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stared at me, the noncoms grinning, Colonel Nizam with a mortal frown.
    We crossed the street, but when I started up my front walk, Arslan laughed. “This way.” Some kind of armored truck was parked in my driveway—my car had disappeared—and a Land Rover behind it on the lawn. He slid into the driver's seat of the Land Rover and motioned me toward the seat beside him.
    I got in. He threw it into gear and plowed straight across the lawn and one of Luella's flower beds before he turned down the Morrisville road. Even so, he drove well. He handled the car like a man who made his living driving. There wasn't a bump or a pothole on the road that he didn't foresee and compensate for. He was looking very smug.
    “Would it be easy to kill me?” he asked pleasantly.
    I imagined not. In any case, I wasn't about to try it, with the school full of children and Luella alone with his soldiers. And it didn't make any obvious sense for him to drive out into the country with me, alone and unguarded; there had to be a catch. “That's not why I'm watching you,” I said. “I was thinking you may make some pretty big headlines, but this is the first time I've seen you do anything for yourself. It takes a corporal just to tie your shoes.”
    He stopped the Land Rover right there in the middle of the road, turned off the engine, leaned his left elbow on the wheel, and slewed around on the seat to face me full. His eyes fairly danced, exactly like some fourth-grader bound to stir up mischief at any cost. And by God, it made me ache to look at him—ache to get my hands on his neck or my foot in his face. We were already out of sight of town, just before the road turned west, with Sam Tuller's fields on our right and the woods of the old Karcher place on the left. There wasn't a sign of life anywhere.
    “I have brought you here for two reasons, sir. One, that you should tell me about these farms. Two, that you should see that I do things for myself.”
    The little breeze stirred the heavy, dead-black hair above his foreign face. He was breathing fast and easily. His eager eyes were no more than two feet from mine. And I felt my blood surge up like a river rising. “Are you daring me to attack you?”
    “Yes, sir,” he said softly.
    I took a deep breath. “You're a good seventeen years younger. You're armed, and you're a professional soldier. I'll be damned if I'm going to throw away whatever chance I've got just to satisfy your sadistic whims. If you want to kill me, you'll have to do it on your own initiative.”
    He didn't move a muscle; only the whole expression of his face changed. The smile was still there, but the eyes were serious. “Good.” He stared at me as if he was reading the fine print on the inside of my skull. “Your language has a beautiful saying, ‘Strike while the iron is hot.’ Now, sir, you are hot. You would like to kill me, yes. But you are afraid that if you tried, you would fail; and this is true. Also you are afraid that if you succeeded, my soldiers would take a great vengeance; and this is also true. But there will be times when it will be easy to kill me, for you or for others. I tell you now what will happen if I ever die within the borders of this district—even of what you call ... natural causes.” His smile tightened. “Every effort will be made to exterminate the entire population of the district, beginning with Kraftsville, which will be surrounded and burned to the ground.”
    I swallowed a swell of rage. “What you mean is, those are the orders you've given.”
    “This has been sworn to me by Colonel Nizam,” he said portentously—there should have been a dark bass chord of accompaniment—but all at once he grinned. “Yes; yes, sir—orders and oaths are no more immortal than men. So I tell you this, sir: my soldiers are like a pack of hungry wolves; they need no whip to drive them to the kill.” He fished a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and lit it without taking his eyes off