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Steadman, she could dream on, because he never
missed an opportunity to praise the chairman, who absorbed flattery like a
beached sea sponge waiting for the next wave.
    Tina lay soaking
in the bath – a luxury she usually only allowed herself at weekends – wondering
when it would be her turn to be fired. She’d been Fenston’s personal assistant
for over a year, and although she despised the man and all he stood for, she’d
still tried to make herself indispensable. Tina knew that she couldn’t consider
resigning until .. .
    The phone rang
in her bedroom, but she made no attempt to answer it. She assumed it would be
Fenston demanding to know where a particular file was, a phone number, even his
diary. ‘On the desk in front of you’ was usually the answer. She wondered for a
moment if it might be Anna, the only real friend she’d made since moving from
the West Coast. Unlikely, she concluded, as Anna would be presenting her report
to the chairman at eight o’clock, and was probably, even now, going over the
finer details for the twentieth time.
    Tina smiled as
she climbed out of the bath and wrapped a towel round her body. She strolled
across the corridor and into her bedroom. Whenever a guest spent the night in
her cramped apartment they had to share her bed or sleep on the sofa. They had
little choice, as she only had one bedroom. Not many takers lately, and not
because of any shortage of offers. But after what she’d been through with
Fenston, Tina no longer trusted anyone.
    Recently she’d
wanted to confide in Anna, but this remained the one secret she couldn’t risk
sharing.
    Tina pulled open
the curtains and, despite its being September, the clear, sparkling morning
convinced her that she should wear a summer dress. It might even make her relax
when she stared up at the dentist’s drill.
    Once she was
dressed and had checked her appearance in the mirror, Tina went off to the
kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. She wasn’t allowed to have anything
else for breakfast, not even toast – instructions from the ferocious dental
assistant – so she flicked on the television to catch the early morning news.
    There wasn’t
any. A suicide bomber on the West Bank was followed by a 320-pound woman who was
suing McDonald’s for ruining her sex life. Tina was just about to turn off Good
Morning America when the quarterback for the 49ers appeared on the screen.
    It made Tina
think of her father.

7
    J ack Delaney
arrived at his office at 26 Federal Plaza just after seven that morning. He
felt depressed as he stared down at the countless files that littered his desk.
Every one of them connected with his investigation of Bryce Fenston, and a year
later he was no nearer to presenting his boss with enough evidence to ask a
judge to issue an arrest warrant.
    Jack opened
Fenston’s personal file in the vain hope that he might stumble across some tiny
clue, some personal trait, or just a mistake that would finally link Fenston
directly to the three vicious murders that had taken place in Marseille, Los
Angeles and Rio de Janeiro.
    In 1984, the
32-year-old Nicu Munteanu had presented himself at the American Embassy in
Bucharest, claiming that he could identify two spies working in the heart of
Washington, information he was willing to trade in exchange for an American
passport. A dozen such claims were handled by the embassy every week and almost
all proved groundless, but in Munteanu’s case the information stood up. Within
a month, two well-placed officials found themselves on a flight back to Moscow,
and Munteanu was issued with an American passport.
    Nicu Munteanu
landed in New York on February 17, 1985.
    Jack had been
able to find little intelligence on Munteanu’s activities during the following
year, but he suddenly re-emerged with enough money to take over Fenston
Finance, a small, ailing bank in Manhattan. Nicu Munteanu changed his name to
Bryce Fenston – not a crime in itself – but no one could