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you make for yourself through hard effort and the stick-to-it quality that's indispensable in sales, the out-of-the-blue kind of luck is a divine mystery—as Rush Limbaugh likes to say, 'on loan from God.'"
    "It's God's reward for how you conduct your life," Pinky said, nodding solemnly and touching the gold cross she wore within the cleavage of her freckled breasts. Freckles and faintly blushing skin and natural strawberry-blond hair, baby-doll-blue eyes—Pinky had looks, although her lower lip was the size of a speed bump, and she was, Betts guessed (knowing she wasn't one to be passing judgment here), a good twenty pounds overweight.
    Frank Tubman leaned forward on the sofa in the smoking section of United's first-class lounge, wincing slightly as a bolt of lightning outside illuminated an airport full of motionless planes on tarmac swept by sheets of rain. A series of late-afternoon thunderstorms had been delaying traffic in and out of SF0 for the better part of an hour:   the Tubners' flight to Rome, Betts Waring's flight to Heathrow.
    "I don't believe the Lord begrudges my putting a little extra jingle in my pockets from time to time or a big-screen TV in the den, such as I won at the Kiwanis picnic Fourth of July last, but—you said your field was psychology, Betts, so maybe you can understand better than most what I'm getting at here—"
    Betts stubbed the last half inch of her Merit in a standing ashtray beside her armchair and resisted the urge to light another one immediately.
    "The lesson, or moral, is:   don't be greedy. That's a very healthy attitude."
    "Exactly!"
    Pinky beamed and opened a new box of the sweet-smelling cigarillos she favored, looking idly around the lounge as she peeled cellophane. Frank was a nonsmoker, but he'd had a couple of bourbon and Cokes during their wait. Thunder caused the sandwich glass in the wall behind Betts to oscillate. Betts wished she could take her shoes off.
    "So you and Pinky have an audience with the Pope," she said to Frank. "I'm not Catholic, but I assume it's a matter of some prestige."
    "In our case, yes," Frank said. "There are several kinds of audiences with His Holiness. The regular Wednesday audience is held in the Papal Audience Chamber, which seats twelve thousand, and anyone can go who can get his hands on a ticket. So those audiences are not, um, that special. But an audience of key lay people from selected dioceses around the country in the Apostolic Palace is, yes, I have to say it:   very special."
    "Momentous," Pinky added, lighting her small cigar and looking at the two men in dark gray business suits who sat silently nearby, where they had been for some time, not drinking or reading or tapping on laptop computers. They did talk to each other, the sort of leisurely conversation that has its share of dry spells; but for the most part they seemed discreetly to be keeping an eye on—well, it had become obvious to the observant Pinky—Betts Waring.
    Pinky looked at Betts again, speculatively, holding the cigarillo near her pendulous lower lip; lighter in her other hand as if she'd forgotten about it.
    "Fact of the matter is," Pinky resumed, "we've always been very active in our diocese. Confidentially"— she now took the time to get her cigarillo going—"I don't think anyone has raised more money for the new education building than Frank."
    "Now, sweetie, it's just a knack I have, persuading people to participate in worthwhile things."
    Pinky Tubner dragged on her cigarillo, expelled smoke, and said in a low voice to Betts, "I don't want to alarm you. But those two men over there that have this sort of look about them, you know, military but in civilian clothes, well—they have been paying you a lot of attention since we sat down."
    "It's all right," Betts said, not looking at the two men.
    "Oh, you mean you know them?"
    "Slightly."
    "Ohh." Pinky felt emboldened to study the pair for a few seconds. Frank frowned at her indiscretion, then cringed at