“Again I know one or more of you know this murderer, or you are this murderer, and I intend to find out which of you it is.”

“This is nuts,” Liggert said, and half rose from his chair.

“Sit down!”

Liggert’s face filled with rage, but he saw violence in this FBI agent and he slowly sat down again.

Jonah stared at Savich, his head cocked to one side. “Charlie Marker shot at you, this morning, in some woods ten miles west of here? That stand of thick pines, next to the field they cleared?”

Savich nodded.

“It sounds like the McCuttys’ land,” Jonah said. He looked around the table. “My grandfather used to own that land. All of us know it very well, but so do most people in town. Agent Savich, you can’t really mean you think one of us got control of Charlie’s mind, made him try to kill you? Come on, I mean, that’s crazy.”

“It sounds crazy, yes,” Savich said, “and Stefan Dalco is afraid I’ll prove it. He’s afraid enough to try to kill me. He won’t succeed.”

Deliah was on her feet, her palms pressed flat on the table. “It’s frightening to think anyone has such powers, especially for a Wiccan. I believe that if this person does exist, the evil he does will be returned to him, his own powers will be turned back against him. I wish we could help you find him. You know I would do anything I could to help Brakey. The simple truth is we can’t.”

Savich said, “You can’t? And what does that mean? I see, it’s the Wiccan party line. Don’t get involved, trust that bad people will have their evil turned back on them. Karma in all its glory.” He banged his fist on the table, rose. “One of you knows full well what’s going on here, possibly all of you. I will find out.” Savich looked at them dispassionately, then he turned on his heel and walked out of the kitchen.

ABOARD THE TGV, TRAIN À GRANDE VITESSE

NORTH OF LYONS, FRANCE

TWENTY-FOUR KILOMETERS

The newly appointed French Ministre de l’Économie, Marcel Dubroc, drummed his long, thin fingers on the armrest of his solo seat. He wanted to enjoy some rare privacy, and so his aide Luc, with his interminable notes and suggestions, sat behind him. Still too close. He could still hear Luc on his cell phone, wallowing in his mistress’s voice, no doubt gloating about being the new power behind the throne.

Marcel looked out the window at the straight shot of highway running parallel to the high-speed rail track. At three hundred kilometers an hour, the highway, the trees, and the fields beyond passed in a near blur. He saw a beautiful red Ferrari, guessed it was traveling at two hundred kilometers an hour. It looked like it was going backward.

He saw an attendant place a plate of croissants on a passenger’s table and realized he was hungry. Why not celebrate a bit? He could hardly jump out of his seat, shout, and wave his fist in the air. He drew a deep breath, settled back in his seat to enjoy the moment, and ordered an espresso and a croissant.

He’d won. He’d planned to head this office for the past five years, had worked hard to achieve his goal, and at last the power, the influence, the public exposure were his. It hadn’t quite settled into his bones yet, the actual knowledge he’d finally arrived, but it would, beginning with the meeting this afternoon when he would drop the hammer.

He was now Ministre de l’Économie—would it be his legacy? For the moment at least, he was content, but who knew what would come his way in the future?

He thought of his ex-wife, Nichole, that unfaithful bitch, and smiled so widely his jaw cracked. At the time, rage had swamped him when a friend had told of seeing her and her lover in an out-of-the-way restaurant in the 5th Arrondissement, trading saliva over couscous. But no longer. Even though his teenage son, Jean, had blamed him for breaking up the marriage to his mother, the little pisshead, Marcel knew he’d been too young to understand, but someday he would.

His new office would be his private revenge. His ex-wife wouldn’t be the woman on his arm at the elegant events that would make up many of his evenings—rather, he pictured a succession of beautiful women, perhaps more interested in his office than in him, but who cared?

His present lover, Elaine, was quite beautiful, and she basked in his new position as Ministre de l’Économie. Should he consider marrying her? There was no rush.

FIFTEEN KILOMETERS

He put portable headphones over his ears, tuned in to a streaming music service as he waited for his coffee. A mad song came on that only a French teenager could appreciate, but now he wrapped himself in the jagged dissonance of the notes as the two male vocalists wailed and screeched unintelligible words in his ears. The vicious sounds made him think of his upcoming meeting that afternoon with Antoine Bardon at Marcel’s office in Bercy. It would be their final meeting, and he was quite looking forward to it. He would ever-so-pleasantly tell Bardon about his new budget, about to be approved by the president. Marcel had cut off all the farm-equipment subsidies Antoine Bardon had received yearly and promptly stuffed much of the money into his own fat pockets, millions of euros he used to facilitate foreign bribes through his bankers and trucking businesses. Marcel had tracked down the paper trail of the stolen federal money, laundered through a small bank in Marseilles, and now he had the power to bring him down. At last. Marcel couldn’t wait to see the look on Bardon’s face when he showed him the proof. For all practical purposes, Antoine Bardon would be gone, perhaps to prison, certainly dead to the French government. So what if Bardon let it out that he’d been one of Marcel’s ex-wife’s lovers? Everyone knowing that would only make it sweeter. Maybe he could call his ex-wife, tell her what he’d done to her ex-lover, offer to tell her which prison he’d be spending his retirement years.