There was a certain aptness to the Rivard LLC delegation staying at Hotel Zauberberg. The lodge was built into the side of the mountain à la Roche Rivard, rising skyward in terraced levels that became narrower—and more exclusive—the higher they climbed. With dormers and spare white arches, the establishment oozed Old World haughtiness.

Quaid entered the lobby by ten-foot farmhouse doors and immediately heard the fuzzing of Geiger counters. A guard in a suit waved him through. Ahead, concierges busily loaded skis onto a brass luggage cart as a man wearing a cape and handlebar mustache looked on.

Off the lobby was an inviting bar area—marbled oak, teardrop chandelier. Quaid decided to wet his whistle with a prairie fire before starting out after Fabienne.

The whole facility was likely under surveillance; the heiress might at this very moment be reclining on some velvet chaise, watching him via closed caption feed.

Quaid had, perhaps, oversold his "tête-a-tête" to the others. It was true he and Fabienne had discussed possible contract work during the Anarchy, but they hadn't spoken in months. The backchannel operator they'd corresponded through had gone dark, and though Quaid likely could have reached her by different means, he preferred to shield his ties to Rivard LLC from his more reputable contacts.

Still, Quaid believed when Fabienne saw him—and remembered their night in Bucharest—she would respond with enthusiasm.

The server brought Quaid something that wasn't a prairie fire—did he taste grenadine?—but he drank it without complaint and ordered another.

As he imbibed, Quaid gauged Hotel Zauberberg's security. It was ironclad as expected, but showed a level of technical sophistication beyond anything he'd seen in the States. Liquor bottles had digital pourers to detect poisons. A red-pulsing laser net below the ceiling morphed with his and the server's movements.

It made Quaid think of his friend Manuel's question about missile defense at Roche Rivard.

How long does a thing like that take to pull together?

That Rivard had conspired with the Blind Mice seemed clear, but there was more to know about the relationship. Were the Mice unique as instigators, or had Rivard contracted with other similar groups? How tight was the coupling? Had Rivard merely ridden a wave the Mice had set in motion, or engineered it themselves? Profiteering was one thing, but that would be quite another.

Quaid finished his second drink—grenadine, definitely—then joined a waiting group at the elevator bank. The car arrived. All shuffled on. As others disembarked at lower floors, he checked his sandy hair by its reflection in gold plating, re-mussing a spot on the right.

Quaid had charmed a range of women over the years, but Fabienne Rivard was a category unto herself. Stephen Hawking, Christiano Ronaldo, Princess Charlotte of Monaco—her trysts were legendary, and legendarily confounding, to Rivard-watchers around the globe.

At the elevator's ding for twenty-two, Quaid smacked his palms and strode forward with conviction.

"Arrêtez!"

Three men aimed assault rifles at Quaid's forehead. They wore dark, trim clothes and what looked like driving gloves.

"You guys'll be wanting the fitness center," Quaid said, gesturing around the bend. "They have ellipticals, if that's your workout of choice."

None cracked a smile, their muzzles remaining steady.

"Quelle est votre enterprise?" asked the middle one, who despite the choice of language had a Spaniard's look. "Personne n'est autorisé ici."

Quaid nodded past them, up a corridor. "Je dois discuter avec Mademoiselle Rivard."

"Bof," said another guard. "Vous? Et Fabienne Rivard?"

"We go way back. Tell her Quaid Rafferty is here, and he's ready to talk terms."

Without lowering their guns, the men traded around a dark look. They spoke in low tones for a moment, then one stepped forward to clamp cuffs mercilessly on Quaid's wrists.

As he was led away, shoved time and again in the small of his back, Quaid recalled the rumors that Henri Rivard had decades ago built an oubliette (the French word for a dungeon with only a trap-door in the ceiling for entry) into Roche Rivard.

What if they locked him up? What if he never even got an audience with Fabienne?

Quaid was prodded through two hallways, one door with a pair of heavy-gauge combination locks, and a short passage smelling of incense.

The cuffs' steel had just sawed a line of blood across one wrist when he was pulled unceremoniously over the threshold of a baronial suite. Inside, cross-legged on a Louis XIV couch, sat Fabienne Rivard.

"Relâchez cet homme," she ordered, standing and approaching Quaid.

Each stride crossed her body at a severe angle, as though the leading edge of her hip, knee, and foot were a machete slicing air, a beat before their mirrored counterparts made the same slice along the opposite diagonal.

The Spaniard uncuffed Quaid. Fabienne sent the guards off with a sneering jerk of the head, then led Quaid wordlessly to an adjoining room with a four-poster bed.

He followed warily, feeling lured in, coaxed along the silken tendrils of a web. The incense smell became stronger. When his eyes strayed from Fabienne's backside—which took a while—he noticed two others in the room: a buxom woman with platinum blond hair, and an African wearing ammunition across his bare chest on dual bandoleers.

Fabienne spoke briefly to the woman, who returned cheek kisses, then left. The man stayed.

Quaid gazed about the frescoed ceiling. "Nice digs. Who's the gal pal?"

"Thérèse Laurent has a PhD in Organizational Behavior." Fabienne's voice seemed to waft forth from the room's smell, which Quaid saw now originated from a hookah in a corner. "She rose high in the Macron administration before refusing the advances of some minister, who was a pig. Thérèse is my chief of staff."

"And the minister...?"

"Lardons."

Quaid's French was rusty, but he understood the term to mean diced bacon.

"And I suppose this guy"—nodding to the African—"negotiated the rebel peace treaty in Sudan?"

The heiress sank into the bed, thighs rubbing like insect wings. "Maha intrigues you?"

"I'm open-minded as the next guy," Quaid said, "but not like that, no. I like it simple."

She threw a pouty look at Maha, then, tucking both feet up underneath her, patted the bed for Quaid to join.

"Our correspondence has fallen into arrears," she said. "When we last spoke, you said you were busy with other projects. 'Booked solid,' as I recall. I found others."

Quaid did sit, the mattress stiff under a lush bedspread. "Third Chance Enterprises is in great demand."

Fabienne scoffed. Her sharp knee bit into his. "Ah, oui, that idiotic name of yours."

"It's called branding. I know you know about branding—that's what the Forceworthy announcement was all about, right?"

Fabienne did not answer. The sun had set, and by sprawling windows, moonlight off the Alps turned her neck a bloodless blue. Taken with her emerald eyes, the color made her seem aquatic—like some mermaid or venomous sea nymph.

Now those emerald eyes bore into Quaid, probing, dissecting.

Just to stop them, he continued, "Honestly, I wanted to take your gig. I did. But Durwood wasn't real keen. He tells me they're predicting ten thousand people could be killed this year for their tooth fillings."

Fabienne batted jet-black lashes. "Terrible."

"Right. Though I must say, based on your talk today, it seems like nobody at Rivard is gonna mind much if the Anarchy keeps right on rolling."

"The world is complicated," she replied. "Each day, women die like dogs in childbirth. The price of corn rises two cents, and how many starve? One cannot know."

Fabienne's purple dress concealed little—if not for linen fabric, it could have been a nightie. Her body was lithe and muscled, the hollow between her breasts deep, her unshaved armpits almost skeletal.

Quaid was helpless against Bucharest memories. The essential oils massage, papaya slices, that wrought-iron balcony whose imprint Quaid's back had borne for weeks.

He asked, "So who were these 'others' you hired instead?"

Fabienne responded with a flirt in her voice, "Freelancers, much the same as you."

"The Blind Mice?"

She laughed. "First, tell me who you are working for. Then perhaps we can have an open discussion of associates."

Saying this, she swung a leg over Quaid's thigh. The inner nub of her ankle hiked the cuff of his pants up. He felt himself growing.

"We work for whoever'll write us a check."

"Peut-être our friend Sergio."

"Sergio?" Quaid chuckled—the three had partied together in Ibizi during Carnaval. "He can barely afford to keep his bridges standing."

"Your own government, then. Many on Capitol Hill know you."

"True, but Uncle Sam strongly prefers non-felons. Those solicitation charges in Massachusetts keep me off the federal dole more or less indefinitely."

Quaid glanced up and saw the African staring intently at his hand, which had settled above Fabienne's knee.

The heiress, noticing the two men noticing each other, began working her vermilion nails through Quaid's hair. "What have you come for? To propose a fresh partnership?"

"I'm proposing...an exploration of such. It would depend on terms, of course. And what exactly needed doing."

Fabienne, in a single coordinated motion, whipped her far leg over Quaid and yanked him by the hair flat against the bed, straddling him.

"There is beaucoup that needs doing."

Quaid bulged. "I'm sure there is."

"Much of the work is...eh bien, unsavory." Fabienne leaned in concert with her winding words, making friction between their bodies. "I wonder, do you have the stomach for such work?"

As if checking, she dragged her long forefinger from the chest of his sportcoat down his belly, then underneath his shirt, then beyond his belt buckle. Her palm was around him in a flash.

Quaid's mind was a jumble. Chasing around inside were nights with Molly and days chasing Mice, and what besides grenadine had been in his drink, and incense, and which side of the razor wire Third Chance Enterprise ought to angle for.

"Might be I'd have to—" Quaid struggled to breath. "Have to—have to cut Durwood out. He can be quite the moralist."

Fabienne had his zipper undone. "The rate would be lower, oui? Sans Mr. Oak-Jones?"

She was teasing—budget never mattered to Fabienne. As their physical entanglement progressed, Quaid felt burgeoning danger. There was an indefinable menace in Fabienne's actions—a display of power, a seizing of will. Quaid was a red-blooded man: he could no more stop what was happening than a desert castaway could dodge a rain shower.

He told himself this meant nothing. Part of the job.

"Let's hear about this unsavory job of yours," he panted. "How dirty are we talking?"

Fabienne had him by a Vulcan grip below, while higher, her gaunt thighs and arms were steel rods pinning him to the bed.

"Assassination." She bit his earlobe.

Quaid moaned at the collision of stimuli—nice, painful, slow, sudden—and found his field of vision rolling away.

He managed, "Government or civilian?"

Fabienne pulled aside her dress—hair rather than fabric bristled Quaid's skin below.

"Civilian."

She joined them with a frank thrust that sent Quaid to another universe—a place of pleasure and beautiful speed and deliverance from mortal constraint, a private anarchy unleashed upon all four sides of the stiff mattress.

It was a good while before his next intelligible thought.

When Quaid returned to himself, he was propped by an elbow. He surveyed the room and found the African still at his post. The bandoleers across the man's chest shimmered, individual shell casings refracting shards of moonlight.

Fabienne was pulling on her purple dress, using the guard's bare shoulder for balance.

"So this civilian you want eliminated," Quaid said. "I take it he or she has outgrown their usefulness to Rivard?"

The heiress allowed the guard to zip her up in back, then returned to Quaid's side to whisper, "You are out of your depths, Mister Rafferty."

She strode from the room. Through the doorway, Quaid saw her meet Thérèse Laurent with a forearm clutch.

He called, "Should we be firming up particulars? It's still early, we could hit the town..."

But the two women were gone.

Quaid briefly thought he'd been left to fend for himself—maybe he could snoop around and see whether any dastardly Rivard plans were lying about—but in the next moment, the African yanked him by the biceps off the bed and dragged him out of Hotel Zauberberg.