ure.

A fence surrounded the estate, but the front gate was swinging open.
Malone saw it and took a deep breath. Now, he told himself, or never.
He drove the Lincoln through the opening slowly, alert for almost
anything.

There was no disturbance. Thirty yards from the front door he pulled
the car to a cautious stop and got out. He started to walk toward the
building. Each step seemed to take whole minutes, and everything he
had thought raced through his mind again.

Nothing seemed to move anywhere, except Malone himself.

Was he right? Were the PRS people really here? Or had he been led
astray by them? Had he been manipulated as easily as they had
manipulated so many others?

That was possible. But it wasn't the only possibility.

Suppose, he thought, that he was perfectly right, and that the PRS
members were waiting inside. And suppose, too, that he'd misunderstood
their motives.

Suppose they were just waiting for him to get a little closer.

Malone kept walking.

In just a few steps, he would be close enough so that a bullet aimed
at him from the house hadn't a real chance of missing him.

And it didn't have to be bullets, either. They might have set a trap,
he thought, and were waiting for him to walk right into it. Then they
would hold him prisoner while they devised ways to...

To what? He didn't know. And that was even worse; it called up
horrible terrors from the darkest depths of Malone's mind. He
continued to walk forward, feeling about as exposed as a restaurant
lamb chop caught with its panty down.

He reached the steps that led up to the porch, and took them one at a
time.

He stood on the porch. A long second passed.

He took a step toward the high, wide and handsome oaken door. Then he
took another step, and another.

What was waiting for him inside?

He took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell button.

The door swung open immediately, and Malone involuntarily stepped
back.

The owner of the house smiled at him from the doorway. Malone let out
his breath in one long sigh of relief.

"I was hoping it would be you," he said weakly. "May I come in?"

"Why, certainly, Malone. Come on in. We've been expecting you, you
know," said Andrew J. Burris, director of the FBI.

15

Malone sat, quietly relaxed and almost completely at ease, in the
depths of a huge, comfortable, old-fashioned Morris chair. Three
similar chairs were clustered with his, around a squat, massive coffee
t