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Page 164
ception early in the year, and at one or two other diplomatic gatherings. Six feet tall, very attractivevery masculine. Craggy features. Wavy dark hair. Eyes like sea ice. Handsome in his way. A Marine colonel, the NSC chairman's man.
''Interesting.''
"I thought you might think so."
"I will wire you some money."
"You heard on the news that Anna Neville's lawyer was killed?"
"Yes. A street accident, they say." That much of the plan had gone simply and smoothly. But what had happened next? Morgan reached the woman, and then?
A light on the telephone indicated another call waiting. Swiftly she said, "Hold for a moment, Yosip." She pressed the button and said, "Ten minutes."
It was her standard greeting and precaution on incoming calls. It gave her time to run the computer program that identified the caller's number.
She came back to Ryerson swiftly. "I am here. Go on."
"What happened to Pierre Grau was no accident."
Marina saw no need to discuss the killing of Grau with Ryerson. "Tell me about this Colonel Morgan," she said. Morgan was the key to a higher stakes game than Grau would ever have been. "Was one of Morgan's victims Grau?" she asked ingenuously.
"No, of course not. Morgan didn't arrive in San Francisco until after Grau was killed. Grau was run down by a Bronco. You know what that is?"
It kept him disarmed if she played the quaint foreigner from time to time. "A horse?" she asked archly.
"Jesus. No, a car. Big, rugged thing. To use off the road, or in the mountains."
"Did the police catch the people in the car?"
"No. But Morgan did."
Marina waited. Sometimes, she thought, Yosip Ryerson had the style of a writer of cheap novels, overly portentous and

 
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