In Bosnia, in Columbia, in Somalia, and throughout the European Continent -- everywhere he had traveled to do the Agency's black-ops dirty work -- Mark Kap had come to rely upon what he called his "cat sense." It was what told him when danger was creeping up silently to slit his throat from ear to ear. Or when armed men would come crashing in holding automatic rifles with laser sights to try and shoot him dead.

So far the "cat sense" hadn't failed him. Nor would it fail him tonight -- the night his beloved Facility was attacked and razed to the earth by 200 black-clothed special ops sent by the government Kap had served faithfully for the last thirty years of his active life.

Marianne White had left early in the afternoon for Washington. She had some loose ends to tie up, she said. There had been a furor over the mess in Amsterdam. The suits wanted to sit down with her. She guessed she'd be chewed out. Kap laughed at this and said:

-Just sit through it and nod your head every so often. Everybody faces the music at least once.

-I'll act contrite and only tell them what they want to hear, Marianne said.

-Which is?

-That the problem isn't problematic anymore.

Giles Jalivert was dead, after all. And he couldn't be traced to Ultra. He'd gone on a rampage through the Grand Hotel Amstelzicht, killing dozens of human beings before he was shot down. Nothing in his psychological profile explained what had set him off like this. The op was straightforward. He was supposed to assassinate a Chinese official. He did the job but then also took out the official's wife and three daughters. Then, instead of making his escape as originally planned, he'd taken on the Dutch SWAT teams sent in to placate him, as well as randomly gunning down hotel guests in a spectacular fashion.

At this point, Giles' Washington connection still only amounted to rumors. Yet the tension in the "intelligence community" over this fiasco was off the charts. Marianne White was being called down to explain what Ultra was doing to make sure such gun-happy hijinks "never happened again, ever."

Kap watched the limosine carrying Marianne White off to the airport. He waved. Then he lit a cigarette and went back inside. It was time to co-instruct the senior class in advanced close combat techniques.

After dinner in the mess hall -- Kap always ate with his students, since he relished their youthful high spirits -- he left the main building and strolled up the quiet path to his cottage. As Headmaster, Kap had the use of the only free-standing house on the property. It was small, but it suited him. He'd started a little garden and enjoyed getting his hands dirty on weekends.

As soon as he entered the house, through the quaintly arched front door that was always kept unlocked, he went to the bar and poured himself a whisky. He drank it standing at the front windows, the lace curtains drawn wide, looking down at the muddy drill field and the cluster of Quonset huts beyond it. Ultra's students lived in the Quonset huts. A small group of the younger ones were kicking around a soccer ball in the last light.

It was a peaceful evening, an immense calm soaking into the landscape with the last sunrays. But Kap's "cat sense" was telling him something was not right. He drank another long sip of the whisky but it didn't help.

He went to the door and locked it. Then he threw the bolt. He took his glass to the bar and poured another whisky. He lit a cigarette and smoked it while drinking the second drink. When the cigarette was finished, so was the drink. He left the glass and the cigarette butt there and went into his bedroom and took down an aluminum briefcase from the closet. He laid it flat on the bed. Using his thumbs, he turned the combination locks until the latch sprung and opened it wide. Inside it were his weapons. There were four large calibre handguns of slightly different size and three commando-style knives and several boxes of ammunition, including dum-dums. He took out the Sig-Sauer and checked the clip. It was fully armed. He racked a round into the chamber and carried the pistol with him into the TV room, which was dominated by a flat screen TV almost the length and width of the wall it stood against. He set down the pistol on the side table and went to the shelf of DVDs to select a film, deciding after about ten seconds on Thief, with James Caan. He slipped it into the DVD player, picked up the remote and went to the low leather sofa. He sat down, sinking into the soft leather, switched on the TV with the remote, and set the remote down next to the pistol. Then he bent to slip off his shoes, kicking them to one side.

**

At 3:43 AM he woke with a start. He was gazing right at the red-lit numerals on his alarm clock. He didn't know what had woken him. Then the numerals blinked out. At the same instant, the motor of the refrigerator stopped humming. He sat up quickly and swung his legs from under the covers and put his bare feet onto the floor. He picked up the Sig-Sauer with his left hand and put it into his right and stood slowly, listening. He heard nothing but the crickets outside. He was waiting for the generator in the main building to start and for the lights to blink on. It didn't. So, they didn't. The generator had been shut down. That meant the electric fence around the property was disarmed. He walked in the near total darkness to the door and pushed it open with his left hand. He made his way down the hall, sweating. The front room was lit by beaming moonlight. Kap heard a small but distinct click. It was, he realized, the click of a key opening a lock. He stopped about five feet from the front door. The knob was turning. It turned very slowly and then some pressure was put on the door from outside so it strained against the bolt. The pressure relaxed. He knew what would come next. He walked backwards into the hall and took cover behind the archway. He slipped the safety catch with his thumb and held the Sig-Sauer up at forehead level and shut his eyes. The explosion made his ears ring and plaster dust and pieces of the door flew past. Then red laser beams darted into the dusty blackness. He stepped out into the dust cloud and fired twice into the chest of the black-clothed op coming through the shattered door. The man pitched backwards, knocking down two or three other intruders. Kap rapid-fired another four rounds, then turned and sprinted full speed the hallway to his bedroom, reaching it just as the intruders fired their first clanging shots. Once inside, he kicked the door shut. He got down on the floor and pulled the briefcase out from under his bed, where he'd stashed it. Outside, there was more automatic weapons fire and shattering glass.

Kap had always felt that it was commonsense to establish an easy escape route in the bedroom of any place where you were going to live for very long. Here, he'd cut a hole into the ceiling of the closet then covered it with a piece of canvas to keep out the dust. By using the shelves as a crude ladder, one could clamber up through the hole and into the attic in seconds. He did this now, pushing the briefcase up through the canvas ahead of him, tossing the Sig-Sauer after it. Men were shouting in the hallway. Once he'd rolled up through the hole, he groped in the dark and found the piece of plastered ceiling he'd cut out, and this he fit back into its place, so that at a glance the ceiling would appear to be normal. He picked up the gun and crouched under the beams, sweating and forcing himself to breathe slow and deep.

There were two small side dormer windows, and these Kap had carefully worked with planing tools so that they could be taken right out of their frames. The house faced South, so the escape choices were East and West. East led into a grove of thick pine trees. West, he'd have to jump out into the garden, landing either in the carp pond or on the soft dirt that grew his vegetables. Kap chose East. It was a lightning choice made for no particular reason except that he was wearing his black silk pajamas and he felt he'd blend well with the pine grove, giving him an extra shot at escape.

He pushed the briefcase over to the window with his bare feet, then crouched and, setting down the Sig-Sauer beside it, felt along the frame. Deftly and without any fuss or even the slightest noise, he removed the window and set it against the wall. The air outside was autumn-cold. The pine grove was dark despite the full moon. He didn't see any movement. He heard his bedroom door shatter with the force of a kick, and the men's voices were suddenly quite clear. They were just below him. In an instant they'd find the escape hatch in the closet. He threw the briefcase out, picked up his pistol and jumped after it.