Page 5 (1/2)

Painfully he dragged his body to the table and reached up and broke in on the incoency line clearance Then both ht learn in theto tint the eastern sky The wind poured through the doorway and scattered loose papers and whipped at their hair

"I'll alert Albany," Meechue"

As if in a drea, and ran recklessly over the uneven rail ties Soon his breath ca out of his rib cage He topped the grade and hurried under the girders of the west bank's flanking span toward the center of the DeauvilleHudson bridge He tripped and sprawled, gashing a knee on a rail spike He picked hie of the center span, he stopped

An icy nausea coursed through his body as he stood in nu eyes

There was a great ee The center truss had vanished into the cold, gray waters of the Hudson River 150 feet below Vanished too was the passenger train carrying a hundred men, women and children

"Deadall dead!" Harding cried in helpless rage "All for eighteen dollars and fourteen cents"

Part I

ROUBAIX'S GARROTE

FEBRUARY 1989

WASHINGTON, DC

There was nothing unusual about the man slouched in the back seat of a nondescript Ford sedan driving slowly through the streets of Washington To the pedestrians who scurried in front of the car at stop lighted intersections, hedriven to work by his nephew No one paid the slightest notice to the White House tag on the license plates

Alan Mercier was a pluenial Falstaff face that masked a shrewd analytical ain-priced suits hite linen handkerchiefs stuffed sloppily in the breast pocket They were tradeerated with keen enthusiasm

Mercier was no paper salesman Recently appointed national security adviser to the country's new president, he was still unrecognized in the public eye Widely respected in the academic community, he had built a reputation as a canny forecaster of international events At the time he came under the eye of the President, he was director of the World Crisis Projection Commission

Perching a pair of Ben Franklin specs on a bubble nose, he laid a briefcase across his lap and opened it

The underside of the lid held a visual display screen, and a keyboard console, bordered by ts of colored lights, lay across the bottom He typed out a conal was bounced by satellite to his corner office at the White House There a coan relaying his workload for the day