San Francisco, California

Samuel Michaels was dozing on his comfortable, threadbare sofa when he heard a key move in the door of his second floor Montgomery Street studio apartment. As his eyes opened so did the door. A blonde, barefoot, platinum-eyed vision in a low-cut, form-fitting black micro-mini-dress jumped in, panting. His neighbor Anastasia Vincent and his half brother Jack were the only ones who had a key—and this definitely wasn't Jack Hatfield. Jack hadn't been here in over a year, which was the last time they spoke. It was to thank him for a jazz CD Sammy had sent as a birthday present and peace offering.

"Sam!" she gulped in her charming Russian accent. "They are after me!"

"Who is?" Sammy asked.

"Very bad men!" she said, shaking. Her eyes, normally alert as those as a Nordic wolf, seemed wary, frightened.

Sammy's Marine training was a little rusty. He hadn't worn a uniform for years, not since he was on one of his motorcycles when a teen driver had hit him, sending him into a year of physical therapy and paving the way for a handsome settlement with the insurance company. Still, as the saying goes, Once a Marine, Always a Marine. Sammy was up and moving past her in an instant. He slammed his apartment door shut behind her, rattling the painting he'd bought at a flea market showing a shipwreck in the Farallon Islands, out in the Bay. Then he locked and bolted the door and turned toward her.

"It's okay," he said. "You're safe now."

Her Arctic eyes locked on his. "Are you sure?"

He wasn't, but he said, "Absolutely. No one would ever expect to find a beautiful girl in my apartment."

She smiled halfheartedly. "You are making a joke."

"I wish. Now, relax and tell me what's going on," Sammy coaxed.

She began to calm. He maneuvered her to the sofa and sat next to her, looking intently into her eyes. It was easy. They were the brightest, lightest blue he had ever seen. But he kept one ear trained on the door, on the steps outside. They were old wooden steps and they creaked. It would be difficult for anyone to sneak up on him.

Anastasia Vincent was a strong, very special girl. Within weeks of her moving here from Moscow he had learned she was a high-class call girl. That was probably how she got into this country, paying her way with favors, but that didn't matter. If there was one thing he'd learned in his thirty-seven years, people did what they had to do. Hell, he was a professional party clown. Not a party animal, but a bona fide clown: big red wig, big red nose, big red slippers, and lots of polka dots in between. Who was he to judge others? Ana had character, wisdom, and she had seen more in her twenty-seven years than most women see in a lifetime. He figured she was on the lam from an angry john, someone he could handle.

"You want a drink? Water? Something stronger?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Thank you, though." Once Ana caught her breath it all came out in a rush. "I met a military officer six months ago at a party hosted by a wealthy armament manufacturer. He introduced himself as General Montgomery Morton. He seemed very taken by me."

Sammy smiled. "That doesn't exactly put General Montgomery Morton in the genius class for pickers."

"You are very sweet," she replied graciously.

Ow. Sammy was used to hearing that from women, which is why there weren't many of them trying to get in to see him. They wanted the younger, the studlier, the wealthier. Even in San Francisco, there were still enough straight guys like that to shrink the dating pool for guys like him to zero.

"So you met this general," Sammy said.

"Yes. Soon he was calling me every week and paying very well," she said. "We were always staying in the city's best hotels, ordering room service, expensive champagne." She smiled wryly. "No gifts, though. Nothing that could be traced. But that was all right. His money was good. The last time we met he asked me to bring other women to party with his friends. That was today. He said it was a special occasion."

"A birthday? A promotion? An appointment?"

"He did not tell me," Ana said. "We met at a Tower Suite of the Fairmont Hotel."

She was right about him spending lavishly: a suite like that, high on Nob Hill, cost more each night than he made in a couple of weeks.

Anastasia explained that she had brought along Ritu, a voluptuous girl from India, and Miwa, an ethereal Japanese girl. The oldest man, whom she mentally named "Pallor" for the whiteness of his skin, lit up at the sight of Miwa. The youngest man—whom Anastasia nicknamed "Kid"—immediately put his arm around Ritu's shoulder and drew her toward the bedroom.

"The general took me to the couch," she said. "He seemed to be thinking about something far away. But I had gone there to do a job and—I did."

She said that for the next hour the general was rougher than usual, though it was nothing she couldn't handle.

"Still, I was relieved when it was over," she said. "The two other girls left but I stayed to get ready for my next engagement. I went to dress and fix my makeup in the bathroom and was about to step out when the general's smartphone rang. As he answered he jumped over and slammed the bathroom door but didn't realize there was a towel on the floor. The door did not shut all the way."

Ana decided to wait until he was done. There was a short silence and then the general uttered a single word. "Good." The next pause was longer, so long that she thought the call was over. But just as she placed her hand on the doorknob she heard him again.

"He said, 'Firebird moves to stage two,'" Ana told Sammy. "It was spoken softly, almost like a prayer."

"Military code?" Sammy wondered.

"That was what I thought," Ana told him.

When the call was finished, she said she shook her hair, opened the door, and froze. The general's eyes were on the rumpled towel, on the open door. And then they were on her.

"His expression was dark and very, very angry," Ana said. "He demanded to know what I had heard. I told him I hadn't heard anything. He just stared at me with those evil eyes. "'What did you hear?' he shrieked, this time rising from the bed and coming toward me. I repeated that I had heard nothing, but he didn't believe me. He lunged for me, like he wanted to grab my hair, but I got around him because he was still tangled in a sheet. I ran toward the door."

"Wow," Sammy marveled. "That's quite an extreme reaction, especially for a high-ranking military officer." He shook his head after considering the matter. "He must be under enormous pressure to go off like that."

"No, he wasn't under pressure once we finished," Ana said innocently.

Sammy stifled a grin; he knew she meant it as a professional observation.

There were tears in the girl's eyes as she recounted how he had shouted for the others to stop her. Pallor and the Kid tried to grab her, but Ana said that she had spent a lifetime escaping—from local bureaucrats who wanted favors when she was sixteen to border dogs when she was eighteen and left the country without permission. The next thing she knew she was out in the hall, running.

"You ran here from the Fairmont?" Sammy asked. He glanced at her legs, following their shapely curve down.

She raised her luminous eyes to the face of a man she had come to like, to trust. She nodded.

"That's...