Sometimes the mountain must come to the man. Bettino Calvino didn’t like it, but he didn’t have to like something to do it. It felt necessary. He studied the narrow, shabby street through the tinted protective glass of his Humvee. Calvino wasn’t prescient. He did not have to be to know he might be in trouble. He’d felt the chill of danger down his back, the sense that change was coming even before Phin’s elimination from play. Was it personal or part of something larger?
Just because he was paranoid, that didn’t mean someone wasn’t out to get him. A lot of someones had motive, he thought with an almost smile. Most of them did not have means or opportunity. He’d have bet the house that Phin was as paranoid or more so. And he’d have lost. They’d been a triangle of power, precariously balan
