"Yeah, Luke. Works upstairs."
     "Yep. Connor Dow."
     Mason Bennett thanked the waiter, then entered an empty elevator and headed up. He pulled off his blond beard and hairpiece and stuffed them into his pockets. He combed his oily, brown hair straight back, and crammed a silk handkerchief into his breast pocket. He jammed the floor button repeatedly, as though it would accelerate the elevator's ascent.
     So, he thought, someone named Luke Tanner, who works at Connor Dow, has overheard us. But what did Tanner know? He knew about the Siamese Twins. He knew they would have a hunting accident and be killed by snakes. But he didn't know who the Twins were, who wanted them dead, where the accident would happen. He also didn't know which piece of business would be switched, that it was worth over one billion dollars or which agencies were involved.
     And he wouldn't live long enough to find out.
The elevator door whooshed open and Bennett walked briskly into the distinctive, mirrored lobby of Kennard Rickert Marketing Communications.
     Moments later, he stepped into Forrest C. Klug's sprawling office, with its panoramic view of the meandering Detroit River. Bennett crossed the purple Isfahan carpet, sat in a burgundy, leather chair and stared over the mahogany desk at Klug, who was carving off the tip of a Porlaranaga cigar as he spoke on the phone. Klug's diminutive size made the desk and office seem enormous.
     Slowly, Klug's face turned. His left eye, the glass one, pointing slightly in and down, seemed to stare at Bennett's neck. The good eye, a shade greyer and very intense, scrutinized Bennett, as usual, for any hint of unwanted news.
     Klug lit the cigar, smacked his thick lips like a carp, and billowed smoke upward where it was sucked straight into a small ceiling ventilator.
     "Give me prime time," Klug shouted into the phone, "or I switch forty million over to ABC."
     Klug at his arm-twisting finest, Bennett thought as he watched the silver-haired chairman of Kennard Rickert, a four-billion-dollar global advertising and media conglomerate. A self-absorbed man, Klug had charmed, cajoled, bullied, bludgeoned, and sometimes blackmailed CEOs in order to get their multimillion-dollar advertising budgets.
     Bennett had known Klug since Vietnam. Once, when he told Klug his soldiers were disembowelling Viet Cong prisoners and playing tug-of-war with the intestines, Klug had looked at him and asked, "What's your point?"
"By end of day--or no deal!" Klug said, slamming the phone down and straightening the sleeve of his grey, three-thousand-dollar suit. His good eye found Bennett.