The more he studied them, the more mismatched they seemed-the sheikh in his tailored dark suit and shiny shoes, Cassidy trying to feminize herself with that upswept hairdo, the dangling earrings and lacy dress, but ending up far short of success. Touching the sheikh's arm from time to time but getting only half-smiles or less.

Shmuck was definitely nervous, his mind somewhere else.

A young dark-haired woman dressed in white work clothes and equipped with a mop and pail emerged from the back of the restaurant, knelt, and began cleaning off the sidewalk.

Al Biyadi and Cassidy ignored her, kept playing out their

, little scene.

Waiting? For what?

The Latam couple had paid their check and left the restaurant ten minutes ago, conferring briefly with Shmeltzer before walking off hand in hand, north on Salah E-Din. To the casual observer a goyische twosome, headed for fun in a suite at the American Colony Hotel.

Al Biyadi looked at his watch again. Almost a nervous tic. Cassidy put the cookie down, placed her hands in her lap.

The scrubwoman dragged her mop closer to their table, making soapy circles, then right up next to them.

She knelt, kept her hands moving, her narrow white back to Shmeltzer. He half-expected Al Biyadi to say something nasty to her-guy was class-conscious.

But instead he looked down at her, seemed to be listening to her. Tensing up. Nodding. Cassidy making a grand show of looking off in the distance.

The scrubwoman dragged her pail elsewhere, scrubbed for a few seconds, then disappeared back into the restaurant. Half the sidewalk was still dirty. Al Biyadi slapped down more bills, pinned them under the candle glass, got up, and brushed off his trousers.

Cassidy stood too, took his arm. Squeezed it-through his binoculars, Shmeltzer could see her fingers tightening like claws around the dark fabric.

Al Biyadi peeled them off, gave her a tiny shake of the head, as if to say not now.

Cassidy dropped her hands to her sides. Tapped her foot.

The two of them stood on the sidewalk.

Moments later, Shmeltzer heard sounds from the back door of the restaurant. The door opened, freeing a beam of ocher light and kitchen clatter. He pressed himself into a dark corner and watched as the scrubwoman, now dressed in a dark dress, walked out and fluffed her hair. Short girl-petite. Pretty profile.

She began heading north on Salah E-Din, duplicating the Latam couple's route.

Shmeltzer could see she was a bit flatfooted, could hear her shuffle. When her footsteps had died, he moved forward, looked at her, then back at the Ali Baba.

The restaurant's front lights had been turned off. The waiter was folding up tablecloths, extinguishing candles, collapsing tables.

Al Biyadi and Cassidy began walking north, too, following the scrubwoman.

They passed within two meters of him, keeping up a good pace, not talking. Shmeltzer radioed the Latam couple. The woman answered.

"Wife, here."

"They just left, followed a short woman in a dark dress, shoulder-length dark hair, early twenties. Ali three of them coming your way on Salah E-Din. Where are you?"

"Just past Az-Zahara, near the Joulani Travel Agency."

"Stay there. I'll take up the rear."

He put the radio under his beggar's robes, back in the pocket of his windbreaker, cursed the heat and all those layers of clothes, and followed a block behind.

Goddamned caravan.

Sheikh and girlfriend kept walking fast. A few stragglers were still out on the streets-lowlife, porters and kitchen help from the Arab hotels going off-shift-but he found it easy to keep an eye on his quarry: Look for a female head bobbing next to a male. You didn't see many men and women walking together in East Jerusalem.

They passed Az-Zahara Street, walked right by the Joulani Agency where the Latam couple was waiting, invisibly, and the American School for Oriental Research, and continued toward the Anglican Cathedral of Saint George and its four-steepled Gothic tower.

Just above the cathedral they reunited with the scrubwoman, exchanged words that Shmeltzer couldn't hear, and made their way-a strange threesome-east, then south, down Ibn Haldoun. The street was narrow and short, dead-ending at Ibn Batuta and the front facade of the Ritz Hotel.

But they stopped short of the dead end, walked through a wrought-iron gate into the courtyard of an elegant old walled Arab house, and disappeared.

Shmeltzer waited across the street for the Latam couple to arrive, saw them enter the mouth of Ibn Haldoun and trotted up the street to greet them. The three of them retreated twenty yards up Ibn Haldoun, away from the glare of street lamps.

"All three of them in there?" asked the man.

Shmeltzer nodded. "They entered just a minute ago. Do you know anything about the building?"

"Not on any list I've seen," said the woman. "Nice, for a street scrubber."

"She resembles the first three Butcher victims," said Shmeltzer. "Small, dark, not bad-looking. We've been thinking they plucked their pigeons right out of the hospital, but maybe not. Maybe they make contact during medical visits, arrange to meet them later-money for sex." He paused, looked back at the house. Two stories, fancy, carved stone trim. "Be nice to know who owns the palace."

"I'll call in, put in for a Ministry of Housing ID," said the woman, removing her radio from her purse.

"No time for that," said Shmeltzer. "They could be doping her up right now, laying her out for surgery. Call French Hill, tell them the situation and that we're going in. And ask for backup-have an ambulance ready."

He looked at the man. "Come on."

They sprinted to the house, opened the gates, which were fuzzy with rust, entered the courtyard, Berettas drawn.

A front-door back-door approach was called for but access to the rear of the house was blocked on both sides by Italian cypress growing together in dense green walls. Returning their attention to the front, they took in details: a single door, at the center; grated windows, most of them shuttered. Two front balconies, the courtyard planted nicely with flower beds. Maybe a subdivision into flats-most of the big houses in Jerusalem had been partitioned-but with only one door there was no way to know for certain.