As Jaime reached quickly for the door to the stairwell in Oscar's building, she saw one of the agents in black coming toward her; she realized too late that he wasn't one of theirs. He leveled his semiautomatic machine gun at her.

"I wouldn't do anything rash, Miss Sommers. It would end badly for you."

Jaime felt her stomach begin to churn. If they were up here on the roof undetected by the OSI, who was watching Oscar?

Hansen glared at Monitor #7. Russ walked over.

"Problem?"

"Not sure." Hansen squinted at the picture, "Thought I saw something move on the roof, but I don't see anything out of the ordinary now."

Jack pressed a button on the console, "Stepmother to R1, report your status."

A voice responded, "R1 all clear and on standby."

"Stepmother to units R2 through four, report."

The units responded, and still Hansen frowned. Russ stepped closer.

"What is it?"

The older man shook his head, "I'm not sure. I've just got a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach...."

One of the younger agent's eyebrows raised, but he refrained from commenting further. Hansen turned to another NSB agent in the van.

"Lewis....how long did Goldman say he'd be in the old man's apartment?"

"Five minutes, Mr. Hansen."

Hansen nodded, but didn't say anything. He would give Goldman five minutes, but not much more. Jack Hansen was many things, but diligent was at the top of the list. And he rarely got that funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Oscar closed the door to Niedelmeyer's apartment and turned toward the living room. He inhaled a sharp breath of air as his eyes landed on the body of Horace Niedelmeyer sitting on the couch by the window, a bullet in his brain. Goldman looked to the little man standing next to him, and the man pulled a gun from under his sweater, pointing it at Oscar.

"Don't make a sound Goldman. Don't even breathe heavily."

Oscar's timbre was low and dangerous, "Who the hell are you?"

The man pulled off the latex mask covering his face and head, revealing a much younger man, and then he removed the voice modulator which had been taped to his throat underneath the mask.

His timbre and accent were completely different, "I think you know the answer to that question, do you not?"

Goldman growled, "A member of the Shia Hizballah."

"Very good, Mr. Goldman."

Oscar looked over at the body of Horace Niedelmeyer, and he felt a strange surge of sadness and anger pulsate through him. He turned back to the man with the gun.

"You didn't have to kill him...."

"Such sentiment from an American spy?" The man laughed. "He was an old man, long having outreached his usefulness. You Americans hold onto every last second of life as though you should. You are nothing but decadent, overindulgent, wasteful pigs. The world would be far better without your influence."

"And without our medical aid, willingness to stand behind our allies and help out other countries in times of need, not to mention a lot of our money, the world would be in a vastly larger jam than it's in now."

"I would expect exactly that kind of propaganda to flow freely from your mouth."

Oscar took a menacing step forward, and the man pointed the gun at Goldman's head.

"I will shoot you where you stand, Mr. Goldman."

"What difference could it possibly make if I die here, or somewhere else? Either way, your people are not going to let me live."

The man smiled and nodded back toward the living room. "Quite true, but do you feel the same way about the life of one of your prize agents?"

Goldman whirled around and his heart plummeted to his knees as his eyes landed on Jaime, held at gunpoint by another terrorist. The panic thrumming through Oscar's body threatened to overtake him. He looked into Jaime's eyes, and the fear he saw in them weakened him further.

His voice was filled with distress, "Jaime.....oh, Jaime....."

Sommers couldn't meet his eyes. It was the very situation he had tried so desperately to prevent, and she had single-handedly put herself into the hands of the Shia Hizballah. And she knew that Oscar would do almost anything they asked of him in order to save her. The regret in her voice was plain.

"I'm sorry, Oscar."

Goldman turned toward the man with the gun, "Look, you have me, you don't need her. If you let her go, I'll go with you quietly. The Gillespie Operation was mine, Jaime Sommers was merely acting under my orders--"

"--Enough. I want both of you, and we are short on time."

Jaime and Oscar held each other's eyes. They weren't sure exactly what the man meant, but they knew it couldn't possibly be good for their longevity.