(Present village of Teghin, Northern Pakistan)

Near the violence-torn area of Baluchistan, bordering Afghanistan and Iran, the local police had been on a manhunt for over a week. That investigation involved a crime only too common within the borders of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Once again, a husband was sought after for the disfigurement and brutal maiming of his wife's face. Such domestic violence remains commonplace within this rural society, where for centuries it has been believed that men have the inalienable authority to severely punish their wives, daughters or mother-in-laws for "dishonoring" them though a host of behaviors, even the unattended association with another male. Often these acts of brutality and permanent disfigurement are carried out upon a man's wife for simply neglecting him in some way or showing a disallowed independence. In this case, twenty-five year old Rahim Jamali, angered with his eighteen-year-old wife Khalida for spending too much time with her female cousins, returned home and beat her severely-a habit he was known for in the village Teghin. On this day, however, he proceeded to tie her hands and feet with lamp chords. Then producing a razor, he proceeded to slash her face repeatedly, cutting off her nose and lips.

After fleeing the scene of the crime, leaving his young wife to tend to her wounds alone until help arrived, Rahim went into hiding, presumably to the next village where he would be assisted by friends and relatives to evade the authorities. Khalida, who managed to survive the brutal assault, broke tradition of silence and pleaded to the authorities for justice. She even threatened to commit suicide by immolation, were Rahim not caught and punished for her attack. She had, after more than a week, come to the sad realization, as many women before her, that such crimes in this part of the world were slow if not ever to be resolved with any restitution for the woman or any just punishment for the male perpetrator.

Word of Khalida's disfigurement went out immediately to other villages and it appeared as a minor, if not commonplace story in an Islamabad newspaper. The incident was relegated to a small weekly column where "honor killings" and wife beatings were featured. Within eight days, however, while Khalida slowly recovered in the city's hospital, an unusual twist to the story developed, making news in all of Pakistan and even beyond its borders.

The police authorities themselves were shocked to find that in the matter of Rahim's discovery and accountability for the crime, uncharacteristic events, totally unknown to Khalida, had taken place swiftly and silently to eventually vindicate her mental despair and physical pain. Rahim's collapsed body, it seems, had been brought to another medical clinic in Islamabad by his relatives. While still alive, his upper torso and face were blackened by the effects of a mysterious toxin. His facial muscles were paralyzed in an expression of anguish. A medical examination revealed that the method of his severe poisoning was a high-speed puncture and injection by two metal darts into his abdomen. The tip of these short arrows were designed with a small chamber, which upon impact, released a pernicious amount of powerful poison, presently unknown to the medical staff, into his stomach cavity. Key to the investigation by the local police, and ultimately information which reached outside Pakistan, was the presence of a cryptic and small insignia etched or stamped onto the metal shafts of the arrows extracted from the victim's body.

Rahim's cousins could only tell the authorities that two females wearing traditional burkas were witnessed to have approached him as he stepped outside of a house. After each had shot him in the midsection with a silent bow-like weapon they had concealed under their clothing, the unknown women assailants quickly fled on foot. After six days of suffering as a result of the foreign toxin's pernicious effects, Rahim was released with permanent damage to his nervous system and digestive tract.

* * *

On the other side of the world Professor Simons entered an elevator of an office building in downtown San Francisco. It was an appointment he had been called to attend of the utmost urgency. "Imperative" was the word the man used on the other side of the phone line, only twenty-four hours before. As Dr, Simons ascended to the ninth floor, he looked at the scrap of paper on he had written the address while back in his office at Berkeley. He also carried with him in his weather-beaten satchel photographs of the tholos and a sheath of pertinent notes on the find he and Nicasio had accumulated in their preliminary investigation.

Room 907 had no business name assigned to it and there was a strange, quiet ambiance on the entire floor, which the professor more or less expected, knowing the nature of the meeting and who had called it. As he knocked loudly at nine AM sharp, it took no time for the door to swing open and for him to be greeted by a large, red-headed man in a tan suit. He was of an indeterminable age, gave a brief smile, and nodded.

"Professor Simons, I presume?"

The man, whose facial complexion was almost as red as his hair, took the professor's hand, and while shaking it, gently but quickly pulled him into the room. He then stepped back out briefly to look up and down the hallway before closing the door. The professor was led over to a desk where suddenly, two younger men appeared from a back office. Each wore a light-colored sport coat and jeans. They easily could have been twenty-five or thirty, the professor guessed. He was invited to sit between them by the suited man who, himself, stepped behind the large desk in front of them. The professor sat upright in his chair, placing his satchel on the floor next to him. One of the younger men, with a mixture of Asian and Anglo features, looked at his watch a bit nervously and brushed back his shoulder-length hair. The other, an athletic and fair-complexioned man sat motionlessly. The red-headed man began the meeting with little small talk and a serious demeanor.

"Professor, we thank you for coming here this morning, and we understand this was short notice. But you must understand the urgency and gravity of our investigation."

"I fully understand," the professor quietly answered.

"As you must know, we are personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department Bureau of Intelligence . . . Research Division."

He wiped his forehead slowly with his hand.

We're all working in conjunction on this case as it develops. I'm also sure you can respect the fact that . . . we can not identify ourselves individually to you, and this is customary of any classified casework we do."

The professor nodded and blinked his eyes in approval.

The younger agent to his left with the blond hair, suddenly also made an obvious point of looking at his black diver's watch. He spoke up confidently, his striking blue eyes fixed on the man behind the desk.

"Don't you think we should wait for our colleague before we get underway?" He looked at the older, suited man behind the desk and waited for his response.

The answer came in a monotone voice, curtly. "For security reasons, she's been taken off the case," he simply said. He made no eye contact with the jeans-clad agents. The two men on either side of the professor quickly glanced at each other expressionlessly.

"What we're here today to do, professor," he went on, "is to synergize our information a bit. We'd like to inform you about some of the latest intelligence we have gained since our initial corroboration with you by phone last week. Hopefully, some of this might resonate with your knowledge and expertise in this matter and possibly assist us further in our overall investigation."

"Fine," Dr. Simons replied under his breath.

"You see, professor, this discovery you've been looking into under the auspices of the University of California these past several weeks . . . quite remarkable really . . . has brought to the surface some curious events. Some we've become very interested in. And primarily that's due to their nature, scale and growing wider scope."

The professor did not respond. He only continued listening intently, though it angered him that Berkeley was not mentioned specifically.

"The fact is," the suited agent said, reaching into the drawer of his desk and bringing out several documents, "we now see these . . . developments of violence as a potential threat to our own citizens, though our data shows that that many of these events in question are happening externally and internationally."

The professor nodded.

"And it's the sudden magnitude and incidence of these attacks," the long haired agent chimed in, "that's troubling us now."

"We've already told you about the assaults we've started cataloging world wide. They seem to be increasing even as we speak," said the suited agent, leaning back no in his chair.

He selected one of the graphics he had taken out and handed it to the professor. It was a world map with a series of red and blue dots printed across it in certain places. The dots, perhaps thirty to forty, were dispersed over the continents, but clustered more heavily in certain countries. The blue and red dots were also curiously accompanied by a number from one to four. The professor held the graphic and looked at its overall involvement across Asia, Europe and the North and South American continents.

"As you are now aware, professor, these attacks are carried out by women suspects exclusively. All witnesses have confirmed that. And the targets, as we have determined, are always men."

"Yes, I'm fully aware of that," the professor said, looking carefully over the data. "It's all quite incredible, isn't it?" He held the schematic in his hand awaiting an explanation of its contents. He knew the meeting that morning was going to technical but at the same time revealing of what he now fully expected.

* * *