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I didn’t have a chance to react-it would have been interesting to know what my «benefactors» were alluding to-and I even tried to get wacky in front of the mirror, asking, «I wonder, what don’t you like about my precious nose?»

The following day came the lightning bolt-an attempt on my life. Let’s write down the date: July 20, 2003.

I stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the first floor as usual, but the elevator rocketed upward, reached the twenty-third floor, jumped a little, then dropped like a rock to the first floor. If I were a woman, I definitely would have gone into premature labor-even without being pregnant. Even then, the elevator didn’t think about stopping. It tore upward, then kept whizzing up and down without end. I was almost out of my mind with fear. I remembered Ted’s unsolved murder in my apartment last year, and I saw my life flash before my eyes. What was worse, I couldn’t sound an alarm, because none of the buttons on the panel worked. After half an hour the light went out and the elevator came to a stop. It seemed to freeze between the eighth and ninth floors. Within minutes, I began to gasp for air. When the rescuers pulled me out of the booby trap, I was unconscious. They administered CPR to me, apologized and attributed the incident to defective electronics. I pretended to believe them. Maybe that would have been true if not for what had happened eighteen months ago, when I became an FBI agent. That is probably where I should begin.