 Lepidopt, with his hands on the Chaplin concrete slab, hesitates, and the Vespers surround the Mossad van.The novel climaxes with a shootout at the El Mirador Medical Plaza in Palm Springs, in which several major characters are shot and killed.Lepidopt finally gets up the nerve to "jump" but travels back only two minutes in time; still, this is enough for him to change the time-line and to save Frank, Daphne and Charlotte, though he himself dies.