1943: The destroyer USS Eldridge vanishes during the Philadelphia Experiment. The ship invisibility project ends.

Nuremberg, 1946: Nazi death camp doctor Martin von Kemnitz is hung.

The Pentagon, 1999: A dying hand gifts Angie Milano and Jim Munroe with the deadly legacy that is the Eldridge Roster, the long-lost crew list of the Philadelphia Experiment. The two are soon on the run from the vicious killers sent for it. Without the roster, Project Telemachus, perversion of a wondrous meld of genetics and physics, will fail. And mankind may survive.

5 Star Reviews for The Eldridge Conspiracy

“Berry does an amazing job of presenting a raft of characters, every last one of which is vivid, real, likable or loathsome, and keeps all of their time-lines, actions, and interactions seamlessly melded—we never get confused. At the risking of stooping to prosaic usage: This is a really, really, really good read. If you're looking for a well-crafted page turner to devourcI recommend this one. My advice: Buy this book. It's great.” Ken Korczak (Amazon US)

“Absolutely LOVED this book and could NOT put it down! c Amazing. Uber~Fantastique! Not only does the story pull you in, you think, ‘What if this actually had happened.’” Amber Norrgard (Amazon US)

“Stephen has done it again in this intense novel that you won’t be able to put down. You know it’s coming to the end and you don’t want it to.” Jeremy Dobe (Amazon US)

“I read the Eldridge Conspiracy over the weekend. It was a great read. The characters were well developed and enjoyable. The science fiction was written well enough that you believe the sequence could actually happen. I had other work to do this weekend but spent most of my time reading. It was that good.” J. Greer (Amazon US)

“I read it in two sittingsc I just could not put it downc a very fast paced thriller with some really likeable characters. If you have ever been fascinated by tales of the Philadelphia Experiment and/or what could happen if the wrong people were allowed to mess around with genetics, then I think you will like this. It's a real page turner, and brilliant value for money. Recommended. Buy it and enjoy. Ann Tocher (Amazon UK)

“What a Great Surprise! You keep getting a new surprise and do not see the ending until you are there.” Clark Bacon (Amazon US)

The Eldridge Roster

by

Stephen Ames Berry

Dedication

To Shelly G. Kaidan-Berry

and

Stephen Robert Gusmer

for Valor

Few is the number who think with their own minds and feel with their own hearts.

Albert Einstein

Stephen Ames Berry’s novels have been published by Ace/Berkley and Tor/Macmillan. The Eldridge Conspiracy is his latest book.

Copyright © 2012 Stephen Ames Berry

Previously published as The Eldridge Roster

Published by Biofab Publishing LLC

v. 6.20.12T

Table of Contents

Prologue

The Bureau

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Yokohama

Chapter 12

New Orleans

Chapter 13

New England

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Epilogue

End Notes

Acknowledgments

Berry’s Other Books

Prologue

September 1998

The cruel white light ebbing, the man who called himself Schmidla entered the Chamber. Walking briskly to the crèche, he peered down through the thick glass and saw the failure he’d dreaded. What a few moments before had been a freckled teenage girl in soft repose was a wailing, writhing horror of ochre scales and suppurating sores, its tentacles battering the lid.

Coolly efficient, he keyed the destruct code into the crèche’s keypad, only to jerk his hand away at the searing pain.

It stood before him, the crèche’s lid still sealed. Schmidla was suddenly afraid—not for himself but for his work. It had been a long time since he’d been afraid and he hated this abomination for it.

Yellow reptilian eyes met his. “Quidquid latet adparebit, Nil inultum remanebit,” it rasped, its rank breath making Schmidla gag. The clinician in him knew it was dying—body shaking, limbs twitching, the slit pupils dilating. He drew his pistol.

A tentacle batted it away as another whipped around his neck. Not yet, he pleaded, fighting for breath, hands tearing futilely at the tightening band of mucid, spasming muscle. Not yet. Lungs on fire, strength failing, Schmidla felt his life ebbing, the room swirling about him.

A blast echoed through the Chamber and a dark pillar of reeking fluid spouted where the creature’s head had been. The grip on Schmidla’s throat loosened as the beast crumpled. Gasping, he almost retched at the putrescent stench of rotting flesh.

Clothes soaked with the thing’s ichorous blood, Schmidla sagged against the crèche. “Thank you, Louis,” he managed after a moment. “I’ve never had one attain Potential so quickly, so monstrously.”

Pale and shaken, Bartlett lowered the shotgun. “Good lord, Richard! Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Schmidla, rubbing his throat as he stared at the grotesque corpse. “That’s not our sweet little Käthe.”

“What was it prattling?”

“From the Dies Irae, ‘The Day of Judgment’—the choir in Goethe’s Faustus. ‘Everything that has been hidden shall appear. Nothing shall remain unpunished.’ Goethe’s finest work. You know she was the last of the Blücher lot? The last of all we had.”

“So it’s over?”

“It’s over when I’ve succeeded. And then it will never be over. I didn’t come this far to fail. There are more of them out there. And I will have them.”

The Bureau

October 1998

Chapter 1

The parking lot was wet, cratered and all uphill. Still half asleep, hands stuffed in his pockets, Jim fell in with the other shuffling dead trudging up the slope, the gray autumn dawn behind him and a chill wind in his face. Flashing his ID at the bored guard, he passed through the barbed-wire fence and into the Bureau.

The Bureau: nine dismal yellowish brick buildings squatting atop a hill overlooking the Pentagon. Converted quickly and poorly from warehouses into offices for the Navy during World War II, the decaying structures would soon be irredeemable, fit only for the wrecker’s ball—destruction sure to gladden its former inmates.

Three more years and about a thousand more cups of coffee, thought Jim, spirits buoyed by the balance in his technology-rich 401K account. Entering the busy main corridor with its photos of ships and glass-encased models of war vessels, he passed a chatty gold-and-white klatch of Naval officers. Seeing Erik Saunders among them, his mood soured. If he saw Jim, Saunders gave no sign.

Jim’s cubicle was at the far end of Wing Six, a deaden sink of stale air, begrimed green walls and uncertain light from expiring fluorescents. Dusty, twisted bundles of loosely strung gray and white cables peered through the gaps left by vanished ceiling panels.

A plume of bluish smoke rose from the cubicle beside Jim’s, signaling that George was in residence. Shrugging off his jacket, Jim checked his coffee mug for cockroach spoor. Finding none, he poured himself a cup of coffee and stood sipping, watching the smoke drift into the adjoining space occupied by the SEAL personnel assignment team.

“Hey!” called a belligerent voice. “This is a military installation. You can’t smoke in here!”

“Actually, Senior Chief,” came a mellow Tidewater drawl, “this is a facility of the General Services Administration maintained for the Navy Department. And not only am I able to smoke, I am smoking, thank you.”

Jim stepped into the adjoining cubicle, passing the faded gray sign on the partition: George J. B. Campbell, Data Administrator. (“J for Jennings, B for Bryan,” George had once told him. “My Dad was much taken with William Jennings Bryan.”) Jim didn’t quite believe that, but George was surely old.

George sat at his PC, green eyes intent on the screen, his fingers plying the keyboard. In the era he’d been born he’d have been called dapper. Now well into the age where his contemporaries were either dead or in assisted living, George was still fit and trim, silver hair neatly set above a lean patrician face.

He clicked his mouse. “Be damned,” he said softly after a few seconds, appraising the data that filled his screen. “It did it.” Taking his panatela from the ashtray, George lofted a cloud of smoke toward the SEAL cubicle.

“SLIF?” asked Jim, peering at the alphabet soup of characters filling George’s monitor.

“SLIF,” nodded George. “‘Not a database engine, but a knowledge engine,’” he said, quoting the SLIF contractor’s pitch.

“Well done,” said Jim, his knowledge of the project vague.

“Thanks,” said George distantly.

“You’re not happy?”

“Uneasy, perhaps.” George stubbed out his cigar. “Stunned, certainly—mostly by the data gofer component.”

When he’d first heard the term, Jim had asked Angie Milano, who ran the database shop, what a data gofer was. “Oh, the SLIF gofer?” she’d laughed. “It’s supposed to be this awesome artificial intelligence data miner that’ll pull information from anywhere. Just puts on its little miner’s hat, turns on its light, goes out and unearths whatever it needs: scanned records, old COBOL files, Internet stuff, anything. It’ll structure the retrieved data to give you the answers you need. And if you don’t quite know what you need, it’ll help you figure that out, too. Absolutely brilliant, they say. And fast. We’ll see if it’s worth the five hundred million dollars spent on it.”

“This,” George continued, tapping the screen, “is an extract of the Navy’s active duty personnel file from World War II. The Fourth Naval District, Philadelphia, July 1943.”

It looked like personnel data: names, what might be dates, service numbers, assignment codes, all meaningless without a file layout, dead data resurrected from a long-ago war.

“Bull,” said Jim. “Those records only exist on paper in a warehouse—not even SLIF can read paper. Unless...” he paused. “Unless you digitized all the Navy’s World War II personnel records?” He shook his head in disbelief. “But even then, supposing you had all of that scanned, we’ve no regular connectivity to the SLIF database in New Orleans. They just set that up for demos here to impress SLIF’s sponsors.” He looked at George, searching for a hint.

“Nexus,” said George. “As I’ve been so often corrected. SLIF doesn’t have a database, it has a nexus.”

“You got Network Services to establish an ad hoc connection for you to New Orleans. Then, assuming all the protocols got worked out...”

“FTP, TCP, FTL,” chanted George, enjoying himself. Clearing the screen, he brought up a new, smaller set of data as inscrutable as the last.

“Then, yeah,” nodded Jim, “you could’ve queried SLIF. But in the wee hours, when there was unused comm capacity and no adult supervision. And costing what?”

“A bottle of fifteen year-old single-malt scotch.”

“You digitized all of World War II, didn’t you? We even had those records? On how may pieces of paper?”

“The government never throws anything away without first making a copy. All sixteen million pages were at the National Military Personnel Records Center in St. Louis. All were scanned into SLIF,” said George. “At our peak wartime Naval Force Level of two million, three hundred thousand, it averaged out to seven pages per service member. Our contractor, GDR, subbed it out down in New Orleans, where the SLIF nexus dwells and labor’s cheaper.” George clicked his mouse. Jim heard the whir of a disk drive. “SLIF pulls whatever we want in the realm of personnel assignments: names, service, numbers, dates, places of assignment, occupational codes. And extrapolates the results. That data gofer’s a genie—tell it what you want and it gets it.” He snapped his fingers. “Like magic. And in answer to your next question, my lad, we used such a vast amount of ancient data to prove that we could do it with a vast amount of ancient data.”

“You could do that with any number of tools,” said Jim, not much impressed, “once you got the records digitized.”

“True,” said George. He rose. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“A meeting with GDR and our boss Stanley. Congratulations. You’re now the SLIF assistant project officer. And remember that ‘extrapolates the results’ part.”

“I’m Stan Gawkins, Director of Personnel Assignment Systems. I’ve been involved with SLIF, the Self-Guiding Latitudinal Infiltration and File Extrapolation System, since its inception.” Tall and sharp-featured, Stanley Gawkins had been with the Bureau twenty-six years. He had a well-cultivated reputation for getting things done. Jim thought him a putz.

Going around the table, Stanley made the introductions. “George Campbell, our SLIF project officer.” George nodded, examining his laptop’s screen. “From GDR Corporation, John Levec and Tony Masters.” Jim only knew Levec by reputation: a politico, assigned to keep things flowing smoothly between the Bureau and GDR. Masters, the smug younger one, was a software engineer assigned to SLIF. “And Jim Munroe, a contractor who works with Mr. Campbell. Jim’s new to SLIF. Last night down in New Orleans,” continued Stanley, “GDR finished scanning the last of the Navy’s World War Two active personnel records into the SLIF database. You about ready, George?” he asked.

“Another minute, Stan,” said George, typing, intent on the screen.

“As you know,” said Stanley, “SLIF’s a joint effort by the Navy Department and GDR Corporation to develop a self-learning, self-improving information retrieval and extrapolation system that can access and integrate data from any source. If successful, SLIF will serve a wide variety of government intelligence needs. Well, George?” he asked as the large screen at the front of the table flared to life, blue and blank. “Have we just flushed half a billion bucks down a rat hole?” he laughed uneasily. Stan personified the truism that the Navy rewards its officers for going in harm’s way and its civilians for staying out of it.

“It works,” said George as a list of names came up on the screen, reflecting what was on his laptop. “Though how is beyond me. These are the Naval aviators assigned to the carrier Lexington on May 28, 1943.” All the names but one vanished: Wilson, Jonathan. It remained highlighted to one side as a column of information began scrolling down the screen in a truncated military script. George translated. “Ensign Wilson was five-nine, blond hair, blue eyes, twenty-four years old. From Sioux City, Iowa. Played high school football—quarterback. Graduated Iowa State, taught English for a year or so before the war. His wife was named Pamela. One kid, a daughter, Debbie. Splashed fifteen Zeros. Good fitness report. Blood pressure a tad high. Really bad teeth. Call sign Farmboy. Sent all his pay to Pam except for a life insurance allotment and fifty bucks. Awarded the Navy Cross after Okinawa, went home in one piece.

“It took about five seconds to get that information,” George added. “Take you a billion years manually, plowing through the records, if then.”

Jim wasn’t impressed. “Couldn’t you do that with a lesser system, given the data?” he asked diplomatically. So far what he’d seen wasn’t worth the cost, even by government contract standards.

“Sure,” said Masters. “Though not as fast. Ready for the rest?” he asked George.

“Yes.” George hit a key. “I’ve sent the query to the data gofer. Any second now.”

In less than a minute George was narrating as the summary rolled past. “I told SLIF to do a drilldown on Wilson’s daughter Debbie. She did okay in high school, went to the University of Michigan, became a science teacher in East Lansing, had two kids, retired seven years ago to Venice, Florida. Decent pension. Her oldest son John’s a corporate tax attorney, practicing in Chicago. Made partner this year. John kindly pays for his new paralegal’s apartment near work. John may not know about his wife’s previous marriage, as it’s not on their marriage license application. Her ex was just denied parole again. But then Pam doesn’t know about the SEC investigation of John’s firm. Their son Tom drives a Porsche Tagra to his private day school and hangs out in Internet chat rooms. Come Christmas the family’s going down to Costa Rica for a week, first class, staying in one of those quaint little seaside hotels where they’ll be taking scuba diving lessons. The folks who own hotel don’t want anyone knowing their ex-Sandinistas. Young Tom had his immunizations updated last week. His school’s administrators and the local police think he may sell a little coke on the side. He does. Tom has a girlfriend he likes and a boyfriend he likes better.” George looked around the table. “Data access and correlation time thirty-two seconds, 1749 data sources accessed. SLIF asks if we’d like further details on Wilson or his descendants.”

“Firewalls?” asked Jim, breaking the long silence.

“Permeable to the data gofer,” said Masters.

“You’ve given us a brave new world, Mr. Masters,” said Jim.

“We know,” said Masters.

At 1200 Jim went over to the database shop, head still filled with unanswered questions about SLIF. In the corner, her back to him, sat a trim white-uniformed brunette munching a celery stalk, eyeing system usage stats. The blue-white laminate sign on the side of her desk read LCDR Angelina Milano, Database Administrator.

Jim crossed to her desk. “Care to consort with the enemy over lunch?”

“Worthless scum sucking civilian,” she said coldly, eyes on her screen. “As you can see, I’m already eating. If you’d really wanted to dine with me, you’d have asked earlier and not merely presumed.”

“Is that a no?” he asked. “Thursday. Coq au vin.”

“Oh. Forgot.” She pitched her celery into the wastebasket and picked up her hat and purse. “Let’s go.”

Jim had known Angie for two years, since she was posted to the Bureau from Naval Air Station Pensacola. At thirty-five, she had twelve years in the Navy and a Master’s in Computer Science from the Navy’s Postgraduate School in Monterey. She was slightly built, with an olive complexion and an oval face that rarely betrayed her emotions and hazel-colored eyes that did. A large diamond solitaire set in white gold had recently come to grace her right hand. For the last six months Angie had lived with her fellow officer, Erik Saunders. Whatever joy that brought her she hid well.

Erik had made full Commander early: his Annapolis class ring, his high-profile but undemanding tours and his old, high-WASP family with its roots in the Revolutionary War had helped. Erik was being fast tracked for a flag officer’s billet. Jim, a veteran of many Eriks, had seen quickly beyond the false geniality to the underlying sense of entitlement and arrogance that defined the man. (“That’s Erik with a ‘k’, like killer, not ‘c’ like chump, Chum,” he’d said when Angie first introduced them.)

Jim hated Erik-with-a-K, sometimes daydreaming of desperate battles in which Erik’s Orion P-3 anti-submarine aircraft, shot to shit, spiraled in flames toward the sparkling green sea far below, a horribly wounded Erik pinned in the wreckage, crisping nicely in screaming agony. (“He’s a truculent SOB,” George had said. “But you hate him because he’s shacked up with Angie.”)

It was true that Jim’s dislike of Erik had grown with his liking of Angie. But he hadn’t violated Jim’s First Rule of Emotional Survival: never get involved—especially with someone who’d never danced to Fats Domino. It was a rule he’d been quietly regretting since the day last week when Angie had come to work wearing Erik’s engagement ring. Smiling stiffly, Jim had offered hollow congratulations then sulked in his cubicle the rest of the day.

Chez Renée was in South Arlington, on the south side of Route 1 across from Crystal City, a soulless agglomeration of office towers housing Navy Sea Systems Command, the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office and the usual camp-following Beltway bandits. Route 1’s south side had somehow escaped its northern half’s fate, remaining a now-gentrified urban village of three-story red brick storefronts, boutiques and sidewalk cafes.

What was Renée’s had previously been an Afghani restaurant. When it folded, Renée, a stocky, voluble Gascon with a Foreign Legion tattoo, had converted it into a red-and-green awninged bistro—nothing grand, just a few tables, fresh flowers, a carefully chosen wine list. And great food. Renée’s offered a simple fare that always delighted—everything fresh, well-seasoned and prepared by Renée and his Algerian wife, with portions unusually generous for Washington. The Thursday special, as always, was Renée’s unsurpassed coq au vin. Jim and Angie ordered it, along with a Chablis Renée recommended as “perk-ee.”

Angie carried the conversation—mostly about work—who was being transferred where, was Admiral Jameson retiring this year?

“How was the SLIF demonstration?” she finally asked. She listened with growing incredulity as he described the demo. “It would be scary if it weren’t impossible,” she said when he’d finished. “There’s nothing that can do that—maybe in fifteen, twenty years, when computers and AI and bioengineering meld into some fantastic new information science. But not now. What you saw was either a sham or magic.”

“That’s what I thought, too. And George is acting weird about it. But victory’s been declared and Stan’s breaking out the bubbly. Though there’s certainly something hinky about SLIF.”

Their entrée arrived, wreathed in an aroma of fresh garlic, onions and white wine.

“Really? What?” she asked as they dug in.

“I dunno. Just intuition. Something’s wrong.”

Talk swung to Erik, who was heading for the Tailhook Convention in Baltimore, the annual Naval aviators’ gathering, bullshitting with the other carrier-qualified fliers. “No booze,” said Angie, sipping her ice tea. “No cake-sprung bimbos. The world continues watching.” (Youthful hi-jinks at previous Tailhooks had focused unwanted attention on the Navy Department.) “Erik’s chairing a panel on the latest in towed sonar arrays.”

“Cool,” said Jim. Probably contract some vile social disease, he thought.

“Doing anything for fun?” she asked later as he ran a light at the Pentagon City Mall, the two of them pleasantly relaxed, filled with coq au vin and crème brûlée.

“The usual. Repainted the living room, went hiking in the Shenandoahs last weekend. Picked up some fine if obscure first editions antiquing up in Warrenton.”

“Picked up any women recently?” she asked.

“No,” he said primly. “Avoid ‘em like the plague—nothing but trouble. Besides, I’m a bit of an antique myself.”

“Really? So you’re content to putter about that house of yours, get out now and then? That’s life?”

Jim’s house was nearby, a green-gabled 19th century farmhouse nestled on a hillside in Arlington’s aging boomer and DINC country—a pricey area he could never have afforded without the large separation bonus from his previous employer.

“Yup,” he said. “That’s life.”

“You’ve no wife, no kids. This is your fifth job in fifteen years...”

“Sixth,” he lied, admiring her eyes in the afternoon sun. “A venal contractor, I flit from agency to agency, following an ever-increasing hourly rate.”

“You know, Jimbo, there are women at work who like you.”

“Who besides you?” he asked, pulling into the Bureau’s lower parking lot.

“I have names. You’re smart, witty, not entirely ugly—they’d go out with you. Nothing terrifying, just fun.”

“You’re too kind,” he said, parking the car. Angie grinned as he flipped down the visor and examined himself in the vanity mirror: sandy-haired, with a large nose, splayed a bit from an old break; an open, good-humored face and what he considered devastatingly attractive gray eyes. He was large-boned, fit but not slender, his life an up-again, down-again battle against pudginess. “No, not entirely ugly,” he agreed. “I’d do.”

“But you don’t,” she said as they got out of the jeep. “No one gets close to you.”

Someone could, he thought, walking beside her up the hill. “Cut me a break, Angie.”

It was well past lunchtime and there was only one other person in the parking lot—a thin, slightly stooped figure a few hundred yards in front of them, moving briskly up the driveway that led to the busy four-lane road between the parking lot and the Bureau.

“Is that George?” asked Angie.

“Yeah. Funny. He never goes out to lunch. Has soup and crackers at his desk. And you think I’m pathetic. Ha!”

“Probably got an eighteen year-old coed stashed in his condo,” suggested Angie. “Slipping out for a nooner.”

“Angie!” Jim protested.

Tires screeching, the big black SUV roared into the parking lot, accelerating down the hill. Jim, Angie and George froze. Afterwards, Jim remembered the deep-tinted windows and the big off-road tires—the sort of vehicle some of the senior NCOs drove, but never so fast. And no NCO, no matter how angry with him, would swerve after George as he turned too late toward the safety of a row of parked vehicles, hitting him square on, tossing him high. It unfolded for Jim in a surreal, cinematic slow motion—George twisting in the air, limbs flailing, landing with a sickening, hollow boom on his back across the bed of a pickup truck, his torso inside, legs hanging over the truck bed.

The SUV closed on Jim and Angie, gathering speed as they stood frozen, gawking idiotically.

No plates, Jim thought dimly. He’s got no plates. Turning, he shoved Angie back and down between parked cars, dropping on top of her, a hot breeze washing over them as the vehicle roared past.

With a squeal of brakes and rubber it was gone, racing toward Route 395.

“You can get off me now, Jim,” said Angie.

“You okay?” he asked. He pulled her up, breathing hard, his hands shaking.

“A few fractured ribs. Otherwise, I’ll live,” she said, face pale.

“George!” he called, taking off at a run, Angie following.

They reached him ahead of the guards and onlookers rushing from the Bureau, clambering up into the truck bed and kneeling beside him. Blood trickled from George’s mouth and nose. Jim took his hand—it was cold. George’s eyes latched onto Jim’s.

“Take... the disk,” George whispered. He touched his shirt pocket. Unthinking, Jim slipped the diskette from George’s pocket into his own. “Hang in there, George,” he said, squeezing the old man’s hand. “Medics are on the way.” He glanced up at Angie, saw the tears in her eyes.

Wheezing, George tried to speak again. Jim leaned closer. “Save... Angie,” George whispered. “From herself—from them.” Jim’s mind reeled at George’s next words. “Your Emma and Angie...same. Stop them.”

Jim leaned close, his face inches from George’s. “Who are you?” he demanded. “How do you know about Emma?!”

George closed his eyes.

“Who are you?!” he repeated, grabbing George by his shoulders.

“Jim! Stop!” cried Angie.

Suddenly there was a crowd and medics from the Bureau’s dispensary. From somewhere came the sound of sirens quickly drawing near. All too late for George.

Chapter 2

Rourke drove through the carefully tended grounds of Admiral Whitsun’s Chevy Chase home and parked his car under the portico beside the silver-gray Rolls Royce with its GDR1 license plate. Walking to the front door of the mansion—inspired by Madame DuBarry’s chateau at Louveciennes—he found himself, as always, disgusted by the ostentatious display of wealth and the appalling waste. Raised in a Spartan, almost communal environment, the CIA Director believed that all surplus resources should be dedicated to shared goals and higher principals. And yet here he was in Washington, one of the 20th century’s foremost centers of conspicuous consumption. Sighing, he rang the doorbell.

After a moment, Whitsun’s elderly Swiss housekeeper appeared and ushered him down to the Admiral’s trophy room. The Admiral sat on a leather club sofa, talking on the phone. He looked a fit, tanned seventy-ish—rapier-thin, with a lean face and an elegant shock of long white hair that still held a few streaks of blond. Hanging up, he motioned Rourke to a chair. Neither man offered to shake hands.

“You’ve grossly exceeded your authority, Terry,” said Rourke without preamble.

“Having Campbell killed?” Whitsun shrugged. "You have authority, Harry. I’m just an old sailor who does what needs to be done. Like this morning, when I had one hour to make a decision and three to implement it.” He jabbed a finger at Rourke. “And where the hell were you, sir?”

“Showing the Russians around Langley. There was no way I could have spoken with you.”

“It had to be done,” said Whitsun, before Rourke could. “But it’s my fault that it had to be done so quickly. I let us grow complacent and we got caught napping. I never thought anyone outside knew about Telemachus other than a few very necessary people like you. Over the years we’ve discredited whatever real information slipped out—the Eldridge and the Philadelphia Experiment now have as much credence as Roswell and Area 51. We thought we were safe.”

“You were wrong.”

“Clearly. Someone knew what we were doing, knew what SLIF was all about and was waiting to snatch the prize. Waiting God knows how many years, some spider sitting in the shadows, patiently tending its toils. Drink, Harry?”

“Scotch on the rocks, please.”

Whitsun stepped to the bar. “Were you really briefing the Russians?” he asked, handing Rourke his drink.

“War’s over—we’re all friends now,” said Rourke as Whitsun sat back down.

“I’m so glad I’m retired.”

“Wish I were,” said Rourke.

Slightly built, in his early 50’s with curly black hair, large competent hands and clever eyes, Harry Rourke had known Terry Whitsun for years, thoroughly mistrusted him, and was here today to deliver a message. “Why did you have some obscure bureaucrat killed?” he asked as they sat on the green sofa, the stuffed heads of game animals peering down glassily upon them. He’d once examined them carefully: gazelle, zebra, tiger, a black panther. Barbaric.

“What do you know about SLIF?”

“Only what I was told this morning,” Rourke lied. “Some sort of very advanced data retrieval system being tested by the Navy, funded by us through GDR.”

The Admiral nodded, sipped his scotch. “SLIF was paid for by you and run by us ostensibly through the Bureau of Naval Personnel so we could know who manned one ship for one day in World War II. A ship not yet commissioned, sailed by a pickup skeleton crew of sailors. Once we found out who those men were, we could find their descendants. And we almost got it. But only after the Navy’s personnel data for all of World War II had been gathered and scanned with agonizing slowness into the SLIF. It was impossible to manually reassemble that roster—its clues lay scattered among millions of pieces of paper, and not one of them the Eldridge roster itself. That was long ago destroyed by panicked little men. But SLIF recreated a virtual Eldridge roster from all those tons of paper—paper now ash. Mr. Campbell debuted SLIF today. It worked flawlessly. Still does, but key data is missing.”

“Campbell again?”

Whitsun nodded. “Our contractor at Naval Support Activity New Orleans finished inputting the personnel records last night. This morning the SLIF nexus had everything needed to reconstruct the Eldridge roster. But Mr. Campbell had changed all the SLIF passwords, locking us out. When NSA finally got us back in we found he’d deleted all the World War II assignment data from SLIF after his dog-and-pony show today at BUPERS. He had about a five hour window to get that roster–be assured he did. Now his is the only possible original.”

“Enter the old records again.”

“Can’t. The input data’s gone and the physical records are ash. Thanks to Mr. Campbell nothing was backed up. And he had the original paper records destroyed. Last night in New Orleans some lieutenant striving for a golden fitness report set teams of sailor laddies toiling through night. By dawn, all of World War II was gone.” He sipped his scotch. “What a shame—I loved that war. Now only the basic personnel data survives and that only in the SLIF database. We can know everything about everyone in the Navy in 1943, except where they worked. I wish Campbell were still alive so I could kill him myself.”

“And your purpose in all this was...?”

“To find out who was on the USS Eldridge the day of the Philadelphia Experiment. Then we’d have related those names to the basic personnel records. A reasoned electronic alchemy, Harry, base data into priceless information long-lost. Names and service numbers from that assignment roster to names and service numbers in the master personnel record, giving us social security numbers, addresses, next of kin and on and on.”

“And then?”

“I’m told that SLIF would have quickly ‘gofered’ the information on the Eldridge descendants out of contemporary databases. ‘Gofered.’” He shook his head. “The decay of the language mirrors the decay of the culture.”

“No doubt,” said Rourke, freshening his drink. “This great quest, Terry—the Holy Grail of DE173. Several people—quite high up—are concerned. Down through the years your project has murdered hundreds of men, women and children while giving sanctuary to a notorious war criminal. The results, though sometimes dramatic, have led nowhere. All you’ve succeeded at is killing off all your subjects – Potentials as you call them. Took a long time, but you did it. You can’t go on.”

“Wrong. We’re on the edge of success. And we’ve learned so much. All we need is that crew roster and through it the Eldridge descendants. Schmidla’s confident he can demonstrate the process is controllable, that it can work for us, if we can just get him more Potentials. And give him more time.”

“Terry, there’s serious talk of closing Schmidla down,” said Rourke, meeting that icy blue gaze. “The knowledge that there are, as you say, spiders stalking the project will only hasten a decision.”

The old man’s laugh startled Rourke. “It never changes! Gutless bureaucrats and empty moral posturing! It’s the money, isn’t it?”

“Money and fear. The world’s changed. The mantra of national security has lost its sanctity. Invoking it no longer excuses an appalling lack of scruples.”

“Scruples?”

Rourke shrugged apologetically.

“You tell those myopic little men for me, Harry, that this Grail’s no medieval fantasy,” said Whitsun with quiet intensity. “It exists. And it has performed miracles.”

“Certainly it’s provided hints of a wider reality, Terry. Miracle is overstated.”

“Call it what you will, if we can give Schmidla the fruits of that roster, Harry, in ten years, maybe less, humanity will have evolved beyond its wildest imaginings. A hundred thousand years of evolution jumped,” he snapped his fingers, “like that. And those weasels would piss it all away to save their scrawny butts and a few bucks.”

“Unless you have significant results within one month the project’s over. No appeal.”

“One month? That is so damned arbitrary! What idiot came up with it?”

“Your Commander-in-Chief, Admiral,” said Rourke, secretly amused.

“Fine,” said Whitsun after a moment. “One month it is. Now, let’s get on with business, shall we? Assuming Campbell had that roster he’d have copied it to something—disk, printout. But it wasn’t on his body when it reached Arlington Hospital. And nothing in his desk, his email, his house or his computer. And I just learned that Mr. George Campbell of BUPERS was also Mr. George Campbell of the CIA—Covert Ops, retired. Or perhaps semi-retired, Harry?”

“Impossible,” said Rourke, startled. “If it was one of our operations, I’d know about it, unless...” he paused.

“Unless it had been set in place and given deep cover, maybe long ago?”

“Campbell could have been working for someone else—don’t assume that it was ever one of our operations.”

“He was working for or with someone,” said Whitsun. “People who know about this aspect of Telemachus and knew just when to strike.”

“There can’t be too many of them.”

“It would only take a few to compromise us,” said Whitsun. “We have to find out who they are, recover that roster and eliminate them. Campbell knew he had only hours after he snatched it this morning. He passed it on.” He handed a slip of paper to Rourke. “These two worked with Campbell—they were with him when he died. They’re the nearest thing he had to friends. Check out Munroe and the other one, a light Commander named Angelica Milano.” He paused—the name was tauntingly familiar. “If they’ve got that file, retrieve it and kill them.”

Rourke shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

“What?” It was Whitsun’s turn to be startled.

“The Agency’s supported you and funded this project for years, Admiral. We’ll continue to do so as long as we’re told to. But having your people terminate Campbell without authorization has given your enemies fresh ammunition—and Admiral, you’ve got a lot of enemies. They’re saying you’ve lost your perspective, that you’re out of control. And saying it into receptive ears.”

Whitsun shrugged. “I mark my successes by the number of my enemies, Harry. As for disposing of Campbell, it had to be done quickly and I did it.”

“Maybe. But you went off on your own and there you stay. My instructions are clear—you may continue to use your own people, but we’ll give you only intelligence support. And if you get in over your head, I’ll only bail you out if told to.”

“Distancing yourself from me won’t save you if this falls apart, Rourke,” said Whitsun, face reddening. “Your precious Agency has been in on this since the start. You’re as dirty as the rest of us.”

Rourke rose. “My Agency, perhaps, but not me, Admiral—I’m the new boy on the block. And you no longer have the clout that made my predecessors your bat boys. I’ll see that you get the information on Munroe and Milano. Good day.”

Whitsun sat pensively for a time and then made the necessary phone calls, the last to an island in Boston’s Inner Harbor.

Driving back to McLean, Rourke thought about those patient spiders. One name kept recurring: Musashi.

Chapter 3

Jim lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling. It’d been after five p.m. before the Defense Protective Service, the FBI and the Arlington County Police had finished taking his and Angie’s statements over at the Pentagon’s DPS office. Emotionally spent, they’d hitched a ride from the DPS cops back to the Bureau’s parking area and bid each other a somber goodnight.

He’d spent the evening detached, on autopilot. After microwaving and eating something that might have been beef, he’d gone to bed and struggled for sleep, his thoughts alternating between a replay of George’s murder—for what else could it have been?—and thoughts of family and friends long gone.

Throwing back the covers, he went downstairs. The microwave’s orange LED told him it was just after midnight. Turning on the lights in the big country kitchen, he sliced up a fresh lime, made himself a stiff Beefeater-and-tonic and read the Washington Post. Twice. A half-hour or so later, the gin and exhaustion combined to send him drowsily back to bed and to sleep.

The dream, so long gone, was back: Emmy, her eyes wide and distant, standing on the balcony beside the railing, holding Kaeko—Kaeko in her little I Love New York tee-shirt, its big red apple faded from many washings, and one of those silly cloth diapers Emmy insisted on using to save money, even though he’d told her a million times he could get the disposables at the commissary. Kaeko wailing, clinging to her mother—himself, running towards them, hopelessly slow even as Emmy stepped up onto table, put a foot on the railing and jumped.

As always, he jumped after them, falling, arms outstretched, trying to reach them as they spiraled towards the earth, impossibly far below—an earth that receded even as the three of them plummeted toward it. Then Emmy and Kaeko were gone, spinning away from him. He screamed as the ground rushed up to meet him.

Jim found himself sitting up in bed, heart pounding, clammy with sweat.

Sunlight washed into the room through the big bay window. From nearby came the sound of traffic cutting past on its way to 23rd Street and Crystal City. The overwhelming sense of helplessness and terror slowly faded.

Why is it back after so long? he wondered as he slowly showered, running the hot water over his tense neck and back. What the hell does Angie have to do with Emmy—dear dead Emmy? And why is Kaeko always wearing diapers? She was five when she died.

There were fifteen flag officers at the Bureau, differentiated mostly by where they were or weren’t going. Some, the comers, were getting their tickets punched on the way to better things, which in the Navy was being at sea and in command of as many pieces of floating gray metal as possible—ideally a carrier battle group. Some had screwed up and were awaiting retirement and some were just awaiting retirement. But there were always a few, like Frank Jameson, whose futures weren’t easily perceived. Jim and Angie’s division chief, Jameson was a two-star admiral, a Rear Admiral, Lower Half. As a captain, he’d commanded an air group during Desert Storm and been one of the few F-14 drivers to have been in a dogfight with Iranian MIGs—three, in fact. He’d sent them into the ocean, a set-to that had earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross and his first star.

Given charge of assigning half a million men and women to hundreds of ships and bases around the world, Jameson had confounded conventionality by learning about the computer systems that did so much of the work, and troubling himself to memorize the names and faces of the senior and mid-level civilians who ran those systems. He’d been back in the working area cubicles so often that all hands had been told to no longer bellow “Attention On Deck!” whenever all that gold braid came flashing down the dimly-lit halls.

Jim sat in the armchair opposite Jameson’s great mahogany desk. The Admiral’s desktop was clear save for a Naval Academy pen and pencil set, a leather desk blotter, a small stack of personnel orders awaiting signature, and to the right, a detailed model of an F-14. The latest flavor of PC sat behind him on a computer stand. Sharing his computer stand was a gold-rimmed coffee mug reading CVN 69 USS Eisenhower. The computer screen displayed the day’s appointment schedule, white letters on a blue background.

Angie had the other leather side chair. “You look like hell,” she’d said as they’d waited in the reception area.

“So do you,” Jim had said, noting the bags under her eyes.

“Bad night,” she said. “Took two glasses of sherry to send me off to dreamland.”

“I used gin,” he said, as they were ushered in.

“I’m very sorry about George,” said the Admiral following introductions. “Sharp as tack, knew ours systems inside and out. His work with GDR on this new SLIF system was outstanding.” Jameson shook his head. “The only thing that ever got in George’s way was his mouth. He once told my boss that if the Navy didn’t have a legal monopoly, its work should be put out for competitive bid.” He sighed. “George is going to be missed—even though a lot people probably won’t think so. At first.

“So how are you two doing? Seeing a friend killed can throw your world off compass.”

Jim and Angie assured him they were doing fine, thank you, sir.

Jameson was a large man and he filled the big desk chair. He was in his early fifties, with a bluff weathered face and sharp green eyes. “George had a unique and irreplaceable depth of knowledge about the weird way we do business here, and rock solid integrity. And the manner of his death...” Jameson shook his head. “He never said anything before he died?” he asked, his eyes, gauging their expressions as they shook their heads. “Well, you’ve got his job for now, Mr. Munroe,” he continued, looking at Jim. “Pending Mr. Gawkins approval, of course. Are you up to speed on the SLIF project? It’s high visibility. CNO’s following it closely.” Jim sympathized—the Chief of Naval Operations had once had Jameson’s current job and would know all the right questions to ask.

“Not yet, Admiral. A day or two, though, and I will be.” He wondered if that six-month contract he’d interviewed for at the FBI was still open.

“Very well,” said Jameson. “I’ve asked Captain Harris to keep me apprised of the status of the Federal investigation.”

Angie suddenly leaned intently forward. Crap, thought Jim. Here it comes.

“Sir, had you been there, I think you’d agree with Mr. Munroe and I that George was murdered—coldly and premeditatedly. George Campbell served this country faithfully for many years, sir. The least we can do is not brush his death under the table.”

Under the table’s where your personnel jacket’s going to be at your next promotion board, thought Jim.

“No one is trying to brush Mr. Campbell’s death aside, Commander,” said Jameson coldly.

“Are you going to request an NCIS investigation, Admiral?” she pressed on, referring to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

“The FBI has jurisdiction over all crimes on Pentagon property, Commander.”

Jim tried not sink lower in his chair.

“I believe an NCIS investigation could be very beneficial, sir,” Angie said, undeterred. “The search for whatever caused his death should start here in the Bureau, and NCIS should be in charge—they’d get far more cooperation than an outside agency.”

Navy folks don’t like Suits, Jim silently agreed, watching a robin perch on the magnolia tree outside Jameson’s window.

“The vehicle that struck George had no identifying features,” Angie continued. “His death has every appearance of being planned. Planned, it would require a motive. And wouldn’t that motive most likely be found where George worked, here in the Bureau? I mean, Admiral, the man had no life outside of here.”

“I think you’re jumping the gun, Commander. It might have just been a couple of crack addicts from the District, joy riding in a stolen vehicle. There’s no indication it was premeditated.”

“A little early to tell, isn’t it, sir?” said Angie, smiling pleasantly.

The smile, thought Jim. She’s not going to let it go.

A discreet knock at the door saved them. Captain Harris’s graying crew-cut head appeared. “General Wilson’s here for your eleven hundred, sir.”

As the Admiral glanced at his appointment schedule, Harris looked at Jim and Angie, jerking his head toward the door. Jim gave him a thumbs-up. The Captain did not care for Jim’s thumb.

“There’s a graveside service for George tomorrow, next door at Arlington,” said the Admiral. “We’ll be posting the time and place.”

“Bureau personnel aren’t usually interred in Arlington, are they Admiral?” asked Jim as he stood. Arlington National Cemetery was reserved for those who had served with great distinction.

“George Campbell was a much-decorated Army officer, Mr. Munroe,” said the Admiral. “He was a platoon leader at Omaha Beach, commanded a battalion at Bastogne and later served as a staff intelligence officer in Occupied Germany—not to mention his many years of government service. Thank you both for your input. If I can do anything, please call me.”

They shook the Admiral’s hand and passed into his busy outer office, with its flag writer and yeomen and ringing phones, then into the even busier central corridor.

“Someday,” said Jim as they made their way back to their area, “they’re just going to have the Marines haul you outside and shoot you. Probably anyone with you, too.”

“You’re such a woos, Jim,” she said absently. “That was strange.”

“What?”

“That he met with us at all. What was the point?”

“He’s just expressing concern, Angie,” said Jim. “He’s a nice guy.” And, he thought, perhaps he also wanted to know if George had told us anything.

“He didn’t get to sit there by being a nice guy.”

“What a cynic. Did you know that George was a hero in the Big One?” he asked as they walked.

“Sure,” said Angie. “Didn’t you?”

“No. He never talked about the war or family or anything.”

“Did you ever ask him? He really liked you, you know.”

“No,” said Jim. If only I were paid by the regret rather than by the hour, he thought.

They stopped at the intersection of the main corridor and Wing Eight, the Dead Guys’ Corner: portraits of the former Chiefs of Naval Personnel, the oldest from 1842, back when it’d been the Bureau of Navigation. Angie had once said all of the 19th century admirals looked as though they might have barnacles beneath their beards. Jim thought none of them looked a stranger to the bottle.

Angie leaned close. “Okay, now, where’s the diskette?” she said softly as a gaggle of chiefs went by, headed for the training rooms.

“Home,” said Jim. “Hidden.” Naval officers aren’t supposed to wear perfume—folks around them might be allergic or think they were women.

“Have you looked at it?” she asked.

“Briefly. It’s one long sequential ASCII file with some gaps. Appears to be mostly personnel codes and dates—no names. We’d need to know the purpose of the data to figure out the format, maybe get some help from someone knowledgeable in Navy stuff. Someone like...”

“Me.”

“Yeah. We can try to work out the file structure. Why don’t you come over to my place tonight, since you’re too cheap to buy a computer?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Trying to lure me over to play with your file structure, Jimbo? PC still in your spare bedroom?”

He’d been on loan to Angie’s section for a few months. She’d kindly brought him lots of work while he was convalescing from a dislocated knee, along with some neat little communications software and a password generator that would let him send her his work every day. By 1700 hours, please.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Have I ever given you reason to think I was...” he hesitated.

“After my bod?” she smiled, enjoying his discomfort. “No.”

“Well, you don’t own a PC, do you?”

“Right.”

“So?” He waited.

“All right,” she said finally. “Seven okay?”

“Sure.”

“See you then. And,” she added, calling over her shoulder as she turned down her corridor, “you have to feed me. No pizza, no pasta and none of your stupid Italian jokes.”

“What sound does an Italian helicopter make?” he called back, but she was gone. “You’re such a bitch, Angie,” he added softly. He went back to his desk, determined to do some work.

A young black petty officer sat at George’s desk, playing a noisy computer game. George’s ashtray was gone, celebration of a small triumph by a small mind in the SEAL shop, perhaps. “You’re in the wrong cubicle, Petty Officer Williams,” said Jim, reading the man’s name tag.

The kid looked up, startled. “Senior Chief told me to sit here, sir. I’m new. He said this desk was vacant.”

“Hard to believe, but Senior Chief was wrong.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Out.”

The kid looked ready to argue. Seeing the look on Jim’s face, he fled.

Jim felt sorry for a moment, then forgave himself and tried to work. It didn’t turn out well: he spent the day being quietly upset, staring at the screen, then left early to find a decent sirloin and a good Bordeaux.

Chapter 4

Sitting at the end of a short tree-lined cul-de-sac, Jim’s house had a big wrap-around verandah and from the back a view of much of Crystal City. Not that Jim or anyone he knew would ever want a view of Crystal City. But from the kitchen or the minuscule sloping backyard could also be seen the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial and the Dome of the Capitol.

Beneath his big front bay windows lived the implacable ancient pink azaleas with which he’d long fought a losing battle. With autumn, they were beginning to drop their leaves. Soon he’d resume the fight, trimming them back yet again. During the winter they’d lie dormant, then in the spring, roots having secretly burrowed and thickened, the branches would shoot up yet again to obscure the bottom third of his living room windows.

Opening the big oak-and-stained-glass front door, Jim went to the burglar alarm touchpad by the foot of the stairs and entered the disarm code. Only as he moved back into the hall did he see the faint trial of mud leading up the stairs.

Adrenaline surged and old instincts clicked in. Stepping quickly to the hall table, he unsnapped the old Army Colt .45 from its hiding place beneath the table top, thumbing off the safety. Chambering a round and cocking the hammer, he slipped into the kitchen, pistol held high and two-handed. Moving quickly, he made a circuit of the downstairs, then went lightly up the stairs.

Bedrooms, baths, closets, beneath the beds—all looked undisturbed. Setting the pistol aside, he sat down in front of the computer. Last used by him yesterday, the monitor was off and cold. The contents of the diskette box appeared undisturbed.

Leaning back in his desk chair, he sat with templed fingers, staring out the window, watching the steady parade of silver jets catching the late afternoon sun as they glided down the Potomac toward the airport.

Put it together, Jimbo, he thought—you used to be good at this. Assume that someone wants George’s file. What made it important enough to kill for? Whatever the reason, they’d come very quickly to his door—something they couldn’t have done without help from inside the Bureau.

Downstairs, he checked the front locks and the alarm panel. Finding no signs of tampering, he poured himself a tall ale and went into the backyard. A stiff wind greeted him with swirling leaves. It was cold and growing dark. Below him, beyond the white picket fence, where Jim’s yard sloped to join his, Bill Enders was still struggling with the huge cedar play set he’d bought his kids two months ago. He was squatting in the tower, screwing in the lateral slats that would enclose the sides. Against his house lay a yellow plastic wave slide, now half-covered by leaves. “Should have paid for assembly, Bill,” called Jim, sipping his ale. “A lousy two hundred bucks, you could be inside jollying the Frau.”

“Fuck you, Jim,” Enders called good-naturedly. “Either shut up or help.” It’d become a ritual exchange, beginning soon after the lumber and clear thick plastic bags of metal parts had been delivered early in August. A solidly built black guy in his mid-forties, Bill was having trouble positioning the tiny brass wood screws with his large fingers.

“You want a Bass?” called Jim, watching from the patio.

“Nah,” said Enders, intent on his work. Jim turned to inspect the ground next to the house. It didn’t take long to spot, the two six-inch long rectangles, about a foot apart, just under the bedroom window.

“Hey, Bill,” he called. “You see any guys with a ladder here today?”

Bill stopped working and looked up, frowning. “Just the two bubbas cleaning your gutters, about three-thirty. Problem?”

“Were you out here all the time?”

“No. They were finishing up when I got home.” Intrigued, Bill set the screwdriver down and eased himself into the opening where the slide would go, legs dangling. “What’s up?”

“I didn’t have the gutters cleaned. Think I had some second story visitors.”

“Shit.” Disentangling himself, he dropped agilely to the ground and came over. “What’s missing?”

“Nothing,” said Jim. “But someone tracked up my front hall.” He shrugged. “Probably no use calling the cops.”

“For what it’s worth, Suspect A was a scrawny white guy, with scraggly blond hair and a baseball cap worn backwards. Suspect B was dark, short, kind of oriental looking, maybe Filipino. Both about mid-twenties. I never saw their truck or whatever they came in. I guess we both better put alarms on our second floor windows.”

“You’re good at this,” said Jim.

Enders shrugged. “Goes with the territory.” Bill Enders was ex-Green Beret and a Special Agent with the U.S. Customs Service.

Bill rejected a second offer of a drink. They bullshitted for a few more minutes, then Bill’s daughter called in him for dinner.

Jim went inside and took all his phones apart, finding a tiny black bug nestled in each. Flushing them down the toilet, he called Angie.

“GQ, Commander. No shitter,” he said as soon as she picked up.

“Jimbo? Are you drunk?”

“Sadly, no. And that steely little osifer tone won’t work on me. Couple of lads burgled my house and bugged my phones.”

“George’s diskette?”

“Not to worry.”

“Good,” she sighed. “I gather you debugged the phones?”

“For sure.”

“I’ll be right over.”

“Is Erik back yet?” he asked, trying to sound casual. He’d almost forgotten about the blond beast.

“Still in Baltimore, at the booze and testosterone fest,” she said. “Give me an hour.” She hung up.

“Yes, sir,” said Jim.

He glanced at the clock—he could make it to the bakery, get dessert and some bread and be back before Angie arrived from Alexandria.

He set out on his errands, the melancholy that had gripped him all day gone.

“More cheesecake?” Jim asked, picking up the silver cake knife.

Angie shook her head. “I’m stuffed, thank you. That was great, Jim.” She looked at him, smiling suspiciously, and sipped the wine.

He held up the wine bottle, now two-thirds empty. She shook her head. “I’ll get silly if I drink anymore. Won’t be able to drive.”

“That’s okay.”

“Let’s continue the mission, shall we?” she said lightly. Angie was all autumn crispness and L.L. Bean tonight, with a blue cotton turtleneck, gray flannel pants and a perfectly cut tweed sportscoat, now carefully folded across the arm of the living room sofa.

“I’ll get the coffee,” he said rising. “Come on upstairs, the PC’s...”

“In the bedroom,” she laughed, rising. Jim watched as she went into the living room, setting the leather satchel she’d brought atop the big red ottoman. Taking a canvas case from inside the satchel, she unzipped it and removed a laptop computer. Carrying the PC into the dining room, she placed it on the cleared end of the table, raised the screen and powered up.

“You’re such a nice Italian girl, Angie,” Jim said, noting the Bureau property control sticker on the side of the machine. “So why the PC inside the satchel?”

“Those little laptop cases might as well have ‘Steal Me’ stamped on them in flaming lavender six inches high. DC and environs are not an Athenian agora. I don’t want the cost of a stolen laptop taken from my meager paycheck. Disk?” she asked, pulling up a dining chair.

Jim handed it over.

“How come your visitors missed this one?” she asked, sliding it into the drive.

“I labeled it as a spreadsheet file and saved it in my checkbook directory,” he said, pleased with himself. “Now if they’d taken the PC with them...”

“You’ve deleted it from hard drive?”

“You bet.”

“Well done. Coffee?”

He went to the kitchen and brewed a pot.

Outside the wind was picking up, rain tapping on the windows.

“So, what have we got here?” Angie asked as they peered at the jumble of characters wrapping down the screen. “You’re right—it does look like a personnel data.”

“If so, it’s very old data. And without names. George was pulling World War Two data the day he died. I think these are service numbers.” He tapped several sets of numbers, each preceded by either an O or an RN and followed by an undifferentiated stream of alphas and numerics until the next occurrence of an O or RN. “Social security numbers replaced service numbers when I was in the Army.”

“Were you in the Bonus March, Jim?”

“Oh, before then. We had bronze-tipped spears—real bitch keeping an edge on those puppies,” he said, glancing at her then back at the screen. “Now, assuming each service number identifies a record, each record, counting blanks reserved for missing data, totals 156 characters. This,” his pencil touched a three character sequence—ENS—“is obviously a rank. But whether the rest of this stuff is a code or a date, who can tell without a file layout?”

“How many service numbers?”

“Fifty-three. And the Navy hasn’t kept officer and enlisted records together in over thirty years.”

“Hull number,” she said after a moment. “See there?” She pointed to a five character grouping with her pen. “This prefix? DE—Destroyer Escort.” It repeated about every two lines: DE173. “Yesterday, George was running SLIF queries against the 1943 personnel data,” she continued. “Could be this is the hull number of a World War Two destroyer. If so, it isn’t just any destroyer. Oh, my, this is a famous hull number,” she said softly, continuing to scroll down. “It enjoys quite a following.”

Jim was about to ask what was so famous about DE173 when Angie suddenly exclaimed, “Look at this!” She pointed to six digits that repeated after every service number: 070343. “Position’s consistent with an Onboard Report Date. Which confirms this as assignment data. Therefore...”

“Therefore what?”

Angie handed him his wine glass. Picking up her own, she divided the rest of the burgundy between them and raised her glass. “Toast, Jim,” she said. “To the long-lost crew roster of DE173, the USS Eldridge, a 1240 ton Cannon-class destroyer escort officially launched in July of 1943 in Newark, New Jersey, commissioned August 27, 1943.” She touched his glass with her own, smiling at his puzzlement. “Drink up, Jimbo. I’ll explain.”

Jim’s philosophy had always been, a woman tells you to drink up, you drink up.

“So?” he asked, following her into the living room, where a table lamp gave a faint light.

Outside the wind had grown to a howling beast, gale force at least, driving the rain against the house.

“So it’s the crew that never was, Jimbo,” said Angie as he triggered the gas fireplace. “It’s the Philadelphia Experiment crew.” She set her wine on the raised hearth, kicked off her shoes and pulled off her sweater. She wore a pleated white silk blouse with mother of pearl buttons and a filigree gold necklace.

“The what?”

Going to the sofa, she took two red-and-gold silk throw pillows and returned to the fireplace. The firelight gleamed off the gold set against her lustrous skin as she sank onto the big old bear skin rug in front of the fireplace. Turning on her side, she put her raised elbow on the cushion and propped her head on her hand. “Flop down, Jimbo, I’m not going to seduce you,” she said as he stood, shifting his weight uncertainly. If he’d had a vision of how an evening alone with Angie would go, this wasn’t it.

“Get your wine glass,” she said. “This is going to take some time. And may I have another cup of coffee? I really do have to drive.” In Virginia, recent use of alcohol-based mouthwash could win you a DWI citation.

Returning with her coffee, Jim slipped off his loafers and settled to the floor a discrete distance away.

“You really never heard of the Philadelphia Experiment?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Been a couple of movies and books? No? Well, it’s an urban legend, and like many legends it has a rich fringe following. I’ll tell you what I know.”

She drank her coffee and gazed into the fire for a moment. “The U.S., Germany, maybe Japan,” she began, “were experimenting with ship invisibility back in the 30’s.”

“Invisible? You mean, like undetectable by radar?”

“No. Invisible, like no-can-see.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Really? So’s nuclear fusion. Works all too well, though, doesn’t it? Certainly made the world safer.”

“But...”

“Just listen for now, ok?”

“Ok.”

“As part of its ship invisibility project,” she continued, “the Navy cammed onto an early attempt by Einstein at a Unified Field Theory that he developed in the 1920’s.” Angie stopped. “Already your eyes are glazing, Jimbo.”

“I’ve a bachelor’s in political science.” He set his half-empty wine glass down on the rug. “And no math. Did I ever tell you about my third grade teacher, Miss Gerrish, and the trauma of the multiplication table?”

“No. Did you want me to continue?” She had that steely tone again.

“Please.”

“World War Two gave birth to R&D as we now know it. The Manhattan Project’s the most famous, of course, but also of great interest to the military and research physicists was ship invisibility.” Finishing her coffee, she reached for the wine bottle, then thought better of it.

“Einstein steered clear of the Manhattan Project and defense research in general until ‘43. Apparently the lure of the ship invisibility project was too hard to resist.”

“Einstein used to correspond with Bertrand Russell,” said Jim, admiring her graceful throat. “They were both pacifists. Well, most of the time.”

“How’d you know that?” she asked, surprised.

“Physics for Poets,” he said. “It was either that or chemistry.”

“Physics for Poets?” She shook her head. “During the summer of 1943, Einstein was a consultant to the Navy’s Office of Scientific Research and Development. He wrote to someone—one of his old Swiss or German chums—that he was really enjoying his work with the Navy. Then in July of ‘43 he was appointed to an unnamed Navy scientific committee ‘... where his special skills would be most useful’, I believe is the way the record phrases it.”

“In Philadelphia?”

“Don’t know. To this day the Navy refuses to release any information about what Einstein did for them during that time. However, Eldridge was probably launched in June of 1943 and used for experiments in ship invisibility during July and most of August of that year—the brief period that Einstein worked for the Navy as an ‘intermittent’ scientific consultant. The generally accepted dates are different, but there are some solid reasons to go with the June-July dates. Anyway in August, something went terribly wrong with the experiment—something that affected the surviving crewmen long after the experiment ended.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, the unwanted ability to penetrate solid matter, invisibility, cycling in and out of this reality. Insanity, cancer.

“Any reports of women carried off to bear alien babies?”

“Scoff if you will,” she said. “But the possibility something’s true is often proportional to attempts to hush it up. And there’s been a lot of hush-up where the Eldridge is concerned.” Finishing her coffee, she set her cup on the hearth.

Outside, rolling peals of thunder had joined the torrential rains. The lights flickered, dimmed, returned.

“This wasn’t in the forecast,” said Jim as a close hit rocked the house.

“So not much on physics?” Angie asked, ignoring the storm.

“No.”

“Okay. No math required.” She paused for a moment, collecting her thoughts. “Scientific observation separates the elemental forces of the universe into two categories: electromagnetism and gravity. Simple, right?”

“So far,” said Jim. He had the same sense of unease he’d felt when his high school math teacher began his introduction to the elegance, beauty and simplicity of calculus.

“Einstein wanted to show that gravitational attraction was interchangeable with electromagnetic field attraction, to build a bridge between them—a Unified Field Theory proving that these two diverse forces were in fact attributes of a single universal design. Any empirical evidence demonstrating the validity, or at least the possibility of that would’ve been of great interest to him.”

“Why?”

“Because he didn’t believe that the universe was divided into two parts—the large part that could be understood through general relativity, and the small part that could be understood through quantum mechanics. Albert believed in the elegance and ultimate simplicity of Creation. ‘God does not play dice,’ he said. He spent thirty years trying to derive an overarching theory that would encompass everything.”

“He never got it, did he?”

“No. He came up with a Unified Field Theory in the 1920’s but discarded it. Anyway, it’s possible that the Philadelphia Experiment combined elements of both electromagnetism and gravitational force and provided an early demonstration of the possibility of a Unified Field Theory.”

“Assuming there ever was a Philadelphia Experiment.”

“Oh, I think there was. In Special Relativity—our old friend from a million toilet stall walls, E=mc2—energy is equivalent to the mass of a body multiplied by the square of the speed of light. Matter converts into energy and back again depending on the velocity at which matter moves. Of course, you need a lot of energy to make a small bit of matter, but not much matter at all to create a lot of energy—something profoundly demonstrated at Hiroshima. In General Relativity, gravitation is a field exerting a geometrical force on the bodies within its influence. And light’s an electromagnetic force.”

“I knew that,” he said.

“When light enters a gravitational field, it bends, and the angle at which it bends is relative to the mass and velocity of the gravitating body. No one’s ever achieved complete unification of gravity and electromagnetism. No quantum theory successfully describes the conversion of gravitational energy into electromagnetic energy and back again.

“However, assume for the hell of it that it might be possible to unify the forces of electromagnetism and gravity by establishing a gravitational field oscillating at an electromagnetic frequency. All matter within that field should then be oscillating at that frequency.”

“Okay.”

“So, if the amplitude—the degree—of oscillation of the gravitational field could be manipulated, bringing it near the speed of light,” her hands formed an imaginary, vibrating sphere, “then the contents of the field—the objects within it—might become invisible to an observer. Voila! Invisible ship, invisible crew.”

“And that,” she said lightly, taking Jim’s wine from his hand, “might just have been the basis of the Philadelphia Experiment.”

“Question,” he said as she finished his wine. “What’s to prevent everything inside this gravitational field from becoming pure energy? Or did I miss something?”

“Ah, Jimbo,” she sighed. “That’s the problem they didn’t work out—or work out very well. Matter within the gravitational field, says the theory, can be restrained from total conversion into energy by the controlled application of a radiation field intense enough to contain those objects.”

“Objects such as the crew?”

“Such as the crew,” she nodded. “Do note the use of the phrase ‘total conversion’. Control during the experiment was apparently... sporadic. The ship briefly disappeared, then reappeared—some of the crew never did. Some faded in and out of existence—going zero, the survivors called it. Others came back, though a few were melded with the ship’s structure.” Angie stared past Jim, envisioning a searing corner of hell from a half century ago.

“The Eldridge was glowing and pulsating for hours, too hot for the rescue parties to board,” she continued, her gaze returning to Jim’s face but her mind still somewhere else. “The surviving crewmen who could move gathered their injured shipmates and jumped over the side—it was a gorgeous afternoon. The rescue parties said you could see the Eldridge guys glowing an almost unbearable white as they fell toward the water. Some never surfaced—their bodies were never recovered. Some just disappeared in mid-jump. Many of the survivors needed long-term psychiatric care and all of them suffered degrees of radiation sickness.”

“How do you know all this, Angie?” asked Jim.

Her eyes returned to the present. “I knew someone who was there,” she said, her tone warning him off. “Now, would you like to hear a different take on the physics underlying the project?”

Seeing his expression, she laughed, touching his arm. “It’s not bad. Actually, it’s really cool.”

“Sure,” he said, thinking the pain was probably worth it if it kept her here just a little longer.

“You’re a sport,” she said. “So Albert’s thirty year quest for a Unified Field Theory failed. And no one else ever came up with a viable one. But what does exist now is what might be called the Theory of Everything—string theory. And if true, it might well help explain what happened to DE173 that day in Philadelphia. String theory says that deep down, within all matter, lie tiny loops of energy. These loops—strings—vibrate. And it’s the interrelated resonance patterns of these strings that determine the fabric of space and time. All matter and energy are determined, Mr. Physics-for-Poets, not by the music of the spheres but of the strings.”

“That’s it?”

“God, no!” she laughed. “That’s the simple part—elegant requires a bit more. String theory’s the heart of the most recent advances in theoretical physics. It could unite general relativity and quantum mechanics. Reams of papers and books have been written about it. No, I just gave you the short of it, so we can get back to the Eldridge. It goes deeper, far beyond my poor comprehension. Unless you desperately want to read up on things like garden hose universes, Calabi-Yau space, flop-transitions...”

“No, no!” he said holding up his hands. “Back to the Eldridge. It has to do with those vibrating little strings?”

“Maybe. My guess is that whatever they did onboard the Eldridge that day made all the strings within their gravitation field resonate in a pattern that caused the ship to vanish, possibly to even move through space and time. They really didn’t know what they were doing and just couldn’t fine tune the oscillation patterns well enough to control the phenomenon. Sort of like an orchestra, playing badly, but still generating a recognizable if botched composition. It’s not the piece itself that’s flawed, it’s the rendition.”

“So what happened after this disaster?”

Angie laughed—a humorless little noise from down in her throat. “Why, hell, Jimbo, you know the answer to that. The Navy wanted to demonstrate to their superiors that the experiment still had merit and could be replicated—no matter what the human consequences. So...”

“They did it again,” he sighed.

“Yes, sir! Can-do, sir!” She snapped a salute, her face twisting into a mindless mask of fierce determination.

“Don’t do that,” said Jim. “It’s scary.”

“Oh, it’s almost Halloween. So, supposedly Einstein was horrified and quit after the first experiment. Warned the Navy that with continued bumbling they might just delete Mother Earth. Operations continued. By the time the Navy called it off they’d run through at least one other experiment using Eldridge and perhaps as many as a hundred and fifty sailors. Our little SLIF file appears to contain the crew roster of the first experiment.”

“And the ship?”

“Eldridge was spruced up, officially commissioned and sent on regular wartime patrols in the Atlantic. After the war, they sold her to the Greek Navy. She went to the wreckers’ yard a few years ago.”

“How do you know all this stuff?” he asked after a moment.

“Hobby,” she shrugged. “Well, more a fixation that began as a hobby. Indulged in during an eighteen month tour on, or rather, within, an Aleutian island. But inspired by first meeting someone who’d been there. That made a believer out of me.”

“And the names?” asked Jim after a moment. “There are no names on George’s list.”

“Just George being paranoid—rightly so. The names are sitting in SLIF. One of us has to go into SLIF and run these service numbers,” she pointed to the screen, “against those in the master personnel records for 1943. That’ll give us the names, the addresses, the social security numbers.”

Lightning lit the room bright as an August noon, followed by great crash, shaking the house to its foundation. Then lights went out.

Chapter 5

The old man answered the phone on the second ring, barely noticing the storm raging outside. He glanced at the clock—it was midnight. “Yes?”

“Encryption status, please?” The caller’s French accent was barely discernible, faded from many years of English.

“Green,” said Whitsun, looking at the telltale beneath the dial pad. “At my age, Philip, I’d hoped to be through with these late hour melodramas.” He loved them. “File recovered, problem disposed of?” he asked, knowing a report of success would have waited until morning.

“We didn’t find the file,” came the unruffled reply. “And our telephone monitoring equipment has been detected and removed. At this moment, Milano and Munroe are meeting at his house.”

“Probably pouring over the information in that file. I’d be,” said Whitsun, sitting up in bed. “Go in now, tonight, take them, the file and all their computer gear and dispose of them. You shouldn’t have any trouble, Philip. We’re dealing with a bureaucrat and some woman who thinks she’s a Naval officer.” Admiral Terrence Whitsun’s Navy had been a band of brothers: white, Episcopalian brothers.

“Not entirely, sir.” He told Whitsun what he’d learned about Jim Munroe.

“I see. Well, perhaps we can reason with him. If not, we’ll dispose of Milano and then try again to reason with him.” A thought struck him. “They’re not intimate, are they?”

“They appear to be just colleagues and friends.”

“Pity. Caring for another human being can make a person so reasonable. Keep them under surveillance. I’ll find someone to have a quiet talk with Munroe tomorrow.”

Cursing, Jim tripped over the coffee table, arriving at the window a second behind Angie.

The majestic old elm in front of house had fallen across the road, crushing a white minivan parked by the curb and grazing the neighboring house. Along the sidewalk, a live power line whipped and snapped like a huge maddened serpent, spewing blue sparks into the wind as it tried to escape the fallen limbs. The elm’s great green canopy filled the broad side yard between two houses, massive roots blocking Jim’s driveway. Horizontal sheets of rain lashed the street as the surviving trees bent groaning beneath the wind.

Angie turned to Jim. “May I use your guest room tonight?”

“Someone went to a lot of trouble over this, Jim.” She waved the small black diskette at him. “They killed George for it.” They sat watching the fire, a second bottle of wine between them.

“What now?” asked Jim. “Do we go get the names out of SLIF or just chuck this diskette into the Potomac?”

“Of course we go get the names—and anything else we can,” said Angie. “George didn’t give you that disk to throw away. Somehow it’s important. We have to find out why.”

He didn’t argue with her—from the set of her mouth and the look in her eye this was non-negotiable.

“Fine,” he said. “I now have SLIF access. Tomorrow I’ll pull the personnel data that goes with those service numbers.”

Angie rose, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek. “You’re okay, Jimbo. I’m going to bed.”

“And after tomorrow?” he asked. “Then what?”

“Pass everything up the chain,” she said matter-of-factly, meaning her chain-of-command and her superior officers.

That would be the end of it—and us, he thought. He and Angie would disappear—a car mishap, like George, or perhaps in a fire of unknown origin. The number of terminal possibilities were endless. “I don’t think that’ll work, Angie,” he said.

A few stairs up she turned, one hand holding her sweater over her shoulder, the other the banister. The storm, which had been easing, threw a sudden gust at the house, rattling the windows and howling up under the eaves.

“But...” she said, “Admiral Jameson...”

“Will do as he’s told,” said Jim. “That information will disappear—and so will we. Bad guys will come for us.”

“So what do you propose?”

“We’re going to have to go outside the Navy with it. Outside DOD.”

“The FBI?”

“No.”

“You they can only fire—me they’ll court martial. I don’t do well with communal showering.”

“Would you rather be dead?”

“I’d have to think about that.”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, after I pull the data. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” she said, heading up the stairs. “Let’s get an early start—say 0630?”

“Fine,”

“Good night,” she called as she disappeared into the guest room.

Her head reappeared an instant later. “Thanks, Jim.”

“For what?”

She shrugged. “Just thanks. Good night.”

Jim cleaned up, putting the dishes in the dishwasher by candlelight, then stepping out onto the veranda. The storm was moving off. An emergency crew from Virginia Power had arrived and was dealing with the now-dead line. There was no sign of an Arlington County emergency crew yet, the one that would tackle the tree and the crumpled van. Must have their hands full tonight, he thought, locking the door.

Jim went up to bed, taking the .45 with him. In a world of Glocks and mini-Uzis it wasn’t the best available weapon. Still, it was an old friend in a life that hadn’t many old friends left.

Despite the afterglow of good wine, good food and good company, and the reassuring lump of the .45 beneath the spare pillow, it took Jim a long time to drift into a troubled sleep—Angie and Emma. Angie and Emma. Save Angie from what?

Chapter 6

Dawn brought clearing skies and an angry fiancée.

Angie must have seen Erik’s car from a window and opened the door for him. The shouting woke Jim from a fitful sleep. Dimly surprised at his sweat-soaked pajamas, he threw on his robe and hurried downstairs.

They were in the front hallway, tearing into each other as only people who know each other well can. Erik, his back to the hall door, spotted Jim first. Breaking off, they turned to face him as he came down the stairs.

Gauging Erik’s expression and body language, Jim decided the man was about to lose it. Angie, pale, barefoot and tight-lipped, was wearing the old red maroon robe Jim kept in the spare room, the sleeves unevenly rolled back, hem touching her ankles.

Jim found himself strangely detached, admiring Angie’s slender feet as Erik pushed past her to confront him. I’m getting old and weirder, he thought.

“She says nothing happened,” snapped Erik, stuffing his face into Jim’s. “Should I believe her?” His breath was hot and smelled of cinnamon mouthwash. He was a lean six-foot-two, years younger than Jim and in peak shape—a good-looking guy, if you liked the lantern-jawed, steely blue-eyed Nordic type. Plus he was wearing The Uniform, made to impress: summer whites with four rows of ribbons capped by aviator’s wings. His hat with its scrambled eggs visor lay on the hall table.

Three inches shorter than Erik, older and not in peak shape, Jim took the conciliatory approach. “I don’t care what you believe, Erik. You’re being an asshole. Please leave.”

“Erik!” cried Angie, grabbing Erik’s arm as he pulled his fist back, face crimson with anger.

“Keep out of it!” he snapped. Not looking at her, Erik elbowed her in the stomach—a short, viscous jab that sent Angie to her knees with a grunt of pain.

Grabbing Erik by the shirt, Jim pulled him close, kneeing him in the groin, feeling a rush of primitive satisfaction as the startled look on Erik’s face was replaced by one of shock and pain. As Erik doubled over Jim chopped him behind his right ear. Erik slid silently to the floor to lay face-down, an inglorious heap of freshly starched white sprawled across a blue oriental carpet.

Jim knelt beside a quietly sobbing Angie, trying to put his arm around her. She shrugged it off. “Leave me alone, Jim.”

“But are you okay?” he asked, rising.

She nodded, tight-lipped, avoiding his gaze.

He had a sudden insight. “This has happened before, hasn’t it?”

“Only once,” she said, looking up, tears in her eyes. “When he got passed over for a command he wanted, he really lost it.” She stood up, ignoring Jim’s outstretched hand. “A female officer got the posting,” she added.

“So, how come you’re engaged to that?” he asked as they stood looking down on Erik.

“I’m not,” said Angie. Slipping the diamond ring from her finger, she bent down, tucking it into Erik’s pants pocket, then stood and kicked him in the ribs, twice. Hard.

“Angie!” protested Jim.

“Hope it hurts like hell,” she said, mouth tightening. “I was a good friend to him.”

“If I call the cops,” said Jim, “are you willing to press charges?”

“You’re not calling the cops,” she said. “I am.”

When the Arlington County police arrived a few minutes later, Erik was still out.

“So what happened?” the older cop asked again as his partner called for paramedics.

“This man entered my home,” said Jim, indicating the fallen aviator. “He assaulted my guest and me. I defended us.”

“Is that what happened?” the cop asked Angie.

“Yes. Commander Saunders and I live together,” said Angie. “He was out of town on business, not expected back until tomorrow. The Commander arrived back early, found my appointment book noting my meeting this evening here with Mr. Munroe and the address. The Commander then came here and forced his way into the house.” She said it all in a clipped, no-nonsense voice, her red-rimmed eyes the only sign she was upset. “When asked to leave by Mr. Munroe, he assaulted Mr. Munroe. When I tried to stop the Commander, he assaulted me. Mr. Munroe then subdued the Commander. We will both press charges.”

“Lucky punch?” said the other cop, looking skeptically from Jim to Erik and back.

Jim shrugged. “Looks like.”

Chapter 7

They buried George that morning amid the fog atop a ridge in a part of Arlington National Cemetery near the Bureau. (It wouldn’t have been Jim’s first choice for himself.)

Waiting for the service to start, standing with a few score military and civilians, Jim knew it would be a different sort of service when he heard the sound of a bagpipe drawing near. A lone piper stepped slowly out of the mist along the access road, wearing the red tartan of Clan Campbell, the eldritch notes of Lord Lovat’s Lament streaming from his pipes. He was followed closely by a team of four magnificent black horses pulling a gleaming caisson on which rested a flag-draped coffin. Six soldiers of the Old Guard, clad in dress blues, flanked the caisson, chrome-plated M14 rifles at shoulder arms.

The piper played Abide with Me as the soldiers carried the coffin to the grave with a grace and precision born of long practice. The Bureau’s chaplain, a Commander who’d never met George, performed the service, offering up the usual non-sectarian prayers and psalms. There being no surviving relatives present—George’s wife was long dead, his only child killed in Vietnam—Admiral Jameson said a few words, touching on the deceased’s war service, dedication to his country and the shock of his sudden death.

After the volleys were fired amid Taps, the flag folded and presented to Jameson, the piper took up the melancholy refrain of The Skye Boat Song, turned and slowly walked away, disappearing back into the gray mists from which he’d come. Angie daubed her eyes with a handkerchief.

The Bureau’s rumor mill, operating far more efficiently than its official information systems, had that morning reported Erik to be in Bethesda Naval Hospital for observation of a possible concussion and broken ribs. He was also pending a chat with a Judge Advocate General’s officer and his captain, the Navy officially frowning on assault and battery. It might forgive his hitting a fellow officer—it hadn’t occurred on duty. It would probably ignore his hitting a woman—she lived with him. But it would never forgive him for having been beaten up, while sober, by a civilian employee some years his senior. Be it by way of resignation or court martial, Erik Saunders' Naval career was over.

The mourners began filing down the hill toward the Bureau and through the iron gate in the fieldstone wall.

“Commander. Mr. Munroe.”

Jim and Angie turned at the Admiral’s voice. “I’m told you two had a busy day yesterday,” he said pleasantly as they walked across the perfectly kept lawn. The faithful Captain Harris, now holding George’s flag, dogged his heels.

Jim figured this was a military matter and deferred to Angie. “Not by choice, Admiral,” she said as they trekked onto the old concrete access road that led to the Bureau.

“You know, I’m always astounded at the amount of trouble two people can get into,” Jameson continued, watching a flock of starlings circling the nearby Marine barracks. “Something that starts innocently enough gets out of hand and then everyone gets hurt.”

“Many relationships do become abusive, sir,” said Angie as they trooped through the main gate, a long line of military and civilians flashing their badges at the guards. “God knows, the Navy’s had its share of problems.”

Walking briskly on, the Admiral got busy returning salutes, Jim and Angie trailing behind.

“‘Just gets out of hand?!’” fumed Angie over the phone that afternoon. Unable to concentrate on her work, she’d left before lunch. “One of his officers bashes another—note that they’re engaged and cohabiting—and all he can worry about is officer-civilian fraternization! Talk about a fucking O-Club mentality! What century is this?!”

“Bad for the Navy’s image,” said Jim. He had revised his opinion of Jameson downward. “Any sign of Erik?”

“He’s being encouraged to resign his commission. I got a heads-up from a friend that Erik will be discharged from Bethesda today. Which means I’m taking you up on your kind invitation to stay with you for a while. In the spare room,” she added pointedly.

“Got the rest of your stuff?”

“In the back of my car. Oh, before I left, I had Erik’s locks changed. And I donated all his uniforms to the Salvation Army shop over in South Arlington.”

“I’ll try not go get on your bad side.”

“I left him the receipt—it’s tax deductible. So, you log into SLIF yet, Jimbo?” she asked, all business.

"Doin’ it now.” Phone held against his shoulder, he tapped the keys. The big orange SLIF banner came up. Entering George’s user ID and password, Jim was admitted to the main menu. “In,” he said, selecting the query module. He took the slip of paper from his wallet and at the ? prompt, typed MBR NBR=12759616; Provide core member data. End. Not quite believing it would work, he hit the enter key.

“12759616 is... Alan Woodruff,” he said, elated and relieved as Woodruff’s information filled the screen. Jim scrolled down. “It’s all here—home address, next of kin, date of birth, assignment history, qualifications, schools.”

“Miracle. Got the list of numbers I gave you?” Just to be safe, Angie’d suggested Jim carry only a list of the crewmen’s service numbers into the Bureau, pointing out, quite correctly, that the bad guys were looking for a diskette, not for a piece of paper jammed into the back of Jim’s wallet with his old ATM receipts.

“Yes. I’ll run them as a group, download the data to a diskette, then I’ll leave. Shouldn’t take long.”

“And eat the paper with the names on it. Gotta go—doorbell. Don’t forget the groceries.”

In an office in Crystal City, the petty officer Jim had banished from his cubicle sat before a mirror image of Jim’s PC screen. As the first of the data appeared, he reached for the phone. The lights went out.

Jim arrived home to find Angie passing out candy to hobgoblins, the small ones who show up around four-thirty or five. “It’s Halloween already?”

“Groceries?” she asked as he trundled up the walk empty-handed. Barefoot, she was wearing blue jeans and an old green flannel shirt over a red t-shirt. A cup of coffee sat next to her on the porch railing.

“Oh. I forgot.”

Angie looked at Jim quizzically as Frankenstein, the Devil and their mother passed him on the way out the white picket gate. “Not like you, Jimbo.”

“Okay, I was worried,” he confessed, sinking into the porch’s glide rocker. Next door, a troop of witches and ghosts were descending on a two-family house.

“Why? ‘cause I hung up when the doorbell rang?” she asked, sitting down beside him, large glass mixing bowl in her lap, filled with petite candy bars. “You think I’m going to hide in the house just because some thugs may come calling?”

“Angie,” he said, touching her knee, “less macho, more street smarts. Things could get very nasty, very fast.”

“And what if our hypothetical bad guys want to make sure no one else knows what’s on that diskette, Jim?”

“Then we’ll be squashed like little bugs.”

“This bug bites,” she said.

“Trick or treat!” Two boys—one about eight, the other no more than six—ran up the front walk, half-full orange bags held wide.

“Ah!” screamed Angie, hands thrown high in mock horror. “It’s Vlad the Impaler! And his buddy, Squish Face!” She threw double helpings of white chocolate bars into their bags.

“You like kids,” said Jim as they watched them go.

“Is that a virtue or a pathology?”

“Virtue.”

“Good. Jimbo, I can be gentle, loving and nurturing,” she said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek, “but not on an empty tummy. Go!”

He pulled into the driveway at twilight. A sudden breeze spun leaves down a street now filled with trick-or-treaters. The crisp evening air was sweet with the mingled scent of dry leaves and wood smoke from a dozen fireplaces. It smelled of home and New England past.

Hauling groceries in from the jeep, he at last identified as happiness the half-forgotten emotion that had been his all day. Still surprised, he went into the house.

While Angie busied herself with the food (“Don’t give me that inverse chauvinist bullshit, Jimbo—I know how to cook. You think microwaving is cooking.”), Jim trotted back and forth to the front door, liberally dishing out candy to ever-larger and more boisterous groups of older kids. After his tenth or twelfth trip, he was turning from the fridge, beer in hand, when a voice commanded “Taste!”

The heavenly flavors exploded across his taste buds: chicken, garlic, wine, onion a hint of orange and basil, all sautéed in olive oil. “Umm!” he responded, chewing. “To die for! How did you do the orange bit?”

Angie laughed, pleased and happy, all else forgotten. “Had an orange with lunch and saved the rind, sautéed it with the chicken.” She thrust a plate of chicken and linguine topped with Mariana sauce at him. “Mangia!”

He stared at her blankly.

“Eat! You never had an Italian girl friend?” she asked as he stuffed his face.

“Ummph,” he grunted diplomatically.

They ate at the old round claw-footed table in the middle of the big country kitchen, seated in the comfortable old captains’ chairs he’d picked up at an auction on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Chicken came with a salad, wine and crusty onion baguettes that they tore apart with their hands, spread with garlic butter and washed down with a Chianti classico so dry it squeaked.

Uninterrupted—porch light off, doorbell disconnected—they devoured five boneless chicken breasts, all the bread and salad, most of the pasta, and topped off with espresso and a chocolate angel food cake smothered in crushed strawberries.

“God, that was good,” said Jim. “Compliments to the chef,” he applauded.

Angie nodded. “Thank you, Jimbo. Shall we waddle off to work?”

Armed with hazelnut coffee and the printout of the personnel data Jim had pulled, they moved to the dining room table, a great slab of walnut that had been an 1840’s library table at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Angie set her chair next to Jim’s as he took the thick, letter-sized printout from his briefcase and laid it on the table.

“All the names are there?” she asked, flipping through it, then looking up. Jim thought she looked relieved.

“Yup,” said Jim. “All the names you gave me. First page is just an alphabetical list of the names and service numbers. I put each service member’s complete personal history and assignment records on a separate page. By the way, this is the only copy of the data that can come from SLIF. After I ran the names and logged off, SLIF advised that all source data had been deleted.” He’d sat staring in amazement at that message for a long moment.

“Everything? All the 1943 personnel records?”

“I went back in and checked—the source data’s all gone. If you were in the Navy in 1943, you’ve been deleted. Assignment records, master personnel records, the whole nine yards.”

“George,” she said.

Jim nodded. “He must have programmed SLIF to delete all the 1943 records after that one query—the one I ran under his user ID.

“Diabolical,” she said. “Who was he really?”

“Maybe he was just George Campbell. Angie, we’re the only ones on the planet with this information.”

“This looks very complete,” she said, ignoring him as she flipped through the first twenty or so pages. “With this it may be possible to track down all of these guys, given time. Some of them could still be alive.”

“Angie, the folks who want this information don’t have it and they know we do. Apparently the Eldridge’s duty roster for that day was lost in a great mountain of paper somewhere—misfiled, tossed, whatever. Or maybe whoever hid it originally hid it so well that it could never be found again.”

“Until the Navy had SLIF built and scanned in all those old records,” Angie said. “After which George, knowing just what he was looking for, reconstructed the Eldridge roster.”

“Know anything about SLIF’ architecture?” asked Jim.

“All I ever saw was GDR’s original high-level briefing paper. It was up there in the stratosphere.”

“The usual bullshit for the brass?”

“Right,” she said. “It talked about proprietary algorithms and heuristics, specialized microprocessors, artificial intelligence modules, massively parallel processing and, of course, seamless integration. Nothing you could get your fingernails under, but lots of five-color concept diagrams.”

“So, we really don’t know how it works?”

“No.”

“Yeah, well, I think SLIF was designed just to retrieve the Eldridge roster.”

“Oh, come on! What makes you think that? We both know they might eventually have gotten that roster with a conventional system. Why build a cannon to shoot a fly?”

“They don’t want the fly, they want the fly’s children. They want the Eldridge descendants. It’s the only thing that makes sense. From what I saw at the demo the other day, given the names of the sailors who were in that experiment, SLIF can track them and their kids and their grandkids right down to next week’s dental appointment or ballet recital.”

Angie thought about that for a moment. “Why?”

"Well, I’d guess that, if the government’s sunk a half billion dollars into finding them, they must think there’s something extraordinary about them.”

“Or extraordinarily dangerous,” she said.

“Who’s the prime contractor on SLIF?”

“GDR Corporation,” she said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Did you know that they run a lot of black budget experimental physics projects for DOD and the CIA, out in the New Mexico desert? Really heavy stuff, requiring billions of dollars each and every year? And have since after World War II?”

“How’d you know that?”

“I read the supermarket tabloids.”

“Jesus, Jim, you’re not going to conspiracy theory on me, are you?”

“According to their website, GDR is taken from their original name, the Gelderide Corporation. An anagram of which is DE Eldridge. There’s also the murder of George, the importance he attached to the roster, the search and bugging of my home, and may I remind you who told me that the Philadelphia Experiment is cloaked in a conspiracy of silence? And the only way to get at that information was through SLIF—a horribly expensive system for which, as nearly as I can tell, the Navy has no legitimate use. A covert system like that should have been built for an intelligence agency. Now that the original data’s gone and the original documentation destroyed, there’s only one place to go for the Eldridge roster.”

“Don’t suppose they’ll forget about us, do you?” she asked.

“I’m surprised we’re not riding in a black chopper. Yet.”

They sat quietly for a minute, Angie sipping her coffee, Jim reading the personnel data.

“So, now what, Jimbo?”

“This is death,” he said, tapping the small pile of paper. “But even if we left it for the leprechauns and it was gone in the morning, I doubt we’d be safe. After all, we could have copies.”

“And we’ve read it.”

“We know too much.”

“So?”

“So, a variation on the theme—we do leave it for the leprechauns,” he said, “but we tell them that friends of mine know what’s going on, and will pursue the matter if anything untoward befalls us.”

Angie didn’t like that at all. “We owe George, Jim,” she said.

He shrugged. “For what, Angie? Getting killed? Being some sort of spook? No,” he raised a finger as she opened her mouth. “Listen to me—I’ve been around this town for a long time. If we don’t get out of this, now, we’re dead. Now, these friends of mine have severe anger issues if aroused. A word from them and these bad guys—and I think these are very bad guys—will take what they want and quietly slip back into the sewers.”

Angie looked down into her coffee. “No Don Quixote you,” she said.

He shrugged. “All my windmills stand behind me. Look, I can fix this, Angie,” he continued earnestly. “We forget all about it and next year at this time we’ll still be around to watch the leaves fall.”

“These friends,” she asked, running a finger gently along the back of his hand, “are they from your former life?”

“Former life?” he asked, as startled by her touch as by the question.

“Come on, Jimbo,” she said. “Your resume lists no prior Federal service...” She held up a hand as he started to protest. “And yet, yet Jimbo, you’ve got a big fat government 401K and decades of Federal pension accrual.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I found your mutual fund and Federal retirement statement when I went through your desk,” she said coolly. “I was curious. I mean, for a quasi-computer geek, you disposed of Asshole Erik with, how to say? polished aplomb? I’m grateful, understand, but had you wanted to stay just innocuous ol’ Jimbo, you should’ve taken a fall and let him beat the crap out of me.”

“I see. Tell you what, Angie,” he said, regretfully banishing the warm glow left by dinner and her company, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The fifty-third service number, the one you so conveniently left off the list you gave me? Whose was it? And while you’re at it, just how long were you and George working together? You knew running that final query would wipe out everything, didn’t you?”

She drew away from him—recoiled, really, it was so abrupt. They stared at each other across a distance far wider than a table.

“You already know or you wouldn’t ask me,” she said. “Isn’t that the way you guys work?”

“You guys?”

“You spook guys, you spy guys, you CIA guys.”

By way of an answer, Jim turned and opened his attaché case.

“Always the fucking briefcase,” said Angie, glaring at him, face filled with hate. “It’s so much a part of your slimy little showmanship, isn’t it?”

He handed her a second manila folder. “This is for you. When I got to my cubicle, I found I only had fifty-two service numbers from our little diskette. You wrote them out while I was asleep—all but one of them. Deleted it from the diskette, too, I’ll bet.”

White-faced, Angie just glared at him.

“Remember I ran one service number when I was talking with you on the phone? Turned out to be some guy named Woodruff. Well, after I hung up, before I ran the main query with all fifty-two names, the one that blew away the database, I played a hunch and did a name search—you know, just a good old name search? Along with the hull number DE173.

“I’ve got all the personnel data for those fifty-two guys on diskette and on the main printout. The information for the fifty-third sailor, the guy whose number you didn’t give me? It’s in that folder you’re holding. I think George didn’t give me a list with the names because he knew I’d recognize one of them. He figured you’d be the one pulling that data if he was killed. Or, maybe he’d have been wrong, lived to see the new dawn and gone back and run that query himself.”

Angie stared down at the folder, not opening it

“Milano, Anthony G., Ensign, USNR,” recited Jim. “Naturalized American citizen. Date of birth: November 16, 1923, Verona, Italy. Married, wife Maria Angelica, née Casali. Date of immigration: May 3, 1928. Date of commission, April 2, 1943. Place of commissioning, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Education: BS, Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania...”

Eyes blazing, Angie leaped up and slapped him with the back of her hand. Hard. “You fucking bastard!” she spat, her face ugly with hate. “What do you know about anything, you nameless little creep?!”

Jim rose and walked to window, rubbing his face where she’d hit him. Sobbing quietly, Angie opened the folder and began reading her father’s military record.

Jim stood watching the last of the old tree’s neatly cut wood being loaded onto a stake bed truck as the street lights flickered on. “The Agency wanted me out of SpecialOps,” he said. “We worked out a deal.” He turned back to Angie, now seemingly lost in the folder. “I was too young to retire, so I was retreaded with a new occupation. I went back to school, got another degree, became a systems and data analyst for the Agency. I took an early retirement when they were handing out golden parachutes a few years back, then became a contractor, most recently at the Bureau. My name’s James Beauchamp,” he said, coming to stand across the table from her. Angie continued reading. “My friends call me Jimbo. I was Department Head for Domestic Liaison—I ran covert operations in the U.S.—very illegal stuff. I’m not married—my wife and our daughter died many years ago.”

Angie looked up, the anger draining from her face.

“My parents are long dead. And until I met you, Angelica Milano, I lived out of mere habit and without joy. So, what did they do to your dad?”

“Before or after they killed him?” she said bitterly.

He waited. She shut the folder. “They ruined his health, destroyed his mind and finally let him die.” She folded her hands on the table. “In the seventies he went into a special VA hospital ward and never came out. He died officially on a bitterly cold Christmas Eve, but Mom and I knew that he’d died long before, on the deck of the Eldridge.”

She rose, walked around the table to him and kissed him. As the kiss grew longer and deeper, Jim pulled her to him. After a while, Angie led him by the hand into the living room where they sank down on the soft carpet.

A half an hour later, across the street, in the front bedroom of a two-story colonial with a “For Sale” sign on the lawn, a phone rang. “Anything?” Philip asked the woman who answered.

She’d slipped off her headphones to take his call, but the recorder was still running, linked by a short cable to the shotgun acoustical antenna pointed toward Jim’s living room window.

“Not much,” she said, “unless you’re interested in happy little screwing moans and groans. Only the living room’s in audible range. When we set up, they were boffing each other in there, now they’ve gotten upstairs, probably to the main bedroom, which is in back and out of range. Given all the exercise they were getting, they’re probably just going to put some balm on the rug burns and go to sleep.”

“You’re a hopeless romantic, my dear,” said Philip. “You’ll be relieved at midnight.”

Philip called Whitsun and relayed the news.

“I’ve check on Beauchamp since we spoke, Philip,” said the Admiral. “He has friends in this town—people who feel he was mistreated. Very unusual in Washington, people caring about you.”

“Yes,” agreed Philip, who no one in Washington, or anywhere, cared about anymore.

“To cut to the chase—Beauchamp knows just about every contract gunslinger, street gang leader, Mafioso and mad computer genius Langley’s ever used. Many like and respect him. Everyone but his former bosses, that is. If we kill him, some of those friends may come for us—they look out for their own. I’d like to spend my declining years not worrying if my car’s going to blow up under me. You know as well as I do, Philip, that these people enjoy taking revenge – pride themselves on it. Or do you think I’m wrong?”

“No, Admiral.” He’d clearly heard the “us” and “we."

“And far more importantly, they’ll sniff out Telemachus if aroused.”

Martin didn’t share the Admiral’s sense of priorities, but wisely kept that to himself.

Whitsun’s big French basset sat beside his armchair, having her ears scratched as she dozed before the crackling fire.

“We are still going after the roster, aren’t we?” asked the Frenchman.

“Of course we’re going after it—there is no project without that list!” he snapped. “Hell, they’ve even managed to delete all of the 1943 personnel records! We have nothing without that list. And if Schmidla calls me about it one more time, I’m changing my phone number.” Admiral Whitsun had had a very bad day. He paused for a second, recovering his composure. “But we’ll go after it gently for now. Pianissimo, Philip, pianissimo. I’ve asked Rourke to find someone to have a quiet talk with Beauchamp, first thing in the morning. Someone he trusts.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then we’ll increase the tempo. What’s Milano’s involvement in all this, do we know?”

“No idea, Admiral. There’s nothing special about her that Rourke’s people can find.”

Whitsun didn’t like that—didn’t like it at all.

“Not bad for an old guy, Jim,” teased Angie, feeling Jim slip out of her.

“God will get you for that,” he managed, rolling to his back and pulling her to him.

“Okay, Jim,” she said after a while, propping herself up on an elbow, fingers curling his chest hairs. “Want to tell me about your wife and daughter?”

He ran his hand down her side, letting it come to rest on her hip. “Years ago, in Tokyo, I was married to a Eurasian woman.” He didn’t want to say more, but did, feeling the old pain welling up as he spoke. “Her name was Emma, Emma Kowamoto. Her father was Japanese—an eminent professor of physics at Waseda—Tokyo University. Her mother was a German researcher, worked for one of the big electronics companies. Two very nice, very reserved people with a brilliant, wild daughter. Well, her mother was nice,” he amended.

“Emmy-chan dropped out of college—Sophia, it’s a Catholic school in Tokyo—and was a struggling artist with a studio in Ikebukuro—not one of your better neighborhoods. I walked into her studio one rainy March afternoon—I thought it was a bar. She painted these enormous, primal canvases, brimming with sensuality—several astoundingly good, I thought. I told her so, asked if she’d like to go out for dinner. Never would have had the courage to ask this exotic, drop-dead gorgeous girl out if I hadn’t already had a few drinks. Anyway, one thing led to another and three years later she was pregnant and thought we should get married. So we did. By then Emmy’d had a couple of exhibits, gotten some good reviews and moved her studio to a loft over a jazz club in Akasaka—decidedly a step up. The jazz wasn’t bad, either. Her work was selling well in some nice upscale galleries. I also remember it as the year her father finally condescended to buy me a drink. Then Kaeko came along that summer...”

“Kaeko?”

“Our daughter. It means “beautiful,” he said with a little smile, “and she was a beautiful child. You know how some kids first look like little trolls when they’re born? Well, Kaeko was beautiful right out of the starting gate.

“We lived in a high-rise apartment in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. I had to travel a lot in my job. The Agency, of course. One day—it was Wednesday, a rainy, warm spring Wednesday—I came home to find the police there. They told me Emmy had taken LSD the night before—they’d found it in the kitchen—then at some point she’d gathered up Kaeko—she was five years old—gathered up Kaeko, gone out on the balcony and jumped to the street, nine stories below.” He paused, his face unreadable. “Emmy wasn’t crazy and she never touched drugs in her life. Sure, she’d run with a wild crowd, but that had been before we lived together. Since then, she’d been devoted to her art and our daughter. She was happy! We were happy! So that was bullshit. I believe but could never prove that they were murdered. God knows why. Probably something to do with me.”

He looked at Angie. There were tears in her eyes. “They were so beautiful,” he said huskily. “I miss them so much.” The pain, the sense of loss rose up and for the first time in years overwhelmed him. The next thing he knew, Angie was holding his head to her breast as he clung to her and sobbed and sobbed.

After a while, with knowing hand and generous mouth, she gently reminded him of how good it was to be alive and to be loved.

Chapter 8

Jim rose early, salvaging his sodden newspaper from the wet and hated azalea, where the paperboy’s careless throw had again wedged it. Padding in slippers and robe into the kitchen, he was grinding the coffee beans when the pounding of the doorknocker brought him back to the front hall. He looked through the side window. “Open the fuckin’ door, Jimbo,” said a deep voice with a Brooklyn accent.

“Kessie!” exclaimed Jim, opening the fuckin’ door.

“How are ya, Jimbo?” A big, bluff-faced middle-aged guy in a good suit walked past Jim and into the kitchen. “Save the beans for tomorrow,” said Kessler, spotting the half-filled grinder. He set a white bakery bag and a holder with three cups of coffee on the breakfast bar.

Fred Kessler was FBI. He and Jim had worked together for years, first in Asia, later in Washington where Kessler had been FBI Counterintelligence and Jim CIA Domestic Liaison. Then Jim had retrained in information systems—or as Kessler said, “gone geek.” They still kept in touch—an occasional Redskins game, poker once in a blue moon—but hadn’t spoken in months.

Kessler took a half-dozen fresh corn and blueberry muffins from the bag, put them on a plate atop the breakfast bar. Sitting, he pulled out a stool for Jim, sliding him a cup of coffee as he sat. “Cream, no sugar, right?”

“Right,” said Jim, peeling off the lid and sipping. He nodded at the one untouched cup of coffee. “Here to give me the black spot are you, Kessie?”

Kessler snorted. “Would Commander Milano care for some coffee and pastry?”

“She’s still asleep.” Jim bit into a corn muffin. “So, Kessie, what’s the message? How come they sent you?”

“They were gonna send Billy Budd, ‘cause you work so well with the CIA brass...”

“Right.”

“But the new DCI, some guy named Rourke...”

“Billy Budd, Harry Rourke and I were together in Japan, years ago, before Rourke went to ‘Nam. It was just after you pulled your stint in Tokyo.”

“Okay, well, Rourke thought you just might beat the crap out of Billy Boy, too, so they sent me. Apparently you’ve become a real loose cannon in your old age—beating up serving United States Naval officers. For shame.”

“You’d have beaten him up, too.”

“Yeah. From what I hear.” Uncapping his coffee, he took a sip.

“Okay, so you’re here because you’re bigger than me. What’s the deal?”

“You have something they want—I don’t know what it is, I don’t want to know. You give it to me, I walk out of here with it, there’ll be no more trouble, and five million dollars will be deposited in both yours and Commander Milano’s checking accounts by the close of business tomorrow.”

“You have the account numbers, of course.”

“I don’t. They do.” He wiped his face with the napkin.

Jim thought about it. “Can you wait a minute?”

“Sure,” said Kessler, biting hungrily into a blueberry muffin.

Going upstairs, Jim went quietly into his bedroom. “You awake?” he said to the mound beneath the covers.

“No.”

“Old friend of mine’s here. The bad guys say if we give him the Eldridge stuff, they’ll give us each five million bucks and leave us alone.”

“And you believe that?” said a sleepy voice.

“No.”

Angie sat up, the bedcovers falling to her waist. “Does your friend believe it?” She was topless, and Jim knew from recent close observation, bottomless.

“Yeah, probably. He’s a tough guy, but a kind of innocent tough guy.” Jim’s eyes dropped to her breasts with their startlingly large, dark areola, recalling the feel of them, swollen and hard beneath his fingers. “Just thought I’d ask.”

“I’m going back to sleep,” she said, lying down and pulling the covers up to her chin. “You do know it’s six a.m.?”

“I’ll be back up soon.”

Whitsun called Philip. “No sale.”

“Ah, people of character,” said Philip.

“Possibly,” said Whitsun, “though probably just people who don’t trust us. And who can blame them? Time to increase the tempo, Philip. I think we may allow some bodily injury at this point—nothing permanent, just a painful warning. Preferably to Milano, but play it by ear. And do play it carefully, Philip, very carefully.”

“My people aren’t musicians, Admiral, though they do find joy in their work.”

Chapter 9

After Kessler left (“Call me.”), Jim and Angie headed north, taking the Capitol Beltway to the Old Georgetown Pike, following it as weaved over wooded hills and dells to the Great Falls National Park. The big dirt parking lot was almost empty—it was Wednesday, a magnificent autumn Wednesday, with the wind swirling off the Potomac, shaking the trees along the hiking trails. They followed the main trail north as it wound beside the river and the remains of the old C&O Canal. The canal was a scenic ruin, mostly sunken and dry, just a few locks, thick retaining walls and parts of the tow path preserved here and there.

“So, what about you and George?” asked Jim as they walked.

“I requested assignment to the Bureau just to try to find out what really happened to my Dad,” said Angie. “Kinda naive, huh? Well, obviously, I didn’t find out anything on my own. So, I confessed all to grumpy old George and asked for his help. He said it dovetailed with something he was working on and he could probably help me. And that’s all I know, swear to God.”

“He told me to save you, when he was dying,” said Jim.

“Yeah, I know. I heard him. And just what are you supposed to save me from?”

Jim shrugged. “He didn’t say. He said you were the same as my Emma, whatever that meant. How about a hint?” he asked, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm.

“He may have meant the widgies,” she said, not looking at him. “Did your wife get the widgies?”

“The widgies?”

Angie nodded. “When I was a kid, we moved a lot because of them. I’m a bit of a freak, you see.”

“Widgies?” he repeated.

They stopped. Angie turned toward the river, then back toward Jim, her face mirroring her indecision. “I’ve never told anyone this before,” she said uncertainly.

“I’d never hurt you,” he said, meaning it.

“Well, no, not now you wouldn’t,” she said with a thin smile. “But maybe later?”

“Angie!” he pleaded, so afraid she was slipping away from him.

“Okay,” she said. “Look, the best way to describe the widgies is to show you one, otherwise you’ll think I’m crazy. Next time one comes along, I’ll tell you. In fact, I think you’ve already seen one without knowing it.”

If she weren’t so level-headed, thought Jim, I’d think she’s crazy. “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll talk about it. And what about you and Erik?” he asked as they resumed their walk, clambering over a moss-covered log that blocked the path, seemingly alone in the woods.

“Erik,” she sighed, taking his hand. “You know, we make a colorful pair, Jim, you and me—the spy and the whore. I’m not a nice girl. You’re supposed to say, ‘Yes you are, Angie,’” she added after a moment.

“Yes you are, Angie,” said Jim. “Come on, don’t leave me hanging.”

“I went after Erik with cold premeditation. His grandfather’s a senior consultant to and a founder of guess what? GDR, Inc. And GDR is, as you well know, a CIA-sponsored front for research into all aspects of voodoo physics.”

“And how did you know that?”

“George told me.”

“I see. And you were really going to go through with the wedding?”

“No, he was going to get his ring back—he just got it back sooner than later.”

“Did you care about him at all?”

“I tried to convince myself that I did,” she sighed. “He can be quite charming. But mostly he’s insecure and immature. And he can be very mean and temperamental, as you saw. And he’s not all that bright. His grandfather bullied him into the Navy—Erik wanted to be a Marine. He’d probably have been happy in the Corps. I should have left him the first time he hit me—that’s what they tell you to do, those women’s groups. But I wanted to see what I could find out about the Eldridge and those ongoing experiments.”

“Did you find out anything?”

“No,” Angie laughed. “I’d never have made it as a Marta Hari. In fact, I never met the old man, who apparently thinks Erik’s an idiot.”

“Perceptive of him.”

“I wanted to know if they were doing to other people what they did to my Dad,” she said in a tight little voice.

The path eventually turned and opened out onto a small point beside the river. They stopped beneath the sprawling green canopy of a stately old willow, the tips of its outer branches brushing the river as it swirled past.

“Seems immortal, doesn’t it?” said Angie, looking up at the tree.

“Nothing lasts forever,” said Jim, following her gaze.

“Time to talk about us,” said Angie, turning to him.

“Not a word mincer, are you?” he said, meeting her gaze.

“Hey, that’s how they train us, you know? It’s just that, Jimbo,” she said in a softer tone, straightening his collar, “I’m blunt and smart and tactless and can be a flaming bitch on wheels. So, if any of that’s going to be a turnoff, you tell me now. We’ll always be friends and last night can just fade to a warm memory. I care about you, James Beauchamp, a lot, but I’m not up to any more pain right now.”

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

“How so?”

“Oh, I had you pegged as one of those women whose life is run like a successful small business, their mate carefully selected for stability, income and ease of dominance. Everything done to a closely-held five-year plan. Typically, they’ve had an earlier relationship that left them emotionally crushed. They’re sometimes attracted to me—I’m funny and fun, old enough to be thought safe. I serve as the friend they lack, the sort they’d marry if they weren’t terrified of emotional risk. And if they find themselves too attracted to me, they retreat into the sanctity of their marriages—though they still continue to hang out with me. Boats longing for the sea but yet afraid.”

“And you get nothing out these sorts of relationships?”

“Oh, on many levels they’re great people. But in the end, you realize that though it was better than nothing, it was nothing and you’d have been no worse off collecting first editions instead.”

“And you thought I was one of these stunted souls?”

“What was I to think, after you got engaged to that dick Saunders?”

“You were wrong.”

“I know. I apologize. Your reasons are now clear.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re a judgmental asshole, Jim?”

“Lots of people. Usually women,” he grinned.

They must have been watching, awaiting their opportunity. They broke from the undergrowth, running, two guys closing fast, about 30 meters away. Both were white, the one in the lead was thin, with a pockmarked ferret face and scraggly long blond hair; the other, just behind him, had broad Slavic features, a body-builder’s profile and a skinhead haircut. They were maybe in their mid-twenties. The first guy held a Bowie knife, grinning with happy anticipation as he closed on an immobile Jim. His companion, Blondie, held a short iron pry bar, raising it high as he covered the last stretch of ground.

Jim’s .45 was safely locked in his bedroom table. Idiot, he thought. “Swim for it!” he snapped at Angie. The Potomac was deadly here above the cataracts, but her only chance lay in the water.

“Sorry! Can’t swim!” she said, stepping out from behind Jim as he faced their attackers.

Crouching, scared more for her than for himself, he waited, heart pounding in his ears, adrenaline surging. He didn't know what Angie was doing until she fired—a 9mm Beretta, he learned afterwards—shooting carefully, firing two-handed, like they’d taught her in Officer Candidate School.

Their attackers never had a chance. Ferret Face took a round between the eyes, a second through the heart, falling like a stone to lie still on the grass, looking surprised. His partner didn’t hesitate, betting his life that he’d cover the few remaining steps to Angie before she could aim and fire. He lost as she blew him away, two rounds to the chest that sent him reeling back against a tree. Pry bar dropping from his hand, he slid down the trunk, sitting to stare sightlessly at the empty sky.

Lowering her pistol, Angie took a fresh clip from her pocket and reloaded. “‘Swim for it,’” she mimicked, slipping the gun back into her jacket pocket. “Where’s your gun, secret agent man?”

“Home,” he managed, looking at the corpses, then up and down the path. Not a soul in sight. “My God, you just...”

“Killed them,” she said. “They didn’t come to chat. They were too close. And besides, everyone knows that a woman with a gun’s only bluffing. It’s okay, Jimbo,” she added reassuringly. “Just means there’re two fewer scum walking the earth.”

“I wasn’t complaining.”

“Let’s go call the cops,” she said.

“No cops,” said Jim, scanning the paths and the woods again. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Why? We’re the ones who were attacked. I’ve got a permit for the pistol.”

Jim laughed—a loud, rolling laugh that rang above the roar of the rapids. “Angie! In some ways, you’re just so naive,” he said, trying to hug her.

“No, I’m not,” she said, slipping away from him. “What’s your point?”

“Wouldn’t be a big problem for whoever’s after the Eldridge roster to have the cops hold us on some charge until our disappearance could be arranged. I’ve done that myself—push the right buttons and they’re very cooperative. What we’ve got to do now is determine a plan of action and move on it. Quickly. We’ve been dallying too long.”

“Dallying? Is that what we’ve been doing?”

“Milano! Are you with me on this?”

“Yes,” she said, after a beat.

“Let’s get out of here before someone comes along,” he said, heading toward the path.

“No rush,” she said.

Something in her voice made him turn.

The bodies were gone, the ground clean of blood, undisturbed.

Jim stared, stammering, not trusting his eyes. “Where... What...”

Angie stood there, pale and frightened, beseeching and terribly vulnerable. “The widgies,” she said in a small voice. “Told you I was a freak.”

Chapter 10

He hadn’t meant to tell her that he loved her—so banal a word, so overused, so subject to later revision. Yet his heart had betrayed him and it had come rolling off his tongue as he stood there, crushing her to him, her body wracked by sobs as she let it all pour out, for the first time trusting another human being. And, he thought later, how could he not have said it, as it was so true?

Walking slowly back through the woods, Jim all but forgot the attack and the attackers as Angie spoke almost non-stop, telling him how growing up Different had been. A lonely girl who’d never dared make friends, whose life was plagued by incidents of things disappeared, things moved, of school bullies suddenly gone meek and quiet—of a life lived not quite on the run, moving every few years. After a while the innuendos and the half-truths always forced Angie and her mother on to the next place. Her mother was a surgical nurse and could make a good living just about anywhere. Puberty had been especially hard, with two boys—fine, upstanding boys from the best homes who’d tried to rape her—ending up in the hospital. The widgies had quieted down by college, thankfully. Over time they’d diminished in frequency but increased in magnitude.

“Usually it only happens when I’m upset,” she said as they drove home in the jeep, Jim staying in the slow lane of the Beltway. “Sometimes, though, it just sneaks up on me, like when I want something to happen and don’t even know it.”

“Such as?” he asked, turning at their exit.

“Such as that tree falling down during the thunderstorm. I just thought I’d like to stay with you a little longer, that I didn’t really want to go home but I didn’t have a good reason not to. I thought, why can’t that tree just fall down and block the street for the night?”

“Didn’t cause the storm, did you?” asked Jim uneasily.

“No, silly, I’m not the weathergirl,” she laughed. After a moment she added, “You okay with this?”

“I’m okay with it,” he said. “Just go easy on the trees. The azalea you can rip up.”

“I like the azalea.”

“Great.”

“So, can you guess now why someone wants the Eldridge roster?” she said.

“They want to round up folks like you and see what makes you tick.”

“I couldn’t tell you anything before without telling you everything,” she said apologetically.

“Understood.”

Reaching the house, Jim unlocked his front door as Angie took the day’s mail from the box. Stepping into the front hall and the floor so recently graced by Erik’s recumbent form, Angie handed Jim a stack of bills, junk mail and a small packet.

“So, Jimbo,” she said as he shuffled automatically through the mail, “now what? We’ve ruled out the authorities—any authorities, civil, military, ecclesiastical. And we’re now into this up to our asses.”

“Just our asses?” he said absently. “Now that’s strange,” he said, holding the flat cardboard mailer.

“It’s just your music club,” said Angie.

“I don’t belong to a music club. Never could get those little postcards back in time—always ended up with several thousand default selections lying around, unopened. Mostly opera.” He made opera sound like tofu.

Tearing open the mailer, Jim removed a CD case and examined the label. “Gotta love it. Pavarotti: Favorites from Puccini.”

Angie picked up the CD mailer, opening the envelope pasted to the front. “Famous Record Club of Arkansas? Come on! But your name is on the invoice.” Her eyes grew wide. “Invoice number DE173!”

He popped opened the box. The DVD had a yellow sticky note in George’s unmistakable hand: Play on PC.

A few minutes later they were upstairs watching George Campbell, comfortably seated in a red leather armchair, smoking a cigar and drinking an amber liquid from a Napoleon brandy balloon.

“Jimbo,” he said raising his glass. “Aren’t these things great? No, not the booze, lad, the camera stuff you can’t see. There’s a computer shop in Georgetown that delivers—they send polite young men to your home to get you going, for a little something extra—after they cheerfully run your credit card, of course. Is Angie with you, perchance? Well, I certainly hope so—do you both a world of good. There’s a first class woman under all that ‘I’m a big bitch’ stuff. Don’t know what she sees in that Saunders. Yeah, actually I think I do. Not the best way to get what you want, Angie—it cheapens you.” He paused for another sip.

“Did he just call me a cheap first class woman?” she whispered, furious.

“Bitchy first class cheap woman,” said Jim.

“Anyway, if you’re seeing this, guys, I’m dead. Always thought I’d enjoy saying that, you know, savor the melodrama?” he chuckled. “But I’m having second thoughts.” Taking yet another sip, he set the cognac down and returned to his cigar. “No matter. Tomorrow, I’m querying SLIF and extracting some information about the crew of the destroyer used in the first ship invisibility experiment – the Philadelphia Experiment of 1943.” He went on to briefly relate much of what they already knew about ship invisibility projects and the Eldridge. “Other people, evil people—if you don’t believe in tangible evil, you soon will—want this information, have wanted it for a very long time, and will do anything to get it. I intend to give you a copy of that crew roster tomorrow, Jimbo, without explanation, in the very likely event that something does happen to me. If certain people find out you’ll be in deep trouble – nothing new for you.”

“Screw you, George,” said Jim.

“If I’m gone,” continued George’s ghost, “a friend will mail this to you. So let’s get on with the purpose of my postmortem visit—Project Telemachus. Telemachus is an outgrowth of the ship invisibility experiments, of which the Philadelphia Experiment was but one. Two other ships were subjected to the same phenomenon—one German, one Japanese. Telemachus is a long-term U.S. effort to advance and exploit the original experiments. It has two principal components. The first—the most obvious—is to replicate the experiment in a controlled manner and determine its underlying physics. I don’t know anything about that part of Telemachus—it’s the blackest of black projects.

“The second aspect of Telemachus is to exploit the latent, longitudinal genetic affects exhibited by the survivors’ children. These tend to manifest themselves in a variety of paranormal abilities.”

Jim glanced at Angie. She sat beside him, her attention given totally to George.

George took a deep pull on his cigar. A blue wreath of smoke briefly fogged his image. Jim could almost smell it and almost smelling it was struck by a very sudden and profound sense of loss.

“I know the bastard who’s running this,” continued George. “His name’s Terrence Whitsun. He’s retired Navy—our navy, sad to say. He directs Telemachus for DOD and the CIA through a front company in McLean, GDR Corporation. Nothing new, those CIA fronts, are they, Jim? I first met Whitsun in Occupied Germany—he was a Commander then, with a cover job on the High Commissioner’s staff, but his real mission was to cut deals with detained or captured Germans. Some of these were Nazi scum who should have danced on the end of a rope. One of them was a man named von Kemnitz—Martin Amadeus von Kemnitz. You may remember the name?” George paused, sipping his brandy.

“Christ,” said Jim.

“Who’s von Kemnitz?” said Angie.

“Mere child you are,” said Jim. “Listen and learn.”

“Okay, Jimbo—details,” continued George, setting down his brandy. “After the war the crew rosters of the two foreign ships used for invisibility experiments were obtained by the U.S., as was that of Eldridge from the second Navy experiment. They used Eldridge twice, with two different crews, a few months apart.

“Of the three hundred and forty-eight men of the four crews who went through hell on those vessels, one hundred and thirty-one of them were known to have survived the experience and the rest of the war—more or less. However, though the number of men who crewed the first experiment was known, there was no extant crew roster for Eldridge from that first experiment—both times she was officially in Newark, awaiting arrival of her precommissioning crew. The sailors assigned to her were for both attempts were pickup crews, mostly from the Philadelphia Navy Yard. They were told they’d be part of a new hull degaussing experiment, something to do with avoiding magnetic mines—got a little more than they bargained for. Without the roster from the first experiment, the only way to find out who was aboard that day was to collect and process millions of personnel records. Recovering those fifty-three names cost $8,918,112 per name. And people complain about what the military pays for toilet seats.

“So, three ships’ rosters out of four gave up one hundred and thirty-one survivors. Of those, ninety-two fathered children—one hundred and eighteen children, to be exact. Of these one hundred and eighteen kids, Telemachus was able to snare over the years ninety-five, of whom fifteen were lost due to ‘initial excesses in experimentation,’ is how they phrased it.” He poured himself another brandy from an elegant crystal decanter, carefully replacing the stopper and setting the decanter out of sight.

“Napoleon VSOP,” said Jim. “It’s all he ever drank. Said it was proof against osteoporosis.”

“Bullshit,” muttered Angie.

“Observable results were obtained from sixty-two of the surviving eighty program participants,” George continued. “Then the project was placed under the direction of the aforementioned von Kemnitz, now reborn as one Dr. Richard Schmidla. Like his colleague, Dr. Josef Mengele, Schmidla—might as well call him that—von Kemnitz’s death certificate was signed over fifty years ago—Schmidla was a graduate of the SS Physicians Institute. He was a very different sort of fish than Mengele and the rest—aristocratic, educated, with degrees from Heidelberg and Bern. He came from an ancient Brandenburg banking family that’d lost just about everything during the Weimar. His father committed suicide. During the First War, Schmidla was a highly-decorated infantry officer. Finishing his medical training in the 20’s, he joined the Freikorp, a group of reactionary ex-army officers. He was a charter member of the Nazi Party. Hitler, Rosenberg, Rohm, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering—he knew them all, though he was never chums with any of them. His blood runs blue—he’s a Hohenzollern, descended from the margraves of Brandenburg.

“In 1933, Schmidla was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the new SS Medical Corps and helped coordinated Germany’s euthanizing of the mentally and physically handicapped. He was later attached to SS General Ohlendorf’s Action Group A on the Eastern Front—one of the infamous Einsatzgruppen. Surviving Stalingrad, he became Medical Director of the Nordhausen concentration camp, where he was given carte blanche by Himmler to experiment on death camp inmates and Russian POWs. Schmidla’s areas of research, on which he wrote numerous papers, were eugenics and the paranormal. Reichsführer Himmler was a devoted reader.

“At Nordhausen, Schmidla tried to produce paranormal events through torture, but by 1942 he’d developed an increasingly sophisticated pharmacopoeia of mind-altering drugs that worked far better than his original medieval methods. For a time he was very interested in twins. In fact, he and Mengele used to compete for identical twins throughout Nazi Occupied Europe. Why, for years after the war, Jimbo, there were side-busting anecdotes, told in certain South American bars, about the lengths those two zanies went to snatching kids from each another.” He raised his glass. “Ha Ha.

“Then, because of his training in medicine, his undoubted loyalty to the ideals of National Socialism and probably also because of the von in his name, Schmidla in 1943 was called in to advise the Kreigsmarine during their first and only attempt at ship invisibility—an attempt which suffered the same fate as the Eldridge and the Kikuzuki, an Imperial Japanese Navy vessel. Surviving the fate of many on board the destroyer von Blücher, Schmidla remained on detached duty, ministering to his fellow Blücher survivors until war’s end. As cover, he’d been transferred on paper to Field Marshal Paulus's personal staff in Russia, then listed as missing in action. Given that the German 6th Army were almost all MIA, it worked well. Whitsun easily slipped Schmidla out of Germany.

“Only through dumb luck did we ever learn Schmidla was still alive—a former Nordhausen inmate saw him in ‘48, in Paris, tripping the light fantastic at a tea dance at the Ritz. This ex-inmate, by the way, was bussing tables, Schmidla was wearing a tux.

“By the time the Sûreté got moving, Schmidla was long gone. We found out much later that he was even then working for Terry Whitsun. In 1947, Dr. Schmidla had moved to New England and become director of what was to be the second aspect of Telemachus.

“Arriving here, experienced, nay, brilliant! kidnapper that he was, Pied Piper Schmidla gathered the children of the survivors of those ships to his deadly bosom—from Europe, America, Asia—didn’t matter how old you were when he found you—any age qualified. These foundlings were placed in a refurbished Federal quarantine facility on an island in Boston Harbor. There they were subjected to experimentation, as were their descendants. These were baby boomers, mostly born between 1947 and 1960.

“The range of their abilities were catalogued and attempts made, with some success, to control and duplicate the results. Those early ‘experimental excesses’ killed many of the Potentials, as they’re called. Richard and his lads came to regret this loss when they found that the third-generation offspring often possessed paranormal abilities far greater than those of their forbearers. Yet, despite this, Schmidla continued his ruthless and deadly experiments. Terror to induce teleportation and telekinesis. Mind-altering drugs to enhance precognition. Forced eugenics to produce selective traits—later refined into the use of surrogate mothers who had no knowledge of the child’s origins.

“The goal?” George stopped for a refill. “Note, this is only my third. You know, this stuff’s sovereign against osteoporosis? Not that I’m really concerned anymore.”

“That glass holds half a liter, you old lush,” said Angie softly.

“Where was I? Yes, the goal. Don’t know what the goal is. Or, if we’re lucky, was. There are no more Potentials—they’ve killed them all off! Amazingly, just as The Good Doctor had almost perfected his techniques, too. The operation was a success, but the patient died.” George laughed too loudly. “Schmidla and Whitsun aren’t finished—oh, no. They saw this coming and got the CIA to fund SLIF. Incredible, isn’t it? A half a billion bucks to get a short list of names?” He shook his head. "Whitsun argues that Schmidla's so honed his techniques that given the Eldridge descendants, success is assured. If given those Eldridge folks, they’ve told their government patrons that they will then quickly show them something,” he cast his eyes toward the ceiling “‘. . . of such power and promise that it will change our entire conception of humankind and of our destiny.’” George looked back at them. “I hope that scares the hell out of you. It does me. Whitsun and Schmidla—two very formidable, evil men united to achieve that to which they’ve dedicated much of their lives. It will be monstrous.

“Oh. Jim. Before I forget—if you see Schmidla, remember that he was born in 1891 and that in 1938, according to his SS medical record, he stood the equivalent of six feet, three inches tall.” Setting his brandy down, George uncrossed his legs, leaning intently forward. “Schmidla and his niece Maria live in an old Yankee farmhouse on the island. Officially it’s a small private psychiatric hospital. There’s a file on this disc labeled Small’s Island—it’s all the information we have on the place—woefully incomplete, sorry to say.”

“Who the hell is ‘we?’” said Jim.

“All I can tell you about us, Jim,” said George, “is that mostly we observe. There’s just a few of us and most of us have no teeth. But you have teeth, Jimbo, or can get them, especially if Angie helps. And it’s time—long past time—to close Schmidla and Whitsun down forever. Our government’s playing Good German—it doesn’t want to know how the results are obtained, but it greatly desires them. Schmidla’s apparently shown them some very heady stuff and Whitsun knows how to pander to the egos of the powerful.

“Three things, Jimbo,” said George, leaning forward intently.

“One. Keep the Eldridge roster from Whitsun. Schmidla needs more Potentials, children of those poor damned sailors like Angie. The unknown children of the Eldridge and their offspring are his only hope. Without Angie or others like her, whatever they’re trying to spawn won’t be born.

“Two. Ensure that the 1943 personnel records were destroyed. All of them. I’ll order them burned tomorrow, after I extract the roster. Not that the Navy ever screws up, but make sure it happens—go down to New Orleans and view the ashes, please. I mean that. Whitsun and Schmidla must not have a single name from that crew!” He sighed. “It may be a mistake to not destroy the roster, but maybe when this is over, amends should be made to those families and, perhaps, their abilities utilized. But only you can judge the cost of keeping that list.

“Three.” George rose and left. They heard a drawer slide open, then he was back in his chair, holding a photo of a stunningly attractive girl in her mid-twenties: jet black hair, elegant fine-boned features with a slight Asian cast to her eyes—blue-green eyes that sparkled with humor and intelligence. “This is Schmidla’s niece, Maria. She grew up on the island, attended an excellent local private day school and was admitted to Harvard at the age of sixteen, graduating summa cum laude. She later earned a PhD, also from Harvard, and teaches history there. Brilliant girl. She believes her name is Maria Theresa Nelson. Her birth name was Kaeko Gabriella Beauchamp. Whitsun and Schmidla murdered your wife and stole your child, Jim.

“Kaeko is the most powerful Potential Telemachus has ever had and the key to all their plans.”

Chapter 11

“Both the men I sent to do that job for you are missing,” said Philip over the phone.

“Any idea what happened?” asked Whitsun.

“No. We’ve searched the area they were in, checked with the police and hospitals. Nothing.”

“Vanished,” said Whitsun, nodding to his housekeeper as she left him his lunch. “Just like DE173.”

“Sir?”

“Nothing, Philip.” Ensuring that the woman had left the dining room, he continued. “We’ve no choice at this point. Get me that roster any way you can. Now!”

At 2:07 p.m. the next day, a Verizon truck pulled up outside Jim’s house. The driver got out, climbed the pole and carefully disconnected Jim’s phone line. Getting back into the truck, he drove off.

At 2:10, an SUV parked in Jim’s driveway. Philip and three other men got out. Sending two of them to the back of the house, Philip stepped onto the porch and rang the doorbell, a silenced pistol in his hand. The street was empty, everyone at work. He rang again, then after a moment nodded to his companion, stepping aside to let him work on the locks. In less than thirty seconds they were inside, ignoring the alarm’s frantic beeping. Joined by the others who’d broken in through the kitchen, they searched the house.

“Not here. Lots of clothes missing,” said Iceman, his number two, coming downstairs.

“The birds have flown,” said Philip, unscrewing his silencer and slipping the pistol into his shoulder holster. “Get his computer and we’ll go.”

Bill Enders was rereading the play set’s directions, translated into colorful and tantalizingly near-comprehensible English by its Chinese manufacturer. It was one of those days when he wished they’d stayed in Arizona. Things were cheaper there, his GS-13 pay had gone further—in Flagstaff, he’d have paid to have this miserable thing assembled. Still, he thought, positioning the new strut, Washington was a better place for the three of them: Patti had a decent job, Joanne went to parochial school, Baby Billy was in a great daycare center. Plus it was a cosmopolitan area, which was nice. No one here had yet stopped Patti—fair-skinned, Irish Patti—when she was with Baby Billy to compliment her on her courage for adopting a black child. We’re doing fine, he thought, screwing in a bolt.

Bill looked up at the sudden sound of breaking glass. Uphill, thirty yards away, two guys were breaking into Jim’s kitchen, one of them already reaching through the broken pane, opening the door.

“Ah, come on—not again,” he muttered. As they entered the house, Bill slipped off the play set and went into his kitchen. Dialing 911, he reported the break-in in the succinct, professional words of a long-time cop. Hanging up, he debated with himself for a few seconds: he should let the cops handle it, but really, enough.

“Freeze!” ordered a voice.

Philip and Mike froze.

“On the floor, now! Spread ‘em!”

Dropping to the floor, Philip risked a look. A large black man in an FBI Academy sweatshirt and blue jeans stood in the dining room entrance, pointing a nine-millimeter Glock at them.

“Spread your arms and legs!” Bill ordered, moving in closer, circling cautiously.

Philip and Mike complied.

“Just lie real still. Police are on their way,” said Bill. He was uneasy—these two looked far too bright and well-groomed for typical burglars. He was wondering what sort of shit Jimbo had gotten himself into when a .357 magnum round tore off the back of his skull, killing him instantly. He never heard the faint pop! of the silenced pistol fired from the stairs behind him.

Rising, Philip looked at Ender’s body, then at his two men coming down the stairs. One held Jim’s hard drive, the other, Iceman, a short-barreled Smith & Wesson .357 Combat Magnum. “Thank you, Ice,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. You heard the man—the police are on their way.”

Yokohama

April 1941

Chapter 12

The dinner party was over, the staff cars bearing the last of the Imperial Navy’s senior officers and their entourage setting off into the warm spring night. It might have been called an intimate gathering, their host thought, had the security personnel not outnumbered the guests. His appraisal of the damage done to his garden by thoughtless feet would have to wait until morning.

General Oshida turned to his nephew as the tail lights of Admiral Yamamoto’s car disappeared down the long, shrub-lined driveway. “Let’s go sit in the courtyard garden, Tennu,” he said, leading the way back through the house. A magnificent work of art, the Oshida home was a cluster of gracefully flowing shoin-zukuri buildings, evocative of the Zen Buddhist monasteries that had inspired it. Interspaced with gardens and accented by the clever use of shoji screens, Oshida Manor was wrought of rough, untrimmed teak beams, built with timber-and-peg construction and often compared to Katsura Palace in Kyoto, architectural beau ideal of the 17th century Edo Period. Sitting atop a hill high above Yokohama, the house had been built during the Tokugawa Shogunate for the legendary samurai, Baron Shuniji Oshida and held by his descendants ever since.

Tennu and his uncle sat unspeaking, listening to the crickets as the tea was served by the general’s houseboy, who left as noiselessly as he’d arrived. “So,” said the general, lifting his cup, “when are you and Masumi to be married?”

“In August, Uncle,” said Tennu. “It’s all been arranged.” He ran a finger between his chaffed neck and the stiff collar of his dress uniform. An Army lieutenant, he’d been the junior-most officer at dinner and the only one other than his uncle not of the Navy. He’d sat wedged between an icicle of a senior captain who, unaware that he was Oshida’s nephew, hadn’t once spoken to him, and an obnoxious Admiral who kept urging more sake on him while telling all around him how pathetic the American military was.

“The Asatos are a fine old family, Tennu,” said the general. “They’ve been industrialists, soldiers, diplomats. I’ve met Masumi—she seems a very accomplished and cultured girl. Nice, too.”

Squat, homely, humorless, unimaginative and seemingly without a spark of sexuality, thought Tennu. But certainly a nice girl. In his late twenties, Tennu was very much the opposite of Masumi Asato—tall and good-looking, with a quick smile and an easy graceful way to him.

“Yes, she’s a very nice girl, Uncle. Her family has been very kind to me. So, Uncle,” he asked, changing from one dejecting topic to another, “all this talk of going to war with America. Do you think anything will come of it?”

General Oshida sighed. “Yes. And soon. Most of our leaders believe the Americans will be too busy with Europe to notice our absorbing, say, the Philippines or Hawaii. Or perhaps, on a busy day, California. Or noticing, do anything about it.” He laughed humorlessly. “And of course, everyone knows that racially the Americans are a mongrelized people, intellectually and spiritually inferior to us—imperfections sadly afflicting everyone on the planet who isn’t Japanese.” He shook his head. “Indulging our stereotypes is going to be very expensive.”

“You don’t believe we can win?”

“Win, Tennu?” He snorted. “I don’t know if we can survive. Neither does my good friend Admiral Yamamoto. Whenever we talk privately we depress each other. If our collective hubris continues,” his hand swept toward the twinkling lights of Yokohama and the harbor, “all this may pass away in blood and flame. But perhaps you think I’m being an alarmist, Tennu?” he asked, finishing his tea. Somewhere nearby a nightingale sang, sweet and high.

Listening to his uncle a cold fear had stolen over Tennu. He’d never heard him so forthright or so pessimistic. The general was as skilled at extracting others’ thoughts as he was keeping his own guarded. He was a much-respected senior official with an extensive career in both intelligence and diplomacy. And he was the rock of his family, supportive of his sister—Tennu’s mother—ensuring that Tennu’s father, despite his gambling and love of absinthe, always had a position at some government ministry or other, a position appropriate to his station.

The young officer thought back to his years in the States, his college friends, a girl he’d cared about, other Americans he’d known. “Americans are determined and resourceful, Uncle,” he said carefully. “Some people mistake their enthusiasm and naiveté for stupidity and lack of character. It would be very foolish—deadly, even—to think we could just march over them.”

The General set his cup down. “I’m glad we’re of one mind on this, Tennu. Of course we have our duty to Japan. But we can best serve her with our eyes open. I’ve a task for you for next week,” he said, turning to a new topic.

An architect nominally assigned to a construction battalion in Saitama-ken, outside of Tokyo, Tennu had spent the last three months on detached duty to General Oshida’s inter-service intelligence group, based in Yokohama, most of his duties focusing on signal intelligence and cryptography. Much of the work was boring, but none of it as stultifying as training levies of young recruits in the building of bridges and roads, only to see them shipped off to war and replaced by yet another batch of fresh-faced conscripts, fodder for the guns.

The only disadvantage of his work was physical inactivity. Tennu compensated for it in the evening by honing his karate skills at the local dojo and other skills with women of convenience.

“A different sort of task, I hope?” asked Tennu, brightening.

“Different but not exciting,” said his uncle, laughing as Tennu’s face fell. “You won’t be parachuting onto Oahu. I need you on a ship in Yokohama harbor. Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere—at least not far. Just steaming out into the harbor. Our good friends in the Navy are trying out a ‘secret device.’” He pulled a face. “The only way we’ll ever learn anything from those clannish Navy people is to be there during this experiment, then question them based on our own observations—your observations. They fought me long and hard on this, but I won—I may send one person. One junior level observer. Just keep your eyes open, take careful notes and let me know what happens. I will be very interested in your impressions, Tennu.”

Tennu nodded. “Yes sir. What sort of secret device, Uncle?”

“They won’t tell me,” he said, spreading his hands. “Not so much as a hint. So go find out for me, would you, Tennu?”

“Don’t I know you, Lieutenant Musashi?” asked the Naval captain as Tennu bowed, introducing himself.

“Yes, sir,” said Tennu. “We met last week at General Oshida’s home.” Captain Watanabe had been the austere, silent officer next to him at dinner. Watanabe was lean and fit, with gray-flecked hair and a face lined from years at sea. He gave the younger officer an appraising glance. “How long have you been on General Oshida’s staff?”

“Six months, sir.”

They stood on the bridge of the Kikuzuki, a Mutsuki-class destroyer. Though built less than a decade ago, her high superstructure and raised forecastle gave her the look of a vintage vessel when compared to her sleek neighbors, the big new Tachibana-class destroyers fresh from the Maizuru Dockyard.

Below them along the crowded deck civilians and sailors were busy making the final preparations for the experiment. This seemed to Musashi’s untutored eye to be mostly a matter of the civilians huddling together in small groups, speaking briefly with occasional reference to the clipboard each carried, then nodding curtly and moving on to form part of a new group wherein the ritual was repeated.

A separate activity, conducted by sailors and a few civilians, was centered on two large electric generators—or so they appeared to Tennu—occupying most of the stern. Thick cables stretched out from them, snaking along the edge of Kikuzuki’s deck. The cables were joined to the ship’s gray steel every three meters by short, equally thick cables that ran down from the main wiring and were clamped to the protruding lip of metal that rimmed her deck.

Tennu had sat in the back during the briefing, held an hour earlier in a heavily guarded conference room of the Naval base, his the only Army uniform there. This had brought him many a quizzical stare, though no one had said anything.

An Admiral and a civilian scientist—the latter introduced as the “eminent physicist, Dr. Kimura, of Tokyo University”—each spoke. The Admiral, Vice Admiral Wada, briefly welcomed everyone, reminding them that this was a top secret project and that anyone revealing information about it would be summarily hung. (Judging from the Admiral’s tone and dark scowl, Wada would like to hang them all now, just for knowing about the project.)

Kimura, a round, bald little man wearing very thick glasses and a rumpled brown suit, spoke in a low monotone. At first, Tennu, leaning forward intently, wasn’t sure that he was hearing correctly, but then seeing the looks of disbelief around him, knew that he was. They were here today, said Kimura, to witness the first attempt at ship invisibility. Eight years of research by he and his colleagues, both Japanese and European, had resulted in a prototype device which would, it was believed, render Kikuzuki invisible to both human and electronic detection. The power output required was substantial, the machinery delicate and the result unknown. “One of three things will happen today,” said Kimura, his voice rising into a normal conversational tone. “Nothing, success or catastrophe. Whatever happens, we will have learned a great deal. We’ve had some success using objects smaller than a ship, though only for very short periods of time. This is our first attempt at concealing such a large object. I would urge those of you who don’t want to be at risk to watch from the pier. The Kikuzuki will steam out a safe distance and engage the field generators. If all goes well, an oscillating electromagnetic field will surround the ship and she will disappear. I’m sorry,” he said as hands shot up, “the Imperial Navy has asked that I not answer questions.” With a stiff bow, he resumed his seat.

“I congratulate you on having the balls to join us for today’s little cruise, Lieutenant,” said Captain Watanabe, looking beyond Tennu to the gaggle of civilians and senior officers standing on the pier near Kikuzuki’s gangway.

“I was sent to observe, sir,” said Tennu. “Observing is best done closely and at first hand.”

“Indeed. We’ll be getting underway in a few minutes. The part of the ship just forward of the bridge will probably be the best place from which to observe. Good luck to you.”

“Good luck to us all, sir,” said Tennu, exchanging salutes with Musashi. Stepping inside the ship’s pilothouse, the captain began issuing orders into a pair of speaking tubes.

As the Kikuzuki slipped from her berth, Tennu found himself a place on the main deck, just below the bridge and watched as Yokohama slipped past. He was soon joined by two civilians of about his own age, emerging from below deck: a young Caucasian woman and an aristocratic-looking Japanese man. Both wore sweaters and leather coats against the chill early morning wind. The woman introduced herself in passable Japanese as Leni Horreth, a physicist from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Her companion was Dr. Shunichi Kowamoto, a physicist on the staff of the Imperial Navy. As the destroyer moved out into the harbor, Kowamoto excused himself and ducked back below deck. “Do you speak English, Doctor Horreth?” asked Tennu in that language as the destroyer picked up speed, plowing through the whitecaps, her deck plates vibrating.

“Is my Japanese that bad?” she laughed. She had high cheekbones and fair skin, her auburn hair tied back in a sensible bun and lovely brown-blue eyes. I’m in love, thought Tennu, savoring the absurdity of it.

“Your Japanese is very good, Doctor, for a...”

“Gaijin,” she said. “And please call me Leni.”

“Yes, for a gaijin, Leni.”

“Your English is flawless—I wish mine were.” Her German accent was almost indiscernible.

“What little accent you have is quite charming,” he said. Tennu kept his collection of Marlene Dietrich records a closely guarded secret. He decided that Dr. Horreth, like Dietrich, could probably make schnell sound enticing.

“Where did you go to college?” she asked.

“University of California Berkeley for undergrad, then architecture school at Yale. So, how long have you been on our tight little isles, Leni?”

“Tight little isles? Yes, they are that, aren’t they?” she smiled. “Seven months, working with Shunichi and Dr. Kimura.”

“Have you had much chance to sightsee?”

“Yes. Shunichi has been the perfect host.”

“Very gracious of him,” said Tennu, hiding his disappointment. “So Germany is working on this too?”

“Well, Germans certainly are,” she said guardedly. “Go ahead—ask me if it’ll work. Everyone does.”

“Will it work?”

“We think so—but how or what will happen, we can only speculate.”

Comforting, thought Tennu, as the ship slowed. They were now well clear of the Inner Harbor and its traffic.

The alert klaxon sounded as Shunichi returned. “One minute to field activation,” said a voice over the loudspeakers. “All personnel don goggles. Goggles on now.” Everyone pulled on the dark goggles given them as they’d boarded.

“Thirty seconds to activation.”

As the count neared its end, Tennu turned to watch the sun rising over Tokyo Bay, a fiery red ball back-dropping a long v-shaped flight of loudly honking geese. Closer in a brown pelican dived, scooping up breakfast, while beside him Leni Horreth slipped her hand into Shunichi’s.

How good to be alive, thought Tennu, as the count reached zero and his world was forever swept away.

New Orleans

November 1998

Chapter 13

“We have part of the list,” Whitsun told Schmidla over the phone.

“Part of it? How?” asked Schmidla.

“We were acquiring it remotely as Beauchamp queried SLIF the other day. Our remote site suffered a power failure while copying the file—we thought we’d lost the information. We just found and restored the truncated file.”

“How truncated?”

“We have twelve names and partial related information.”

“Twelve? Out of how many?”

“We assume there were approximately fifty or so men crewing Eldridge that day.”

“You don’t even know how many people were on that ship?” said Schmidla, amazed.

“Would you prefer that we had no names to work with, Richard?” Whitsun said testily.

“So, you’ve had these twelve names for some time, but you didn’t know it?” said Schmidla. If he was trying to keep the sarcasm from his voice, he failed.

“Since Halloween. The man responsible for the oversight has been permanently replaced.” (Tony Master’s messy suicide was a shock and an inconvenience to his colleagues. It took a week to clean and repaint the conference room where he’d blown his brains out. Meetings had had to be rescheduled.)

“Trick or Treat indeed,” said Schmidla. “Did you put those names through your computer system?”

“Through SLIF, yes. It’s given us the addresses of scores of descendants. The problem with acquisition is manpower—the CIA is staying out of this and I’ve just got Phil Martin and his team.”

“I need Potentials now, Terry.”

“You’ll have them shortly. Martin’s going to start acquiring the Potentials nearest you in the next day or so—makes it easier to transport them. And of course we’re still after the complete list, the one Beauchamp has.

“And now,” said Whitsun, hanging up the phone and turning to the younger man across from him, sitting stiffly on the trophy room sofa, “you incredible imbecile, what am I to do with you?”

“I didn’t come here to be abused by you, Grandfather,” said Erik Saunders, rising, his face red.

“Sit down and shut up,” snapped Whitsun. Erik sat. “I spoke with my ex-aide Frank Jameson over at the Bureau. He and his boss, the Chief of Naval Personnel, would take it kindly if you’d resign your commission today. Do it. Fax it over and you won’t have to rescue your uniforms from the Salvation Army. I’ve been bailing you out of your messes since the Academy, Erik, but this one was just too public. Plus my star is on the descent—the right people are no longer calling me back. Time you grew up, boy. Now, who’s this devil-woman you were living with?”

When Erik told him, Whitsun’s expression changed to one of amazement. “Angie Milano! What a small world.”

“What...”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This civilian who beat the crap out of you...”

“He didn’t...” Erik stopped at a withering gaze from his grandfather.

“Was his name Munroe, by any chance?”

“Yes, sir,” said Erik, no longer surprised at anything the old man knew.

Whitsun thought for a moment. “Erik,” he said. “I think I may have a job for you. My company, GDR, is the primary contractor for several very sensitive, long-term projects involving applied physics. The largest of these is located at a facility in a very remote part of New Mexico. There are several openings for project managers there. I’m going to get you one of those jobs,” he continued, happy to see Erik’s sudden smile vanish at the word “remote.” “We’ve a lot of ex-officers there – you’ll fit right in,” said Whitsun. “Now, it’ll take about a month to get you vetted. Stay at my Annapolis house while you’re waiting, take the boat out before the weather gets truly awful, and relax. I’ll let you know how things are going.

“I’ll be visiting our sister project up in Boston. I’d like you to join me for the day. You’re not cleared, but I can introduce you. Richard Schmidla’s a brilliant man, if a bit difficult. He’s doing great things for this country—great things. Someday you can tell your children that you met Richard Schmidla.”

“Thank you, sir. About the job, Grandfather,” Erick continued uncertainly, “I don’t know much physics.”

“No, Erik, you don’t know any physics,” corrected Whitsun. “And if you did, it wouldn’t help—this stuff is way out there. But you won’t need to know anything—you’ll be a project manager.”

“What’s going to happen to Angie, Grandfather?” Erik asked later as he was leaving.

“Do you ask out of concern or hatred, Erik?”

“What do you think?” said Erik sullenly. “She ruined my Naval career and made me look like a fool.”

You are a fool, thought Whitsun, patting him on the shoulder. But you’re my fool. “Some things it’s best you not know, Erik. Rest assured though that nothing good is going to happen to Commander Milano or to Mr. Munroe. My word on it.”

Angie was gone and Jim was alone. Terribly, achingly alone. His sense of loss was all the greater for having been adrift for so long before their one glorious week together.

Walking to the window of the rental condo, he looked out over Boston’s North End. It was Sunday morning, just a few early risers out jogging through the mist and light rain. He watched as a couple came out of Mike’s Pastry Shop over on Hanover Street, laughing, carrying coffee and pastry.

Sighing, he went back to his own coffee and Angie’s laptop, reviewing the file on Smalls Island left by George. It didn’t take long. George had been right—it was woefully inadequate.

The phone rang. “Mr. Jim, sir,” said a voice with a pronounced Boston accent. “Got your message. Heard you were dead.”

“I was,” said Jim. “Tooky, can we get together today? I need a favor. A big one.”

“I hope it’s nothing illegal,” laughed Tooky. “Where are you?”

Hands cupping her eyes, Angie peered through the darkened shop window. Haitian masks stared back at her from the dimly-lit interior. Masks, paintings, carvings, knives and mysterious objects filled the walls and those few of the old glass display cases she could see from the street. Indeed, she thought, stepping back from the window, the shop’s gloomy interior. M. Laval & Sons, New Orleans, read the gilt lettering on the window. The shop had a brooding, baleful aura about it that seemed to reach out past the window, touching some deep, long-neglected part of her brain.

Brushing her sudden uneasiness aside Angie stepped to the door, rapping sharply on the thick glass. When no one answered, she rapped harder.

“We’re closed!” called a voice from the back of the store. “Read the sign!”

“It’s Angie!” she called.

A thirty-ish, lightly-complected African-American emerged from dimly-lit recesses of the store, framed by a sudden burst of light from an opened office door. He was wearing a gray coverall with the words “Chalmette Cleaners” over the front pocket. Letting Angie in, he led her past the display cases toward the office.

“Nice shop,” she said as they walked.

“Creepy is the word,” he said, grinning. “And creepy’s what we strive for.”

Angie decided she liked him. “Your shop?” she asked.

“My Dad’s, mostly. I help out. Been going on buying trips with him to the islands since I was twelve.” Shutting the office door behind them, he turned and held out his hand. “Paul Laval,” he said as they shook.

“Angie Milano.”

“So, from what Jim told me, you need access to the Enlisted Personnel Management Center of NSA New Orleans to make sure that some records were really destroyed?

“That’s pretty much it.”

“Couldn’t you just ask them?” He had an easy smile, an intelligent, good-humored face and a taut athletic build visible beneath the coveralls. Either he didn’t shave very often or he was growing a beard.

“Not really,” she smiled back. “If they’re not destroyed, I have to destroy them.”

“Ah,” he said, learning against a filing cabinet, arms crossed. “So this could be like, a big time felony, not just a little B&E?”

Angie looked at him appraisingly. “Pretty much. What can you do for me? Or rather, what are you willing to do?”

“Since it’s Jimbo, just about anything,” said Paul. “We go way back. This is important, right?”

“Very, terribly important. Fate of the universe stuff.”

“Already I love it. Okay, Jim said you’re familiar with NSA East facility?” The Mississippi River divided New Orleans’ Naval Support Activity into the East and West banks. The main operations complex was on the east bank, near the French Quarter.

“I had a three year tour here, in the late ‘80’s,” she said. “A dismal three year tour.”

“It hasn’t changed,” he said, “on any level. Jim asked me to scope things out and I did. As nearly as I can tell, what you want are the records that are stored in the EPMAC contractor’s area, on the fifth floor. They scanned all those records into an optical disk-based system, over about an eighteen month period. Then, last week, they had a huge rush effort to dispose of the original records. Navy guys, civilian haulers. Thing is, though, like I told Jim on the phone, they were ordered to stop toward the end, so there’s still quite a bit of stuff left.” He shook his head. “It’s the government, but even for the government, it was crazy.”

“Not really a cleaner, are you?” said Angie.

“Usually, I’m a computer programmer,” said Paul. “Working on converting—this will surprise you—EPMAC’s COBOL-based system into an ORACLE environment. But tonight, I’m a cleaner.”

“Am I a cleaner tonight, too?” she asked.

Paul laughed.

“I say something funny?”

He nodded, recovering. “A nice white girl like you, cleaning? In this town? You’ve lived here—come on.”

“I’m nice olive girl.”

“Okay, okay. A nice olive girl.” He shook his head. “The Union may have won the Civil War, Angie, but in New Orleans, and especially where we’re going tonight, it’s still a plantation economy. Come on, how many white folks you ever see cleaning that big old Navy building while you were there? Good heavens, I’m the only black computer geek in the whole place—some days I feel like I’m expected to do a little Sammy Davis Junior tap dance routine for those folks.”

“You’re right,” she said, dredging up memories of her New Orleans tour. “So how do I get in?”

She got in by hiding in the back of the Chalmette Cleaners van—hiding under bags of new cleaning rags behind cartons of new trash bags. Not that anyone looked. After a cursory inspection at the gate, the van drove on up to the fifth floor of the garage attached to the main building. Then they just walked right in, down the deserted main corridor, turning right and again until they came to a door marked “SLIF Staff Only”. Paul turned the handle. “Gracious. It’s locked.” Taking a lock pick set from his pocket he set to work as Angie watched the corridor.

“This is still the world’s butt-ugliest building,” she said, looking at the brown walls, the brown linoleum floor and the brown ceiling.

“Oh, but very clean. And they repaint it every six months,” said Paul, intent on his task. “NSA New Orleans must be the world’s largest purchaser of brown latex semi-gloss,” he added, delicately maneuvering two slim lock picks. There was a faint click. “If possible, it’s even uglier in here,” he said, swinging open the door.

The SLIF area was yet another squalid collection of grimy Federal office cubicles, a cluttered space unbroken by any windows, lit only by the usual flickering fluorescents. Two doors led off from the work area.

“Where’s the SLIF system hardware?” asked Angie.

“Downstairs, third floor. Not much to see really, just two little shiny black boxes about the size of a water cooler.”

Angie turned to him, surprised. “A water cooler? But we were told that there were five supercomputers, vast arrays of file servers, optical disk readers...”

“Here?” He laughed. “Supercomputers? Who’d be crazy enough to send a collection of advanced hardware here? Until last year they still had a functional keypunch machine!”

Angie was now totally perplexed. “They sent those little black boxes here. Who takes care of them?”

Paul shrugged. “They just seem to take care of themselves. I work on that floor—I’ve never seen anyone go near that gear.”

“Let’s get on it with this,” said Angie, setting aside the puzzle of the SLIF hardware. “I’ll be in there,” she pointed to the door marked “Document Storage.”

“I’ll watch the corridor,” said Paul. “Next security rounds begin at 2200 hours.” He checked his watch. “Two and a half hours enough for you?”

“More than enough.” Paul held the door as she wheeled the cleaning cart into the document room.

What had been spared the landfill lined the far wall of the big mostly empty room: several hundred bundles of 8.5 x 11 inch paper, bound with thick red rubber bands, divided into three groups, stacked four to five feet high. Each bundle had a five-digit number taped to the front of it—Angie assumed they were batch processing identifiers.

She figured that as a percentage of all those old Navy personnel records what was left in the room was bubkas. Most of the records must have been burned before Whitsun intervened. “Time to finish the job,” she said.

Opening a utility knife, Angie began cutting the rubber bands. It took her thirty minutes to heap the dry old paper into a mound in the middle of the room. As she worked, she was impressed by the fine condition of most of the paper—there was none of the yellow brittling so common to high-acid modern paper. Most of the fifty year-old records looked no more than a few years old. Taking the first of three five-gallon cans marked “Disinfectant” from her cart, unscrewed the lid and began sloshing it over the mound. As she worked, the pungent smell of gasoline filled the air.

“Merde,” cursed Philip as their rental car hit yet another pothole on Dauphin Avenue. The road was dark, the only light from their headlights or the occasional security lights outside the dilapidated warehouses set back from the roadway. It was late and there were no other cars, the government workers long fled home to the suburbs. Though not near any of New Orleans high-rise ghettos, Dauphin Avenue after dark wasn’t safe. After twilight, safety in New Orleans resided in the French Quarter, where cops looked out for the cash crops of tourists.

“Just a few more blocks,” said Iceman. He was checking the map for cross streets as their rental car jounced along, tortured suspension squeaking.

Whitsun had dispatched Philip to New Orleans as soon as he’d heard from the Navy that some of the records had survived. “Get down there and secure what’s left,” he ordered. “We may be able to use it.”

“There,” said Philip as they turned a corner. A hulking rectangular slapdash of concrete, concertina and sodium vapor lamps, NSA New Orleans blazed before them, outpost of light amid an otherwise dark and blighted district. Marines in camouflaged fatigues guarded the perimeter, M16s slung over their shoulders. A Rottweiler watched disinterestedly as Philip pulled to a stop at the main gate.

“Good evening, sir,” said the lance corporal, bending to look into the car at Philip and Iceman.

Philip handed over a brown leather ID case. “Commander Cheyne, NCIS,” he said as the guard looked at the IDs. “And Lieutenant Walker,” he said, passing Iceman’s ID. “We should be on your list.” The Marine stepped into the guard shack, taking a clipboard off the wall.

At such moments Philip Martin’s French accent vanished. (“So, Monsieur Martin,” Schmidla had once asked him in his flawless English, “do you take elocution lessons to preserve zee cute little accent?”)

Waiting, Philip felt watched. The Rottie was scrutinizing him, large red tongue lolling from its big square mouth. “Nice doggie,” smiled Philip. Growling low, the dog lifted its right lip, displaying fang-like incisors.

“Saw one of them dogs rip a big nigger’s balls off once,” said Iceman in his nasal Ozark twang. “That fucker was screamin’ like a little girl,” he chuckled.

“No doubt,” said Philip as the sentry returned. Not for the first time he reminded himself that Iceman was intelligent, obedient and very fast.

The corporal handed them their credentials and two visitors’ badges. “Please park there on the right and enter through the main doors to my left. Clip the badges to your jackets and wear them at all times.”

“Thank you,” said Philip, pocketing his fake ID. In the past year he’d been, variously, an FBI agent, a CIA officer and a USAID agronomist. “Which floor is the EPMAC facility on, corporal?”

“Fifth, sir. Take the left elevator. The one on the right is always reserved for the Admiral.”

“But it’s 8 p.m.,” said Martin.

The Marine stared at him blankly.

“Let’s go,” said Angie, rejoining Paul inside the door to the main corridor. “Come on!” she cried as the smoke began filling the SLIF work area. They ran from the room, shutting the door behind them.

“If this building goes up, Jim’s gonna have to find me another job,” said Paul.

“Not the best time to ask him,” said Angie. “What about the sprinklers? Smoke alarms?” she asked as they ran for the garage.

“There aren’t any,” he said. “The government exempts its older buildings from that silliness.” An elevator bell chimed.

Stepping from the elevator, Philip and Iceman saw the smoke seeping under a door to their right and two people in brown overalls going through a set of doors to their left. Philip recognized one of the faces that glanced back at them, just before the doors swung shut. “Milano!” he cried.

Torn between his orders to preserve the surviving SLIF records and his desire to get Angie, Philip called, “Get them! I’ll see to the fire!”

Iceman took off in pursuit.

Philip ran toward the smoke, stopping only long enough to pull the fire alarm. Klaxons echoed through the empty building. He kicked open the door to the SLIF office, then staggered back from the searing heat, arm thrown across his face. Acrid smoke billowed past him, pouring into the hall. Gagging, he turned toward the elevator only to find it gone, automatically sent to the lobby when he’d triggered the fire alarm.

Smoke filled the hallway. Philip ran through the fire door and down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Paul was backing the van out of its parking space, turning for the exit ramp, when Iceman came tearing around the corner, twenty feet behind them, an automatic in his hand.

“Gun!” cried Angie as Paul straightened the van out and accelerated for the exit, engine roaring.

Iceman fired seven quick shots. He got off three more as the van disappeared down the ramp with a squeal of rubber. The hollow point rounds punched through the vehicle’s paneling, a series of overlapping dull Kachunks! A bullet found Paul. “Fuck!” he gasped as it seared along his ribs, then punched into the dashboard, destroying the speedometer.

The van swerved, hitting the ramp wall, bouncing back to the center as he fought for control.

Philip ran through the deserted lobby and into the parking lot. Behind him the fire alarm continued, seconded by the flashing of strobe-like evacuation lights.

“Corporal!” he called, jogging to the guard post. “A vehicle’s coming down that parking ramp. Stop it!”

The Marine ignored him, instead signaling to the guards manning the main gate to open it. “Sir, Post One,” he said into his radio. “The fire apparatus are approaching. It’s the whole fifth floor is...”

Gunfire mingled with the sounds of sirens and air horns drawing near.

“Small arms fire in the complex, sir!” said the corporal. “Say again, small arms fire in the complex!” Overhead windows suddenly exploded, tongues of orange-red flames licking upwards as glass cascaded into the parking lot, sending the Marines scurrying away from the building.

Philip heard a vehicle racing down the parking ramp. He turned toward the parking garage exit, drawing his pistol, only to freeze in mid-stride as something sharp and hard gripped his right wrist. Looking down, he saw his old friend the Rottweiler growling up at him, the fire’s red flames dancing in its eyes.

“Gun on the ground, sir! The corporal’s M16 was aimed at Philip’s chest.

“You have to stop that van!” cried Philip, dropping his pistol even as the van shot from the bottom of the ramp and out the gate, opened wide to receive the fire engines roaring down the street. The van turned right and was gone, seconds before the first of the engines came through the gate.

“Sir, you’re not in my chain-of-command,” said the corporal, as a Marine Humvee pulled up beside them, disgorging reinforcements. “And you’re not authorized to carry a weapon on this base. On the ground, sir. Before Chewie takes your arm off. Please.”

Chewie growled hopefully, tightening her grip.

Smoldering with rage, Philip did as ordered.

Next time, thought Philip, as rough efficient hands searched him and his wrists were handcuffed behind his back. Next time.

“You’re sure a fun date, Angie,” said Paul, as she finished wrapping a great swath of gauze around his side.

“Not so bad yourself,” she said, neatly cutting off the bandage and securing it with a couple of butterfly pins. “Where’d you learn that little thing with the lock picks?”

“I wasn’t always a programmer,” he said, wincing at the pain as she helped him pull a t-shirt over his head.

They were back on Royal Street in the office at the back of the shop, the bullet-riddled van taken away by a friend of Paul’s who “fixes things.”

“Want to tell me what you and Mr. Jim are into?” asked Paul.

“No,” she said, with a tired smile. “Want to tell me why you didn’t mind helping me break, enter and torch a Federal installation? Guess that’s, what? A hundred years in jail?”

“Only ninety-eight with good behavior.” He smiled weakly. Walking to the small fridge in the back he took out a beer and held it up. “Last one. Split this with me, and I’ll answer your question.”

“Deal,” she said. “Here, let me open it,” she added, as he struggled one-handed with the tab.

“When’s your flight?” he asked, pouring a carefully gauged half a beer into a glass.

“Oh-six-hundred. First plane out.”

“Time enough to tell you about Mr. Jim’s Small Business Administration. Though we may have to go out and get us some more beer before we’re finished.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking very much,” she admonished, accepting her drink. “Retards coagulation.”

“We’ll get us some light beer, then,” he said, raising his glass. “Here’s to still being alive.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Angie as they touched glasses.

New England

November 1998

Chapter 14

“I thought you’d given up looking for trouble?” asked Tooky as the waitress brought their double espressos. “Got yourself a cush government contracting job.”

“Trouble found me,” said Jim.

“Always the way, isn’t it? So, what’s up?”

“I need your help in locating some people and getting to them before others do. Trouble is, I don’t know who they are—I only have their grandparents’ names, with addresses from 1943.”

“Jesus, Jim! 1943? You don’t need a private detective agency—you need a genealogist.”

“Tooky.” Jim leaned forward intently. “I can’t tell you any more, but if the bad guys start grabbing folks before we can get to them, our grandchildren may not be around.”

“Didn’t know you had kids,” said Tooky.

“I just found out.”

“You old rascal!”

“Kaeko’s alive.”

“Oh,” Tooky set his cup down. “Okay,” he said after a moment, “so, maybe you’d better just knock off the need-to-know crap and tell me everything.”

He was a big man. Jim had watched Tooky Azarian’s brown flesh expand over the years, from the trim CID officer he’d first met in Tokyo, to a larger, seam-challenging CIA officer in McLean, and now, in comfortable retirement, a very fat man. Over the years those who’d thought Tooky slow in either brains or speed had been quickly disabused of their misconception.

“It’s real nasty, Tooky,” said Jim. “Two people who got involved in this are already dead.” Customs Agent Killed in Washington Area Break-In, had read a small headline in yesterday’s Boston Globe. “The opposition would like nothing better than to add my name to that list—mine and anyone helping me.”

“Jimbo, let me tell you something. I’m upper middle-aged. I’ve got a good pension, two lovely grown kids, a nice business dealing with minor industrial espionage, wayward spouses and runaway teens. More business than I can handle, really. I’ve got over thirty employees, three offices—I’m thinking of franchising.” He leaned forward. “I am so bored. I haven’t had a real challenge since before the Berlin Wall came down. Remember busting that GRU operation in Luxembourg?”

“This isn’t the GRU or the KGB—these guys are more like the Assassins Guild. There are no rules of engagement. And if you come in on it, we’re all alone. If we screw up, Uncle isn’t going to bail us out, give us an ‘Atta boy!’ and send us to Jamaica for R&R. We’ll be dead. Worse, Uncle’s behind these guys.”

“Jimbo, can you do whatever you need to do without me?”

“No.”

“Then I’m in.” He held out his hand. They shook, Tooky’s larger hand engulfing Jim’s. “Hell, if it comes down to it, I’d rather go out with my boots on.”

“Let’s take a walk,” said Jim, rising and throwing some money on the table.

They walked slowly up an almost-deserted Hanover Street, turning left into the green stretch of Paul Revere Park, Jim doing most of the talking, Tooky sometimes nodding, interrupting occasionally with a quick question.

“What you need,” said Tooky a half-hour later, as they ate cannoli at a small cafe on Prince Street, “is for me to run down those names, come up with third-generation survivors and their addresses.”

“Yeah, but I need it yesterday. The theory is Whitsun doesn’t have any of these names, but if he does, or gets some, he has a magical data system that can track down descendants in seconds.”

“Well, I’ll have to do it the old fashioned way. Fortunately you haven’t got that many names. When I said it sounded more like genealogy research, I meant it. And there are all sorts of genealogy resources out there. Deaths, births, current addresses. You did say you have the social security numbers?”

Jim took a diskette from his pocket, passed it to Tooky. “Take it, you’re committed.”

“If my wife knew about this, she’d have me committed.” Tooky slipped the diskette into his pocket.

“Give me what you can get within the next twenty-four hours,” said Jim, writing a phone number on a napkin. “Memorize and...”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the big man, glancing at the number and then shredding the napkin. “Teach your mother to suck eggs. How long you going to be in town?”

“Until Angie gets back from New Orleans, at least.”

“Want to come over for dinner tonight? We’ve got a nice place down in Cohasset, on the water. Maryann’s doing Chicken Marengo. Bring Angie along if she’s back.”

“Love to, but tonight I’m attending a lecture at Harvard.”

“You?” laughed Tooky. “I think I may pass on that Chicken Marengo just to see you at Hah-vad.”

The sound of the key in the apartment door jerked Jim from a quick nap. He was only half off the bed when Angie arrived, overnight bag in hand. “Having a little nappy?” she asked, dropping her bag on the rug and giving him a kiss.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

She told him, pouring herself a beer and sitting on the sofa. “I made Paul let me take him to his sister’s house in Metairie,” she concluded. “She’s a nurse. She gave him a shot—none too gently—and told him he was an idiot. She also told him he’d be fine and would have a very nice scar to impress the girls with. Oh, and Paul told me all about Mr. Jim’s SBA program.”

“Did he now? You know, that’s not what my bosses called it. You want some coffee? Had anything to eat?”

“Yes and no. So you were the CIA’s Robin Hood?”

“Oh, just another chapter in the life of a demi-god,” he said, ducking a thrown sofa pillow.

They’d given him money—it had been Billy Budd’s idea—money to expand a loose network of domestic contacts into a cohesive whole. It was strictly illegal, of course, but the Agency had been burned too many times by sloppy FBI counterintelligence and desperately wanted its own domestic sources. So, with a covert blessing from the White House, Jim Beauchamp had been given seemingly unlimited funds and sent forth. The model to be used was that which had worked so well for so long overseas: establish businesses in key areas, using them as fronts through which to monitor things of interest—things like the movement of Soviet diplomats, their contacts and communications, sniff out and unearth possible sleeper agents and terrorists. Jim’s to-do list was seemingly endless, driven by Cold War paranoia and directed by officers who perceived themselves as the last virulent bulwark of a decadent West confronting an expansionist Evil Empire.

It was a mindset of which Jimbo took full advantage.

In seven heady years, years during which the economy was in the crapper, CIA money seeded hundreds of successful small businesses, many of them minority-owned, all established by Jim Beauchamp through a variety of dummy corporations and venture capital firms. All could be called upon to perform certain tasks for the United States—some were asked to do so, most weren’t. One requirement of funding was the provision of scholarships to bright kids who otherwise wouldn’t have gone to college—kids like Paul Laval.

Then one day it was all over. The Berlin Wall was down, Russia was broke and communism lived on only in Fidel Land. Jim Beauchamp’s career as the CIA’s greenback-planting Johnny Appleseed ended. Carte blanche for the military and the intelligence community also ended even as fiscal scrutiny increased—Jim’s long discussions with the Agency’s audit and inspector general services were just beginning. The same people who’d before wanted to know as little as possible about his activities now couldn’t know enough. (“Beauchamp’s questionable use of the funds entrusted to him casts disrepute upon the Agency and may ultimately hinder its ability to perform its mission,” read a portion of a memo from Rick Ames to then Deputy Assistant DCI Harry Rourke, a copy of which Jim had long cherished.) In the end, when they couldn’t prove he’d taken a penny for his own use—because he hadn’t—they sent him off to school, let him work a few more years, then made him a retirement offer he knew better than to refuse.

“It was one of those Rearm America binges,” said Jim as Angie poured more coffee. “Money just poured in and out into the usual greedy hands. It would’ve been obscene given the chance I had not to try and do some lasting good rather than just filling the usual platinum rice bowls.”

“So then they threw you out.”

“I didn’t mind. It was the most fun I’d had since Emmy died.

“Freshen up, Milano. We’ll go over to Dom’s, have some real Italian food, then take the train over to Harvard Square.”

“Why?”

“We’re attending a lecture at Harvard’s Cronkhite Graduate Center: America’s Forgotten Fathers. Apropos, isn’t it?”

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with...”

“It would.”

Paul Laval had no idea why his father wanted an inventory. It wasn’t as though the old man moved much merchandise or made more than a modest income from the place. It was possible, he thought, moving with the clipboard along the center display cases, that he was thinking of selling and retiring. Stopping, Paul counted, then wrote “Gris-gris bags, 11” on the yellow legal pad.

He looked up as the tinkling bell above the door announced a customer. “Good morning,” he said. The customer, a thin white guy in his thirties, nodded, eyeing the display cases as he moved slowly through the store, hands in jacket. It was a cold day for New Orleans, with temperatures in the upper 40’s. The morning radio reported commuters were running their car heaters.

Paul turned back to his work, having assessed the customer as a blue-collar tourist, here for some good food, laughs and window shopping. Yet, he thought, eyeing something with feathers that he decided to list as “Curio, feathered (1)”, there was something very familiar about that pinched face...

He made the connection too late, remembering just as a sinewy arm snaked up under his chin and a hand clamped down atop his head, immobilizing it. “This is for fuckin’ me up, boy,” a voice with a nasal Ozark twang said softly in his ear.

Struggling to free himself from that iron grip, Paul felt the cold tip of the ice pick behind his right ear, then a sharp sting and blinding pain behind his eyes as Iceman drove the long blade home, twisting the wooden handle in wide circles as Paul’s hands fell from his arm, his body spasming as he died.

Iceman waited until the last tremors had faded, his and Paul’s, holding the body hard against his own, awash in the raw sensuality of the moment and the release it brought him.

With a wary eye on the shop door, Iceman lowered the body to the ground. Setting the ice pick aside, he took out the big clasp knife he always carried. Opening the largest blade, he grabbed Paul’s hair and carefully cut his throat from ear to ear, avoiding the pooling blood as he all but severed the head. The combination of the ice pick and throat wounds were his trademark, and it really pissed him off when a sloppy medical examiner missed the pick wound. Happily, he thought, squatting to clean knife and ice pick on Paul’s shirt, that hadn’t happened for some years. So well-known was his work now that any ME in any major city, being presented with a slit throat, always looked for a puncture wound behind the ears.

Turning the shop’s sign to “Closed,” Iceman gathered up his tools, tidying up in the bathroom before heading out for crawdads and an ice cold Dixie beer.

Chapter 15

She sat on the slope of her special rock, the one like a miniature Gibraltar, looking out to sea. Huddling against the raw Atlantic wind, hugging her knees to her, she savored the biting cold air and the violence of the dark green water smashing against the cliffs. A storm was coming in, rolling off the ocean into the harbor, dark clouds marching toward the island and the city beyond. Behind her in the old stone house her uncle had guests, and she knew that she was expected—should have been there to greet them. But she wanted to sit here a bit longer, between the crashing surf and raucous gulls wheeling over the island and look out across the untamed Atlantic. Her friends the gray harbor seals were nowhere to be seen, probably long gone to safety.

Far off, a giant multi-domed liquefied natural gas hauler was making its careful way toward distant Boston Light and the open ocean. The day sailors and the local cruise ships that filled the Inner Harbor in the summer were gone, their season over.

“Bet the seals are gone.”

She turned, startled. “Hey Johnny! I didn’t hear you,” she smiled.

Johnny Kim was standing beside her, looking at the rocks below. He wore a black turtleneck sweater and a knit sailor’s cap, a cellphone in a worn leather carrying case riding on his belt.

“Kinda hard to, what with the wind and the water,” he said.

Johnny owned Kim Construction, the general contractor her uncle used whenever there was remodeling or repair work to be done on the island.

“How’s the job going?” Maria asked.

“Maybe you can tell me,” he said. Actually, he said “Maybe chews can twell me.” A Korean accent underlay his blue-collar Bostonian one. Johnny Kim had come to the Bay State from Seoul as a teenager and grown up in working-class Dorchester, giving him a mixed linguistic heritage that he still carried with him in his thirties.

“What do you mean?” she asked. Unwinding from atop her rock, she jumped lightly to the ground.

He shrugged. “Wouldn’t want any of this to get back to your uncle, okay?”

“It won’t.” Johnny had been around, on and off, for about two years now. He was intelligent and funny and Maria found him cute, in a tough guy, gangsterish way. And her uncle had little criticism of his work—a rarity.

“The original specs for rehabbing part of the fort called for converting a few of the old galleries into offices, running in the electricity, plumbing, HVAC, stuff like that. Now he wants a separate generator—big one—and industrial strength electrical. Plus the whole fort is to be converted into living quarters and lab facilities. And your uncle wants it done yesterday. Money, he don’t care about. Just get it done.”

“Really,” said Maria reflexively. This was new. Uncle Richard ran a private psychiatric hospital on the island—had for years, though the number of patients had dwindled. And now just when she thought he might be easing into retirement, what his frequent getaways to Europe, he’d suddenly begun expanding into Ft. Strong. “I really don’t know, Johnny,” she said. “Is there a problem?”

The contractor shook his head. “No. Just kinda curious. I mean, the money’s okay, you know? But what’s he going to do with all that space? And with those gas and power specs? Open a manufacturing plant?”

“Did you ask him?”

Johnny laughed. “You’re a funny lady, you know?”

“He can be a little intimidating.”

“A little? With that stare? All he needs is a monocle.”

She was surprised that Johnny knew what a monocle was, but quickly forgot as she saw a familiar figure hurrying toward them from the house. “Flee. The ogre comes. I’ll ask him, though. Promise.”

“Don’t mention me.”

“I won’t.”

Johnny left, walking up the path toward the fort entrance and his construction site trailer. Maria stood watching the water, turning as her uncle arrived.

“Such primal majesty to the sea, isn’t there?” he said. “I never tire of it.”

“Come to drag me back to the house, Uncle Richard?” she said with a smile.

Schmidla laughed, shaking his head. “No, my dear. But it would be nice if you could join us. Just for a bit.”

“I have to go to the mainland soon.”

“A few moments only, Maria. Please? For your old uncle?”

Schmidla didn’t look all at that old: sixtyish, medium of height, a spare build with a full head of wavy black hair and green eyes set in a thin, ascetic face—quick intelligent eyes that missed nothing. His expression, as often, was one of detached, almost sardonic amusement—an expression that left the impression of a man confident in his superiority—a man who found people to be generally uninteresting but sometimes amusing and useful.

Maria kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Okay. For my old Uncle. Though Admiral Whitsun always looks as though he’s constipated,” she said as they walked across the field toward the house.

Schmidla laughed. “He’d be flattered to hear you say that. But you are right. One is tempted to blame his military career for that, but I suspect he was born...constipated.” The years had erased his accent—only his formal sentence structure hinted at an origin other than American. Well turned-out, he wore a Harris tweed jacket with leather-patched elbows over a black cashmere sweater, wool-worsted trousers and a pair of Italian loafers—attire he thought casual.

“Was that the ubiquitous Mr. Kim I saw you with just now?” he asked. They looked up at the sudden roar of a jet passing low overhead.

“He’s doing some substantial additional work, isn’t he?” asked Maria as the plane disappeared across the harbor toward Logan Airport.

“Getting ready to. Surely he wasn’t complaining?”

“No. What are you up to, Uncle Richard?”

“Indulging my desire to make money, my dear. You may have noticed that business has fallen off?”

“Fallen off?” she said. “The old place is more a ghost town than ever.”

“All too true. However, we are ideally suited to take advantage of the biotech and software revolutions. The greater Boston-area doesn’t have enough facilities for all the companies and startup ventures that want to be here, near the universities. I can offer a lovely oceanfront venue, thirty minutes from Cambridge, with a bridge to the mainland, historic charm and excellent security. I’ll provide state-of-the art research facilities, leased for top dollar or perhaps a modest equity position in my tenants’ firms.”

“But the island belongs to the City of Boston.”

“Yes. And I have a ninety-nine year lease that permits subletting. It was written when the Harbor Islands were considered worthless glacial drumlins fit only for garbage dumps. That was back when the city was building the expressway it’s about to demolish,” he chuckled.

“What a devil you are!” exclaimed Maria.

“Some would agree with you, my dear,” said Schmidla as they walked up the worn old granite steps to the house.

“You’ve never seemed an entrepreneur. It’s out of character. When did you think of all this?”

“A few months ago, when I dimly realized that specialized commercial real estate development is booming. When I was your age, Maria, my family, which had always been wealthy, lost everything. Life in Germany after the war was very difficult. I suspect that the only thing worse than having always been poor is to have been rich and then poor. I’ve never since taken money for granted.”

They entered Hull House through the oak-paneled front hallway with its broad white pine floors and faded oriental runner. The open double doors of the front parlor were to their left, Schmidla’s office to the right, its door closed and locked. Further on a carpeted stairway with an oak banister curved up to the top two stories.

They stepped into the parlor, a cheery room with long windows looking across the island toward the sea. A fire burned low in a fieldstone fireplace flanked by bookcases with an eclectic selection of works in German, French and English: medicine, physics, history, literature.

Whitsun and Erik Saunders rose from the sofa.

“Very nice to see you again, Maria,” said Whitsun, taking her hand. “Congratulations on your appointment.”

“Thank you, Admiral, but it’s just an untenured associate professorship.”

“Doesn’t matter, my dear,” he said. “It’s Harvard.”

“Let’s hope that in about two years some other university’s appointment committee is as equally impressed,” she smiled politely. As a talented woman academic, Maria knew her chances of tenure at Harvard to be infinitesimal. She was still enough of an idealist for that to bother her.

“Surely some senior faculty will recommend you for a tenure track?” said Whitsun.

“Harvard has far more heads than spines, Admiral,” said Maria. “In a few years I’ll move on to another university.”

“My grandson, Erik Saunders,” said Whitsun, belatedly making the introductions.

Erik looked faintly stunned, Schmidla noted, amused. Maria had that effect on men.

“Hi,” she said, shaking his hand. Pretty-boy-jock, she decided.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. I’m in lust, he thought, desire stirring in him for the first time since the trouble that bitch Angie had caused him. Looks stuck-up, but those Ivy girls could be vixens in bed. Bet I’d be peeling those tight little Lands End jeans off her on the first date. He sighed to himself, knowing that he wouldn’t have the opportunity.

“Erik kindly drove me over from the airport. He’ll be joining GDR on a project down in New Mexico, as soon as he’s vetted,” said Whitsun.

“I’m going to be a project manager,” said Erik.

Wow, thought Maria, nodding distantly.

“Erik’s decided to come onboard after many fine years in the Navy,” said Whitsun.

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm? thought Maria. Admiral Whitsun? Impossible.

“Unfortunately,” continued Whitsun, “he does have to go back to Washington this afternoon, but I wanted him to meet you two. Especially you, Richard. He’s heard me speak of you so often over the years.”

“You’re very gracious, Terry,” said Schmidla. “Perhaps someday you’ll be as much as a diplomat as your grandfather, Erik. He was a sort of ambassador plenipotentiary when we first met,” he added, remembering Whitsun plucking him from that stinking POW cage.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to go,” said Maria, enjoying Erik’s crestfallen look. “I’ve an appointment in town.” She carefully avoided mentioning that she was lecturing tonight, afraid Erik might invite himself along. And, she thought, closing the hall door firmly behind her, my tight little Lands End jeans are going to stay right on my tight little Ivy ass, sailor.

“Erik, why don’t you take a walk around the island?” suggested Whitsun as Maria’s car crunched down the shell-paved road toward the bridge to the mainland. “Richard and I have some business to discuss.”

“It’s lovely and parts of the old fort are quaint,” added Schmidla. “So, anything good to report?” he continued after Erik had reluctantly left.

“Despite last night’s debacle in New Orleans,” said Whitsun, “yes. Phil Martin’s out of the brig,” he said with faint distaste, “and will be rounding up two of the third-generation Eldridgers in the area. We found out who aided Milano in New Orleans—he’s been dealt with. And we’re looking for the people who have the roster – with CIA help. They can’t hide forever.”

“Why haven’t you replaced Martin?” asked Schmidla. “He seems very out of his depth.”

“He is,” said Whitsun. “I’m looking at replacements now. About the list, Richard,” continued Whitsun. “Remember, for immediate purposes, it doesn’t matter if we have only a partial list, so long as we get at least two useful Potentials.”

“And that you get them now,” said Schmidla, as his housekeeper, a heavy, taciturn woman with hooded, deep-set eyes, wheeled in the tea dolly.

“We’ll serve ourselves, Mrs. MacDonald,” said Schmidla. “Thank you. How many new third-generation Potentials have you identified?” he asked as the door closed.

“Forty-one,” said Whitsun. “We’ll get to the rest as soon as we can. They’re not going anywhere.

“You’re far too confident, Terry. You’re lucky you recovered any of those names. Your tea.”

“Let me worry about getting you your Potentials,” said Whitsun, accepting a steaming cup of Earl Grey. “What you should be worrying about are the results—our sponsors have made it clear that if we don’t produce awe-inspiring, repeatable results, they’ll close us down and divert our funding to the main project.”

“This is the main project!” said Schmidla. “They’re just too imperceptive to realize it. Out there, playing around with their field generators, mired in their physics, moving metal about, while we transmute time and space from here.” He tapped his temple.

“You have to prove that, totally and irrefutably, Richard.”

“Give me those Eldridge descendants and I will.”

“It has to work the first time, and very soon, or we’re finished.”

“Finished in America, perhaps,” said Schmidla. “There is alternate funding available.” He ignored the narrowing of Whitsun’s eyes. “I’ve made some inquiries of old friends and there is keen interest out there. Not everyone has forgotten the von Blücher.”

“Richard, this is an American project. Always has been, always will be. I’ll destroy the project and you before I let you take it offshore.”

“I was referring to working with an allied nation, not North Korea.”

“Many people don’t trust Germany, ally or not. I’m one of them. Take this any further, I’ll bring it all down on our heads. I’ll go to jail and you’ll go to the gallows. Clear?”

“Terry, Terry, you get so excited,” said Schmidla, smiling as he patted the other man’s arm.

“Don’t patronize me, Richard,” said Whitsun, jerking his arm away.

Schmidla shrugged. “It was just a thought. You know my dedication to this project. As to my gracing the gallows, well, by now, I doubt I could be convicted—surely I’ve outlived all potential witnesses for the prosecution?”

“I’m sure they left heart-rending affidavits. And how Richard, would you explain why you look to be in your early sixties? You’re forty years older than me.”

“I’ll tell them I made a Faustian pact: knowledge and long life in exchange for my small tattered soul.”

“Truth to that.” Whitsun poured himself a cup of tea. “You’re about to have a visitor—one who’ll be here for a while.”

“Really?” Schmidla’s smile faded. “Who?”

“Deputy Assistant Director for Central Intelligence Willard C. Budd. He’ll be on-site until you’ve either demonstrated the proof of your theories or until this project is terminated by Mr. Budd. Budd represents Rourke, who represents our sponsors.”

“Budd,” said Schmidla. “Wasn’t he associated with Telemachus years ago?”

“Yes,” said Whitsun. “One of many. Unlike us, he’s moved on.”

“Can Budd really close us down?”

“Yes. He can make our funding disappear,” he snapped a finger, “like that. But, Richard, unless we prove our value we’re going to be closed down, even if you do get your Potentials. Budd can just drop the curtain somewhat sooner. You’ll need to do your usual dog-and-pony for him.”

“And when does he arrive?”

“In a few days—we’ll be advised. Rumor is he’s not very happy with his assignment.”

Billy Budd watched the packers put the last of the boxes containing his personal items onto the hand truck and wheel it out of his office. Once inspected and released by Security, they’d be shipped to his lakefront home in nearby Reston. Thirty years of awards and (sanitized) memorabilia. He planned to have them stored in his cool, crisp, climate controlled basement and never, ever open a single box. His grandchildren, once they got a little older, could enjoy entire afternoons of discovery, rummaging through the contents. He was sorry he didn’t have a big dry-smelling attic for them to explore, such as his folks had had, but there was a lot of neat stuff for them to unearth.

“Leaving us?”

Budd turned toward the familiar voice. His boss, Harry Rourke stood in the doorway.

“I’ve turned in my papers. I’m using the rest of my annual leave and then I’ll just fade away. Please, no farewell ceremony. I sent you an email,” he added.

“Yes, thank you, Billy, and I read it.” Stepping into the office, he pulled the door shut behind him. Rourke looked around the big corner suite, now quite barren. “Great digs. And a view to die for,” he added, glancing out the window across the canopy of trees toward the distant Potomac. “How long have you had this office?”

“Forever,” said Budd, wishing Rourke would cut to the chase.

“Amazing,” said the Director. He perched himself on the side of Billy’s desk. “Forget taking the annual leave—we’ll pay you for it. I need you for just one more small task.”

“Have Accounting do it,” said Budd, sinking into his desk chair—the last chair in the office. “You’ve had me counting budget beans for the last year. Hardly a vote of confidence for a senior operations officer.”

Rourke shrugged. “You know I don’t like you, I know you don’t like me. But you’re one of the few here who knows about Telemachus in all its aspects. And the only one besides me who knows what it’s all about. You were in on the start, weren’t you?”

“I’m not quite that old,” said Budd, “But yes, I was involved back in the early 70’s.”

“Our mutual friend and former colleague, Mr. Jimbo. Heard anything from him?”

Budd shook his head. “No. But Freddy Kessler told me about his visit with him.”

“That didn’t work.”

“I heard.”

“I need you to go up to Boston for a few days and assess just where that project’s at,” continued Rourke. “Whitsun believes that they’ll have some sort of breakthrough to show within the next few days. Now, if he’s jerking our chain, tell me and I’ll close them down. The President and the NSC want this neatly wrapped up and put away. If, however, they do pull off something spectacular, I’m putting resources in place in Boston to deal with that.”

“Resources?”

“A contingency force—the special brigade out of Ft. Bragg.

“The Black Brigade?” said Budd, shocked. “You’re using the Black Brigade in the U.S.? Whatever for?”

“Why, for cleanup of course—if needed. If they go in, Kessler will be in charge.”

“Cleanup? In what sense?”

“In the usual sense. Kessler will be standing by to put out fires and to bail you out. I’ll send you a briefing packet today.”

“And what about the Eldridge roster?”

“Ah, the roster. I sometimes see that miserable thing in my sleep,” he said honestly. “Pity I can’t quite make out the names. Regardless of what happens on that island, we’ll still need it. We can’t finish off without it. They’re out there somewhere, breeding.” He shook his head. “Would’ve been nice if we could have completed this under the guise of research—had The Good Doctor do it for us.”

Schmidla’s cover name, assigned by Whitsun many years ago, in place ever since, was The Good Doctor. Budd thought one of Whitsun’s subordinates back in Germany must have made up the title, the Admiral not being noted for his sense of humor, dark or otherwise.

“Whitsun was supposed to obtain that roster. Not only did he fail, he let it get stolen out from under him. We invested a big pot of money in GDR just to get that information.”

“SLIF?”

Rourke nodded. “SLIF. The deal was, the contractors and their subs got to exploit the technology they developed, with just a pittance paid to Uncle, while we got the information we needed. Problem: the basic information is gone. And as Whitsun’s company is the prime contractor, he’ll do very well off of his own failure.” It wasn’t true, but no one would’ve believed the truth anyway.

“One more thing, Billy. The Russians may become involved.” That, unfortunately, was true.

“Why can’t they stay buried?”

Rourke shrugged. “They smell money and power. It brings them out of their crypt. A while ago I pulled the rug out from under Whitsun, told him he couldn’t have any more Agency resources. That shook him up. His current security chief hasn’t been doing well by him recently. So, Whitsun started asking around. Someone—not me—gave him Anton Lokransky. They’ve been talking.”

“Lokransky? That butcher? He now works for the Russian Mafia.”

“Which means that he works for the Russian government. The two are virtually indistinguishable. Spesnatz in Afghanistan and Chechenitza were your turf, Billy. Is Lokransky the brilliant devil they say he is?”

“Possibly the best special ops leader since Otto Skorzeny,” said Budd, naming the Nazi colonel whose daring raid had rescued Mussolini from Italian partisans. “Lokransky is brilliant, cold, viscous and sadistic. The Mujahedeen still have an outstanding offer of one hundred thousand dollars in gold for his head. His literal head. He did a lot of stuff to their women and children they’ll never forget. So, what do you want me to do, Harry?”

“I need you on that island when this alleged final attempt occurs, which should be in a few days. If it succeeds, if Schmidla pulls it off, then all our fears are justified. You’re to signal Kessler. He’ll launch the assault. Everyone on the island is to be eliminated. If the Russians are there, so much the better. That island is to be completely sanitized.”

“What about computer records, files, what naught?”

“A recovery team will go in as soon as it’s over. Most of the project records are in a vault, deep inside the old fort. Action should be limited to small arms, so the records should be intact.”

“Should?”

Rourke shrugged. “Spesnatsky are light infantry.”

“Let’s hope they remember that,” said Budd. “And if Schmidla fails?”

“Then all’s well that ends well. You smile, express regrets and leave. If the Russians are indeed there, let’s hope they pack it in and go home. If not, there’s more than enough firepower on call to take them out.”

Chapter 16

“Welcome to this, one of a series of lectures for the general public in Early American History,” said Maria, standing at the podium in the large half-filled hall. “My name is Maria Nelson, and I’m a professor of history here at the university. I’ve been asked to speak about Robert Rich. Given that I teach an entire semester’s course in which Rich is a central figure, tonight we’ll just hit the high notes.

“Who was Robert Rich? America would not be the nation it is today had it not been for this seventeenth century Englishman, much neglected by history. How many here – excluding history faculty—have ever heard of the second and twenty-third Earl of Warwick, Lord High Admiral Sir Robert Rich?” Only one hand out of several hundred was raised: that of a middle-aged man in the back. “You’re an unusual man, sir,” she said.

Jim acknowledged with a nod and a faint smile.

“No understanding of how we as a nation came to be is complete without some knowledge of Lord Rich,” she continued. “Rich is one of our Forgotten American Fathers—incidentally the title of the course I teach in early colonial history. In the hour allotted to me tonight, I hope to impart at least an appreciation of this remarkable man and his time—a time of war, a time of exploration and a time of opportunity for those like Rich who had the courage and vision to seize it.”

“She’s brilliant,” said Angie, as they walked toward Harvard Square. “History bores me, but she breathed life into some obscure English earl. She reached out and touched me. Your daughter’s a very gifted teacher, Jim.”

“You can thank Schmidla for that,” he said bitterly.

“She’s your daughter—yours and Emma’s,” said Angie. “Sprung from your seed, not his. All he did was raise her for his purposes, a component of his work. He doesn’t love her, you do.”

They’d stayed after the lecture, drinking white wine and nibbling cheese at the back of the hall as a small group of people – most friends and acquaintances—surrounded Maria, a bright chatty circle of admirers.

Suddenly spotting Jim, she broke free and came over. “Maria Nelson,” she said, extending her hand. Jim stared at her for instant, dazed, then recovered, taking her hand. “Jim Beauchamp,” he said. “This is my friend, Angie Milano.”

“That was the best lecture I’ve ever been too,” said Angie, honestly. As a teacher Maria had the rare gift of infectious enthusiasm.

“Thank you,” said Maria. “So,” she asked Jim, “how come you’ve heard of Bobby Rich? Are you an English Civil War buff?”

“There is such a thing?” said Angie.

“Oh, yes. You should see the emails I get. Some people still want to lop Rich’s head off for taking the Royal Navy over to Cromwell. Others want the Republic of England restored.”

“Bobby Rich was my umpteenth great-grandfather,” said Jim. Yours, too, he wanted to add. She got Emmy’s gray eyes, he thought, and my nose. If I hug her, she’ll push me away and they’ll throw me out. Do you remember your mother, he wanted to ask, your gifted, funny, passionate mother? No, of course not, you were so young when they killed her. “My mother’s family is descended from Rich and his first wife, Jane Faircamp.”

“Daughter of Sir Thomas Faircamp,” said Maria. “Thomas and Bobby Rich’s grandfather, the infamous Richie Rich, sacked the monasteries under Henry VIII.”

“Yeah, thick as thieves and the wealthiest families in England.”

“How did that work out for you guys?” asked Maria.

“Partied hearty until the South Sea Bubble burst,” said Jim. “The London gaming tables took the rest. Gramps was a telephone linesman.”

To Jim, the conversation felt increasingly delusive, as though he and his daughter were puppets, each in their own way in thrall to Schmidla—Maria, Schmidla’s unwitting marionette, unaware of who or what she was, Jim playing his part for fear of shattering the frangible vessel of Maria that God willing, still held his Kaeko.

“And what do you do?” Maria asked him.

“Oh, this and that.”

“‘Oh, this and that,’” mimicked Angie.

“What the hell did you want me to say, Milano? ‘Hi there! I’m your Dad?’”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“I couldn’t risk that.

“So weird,” he continued as they walked toward the lights of Harvard Square. “Angie, Rich really was my tenth great-grandfather. And her eleventh. No way Kaeko... Maria... could know that. Yet she goes forth and researches him for years, makes him the basis of her dissertation, of her career. And brilliantly—she makes that old man live again. Care to calculate the odds of my lost daughter unearthing and making a career out of a long-forgotten forbearer she didn’t even know was hers?”

“Synchronicity, Jimbo,” said Angie after a moment. “It happens to me too, a lot, but before I just thought it was a fluke. What if all Potentials are affected by synchronicity way out of proportion to the general population?”

“Buy me a coffee, Milano, and tell me about it,” he said, suddenly feeling very tired.

“Okay, so what’s your definition of synchronicity?” Jim asked a few minutes later as they sat sipping cappuccino in a coffee house. Despite the hour, the place was crowded, a mix of students and locals.

“Actually, it’s acausal synchronicity – events that seem to be more than coincidence, but which must be, as they’ve no rational explanation, no apparent causality,” explained Angie, sprinkling more cinnamon onto the frothy steamed milk. “Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli wrote a book about it, back in the ‘50’s.”

“It’ll surprise you to know that I’ve read it,” said Jim. “But only because someone left it on the New York-D.C. Amtrak I was riding. Coincidence?”

“Yes,” she said. “Now, say you lived in New York and were taking that train to D.C. to find your long-lost twin brother, whose address you’d just gotten after years of searching. Yet at the same time, your brother was heading north on the opposite track, having just found your address, after years of searching.”

“Synchronicity?” asked Jim, wondering if he should tell her about the white mustache the cappuccino had left on her lip. “Not yet,” she said. “Say the two trains collide.”

“Death and destruction,” he said. “Scream of brakes and tortured metal. Moans of the dying amid the wreckage. Synchronicity?”

“Not yet. And then you and your brother, your relationship still unknown to one another, surviving unscathed, pitch in to rescue a trapped conductor—a conductor who is the father that abandoned you two and your mother to years of hardship. Now that’s synchronicity!”

“So leaving the worthless son of a bitch in the wreckage, do we go out for a beer?”

Angie sighed. “No, dear. You may never know that one’s your brother and the other’s your father. Your knowledge of the event’s irrelevant—it’s the event itself that matters.”

“If no one knows that it’s happened, then how can it have happened?”

“Jimbo,” she said, “we’re getting into deeper waters.”

“Knowledge a priori and a posteriori,” he said, sipping his drink. “If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it and all that, right? William James? He taught here.”

“I apologize for my condescension,” she said humbly.

“You called me ‘dear,’”

“No I didn’t,” she said, shocked. “I never call anyone ‘dear.’”

“And you’ve got a white mustache,” he added.

The lecture hall was empty. Maria went outside, standing for a long time on the portico, staring out at deserted Brattle Street. The cold wind shook the old chestnut trees along the sidewalk, their branches throwing intricate, ever-changing shadows along the uneven, weathered bricks. Maria, her mind Elsewhere, seemed not to notice.

“Gotcha!” cried Tooky, reading the email from his locator service. Picking up the phone, he dialed Jim’s number. “We have two current addresses,” he said when Jim answered.

Chapter 17

“We’re an accredited fifty-bed, private psychiatric hospital,” said Schmidla, leading Whitsun and Billy Budd into a three-story, red brick building. Passing a deserted reception desk, they turned down an empty, well-maintained corridor of gleaming marble. “We have a few regular patients, five at the moment, all private pays. They’re treated by psychiatrists from various Boston-area teaching hospitals, all of whom receive incentives to maintain their privileges here at Smalls. We try not to take in anyone who’ll be staying too long and who doesn’t need to be heavily medicated.”

Budd noticed Dr. Richard S. Schmidla, MD, Director gilt-etched into the frosted glass panel of a door as passed. He’d seen no one else since entering the building, “Where’s the staff?” he asked.

“There are two duty personnel on the ward, none down here. We haven’t needed much of a staff since our research wound down.”

Wound down indeed, thought Budd. “Did you ever consider a career in politics, Dr. Schmidla?” he asked. “You have the gift.”

“I was involved in a populist political movement many years ago, though I never stood for office. Happily. And now what we’re really about,” said Schmidla, pressing the call button. Entering the elevator, he keyed a sequence into the touchpad set at the base of the control. The door shut and the car descended, indicator lights marking its progress from L to B1.

“Home,” said Schmidla as the door slid open, revealing a hallway of dressed granite blocks and brick floor. “This is Ft. Strong, Mr. Budd,” he said, “named for a fallen Union general. It occupies the western end of the island, mostly dug into the rock. You can’t really see it very well from the ocean. Its earthen roof and gun embrasures are almost totally overgrown.”

“When was it built?” asked Budd as they turned the hall, pausing at a steel door.

“About 1840,” said Schmidla. “One of a series of forts built from Maine down to Louisiana to protect you against those vile European powers. Most were designed by Sylvanus Thayer, an American Army engineer and the founder of the U.S. Military Academy. The War of 1812, during which the British burned the White House and raided at will along this coast, left Americans reeling, violated and vulnerable. So, they built their own Maginot Line and it saw about as much service. Of all the forts built during that period, though, only Sumter ever fired a shot in anger, but their existence served as a signal of American resolve to any potential invaders.”

Wonderful, thought Budd. A Nazi war criminal is lecturing me on American history.

Keying yet another touchpad, Schmidla led them through the door and down an antiseptic modern corridor done in white latex semi-gloss with recessed lighting. Very ordinary six-panel doors, also white and marked only by small black numbers, lined the corridor. “Let’s look in on our room of curiosities. It’s where we always first take our VIPs.”

“Room of curiosities?” said Budd. He wished Schmidla would stop smiling. He knew too much of the man’s history to ever see anything but a skull beneath the smile.

“Curios, transdimensional knickknacks,” said Schmidla.

“A mere hint of the powers we seek to unleash,” said Whitsun, trying his best.

Unleash was probably an unfortunate choice, thought Budd.

Turning a corner, the party stopped short.

“That’s quite a door,” said Budd.

A dull gray expanse of metal blocked the corridor. A green-lit keypad was set in the wall beside it, a camera high and to the right.

“More a gate than a door,” said Schmidla, keying in a quick series of digits. With a faint whir, the great slab sank into the floor. The room beyond was small with just a simple wooden table in the middle, the few objects on it softly lit by low hanging lights.

Budd walked to the table and stared down staring at two identical black objects. “So, what are these?”

‘These’ were equilateral triangles, about six inches on a side, two inches thick, made of a dark iridescent blue material. Budd thought he saw a faint rippling along their surfaces. He blinked and whatever movement he’d seen was gone.

“You noticed the shimmering?” said Schmidla.

“Yes. What is it?”

Schmidla shrugged. “Who knows? In the twenty-one years they’ve been here there’s been all sorts of speculation by some of the better minds. Terms like phase transition and perturbation theory are the current vogue. My colleague Dr. Bartlett, who worked with extensively with our project’s children, dubbed them Thing One and Thing Two. Certainly as good a name as any.”

“Fascinating,” said Budd, reaching for nearest Thing.

“Don’t touch,” said Whitsun, grabbing the CIA officer’s wrist. “You wouldn’t care for the results.”

“That, Mr. Budd, is what we asked ourselves after we pried them out of the dead hands of one of our Potentials,” said Schmidla. “Why would she bring these back to us from Wherever? Not very impressive looking, are they? Like bookends, they’re a pair.” Taking something shiny and yellow from his pocket, he held it up. “Kruegerand,” he said, dropping it atop the nearest Thing.

Without any apparent transition a duplicate of the coin appeared on the opposite Thing. Carefully avoiding touching the artifacts, Schmidla quickly removed both with his pen and handed them to Budd. “If you can detect a difference, tell me. You’ll be doing better than some very good numanists and metallurgists.”

“How large an object can it duplicate?”

Schmidla shrugged. “I had my car pushed atop one, out in the field near my house, with the other Thing a hundred meters away. I now have two identical cars with identical contents, right down to the Mahler in each CD player. My niece drives the duplicate to Boston. Thinks her silly old uncle ordered two cars.”

“People don’t fare as well, though, do they, Richard?” prompted Whitsun.

“Organic matter? No. Oh, Thing One and Thing Two will replicate an organism, but the replicant isn’t viable. The result is very... messy.” First they’d tried a dog, then a monkey, then a disappointing Potential. It hadn’t gone well.

“And this?” Budd picked up the sword from the table.

“At first sight, a common gladius, the short thrusting sword of the Roman legions,” said Schmidla. “This is a gladius hispaniensis, 76 centimeters long, used from 200 BCE until 20 BCE. The cork grip was dated at approximately 50 BCE. The blade is titanium. Mind the edge—it’s wickedly sharp.”

“Titanium’s a modern alloy used in submarine hulls,” said Budd, hefting the sword, admiring its balance. “Rome was Iron Age. This can’t be two thousand years old.”

Schmidla shrugged. “It is as you see it. The titanium, however, is somehow hardened by a process unknown to our metallurgy. Makes the weapon both light and extremely durable.”

“No scabbard?” he asked, carefully setting the weapon back on the table.

“It came with this wrapped around its hilt,” said Schmidla, handing Budd the small wooden box from beside the sword.

Budd opened the box—and almost dropped it. Inside was the mummified dark remains of a human hand, the skin dry and shriveled, a great emerald and diamond ring on its thumb. There were six fingers.

“Male,” said Schmidla. “Caucasian. About forty years old when he died. We’re still researching the DNA. The ring has no unusual characteristics, other than being quite valuable, of course. We provided the box.” Picking up a clothbound book, he handed it to Budd.

“The Great Fire of London, 1733,” Budd read aloud. “Was there a great fire in London in 1733?”

“No more than there were six-fingered swordsmen wielding titanium blades when Rome ruled the world,” said Schmidla. “At least not in our world.” Opening a drawer, he took out a photograph. “My favorite.”

Budd looked at the black-and-white snapshot of three men, laughing, sitting inside a large blue teacup. One he recognized immediately. Turning the photo over, he read the inscription, neatly written in faded India ink. “Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Ho Chi Minh: Disneyland, May 7, 1954.”

“Disneyland opened in 1955,” said Schmidla as Budd examined the laughing faces. “Ho was consulting with General Giap that day—the day the French surrendered at Dien Bien Phu. Einstein and Oppenheimer were at Princeton. None of them were riding around in teacups. Not in our reality.”

“How do you know these aren’t fakes?”

“They may be. But those who died bringing them back here apparently thought them important. And there are objects that we don’t have here, sent on to our sponsors for further study,” said Schmidla, putting the photo back in the drawer. “A device the size of a conventional microwave oven that produces not food, but spare organs, adapted to the user’s body. A hand weapon that fires a particle beam. When they tried to remove its power source, it exploded, leaving a crater in the New Mexico desert.”

Budd recalled the disaster at Sandia National Labs that had killed over three hundred people and obliterated an atomic particle research. Rourke hadn’t mentioned any of this. He wondered what else the DCI hadn’t told him.

“Where did these come from?” asked Budd. “And how did they get here?”

“Follow me and I’ll show you, as best I can,” said Schmidla.

Budd had been expecting a laboratory to be their next stop. Instead it was a small windowless amphitheater with a large flat-paneled projection screen at the front. “Have a seat, please,” said Schmidla as they filed in, the lights flickering on. Stepping to the back, he keyed yet another touchpad, this one opening a small safe. Taking out a disk, he slipped it into the player at the back as the lights dimmed.

“You haven’t seen this one, Terry,” said Schmidla, taking a seat next to the other two men. “This was January’s near-triumph.”

“Last of three of our true Potentials,” said Whitsun, eyes on the screen.

“Yes. And although it was a failure, it granted us a whole new perspective,” said Schmidla. “Before this event, we’d been studying a phenomenon, hoping to understand and ultimately control it. After it, we saw that we could use it to evolve humanity. All we needed were more third-generation descendants of those crews—at least three third-generation Potentials. And we had only one. Can you understand how frustrating that was? Here, see for yourself.” He touched the remote control and the video began.

The camera aspect was from somewhere in the center of a high ceiling, looking down into a deep well of a room, its circular white walls broken only by a long high window beside the top of a narrow circular staircase. Three black coffins lay in the center of the room, arranged in a circle, their ends almost touching, wires threading away into wall receptacles. The lids of the coffins were transparent, revealing the still figure within each. All three occupants wore headsets clamped over their ears.

“What am I looking at?” asked Budd.

“The Chamber,” said Schmidla, eyes on the screen. “Sometimes called the Well of Souls—lost souls. And three transport crèches, though the crèches go nowhere.”

As he spoke the camera zoomed in on the three coffins and then panned left to right, capturing each occupant: two women and one man, casually dressed, in their late twenties or early thirties. They lay unmoving, their eyes open and staring.

“The woman in the middle is my niece, Maria,” said Schmidla. “The experiment is monitored from behind the glass wall of the observation room, at the top of the stairs. Are you familiar with our recent attempts and techniques, Mr. Budd?”

“No,” said Budd, turning to look at the doctor as the German paused the video. “I haven’t known of your work since you used to slowly drown people or freeze them or vivisect them.”

Schmidla shook his head, distressed. “Early blunders and so unnecessary. A horrible waste of resources. A very painful period for me to recall.”

“More painful for your victims, surely.”

“We all acknowledge that mistakes were made,” said Whitsun. “Let’s confine ourselves to the present. Richard, why don’t you tell Mr. Budd what you were trying to accomplish with this experiment and your methodology?”

Schmidla nodded curtly. “Certainly. First, the methodology.

“The crèches are small sensory deprivation capsules—the lids are of thick one-way glass, which serve to create a Ganzfeld effect within the Potential. The lines you see leading to them from the wall receptacles provide oxygen, record vital signs and carry audio signals that create a binaural rhythm within the subject, in an attempt to produce a theta state transfer. It is absolutely essential that the Potentials feel overwhelmingly alone and that the binaural rhythm be allowed to drive their brain waves into the correct megahertz range to achieve transport.”

Budd looked at the frozen image on the screen, then at Schmidla. “Pretend, if you would, that I don’t know what binaural rhythm and theta state transfer are, please. And Ganzfeld effect.”

Schmidla paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts. “The human brain has four basic brainwave states, ranging from high amplitude, low frequency delta to low amplitude, high frequency beta, from deep sleep to full arousal. No matter which pattern predominates at any one time, however, all are present, even if only as trace patterns. In descending order of arousal, these brainwaves are beta, alpha, theta and delta.

“Brainwaves can be made to fall within one of those four ranges. The most efficient way to do this is through entrainment. Entrainment, as it applies to biosystems, is the process of inducing an auditory brainstem response in the superior olivary nuclei of each hemisphere of the brain. To do this, one introduces two different auditory impulses,” he touched a finger to each of his ear lobes, “one into each ear. If, for example, a tone of 400 hertz is introduced into the right ear, and a tone of 410 hertz is simultaneously introduced into the left ear, the result is an amplitude modulated standing wave of ten hertz, the difference between the two waves. One has then induced within the subject a cortical response of ten hertz, an alpha state brainwave pattern. Essentially, it’s a consciousness management technique.”

“And Ganzfeld?”

“Ganzfeld effect is the quietude and isolation experienced by the subject as a result of total sensory deprivation.”

“And the object of the exercise?”

“To induce a theta state, the next to lowest of the four states, at the exact same frequency and at the exact same time deep in the brain, in all three subjects’ hippocampus,” said Schmidla, nodding toward the screen. “When we do this to them individually, separated from each other, they slip into the normal human response of deep meditation or dreaming.”

“And they don’t do that here?”

“No. That’s because they’re not quite human.”

“That’s been known for a long time,” said Budd.

“Yes, certainly, but no one’s been able to control any of their abilities, including the Potentials themselves. But when we entrain the neural rhythms of three Potentials simultaneously—entrain them to the same frequency, with the Potentials physically adjacent to one another, under conditions of sensory deprivation, things happen. Technically, what we’re doing is called resonant entrainment of oscillating systems. It’s a principal long understood in physics. Strike a tuning fork designed to oscillate at, say, 400 hertz, then place it close to another tuning fork designed to oscillate at the same frequency and the second tuning fork will also oscillate. The first tuning fork has thus entrained the second. Here we use binaural signals to simultaneously produce the exact same neural rhythms within all three of our subjects’ hippocampus—a frequency-following response.”

“And then what?”

“Watch,” said Schmidla, touching a button.

Maria and then the other two figures began to fade from their crèches. Budd blinked, not believing his eyes. They continued to fade, figures quickly growing translucent. Watching Maria, Budd could see the cushioning of her crèche through her increasingly diaphanous body. In a few seconds all three crèches were empty.

“Where’d they go?” asked Budd, stunned and still staring at the screen and the empty containers.

“We don’t know,” said Whitsun. “Recording gear comes back blank or with its chips fried.”

“It’s not that important,” said Schmidla, stopping the video. “Which brings us to our proposed revised goals for the project, Mr. Budd. Where they went is unimportant. Intellectually intriguing, but unimportant. That they went is what’s important. That they returned alive is very important. These were our first fully actualized Potentials. Years of trial and error brought us to that moment.”

“People have transported before,” said Budd.

“Yes, and in groups of three, using this technique. But rarely did they return as a group, or returning together, return alive. Only my niece survived those experiments. But this group made it back. Standing there, watching them return together and alive, I knew how Oppenheimer must have felt at Los Alamos when he attained his own Trinity.”

Budd had a sudden happy vision of Schmidla, surprised by death, swinging from a gallows.

“Those three you just saw transport should have been the nucleus of a new humanity, beings to whom space and time are transparent. Beings with innate gifts of telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, precognition—talents embodied in all our Potentials. And now,” he said, his excitement fading, “here’s where it all fell apart.”

The video rolled again, the digits in the lower left indicating that five hours, thirty-three minutes had elapsed since the trio had disappeared. Then they were back, with Schmidla and Bartlett running down the stairs and swinging open the crèche lids.

Maria slowly sat up, helped by Schmidla, shaking her head, looking dazed and disoriented as he took a syringe from his pocket, injecting her in the arm. She responded almost at once, slipping back down into her crèche, apparently asleep.

Her two companions lay as they’d arrived, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, jaws gapped wide. With a sudden crack! a fierce blue torrent of light sprang from their mouths, joining above their crèches. Schmidla and Bartlett jumped aside as orange-blue flames enfolded both crèches. The fires burned fast and clean, flames dancing along the shriveling, blackened husks.

It was over in a moment, Schmidla carrying Maria to safety as Bartlett lay foam from a fire extinguisher over the two ruined crèches and their gruesome contents.

The still, silent death of the two Potentials took Budd back to a sweltry Saigon afternoon when a Buddhist monk sat down in the street outside MACV Headquarters and lit a match to his gasoline soaked saffron robe. The monk hadn’t moved or cried out either. It was as though all three were gone before they died.

“Your comment about how we’ve long known they’re not human?” said Schmidla as the room lights came on again.

“Yes,” said Budd.

“You meant that they demonstrate nonhuman abilities?”

“Yes.”

“Actually they’re not human,” said Schmidla. “We know from recent genetic research that human beings may have approximately 53,000 genes. The third-generation descendants of those ships crews have about 82,000. Same number of chromosomes as us, but far more genes. Genetically the difference between say, Maria and I, is far greater than the difference between me and a field mouse.”

“Perhaps they’re just human beings with more genes,” suggested Budd.

“A rose by any other name?” smiled Schmidla. “Certainly, if you’re trying to boundary science with some silly metaphysics. Rationally, scientifically, they are a species apart—they only look human. But... ” he held up his hand as Budd started to speak, “they are a gift, a gift for us to study and use for our own improvement—our own human improvement.

“Admiral Whitsun and I agree that once we’ve demonstrated that Potentials can successfully flit through time and space, we need to broaden the scope of this project. The assumption was always that the abilities we’ve seen are inherent in all human beings and could be released once we understood more about the process—how to identify it, how to control it, how to exploit it. But as Potentials aren’t human, the only way for we humans to ever have Potentials’ abilities is to understand their genetic make-up and selectively replicate it within our descendants. The tools of genomics, of genetic mapping and engineering, are fast coming to hand. But we need your support.”

“And you need the Eldridge roster,” added Budd.

“Yes. Without that everything stops.”

“You need to demonstrate that these paranormal abilities can be controlled, Doctor,” said Budd. “You haven’t done that. No one wants such uncontrollable abilities—they’re a curse, not a gift.”

“We should shortly be able to show you a successful three-person transport,” said Whitsun.

“How will you do that? You just told me you’re out of Potentials.”

“We’ve identified two third-generation Eldridge descendants living in this area,” said Schmidla. “They’re being picked up now. My niece will be the third Potential.”

Budd was silent for a moment. “If you can demonstrate a successful three-person transport, I’m sure Director Rourke will carefully consider your recommendations when he briefs the NSC.”

“That’s all we ask,” said Schmidla. “Reasoned consideration. My housekeeper’s prepared a light lunch for us,” he said, rising. “Please join us.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes, thank you.” said Budd, taking out his cellphone. “I have to check my messages.”

“Name number four on your list,” said Tooky, pushing his much-dented red SAAB convertible into the slowly moving expressway traffic. “This guy’s the grandson of Able Seaman Louis Bissette. Seaman Bissette survived whatever happened on the Eldridge that summer day in ‘43, but like many of the crew and scientists, suffered physical and mental complications after the war. Died of multiple melanoma in 1955, though not before fathering a child. Said child, a daughter, had one child, named Timothy O’Malley. Mr. O’Malley’s a structural engineer and lives in JP—Jamaica Plain to you foreigners. It’s become one of Boston’s many affluent enclaves.”

He turned left, dodging an oncoming trolley and then turned up a four-lane boulevard, passing a VA hospital as they bumped along the trolley tracks, bouncing through a very deep pothole. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“It’s okay, Tooky,” said Angie from the back seat, death hold on the handgrip. “From what I’ve seen, you’re one of the better drivers in this city.”

“When I was a kid, this road sucked,” said Tooky, turning the wheel to avoid what looked to Jim like a sinkhole. “It still sucks.”

Despite the road, Jamaica Plain proved a pleasant 1880’s urban enclave, a mix of 19th century homes and shops, of small yards and big houses. It looked to Jim as if everything had either been recently renovated or was in the process of being renovated: scaffolding seemed to climb every other building, construction dumpsters and contractors trucks were parked and doubled parked everywhere.

“Gentrification continues apace,” said Tooky, turning right down a street of large gabled Victorians set amid broad lawns and wrought iron fences. “I liked Boston better when it was poor, rundown and inhabited by lots of unpleasant trolls in rumpled old clothes. Guys like me. Less charm, more character.” Tooky pulled to a stop in front of an imposing purple house with white shutters and matching trim, a magnificent Painted Lady in her second century.

“Wow,” said Angie. “But purple? And in this neighborhood? “This is O’Malley’s?” she asked Tooky as they got out of the car.

“It’s O’Malley’s,” said detective.

“He’s got balls,” she said.

“Certainly he’s got good taste-and some money,” said Jim, looking up admiringly. It stood tall and proud against the blue sky, three stories of bow-front windows, gables, a wrap-around veranda and a large expanse of lawn. A custom wrought iron fence surrounded the property, wicked looking spear points interspaced by brick columns topped variously with iron gargoyles, griffins and the occasional insipidly smiling cherub.

“Ferro battuto!” exclaimed Angie.

“Okay,” said Jim.

“Wrought iron,” she translated. “It’s an ancient Tuscan craft. My mother’s side, the Casalis, have wrought iron like this,” her hand swept the fence, “since the Middle Ages.”

“They are magnificent,” said Jim. “As for having balls...”

“And they’re all anatomically correct!” said Angie, eyes widening.

Jim laughed. “I think parts of the gargoyles are anatomically exaggerated.”

“How do you know, Jim?” said Angie. “Ever met a gargoyle?”

“I’ve worked for a few. Though we were never intimate.”

“Jeez,” said Tooky. “Couple of years back and you’d have had the Catholic Mothers Decency League out here with blowtorches.” He jiggled the unmoving brass doorknob on the walkway gate. “He said he’d be expecting us.”

Reaching past him Angie pressed the buzzer set in the gate pillar and then waited, staring up into the camera lens beside the buzzer.

“Is he married?” asked Jim as they waited.

“Nope,” said Tooky. “No significant other. Lives alone. This house, two blocks from Jamaica Pond, would go for a couple of million, easy. And that’s this week.”

“Four million,” said a voice from the speaker grill. “Angie?”

“And Jim,” she said. Jim waved at the camera.

The gate lock buzzed open.

“Okay, guys,” said Tooky, “the deal was, just the two of you. I’ll wait in the car.”

“Not bad for a structural engineer,” said Angie as they walked up the path. The flower beds on either side were neatly mulched, ready for winter.

“I’ve never met any of the other descendants,” said Angie nervously. “I’ve got stage fright.”

The big front door swung open as they walked up the stairs onto the veranda. “Howdy,” said the young man who came out. “I’m Tim O’Malley,” he said, holding out his hand. “Come on in,” he said after introductions. “I made some coffee.”

He led them into a perfectly preserved front parlor, furnished with late Victorian period pieces, the morning sun flooding through the tall bow-front windows.

“Is that a Tiffany lamp?” asked Angie as O’Malley disappeared through the dining room and into the kitchen.

Jim looked around. “I think they’re all Tiffanies, or very good knockoffs.”

Angie peered at the painting over the fireplace, overcoming the urge to go over and examine it. “That may be an original Monét over the fireplace, Jimbo,” she whispered.

“How can you tell? Seen one flower, seen them all.”

“You’re such a trog, Munroe.”

“Beauchamp,” he corrected.

“It’s going to take some time,” she said, moving closer to examine the painting.

Tim O’Malley came back in, bearing a silver coffee service on a matching tray. “Here we are,” he said, setting the tray down on the marble coffee table. Pouring the coffee into three English bone china cups, he sat down in an armchair. Jim and Angie seated themselves on the sofa.

“We love your fence,” said Angie, sipping her tea. “Is it new?”

“The pickets are,” said O’Malley, stirring cream and sugar into his cup. “The figures though are all antique. I roamed Tuscany one summer, fell in love with it—the architecture, the food, the people. And the iron work. I’ve been collecting it for years. Now every pillar’s got one. Guess I’ll have to get a bigger place for a bigger fence.”

Despite his name Tim O’Malley looked Welsh. He was short and thin and dark, with a narrow face and sharp black eyes.

“Do you know who made any of those figures?” asked Jim.

“Most are by several generations of artisans who lived in Camucia, in Tuscany—the Casali family.”

“That’s my mother’s family!” exclaimed Angie.

“Really?” said O’Malley, looking at her seemingly for the first time. “Are they still doing ferro battuto?”

“Don’t know,” Angie shrugged. “We lost touch during the war.”

“I have probably the largest collection of your family’s work in America.” He shook his head. “Do you know what the chances of your walking in here were? A billion to one?”

“If you’re what I think you are,” said Angie, “my walking in here was probably inevitable.” Having started, she plunged in. “Did you ever hear tell of your grandfather having served aboard the destroyer escort USS Eldridge, part of a one-day pickup crew, in Philadelphia in 1943?”

O’Malley shook his head. “No. All I have of him are some old medals and a picture of him as a scrawny kid in a white uniform. But my mother told me he was a submariner. So what would he have been doing aboard a destroyer?”

“Perhaps we should start at the beginning,” said Jim.

“I have to be at a construction site by noon,” said O’Malley, glancing at the grandfather clock, all but lost in a corner of the room.

“Won’t take that long,” said Angie. “We’ll give you the condensed version, okay?”

“Okay,” he shrugged.

Philip answered his cellphone. “Yes?”

“How close are you?”

“Stuck in traffic, Admiral,” said Philip. “We’re near...” He looked at his driver.

“The Museum of Science,” said Iceman. “Turning onto Storrow Drive West.”

Philip repeated the information, adding, “We’re meeting our contractors at Olmsted Park in five minutes, changing vehicles. Say, another fifteen, twenty minutes to Jamaica Plain.”

“As soon as you get O’Malley here to the island,” said Whitsun, “I’ve got another pickup for you to make. Advise me the minute you have him. And Philip?”

“Sir?”

“Don’t screw this one up.”

Tim O’Malley thought their story a real hoot. Listening as they spoke, his expression slowly changed from one of polite interest to skepticism to outright incredulity. As Angie finished, he started laughing—laughter that grew until he was gasping for breath, his face red. “You guys should do a screenplay!” he gasped. “It has just the right touch of paranoia and government conspiracy to make it soooo good!”

Jim looked at Angie’s darkening face, then back at O’Malley, doubled over in his chair. “Tim...” he warned.

“And which one are you supposed to be?” chuckled the engineer. “Oh, of course-you’re the intuitive one, she’s the analytical one!”

“Tim, I’d cool it if I were you,” said Jim. “She’s got a temper.”

“Listen,” said O’Malley, recovering, “you two freaks get out of my house, right now.”

“Enough!” snapped Angie. Untouched, the coffee service somersaulted through the air spewing hot brown liquid that soaked O’Malley’s pants, scorching him. He leaped to his feet amid the broken china, shock, pain and anger mingling on his face.

“I warned you,” said Jim, sipping his coffee.

“How’d you do that?” gasped O’Malley, staring at Angie.

“Sometimes I have trouble controlling my temper,” she said contritely. “Sorry.”

O’Malley looked down at his ruined pants and the coffee soaking into the carpet. “I believe you. I did from the start. What do you want?”

“You,” said Jim. “And the truth.”

“The truth?”

“How’d a kid like you get so much money so fast? Your parents are average middle-class folks, live in the burbs, nice house, small. They’ve got a mortgage and day jobs. No one ever gave you anything.”

Tooky Azarian had done his homework.

O’Malley sat down again, ignoring his pants. “I play the stock market. I’ve been lucky.”

“You’re a precog, aren’t you?” said Angie. “And unlike me, you can control and channel your ability. But then you’re third-generation. I’m second.”

“Yeah. I can see things, sometimes. Things that happen later. But most of the time it’s just instinct. When I buy and sell stocks, I’m right about ninety-five percent of the time. I just know when to click “Buy” or “Sell.” In the last year I’ve made close to fifty million dollars. The SEC’s always poking around, looking to see if I’ve insider information.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “All my insider trading takes place inside here. I’ve even offered to let them sit here and observe. They’ve backed off for now.”

No one said anything for a moment. “So what do you want from me?” he asked.

“We want you safely out of here,” said Jim. “Your life’s going to be very unpleasant and very short if Whitsun and Schmidla get their hands on you.”

“The two nasties you mentioned?”

“Yup.”

“What’s ‘out of here’ mean?”

“It means staying in a gracious old inn in northern New Hampshire,” said Jim. “Owned by a friend of mine. You have similar architectural tastes.”

“Jim has lots of friends who own businesses,” said Angie.

“For how long?” asked O’Malley

“Until this blows over,” said Jim.

“Which would be when?”

“When whatever event Schmidla’s orchestrating fails to materialize and his sponsors pull his plug. Or the whole project’s exposed and the lot of them go to jail. Don’t count on the second scenario, though.”

O’Malley rose, facing them, his hands clasping the back of his chair. “Okay. Not much of a choice, is there?

“Not really,” said Angie.

“How’d you come to trust him?” he asked Angie, cocking his head toward Jim. “He’s not one of us. No offense,” he said to Jim. “It’s just that I don’t think I could ever confide in someone who wasn’t...”

“A Potential,” supplied Jim.

“That’s the official government term for us,” said Angie. “Potentials. We’re a much sought after commodity. As for Jim, he’s cool.”

“How much control do you have over your abilities?” asked O’Malley.

“None,” she sighed. “My subconscious seems to trigger them. I dropped a tree into Jim’s driveway, apparently so I could be trapped there for the night, then later I whisked away some inconveniently placed corpses.”

O’Malley looked at them, shaking his head. “You two have had quite a time of it, haven’t you? Disappearing corpses, flying trees, an original Nazi. “Okay,” he said, making up his mind, “I’m with you. When do we leave?”

“Now,” said Jim. “Trouble may not be far behind us.”

“Now? Like right now?”

“Like right now,” said Jim.

O’Malley was upset. “But there’s this project I’m working on that I’ve got to get out...”

He held up a hand as the other two both started speaking, “Fine. But I do have to at least email my client some preliminary work before we go. He needs these yesterday and he’s always been straight with me.”

“Sure,” said Jim reluctantly. “How long will it take?”

“Oh, maybe ten, fifteen minutes, then another ten to throw some clothes together. And change my clothes,” he added ruefully, glancing down at his pants.

“Get to it.”

“‘Not one of us,’” said Jim, walking to a window, looking out on the street. “So, why do you trust me, Milano?”

“Because you’re an idiot,” she said sullenly as she collected the coffee cups and put them on the tray.

His cellphone rang. It was Tooky. “Verizon van, big one. This is its third time around the block in that many minutes. Oh oh. He’s pulling up behind me.”

“I see it,” said Jim, looking out the window at the man who stepped out of the driver’s side, wearing a phone company coverall and hardhat. His right hand was in his pocket. “Tooky! Get out of here! Now!”

Tooky pulled away from the curb, accelerating down the street and disappearing around the corner. The man in the telephone company outfit gave a shrug then turned back toward the van, giving Jim a clear view of his face.

“It’s Phil Martin.”

“Who?” asked Angie, stepping to the window.

“Former DST agent – French Intelligence. Had some issues back in the Old Country. Went rouge and now works for the highest bidder. Phil’s cautious—rarely goes on an operation without an army. Probably killed Bill Enders.

“He was one of the thugs in New Orleans,” said Angie.

“O’Malley!” Jim called. “Get down here! Now!”

Upstairs, Bill O’Malley finished addressing his email. “Minute!” he called. Attaching a file named “Ft_Strong,” he sent the email to Johnny Kim.

“Bad guys are here!” added Jim.

That brought O’Malley running down the stairs, eyes wide with alarm.

“Where?”

“Four more just got out of the van,” called Angie.

“You two go out through back, now,” ordered Jim. He tossed her his cellphone. “Have Tooky pick you up on the next parallel street behind the house. Hurry!”

“Go on!” he said as Angie looked uncertain. “O’Malley needs you. And we can’t let Schmidla get you.”

“What about the police?” asked O’Malley, his voice quivering.

“Show Angie the fastest way out, Tim. I’ll amuse them for a few minutes.

Hey sailor!” he called. Angie turned at the kitchen door. “Where’s your gun?”

Taking her Beretta from her jacket pocket, she held it up, clicked off the safety and chambered a round, holding his eyes as she did so.

“Shoot first,” he said, “and keep moving.”

“Aye aye, sir,” she said and was gone.

Drawing his .45, Jim flicked off the safety and stepped to the front window. Two of Philip’s men had just turned from the sidewalk, heading across the lawn toward the rear of the house, silencers screwed into the muzzles of their Glocks. Philip and two others were some distance up the street, hurrying toward the house.

Stepping to a side window Jim fired at the first yellow safety helmet he saw, sending two rounds crashing through the glass. The big copper jacketed bullets tumbled into the man’s skull, tearing through the soft gray brain tissue. He crumbled to the ground, leaving some of his blood and much of his brain spattered along the grass.

Jim ran across the parlor into the hallway. Throwing open the front door, he stepped onto the veranda, firing two-handed at Philip and his men as they scattered for cover. Their return fire splintered the veranda rail, plowing into the clapboards, silent except for the faint plop of the pistols and sound of splintering wood. Jim snapped off a shot at one man was working his way up the street toward the van, but the answering fire spoiled his aim and the guy made it, disappearing behind the van.

Jim tipped over the veranda picnic table with his free hand. Dropping down behind it he ejected his empty magazine as 9mm rounds slammed into the solid redwood planks, an irregular series of overlapping kaachunks.

Snapping a fresh magazine home, Jim peered over table just as the guy who’d disappeared behind the van reappeared and threw a hand grenade. It rolled along the brick sidewalk, coming to rest almost directly beneath the gate.

The blast blew the sidewalk gate off its hinges, sending it and a gargoyle spinning into the flowerbeds below the veranda.

Philip waved his remaining men forward. “Now!” he shouted, firing from behind a big elm.

They came from behind the parked vehicles, charging past the shattered gate and up the walk, firing. Rising, Jim dropped the lead man with a shot to the chest. As Iceman stepped out from behind a parked car and began running toward the gate, Jim rushed toward the other two, firing. Maybe it was the shock of having their target come after them, or maybe they were just bad shots, but at fifteen paces, they missed and Jim didn’t, sending them down. He felt in his pocket for another magazine. There wasn’t one.

“Well shit, good buddy,” smiled Iceman, stepping up the walk, pistol leveled. “You’re fucked.”

Jim looked down the small black hole of Iceman’s silencer and time stopped. . Forgive me, Emmy, he thought as Iceman cocked the hammer.

The pistol flew from Iceman’s hand, spinning over the fence to land clattering on the pavement. His startled look gave way to one of pure terror as he followed his weapon, lifted high over the fence, limbs and arms flailing. He started screaming—screaming that rose to a terrified shrieking as the invisible force holding him positioned him with cool precision over the fence, carefully parted his legs and slammed him down, impaling him astride an iron picket.

It wasn’t the killing, or even the manner of it that sickened Jim, but its calculated, detached deliberateness. He watched as Iceman, castrated, shrieking now in a wavering falsetto, was slowly forced down on the sturdy metal picket, carefully spitted like a prize pig, blood gouting in great choking spurts from his mouth. Only when the point pierced his heart did he stop screaming. And only when it emerged flecked with gore from the top of his skull did the downward pressure on his body cease. Iceman’s body hung there, limbs twitching as a mix of blood, urine and feces oozed down the fence, pooling along the white concrete of the sidewalk.

Jim vomited into the flowerbed.

Unnoticed and trembling, Phil Martin slinked away, Iceman’s death and the power behind it indelibly set in his memory. The image of it would haunt him the rest of his life.

“Come on, Jimbo,” said a familiar voice. “This is no time for a break.”

He looked up. Angie stood there, gun in hand, a quizzical look on her face. “You okay?”

“My God!” he managed, straightening up. “Did you do that?”

“Did you want to die?” she countered. The wail of police sirens drew near.

“Did you do that?” he repeated, pointing with shaking hand at what hung on the fence.

“It’s nothing I have any control over,” she said, looking without expression at the corpse. “It’s subconscious. He killed Paul Laval—I saw it in his mind. Killed him and wallowed in it. What a sicko.”

“It’s your id,” he said. “Your id did that. Someone murdered your friend, threatened your mate and you skewered him like a capon.”

“Paul was your friend, too. He died because of you.”

“Yes. And I’m so sorry he’s dead. But he wouldn’t have wanted you to do that!”

“I can’t control it, don’t you understand?!” she said, her voice breaking. “It just happens!”

“You better have a real serious talk with your id,” said Jim, holstering his useless pistol. “For all our sakes.”

The sirens were very close now. Across the street people were peering out their windows. Two houses down a feckless soul stepped out onto her porch.

“We can talk Freud later,” said Angie urgently, pocketing her own weapon. “Tooky’s hit.”

“How bad?” asked Jim, suddenly sorry he’d brought them all into this—Angie, with her slumbering demons, Tooky, nicely retired and now maybe dying because of Jim Beauchamp’s stupid conceit.

“Bad enough,” said Angie as they jogged toward the back of the house. “He’s in his car on the next block.”

They took off running behind the house as three Boston police cars skidded around the corner.

It’d all been over in about ten seconds, the area blessedly empty of noncombatants.

Angie had run into the street on the block behind O’Malley’s house. Tooky was standing beside his car, O’Malley in the back seat. As Angie ran up the street toward Tooky, a guy in telephone company work clothes appeared from behind a house, pistol in hand. Shouting a warning, Tooky fired at the same instant as gunman. Tooky fell to his knees, clasping his shoulder as Angie spun and pumped three rounds into the gunman’s chest.

“We’re getting you to a hospital,” said Jim, slipping behind the wheel of the SAAB and pulling away from the curb. Police sirens sounded from everywhere. “Phil must have dropped an extra man off before he pulled up to the house,” said Jim.

“No hospital,” said Tooky. He sat in back between Angie and O’Malley, a stack of gauze pads from the car’s first aid kit pressed against his right shoulder. “We’re going to Chelsea. One of our more industrial suburbs.” He grunted with pain as they went over a pothole. “There’s a Nicaraguan doc there who’ll patch me up. She owes me and I pay cash. Turn right here, Jimbo,” he said as they reached the end of the street. His face was drawn with pain. “Stop at an ATM,” he added as they slipped into the traffic along the two-lane Jamaicaway, Jamaica Pond to their left.

“Our treat,” said Jim. “We’ve got lots of cash with us.” He pulled over to let five police cars roar past in the opposite direction. As he drove, Jim kept hearing and seeing Iceman’s death agonies, a continuously looping bit of hell. Angie sat silently in the back seat, keeping pressure on Tooky’s wound, her face paler than his.

In the twenty-five minutes it took to wind through the traffic to Chelsea and the doctor’s dilapidated three-family house, only Tooky spoke, and then only to give directions.

“Martin failed again,” said Whitsun, hanging up the phone as Schmidla came into the room. . “Spectacularly. All his men are dead. Munroe and Milano have the Potential, O’Malley. The only good news is that O’Malley wasn’t killed.”

“Such good news,” said Schmidla. “So what’s the plan now, Terry?”

“Philip has failed us on several occasions, Richard,” said Whitsun with a slight shrug. “He is being permanently replaced. His replacement is awaiting my call. Colonel Lokransky comes highly recommended.”

“Sounds familiar. Not Russian is he?”

“He is.”

“You brought in Russians?” said Schmidla, incredulous.

“Specifically, I brought in the Russian Mafia, Richard. Lokransky comes with a money back guarantee and an elite group of men he’s trained and led. They’re all ex-Spesnatsky—special operations commandos. They’ll be headquartered here for the duration.”

“Here?! You’re bringing Russians commandos here? Are you mad?” Schmidla’s face flushed with anger. “They could compromise everything we’ve worked for!”

“You served in Russia, didn’t you?” asked Whitsun. Rarely did Schmidla lose his aloofness. When he did Whitsun was quick to push all the buttons.

“Terry, if you bring those subhuman Slavic scum here...”

Whitsun burst into laughter. “Oh, Richard, Richard! Such a cultured, educated man, yet at your core you’re just another little Nazi street thug, driven by your prejudices. Probably even remember all the stanzas to the Horst Wesel, for god sake.”

“They come, I’m gone!” snapped Schmidla, furious.

“We have no other options. We need the Eldridge descendants—now. How long do you think Budd is going to hang out here? And we need security. There are just the two of us here. Lokransky can provide us with security and Potentials. He’s worth a hundred Philip Martins. He’s hired.”

Schmidla opened his mouth.

“No!” snapped Whitsun with a chop of his hand. “Enough. Recall our earlier conversation about who’s running this show. I am. Lokransky’s in Washington. He’ll be here first thing in the morning. You will cooperate. You will be civil.”

“Is that an order, Admiral?” said Schmidla, his composure regained.

“Yes, Standartenführer, that is an order,” said Whitsun. “For your own sake, Richard, for the sake of our shared goals, I hope that you still remember how to take an order.”

Schmidla turned and left the room. Soon, he thought. Soon.

Still much shaken, Phil Martin exited his plane at Washington’s Reagan Airport wanting only to grab a cab, get home to his Georgetown apartment, take a long shower and have a very large scotch. His conversation with Whitsun hadn’t gone well. Time to put out some feelers for fresh work, but that could wait until tomorrow.

“Mr. Philip Martin, please come to the United Airlines customer service counter,” came the page, echoing through the terminal.

Wonderful, he thought, heading for the main concourse. Probably shredded my luggage. Or worse, Whitsun sent someone over from GRD to pick him up and debrief him. He didn’t need any of that tonight.

Martin stood in line at the counter for a few minutes only to be told it been a courtesy page for someone who’d been there but was apparently now gone.

Stupid, he thought, entering the men’s room and stepping up to a urinal. Must have been someone from GRD. At least he had the lavatory to himself.

“Mr. Martin?”

Martin turned his head, startled. A blond-haired man with a scarred face stood in front of the adjacent urinal.

“Yes?” said Martin, wishing that what he held in his hands was a pistol.

“They asked me to tell you that you’re fired,” said the man, firing two rounds from a silenced .22 pistol into Martin’s head. The Frenchman’s body fell to the tiled floor.

Pocketing his pistol, Lokransky left the men’s room, stepping around the yellow “Out of Service” sign.

Chapter 18

“An inn?” exclaimed Angie as Jim gunned the SAAB up the broad sweeping driveway. “It’s the House of Usher!”

“Surely not as foreboding,” murmured Jim, parking beneath the portico of the white clapboard manse. Green wicker rocking chairs lined the blue veranda.

“The Windermere,” said O’Malley from the back seat. “I stayed here once. This is your safehouse?”

“Well,” said Jim, getting out to meet the man coming down the steps toward them, “certainly we’ll have a nice room.”

“Jimbo!” cried their host, shaking Jim’s hand. “Welcome! Mi casa es Su casa.” He was in his late forties, thin-faced, with a receding hairline and wide green eyes. Jim introduced Angie and O’Malley. “This is my friend Henry Watts,” he said. “We’ve known each other a long time.”

Two teenagers appeared and took their bags, following their boss into the Windermere.

Like much of the inn the lobby was a magnificent Gilded Age jewel. Furniture, carpets, tables, lamps, crystal chandeliers, all could have been plucked from a London club of two centuries ago. A baronial fireplace large enough to roast a stag dominated one side of the great room. The mural above it depicted a medieval hunt, a ferocious wounded boar charging an unhorsed hunter and his dogs. There was an air of eternal unresolved suspense to it—it wasn’t clear whether the monstrous wild-eyed boar or the tight-lipped bearded hunter would survive—if either. It was brilliantly done and Angie said so.

“Unsigned, but rumored to have been painted by Winslow Homer,” said Henry, handing their keys to the bellboy. “Might even be true—has the atmosphere of “Watson and the Shark.”

“So, here we are,” said Angie, after she and Jim had been taken to a suite seemingly only half the size of the lobby, the aptly named William Howard Taft Suite. “What now, Jimbo?” she asked, sinking down on the big canopied bed.

The two-hour ride from Boston had been spent with Angie and Tim chatting like long-lost siblings—what was it like growing up with the dawning realization that you were Different? What did you first do that was really Weird? Were you as scared as I was? Did you ever tell your parents? (No, never, but they figured it out. And never once was it mentioned or discussed.) How much control do you have over It? (None.) And, lastly, synchronicity. Will it grow even more pronounced if there are more of us?

“Now,” said Jim, joining Angie on the bed, “we keep going down the list, getting to folks before Whitsun. We’re not just here for the view. There’s a Potential here in New Hampshire.”

“First tell me about this intimate little hotel and your buddy Henry.”

Jim shrugged. “Henry worked for me up here as a sort of stringer. The Agency had an underground emergency command center nearby, one of several, just in case? Henry ran a failing B&B—too big a mortgage, too few rooms—and kept an eye out for visitors who might display an unusual interest in the area around the command center. So I funneled some money to him to ensure that he’d stay around.”

“You bought him the Windermere with my tax dollars.”

“No. I’m not Henry’s fairy godmother. Just helped find him a buyer for his B&B, provided a down payment and the name of a sympathetic mortgage officer. Besides, the Windermere was a grand old rotting hulk when he bought it—very much the House of Usher. Henry was able to get a government grant to restore the old place, given its historic significance. Taft did stay here, and Teddy Roosevelt, not to mention Charlie Chaplin, young Winston Churchill...”

“So you didn’t do much for the guy and here we are in this immodest suite, gratis, and I bet not a vacancy in the place.”

“Henry would have lost his shirt if the New England economy hadn’t taken off just after he remodeled.

“You and Tim really hit it off, after a rocky start,” he added. “Sounded like long-lost twins.”

“You’re jealous!” she laughed.

“No, I’m very happy for you both. Besides, there’s not a jealous bone in my body.”

“Right.” Reaching over, she pulled him down beside him.

“Ah, we’re supposed to meet Tim in the dining room in twenty minutes,” he said.

“Better get started,” she said, deftly unfastening his belt and zipper. Slipping her fingers into his shorts, she stroked him, feeling him stiffen. Leaning toward her, Jim kissed her, deeply, his free hand rubbing her breasts through her blouse. She wasn’t wearing a bra and he felt first one, then the other nipple swell with need.

“Think President Taft did this here?” asked Angie ten minutes later as she straddled Jim, working him slowly, her hips moving in a slow ellipse as she rose up and down, Jim’s hands caressing her breasts.

“Ever seen a picture of Taft?” he managed, watching her as she bit her lower lip, her face tense. Their rhythm increased, Jim’s hands slipping to her ass, squeezing, plowing into her, hard and deep. Her hand slid down, caressing Jim’s rock-hard testicles, even as her abdominal muscles tightened and released, tightened and released, the pleasure driving Jim to the edge. A deep flush spread across Angie’s face and chest.

Throwing back her head, riding him hard, she let out a joyous sound of release, half sigh, half dirty chuckle.

Jim came deep within her, his hands pinioning her taut buttocks to him. Angie collapsed on top of him, keeping him inside her. “I think we went a bit over on our time,” she said.

There was a knock on the door. “You folks coming?” called O’Malley.

“I’ve found O’Malley,” said Lokransky. “We’ll have him here by tomorrow morning.”

Whitsun was startled. “That was fast! You’ve only been here a few hours, Colonel, yet you’ve already located one Potential and retired Mr. Martin? Well done!”

“And where is Mr. O’Malley?” asked Schmidla. The three of them were in his parlor. It was night, with a fire in the hearth and red-chimneyed kerosene lamps burning high—lamps that always reminded Schmidla of his boyhood.

“Dorset, New Hampshire. The Windermere Inn. We’ll be there in less than an hour.” From outside came the sound of a helicopter revving up-a large one from the sound of its engines.

“How did you find him?” asked Whitsun.

“One of those involved in Mallory’s escape—a man named Azarian—was wounded during the firefight. Someone imprudently made a phone call from the Windermere to his home.”

“So?” said Schmidla. “Anyone could have...”

“Please wait until I’ve finished, Doctor,” said Lokransky.

“Of course,” said Schmidla with a curt nod. Arrogant ass, he thought, desperately wanting to shoot the Russian.

“The ex-CIA officer who aided in O’Malley’s escape endorsed his agency’s purchase and renovation of the Windermere Inn and Hotel—part of their Cold War domestic counterintelligence effort.”

“I’m sure that Phil Martin would have puzzled that out in about ten years, Colonel,” Whitsun said. He’d arranged for Rourke’s staff to fax a list of Jim’s projects to Lokransky.

“What a generous program,” said Schmidla. “I’m doing some renovations to the fort—pity the Cold War’s over.”

The roar of a helicopter engine filled the room, rattling the windows. One of Lokransky’s men came in, said something to his colonel in Russian and left. “We’re leaving now,” said Lokransky. “I anticipate returning with O’Malley by dawn. We also have one other stop to make, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for another Potential from your partial list, but we’ll take O’Malley first. Do you want O’Malley’s rescuers alive?”

“Yes,” said the Admiral. “Unless they’re so imprudent as to have the Eldridge roster with them.”

“Colonel,” said Schmidla. Lokransky looked at him expressionlessly.

“If O’Malley should be killed rather than captured...”

“He won’t be,” said the Russian.

“Come, Colonel, we’ve both seen combat. You know as well as I you can’t predict who’ll catch a bullet and who won’t.”

“So?”

“So if O’Malley’s killed, please bring me his head.”

“His head?” It was the first time Lokransky had ever shown surprise. Or a glimmer of humor. “Are you a collector, Doctor?”

“I am a scientist, Colonel. If I can’t study the live organism, I study the remains. These people—people like O’Malley—are different from us and that difference is their physiology. There’s no magic, there are only things that we do not yet understand.”

“As you wish.” Lokransky gave a stiff little nod and was gone.

“He’s got a whole squad in that helicopter,” said Whitsun, watching through the window. “All armed to the teeth. I hope he doesn’t start World War Three.” He turned to Schmidla. “You should commend me, Richard. I think we’ve got ourselves a winner there.”

“A word of advice, Terry?” said Schmidla as the Sikorsky lifted off. “I speak from some experience. Never trust a Russian.”

They watched at the window as the Sikorsky rose. It circled over Hull House then turned north and was gone.

Lokransky and his unit had arrived at dawn. In fifteen minutes they’d occupied the island and secured the bridge to the mainland. Visitors weren’t allowed on the island, but some had in the past had come over in boats or across the unguarded bridge. No longer. The Russians were brisk, competent and efficient, clearly a highly-trained unit.

Over Johnny Kim’s protests Schmidla had stopped the construction work begun only that day. What few private patients remained had been transferred to a mainland facility, a move paid for by Schmidla.

She was almost out of fish yet the greedy pups kept on barking. “You guys are pigs!” shouted Maria, throwing the last of the mackerel down to the seals.

Gone since the mid-nineteenth century, the gray harbor seals had returned to the Inner Harbor as the waters had grown cleaner. Cleaner waters brought back the fish, the fish brought back the seals and the pelicans. Hawks and the occasional osprey now nested on the islands.

Watching two young males contend for the last of her offering, she didn’t notice Johnny Kim until he was almost next to her. “So, you catch the fish, huh?” he asked.

“Right,” she said, carefully gauging the distance as she pitched the last of the mackerel, trying to place it near one of the less aggressive seals. A sudden sharp gust blew it mid-point between her target and a larger seal. The bigger animal dived, shouldering aside the smaller one and swimming triumphantly back to its perch, prize dangling from its mouth. “I keep a freezer full of mackerel for these ungrateful swine,” she said, turning to him. “We have them delivered every few weeks. So how’s your work going?” She wiped her hands on the towel tied to the handle of the plastic cooler. “Aren’t you supposed to be starting this week?”

“We were going to start today, do some demolition,” said Johnny. “But your uncle, he called it off.”

“Why?” asked Maria, surprised.

“He didn’t say. Just said he’d ‘pay for any inconvenience, as per our contract.’ And he told me to stay off the island until he called me. Fine,” he shrugged. “We haven’t got another job for two weeks, so my guys get time off with pay from your uncle.” He looked out to sea for a moment, then back at her. “So, what’s going on?”

“Going on? Oh, you must mean the security force.”

“Is that what they are?” He jerked his head toward the bluff, off to their left, where a solitary black figure stood, silhouetted against the morning sun, a machine pistol slung over his shoulder. “We were here this morning early. This big chopper lands, a buncha those guys jump out, carrying machineguns. Five minutes later, they’ve occupied the island and your uncle’s telling us to leave. I say I’ve got just a bit more work to do, so I can be ready to start again when he says. He says, okay, you can stay ‘til noon.”

“You just stayed to ask me about it, didn’t you?” she said, bending to snap the lid back onto the cooler.

“Well, yeah,” he confessed, grinning sheepishly.

The guard on the bluffs had turned and was watching them.

“Walk with me to the house,” she said, glancing at the sentry. “You can carry the fish.”

“Thanks,” said Johnny, lifting the cooler.

“There’s an important official here from Washington for a few days,” she said as they walked. “He may be discussing some sort of classified work to be done in those new facilities you’re building for my uncle. I assumed that the merry men in black are his security escort.”

“Really?” said Johnny. “Have you heard those guys talking?”

“No. Why?”

“They speak Russian.”

“How do you know it’s Russian?” she asked.

“Dumb blue-collar guy like me, you mean?” he smiled.

“I didn’t mean...”

“I’ve done a lot of work over in Brighton—it’s about one-third Russian. I don’t speak it, but I know it when I hear it.”

“Oh,” said Maria, looking toward the commando slowly pacing in front of Hull House. “So, they’re probably not from Washington.”

“Someplace colder, be my guess.”

“Tooky’s okay,” said Angie, joining Jim and O’Malley at their table. “He’s at home, watching football.”

“Definitely not on the critical list,” said O’Malley.

“You called his house?” said Jim, looking up from his clam chowder.

The fall foliage had peaked weeks ago yet the Windermere’s dining room was full, testimony to the old inn’s popularity. Their table, draped in white linen and set with silver and English china, sat beside a set of French doors leading out onto the veranda, closed now against the chill autumn air. Down across the sloping meadows, Dorset village was visible in picturesque miniature, a handful of clapboard houses and a white-steepled church around a town common. Beyond Dorset the sun was setting behind the Presidential Range and gargantuan, eternally snow-capped Mount Washington.

“Of course I called Tooky’s house,” said Angie. “I move stuff. I’m not telepathic.”

“Nor the weathergirl,” said Jim. “Did you use your cellphone?”

“No,” she said, puzzled. “I used the lobby phone. Why?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Even if Phil Martin’s still around, he’ll have to regroup. And I don’t think Martin’s got the smarts to monitor incoming calls to Tooky’s and compare them against likely points of origin. He wasn’t what you’d call one of France’s top men in the field.”

“Points of origin?” said O’Malley. Seemingly recovered from the morning’s kidnapping attempt, he was munching his crisp Waldorf salad.

“Places associated with me in the past,” said Jim. “There are a lot of them, and it would be a long shot. And require Agency cooperation. Not to worry—we should have a few days before they’re reorganized.”

“Who’s next?” asked Angie.

“Dede Tinker,” he said. “She lives in Portsmouth, on the New Hampshire coast. It’s about ninety minutes south of here. Problem is Whitsun has her name.”

That startled them. “How?” asked Angie.

“GDR recovered a partial list of names when I ran the query from George’s list. Tinker’s grandfather was one of them. We’ll get to her tonight. She’s expecting us—Tooky’s called her.”

“How do you know this?” asked Angie.

“Friends in low places,” said Jim vaguely.

“You have a source,” said Angie.

Jim carefully buttered his cornbread.

“I see,” she said.

“How come everyone you’ve found so far is from New England?” asked Tim. “Synchronicity?”

“I think it’s just ‘shit happens,’” said Jim.

“I don’t suppose this trip to Portsmouth could wait until, say, oh-five-hundred?” asked Angie. “I’m beat.”

“I’ll drive,” said Jim.

“You know, Jimbo, for a guy with so much going on in his life, you look remarkably fresh,” she said resentfully. There were dark circles under her eyes. Jim wondered how much of herself she’d used up dispatching Paul’s killer.

“What about me?” asked an alarmed O’Malley as his chicken cordon bleu arrived. “What if they find out we’re here?”

“I’ll ask Henry to switch your room,” said Jim, tucking into his prime rib, “but leave you registered to your original room number. If any visitors arrive with malice intent while we’re gone they won’t be able to find you. There’re over two hundred rooms, suites and cottages.”

“Excuse me, guys, but I don’t like being left alone here,” said O’Malley. “I’d rather go with you.”

“I’ll stay with you, Tim,” said Angie. “Unless you think you’ll need me?” she said to Jim.

“No. I’d feel better if you were both here. And once we’ve gotten Ms. Tinker we go on the offensive.”

“How?” asked Tim.

“Best you don’t know until we’re ready,” said Jim. “Just in case.”

“I see,” said O’Malley, looking out the window at nothing in particular. “Something very bad’s about to happen.”

“What?” asked Angie.

“When?” asked Jim.

Tim looked back at them, though his thoughts were still Somewhere Else. “Don’t know. Soon though. Very soon.”

Unseen by them, the hotel courtesy van pulled up to the Windermere. Sliding open the side door, the doorman signaled the bellhops to come take the gentlemen’s luggage, of which there was very little. Except for the older scar-faced man, they were in their twenties, very fit with close-cropped hair. More computer geeks, thought the doorman, slamming the vehicle’s door shut as the five new guests disappeared into the hotel.

Driving back across the bridge from Quincy where he’d gone to do his banking, Schmidla passed Johnny Kim’s big green Chevy Suburban, the two vehicles flashing by each other on the otherwise empty bridge. He caught only a brief glimpse of the two occupants: Johnny driving, Maria in the front seat next to him. He could have sworn she was laughing, but hoped he was wrong.

Schmidla watched the Suburban dwindle to a green speck in his rear view mirror then disappear onto the main roadway.

Chapter 19

“I hate this,” said Jim, letting go of Angie. They were in their room, Jim by the door with his leather jacket on.

“Ah, Jimbo,” she sighed, touching his cheek. “You know, all I ever really wanted was a cozy cliché—a yellow, blue-trimmed house with a white picket fence, a couple of smart bratty kids and a guy who loved me. And, of course, a lucrative, highly-portable skill set.”

“In case the guy didn’t love you anymore?”

“And what do I get? I get the fucking Eldridge! Here,” she said, clenching her fist to her chest. “Forever! It’s a disease. I used to think it’d be wonderful to have a baby. But now after this morning, skewering that man—I couldn’t pass that curse on to a child.”

“He was a very horrible man,” Jim said gently.

“Doesn’t matter. No one deserves to die like that.” She looked up at him, face pale and stricken. “What if I lost my temper and did that to you? To anyone? All I felt was fear, panic and anger when I saw him with his pistol at your head. Then the images of Paul’s death just popped into my head...”

“So why didn’t you just shoot him?”

“I didn’t have a clear shot. And before I could move, there was this sort of flash and the next thing I knew he was a gory mess spitted on the fence and you were puking in the garden, saying, ‘Did you do that?! Did you do that?!’ like I was a bad dog.”

“I’m sorry. I was shocked.”

“Jim, I’m scared of me. Aren’t you?”

“I’m not scared of you,” he said, pulling her to him. And he believed that, standing there in the hotel room holding her as she cried, her body shaking, the tears running down his thick leather jacket. “I love you.”

“And I love you,” she said, stepping back, drying her eyes with her sleeve cuff. “But you’re a masochist. There are a lot easier women to love.”

“Sure, but none so complex and interesting,” he grinned.

“Probably not,” she said, smiling weakly. “Wish they had a training school for Potentials.”

“Call Schmidla. He’ll be happy to arrange something.”

“Sure. Now get going. It’s getting dark. Best of luck with Ms. Tinker. And don’t worry—Tim and I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll call you from Portsmouth,” he said. “Leave the connecting door unlocked.” Henry had changed their rooms and given O’Malley an adjoining suite. “Despite his premonition, there’s no logical reason to worry.”

Baby? he thought later as he drove south of Dorset on the all but deserted four-lane highway.

It was only the second time he’d ever seen her cry.

Coming out of the bathroom wrapped in the soft Windermere robe, hair in a towel, Angie spotted the red message light blinking on the phone.

The lobby picked up on the second ring. “Desk,” said Henry. Has a large staff, but still man’s his own front desk, she thought. Smart guy. “Jim’s out, Henry. I can take the message.”

“Sure. “Message reads: ‘Can’t reach your cell. The Frog is dead. W. has hired Anton Lokransky. Lokransky enroute Washington to Boston via helicopter this afternoon. Lokransky given access to all your case files and personnel jacket. Garde vous. D’Artangan.’ How come I never get messages like this?” he added wistfully.

“Thanks, Henry,” she said. Hanging up, she called Jim and relayed the message adding, “Who’s Anton Lokransky?

“Jim, you there?” she asked after a long silence. Dead zone, she thought.

“Take O’Malley and get out of there, now!” he ordered, voice strained.

“Why?”

“Lokransky’s ex-Spesnatz—Russian Alpha Brigade commando. He and his team are available to the highest bidder, usually through the Russian mob. He’s the best. Remember all those bankers in Rome and New York, the ones who couldn’t testify about money laundering because of their tongues hanging out of their slit throats? Lokransky. Get a car from Henry and bail out. Don’t stop driving until you get to Portsmouth. Call me as soon as you’re on the road. Clear?”

“Perfectly. We’re outta here.” Hanging up, she went over to the doorway between the two suites and rapped sharply. She could hear Tim’s TV. “Tim! You decent?” she called, loudly knocking again.

There was no answer. Angie opened the door.

“I hope you didn’t ask me here just to eat greasy fish and chips, Johnny,” said Maria. They sat in a diner along Quincy Shore Drive. The diner afforded a grand view of Quincy Bay, Smalls Island and the bridge connecting the island and the Quincy shore. The food was fast and mediocre. At least the haddock’s fresh, thought Maria, wiping her fingers on her napkin.

“Food sucks, doesn’t it?” Johnny put down his coffee. “It’s time we talked.”

“Really?” she said coolly. “About what?”

“You know the work I’m doing on the island? Was doing?”

“You’re expanding and remodeling part of the old fort,” she said.

“Sure, that’s part of it. Your uncle’s adding a lab. What does a small residential psychiatric hospital need with a large laboratory?”

“How about you cut to the chase, Johnny?” she said, glancing at her watch, then outside. “I was raised on the Socratic method. If you don’t mind my saying so, you’re not very skilled at it.” She looked across the road at an elderly couple strolling beside the cracked old seawall.

“Spare me the preppie bitch act,” he said quietly. “You’re too genuine to carry it off.”

She turned back to him, her face flushing with anger.

“Your uncle’s building a small but highly sophisticated genetic research facility,” he said, before she could lash out. “Possibly with an invitro fertilization component. And he’s not your uncle.”

Astonishment and anger all crossed her face. “Who are you?” she asked, mastering her emotions. “You’re not talking funny anymore,” she added warily. His English was now perfect and perfectly bland.

She has her grandmother’s eyes, he thought. Why didn’t I notice before?

“Since you haven’t stormed out of here or told me I’m crazy, I think you’ve had your own suspicions about your non-Uncle.”

She just stared at him.

Johnny reached into the side pocket of his old Army surplus field jacket. Taking out a photograph, he slid it across to her. She didn’t touch it, looking at it as though it might bite her.

“That’s you at age two, at your birthday party with your parents.” It was an old color photo, the details sharp but the colors faded. A very pretty woman with delicate, exquisite features sat at a table beside a broad-shouldered, round-faced man. They couldn’t have been more than thirty. The woman had long luxuriant black hair and wore a jade pendant at her throat, a gold dragon in its center. Maria clutched the identical ornament that hung from her own neck

A little girl sat in a highchair between the couple. The child’s ears and possibly her nose owed something to the man, the rest of her features were entirely the woman’s, especially her eyes, alive with merriment. All three wore silver tasseled green-and-red paper party hats. Her parents were laughing at the girl, who’d smeared herself with great gobs of chocolate cake, scooped with greedy little hands from the remains of the birthday cake imprudently left within her reach. Her face and clothes were layered in chocolate confection. There was something naggingly familiar about the man, but it eluded her.

“I don’t know where you got this or who you are,” she said carefully, “But my parents were professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder. They were killed in an avalanche in Snowmass, Colorado when I was five years old. This,” she touched her pendant, “was my mother’s.”

“Don’t you think it odd that you’ve no relatives, other than your uncle?”

“My uncle never married. My father, Professor John Nelson, had no siblings. All my grandparents are dead. So no, it’s not odd.” She said it all flatly, without indignation, a lesson learned. Not surprising, he thought.

“Out of all that, two things are true,” said Johnny. “Schmidla never married and the locket is your mother’s. It was taken from her body after she died trying to protect you from your kidnappers. If Schmidla gave it to you, it wasn’t out of compassion but because it amused him.”

“What was her name?” asked Maria, looking at the photo. “This woman you say was my mother?”

“Emma. Emma Kowamoto. She was a well-known artist in Tokyo in the late 1960’s and early 70’s. Both her parents were physicists. Her father was Japanese—a brilliant, aloof man, though I’ve no doubt he loved your grandmother very much. She was German, at least as smart as he and very beautiful. Funny, too,” he added in a softer voice.

“And the man you claim is my father?”

“James Beauchamp. He was a CIA officer.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Yes.”

“And where was he when... this woman died?” She tapped the image of Emma captured in the photo.

“Away on an assignment.”

“And why would anyone want to kidnap me?”

“You know why.”

She looked away, staring at the ocean. It was raining now and almost dark.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said suddenly, rising. “You can buy me a drink.” She slipped the photo into her purse.

He put some money on the table and they left.

“So, what’s your real name?” she asked as they got into his Suburban.

“Musashi. Tennu Musashi.”

“And what are you really, Mr. Musashi?”

“Mostly I’m a teacher. Before that I was in the military.”

Jim remembered Portsmouth from his college days. It’d been a place you drove past on the way to someplace else, a once-prosperous Yankee seaport decayed into a hard-scrabble town of boarded up storefronts and rusting unused port facilities, its ship building and repair business gone south and west. Now he drove through the downtown feeling like Rip Van Winkle—Portsmouth was reborn. Many of the downtown shops were open despite the hour: restaurants, art galleries, bookstores, coffee shops, a theatre. The people strolling about looked at ease and most of the cars along the streets were new. “Well, I’ll be danged,” he said.

Spotting the sign he wanted, he turned the SAAB down Green Street, following it to the last house on the right. It was more a cottage than a house and judging from its stern, no-nonsense lines, either a seventeenth century Puritan cottage or a good imitation. It was painted blue and green, with morning glories and roses climbing the white trellis in front. Dee’s Pottery read the sign hanging from the gas lamp beside the gate.

Jim walked with loud crunching steps up the seashell path and tugged the brass doorpull.

He was savoring the sweet scent of roses and the low chirping of crickets when the overhead light flared on and the door swung open.

“Hi there. You’re Jim?” She’d come quietly to the door in bare freckled feet.

“You must be Dee.”

“Come in,” she said, opening the screen door for him. Dee Tinker’s voice was much too deep for her short, slender frame. He followed her down the hall, captivated not by the glazed earthenware he passed but by the fiery red hair cascading in a lustrous stream down her back to her waist.

“So,” she said as they sat in her small parlor with its rough pine floor and well-used furniture. “I told Mr. Azarian you could come over because he had all the right words—Eldridge, long-term effects, Lieutenant Commander Todd Tinker.”

“Your grandfather was the skipper?”

“Sort of,” she said.

He guessed that Dee was about Kaeko’s age, with a freckled face and pale blue eyes that seemed to look right through him.

“Eldridge didn’t have a real skipper during the experiment,” she said. “She was a precomm, with no official crew yet assigned. Gramps wasn’t read aboard and all that stuff. He was there because they needed someone to drive the ship and that’s what he was, a ship driver. By war’s end he was commanding a destroyer squadron in the North Atlantic. So, what’s so urgent?”

He started at the beginning. Having briefed O’Malley only that morning, Jim’s delivery was practiced, if not especially polished.

“I’m sorry,” she said after about five minutes. “You look absolutely beat. You want some coffee?”

“Lots, please.”

From then on Jim spoke mostly without interruption for over an hour. He kept waiting for his cellphone to ring, but it never did.

“And so here I am,” he said, setting down his third mug of strong black coffee.

“So, a bunch of Russians are going to come through my door at any second...”

“Burst,” he corrected. “Those guys burst.”

“Okay. Burst through my door at any second, to bear me off to an astoundingly long-lived Nazi doctor to use in some sort of secret government parapsychology experiment. I’m being favored with this attention because my grandfather was on the Eldridge. Is that the gist of it?”

“Yup,” he nodded. “So, what do you do?”

“Do? I do pottery.”

“No, I mean special abilities. Angie Milano moves things, Tim O’Malley is a precog, I guess you’d call it. All you Eldridge folks seem to have a least one distinct ability.”

Jim felt those sharp blue eyes appraising him. “Basically,” said Dee, “I read minds. Want some apple pie? Yes, you do. And yes, I have some vanilla ice cream I can put on it. No, not that low-fat crap that makes you fart. You can see why I’ve no significant other in my life. Be right back.”

“That wasn’t very nice of you,” he said when she returned with his apple pie a la mode.

“What, to make you do all that talking?” she said, putting the pie in front of him on the coffee table. “Didn’t want to scare you.”

“No. To read my mind.”

“I rarely do that,” she said, taking the chair across from him. “First of all, it’s not ethical. Secondly, to acquire details, not just surface noise, requires lots of energy and concentration. It just wipes me out. By letting you talk I was free to judge the truth of what you were saying and gauge your emotions.”

“Are you reading my mind now?” he asked, eating. The pie was delicious, the apples sweet and juicy, baked in cinnamon.

“No. And I won’t again without your permission.”

“They used to burn folks like you at the stake.”

“They still would.”

“We need to leave. Soon.”

“Better call her again,” said Dee. “I’ll pack a bag.”

“I thought you weren’t going to read my mind.”

“Anymore. I picked up the waves of concern when you first came in. Be back in a minute.”

Jim dialed the Windermere.

O’Malley came out of his bathroom just as Angie stepped through the connecting door, one of the hotel’s big white towels wrapped around him, drying his hair with another. His face lit with pleasure when he saw her. “Cute gun,” he said, nodding toward the Beretta in her hand.

“Like me, and also Italian,” she said, tucking the pistol into her belt. “We have to leave right now.”

His smile vanished. “We just got here!” he protested. “They’ve got a spa fit for Nero!”

“Remember your premonition, the one you had with dinner? Congratulations. Some of the world’s deadliest mercenaries are probably headed here—ex-Russian special forces.”

“You two do bring out everyone’s talents. What is this, Whitsun’s A Team?”

“Yes. He just permanently retired the last of his B Team.”

“I’m packing.”

“You’ve got three minutes,” she said.

Henry was in his office checking the next day’s reservations. Over half of his guests now reserved via the Internet. Though he’d originally been reticent about spending so much money for a very splashy, dynamic Web presence, he’d made it all back in additional bookings the first two months. Still, efficient as it was the place just wasn’t the same without old Mrs. Ives’ astringent Yankee charm. Formerly reservations central, she’d weathered three wars, two husbands, fourteen presidents and the Great Depression, but when confronted by the need to learn a computerized, Web-based reservation system, she’d retired the same week, first telling everyone what a damned-fool idea it was. Still, she dropped by every Sunday after church for her free retired employees’ dinner.

Henry looked up as the door opened. A trim man in his forties stood in the doorway, his face marred by an old scar running down his left cheek. “Mr. Watts?”

“Yes, sir?” said Henry.

“The young lady on the desk suggested that I speak with you,” said Anton Lokransky, shutting the door behind him. “I need to know to where you’ve moved Mr. O’Malley and Ms. Milano, please. They’re no longer in the rooms they were first given.”

European, thought Henry. Probably Russian. Then he got a good look at the man’s dead eyes. Ah, shit, Jimbo, he thought. What’ve you gotten me into? He pressed the silent alarm on the side of his desk well. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know Mr. O’Malley,” he said. “We have over two hundred guests tonight. If Jane at the desk couldn’t help you, I’m afraid I can’t either.”

Jane had been instructed to give out the old room numbers if anyone asked.

Lokransky shot home the dead bolt and set to work on Henry with his favorite tool, a long-bladed stiletto. It only took a few minutes to extract Tim and Angie’s room numbers.

The hotelier had held out after the first shock of the knife slicing across his cheeks. Hard-won experience had taught Lokransky that if they didn’t tell all after that first disfiguring cut, they’d hold out for a long time unless you immediately moved to the next stage.

Carefully placing the tip of the blade against Henry’s closed right eye, Lokransky pushed, just a little. Then a little more. “Room numbers, please,” he said, ignoring the guttural sounds issuing from deep within Henry as he thrashed against his bonds—sounds not fully muffled by the tape across his mouth.

Placing the knife point just in front of Henry’s remaining eye, he repeated, “Room numbers, please.” Henry carefully jerked his head up and down. His arm freed, he wrote them with shaking hand on a piece of paper.

“Thank you,” said Lokransky, memorizing the numbers. “Ah. You’ve soiled yourself,” he observed. “Let me help you.” Pulling Henry’s head up by the hair, he deftly cut his throat, taking care that none of spurting blood touched him.

Lokransky washed his hands in Henry’s lavatory then left, using Henry’s key to lock the door. He’d been in the office for six minutes.

“We’ll stop in the lobby and beg a car from Henry,” said Angie as she and O’Malley entered the elevator, bags in hand. The doors closed in front of them and the elevator began its slow descent.

They hadn’t been gone for more than a few seconds when the elevator chime sounded again and Lokransky and two of his men stepped into the corridor from the other elevator.

“Henry in?” asked Angie of the woman on the front desk.” “Jane” read her name plate. It was after eight, with only a few people in the lobby.

“Yes,” said the pert blonde, glancing toward the door marked Manager. Picking up the phone, she dialed Henry’s extension. “Funny,” she said after a moment. “He was in there. Wait here, please.” Walking over to the office door, she knocked several times. “Henry?” she called. Frowning, she took out her master key and opened the door. Things then happened very fast.

Jane screamed, loud and high. Lokransky and his men stepped out of the elevator. The two men he’d left in the lobby nodded as he gestured toward Angie and O’Malley, standing by the front desk. Angie started toward Jane, now screaming hysterically. Staff and guests came running.

Seeing the Russians converging on her, Angie shouted “Behind the desk Tim!” She sent two quick rounds from her Beretta toward Lokransky as O’Malley dived across the top of the registration desk.

Lokransky ducked behind an ornate walnut armoire as Angie’s bullets snapped past him, tearing into the wainscoting. Turning, she leaped over the registration desk as Lokransky drew his pistol. The Russian nearest the hotel entrance swung a machine pistol from under his coat, spraying the area above and behind the registration desk, the bullets smashing through the rows of old oak mailboxes.

Screaming was no longer confined to Jane, as those who’d rushed to help her fled. Jane, deciding it was better to be confined with a corpse than to become one, stepped back into Henry’s office and locked the door behind her.

“We want you alive!” called Lokransky. “But we will kill you if we can’t take you. Throw out your pistol. Now!” He waited a few seconds, then nodded to the man with the machine pistol. This time the bullets were lower, just above the top of the desk, an entire forty round magazine. A thin haze of gun smoke drifted toward the ceiling, the acrid stench of cordite permeating the lobby.

Angie poked her head around the bottom corner of the desk as the machine gunner reloaded, only to pull back in as four pistols fired, the rounds plowing into the wood behind her. She knew they easily could have hit her.

“Thought you could move things?” said O’Malley. Pale and sweating, he hunched with his back to the desk, forehead on his knees, hands over his head. “How about moving them out of here?”

Reloading, the gunman with the machine pistol started walking slowly toward the registration desk, firing short bursts. The rest of the Russians followed, a line of skirmishers with just the one man firing.

Enough, thought Angie.

Holding her pistol high and two-handed, she rose quickly from behind the desk, hoping that their leader—surely he must be Lokransky—would still be to her right.

The entire Town of Dorset police department—two men and a woman—came through the Windermere’s main door, Kevlar vests zipped, shotguns leveled. “Police!” shouted the guy wearing the sergeant’s stripes. He was fat and bald, an American flag patch on his shoulder. “Drop your weapons!”

A blur of motion, the Russians turned and fired. As Olympic contenders the Spesnatz would’ve each rated a 10, their flawless shooting sending the cops down with neat little holes in the center of their foreheads.

Turning back around, the machine gunner caught a brief glimpse of Angie as she sent three rounds into him, then nothing.

Angie switched her aim to Lokransky, pulling the trigger as the colonel turned back toward her. There was no shot, no recoil. Lokransky snapped a command, staying a return volley. Running, he reached Angie as she tried to work her pistol’s jammed action. “The Beretta is notorious for that,” he said, ripping the weapon from her and slapping her hard across the face.

Angie spat into his eyes.

Furious, the Russian pistol-whipped her to floor, unconscious and bleeding from the deep gash across her forehead. “Cunt,” he said, kicking her in stomach.

Wiping his face, he then carefully searched her, finding only the usual wallet contents and spare ammunition clips. “Too bad,” he said rising. “No list. We’ll have to take her with us.”

Only then did he looked down to where O’Malley lay, propped against the back of the registration desk, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, a bullet hole through his right temple.

“The other one’s dead,” he called.

“Are we taking her all the way?” asked Nikolev, his old sergeant. The short thickset Muscovite had been with him through all of Chechenitza. There they’d sometimes taken the Chechen women and girls up in a helicopter for interrogation, gang raping them when finished. The first few times, after everyone had had a few turns, they’d shoved their victims out the door, laughing as they spun toward the distant ground. But after that, observing that most of the women went stoically to their deaths, Lokransky made sure that they were returned safely to their villages, their appearance mute testimony to their defilement. His superiors, thinking it a neat piece of psychological warfare, hadn’t objected when the practice spread.

“Yes, she rides all the way with us, Nikolev,” said Lokransky. “No fun and games. Get her out of here,” he ordered. “We’ll take the hotel van.”

Planning on a quick and stealthy extraction, the Russians had left their helicopter eight miles away at the county airfield, a move Lokransky now regretted. He hadn’t anticipated a firefight.

“Who fired low and from the side?” demanded Lokransky, looking at O’Malley’s head with its side entry wound.

His men exchanged puzzled glances. “No one, Colonel,” said Nikolev. “Your orders were clear.”

“Then she killed him,” marveled Lokransky. He watched as two of his men picked up Angie, slung her between them and carried her out the door and into the night. “She killed Chekotov and then, when saw he’d be taken, she killed O’Malley.” He laughed, startling Nikolev. “What a woman, Sergeant! If there’s any fun and games, she’s mine.

“Let’s go. We’ve got one more stop to make. We don’t want our clients to be too disappointed in tonight’s catch.” They started toward the door. “Oh, wait,” said the colonel. “Sergeant, cut off O’Malley’s head.” He jerked his thumb back toward where the engineer’s body lay. “Wrap it up and bring it with us. Be quick about it. We can expect their State Police anytime now.”

“Yes, Colonel,” said Nikolev. The order didn’t faze him. He was an old hand at removing human appendages, though mostly from the living. Drawing a long thick-bladed knife from his boot, the Spesnatz walked back to the reception desk as Lokransky and the others moved briskly toward the entrance. The hotel van pulled up to the entrance, a Russian at the wheel.

“Wait!” called a new voice.

The Russians turned, pistols raised, then froze, joining Nikolev in staring at Tim O’Malley as he stood behind the reception desk, hands raised, not a mark on him. “Why not take all of me?” he said.

In the amazement and haste that followed, only Lokransky thought beyond the illusion, wondering if O’Malley spoke Russian. And if not, how had he known that Nikolev had been told to cut off his head?

“Oh, no,” said Jim, stopping the car.

“This isn’t good, is it?” said Dee.

Up ahead beyond the New Hampshire State Police cars blocking the road, they could see the Windermere, more police cars and ambulances clustered around its entrance, cops coming and going from the building or huddling outside. Flashing blue lights reflected off the hotel’s windows. As they watched, a police helicopter flew overhead, landing in the side parking lot, which held even more police cars with flashing blue lights.

Jim swung the car around, making a U-turn. “Whatever happened is all over,” he said. “If we go up there now and I tell them I’m a guest, we won’t get out of there for a week.” Driving with his left hand, he took out his cellphone, punching out a number with his thumb. “Anthos here,” he said when the voice mail message tone beeped. “You were right. Our foreign visitors were at the inn where I left Angie and O’Malley. The place is chaos. Call the New Hampshire State Police and find out what happened tonight at the Windermere Hotel in Dorset. Especially to two guests, Angie Milano and Tim O’Malley.” Giving his cellphone number, he added, “I owe you big time, guy. Bye.”

“Now what?” asked Dee.

“We’re for sure not going back to Portsmouth,” he said. “And unless you’re driving, I’d like to pull up for the night at the first decent motel we see.” As he drove, he tried to convince himself he’d see Angie again.

Chapter 20

On Smalls Island, Dr. Richard Schmidla and Admiral, USN (ret.) Terrence Whitsun, sat in the dimly-lit parlor of Hull House, alone with each other and their insecurities.

“Let’s pray this went off without a hitch,” said Whitsun. It’d been almost an hour since Lokransky had called to say he was pulling up to the Windermere and would report back shortly. Whitsun glanced at the phone, then back at Schmidla, stoking the dying fire with a poker. “The worst part of war is the waiting.”

“No,” said Schmidla, racking the poker and resuming his seat in front of the hearth. “The worst part of war is the dying.” He glanced at the old Westminster clock on the mantelpiece. “Is it possible, Terry, that we’re being bested by this Children’s Crusade, led by some ex-CIA agent? What’s his name, Munroe?

“Of course not,” said Whitsun. “We have Lokransky and the cooperation of the CIA.”

“So? Munroe has the full list. Recall what all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t do for a certain shattered egg.”

“His real name’s not Munroe—perhaps I didn’t tell you. It’s Beauchamp.”

“Beauchamp? Not James Beauchamp, surely?” he said, rising, suddenly agitated.

“Yes,” said Whitsun, frowning. “What’s wrong?” he asked as Schmidla walked to the window and stood staring out into the darkness.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, turning back to Whitsun. “Or had you forgotten, Terry?”

“Forgotten what?” asked Whitsun, puzzled.

“The name of Maria’s birth family!”

“Was it Beauchamp?” said the Admiral. “So?” he shrugged. “What of it? And why should I remember? Or you? Maria was acquired through intermediaries—neither you nor I were directly involved. And so long ago. Your fire keeps dying,” he said, busying himself with the tongs and poker. “Why are you worried about Beauchamp, Richard? So what if Maria’s father knows you have her? It was years ago. Certainly you long since made her your own. Beauchamp poses no threat. I’ve seen his file. He’s a has-been. The Agency all but cashiered him.”

“Terry,” said Schmidla carefully, coming to stand next to the American as he added another chunk of pine to the flames. “Terry, I’ve seen parents sacrifice everything trying to save their children. I saw it in Russia, I saw it in the camps. Their children threatened, the mildest of people become fearless, cunning, wanton—whatever desperation moves them to. It’s a biological imperative, the preservation of one’s genes. Beauchamp’s after us not for the sake of the Eldridge descendants, not to revenge his dead friends but to reclaim and protect his child—the child of he and his dead wife. A wife murdered to further the interests of our project.”

“He’s a has-been,” repeated Whitsun, slipping the fireplace tools back in their holder.

“He’s coming here Terry,” said Schmidla intently as Whitsun turned to face him. “We’ve imbued him with purpose and dedication. He’ll kill us and take Maria if he can. We’re very great fools if we’re unprepared.”

“Maria’s mind belongs to you,” said Whitsun. “And we’re prepared,” he added dismissively. “We have Lokransky.”

“Lokransky,” snorted Schmidla. “You chant his name like a mantra. Terry, the woods are coming to Castle Dunsinane.”

“You’re a very strange man, Richard,” said Whitsun, listening for the sound of a helicopter.

And you my dear Admiral, thought Schmidla, are a very great fool, standing at the center of a vortex you’ve helped unleash but will never comprehend.

James Beauchamp, he thought, pouring himself a cognac. Yet someone other than Beauchamp or George Campbell is behind this. Someone or something very clever. And patient—very, very patient.

He sipped his cognac and waited, staring into the reborn fire.

The big Irish pub in Quincy center was crowded for a Wednesday evening, its long bar packed with a mix of workers from the Fore River Shipyard and the local office parks. Twenty-ish software geeks jostled with welders twice their age for the attention of the two overworked bartenders. Harried waiters wound their way through the crowd carrying shepherd’s pie, rabbit and broiled scrod to the tables. The noise level was awesome. The stereo might have been playing something from Riverdance—Maria could only make out an occasional snatch of a Celtic tune.

“You come here often?” she said to Musashi.

“Only when I don’t want to be overheard,” he grinned. They were leaning close over the table, the only way to carry on a conversation. “Friday nights you can’t even get in here.”

Their drinks arrived. His a thick imperial pint of Guinness Stout, hers a Beefeater-and-tonic.

“You’re the only Oriental in the place,” she said, looking around.

“Asian,” he said. “Oriental’s passé and tends to offend. Brings to mind coolie labor, Hey Boy! Hop Sing, no-tickee-no-shirtee and of course all those concentration camps in Utah for the sneaky Japs. And you’re wrong. There are two people of Asian descent here—you and me.”

“If I believe you,” she said, her face reddening nonetheless.

Taking a brown envelope from his jacket he passed it to Maria. “Here’re the rest of those. I’m sorry that I don’t have more, but your father probably does.”

She gave a curt nod and stuffed them into her purse. “What does Uncle Richard have to do with this?”

Musashi thought it interesting that she said “Uncle Richard” and not “my uncle.” “Schmidla’s your kidnapper and the architect of the murder of your mother. She was in his way. There are thousands of people dead who were in his way or with whom he was through. His real name is von Kemnitz—Martin von Kemnitz. He’s a physician and former SS officer, a colleague and contemporary of Mengele. He would have been tried for war crimes but was presumed dead. Whitsun arranged his escape from Occupied Germany.”

What had he been expecting? Shock, incredulity, derision? The last, he supposed. Or perhaps just a hearty laugh as she shook her head?

“He’s not old enough,” she said. “He was born in 1932.”

“He was born in 1891,” said Musashi. “He was in both world wars.”

“If so, he’s remarkably well-preserved.”

“He was involved in an experiment aboard a German Naval vessel, the von Blücher. It didn’t affect him the way it did most others, many of whom died horribly or went mad. Schmidla merely ages much slower and grows slowly shorter.”

“He grows shorter?” she said. Now she was incredulous.

“About an inch every ten years.” He laughed, then had a sip of Guinness. “It adds up if you’re almost immortal. Or rather, subtracts down, though too slowly for it to help the rest of us. By the time he’s two hundred years old he’ll be about four feet tall. Perhaps he can play a Munchkin.”

“Why was I kidnapped?”

“Because both your maternal grandparents were on a Japanese destroyer, the Kikuzuki, that was used in the same type of experiment as the Blücher and an American ship, the Eldridge.” He went on to tell her about the ship invisibility project and its offshoot, Project Telemachus. It took him some time and required another pint of stout. “Schmidla’s been using you for years,” he concluded.

“No he hasn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Except for the lack of parents, I had a normal childhood. And I’ve spent a lot of time away at school.” Her gin and tonic sat in front of her, untouched, ice melted.

“Do you remember your parents at all?”

“I was five when they died.”

“Begs the question, Professor.”

“Just fragments,” she said. “I remember a woman painting in a room bright with color. I remember woods, a field—a park maybe, and a man carrying me on his shoulders and singing to me—always the same song. He was funny. I guess those were my parents.” She tossed her head back, throwing her hair over her shoulder, the light catching her eyes just so. Her grandmother’s eyes. “Fragments,” she repeated.

“You were five when Schmidla stole you,” said Musashi. “You were raised in comparative isolation on his island. And as for schools, you attended day schools. You spent thirteen years at the John Adams Academy. Very prestigious and only four miles from the island. As for Harvard—you commuted, didn’t you?”

“I lived in the dorms!” she protested, amazed at how much this comparative stranger knew about her cloistered life.

“You kept a room in the dorms. But you were home almost every night.”

Her only response was to poke her lime twist to the bottom of her glass with short, deliberate stabs of the stirrer.

“Schmidla’s conditioned you through posthypnotic suggestion since you were a little girl. He may have used drugs to help that along. He can put you under like that.” He snapped his fingers. “You’ve been the core of his experiments. If he succeeds in acquiring a few more of the third-generation, like you, descendants with very pronounced special talents, then...”

“Then what?” she said, looking up. Musashi felt as though he was being watched by a small wary animal from just inside its burrow.

“Then he becomes a grave threat to a lot of people in many different places,” he said. Still, no protest, not a word in defense of Uncle Richard, nothing about not having special talents.

“You’re not telling me anything.”

“That’s all I can tell you, at least for now,” he said, spreading his hands.

Maria appeared to reach a decision. “Okay, so, yes, I have some special abilities. But I keep them in check.”

“Totally?”

She looked uneasy. “As best I can. Sometimes things just spring into my mind. Like the other day, that creep Erik, Whitsun’s grandson, was entertaining prurient thoughts about me. Those came right into my head.”

“Do you usually pick up lustful thoughts?”

“Only when they’re bubbling with testosterone,” she smiled. Faint, but a smile.

“Got a boyfriend?”

“No. Too busy,” she shrugged.

Or too conditioned, thought Musashi. Probably never had a boyfriend. Too bad.

“And sometimes,” Maria continued, looking down at her drink again, “I wake up with scattered memories of having been someplace else—sometime else, maybe.” She met his gaze. “All that really lingers is a sense of light and music entwining, permeating everything. So, who are you?”

“Told you that,” he said, finishing his drink.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m here to prevent Schmidla from doing any more damage. Huge damage. I work within severe limitations, meaning I have to work mostly through others.”

“Look,” she said. “I don’t disbelieve you—understand? But this is all just a little overwhelming. Maybe Uncle Richard isn’t my uncle. Maybe he is what you say he is. Maybe he has been using me.” She leaned forward intently. “The only reason I’m lending your story any credence is because I know I’m different. But I need proof. And not just a few photos and tales of ghost ships.”

“How much proof can you handle?”

“How much proof do you have?”

“Do you know about the special ward, inside Ft. Strong?”

“The drug rehab ward? Sure. There are always a few patients there, usually just for evaluation. At least there were before today. After evaluation, the right rehab facility is selected for them and they’re sent on.”

“There’s still a patient there and he’s not a drug addict. Other than you, he’s the last living victim of Schmidla’s experiments.” Other than you, he thought. “He’s kept as a sort of freak show to impress visitors from Washington.” Musashi passed her a slip of paper. “That’s the access code to the entrance door to the ward.”

She gave it a quick glance then put it in her pocket.

“Check it out,” said Musashi. “Tonight would be good. Lokransky and his men are away. And when you see this person, remember that he’s kept alive only because he’s useful. Like so many of the rest, his ashes will eventually be consigned to the ocean. Never forget that anyone Schmidla can no longer use he disposes of. Anyone.”

“Drive me back, please. I’ve had enough for one night.”

Jim’s cellphone chirped. “Yo,” he said, awake. He hadn’t been deeply asleep, just tossing, half-dreaming of Angie: Angie laughing, Angie talking particle theory and dead sailors; Angie being a bitch; Angie curled up against him, naked, flesh damp from lovemaking; Angie dead, eyes wide and staring at nothing, a hole through her head, lying in a pool of her blood.

It was D’Artangan. “What’d they say?” Jim asked. .

“Lokransky tried to slip them out of the hotel,” Jim told Dee a half-hour later as he sat watching her eat breakfast at McDonalds. “According to witnesses, he spotted Angie and O’Malley as they were leaving the lobby of the inn. There was a firefight. The whole Town of Dorset police department was wiped out, along with my friend Henry, who owned the place, and one of Lokransky’s men. Angie and O’Malley were captured, taken away in a stolen hotel van, later found abandoned at the county airport. Lokransky took them aboard a helicopter that headed north.”

“North?” said Dee. She was wearing blue jeans and a matching cotton denim shirt, her hair tied back with a wide green ribbon. She had the half-drugged look of someone who hadn’t slept well.

Jim shrugged, sipped more of his coffee. “Transparent ruse. He’s in Boston by now.”

“You should eat something.”

“Not hungry, thanks. Look, Dee,” he continued, “you know you can’t go back to Portsmouth—they’ll be waiting for you. There’s a city in Mexico, on the Yucatan—Meirda. I spoke with a friend of mine there this morning, someone from the old days. He runs a travel agency. He can put you up in one of his properties until this is over. I’ll see that you get money to tide you over.”

Leaving Washington, Jim and Angie had cleaned out there bank accounts, stuffing it all into a money belt Angie had made Jim buy. “No one wears these anymore,” he’d groused, hating the itchy miserable nylon thing around his waist. “Think of yourself as a cash heavy entity, Jimbo,” she’d said.

Dee took a big bite out of her hash browns. “No thank you,” she said. “That Russian will figure it out, eventually. Or don’t you think so?”

“Lokransky? Can’t say that he won’t.

“And then I’d be on the run in Mexico, and me with not a word of Spanish. And that’s if I’m lucky.”

“Ok, so, what do you want do?”

“The question is, what are you going to do?” she said, wiping the grease from her fingers with a thin paper napkin. “I’m going with you.”

“I’m going to Boston,” he said, “to visit an island.”

Maria sat at the desk in her room, looking at the framed photo of herself, Baby Maria, with her late parents, John and Greta Nelson. It was four a.m. and she hadn’t been to bed. It was a nice shot, the three of them standing in front of their house, her mother holding her. It must have been a cold day. Her dad was wearing an overcoat and gloves, her mother a ski parka. Maria was bundled up in a powder-blue snow suit, the white fur-trimmed hood pulled back to expose her chubby, smiling face.

Opening the envelope Musashi had given her, she looked again at the photo that had so captured her attention. It was another Baby Maria shot, same snow suit, same expression, different parents, this time the young couple from the photo Musashi had first shown her. The trio stood smiling before a broad stretch of water filled with regal white swans, a tall stone wall sloping up and out of sight on the opposite bank, a light dusting of snow all around. She’d already read the back: Kaeko, 18 months, Imperial Palace.

“One of you is lying,” she said, looking between the two photos.

Feeling faintly melodramatic, she slipped out of the house just before dawn, stopping in the kitchen to take one of the well-honed fish filleting knives from a drawer, carefully easing it down between her hiking boot and thick woolen sock until the haft touched the boot top. If what Musashi said was true, she was important and no one was going to intentionally harm her. That didn’t mean she wanted to be caught. And it didn’t mean she wouldn’t use the knife. The worn bone handle gave her a feeling of security, pressing against her skin as she walked.

It was a clear, cold night. The crisp wind off the water cut through Maria’s leather jacket, chilling her as she moved away from the house. Hurrying across the meadow toward the hospital, she was grateful for the luminous full moon bathing the island, easing her way.

The moon that brightened the night also threw deep shadows among the boulders from which she fed the seals. There was no reason for her to look there. Even had she looked, she probably wouldn’t have seen the dark figure that lay hidden among the rocks, eyes following her.

Using her security card to open the hospital’s main door, Maria moved quickly along the deserted corridors then into the elevator and down into Ft. Strong. Gray and implacable, the vault door stood before her. To the left the status light over the entry touchpad was a solid red.

Following Musashi’s instructions, she entered the access code, holding her breath until the light winked green and the door slid silently open. Only as she passed through did she realize how thick the door was: a foot at least and solid steel. As she turned left, following the ancient To The Batteries sign, she heard the clank of the door bolts sliding home behind her. Mastering her fears, she pressed on down the empty corridor.

“Don’t suppose you want to go with me?” she asked Musashi as he’d driven her home from the pub. She immediately regretted it. She hadn’t meant to say it, it just came out.

“Some things we have to do alone,” he said. “We’re born alone, we die alone. In a way, this is the beginning of your rebirth—if you want it to be. It’s something you need to do by yourself.”

“Any other platitudes for me?” she’d asked, hiding her hurt.

“‘And the truth shall set you free.’”

Okay, truth, she thought pushing through a set of double swinging doors into the last century, here I come.

Darkness enveloped her as the doors swung shut behind her. She clicked on the big flashlight she’d brought from the house.

Maria swept the powerful beam in front and around her. Cold, damp and bleak, smelling of rotted wood and mold, the cavernous gallery held no surprises—it was the same place she’d played as girl. Eight wide gun embrasures breached the thick gray wall to her left, the openings in the blocks of dressed granite neatly angling out to give best vantage to the long gone rifled Dahlgren cannon. The huge retaining rings remained, designed to limit the big guns recoil: thick, corroded loops of iron, pounded far into the floor.

A barrel arch, high and deep, supported the great domed roof. Stretching the thirty feet to the ceiling, much of its brick badly chipped and in need of repointing, the arch lay in the center of the gallery, an opening the width of five men.

Further along, against the far wall, beyond the last gun position, Maria’s light picked out the remains of a small fireplace, its mantel long gone. A sudden sharp gust came whistling down the chimney, startling her. From outside she could hear the surf breaking against the rocks below the fort.

Moving quickly toward the far door, she remembered the thrill of playing hide-and-seek here with the occasional childhood visitor, both of them looking for (or looking out for) ghosts, the light streaming through the gun embrasures on a sunny day, shrieks of surprise and laughter echoing through the fort. Now the room’s magic was gone—it was just another of the earth’s dank and forgotten places. Any surprises Ft. Strong held for her lay beyond the doorway.

I have another platitude for you, Mr. Musashi, she thought, passing into the next room: You can never go home again.

What had been the enlisted quarters, remembered as a long, open bay with windows facing in toward the fort’s parade ground, was gone, replaced by an antiseptically white corridor, lit by recessed fluorescents set amid a suspended ceiling of white acoustical tile. The corridor ended at a restored brick wall—the fort’s north wall, Maria recalled.

The corridor had six metal doors, each with a small rectangle of thick, clear glass set at eye level, a large brass lock above the doorknob. A small sliding panel lay just below the window. Painted an institutional green, the doors bore no markings, but she knew at which one to stop. Not hesitating, knowing she’d never try again if she didn’t do it now, Maria peered into the room.

He sat on a wooden chair beside the bed, reading a book by the light of a table lamp, a long-haired young man in his mid-twenties, dressed in a cotton sweater and bell-bottom jeans, decades out of style.

She must have made some sound—he looked up. He had a bright, intelligent face, narrow and sharp-featured, with a very prominent nose and dark hair. He also had the saddest eyes she’d ever seen. “A woman,” he said, amazed. Rising he moved to the door. “They never send a woman.”

Barely able to hear him through the thick door, Maria pushed open the slide. She’d been expecting... what? A monster? No, a monstrosity, some horrible perversion of nature. Instead, she’d found a guy who looked like a 70’s grad student. Yet there was something off about him, something that escaped her but left her uneasy.

“Want to come in?” he asked. “Just another quiet evening at home.”

“Who are you?” she asked

“I’m...” His face clouded with confusion. “I’m some kind of idiot who can’t remember his own name.” He tried to laugh, but instead his face twisted and he turned away with a strangled sob. Shuffling to the bed, he threw himself down, burying his face in the pillow.

Maria hated the door and the lock that kept her from reaching him.

Suddenly he turned over and sat bolt upright. “Jack!” he shouted triumphantly. “I’m Jumpin’ Jack Goldman! Come in, pretty face,” he cried, “come in and jump with Jumpin’ Jack! It’s jumping time!” His eyes were wild, insane and his face glowed, a glow that grew brighter as Maria watched in horrified fascination.

“No!” he shrieked, his features contorting in terror. “Not again! Stop! Let me end!” He drew himself into a fetal ball as the glow continued, spreading down his body, encasing him in a blinding white radiance that forced Maria to jerk her head away, shielding her eyes. Light pulsed through the small room and then faded.

She opened her eyes. Jumpin’ Jack was gone.

“He comes and he goes,” said a voice behind her.

She whirled, heart pounding, reaching for the knife. “You!” she said to Musashi. “Don’t ever do that again!”

“Sorry.”

“Who was that poor demented man and where did he go?

“That, as he told you, was Jack Goldman—Jumpin’ Jack,” said Musashi. “A second generation descendent of an ensign from the second Eldridge experiment. Jack’s one of Schmidla’s more spectacular failures. As you saw, he did boost Jack’s Potential so that he could jump Elsewhere—a little chemical accelerant from The Good Doctor’s stock—but he couldn’t get him to stop. Jack’s gone zero, looping until the end of time. A hellish immortality. He shows up each night about seven, looks confused and then picks up that book he just dropped and starts reading it. Always at the beginning.”

Maria peered through the window, trying to discern the title.

“It’s by Jean Paul Sartré,” said Musashi.

“Not Being and Nothingness,” said Maria, recalling an empty space in Schmidla’s bookcase. It was surreal, it was horrible. She was scared and wanted to wake up.

Musashi nodded. “A cruel prop provided by The Good Doctor. Says a lot about Schmidla, doesn’t it? Jack’s kept alive to show to visitors, a vivid demonstration of a potentiality not yet realized.”

“What happened to the ‘born alone, die alone’ stuff?”

“It’s still true, Kaeko. It’s just that after we’re born or after we die, someone tidies up. That’s me.”

“My name’s Maria,” she said.

“If it pleases you to think so.”

“Who or what are you?” she asked as they walked back through the fort and into deserted hospital.

“Just a guy,” said Musashi. “So, how’s my credibility?”

“Better. At least as far as the project and Uncle Richard’s involvement.”

“If that, why not the rest?”

She shrugged. “Denial. I want to meet this Beauchamp,” she said after a moment.

“Your father.”

“Whatever. I want to meet him. Can you arrange it?”

“I’ll see what I can do. He’s in the area.”

“My car’s over by the bridge,” he said as they stepped out of the hospital. “I’ll walk you back to the house.”

It was then that they heard the helicopter.

“Lokransky,” said Musashi. “Inside!”

Ducking back into the lobby, they stood watching through the doors.

The big Sikorsky appeared seconds later, coming in low over the fort, ablaze with light. Swooping past, nose down, it circled and leveled off, landing near the house, engines roaring. Lokransky was out before it had quite touched down, dragging a woman after him. Handcuffed, face battered, she walked in front of him, her head held high. Two more Russians followed, a man between them, his hands also bound behind him. Schmidla and Whitsun came out to meet them.

Captives and captors disappeared into the house.

“Maria,” said Musashi urgently, taking her by the shoulders, “you must leave now. We’ll go together.”

“No,” she said, shrugging off his hands.

“You must! Things are going to quickly worsen.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I find out who I am and if my uncle is the monster you say he is.”

Musashi looked at her determined face, then back at the house. “They’ll be looking for you. Perhaps it had to come to this,” he said more to himself than to her. “Listen,” he continued urgently, “whatever happens, wherever you go, no matter who you are, try to remember that you’re a good and kindly person, daughter of gentle and loving parents. I’ll be back for you,” he said as he moved into the lobby. In a second he’d disappeared down the main corridor.

Maria stepped outside and waited for them to find her.

“I gather she didn’t give you the Eldridge roster?” said Whitsun, taking in Angie’s bruised and cut face as Lokransky brought her and O’Malley into the front parlor, hands secured behind them.

“She didn’t have it,” said Lokransky. “She managed to kill one of my men, though.”

“Quite the little spitfire, aren’t you?” said Schmidla.

“You must be the infamous Doctor Schmidla,” said Angie, ignoring Whitsun.

Smiling, Schmidla sketched a bow.

“Still shrinking?” she asked.

Schmidla stopped smiling.

“Was Seaman Bissette your grandfather?” Whitsun asked O’Malley.

“He was,” said O’Malley. There was an air of quiet resignation to him. He regarded Whitsun as though the Admiral were an uninteresting bit of flotsam.

“He was in my division, back on the Missouri, before he transferred to subs. Good man.”

“My grandfather said that you were a pompous and self-aggrandizing martinet, Admiral, and that whoever put you in charge of other human beings should have forced to serve under you,” said O’Malley. “Forever.” It wasn’t true, but it worked.

Whitsun’s icy WASP reserve disappeared as the color rose to his cheeks. Lokransky stepped forward and punched O’Malley hard in the stomach. The engineer doubled over with a grunt of pain.

Angie pulled away from her surprised guard, closed the distance to Lokransky and kicked him at the back of the knee. Cursing, the Russian staggered, going to the floor.

“Stop!” ordered Whitsun as Angie’s guard raised the stock of his machine pistol. “Get them out of here. Put them in the hospital ward, next to Mr. Goldman’s room. See that they’re kept apart.”

“She killed one of my men,” said Lokransky as the door closed behind. “You will pay his family, as we agreed.”

“Of course, Colonel,” said Whitsun.

“Are all your women officers like that, Terry?” asked Schmidla with a slight smile.

“I never allowed women officers in any of my commands. And I retired before they could force any on me.” Going to the side table, he poured himself a scotch, neat. “Warfare is for men.”

“Had you been in Russia with us Terry, you’d have learned that the Russians certainly don’t believe that nonsense.” He turned to Lokransky, standing by the door. “Or am I wrong, Colonel?”

“All of her children serve the Motherland,” said Lokransky, exchanging icy glares with the Schmidla.

“You see, Terry?” said Schmidla, walking over to join Whitsun for a drink. “How could anyone defeat that? It’s like fighting the earth itself. We must have been mad.”

Lokransky glared at Schmidla, silent and tight-lipped

“You planned and executed a brilliant operation tonight, Colonel,” said Whitsun, trying to ease the tension. “My compliments, sir. Will you join us for a drink?”

Lokransky bowed stiffly. “Thank you, Admiral. I would be pleased to drink with you, sir, but not,” he jerked his head toward Schmidla, “with that. With your permission, I’ll see to the prisoners and check the guard posts.”

“Perhaps the Colonel would be so kind as to find my niece?” asked Schmidla. “She’ll be needed shortly. She’s not in her room.”

Lokransky looked at Whitsun. The Admiral nodded. Turning on his heel, Lokransky left.

Watching the Russian through the window, Schmidla raised his cognac glass. “To the New Europe. God help it. And so now we’ve got two useful Potentials and we need three.”

“Actually, Richard, you may have three,” said Whitsun with a smug smile.

“Oh, really?” said Schmidla. “How’s that?”

“Rourke forwarded a summary of the fight in Jamaica Plain, at O’Malley’s house.”

“Phil Martin’s Waterloo.”

“Yes. One of Martin’s men was killed, rather gruesomely, in a way that could only have been done by someone who’s a very powerful Potential.”

“A Potential?” asked Schmidla. He set down his glass, cognac forgotten.

“Had to have been. And it couldn’t have been O’Malley, as he’d already been spirited away. From the reports of the witnesses—neighbors, peering out their windows—it had to have been Milano, saving Beauchamp, whose brains were about to be blown out.”

“How do we know it wasn’t Beauchamp?”

“Neither of his parents was in any of the ship invisibility experiments. It could only have been Milano.”

“How extraordinary, if true,” said Schmidla. “Well, there is one way to find out.”

“Use her as the third Potential in the experiment?”

“Precisely.”

“You didn’t tell them that O’Malley is also an illusionist?” said Nikolev to Lokransky as the two walked from Hull House.

“No,” said Lokransky. “And I won’t. Only Moscow need know. Just be on your guard for anymore such tricks, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, wondering how you guarded against such tricks.

In McLean, Virginia, CIA Director Harry Rourke dialed the private home number of the Secretary of Defense. The SecDef himself answered. “Sorry to bother you so late,” he said. “There’s a situation brewing in Boston that may require SpecOps intervention.” He listened to the protest on the other end. “I’ve just gotten off the phone with Naesmith,” he said, invoking the President’s National Security Advisor. “We’re to meet with her tomorrow—she’s probably calling you right now. I just wanted you to hear it from me rather than her. We’re sending the Second SpecOps battalion to Boston, as precaution. Yes, the Black Brigade. It’s Whitsun and Telemachus. Time to close them down. No, I don’t think they’ll be needed, but they’ll be there just in case. The Russians are poking around up there. If they see something they like coming out of Telemachus they may try to take it. Tell me, Joseph, have you ever heard of Colonel Anton Lokransky of the Spesnatz?”

Lokransky was a sadist, a remorseless torturer and murderer, an adept in the black arts of death, fast or slow. He’d gone into Afghanistan a captain and returned three years later a lieutenant colonel. Afghanistan had been hell and he’d reveled in it, as he had in Chechnya. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to another human being in the pursuit of his mission—that he enjoyed doing it made it even better. “It’s not so important what work you do in life, Anton,” his grandfather had said, “so long as you enjoy it.” Anton enjoyed his work.

Above all else, though, Anton Lokransky was a Russian officer and the son of Russian officers. He despised the decadent West for its cowardly Cold War triumph. He despised his own countrymen for their greed—the greed with which they were raping his Mother Russia. He despised his government for its weakness and corruption. Often, too, he despised himself for working for the men he did, justifying it as an expedient toward the birth of a new Russian Empire, one free of the crippling strictures of a failed ideology.

In many ways Lokransky and the Russian Mafia were much alike: they were strong and ruthless and knew what they wanted, and what they wanted was more. After the Berlin Wall came down they’d both wanted money. Having money, they wanted Russia to be powerful again—something Anton Lokransky might just be able to help attain. And then when Russia was powerful again, they would want ever-greater things for her.

The Kremlin had long known about Project Telemachus and GRD and Admiral Whitsun and all those secret sites out in the desert—known but never penetrated it, the agents they sent always disappeared. Only recently, through one of Schmidla’s corruptible European colleagues, had they learned of the second aspect of Telemachus and its wondrous promise. The old freighter now dropping anchor off the island had been their only hope—until Whitsun had hired the very man they’d picked to lead that operation. We may yet dance on your graves thought Lokransky, looking beyond the freighter towards the lights of Boston.

Reloading his machine pistol, he resumed his walk along cliff tops, following the well-worn path toward Hull House and what promised to be a momentous day.

Behind and below him, the incoming tide battered the bullet torn bodies of half a dozen harbor seals against the rocks.

Chapter 21

Jim and Dee had a somber lunch over soup and salad in a little place on Prince Street then went up to the rental condo he’d shared with Angie.

“If you never love anyone, you can never be hurt,” said Dee, coming from the alley kitchen, bearing two steaming mugs of coffee.

“I thought you didn’t read minds,” he said.

“I don’t,” she said. “You’re emanating great dark waves of anguish. I’d have to be dead to not feel it.”

“You’re an empath, too?”

“If you feel it, I can feel it,” she sighed. “You know, I’m pretty much an agoraphobic. I try to wall myself off from people—their emotions wash through me like a polluted stream. Strong thoughts do too, the ones driven by strong emotions—love, hate, greed. Hate tops the rest. God, it’s so corrosive. Some dark days I all but pray cockroaches inherit the Earth.” Sipping her coffee, she looked out the window. It was a gray autumn day, rain clouds scudding in off the ocean.

“She’s on that island, right over there,” he said following her gaze over the rooftops of the North End toward the harbor.

“No one you can call on for help?”

“Help? Like the government?”

She nodded.

“No. Our fine government’s in this up to its nostrils. All I seem to be doing is getting people I care about killed or captured.” The shootout at the Windermere was all over the TV and the newspapers, especially images of a parade of body bags. “I’m going over to that island and I’m not coming back without the three of them.”

“Anyone else but me going with you?”

Jim looked at her small determined face and laughed. “Have you ever fired a gun?”

“No. But I can learn. Besides, it never hurts to have a mind reader along.”

“Really. So where do I have to be in thirty minutes?” he asked, trying to clear his mind of all but an image of an earless Vincent Van Gogh.

“Anne’s Donuts on Bunker Hill Street in Charlestown,” she said at once. “Meeting with a criminal named Eddy Murphy. You saved Mr. Murphy’s life a few wars ago when you were his platoon leader. Later Mr. Murphy was employed by you to break into various places and steal information about...”

“Thank you,” he said. “We can walk to Charlestown—there’s no place to park there anyway.”

“And yes, I do have nice little tits.”

“Now El Tee, let me see if I understand this,” said Eddy, tucking into his luncheon omelet. Jim watched the egg-laden fork paused halfway to Eddy’s mouth. “I’m just a simple working guy, you know?”

“Right,” said Jim.

Five years younger than Jim, Eddy Murphy, despite the beer and the red meat and the donuts, had somehow kept the weight off. Still, he’d never been small—six feet two, stocky—almost chunky—he had big hands, a broad face with green eyes and a mouth that smiled a lot without always meaning it. His income tax return listed his occupation as “Automobile Recycler.”

“Okay, so you need some sharp guys to go with you on a trip, a little outing to someplace nearby, rescue a few friends from some bad men. Would these bad men be any I know?”

“No,” said Jim, watching the food slip into Eddy’s mouth. “They’re not in the same line of work as you.”

Eddy chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “I hear Tooky Azarian got shot over in JP, helping out an old friend,” he said, slabbing butter on his toast.

“Tooky’s a nice guy,” said Jim.

“Umm. Yeah, well, while he was nicely catching a bullet the guy he was with got away. Neighbors got a good look at him, though.” Eddy looked at Dee, sitting a few tables away, sipping her orange juice and watching them. “She read lips or something?”

“Minds.”

“Okay. So El Tee, I figure this is some real heavy shit you got going down. Any guys I ask to come along, they’re going to want compensation.”

“Ten thousand each,” said Jim. “Five when they show up, five after we’re finished.” And if we all get killed, he thought, I won’t have to pay. The cash would be coming from the diminishing wad in his money belt.

“What about their boss?”

“He’s an old friend. I wouldn’t insult him by offering him money.”

Eddy laughed. “For sure. So, you want to tell me what this is about? This isn’t any of your spy shit, is it?”

“Kaeko’s alive.”

“Your little girl?” he said, shocked. It took a lot to shock Eddy Murphy.

Jim nodded.

Eddy had unexpectedly visited them in Tokyo at a time when it was best for him to be out of the U.S. During his two months in Japan he and Kaeko had become friends, with Eddy taking her out to the zoo and the park and numerous ice cream stands when Jim and Emmy were busy. Emmy liked Eddy, enjoying his brave but futile attempts at Japanese, and introduced him to her first cousin Tamiko. “He’s such a gangster!” Emmy had laughed, as if gangster were synonymous with clown. “When does he plan on leaving?” she’d asked after the fourth week. Their apartment wasn’t large. “Either when the charges are dropped or Tamiko gets a job,” he’d said.

“He’s teaching her English,” Emmy had said, straight-faced.

“How?” asked Jim. “He doesn’t speak English.”

Eventually the FBI liaison from the American Consulate (Fred Kessler’s predecessor in the job) had come around with a Japanese National Police colleague, inquiring about Eddy. Eddy had left early the next morning to visit relatives in Dublin, using a passport bearing a name other than his own.

“Kaeko’s over on Small’s Island,” said Jim. “The guys who kidnapped her killed Emmy and raised Kaeko with no knowledge of her real parents. And there is some heavy shit going down over there. She’ll be right in the middle of it. I’m going for a little visit.”

“Forget about money, El Tee,” said Eddy. “This one’s on the house.”

Jim was again going over the information about Smalls Island given him by George—it truly wasn’t much. Before leaving Virginia he’d printed out the sketch of the island and its buildings. It would’ve made a reliable tourist map. As a key aid for planning a life-or-death mission it wasn’t helpful. The only hope they had of rescuing Angie, Kaeko and O’Malley was to know precisely where they were, go there, get them and get out. To go in there and start stumbling about looking for the prisoners with Lokransky and his men on alert would be suicide.

Of course I have The List, he thought, getting a cup of coffee. Would Schmidla and Whitsun agree to a trade? Never.

The coffee was too acrid even for his callused taste buds. He was just brewing a fresh pot when his cellphone rang. ”Mr. Beauchamp,” said the caller, “my name is Musashi. We need to meet.”

A half an hour later they stood inside a noisy North End trattoria, crowded with young Italians watching the big screen TV hanging from the wall, cheering Italy’s national soccer team on to victory over Argentina. Roars of “Eee-tal-ya! Eee-tal-ya!” resounded. There was nowhere to sit.

“Sorry,” said Jim. “It’s usually quiet here.”

“How about a walk?” said Musashi.

A few minutes later they sat on a bench near the fountain in Paul Revere Park, the Old North Church behind them.

“So,” said Jim, looking appraisingly at the younger man, “how are you involved in this? And how did you get my cellphone number?”

Musashi laughed, as if he’d said something funny. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

The Japanese shook his head. “I’m the man who can get you into the right place on Smalls Island and past all those Cossacks.”

“I don’t know anything about you.”

“Your daughter would like very much to meet you. I told her about you, her mother and her grandparents. I think she’s beginning to believe me. But only you can convince her. Her belief is essential if Schmidla’s hold on her is to be broken.”

“Besides me only Schmidla or Whitsun could know all that,” said Jim, fingers wrapping around the pistol in his jacket pocket.

“There are other players in this. I’m but one of them.”

“Okay. Tell me something about Kaeko that Whitsun or Schmidla couldn’t know.”

Musashi thought for a moment. “Her father used to carry her on his shoulders and sing to her.”

“A lot of dads do that.”

“He sang Sukiyaki to her off-key and in very bad Japanese.”

Jim just stared for a moment, astonished. “How could you possibly know that?”

“How I know is unimportant—it’s what I know that is. And I know enough, just maybe enough, to save those three Potentials. You need to make up your mind now whether or not to trust me.”

Jim held out his hand. “My friends call me Jimbo.”

“Tennu,” said Musashi, shaking Jim’s hand.

“We plan to go in tomorrow tonight. Today we’re reconnoitering.”

“I’d like to go with you,” said Musashi. “I’m familiar with the island.”

“Welcome aboard.”

“One more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Not now but soon, I would like to have the Eldridge roster.”

Jim laughed. “So would a lot of other people. What makes you the winner?”

“I’m one of the good guys. If you don’t want what Schmidla represents to destroy all that you know and love, I will need that list before much longer.” He held up a hand at the look of skepticism on Jim’s face. “When you’re ready, we can talk some more. But soon.”

“Well?” asked Jim a few moments later, as Dee joined him, walking down busy Prince Street, back to the condo.

“Weird,” she said. “I couldn’t pick up anything from him.”

“You mean he kept you out?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s like he wasn’t there.”

Chapter 22

“Maria,” said Schmidla, looking up from his desk as she stepped into his office. “I was worried, my dear.”

She just stood there looking at him, this unfailingly kind but always aloof man who’d raised her. “Of course you were.”

Taking the envelope of photographs from her pocket, she tossed it across his desk, the pictures cascading out. “Death and betrayal. You’re no stranger to them, but I was. The road to belief was hard: shock, disbelief, anger, depression and acceptance. You’ll be pleased to know you’ve raised a superior child.” She held up a hand as he started to speak. “I passed through the whole process in a few hours. I can only think that I’ve always known, always remembered that you killed my mother and brought me here.”

He glanced at the photos, not touching them. “Maria...”

“My name is Kaeko,” she said coldly. “Kaeko Gabriella Beauchamp. And yours is Martin von Kemnitz.”

“Martin Amadeus von Kemnitz,” he said. “You must believe me, Maria... Kaeko. I have always treated you as I would my own child, had I a child. I gave you the best education money could buy—my money, not the government’s.”

“Money stolen from dead Jews,” she said contemptuously.

“Old family money,” he said. “My mother’s family held their estates from Barbarosa, in what is currently Poland. We were never poor. I slowly and surreptitiously liquidated everything in the mid-Thirties and moved it to Switzerland. It was obvious that when war came, America would enter it to protect their cousins. Caught between West and East again we would lose again.”

There’d been no ancestral estates after the 1920s. His money had come from pharmaceutical patents he’d helped develop during the war, using death camp inmates and the Blücher survivors as his lab rats. The mortality rate had been high, but the results, obtained with comparative speed, were still in commercial use and provided a steady income. Later, the CIA money had made the patent royalties superfluous.

“And as to the dead Jews,” continued Schmidla, “I can tell you honestly, from the perspective of more years than most men are granted, that we rarely killed anyone who didn’t need killing.”

“What a monster you are!” she said, her voice filled with hate.

“We dreamed of a better humanity and tried to achieve it,” he said. “That our methods were crude doesn’t mean that we were wrong or that our dream is dead. It is in fact very much alive, in part thanks to you. And soon it will become reality. As to being a monster, if so, well then I’m a monster who raised a fine professor. Not that you will, but you should thank me for your superb education and your finely-honed intellect. And the resilience that permits you to confront me but a few hours after deciding that I killed your mother.” He stopped her forward rush with an upraised palm. “Which I did not!”

“Really? Who did?” she demanded, leaning toward him, fists on his desk, face pale with rage.

“The men Admiral Whitsun sent to get you and your mother botched it. There was a struggle. She’d had some martial arts training and put the first man down. Afraid she’d identify them, the others pitched her off the balcony.”

Kaeko stepped back and took a deep breath. “What am I to you?”

“Such an open question, Kaeko. Rather, I think you might ask, ‘Am I anything to you?’”

“Am I?”

“I’m very fond of you,” he said after a moment. “And very proud of you. You’re a very fine girl, a very intelligent girl, a girl who, sadly, tragically, has a unique gift—a gift that I must use to sow the seeds of a better humanity, one that will scourge this world of the teeming, mongrelized billions that infect it like some scabrous sore.

“I’m in the god building business, Maria—an enterprise to which you’re essential. I’ve subordinated all else in my life to that end. An end you’re privileged to help me attain. Future generations will honor our names.”

“Along with Hitler’s?”

He shrugged. “Every journey has a beginning, every process a catalyst, no matter how unlikely. A mad genius possessed of a flawed vision, was Adi, but useful in his madness. He wouldn’t understand—you don’t conquer from without, you conquer from within, and the deeper from within the better. And what is deeper than our very genes? How I wish I were sixty again, knowing what I know now.

“My success requires that Hitler serve as the undeserved Messiah of a New Man. Much as credulous millions believe a bedraggled Jew rose from the dead, a renewed and better humanity will cherish not the straight Cross but the crooked one. The origins of faith are unimportant. It’s creating, inculcating and manipulating belief to the right ends that matter. Such was St. Paul’s mission, so partially is mine. And if you can beget both a new faith and new life itself, and bind them together, then you forever change humanity, set it on a higher path from which there’s no turning back.”

The angry certitude she’d felt walking into the room had dissolved amid growing fear and horror as Schmidla spoke. “You’re insane! What have you done to me?!”

“You? Nothing, really. Just brought forth the talents you were born with. And created a more pliant personality to house them. Since you were five, you’ve been given daily doses of Ethinamate, a hypnotic I helped to develop back in the 40’s. It’s been very useful in creating and maintaining the duality you are, Maria. The witty, charming, talented teacher and the lonely, insecure little girl who craves her uncle’s attention and does what he tells her—a little girl with a powerful Potential that is mine to use. Naturally, you’ve had to be kept close so that either Mrs. MacDonald or I could see that you received your medication.

“And now my dear Kaeko, I’m afraid it’s time for you to go to sleep—I need little Maria for a few hours. Don’t worry, she’ll recall none of these distressing events. We won’t meet again, you and I, Kaeko. Goodbye.”

Terrified, the sudden half-remembered nightmares overwhelming her, Maria-Kaeko turned to flee.

“Quarks in three-quarter time,” said Schmidla as she reached the door.

Kaeko Gabriella Beauchamp, newly awakened, went back to sleep.

Schmidla watched as the girl turned back toward him, confused. “Uncle Richard? Is something wrong? I had this bad dream—you did something terrible and I hated you.” Maria rushed toward him and threw her arms around him as he rose, stepping around from his desk.

Maria Nelson, age six, found the bad dreams fading as her Uncle Richard took her small hand in his big strong one and led her up the stairs and tucked her into bed.

Standing there, watching her sleep, he was again struck by how much she resembled that young Jewess at Nordhausen, before the Blücher experiment and his subsequent impotency. Raven-haired Rebecca of the flashing dark eyes and the sad soprano flute.

Rebecca. How could he ever forget her? Especially that first time, standing before him naked yet defiant, the “For Officers Only” tattoo still fresh on her wrist? Like Maria, an exquisite creature, creative and highly intelligent—she’d been a concert flutist in Salzburg—and like Maria, so vulnerable and ultimately so malleable. The key to Maria had been time and drugs and hypnosis. With Rebecca it had been the coarse but effective wartime therapy of the riding crop. That she’d hated him was good—he enjoyed her hatred and it lent her passion. Indeed, he’d even found himself in weak moments daydreaming of helping her survive the war, their Baroque piano and flute duets soaring down through the years. Ridiculous fantasy of an exhausted researcher. The war over, an treacherous ingrate like all her kind, she would kill or betray him at the first opportunity.

It ended when Rebecca became pregnant. She’d tried to hide it, knowing the fate of a Jew whore carrying a half-Aryan abomination. But to a physician who was also her lover the signs were unmistakable. Confronted, she’d confessed, sobbing wildly, begging him for an abortion. He’d agreed. It had made things easier. Certainly it could have been easily arranged. But illegal and more importantly, dishonorable, as no other officer at the camp could have availed himself of that remedy. As a kindness, he’d slipped her a sedative, blowing her brains out as she slept. A bullet was always so much more gratifyingly atavistic than a drug. Besides, a man of integrity shoots his own dog.

Hearing one of her beloved Mozart sonatas always brought back warm memories of Rebecca and their brief, passionate time together—heady days of wine and music and death.

Back in his study Schmidla sat looking at the photos, wondering where the hell Maria had gotten them. He suspected the affable Mr. Kim, absurd as it seemed. A few months ago it might have mattered. Now it didn’t. Win or lose, it was endgame.

He dropped the photos into the wastebasket and got back to work.

Angie sat on the chair in her room, a thick steel door and two shaven-headed Russian commandos between her and freedom, trying but failing to deny herself the luxury of despair. A smart and bookish girl, she’d grown up mostly alone and very lonely, learning to hide her wild talents behind a wall of aloofness. An expert in keeping everyone at a distance, all her relationships before Jim had been superficial and several intentionally manipulative. Having dedicated herself to finding out what had really killed her father, she’d followed the faint trail George Campbell had given her to Whitsun, then from Whitsun to Erik. Erik, easily seduced, had quickly shown that while he knew nothing about his uncle’s work he very much enjoyed Angie’s body. In their five months together she quickly came to despise his arrogance, sexism and intellectual vacuity, and the assured way he would take her, riding her long and hard, watching her face and waiting for her to come—which she never did. Not once. An adept cocksman, he employed the full gamut of his skills, and every time she felt her body starting to respond, she clamped down, waiting for him to finally spend himself within her. He’d lie staring sullenly at the ceiling while she took a long hot shower.

Jim and the Eldridge roster had freed her from Erik, freedom she’d been about to grant herself anyway. Or so she told herself.

And so what had that list brought her? she wondered, pacing the small room. Well, it’d brought her Jim, if perhaps only for a little while. And the beginnings of a sense of fulfillment—she’d been right to pursue the nebulous trail of the Eldridge and Telemachus—right to follow it wherever it went. But most all, she thought, staring out the window into the night, most of all it had brought her the courage to finally let someone into her heart.

She was throbbing with pain where Lokransky had hit her. Wetting a cloth, she lay down and held it to her face, trying to rest.

In the next room an exhausted Tim O’Malley, drained of visions, drifted uneasily into sleep, fragments of an old hymn slipping through his mind:

Day of wrath and doom impending,

David’s words with Sybil’s blending.

Lokransky met the reinforcements as they came ashore, moving quickly up off the beach amid the clanking of weapons and equipment. A sullen red sun was just rising out of a sea unusually calm for so late in autumn.

“Colonel,” nodded Bakunin. Lokransky saw him struggling to not salute.

“Sergei Ivanovich,” he said smiling, holding out his hand. “We need to dispense with ranks,” he said as they shook. “We’re all just gangsters now.”

“So, Anton Mikhailovich, you’re no longer the boss?” said the former Spesnatz major, hiding a grin as they made their way up the path to the top of the bluffs.

“I’ve always enjoyed your sense of humor, Sergei,” said Lokransky. “Consider me the gangster chieftain. How was your trip?”

“Uneventful. Though we had to stay below decks on that stinking pig of a ship. She usually hauls livestock to South America. The aromas linger.”

“I noticed.”

They’d embarked from New York’s East River after dark, ninety-eight former commandos ostensibly in the employ of a Queens, New York security firm. The men had entered the United States in twos and threes over the past week on work visas issued by well-bribed U.S. Consular officers in Moscow and St. Petersburg—officers since killed in Russia’s brutal urban crime wave.

Staying in several apartment buildings in the almost entirely Russian Brighton Beach area, they’d remained inconspicuous, waiting for the call that had come two days ago.

“Why didn’t you just rent some trucks for the weapons and the equipment, charter a few busses and drive up, Sergei?” asked Lokransky, looking at the freighter. “A lot easier and less conspicuous. Cleaner, too. They don’t have police checkpoints in America.”

Bakunin shook his head. “And what if there was an accident or we were stopped? How would we explain the weapons? Tell them that we were going to a swap meet?”

“They might have believed you.” He glanced at a line of Spesnatz hauling a series of crates and boxes toward the hospital. “What have you brought?” he asked.

“An international medley,” said Bakunin, his hand sweeping the line of men. “Vektor CR21 5.56mm compact assault rifles from South Africa. Tadiran HF-6000 tactical commgear, with automatic bandskipping and 32-key encryption, made in Haifa. Our Swiss friends at Bofors have provided us with an MK19 Mod3 40mm machinegun for use on bothersome aircraft. And lastly, our host country has furnished us with four M2 .50 caliber machineguns, made in the State of Maine and featuring the new M2HB interchangeable barrel, and six M60 7.62mm machineguns. Plus approximately 100,000 rounds of ammunition, night vision goggles, automatic grenade launchers, sniper rifles, Semtex plastic explosives, Stinger shoulder-fired missiles with dynamically-shaped charges. And, lastly, a gift from the Old General himself.” Talking a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka from his pack, he tossed it to Lokransky.

“This isn’t Borodino or Stalingrad,” said Lokransky. We don’t need all these toys. I hope to be out of here in a few days.”

“The man who sent you the vodka said to tell you that the heavy stuff is insurance, to buy you a little extra time, should you need it.”

“By which he means don’t come home without the cow,” said Lokransky with a thin smile.

Bakunin nodded.

“Even if we are detected,” said Lokransky, “it will take the Americans at least a day to gather sufficient forces to dislodge us. More than enough time for us to disappear.” Taking a map from his jacket, he unfolded it atop a rock. Bakunin shined his flashlight on the map. “This is the island,” said Lokransky. “We are here,” he pointed. “This is the bridge that leads to the island. This is the Director’s house, this is the hospital, behind it the old fort, part of which is used by the hospital.

“Mine the bridge and place a strong defensive position at this end—one of the heavy machineguns. Set the 40mm mount up on top of the hospital roof, along with two of the fifty-calibers and establish the command post in the hospital lobby. Put another fifty caliber inside the lobby and the others along the bluffs to command the sea approach.

“And the rest of us?” asked Bakunin as they reached the top of the bluffs.

“Perimeter patrols and sentries along the shoreline. Distribute the Stingers between the heavy machinegun positions and the command post. Four men to be at the call of the American Admiral at all times—they go where he goes. Right now he’s at the house. Do whatever he asks in terms of handling prisoners. Otherwise, all orders come from me. Post sentries in the hospital and the fort—I’ll show you where. All off duty personnel are to bunk in the hospital and are confined to the hospital. No sightseeing.” He folded the map and handed it to Bakunin.

“Any patients in the hospital?”

“The few that were have been moved off island.”

“And what is our mission?” asked Bakunin, folding the map and tucking it into his jacket pocket.

“They didn’t tell you?” asked Lokransky, surprised.

“They told me to obey orders.”

Lokransky shook his head, disgusted. “Fine. The mission. An experiment is being conducted here over the next few days. It’s the culmination of many years work. If it goes well, we are to take the fruits of it and leave, eliminating all personnel and equipment as we go. If the American government should interfere, we are to resist long enough to accomplish our mission.”

“What sort of experiments?”

“Genetic. Long-term genetic experiments.”

“And the fruits we’re to carry away?”

“Records and several canisters of organic material. We need to find where they’re stored. Oh. The doctor is an old fascist butcher. He may be a problem, but for now he’s needed. But he won’t be going with us. When the time comes, he’s mine. Everything clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“Come, I’ll give you a tour.”

Chapter 23

Jim met Eddy at the base of the Quincy Yacht Club pier. A ramshackle wooden structure stretching out into Quincy Bay, the QYC was small and rustic, with just a handful of boats moored there. It was an early weekday morning with few people about.

“We got a boat?” asked Eddy. He was carrying a fishing rod and a small cooler.

“That thirty-footer over there,” said Jim, pointing to a small cabin cruiser tied to the pier. Like the yacht club, it had seen some years. Merri-Lee, Quincy, Massachusetts read the faded gold letters on her stern.

“Look’s kinda old,” said Eddy, dubiously eyeing the boat.

“The QE2 was booked for the week,” said Jim as they walked down the pier.

“You a sailor, El Tee?”

“No, Eddy, but he is.” He pointed toward Musashi, who stood at the end of the pier, the collar of his windbreaker turned against the brisk wind. He was looking across the bay at Smalls Island. Hearing them, Musashi turned and waved, walking toward the Merri-Lee.

“Who’s the Jap?” asked Eddy.

“His name’s Tennu Musashi,” said Jim. “And Eddy, I know of at least one Japanese you were very fond of, so be nice.”

“What’s he do?”

“He knows things,” said Jim as they reached the boat.

After introducing Eddy as “an old friend”, they cast off, roaring away amid a cloud of diesel fumes. “I wouldn’t want to go very far in this boat,” Musashi called above the roar of the twin engines. “These engines need an overhaul and you can almost smell the rot. I’ve seen the charts,” he continued as they sped across the almost glassy clam surface, no other boats in sight. “We’ll circle the island and come back under the bridge.” The half-mile long suspension span connecting Smalls Island to Quincy was now to their starboard.

“What are we looking for?” asked Eddy.

“A cave. I first saw it on the old maps of the fort. It was a smugglers lair, a grotto, from at least the War of 1812, when the British blockaded the coast. The cave’s in a small cove, on the windward side of the island.”

“Great for smugglers,” said Jim, zipping his coat against the stiff breeze. November was not the best time for pleasure boating in New England. “Not visible from the mainland.”

“When they built Fort Strong in the 1840’s, they connected the cave to the subgalleries they were using for storage. Supplies and personnel could be brought into the fort if the landing area on the leeward side was blockaded.”

“Have you been in the cave?” asked Jim.

“No. I’ve seen the end of the connecting passage inside the fort. There’s an old iron door at the entrance to the fort. It’s locked. With the right tools, we can cut through it quickly.”

“Don’t look, but we’re being watched from the island,” said Eddy. “I saw the sun on two pairs of binoculars up on the bluffs.”

“Time to fish,” said Jim. Musashi pulled back on the throttle and cut the engine then went forward and dropped anchor.

“His English is great,” said Eddy, bending to open the bait box.

“So’s his hearing,” said Musashi, leaping nimbly back over the railing and onto the deck.

“Eddy,” said Jim, looking inside the cooler, “there’s no bait!” A half a dozen cans of domestic beer lay nestled atop a blue icepack, next to some plastic-wrapped convenience store sandwiches.

“So? Just fake it, El Tee.”

“How? Stick a beer can on the hook?”

“Jimbo, what would you do if you caught somethin’? Eat it? You don’t want nuthin’ outta there. Sure, they’ve cleaned the water up a lot in the last ten years. Just means you can go for a dip without your dick turning green and falling off in the shower a week later.” Eddy reached into the cooler, passing out the beer.

“Eddy, you have a gift for vivid imagery,” said the Japanese, opening his beer as he returned to the wheel.

“You ever hear from Emmy’s folks or Tami?” asked Eddy a few minutes later, as the Merri-Lee pulled up anchor and slowly beat her way around the island, fishing lines trolling from her stern

“Just her mother—every Christmas a card and a long letter,” said Jim, watching the island slip by as he sipped his beer. “The rest of her family considers me the evil giajen spy responsible for her death. Last I knew, though, Eddy, Tamiko was married to a salariman—some senior bank officer a bit older than her.”

“Those tired looking guys you see in the bars every night? Drinking too much? Laughing too loud?”

“Don’t forget dying too young. Yeah, those guys.”

Eddy laughed, shaking his head. “Tami and a salariman!? Ah, the Good Lord keep the girl! And him, too.”

“There it is,” called Musashi from the wheel, fifteen minutes later, as they anchored off of a small cove. No more than a hundred yards across, the cove was flanked by fifty-foot cliffs. Even from a quarter a mile out, Jim could see the white explosions of spray where the rolling combers crashed and broke against the jagged teeth of half-submerged boulders. The only beach was a thin pebbly strand between the ocean and the base of the cliffs.

“You can get a boat in there?” asked Jim skeptically.

“Yes,” said Musashi, staring at the shoreline. “I can get a boat in there, though not this one. We’ll go in a Zodiac—a light inflatable. We’ll bring this boat back and launch from here.”

“Where’s the cave?” asked Eddy.

“See that big pile of boulders, to the right?” said the Japanese, pointing. “Just at the high tide mark?”

“Yeah,” said Eddy. The rocks lay in a tumbled heap along the beach, half-submerged beneath the breaking waves.

“The cave entrance is just to the left of those rocks.”

“Great place to hide stuff,” said Eddy approvingly as they stared at the shore.

“For sure,” said Jim. Even at high tide there should be room to hide the Zodiac behind the rocks.

“When do you think?” asked Jim. “Tonight?”

“Not tonight,” said Eddy, shaking head. “Gotta line up some help. Get a boat. Unless you have a Zodiac?” he asked Musashi.

The Japanese shook his head.

“Probably going to want one of their bigger inflatables,” said Eddy. “Say an FC470 like the SEALS use.”

“How much do they cost?” asked Jim, touching his ever-shrinking money belt.

“I’ll buy,” said Musashi. “Eddy just needs to locate one and go with me to arrange transport.”

“Deal,” said Eddy.

“Weapons?” said Jim.

“I was thinking some Uzis, a few pistols, lots of ammo,” said Eddy.

“No, I mean, where do we get them?” said Jim.

“No problem,” said Eddy.

“No later than tomorrow night,” said Jim. “Schmidla’s not waiting on us.”

“Agreed,” said Musashi. “They’re probably being held in the fort.”

“We’re not leaving without them,” said Jim. “Not matter where they are. Are we all agreed?”

“Why do you even ask me that, Jim?” said Eddy. “Kaeko’s my little girl, too.”

“Sorry, Eddy,” said Jim, clapping him on the back. “It’s been a long time.”

“Yeah,” said Eddy, eyes watching the tops of the cliffs.

“And you? How committed are you?”

“Totally,” said the Japanese flatly. “Believe me, my back’s to the wall as much as yours.”

“Just what wall is that, Tennu?” asked Jim.

Smiling slightly, Musashi also turned to look toward the island.

“We’re being watched again,” said Eddy, spotting the sun glinting off a pair of binoculars atop the cliff, just above the cove. Turning, he snapped the cooler shut.

“We’ve seen all that we can,” said Musashi. “We know where we’re going, it’s doable and I can navigate back here at night. Let’s return to the harbor. You guys pull up those fishing lines, I’ll get the anchor.”

Jim’s cellphone rang as they pulled into the pier. “D’Artangan here. Trouble.”

“You never call with good news.”

“Our friend Lokransky’s been reinforced.”

“How? And how many?”

“Off a freighter, anchored in the harbor’s outer roads. They disembarked at least a hundred men at first light. Assume they’re from Lokransky’s old unit and armed to the teeth.”

“Great.”

“It gets better. DCI Rourke’s put a Black Brigade battalion over in South Weymouth, just across the harbor at the old abandoned Naval air station, plus a squadron of Apache gunships. It’s supposedly under joint Army-FBI command, with Freddy Kessler’s calling the shots. Word is something’s going to happen real soon on your favorite island paradise and Kessie’s going to be sent in to clean up the commies, The Good Doctor, the weirdoes and all.”

“Clean up?”

“The Big Sleep, Jim.” said D’Artangan. “The Black Brigade’s our Sandman.”

Jim snapped the phone shut. Weighing his options, he chose the one he least liked. “Bad news?” asked Eddy, reading Jim’s face.

“Let’s go see Tennu.” They joined him by the wheel. Jim quickly briefed them, concluding, “So, even if Schmidla doesn’t kill them, the Feds may.”

“Why do the Feds want to waste everyone on that island?” asked Eddy.

“They’re terrified,” said Musashi. “Of Potentials actually attaining their potential. It would change everything.”

“What the hell’s a Potential?” asked Eddy.

“Later. It’s a long story,” said Jim. “I’ve got to get inside that fort,” he added. “Now.”

“Get inside, like in get caught?” asked Eddy.

“Like in give myself up.”

“What good’s that going to do?” asked Eddy. “You’re just giving them one more prisoner.”

“But a well-trained one,” said Musashi, cutting the engines so that they were just holding their own against the current. “Which the other three are not.”

“Come on, Jim,” said Eddy. “One guy won’t make any difference.”

“I disagree,” said Musashi, delicately adjusting the throttle, setting the Merri-Lee in perfect balance against the current. “If I believed that, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Yeah?” said Eddy. “So where would you be?”

“Enough,” said Jim looking at the shoreline. “I’m going in. They won’t kill me until they get the roster.”

“Roster?” said Eddy, looking between them. “Give me a clue, guys.”

“Names of the men who crewed a World War Two ship,” said Jim. “The guys who have Kaeko want it real bad.”

“They’ll probably promise to release everyone if you give them the list,” said Musashi.

They all laughed.

“But once you’re in there with the prisoners, Dee can always find you.”

“She can?” said Jim, feeling a sudden surge of optimism.

Musashi nodded. “Once someone with her talent has read your mind—which you say she has—they can locate you, provided they’re near enough.”

“You weren’t bullshitting me!” exclaimed Eddy, turning red. “She was reading my mind!”

“I’m sure she’s seen worse, Eddy,” grinned Musashi.

“Maybe,” said Jim.

“Yeah and what if Dee doesn’t want to go on this little raid with us?” asked Eddy.

“Oh, she’ll go,” said Jim. “Dee’s a fighter.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Jim said. Back in the North End condo, he sat across the small kitchen table from Dee, slowly stirring milk into his coffee. Outside the sun was setting, casting long shadows down the narrow old streets. One by one, the gas lamps were flaring to life.

She looked at him over her own mug, sipped, and put it down. “As I understand it, this wouldn’t work without me. Correct?”

“May not work at all. Depends on how lucky we are.”

“On a small island, with a hundred or so enemy soldiers and us with no idea of where the prisoners are, you think you need luck?” She shook her head. “You’d need a miracle. I’m your miracle.”

“It gets even better,” said Jim. “There’s a CIA Special Operations task force a few miles from the island, ready to roll when they get the word. Army Rangers, Apache gunships, the whole nine yards.”

“Why not just join up with them?”

“Their mission’s to kill everyone on the island,” said Jim. “Including us, if we’re there.”

“Oh, come on!” exclaimed Dee. “This isn’t a movie, it’s America! They can’t do that. I mean, right in Boston Harbor?”

“They can do whatever they can get away with. They’ll probably say they were after terrorists who’d taken over the island. Plausible, given that terrorists have taken over the island. So you still want in?”

“Of course.”

“Thanks Dee,” he smiled. “You’re first class.”

“I know,” she said, sipping her coffee. “Besides, I’m very much intrigued by the Man Who Wasn’t There, the amorphous Mr. Musashi.”

“You’re wondering what he is?”

“No. I’m wondering if he is.”

Chapter 24

The sound of a key in the lock brought Angie to her feet as the door swung open. Lokransky came in, followed by two of his men, a pale and unshaven Tim O’Malley between them.

“Good morning, Commander,” said Lokransky. “You are needed. I trust you’re rested and ready for a challenging day? You’ll be working with Dr. Schmidla.”

Full of hate, with everything in her, she willed him into the wall. Nothing happened.

She’d seen no one all the previous day, other than the commandos who brought her meals. And though she’d slept fitfully, she did feel better. They set off down the corridor.

Given what she knew of Schmidla’s work, she didn’t expect to survive the day.

“How many men did Lokransky arrive with?” Schmidla asked Whitsun, as the two men ate lunch in the dining room of Hull House.

“Nine,” said Whitsun, as Mrs. MacDonald refilled his coffee cup then left the room. “Why?”

“I’ve counted twenty-three since we sat down,” said Schmidla, looking past Whitsun, out toward the hospital and the green earthen mound behind that formed the roof of Ft. Strong.

“He’s been reinforced,” said Whitsun, reaching for another dinner roll. “About a hundred men, off a freighter.”

“A hundred?” said Schmidla. “Why?”

“As a precaution.”

“Against what?” said Schmidla, his haddock forgotten. “Invasion?”

Whitsun looked up from his mean, surprised. “It’s all right, Richard. Lokransky knows what he’s doing. He’s a very competent officer.”

“Yes, and he’s very competently taken over my island,” said Schmidla. He needed to get away immediately after the experiment. It was crucial. But then, he reassured himself, cutting into his potato, there are contingencies—not even I am indispensable.

“You’re being an alarmist, Richard,” said Whitsun.

“Am I? Well, we’ll know soon enough, won’t we Terry?”

Jim drove across the bridge to the island. It was an old bridge, rusting and in need of paint. The only thing new on it were the thin green wires threading along the sides—wires which disappeared, dropping down out of sight, at the end of the bridge: Lokransky preparing for a mini Stalingrad.

Two men in heavy black woolen turtlenecks and jeans blocked the end of the bridge. One held an assault rifle, the other a machine pistol. The Spesnatsky wore small black radio headsets with a thin antenna projecting from a node over the right ear, a tiny microphone in front of their mouths. Best of everything, thought Jim.

“Out!” ordered the commando with the assault rifle, leveling the weapon at him.

“Tell Admiral Whitsun that Jim Beauchamp’s here,” he said in Russian, carefully exiting the car, hands in sight.

They just stared at him. “You are Russian?” Jim asked.

“Wait,” said the nearest commando as the other spoke a few quick words over his radio, then after a moment spoke again, giving a faint nod at whatever the unseen speaker had said. “Go to the hospital,” he ordered. “Park in front of the main entrance. Leave the road and you’ll be shot. Understood?”

“Yes,” said Jim, getting back in the car and driving slowly ahead.

“Mr. Beauchamp is on his way here,” Lokransky informed Whitsun and Schmidla. “I’ve cleared him through the bridge checkpoint.” The three men were walking toward the hospital entrance.

“Beauchamp?” exclaimed Whitsun, halting. They all turned at the growing sound of tires crunching over gravel. A red SAAB came into sight.

“He’s here to bargain,” said Schmidla. “We each have something the other wants.”

“He gets nothing from us,” said Whitsun. “But I will have that list.”

“Or at least the pleasure of trying to extract it from him, Terry.”

They looked up at the sound of a helicopter, coming in low and from the south. A small white Bell, it circled once, and then landed next to Lokransky’s much larger aircraft. “It’s Budd,” said Whitsun. “I called him at his hotel this morning, told him today’s the day. I’ll meet him. Colonel, see that Mr. Beauchamp joins us, please.”

“I must get started,” said Schmidla, turning to enter the building as Jim’s car pulled up.

You will be cool, calm, rational, Jim had told himself, during the drive from Boston, and now across the small distance from bridge to hospital. Anger is a weakness and serves only your enemies. Yet, slowing to a stop in front of the old brick building, seeing the face of the man he knew from George’s files to be Schmidla turning into the hospital, Jim was all but overcome by rage. Watching helplessly, a small part of his mind kept shouting at him to stop as he threw the car door open and bounded toward the retreating German. He saw but didn’t care about the scar-faced man with the machine pistol, standing at the base of the stairs.

A steel grip on his arm stopped Jim, spinning him half around to find that thin, scarred face inches from his own, cornflower blue eyes looking into his as Schmidla disappeared into the hospital. “Another time,” said Lokransky. Seeing the anger leave Jim’s face, the Russian released him and stepped back. “He is a pig, though.”

“You’re Lokransky,” said Jim, taking a deep breath.

The colonel nodded. “Mr. Beauchamp,” he said. “So, you’ve come to the end of your crusade?”

“Did you kill Henry Watts?” demanded Jim. “Torture him, kill him?”

“Henry Watts?” said the Russian blankly.

“The hotel manager in New Hampshire. He was my friend.”

“It’s very dangerous to be your friend. Your trail here is littered with your friends, dead or taken.”

“Did you kill Henry?”

Lokransky shrugged. “During an operation, you do what you have to do—you know that. He had information I needed.”

“I owe you,” said Jim flatly.

Lokransky chuckled. “Many people owe me. I have yet to be paid. This,” he touched his scar, “was the best anyone’s ever done. Gift of a distraught Afghani mother.”

“Jim Beauchamp,” called a familiar voice. “Why am I not surprised?”

Jim turned to see Billy Budd walking across the driveway, accompanied by Admiral Whitsun. “Not exactly on the side of the angels, are you Billy?” he said.

“Just doing my job,” said the CIA officer. “Rourke won’t let me put in my pension papers until my report’s on his desk.”

“The pack of you should be hung,” said Jim. He turned to Whitsun. “I want to see my daughter, Commander Milano and Mr. O’Malley. Right now.”

“Certainly,” said Whitsun. “Why don’t we go inside and discuss this civilly?”

Maria lay nestled in the lightless cocoon of her crèche, swathed in perfect silence as the sweet languor of the Ethinamate stole through her. Soon the sound would come, freeing her to play again in half-remembered places. And with new friends—always new friends, never any old ones.

It began—two high-pitched tones flowing into her, one through the left of her headset, the other, slightly higher, through the right. Maria’s mind resolved the conflict by outputting the small difference between them as a new, low harmonic. Entraining the pattern, her brainwaves slipped down into the theta range, her mind hovering on the twilight border of sleep.

Reaching out, she felt them: the woman to her right, now giving up her fight as her mind responded to the beat deep within her, brainwaves slipping down into the same low frequency as Maria’s.

The man, to Maria’s left, was a bit behind the two of them, his brain still functioning above the range in which it would allow him to entwine with his Potential. Frightened but curious, lightly sedated like Angie, he was trying to understand what was happening to him. Another moment, though, and the beat would sweep him down into the theta range and then all three of them together would go, Maria guiding them.

Opening what she called her inner eye, Maria could see their Potential, wild and primal, a cold white radiance. Soon the three of them would be gone. They were almost ready.

Schmidla ignored the door opening behind him, intent on the readouts. All three EEGs were dropping into the correct range, O’Malley and Milano’s oscillation patterns falling into line with Maria’s.

“We’re all here, Richard,” said Whitsun, entering the room with Budd, Jimbo and Lokransky.

Schmidla turned. “Ah, Mr. Beauchamp,” he said meeting Jim’s gaze. “The persistent, meddlesome Mr. Beauchamp, keeper of the holy list.”

There was no more than ten feet between him and Schmidla. Lokransky was back near the door, a good five yards away. Jim figured he could probably break Schmidla’s neck before the Russian could stop him. And then what? “Where’s my daughter?” he said.

“Your daughter?” smiled Schmidla. “Your daughter is down below.” He nodded toward the glass wall fronting the instrument consoles. “In her crèche. As are your friends. Please—go and look.”

Jim walked to the window. Staring down, he saw Kaeko lying corpselike within her crèche, a thick black headset over her head and ears, the white tabs of EEG sensors attached to her temples, sniffing out the changes within her cortex. She was dressed as he’d last seen her, in blouse and jeans, but that was the only similarity. Gone was the vivacious, sophisticated, gifted young woman, in her place was what? Kaeko’s eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling, her face composed and serene, almost beatific—the face of someone embracing a strange and powerful vision, one that her father, watching her, knew he could never comprehend. Standing there, closer to her than he’d been since she was little, Jim felt further from her than ever.

Angie lay to one side of Kaeko, O’Malley on the other, thin blue sensor cables and fat red oxygen hoses snaking from their crèches into the wall receptacles. Unlike Kaeko’s, their faces were devoid of expression, their gazes blank and unseeing, people gripped not by a vision but lost in a coma. Kaeko embraced her Potential—Angie and Tim were being driven toward theirs.

Seeing that the entire left side of Angie’s face was bruised and swollen, he turned toward Schmidla, anger all but consuming him. “What the hell did you do to Milano?!” he demanded.

“Nothing,” said Schmidla, shaking his head. “Other than preparing her for this experiment. Colonel?”

“You refer to her face?” asked Lokransky.

“Yes, I refer to her face!” he snapped, hands held carefully at his sides.

The Russian shrugged. “What would you expect? She killed one of my men. She’s fortunate to be alive and wouldn’t be, had I not been asked to bring her here intact.”

“That’s another one I owe,” said Jim.

“You are tedious,” said Lokransky, turning his gaze back to the Chamber and the Potentials.

Guilt and sorrow welled up inside Jim as he turned back to Kaeko. Did I somehow do this to you, let these monsters loose on you? I’ll get you out of here, I swear. All of you. His eyes went back to Angie. “Why is Milano a part of this?” he asked. “She’s not third-generation.”

“But powerful nonetheless, or so we’ve heard,” said Schmidla. “Serendipitous, her being here.”

“Now what?” asked Budd.

“Now we wait,” said Schmidla. “It shouldn’t be long. Maria’s brainwaves must first entrain those of the other subjects. When all three patterns,” he indicated the three EEG monitors set in the console, green-and-red lines weaving across them, “are indistinguishable from one another, that’s when they’ll transition. In a moment you should see an ambient glow, a nimbus, grow to surround first Maria, then the others. Then they’ll vanish.”

“I’m willing to trade the Eldridge roster for the three of them,” said Jim, masking his desperation. “But you have to stop this right now and release them.”

Whitsun exchanged glances with Schmidla. Both men laughed.

“Anything you know, we can extract from you,” said Schmidla. “Such as the location of the roster.”

“The only copy is in the hands of a friend who will destroy it if I’m not back by tonight.”

“Even if true,” said Lokransky, “it’s unlikely you’ve told whomever it is to destroy it. Besides, we know who all your friends are.”

“Billy,” said Jim.

Budd turned from the instrument console. He’d been watching the three EEG monitors, how displaying almost identical theta waves.

“That’s Kaeko down there, Billy,” said Jim. “Remember Kaeko? She used to sit on your lap when you came over to our place in Shinjuku. Remember how we’d all hang out watching sumo wrestling on TV while she shared your beer—Kirin, as I recall—and usually, what? Yakitori with steamed rice and teriyaki sauce, wasn’t it? You even tucked her in once or twice and read her a story until she went to sleep. And what was the name of that weird kid down the hall—Japanese, with too much money?”

“Shunichi something,” said Budd. “His folks owned that big kabuki restaurant over on the river in Asakusa. That was a lot of years ago, Jim,” he added, walking to the window and the view of the three crèches below. “And a lot of girls—most of them older—have sat on my lap since then. My first obligation’s always been to America.”

“Your first obligation’s always been to your pension, you weasel,” said Jim.

“It begins,” said Schmidla, standing beside Budd. Everyone not at the window joined them.

It was as Schmidla had said it would be: a faint white glow surrounding Maria, growing quickly more intense until painful to look upon. As Jim watched, fascinated despite himself, the same glow could be seen separately encasing Maria and O’Malley. Suddenly the white nimbus expanded, enfolding the three of them, even as the observation room glass polarized into a deep obsidian black. When it cleared a moment later, the crèches were empty. Jim stared at them, disbelieving.

“You’ve no idea where they go?” asked Budd after a moment.

“The question you really should ask, Mr. Budd,” said Schmidla “is how did they go? Where isn’t so important. Where is something we allowed to distract us for many years. Where is something for later research. For now, that they went is what’s important—important in that it demonstrates their innate ability to channel if not yet control energy and matter. Then comes How and how will give us Where.”

“How did they go?” said the CIA officer. “And when are they coming back?”

“How, we’re not yet certain, you understand,” said Schmidla, “but we believe they’ve negotiated a flop-transition—created a wormhole to somewhere. And as to when... it could be hours, if experience holds true. Or just moments. It’s never been more than a day, though. Also, time may be very different where they are.

“Assuming they come back at all,” said Budd.

Clambering into the Zodiac, Eddy Murphy looked at Tennu Musashi and the katana, the long samurai sword tied to the latter’s back. “What are you gonna do with the katana?” he asked.

“Kill people,” answered the Japanese cheerfully, giving Dee a hand into the rolling boat. Dressed all in black, Musashi looked like a ninja.

“Works for me,” said Eddy.

“Let’s shove off,” said Musashi.

At twilight they’d once again sailed the doughty Merri-Lee from Quincy, a yellow Zodiac lashed to her deck, Eddy, Dee and but one other person on deck: Enrique, or Ricky, recruited by Eddy and vouched for by him to Jim as “smart, fast, good with a gun and a great sailor.” It’d been decided that given the number of Spesnatz now on the islands, if Tim, Angie and Kaeko couldn’t be extracted by five people they couldn’t be extracted by nine or ten, either.

They left the harbor behind, the setting sun turning the western sky red. Dee felt an unexpected calm come over her, banishing the uncertainty and deep unease she’d felt since Jim Beauchamp and his friends had broken into her orderly, cloistered life.

“A penny for your thoughts.” She turned to find Tennu Musashi standing beside her. They both gripped the rail as the Merri-Lee pushed into the wind, slapping through four-foot swells.

“Who’s driving?” she asked, looking toward the pilothouse. Ricky was at the wheel. Short, dark, whipcord thin with quick movements and darting black eyes, Ricky said little. He seemed intelligent, did exactly what Eddy told him to, usually acknowledging with just a curt nod. Dee’s one attempt to get him to speak had been ignored.

“Eddy says he can pilot a boat,” said Musashi, following her gaze. “And he seems to know port from starboard.” He turned back to Dee. “So, do you want that penny?”

“I was just thinking how everything has changed, knowing I’m not alone and being able to accept what I am—maybe finally reconcile myself to what? To life, I guess. To myself.”

“There’s no surety we’ll make it through the night,” said Musashi.

“I know. But I’d rather go out standing up than strapped to a table. So,” she said, grasping the rail hard as a sudden swell threw her off-balance, “what are you?”

Throwing his head back, Musashi filled his lungs. “It’s so good to smell the cold sea air. We lived up north on Hokkaido until I was twelve. I love the cold and the snow.” He looked at Dee. “Me? What am I? I propose a small exchange.”

“And what would that be?” she asked carefully.

“I’ll tell you something about myself if you do something for me.” He looked around. Eddy and Enrique were in the pilot house. “Check out Eddy and Enrique—make sure that they’re truly on our side.”

Dee thought about it for a moment, weighing the ethics against the need. “Okay,” she said finally. “But no roaming about between their ears, understood?”

“Understood.”

“And I don’t want you to just tell me you have two sisters and a cat, collect Hokusai prints and consider that a fair exchange.”

“I had a sister,” he volunteered. “Never a cat—allergies. But I once owned a Hokusai print of Mt. Fuji.”

“Did it have a cat in it?”

“No. More likely that would have been Hiroshige. They were competitors. But I think you knew that,” he smiled.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it. It shouldn’t take long.”

It wasn’t actual thoughts she first sought out—it was harmony or the lack of it, a thing of intermingled light and emotion, a quick gauge of the degree of serenity or of discord within each mind. No two minds were ever the same.

Eddy was a riot of vibrant colors and feelings—no surprise there—and happy, genuinely happy, though she saw as she looked just a bit deeper that his immediate happiness was from tonight’s forthcoming action, a possibly desperate battle of good against evil. It was the sort of fight Eddy lived for and rarely had.

Still enjoying the warmth of Eddy’s good-heartedness, she turned her mind to Ricky—and gasped as fierce hatred burned through her, the smoldering incandescence of a sacrificial pyre, its sickly sweet stench so real that she gagged.

Experience let her see it as a core of black despair within Ricky, a dark torment that had long ago taken the light from him even as it devoured him. Fearing to do so, yet obligated, Dee steeled herself, probing deeper. From afar, she was aware of Musashi’s growing concern. After a moment, she had what she needed and withdrew.

“You don’t look so good,” said the Japanese as she leaned weakly against the rail.

“That young man,” said Dee, “is a piece of work.”

Musashi’s eyes flicked to the pilothouse, then back to Dee. “How so?”

She took a deep breath, as always appalled at just how vulnerable she was to the emotions ravaging her fellow man. “He’s a contract killer, but,” she said resting her hand on Musashi’s arm as his face hardened, “he’s not after us. Eddy gave the kid a job after he got out of prison for knocking over a liquor store. Enrique looks up to Eddy as a sort of role model...”

“Oh my.”

“...but mostly, hatred is what defines Enrique. It fills him, consumes him. Nightmarish childhood, alcoholic mother, his uncle raped him when he was ten.” She wanted to stop, but it just kept pouring out. “Killed a girl in ninth grade who made fun of his sexual awkwardness, went back and killed his uncle when he was sixteen. Does hits for some drug dealers he met in jail, occasional jobs for Eddy, like this one. Eddy has no idea that he’s harboring a sociopathic killer. Thinks Enrique’s a nice kid, just too quiet and a little rough around the edges. Admires the kid’s fearlessness, but it’s only a death wish.”

“Are you all right?” asked Musashi, as she continued staring fixedly out toward the dark sea.

Dee shrugged. “I’ll be okay.” She gave him a weak smile. “It’s like walking through a sewer. Takes time for the results to fade. And now, sir, what about you?”

“Human,” he said. “Male, thirty-two years old. And the reason you can’t read me, is that I’m skilled at keeping people with your abilities out of my head.”

“Are you one of us?” she asked hopefully.

“No, but I do have some complimentary skills, though nothing as profound as yours.”

“Why are you here?”

“Two reasons. To prevent the names of the Eldridge sailors and their families from passing into the wrong hands.”

“Whitsun and Schmidla’s?”

“Theirs would be but the first. And also, to ensure that tonight goes as it should.”

“As it should?” she repeated, picking up on something in his voice. Regret? She wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” he said and abruptly walked away.

Chapter 25

Maria was so happy whenever Uncle Richard brought her special new friends. It was lonely on the island, a loneliness she only partially overcame by exploring the beaches and hills, the small wonders left by the receding tide in the pools among the seaweed and the barnacled rocks. And playing with whatever few other kids might visit her from school on weekends—something that didn’t often happen, as she was a shy and aloof girl, brilliant and beautiful.

But with special friends, like Angie and Tim, she could go anywhere and be at ease.

First, she took them to the Old Man’s House. He wasn’t there today. In fact she’d only seen him once, in his library, a shawl over his legs, the fire dying before him. A nice girl, not wanting to disturb him, she’d left as quickly as she’d come.

“Where are we?” asked Tim, looking about him, still disoriented.

“Not in Kansas anymore,” said Angie, lightheaded. “How do you feel?” she asked Tim.

“Dizzy. Strange.”

“Where are we, Maria?” Angie asked gently. “How did we get here?”

Maria had taken a sextant from the ornate desk in the middle of the room. She held it close, looking curiously at the figures etched into the brass, then losing interest, dropped it back on the desk. Calling “Catch me!” she ran out the double doors into the garden.

“What’s she on?” asked Tim.

“Whatever we’re all on,” said Angie, staring through the doors after Maria, now skipping across the grass. It was a lovely garden, mostly roses, with a tall well-tended hedge marking its far boundary. A white-pebbled path led into the hedge, an arbor of yellow roses at its entrance. The path forked and disappeared before a second row of hedges just beyond the first. A maze? she wondered.

Before following Maria she turned back for a last about the room. There were candles, set in brass chambersticks and candelabrum around the wainscoted room. An ornate chandler, but no electrical outlets. A fireplace, but no sign of central heating. And books – row upon row of leather-bound books stretching to the blue-domed ceiling. An iron spiral staircase led to the balcony circling library’s second tier.

A flintlock pistol with worn silver-chased grips lay on the desk. “I think we’re a long time from home,” she said. “And a long when.”

“If we’re really here at all,” he said, following her gaze as it moved around the room. Their eyes met. “Let’s find our conductress,” said Angie.

Jim stepped away from the window and the empty Chamber that only a few moments ago had held his daughter, Angie and O’Malley.

“Flop-transition?” he said to Schmidla.

“We probably have some time,” said Schmidla. “You know about the Eldridge and the ship invisibility experiments. Do you have any idea what made those ships vanish?”

“They were, what? encased in some sort of magnetic field and subjected to some sort of energy...” Jim managed, feeling stupid.

“Obviously you don’t,” said Schmidla dismissively. “It’s quite simple, exquisite even. Our sister project, the one which is so heavily funded,” he shot a dark glance at Budd, “has replicated the Philadelphia Experiment many times, remotely, with even larger inanimate objects.”

“Why do you think that?” asked Budd.

“I’ve been involved with this work for over half a century, Mr. Budd,” said Schmidla. “One hears things.”

Budd glanced at Whitsun, standing next to Lokransky by the observation window.

“Our sister project’s problem,” continued Schmidla, “and ours, has always been one of control—control of the phenomenon once it’s initiated.” He paused, collecting his thoughts, then continued, pacing in a small slow circle, hands behind his back. “It’s been recently theorized that all subatomic particles are comprised of strings of energy. And that it’s the interrelationship of these strings-often called superstrings—that determine the structure of all matter and energy. Specifically, these strings, of differing contours and tension, vibrate and determine through their harmonics the constituents of all matter and energy, of time and space. The universe, indeed, the multiverse—the endless sweep of time and dimensions—is the product of the oscillation of these tiny strands of energy.”

Right on Angie, thought Jim, recalling her seemingly long-ago lecture on particle physics, string theory and Eldridge.

“What the United States, Germany and Japan did, we may theorize, was to alter the vibrations, the different patterns of oscillation, of the energy strings comprising their vessels, thus altering the structure of ships and crews and setting them moving through a what? a series of dimensions, time, perhaps? ultimately returning to their points of origin.”

As Schmidla spoke, Jim glanced at the others in the room. By their expressions this was new information only to Lokransky—the Russian stood by the door, rapt with attention. Whitsun and Budd had the disinterested looks of men hearing a tale retold.

“If this is a new theory,” said Jim, “how did it come to be tested out in the 1940’s? How did anyone know to try it?”

“They didn’t,” said Schmidla. “What they were trying to do was to alter the properties of the ships’ materials, make them undetectable to radar yet retaining their structural integrity. Radar was very new, but as soon as the theory of radar was known, everyone of course began working on countermeasures. Opinion among researchers was evenly divided as to whether success would also render the ships totally invisible. Only Einstein in the U.S. and Kowamoto in Japan thought that far more profound effects might result.

“Three nations—Germany, America and Japan—succeeded in altering the properties of their test ships, such that they weren’t detectable by radar,” he continued. “An unlooked for side effect was the removal of the vessels from their own reality.” He shook his head, amused. “Manipulate those little strands of energy just right, set them to resonating with just the right harmonics, and you may just create enormous quantum fluctuations—tearing the fabric of space-time and sending an object through what is popularly known as a wormhole. A flop-transition.”

“Tiny little strings can do that?” said Lokransky skeptically.

Schmidla stared at him, startled, as though his housekeeper had interjected herself into his dinner conversation. It suited him to reply. “It’s theorized that just one of those tiny little strings, Colonel, each but the size of a dust mote, can generate one thousand kilowatt hours of energy. Enough to run a large, energy-hogging American household for a month.”

“Where do these objects emerge?” asked Jim, intrigued despite himself. “Where do they go?”

“Someday we may know,” shrugged Schmidla. “Space and time are permeable and curve back in on themselves. We’re still decades away from the mathematics that could help us understand the phenomenon or equipment that can record it.”

“And the people aboard those ships?” asked Jim, sensing what was to come next, for once you admitted that a piece of metal could be made to go Elsewhere...

“That is the most amazing thing of it all,” said Schmidla. “The experiments created in the descendants of those crewmen the potential—hence Potentials—to alter their own string vibrations—alter, but not control. And rather than diminishing, Potential increases with each generation. Plays hell with convents of heredity, genetics and information theory, doesn’t it? This aspect of Project Telemachus, the human aspect, was founded to research that potential, to see if it was inherent in all humans and, if so, how it could be actualized and controlled. Manifestations of extrasensory ability, also uncontrolled, are symptomatic of the possession of Potential.”

“Surely everyone with paranormal abilities isn’t descended from one of those sailors?” asked Jim.

“No, but all ships’ descendants have paranormal abilities,” said Schmidla.

“You didn’t succeed.”

“We haven’t yet succeeded—our terms of reference have changed. We know now that we can’t give humans the abilities possessed by Potentials. We’ve recently demonstrated that Potentials aren’t human—they’ve far more genetic material to play with than do we. About twice as much.”

Jim felt Kaeko’s warm little five year-old hand in his as they used to stroll along the beach at Shimoda, Angie’s nasty mouth and her musical laugh. “You’re definition of what’s human is very limiting.”

“Both species can’t be human. And despite the ability to interbreed, we aren’t the same species, so profound are the differences. I suspect our successor species will decide we’re not human and dispose of us as we did the Neanderthal. Displacement of the inferior by the superior is a tenet of natural selection. But,” continued Schmidla, “knowing that there’s a physical difference between the Potentials and ourselves is very liberating. It inspires us to strive for perfection, to engineer for the physical and intellectual attributes of the ultimate human being—Homo Supernus—a being I’ve long believed attainable, a being whose creation I’ve long championed.” Something hard had slipped into his tone.

“We know your antecedents, Dr. Schmidla,” said Budd.

“And have you succeeded?” prompted Jim.

“If,” said Schmidla, “our three Potentials return to us, alive and well, I’ll have demonstrated that Homo Supernus is possible, even inevitable. The ability to traverse time and space, to manipulate energy and matter, will raise the Potentials from the status of genetic oddity to that of a quantum evolutionary leap.” His voice rose excitedly. “What must come next is a generation carefully crafted, one whose members will have and can control extraordinary abilities, but most of all, control matter and energy. Think of it—to control matter and energy with your mind. The tools of the biotech revolution put that goal within our reach. Its attainment is a vision that Admiral Whitsun and I have long shared.” He turned to Budd. “All we need is money.”

“We’ll see how this plays out,” said the CIA officer.

“This has been tried before,” said Jim. “By you and others like you. It failed. Superman’s still confined to the comics.”

“In retrospect, it was darkly comedic. Of course we failed! The time wasn’t right—we didn’t have the science, the technology. We went about it crudely, pursuing not so much a vision as an inspiration. It was all so coarse, so primitive. Forced eugenics, euthanasia, Aryan breeders.” He shook his head, embarrassed by his younger self’s indiscretions. “Such enthusiasm. Such bumbling. But our vision inspired us—it gave us the resolve and the courage to attempt a better humanity. That vision never died. And now,” he closed his fist before their faces, “we will attain it!”

They heard Maria playing somewhere in the maze. “Can’t catch me!” she called happily, her voice muffled by the verdant walls of hedge.

“Is that a castle?” asked Tim. He stood with Angie at the entrance to the maze, gardens around them, woods beyond that, staring at the expanse of Norman stone rising behind them.

Angie looked back at the long mullioned windows, the towers, remains of crenellated battlements. “It may have begun as a small castle,” she said. “Or perhaps a priory. Now it’s a manor house—probably had some major Late Renaissance renovations.”

“Thirty bedrooms, one toilet?” Tim speculated.

“And lots of books.”

“Come and get me!” Maria called again.

“She got us here—let’s hope she can get us out,” said Tim.

Something about him has changed, thought Angie. He’s calmer, less prone to hysteria. Wonder what this is doing to me?

“Where are the people, the animals?” she asked. They saw stables, ponds, a river, outbuildings, woods and the long stretch of a dirt road. In the distance a square church tower rose above the trees. “No life at all. You see an insect, a bird?”

O’Malley shook his head. “No. And not a hint of breeze.” He sniffed one of the arbor’s yellow roses. “Vanilla. Different. There’s no evidence any this is real,” he said, waving a hand.

“Never guess you were an engineer,” smiled Angie. “There’s no evidence it isn’t real. Whatever process brought us here is part of Project Telemachus, derived from the Philadelphia Experiment. Disappearance was the goal, moving the unintended consequence. All physics, not biochemistry. Schmidla wants power and that doesn’t come from hallucinations  Is this place a part of ours or any universe? I don’t know. But whatever or wherever it is, it is. And to leave it we need Maria.”

“I haven’t played hide-and-seek in a long time,” he said, following her into the dark coolness of the maze.

“It’ll come back to you,” she said. “Maria! Here we come, ready or not!” she called, plunging into the cool green labyrinth.

“It’s been over six hours,” said Whitsun, looking at the clock.

“Perhaps it’s been a few days where they are,” said Schmidla.

“What happens when they come back?” asked Jim, leaning against a console. Except for the guards, everyone else sat in a chair. No one had offered him one.

“If they come back,” said Schmidla. “That’s often been a problem. If they come back, they’ll be altered, their abilities enhanced—it is the only way that they can come back. Alive. To return intact they must all share their abilities, and through sharing, each gains some of the others’ Potential—Maria’s partial memories of her previous voyages have told us that. In terms of string harmonics, look at it as musicians teaching each other how to play their special instrument. Their skills become shared skills, held in common.”

“Have any returned before?” asked Jim.

“Returned, yes. Survived, no. Of all of them, only Maria has lived through the experience. We believe her abilities have been augmented by the process—a process to which I’ve tried to make her mind amenable.”

“How?” Something in Jim’s voice brought Lokransky’s gaze his way.

“Oh, nothing deleterious or she wouldn’t be teaching at one of the world’s better universities. I implanted autosuggestions from an early age, isolated her from her peers during childhood as much as psychologically feasible. This fostered dependency upon me and helped prevent any unfortunate revelations of her abilities. So now when she receives the trigger words, she reverts to a pliant, lonely little girl who wants to take her new friends on a journey. New friends, of course, as the old are unfortunately gone. The rest of the time she’s the crisp, cool academic.”

“You did that all with hypnosis?” asked Budd.

“Reinforced by a pharmaceutical to make her mind more receptive, yes,” said Schmidla. “The trouble with that drug was that it had to be administered daily. Very cumbersome. A few years ago, though, the pharmaceutical company I use perfected a variant that can be administered weekly. It’s made life easier.”

“Let’s stay together, no matter what,” said Angie. Their first choice lay before them, two branchings of the trail forking out between the hedgerows. From high above the sunlight filtered down onto the trail—a perfect trail devoid of leaves, twigs, insects. Maria hadn’t answered their calls. They hadn’t heard her again since entering the maze.

“Which way?” asked Angie.

“Right,” said Tim, leading.

“Why three people for an experiment?” asked Jim.

“Simple,” said Schmidla. “One or two never return alive or die at once upon return. Four or more never leave.”

“Are you hearing this?” Rourke asked Kessler over the phone.

“Yes,” said the FBI agent, touching the ear jack in his left ear, the cellphone to his other ear. “Believing’s harder.”

“Believe,” said Rourke.

The transmitter in Billy’s belt buckle was working flawlessly, relaying the voices from Small’s Island through a transponder in his helicopter to a communications satellite, thence to Rourke in McLean and Kessler in Massachusetts.

“Why isn’t Billy saying anything?” asked Kessler. “Not like him to be so quiet.”

“Our Billy’s in a tenuous position,” said Rourke, “what with the place swarming with Spesnatz. Oh. New word from the Old Country is that Lokransky and company only ostensibly work for Whitsun. They have a different agenda, straight from the Kremlin.”

“And that is what?” asked the FBI agent. Looking out through the office window, he saw that the Army helicopters had finished refueling, the tanker trucks now leaving. The tarmac of the old Naval air station was alive with activity, men and women in olive-drab fatigues moving quickly through the process of readying the big Huey troop carriers and the squat, insect-like Apache assault craft for combat. Behind him in the barracks, three hundred carefully selected and specially trained Army Rangers from Ft. Bragg were eating their packaged Meals-Ready-to-Eat. Smalls Island was just across Boston Harbor, a three minute chopper ride away.

“Fred, if today’s experiment is a success,” said Rourke, “with those three returning alive, Telemachus will have succeeded—Schmidla’s version of it. The Russians will seize all the project material, go home and cobble together some organic monsters to restore the glory that was. That’s the other thing you’re there to prevent.”

“You underestimated The Good Doctor, didn’t you, Harry?” asked Kessler quietly, walking to the corner of the room, away from Colonel Caddock and his staff. The officers were hunched over a map of the island, reviewing their operational planning one last time.

“Only a bit,” said Rourke.

“A crucial bit. You thought he was a crackpot mountebank peddling pseudo-scientific garbage. So you humored him, to get the job done.”

“He did what we wanted him to do—take out our garbage. He found and destroyed the descendants of those ships’ crews. He had the background we needed for the job. And he even picked up a few toys and oddities for us along the way.” Rourke recalled the half-mile wide crater in the southwest desert left from the explosion of one very small such oddity. “If we’d had our usual contractors do it someone would’ve picked up on it. Can’t you see the headline? CIA Hit Men Stalk War Vets’ Orphans.”

“Schmidla’s been playing his own game,” said Kessler. “He’s been playing us all like trout for decades to get what he wants. I think he has or is on the verge a breakthrough. His ideology’s perverted but his method may work-- something very different is happening over on that island.”

“So what?” said Rourke. “Even if Schmidla’s latest trio does return intact, they’ll go down with everyone else. Just make sure you take our old friend Jimbo alive. Get that miserable crew roster and we’ll then use contract staff to track them down and finish up. You’ve got to get me the Eldridge roster, Freddy.”

“You know, Harry, if I weren’t convinced that what I’m doing’s the only way to save us all from extinction...” began Kessler.

“Don’t be a Boy Scout, Freddy,” said Rourke. “If those people with their abilities and their potential for interbreeding get off that island, humanity as we know is finished. Sanitize that site, get the roster, and it’s over. Life returns to normal.”

“Really?” said Kessler. “Think you can stuff this genie back into its bottle?”

“We better. It’s the genie or us.”

Angie and Tim found Maria sitting on a bench at the heart of the maze, where paths merged into a round swath of perfectly even, perfectly green grass. A two-headed orange-yellow butterfly was perched on her index finger, wings fluttering. Maria looked up as they arrived. “Isn’t he gorgeous?” she said. “Want to hold him?” She held him out to Angie.

“How can you tell it’s a he?” asked Tim, peering closely. “Oh.”

Understanding, or at least the beginning of it, came to Angie as she put her finger next to Maria’s and the creature hopped on, the soft breeze from its wings caressing her hand. “Hello beautiful,” she said feeling the quiver of tiny life atop her finger. Both heads turned, front and back and four solemn black eyes appraised her.

“Are the Red Queen and a big bunny coming for tea?” asked Tim as Angie held the insect close.

“Not unless Maria creates them,” she said, watching the translucent wings quiver. “This is Maria’s world,” she said softly. “A pocket universe playhouse built by a tormented and lonely little girl.” She returned the impossible-but-real butterfly to Maria. “How often do you come here, Maria?”

“Whenever Uncle Richard lets me,” said the girl. “Bye bye!” she called as her insect took flight. It rose in lazy circles, disappearing over the top of the hedge. “Uncle Richard was mean to me,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

Behind her the hedge turned opaque so briefly that Angie almost missed it.

“Maria,” said Tim, “we have to go home.”

“I’m never going home again,” said the girl, sniffling.

Okay, what’s going on? said a voice in Angie’s mind—Tim’s voice.

“Tim?” Angie said aloud, startled. Tim stared back at her.

“Just wishing we could chat privately,” he said. Guess we can. So, what’s going on? It’s Maria, isn’t it? Anxiety tinged his thoughts.

I think Maria used our combined powers to bring us here, thought Angie. Maybe she used them to build this play world. Our abilities and all the others she’s brought here. In doing so, our abilities—our Potential—has grown—maybe still is growing. This is what Telemachus is all about. Not our little selves moving about the universe—it’s about our innate abilities to create and alter physical reality—we children of those poor sailors. Apparently we, what? cross-fertilize each other.

And the purpose of the project? asked Tim. The long years of torture and murder presided over by Whitsun and Schmidla? All they’ve really accomplished is killing off most Potentials.

Angie sat down beside Maria, now pouting at her feet. It seemed obvious, now that O’Malley had said it.

Don’t you see? That’s what they were supposed to do. The government wanted us all dead. If they could learn something from us, fine, but their main agenda was to have us quietly snuffed. No hit men, no fomenting of conspiracy theories. They hired Schmidla and he did the rest. Drown, freeze, chop—whatever the Doctor ordered. He had the perfect resume for ridding Earth of paranormals.

“Why?” He said aloud, shocked. “I’d think we’d be welcomed as a godsend.”

Angie laughed. “Come on, Tim! What would those who can’t control matter and energy from within call those who can?”

“Witches?”

She shook her head. “Demons.”

Chapter 26

The bitter north wind numbing her face, arms aching with exhaustion, Dee watched the dark outline of the shore inch closer as they paddled hard against the outgoing tide. Her hands wet and numb with cold, she could hear the surf crashing against the sharp rocks to either side-must be almost there, please, almost there, she thought, panting, pushing against the tide and her pain. In front and beside her, Musashi, Eddy and Ricky paddled with easy, experienced strokes. Dee decided she hated them.

They weren’t supposed to be splashing about fifty meters inshore from the Merri-Lee. They were supposed to be slipping through the surf, noiselessly propelled by the Zodiac’s 40 hp electric outboard motor—a motor which had quit on them just as they’d pulled away from the anchored cabin cruiser. Eddy, noting that the motor was of Japanese manufacture, had made a salty remark, to which Musashi said, “Paddle or swim, please.”

A large wave broke behind them, propelling them into quieter, shallow water, tantalizingly close to shore.

“Out!” cried Musashi. “Pull it up! Beach it!” Following his lead, pain shooting through her cramped legs, Dee pushed herself over the side, staggering at the sudden sharp tug of undertow as her feet found the rocky bottom. Water roiled about her, surging up over her waist, the waves slamming her. She grabbed the Zodiac’s thick rubber-coated pull-handle and trotted with the others through the icy surf, dragging the boat up onto the pebbled beach. She collapsed, gasping, leaning her back against the boat.

Musashi dropped down beside her, breathing easily. “That was fun!” he said, clapping her on the shoulder.

“You’re crazy,” she managed. Behind her, Eddy and Enrique were hauling a heavy bundle from the Zodiac. It was wrapped in a blue tarp and tied with white nylon cord that Eddy deftly sliced with what Dee thought must be the world’s largest knife. They gathered around as the bundle was unrolled and Eddy distributed the newest, smallest version of the Uzi.

“Here,” said Eddy, handing Dee one of the machine pistols and five magazines. “Just remember what we showed you on the boat, and you’ll do fine.”

Out over open water, the sun almost gone, they’d run her through a quick weapon’s drill, having her load and fire off a magazine. She’d enjoyed the weapon jerking in her hands, the smell of cordite. To their mutual surprise, some of the rounds had hit the bobbing orange life vest of a target. Confronted by a Russian commando, Dee thought the outcome clear, but it had been fun.

They dragged the boat behind the boulders flanking the cave entrance, just above the high tide mark, stashing their wet suits in the raft.

“Your show, Musashi-san,” said Eddy with a slight bow.

“The prisoners will most likely be in either the confinement wing of the fort or the experiment’s operations center, under the hospital,” said the Japanese. “If they’re not in the hospital or the fort, we’ll return to the beach. There’s little cover between the hospital and the only other likely point of confinement, Schmidla’s house. Half the Russian Army’s out there—we’d never make it.

“Let’s go,” he said, leading them into the cave.

“Where are they?” said Whitsun, looking at the clock. “It’s been almost seven hours. Has any group ever been away for this long?”

“None that came back,” said Schmidla as he deftly slipped the IV into the vein of Jim’s arm. Reaching up, he turned on the sodium pentothal drip.

They were still in the observation room. Not daring to leave, but very much wanting to extract the location of the Eldridge roster from Jim, Schmidla had Lokransky’s men strap Jim into a chair and begun administering the truth serum.

Jim didn’t care about the sting of the needle or the growing warm fuzziness in his head. He didn’t care about the Eldridge roster—hell, no one in the room would be leaving the island alive. (Wonder if Billy knows he’s toast? thought Jim, looking at the ever-unflappable Billy Budd, as he sat in his chair, writing in his palm pilot.) “Doing your expense report, Billy?” he asked.

“Trying to,” said Budd, not looking up.

The goal, thought Jim, was to somehow ensure that Kaeko and Angie lived through the coming battle—a battle to be signaled by their return.

“Feeling a bit drowsy?” asked Schmidla.

“Not at all,” said Jim, wanting to sleep.

“You will,” said Schmidla, pulling up a stool and sitting. “While we wait, let’s talk about a few things, shall we?”

“No.”

“What is your name?”

“Bingo the Balless.”

Schmidla frowned. “Perhaps a few more minutes before our chat. Louis,” he called.

Dr. Bartlett appeared.

“Yes, Richard?”

“I’d like you to have Mr. Beauchamp taken into one of the treatment rooms, monitor his progress on the pentothal. When he’s sufficiently pliant, please let me know.”

Bartlett frowned unhappily. “I was hoping to be here when they return, Richard.” His voice was mellifluous and surprisingly deep for so short a man. His resemblance to the legendary swindler Charles Ponzi was uncanny.

“It won’t take long, Louis,” said Schmidla. “If they return, I’ll call you. I promise.”

Three Spesnatz carried Jim, chair, IV pole and all, following Bartlett down the hallway. They were barely gone when Lokransky received the report he’d been waiting for and slipped away.

They moved through the cave—a smugglers grotto, carved from a fissure in the rock and widened by long dead hands wielding hammers and chisels. Passing the dank rough-hewn walls, Dee saw tool marks and holes where workmen had set their spiked candle holders and lanterns. Scattered about were bits of broken glass, the rotting remains of wooden pallets and rusted metal. As she was about to go up the narrow granite stairs to the fort, something caught Dee’s eye. Kneeling, she gently picked it up, trying to make out what lettering had survived years of corrosion

“What is it?” asked Musashi, joining her as she rose.

“It’s a steel beer can,” she said, almost reverently, handing it to him. “My Dad told me about them, but I’ve never seen one. Can you make out the name?”

Musashi started at the rusted can. “McCray’s Ale,” he said after a moment. “Big on U.S. college campuses in the 1930’s. Like so much else, it didn’t survive the war.”

“Really?” she said, looking again at what was left of the can. “How can you tell?”

“I know my beers,” he grinned. “Let’s go.”

“You coming?” said Eddy, a foot on the first stair, wanting to go but knowing Musashi and Dee should be on point, as agreed.

The stairs ended at a very old, very solid iron door.

“Locked on the other side,” Eddy said, shoulder to the unmoving metal.

“Anyone nearby?” Musashi asked Dee.

“I’m a telepath, not a radar unit,” she said. For just a second her eyes took on That Look, then she was back. “All clear.”

From his backpack, Eddy took a small yellow blowtorch, a thick pair of gray gloves and welder’s goggles. He pulled on the gloves and slipped the goggles over his eyes. “Stand back,” he ordered. “This is magnesium—it’ll go through that door like a knife through butter.” Which it did, the white flame slicing through the old iron as the torch hissed, sparks cascading to the floor.

With a tap from Eddy, a chunk of smoldering metal fell clanging onto the stone floor of the corridor. Perfectly balanced, the door swung silently open on well-oiled hinges. They waited a long moment, hearing only the distant surf and the pounding of their hearts.

“Great,” said Eddy, shouldering his back pack and picking up his Uzi. “Ready?” he asked Musashi.

“No,” said the Japanese. Using his foot and the wire stock of his Uzi, he turned the still-hot piece of metal over. The touchpad of a small electronic lock gleamed up at them, its red LED dull and dead. “Very new,” he said. He looked closely at the hinges. “And the door’s been rehung and lubricated. My workmen didn’t do it. Someone’s only been using this entrance, or is planning to.”

“The Russians?” suggested Eddy.

“They came in by helicopter and boat,” said Musashi. “They probably don’t even know about the cave. There’ll be sentries up ahead, though.” Switching the Uzi to his left hand, he drew his katana from where it rode high on his back. “Let’s go.”

Scared, tense and excited, Dee fell in behind Musashi, her Uzi held tight, finger inside the trigger guard, safety on. Most of her mind was busy, probing ahead, but a small part toyed with how Tennu had so effortlessly identified a beer that hadn’t been produced in over half a century.

“How are we doing?” asked Bartlett, looking down at Jim.

“Not so good,” said Jim. Oh oh, he thought. He’d intended to say something about Bartlett’s mother, but the truth had popped out. The two men were alone in a small examination room, a Spesnatz on guard outside.

Bartlett nodded. “About time. What is your name?”

Jim heard some treacherous part of himself reply honestly. The questions continued: occupation, date of birth. The truth flowed freely.

“You’ll do,” said Bartlett with a faint smile. He was reaching for the wall phone when Billy Budd came into the room and shot him dead, a bullet to the head.

Pocketing his silenced S&W, Budd stepped back into the corridor, returning in a moment with the body of Spesnatz, also shot in the head. He locked the door. “I should shoot you, too,” he said to a glassy-eyed Jimbo. “‘Sanctimonious weasel.’ You’re not looking so good, Jimbo,” he added.

“Either shoot me or get me the hell out of here,” said Jim weakly.

“I should ask you where the Eldridge roster is,” said Budd. “But I don’t want to know.” Taking the IV from Jim’s arm, he released the canvas straps holding him to the gurney. Legs over the side of the table, Jim leaned forward, hands to his bursting head.

“Can you walk?”

“After I puke.” Which he did, into the wastebasket Billy shoved at him.

“Nasty shit,” said Jim after a moment. “Water?” he asked.

Billy filled a glass from the tap and brought it over.

“Thanks,” said Jim, sipping. “So, are they back?”

“Not when I left,” said Billy. “And Kessler’s out there, ready to launch an assault.”

Jim focused on that despite the pain drilling through his head. “They’re going to kill everyone, aren’t they?”

“It’s the Black Brigade. It’s what they do. They’ll kill everything that moves, take the project records and torch the place. Maybe sow the ground with salt, too. You they want to bring back alive.”

“The roster?”

“Yes. Me, though, well, I know enough to send a lot of people to jail forever, if not the gas chamber.”

“Kessie’s not going to shoot you,” said Jim. Finishing the water, he crumpled the cup and pitched it toward the wastebasket. Bouncing off the rim, it landed in Bartlett’s mouth, still gapped wide in disbelief.

“No,” agreed Budd. “Not Kessie, but some of the Army guys probably have their orders. Think of the money the government will save on my pension. No doubt they’re hoping to get Kaeko, Milano and O’Malley, too, but if they’re not back,” he shrugged, “they’ll leave a small reception committee amid the smoldering ruins. Now’s our last chance to get the hell off this island, Jimbo.”

“How are we going to get by the Red Army?”

“I can have Rourke call Whitsun. A chopper will pick us up.”

“Making me your ticket out of here.”

“I want my pension.”

“I’m not leaving without my daughter and Angie and Tim O’Malley,” said Jim. Standing, he staggered and would have fallen if Billy hadn’t steadied him.

“Jim, they’re not here,” said Billy, seizing him by the shoulders, looking him in the eye. “They may never be here. If you’re dead, who’ll follow up on the roster?”

“Forget the roster, Billy.”

“Okay. So, do you have a plan? Other than your band of desperadoes?”

“Yeah,” said Jim. “I’ve got a plan.” His vertigo was fading but not his headache. “We shoot our way into the operations area and hold it until our trio returns.”

“I like my plan better.”

Kneeling, Jim took the machine pistol from the dead Russian. “Chances would be better if there were two of us,” he said, checking the weapon’s action and clicking on the safety.

“Not really,” said Billy, watching as Jim took the commando’s webbed utility belt with its spare magazines, let it out a tad and buckled it on. “Things didn’t end well for Butch and Sundance either.

“So, Billy,” asked Jim cheerfully, “what’s your 401k worth now?”

“You mean the 401k my ex, the Bitch of Baltimore’s going to get? She and her decidedly younger boyfriend? Pisser, isn’t Jimbo? Work all those years, kiss acres of ass to get ahead, take some big risks. You know why they first let Schmidla out of his cage?”

“You’re going to tell me something that’ll make even me more cynical, aren’t you?” said Jim. As an afterthought, he knelt, checking the Spesnatz’s body—no grenades.

“They wanted to wipe out the descendants’ survivors. Those kids terrified them—mind reading, telekinesis, teleportation, precognition—abilities that grew with each generation, but powers over which their owners had no control. The first generation scared our masters. By the third-generation, they’d lost control of their bladders. There’s to be no fourth-generation.

“Schmidla seemed well-suited to the task at hand—disposing of this threat to our comfy place atop the food chain. The understanding’s always been that he could use Potentials as his sacrificial lab rats so long as they were all sacrificed. He was allowed to keep Kaeko, though—he did insist.”

Seeing the look on Jim’s face, he added, “Jim, I swear, if I’d known Maria was Kaeko, I’d have told you—we’d have pulled her out of here years ago. You know how easily new IDs and new identities can be created, fat new bank accounts set up.”

“Schmidla’s an ancient, lidless crocodile, Billy. If he played your dupe, it was because it suited him.”

“Know much about him?”

“Only what I hear from his friends.”

“Well I’ve done my homework,” said Budd. “Beneath that cloak of intellectualism and cold rationality lies a misty-eyed Teutonic knight. For over half a century he’s been on a quest for Nazism’s Holy Grail, the Aryan Superman, Der Übermensch. Superman,” Budd snorted. “His only tangible result to date is a trail of corpses stretching from the Caucuses through Nordhausen and Bremen to Boston. But pathetic though his loathsome attempts at eugenics may be, he’s an excellent executioner, perfect for the job of ridding the world of those weird, scary Potentials. That’s why Whitsun was told to go out and get him.”

“Schmidla’s a genius, Billy—a very clever, patient and diabolical genius.”

“He can afford to be patient—he’s over a hundred years old. You know he’s shrinking?”

“Not fast enough to do anyone any good,” said Jim. “And Whitsun?”

“Judging from his reports and point papers, Whitsun bought into the concept of developing Potentials to man the Frontiers of Freedom. And as a deterrent to Russia developing Potentials, of course,” Budd smirked.

“Did our Russian friends ever have their own ship invisibility project?”

“No. They didn’t have much of a fleet during World War II. Plus they were broke and fighting for their lives. But if we can recreate the conditions of the Philadelphia Experiment—and we have—so can they. Typically the Russians just steal our R&D results. Costs a lot less. Probably the only reason they didn’t visit this island paradise before is they didn’t think it worth the effort. Sounds like a macabre nightmare unless you’ve seen videos from the experiments.”

“So what changed their minds?”

Budd shrugged. “Biotech, genomics—they’re the future that’s suddenly upon us. If the Russians caught even a hint of the sort of long-term HUMBAPs Telemachus’ tinkering with...”

“HUMBAPs?”

“Human-Based Phenomena. They’d just love to have a look at the genetics of some Potentials. Why join in the race to reengineer the human genome if Mother Nature’s already produced a workable prototype? Steal the prototype. And if there’s no prototype left, thanks to The Good Doctor’s enthusiasms, why then, bring home any research material you can grab and, of course, the Sacred Roster.”

“It always amazed me,” said Jim “how we reduced intricate complexities to a few words, then shrank those into acronyms. Kaeko and Angie—HUMBAPs.”

“In your way, Jim, you’re as much as romantic as Schmidla – it was your idealism that doomed you at the Company. We’re Corporate now. The Great Game’s long gone.”

The phone rang. Budd answered, taking a message for Bartlett. “They’re back,” he said, hanging up.

“Showtime,” said Jim. Banishing emotion, Jim went into that small ever-calm center of himself that he’d first found in the jungles of Asia. “We need Freddy.”

Billy shook his head. “Agent Kessler has his orders.”

“I’ll talk to him. Get him on your phone.”

“Freddy,” said Jim when the FBI agent answered. “Jimbo. I’m here on the island with Billy. Angie, Maria and O’Malley are back. We need a friendly assault right about now. I repeat, friendly.”

“We’re coming in, but it’s not going to be friendly.” His voice was low and urgent. He spoke quickly almost pleadingly. “Rourke and the NSC staff believe that if anyone gets off that island, humanity’s finished. They’ve sold the President on it. And me. I’m sorry, Jimbo. No one gets off that island.”

“Freddy,” said Jim. “You’ve got to believe me—folks with special abilities won’t be roaming about, wreaking havoc and turning the rest of us into zombies.”

“Really? What’s to stop them? Other than our coming in and doing what needs to be done?”

“Kessie if I tell you it’s under control, then it’s under control. The power and the will exists to control Potentials. You’ve got to trust me.”

“You are so crazy,” whispered Billy.

They waited.

“Ah, Jimbo,” sighed Kessler. “You think I like being the last proconsul? Here’s what we do. We’ll take out the Russians and roundup the noncombatants. But then you’ve got to convince me, and real fast.”

“Do you have a lock on the military? That’s the Black Brigade you’re riding with.”

“They’ll do as I tell them. All they know is that they’re to take out a group of international terrorists who’re using Smalls Island for a staging area. That’s the way it’ll stay.”

“Love ya, Kessie.”

“Fuck you, Jim.”

“Wait! Have you got gunships?”

“Apaches. Why?”

“Give us a missile strike as soon as you’re over target. Anywhere near the hospital will do. Billy and I need a diversion.”

“Fine. The boys will probably try to hit some Russians, if you don’t mind.”

“What’s your ETA?”

“Seven minutes. You’ll hear us.”

Jim handed the cell phone back to Budd, who stared at him admiringly. “I can’t believe you pulled that off.”

“Freddy had some cousins back in the Old Country who served in the same outfit as Schmidla. It bothers him. No matter how convincing you are, I doubt you or God Himself could ever really sell Fred Kessler on genocide.”

Flicking off the machine pistol’s safety, he opened the door and looked down the corridor. Empty. “We’ll wait for that first missile.”

“I want one of those,” said Budd, looking enviously at the neat streamlined little Vektor Jim was cradling.

“Your chance is coming.”

“Joy.”

“Maria, we have to go,” Angie said urgently. The hedge, the sky, the grass, all the props and stage dressing of Maria’s little universe were fading in and out, coming and going as her anguish rose and fell. Through the widening black rents in their dissolving reality they saw great tendrils of light, pulsating, undulating bands of white luminescence. “Maria, if you come with us, we’ll take you to your Daddy,” said Angie. “No more Uncle Richard.”

What are those wormy things? asked O’Malley.

Strings? Angie speculated, watching Maria as, sniffling, she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand.

“Promise?” asked Maria, looking up at Angie.

“Promise,” smiled Angie, silently praying that it wasn’t just an expedient lie.

Strings are tiny. O’Malley stood looking at the undulating cylinders of energy.

Perhaps we are, too. Surely it wouldn’t take as much energy and effort to maintain a tiny universe as it would a full-scale one?

If I remember my physics, it takes very little matter to create a whole lot of energy, thought Tim, but a great deal of energy to create just a little bit of matter.

Maybe she has a ready supply of nicely compacted matter stored close at hand, suggested Angie. Say, from a convenient black hole or two?

You could convince me of anything now.

“Ok, said Maria, standing, composed. “We’ll go back. You’ll have to help. I can’t do it alone right now. I’m very tired.”

“What do you want us to do?” asked Tim.

“Listen with me. We have to find just the right sound—but not just a sound—more like listening to all the music in the universe, all at once, and finding that one harmony, that one euphony that’s home. And follow it there.” Seeing their confusion she said, “It’s easy, really. Here. All hold hands, then open your minds and listen—listen with all your being. And please, please, stay with me. My other friends didn’t.”

Hands joined, they felt Maria sweep into their minds, a dazzling explosion of Potential: hers, theirs—engulfing them in light and sound—sound that flowed in consonance with the light into a melody so pure that Angie would have wept from the beauty of it, had her body not been absorbed by the kaleidoscope of color and the ethereal harmony of which she was part.

Everything has its own special music, came Maria’s thought, even the horrible room we came from. Our cells remember it, even if we don’t. Hear it, let it touch you, entwine with you. Do that and we’ll be back. It’s...this... A plaintive soprano flute began a sad little air, Maria sharing the well-remember notes of a melancholy piece so tinged with oppressive dark blue that it overwhelmed them with ineffable sadness.

It’s a dirge, an elegy for all those souls who left from there, never to return, thought Maria.

We have to find it? asked Tim.

No, answered Maria. We have to let it find us. All of us together, listen to it again, and as we hear it, hear only it—filter out all the wondrous music of the universe until you hear only that lilting flute playing that sad air. Hearing it, embrace it. Embracing it, together, we’ll be there.

How do you embrace a sound? asked Angie.

You’ll know. I’ll help. Hear nothing else, no matter how alluring. Embrace nothing else, no matter how beautiful. If you do, you’ll never get back. None of us may.

Is there nowhere else we can go? Near, but not from just where we left? asked Tim.

No, said Maria. It’s the only place I’ve ever left from. That any of us left from.

You’re not a little girl now, are you? asked Angie with sudden insight as the flute drew closer, rising softly above all else, filling her.

No. I’m me.

Chapter 27

“Anything?” asked Musashi.

Dee shook her head. “Lots of people nearby,” she said. “Too close and too many to tell just where.” They were nearing a bend in the corridor, where the fort and hospital met, when two Spesnatz strolled around the corner. Everyone stopped—except Musashi. A blur of motion in an otherwise frozen tableau, he swept down on the Russians as they brought their weapons up, his blade slicing through first one and then the other, a fluid quicksilver of death that left two corpses mingling their blood on the floor. One man’s head hung by a thin cord of muscle from his torso, the other run neatly through the heart, looked asleep.

Musashi deftly spun the blade toward the floor, flecking it free of blood and sheathed it in one artful motion. Eddy broke the silence. “I hope I haven’t said anything that’s offended you, Tennu.”

“Not yet,” said the Japanese. “Dee, anyone in the corridor?”

Reaching out, she felt them. “Three, no, four guards. Close. Maybe just the other side of the door. Beyond that, more people. Best I can do.”

“Do you contract out?” asked Eddy, slipping to one side, weapon raised, as Musashi unslung his machine pistol.

“Not for what you’re thinking,” she said.

“It’s only about forty meters to the operations room,” said Musashi. “Straight down the corridor, right at the intersection. Third door on the right. I’ll go in first, then Eddy, Enrique and Dee. Clear?”

They nodded.

“Follow me,” he said, pushing through the door into the well-lit modern hallway—a hallway with four Spesnatz on guard.

The Russian commandos were young, battle-experienced and alert. They whirled as the door slammed open. Musashi was already firing, charging forward, sending short precise bursts into the nearest two Spesnatz. He and the third commando exchanged fire, the Russian’s bullets going wide as Musashi’s found his heart.

The last commando was thrown back against the wall, his head blown away by twin bursts from Eddy and Enrique.

Suddenly the corridor shook beneath the dull Karump! of an explosion. Ceiling tiles crashed to the floor, sending decades of dust into the air as the lights flickered.

“Incoming!” cried Eddy, looking up. “Heavy shit. Rockets, maybe.”

“Let’s go!” ordered Musashi, charging past the bodies.

Following him, Dee made the mistake of looking down into a very young and surprised face, blood still trickling from its mouth. A pair of startlingly blue eyes stared sightlessly past her.

“Come on, Sundance!” cried Jim, running out the door and down the corridor as the sound of the explosion faded, machine- pistol held ready.

“I just hate this,” said Billy as he followed, pistol held high and two-handed.

In the hospital basement, flanked by two of their men, Lokransky and Bakunin stood before the gray expanse of the armor-plated door. “So what’s in there?” asked Bakunin. “Hitler’s missing testicle? Goering’s Old Masters?”

“This, my friend, is Schmidla’s project archive. And the objective of our mission. Moscow wants the contents intact.”

“Moscow?” said Bakunin, raising an eyebrow. “Not the Mafia?”

“The Kremlin,” said Lokransky, enjoying the sound of it. “We’re soldiers of the Motherland again. For now. But of course if caught, we’re just gangsters.”

“And what are these archives?”

“Project research notes, videos and, they think, genetic material. It’s the road back to being a world-class power, Andre. The world power. Remember those days? The fear, the respect?” He patted the gray stippled armor plating. “It’s all in there.”

“We can have it off in ten minutes with Semtex,” said Bakunin.

“And destroy the contents.”

“I have a man who’s a demolition artist. When he triggers his beauties, a small breeze will kiss the inside of that vault—nothing more.”

“No,” said Lokransky. “I think we’ll just ask Dr. Schmidla to open it for us. Come.”

They’d gone but a few paces when the sound of automatic weapons fire turned them toward the stairs. “Any unit, this is Lokransky!” said the colonel into his radio. “Report!”

The thud of an explosion stopped him, the nearby blast shaking the complex, sending chunks of old plaster smashing to the floor.

“Incoming airborne assault!” said a voice.

Lokransky and Bakunin charged up the stairs. From the hospital roof came the deep staccato of the 40mm mount on the hospital roof as it opened fire on the incoming helicopters.

“Direction, aircraft type, numbers?” asked Lokransky, taking the stairs two at a time.

“From across the harbor, north by northeast, coming in low and fast. Seven Apache A-Tens, maybe eighteen, no, twenty-one Huey Twos. U.S. Army markings. Wait! That’s the first wave! There are...”

He was cut off as close blast rocked the building, shattering windows amid the high-pitched whine of heavy ordnance raking the area

“Twenty millimeter Vulcan cannon,” said Bakunin.

Another explosion, this one closer, sent the four of them stumbling to their knees. From outside multiple explosions and machinegun fire was interspersed with the lighter sound of 9mm machine pistols as Spesnatz across the island returned fire.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Lokransky’s trained ear could distinguish between the shrill sound of the Vulcan cannon, firing their hundreds of rounds per second, and that of his surviving few heavy machineguns returning the fire. As he slammed through the door into the first floor, the last heavy machinegun fell silent.

Lokransky stopped short, stunned. The lobby was destroyed, his command post gone. All that remained were heaps of shattered equipment, dead men and broken furniture, smoldering in the wake of a Hellhound missile that had homed in on a frequency-skipping radio signal that hadn’t skipped quite fast enough. Those Spesnatz who’d been off duty were just now arriving, running down the main corridor.

“What are your orders, Colonel?” asked Nikolev, now the senior NCO.

The two officers looked through the shattered hospital entrance out across the island at a battle they’d already lost. The sky was filled with helicopters, the Apaches circling and firing at the few surviving guard posts, the big Hueys unloading in the meadow, hovering with their skids just above the flattened grass, taking off as the last Ranger leaped out. The Americans were wasting no time, forming up, advancing quickly, the nearest soldiers a few hundred meters away and closing fast. Smaller units had been detached to either flank, moving to flush out those Spesnatz missed by the gunships.

“Defense positions!” ordered Lokransky. “Do not fire until ordered!”

“There’re at least two hundred of them,” said Bakunin. He looked around him. “We have maybe forty effectives.”

“They were waiting for us. Surrender is not an option, Major. Those will be special troops with special orders. You understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep low and out of sight—and hold your fire!” he ordered as his men deployed along the windows.

“I can’t raise number three squad,” said Bakunin, tapping his headset. “Maybe they were able to blow up the bridge.”

Outside the Rangers had gone to earth, taking cover facing the hospital. Following orders, the Spesnatz stayed out of sight. Firing had stopped.

“What now?” asked Bakunin, looking at the long lines of infantry.

Lokransky heard it first—a distant, familiar clanking drawing closer. Risking a look, he saw first one then two more of the low-turreted M1 Abrams Main Battle tanks appear, coming down the road from the bridge. “The number three squad didn’t blow up the bridge,” he said. “Barricade those windows! Andre,” he continued urgently as his men began piling broken furniture at the windows and door. “I’m going to get into that vault and take the contents home. You must hold as long as you can.”

“We will,” nodded Bakunin. “How are you going to get into the vault?”

“I believe Schmidla will be along soon. Buy me as much time as you can.”

“Just get the goods back home,” said Bakunin, clicking off his weapon’s safety and chambering a round. “A desperate battle against impossible odds, far from home. We’ll be a legend. Until we meet again, Anton.”

“More gunships!” someone shouted. The two officers looked outside to see a phalanx of Apaches coming in off the harbor, flying low over the advancing tanks, straight for the hospital, followed by more of the troop-carrying Hueys.

“Go, Anton. Now!” said Bakunin.

Two of commandos snapped open Stinger missile launchers and sighted at the helicopters.

“Here they come!” cried a voice as the Rangers rose to their feet and advanced behind the tanks, firing.

“Open fire!” ordered Bakunin. Knocking away the last of the shattered plate-glass, he hunkered down behind the hasty barricade, adding his fire to that of his men sweeping the lead squads. Ignoring their casualties, the Rangers kept coming, squads leapfrogging one another, M16s pouring a withering fire into the lobby. The Spesnatz to Bakunin’s right slid to the floor, the right half of his face gone. Then the tanks and the gunships started firing.

Unnoticed, Lokransky slipped down the stairs and away from the fight, toward the vault. It won’t be long, he thought. Schmidla and he had the same goal—retrieval and escape.

An overhead blast and the sound of exploding ammunition made Lokransky’s heart leap—one for us!

Hoping that Schmidla would soon be at the vault, Lokransky’s hand stole unknowingly down, fingers caressing his knife.

Light pulsed again through the Chamber. True to his word, Schmidla telephoned for Bartlett.

A trio of Spesnatz watching impassively, Schmidla and Whitsun waited impatiently for the light inside the Chamber to fade. As it receded to a faint nimbus Schmidla reached for the door handle—then froze as a sudden explosion shook the room. Automatic weapons fire echoed down the corridors.

The Spesnatz bolted from the room, ignoring Whitsun’s demands for information. Watching them go, Schmidla said. “My Russian’s limited, but ‘attack’ and ‘overrun’ I know.”

Whitsun looked stricken. “Who?” he asked, face pale. “Why?”

Schmidla ignored him. “Let’s see who made it back, shall we?” He hadn’t been this apprehensive since January’s debacle. Please, no more corpses, no more monsters, he thought.. Give me success—pure success. I’ve earned it.

With a vast effort of will, he stilled his hand’s trembling and opened the door to the Chamber.

Jim and Billy Budd pressed against the wall, weapons ready as a squad of Russians charged past them down the intersecting corridor, racing toward the gunfire. Their footsteps faded.

Catching Jim’s eye, Billy smiled and with a slight bow and wave of his hand, granted him the privilege of being first into the next corridor. Taking a deep breath, Jim slipped around the corner.

The corridor was empty. The unguarded door to the operations area was a few score meters away. A sudden surge of optimism mingling with dread, Jim moved cautiously down the hallway, Billy behind him, walking backwards, watching their backs.

A booming series of explosions rocked the building. The ceiling lights winked out, replaced by the pale beams of sparsely scattered emergency lamps.

Slipping quickly through the near-dark, Jim and Billy were halfway to their goal when three Spesnatz emerged from the operations room and another squad of Spesnatz burst out of a stairway.

Firing, the Americans dived for the cover of opposite doorways. Jim saw two of Spesnatz go down before return fire began. The whine of ricochets and the tinkle of spent cartridges were barely audible beneath the hammering of half a dozen machine pistols. Sensing Spesnatz were moving along the wall on his blind side, Jim stuck his Vektor out, sending a long burst down the corridor. He pulled back and crunched down at the torrent of return fire.

Another Russian fell as Billy popped out of his doorway, fired two close shots and ducked back in.

Ten, fifteen seconds before it’s all over, thought Jim, jacking the last magazine into his weapon, working the action, hands slippery with sweat. His head hurt and the corridor stank of gunfire and fear.

The Spesnatz stopped firing.

“Drop your weapons!” commanded a voice.

“Okay!” called Billy, reloading.

“Time, Sundance,” called Jim, holding up three fingers.

Nodding, Billy raised his pistol.

Two fingers, one...

Tensing for the bullets that would rip through him, Jim stepped into the corridor, Billy with him as the shooting began again.

The Russians were turning, firing to their rear, falling as they fired, cut down from behind.

Ducking away from the friendly fire, Jim felt a round strike his Vektor, then a searing pain across his left shoulder. Clasping it, he saw the blood begin oozing where the bullet had passed.

In the corridor the firing stopped. “El Tee?”

“Eddy!” called Jim. “We’re coming out! Don’t shoot!”

He and Billy stepped out. Eddy, Musashi, Dee and some kid he’d never seen were walking past the fallen Spesnatz through air hazy with cordite.

As Enrique passed him, one of the Russians moaned. Not breaking strike, Enrique dropped the muzzle of his Uzi and casually blew the man’s brains out. Musashi winced as Dee gasped. “Eddy,” he said, “after this is over, we need to talk.”

“Good to see you guys,” said Jim as Billy slipped his pistol away and took a machine pistol from the ground. “My former colleague, Billy Budd, aka D’Artangan.”

“You almost bought it there, Jimbo,” grinned Eddy. “You got winged,” he said, nodding at Jim’s wound and the blood matting his torn shirt.

“Just a graze.” Jim nodded toward the operations room. “They in there?” he asked Dee. No one asked who they were.

“They’re in there,” she said, looking at him. “You prepared?”

“No. Are you?”

“No,” said Dee.

It was suddenly very still.

“Let’s go in before the troops and Kessler get here.”

Musashi spoke as they moved toward the door. “Please don’t harm Dr. Schmidla, other than to save your own life.”

“What?!” asked Jim. Schmidla’s continued good health wasn’t on his agenda.

“There are things he still needs to do.”

“Like what?” asked Budd. “Start Armageddon?”

“It’s okay, Billy,” said Jim. “Tennu has special knowledge. We’ll do our best,” he said, entering the operations room, machine pistol leveled.

Chapter 28

Alone and lost, Angie found herself back in her crèche, torn from the interplay of light and harmony that had briefly defined and had forever changed her. As the overwhelming sense of loss faded and her familiar reality coalesced around her, she recognized a different loss: anger. Gone was the anger that had always driven her—anger at the government for stealing her father, anger at her father for dying, anger at her mother for never being enough, anger at Erik for treating her like chattel—all that churning, fragmenting dissonance now replaced by an assured sense of completeness and tranquility that had eluded her all her life. Rising shakily she stepped to her feet, returned to hell, the devil greeting her.

“Welcome back,” said Schmidla, steeping down into the Chamber as the lights flared high. “All of you,” he said happily, “welcome back.”

Looking about, Angie saw Kaeko swing up the top of her crèche and step out. Kaeko stood with one hand on the side of her crèche, staring at Schmidla, expressionless.

In the corner beside a now-silent EEG monitor, Tim O’Malley sank into a chair, head cupped between his hands.

“I’ve succeeded,” continued Schmidla. “For the first time, Potentials have transported and returned alive and undamaged.”

Kaeko thought it was the only time she’d ever seen him truly happy. “Don’t you care where we’ve been?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “What I care is that you went and returned alive and well. You’re wonderfully advanced biological engines, capable of anything—engines to which I’ll have the blueprints. And I will reverse-engineer you and build better engines now that I know the prototypes work.”

A series of nearby explosions rattled the room

“What’s happening?” asked Angie.

“My sponsors are terminating this project, with extreme prejudice,” said Schmidla.

“Are you two okay?” asked Angie.

O’Malley raised his head and smiled tiredly. Fine, said his voice inside Angie’s head. Better than ever, actually. How about you?

I feel... whole.

Me too. His thought conveyed contentment and something else—determination? How’s our little Maria?

Gone, came a third thought—Maria’s, but not Maria’s—someone cool, reasoning and mature. Her thoughts didn’t carry the expected rage, just sadness. “Uncle Richard,” she said, still standing by her crèche. “You were wrong. We meet again.”

“Maria,” he smiled. “I’m surprised and delighted.”

“Kaeko,” she said, walking slowly toward him. “Kaeko Gabriella Beauchamp. Daughter of Emmy and Jim.”

Something in her eyes made him step back. “The gostak distims the doshes,” he said.

She shook her head. “Mumbo jumbo all you want—it won’t work anymore. I’m whole and healed. The little girl who was your toy is gone.”

The chatter of automatic weapons fire sounded close by. Schmidla drew a sleek automatic pistol from his pocket.

“Trouble, Doctor?” asked O’Malley.

“For you, not for me,” said Schmidla as a wide-eyed Admiral Whitsun came running down the stairs into the Chamber.

“Richard! There’s fighting right outside in the corridor!”

“It’s all right, Terry,” said Schmidla. “It’s just your beloved military, killing Russians. Us too, if we let them.”

“I doubt that!”

“Really? Did you think they’d let Potentials live? Or let us live to tell the tale? Believe me, they never intended that.” Schmidla shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, Terry—the project’s over.” He turned to the three Potentials. “And I really must leave now, if we are to capitalize on my success.”

“We?” said Whitsun.

Schmidla cocked his head at the sudden lull in gunfire. Just as suddenly it resumed. “Ah, Terry, my old friend,” he said, facing the Admiral. “Terry, I’m grateful to you for having saved me from the ignominy of the gallows and for the opportunity to fulfill my destiny—not to mention providing me with a home and a paycheck. So, briefly—these three,” he nodded toward the returnees, “have demonstrated the possibility of Homo Supernus. Matter, energy, and hence, time and space, are their dominion. It now remains only to ensure that Homo Supernus is crafted, mind and body, to serve the right ideals before he remakes the universe.”

“And how would you do that, Richard?” asked Whitsun. The Admiral was composed again, wrapped in the mantle of command that had served him so long and so well.

“The genetic heritage of all of our subjects, including Maria’s, are in the cryogenic archive I’ve complied over the life of the project.” He laughed at the surprise on Whitsun’s face. “No need for you to have known, Terry—it would only have upset you.

“DNA, sperm, ovum—all the project’s genetic material are in a special facility in Europe and being put to good use. We’ll be mapping the best of it, gene by gene, using the fine work of the Human Genome Project as a basis of comparison. The very quick whole-genome shotgun cloning technique will give us our results in half the time it took the HGP. We have the funding, the equipment—when our own work is done, we’ll select the most desirable characteristics and create the children we want. They’ll be raised in a communal environment, instilled with the correct perception of themselves and their destiny.”

Outside, the gunfire continued.

“It’s astounding, Terry,” said Schmidla, “how rapid advances in genomics are opening up grand new vistas of opportunity for us. In fifty years, perhaps less, man as we know him will be gone. And the dream we dared to dream so long ago, my comrades and I—our badly articulated and crudely attempted vision of a perfect humanity—will have come true. A humanity worthy of this world and all the others it may care to have.”

Whitsun shook his head dazedly.

“Do you seriously believe you can create beings of such power who’d cherish your vile little ideology?” asked Kaeko.

“Evocative ideologies survive,” said Schmidla. “More, they flourish. Stomp them, persecute their adherents—a simple belief that touches a primal longing in people will only continue to grow. Christianity was born in a stable and fired with purpose at a Passover Seder. Who’s to say that a philosophy sprung from the bitter trenches of the Great War and first espoused in beer halls is any less powerful? Certainly judged by the number of its disciples, it is not. Homo Supernus will surely embroider and enhance, but the essence of the ideals they’re bequeathed will always be there, guiding them. Why? Because our beliefs touch the deep human need to be mastered and yet be masterful, to eradicate weakness and to strive for perfection.”

“Who defines perfection? You?” asked Kaeko.

“Nature, my dear. Innate intelligence, cunning, the will and the ability to conquer and rule—that’s what defines perfection.”

The shooting had stopped.

“And the Eldridge roster?” asked Angie.

“The Eldridge roster?” He shrugged. “Nice to have, but now not really necessary.” He turned to see Whitsun walking slowly up the stairs, shoulders slumped. “Where are you going, Terry?”

“To surrender myself.”

“They’ll shoot you,” said Schmidla.

“Good.” Whitsun turned. His face was haggard and he looked his age. “At first I believed I was serving my country. Then you convinced me, Richard, that I was serving mankind. But all along I was merely serving the Lord of the Flies.”

“No, Terry,” said Schmidla, shooting Whitsun twice in the chest, “you were only serving yourself.”

Whitsun fell backwards, the shots echoing through the high-ceilinged room. “Sanctimonious old fool,” said Schmidla as the Admiral’s body slid down the stairs, coming to rest at his feet. He turned back to the others. “Can’t leave you three behind,” he said, turning his gun on Angie and pulling the trigger. He was rewarded by a dull click.

“It’s broken,” said Angie as he tried to work the Walther’s unmoving action.

Voices made Schmidla look up. Jim and Billy Budd were staring at him through the observation room window He met Jim’s eyes for a second then fled out the side door.

As he left Kaeko reached out, gently increasing the tempo of a minor harmony that had long played within him. “Good bye, Uncle Richard,” she said.

Jim’s weariness and pain were swept aside by relief and elation at the sight of Angie, Kaeko and Maria, coming to him as he ran down the stairs into the Chamber. He got as far as, “Hey, Milano...” before she was on him, kissing him, her arms around him. Someone—Billy?—slipped the machine pistol from his good hand as he held her. Feeling him winch, she pulled back, looking at him. “You’re wounded!” she said, seeing the blood.

“It’s not much,” he said. “It’s already clotted.”

“A hospital must have a first aid kit,” she said, looking around her.

“Maybe not this kind of hospital,” said O’Malley. “Good to see you, Jim.”

“Likewise,” said Jim, as Angie left to rummage the observation room.

“Hi,” he said to Kaeko, who hadn’t moved since Schmidla had left. “I’m your Dad.”

She looked at him appraisingly. “You were the guy at my Bobby Rich lecture.”

“Yup.”

“We don’t look much alike,” she said coolly.

He shrugged, instantly regretting it as pain shot through his shoulder and down his arm. “You come from a big gene pool.”

Kaeko did a quick scan of his mind, searching for proof, but his pain made it too hard. “My father used to carry me on his shoulders,” she said. “Sometimes we’d go to a park, and he’d sing to me, always the same song.”

“Ue Wo Muite Arukou,” said Jim, surprised to find the old title rolling off his tongue. “Sukiyaki in the U.S. release. ‘I Look Up When I Walk’. By the late Kyu Sakamoto.” He launched into it, a cappella:

Ue wo muite arukou,

Namida ga kobore nai yoo ni,

Omoidasu haru no hi

Hitoribotchi no yoru.

He was interrupted as the second woman in three minutes threw her arms around him, silently crying, saying nothing, just holding him.

“Welcome home, Kaeko,” he said hoarsely.

“Your Japanese is very bad,” said a new voice as Kaeko let go, wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “Fine song, though.”

Musashi, Eddy, Enrique and Dee came into the room. “Hello, Kaeko,” smiled Musashi.

“Tennu! Why am I not surprised to see you here?”

“Johnny Kim?!” cried an unbelieving Tim O’Malley.

“Tim?!” laughed an equally incredulous Musashi.

“How...” began O’Malley.

“Synchronicity,” said Musashi, shaking his head. “And my name’s Musashi—Tennu Musashi.

“Are any you feeling somehow changed?” he asked the returnees.

They all nodded.

“Where did you go?” asked Jim.

“Kaeko’s little playground universe,” said Angie, returning with a first aid kit. “Am I right?”

Kaeko nodded. “Probably. When I was little, I’d escape the island and Uncle Richard by fantasizing that I lived in a castle. I think it started off as a Disney-ish castle, you know, complete with fairies and pirates? Then, over the years, with my studies, it became Leigh’s Priory, the old Rich family home in Essex. I’ve been there—it’s a very nice wedding venue now. It was part of my doctoral research.”

“It’s also part of you,” said Jim. “Robert Rich was your ancestor. Our ancestor. ”

“No!” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, the last of her reserve gone. “Impossible! I couldn’t have known that.”

“Some part of you must have,” said Jim.

“Maybe you were always looking for your parents, and you found a grandparent,” said Angie. “Is Leigh’s Priory as we saw it?”

“No,” said Kaeko. “That was the 16th century structure. Just two gatehouses and the main house survived the 18th century. The property’s in a hollow—you can’t see Felsted Church from there. There’s no maze—probably never was. And I doubt Bobby Rich kept a pistol close at hand—he had a few hundred armed retainers on the payroll.”

“You have a deep and still mostly untapped Potential,” said Musashi, looking at Kaeko with something close to awe. He glanced down at Whitsun’s body. “Who killed the Admiral?”

“Schmidla,” said O’Malley. “Whitsun finally figured out he’d been Schmidla’s dupe all these years and told him off.”

“I see,” said Tennu. “And where are Schmidla and Colonel Lokransky?”

“Schmidla went out the back door,” said O’Malley. “Lokransky left before the shooting started.”

“They’ll be heading for the archives,” said Musashi. “Lokransky must be stopped before he kills Schmidla.” He turned to Eddy and Enrique. “Eddy, with me, please. Enrique, stay here and provide security.” Enrique opened his mouth to protest but stopped at look from Eddy.

“Wait!” snapped Jim. “I’ve been looking forward to killing that psychotic bastard ever since this started. And you’ve been telling me I can’t. Why not?”

““It’s very complex,” said Musashi.

“I’ve got time.”

“No, you don’t,” said the Japanese.

“El Tee?” said Eddy.

“Tennu’s right,” said a new voice. Kaeko walked over to her father. “Schmidla’s not to be harmed.”

“Why not?” said Jim.

“It’s important.”

“He’s a monster!”

“Sometimes evil inadvertently does good,” said Tennu.

“Zen and the art of indecision,” said Angie as she came back down the stairs. “Make up your mind, Jim. Time’s slipping away.”

Jim reached a decision. “Go with Tennu, Eddy, please. Do what he says. I’ll be along once I’m repaired.”

Chapter 29

Fred Kessler picked his way through the shattered hospital lobby, Colonel Caddock beside him, broken glass crunching beneath their feet. It was an abattoir: pockmarked walls flecked with blood and gore, the torn bodies of Spesnatz lying amid the ruins. The Russians hadn’t tried to surrender, instead taking as many of the Rangers with them as they could. Kessler had watched from his chopper as a Stinger missile streaked up from the hospital, exploding the lead Apache and showering the first wave of Rangers with burning derbies and exploding ammunition.

Nikolev had fired the Stinger. He would have been proud to know how many of the enemy he killed and maimed. But Nikolev was dead, killed even as the Apache exploded, his body cut neatly in half by a round from a tri-barreled Vulcan cannon.

With the Rangers almost at the hospital, Bakunin had triggered the landmines planted close-in during the night. Seizing that brief moment of confusion, he’d led his men out through the shattered windows, charging the Rangers, screaming and firing.

None of the Spesnatz lived beyond the next twenty seconds, Bakunin himself cut down as he jumped through the window. Dying, his intestines spilled around him, he was struck by how much the American gunships resembled some sinister airborne arachnid.

Sixty-five Rangers had been killed or wounded. Colonel Caddock assigned a special squad to see to the Russian wounded. The squad moved carefully among them, delivering the coup de gras with the traditional pistol shot to the base of the skull.

The Black Brigade was the most special of SpecialOps.

The wounded Rangers were soon gone, evacuated by helicopter to Boston-area hospitals, their medical staffs impressed as much by their taciturnity as by their wounds. The dead, Russian and American, were being laid out in the meadow for later removal. Massachusetts State Police had secured the mainland end of the bridge as Apaches circled the island, shooing off the news choppers, they and Air Force F-16s enforcing the no-fly zone imposed by the FAA. A Coast Guard cutter, augmented by two Navy destroyers and police boats, patrolled the waters around the island, working with the Army helicopters to keep at bay the growing flotilla of the curious. Smalls Island was quarantined until further notice, local and national television reporting that Federal authorities had smashed a major terrorist plot, the biggest and most dramatic Federal raid since Waco.

“Was this necessary?” Kessler asked Caddock as the Rangers fanned out past them, moving quickly into the hospital and toward the fort beyond. The FBI agent watched as the torn bodies were hauled off amid the occasional sharp crack of a pistol. He felt ill and soiled and doubted he’d ever feel clean again.

“Just doing my job, Mr. Kessler,” said Caddock. “Besides, you know what Joe Stalin said about making an omelet.”

“I know what Lincoln said about charity and malice, Colonel. And what happened to guys like you at Nuremberg when they said they were just following orders.”

“Guys like us, Mr. Kessler,” reminded Caddock, listening to a message coming in over his headset.

“Yeah, guys like us, Colonel,” agreed Kessler, watching as more bodies were heaped into the center of the lobby.

“Very well,” said Caddock into his radio. “Leave one squad to guard the operations area, the rest continue securing the facility. Your people are nearby and intact,” he told Kessler.

“Lead on,” said Kessler.

Caddock was a lanky, hard-eyed Carolinian, with over twenty years in the Army and a leathery face seamed from years of operations carried out in fierce weather and inhospitable climes. His operational planning had been meticulous, his execution flawless, and his concern for his men and his mission in the finest tradition of the United States Army.

Kessler couldn’t stand him. He thought him a remorseless, technically adroit chain-of-command automation—an antipathy sensed and returned by Caddock. Kessler, a civilian and mission leader, had, without discussion, modified Caddock’s original orders: no civilians on the island were to be killed and the place was not, repeat not, to be destroyed. Not unless Fred Kessler said so.

“Are they all right?” asked Kessler, as they moved out toward the operations center, a squad of Rangers guarding them front and rear.

“No one seriously wounded,” said Caddock, pistol in hand, his eyes scanning doorways and intersections as they moved quickly toward the operations area.

Turning off the main corridor they passed a small group of dead Spesnatz, twisted bodies sprawled along the floor just outside the operations entrance. Inside Rangers stood guard, saluting Caddock as he strode past them, Kessler at his heels.

“About time,” said Jim Beauchamp. He sat in a chair as Angie bandaged his arm, doing a neat professional job with a roll of gauze and some tape.

“Hey Freddy,” said Billy. He sat atop a console, sipping a bottle of water taken from the room’s refrigerator.

“Gentlemen. Commander Milano,” nodded Kessler as Caddock and his men moved on down into the Chamber, ignoring the civilians. “The chatty bird colonel is Colonel Caddock,” he added. “You okay, Jimbo?”

“Yeah. What about the Russians?”

“Dead,” said Kessler.

“Your troops are wearing numbers where their name tapes should be,” noted Jim.

Billy snorted.

“They’re not doing anything they want to be remembered for,” said Kessler. “Looks like Rourke won’t have to listen to Terry Whitsun anymore,” he added as the Rangers hauled Whitsun’s body away. “Who killed him?”

“Schmidla,” said a weary voice.

Kessler turned to see a lovely young woman emerge from the lavatory, wiping her face with a paper towel. “Did you use to have a funny tee-shirt with a silly red woodpecker on it?” she asked, staring hard at him. “A cigar-smoking woodpecker?”

“Kaeko!” exclaimed Kessler, beaming as he hugged her.

“You remember this big ugly guy?!” exclaimed Jim. “You were five years old!”

“Sure. Uncle Freddy, right?” she said, a sudden smile lighting her face

“Yes,” laughed Kessler, delighted. “I can’t believe you remember that shirt! I used to play softball in it with your Dad, just about every Saturday. Remember that, Jim? Camp Drake, Zama, Tachikawa—we used to play against everyone.”

“And everyone used to beat us,” said Jim. “Especially the Bar Hostesses League. Remember Billy?” he asked, pointing to the CIA officer.

“Sort of,” she frowned. “You wore something different, too,” she said. “But I can’t remember what.”

Budd shook his head. “No, my dear. I’m not a funny shirt guy like Freddy. And I’m not much at softball—can’t catch worth a damn.”

“Where’s Schmidla?” asked Kessler.

“Gone,” said Jim, as Caddock came back into the room. “Probably going to collect stuff from the archives vault.”

“It’ll do,” said Angie, stepping back to admire her handiwork. “I’d have made a great nurse.”

“Doctor, maybe. Nurse, no,” said Jim as she helped him pull on his jacket.

“So, how come no one’s gone after him?” asked Kessler a bit testily.

“They have,” said Jim, bending the truth a bit. “Mr. Musashi, our Japanese associate, my friend Eddy and one of his guys. More than enough for one aging physician.”

“Final body count’s in,” said Caddock. “We’re missing at least the Russian CO, Lokransky. Think he might know about those archives?”

“Bet on it,” said Kessler. “Where’s this vault at?”

“Only Musashi knows,” said Jim.

“Does he have a radio?”

“No,” said Jim.

“Brilliant,” said Caddock. Turning aside, he started issuing orders into his radio, directing more of his force into Fort Strong. As he spoke, Jim picked up his machine pistol. “Angie, stay here with Kaeko.”

“She doesn’t need me,” protested Angie.

“Angie. Please?” asked Jim.

“Fine,” she said reluctantly.

“I can help,” said Dee, joining him. She’d been sitting quietly atop an equipment console.

“Sure,” said Jim, after a second’s hesitation. “Fred?”

“Best if I stay with the good Colonel,” said the FBI agent, glancing at Caddock as the officer continued coordinating his men. He was giving Caddock no opportunity for independent action.

Nodding, Jim headed out the door with Dee.

Schmidla entered the last digit on the keypad and was rewarded by a faint click and the status light winking green. Grasping the steel handle, he swung the door wide. Halogen lamps flared on, illuminating a narrow passageway containing hexagonal arrays of cryogenic storage cylinders filled with liquid nitrogen. Only the gas remained in the cylinders. The pipettes containing the genetic material of over two hundred Potentials had been carefully packaged and shipped months before, sent via four separate flights to Vienna. There the transport canisters had gone by four separate helicopters to a biotech research facility near Graz, Austria. An extensive title search would have shown that the facility was owned by a non-profit German foundation headquartered in Aachen. The foundation was established in 1979 and was headed by one Greta von Kemnitz. Surprising, as Greta von Kemnitz had died in 1937. Though he planned a greater immortality, among the DNA had been several samples of Schmidla’s own.

Walking quickly to a wall safe at the far end of the vault, Schmidla keyed another combination and removed a tan attaché case. Snapping it open, he ensured that the three CDs were still there, nestled in their cases and held in place by Velcro straps.

Attaché case in hand, Schmidla left the vault for the last time. The boat, summoned by satellite phone during the fighting, would be waiting in the old smuggler’s cove. A quick trip across Boston Harbor to Logan Airport’s commuter pier and he’d be on the first available flight to Europe, even flying coach if necessary, just another passenger with a false passport.

“Leaving us, Herr Doktor?”

Schmidla slowly turned, the case suddenly much heavier. “Colonel Lokransky,” he said. “How goes the battle?”

The Russian stood in the middle of the corridor, pistol pointed at Schmidla. “The battle is lost, but not the war. What’s in the case?”

“Nothing of any use to you.”

“Set it on the floor, handle toward me and open it.”

Schmidla complied. He stepped back as Lokransky advanced, pistol leveled. The Russian glanced down. “What’s on the CDs?” he asked.

“Medical records of project participants.”

“Where is their genetic material?” demanded Lokransky. “The samples you took from them?”

“Closer to Moscow than to Boston, Colonel.” And totally useless without the information on the CDs, thought Schmidla desperately. The genetic material that waited in cryogenic sleep at The Institute bore only identifying numbers—numbers correlating to those assigned to the project’s subjects. Without the ID numbers and the detailed records that lay in the attaché case, halfway between him and Lokransky, Telemachus’ genetic material was a useless collection of proteins. Yet, to have shipped the records home was to have invited betrayal by certain European associates who thought him an oddity, if not a freak. Undone by my own paranoia, he thought. And I always thought it would be hubris.

“The location can be taken from you,” said Lokransky.

Schmidla laughed, putting on a brave mask. “Not in the time you have left, Colonel. I’m sure the Americans will be along at any moment, in their usual overwhelming numbers. Certainly you can kill me. But that’s all you can do. As for the records, they’re useless without the genetic material.”

“Perhaps the opposite also applies?” suggested the Russian. Schmidla’s expression gave him no hints. “If so, at least I can strip your fascist brethren of the ability to create a race of monsters.”

“You’d approve if they were Russian monsters.”

“After what I’ve seen here? No.” He shook his head. He’d thought hard about it, making his way down into the fort. Lokransky had one pure, undiluted passion left in his weary, twisted soul—to see Russia risen from the ashes of her defeat, striding across the globe, proud and strong. And he, Anton Lokransky, could grant her that resurrection. And yet he knew now it would’ve been a bad gift, a demon set loose, devouring all in its path, starting with Russia.

“You’d create beings of such power that no one could long control them—not you, not us,” he said. “They’d kill us all. It ends here,” he said, putting a burst into the attaché case and shattering the CD’s.

“This is long overdue,” he said, centering still-smoking muzzle to Schmidla.

“Stop!” cried a voice.

Lokransky turned.

Musashi stood there, machine pistol leveled. “Safety your weapon and slowly lay it down, Colonel.”

Lokransky obeyed, his eyes never leaving Musashi’s.

“Go, Schmidla,” said the Japanese.

Schmidla and Lokransky were equally astonished. “Are you mad?!” cried Lokransky. “He’s a very dangerous man.”

“Oh? And what are you?” asked Musashi.

“Nothing like him. He’s the most dangerous man on this planet!”

“Who are you?” asked Schmidla. “Certainly not Mr. Kim of the high construction quotes and the comedic English.”

“You need to go now,” said Musashi, watching Lokransky.

“Whoever you are,” said Schmidla, “I hold you responsible for Maria’s sudden enlightenment. But where did you get those photos? All of her family memorabilia was destroyed years ago, when I acquired her.”

“The answer will occur to you. Given what you already know, it’s very simple. Go, now!” repeated Musashi, “Or join Whitsun in hell.”

Schmidla turned and ran, slowing only at the turn in the corridor to pitch the hand grenade he’d taken from a dead Spesnatz.

“Idiot!” snapped Lokransky as he and Musashi lunged toward the safety of the vault. Clattering toward them, the grenade exploded, bringing down part of the old ceiling, half burying their bodies beneath a mound of ancient brick and mortar.

Uncovering his ears, The Good Doctor smiled and resumed his jog to the cove. The loss of the CDs was inconvenient but not disastrous. He’d long ago backed up the information on a European Internet site—something only he knew. But it would be disastrous if he didn’t escape to retrieve that information and place it in the right hands.

Chapter 30

Angie sat in a chair, hands folded in her lap, eyes distant, trying to understand who she was, what she was and what she was becoming. Or had she already become that, she wondered? Whatever it was? God, I’m so confused, she thought, missing for a moment the sure and certain Naval officer she’d been, the one who always knew where she was going, who’d deluded herself into believing she’d left behind the strange and fearsome things that happened around her. In denying my Potential, have I denied myself? she wondered.

So far, she’d been afraid to probe her new gestalt, the hugely expanded Potential gifted her through the transference with Kaeko and Tim. But she felt it out there at the periphery of her consciousness, deep, quivering with power, waiting for her. She knew she’d eventually reach out and... what?

“We’re needed,” said Kaeko, setting down the fruit juice she’d been sipping. The three Potentials were alone in the operations room. Two Rangers patrolled the corridor outside.

“Needed?” said Tim, leaning against the wall near the door. “So we are.”

“Angie,” said Kaeko.

Angie looked up, surprised.

“Hi,” smiled Kaeko.

“Hi,” said Angie. “Just woolgathering.”

“There’s a problem,” said Kaeko. “Look.”

They looked, following where her mind led.

Musashi felt lighter, an oppressive weight gone. Something soft was pressing on his forehead. Opening his eyes, the blurs about him resolved into Jim, Dee and Billy, hovering concernedly over him. Dee had tucked her jacket under his head and was holding a bandage to his forehead. “Hey,” she said with a relieved smile.

“Hey,” he said, sitting up. He gasped as pain split his head. “Lokransky?” he asked.

“You were the only one here,” said Jim. He held up a finger. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Musashi blinked. “One or more.” There was a ringing in his ears but the headache had eased.

“Tennu!”

“One.” He tried to rise and his head exploded. Dee caught him as he slumped back. “Lokransky was here and about to kill Schmidla. I helped Schmidla get away. He thanked me by tossing back a concussion grenade.”

“The Good Doctor isn’t much on gratitude,” said Billy.

Schmidla’s wars were long past – he didn’t know that a modern fragmentation grenade had a spheroid shape or that a concussion grenade was cylindrical. The latter was also deadly in confined spaces, having eight ounces of TNT and capable of leveling walls and men within its several meter blast radius. As the one nearest the explosion, Tennu was lucky to be alive.

“We must get Lokransky before he gets Schmidla,” said Musashi, trying to rise again.

“You’re going to be checked out by the Army medics,” said Jim as Dee restrained Musashi. “You may have a concussion. Billy and Dee will get you there,” he said. “I’m going after Schmidla.”

“The Black Brigade has medics?” said Musashi as Billy and Dee helped him to his feet. “I thought they just killed everyone.”

“Not their own people,” said Billy. “Usually.”

“Such a small circle of compassion,” said Musashi, taking a tentative step, then grabbing on to Jim, too dizzy to walk. “I’m no use to you right now.” Leaning on Billy with one hand, he untied his sword with the other and passed it to a surprised Jim. “Take care of this for me, please.”

“You trust me with your katana?” said Jim, surprised and touched.

“Of course,” said Musashi, resting his other hand on Dee’s shoulder.

Jim turned the elegant weapon over in his hands. A pair of delicately-wrought honeybees hung from the sheath. The handle was wrapped in a coarse yellow material – the traditional shark skin. He drew the blade with an ease that surprised him—and Tennu.

“You know this weapon!”

“Emma taught me. She was a kendo and iaido fanatic.” Jim examined the finely-wrought blade and then slid it back home. “Her father’s family had a beautiful old katana like this—not that I was ever allowed to touch it.”

“Its name is Kabuto Wari—Helmet Crasher,” said Musashi. “It was made for my many-times great-grandfather in the 11th century. It’s never lost a fight, never been sheathed in disgrace. Keep it well for me and if you use it, use it with honor. Now go get Lokransky.”

Anton Lokransky limped to a stop at a fork in the passageway. The blast and the falling debris had injured his right knee and left a still-bleeding gash in his scalp. He’d lost his pistol in the explosion. No matter—his knife would do to gut one old fascist pig.

Ignoring the pain, he focused on Schmidla’s probable escape route. The air space over the island would be impossible—the sea was Schmidla’s only chance, the mainland but a few miles away. Reaching it, he’d disappear. As will I, thought Lokransky, thinking of that GRU safehouse in Boston.

The fort’s two old corridors looked identical: granite-floored with red-bricked walls and ceilings. The incandescent bulbs strung along the ceiling by Kim Construction were the only recent addition. One corridor branched right, the other left.

Lokransky sniffed the air of each corridor in turn. Left, he decided, following the sea air.

“When will we be executing the rest of our orders, Mr. Kessler?” Colonel Caddock called above the sound of the helicopters. Two of the big Hueys were lifting off, ferrying the last of the dead Spesnatz to a crematorium somewhere further south, their ashes destined for a night drop over the Atlantic. All across the island, the Rangers were collecting weapons and equipment, placing them in the center of the field in front of a still-intact Hull House.

“When I say so, Colonel,” said Kessler, watching the choppers move off low and fast over the dark water.

The two men stood on the steps of the hospital, the cleanup winding down around them.

“Soon?”

“If you think I’m not doing my job, Colonel, get on your phone to Rourke.” Caddock’s deep brown eyes with their dark reminded Kessler of a basset hound.

“No need for that,” said Caddock. Yet, he added to himself as Kessler turned and went back inside.

“It would be easier if you went and got the medics,” said Musashi. The doors to the main hospital were in sight.

Billy and Dee exchanged glances. They’d half carried, half dragged Tennu this far—progress had slowed.

“Ok,” said Billy. They eased him down against the wall, Dee joining him. “Keep this,” said the CIA officer, giving him his pistol. “I’ll be right back.” He walked quickly toward the hospital.

“How are you doing?” asked Dee after a moment.

“I’ve felt better,” said Musashi. His head was still pounding, but the dizziness was passing. “Dee...” he began, then stopped. What could he say? Nothing. The only way to change things—maybe—was to leave with her right now. Disappear with her into some melting pot like Hawaii. Run from destiny, forsake the fight and surrender the future. No, of course not. Duty. Gimu—the highest obligation. The greater good. But she was so nice and so alive and she really liked him. Above all, despite her powers and insight, there was an innocence to her, a purity like that of some Bronze Age priestess-seer.

“Yes?” she said after a moment, puzzled.

“Nothing,” he said.

A few minutes behind Lokransky, Jim stood where the corridor divided. The way to the smugglers grotto and Schmidla’s path lay to the right. A trail of blood led to the left.

The passageway ended at a flight of granite stairs that curved up. Does one go up to go down to the beach? thought the Russian. Maybe. Hobbling up the stairs, he stepped through a doorway and saw where he was: one of his observation posts atop the fort’s eastern wall. The bodies of two of his men lay just outside the parapet, along the cliff top that formed a natural extension to the fortifications. Ripped apart by aerial cannon fire, the two Spesnatz lay amid their equipment, a tangle of limbs and weapons.

The sun was just coming up, light enough for him to see the patrolling warships and the helicopters over and around the island. The hospital compound was a scene of purposeful activity, the Black Brigade cleaning up after itself with practiced efficiency.

Down to the right Lokransky saw a cove, partially hidden by the cliff, a sleek motorboat holding station against the tide. Cursing, he was turning back to the stairs when his eye was caught by the scoped rifle protruding from beneath a body. Rolling the dead Spesnatz over, he took the weapon. It was a silencer-fitted U.S. Army M24 SWS, one of the world’s best sniper rifles. Working the bolt, he ejected then reloaded the five .300 Winchester Magnum rounds. Setting the bipod atop the wall, he centered the crosshair on the blue uniformed figure at the boat’s controls, but the distance and the movement of the craft made it impossible to hold an accurate bead. Slipping over the parapet, he moved along the cliff top to find a better position.

Billy was soon back, accompanied by two medics with a stretcher. “I’m going to find Jimbo,” he said as soon as Tennu was rolling toward the hospital. Reclaiming his pistol, he retraced his steps into the fort.

Dee followed toward the hospital doors, only to freeze at the sudden dry serpent’s tongue flicking through her mind. It was gone as quickly as it came. An alien sensation, it left her feeling violated, afraid and strangely excited. She reached for the door and the tenuous safety of the warm corridor beyond, then let her hand drop. She had to know.

Gingerly reaching out, she located the source of the probe and began retracing her steps.

Chapter 31

Jim stepped out onto the parapet and stopped at the sight of the two dead Spesnatz. Looking up, he saw Lokransky moving quickly along the boulder-strewn cliff top, rifle in hand. Dropping over the parapet, Jim followed.

Dee went down into the old smugglers grotto and out onto the beach. A sullen red sun rose above a line of low, gray clouds. The tide, full when they’d arrived, had turned and retreated, exposing a broad reach of stone and sand. The Zodiac was still there, half-hidden behind the boulders. The Merri-Lee was gone.

A boat with State Police markings lay just offshore, engines running low.

She saw the smoke first, curling from behind a tumble of boulders, then he stepped out, cigarette in hand. He wore a blue woolen turtleneck sweater, faded jeans and black sneakers. An automatic pistol was belted to his waist, riding high in a trim black leather holster. His Federal ID hung on a cord around his neck, its top clipped to the collar of his sweater.

Waiting, yes, she felt as he walked toward her. Definitely waiting. For her? No. For someone else.

“Hello, Dee,” he said, dropping the cigarette and crushing it. “I’ve never met one of you before. You’re so very different. So vulnerable. You just emote everywhere,” he laughed, shaking his head.

Even this close, she couldn’t read his thoughts. He remained a cold point of light in her mind’s eye, still the odd compact anomaly that had drawn her attention back in the corridor. Only when he’d scanned her, there in the tunnel, had she caught just the briefest glimpse of What he was. She knew that were she a sensible woman, possessed of an ounce of self-preservation, she’d have bolted the island at the first touch of that effortlessly invasive probe, a mouse fleeing a viper. But Dee had never been sensible—sensible people don’t become potters. And now, close up, perceiving him with all her senses, she found herself drawn to his cold, remorseless perfection. She stood there, unmoving, not so much looking at a man as mesmerized by a beautiful, deadly serpent.

“What are you?” she asked.

“Just a messenger,” he said, looking beyond her to the cave entrance, then back. “Seeing that something gets to where it must go.” He glanced at his watch. “Right on time.”

The sound of running footsteps and then Schmidla emerged from the cave, pistol in hand, breathing hard, his face flushed. He stopped at the sight of the two figures on the beach. “You!” he exclaimed to the man. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, suspiciously raising his pistol.

“Seeing to your escape,” said the man, turning to wave to the waiting police boat. “And you know your pistol’s broken.”

The helmsman throttled up, moving quickly toward the shore. “The boat will take you to the airport, Doctor. Leave the pistol here—metal detectors can be embarrassing.”

“It’s not the boat I was expecting,” said Schmidla, dropping the pistol.

“Your boat was waved off by the Coast Guard. I arranged for this one. You’ll get to Europe today.”

“Why is the CIA doing this?” asked Schmidla, confused.

“Not the Agency. Me,” said Harry Rourke. “Be glad I’m here. You’d never realize your life’s dream if I weren’t.”

“You’re not from here, are you?” asked Schmidla with sudden insight as the boat came into the shallows, slowing. “Neither you nor the Japanese are.”

“That’s the only thing Musashi and I have in common. You’ve only a few minutes before Beauchamp gets here,” said Rourke. “Get in the boat.”

“Not until I know what happens to my project,” said Schmidla adamantly, a determined set to his mouth. “You have some insight. Share it with me, or I don’t move.”

There was nothing to be gained by denying him and everything to lose. “You’re project succeeds, Dr. von Kemnitz,” he said. “The children that are created will be everything that you hoped. Where I’m from, your vision is being fulfilled by what you named Homo Supernus. But it won’t be if you don’t get into that boat.” He glanced at his watch. “Now!”

Yes, much better, thought Lokransky, dropping to the ground on the cliff’s edge. Now he could see all of the cove and the three figures on the beach. Looking through the sniper scope, he recognized Schmidla. And though there was a nagging familiarity to the other man, he couldn’t place him. The woman he didn’t know.

The boat was moving quickly toward shore. Time to get to work. Setting the rifle atop a rock, he chambered a round and zeroed in on Schmidla, now talking animatedly with the other man at water’s edge, centering the crosshairs on that neatly coiffured head, source of so much misery.

Jim stepped from the cover of the rocks. Lokransky was a few meters away, hunched over his rifle. Bringing the Vektor’s muzzle to bear, Jim pulled the trigger. Nothing. Jammed.

Sensing a presence, Lokransky whipped about, bringing the rifle up as Jim rushed him, knocking the rifle aside as it fired with a faint pop.

The Russian brought the butt around, knocking the Vektor from Jim’s hand. He chambered another round as Jim brought the katana out, up and down, neatly severing Lokransky’s left arm at the shoulder.

The Russian stood stunned, staring in shock at his severed limb, blood spurting from his shoulder. Raising the katana two-handed above his head, Jim brought it down in a graceful flowing movement. The ancient blade moved smoothly through Lokransky’s neck. The Russian’s body collapsed as his head rolled over the cliff.

Jim cleaned the katana as Tennu had done, whipping away the blood by spinning the blade around and down in a classic chiburi movement, then sheathed it gently back into its saya. Only then did he feel the burning pain in his shoulder and the fresh blood sopping his torn shirt.

Jim looked at Lokransky’s remains, then examined the Vektor: there was a large dent on the receiver, just above the trigger. But for the katana, he’d have been dead—along with Schmidla. “Thank you, Tennu,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Schmidla with a slight bow.

“No. Thank you, Dr. von Kemnitz,” said Rourke as Schmidla turned and waded into the water. “We’d be nothing without you.”

The boat began backing out of the shallows as Schmidla pulled himself over the side. “You’re one of mine, aren’t you?” he called as the boat turned, prow pointing toward open water.

“Viel Erfolg, Herr Doktor!” shouted Rourke in the High Tongue as the pilot gunned the throttles, sending the boat knifing through the waves. “It’s a high honor to have served you!”

He turned back to Dee. She stood enthralled, watching the boat shrink into the distance. “And now you,” he said. Reaching out, he cupped her face between his hands, admiring her delicate features, her green eyes and soft pale skin. “Lovely,” he sighed. “But my dear Eldridge, we can’t have you breeding, spreading your wild riot of genes. You’re dangerous, Eldridge—a threat to what must be.”

“What are you?” she asked again.

“Death,” he said.

Too late, Dee’s sense of self-preservation kicked in. As she turned, trying to pull away, he clasped both hands on her head, forcing it up and around, snapping it with the sound of a dry branch breaking. Her warm soft body slid against his as he lowered her gently to the beach, her limbs spasming in death. He looked at his watch—any second now.

Dee’s dying mind reached out, her pain and fear giving her the strength to cleft to Kaeko for a despairing instant, then she was gone, sending Kaeko to the floor sobbing, her face buried in her hands.

“What?” asked Angie as she and O’Malley hurried back, kneeling beside her.

Kaeko opened her mind, letting them see and feel Dee’s death, though mercifully, not with the same intensity.

Musashi, Jim and Billy Budd met at the entrance to the smuggler’s cave, beside the door Eddy had opened so expertly what seemed so long ago. “You’re better?” asked Jim, handing him the katana.

“Better than you, I think,” said the Japanese. “Did you put it to good use?”

“I did. Thank you.”

“Not on Schmidla?” asked Billy as Musashi swung the door open.

“No. Lokransky,” he said as they went down to the stairs.

They came out of the cave and onto the beach, halting at the sight of Dee’s body and the man standing beside it, watching them as he smoked a cigarette. “And right on time,” said Rourke as Musashi dropped down beside Dee, feeling against hope for a pulse.

“What the hell are you doing here?” asked a very surprised Billy Budd, looking from Rourke to the dead woman then back.

“Where’s Schmidla, Harry?” demanded Jim, pointing his gun at the CIA Director. He hadn’t seen Rourke in seven years, yet the man seemed hardly to have aged.

“Gone,” said Rourke, releasing another puff of smoke. “I saw him safely away—one of my two main tasks for today, the other being to obtain the Eldridge roster. Killing her,” he said, nodding toward Dee’s body, where Musashi knelt, gently closing her sightless eyes, “was an unexpected treat. All we knew was that she died about now, but that’s all we knew, wasn’t it Tennu? So much was lost. Where’s the roster, Tennu?” he demanded as the Japanese rose to face him.

“I should have gone with her,” said Tennu.

“And jeopardized your precious mission?” mocked Rourke. “You cared about her, didn’t you? But protecting her, you might have destroyed our shared future. Each man kills the thing he loves.”

“When did you replace Rourke?” Musashi asked, his face a mask.

The DCI shrugged. “A long time ago—back when he was a CIA province advisor in Vietnam. So many transient relationships in a war—no one ever gets to know you very well, so any small slipups I made assuming his identify passed unnoticed. Over the years, though, I was promoted solely on my own merits. The real Rourke would have been just another mid-level officer, like Mr. Jimbo or maybe a more senior guy like Billy here.”

“I’m sure your monstrous lack of scruples helped,” said Musashi.

Rourke shrugged. “There were some fortuitous deaths and disappearances.”

“Who is he?” asked Jim.

“One of Schmidla’s spawn,” said the Japanese. “Sent uptime to get the Eldridge roster. As was I.”

“The SLIF funding came from the CIA’s black budget,” said Budd. “You gave it to Whitsun’s company so you could get the roster.”

“There was no other way to reassemble that miserable list and quickly find the descendants,” said Rourke, eyes shifting to the cave entrance, then back again. “Much of the SLIF technology came from us, given to GDR. It would’ve been hard to hide such otherworldly technology from the inquisitive in Washington, so it was tucked away down in New Orleans.”

“George said SLIF was magic,” said Jim. “And he was right.”

“He was a pesky old coot,” said Rourke. “Working with you, wasn’t he?” he said to Musashi.

“Mr. Campbell was a very intelligent and perceptive man, with great personal integrity,” said the Japanese.

“Where’d the money go?” asked Jim.

“Money?” asked the prime example of Homo Supernus blankly.

“The half a billion dollars it didn’t take to develop SLIF,” said Jim carefully. “You gave them the technology.”

“That was funneled into Schmidla’s hands for his genetic research in Europe,” said Rourke. “One gene sequencer alone costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Schmidla’s colleagues are using hundreds of them. Then there’s all the other equipment, personnel, facilities. The half billion’s just startup money.”

“Why didn’t you just give him the genetic research equipment?” asked Jim. “Like you did with SLIF?”

“Creates a closed temporal loop,” said Musashi. “SLIF was a dead end—it produced nothing that didn’t already exist in the future. Schmidla’s genetic research does. Simply put, nature frowns upon attempts to be one’s own grandpa.”

“Crude but correct,” said Rourke. “We exist in a realty in which Schmidla’s people did their own homework. Now, I’ll take the roster, Jimbo.”

“Do you have a name?” asked Jim. “Other than the one you stole?”

Rourke laughed. “Of course! Do you think we spew out of some baby factory, numbers on our foreheads, to be raised by our slaves? I have a name, which I only share with my peers. I have adoptive parents, friends, a hometown. And unlike you beasts, I’m part of a vision that will sweep you all into the compost heap of failed species. Now, give me that roster!”

“Why?” asked Jim.

“So he can hunt the Eldridge descendants to extinction, here and now,” said Musashi. “Where we comes from, they lead the fight against his kind. A fight we’re winning.”

“Hardly,” said Rourke.

Angie, O’Malley and Kaeko came running out onto the beach. They stopped at the sight of the group gathered around the small crumpled form.

“Rourke’s not...” began Jim, turning to Angie as she stepped past him, eyes on the Rourke.

“We know,” said Kaeko as she and O’Malley joined Angie, one on either side of her. They stood silently watching Rourke.

“None of you are a match for me,” he smirked. “Two of you are so new to your Potential it would be years before you could master it. And you’ve only minutes left to live.” His gaze shifted to Kaeko. “And as for you, freak,” he sneered, “Schmidla conditioned you with drugs and hypnosis since you were five—without them you’re just another mere mortal. Last chance,” he said to Jim.

“I don’t have it,” said Jim.

“Not a problem. Two of you read it.”

A stiletto sliced into Jim’s mind–an unbearable, blinding pain that sent him to his knees, fists clenched to his head as Rourke roamed carelessly through his mind, pulling out bits of memory here and there, enjoying the rush of Jim’s writhing agony as he gathered name after name, number after number.

Budd and Musashi both fired, sustained bursts whose bullets flared into incandescence a half meter from Rourke.

Unmoving, his eyes never leaving Jim, Rourke sent both Tennu and Billy flying backward through the air, smashing hard against the cliff face.

Do something! Angie’s anguished thought demanded of Kaeko and O’Malley.

Together! thought Kaeko, a golden nimbus growing around her, spreading to touch Angie and O’Malley as their own Potential shimmered about them.

They had Rourke’s attention now. “Pathetic,” he said, withdrawing from Jim’s mind. “You don’t even know how to project.”

A fierce white tendril of energy shot from the center of the nimbus surrounding the trio, snapping through the air toward Rourke’s chest. Laughing, he looked down as it halted, stopped by the thin blue shimmer of energy encasing his body. “A good first attempt.” he said. “Now, let me show you how it’s really done.”

“You are more deserving of the lesson,” said Musashi, rising. His hand snapped out, sending a thin white shaft of energy knifing through the air to join with those of the three Potentials. The augmented beam, wider, pulsating with raw power, slammed into Rourke, turning the faint shimmer surrounding him into a rippling chrysalis of blue-white energy.

Lying against the cliff next to Musashi, a half-stunned Billy Budd threw up an arm, protecting his eyes from the cold light devouring a now-screaming Rourke—a light that emitted no heat, but which consumed completely.

After a moment, the beams winked out of existence, leaving only a blackened patch of beach where Rourke had stood. “Good bye, Telemachus,” said Musashi.

“So he had a name,” said Angie.

“He did,” said Tennu. “It means ‘Far Traveler.’ From Homer. His people know the classics.”

“Wish I could have done that when the SEC guys came around,” said Tim, still eyeing the scorched sand.

“Don’t even joke about it, Mr. O’Malley,” said Tennu, walking slowly toward him, his face pale and exhausted in the early morning light. “Such power must be used responsibly or not at all.”

“I didn’t mean to...”

“I know,” said Musashi, waving his hand as the two men joined Angie and Kaeko where Jim lay, face-down on the hard stone beach. Angie was feeling his throat for a pulse. “Alive,” she said at last, exchanging relieved glances with Kaeko. “Gently,” she added, as they turned him over. His breathing was shallow, his eyes closed.

“Pray there’s no brain damage,” said Musashi as he and O’Malley joined them. “They delight in destroying as they take.”

“Papa!” said Kaeko, gently shaking Jim’s shoulder.

“Come back, Munroe,” whispered Angie. “I need you.”

“Beauchamp,” said Jim weakly, eyes opening. “Get the name right, Milano.” He looked out on a sepia-hued world of hazy shapes, wherein specks of white light danced before his eyes and everything smelled wrong.

“Papa. You used to call me that,” he said to Kaeko. He sat up, hugging them both to him as best he could, Kaeko sobbing uncontrollably, her body shaking, Angie crying. Closing his eyes, Jim let the warmth and contentment wash over him, sinking into him. Home he thought—I’m finally home.

“You always had a way with the girls, Jimbo,” said Fred Kessler, coming over to them, a squad of Rangers and the ever-present Colonel Caddock following.

Opening his eyes, Jim looked up into Kessler’s large, concerned face. The world looked normal again—no blurs, no odd tinctures. Low tide smelled unmistakably like low tide.

“What happened?” asked Kessler, looking at Dee’s body.

“Harry Rourke killed her,” said Jim, as Kessler gave him a hand up. “Then he was killed in turn by these four,” he said, pointing to where the Potentials and Musashi huddled slightly away from the rest.

“Harry Rourke?” said Kessler, incredulous. “Harry Rourke’s in McLean!”

“Harry Rourke’s that smudge on the beach over there,” said Jim. “And Freddy, it wasn’t the Harry Rourke we knew back when the world was young, believe me.”

A frowning Colonel Caddock touched his cellphone and waited impatiently as it chirped out a very long preprogrammed number.

“And The Good Doctor?” asked Jim.

“We haven’t found him yet,” said the FBI agent.

“He’s gone,” said Musashi. “To Europe.”

“We can still stop him,” said a much-recovered Billy Budd, joining them.

“You all right?” asked Jim.

Budd shrugged. “Just some bruises.”

“Please do not try to stop Dr. Schmidla, Mr. Kessler,” said Musashi as Kessler took out his own cellphone.

“Why not?” asked Kessler, pausing.

Everyone watched as the Japanese carefully considered his answer. “Where I’m now from, Schmidla is part of their history. To cut him off here, at this juncture, would have unforeseen consequences. His work contributed greatly to advances in genomics and medicine and enables millions to live better lives, not so long from now.”

“So he’s Albert Schweitzer,” said Angie.

“Hardly. But his failing attempt to populate the world with his bioengineered spawn has also brought much-needed caution to genetic engineering.”

“Caution?” said Jim. “Why is it still going on?”

“Because it’s a wondrous thing,” said Musashi.

“You sound a bit like Schmidla,” said Jim.

“Perhaps,” said the Japanese. “But I’m not.”

Kaeko spoke as medics carried Dee’s body away, her voice carrying over the soldiers and the sea:

I love those skies, thin blue or snowy gray,

Those fields sparse-planted, rendering meager sheaves

That spring, briefer than apple-blossom's breath,

Summer, so much too beautiful to stay,

Swift autumn, like a bonfire of leaves,

And sleepy winter, like the sleep of death.

“Who?” asked Angie.

“Elinor Wylie,” said Kaeko. “Dee’s favorite.”

“How do you know?” asked Jim.

“I just do,” said his daughter.

They watched the stretcher disappear into the cave. “She would have loved Hokkaido,” said Musashi. He suddenly looked very weary and much older. “I don’t know when this war will end, but I am so tired of seeing my friends die. Downtime, when I left, about all that we knew of tonight was that Schmidla escaped and that Dee probably died. And that the government probably killed everyone on this island.” He looked at Caddock, standing off to one side, speaking urgently into his cellphone. “I didn’t know if we’d survive, but I thought tonight Dee would probably die. Certainly Rourke knew Schmidla’s details for the day.”

“Director Rourke’s whereabouts are unknown,” said Colonel Caddock, clipping his cellphone back onto his belt, his mouth a grim little line.

“They told you that?” asked Kessler.

“Hell, no—they just said he was unavailable. Unavailable? Ha! He was requiring updates every twenty minutes, then... poof! He’s unavailable. So, until someone higher up in my chain tells me otherwise, this is your show, Mr. Kessler.”

“It always was, Colonel,” said Kessler.

As he spoke, Kaeko was staring at Billy Budd, then back at Kessler, then at Budd. “I remember now,” she said slowly. “Uncle Freddy wore the funny t-shirt at baseball, on those muggy summer days. But you, you wore a green ski mask the day you killed my mother.”

Budd’s pistol was in his hand. He looked at Kaeko, oblivious to the weapons aimed at him, the shocked looks.

“Billy?” said Jim, stricken.

Budd’s face was pale and haggard. “I’m so sorry, Kaeko,” he said earnestly, his eyes imploring her. “Your mother fought fiercely for you—she was a tigress. We tried to chloroform her, my helpers and me—a couple of yakuza. But she ripped off my mask and started screaming my name, shouting ‘Why, Billy?! Why?!’ You woke up from your nap just in time to see them throw her off the balcony. We used the chloroform on you.” He turned to Jim. “I never meant to hurt Emmy.”

“No, you were going to let Schmidla do that,” said Kaeko bitterly.

Jim looked at Billy, but he saw Emmy and Tokyo instead—the brash, noisy, upbeat Tokyo of his early years and the sometimes brash, sometimes uncertain but always brave Emmy, so alive and with so much to live for. He knew that he should hate Billy, should blow him away, but he couldn’t—Billy was just another empty suit. The true murderer was speeding across Boston Harbor toward Logan Airport.

No, Jim felt only sadness and a sense of loss. Loss of Emmy, loss of Kaeko. His child stolen from him, her mother and her childhood stolen from her.

“Who were you working for?” asked Kessler.

“Whitsun,” said Budd. “Grabbing Potentials for Schmidla. And eventually I was rewarded,” he laughed at some secret joke, “and replaced by others. Phil Martin was but the last.”

“So what now, Billy?” said Jim.

“He’s going to do the honorable thing,” said O’Malley.

“Did you hear that?” said Budd, shaking his head in disbelief. “He’s reading my mind. Do you really want them walking around, stealing our humanity? I don’t.”

“They’re our children, Billy,” said Jim.

Billy looked into Kaeko’s eyes. “I’m so sorry about your mother, Kaeko,” he repeated. “I hope that someday you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” He brought the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.

“Jesus!” said Kessler, turning away. Kaeko and Jim watched unblinking as Billy Budd’s body fell to the ground, the top of his head gone.

“Forgive him?” said Kaeko wonderingly, after a moment. “Do you forgive him?” she asked her father.

“I’m not the one he asked,” said Jim, slipping his arm around her shoulder. “Let’s go home,” he said tiredly. “You coming, Milano?”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” said Musashi.

“I’m in charge here,” said Kessler.

“Not in this regard, sir,” said Musashi. He turned to Jim, Angie and Kaeko. “This is the other part of my brief—actualized Potentials can’t roam about in this time.”

“Is that what we are?” asked Angie. “Actualized Potentials?”

“Yes,” said the Japanese. “You’ll find you’ve ever-greater control of your abilities—abilities which will, perhaps, grow even stronger.”

“Who the hell are you?” demanded Kessler.

“Merely a catalyst, Mr. Kessler,” said Musashi. “You do need to come back with me, the three of you,” he said, his gaze encompassing Angie, O’Malley and Kaeko. “If you wish to keep your abilities, be trained in their use, in exchange for being put to good work, we can offer you that. If you decide to return home, we can arrange to remove your Potential through genetic surgery and send you back. The choice is yours.”

“If you can alter a person’s genetic heritage, can’t you then also add to it?” asked Kaeko.

That’s my girl, thought Jim.

“Not quite yet,” said Musashi. “Soon, perhaps. And if that becomes possible,” he added, “you can thank Schmidla for it. His staff will soon be running a comparison of the human genome to that of third-generation Potentials. Not long from now they’ll understand where and how the two differ.”

“So do you believe we’re not human, Tennu?” asked Angie as Caddock’s men removed Billy Budd’s corpse.

“She’s extremely human,” said Jim. “I can testify.” Angie hit him lightly on his good shoulder.

“We’re all human,” said the Japanese. “Any inhumanity we have is in our thoughts and our actions, not in our biology.”

He turned to watch the great red orb of the sun now rising above the clouds, out beyond Boston Light. It reminded him of another sunrise in another harbor, long ago. “I’ve seen so much death and misery. And always I ask myself if I’ve learned anything from it. For there seems little sense in continuing if one doesn’t grow and learn.”

“And what have you learned, sensei?” asked Kaeko.

Perhaps it was the way she said it, but Jim felt a silly twinge of jealousy.

“Nothing is immutable, nothing is written. Just a few people can make a difference, no matter how frightful the odds. Which is what happened here. Just a few of you prevented Schmidla and Whitsun from obtaining the Eldridge roster. And one man—George Campbell—ensured that it could never again be recovered. Had Schmidla gotten those names, the future—our future—would have been one of blood and conquest and genocide. You prevented that.”

“If we’re having a Quaker prayer meeting,” said Jim, “let me just say that George was right—evil, real tangible evil, exists.”

“Yes,” said Musashi. “Today it failed. But it’s relentless. Tomorrow...” He shrugged. “So, I ask that the three of you go with me now. We can help you to understand and master your abilities, and offer you adventures enough to fill several lifetimes, should you wish.”

“Now? Like, right now?” asked Angie.

“Yes.”

“How?” asked Kaeko.

“Much the way you traveled today—as a group, moving in unison. There aren’t that many of you who can do that—Kaeko’s one of them. I’ll guide you. You won’t hear Rebecca’s sad flute again.”

“Who?” asked Kaeko.

“Later,” said Tennu. “Enough sadness for one day.”

“Will they ever be back?” asked Jim, feeling his world slipping away.

“Yes,” said Kaeko and Angie together.

“Or they won’t be going, Tennu,” added Angie.

“She’s right,” said Kaeko. “You can’t compel us.”

“Do you think it responsible of you to stay here, unable to control your Potential?” he asked mildly.

“Can we come back?” asked Angie.

“If you choose to, yes, but there is that price,” said Musashi.

“We need to speak among ourselves,” said Kaeko.

As Jim watched, the Potentials seemed to withdraw to Somewhere Else. “How did Rourke --Telemachus—get here from downtime?” he asked.

“Mechanical means,” said Musashi. “As did I. Much of string theory can now be expressed mathematically. Engineering is following. But temporal transfer requires an enormous consumption of resources and isn’t often done—a mark of how desperate Schmidla’s offspring are becoming. Of course, many of them can move about in the same time, just as Rourke did, flitting up here from McLean.”

“Where are you from, Tennu?” asked Jim. “Originally?”

“Your past. I was swept off Kikuzuki during the experiment, landing downtime in the middle of a battle. A bad day. The experience gave me the ability to serve as a sort of facilitator for Potentials—especially fledgling ones. Did you know that Emma’s parents were on the Kikuzuki during the experiment?” he asked Jim.

“Yes. But she didn’t have any special abilities.”

“Didn’t she? We all keep secrets, Jim, even from those we love. Maybe especially from them.”

“Wouldn’t know anything about a recent opportune power failure at GRD Corporation, would you?” asked Kessler.

“Two, actually. And Admiral Whitsun didn’t think it opportune, Mr. Kessler,” said Musashi with a mischievous grin.

“Do you have family here?” asked Kessler.

“My family all died in the war—World War Two. Firestorms from the bombings.”

I have a family, thought Jim, looking at Angie and Kaeko who were still Elsewhere.

Colonel Caddock had been on his cellphone again. “Mr. Kessler? The eval and debriefing teams are enroute. ETA 1200.”

“Continue securing the island,” said Kessler. “Advise Langley that Mr. Budd’s fallen in the line of duty. And start pulling most of your troops out of here, Colonel. D-Day’s over.”

“We’ve made our decision,” said Angie.

Chapter 32

They met him just outside of Customs at Frankfurt Airport, his three principal partners. Two were fellow physicians and the grandchildren of brother officers, the third equally dedicated and a gifted geneticist.

“Cable news is reporting an attack of some sort on a bio-terrorist base in Boston,” said Kurt. “It’s a miracle you survived. It looks like a war!”

“It was just a raid,” he said wearily as they walked.

“Give me your claim checks, Richard. I’ll have your bags picked up.”

“I don’t have any bags. I barely got away with my life,” he said as they rode the escalator.

Stepping onto the main concourse, Schmidla walked out of his right shoe. His stockinged foot came down on the slippery marble and he staggered. He’d have fallen if Kurt hadn’t grabbed his elbow.

Pushing back through those behind him, Schmidla picked up his shoe, staring at it as people flowed around him. It was tightly laced, a still-damp brown Bally brougham—Boston’s airport shops had yielded new trousers in his size, but no shoes.

“‘Goodbye, Uncle Richard.’” There’d been something about the way she’d said it. And she’d always been such a subtle girl.

Suppressing a growing sense of alarm, Schmidla held both his arms out straight, examining the cuffs of his suede jacket. Also bought at the airport, a few hours ago it had fit well for off-the-rack, the cuffs hanging just right, a tad below his wrists. Now they were almost touching his knuckles.

By the time he’d reached his hotel suite the cuffs were below his knuckles and he found himself calculating with cool detachment just how long he had left. He’d provided the website access information to Kurt, scratching it out in the back of the stricken young geneticist’s address book as the limo wound through the traffic. Still, there were other things they should know, things that would save them time. They’d wanted to stay with him, but he’d sent them off, reminding them of their duty—a dignified farewell. His triumph was now in their hands.

Clinically, it was an interesting problem, thought Schmidla, sitting on the edge of his bed: how small could a person become and yet still live? At what point would shrinkage compromise the structural integrity of his vital organs? Or perhaps his brain would give in first, synapses no longer able to fire?

He was thinking about it when he looked down again and saw the liver spots blossoming on the backs of his hands, his knuckles and wrists grown suddenly knobby. Startled despite himself, he looked into the mirror above the bureau: an ancient, wizened gnome stared back, its eyes sunk into its face, brown-splotched wattles of dry flesh hanging from its pointed chin.

So diabolical, he thought proudly, lying back with a grunt of effort. What a brilliant girl I raised! He wished only that he had the strength to pour himself a drink and raise a toast to her. A toast to her, and also, why not? to the long trail of forgotten and unhallowed dead who’d enabled him to live a purposeful life, a life that had made a difference, would forever make a difference.

Finding it increasingly hard to breathe, he toasted them as the light grew faint: to that wise owl, Max Hoffman, then a mere colonel, who’d decorated him after Tannenberg—the Pour le Mérite—promoted him, and taken him from the mud and the blood of the Eastern Front, making him his adjutant and almost certainly saving his life. To his mother, resolute after his craven father hung himself, hounded to death by the blood-sucking Jews. A stern whipcord of a woman—some unfairly said hard—whose opportunities had never equaled her drive and intellect, selling everything in the magnificent old house right down to the walls. To the Bohemian Corporal, who with his comical mustache, burning eyes and absurd locution had mesmerized the masses and provided a creative physician with opportunities for growth and fulfillment in the charnel house of his Thousand Year Reich. And of course, to Terry Whitsun and the long parade of those sanctimonious, hopelessly naïve Americans with all their money—so easily manipulated, so secretly desirous of his approval even as they’d delighted in reviling him, thinking themselves so clever, so morally superior. Yes, two glasses to the Americans and all their lovely money! Oh and of course, he should toast his shipmates from the von Blücher, except he couldn’t remember their names, just their young sacred faces. And to the Jews and the POWs and the children of all those sailors, but try as he might, he couldn’t recall even a single face, only their screams.

What a marvelous, gloriously bloody century he’d had! But nothing like the future! Wait until tomorrow, he thought, all the tomorrows I’m bequeathing you, oh world! A toast to tomorrow! Prost!

Then he started laughing, increasingly drier cackles that fell to muted croaks. And he laughed and he laughed and he laughed until he died.

Epilogue

April 1999

Tomorrow Belongs to Me

Finished trimming the azaleas—a half-assed job, he decided—Jim went around to the back of his house and put the shears in the tool shed. Going to the rear door, he glanced at what had been Bill Ender’s house, empty now and for sale, Patty and the kids having moved near to her mother in San Diego, their lives outwardly eased by Bill’s hefty life insurance payout. The unfinished wooden playset sat forlorn in the backyard, a wrench and hammer rusting on the platform, only vines climbing it.

Sighing, he went into the kitchen, glancing at the wall clock: just a tad after noon—an ale was in order. Opening the fridge, he took a brown pint bottle from behind a decaying clump of broccoli. Pouring the amber liquid into a tall glass, he settled down to read the Sunday paper, swollen with Easter shopping supplements. It’d been four months and three days since Angie, O’Malley and Kaeko had stepped back into the Chamber at Smalls Island, slipped into their crèches, and under Musashi’s guidance, disappeared along with the Japanese in that now-familiar radiant white nimbus. Four months, three days and four hours, but who’s counting?

The doorbell rang. Probably the neighborhood kids selling more unneeded candy, he assured himself, all but running to the front hall and throwing open the door.

She stood there, jeans and a green plaid blouse visible under the long leather overcoat belted loosely around her waist. “I’m out of the goddess business,” she said.

With a cry of joy, Jim swept Angie off her feet.

“God, I’ve missed you,” she said, kissing him.

“This calls for a drink,” he said, leading the way into the kitchen.

Keeping her coat on, she’d take only a ginger ale, letting him pour her a ginger ale, then sat across from him at the table.

“So, how’s Kaeko?” he asked. She seemed diffident, he thought, and what? apprehensive? And had put on weight.

“Happy,” she said. “She sends her love. She and Tennu are an item, by the way. They’ll be here in June. And her abilities just keep increasing—she’s already as accomplished as any of their best.”

“June,” he said unhappily.

“She’s been real busy, Jim. So, how’ve you been?”

He shrugged. “Oh, fine, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Considering that you all just ran off and left me—off to embrace your Potential.”

“It didn’t seem to us like we had a choice.”

“Maybe not. But how’d you like to find your kid—a kid you’d thought a long time dead—find her and then, holding her for what? two minutes, total? see her just go POOF! and gone. Not to mention your girlfriend.”

“Thanks for the afterthought. What the hell did you want us to do, Jim? Hit Tennu over the head, dump him in the harbor and say piss-off to humanity?”

“I could’ve lived with that.”

“Look, he was right. We couldn’t be left here, not with our unchecked talents—our ever-growing unchecked talents. On a bad day, I might have set off an earthquake. Tim, well, Tim apparently doesn’t so much predict as fiddle with stuff, though he didn’t know it then. He could’ve brought the whole economy crashing down in his unwitting pursuit of profit. And Kaeko? Ha! Like her mother, an artist, only she sculpts—using matter and energy, and on a grand scale. No, we were dangerous. We had to go.”

“All Potentials please check your talents at the door,” he said. “It’s been a long and lonely four months.”

“And three days,” she added. “Are you through indulging your self-pity?”

“For now.”

“Good. Kaeko’s eager to spend time with you, wants to get to know you, learn about her mother. She and Tennu want to stay for the summer.”

“They can spend forever here and welcome. So, what can you tell me about your adventures?”

“Not much,” she said, sipping her soda. “The future’s a fascinating and scary place. And we did good, giving that roster to Tennu, Jimbo. Trust me—we did real good.”

“And so, are you really here to stay?” he asked too casually.

“Yes.”

“No regrets?”

“I never asked for that whole bagatelle of abilities. And I kept thinking about that scum I impaled on Tim’s fence. That one person could do that to another... It made me no better than Rourke and his kind.” She shook her head. “They offered me a way out and I took it.”

“When did you get back?”

“Last night.”

“Did you step out of a phone booth?”

“If there were any left, I would have. How’s Tooky?”

“Fully recovered. He and Fred Kessler have been talking partnership. Freddy’s pretty disgusted with our government and Tooky’d like to open a D.C. office as long as he doesn’t have to live here in what he aptly calls asshole city.

“How’s your relationship with the Navy Department? Any idea?” he asked. “I’m contracting at the Pentagon proper now, not at the Bureau, but rumor has it your name’s never mentioned up there—you’re a disapearedo.”

“The Navy and I no longer have a relationship,” she said. “I spoke with Kessler this morning. While I was gone, he squared things with the Navy—I’ve been honorably discharged, with pension credits for twenty years’ service. And a retroactive promotion to full Commander for the last three years, which bumps up my pension. Even got a medal. They’re mailing it here.”

“Cool. So, did you bring me a gift from the future?”

“I did bring you something,” she said, rising, finally taking off her overcoat, letting him see the gentle swell of her belly. “But from the past.”

“Ah,” he managed after a moment. “Are you...?”

“You’re not even going to hint that they’re not yours?” she said dangerously.

“No!” he said, stunned. “‘They’re?!’”

“Twins. A girl and a boy. You do remember that night in New Hampshire?”

“Vividly,” he said, collecting his wits. “Are they going to have your abilities?”

“If they want to keep them, yes. It’s a decision they’ll have to make when they’re old enough. Now look,” she continued hurriedly, “Just because I showed up here preggers doesn’t mean you have to do the conventional thing. I mean, it’s the 20th century and I’ve admired many single parents—lots of them raise their kids better than they would have with a partner, besides...”

“They’ve got this waiting period here,” he said. “So the earliest we could get married would be Tuesday. There’s this nice little town with a justice of the peace up in the Blue Ridge, near Front Royal. Apple blossoms should be coming out. Then maybe we could rent a cabin along the Shenandoah for a week or so—nothing fancy. Barbecue, go hiking, fishing, fool around.”

“Ok,” she said.

Only afterwards did it occur to him that he’d soon be the father of not one but three third-generation Potentials.

“I’d forgotten how horny you pregnant girls get,” Jim said much later, when she’d finished with him.

“We’re insatiable,” she agreed. “Just a rage of hormones. Keep it up and I’ll probably get pregnant again,” she added, lying down beside him, pulling the covers up.

“You’re kidding,” he managed as she snuggled against him.

“Yup,” she mimicked.

“Is Kaeko really happy?”

“Yes. Thanks to Tennu. Those were two very lonely people.”

“Unlike us. They have her doing anything dangerous?”

“Oh, now and then.” She knew the truth would freak him out.

“Great.”

“The war against Schmidla’s designer supermen should be over soon. They’re on the run.”

“Just what horrors did they perpetrate?”

“Can’t tell you. It was pretty bad.”

“O’Malley still playing the stock market?”

“No way! They don’t let him near a brokerage house, on-line or otherwise. Besides, he has bigger fish to fry.”

“Must have lots of money, what with those stocks of his just sitting around all those years, splitting and splitting.”

“His nearest cousin will have him declared legally dead next year and get all that money. He doesn’t care. And as for money, Jim,” she said, “you’ll want to sell all those juicy tech heavy stocks of yours within the next few years. I have a date in mind. Then move everything into government bonds. And don’t work in the Pentagon beyond mid-summer of 2001. And, sad to say, you’ll need to sell this house. We’ll have to move from Washington before the twins start school. Maybe some nice college town in the mountains.”

“You have reasons and places to suggest?”

“I do. The places we can talk about.”

“I’m marrying Cassandra. When should I sell the house?”

“In a few years. I’ll tell you in plenty of time. I believe you’ll do quite well on it.”

“I thought they didn’t let you know the future?”

“Me, no. Keiko they do. You ever find out what happened to Schmidla?” she asked. “Not even Keiko would tell me.”

“Ah, The Good Doctor,” said Jim, turning off the light. “Like Napoleon, he tried to conquer the world. And like Napoleon, he came up short.”

It was a brief graveside service, Lutheran, held in a cold drizzle beneath a gnarled old linden in an ancient cemetery. Schmidla would have scorned the ritual but enjoyed the rain.

Only Kurt and the local pastor were there, and the deceased, his remains in a diminutive rosewood coffin. He’d long ago written his own epithet:

Martin Amadeus von Kemnitz

Gelehrter, Physiker und Soldat

3.Maerz 1891 - 28.November 1998

Morgen Gehört Mir

Martin Amadeus von Kemnitz

Scholar, Physician and Soldier

March 3, 1891 - November 28, 1998

Tomorrow Belongs to Me

His stone was topped by a black marble sculpture of the Earth, tilted on its axis and banded about by a finely-wrought bronze double-helix. The pastor found it an odd and vaguely disturbing monument. “Was Dr. von Kemnitz cremated?” he asked as they walked away.

“No,” said Kurt. “He was just a very small man.”

The End?

Oh Fatherland, Fatherland

Show us the sign

Your children have waited to see

The morning will come

When the world is mine

Tomorrow belongs to me!

End Notes

Chapter 16

The human genome: Years after these events, Schmidla’s gene count is as valid as any. As of this writing, different computation methods continue to produce widely differing gene counts.

Chapter 26

English translation of Jimbo’s rendering of Kyu Sakamoto’s Ue Wo Muite Arukou (Sukiyaki)

I look up when I walk

So the tears won't fall

Remembering those happy spring days

But tonight I'm all alone.

Copyright © 1975 Watanabe Music Publishing Co. Ltd

“Tomorrow Belongs to Me” from Cabaret

Lyrics by Fred Ebb, music by John Kander

(From the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin, by Christopher Isherwood)

Acknowledgments

I’m privileged to know some very talented and generous people, without whose help and encouragement this book would never have been completed:

My blessedly picky readers: Silvia Bichler, Stephen R. Gusmer and Sharon E. Slominski; research chemist Bill Jackson, who took time from his busy day to unearth a drug for Dr. Schmidla’s diabolical use; MIT physicist Simon Verghese, who early on patiently explained to me basic aspects of classical physics, and my fellow Ace and Tor Books author Melisa Michaels, whose insights prompted some needed plot rerouting.

I’m indebted also to Genette Carr of Leighs Priory for her kindness and generosity in sharing her knowledge of the Rich family’s ancestral home, to Max Masao of japanlyrics.com for his translation of the Kyu Sakamoto lyrics, and to the eagle-eyed Thomas Stronach of Essex County for plying his proofreading skills.

And I’m eternally grateful to the talented, thorough, gracious and good-hearted Eman Abu-Khadra of Tunis and Toronto. Her multi-faceted skills of linguist, logician and editor and her presence as boon Internet companion have made this a far better book and the journey to its end much lighter.

Any mistakes are entirely my own.

Stephen Ames Berry

St. Thomas, USVI

Charlestown, Massachusetts

Sarasota, Florida

1999-2006

Former US Navy Department and Harvard University data architect Stephen Ames Berry teaches wayward youth at a special school. He lived for several years in Tokyo. This is his fifth novel.

Berry’s Other Books

The Biofab Quartet

The Biofab War

The Battle for Terra Two

The AI War

Final Assault

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Epilogue