22

Charlie moved the desk and chair over so that Gabriella could sit next to the bed. He stood behind her as she walked him through the entire ascent, making corrections on her worksheets as she spoke. He studied the curve to the back of her neck and knew he should be paying more careful attention. But her words fell on him like a gentle wash, soft as summer rain.

She arranged the pages in proper order and tamped them into place. “Are you ready, Charlie?”

“Sure thing.”

“Do you understand what you will accomplish in this ascent?”

“Whatever you tell me to do.”

She gave that a significant pause. “Make yourself comfortable on the bed, please.” She arranged her equipment on the desk and fitted the headphones on his head. “How is the volume?”

“Perfect.” He could smell her perfume. Along with a smoldering trace of the day.

“Are you the least bit frightened, Charlie?”

“No.”

“Most people find the second and third ascents the hardest. Particularly just before leaving the body. We call it uncoupling. After the third ascent, sometimes the fourth, either they have begun to find a sense of familiarity or they stop. It is not a conscious choice. Fear simply overrides their ability to ascend.”

“Where are the rest of your team?”

“On their way to Italy, by way of Switzerland. My family used to rent a villa in Brunate, a small village in the mountains above the Lake of Como. There is no record of this anywhere, to my knowledge. We should be safe there. At least until we can establish a more permanent situation.”

He liked how she never hesitated before answering his questions. “I’ve never heard of the place.”

“Como is just south of the Swiss border, in the foothills of the Alps. My aunt’s family, my mother’s sister, had inherited a quarter share of a family villa through her husband’s . . . Never mind, Charlie. It is a very complicated connection. Very Italian. But the villa itself is beautiful, almost six hundred years old—not the largest villa in the village by any means, but still very nice. I called the family and they said it was empty for the season. Just as I saw during my last ascent.”

Charlie saw the shadows pass before her face again and knew she was thinking of what else had come out of that particular session. She almost managed to hide the crack in her voice as she said, “I have a theory as to why you are not afraid. Would you like to hear it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Identity for most people is constantly shifting. People are this way with one person, another way with the next. They are happy, sad, up, down, backwards, forwards. Much of their internal state is dependent upon the things going on around them.” She hesitated, as though suddenly uncertain she should be saying these things. “Recent studies suggest that people who fight in wars fit an entirely different psychological profile.”

“The standard term,” Charlie said, “is combat veteran.”

“Yes. Thank you. These studies suggest one reason so many combat veterans have difficulty adjusting to civilian life is that they lose this ability to shift identities. This flexibility of character has been cauterized. They are frozen in the rigidity required to survive battle. They are precisely who they are. All the time.” She stopped once more. “Was I wrong to tell you this, Charlie?”

“Not at all.”

“I don’t want to make you think that I do not consider you well adjusted.”

“You’re describing a very real problem in my world, Gabriella. A lot of guys just plain can’t come back. I’m glad scientists are taking a look at it. What you’re saying makes a lot of sense.”

“I have been thinking a great deal about this since meeting you. Why does the warrior become so inflexible? The answer is, of course, survival. This intensity, this focused power, carries the warrior through threats that arrive from every point on the compass. This character inflexibility is a natural side effect. I wonder if perhaps your core personality, this solidity of purpose, makes it easier for you to ascend. For you, the seasoned warrior, ascending becomes the next danger zone you choose to enter.”

He gave that some thought. “I think maybe there’s another reason why I’m not afraid.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve almost died twice. Once in combat, once in a car accident.”

“This also carries a great deal of validity, Charlie. There is documented evidence that near-death experiences leave many subjects with less fear of the end.” She nodded slowly. “Perhaps we should focus upon this in our selection of new test cases.”

He could feel the heat of her body beside the bed. “I’m very sorry about today, Gabriella.”

“We must focus on you now, Charlie.”

“I just wanted you to know.”

She settled a hand on his shoulder and left it there for a time, soft as whispered gratitude. Her other hand became busy with the controls. A rush of sound filled his ears. She said, “You are entering Base Level now.”

This time Charlie was much more aware of the actual process. Like before, his focus gradually turned away from Gabriella’s voice and her presence, taking an increasingly tight aim at his internal state. Yet at one level he remained acutely aware of her at all times. The fact that his focus could be so utterly divided and yet remain so sharp was only of mild interest, a thought that came and went in the sweep of counting upward.

Then he ascended.

The word fit the experience with exquisite precision. He rose away from normal awareness.

He had never considered the concept of awareness in those terms before. Normal awareness meant self, then body, then environment. It was all about analysis and search and defined concepts of danger. Normal awareness meant maintaining an island of security and safety.

Charlie literally felt his awareness draw away from all these things. The elastic moment was strong as a physical sensation. He turned away.

He had expected a wrenching of some sort. Every journey he had experienced started with a sensation of departure. Until now.

There was an instant of transition as natural as the tiny breath his body took. The body he was now looking down upon.

He remained poised slightly above the bed and the lovely woman who observed the body lying there. He watched as Gabriella lifted the pages. He saw the slight tremor to her hands. Then the message formed inside him in tandem to her speaking.

Gabriella said, “Identify what risk we currently face. You will focus exclusively upon the next danger at hand. You will remain in complete safety and complete control at all times. Go now.”

Before the now, Charlie was already gone.

He knew a tornado effect. The sense of gathering force was that great. His senses were honed as he traveled, focusing with such intensity he could fracture a laser.

He came to rest in the back of a limo. Outside the limo’s windows was a nighttime cityscape. Though he recognized no landmarks, Charlie knew with absolute certainty he was still in New York.

Across from him sat the woman he had last seen at Harbor Petroleum. Reese Clawson was blonde and alluring and draped in a cloak woven from sexuality and dread. The combination of menace and manipulated desire tore at Charlie’s psyche. He had noticed it before, but with nothing like the pure intensity he felt now.

Reese said into her cell phone, “I appreciate your willingness to help us out, General Strang.”

The man’s voice on the other end of the phone came through as clearly as if Charlie held the phone to his own nonexistent ear. “I’ve got two reasons. First, Hazard is off the reservation. Second, I want your business.”

The blonde woman pulled her skirt up a trifle, as though offering a tantalizing pose to the man on the other end of the phone. “I will be equally frank. Our background search has turned up nothing usable on Hazard. He is almost absurdly clean.”

“I figured that was the issue as soon as your man placed this call.”

“We need a lever, General. We need it now.”

“First let’s talk terms.”

“You deliver and so do I.”

“Same deal?”

“The same contract as before, only with Hazard erased.”

“In that case, I’m happy to tell you that Charlie Hazard has an Achilles’ heel.”

Reese smiled. “Men always do.”

Charlie’s next transition was equally smooth and as powerful as the first. He had attended military training seminars where experienced field officers described entering new combat terrain and watching their new troops give in to sensory overload. The new scene offered that same level of bombardment.

He stood at the back of an intel war room. He had visited the Pentagon’s underground chamber once, acting as aide to Colonel Donovan Field, who had been invited by a general who had once served under him. The setup was unmistakable. Arena-like banks of seats rose in four curved rows from a wall of giant flat-screens. Over the loudspeakers, Reese was talking to Curtis Strang.

Strang was saying, “Hazard was in the process of divorcing his wife.”

A slender man stood by a console to Charlie’s left. He had olive skin and an aggrieved air as he cried, “That is not part of any official record!”

On one screen, Reese winced and cupped her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Ease up on the volume, Patel.”

“We have searched everywhere. Charlie Hazard was married until his wife died in the car accident. He never—”

“All right.” Reese replaced the phone to her ear and said, “We show no evidence of that, General.”

“I don’t care what your records state. Forget your own data. If there was written evidence, you wouldn’t be calling me. I know Hazard was divorcing his wife because he told me a month or so after he joined my team. She was having an affair.”

The olive-skinned man bounded to his feet. “All right!”

Reese winced again. “Patel, chill.”

Strang said, “Excuse me?”

“Go ahead, General. You were saying?”

“Hazard wanted Sylvie to file the papers. He called it the honorable out.”

Patel said into his mike, “I have the police records here in front of me. Sylvie Hazard died in a car accident. Charlie was in the car and was injured.”

Reese said, “Sorry, General. I don’t see how this helps us. The lady is dead.”

“Hazard claimed he was asleep when the car went off the road. The police found him unconscious, saved by his seat belt and air bags. It appears that his wife, who was driving, was not wearing her belt and was thrown from the car, hit a tree, DOA. The authorities had some questions about Hazard’s possible involvement. But they didn’t know about the wife’s affair. At the time, it was to my advantage for them not to find out. The prosecution decided they didn’t have a case.”

“You know this how?”

“I have an ally inside the LAPD.”

“Can you get him to change his mind?”

“It will cost you. He’s put in his twenty. He’s looking for a cushy corporate security job.”

“I can make that happen.”

“He drinks.”

“I said I can make it happen. But your pal has to issue the warrant tonight.”

“And the service contract with your group—”

“Will be expressed to you tomorrow. We need an international arrest warrant, and we need it now. Not some local alert. We’re pretty certain Hazard has left the country, or is about to do so.”

“I’m on it. Strang out.”

Reese hung up. “Patel?”

“Almost there.” His fingers began a tap dance on the keys. “Is your console on?”

“Hang on. Okay.”

“Here we go.”

On the arena’s top left screen, Charlie watched as his face appeared on an international fugitive warrant. The charge was murder. Beneath his picture, words appeared in a multitude of languages. Considered armed and extremely dangerous.

“Looks good,” Reese said. “Be ready to put this out the instant the police act.”