The Circle had managed to stall the withdrawal of American forces in some instances. Near-mutinies of some troops had caused the Pentagon to slow the removal of its forces from certain hot spots. A few American diplomatic personnel had simply refused to abandon their posts—and now they could no longer speak for the American government. High-level negotiations continued, with the object of bringing all Americans home, which was just what the Circle wanted: talk. That was their weapon of choice.
The Circle was not designed for quick response to an unforeseen crisis. Their plans sometimes took generations to mature. A decade was nothing. The slow building of relationships, the “chance” meeting in college that matured into a lifelong influence, the casually-dropped remark that led one person to say something slightly different than what he’d planned to say to someone else, which led in turn to…. This was the way the Circle moved, slowly and very meticulously. They were not good at prompt reaction. None of them would be the kind to throw himself on a hand grenade that had just been thrown through the window. Their job was to make sure that the hand grenade never got thrown; indeed, that it never got manufactured.
Now something much, much bigger than a hand grenade had been thrown into their laps. Some of the members wasted too much time worrying how it had happened, how such a major catastrophe, something that obviously took years of planning, could have happened without their having a hint it was coming. There was only one precedent for that: 9/11.
The Chair kept them focused. Gladys Leaphorn seemed not to sleep. She had never needed as much sleep as an average person, and in her eighties she seemed to have given up the habit altogether. She was living on strong tea and the occasional five-minute meditation, from which she returned to work apparently completely refreshed. Craig and Alicia Mortenson looked at each other significantly when this happened. They didn’t have to say what they were thinking, which was that their beloved Chair might be headed for situational psychosis: be driven quietly mad by this nightmare, so calmly that no one would notice. The Mortensons remained alert, while doing their own jobs.
One midnight, five days after the faster-than-sight planes had passed over America, Gladys dropped into a chair in frustration. “We just can’t get to this damned NSA. We’ve lost too many people trying. And we have absolutely no one from his past to reach out to him now.”
“No, that ship sailed a long time ago, it seems,” Craig Mortenson said. He lit a pipe and stared into space, envisioning a different past. “One of us should have discovered his potential when he was a boy. We needed to be cultivating—”
“He didn’t have any potential,” Gladys snapped. “You’ve looked at his records. Everywhere he’s been and everything he’s done, his work has been average at best. At best. There was absolutely no way to predict his rise to such prominence. I almost think that infamous paper of his must have been plagiarized. But we’ve been scouring all our sources without—”
“There are precedents for this,” Alicia said quietly. She was the only one still standing of the three, willowy in her blue dress, her eyes red-rimmed but still very alert. “General Grant springs to mind. Miserable at everything he tried except war. And who could have predicted he’d be a brilliant wartime commander until we were at war? This is somehow similar. We can’t predict everything, Gladys. We can only try to keep the country on a generally correct course. We can’t handle every little crisis that comes along.”
“This is hardly little,” Gladys Leaphorn muttered. Then she suddenly stood up. “I’m going home,” she announced.
This was a big announcement. None of them had ever been to the Chair’s home, or even knew exactly where it was. And if she was quitting when they were nowhere near solving this enormous problem—well, that just couldn’t happen.
“Just for a little while,” she said. “You two take charge. You know what we need to do.”
“All except for one thing,” Alicia said. “What about Jack? Why did you send him away, Gladys, and what is he supposed to be doing?”
“Doing nothing, I hope,” the Chair muttered, with a flash of anger. “And you know very well why I sent him away. I don’t know what he’s been up to these last few years. Neither do you. I don’t know if he can be trusted. If he’s as resourceful as we all think he is, maybe he can accomplish something on his own. But at any rate he’s out of the way. I don’t think he can do much damage to the cause on another continent.”
Craig and Alicia didn’t even have to glance at each other to complete the thought: Plus she’s got Arden to report back to her if Jack does do something of significance.
But even they didn’t know if that was Arden’s only function in the Chair’s plans.
Arden and Jack went to breakfast earlier than anyone else in Prague, apparently. False dawn lured them outside, but then it was as if night fell again. They walked through a dimness that could have been the mists of time. Jack felt unwatched, unpursued. Arden seemed to have an instinct for that sort of thing, and this morning he trusted her instinct. He had cried himself out during the night, showered in darkness, and now felt very refreshed. He walked in the dark, but it was noon in his mind.
It was a beautiful old city. Somehow even shop windows were prettier than their counterparts in America: smaller, less bold, with arrangements inside that invited one to stop and peer. These shop windows compared to the arrogant displays of American commerce were the equivalent of a half-smile and darting glance compared to a shouted invitation.
Arden’s shoulder bumped his occasionally, but she didn’t take his hand. She respected that last night had been a vulnerable moment that didn’t extend into daylight. She wouldn’t take advantage of his confidences. At least not overtly.
They watched a cafe open up, as a sleepy, aproned waiter, or perhaps the owner, pulled a few tables out onto the sidewalk and set spindly-legged metal chairs around them. He smiled at them and gestured, and they took their seats as if this had been prepared solely for them. Moments later he brought them two cups of very strong, heavily flavored coffee and disappeared without taking an order. These things were done more leisurely here. Why would they be together, the waiter seemed to say, unless they wanted to be together? So he gave them a few minutes of privacy.
A breeze sprang up with the sun. The street slowly came to life. Arden moved her chair around to sit closer to Jack, maybe for warmth, maybe protection. She became more watchful. He let her. Jack’s senses were exhausted in that regard. She could be his bodyguard this morning.
After their cups were emptied, the waiter returned to refill them and brought what was apparently the daily special: croissants smeared inside with a fragrant, yellowish, slightly lumpy something that could have been either dairy or fruit in origin. They didn’t inquire. It tasted wonderful, but anything would have inside the freshly-baked croissants, which almost flaked into nothingness between their plates and their mouths. The breakfast seemed very delicate, but they found themselves satisfied after a few bites.
Jack sat and watched the shops opening for business, the foot traffic begin, cars move slowly down the street. He didn’t feel at home, not at all, but somehow better than at home. In this setting even breakfast seemed an adventure.
He didn’t feel Arden’s eyes on him—she was being careful to put no pressure on him, even the pressure of attention—but he felt her curiosity. Finally he said, “How could it be worse, even after she was dead?”
She leaned toward him and her eyes fastened on him. Instantly it was as if they were back inside the dark hotel room, in the center of Jack’s story again. But this time his voice was flat, as if he were again in the immediate aftermath of his lover’s death, and nothing else could touch him emotionally.
“This is how it got worse. Madeline died in the summer. Two weeks later Osama Bin Laden released a videotape, condemning America, blah blah blah. Just taunting, really.”
He heard Arden’s unasked question: So?
“I was at the tail-end of two weeks of binge-drinking that had become life-threatening, with no one to intervene. I was still in London but I couldn’t have told you that. One afternoon I kind of came to my senses in Madeline’s apartment with the TV on and there he was, the most wanted person on earth mocking us. Mocking me personally, it seemed like. Then I noticed something strange. Maybe what had drawn my attention was a light coming on on Madeline’s television. She was recording this spiel.”
“How did she—?”
“That was the question, right? How did Madeline know, weeks ahead of time, when that tape would appear on the television news? Breaking into an afternoon chat show. I ran it back and played it again. It started me thinking about something other than myself for the first time in a long time. How had this man eluded American forces for so long? A six-foot-four Arab who needed dialysis? So distrinctive looking he was a walking cartoon.
“And let us not forget, I was a member of the Circle. The group whose self-assigned mission for the last two hundred-plus years has been to keep America safe, to protect our country from its own excesses and—” He held up a finger. “—to know everything our intelligence services know and more. Forget that Bin Laden was still free. How had he ever happened in the first place? Where was the Circle when America suffered its worst attack on our own soil ever?”
Arden kept watching him and shrugged. She had been a child at the time, with not yet a glimmer of the Circle’s existence.
“This was the first question that engaged my attention since Madeline’s death. Did we know about the attack in advance? I don’t know. If we did know and still let it happen, that’s unforgivable. If we didn’t know, that’s unforgivable.”
Arden answered as if she’d heard this question debated before. “Of course, that’s the kind of attack that’s almost impossible to prevent. Twenty fanatics, working in a very tight-knit, homogenous group. No way to infiltrate—”
“Heavily financed and with a lot of ground support,” Jack interrupted.
“True, but still only twenty crazed men. It would have been nearly impossible to infiltrate a group of that—”
Jack stopped her with an uplifted hand. “Actually only nineteen of the twenty boarded the planes.”
Arden stared at him as if reading the lines of his face, then gasped. Jack nodded. “One of the supposed fanatics didn’t get on board. At the last minute he had a problem or something else to do. He made sure the operation happened but escaped its consequences himself.” Jack sat as if mulling over an idea, his face calm. Arden’s expression grew more and more horrified. If she hadn’t known about this possibility before this moment, then she was a brilliant actress. Of course, Jack thought she was. Just as she was about to speak again, he continued. “It sounds like us, doesn’t it? Just the kind of role one of the Circle would play in that scenario. Actually we’d usually be much deeper in the background, but this was one that had to be guided personally, right up to the last minute. There have been all kinds of speculation about who that twentieth man was, and suspects named, but we would throw up that kind of smokescreen, wouldn’t we? That is, if one of us was the twentieth fanatic.”
Arden had had time to absorb the idea now. “You’re just speculating.”
“I was then. But since then I’ve spent years investigating the possibility. I’ve particularly wondered whether I was supposed to be personally involved.”
“What?”
“Madeline meeting with the Arab man, remember? I know, I know, London is full of Arab men. But one night I woke up seeing them again, seeing the man looking at me so speculatively, weighing my possibilities. I think I was supposed to find them that day, so he could see me. Maybe he’d already studied my file, but he wanted a personal look. And Madeline just sat there with a little smile, the way she did at fashion shows where people were looking at her creations.”
“Jack.” Arden’s hand reached for his arm, but the gesture stopped before she touched him. Jack sat appearing perfectly composed, no tears hovering in his eyes. “Yes?” he said calmly.
“You think maybe she—singled you out?”
“Do I think maybe it wasn’t happenstance? That maybe it was only love at first sight on my part?” He shook his head. “I think she loved me. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t have another purpose in mind. To recruit me.”
“To what? To be part of this cover-up? How could you have joined in that?”
Jack turned and looked directly at her. He was good at evaluating people. Beyond good. When he was on his game he could almost read thoughts. Emotions were harder. Half the time people didn’t even know their own emotions. He studied Arden as he had several times over the last few days, and over the two years since he’d known her. He felt her concern, and thought he felt curiosity. That was what he wanted to know. Did she already know the deep secret he was about to reveal? Was that why she was with him, to keep him from learning anything more?
The question could be put a different way, in a form that had tormented him for more than five years: Did the Chair know what he was trying to find out? And if so, had she told her granddaughter?
The logical part of his mind was evaluating what he should do. If Arden already knew, then what was the harm in telling her? If she didn’t, he might be gaining a valuable ally. The danger was in letting her know what he knew if she already was on the other side.
But he began speaking before he’d fully evaluated the risk. The other side of his brain took over. He wanted to talk.
“I believe now that there is another group within the Circle. An Inner Circle, maybe. A core group of us, allied with people outside the Circle. They may have similar goals to the original Circle’s mission, but they are much more ruthless. I believe this group knew the 9-11 attack was coming, even encouraged it, maybe even first planted the idea. But at any rate made sure it happened.”
His voice remained calm, but Jack stared into space and Arden knew he was far away. “You know how you can take a snapshot with your mind, and replay it again, sometimes from different angles, zoom in on something maybe you didn’t notice the first time?”
Arden nodded.
“That’s what I’ve done with that scene of Madeline and the Arab man. Nicely dressed man, Saville Row suit, hundreds like him in London. But his ear was distinctive. Pendulous lobe, flat on top. One of the hardest things to disguise. I’ve replayed his face in my mind a thousand times, and I’ve also replayed that scene that came on Madeline’s TV at just the right time. I think they were the same man.”
Arden gasped. “Osama in—”
Jack shook his head. “This wasn’t Osama. But I think he plays him on TV. Someone keeping alive the myth of our great enemy still plotting against us. It makes sense, doesn’t it? How has he eluded us so long? Because most of the time he’s not Osama Bin Laden. He’s a respectable-looking businessman with a legitimate passport. And Madeline was sitting there with him chatting pleasantly.”
Arden stood up, stared at him, then sat again, leaning close to him. “Why on earth would any American help in such a—a mad scheme? How could you think one of us—?”
She sounded angry. The way Jack had reacted when he’d first gotten this idea. He’d had years to calm down, but it was a horrible idea, and watching Arden’s reaction made him realize again the horror of it.
“Think about it,” he said, emphasizing the first word. “What happened in the wake of the 9-11 attacks? There was an enormous outpouring of sympathy and good will toward America from all over the world. A new president, one most of us didn’t have much confidence in, started his term with more worldwide support than America has ever enjoyed. Ever. That president squandered it all over the next few years, but that wasn’t our fault. The attacks made us look vulnerable but also armored us with good wishes. Maybe that day helped define our allies and our enemies in a way the Inner Circle wanted, too. I’m not sure about that part. But it accomplished what they wanted.”
Arden was shaking her head. “We would never—”
Jack grabbed her arms. He talked more urgently then he ever had in his life. It was as if Arden were his own doubts made into another person. If he could convince her he could convince himself.
“No, we wouldn’t. But I believe this other faction, this rogue component of the Circle would. Imagine it, Arden. You give people behind-the-scenes power for generations. Isn’t someone bound to misuse it some time?”
She had calmed down. Her eyes tracked back and forth across the tabletop, then out to the street. Their movement slowed as her mind speeded up. Jack could see it happen, could feel her thinking as if her skin temperature had risen. Her mind explored tangents, then finally returned to him as her eyes rested on his. A smaller but more personal version of her horrified expression also returned.
“Does this mean you think they killed Madeline?”
Jack sighed. “I hope so.”
Because the alternative was that his lost love had been one of the bad guys, and had been trying to recruit him as one of them.
Later they walked into the newer part of Prague. The modern office buildings and occasional McDonald’s were much less eye-pleasing than Lesser Town, but also less sinister. Here the streets didn’t seem to seethe with plotting. Jack wished he could go back to last night’s cafe and talk to his old friend Stevie again. It had been years since he could do that. But he couldn’t now. Make minimal contact, get the ball rolling, move on. That was the plan now, just as it had been for years. When he’d first suspected the existence of the Inner Circle, there’d been no one he could trust except a hardcore group of his old friends, ones he’d known since childhood. Each of them had had people they could trust too. Jack didn’t, outside his own family, which was in no way part of his adult life. Now he had trusted Arden, or at least acted as if he had.
She asked, “So do you think this rogue faction as you called them launched these latest attacks against America?” She said the name of her country the same way she’d say England or Italy, like an interesting foreign place. Or maybe that was Jack’s imagination.
“No,” he said. “I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. I think this took all of us by surprise. This is something new. I don’t know the source of it yet. It may have been something the Inner Circle unwittingly set in motion. I don’t know.”
“And the attacks on you? The fake Jack-sightings around the world?”
“Now those I believe are the work of our old friends the Inner Circle. I guess they’ve discovered I suspect their existence. Or maybe they just wanted an excuse for the Chair to get rid of me.”
Arden stopped abruptly. “You think Granny is one of them?” She wasn’t looking at him.
Jack looked at her, though. She looked like a young woman startled by a terrible idea.
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. I certainly hope not. We’re all in deep trouble if she’s their leader too. But if she’s not, and she’s so smart, why hasn’t she suspected this? Why am I the only one of us who’s caught a glimmer of this?”
“Maybe you’re not. Have you talked to anyone else about this? Any of the group?”
“No,” Jack said. He didn’t include his tiny group of old friends, whom he trusted implicitly. “How can I? Anyone I’d tell might be one of them. Even the Mortensons. Anyone I might tell might be part of the Inner Circle, and that would be the end of me.”
Arden cocked an eyebrow at him. He understood. Yes. There might be others in the Circle who shared his suspicions, but none of them could afford to share them with anyone. Anyone who suspected the existence of this Inner Circle was isolated, trapped within himself by his own suspicions.
That was why it had been such a relief to tell Arden now. Jack felt the rush of relief through his system, relaxing him, almost making him sleepy. At that moment he didn’t care if Arden’s secret confederates stepped out of hiding and captured him. It felt so good to have let his great suspicion escape. It was no longer trapped within his own mind, banging back and forth against the walls of his brain.
“Do you suspect anyone in particular?”
Jack shook his head, then shrugged. “Craig Mortenson? Look how efficiently he brought down the Soviet Union. But mostly non-violently, I know. Alicia, then? Maybe they’re not so joined at the cerebral cortex as everyone thinks. Maybe she guides him, a lot more subtly than he guides world events.”
“I love the Mortensons!”
“So do I. Do you think evil people look monstrous? Or act it? They don’t even think of themselves as evil. They just think they’re doing what’s necessary. From that angle, who’s not a suspect? I suspect the only woman I’ve ever loved! How about Professor Trimble? He always seems to be at conferences all over the world instead of teaching. My old mentor Janice Gentry? She’s been in some key locations, let me tell you. Then there’s…”
Jack trailed off, but Arden knew exactly whom he meant. “Granny? You think so? Wouldn’t the leader of this secret group try to stay out of the limelight within the Circle? She wouldn’t put herself forward as Chair, would she?”
“No one puts herself forward as Chair. You’re elected by acclamation. Wanting to turn down the job is an indication you’re right for it. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Arden looked around, appearing surprised to find them in a modern-looking city in broad daylight. “What do we do next?”
“Leave here,” Jack said. “You didn’t leave anything important in the hotel, did you?”
Arden tapped the shoulder bag under her arm. If he’d planned to take her by surprise with his announcement he would have been disappointed. She appeared poised and ready. And remarkably fresh. When had she gotten more sleep than he had? Her skin was smooth and pale and her eyes gleamed. Her little secret smile had returned, too. Arden had always looked as if she were sharing a secret joke, possibly only with herself. He hadn’t shocked her for long. “Where to?”
Jack started toward an underground station, and within a few paces Arden was leading the way. “Two places, I think,” Jack said slowly. “The peace summit is supposed to take place in Salzburg in four days.”
“Hasn’t that been cancelled?”
“On the contrary, we have to make sure it takes place.”
Arden frowned. She knew she’d get an explanation as they went along. “What’s the other destination?”
“Israel. Or close by there, anyway.”
That one obviously came as a surprise to Arden. But she shrugged and looked ready. “Which one first?”
Jack stopped and looked at her sternly. “That’s not what I meant. We’ve got two different destinations at the same time. I need you to go to Austria.”
She looked back at him, absolutely unperturbed. “We will. As soon as we finish in Israel.” Jack started arguing and Arden cut him off. “Look, if I’m not with you you’ll get yourself killed. Then Granny would kill me. Then there’s nobody left who knows about the plot or can stop it.”
She raised her eyebrows, inviting him to try to refute her logic. After a moment Jack gave up. “Come on, then.”
“Back to the airport?”
“Not exactly.” Train doors opened in front of them and they got in the subway.
“I hate calling in any favors at a time like this,” Jack shouted over the noise of the helicopter’s rotors. Arden nodded, knowing exactly what he meant. Impersonal public transportation was scary because it left them so vulnerable, but arranging more personalized transport was just as dangerous. It pinpointed them.
The pilot in his bomber’s jacket and sunglasses slapped Jack on the back. “That’s okay, pal, don’t worry about it. Anything for the guy who wrote ‘Air Gladiator.’”
Arden gave Jack a look and he shrugged. Yes, a few years earlier he’d written an air combat video game at a time when he was learning to fly himself. All he did, really, was put all his fears about flying onto a video screen, just imagine what he was about to do wrong and see if any players could get out of such a scenario. The game had been popular, not a huge breakthrough, but it remained very well-known to pilots. This one had been glad to take Jack on a hop south once he’d learned who he was.
Jack and Arden couldn’t talk about any of the things they really wanted to discuss during the flight. The pilot took up the conversational slack by pointing out features of the jet helicopter to Jack, explicitly making suggestions for an “Air Gladiator II.” Quite clearly he was also willing to pose for the central character. Jack and Arden had to have some kind of cover, and Arden quickly decided their roles: Jack was the internationally famous game designer and she was a groupie he’d picked up at a convention. She clung to him like ball moss to an oak branch the whole way, occasionally squealing delightedly over something he said. This scene fit the pilot’s world-fantasy view so perfectly that he didn’t even ask them questions. He just grinned and occasionally, very subtly he thought, winked at Jack, two men of the world. Jack gave him as manly a sly smile as he could manage in return.
After what seemed to Jack a long, long flight but in reality was only a few hours, the pilot said, “If I get much closer I’m going to have all kinds of radar locking on me.” He gave Jack a look, half-apologetic, half hoping Jack would ask him to dodge incoming to get them farther inland. But Jack just said, “You’ve done a great job, Captain. Given me lots of great material, too. I’ll be seeing you.”
The helicopter set down on a beach. Most of their trip had been over the Mediterranean, but now they were on a much smaller body of water. Jack and Arden scrambled out, the pilot gave them a thumbs-up and lifted off, all within a minute. The pilot believed they were traveling under stealth cover to avoid Jack’s fans, which was only partially inaccurate.
“You can let go now,” Jack said once they could hear again, but as soon as Arden released his arm he felt her absence. Her coziness on the plane had been annoying and, now that it was gone, comforting. She smiled at him as if she could read his feelings, then glanced up and down the largely deserted beach. Jack, though, was watching large specks on the southern horizon growing rapidly larger.
“Where are we?” Arden asked.
“Gaza, if that pilot knew what he was doing, and I think he did. The West Bank.”
“And who are those?” Because now Arden too noticed the armed convoy approaching them at a speed that seemed angry.
“Israeli troops, I think. Or maybe the Palestinian Authority. Either way, I don’t think we can pass, do you?”