“Something’s happening in Salzburg,” Professor Horace Trimble said over the phone from New York.
“Yes, I believe I read something about that,” Craig Mortenson said drily. The front pages of every newspaper in the world had been consumed with two things in the past few days: reprises of the attack on America story, and speculation as to whether the peace summit, over a year in the planning, would still be held, now that the American President had announced that America would no longer be involved in world affairs.
“I mean,” Trimble said snippily, “there’s something going on behind the scenes. I’m going over to investigate.”
“You’re going over personally?” Craig, sitting in the Circle’s western headquarters listening to Trimble over speaker phone, glanced at Alicia. She gave him a raised eyebrow in turn. “Don’t you have any contacts—?”
“Of course I do,” the professor snapped. “But I want face-to-face contact. Someone over there’s been lying to me and everyone else on the planet, and I want to know who it is.”
The Circle so far had made almost no headway in discovering who was responsible for the mysterious plane attacks. They knew from monitoring intelligence sources that the CIA and FBI didn’t have a clue either. Nor could they get to the National Security Advisor; those attempts had cost them more in lost personnel than they had suffered throughout the Cold War. Instead they had now been bending all their efforts to make sure that the President still attended the summit. They hoped that somehow this would reengage him in world events. They had influential connections with the president from several directions, and had been using all of them. Even the president’s mother had called him to tell him he should go to Salzburg. They were pretty sure they had won that battle.
But now Trimble was saying there was something else wrong. “What have you found out?” Janice Gentry said to the speakerphone.
“Distressingly little,” answered the professor. “I believe, though, it has something to do with our old friend Jack’s appearances in recent times. He was up to something when he went to that flat in London. I’m not sure what, but I’m going over there to find out. I’m afraid our beloved Chair may have made a mistake in letting young Mr. Driscoll out of our sights. But maybe I can rectify the situation.”
Craig Mortenson caught every eye around him, and found nothing but shades of apprehension. “Don’t rectify anything that can’t be un-rectified unless you get approval from us,” he said. That was as precise as he could get, but Trimble was a subtle man. He would understand.
“I shall do no more than what is absolutely necessary,” Trimble sniffed, obviously offended. “Now I have to run. My flight is boarding.”
The small group pictured the tall, thin, extremely dignified professor of applied mathematics actually running down an airport concourse and knew he had been speaking figuratively. Alicia Mortenson called his name, but the line had gone dead.
Alicia looked at her husband. “You’re right,” he said, and stood up. “Janice, you’re in charge until the Chair gets back.”
“Where are you two going?” Professor Gentry asked in surprise, and Alicia Mortenson looked surprised at her surprise. “Virginia, of course.” Consciously or not, her voice had slipped into a soft southern accent. Her husband nodded as if the question had been silly, and the two walked quickly out of the room. Janice Gentry sat at the console, looked around the small remaining group to see if anyone else had understood that exchange, and saw that she didn’t have to feel stupid, because no one else had.
“And where the hell is Gladys?” she asked grumpily.
Gladys Leaphorn lay in bed. She had the temperature turned down low and lay under blankets in deepest slumber, like a child in a crib or a mystic in a trance. At headquarters she’d realized that she was making bad decisions or worse, being unable to decide at all. She had neglected her subconscious. She could get by for days without sleep if necessary, as she’d been proving, but her imagination suffered. Like most artists, she did some of her best work while unconscious. Her mind roamed from her earthbound body and sometimes returned with insights she could never have achieved awake.
So she had left good people in charge, come home, put on her favorite pajamas, and gone to bed. And it worked. The next morning, after six hours’ sleep, her eyelids snapped open and she smiled grimly. She knew what she had to do. Jack Driscoll was key. Gladys needed to get in touch with her granddaughter right away, and wondered where she was. For just a moment, still under the influence of her dreams-filled sleep, she imagined she could reach out with her mind and touch Arden’s.
But it was in that moment that Gladys Leaphorn realized something else.
Someone was in her house.
She climbed out of bed, groaning like an old woman, doing an excellent impression of one. Stealth was no use now. She wouldn’t be able to slip past the people in her house. She had a good idea of who they were.
So instead she got out of bed, put on a robe sloppily, and shuffled in slippers out to her small living room. A man and woman waited there, wearing matching dark suits, tight mouths, and expressionless eyes. Grim as the situation was, Gladys almost grinned. Because the man’s hair was slightly mussed and there was an indentation on the woman’s sleeve she felt sure had been caused by a hand. These two stony-faced agents had been kissing while waiting for her to wake up. Gladys wondered how she could use that to her advantage.
“Mrs. Leaphorn,” the woman said, not asking a question. “We need you to come with us.”
Gladys Leaphorn didn’t move. She was eighty-seven years old, and on the best day of her life she couldn’t have outrun either of these two for three steps. Nor had she ever been any good with guns, and she knew these two would be. She recognized their types, if not these particular two. “Identification?” she asked.
Both immediately held out flip wallets. Yes, she’d been right: United States Secret Service. That meant nothing. They could be here on official orders or they could be under the control of someone who had infiltrated the government better than the Circle had. Or they could be rogues. It didn’t matter. They had her.
She looked at the woman, at her sleeve, and her lips, then her eyes, and had the satisfaction after a moment or seeing her begin to blush. “I’ll be right with you,” Gladys said, and shuffled back toward her bedroom.
The woman went with her.
Jack kept saying one sentence in Hebrew, and it didn’t seem to be working worth a damn. The Israeli soldiers had them face down in the sand within five seconds of reaching them, and Jack’s protestation won them as much respect as if he’d been announcing he was the leader of a neo-Nazi movement. Arden tried her own more subtle methods of insinuation, which didn’t require speech at all, and she thought she was getting through to a couple of the men, but unfortunately half the soldiers were women, and they just glared at Arden and handcuffed her hands behind her back. She whimpered at that, again drawing some sympathy, but only from the half of the troops with whom she’d already succeeded.
She had enough Hebrew to understand, she thought, that Jack was telling them he had some information. But the soldiers didn’t seem to care. They had Jack and Arden stowed in the back of an armored personnel carrier—American-made, Arden noted wryly—and were taking them away at top speed without anyone’s ever acknowledging that Jack could speak their language at all. Maybe he was getting it wrong, in fact. “What’s he saying?” Arden asked in English, but that didn’t work either.
The small convoy roared down the beach. Within minutes it stopped, and Jack and Arden were shoved out the back of the carrier. They found themselves in the center of a small military compound. Jack and Arden were marched up to a small tent. Arden, slightly in the rear, noted that the soldiers had completely immobilized Jack’s arms with some kind of restraint with a bar that kept his elbows apart while handcuffs held his hands close together. Did they think he was some kind of X-Man, who could smash them all if he got free? The complicated restraint was kind of flattering in a way, and Arden felt slightly insulted that they’d only handcuffed her.
Then they were both shoved inside the tent. The soldiers didn’t follow. A woman looked up at them from a small field desk. The woman was not very tall, and she was thin in a wiry, energetic way. Her skin was several shades darker than Arden’s, with spots of color on her cheeks and surprising green eyes. Her dark brown hair was thick but cut short. Overall she had a boyish but sexy look, as well as an air of authority.
“Mr. Driscoll,” she snapped. “I heard about your recent exploit in France.” She stood up and spread her hands, speaking as much with them as with her voice. “So, you come to my hemisphere and you don’t even call a person?”
And she ran over and hugged Jack.
With his arms awkwardly restrained he couldn’t hug back, but Jack put his head down against the woman’s neck and shoulder and closed his eyes. For a moment the two almost blended together. It was embarrassing to watch, which didn’t keep Arden from staring open-mouthed.
The woman stepped back. Jack said, “I didn’t have time that trip. I knew I’d be coming back soon. And here I am. Uh, Rachel—”
He turned around to display his restrained arms to her. Rachel frowned as if at a small puzzle.
“Ouch,” she said sympathetically. “They tell me those things really hurt.”
“They tell you correctly.”
“What can we do about this?”
“Are you saying you don’t have the key?”
“I don’t have the key.”
“Then could you please melt them with your laser vision? And be careful because I’d like to use my hands again some day. Like you do when you talk.”
She gave him a small wicked smile, then walked over to Arden, made a twirling motion with her hand, and Arden turned around. A moment later her handcuffs came off.
“You said you didn’t have a key,” Jack said accusingly.
“Sue me,” Rachel said. She held out her hand and said her name to Arden.
“Arden Spindler.”
“Ah. I’ve heard of you. And how was the Chair when you left her?”
“You can imagine.”
“I can, actually,” Rachel said. The two women continued to look at each other. Rachel was a few years older, Jack’s age. Arden was taller and heavier, Rachel a woman compressed to essentials. She looked dangerously thin, and to Arden as if she’d lost weight recently. Rachel reached out and squeezed Arden’s arm in a kindly way and their introduction was done.
Rachel returned to Jack. She stood close in front of him, almost nose to nose, since he was a little hunched over, as if the harness kept him from standing upright. After a moment he said, “I didn’t call because I knew I wanted to see you face to face.”
All seriousness, Rachel said, “It’s that bad?”
“It’s that bad.”
Without taking her eyes off Jack, Rachel said, “Ms. Spindler? There is a captain outside named Ari. Tell him, please, that I need the key to this contraption.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Arden slipped out the tent flap. She hadn’t asked how she was expected to get the key if Ari didn’t want to give it to her, and Rachel hadn’t bothered to give further instructions. When she and Jack were alone in the tent, Rachel shook her head. “Jackie, Jackie.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Your girl friend’s very pretty. A little young for you, isn’t she?”
“She’s not my girl friend. Not remotely. I don’t trust her an inch.” Then he seemed to hear for the first time something else she’d said. “Rachel? Aren’t we young?”
She smiled wistfully. “I think so. We’re both shy of thirty. I personally am in great shape. I don’t think you’ve reached your physical peak yet. Thing is, I thought we were grown when we were fifteen, so maybe our perspective’s kind of skewed.”
Jack nodded ruefully. Arden returned through the tent flap, looking unruffled and holding up a key ring. Without a word she went behind Jack and used two keys to free him. Arden took the harness, apparently studying it closely while Jack rubbed his wrists.
“How are we going to explain this?” Rachel said. “I don’t want to tell my people here that you and I have some past connection.”
“I conned you with some story and then overpowered you,” Jack suggested.
“Be serious.” Rachel paced for a moment. “You two were just lost—”
“Arriving here by jet helicopter? Yeah, we were actually on our way to the honeymoon suite at—”
“Yeah. Well, you could be the—”
“I’m tired of that one. How about if you sent—?”
Rachel shook her head. “I don’t need any outside help. I’m kind of—” She shrugged. “—respected here.”
“Yeah. I’m surprised to see you taking such a high profile position, Rache.”
“Couldn’t be helped. They needed a security consultant, and I couldn’t let it be their second choice. Or third. So I had to step forward. Don’t worry, I’ll fade into deep background afterwards. This is very temp. The prime minister is concerned about—”
“The peace summit? More than he’s usually concerned?”
“Yes.” Jack looked a question and Rachel shrugged again. “He thinks the attacks on America and your president’s decision to withdraw and everything else that’s happened has been a ruse designed to catch him off guard and lose him an advantage at the summit.” In answer to Jack’s That’s ridiculous expression, she shrugged again. “This is Israel.”
Jack nodded. He started to ask another question, then noticed Arden still standing there. He told her, “Rachel and I went to school together.”
“Really. You two’ve met before today?”
Arden remained deadpan. Rachel smiled at her. She touched Jack’s arm, and her hand lingered there.
“What have you found out?” she asked then, and Jack gave her a rapid briefing. From Arden’s perspective he didn’t tell her everything, but that may have been because Arden was listening, and it was certainly because Rachel already knew a lot. As the two talked they sort of circled each other, staying close, Rachel’s head bent sometimes as if to ease the flow of Jack’s words into her ear. They brushed against each other like cats. Arden gradually lost her first impression that they were or had been lovers. They were something to each other, though, something that made her even more envious.
Jack finally said, “I need you to—” and Rachel said, “Already done. It should be three, four days at the most. In case you need to time something.”
“I don’t know what. I’m kind of at loose ends after this, Rachel.”
“So you came to me?” She smiled. “Well, let’s start with what we know.”
Jack remained silent.
“That’s great,” Rachel said. Then more seriously, she said, “We’ve learned a little more about these planes that attacked your countrymen. Our scientists have been working with yours.” And Rachel had the information. No one asked her how.
“Planes?” Jack said.
Rachel nodded. “There were more than one. That’s how they seemed to cover so much ground. More like rockets, really. Very fast but very short range. After they accomplished their purpose they more or less vaporized, which gave the impression of travelling so fast they disappeared.”
Jack nodded. That helped make sense of what had happened.
“But that must have cost billions,” Arden burst out. She’d been trying to keep quiet, be invisible, but the comment jumped out of her mouth. The other two looked at her and it was clear they’d already understood that. Arden slipped backward, trying to regain her invisible status.
“She’s right,” Jack said. “What country would spend that much to have America disengage with the world?”
Rachel shook her head. “Don’t you think I’ve been puzzling over that question? I can’t think of any.”
“No private terrorist network has that kind of—”
“Maybe they were stolen,” Arden said. “Maybe a government was working on them—”
“Without our knowing about it? Surely at least one of our people would have been involved.”
“Someone was developing them, Jack, and we didn’t know about it.”
They continued to discuss the problem in low voices, and Arden understood why Jack had come here. It wasn’t as if he and Rachel were one mind, but two complementary ones. They came from different angles, had different information, different perspectives. They covered speculative ground in minutes that would have taken either of them days separately. One observation led to another. Arden became lost, especially as they mentioned people and events she didn’t know about.
Jack’s eyes were open wide and he stood back to back with Rachel, leaning back against each other. The small woman was still talking, and Jack was envisioning what she said. “Jack!” she said suddenly, turning around so fast that Jack almost fell. “I can think of one private organization with that kind of money.”
Jack questioned her silently.
“Us!” Rachel said. Her voice sounded bright, happy with the thrill of solution, then she gasped.
Jack was shaking his head. “No,” he mumbled, not in contradiction but in denial. “Why would we do this? Even the rogue faction I suspect…”
They both stood silent for a few moments. Arden was afraid they’d turn to her next. She practiced innocent expressions. But after a few seconds Rachel and Jack shook their heads at the same time.
Running down the idea seemed to have refreshed them, though. They looked at each other with glowing eyes. Arden was quite sure they would have kissed at that moment except for two things: her presence and the deferential cough from outside the tent. “Colonel Greene?”
Rachel raised her voice. “I’ve almost finished interviewing the prisoners, Captain. Thank you for standing by.”
They heard footsteps withdraw. Jack smiled. “‘Colonel’?”
Rachel made a wry face. “I did this little thing last year, you wouldn’t have heard about it, and got kind of a battlefield promotion. Besides, out here you have to have rank.”
“What are you doing out here, Rache?”
“Training exercises.” She glanced across the room at Arden.
“What?” Jack asked.
Rachel chewed her lip, then said it. “Our Prime Minister isn’t entirely paranoid. Something bad’s going to happen in Salzburg.”
Jack stared at her. “You have intelligence?”
“No, just a feeling. But my feelings are usually—
“Yes, they are.”
Jack also glanced at Arden. “Is this part of the other?” He might have been asking them both. Arden shrugged.
Rachel lifted her hands in another kind of shrug. “The wrap-up, maybe. It’s such an opportunity for some madman. A peace summit is the perfect place to start a war.”
That was more or less the end of the conference. A few minutes later they walked out of the tent. As they did, Rachel said quietly to Jack, “I’ve just turned you. You’re going off to Italy now thinking you’re doing one thing for your own organization—”
“But you’ve actually duped me into doing something for yours,” Jack concluded. “Duh, t’anks, Coach.”
They walked on. The soldiers around the compound tried to appear not to be looking at them, and failed. Arden walked several steps behind, and for once in her life was not the object of attention. She could see from the expressions on the faces of both men and women that they held Rachel Greene in something more than respect. Arden knew her grandmother had mentioned Rachel when briefing her on Jack. The two of them had been friends at school, had gotten into some kind of trouble that had turned out all right in the end. Granny had been pretty vague about it. Whatever had happened was part of the Real History. It would never appear in any textbook, and might die with living memories.
But just as Jack had needed to come here to talk to Rachel in person, Arden had needed to see them together even to begin to understand their relationship. They gave off ideas like a nuclear reactor shedding neutrons. Arden felt bathed in their inspiration.
They walked out of sight of the camp and Rachel pointed with her shoulder. “Down there’s another helicopter waiting for you.”
“You ordered me a helicopter that fast?”
“It’s mine, actually.” They smiled at each other.
“Maybe I’ll see you in—” Jack began, and Rachel nodded. They were no longer touching. Someone might be watching.
Just before he turned away, Rachel lowered her head. For the first time, she looked very young. Also tired. “Jackie?” Her voice came very low. “Who assigned us to save the world?”
“I think that was in—what?—ninth grade? And I think we aced that assignment.”
Rachel looked up, her eyes alight again. “Mrs. Chavez gave us a B+, I think.”
“She was just trying to keep us humble.”
“Yeah? Did that work?”
They grinned at each other. After another moment Rachel said very earnestly, “Jackie? Be carefree.”
He nodded. Then he turned and jogged. Arden had time for only a hurried goodbye to Rachel, then had to run to keep up with Jack. They came within sight of the helicopter and in another two minutes were in the air. The whole episode on the beach in Israel immediately assumed the quality of a dream. Except that Arden could see its effect on Jack, in renewed energy and quiet thought. She sat thinking herself, wondering what she had just learned, and how much of it she had to convey to Granny.
Exit Interview: The Real History
Once you’d been accepted into the program at Bruton—
The program for training young Circle members?
Yeah, but you didn’t know that at the time. One of the first things that happened is that you went into Mrs. Stein’s history course. It was always a small seminar, maybe half a dozen students. You didn’t sign up for it, you just found it on your schedule.
Mrs. Stein?
Yeah. Ditsy old lady, rumor was she’d lived through half of American history herself, and she was always mumbling silly asides about the things we studied, like that Betsy Ross not only dipped snuff but had Lesbian tendencies.
For once the interviewer seemed outraged by something Jack had said. I ought to slap you!
Hey, I didn’t say it. Some students reacted exactly the way you just did. Those students kind of got eased aside. They found themselves out of the seminar into a regular history class. And our paths began to diverge from theirs.
The interviewer frowned. What happened to those students?
Nothing. They went back to the normal world. While the rest of us started being taught the Real History. Jack quite carefully refrained from making air quotes with his fingers.
The “real” history. Such as?
He looked at his interviewer, obviously considering how much to say. Even now, with everything smashed and destroyed, the Real History was the Circle’s greatest secret. Their legacy. It was all he had left of his friends. To give it away would be the last betrayal.
He and the interviewer stared at each other. Something in her gaze seemed to break him down, much more effectively than the back-and-forth slaps an earlier interviewer had administered. Jack’s eyes filled with tears again.
Such as that Alexander Hamilton was one of our first heroes. Mrs. Stein didn’t tell us about the Circle then, you had to begin to figure it out on your own. But she explained that Alexander Hamilton belonged to a group that was very committed to democracy but didn’t quite believe in it.
Like the Federalists.
Jack smiled but didn’t let himself be distracted. And Aaron Burr found out about this group. He wanted to be part of it. But the group wanted no part of him. They thought he wanted to use them for his own purposes. Normally in such a situation the person who was confronted by Burr—in this case Hamilton—would have distracted him, gotten someone else to lead him down a different path. But our techniques weren’t as refined then, and there wasn’t time. All Hamilton could do was maneuver Burr into a duel.
You have to remember, Aaron Burr was vice president of the United States when this happened, in 1804. He was headed for great things. And he couldn’t take the secret with him. So Hamilton goaded Burr into challenging him to a duel.
Intending to kill him? the interviewer asked, leaning forward with an uncharacteristic light of curiosity in her eyes.
Maybe. No one knows for sure. But Hamilton accomplished his purpose anyway. Burr killed him, which disgraced Burr for all time. And others arranged for letters to be planted that raised dark questions about Burr’s true motive. He became known as the great traitor, always trying to found his own country or otherwise gain power. He also talked for the rest of his life about a cabal that actually ran America behind the scenes, but no one believed him. He was disgraced, you see. Alexander Hamilton planned that and arranged it.
Getting killed in the process.
Jack was silent for a moment. His eyes were dry again. Part of the point of that story was that sacrifices are required. In every generation.
The interviewer scribbled something on the pad. Jack responded immediately. Then the interviewer frowned. But you said some kids were eased out of this course. Was that the end of their training?
Jack nodded. You had to have the capacity to accept an alternate reality. Most people can’t. Unfortunately, one can’t know that about the candidates until they are taken partly inside. Most candidates wash out, and then they have to be dealt with. They are soothed back into the world they know.
Brainwashed, said the interviewer knowingly.
Not really. They’re just told, “We were only kidding. Things are just the way you think they are.” It’s a great relief to them.
And the Real History?
Jack shrugged. I think maybe they were told that Mrs. Stein’s seminar was a combination history and fiction class. Designed to stimulate their imaginations, and they’d been stimulated enough after only a couple of weeks.
Some candidates don’t make it, Jack was thinking. Some of those failed candidates are children of Circle members, which is sad for everyone. But the failed candidates might have children who have the capacity. Sometimes it skips a generation. Those grandchildren are watched closely.
He looked at Arden. She was gazing down at the sea. He had no idea what she was thinking.
Jack leaned back in the cushioned seat and tried to relax. Be carefree, Rachel had told him. Not careful; care-free. Because that was when Jack was at his best, when he turned his cap backward and let his thoughts roam free of restraint.
Be care-free. That was hard to do with every important person in the world out to get him and the responsibility for saving humanity on his shoulders. He shrugged, beginning to slip free. He, too, stared out to sea, seeing patterns there, faces. A supersonic aircraft that was actually several planes. And the Circle’s own treasury. Who kept track of that? he wondered.
He and Arden had crossed the Mediterranean again, and it wasn’t yet dusk. They were set down in the bottom of the boot of Italy and their pilot, who hadn’t spoken during the entire trip, lifted off immediately, whipping them with sand and sudden loneliness.
“I assume we’re heading for Salzburg?” Arden said.
“You are. I have something else to do, then I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“Arden, something’s going to happen there. Something very bad, and I don’t have a clue what. Even worse, Rachel doesn’t know, and she has the Mossad working for her. The best intelligence service in the world.”
“Maybe nothing’s—”
“She also has a feeling,” Jack continued. “And Rachel’s feelings are not to be ignored. I don’t even know what to look for. But I need your eyes there, and I still have another stop to make. There’s no time to argue.”
She glared at him, but she could see that he wasn’t going to move until she did. Finally she turned and started to jog. Arden still wore the small backpack Jack had given her, and she had credit cards and cash from Granny. She could hear traffic, and knew she could get away quickly. Just over the hill was a highway, she felt sure.
At the top of the rise she turned and looked back. Jack just stood there. She didn’t wave, nor did he. After a moment she just turned and walked down the rise toward the highway.
Jack watched her go. Suddenly he felt very lonely. Seeing Rachel for only a few minutes was like having surgery performed on him without anaesthesia. Now his companion of the last few days was gone too. He’d never trusted her, which was one reason he’d sent her away, and she knew that. But Arden had also saved his ass at least twice. That was another reason he wanted her gone. He didn’t know whether she’d really been protecting him or shepherding him, guiding his steps even while giving the illusion that Jack was in charge. Now he’d see how he did on his own.
He didn’t want to be protected any more.
The first riot broke out, prematurely, while Jack was in Italy. The riot happened in, of all places, South Korea. America had kept bases there for sixty years. The strip between the Koreas was still known as the demilitarized zone, which meant it was heavily militarized on both sides. A peace treaty had never been signed to end the Korean War, which hadn’t officially been a war. Tell that to all the Americans who had died there.
There was probably nowhere else on earth where neighbors were more suspicious of each other. Korea was not one country divided, not any more. On the South Korean side, the suspicion was accompanied by fear. South Koreans had actually cheered when President George W. Bush had included North Korea in his “axis of evil.” North Korea was ruled by one of the most ruthless and ambitious tyrants on earth. He had nuclear aspirations, and maybe nuclear power by this time. But aside from that, he had an army millions strong. Kim Jong Un didn’t have to bomb the south into submission. He just had to set his army marching. They would overrun their weaker neighbor in days.
Only one thing kept that from happening. The United States Army. America had kept thousands of troops posted near that border for decades.
When the bases began emptying some soldiers balked, as had some of their counterparts in Afghanistan. Many of them had families there, Korean wives, homes in town. They weren’t going home. They were home.
More than that, many of them had a sense of mission. They knew they were actually protecting people, and they knew those people personally.
The riot began with a small group of South Koreans attempting to block the gates of the base, to stop the convoys taking soldiers to the airfield. At first the armored personnel carriers tried to ease through them, but when the first Korean was injured that stopped. Then they hunkered down while the commanding officer sent another convoy to another gate. Hundreds of soldiers were evacuated before the South Koreans caught on to that one. It didn’t take long. The base was full of Koreans working in various capacities, and they had cell phones. The commanding officer tried to empty the base of civilians, which worked about as well as trying to sweep the ocean.
Soon the base was surrounded by civilians, hundreds deep. The demonstration made Tiananmen Square look like a couple of picketers. But this was a demonstration of affection. Of need. Even desperation. News sources soon gathered. Pictures went across the world of thousands of civilians asking American troops not to leave. It was the strangest sight many people around the globe had ever seen. Some signs read “Yankees Stay Here.”
The base was immobilized.
“This would be a hell of a good time for the North to invade,” the General of the Joint Chiefs said to the President during his briefing. The President glanced across at his National Security Advisor. The NSA shrugged.
“Tell General Jackson to stand down for now,” the President said. “Halt the evacuation—temporarily. We’ll figure out another way.”
The President and NSA exchanged a glance. But we’re working against a deadline, Dennis Wilkerson thought, and knew he didn’t have to say it. The communication the night the planes had crossed America had been very explicit. This is only a warning. If you don’t pull out of everywhere, the next time would be worse.
And the intelligence services had made zero headway in finding the source of that threat. It was almost as if the services had been infiltrated themselves.
“Dennis?” the President said after they were alone.
“I know, sir. I’ll try to come up with something. But I could use some help.” Dennis Wilkerson was feeling lonely. No one seemed to talk to him these days. At least, no one talked to him more than once.
He excused himself and returned to his office. He glared around the room, realizing he had no expertise at anything that would help resolve this crisis. Not military experience, diplomatic, strategic. He only employed strategic planning on one field.
Maybe that would help. Sometimes he felt that he drew inspiration from his one relaxation. Without any more hesitation, he opened a desk drawer, took out his PSP2, connected to the Internet, and looked to see if his most frequent opponent was online.
Jack was on the train heading west when he realized he’d forgotten to ask Rachel if she’d heard of his being seen anywhere in her area. She would probably have mentioned it if she had, since she had mentioned his being in France.
He was on his way to Nice, to the home of Paul Desquat, a French architect and occasional essayist. The dual occupation was a clear sign. Paul Desquat was a Circle member.
Jack had met him through Madeline, on a short trip to Paris those few years ago that seemed so long ago, because they were on the other side of the great divide in his life. It was only later, when he’d been re-evaluating everything Madeline had done, that Jack thought she must have had a purpose in introducing him to Desquat. Letting Desquat meet him.
None of the people to whom Madeline had introduced Jack had contacted him after her death, except for a few uninspired words of condolence. That seemed a clue now too. Some of those connections should have survived Madeline. Unless her death had been specifically intended to sever them.
So Jack was going to pick up the threads again. He didn’t have time to track them all down, not now. So he had returned to the flat in London. The Chelsea flat had been maintained just as Madeline had kept it, another signal. The Circle owned that flat, and they wouldn’t let a civilian buy it or move into it. Madeline’s mind had been too twisty. She loved puzzles too much. There was no telling how many signs she had left. People had been studying that flat very quietly ever since her death.
But she and Jack had had signals between them that no one else shared. Not many, they hadn’t had a long enough history for that. And maybe everything she’d said to him had been false, even her personality made up for his benefit. But he didn’t believe that, and if it was true everything else he did was pointless anyway.
On Jack’s way to France, Jack had stopped off in London. After making sure he hadn’t been followed, he had slipped into the flat in Chelsea very surreptitiously, he thought, but obviously not, since he’d been seen. The Chair had known about his going there. Maybe it was under constant surveillance. Jack hadn’t spotted any cameras, but he hadn’t given himself enough time to check out the place thoroughly.
Going inside the Chelsea flat was like walking through a time warp. Her things were still there. Her scent leaped into his nostrils. That must come from his memory, it couldn’t still linger here. A faint aroma of violets, coupled with the scent of her own flesh. Jack swallowed and looked around coldly, but he couldn’t stop his flesh from prickling with the feeling that she was about to walk through that bedroom door.
So he walked boldly in there. The bed was made up neatly, still with the flounces. Had someone found new sheets and ruffles in the same pattern, or kept the old ones all these years? The air smelled slightly musty. It circulated, but no one came here to dust regularly.
Even Madeline’s sheets were puzzles. This one she had designed herself. It featured a long meandering path through gardens and villages, like a giant gameboard. Jack had tried following those paths with his mind on idle mornings when he’d awakened under those sheets and lay there waiting for Madeline to wake up too. Sometimes his finger had traced the paths, over the hollows and hills of the bed, over her body, until Madeline woke up laughing.
He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. This place would immobilize him if he let it. He wasn’t here on a memory tour.
In the next hour Jack took the place apart, neatly. He even managed to get into the safe under the fireplace, but that was too obvious a hiding place. All he found inside was some jewelry and a good bit of cash. He left it all. Once Madeline had modelled some of that jewelry for him, memorably wearing nothing else. Jewelry from an ankle bracelet to a tiara. “And I never quite figured out what to do with this,” she’d smiled, fastening a long necklace around her waist. It had a pendant that hung down, strategically.
Jack studied all the paintings, the books, the wallpaper. The way the dishes were stacked and the glasses put away. No scrapbook, no mementoes of her career. No photographs. That seemed a strange absence. Someone might have taken them.
Jack had returned to the bed. If Madeline had left him a personal message it would have been here, wouldn’t it? He had stood and stared at the sheet, following the path. It drew his eye downward. He had never noticed that before, possibly because his usual angle was from under the sheet. But looking at it from this perspective, he found the paths were not random at all. They went downward.
Along the way there were cottages and villages, occasionally a large country house, French Provencial style. Jack had stood trying not to move, except his eyes. They inevitably traveled down and down, to the foot of the bed. Near the bottom there was a representation of a house in a different style from everything else. A villa. Jack had stood there in the Chelsea bedroom studying that house. Had he seen it before?
He had remembered something else as he stood there. Madeline had kept a light blue coverlet at the very foot of the bed, of the softest texture Jack had ever felt. It was gone now. Now that he thought about it, he realized Madeline had gotten rid of that coverlet before her death. Right about the time she got sick it disappeared. Now it existed only in Jack’s memory, but it was firmly placed there.
It had been a deep, peaceful blue, with a wavelike pattern in it that almost seemed to ripple even when it lay still. Sometimes that sheet, that coverlet had in fact moved like waves, as Jack and Madeline had set them in motion. She had laughed a couple of times when she made the comparison. The waves. And the coverlet was blue like the sea.
It had seemed too simple. Jack had stood there staring, remembering. He also remembered the jewelry, the time Madeline had worn it and nothing else. She had been laughing, describing the jewelry, some of its history. Keeping him tauntingly at bay. The jewelry had seduced his gaze downward as well. He’d reached for the pendant on the necklace, the one hanging below her waist, pretending to be curious about it. “It looks valuable,” he had said with a dry mouth.
Madeline had grabbed his hand and laughed. “No. I got it from a street vendor in Nice. But it goes nicely with the necklace, doesn’t it?”
“Nicely from Nice,” Jack had repeated, the best joke he could manage under the circumstances.
Madeline had pulled him close, her eyes only inches from his, and she was no longer laughing. “Remember,” she’d said. Then the moment of intensity had passed. She’d drawn back, laughing again. “There might be a quiz later.”
But Jack did remember, years later as he stood in the otherwise empty flat again. Nice. And the path on the sheet led his eye down. Southward. To a villa that, when Madeline had lived here, had stood beside a coverlet as blue as the sea.
He also remembered the money in the safe. A thousand pounds, but the rest in francs. Before Euros.
No one else had been able to figure this out because they hadn’t had the clues. Jack hadn’t even needed to come here. She had tried to embed it in his memory.
She had succeeded.
Jack had stood there thinking he understood something, far from everything. He had moved carefully around the flat then, not returning to the safe or the bed. He’d stood again for a long time in front of a painting that was full of symbols, like something by Dali. He hadn’t been able to make a lick of sense out of it. But if he was under surveillance, the last thing people would see him doing would be studying this painting, tracing a couple of the symbols with his finger, before he suddenly strode out of the flat as if with inspired purpose.
Now, having just sent Arden on her separate way, Jack finally had a chance to act on his hunch. He had been wanting to do so for weeks, but first he’d had to get to the ambassador, then other matters had intervened. But now, before he went to Salzburg he intended to stop in Nice, at the seaside villa of the architect Paul Desquat.
The train was fast. Jack would have liked to go by air again, but he had no more jet helicopter favors to call in and no airport was convenient. So he took a train from Italy, which was nice because it gave him time to think. Or would have if he could have turned off his nerves. Jack hardly sat on the train, he kept changing cars, standing at the back to see which passengers turned to look at him. Several did. He tried to narrow down the suspects. The teenage American girl, could he eliminate her? Not really. What about the two businessmen in suits, traveling together? Jack wasn’t willing to scratch them off the list of people who might be following him either, even after one put his arm around the other’s shoulders in an intimate way. What, you think there aren’t any gay assassins?
He edged his way through the cars, imagining that he was gathering a wake of people out to get him. He kept studying his fellow passengers, most intently the few who looked more or less like he did. This time there were no Jack doppelgangers, at least not out in the open. Maybe they had one stashed so he could take Jake’s place after they’d offed him. It would be a simple matter of pushing Jack out a door.
Because this wasn’t a steam engine in the old west. This was a sleek silver European metroliner, going a hundred and twenty miles an hour between stops. There’d be no jumping off this train and rolling gently down a slope to come to a rest. If someone were propelled off this train the suction of the train’s speed might pull him under the wheels. If you beat that hazard you would land on rocks at a speed of a hundred miles an hour, shattering whatever bones first hit the ground, including a skull. A very skillful adventurer, with pinpoint timing, might be able to leap from this train and suffer no worse than several compound fractures, unconsciousness, and a hospital stay. If he got lucky.
So Jack paced and jittered and had no time to plan what he would do once he got to Nice.
Rachel and Stevie had been Americans, raised in America. They’d always known they’d have to return to the countries of their origin, but by that time they’d become Americans. That was the Circle’s hope.
But sometimes, once in a great while, the Circle had to recruit members from other countries, brought up there, knowing their own countries. The Circle needed that intimate familiarity with foreign places. These recruits had to be wholly foreign yet wholly members of the Circle, too. But it is very hard to create a world citizen. Teaching and training these recruits in their home countries made it harder to instill the Circle’s values, which were intrinsically American. It was always a risk, and sometimes it didn’t succeed. Those people had to be dealt with later.
Paul Desquat was one of those foreign-raised members. He remained a member in very good standing. Jack knew, for example, that the Chair was receiving regular reports from him during the current crisis. It was hoped that Desquat would be very useful in stabilizing Europe.
But Jack had met the architect years earlier, with Madeline. He was sure now that that meeting had meant something. Madeline hadn’t done anything by accident. But Jack had heard nothing from Paul Desquat in the five years since Madeline’s death. That seemed odd now. If they had thought Jack worth recruiting, why hadn’t anyone tried to continue that after Madeline’s death? Or had she determined that Jack wasn’t material for the Inner Circle, and had waved them off?
He had a sudden thought: had Madeline faked her own death in order to start a new life somewhere else, one without Jack in it?
Members of the group had done such things before, when they’d become too well-known in a particular field. And Madeline had been a very popular designer.
Had she bailed on him?
Jack didn’t believe that. That would mean everything he’d known during those few months in London had been fake. Madeline’s affection for him, the glimpses of another world, the puzzles. The sex amid jewelry.
If that was true, if Madeline was still alive somewhere in the world, then there was only one thing for Jack to do. Track her down and kill her.
It was a strange thing to hope for, that his one true love had been murdered, but it was the only hope Jack had. Now, in the midst of this world crisis, he intended to find the proof one way or the other, and hope the two were connected. Who else but a ruthless Inner Circle could have pulled off such a thing? Maybe this inner group believed that America would be better off in isolation from the world. Maybe that had been the point of the 9-11 attacks, and this was another stab at the same goal.
Too many maybes. Jack had come to Nice to find answers.
He felt pretty sure he had gotten off the train unobserved. In a small cafe in Nice he resumed his Internet game. Sure enough, his best virtual friend was waiting for him. “WANNA PLAY?” Oh yes, Jack wanted to play.
An hour later he shut off, right in the middle of a maneuver that he hoped would keep his opponent off-balance for a while. Jack went into a shop and bought a bathing suit, towel, and small carrying bag. The thing about European shops was their look of permanence. Shops in buildings that looked older than the country Jack came from, possibly with the same shopkeepers. The buildings looked as if they had been remodelled from seventeenth century baronial manors, and not remodelled much. By contrast, Jack realized, stores in America, even the grandest ones, looked as if they had just been thrown up by a construction crew that morning, and might be scheduled for demolition that afternoon. How could such grand old buildings as these carry items as common as bathing trunks and gym bags? Europe made him feel that there had once been a world of grace and beauty, but it had been conquered and extinguished by the Gap. He wanted to apologize before he left.
Jack ducked into a kiosk men’s room. Another odd experience, using the bathroom practically in public, with one’s calves and feet exposed to view. Jack used this one only to change. When he emerged, wearing his swim suit, flipflops, and Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt, he looked as much like a native as the natives did. He strolled down toward the beach, not hurrying: that would have marked him as an American.
Nice boasted one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. It drew visitors from all over Europe and farther. Jack found a few square feet of unclaimed sand and sat down on his beach towel. It was October, cool, and the beach wasn’t nearly as crowded as it would have been two months ago. There were still plenty of people, though. Women in bikinis, or topless. Some whose friends should never have let them appear in public that way, a few who should by law never be allowed to wear clothes. Jack watched openly. No one looked back. He felt invisible, which was a relief.
The sun began to go down and people began to leave. There was a tourist pier, a sort of large boardwalk that kept going into the sea. Before the light disappeared Jack walked out on that pier, to a place where it widened. There were for-pay telescopes at every corner, and luckily Jack had the right coins. He dropped them in and the view clicked open. But Jack didn’t look out at the ocean. He turned the telescope inland, scanning from left to right, looking along the sand, then higher up the beach. He didn’t want to ask anyone where Paul Desquat lived, he didn’t want to be remembered as the man who’d asked questions, and he wasn’t sure he could find the man in a phone directory. But he remembered from Madeline that the architect’s villa was beside the sea. He needed to get lucky now.
The telescope found a dozen seaside houses within sight, and Jack gazed at each for a few seconds. Too big. Too small. Too ancient. Beautiful places, no doubt inhabited by beautiful people, but not the right one.
Suddenly the view of sand and houses disappeared, replaced by a pair of giant breasts. Lovely breasts even out of focus Stevie, without tan lines, but appearing threatening as they filled the view. Jack jumped back. A woman stood in front of the telescope, topless. This was one of the ones who should go through life naked. She was lithe and smooth and tan. “What are you doing?” she asked in French.
Her mouth was small, it seemed to close up when she wasn’t speaking, but that was the only flaw in her face. A good chin, interesting nose, hazel eyes staring at him as if in outrage. The woman was neither young nor old, but walking confidently through her own exquisite twilight of age.
She continued, “The viewers are for looking at the sea.”
Jack managed to answer in French, “I am not interested in fish.”
“What are you interested in?” She sounded accusatory.
Jack resolutely kept from glancing downward as he answered. “Architecture.”
The woman’s mouth quirked into a smile. He had been wrong: her mouth was just the right size.
“I believe you’ll find the most interesting homes down that way.” She pointed eastward.
She started walking out the pier, then turned back and said, “Interesting architecturally, I mean. One of them won a competition, I believe.”
She turned and kept walking, never looking back again, but her walk convinced Jack that she expected Jack to be watching her, and knew he would be. At the end of the pier she barely paused as she stepped up onto the wooden railing and dived off. Jack gasped. Oh, Mademoiselle, he wanted to say, please don’t risk that body by diving into unknown waters.
But she probably knew this water well. She surfaced twenty yards out and began swimming with strong strokes. Eastward, the way she had told him to go. Jack wanted to turn the viewer on her, but heard a click which meant his time had run out.
One of them won a competition, she’d said. Maybe that was the architect’s villa. Jack felt he had some luck coming.
He did get lucky, and it turned out to be the worst luck he’d ever had.
Night had fallen by the time Jack reached the architecturally interesting part of the seashore. There were still a few people walking the beach, but he sensed them as movements and soft sounds. A man who stood still could go unnoticed. There was no moon.
But the villa he sought gave off its own light. Jack was sure when he saw it that he had the right one. Madeline’s rendering of it on her sheet hadn’t done the place justice, but it was still recognizable. The villa was made of sandstone, so it seemed to rise straight out of the beach like a sandcastle. It was low and wide, except for a crest in the center that rose up two extra stories, a small crown atop the villa. There would be a deck up there, of course, with a splendid view of the ocean. It almost looked like the mast of a cruise ship, except it curved toward the sea. A melting smokestack.
The house stood atop a rise a hundred yards back from the beach. Jack walked up that rise, avoiding the house’s boardwalk. When he reached the top, the villa looked larger than it had from the beach. It dominated the view. How could a Circle member live here, in the most conspicuous house in town? We’re supposed to be unobtrusive, he thought, and wondered if the Chair had ever seen this house. As far as Jack was concerned, the house immediately branded its owner a traitor to his group’s values.
He walked around the house for half an hour, keeping his distance. There didn’t seem to be any security guards, but there was an alarm system that included cameras. They might not be monitored full-time, though, they might just be making tapes that could be viewed later, after a burglary, for example. One of the cameras moved in a short semi-circle. One thing it kept in view on its circuit was some steps carved into the side of the house. Jack followed those steps upward with his eyes. He could reach that high deck without going into the house.
First he had to disable the camera, though. He crept up behind it, wondering if it had a microphone as well, and as the camera reached the farthest point of its arc to the left, Jack turned it on its pivot so it was pointing out toward the beach. Careful to stay out of its view, he made sure it was anchored there and then crept toward the house.
He hadn’t seen any people through the house’s large ground floor windows. But there was a car parked in the driveway in front of the house, on the side opposite the sea. A low, sleek, European sports car that called attention to itself as much as the house did. Someone must be here, but Jack didn’t know where.
He climbed the sandstone steps, walked across the flat roof, and found more steps leading up to that high deck. He crept up those even more cautiously. When his head came level with the deck he peeked over quickly, then ducked down again, reviewing the mental picture he had just taken. The deck was furnished in beach-fashion, but with better taste than most people display in beach houses. Two chaise lounges with thick cushions faced the sea. A small black table between them held two cocktail glasses, with a martini shaker between them. Light curtains billowed inward from an open doorway.
He hadn’t seen any people on the balcony, but they hadn’t been gone long. And that open doorway told Jack where he had to go next.
Wincing, wishing he had taken some secret agent training, he stole back upward again, this time out on the deck, crouching on its surface like Gollum. He slinked across to that open doorway, and began to hear sounds. A groan and sharp intakes of breath. It sounded as if someone was being tortured. Jack reached the doorway and stared in.
A man and woman were making love. The man was on his back with his arms spread wide, the woman atop him. She had black hair and not as lovely a body as the one he had glimpsed on the pier. That was all Jack had time to notice as he ducked back away again. He sat back against the wall of the house, feeling guilty, like a voyeur with a conscience, waiting.
The breeze from the sea and the small sounds from within the house were oddly soothing. Jack had had a long, long day, beginning well before dawn. Sitting against the wall of the house, he fell into a trance that was very close to sleep. The sound of a door slamming woke him.
By the time he was alert the sound existed only in Jack’s memory. He didn’t know where it had come from. But a moment later he heard a voice calling from below, inside the house. “Hello? Where are you?”
Then Jack became aware of sounds much closer as well. The people in the bedroom were moving fast. Jack looked at the glasses and martini shaker on the table. Would they come out here? But he sat paralyzed, still groggy from weariness.
Luckily, no one came out onto the deck. A man’s voice called, “Coming!” That started a woman giggling, and the man shushed her.
Jack crept over to the open doorway and glanced into the bedroom, his head down near the ground. He saw the man and woman who’d been making love earlier hastily dressing. By the light from a bedside lamp he could see their faces. The woman wore a smirk as she zipped herself up, and the man smiled guiltily. “We were silly,” the man said in French. The woman answered, “Let’s ask Alexis’s opinion.” The man made a silencing gesture at her as he hurried out the bedroom door into the interior of the house. The woman took her time, moving leisurely, and at the doorway turned to look back at the bed. Jack pulled back out of sight.
But he wouldn’t learn anything up here. He gave the woman a few more seconds to get out, then he too crept through the bedroom. He looked around for any identifying features, such as photographs or maybe an architectural award, but saw nothing like that. He walked softly through the room and out its only other door.
Just outside the door was a staircase landing. This bedroom was the only room on the top floor of the house. Jack crept down the stairs, crouching low. The stairs wound down, and before he was halfway down he heard voices. “We were watching the sunset,” the man said in French. The woman’s voice answered in English, “Which set an hour ago.”
There was a pause, and the man said, “You know Yvette.”
In the silence that followed, Jack could picture the women’s expressions: Yvette still smirking, the other woman looking at her coldly, neither offering a greeting. Probably Paul Desquat standing there with the fatuous grin men wear when alone with two women with whom he’s been intimate. “Would you like a drink?” his voice asked.
“This is important. Jack Driscoll is on his way here. You need to be prepared.”
This brought a flurry of voices. The man obviously knew who Jack was. After a moment Alexis’s cool voice cut through the babble. “One of our people spotted him on the beach and I sent him this way. Well, we want him here, don’t we?”
So Alexis was the woman who had stepped into the view of his viewfinder. Jack wondered how she was dressed now, but he didn’t dare go farther down the stairs. They seemed to end right in the room where the people were talking.
“Good,” Paul Desquat said, sounding more sure of himself now. “Then we will have him and he won’t be able to interfere with our plans.”
“He couldn’t have anyway,” Yvette said. “Everything is set, and your Jack has just been wandering around cluelessly.”
A pause meant, Jack hoped, that the other two exchanged a glance saying Yvette didn’t know what she was talking about. But her assessment wasn’t far wrong.
Even without seeing them, Jack could sense the tension in the room. The pause continued. In the silence he heard the small click and hiss of a cigarette lighter, then smelled the cigarette. Paul Desquat relaxed into a chair and tried to start a conversation.
“What intrigues me about the whole business is that no one except we few know how one day will be different from the previous, but it will affect everything. Even the language. After this everyone will say the word ‘Salzburg’ the way they say ‘Nine-eleven’ now. It could easily have been another place, but now people will think of the world in terms of before and after Salzburg.”
“You talk too much,” Alexis said, and from the sound of her voice she was moving. Jack had to make an instant decision, and did. Quickly but as quietly as possible, he began backing up the steps. A little more, another two, three feet, and he’d be out of sight of the bottom. He moved on feet and hands, like a child eluding bedtime. Just as he backed up near the top he heard Alexis arrive at the bottom of the stairs. Had she seen his feet? He couldn’t tell. Jack stopped moving, because she had. He stopped breathing, too.
Alexis’s intense gaze up into the semi-darkness at the top of the stairs almost had a sound, a crackle like a laser beam. Then her foot touched the bottom step. The stairs were metal; that one step vibrated all the way up to where Jack crouched. If he moved she would feel him move, too.
Then another voice cut across. “What are you looking for up there?” It was Yvette. Her voice was playful and mean. “I may have left my jacket up on the deck.”
Jack didn’t wait to hear Alexis’s reply. He scuttled the rest of the way up the spiral staircase, gained his feet and hurried through the bedroom. He hated to miss what was being said in that living room, but it was even more urgent that they not know he had heard the one vital word.
The glass sliding door to the deck was still open. Jack went through it quickly, and across the deck to the steps cut into the wall, leading down. When he reached the bottom of those steps he was walking across the roof of the first floor of the house. He tried to step very lightly. He came to the edge of the roof and went down the other set of steps.
On tiptoe he ran through the blind spot he had created in Desquat’s video surveillance of the house. Carefully he moved the camera back to cover the house, hoping no one would review the tapes and notice the discrepancy. Then he stood in the darkness, listening for sounds. He heard nothing, which was ominous. Some presence was quieting the insects and birds. Jack stood completely still, trying to listen and to think at the same time. Which way? Back down toward the beach? He was dressed for that, but that way was more difficult, down that sandy cliff. He could circle the house toward the front, which would probably be more unexpected. Yvette seemed like a careless person. Maybe she had left the keys in her car.
He began moving that way, around the perimeter of the cameras. The driveway was probably covered too, but that couldn’t be helped. The little silver sports car was down at the end of the driveway, maybe out of camera range.
Moments later he was standing there. Peering in, he could see that surely enough the keys were in the ignition. He reached for the door handle and heard two clicks. One was of the door locking itself. The other, he saw when he turned, was Yvette cocking the semi-automatic pistol she held trained on him. She still wore the loose grin, and it was no more attractive when turned on him.
“I’ve always been the lucky one,” she said softly, her eyelids moving languidly. “I picked the right direction. And Paul had an extra set of keys to my car.”
She gestured with the pistol, indicating the direction of the house. For the moment they were alone. Jack could lunge and overpower her. But he saw her, even with the sleepy, seductive look, keeping a careful distance. She wasn’t prepared for another kind of attack.
“You know he’s in love with Alexis, don’t you? You’re just a diversion, something to make their lives interesting. You do know that, don’t you?”
In an instant her lip was trembling. Her eyes darted back and forth, obviously wondering if it was true. Then she stepped toward Jack, lowering the gun.
“Could you—?” she asked hesitantly.
“Yes.”
“—be more stupid?” she finished, and hit him in the stomach with the gun. The heavy metal cracked off a rib. Jack doubled over instantly. Yvette moved around, kicked him from behind, started him moving toward the house. “The great manipulator,” she laughed.
A few minutes later Jack was sitting in that living room he had heard but not seen until Yvette had pushed him into it at gunpoint. It was a beautiful room, though too stark and modern for Jack’s taste, with a parquet floor, half-empty white bookcases and high-tech furniture. He sat in a very modern chrome and black leather chair. The back was high enough that he couldn’t turn and see anyone behind him. Jack pivoted the chair slightly so that he could see the wide windows of this room, with a view of the gardens but also a reflection of the room now at night. In that reflection he watched Alexis and Desquat enter the room from different directions, from their separate searches for the intruder. Jack looked at Yvette, saw her look first at Paul Desquat. Some women would look at their rival, comparing looks, but Yvette looked at her lover. She saw that his eyes went first to Alexis when he entered the room, involuntarily, the way a compass needle points north. Yvette’s pouty little mouth hardened.