Date: 2013-09-11 04:00:00+00:00
Description: Four of Gerald Lund’s best-selling novels The Alliance, Freedom Factor, One in Thine Hand and Leverage Point are together in one eBook bundle.
Publisher: Deseret Book

Gerald N. Lund 4-in-1 Fiction eBook Bundle

Gerald N. Lund

© 2013 Gerald N. Lund.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Shadow Mountain®. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of Shadow Mountain.

Table of Contents

One In Thine Hand

One In Thine Hand
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty

The Alliance

The Alliance
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37

Leverage Point

Leverage Point
Preface
Characters in Leverage Point
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Epilogue
About the Authors

The Freedom Factor

The Freedom Factor
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
About the Author

One In Thine Hand

One In Thine Hand

© 1982, 1987 Gerald N. Lund

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Bookcraft, P. O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Bookcraft.

BOOKCRAFT is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

First printing paperbound edition, September 1987

First printing redesigned paperbound edition, January 2000

Visit us at deseretbook.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lund, Gerald N.

One in thine hand.

1. Title.

ISBN 0-87747-894-5 (hardbound ed.) AACR2

ISBN-10 0-87579-125-5 (paperbound ed.)

ISBN-13 978-0-87579-125-8 (paperbound ed.)

PS3562.U48505 813’.54 81-19418

To Lynn, my traveling companion to Israel and other destinations, including the eternal ones

One

Heathrow Airport was like the streets of downtown Saigon at rush hour, masses of bodies jostling back and forth, people milling around aimlessly, always seeming to stop where they could most effectively snarl the traffic flow. And judging from the lines in front of the Trans-World Airlines ticket counter, the majority of this swarm of tourists had not heard there might be other airlines competing with TWA to transport people out of London.

Brad Kennison ignored the crush of people and focused a burning glare in the center of the ample back of the lady ahead of him. She was pawing through her purse in search of her ticket, a bag easily large enough to carry half the files of the National Archives. The scowl darkened his even, tanned features and pulled his mouth, usually quick with an easy smile, into a tight line. He brushed his hand impatiently across his dark brown hair, then massaged the back of his neck.

When they had opened this new ticket window, Brad had jumped quickly and bettered his place in the line by six positions. Now he was still waiting, thanks to this woman, and the man in front of her who had required the frustrated clerk to recite every possible flight time to every possible city in Europe. The man in the line next to him finished and moved away as Brad’s gray eyes smouldered. Originally that man had been four places behind him.

Suddenly the lady with the huge purse gave a squeal of delight. “I knew it was in there,” she said triumphantly.

“Thank heavens!” Brad muttered, more loudly than he had intended.

The lady glanced back at him quickly, flustered and embarrassed.

Hey, come on Kennison, he chided himself. The plane doesn’t leave for two hours yet. Why so uptight?

He shrugged off the question, as though absentmindedly brushing away a fly. He had been home from Viet Nam for nearly four months now, and some time ago had come to terms with the fact that he was impatient, easily frustrated, and even irritable at times. He stared out the airport windows, shimmering and wavy in the early August sunshine, peeved as much at himself as at the delay. Maybe in Israel the restlessness that gnawed at him could be put aside.

Finally the lady in front moved hurriedly away, clutching her ticket in her hand. Brad pushed his camera bag across the polished tiles with his foot and stepped up to the counter. The ticket agent was a pert blonde with a dazzling smile. The smile warmed noticeably as she gave him a quick appraising look. After the bumbling, flustered lady, this tall, striking young American would be a welcome reprieve.

“Good morning,” she said brightly, taking his ticket. “Tel Aviv, sir?” Her English accent warped the syllables in a delightful way, but he didn’t take notice.

Brad nodded. He watched her process the ticket for a moment, then asked, “Is this going to be a crowded flight?”

She laughed. “Not as much as TWA would like. It’s only about half full. Everybody seems to be going to America, not to the Middle East.”

“Good,” he said, ignoring her cordiality. “I would prefer to be alone. Can you seat me where no one else will be by me?”

The smile slowly faded. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kennison. But it’s open seating for passengers boarding the flight here in London. This flight originated in New York, and many passengers are continuing on to Greece and Israel. We don’t know which seats will be occupied.”

The dark scowl returned. On the flight across the Atlantic, Brad had been stuck next to a couple from New York on their way to Italy. Sunglasses, Bermuda shorts, nonstop talk, and a furtive cigarette whenever the flight attendant wasn’t around to remind them they were sitting in nonsmoking seats—they hadn’t done much for his mood. In fact, they had pretty well destroyed the deep excitement and anticipation he had felt when he first boarded the plane in Salt Lake City. And he resented that loss, for planning this trip had provided the first real satisfaction he had found in the four months since his return from Viet Nam.

“Can’t you do something?” he demanded.

“No, sir. I’m sorry.” The clerk handed him his ticket and boarding pass, avoiding his eyes. “Gate fifty-six. They’ll board at two P.M.”

Brad snatched the ticket, his frustration mounting. He yanked up his camera bag and spun away.

As he did so, the ticket agent murmured under her breath, “Mister, just give them a look like that and you’ll have the whole row to yourself.”

He whirled around and glared at her. She jerked up, obviously startled, and then instantly her face flamed scarlet. But she stood her ground and stared back at him.

Gradually Brad felt his face relax into a grin. “Was it really that bad?” he asked.

Her relief at his sudden change was so evident that his smile broadened even more, crinkling the lines around the corner of his eyes.

“You were pretty grim,” she admitted. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I did. That was rude of me.”

A flash of the old Brad Kennison flicked across his eyes, and he pulled a wry face at her. “To give a man his just due is not rudeness,” he said. “My mind was somewhere else. It is my rudeness that needs an apology.”

That restored her smile completely. “It’s all right. Have a good flight.”

“Thank you.” Brad shouldered his camera bag and turned away again.

“Mr. Kennison?”

He turned back in surprise. “Yes?”

“There should be plenty of room on the plane. If you would like to sit alone, you could set your camera bag on the seat next to you until takeoff. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Thank you very much,” he said, smiling in genuine gratitude. “I’ll do that.”

And then, as he strode down the concourse toward the departure gates, he did something he hadn’t done for over a year. He began to whistle softly.

* * * * * *

By the time his flight was announced—forty-five minutes late—the cheerful mood had evaporated, and frustration, like an old familiar jacket he had temporarily displaced, had embraced him again. He fought it at first, then finally surrendered, rationalizing that a good part of it was just fatigue. It was now nearly twenty hours since he had left Salt Lake City and almost thirty since he had had any sleep. His body had switched over to quarter speed. His eyes were bleary and burned from the cigarette smoke that had turned the air of the boarding area a thick blue-gray. His dark hair, thick but cut fairly short, now had a slightly tousled look. Black stubble was taking over his lower face, hiding the square set of his jaw. Normally he had an air of alertness and friendliness that quickly put people at ease. Now he just looked tired and rumpled. As he waited he had slouched into a chair between a cigarsmoking Frenchman and a large black man in an Arab headdress, and anyone seeing him now would have underestimated his height, which was slightly over six feet.

In spite of his deep weariness, his mind kept alternating back and forth between the prospects of being in the Holy Land and the faint sense of guilt he felt at leaving. But why should I feel guilty at being different? he demanded of that part of his mind that kept nagging at him. You can’t expect to spend two years teaching the gospel sixty and seventy hours a week, be home only six weeks, and then be drafted for another two years into the army, and not come home different. The last thirteen months of duty had been in Viet Nam. He had left as a nineteen-year-old kid who rarely thought of anything more serious than whether to go waterskiing at Flaming Gorge or Lake Powell. He had come back with a great longing to embark on life, to do something with himself. And he couldn’t help it if Karen and he were not meant for each other as they had first thought. There had been no promises, no dateless waiting on her part, and she had sensed it was over almost as quickly as he had. And why enroll in school when he had no idea what area to pursue?

The loudspeaker blurted out its usual unintelligible blast of noise, and the people around him began to stir themselves into action. Brad pushed aside the thoughts that dogged him and stood up. He stretched wearily, but the smoky-gray eyes were bright with anticipation. The next time he stepped off the plane—. He nodded almost happily as he moved toward the boarding area and into line. Maybe in Jerusalem.

* * * * * *

Brad moved inside the huge cabin of the Boeing 747, handed the flight attendant his boarding pass, and smiled briefly in response to her greeting. Moving quickly to an empty row, he eased into the window seat, and, feeling only slightly guilty, set his bag squarely in the middle of the aisle seat. He was exhausted, and if he could guard the two adjoining seats, there would be room to stretch out.

Someone had left a New York Times in the seat pocket in front of him. It was dated August 8, 1973, which made it almost two days old now, but he glanced through it idly while the rest of the passengers boarded. It didn’t do much for his mood either. Watergate still dominated the headlines, as it had since April. John Dean’s testimony threatened to take the guilt right into the Oval Office, though President Nixon still flatly denied any knowledge of the growing scandal. The Arab oil embargo was in full swing, and three people had been hospitalized after a fight erupted in a New Jersey gas station when someone broke into the long line. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were rumored to be near separation because, as she had said, “Maybe we loved each other too much.”

Brad crammed the paper back into the pocket with a sigh. It was the stuff of which American news was made, but since his return from Viet Nam he had little patience for it. He had come to love America with a passion that surprised him, and it didn’t help at all to watch what was happening to it.

A moment later the big doors swung shut and were sealed, and the flight attendants launched into their “welcome - aboard - and - we’d - like - to - introduce - you - to - the-safety-features-of-this-aircraft” routine. Brad was grateful he had followed the counsel of the smiling ticket agent. The row was his unchallenged. Relieved, he reclaimed his camera bag and slid it under the seat in front of him, tightened his seat belt slightly, and leaned back, closing his eyes.

When the flight attendant announced that the captain had turned off the “fasten seat belts” sign and they were free to move about the cabin, Brad yawned wearily and pulled up the arm rest between the seats, suddenly anxious for sleep.

But before a minute had passed, a deep voice at his side startled him. “Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?”

Two

The look on Brad’s face should have stopped anything up to and including an M-60 tank, but it went totally unnoticed by the young man who was already hoisting a small, incredibly battered case into the overhead bin. Brad stared at him, unable to believe that anyone could have misread the “No Trespassing” signs he left hanging like daggers in the air.

The intruder was obviously an Arab. Brad had had numerous Arabic students in his classes at the University of Utah—Iranians, Saudis, Jordanians—and this young man was definitely one of them. He had dark, olivebrown skin, jet black hair with a slight wave to it, and eyes so deeply brown as to be almost black. He was short, probably two or three inches shorter than Brad, but lean and muscular, like a marathon runner. Tight Levis and a red pullover shirt emphasized his slim figure. His face was darkly handsome and was split by a broad smile and brilliant white teeth.

Brad groaned inwardly at the sudden evaporation of his solitude. He decided it was worth one last attempt, so he gave the young man an icy look that should have frozen him rigid to the spot. It didn’t. The intruder tossed his windbreaker into the center seat, slid into the aisle seat, and stuck out his hand.

“Hi! My name is Ali Mohammed Gamal Abdel Khalidi.” He grinned broadly. “If that seems a little heavy, just call me Ali. Not Alley, like most Americans say, but Ah-lee.” He pronounced each syllable slowly and distinctly.

Dazed by the verbal barrage, Brad took the proferred hand and dutifully repeated, “Ah-lee.”

If Ali noticed the lack of enthusiasm in Brad’s voice, he kept it well hidden. “Good!” he bubbled, pumping Brad’s hand vigorously. “And you’re…?”

“Oh. Brad. Brad Kennison.”

“Great! I’m glad to meet you, Brad.” Ali leaned back, his dark eyes suddenly sober. “I guess I shouldn’t be so sensitive.”

Sensitive! Brad thought. Surely you jest. But he managed a polite look.

“About my name, I mean. But I get so tired of having it mispronounced and made fun of. I’ve been called everything from Ali Babba to Alley Cat, including Alley Oop, Tin Pan Alley, and Little Nasser.”

“Little Nasser?” Brad repeated. He had lost a turn somewhere. “What has that got to do with Ali?”

“Nothing. It was from my other names. Gamal Abdel. Those were the names of President Nasser, Gamal Abdel Nasser. You know, the late president of Egypt.”

“Yes, I know,” Brad inserted hastily, before his seatmate decided he needed a semester’s course in contemporary Egyptian personalities.

“You’re American,” Ali continued. It was not a question, and so there was no point in pausing for an answer. “You almost sound like a Californian, too. Are you from California?”

Brad smiled in spite of himself. He had spoken less than a dozen words. Could this conversational volcano be a linguistic expert as well? “I was on a—” He caught himself, realizing that the word “mission” would require substantial explanation. “I lived there for two years,” he amended.

“Aha!” Ali said triumphantly. “I knew it. What part? Southern California, I’ll bet.”

“Yes. Anaheim.”

Ali’s speech was pure American, and Brad could detect no trace of accent. At first glance Ali had seemed younger, maybe nineteen or twenty, but now as Brad studied him, he could see that the leanness of his face made him look younger than he was. Brad reassessed and put his age at close to his own twenty-four years. In spite of himself, Brad’s curiosity got the best of him, and he forgot his determination to play freeze-out.

“You asked if I was from California too. Are you from there?”

“Most recently from Westwood.” Ali reached for his windbreaker, holding it up so Brad could see the UCLA stenciled on it. “Just finished my degree there. Before UCLA I lived in Long Beach for thirteen years. I’m Arab, you know.”

“I wondered,” Brad said, unable to repress a smile.

Ali laughed. “I guess that was kind of dumb,” he admitted. “If I had introduced myself as Gerhard Schwartz, I might have had you going for a while, right?”

Maybe this was going to be all right after all, Brad thought, as he nodded with a smile. Ali’s face radiated an uninhibited, unrestrained love of life, and there were even little crinkles around the corners of his eyes from what Brad guessed was a near perpetual smile. Even now the smile started with the mouth, quickly spread across his face, and finally erupted in those nearly jet black eyes. Brad felt his irritation slipping away in spite of his tiredness. It would be very easy to like this young Arab.

“My father owned a chain of men’s clothing stores in the south harbor area,” Ali said. “Hey, did you ever hear of Frank’s Stores for Men?”

“No,” Brad admitted. “But I didn’t get down around Long Beach at all.” He started to ask a question, hesitated, and then decided he was being too sensitive. Why not follow Ali’s own example of openness? “Frank’s Stores for Men?” Brad asked. “Is your father’s name Frank?”

Again that infectious laugh burst forth. “No way, man. His name was Fawzi. But he was shrewd enough to sense that ‘Fawzi’s Stores for Men’ lacked a little something in Long Beach. So he Americanized his name to Frank.” Ali rolled his eyes upward in mock horror. “Business is business. Anyway he sold out in 1965 and we went back to Palestine.”

It was like an ant trying to follow a hummingbird. While Ali flitted from flower to flower, Brad was crawling through the dense conversational grass, trying to keep up. “Back to Palestine?”

“Oh, yes. My father’s family had owned land near Bethlehem for eight or nine generations. When Israel was made a nation in 1948, my father and mother and my older brother had to flee during the so-called War of Independence. An Israeli kibbutz ended up with my family’s land, and my family ended up in a refugee camp near Jericho. That’s where I was born.”

Ali flashed his white teeth again in a broad grin. “Hey! How does it feel to be sitting next to a real live Palestinian refugee?”

“You hardly fit the typical image,” Brad admitted with a wry smile.

Ali’s hoot of laughter startled the very English-looking lady in the row in front of them, and she peered severely at them over the top of her seat. Ali just beamed at her, as totally impervious to her withering look as he had been to Brad’s initial coolness.

“How did you happen to come to America?” Brad asked.

“My father had a brother in Long Beach. He had moved to America in 1939. Conditions in the refugee camp were terrible. So my father worked at any and every job he could find until he saved enough money, with some help from Uncle Akhmud, to bring us all to the States. That was in 1952, when I was two years old. At first my father worked in the fields alongside the Mexicans as an itinerant worker. He saved every penny and finally bought a small tailoring shop in Long Beach, which he eventually parlayed into a very respectable men’s store, and then two men’s stores, and finally five. He was the hardest-working man I’ve ever known. A good man. A good father.” Ali’s mood became suddenly somber, and his eyes clouded.

“Was?” Brad asked.

“Yes. He was killed five years ago.” Ali paused for a long moment, and then seemed to shrug off the mood. “But anyway, in 1964 my father decided it was time to return to our homeland. That was a terrible shock to my brother and me. America was our home. I couldn’t even remember Palestine. We spoke Arabic in our home, of course, but English was my language. I even dreamed in English.”

“You do speak perfect American,” Brad nodded.

“I know. I was American. I was on the football team. I dated American girls. I loved hot dogs and hot rods. Then suddenly I was told I had to move eight thousand miles away to a new country, a new culture, a new everything. It was pretty traumatic for a sixteen-year-old. But in our culture, family ties are everything, and the father’s word is law. My father was adamant. Even mother fought him. But he wouldn’t budge. He said he had betrayed his ancestors by leaving their homeland. Now he had enough money to return.” Ali’s dark eyes were grave. “And so we returned.”

“Wow! That must have been some adjustment.”

“Like you can’t imagine,” Ali said fervently. “I came home from my Arabic school with black eyes for nearly three months. Every kid in the school had to take on the ‘rich American pig’ who claimed to be an Arab, but didn’t know how to act like one. My mother bawled, and my older brother and I ran away three different times. But my father always hauled us back and we stayed.”

Ali closed his eyes and leaned his head back, a tiny smile on his lips. “I can look back now on those times and laugh, but then it was pretty serious.” He fell silent, lost in the memory of those days.

Finally Brad, who had completely forgotten his original desire to be alone on this flight, broke the silence. “So is that why you decided to go back to the United States?”

“No, not then. Actually two things happened that deeply influenced me.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. First I found myself starting to fall in love with the land and the people. I didn’t want to. I fought it like mad. I was convinced I was an American, even though my father had never let us become citizens. But Palestine is a fascinating place. Americans read a lot about how the Jews have an almost mystical love for the land, but nobody ever says anything about the Arabs and their attachment to the land. It is there, as powerful for my people as for the Jews. I began to sense what my father felt for his homeland. I began to feel it was my homeland.”

Brad nodded. That was one of the reasons he had decided to come to Israel. He had even heard Mormons talk about the subtle but powerful draw of the Holy Land and how it affected them. He hoped he could find at least some of that for himself. “And the other thing?”

“The other was June 5, 1967.”

Brad looked blank.

“The Six Day War.”

“Oh, yes.”

The light mood had fled now, and Ali’s dark eyes were grave. “Suddenly our family were refugees again. It was a tremendous shock to all of us. One day we were Jordanians. A few days later we were part of the territories known as the West Bank, which was occupied by the state of Israel. Fortunately this time my father didn’t flee too far. When the fighting was over we came back, and after several months of wrangling with the Israelis, he got his little tourist shop and our home in Bethlehem back. In the long run, it turned out to be a blessing, because the business has really boomed with the increased tourism. Our family eventually bought two more shops in the Old City of Jerusalem.”

“Then how did the war change your mind about being there?”

“That’s when I became an Arab,” Ali said. “On the first day of the war, the Israelis smashed through the Sinai and devastated the Egyptian air force in four hours. I was humiliated. Along with the other guys at the school, I ran down to the souks—the markets of Old Jerusalem—and bought weapons. I got an old, rusty British Enfield rifle, twenty rounds of ammunition, and three hand grenades—two of which turned out to be duds—for fifteen dollars. Remember, by this time I’m still not quite eighteen.”

His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “It was Wednesday, June 7, the third day of the war. At nine o’clock the Israelis launched their attack on the Old City of Jerusalem. About twenty of us were hidden just inside St. Stephen’s gate on the east side. I was up on the wall when they rounded the corner and started up toward us. I could see the paratroopers coming up quickly behind the tanks and half-tracks. I knew we didn’t stand a chance, and suddenly I was crying. Not because I was scared, though heaven knows I was that, too. No, I was crying because my people—,” his voice rose in sudden intensity, “my people, the Arabs, stood helpless in front of the Israeli army. I ran down the steps, firing blindly and hurling the grenades at them as they punched through the gate. One of my friends—one of those I’d had to fight in school a few months before—pulled me back, and we hid in the Old City until it was over.”

Ali shook his head with the shame of it, his lips tight with bitterness. “They took the Old City, a soldier’s nightmare of twisting, narrow streets and limited access, a perfect place for guerrilla fighters to defend—they took the whole thing in less than three hours! And I cried because it was my people who surrendered, my people who ran. And suddenly I realized that never again could I be an American. I was Arab. It was as though somebody had thrown away the old me and given me a new body, a new mind, a new heart. And I wanted desperately to get even, to somehow take away the shame of my people. It was a bitter, bitter thing.” His voice trailed off, and he stared at the ceiling of the plane.

“I don’t understand,” Brad said softly, hesitant to break into Ali’s thoughts. “If you found yourself, found your identity, why did you go back to the United States?”

“Ah, well, that came a little later.” He grinned at Brad, the sober mood lifting. “You must remember that we Arabs invented the art of dragging out a story forever. You know the legend about the woman who saved her life by telling stories for a thousand and one nights?”

Brad chuckled as he nodded.

“Fear not, I shall attempt to finish in only half that time.” Ali paused, searching for the right words, then plunged in. “I was so full of shame, so full of bitterness, so moved with a passionate desire to do something for my people. When three of my friends told me they were going to slip across the border into Syria and join a PLO training camp, I decided to join them. I thought maybe hate would be sufficiently strong medicine to wash the taste of shame out of my mouth.”

As he spoke, his voice was low, and Brad could sense the tension in his lean body. “Well, I should have guessed what was coming. I wasn’t training for the redemption of my people. I was training for terrorism. They taught us how to use every conceivable weapon, how to make and use explosives, and how to kill with our bare hands. I kept telling myself that this was the answer, that this was how I could erase the shame, how I could best help the Arabic peoples. But I knew it was all a lie. My real problem, I am happy to admit, is that I am not a terrorist at heart. In spite of all my hate, in spite of all their propaganda, it wasn’t me, and I knew it. I had just about decided to sneak away from the camp at the first opportunity, when word came of my father’s death.”

It was as though Ali had somehow been suspended in time. He was staring at Brad without seeing him. Finally he continued, his voice very soft, yet firm. “He and my younger sister had gone to Hebron to buy pottery and glass vases for the shops. Their car broke down, and they had to leave it with a mechanic, so they caught a bus back to Bethlehem. Someone had planted a package of explosives near the back, just two or three seats from where my father and sister sat. They and eleven others were killed instantly.”

Ali took a deep breath and gradually came back to the present. He shrugged his shoulders, his face showing pain. “I suddenly had a new perspective of the effects of terrorism. Yasser Arafat and the PLO claimed credit for the deed, though, of course, everyone at the camp deplored the fact that—,” his voice became softly mocking, “ ‘innocent people sometimes have to die in the cause.’ But it provided the perfect excuse for leaving the camp without fear of retaliation.”

Ali fell silent as the flight attendant approached with a tray of drinks. Brad took a Seven-Up, but Ali just shook his head. When she was gone, he brightened visibly. “It’s not really that grim. My older brother took over the family business, and I decided that if my people were going to be saved, it had to be through service, not slaughter. UCLA accepted my application, and I returned to the United States. I have just completed my master’s degree in educational administration, and now I’m going back home to try again. For my people.” He paused, then added softly, “And for my father.”

“That is absolutely fascinating,” Brad said, suddenly ashamed that he had tried to discourage Ali from sitting next to him. “So what now? You’re going back home to teach? To be a school administrator?”

“Both,” Ali said, the smile completely conquering his face again. “My family is putting up the money, and we’re going to start our own private school—a combination elementary, secondary, and vocational school. It may not be as direct or dramatic as a bomb or a knife, but I think it beats the PLO all to pieces.”

“That is great,” Brad said with genuine envy in his voice. “That is really great.”

Suddenly Ali hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Ah!” he said in disgust. “You stupid one!”

“What’s the matter?”

“What my mother says is true. She says that I talk more than six Bedouins at a sheep auction. Here I’ve been rattling on for half an hour, and you’ve hardly said a word. What a stupid one I am. You know my whole family’s history, and I don’t know anything about you but your name.”

Brad smiled. “Don’t apologize. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.”

“You’re very kind,” Ali replied, “and a good listener. I really had no intention of going into all that.”

“I’m glad you did. It really is an incredible story.”

“Not really.” Ali laughed, dropping his voice into a deep southern drawl. “I’m just your typical run-of-themill Palestinian refugee turned all-around American boy, turned screaming Arab terrorist, turned UCLA graduate student, turned Christian, turned schoolteacher.”

“Turned Christian?” Brad asked in surprise.

Ali shook his finger at him. “Oh no, you don’t. You get your thirty seconds of conversation before I launch into my next half hour. So you’re Brad Kennison from California. Are you going on to Israel, or are you getting off in Athens?”

“No, I’m going to Israel.”

“Great! Have you been there before?”

“No, this will be my first time.”

“You’ll love it. Business or pleasure?”

Brad hesitated. How did you answer that question—both? neither?

“I’m sorry,” Ali apologized, noting Brad’s hesitancy. “You’d think I’d got my degree in law or something. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Oh no,” Brad said quickly. “It’s not that at all. It’s just that I’m not sure exactly why I am going there. I guess in a way I hope to do what you did—to find the real me, to work out some things, to leave some things behind.”

“I certainly understand that,” the young Arab responded. “So how long do you plan to stay?”

Again Brad hesitated, his gray eyes darkening slightly as he considered the discontent of the last four months. “Well, dumb as it sounds, I’m not sure of that either. I may even look into the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, see if they offer enough classes in English that I could work on a degree.” He lifted his hands in a gesture of frustration. “I don’t know. It just depends on what happens. Money is a consideration, of course.”

Ali nodded. “Isn’t it always?”

“If I stay,” Brad went on, “I’ve got to find some kind of work. I saved almost all my service pay during the year I was in Viet Nam—”

“You were in Viet Nam?”

“Yes.”

“Combat?”

Brad nodded. “For most of the time.”

Ali gave a low whistle. “So you’ve had a pretty exciting life of your own.”

“I’m not sure ‘exciting’ is the exact word I’d choose,” Brad mused. “Anyway, I’ve got enough money to see me through several months, but if I decide to stay, I need some money coming in. I know it sounds strange to come this far not knowing for sure why you’re coming or what you want to do, but—” He brushed absently at his dark hair. That’s what everybody kept telling me at home too, he thought. “If you even knew what it was you’re looking for, it wouldn’t be quite so pointless.” He sighed, suddenly aware of his deep tiredness.

Ali nodded soberly. “So where will you be staying while you’re there?”

Brad shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I thought I’d start in Jerusalem and kind of let it happen from there. I’ll find a youth hostel or a cheap hotel once I get there.”

“No need to worry,” Ali beamed. “I know just the place. Khalidi’s Inn for Weary American Travelers. It’s run by a very respectable Arab-American family in Bethlehem, only six miles from downtown Jerusalem.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t stay with your family.” The words came out more forcefully than Brad had intended. “Thank you,” he amended, more softly. “That’s very kind, but I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Ali studied him for a moment, his dark eyes probing Brad’s. Finally he smiled and said, “The Arab in me says that ‘no’ is an unacceptable answer. Hospitality is a very sacred obligation in our land, you know. But the American in me says, ‘Sometimes it’s easier to work certain things out when you’re alone.’ But a dinner at the Khalidis’ every now and then. That’s a nonnegotiable item. Is that a deal?”

“Deal,” Brad agreed, grateful for Ali’s understanding.

“Tell you what,” the young Arab said, snapping his fingers. “I know a small hotel near the Jaffa Gate. It’s in a great location near the western entrance to the Old City. It would even be within walking distance of the university, no more than a couple of miles. It’s clean, has excellent food, and is very reasonable. We supply the little tourist shop in the lobby. If I take you there, I think they’ll give you a special rate. Our family has done the owner a few favors.”

“That sounds great,” Brad said. He had worried somewhat about finding a suitable place, and this was an unexpected solution. He sipped his Seven-Up, his face sobering again.

Ali Khalidi studied his seatmate closely. The gray eyes were tired and the otherwise pleasant face was lined with fatigue, but it was hard to tell how much was just traveler’s fatigue and how much had been there before the trip had begun. Ali had sensed the quick resentment when he had moved to take this seat, but now he was glad he had. The coolness had thawed quickly, and he felt a genuine warmth and openness beneath Brad’s reserve. And there was a quiet strength in this young American that he liked. He nodded to himself and decided to trust his instincts by moving one step further.

“You said you were going to Israel to find some answers. What is it exactly that you’re looking for?” It was asked cautiously, as if to say, if you don’t want to answer that, it’s okay with me.

A look that lay somewhere between frustration and self-anger shadowed Brad’s face. “If I even knew that much, I would at least know what direction to start looking. My folks kept asking me the same question. ‘What’s the matter, son? What is it you want? Why aren’t you happy?’ And then the girl everybody hopes you’ll get serious with starts in. ‘Brad,’ “ he mimicked, “ ‘what’s wrong? You’re just not the same anymore.’ ”

“Is she pretty?” Ali asked gently.

Brad reached for his wallet, turned past the picture of his parents and brothers and sisters to the snapshot of Karen, and passed it to Ali.

Ali’s eyebrows lifted in surprise as he gave a low whistle. “Wow! She isn’t pretty. She’s beautiful!”

“And rich too,” Brad added glumly. “Her father’s a big executive with Univac Corporation.” Suddenly he felt guilty for giving Ali the wrong impression. “Karen wasn’t the problem. She is really a super person and not pushy at all. We weren’t engaged or anything, and we both know things aren’t going to work out for us. I’m the problem. Suddenly I felt as though I was smothering.”

“What a way to go!” Ali said fervently as he handed back the wallet. He touched his forehead with his finger. “You’re crazy, boy! We could get ten camels and a Land Rover for that woman at the marketplace. You’d be rich! I’d be rich!”

Brad started to laugh in spite of himself. “Ain’t it the truth?” he drawled.

Gradually their laughter subsided to quiet chuckles and finally to sober silence. After a long moment Ali spoke in a low voice. “In all seriousness, I do know a way you can find the answers to what you are seeking.”

“Really?” Brad asked skeptically. “What?”

“Does the word ‘Mormon’ mean anything to you?”

Brad stared at his new companion, completely dumbfounded. He couldn’t have been more stunned if Ali had revealed himself as one of the Three Nephites. “What?” he nearly shouted at him.

Brad’s reaction startled Ali, and for the first time he seemed thrown off balance. “Do you know anything about the Mormon church?” Ali asked hesitantly, his face serious.

Brad tried to play it straight, but it was more than he could contain. Through a grin that was rapidly threatening to degenerate into outright gales of laughter, he said, “I know enough to know what the next question is. ‘Would I like to know more?’ Right?”

Ali was perplexed. He hadn’t done this very often, but he’d never had a reaction quite like this. And then the light came on. “Are you a Mormon?”

The look on Ali’s face didn’t help Brad’s self-control in the least, and his hoot of laughter brought another devastating look from the lady in front of them. “You got it!” Brad finally managed with a nod.

“You’re kidding!” Ali said, disbelief still plainly written all over his face.

“Nope. Elder Brad Kennison, Salt Lake City, Utah. Member in good standing for twenty-four years.”

His face was a perfect study of bewilderment. “But you said you were from California.”

“No, I said I lived in California. I was there for two years.”

“You were there on a mission?”

“Right!”

“Can you believe that?” Ali asked of no one in particular, still obviously struggling to believe it himself. “I joined the Church in April, just four months ago. I hope to go on a mission too, but my bishop in Westwood said I could do a great work among my own people in the meantime. So I hurried and finished my degree and here I am on my way home.” Then suddenly Ali’s impish grin came stealing back. “I have a confession to make.”

“Oh?”

“Before I got on the plane, I decided I would pick out the person I thought would make the best Mormon and sit by him so I could eventually talk about the Church. I saw you getting on and decided you were the one. Not bad, huh?”

“Well,” Brad said sheepishly, “I also have a confession to make. I wanted to be alone, so I put my camera bag in your seat. I had just barely moved it when you came and sat down. Some Mormon, huh?”

“I know,” Ali smiled. “I watched you. At first I thought you might be saving it for someone. Then I saw you glaring at anyone who came close. You about scared me off then. But I finally decided that underneath all of that, there probably lived a very pleasant person. So I took my chances.”

“So you set up a typical Mormon ambush?”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Well, I must admit I’m glad you did.” Brad really meant it. This had turned out delightfully well.

Suddenly Ali’s face lit up. “I just had a brilliant idea. Is anyone meeting you when the plane gets to Tel Aviv?”

“No.”

“Me neither. I plan to surprise my family. We could take a cheroot—a taxi—to Jerusalem together. What do you think?”

Brad looked into the shining eyes of his new friend for a long moment. “I think I am very glad that you thought I would make a good Mormon, Ali.”

“Me too!” Ali said. “Now, I’ll shut up and let us both get some sleep. You look beat, and I am too.” With that, he reached up, grabbed pillows for both of them, and promptly closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Three

The Mercedes lurched to a halt, jerking Brad’s head up in startled surprise. He looked around wildly, trying to make his mind process the data his eyes were feeding it. Only when they focused on Ali, who had leaned forward and was speaking rapidly in Arabic to the driver, did he remember. He shook his head vigorously, then rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. It felt as though the inside of his eyelids had been lined with number two sandpaper, but at least when he finished they stayed open. He peered at his watch in the dark. It was a little after ten-thirty. Ali was out of the taxi and headed for the doors before Brad could respond to his quick “Hold on and I’ll check things out.”

Stifling a yawn, Brad watched Ali push through the glass doors and enter the brightly lit lobby, then leaned over and rolled down the window. The night air was cooler than he expected, and filled with a hundred odors blended into one mixture that somehow smelled exactly as Brad thought Jerusalem should smell. He breathed deeply, reminding himself that this was Holy Land air, the air that Jesus had breathed, and Abraham and David and Peter. He felt a sudden stirring of excitement in spite of his weariness.

His eyes were curious as he studied the building Ali had entered. Large, bright red letters of translucent plastic announced in Hebrew and English that this was the Jaffa Hotel. It was a small building, only three stories high, made of square blocks of a white-beige stone. Brad quickly counted the windows and estimated that there couldn’t be more than thirty-five or forty rooms. Good. He wasn’t after flocks of company.

Through the lobby doors he could see Ali talking to a dark-haired girl behind the main desk. His new friend pointed in Brad’s direction, and the girl leaned over the counter and peered out at him. It was tempting to give a little wave, but he resisted and pulled back from the window. The girl shook her head sharply as she turned back to Ali, and kept shaking her head as he spoke. Ali became visibly more agitated, punctuating his sentences with articulate and eloquent gestures, his hands in near constant motion.

Suddenly the girl slammed her hand angrily against the counter and nodded. Ali was instantly all smiles. He turned quickly and came out of the hotel.

“Okay,” he said as he opened Brad’s door. “It’s all set.”

Brad made no effort to hide his dubious look. “Are you sure?”

“Sure,” Ali beamed. He spoke briefly in Arabic to the driver, who climbed out, moved to the back of the Mercedes, and opened the trunk.

Brad got out of the taxi stiffly and joined them. Ali studiously avoided Brad’s questioning gaze as the driver swung his suitcase out and onto the ground.

“Ali!” Brad finally exclaimed.

The Arab’s face was full of innocence. “What?”

“That hotel clerk didn’t seem overjoyed with the negotiations.”

“Who, Miri?”

“You know who I mean. Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“Trouble?” Ali said in amazement, as though he’d just heard the word for the first time. “It’s no trouble. Miri is the daughter of the owner of the hotel. He’s not there right now. I’ll speak to him tomorrow afternoon. We’ll settle on the rate then.”

“You mean—” Brad started. Suddenly he didn’t like this situation at all. “If she doesn’t feel good about this, then I’ll pay the full rate, or if that’s too much, I can find somewhere else to stay.”

“Whoa!” Ali soothed. “As I told you, the owner is an old friend of my family. We have done him many favors. He has done us many in return. He has told me many times, ‘Ali, if you ever need a place for your friends or relatives to stay, you bring them to the Jaffa Hotel and I’ll make them a special deal.’ ”

“Has he told his daughter that?” Brad asked, still unconvinced.

“Miri?” Ali shrugged. “Miri is what we in America used to call a spitfire. She’s angry because—” He threw up his hands in exasperation. “Ah! Who knows what makes a woman angry? Pay her no mind.”

Brad’s protest was becoming noticeably weaker. He was too exhausted to pursue the objection further, and the thoughts of having to find another hotel at this hour were utterly depressing. “She’s not going to kick someone out of his room, is she?”

That irrepressible grin flicked momentarily across Ali’s face and then was gone. “Just a recently widowed lady with nine children who’s pregnant with twins and due to deliver any moment. But in the Middle East you learn to be firm. It’s part of the inscrutable Arab image.”

“All right, all right,” Brad laughed. “I give up.”

“Good. Mr. Shadmi will meet us at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Everything will be fine.” Ali absolutely oozed self-confidence. He pointed up the street. “The Jaffa gate is just around that first corner. Five minutes and you can be in the heart of the Old City. I wish I could be with you tomorrow and show you my homeland.” He smiled and shrugged. “But my family—we will be celebrating my return all night and most of tomorrow.”

“I’ll be fine,” Brad replied. “I really appreciate all you’ve done.”

“Including the ambush on the plane?”

“Especially that.” Brad shook Ali’s hand warmly, then had a sudden thought. “How much is the taxi fare?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll—” Brad’s look stopped him short. “Okay, okay. Sorry for even suggesting it.” Ali spoke to the driver, who answered without hesitation. Ali turned back to Brad. “It’s thirty-five Israeli pounds or about nine dollars. Your share would be four-fifty.”

Brad pulled out his wallet and counted out the amount plus a generous tip from the money he had exchanged at the airport. Brad ignored Ali’s strenuous protests and handed the money to the beaming driver.

“Shukran, shukran,” the driver said, nodding again and again in a little bow.

“That means thank you,” Ali explained.

“How do I say ‘you’re welcome’?”

“Ahlan wa salan.”

“Ahlan wa salan,” Brad repeated. His pronunciation was atrocious, but it pleased the driver immensely.

“Shukran,” he said again, showing his discolored teeth happily. “Wel-come. Wel-come.”

Ali reached out and took Brad’s hand and shook it again. “Okay, my friend. We’ll see you at three o’clock tomorrow.”

Brad gripped his hand firmly. “Thanks. For everything. I really mean that.”

“You’re wel-come,” Ali said with a grin, pronouncing welcome in a perfect imitation of the driver. “See you tomorrow.”

Brad gave a final wave as the taxi disappeared around the corner, then picked up his luggage and shouldered through the door and into the lobby. He walked to the counter, but no one was in sight. The hotel was small, neat, and quite modern. The walls were of a beautifully grained white marble; the floors gleamed like a mirror. One wall area had been made into a lounge with deep maroon carpeting. Chairs and couches in tastefully selected accent colors were scattered around three coffee tables, also made of marble. A huge panoramic black and white photograph of Jerusalem’s Old City filled the entire wall above the lounge. Brad recognized the Dome of the Rock, which dominated the picture.

Behind him a small shop occupied one corner of the lobby. Its windows were filled with olivewood statuary, brass vases, and assorted Arabic-looking dresses. That must be the shop Ali’s family supplies, he thought. He turned back to the counter but was still alone. A light was on in the small office behind the desk area, but it also was empty. Here again the feeling of neatness and order prevailed. The keys were placed in their pigeonholes in precisely the same place in each case. A sign stuck to the window of the office announced in neat hand-lettered English:

Holy Land Guide Service

Individuals or Groups

Reasonable Rates—Excellent Service

Licensed Guides

Inquire at Desk

Growing a bit impatient, Brad picked up his suitcase and set it down again firmly, making a sharp click against the tile floor. A moment later the girl appeared from around the corner of the lobby and walked toward him.

Brad looked at her in surprise. He hadn’t been able to see her very clearly from the taxi through the reflections of the glass, but his impression had been that of—what? Now that he thought about it, it was clear that he had formed his impressions on the basis of her angry reaction to Ali, and not on any clear visual image. She had been behind the counter, and he had seen her only in profile. But he had not expected this.

She was not a classic beauty in the same sense as Karen, but here was a woman who would turn men’s heads wherever she passed. A white blouse of a soft silky material and a tailored navy blue skirt revealed the lithe, supple figure of a dancer, slim-waisted but full-figured, with long, perfectly sculpted legs. Her skin, a glowing golden tan, was clear and flawless. She wore her jet-black hair cut short around her neck, but left it full and fluffed slightly around her face. The effect was to soften her features, which otherwise could have been a bit too angular. Her eyes were large and round and as dark as Ali’s, her nose straight and narrow. Brad guessed that her lips would normally be full and generous, though now they were compressed into a tight line. A delicate gold chain with a tiny diamond pendant hung at her throat.

“You’re the American,” she said bluntly. There was not the slightest hint of cordiality in the luminous brown eyes.

“Yes.” He rejected his initial impulse to try something light and charming. The climate behind the counter was certainly not conducive to witty chitchat.

She pushed a card and pen at him. “Fill this out, please.” The last word seemed distasteful to her, as though she had bitten into a worm while eating an apple.

He filled out the card in quick, bold strokes, pausing only to check his passport number. He pushed it back and felt a little satisfaction as he stared back at her, causing her to blush slightly. The tangle of thick black lashes masked what lay in her brown eyes as she lowered her gaze to study the card.

“How long do you plan to stay, Mr. Kennison?” She spoke excellent English, her voice husky and rich, even in its coolness.

“I’m not sure.” He decided to try a smile. “Until my money runs out. A couple of months at least.”

She intercepted the smile before it cleared the counter and shattered it in midair. “We’ll do our best to take as little of your money as possible,” she snapped.

Brad bit back an angry retort. “Look,” he said sharply, “I wasn’t aware that Ali—Mr. Khalidi was going to bargain in my behalf. I don’t want to create any problems.”

“Oh, it’s no problem,” she said bitterly. “My father is always giving someone a handout.” She gave the stubbled face, the disheveled hair, and his rumpled clothes a slow once-over, obvious distaste in her eyes.

“Now wait,” Brad said, really angry now. “I don’t—”

But she cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That wasn’t fair. It isn’t your fault that my father is more concerned with other things than making this hotel a profitable business.”

Brad let his breath out in a slow, inaudible sigh, a technique he had developed in the service to cope with intransigent sergeants or obnoxious lieutenants who tried to goad you into losing your temper so they could really hang you. Finally in control, he quietly said, “For someone on the brink of bankruptcy, you dress quite well.”

Her head shot up, and she stared at him, uncertain whether to take it as a compliment or an insult. Once again he held her gaze until she was the one to drop her eyes. “You’ll be in room 312,” she said, handing him the key. “I’ll call someone to help you with your luggage.”

“No thanks,” Brad retorted. “One hotel employee is all I’m up to tonight.” With that he spun away, picked up his bags, and headed for the elevator, aware of the burning glare she was hurling at the back of his neck.

Four

It was almost more than he could muster, but with a groan, Brad rolled out of bed and stumbled into the shower. He turned the cold water—a purely relative term—on full blast and let it pound into his face until he felt some semblance of life start to flow again in his body. He had fully intended to rise about eight A.M. and spend the day seeing Jerusalem. But at precisely 1:48 in the morning he was suddenly wide awake, experiencing a healthy case of jet lag. Not until the sun had flooded his room with light around five o’clock had he finally won the battle and dropped again into a deep sleep. But now it was nearly noon, and if he wanted to see the city at all before Ali came, he would have to hurry.

Brad shaved off the black growth, then stared at himself in the mirror. His gray eyes were still bloodshot, but shaving and some sleep had made a surprising improvement.

He dressed quickly, deciding not to unpack until the issue of the room was settled. Grabbing his camera bag, he went down to the lobby, preparing himself for a possible confrontation. But to his relief the girl was nowhere in sight. A tall, powerfully built man was behind the counter, head bent over a stack of papers. His hair was a wild tousle the color of coal dust. As Brad laid his key on the counter, the man lifted his head, revealing a darkly handsome face and pleasant brown eyes, which reflected an air of quiet self-assurance. He was probably twentyfive to thirty years old, and, judging from what Brad could see, in superb physical shape.

The clerk glanced at Brad’s key, then broke into a broad smile. “Ah yes,” he said in a deep, booming voice. “You’re the American who came in last night.”

“Yes,” Brad admitted.

“Welcome to Jerusalem.” The young man stuck his hand across the counter and took Brad’s in a handshake that bordered somewhere between a pair of vice grips and a nutcracker. “Miri told me you came in last night. I’m Nathan Shadmi, Miri’s brother.” His English was good, but with an accent more pronounced than his sister’s.

“Thank you,” Brad said, relieved to find some warmth in the welcome. “I’m Brad Kennison.”

“Yes,” Nathan responded. “I saw your name on the register. I understand you and Ali will be meeting with my father and me at three o’clock today.”

“Yes,” Brad answered, somewhat wary.

But Nathan was smiling broadly. “I’m sure we can work something out that will be agreeable to you.”

Brad’s smile matched Nathan’s in broadness. “Thank you. That’s most kind.”

At that moment the small switchboard in the office buzzed. “Excuse me, please,” Nathan said. “We’ll see you at three.”

Brad plunged out into the blistering noonday heat with genuine enthusiasm. It was exciting to finally be in Jerusalem. In fact, he thought, it was exciting just to be excited again. He strode up the street in the direction Ali had pointed him last night.

As he came around the corner the view of the Old City stopped him in midstride. The pictures he had seen of Jerusalem’s walls had not been able to convey the feeling of massiveness that overwhelmed him now. He darted across the busy street that ran alongside the wall and entered the great opening that was the Jaffa Gate.

He had gone only about fifty yards inside the gate when a delicious aroma from a tiny, open shop stopped him. His stomach suddenly reminded him that he had last eaten on the plane the night before. Stepping up closer, he watched a young teenaged Arab boy forming a gooeylooking paste into one-inch balls and dropping them into a pan of boiling oil. That was definitely the source of the aroma.

“What you like, sir?” The boy’s smile was warm and friendly.

“I don’t know,” Brad grinned back. “What you got?”

“We got anything you like. You American?”

Brad nodded, used to the identifiability of his species from his travels in Asia.

“Wel-come. You like felafel?”

“Is that what those are?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Chick peas, ground up, mixed with spices. Very good. I put it in pita bread with lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes.” He waved to bowls filled with each item as he spoke. “Then I put sauce on it. Green or red sauce. Very good. You want one?”

“Why not?”

Pleased at his sale, the boy moved quickly, taking a round but perfectly flat piece of bread from a tray. With a little flourish for Brad’s benefit, he cut off one edge and, to Brad’s surprise, opened the bread, which was hollow, forming a pocket. Into the pocket he then stuffed two of the deep fried balls and the other vegetables he had promised. “You want red sauce or green sauce?”

Brad hesitated, looking at both. “I don’t know. Which is better?”

“Red sauce, very hot. Green sauce, very good.”

Amused at the boy’s salesmanship, Brad pointed. “Okay, green it is. What have you got to drink?”

“Fresh-squeezed orange juice or soda pop.”

“Make it orange juice.”

The felafel was as good as it had smelled, and Brad ordered another one, to the great delight of the young proprietor. Feeling much better, he started into the narrow opening of what at first appeared to be another shop, but on closer look was one of the narrow, covered streets that he would quickly learn were typical of the Old City.

Suddenly Brad was thrust through time and space to a completely different world, a teeming, bustling world of sight, and sound, and smell. The narrow, twisting streets were often mere tunnels under buildings that stretched for as much as a full city block. These were the souks that Ali had talked about, tiny markets offering the most incredible variety of wares imaginable. Tourist shops filled with olivewood carvings and brass vases elbowed side by side with butcher shops where slabs of raw meat hung in the open, often dotted black with flies. Even Brad, who thought he was used to anything, pulled a face when he saw one counter filled with neat stacks of goat heads. Shops with a dozen or more huge burlap sacks with their tops rolled down into neat collars displayed spices and beans and nuts and seeds, half of which Brad couldn’t recognize. An old man with a face that would have made Methuselah look positively youthful sat at an old treadle Singer sewing machine, embroidering an intricate design in red thread upon a black dress.

And the people! Bedouin women, their faces covered with veils on which were sewn hundreds of coins, ducked furtively past men in western business suits and ties. Women with trays of bread or bundles of clothes balanced neatly on their heads jabbered happily to each other as they maneuvered through the limited space. Brad jumped hastily out of the way to avoid a hurtling pushcart loaded with bales of straw pushed by two boys too small to see over their load.

A donkey straining under a load of sacks marked “United Nations Relief Agency” clopped past, winning Brad’s sympathy until he saw an Arab porter staggering under the weight of a refrigerator on his back, held in a sling stretched across his forehead and over his shoulders. Black-robed priests with silver and gold crosses jostled with ultra-orthodox Jews in fur hats and long curls of hair dangling from their temples, a response to the Mosiac commandment not to cut the “corner of the beard.”

Brad continued on for another hour, walking slowly, savoring the myriad sights and sounds and smells—though some of the latter caused his nose to wrinkle in protest—and loving the fascination of it all. It felt good to be totally immersed in something again. He had felt detached for so long. Dad was right, he thought. This trip is going to be the medicine I’m looking for. The thought of his parents turned him into the next shop, where he disappointed the eager clerk by purchasing only three postcards and the stamps to send them to America.

Ten minutes later he glanced at his watch, then beckoned to a small boy who had been tailing him, trying to sell him three reed flutes for a dollar. “Do you know the way to the Jaffa Gate?”

The boy nodded his head, his large dark eyes solemn yet hopeful.

“Will you take me there?”

“Five dollars,” came the instant reply.

Brad smiled to himself. He had developed a taste for bargaining in the Far East. “Five dollars?” he said, screwing his face into a look of shock. “Too much! Too much!”

“Three dollars.” The young face was unmoved by Brad’s protestations.

“One dollar.”

“Two dollars.”

Brad considered that carefully, as though it taxed the limits of his resources. “Two dollars if you give me three flutes and take me to the Jaffa Gate.”

“Okay,” the boy agreed, so quickly that Brad knew he’d just bid too high. He smiled, good-naturedly accepting the boy’s triumphant look. He had been taken, but it felt good. He turned and walked swiftly to keep up with the boy, who was trotting up the narrow street, clutching the two dollars happily in his hand.

Brad had not gone into the Old City as far as he had thought, and by the time he arrived back at the hotel, it was still only ten minutes to the hour. The heat was oppressive by now, and he was perspiring freely. The air-conditioned lobby was going to feel great, but as he pushed open the door to the hotel, he stopped short. At that moment a battered Volkswagen rattled around the corner and started down the street toward him. Even at this distance Brad could hear the tortured sounds of the motor. He made an immediate side bet with himself that it would not make it up the slight rise that ran past the hotel. But he was wrong. It lumbered forward and turned into the hotel’s short driveway.

A thick layer of dust obscured the car’s color, although there was a slight hint of red beneath the accumulated layers. Whatever the color, it was certain that the paint wouldn’t have any sun damage at all. One headlight had been gouged out, leaving a rusty, gaping wound. A crack ran diagonally across the entire width of the windshield, though under the dust it was barely discernible.

Brad started to smile, then jumped up in surprise as the door opened and Ali stepped out and waved to him. Brad fought the temptation as he greeted the young Arab, but it was too much for him, and he stared at the car, his nose slightly wrinkled.

Ali noted the expression. “Well,” he said, grinning broadly, “what do you think of it?”

“Is this your car?” Brad asked, instantly regretting that his voice had put the whole force of the question on the word car.

“No,” Ali said, slapping Brad on the back. “It’s yours!”

“Ali!”

“What?” His dark eyes were wide and sparkled with delight.

“You can’t—I mean, I can’t take this!”

“Why not? It will look better once it is washed.”

“You can’t just give me your car.”

“It’s not mine. It’s my brother’s.”

“Well, you can’t give me your brother’s car.”

“Actually, it’s my brother’s old car. It’s just been sitting in a shed in Bethlehem for several months. We almost didn’t get it started. And I’m not giving it to you. Just lending it to you for the time you’re in Israel.”

“But—”

“But nothing,” Ali interrupted. “Ahkmud says he thinks the fuel pump is nearly gone. I was going to get that fixed too, but I’ve got to go to Nablus for the next three days and get equipment for our school. I thought you’d rather have it now and get it fixed yourself than wait till I get back.”

“Sure,” Brad said hastily. “That’s no problem.” His voice trailed off, as he was suddenly overwhelmed by the generosity of his day-old friend.

“Then it’s settled,” Ali said. “It was just sitting there gathering dust,” he said, wiping his finger across the hood with a grimace, “and you need some wheels.”

Brad threw up his hands. “I can’t believe you. What can I ever do to pay you back?”

“Ah,” Ali said with a smile, “I thought you’d never ask.”

“You name it,” Brad said. “Anything. Just name it.”

“Okay.” Ali looked suddenly solemn.

“Well?” Brad prompted.

“Anything?” Ali asked, still hesitating.

“Yes.”

“All right. Once we negotiate the price of your hotel room with Mr. Shadmi, you get to be the one who tells Miri.”

Ali darted away laughing, as Brad howled in protest. “Remember, you said anything,” Ali called as he opened the lobby door and motioned Brad inside.

Five

Levi Shadmi was short and stocky with a barrel chest that threatened to split his shirt up and down the back whenever he moved. His close-cropped hair had once been jet black but now was softened by liberal amounts of gray, and was nearly pure white at the temples. His eyes were a sparkling light blue and danced with hidden amusement as though he had just remembered the punchline of an exceptionally fine joke. Nathan stood next to his father, the resemblance between the two unmistakable. Brad liked Levi instantly, as he had Nathan.

“Shalom! Shalom!” Shadmi boomed, motioning them into chairs in the small office behind the hotel desk. “Ali, it is so good to see you home. How was America?”

“Fine. A great experience.”

“Wonderful. And you finished your schooling?”

“Yes,” Ali replied, the pride evident in his voice.

“Your brother Ahkmud tells me about your idea for the school each time he comes. Are you still planning to go ahead with that?”

“Yes. In fact, I leave for Nablus tonight to begin purchasing supplies.”

Shadmi nodded his approval. “Good! Good! It is an important thing that you are doing.”

Ali was obviously touched. “Shukran, my friend. Shukran.”

Shadmi turned toward Brad. “And you, Mr. Kennison—”

“Please,” he interrupted. “Just Brad.”

“Brad, then. Where do you come from in America?”

“Salt Lake City.” Then, remembering that many people overseas thought of the United States as either New York or California, he added, “That’s in Utah.”

“Yes, I know. We have been there. We visited your—how do you say it? The Square of the Temple?”

“Temple Square,” Brad answered. “When were you there?”

“Let’s see, about six years ago now,” Shadmi mused. “We were there just before the Six Day War, in January 1967. We lived in New York for two years on an assignment for the Ministry of Tourism. We decided to see America before we returned to Israel, and stopped in Utah on our way to California.”

“A very beautiful building, that temple,” Nathan said. “Are you Mormon?”

“Yes.”

“So am I,” Ali said proudly.

Both father and son looked startled, and stared at the young Arab.

“I joined the Mormon church four months ago. In fact, that’s how Brad and I happened to meet on the plane.”

“Well, well,” Shadmi said. “It is an interesting religion. Ali tells me you plan an extended visit to our country.”

“Yes.” Brad paused. “Exactly how long I am not yet sure.”

“And you need a place to stay?” Shadmi said.

“Yes, but I don’t want to be a problem. You have a hotel to run, and I’m sure every room is critical.”

“Every room but the one we had reserved for you,” Shadmi said with a warm smile. “You will stay here for as long as you wish. It is a pleasure for us to be able to do something for a friend of the Khalidis.”

“Brad is a proud American,” Ali said, voicing Brad’s biggest concern. “He is a proud American but not a rich one. He will not accept charity and yet he cannot afford luxury. What can you work out between you?”

“Two hundred fifty dollars a month for the room, which will include breakfast and dinner here in the hotel.” The words were spoken with finality, suggesting no opportunity for debate. “For three hundred you could eat lunch too, but I thought you might be gone during the day.”

Brad stared at him and then started to speak, but Ali beat him to it.

“Ah,” he said softly. “That is very generous, my friend. Too generous.”

“I expected to pay more than that just for a room,” Brad replied. “It is far too little. I have saved enough for several months, and I hope to get some work of some kind to help out. I can pay a fair price.”

The older man’s eyes were thoughtful as he looked back and forth at the two friends. “I have a proposal,” he said at length. “Nathan here finishes his leave day after tomorrow and must report back to his unit.” He looked at his son with evident pride. “Nathan is a colonel in the army.”

A colonel, Brad thought in surprise. In Viet Nam lieutenants under thirty were called “shavetails.” He guessed Nathan’s age at twenty-six or twenty-seven. With a start he brought himself back to listen to what Nathan’s father was saying.

“—and frankly I’m a little nervous about having Miri work here at night alone. We don’t expect any problems, but in Israel, terrorists are always a concern. We have a fellow who comes in from eleven to seven in the morning, but I need a desk clerk in the evenings. Would you be interested in that, Brad?”

“That would be great,” Brad said eagerly. “However, I can only speak English. Will that be a problem?”

“Ninety percent of our guests either speak or can understand English. And Miri or I will be around a good part of the time if there are special needs.”

“Then that sounds great.” Brad’s face reflected his gratitude. In one fell swoop he had solved three major problems—a place to stay, food, and keeping expenses down.

“Okay, in that case, if you work five evenings a week, Monday through Friday, let’s say from five to eleven—and we can be flexible if you want a specific evening for something—we’ll make the monthly rent two hundred instead of two-fifty.”

“No,” Brad protested. “The two-fifty stands, and I work to justify that.”

“But I would pay more than that for a clerk—” Shadmi saw the look on Brad’s face and stopped. “Okay, the two-fifty stands, but you can eat lunch here anytime you’re at the hotel, in addition to all other meals. That’s final,” he said firmly. “That way we both benefit. You can start tomorrow night.”

“Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” Shadmi boomed heartily. “Tomorrow I’ll have Miri show you what must be done. In the evening, there is not much that is difficult.”

Nathan laughed at Brad’s sudden look of dismay. “Did you meet Miri too? I am afraid my sister was upset last night.”

“It was nothing,” Brad said.

Shadmi sighed. “That’s my Miri.” He stood up, stuck his head out of the office door, and bellowed, “Miri!”

Brad held his breath, expecting that battering ram of sound to hurl to the floor everything not tied down, but all was silent for a moment. Then he heard the click of heels on the polished marble floor.

Miri was wearing a soft beige dress with dark brown trim and a neck scarf that pleasantly accented the golden tan of her arms and legs. Her head was high, the dark eyes flashing. If her father’s call had intimidated her in any way, she was disguising it well. There was no air of open defiance, but she was miles from cowering in abject fear of rebuke.

Then Brad decided that Shadmi’s thunderous summons must be his normal substitute for a public address system, for he was not angry with her at all. As she came to stand by him, he put his arm around her waist and gave her a gentle squeeze.

“Brad, this is my daughter Miri. I understand you met last night.”

Brad stood up. “Yes, we did,” he replied, noting with satisfaction that her cheeks had colored slightly.

“Miri, this is Brad Kennison, from Utah.”

She stepped forward and stuck out her hand, her eyes widening slightly. Her impression the previous night had been that of a sloppy, ill-kempt, and ill-mannered American—typical of so many found on the tourist lanes of the world. But now he was well groomed, neatly dressed, and quite pleasant-looking—quite good-looking, she thought begrudgingly. His gray eyes were clear and met her gaze steadily, holding out an obvious flag of truce. His look was friendly, his mouth on the verge of a smile if given the slightest encouragement. She glanced at her father and then decided Mr. Kennison had already received too much encouragement. “How do you do, Mr. Kennison.” The huskiness of her voice made it difficult to read, but it certainly wasn’t dripping with cordiality.

“Mr. Kennison is going to be staying with us indefinitely, Miri. We have worked out an arrangement.”

“I expected that you would,” she said with obvious sarcasm. She shot Ali a quick look, which he fielded with a bland smile.

“He will have his room and any and all meals for two hundred and fifty American dollars per month.” Her father stopped and looked at her as he heard the sharp intake of her breath. Her eyebrows shot up in a look of shocked surprise, confirming Brad’s conclusion that Shadmi had given him a super deal.

“And,” Shadmi said firmly, “he will become our evening desk clerk five nights a week. Starting tomorrow night.”

That succeeded in getting through her tight selfcontrol. Her eyes flicked instantly from surprise to anger. “Father,” Miri said, her mouth a tight line, “you don’t even know him!”

“I do now,” Shadmi said. “Besides, he’s a friend of Ali’s.”

She dismissed that contemptuously with a toss of her head. “But this morning you said I would be taking the evening shift.”

“Yes, that was before. I don’t like the idea of your being here alone. Once we get your Uncle Shlomo’s business going well, then I won’t have to be gone every night. For now, this is a good solution.”

“But he’s American!” From the way she spit out the word it was clear that ranked him somewhere between boils and bad breath.

For the first time, Shadmi’s voice turned sharp. “Miri! That’s enough!”

But it wasn’t sufficient to stop the explosion. Brad watched almost in awe as she turned on her father and launched into a tirade in their own language. Her body was rigid and poised like a spear in the hands of a javelin thrower. Her head was held high, regally, like a queen, revealing the graceful lines of her neck. As she tossed her head angrily, her hair reflected the overhead lights in quick bursts of brilliance. The dark eyebrows had drawn down almost to a point as her eyes narrowed into angry slits.

But Shadmi must have dealt with this towering temper before, for he stood his ground as the words tumbled out in a wild torrent. Brad caught the word American at least three times as she spoke.

Suddenly her father thundered out a blast with such force that it made his earlier summons seem like an asthmatic whisper. It was as though a huge boulder had been dropped directly over the cone of an erupting volcano. One instant there was fire and spewing lava. The next instant there was a complete cutoff. But one could sense the seething force inside threatening to find new vents of escape for the pressure. Miri shot Brad and Ali one quick, withering glance, then turned and stalked out.

Shadmi shook his head and heaved a great sigh. In the awkward silence it sounded like a force-six gale. “I hope you’ll forgive my daughter, Brad. In an hour or two she will calm down, and then she will be very embarrassed and come and apologize to you.”

Brad managed a tight smile, trying not to let his own anger show. “Look, if you promised your daughter the job of evening clerk, I can find something else.”

Nathan, who had remained unperturbed through his sister’s outburst and his father’s response, laughed out loud, his brown eyes deeply amused. “Promised her! When Father told her about it this morning we had a scene nearly as explosive as what you’ve just witnessed. She said she had too much to do in the evenings, that she couldn’t be here night after night. No, she is just angry that Father has accepted a lesser rate, and from an American at that. It has nothing to do with you personally.”

Ali stood up and poked Brad in the ribs. “I’m just glad I’ve repented of being an American.”

Brad shook his head, remembering the contempt in Miri’s voice when she used the word. “Somehow I thought Israel and America were allies.”

“I think we owe you an explanation for that,” Nathan said. “America is Israel’s greatest friend. Perhaps too great a friend.”

Brad looked puzzled.

“There are some in Israel—an increasing number—who think we depend on America too much. Now the oil crisis comes and suddenly America begins to pressure Israel to accept the unacceptable.” Nathan’s brow furrowed as he continued. “There are some who think America is too weak to stand for what is right anymore. They fear your country is willing to sell out Israel in order to be comfortable.”

It was evident from the somberness of Nathan’s tone that Miri was not the only one in the Shadmi family who had those concerns.

“There are many in America who agree with that one hundred percent,” Brad said, matching his own tone to that of the younger Shadmi’s. “Unfortunately, our leaders do not speak for the people often enough.”

“That we know,” Nathan agreed. “We have great confidence in America, the people. But in America the government? Miri just hasn’t learned to distinguish between those two yet.”

“Well,” Ali broke in, glancing at his watch, “Ahkmud should be here any minute now to pick me up. C’mon, I’ll walk you out.” Brad shook hands again with Shadmi and Nathan, thanking them.

As Brad and Ali reached the lobby doors, Nathan called, his face split by a wide smile. “If you’d like, Brad, I’ll train you on the desk tomorrow instead of having Miri do it.”

Brad gave him a thumbs-up sign. “You’re on! Terrorists I can face, but it might be wise to steer clear of her for a while.”

Six

By the time he finished breakfast—an interesting combination of cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, boiled eggs, hard rolls, and bitter, dark hot chocolate—Brad had overcome the effects of a second night of jet lag and was feeling nearly normal. He had awakened at the same time as the night before, but instead of fighting it, he had gotten up and written the postcards to Karen and all of his family. By three-thirty he felt sleepy again and had slept deeply until seven.

Brad took the stairs up from the basement dining room two at a time, actually looking forward to the day. However, his pace slowed abruptly as he came up into the lobby. The girl was at the counter helping a small group of tourists check out. He was hoping that either Mr. Shadmi or Nathan would be around to orient him to his new job and give him some directions on where he wanted to go today. Irritated by her previous manner, Brad walked up boldly.

The expression in her eyes was still impossible to read, but she managed a fleeting smile. “Good morning.”

“Hi,” Brad responded, encouraged by the lack of open hostilities.

“Mr. Kennison, I want to apologize for yesterday. I was very rude. I’m sorry.” The apology was obviously difficult for her. Her cheeks were reddening, and those large brown eyes dropped as he watched her.

“No apology necessary.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Is Nathan around? He was going to teach me about running the desk.”

“No, he’s gone until this afternoon. He said he’d meet you at four o’clock and show you then.”

“Okay.” Brad did some quick calculations. He’d just have to do the car first and Nathan later.

Miri looked at him steadily for a long moment. “I could train you now, but then maybe you’d rather face a terrorist.” She smiled sweetly.

Brad’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut again, and he felt his face go instantly hot. He shot her a glance, then looked away quickly when he saw the look of triumph that she was making no effort to hide. For a moment he sought for some appropriate response, but finally gave it up. She had him, and it was his own fault. He should have known she was still somewhere around the lobby when Nathan had called to him yesterday. Then he felt his embarrassment start to give way to anger. The comment he had made yesterday was not totally undeserved. His hackles started to rise. Why was this woman needling him?

“Look,” he said shortly, “could you tell me where I can find a good automobile mechanic? I need to get Ali’s car fixed.”

The air of triumph slowly dissolved, and the cool reserve slipped back into place. She thought a moment, tapping a pen gently on the counter. “Minor repairs or major?”

“Fairly minor. Ali thinks it’s a fuel pump.”

“There is a garage not too far from here, near the Damascus Gate. Do you know where that is?”

Brad nodded. He hadn’t the slightest idea, but it would have taken the combined fortunes of Howard Hughes and the Rockefellers to make him admit it.

“Go east from the gate one block to Saladin Street. Turn left. The garage is three blocks north on Saladin Street. It is on the right-hand side of the street. It’s not very big, so you will have to watch for the sign. It is called Mohammed’s Garage.”

“Mohammed?” Brad asked dubiously.

“Yes. Is something wrong?”

“Well, no. Do you happen to know a Jewish mechanic?” The instant it was out he regretted it. What in the world had prompted him to say that?

Miri’s eyebrows had lifted slightly, and her eyes started to smoulder. “You would rather not have an Arab mechanic?” she asked.

“No, it’s not that. I’d just rather—never mind, Mohammed’s is fine.”

But Miri wasn’t about to let him stop. “You would just rather what?”

His anger, now as much at himself as at this cool, raspy woman, threw him off balance. “I don’t know. It’s just that—well, you know how the Arabs are,” he finished lamely.

He had been mistaken about her eyes. They weren’t smouldering at all. They were like two dark brown chunks of antarctic rock. “Oh, really?” she murmured. “I’m an Arab.” With that she spun away and went into the office, slamming the door behind her.

* * * * * *

Brad set the guidebook aside, giving it up as a lost cause. He glanced at the wall clock. It was ten minutes to eleven, and his first shift as evening clerk at the Jaffa Hotel was nearly over.

It had been a busy evening, and Nathan had stayed around helping him as needed until almost nine-thirty. Brad hadn’t seen Miri since his return from Mohammed’s Garage, and had hurried through the lobby while she was on the telephone. Even now the very thought of Mohammed’s Garage made him wince. What in the world had ever made him say such a stupid thing? He had undergone a critical self-analysis since his morning blunder, and each time he concluded that his statement about Arabs did not reflect his true feelings. He thought of Ali and shook his head. She must think you’re really something, he thought. You let an Arab find you an incredible deal on a hotel. You let him find you a job the first day after you arrive in a strange city. And you let him give you a car without being asked. Then you come off the wall with, “Oh, you know how Arabs are.”

Brad shook his head, angry at himself that he should care what she thought. She was rude, impertinent, and had deliberately goaded him. He was so flustered by her, he had lost his balance for a moment. He felt a little better knowing he could honestly say those were not his true feelings, but he still felt so stupid to have said it. And to have said it to an Arab was even worse. Just how dense could one person be?

And speaking of being stupid, why had he assumed the Shadmis were Jewish? He groaned inwardly, torn between self-condemnation and irritation at Miri Shadmi. Suddenly Brad’s head jerked up. Hey, wait a minute. Answer your own question. Why did you think the Shadmis were Jewish?

He let his mind run swiftly over the past two days. Ali had never said anything about their nationality one way or the other that Brad could remember. But when Miri had launched into her tirade yesteday in the office, he had assumed she was speaking Hebrew. He shook his head. His ear wasn’t trained enough to distinguish between Hebrew and Arabic. He frowned, then nearly leaped off his chair. Nathan was a colonel in the Israeli army! Now maybe he didn’t know much about Hebrew, but he knew enough to know that Arabs didn’t become colonels in the Israeli army. Things began to click. Levi Shadmi. An Old Testament name. A Jewish name, not Moslem. So was Nathan. Another thought flashed back. When Ali had introduced Brad to Mr. Shadmi, the greeting had been, “Shalom, shalom.” A linguistic expert he was not, but he knew at least one word of Hebrew. His eyes narrowed as a slow, burning anger began to ignite down deep inside him. There was no excuse for his stupid remark, but fair was fair. And Miri Shadmi had not played fair!

Saud, the night clerk, came in shortly before eleven. After a brief self-introduction and a friendly conversation, Brad heaved himself to his feet with a sigh. “Well, I’m ready for bed. I’m glad to meet you. See you tomorrow night.” He started away and then, on a sudden impulse, turned back.

“Saud?”

“Yes?”

“Can you tell me a little bit about the Shadmis?”

A sudden wariness sprang into the Arab’s face. “The Shadmis?” he asked slowly.

Sensing his hesitation, Brad leaned back against the counter and briefly explained how he had come to be the evening clerk at the Jaffa Hotel. “So anyway,” he concluded, “it was very good of Mr. Shadmi to help me out, and I just wanted to learn a little more about him.”

“Yes,” Saud said, anxious now to help. “Mr. Shadmi is a very good man. They are a good family.”

“Are they Jewish?” Brad asked casually.

“But of course,” Saud said. “Nathan and Miri are what the Israelis call sabras.”

“Sabras?”

“An Israeli who is born in Palestine is a sabra. It comes from the Hebrew word meaning—how do you say it? Kahk-a-toos?”

The lack of comprehension on Brad’s face was evident, so Saud tried again. “Kahk-a-toos. It is the plant with sharp stickers.”

“Oh, cactus.”

“Yes, kahk-a-toos. The Israelis call themselves sabras because like the kahk-a-toos, they are sharp and prickly on the outside, but the flowers and the fruit are beautiful and very sweet.” Saud laughed, half to himself. “If you do not get stuck getting close to them. It is a good description of Israelis, no?”

Brad smiled ruefully. “It sure is, especially the first part.” His nose still smarted from running full tilt into her spiny exterior. “Are there other children?”

“There was an older brother named David. He was killed in the Six Day War. So now there is just Nathan and Miriam.”

“Miriam?” Brad asked in surprise. He hadn’t thought about it being a nickname. Miri could pass for Arabic with a dumb American. But Miriam? No way! So Jewish as to be unmistakable. He threw another log on the growing fire.

“Well, thanks, Saud. I’d better get to bed. I’m still trying to adjust to Middle Eastern time, and my need for sleep has just caught up with me.”

The latter proved to be an optimistic conclusion. Sleep didn’t have a chance for the next hour and a half, as he lay in bed polishing off some very fiendish plots having to do with one Miriam Shadmi, former Arab and current kahk-a-toos.

Seven

It was perfect. The hallway was long and narrow, and there was only one entrance into the small linen room. And Miri had just gone inside.

He hadn’t expected his opportunity to come so soon, but he was ready. A movie star, preparing to audition for the coveted role of the century, could not have rehearsed his lines any more thoroughly than Brad had prepared for this scene as he lay awake last night.

As he had come down from his room for breakfast and stepped off the elevator near the hotel’s dining room, Brad had seen Miri start down the hall toward the linen room. Her back was toward him, and she hadn’t seen him. Now he waited until she went inside, then walked softly down the hall after her, his tennis shoes making only the barest whisper on the tile floor. Stopping just short of the door, Brad leaned against the wall, trying to ignore the sudden tension winding up in him. The door was still open, and he could hear her moving around inside.

Suddenly the light clicked off, and she stepped out, her head half turned away from him as she shut the door. There was a stack of towels in her arm, which she nearly dropped as she turned and saw him and visibly flinched. The sharp intake of breath and the look of surprise were quickly noted, not without some satisfaction. Let her be caught off guard for once, Brad thought. He had been on the defensive long enough.

When Brad spoke, his voice was duly contrite. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” Half truth, his mind noted. He hadn’t really planned it that way, but to say he was sorry fell slightly short of reality.

Miri was quick. He had to grant her that. She recovered her composure almost instantly. “Excuse me,” she murmured, and started to push by him.

Brad moved sideways and blocked her way. “Could I speak with you for a moment?”

Miri stepped back a step and looked at him steadily. Her head was tipped back slightly, her face bathed in the pale light of the hallway, her eyes unfathomable pools of black. She was beautiful, but it was the beauty of a cobra with its head raised. Admiration was possible, but only from a safe distance.

“Yes?” she said coolly. The cactus needles flicked out like a well-oiled switchblade knife.

“I would like to offer you an apology,” he said in a soft voice.

It had the desired effect. He could visibly detect a slight lowering of her defenses, so he followed it up swiftly, his voice still dripping sweet innocence. “And then you can apologize to me.”

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, then dropped as her eyes narrowed to angry slits. “Apologize? What have I—?” Catching herself, Miri bit off the question. She lowered her head and tried to step around him. “If you’ll excuse me, the maid is waiting for these towels.”

He leaned casually against the opposite wall, cutting off her escape. “Oh, come now,” he said. “Surely you can stay a moment. I have heard so much about the great warmth and friendliness of the Arab peoples.”

Oh, how sweet it was! Even in the dim light of the hallway he saw her face flush. She looked up. “I—”

But Brad went on quickly, still holding the light, almost conversational tone in his voice. “Now, I’ve heard the Israelis aren’t like that. More stiff and reserved. Almost rude sometimes. Tell me, from an Arab’s point of view—are they really as bad as they say?”

He grinned easily into the wrath that blazed from her eyes. For a moment he thought she was going to hurl the towels into his face. She tried to push his arm aside, but he held firm.

“Please let me by.” Her voice was like the low rattle of a coiled sidewinder.

“Not until you apologize for being prejudiced.”

“Me?” she hissed.

“Yes,” he replied. “I have detected a definite anti-American bias in you. But I have a forgiving nature. I accept your apology.”

Miri stared at him, outrage momentarily overcoming the infuriated look on her face.

“Mr. Kennison!” The fury made her voice tremble. “We have a very large man cooking for us in this hotel. If you do not move your arm and let me pass, I am going to scream. You will find him to be a very unpleasant person.”

Brad looked thoughtful. “Hmmmm!” he mused. “Just out of curiosity, do you plan to scream in Hebrew or Arabic?”

He should have felt some of the generous magnanimity that was expected of the victor, but it felt too good to find her suddenly and totally flustered, as he had been yesterday.

Stepping aside, Brad bowed politely and waved her through. “It must be a terrible thing to be the only Arab in an Israeli family, Miss Shadmi. Someday I would like to hear how you cope with that.”

He turned and walked away, leaving her standing there, rigid as a steel fencepost. “Have a good day, Miriam,” he called over his shoulder.

* * * * * *

When Brad entered the hotel lobby shortly after four that afternoon, he was hot and frustrated. A blast of arctic air rolled toward him from the direction of the desk where Miriam was working, though she appeared not to look up. He pushed aside the slight feelings of guilt he had felt after his ambush that morning. If she wanted a game of freeze-out, he was in the perfect mood. He strode across the lobby without giving her a second glance, then stopped as Levi Shadmi’s voice boomed out.

“Brad, have you got a minute?”

Brad looked around and saw Shadmi’s bulky figure in the office behind the hotel desk. Shadmi came out and stood next to Miri as Brad reluctantly turned back and moved to face them. If Shadmi noticed the frost in the air, he gave no sign as he smiled in greeting.

Miri was studiously reading the Jerusalem Post and was ignoring them both.

“Nathan tells me that you caught on very quickly last night,” Shadmi said. “He thinks we were very lucky to get you.” He glanced quickly at his daughter, who only lowered her internal thermostat a few more degrees without looking up.

“Thank you,” Brad responded, pleased with what Nathan had reported to his father.

“Nathan said he did not show you anything concerning the gift shop,” Shadmi went on.

“No. There were only three or four guests who wanted things from the shop last night, and Nathan said he figured I had enough new things to learn for one night.”

“Well, it’s not much of a shop, but our guests like to have something right in the hotel to supplement their other purchases. We keep it open until nine each night, so you had better learn the basics as soon as possible.”

“Fine. Would you like me to do that now?”

“Oh, no,” Shadmi said. “Go on down and get your dinner first. When you start your shift at five, Miri will take you in and show you how it works.”

That was sufficient to break through her concentrated study of the newspaper. Her head shot up, and she gave her father an incredulous look. The only sign that he had noted her dismayed reaction was the glint of amusement in his eyes as he looked at Brad.

Shadmi turned and gave his daughter a light kiss on the cheek, oblivious to her withering stare. “I’ve got to go. I promised your Uncle Shlomo I would help him start ordering his equipment tonight. Tell your mother I should be home around eight.” With that he plunged into the office, grabbed a small briefcase, and left with a wave.

“Well,” Brad said, forcing a cheer he certainly didn’t feel, “I will be back in a few minutes.”

* * * * * *

Dinner helped his mood considerably, and by the time Brad returned to the desk he was almost looking forward to the next round of the Israeli-American war. The way he figured it, the score was now even, and if Miri chose to fire the first salvo, he was ready to up the tally to two to one, his favor. He smiled brightly at Miri, whose face was an inscrutable mask.

“Okay, I’m ready whenever you are,” he said.

She nodded, came out from behind the counter, and walked across the lobby without a word. Once inside the shop, she began the orientation without preliminaries, her voice flat and expressionless. He smiled to himself. A mannequin would probably have elicited more warmth than he was getting. He leaned against the small counter and watched her, only half listening to her instructions. There was one bank of fluorescent lights in the narrow shop, and her hair gleamed under its glow. The scowl she wore couldn’t quite obscure the fineness of her features—the high cheekbones and dark eyebrows, and, her most striking characteristic, the large brown eyes with their thick black lashes.

Miri wore a silver Star of David on a delicate chain, which further emphasized the soft line of her throat and the golden tan of her skin. She was wearing a navy blue skirt and a long-sleeved blouse of a pale blue silk, and Brad couldn’t help but admire the slimness of her figure. Without question, she was lovely. He felt a slight pang of regret that they were getting along like two bantam roosters competing for king of the barnyard.

Suddenly he jerked up, aware that she had spoken to him, “Oh, I’m sorry,” he murmured. “What was that again?”

“Am I boring you, Mr. Kennison?” she asked.

“Oh, no, I’m listening.” And then to quell her dubious look, he quickly added, “Olivewood statuary, prices on the bottom. Same with the brassware. Clothing is marked in the collar. Mother-of-pearl pins—large, three dollars; small, two.”

He grinned at her. The army had honed his ability to listen with one ear while his mind wandered. “I’m sorry if I seemed inattentive. I was just debating about asking you a question.”

“What?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “I was wondering if you carry any weapons here in the shop.”

“Weapons?”

“Yes, you know. Guns, knives, explosives. Just your usual stock of weapons.”

“Of course not. Why in the world would we—”

“That’s good,” Brad interrupted. “Then I would like to make one more attempt to apologize to you. But after this morning, I didn’t want to try it where you could lay your hands on something dangerous.”

Brad thought he noted a momentary flicker of a smile, but if so, she squelched it quickly. “There is no need for an apology,” she said.

“Maybe not, but I’d like to try. I promise, no blocking the exit this time. Okay?”

She folded her arms and looked at him, her eyes expressionless. But she didn’t say no, so Brad plunged in.

“We have an expression in America. It’s called putting your foot in your mouth.”

“I am familiar with this expression.”

“Well,” Brad gave her a tentative smile, “my father says that I was born with a special talent for doing just that, and he thinks that since then, I’ve greatly increased my birthright.”

That won him a smile. It was a tiny, reluctant smile, but it was a genuine smile nevertheless, the first he had seen. “I think your father sounds like a very wise man,” Miri replied.

“Right. Well, anyway, I wanted to apologize for my statement yesterday about Arabs. I’ve said a lot of dumb, stupid things in my life, but that one tops them all. I know it sounds phony now, but I don’t really feel that way.”

“Then why did you say it?”

He hesitated a moment. “Because you got me so irritated. When you made your comment about the fact that I would rather face a terrorist than you, I knew you were trying to get even with me.”

She tipped her head slightly to the side and looked at him quizzically. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought originally that was your comment.”

“Yes, I know. That is what my father means. Anyway, you threw me off guard, and I just blurted out that comment.”

“And your remarks about Israelis this morning? Are you going to tell me that you really didn’t mean those either?”

He smiled sheepishly. “No, I was just baiting you.”

She looked puzzled. “Baiting me? I don’t understand. What is ‘baiting’?”

“It means to try to needle someone, to make them react the way you want. Kind of like waving raw meat in front of a hungry lion.”

Miri nodded, her eyes mocking him. “I understand. And I was the hungry lion—or lioness. Correct?”

“Well, yes,” Brad said. “And that is the second part of my apology. At first I felt terrible about offending you with that blunder. Then when I discovered you were Israeli and not Arab, I was just plain ticked off.”

“You Americans and your expressions,” she smiled. “I suppose that means you were angry with me.”

“That’s close. Anyway, I decided to get even and…” He paused, trying to choose his words carefully.

“And so you ‘baited’ me.”

“Yes. And I apologize. That was unnecessary.”

Miri lowered her eyes, her fingers tracing a pattern on the counter. “Perhaps unnecessary, but not undeserved. I don’t know what prompted me to say that I was an Arab.” She took a deep breath. It was obvious that apologies didn’t come easily to her. “Your comment seemed so—so bigoted, so smug. So American. I reacted without thinking. It also was a stupid thing to say. But there are so many feelings between my people and the Arabs without having an outsider come in and be so smugly insulting.”

Brad felt himself bristle and bit back an angry retort. Her words stung like pebbles flung into his face. But she was right. It was stupid, it was smug, and it was insulting. It said something for her that an Israeli should so sharply feel the insult on behalf of the Arabic peoples. “I know words are cheap,” he said. “But I really don’t feel that way.”

“I hope not,” Miri said, still seeming only half convinced. She straightened up and became very businesslike again. “Well, do you have any questions about the store?”

“Just one,” Brad answered, letting his tone become as impersonal as hers. “You mentioned the mother-of-pearl pins were two and three dollars. Are all the prices in American dollars?”

“Yes, though they are in Israeli pounds also. Most guests from other countries either carry dollars or understand its exchange rate. We exchange all currencies at the desk, however.”

“Yes, Nathan showed me the conversion tables last night. I was just surprised at how common the dollar is, even here.”

“Oh yes,” she said, her voice again filled with bitterness. “The dollar, the fashions, the music, the politics. There is not much that America doesn’t influence.”

Brad nearly let the remark pass, remembering Nathan’s explanation for Miri’s caustic reaction to America, but recently he had gotten just a little tired of what seemed to be developing into a national and international pastime, and that was the “let’s-run-down-America” fad. “Oh, I agree,” he said, the sarcasm heavy in his voice. “Leave it to good old America and she’ll pollute the world, right?”

Miri’s head jerked up in surprise at his reaction, then her eyes hardened. “I didn’t really mean it that way. But yes, I suppose that is not too far from being right.”

“Is there anything at all you find acceptable about America?” Brad challenged.

“I think it is a beautiful country. The mountains, the lakes.”

“Wonderful! Now if we could just get rid of the people.”

“You twist my words.” Her dark eyes flashed. “But if you must know, I lived in America for two years. I got to know your people.”

“Correction. You lived in New York for two years.”

“Ah, and New York is not America?”

“New York is only part of America. There is much, much more.”

Miri’s head was up, her fists clenched into tight little balls. “New York was enough. I found Americans to be narrow, materialistic, concerned only about themselves, and quick to tell other countries how they must live.”

Brad shook his head in mock wonder. “You must have been a busy girl to meet all two hundred million of us in the two years you were there.”

Her voice was tight and low, vibrant with the anger that shook her. “I met some very nice people, but most of them were insufferably proud and arrogant.” She tossed her head. “Very much like I find you, Mr. Kennison.” She whirled around and started for the door of the shop.

“Tell me, Miss Shadmi,” Brad retorted quickly, “why is it you find prejudice against Arabs so repulsive, and prejudice against Americans so attractive?”

If she heard him she gave no sign. She stalked across the lobby, yanked her purse out from behind the desk, and plunged out the door, her head high and her back rigid.

Eight

Brad was lost again. Once more the Old City had put him in his place. This morning when he had set out for the Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock, he had carefully studied the map of Jerusalem that Ali had given him. His destination was on the far eastern side of the walled city, and the street to it lay in an exact straight-line shot from the Jaffa Gate. Or so it looked on the map.

Frustrated, Brad looked at his watch. It was nearly one o’clock, and his stomach was getting as growly as his attitude. Something had to change. He was coming to the conclusion that if he was really going to see Israel properly, he needed help. He thought of Ali, and shrugged it off. His friend was too busy with the school to shepherd a green American tourist around. And the thoughts of trooping around with a package tour was more distasteful than being constantly lost. Yet even if he could find his way, he wasn’t sure he would be satisfied. He felt a tremendous longing to understand this place, know its history, learn the stories and folklore that he was sure lay behind the sterile brevity of the guidebook. As little as he had seen, Brad felt the spirit of the Holy City, sensed that it was seeping into his soul and starting to purge out the frustration and irritability that had dogged him for the last four months. He hadn’t come to any life-altering decisions as yet, but the pressured feeling, that sense of smothering in pointlessness, was now dissipating. He was aware of a growing hunger to capture more of the spirit of this land.

Suddenly an idea hit him, and he stopped in midstride, nearly tripping a heavyset Arab woman with a large tray of bread balanced on her head.

“Of course!” Brad said aloud, drawing suspicious looks from several people in the river of humanity that was flowing past the dam he had created in the middle of the narrow street. Liking his sudden inspiration more with every moment, he started looking for a young boy to lead him back to the Jaffa Gate.

Twenty minutes later he pushed into the delightful coolness of the hotel lobby. Miri was behind the front desk, but if she had seen him come in, she gave no sign. He walked up to her, amused at her sudden scrutiny of the molecular structure of the countertop.

“Good afternoon, Miss Shadmi,” he said cheerfully. “Is your father in?”

“He’s in the shop,” she answered, not looking up.

“Thank you,” he called as he turned away, too pleased with his idea to let her set him off the track.

Shadmi, holding a large piece of olivewood statuary, was jammed into one corner of the narrow shop, surrounded by three elderly women. They were speaking what sounded to Brad like German or Dutch. The hotel owner lifted his eyes in a combined expression of greeting and pleading for deliverance.

Brad studied the crowded shelves idly until the women had completed their purchases and squeezed past him. “Hello, Mr. Shadmi.”

“Levi, please,” he said with a pleasant smile. “How are things today, Brad?”

“Fine, thanks. Have you got a minute I could talk to you?”

“But of course. Let’s go over to the office where we can sit down.”

“Oh, this is all right,” Brad said a little too quickly, thinking of Miri behind the desk. “It will take only a minute.”

Shadmi smiled knowingly. “Whatever you say.”

“I’ve just spent three hours lost in the Old City,” Brad said, plunging right in. “No, it wasn’t that bad,” he added quickly in response to Shadmi’s look of sudden concern. “I had a map and thought I could find my way.”

“Ah yes,” the older man sympathized. “Inside the walls is a different world, no?”

“Absolutely. Well, anyway, it started me thinking. I decided it might be of value if I had someone to show me around. Someone who knows the city—not only where things are, but the historical significance of them, the places of real interest. You know what I mean?”

“Of course. A guide.”

“Yes.”

“A very good idea.”

“I know so little about Israel. After I get better acquainted, then I’ll be fine on my own. It just seems like a shame to blunder my way around a city as significant as this.”

“Yes, I agree. A terrible mistake.”

“Well, I noticed the signs you have posted at the desk, about the guide service for either groups or individuals.”

“Ah!” Shadmi said with sudden understanding. “Yes, that is a service we can provide for our guests.”

“Can you tell me a little bit about it?”

“Well, we arrange whatever tour you are interested in. Usually we do this for groups, but occasionally some of our guests prefer to have a guide just for themselves or their family.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m thinking about. Is it terribly expensive?” Then noting the hesitation on the older man’s face, Brad quickly added, “And no deals please. You have done far too much for me already.”

Shadmi sighed. “Ali was right. You are too proud.”

“I know, but I really mean that. What are the regular rates?”

“You can schedule either half-day or full-day tours. A half-day is fifteen dollars. A full-day is twenty-five. We also have weekly rates.”

Brad hesitated, trying to keep the dismay out of his eyes. And yet, he thought, wasn’t it just as foolish to spend the money to come over here and not get the full benefit? He was saving significantly on his board and room.

He nodded. “That sounds good. About how far in advance would I have to schedule a guide?”

Shadmi laughed. “At the moment, fifteen minutes. Most tourists come here on tour with groups and have all their arrangements already made. Our service merely fills the needs of a few like yourself who come on their own.”

“So, if I wanted to start tomorrow—?”

Shadmi shook his head quickly. “Tomorrow is Shabbat and we do not provide the service on the Sabbath.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Brad said. “We have church tomorrow too. So I couldn’t go then either.”

The blue eyes widened a little. “Your church meets on Saturday?”

“Only in Israel. The President of our Church gave the branch here special permission to meet on the Jewish Sabbath since otherwise people would have to get off work to come to church Sunday, and so on. So anyway, Sunday would be my first opportunity too. Would that be possible?”

The older man started to nod, then frowned slightly. “There is one possible problem.”

“Oh?”

“You see, we have only two licensed guides. Nathan and—”

“Miri!” Brad finished for him, the dismay evident in his voice.

“Right.”

Brad’s mind was racing, looking for an out, as Shadmi went on talking.

“I know she was very rude to you, but it was because she worries so much about my finances. I am helping my brother Shlomo get a business started. I lent him some money, and she worries if we will pay the bills.” He was watching Brad closely. “She is an excellent guide. Even better than Nathan. In addition to guide school, she has also graduated from the university in history and archeology. Miri has a great love for Israel, past and present. She would be very good—if you are willing.”

Brad shrugged. There was no way he would offend this man after the great generosity he had extended. “That’s fine with me. She might have some feelings about it though.”

Shadmi brushed that aside. “It is nothing.”

Brad choked on that one, grateful that her father didn’t know about their last two encounters.

“Besides,” Shadmi added, “a guide is not paid to take only people she likes.”

A good point to be made with Miri, Brad thought. But he just nodded. “Then I’m willing.”

“Let’s go talk with her.” Shadmi pushed past Brad and went out into the lobby.

“Miri!” Shadmi’s deep voice boomed off the marble walls.

She had gone into the office and now came out, hesitating when she saw the two of them together.

“Do you have anything on the schedule for Sunday morning?”

“Just to be here to help you.” The words came out slowly, as though a sudden sixth sense had warned her there was a trapdoor beneath her feet.

“Good. I can cover the desk for that long. Mr. Kennison would like a guide to show him around Jerusalem.”

It was a credit to her that she was able to contain the anger that sprang to her eyes. Her voice was cool and polite. “Oh?”

“Yes, just the half-day tour. Is that okay with you?”

“Of course,” she said, calmly.

Brad felt a tremendous surge of relief, which she instantly flattened.

“And what price has Mr. Kennison negotiated with you for this service?”

“Miri!” Shadmi snapped. “That is enough!”

“That’s all right,” Brad said. “You might as well confess. Tell her what we agreed upon.”

It evened the score a little to see her triumphant look vanish as her father said, “Fifteen dollars per half day. Twenty-five for a full day’s tour.”

The lovely face was impassive as she nodded. “And what time would Mr. Kennison like to leave Sunday morning?”

“You’re the guide,” Brad shot back.

“Good! We’ll leave the hotel at four-thirty A.M.”

Shadmi hooted at the startled look on Brad’s face. “Miri thinks the best way to see Jerusalem for the first time is from the Mount of Olives at sunrise.”

“If you prefer to sleep in,” Miri challenged, “we can leave at nine o’clock.”

This one wasn’t on the defensive very long. “Fourthirty sounds fine. As I said, you’re the guide. Meet here in the lobby?”

She nodded, turned away, and stalked back into the office.

Brad held up his hand to cut off Shadmi’s apology. “We’ll be fine. Really. Now, let me ask you one other question. I’d like to learn as much about Israel as I possibly can. About the people, the history, the land, everything. Could you recommend some books and tell me where to find them? If I have slow time on the desk, that will give me something profitable to do.”

“Say no more,” Shadmi said, pleased at Brad’s request. “I have many books that would be very good in that area.”

“In English?”

Shadmi looked startled and then sheepish. “Some. Enough for now. I will call my wife and have her bring them when she comes to get me this afternoon. You can start tonight.”

Nine

“We’ll park and walk from here,” Miri said as she opened the door of the hotel’s Volkswagen van and got out. She didn’t wait for him. She didn’t even look around. These were the first words she had spoken to him this morning. Her eyes had stayed locked on the road ahead, her neck rigid.

She wore a softly tiered cotton skirt in a pastel floral print that fell gracefully around her tanned legs. Teamed with an embroidered peasant top, it gave her a charmingly cool look. Her feet were bare except for white sandals. She had a matching purse slung on her shoulder and carried a medium-sized notebook and a small Bible. Sunglasses were perched atop her head, nearly lost in the thickness of her dark hair. She was obviously used to Jerusalem’s summer heat and dressed accordingly.

Brad watched as she strode away, totally unconcerned as to whether or not he was coming. Then he reached over the seat, grabbed his camera bag, and climbed out to trail after her. It was just now approaching quarter to five and yet daylight had fully driven away the last remains of the night. He estimated it was only four or five minutes to sunrise. A high stone wall that ran next to the sidewalk blocked any view of the city, and he quickened his pace slightly in order to draw even with Miri by the time they reached the place where the wall’s height suddenly dropped in half.

Brad stopped in midstride and stared at the panorama that suddenly lay before his eyes, letting out his breath in a long, slow expression of amazement. “That is incredible!” he whispered in awe.

Her sense of timing was precisely correct. Though they were still in shadow, being below the crest of the Mount of Olives, the entire Old City of Jerusalem lay across the valley, bathed in the first gentle rays of the morning sun. The burnished, golden sheeting of the Dome of the Rock dominated the entire scene, drawing the eye to itself like a selfish debutante who wanted to be the center of everyone’s attention.

Brad reached instinctively for his camera, then slowly let his hand drop. Distraction was unwelcome at this point. He stood in silent awe, trying to let his mind soak up what his eyes were seeing.

“You were right, Miri,” he finally said, unconsciously using her first name. “This is the only way to see it for the first time.”

She nodded, pleased in spite of herself. “Each time of day has its own mood,” she said softly, “but I love this one the best. The city opens herself to view, innocently, fully, as though she had nothing to hide.”

“It is beautiful,” Brad murmured. “This is what I came for.”

Miri was watching him closely, searching for the slightest hint of mockery or sham, almost unwilling to accept the fact that he was as stirred by the sight as she hoped he might be. But it was evident that Brad was enthralled, almost unaware of her in his enchantment with the city before him. Her stiffness lessened slightly.

“The ancient rabbis had a saying: ‘The Holy One of Israel, blessed be his name, created ten measures of beauty for the world. He gave nine of them to Jerusalem.’ ”

They stood, silent for a moment, and then Miri shook off the mood, remembering her resolve to maintain a quiet aloofness. “There is a place to sit a little further down. I will orient you to the city there, and then we will go to see it.”

But before they sat down, Brad took out his camera. He had bought the best equipment he could find while he was in the Orient, and now he put it to its full use. He started with his wide-angle lens, the only one capable of coming close to embracing the full view. Then he went to his standard lens, clicking away steadily as he moved slowly from left to right trying to capture it all. When he switched to his telephoto lens, Miri let the professional guide in her take control.

“The corner of the wall, there directly across from us, is the pinnacle of the temple, the traditional site where Jesus was led by Satan and encouraged to jump.”

Brad lifted his camera and focused in on the spot.

“If you wait a moment, there is a truck coming up the hill. When he is directly under the pinnacle, it will give you a better sense of perspective in the shot.”

He followed her suggestion and was grateful immediately. The truck looked like a tiny bug laboring up the slope, dramatizing the massiveness of the walls. He clicked the shutter, then gave her a long look. “That was an excellent suggestion. Thank you.”

That was the pattern for the next five minutes. She would raise her arm and point out things for him, explaining briefly what it was and why it was significant. He would nod, focus, and record it on film. To call it a cordial, warm partnership would have been a gross overstatement, but the tension that had filled the air on the way over from the hotel had largely disappeared.

Satisfied at last, Brad put the camera away and sat down. “Thank you,” he said, sincerely meaning it. She had called his attention to things he would never have seen as important. “I’m ready for the orientation now.”

To his surprise, she sat down next to him. It wasn’t close enough to touch, but after their beginnings this morning, had Miri chosen a spot several feet away, it would not have surprised him.

For almost a full minute there was a comfortable silence, as Miri gazed at the panorama that lay before them. When she spoke, her voice was low, emphasizing the huskiness of it. “Yerushalayim—or Jerusalem, as you say it—is a strange choice of names for this place. Its name is made of the Hebrew word uru or yehru, which means city or dwelling place, and shalem, which means peace.”

“Like shalom?”

“Yes. It is the same word. To call it the dwelling place of peace is one of history’s great ironies. There are probably few places in all the world that have seen more blood and less peace than the land that lies before us. The city itself has fallen to conquering armies twenty-six times in recorded history.”

Brad gave a low whistle. “Twenty-six times!”

“It is a tragic history as well as a glorious one,” Miri nodded. “The ground that you see before you has literally been irrigated with the blood of those who have died here.” She held up her long, slender fingers and began ticking them off as she spoke. “Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Crusaders, Turks, British—each has come with its armies and left a trail of blood and horror in their wake.”

Her eyes were saddened as she gazed out across the city. “And always they leave Jewish bodies broken and dead beneath their feet. Under the Romans in A.D. 70, the siege was so terrible in Jerusalem that the people turned to cannibalism. If they tried to escape, the Romans crucified them. At one point there were waiting lists for crosses even though they were crucifying five hundred a night.”

Brad shook his head, deeply sobered as he pictured the fleeing refugees nailed to crosses, perhaps right on the very spot where they now sat.

Miri turned back to Brad. “Of course, Jews are not the only ones who have died. When the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, they butchered thousands of Arab Christians. Since they looked like the ‘infidel’ Arabs, they were cut down even as they held up crosses and begged for mercy. Several thousand Jews fled into the main synagogue. These Christians—,” the word was almost spat out in contempt, “promptly set fire to the building and drove anyone who tried to escape back into the flames at the point of the sword.”

She stood up, suddenly restless. “When it was over, the Crusaders sheathed their swords and trooped off to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was Sunday, and the Holy City was in Christian hands once again.”

“Not Christian hands,” Brad corrected softly. “Only hands that carried crosses. There is a great difference.”

She turned around slowly and measured him with those somber eyes. The defiant set of her jaw relaxed, and he thought he detected just a flicker of admiration in her voice. “Yes, I suppose you are right.”

Choosing his words carefully, Brad spoke again. “And it is not over yet, is it?”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, her voice challenging.

“Jerusalem is still not ready to earn her name, is she?”

Miri took the sunglasses from their perch on top of her head and put them on, shaking her head once to rearrange her hair. The glasses hid her eyes, making it harder to read what she was feeling, but her face was sober. “You are right. The characters have changed, but the drama is still the same. Now it is the Arabs who encircle the city, and the Jews who wait for the final assault on the walls.”

“While the world stands by, empty gasoline cans in hand, hoping all will turn out well in the end,” Brad added.

To his surprise that brought a sad smile to her lips. “Exactly. At least well for them. And they grow impatient when the Israelis are so stubborn and uncooperative.”

Brad spoke slowly and solemnly. “Now I personally have never met an Israeli who was like that.”

Miri threw back her head and laughed out loud, a totally uninhibited and delightful sound. “Touché, Mr. Kennison. Touché.”

Brad smiled back at her, relieved he hadn’t triggered another explosion.

“Well.” Miri picked up her purse and notebook and stood up. “Enough of this gloom. Let us stop looking at Jerusalem from a distance and go to meet her. She has seen much sorrow, but she has also seen much joy.”

Shouldering his camera bag, Brad stood up to join her. “I am anxious to come to know her well.”

* * * * * *

Thirty minutes later they stood inside the Garden of Gethsemane. It had been locked at this early hour, but Miri had found one of the Catholic priests she knew, and he had opened it for them.

The site lay in the bottom of the Kidron Valley, the deep, narrow ravine that lay between the Mount of Olives and Mount Moriah or the temple mount in the Old City. Beyond the walls of Gethsemane, the walls of the Old City loomed bright golden in the morning sun. A thick, bushy vine with violet and burgundy flowers hung over the stone walls that formed the garden’s enclosure. The bright pink oleanders were thick clumps in each corner. Numerous flowers and small shrubs, set off by neat, stone-lined walkways, were well tended within the garden. But the eight olive trees were what arrested the gaze and invited the attention. They were grotesque, the trunks twisted and gnarled as though they too had suffered the agony of that night two thousand years before. Their silver-gray leaves stirred slightly in the morning breeze.

Brad stood quietly, awed to think that he stood near the spot where the Savior had knelt that night while his apostles fought against, and then surrendered to, sleep. Here Christ had bowed beneath the tremendous weight of the combined sins of the world and had suffered so intensely that his very vessels had ruptured under the strain and oozed blood from every pore. And now he stood here where it had happened. He was transfixed, touched, and moved more deeply than he had been for a very long time.

Miri finally spoke softly at his side. “Originally the olive grove was much larger than what you see here. The olive trees are very old, perhaps well over a thousand years old.

“They are—” Brad was going to say beautiful, but that was inadequate. He groped for a better word. “I don’t know, awesome, I guess.”

“The olive is a peculiar tree. When it dies or is cut down, the roots send out new shoots that grow into new olive trees. So if these trees do not date back to the time of Jesus, they spring from the roots of trees that were here when he was.” She pointed out one of the nearest trees. “See, there you can see a new, young tree growing out of the parent root.”

Brad nodded, still caught in the mood of reverence that gripped him.

“I suppose that is why the ancient prophets compared Israel to an olive tree,” Miri mused. “So many times our enemies have cut down the tree and assumed we were dead.”

Brad looked startled, remembering the allegory of the olive tree in the Book of Mormon.

“The Babylonians, the Romans, the Nazis. Each one has tried to kill the mother tree, and each has failed.”

The aptness of the symbolism was beautiful and caught Brad’s imagination. “And the modern state of Israel is the newest shoot,” he said with understanding. “A new tree comes forth out of the old root.”

Miri glanced at him sharply, the surprise evident in her eyes. “Yes, exactly.”

“And I guess I can’t blame Israel for getting a bit upset when she sees the world picking up their axes again,” Brad said, meeting her speculative gaze. “But this time the tree itself will survive. It may take a few solid hits. But it will survive.”

The expression on Miri’s face was a study in puzzled thoughtfulness. But all she said was, “Would you like to go inside the church and see the rock of the agony?”

Brad shook his head. “Not now. Maybe some other time. The garden is what I came to see.”

He fell silent again as he leaned on the fence and peered at the trees, trying to visualize what it must have been like on that night. Miri stood silent, sensing his desire for quiet. Finally he straightened up and nodded. “Okay. Shall we go?”

Ten

They had been on the temple mount for over an hour now, touring the majestic, almost awesome beauty of the Dome of the Rock, holy shrine to Moslem, Christian, and Jew. When they had left the Garden of Gethsemane, Miri had lapsed into silence, and Brad assumed she had retreated behind her wall of aloofness. But as soon as they had come through St. Stephen’s Gate, she had warmed again. They became tourist and guide, he ignorant but eager, she knowledgeable and sharing. Soon there was an open interchange, like that between a tutor and pupil.

Now they sat in the shade of the huge eucalyptus trees that towered over the small grassy area just south of the Dome of the Rock. Two small Arab children were playing tag among the trees, and Miri watched them with amused eyes. She was half turned from him, her head tipped slightly back, her face in profile. Filtered sunlight made gentle patterns on her face as the slight breeze rustled the leaves overhead.

Suddenly Miri seemed to sense his gaze, and looked a bit startled. “I’m sorry. I was watching the children. Are you ready to continue?”

Brad shook his head.

“No?” she asked, her eyebrows lifting in surprise.

“No. It’s lovely here.” He turned and gazed at the Dome of the Rock, towering above them, its golden dome like a giant sun hurled down to rest on the blue-tiled walls that cradled it. “It really is an incredible building. It’s magnificent inside and out.”

“I have seen it a thousand times and yet, even now, it seizes the eye and leads it upward against its will.”

“And to think that it is thirteen hundred years old,” Brad marveled. “In the western United States, if anything is more than a hundred years old we say it is ancient. And then to think that just west of here are the remains of the original walls of Herod’s temple. Those stones were here seven hundred years before the Dome was built.”

“And just to the south of where we sit is Hezekiah’s tunnel, carved through solid rock when the Assyrians laid siege to Jerusalem, seven hundred years before that!”

Brad was impressed. “This place literally breathes history. It’s fascinating!”

Miri gazed at him steadily. “I am glad you sense it too. Americans usually jog through the holy sites, snapping pictures, dropping cigarette butts, and asking where the nearest restrooms are.”

At first it was tempting to let that pass, but it was clear that she was taunting him for some reason. Brad picked off a blade of grass, stuck it in his mouth, and chewed on it reflectively for a moment.

“Yes,” he finally mused, “I understand how you feel. When I was in the service we had a typical Jew in my platoon. His name was Samuel Goldstein. He had a big nose, smoked cigars, and was really quite obnoxious.”

He ignored the sudden flash of lightning in her eyes and the sharp intake of breath. He turned and gave her a look of bland innocence, inwardly tensing for what was obviously building rapidly into an explosion equaling Vesuvius, Krakatoa, and the bomb at Hiroshima all together. “Actually, I had never known any Jews, and so I was glad to finally meet one.” He emphasized the last word ever so slightly.

But it was enough. Gradually he could see the light dawn in her eyes, defusing the imminent eruption as swiftly as it had been armed. “Okay,” Miri apologized grudgingly. “I get the point. Not all Americans are that way.” Then she smiled. “Was there really a Samuel Goldstein?”

Brad nodded. “There really was. My bunkmate, Marvin Barnard, and I used to lay awake nights devising ways to deflate this guy’s ego. One night Marvin asked me if I thought Sammy was typical of Jews. I was surprised. Growing up in Utah, I had never met any Jewish people, and I admitted that I hadn’t even thought about Sammy being a Jew. I just thought of him as a first-class dork.” He grinned at her. “Do you know what a dork is?”

“No, but I think I get the meaning from the context.”

“Yes. Well anyway, Marvin looked at me kind of funny, and he just said, very quietly, ‘Oh, that’s good.’ The way he said it made me curious, so I asked him why he thought it was good.” Brad looked at Miri. “Do you know what he said?”

“That he was Jewish too?”

“Yes.” Brad paused. “Marvin saved my life once in Viet Nam. He was killed three weeks later trying to help evacuate some wounded out of a mortar barrage. He was nineteen at the time. I consider it one of the privileges of my life to have known him.”

“I stand rebuked,” Miri admitted with no rancor. “I know that all Americans are not—” She paused, seeking for an appropriate term.

“Soft? Spoiled? Coddled?” Brad supplied.

Miri nodded. “You even have low-calorie dog food so your pets won’t get too fat. Somehow that is a problem many people in the world have a hard time getting very concerned about.”

“Guilty as charged,” Brad said. “But we are not all that way. There are some who care, some who still stand for what is right. I’ll grant you, there may not be as many as there should be. But there are many—a great many—who love their country and try to maintain her greatness.” Miri didn’t respond to that, and Brad decided to risk a comment of his own.

“If you want to comment on national character, the Israelis are not without their own problems. It would seem that little more softness on your part might go a long way to solving some of your problems.”

“We are well aware of our own problems,” Miri bristled, “but lack of softness isn’t one of them. All of the soft ones marched to their death in the ovens of Dachau, Buchenwald, and Auschwitz.”

“And now,” Brad said softly, “here stands the invincible, tough-minded Israeli, a class of super-warriors, ready to tackle the whole world if necessary.”

“Yes,” she snapped. “And with the rest of the world frantically waiting at the base of the Arab oil spigots, we may have to stand alone.”

“And so you trust only in yourselves,” Brad said, knowing that this was rapidly getting out of hand, and yet not willing to let it drop.

Miri leaned forward, her brown eyes nearly jet black with anger. “You tell me—who else can Israel count on but herself? America?” She spat out the word with contempt.

Brad met her challenging stare and then slowly said, “When the barbarians were approaching Rome, someone said, ‘The Roman world is falling, yet we hold our heads erect instead of bowing our heads.’ ”

Miri leaped to her feet, startling a group of tourists dutifully following their guide toward the Dome of the Rock. “Spoken like a true Christian,” she said bitterly. “Turn the other cheek? Love your enemies? Tell that to the athletes who were butchered in the Munich massacre last year! Oh, wouldn’t Yasser Arafat love that, because he’s waiting with a razor at our throats to slash either cheek that turns to him.”

She snatched up her purse and books and glared down at him, breathing hard. “Go out into the real world, Mr. Kennison! Go out on the Golan Heights. Go into the Gaza strip. Go to the Sinai. You’ll not hear hymns and prayers there. You’ll hear the shriek of artillery shells, the screams of the dying, the cries of children as they huddle over the dead bodies of their parents. You go there and then talk to me about God and Christianity!”

Miri spun around, but before she could take a step Brad quietly said, “I’ve been there, Miri.”

She turned back slowly, caught off guard by the quiet intensity of his voice.

“I’ve been there, and I’m ready to talk about God and prayer. Why is it you Israelis think you have the corner on suffering? Do you think death is any sweeter in the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta than in the sands of Sinai? Do you think Vietnamese children have no tears? Do American mothers receive their dead sons with any less grief?” He took a deep breath, getting just a bit angry himself. “And while we’re at it, why is it that you can criticize and question and challenge my country and my religious beliefs, while if I so much as raise a tiny cloud of doubt about yours, you jump to your feet and storm off as if I’ve insulted everything you hold holy?”

Miri flinched visibly, and he could tell he had sent that one rocketing home. Her mouth opened and then shut again.

“Besides which,” he said more gently, “it’s not like an Israeli to run from a fight. If your convictions can’t stand up to criticism, then they’re not worth defending, right?”

“They can stand up to anything you can say,” she retorted. But the anger in her voice was lessening, and she walked back over and sat down facing him. After a long pause she said, “You can be an infuriating person, you know.” She was half daring him to take issue with her again.

“I know.” He grinned. “It’s one of my natural talents. And you—you really get kind of feisty when you’re angry, don’t you?”

“Now you’re teasing me.”

“Yes, I guess I am. But it’s only my way of saying I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you angry. Here we’ve gone a full three hours without a clash. I guess it was only natural that it just kind of boiled over again.”

“My father says boiling over is my natural talent,” Miri admitted, managing a genuine smile. It wasn’t enough of a smile to bring in the photographers for, but it represented miles of progress from a few moments earlier. Then she grew serious again.

“Now that I have a little better control of myself, may I try to answer your question?

“Did I have the gall to ask a question in the midst of all that?”

Miri laughed, and Brad knew that for the moment at least they were back on safer ground. “Actually, it wasn’t a direct question. But it was implied. You were asking why we don’t turn to God.”

“Yes, I guess I was.”

She spoke in a low voice but one filled with intense emotion. “To what god would you have us turn? The god of the Hebrews who watched six million of his children go to their deaths in gas chambers and did not answer? The god of the Lutherans whom the Germans worshipped as the trains rolled eastward to the death camps? Or maybe the Catholic god who presided over the Vatican while they ignored the pleas of Jews begging for help to escape the Nazis? Tell me, Mr. Kennison, to which of these gods should the Israelis bow their necks?”

He started to answer, but she went quickly on. “For three thousand years we have been God’s chosen people. For what are we chosen? Look at our history and there is only one answer. We were chosen to suffer. What a privilege, that God should select us! We waited all these years for God to help us. We went like sheep through the slaughtering pens. Now we will help ourselves. We have bowed the neck long enough. Now we bend the bow and unsheath the sword, and call on all Israel everywhere to die like sheep no more. If we die, we will die like human beings.”

Gradually the passionate intensity faded. Her eyes focused, and she looked at him directly. “And that is the answer to your question.”

Brad met her gaze and then said gently, “Why is it that we alternate between intense heat and bitter cold, you and I?”

His question took her back, and immediately her defenses went up again. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, here we are scorching each other now, and yet in the car on the way over I nearly froze to death.”

“Froze to death?” Miri looked puzzled, then laughed. “Oh, yes. Of course. I was very angry with you for making me serve as your guide.”

Brad had a pained expression. “Somehow I had sensed you might feel that way. May I make a confession?”

“Of course.”

“When I asked your father for a guide, I had no idea it was you. When he told me, I nearly died. I would have backed out except that after all he has done for me, I didn’t feel I could.”

“Well, that makes me feel better.” She pulled a wry face. “I think.”

“Can I make another confession?”

“I think I’m up to it.”

“I’m glad I didn’t back out. You are exactly what I was hoping for.”

Miri raised an eyebrow. “You wanted the hot and cold?”

Brad laughed. “Well, it certainly keeps one alert. But no, that’s not what I meant. I decided to hire a guide because I wanted to come to feel the spirit of this land. I told your father that, and he said you were the best.” His eyes caught hers and held them. “And he was right.”

Miri lowered her head, suddenly embarrassed by his sincerity. “Thank you. This morning I dreaded it, going through the day pointing out things to you while you taunted me, laughing at me behind my back.”

“I have never laughed at you,” Brad said softly. “Nor even felt like it.”

“I finally realized that. I could sense you really did want to see Jerusalem. That made me feel better.”

“Good. Then I have a proposal. What do you say to the idea of setting up an Israeli-American détente?”

A smile stole slowly over Miri’s face, revealing even white teeth and a slight dimple in her left cheek. “Détente? Yes, it is a good word. The two hostile superpowers agree to seek more friendly relations.” She stuck out her hand. “As you Americans say, ‘It is a deal.’ ”

Brad took her hand, pleased at this sudden turn of events. “Yes, it’s a deal. On one condition though. That you stop calling me Mr. Kennison. It’s just Brad, okay?”

“Okay.” She stood up and brushed down her skirt. “Then let us continue our tour. We have—” A horrified look suddenly sprang to her face. “Oi vavoi!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Oi,” she said again. “This is terrible. Can you wait here for a moment? I must make a phone call. I’ll be right back.”

“Can I help you?”

“No, no! I will only be a moment.” She plunged away, leaving Brad to stare after her.

In three minutes she was back and obviously flustered.

“Brad, I’m terribly sorry,” she burst out as she came up to him. “But I have a problem.”

“Oh?”

She blushed but looked him directly in the eye. “I made an appointment this morning, and I forgot all about it until right now.”

“Hey, that’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I made it deliberately yesterday so I would have an excuse to end our tour as soon as possible.” Her flush darkened. “I was afraid that by now we would both be ready to quit.”

Brad checked his watch. To his surprise, it was ten after nine. “I only contracted for a half-day tour, and we’ve already been going for almost five hours.” He grinned at her. “Was I really that fearsome?”

She was too embarrassed to return his smile. “I made an appointment to go shopping with a girl friend at nine o’clock. I tried to call her when I remembered, but she has already left. I am terribly sorry.”

“If you’re sorry, we’re making progress.” He smiled, his gray eyes teasing. “It’s all right, really. In fact, I’d like to stay here on the temple mount for a while anyway. I’ll just poke around and take more pictures. I can find my own way back.” He pulled a face, remembering his last two excursions into the Old City. But there had proved to be an abundance of little Arab boys waiting to fatten their purses. “I’ll be fine. Really.”

“I feel badly about it,” she said. “I promise it won’t happen again.” Her face dropped. “Oh, that is if you still want the guide service.”

“Absolutely! Tomorrow if possible.”

“Yes, tomorrow is fine.” She touched his arm. “Thank you, Brad. I really am sorry.”

“I know. Hurry now or you’ll be even later. I’ll be fine.”

He watched her thoughtfully until she was out of sight, then hoisted his camera bag to his shoulder. “All right, Jerusalem,” he said cheerfully, “here I come again.”

Eleven

Ali finished the rest of his custard dessert and pushed back from the table with a satisfied sigh. “Though I protested heartily, thank you for your insistence that I join you for dinner, Brad. That tasted great.”

Brad grinned. “For someone who said he wasn’t really hungry, you tanked away a healthy amount of food.” The hotel’s Arab waiters knew Ali well and had brought out heaping servings of each course. Brad had finally surrendered after the roast chicken and rice, but Ali had had an extra helping of salad, two more rolls, plus a generous portion of dessert.

If Ali felt any embarrassment, he had it well under control. “Just be glad you aren’t paying for it by the pound,” he retorted, patting his stomach with satisfaction.

“It gives me shudders just to think of it.”

“Actually, you shouldn’t be paying for it at all. I didn’t come here to get a free meal. So let me pay for my own lunch.”

“Absolutely not. I am here in this hotel at a greatly reduced rate for my room and meals, I have a job, and I have a car to get around in, all because of you, my friend. Buying lunch is the least I can do.”

Ali’s face was split by that infectious grin that brightened everything around it. “Well, I always like to help a man do his Christian duty.” He looked up and waved. “Hey, there’s Miri.”

Brad turned and waved too, then watched her come down the stairs with that easy, flowing grace with which she always moved.

“Hello, Ali,” she said. “Hello, Brad. May I join you?”

“Sure.” Brad pulled out the chair between them. “Have you had lunch yet?”

“Yes, I ate at home with Mother.”

“It’s probably just as well,” Brad said, gesturing to the stack of dishes surrounding Ali’s place. “There may not be much left in the kitchen.”

Ali gave her a contented, lazy smile. “Brad was paying.”

At that moment one of the waiters saw her and hurried over. “Would you care for some lunch, Miss Shadmi?”

Miri shook her head, but the waiter was anxious to please the owner’s daughter. “Would you like some dessert, please?”

“No, thank you, Avraham. I’m fine.”

“We have some iced lemonade. Very good.”

“Okay,” she laughed, giving up in the face of such persistence.

“Mr. Kennison?” he asked.

“Yes, that does sound good,” Brad answered.

Ali held up a hand and forestalled the waiter before he could even ask. “No, thank you. I’ve got to get going. They are supposed to deliver the paint for the school this afternoon.”

As the waiter moved away, Miri turned to the young Arab. “So how is the school coming, Ali?”

He beamed. It was his favorite subject. “Wonderful. I have all the furniture and equipment now. We found a building in Bethlehem. When we get it painted and fixed up, it will do very nicely. My brother Ahkmud and Brad have been helping me, so we should easily be ready in time for school. We will open on the third of September, not even two weeks from now.”

“What you are doing is an important thing for your people,” Miri said, her voice warm with praise. “I hope it succeeds.”

“How can it fail?” Ali asked. “Brad is going to teach for me.”

“He is?” She turned to Brad in surprise. “You are?”

“Only because one Ali Khalidi twisted my arm,” Brad growled good-naturedly. “And only until his regular Arabic English teacher can start around the first of October.”

Avraham came bustling out of the kitchen with two glasses of lemonade on a tray and set them on the table, while Miri looked at Brad in astonishment. “I didn’t know you spoke Arabic!”

“You bet,” Brad intoned seriously. “I have it nearly mastered now. ‘Yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘you’re welcome.’ The rest is still coming.”

“We’re trying an experiment,” Ali explained to her. “Like your ulpans, where you teach Hebrew to the immigrants through teachers who do not speak the immigrants’ language. Only Brad will be teaching children six to fourteen who speak no English.”

Miri gave Brad an appraising look, almost as though she saw him with new eyes, but she sipped her lemonade without speaking.

Ali stood up. “Well, I’d better get going. Thanks for lunch, Brad. See you tomorrow?”

“Right. Eleven or eleven thirty?”

“Fine.” Ali waved, then turned and ran lightly up the stairs and was gone.

For a moment they both fell silent, sipping their lemonade. Miri watched his fingers as he traced the patterns in the tablecloth. She studied him quietly, keeping her eyes lowered, not wanting to draw his attention to her scrutiny. She smiled briefly as she thought of her first impressions and their first few encounters. They still had flashes of fire, but out of the tourist-guide relationship mutual respect and genuine friendship were developing. His demand for knowledge about everything they saw constantly surprised her. He was like a desert wadi soaking up the first rains of winter. Equally surprising was his knowledge of the Bible. She had guided some Christian ministers who knew the scriptures thoroughly, but other than that, Brad’s knowledge was a rarity.

She looked up and caught him studying her closely. Slightly flustered, she smiled, but then almost instantly became sober. She decided to go ahead with her purpose in coming down to the dining room.

“Brad, may I ask you something?”

“Of course,” he said lightly. He became serious as he sensed her hesitancy. “Yes, go ahead.”

“I do not wish to offend you.”

“Offend me? Why would you offend me?”

“It is about your religion.”

Startled, Brad nodded. “Okay.”

“Father says you are a Mormon.”

“Yes.”

“Are Mormons Christian?”

“Yes. Actually Mormon is a nickname given to us. The formal name of our church is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

She was silent for a moment, digesting that. “Do you—I mean, does your church believe that Jesus was the Son of God?”

“Most definitely.”

“In the literal sense, not just in a symbolic sense?”

“Absolutely. We believe that God was his literal Father, and Mary his mother.”

“Doesn’t that seem—” She stopped, the indecision clear on her face.

“Go on,” he urged.

“Well,” she said, still unsure of herself, “first maybe I ought to explain something. When I studied history at the university, I specialized in the period of the Second Temple—what you would call the Christian era. I was required to study much of the Christian literature of that period, including the New Testament. And, of course, to become a guide, we had to learn Christian history and study the New Testament quite intensively.”

“Did that bother you?”

“Oh no, not in that sense. My grandfather, whom I never knew and who was an Orthodox Jew from Eastern Europe, would not even have allowed me to speak the name of Jesus in his presence. But he and his generation vanished into the gas chambers of Nazi Germany. Now all but the most Orthodox Jews are willing to accept Jesus as a great rabbi, though, of course, we reject the Christian notion that he was the Son of God, or the Messiah.”

“I understand.”

“There are many things in the life and teachings of Jesus that I like. I am fascinated with him as a man and a teacher. But the theology is very puzzling.”

“In what way?”

“Okay. You say that you believe Jesus was the literal Son of God?”

“Yes.”

“And Mary, was she divine too?”

“No, she was a mortal woman. In fact, I picture her to be very much like yourself.”

Miri’s head shot up, and she stared at Brad.

“Hey!” he added hastily, “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I am not offended.”

“All I meant was that I picture Mary much like you—a young Jewish girl, a native of Israel. I suppose she didn’t have to be, but I picture her as very lovely.” He hesitated, then added softly, “Like yourself.”

Her face flamed red as she lowered her eyes. “Thank you.” She was silent for a long moment, then said, almost shyly, “Do you know what Mary’s name is in Hebrew?”

“No, what?”

“It is the same as my name. Miriam.”

“Ah.”

Again there was a long pause. “You are not making it any easier to ask my next question,” she finally said.

That surprised him. He thought he was being the model of cooperation. “I’m sorry,” he answered, although he wasn’t sure exactly for what. “Please go ahead.”

She took a deep breath and plunged in. “Do you believe Jesus was a god before he came to earth to be a man?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t find that peculiar? That a god has to become a man in order to save other men? If you told me it was the other way around, I might question the reality of the story, but at least it would be logical. Vice versa is profoundly illogical.”

Brad toyed with his glass, nodding slightly, his eyes thoughtful. He remembered that the Apostle Paul had said that the Jews found Jesus to be a stumbling block. To say that Jehovah, the god they had worshipped for centuries, would divest himself of that majesty and glory, enter life through a stable, go about like other men, and, most incredible of all, allow himself to be arrested, whipped, spit upon, crucified! No wonder that Jesus as the Messiah caused them to stumble. Only the Spirit could render such a statement not only logical, but the only possible choice.

He looked up at Miri, knowing that a quick answer now was not what she needed. Groundwork had to be laid, foundational concepts established, before she was ready for the answer. And he was not prepared to lay that foundation properly. Not yet.

To his surprise, she reached across the table and touched his arm gently. “Now it is I who have offended you,” she murmured.

“Oh no, I am not offended. It’s just that your question is a good one, but a deep one. I was trying to think how best to answer it.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I can answer your question.”

It said something for this woman that her reaction was that of disappointment rather than triumph.

“But,” he went on quickly, “the problem is not that there are no answers, only that I am not prepared yet to answer you.”

She nodded. “I understand. Thank you for your honesty.”

“But I promise you this,” Brad vowed solemnly. “I will get those answers and share them with you.”

Twelve

Brad put down his paintbrush and pulled out a rag to mop his brow. “You know, I can’t figure out whether the Lord put the Arabs in the Middle East because they like the heat, or whether they like the heat because the Lord put them in the Middle East.”

Ali grinned down at him from the top of his ladder. “What makes you think we like the heat?”

“Well, look at you two. Here I am sweating like a polar bear in a sauna bath, and your foreheads aren’t even damp.”

Ahkmud made a face. He was obviously a Khalidi, though more darkly complexioned and at least twenty pounds heavier than his younger brother. “Allah has blessed you with poor eyesight and no sense of smell, my friend.” He was sitting below the ladder on the floor, painting the baseboards of the schoolroom. “Ali smells like the unwashed colt of a donkey, and he is doing hardly any work at all.”

“Ah!” Ali cried in mock outrage. “Only because I grow faint from the odor that rises from beneath me.”

Ahkmud grabbed the ladder and rocked it wildly. “Silence, little pup, or I shall bring you down to where the air is more fair.”

Brad grinned broadly, watching the two brothers. In the last few days as they painted the classrooms in Ali’s new school, they had kept him laughing with their gruff insults and mock battles, which did not disguise the warm affection that lay between them.

Ali dipped his brush into the can and leaned out, holding it so it was directly over Ahkmud’s head. “Your tongue is slick as a serpent’s belly and black as a Bedouin tent. One more word and I shall paint it white and perform a great service for the whole of mankind.”

At that moment a great drop of paint broke free of the brush and plummeted downward, hitting Ahkmud squarely in the center of his jet black hair. Ali was down the ladder in a flash and darting for the door. But Ahkmud was faster. He dove across the room and wrestled him to the floor.

“Ahkmud, no!” Ali wailed. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to.”

With great deliberation Ahkmud reached up with his thumb and wiped the glob of white paint from his hair.

“Brad! Help me!” Ali screamed, but Brad couldn’t have walked three steps, he was laughing so hard.

“People should be warned of a dangerous beast,” Ahkmud said. He took his thumb and slowly ran it down the length of Ali’s nose, leaving a broad white smear. “May all see you coming and get out of your way.” He stood up and let Ali free.

Brad tossed his rag to Ali, still doubled over with laughter.

“Thanks a lot, American,” Ali said, only half succeeding in wiping away the smear. “I ask for arms and miltary aid, and you send cotton goods.”

“Hey, little brother,” Ahkmud said, “one sends cotton to one who has cotton for brains.”

“All right, you two,” Brad finally managed. “If you don’t cut it out, I’m not going to be able to sit up tonight at the desk. How do I explain to Levi that I can’t work because my sides are too sore from laughing?”

“Which reminds me,” Ahkmud said, “what time is it?”

Brad looked at his watch. “Almost twelve o’clock.”

“Then I must go.” He handed Ali his bucket and brush. “We have a delivery from Hebron coming to the store in half an hour.”

“You only fear retaliation,” Ali quipped.

“Ha!” his brother snorted. “The lion flees from the goat? No chance. Besides, you are almost done now.”

“Ah!” Ali retorted. “Only with the painting and fixup. We still have all the equipment and furniture to move in, and school starts on Wednesday. That gives us only three more days to have everything ready.”

Ahkmud punched him lightly on the arm as he started for the door. “Only because you have let your Mormon ideas ruin a perfectly good workday tomorrow.”

There was the slightest hint of criticism in Ahkmud’s voice, but Ali ignored it. “The Sabbath is not a Mormon idea, my infidel brother,” he said with a patient smile. “Originally, I think it was God’s.”

Ahkmud shrugged and headed for the door. Brad and Ali walked to the door after him and watched him climb into a maroon Mercedes sedan. They waved as he roared away in a spray of gravel.

Ali shook his head, but his eyes were warm and affectionate. “These Moslems,” he said. “They are a stubborn lot.”

Brad smiled and returned to his paint bucket. “I’d better hustle too. I told Levi I’d cover for him at the desk at two-thirty. Miri took that group from England on tour today, and he has an appointment somewhere.”

“So that puts an end to your touring for awhile?”

“No, they are only here for a few days. She’ll be finished with them today.”

Ali gave him a long speculative look. “And how is your pocketbook holding up under all this?”

Brad stopped in midstroke and pointed the paintbrush at Ali. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Mean? Nothing. I just figured at fifteen dollars a half day, one of these times you might run out of money.”

“Oh no,” Brad said. “Don’t play that inscrutable Arab bit with me. I know you too well already. What’s really on your mind?”

The young Arab was meticulously studying the brush strokes as he painted the wall. “Well,” he finally said, “it just seems that for two people who started out as the star participants in the Middle Eastern version of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, you seem to be getting along famously.”

“Ha!” Brad retorted with more vehemence than he had intended. “You ought to come on tour with us. This morning, for example, we really got into it over the Palestinian question. I was so foolish as to suggest that Israel had treated some refugees with gross unfairness and downright intimidation in order to take over their land.”

“You are a foolhardy devil, aren’t you?” Ali laughed. “You’re lucky she didn’t bite your head off.”

Brad reached up and pulled his shirt collar down, baring his neck. “Care to see the teeth marks?”

Again Ali gave him that long appraising look. “Have you made any decisions about how long you are staying yet?”

Ali studied his friend, noting that the frustrated, strung-out air that had been so evident in Brad the first few days was largely gone. His tanned face was relaxed and broke into a smile much more easily than at first. The pinched look around his eyes had smoothed out, and the nervous drumming of the fingers whenever he faced inactivity was rarely seen now. The young Arab was deeply grateful for this American Mormon, and marveled that it had only been a couple of weeks since they had first met. It seemed as though they had known each other for years.

“Well,” Brad mused, cutting into Ali’s thoughts.

“I was just thinking of our conversation on the plane, why you said you were coming to Israel. As I remember, it was to find yourself, set some goals, stop smothering. I was just wondering how that is coming?”

Brad rested his brush on the paint-can lid. “Good question. I was asking myself the same thing just the other day.”

“And?”

“And I don’t know for sure, but I am sure that coming here was right. Dad said my problem was that after four years of mission and Viet Nam, I had spiritual battle fatigue. Suddenly I came home with no demands on my time, no real commitments. It left me dangling in a spiritual void.”

“And do you agree with him?”

“I didn’t at first, but now I think he knew me better than I did. I got so frustrated at home because I felt the pressures of everybody’s expectations—including my own. But there was something deeper than that bugging me. I know that now.”

“Like what?”

Brad shook his head slowly. “It is hard to explain, but I was torn. On the one hand, I felt this great need to do something, to launch my life, as it were. But on the other hand, the old goals, the former decisions were no longer acceptable. Like school, for example. Suddenly just preparing for a satisfying, good-paying job was not enough. Though I am just now coming to realize it, what I’ve been searching for is something really meaningful to do with my life, something that will require the same kind of intense commitment and wholehearted effort I’ve become used to during the past four years.” He gave Ali a long, searching look. “That is why I envy you.”

“Me?” Ali was genuinely surprised.

Brad picked up his paintbrush and waved it in a broad gesture. “I envy you this.”

“What? An unpainted room with no furniture?”

“You know what I mean. The school. A life’s work that is demanding, significant, and that absolutely enthralls you.”

Ali finally nodded, with great soberness. “Yes. I hadn’t thought of it quite that way before, but you are right. I love it. The thought of spending the next forty years here thrill me.”

“Exactly! That’s what I’m looking for. And Israel seems to be a good place to do it. At least for now.” He dipped his brush in the bucket and began painting again.

Ali began painting again too, and for several minutes the room was quiet. Finally Ali spoke. “And do your plans include continuing with your guide service?”

Brad looked up in surprise. “Yes. Why?”

Ali’s face was a mask of bland innocence. “Oh, just wondering.”

“All right, Khalidi. What is it you’re driving at?”

Ali shrugged, and then, almost as an afterthought, he nonchalantly added, “I just wondered if you might have other interests in one Miriam Shadmi besides her qualifications as a guide.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brad shot back, just a bit too quickly. “She is an excellent guide, and I want to really come to know Israel.”

“Of course.”

Brad let out his breath in a sigh of exasperation. “Ali, Miri is just—”

“A very attractive young woman,” Ali cut in, finishing for him.

“Oh, come on.”

“And the fact that she is interested in Christianity and Mormonism throws the old missionary instincts into high gear. Right?”

Before Brad could respond to that, Ali went on quickly. “Hey, I’m not knocking it. I think it’s great, although I don’t think you stand much of a chance of converting her.”

“Why not?”

Ali grinned. “That’s what I thought. You are, aren’t you?”

“I am what?” Brad said, realizing he had just gone over to the defensive.

“Lining her up in your missionary sights.”

“Well, yes. I’d like to try. You ought to hear some of her questions. In fact, I want to corner President Marks after sacrament meeting tomorrow and ask him some things.”

“Listen, my friend, I wouldn’t discourage you for a minute. I’ve told you how hard the missionaries worked on me. But compared to a Jew, a Moslem is like the man who walks up to the missionaries and begs, ‘Baptize me, oh please, baptize me.’ We don’t have two thousand years of persecution at the hands of the Christians to hang us up.”

“I know,” Brad sighed. “But in some ways, she is so open. I’ve got to try.”

“Absolutely. But if she doesn’t respond, then what?”

“What do you mean, then what? If she doesn’t respond, she doesn’t respond.”

“And no further interest?”

“Well, we’ll be friends, of course.”

Ali nodded soberly and went back to his work, humming softly to himself. It took a minute or two for Brad to realize that he was humming the old tune, “It Seems to Me I’ve Heard That Song Before.”

* * * * * *

Brad and Ali stood around after sacrament meeting, idly chatting with several students from the Brigham Young University Study Abroad program.

Brad saw the branch president finish with his counselor and start to put his scriptures in his briefcase. “President,” Brad said, moving over to him, “do you have a minute I could chat with you?”

“Certainly, Brad. Come into my ‘office.’ “ He motioned to the open space behind the table on which sat a homemade mini-pulpit. He pulled up a folding chair for Brad and the rickety piano bench for himself.

The branch “chapel” was a large open room in the basement of a small hotel in East Jerusalem. The facilities were less than adequate, but both last week and this the spirit in the meetings had been remarkable. Part of it, Brad sensed, was due to the man who sat before him now.

President Marks was a broad man in every sense of the word. Physically he was built along the lines of a touring bus. At first glance he gave an impression of obesity, but one had only to watch him move to see that flab found no place on his body. And yet he was a gentle man, radiating a kindness and sensitivity that seemed incongruous for such a large man. The previous week had been the first Sabbath in Israel for the BYU group as well as for Brad, and President Marks and his wife had been the sacrament meeting speakers. They had spoken about the land of Israel and how its destiny was interwoven with the destiny of the Latter-day Saints. Both had deeply impressed Brad. And today, in just a few brief words as he announced the sacrament hymn, he had set a mood that made the simple ordinance take on a new meaning.

Now he watched Brad out of clear blue eyes that sparkled with a hint of humor and yet at the same time a deep sense of concern. “How can I help you?”

“Well,” Brad said slowly, “I need to ask you a doctrinal question.”

“Hey, listen!” President Marks chuckled. “I’m just an old Idaho potato picker. If you have doctrinal questions, we ought to get Brother Spencer over here.” Brother Spencer was the religion professor who had come as the BYU representative for the Semester Abroad program.

“I suppose we could,” Brad said. “It’s probably a dumb question.”

The older man’s smile broadened. “Well, now, if it’s a dumb question, maybe I can help you. In college I was real good at asking those. Fire away. If we need Brother Spencer, we’ll call him.”

Brad took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, the frustration evident in his eyes. “What’s the best way—I mean, suppose you have a Jewish person. You think there might be a slight—very slight,” he added hastily, “chance they could be converted. What is the best way to approach it?”

The president looked at him, his expression half thoughtful, half concerned. “That is a tough one. You know that we cannot do any active proselyting in Israel, both by the laws of the government and by the directive from President Lee. It can be done only through association when a person asks.”

“This person is asking.”

“About Mormonism?”

“Not directly. Just about Christianity. But I figure she may as well get the best.”

“True. Well, it is a special challenge. We have found that we even have to be careful of certain words we use with the Jewish people.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Their only experience is with other Christian churches, and if you know anything about their history, you know that the Christian interaction with the Jews has been pretty sordid—persecution, torture, inquisitions, massacres. They don’t find a lot in Christianity to attract them. Also, as you know, we have a special vocabulary of our own, and even take common Christian words and give them a special Mormon flavor.”

“Such as?”

“Well, take the word saint, for example.”

“Of course,” Brad said. “I see what you mean. If a Jew were familiar with Catholic saints—”

“Exactly. Here are a few others. Deacon, bishop, priest, stake center—they think that’s a restaurant. Talk about doing sealing work in the temple and they’ll think you’re painting the ceilings at the synagogue, which is what they call a temple. If another church converts a Jew, they turn him into a Christian. If we convert another Christian, we say that we have brought him into the house of Israel. Thus, when a Jew says gentile he means anyone not Jewish; when we say it, we mean anyone not Mormon.” The president gave a wry smile. “Try explaining to your Jewish friend that she’s really gentile and see what happens.”

Brad considered past encounters with Miri and decided that idea could wait for awhile.

“Do you understand what Zion and Zionism mean to an Israeli?”

“Somewhat,” Brad replied.

“Zionism is the name given to the movement to establish Israel as a national homeland for the Jewish people. The state of Israel has been dominated by Zionists since its beginnings. That is why you’ll often hear Arab leaders say that it is not the Jews they oppose, but the Zionists.”

Brad nodded. “Which is a far sight different from what we mean by Zion.”

“And that’s the point. Converting a Jew requires a whole different approach from normal missionary work. I even try to refer to Jesus as the Messiah instead of as the Christ. Messiah is the Hebrew equivalent for Christ, but it doesn’t have the same connotations in the Jewish mind.”

“I see what you mean,” Brad said, the discouragement in his voice hard to miss.

“But,” President Marks said, “I have two suggestions, depending on how religious and how knowledgeable she is.”

“Not very and very,” Brad said quickly. “She says her family is not very religious, but she is a guide—that’s how I came to know her.” He stopped as he realized how true that was. “Anyway, she’s read the New Testament a lot. She says she believes Jesus was a great rabbi, but she finds the theology very illogical.”

“Well, that could be a lot worse.”

“So, your two suggestions are?”

“First, if you find an appropriate moment—and I strongly suggest you heed the Spirit’s guidance as to timing—give her the Book of Mormon. Remember what the title page says.”

Brad probed his memory.

President Marks quoted, “It is for the convincing of Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ—the Messiah.”

“Of course,” Brad said, his voice excited. “It’s a great missionary tool.”

“And second, use the Old Testament.”

Brad frowned. If expertise in the Old Testament were measured on a scale of one to ten, he would have to get a very low number.

“Once you know how to study it, the Old Testament bears powerful and consistent witness of the Savior. It is Jewish scripture. Convert them with it.”

“But how? Give me some examples.”

“Oh, there are hundreds. Take the Law of Moses as a case in point.” Suddenly President Marks stopped. “Listen, I’ve got a better idea. Are you busy tonight?”

“Ali and I were going to come to the fireside, but I thought they announced that you were the speaker.”

An apologetic grin appeared. “I am. But I haven’t prepared anything yet. And that’s my idea. Last year I made a presentation to the students called ‘The Old Testament as a Witness for Jesus Christ.’ This new group hasn’t heard it.”

Now Brad was really enthusiastic. “That would be super!”

“Even then I can only hit the highlights. But once you get the idea, you’ll start reading the Old Testament with a whole new pair of eyes.”

“That’s great! Thanks, President. We’ll be there.”

“Thank you, Brad, for giving me a topic. I’ve been worrying about it all day. See you tonight. Oh, by the way. Are you and Ali going to be able to join us for the concert tomorrow night?”

“If you are sure you have enough tickets.”

“We do. The Israeli Philharmonic is an outstanding orchestra. We try to get each Study Abroad group to at least one concert.”

“Good. We’ll plan on it. We’ll meet you at the concert hall at seven-thirty.”

Thirteen

It was a warm summer evening in Jerusalem, with a hint of a breeze stirring the air. Brad and Ali were standing with a small group of students taking their last farewells after the concert, when Brad saw her. She had just come out of the Convention Center and stood for a moment looking around. She was wearing a dress of black voile, its square neckline and long sleeves trimmed with a narrow band of lace. Black satin heels, which matched her dress perfectly, added to the look of simple elegance. Her black hair was pulled back away from her face, accenting the fineness of her features. It was the first time Brad had seen her really dressed up, and even at this distance, she was striking. His were not the only eyes that had lifted to watch her. Half the males in the area had stopped their conversations in midsentence, much to the dismay of their companions.

Brad stepped away from Ali and the group and started to raise his hand to wave, but he stopped abruptly and quickly rejoined his group as a tall, broad-shouldered man in a sports jacket and open-necked shirt stepped out of the doors behind her and moved to stand beside her. Much to Brad’s dismay, Miri looked up at him, smiled, and slipped her arm easily into his. When they started moving in his direction, Brad quickly turned away and pushed deeper into the group of students, afraid Miri might see him. But it was a pointless worry. It was obvious that she was not seeing much of anything else as she looked up into the tall Israeli’s face, eagerly taking in every word he was saying. Brad caught a quick burst of Miri’s husky laughter as they passed him.

What did you expect? he chided himself. A beautiful Jewish girl who gave guided tours during the day and then retired into a convent for the evening? Forget it. But his eyes wouldn’t obey his mind; they followed as the couple moved easily through the parking lot. It didn’t help at all to see them stop at a gleaming, dark blue Porsche and have him open the door for Miri to slide in.

Brad yanked on Ali’s arm, an idea suddenly striking him. “Let’s go!”

Ali looked around, startled. “What?”

“Look, can we go? Now!” The Porsche had started with a low roar and was joining the line of slow-moving cars. “I’ll explain on the way. Let’s move it!”

The others in the group looked surprised as they said hasty goodbyes, and Brad pulled Ali into a trot, keeping one eye on the low sports car, which was making slow but steady progress toward the exit.

“What’s the matter?” Ali asked, as Brad threw open the Volkswagen door, jumped in, and kicked the motor into life. “What’s going on?”

“I want to see where someone is going,” Brad muttered, smacking his hand against the wheel to make the little car stop sputtering from the sudden gush of gas to the carburetor. When the engine steadied, he spun out around a passing car, narrowly missing its right front fender. The line to the exit now stretched out twenty or thirty vehicles behind the Porsche, so Brad gunned the VW out around the back of the line, then rocketed forward, darting into a place three cars behind the Porsche that was barely big enough for a medium-sized Tonka truck. The angry honk that shrieked out behind him came as close to profanity as one could achieve within the limitations of an automobile’s horn.

“Welcome to California!” Ali breathed, his hands pressed white against the dashboard.

“Sorry.” Brad stuck his hand out the window and gave an apologetic wave to the car behind him.

“Just who is it you’re interested in following?” Ali asked, regaining his composure.

“Oh,” Brad said, trying to act nonchalantly. “That dark blue Porsche in front of us.”

“Just the Porsche? Not anyone in it?”

“I thought I recognized someone,” Brad stalled, suddenly feeling foolish.

“Who?” Just then the Porsche reached the street and turned right. For a brief second the passenger was revealed in the glare of the streetlight, and Ali answered his own question. “Miri!”

Brad nodded, feeling like a four-year-old who has just been caught standing over the fishbowl with a wiggling fish in his hand.

“Is the point to catch her or run over her?”

Brad laughed. “Good question.”

“Who is she with?”

“Don’t know him. A tall, good-looking dude.”

“Oh.” Ali managed to pack more expression into that one word than most people would achieve in a twentyminute oration.

It was Brad’s turn at the street, and he spurted out into the traffic, accelerating as rapidly as the VW could muster.

“Tell me, Kojak,” Ali said in a deep rumbling voice, “have you done much tailing since you got into this line of work?”

“No.”

“Then I suggest you not get too close. Not only are you in a car distinctive in its class, but it is one that would be instantly recognized by the suspect in question, one Miriam Shadmi.”

Brad’s foot came off the accelerator, and the motor immediately lessened its howl of protest. The taillights of the Porsche were still clearly in sight about a block ahead, but the evaporating distance between the cars steadied.

“In addition to which, unless you fixed the right front fender, you have only one headlight.”

Brad groaned. “That’s right!”

“Well, short of a neon sign saying, ‘Hey guys! We’re following you,’ there’s probably not a more effective way to give away a tail. Hang back and try to keep some traffic between you and him.”

Brad obediently followed Ali’s instructions, letting a taxi pull around between them. Then the Porsche caught a yellow traffic light and braked hard to a stop.

“What do I do now?” Brad asked.

“Keep the taxi in front of you and come up close behind him so it blocks you from view.”

The light turned green, and the sports car moved out smoothly and swiftly. “Fall back at least two blocks,” Ali commanded.

They drove for several minutes in silence, Brad occasionally spurting forward when he temporarily lost sight of his quarry. The Porsche took a quick left turn at the next intersection. As Brad approached, the light turned yellow. He stabbed at the brake, then realized such a delay could lose them, so just as quickly, he hit the gas and leaned the Volkswagen into the corner, taking the light at full red. A panel truck blasted its horn as Brad rocketed past him. If they were keeping score for the most unpopular driver in Jerusalem tonight, Brad had it going away.

Ali spoke up when the car had come out of the sliding turn and settled into the straightaway. “At the risk of sounding like a broken record and knowing I’m probably a hundred miles off target—” he stopped, searching for the right words.

“Go on,” Brad said, sensing what was coming.

“All your protests last Friday about how casual your interest in Miri is seem a little hollow about now. You know that, don’t you?”

Brad was silent and concentrated on the taillights ahead of him.

“Don’t be ridiculous, right?” Ali said.

“I’m just curious about who she’s with, and where he’s taking her.”

Ali grinned. “Some curiosity! We are not just out here risking life and limb in the Jerusalem Grand Prix. You might sell that to some dumb American kid, but with a brilliant, perceptive young Arab boy, it won’t wash.”

Brad nodded reluctantly. As usual, Ali, beneath that easy good humor, knew the score—even better than Brad. “All right, I guess I do find her very interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“All right, you sadist. I find her attractive.”

“That’s more like it.”

“You won’t let a man have any illusions, will you.”

Surprisingly, Ali grew very sober. “Speaking of illusions, are you facing the biggest one?”

“I know what you’re driving at. But I’m working on her. If I could convert her, then—”

“Is this the cool-headed Mormon missionary talking? Or the young man who sees his girl with another man and jumps into his car in hot pursuit?”

Brad was silent, not knowing the answer to that himself. “I think there is more hope of converting her than the typical Jewish person. She really seems—”

“Oh, oh!” Ali cut in again, pointing ahead of them. “Your boy is turning left.”

“So?”

“He’s turning the wrong way into a one-way street.”

They were headed north now, out of Jerusalem, and the traffic was thinning out rapidly.

“What do I do?”

“Don’t follow him! Either he’s made a mistake—and that seems unlikely, he’s been driving as though he knows the city well—or he’s on to us. You follow him the wrong way on a one-way street, and there’ll be no question about what we’re doing.”

“Oh well, let’s give it up. It’s no big thing.” The disappointment was evident in Brad’s voice.

“Maybe we could out-fox the fox,” Ali said a moment later as he peered down the street where the sports car had turned. It was dark. No taillights were visible.

“How?”

“Either he’s turned off his lights, or he took a quick right to get off the one-way street. If he did that, there’s only one major place he can come out. Hit it, and we’ll see if we can be waiting for him.”

Brad punched the gas pedal down as Ali directed him toward the likely intersection. Two minutes later he pointed to a spot along the curb that was deep between two trucks. “Pull in here. If he’s coming out, he’ll be coming out of that next intersection.”

Brad pulled over and cut his lights. He smiled at Ali. “Crazy, huh?”

Ali shrugged. “Actually it’s kind of fun. We had one class in surveillance techniques at the PLO camp. But we never got to do it for real. And I think,” he said, trying not to sound too excited, “my instructor would be right proud of me. There he is!”

The Porsche eased out of the side street and then moved away, the rich, throaty roar of its engine clear even from where they sat.

“Okay, give him some running room and leave your lights off this time. If he sees this one-eyed beast following him again, he’ll sprint like a scared rabbit. And this bug ain’t no way going to keep up with his rabbit.”

Brad obeyed, somewhat nervous to be driving without lights.

A few minutes later Ali spoke again. “I can’t figure where he’s heading. We are nearly out of the city and headed north for Nablus. Maybe he’s going to take her on a quiet country drive in the moonlight.”

“You’re a real comedian,” Brad growled.

“For a guy who’s only curious, you sure are touchy.”

A car was approaching from the other direction and, as it came up on the VW, its lights clicked off and on twice.

“Oh, oh!” Ali said as it passed. “That was the police. You’d better turn on your lights, or we may have a threesome in this little party.”

Brad reluctantly turned on the headlights and watched his rearview mirror anxiously. But the taillights receded rapidly and then disappeared.

“Now let’s see if our man sees us and panics and runs,” Ali said.

For the next several minutes the Porsche drove steadily. There was no increase in speed. They had left the city now, and only scattered houses, pale and ghostlike in the light of a half moon, appeared along the road. It was really quite pleasant, with the warm evening breeze streaming in through the open windows. Yeah, Brad thought. A great night to park.

Suddenly up ahead the right taillight winked a bright red and then winked again. Then both brightened as the driver braked.

“He’s turning.”

“That’s odd,” Ali said. “I don’t remember any main roads out here. Maybe he’s going to someone’s house.”

“Do I follow him?” Brad slowed down as they approached the spot where the Porsche had turned.

“Let’s see what we’ve got. I’d hate to follow him into someone’s driveway.”

It wasn’t a driveway. It was a road, though not much of one. As Brad turned, the sweep of the headlights showed that the pavement ended immediately. He stopped as he rolled onto gravel. A dirt track led on into an olive grove.

“Well, that settles it,” Ali said as Brad brought the car to a halt. “You certainly can’t follow him up that without being noticed. We may as well—”

A piercing white light exploded in Brad’s eyes, and a deep voice bellowed a guttural noise in his ear. He jumped so hard his knees hit the steering wheel. Stunned, he stared into the light. He couldn’t see who was holding it, but he didn’t have to.

“He says to get out very slowly,” Ali said. “And to keep our hands in sight.”

Brad had learned one thing about the military. A man with rank is to be obeyed without question—and this man had placed the flashlight so that it very clearly illuminated his rank—an M-16 rifle. He lifted his hands slowly and carefully, his heart pounding like an artillery barrage. The light moved back, and Brad’s door was yanked open. Again the voice barked out a command.

“He wants me out too and both of us spread-eagled on the hood,” Ali translated. “Move very slowly.”

They obeyed. Brad squinted briefly into the light, then turned his head slightly so he could see their captor out of the corner of his eye. There was no question about it. It was the driver of the Porsche. But he was puzzled. Where was Miri? Probably hidden out in the trees somewhere.

Expert hands searched him quickly for weapons, then moved to Ali to do the same. Suddenly Brad understood and went cold. If I were an Israeli, and a beat-up old Volkswagen started following me late at night, what would I assume? Arab terrorists were too grim a reality to ignore. He admitted a grudging admiration that this man had taken action to protect Miri.

Then an even worse thought hit Brad. Where was Miri? What if she comes to see what is happening? He could picture the look on her face when she learned who her pursuers were. The Israeli stepped back, clearly visible in the light of the headlight. Brad and Ali slowly straightened and turned around.

From the look on his face, it was clear that his unsuccessful search for weapons had not greatly improved his mood. He lowered the flashlight, but the black muzzle of the rifle was set in stone. Again the flow of rapid Arabic came pouring out.

“He wants to know why we’re following him,” Ali murmured. “That’s a rough translation, minus a few choice terms.”

“Well, don’t tell him!” Brad hissed. “Think of something.”

Brad grunted in pain as the snout of the rifle jabbed sharply into his ribs. The eyes staring into his were like two daggers of ice.

“Please do tell me why,” he barked in rough but clearly understandable English.

Straightening again slowly and rubbing the tender spot, Brad spoke politely. “Look, we’re sorry. There’s been a mistake. We thought you were someone else.”

“Shut up!” the Israeli barked. He looked at Ali. “You, Arab. You tell me why you follow me.”

“Well,” Ali said, giving Brad a quick glance, “we saw you at the concert with—” Brad cut off the critical word with a sharp kick to Ali’s leg.

If he hadn’t expected a reaction from the Israeli, the swift blow would have left Brad retching on the ground. As it was, he saw the sudden flip of the man’s weapon, and dropped back as the butt of the rifle struck him solidly in the solar plexus. It made him gasp sharply, and he dropped to his knees.

“Hey!” Ali cried, diving for the weapon. The butt swung upward, catching Ali with a glancing blow on the chin. He flew backwards, hit the hood of the Volkswagen, and slowly crumpled to the ground.

Brad saw it all from his knees, but didn’t turn his head. He gave one slow moan and toppled over onto his face in the gravel, where he lay trembling. His trembling was not faked, nor was it alone from the pain. Containing the fury rising in him was almost beyond him, but containment was his only hope. He groaned again as he clutched a handful of gravel beneath him.

“On your feet,” came the command. Brad ignored it.

The feet crunched twice on the gravel, and Brad was yanked roughly onto his back. As he turned over he flung the gravel upwards, catching his opponent full in the face.

The Israeli howled in pain and grabbed for his eyes, jerking the M-16’s muzzle straight up in the air. Brad sprang into a crouch, brought his two hands into a club, and swung with all the fury that was seething in him. It caught the tall Israeli right between the buttons of his sport coat and cut him down like a sapling hit by a Howitzer.

Brad staggered to his feet, breathing hard, and retrieved the rifle, leaving the Israeli where he lay, gasping frantically for breath. He moved to Ali and bent over him. An ugly red welt was visible on his jaw, but he was reviving. Brad helped him up to a sitting position. Even in the poor light of the headlamp, the gray undertone of his complexion showed he was still in a mild state of shock.

“Are you okay?” Brad asked anxiously, careful to keep the rifle trained on the Israeli.

Ali managed a wan smile. “Yeah. I’ll be all right.” He looked over at the sprawled figure, still twisting in agony. “I don’t think he liked being followed. What did you do to him?”

“Evened the score for you.” Sympathy was not one of Brad’s more obvious virtues at the moment. But satisfied that Ali was going to be all right, he moved back to the Israeli. He grasped him by the belt and lifted him up and down several times as he had seen trainers do to football players when the wind was knocked out of them. Gradually the man’s color began to return and his breathing slowed to a more reasonable rate. He hitched himself up and leaned against the Volkswagen, his eyes wary and full of hate, but not fearful.

Brad closed in on him, the muzzle of the M-16 in a position to suggest a strong hint. “Look,” he said calmly, “I tried to explain to you that we meant you no harm, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“What do you want?” the man asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Nothing.” Brad extracted the clip from the rifle and ejected the shell in the chamber. “We made a mistake. We’re sorry. But next time you ought to give a man a chance to tell his story.” Brad moved back, the rifle hanging loosely now. “We’ll leave your rifle exactly one mile down the road on the right side.”

Brad stepped back to Ali and helped him to his feet. “Let’s go.”

Suddenly a sharp voice rang out behind them. “Don’t move!” The voice was firm and very impelling. “I have a pistol pointed at your backs. Drop the rifle!”

Brad obeyed, his heart sinking. He would have known that husky voice anywhere.

“Move into the light where I can see you.”

Ali grinned weakly. “I think we had better obey the lady, don’t you?”

Fourteen

It was past ten, and the hotel lobby was deserted and quiet. Brad was so deeply engrossed in his book that he wasn’t aware of her until she was nearly at the desk. If someone had wired his chair with electricity and suddenly dropped the switch for a full charge, he wouldn’t have come to his feet with any more dispatch.

“Oh, hello,” he murmured.

Miri smiled. In his embarrassment, Brad couldn’t tell if it was a smile of friendly welcome or more like that of a tiger as it eyed its intended victim.

“Hello,” she said sweetly. “Brad Kennison, I presume.”

Brad groaned inwardly. It was the tiger. But he decided to try a tentative smile. “How are you?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I’m curious.”

“Oh? About what?”

“Two things. First, are you still planning on coming to our home Saturday night? Father asked me to remind you.”

Brad hedged. Levi had asked him last week to come to his home for an informal evening with some friends. At the time he had been very pleased at the prospects. Now…

“Well?”

“Well,” Brad murmured, thinking rapidly, “I may have to—well, I’m not sure.” He didn’t want to offend the Shadmis in any way. And yet how could he spend an evening making small talk with Miri after Sunday evening’s disaster?

“I see,” she said slowly. “That leads me to my second question. Why have you been deliberately avoiding me these past four days?”

“Well,” Brad hesitated, “I’ve been helping Ali. School started yesterday. I have to prepare for that English class I’m teaching.” He stopped, realizing how empty the whole monologue sounded.

“Uh huh,” she said, her dark eyes holding just a hint of amusement. “And is that why you keep going through the hotel lobby as though you’re making your way through an armed mine field?”

“Who, me?”

“And why you haven’t eaten in the hotel except when you’re sure I’m gone somewhere? Not even breakfast?”

“Well, we get an early start at the school.”

“Oh really,” Miri said.

He decided that the cat and mouse game had gone on long enough. “Listen, I am really sorry about Sunday night. I have never felt so ridiculous in my whole life.”

Her expression was grave, but Brad had the distinct impression that a laugh was struggling to break its way to the surface. “Oh?” she said, her voice half mocking.

“I don’t know why it is that whenever I’m around you, I keep doing these idiotic things,” he finally said in exasperation.

“A girl loves to be told how she brings out the best in someone.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he started, and then saw that she was playing with him. “Anyway, I am sorry. How’s your friend?”

“He claimed he was fine. But I noticed that he walked me to the door very carefully Sunday night. What did you hit him with? He wouldn’t talk about it.”

“Nothing.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

“I mean nothing that I picked up.” Brad held up his hands, interlocking the fingers as he had done that night. “Just this. When I saw him club Ali, I’m afraid I lost my cool.”

“How is Ali, anyway?”

“Fine. He’s got a big bruise, but it hasn’t slowed him down at all. He still talks a mile a minute.”

“David felt a little better when I told him you were a Viet Nam veteran.”

Brad shook his head, cursing himself for the hundredth time for deciding to follow Miri that night. “Does he always carry an M-16 and a .45 automatic with him on a date?”

She laughed lightly. “As you know, I can be very fierce.”

Brad pulled a face at her. “Come on, be serious.”

“David is in the military. He is a good friend of my brother, Nathan.”

And of yours, Brad thought, remembering how she had looked up at him after the concert.

“Israeli soldiers are required to keep their weapons with them at all times,” she added.

“I’ll try and remember that.”

“Now will you tell me what happened? As I told you, David refused to discuss it. Partly anger, partly hurt pride, I think.”

“I don’t blame him for being angry. What he did under the circumstances was very admirable.”

“But to come to blows, Brad! Why didn’t you explain to him? David is a kind man.”

Brad smiled. That could be a good sign. Obviously she didn’t know this fellow too well.

“Really, he is. Please, tell me what happened.”

“How much did you see?”

“Nothing. David gave me the pistol and made me go hide among the olive trees. I waited for a few minutes and then decided to sneak down to see what was happening. I saw you standing over David with the rifle.”

If compliments were being passed out for courage, this dark haired sabra could get in line. She had jumped into a potentially deadly situation to help David as swiftly as he had moved to protect her.

“Well,” Brad said sheepishly, “Ali started to tell him that we were following you. I could just picture the look on your face when he asked you to verify our story. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. When Ali started to explain, I kicked him in the shins. Your friend thought I was trying to stop him from talking. That’s when he hit me and knocked me down.”

“He hit you too?”

“I don’t blame him. Anyway, Ali reacted and went for him, so—” He shrugged. “Will you tell him how sorry I am? It was really a stupid thing to do.”

“I will tell David when I see him again. He went back to his unit on Monday.”

For a long moment, she looked at him, her eyes unreadable and very disturbing. “And why were you following me, Brad?”

“We saw you coming out of the concert and—”

“I know. You said that Sunday night. But why?”

Brad had given that a lot of thought himself in the past four days. He decided to be perfectly honest and direct. “I don’t know.”

It wasn’t much, but it seemed to satisfy her. “And you were so sure I’d be angry that you’ve been avoiding me these four days. I’m not sure that speaks very highly of your opinion of me.”

“No,” Brad protested quickly. “It was just that I felt so embarrassed about the whole mess that I didn’t want to face you.”

“Does that mean you’ll be looking for another guide?”

He searched her eyes. “No, I hadn’t planned on it. I just thought a few days’ wait might not hurt.”

“I’m offering discount rates this week.” She smiled at his surprised look. “Fifteen dollars for a half-day tour, or fifteen dollars if you would like the full day. It is the best rate in town.”

He stared at her, his eyes incredulous. “Are you serious?”

“Of course.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I see. Then let’s say ten dollars a half-day or ten dollars for the full day.”

“Miri! You know what I mean!”

“Five dollars a day, and that’s my last offer. My father won’t let me take any less,” she added with an impish grin.

“Okay, okay,” Brad said, his expression still one of disbelief. “Fifteen dollars it is. But I provide the car. And definitely book me for the full-day program.”

She put out her hand. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Kennison. When would you like to begin?”

“Well,” he said slowly, holding her hand for just a shade longer than was necessary, “I’ve been very busy. I couldn’t possibly leave before tomorrow morning. Is that too soon?”

She shook her head quickly and withdrew her hand. “Tomorrow would be fine. What about your class?”

“Friday is the Moslem Sabbath, remember? No school. How’s that for luck?”

“Perfect,” Miri said, the dimple in her left cheek showing as she smiled.

Brad was still half doubtful. “You’re really not angry about Sunday night?”

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she lowered her eyes to avoid his probing gaze. “No, I think it is one of the nicest compliments I have had in a long time. And what shall I tell my father about Saturday evening?”

Brad gave her a thoughtful look. “Will David be on leave again?”

Miri laughed in delight. “No, of course not. But Nathan will.”

“Nathan I can face. Tell your father I’d be delighted to come.”

Fifteen

In addition to the four Shadmis and Brad, there were five others in the relatively small Shadmi living room. Miri’s uncle, Shlomo Shadmi, whom Levi was helping to get started in business, was several years younger than Levi, but clearly cut from the same stuff as his brother. He had the squat build, the stiff wiry hair, and the piercing blue eyes. His wife, Ruth, was the perfect stereotype of a Jewish grandmother—pleasant brown eyes, a kindly warm face, steel gray hair pulled back in a bun.

Avriel Cohen and his American wife were neighbors of the Shadmis. He was one of the justices of the Israeli Supreme Court and every inch a gentleman of infinite refinement. According to Miri, his wife, Rachel, had been a high-fashion model in New York’s finest salons. Watching her now, Brad didn’t doubt it in the least. Though now in her early fifties, she was still a stunning woman. If he was every inch a gentleman, she was every bit a sophisticated woman. Brad felt almost intimidated by who they were and the very power of their physical presence, but they had quickly put him at ease. They were warm, gracious, and totally unaffected by their status.

The final member of the group was Sergeant Yitzhak Narciss, Nathan’s driver, chief assistant, confidant, and friend. Brad marveled at that. In the United States Army sergeants didn’t spend a social evening at their commanding officer’s home, especially when he was a colonel. But he had heard that Israeli officers wore their rank lightly, earning the respect of their subordinates rather than demanding it. Narciss was solidly built and as lean and hard as Nathan. He was slightly balding and had alert, almost darting brown eyes. He had the look of a man very much in command of himself.

Brad arrived five minutes early, and Miri introduced him to her mother, an attractive woman who had given Miri her clear complexion, finely cut features, and deep brown eyes. Brad liked her immediately, and appreciated her efforts to help him feel comfortable as the others arrived. As she and Miri served glasses of wine to the others, it was Miri’s mother who brought Brad a glass of orange soda.

“Levi tells me that Mormons don’t drink alcoholic beverages,” she murmured. “Do you drink soda pop?”

“Most definitely,” Brad answered, grateful for her concern and consideration.

Bowls of nuts, dates, apples, pears, oranges, and tangerines followed, and very quickly the group launched into animated conversation—mostly in English for Brad’s benefit, but with occasional lapses into Hebrew. It was comparable to being caught in a flash flood, and Brad struggled to keep his head above the conversational torrent.

The mood was intense, passionate, and fast-moving, and rarely focused on trivia. Current political events dominated—the latest developments in the Watergate crisis, the Arab oil embargo, Israel’s soaring inflation, the latest artillery duel in the Sinai. There was no lull, the only ebb and flow coming when the group split into two or three sub-groups, all talking rapidly, intensely, gesturing emphatically.

Someone mentioned the name of Henry Kissinger and his increasing power in the United States government. For a moment there was silence. Then Avriel Cohen, the judge, spoke up, puffing thoughtfully on his pipe. “Mr. Kissinger may have a chance to do more than advise Mr. Nixon on Mideast affairs. Speculation is heavy in the Knesset that Mr. Nixon is just looking for a graceful way to dump William Rogers, and then he will make Mr. Kissinger his Secretary of State.”

Several of the group shook their heads sadly at that news, and Brad noted that Miri was watching him closely for a reaction. She had warned him yesterday that he might come in for some flak. “Israelis feel very strongly about things,” she had said, “and they may ask you some very blunt questions. But you can be blunt with them also. You will never lose an Israeli’s respect by speaking honestly of your feelings. He may grow angry and violently disagree with you—” At that point she had seen his grin, and they both laughed, remembering their own encounters. “We have a saying,” she had continued. “Whenever you have three Jews come together, you will have four strong opinions. So do not be afraid to speak up.”

Rachel Cohen looked over at Brad and shook her head in mock sadness. “You must forgive them,” she said. “Israelis have three national sports—soccer, war, and criticizing America.”

Brad smiled. “I’m learning that.”

“But do we criticize without cause?” the sergeant asked, leaning forward and speaking with his hands. “America tries to tell Israel what she can and cannot do.”

The justice’s wife smiled sweetly at him, then turned to Brad again. “You must understand, Brad. What Yitzhak is saying is that Israel wants America’s help, but only if it is money. No suggestions, please.”

“Some of us,” Nathan spoke up, “wish that Israel would stop taking America’s money for that very reason.”

“That is easy to say now,” Rachel shot back. “If it weren’t for American dollars—federal aid as well as private contributions—there would be no Israel today, and you know it.”

Nathan’s father broke in. “What Rachel says is true. It is a great dilemma for us now that America is changing.”

“Brad has a better solution,” Miri said, catching him totally by surprise. Everyone turned to look at him.

“I do?”

Mira nodded. “Brad thinks Israel should trust only in God for its defense.”

“That’s not what I said,” Brad said, as he shot her a devastating look. But she only smiled. It was almost as though she wanted him to challenge the others in the same way as he had challenged her.

“I said I didn’t think Israel is wise to trust only in herself. I don’t think she’s wise to trust only in America either. It just seems tragic that the people who gave the world the idea of one true God no longer look to him in what may be the hour of their greatest need.”

“Only because God no longer looks to us,” Nathan said quickly.

“Nathan!” his mother said sharply. “Do not speak like that of God.”

“Why not? Offer me one proof that God still cares for us as a people.”

“The state of Israel,” Brad said softly. “Here you are in fulfillment of prophecy.”

“No!” Nathan shot back hotly, “not because of prophecy. Because of determination, because of sacrifice, because we refuse anymore to die simply to please the God who chose us.”

The rest watched the two young men, and Brad was suddenly tempted to back down from an open confrontation. After all, he was the guest here. But then he remembered Miri’s advice about speaking his mind. He took a breath and plowed in.

“That is one of the great ironies I find in this land. Israel is the only country in the world that uses the Bible as a textbook in its public schools. Your children know the history. They know the sites, they know the stories, and yet you ignore the most important thread of it all—that God is behind your history. God is your history! How can you ignore the hand of God in bringing Israel into being? In 1967 you fought what could easily be the most miraculous war in history. People call it the ‘incredible’ war. Can’t you see divine help in that?”

Yitzhak and Nathan both started to speak simultaneously, but Yitzhak prevailed. “No. I see the help of brilliant planning, careful strategy, and flawless military execution of that strategy. The Six Day War was incredible because of the way we did it, not because of God.”

Levi Shadmi cleared his throat, letting the tension ease slightly, and then spoke. “Do not be too sure, Yitzhak. David faced Goliath because he had great confidence in the power of his sling. But he said to the giant, ‘You come to me with a sword and spear, but I come to you in the name of the Lord God of hosts.’ Perhaps that is a lesson we should not forget.”

“Brad is a Mormon,” Miri interjected. “Mormons take their religion very seriously.” She smiled at him. “They call themselves Israelites too. They believe they are descendants of the tribe of Ephraim.”

That surprised Brad completely. He and Miri talked almost constantly about Christianity, but he had hardly said a word to her yet about Mormonism. Where was she getting her information from?

That interested the others immensely, and for the next twenty minutes they threw question after question at him. Brad talked of living prophets, the Word of Wisdom, the Mormon concept of temples, the members’ special feelings for Judah. He talked about the great apostasy and the need for a restoration.

“I am well aware,” he continued, in response to a question from Miri about the apostasy, “that so-called Christianity has been responsible for many of the Jewish persecutions down through the ages. That is not the natural product of Christianity, but of apostate Christians. No true follower of Christ would seek to persecute the Jews. That is why there had to be a restoration of the truth.”

Miri’s mother spoke up. “So Mormons do not think the Jews crucified Jesus?”

Brad took a deep breath. He had been expecting that question from Miri and had thought about his answer a great deal. There was no sense trying to duck it. “We accept the New Testament as a historically accurate record, which means—”

“Which means the Jews were responsible,” Nathan broke in.

“The Romans actually carried out the execution, but the Jewish religious leaders were responsible for it,” Brad admitted. “But,” he went on hurriedly, “that is something quite different from saying the Jewish people are responsible. One group of Jews—evil men—rejected him and conspired to bring about his death. But another group—which included people like Peter, James, John, Mary Magdalene, Matthew, Nathanael—all of them were also Jewish, and they accepted him. Christianity was totally Jewish in the beginning. It would be as foolish to say that the Jews—as a people—are to blame for Christ’s death as it would be to say that the Jews—as a people—are responsible for Christianity.”

Something was still digging at Nathan. He lit a cigarette and turned to Brad. “So you reject the idea that God has been punishing the Jews for the death of Jesus for the last two thousand years.”

“In the sense you mean it, yes. I reject that. We do not believe that God punishes one person for the evils committed by another.”

“Do you believe the god of the Jews is the god of the Christians? Of the Mormons?”

“Yes.”

“Then why has he allowed the Jews to suffer so much down through the centuries? Our people have committed themselves to him above all others. They have worshipped him for three thousand years without fail, while all around them the Gentiles have worshipped frogs and crocodiles. And who has suffered? The Gentiles? Not on your life.”

“The Mormons have suffered too,” Miri said, again surprising Brad with her knowledge. “They were persecuted, driven from state to state in America. Their first prophet was killed by a mob. Six thousand Mormon pioneers died when they were driven out by their enemies and had to cross the plains to Utah.”

“Six thousand is far short of six million,” Nathan snapped, obviously irritated at his sister’s interruption. “Have you been to Yad Vashem yet?” he demanded.

Brad looked blank.

“We are going there tomorrow,” Miri answered for him. Then to Brad she added, “It is the memorial for the Jews killed in the Holocaust.”

“Enough of this bickering over who has suffered the most,” Cohen broke in. “Six thousand or six million, either is a great tragedy. I wish to hear Brad’s answer to Nathan’s question. If you do believe in God and say that he is not punishing today’s Jews for killing Jesus, then how do you explain the sufferings of our people?”

Brad looked at the judge, then at Miri, and then around the group. How did he get himself into these situations? He liked these people. They were good people, and he had no wish to offend them. And yet, for Miri most of all, it had to be said.

Brad took a deep breath. “I can only answer in terms of what I believe. You may find my answer foolish or perhaps even offensive.”

“We may not accept your answer,” Cohen said with an encouraging smile, “but we shall not be offended.”

“All right,” Brad went on, choosing his words more carefully than he had for a long time. “We believe that God cannot or will not force himself on anyone. Either one comes to him freely or God allows him to go his own way.”

“That’s a reasonable conclusion,” Levi Shadmi said.

“Second, we believe that knowing about God and the principles he teaches brings a special responsibility with it. When a people have the truth, they become more accountable to God than a people who do not.”

Again several nodded as Brad paused. That was the easy part. “Since the Jews knew God and his laws, they were under a special obligation, which none of the Gentiles were. God had special expectations of them. And when they went into apostasy—that is, when they rejected him, they brought the natural effects of disobedience upon themselves. That is the whole story of the Old Testament. When Israel was faithful, she had tremendous power. No enemy could touch her. No problem could overwhelm her. But when she turned from God, she immediately lost his power and protection. And the result? Suffering, conquest, captivity.”

He looked at Miri, whose face was attentive but impassive. “In a religious sense, I believe the Jewish people are still in that same state. They have not turned to their God with all their hearts. And so they continue to endure problems, sufferings, and persecutions.”

They were all attentive, so Brad plunged ahead. “Israel and the Jews are not the only people who are turning from their God. Most of Christianity is in the same state. Some Mormons are slipping into the same pattern. They go through the motions of their religion, but God is not the highest priority in their lives. To the degree that a person abandons God, to that degree he will experience sorrow, misery, and suffering. The same is true of nations or peoples.” He sat back, his gray eyes somber. “That’s what I meant when I told Miri that Israel needed to trust less in herself and more in God.”

Nathan raised his glass of wine and spoke, his voice tinged with bitterness. “God, Kissinger, and the United States. Courage, brothers, we have nothing to fear.”

Sixteen

Brad pulled up in front of the Shadmi apartment and turned off the motor. Miri must have been watching, for the door opened immediately. To Brad’s surprise, Nathan came out with her, a travel bag and rifle in his hand.

Miri came over to the car, leaned down, and smiled in at Brad through the open window. “Do you mind if Nathan rides with us?”

“Of course not.”

“He has a staff meeting in Tel Aviv at noon. I thought that after we’ve seen Yad Vashem, we could start seeing things out away from Jerusalem. We could visit some places today in Jaffa and Tel Aviv, and then drive up the coast to Caesarea and see the ruins there. Does that sound all right?”

Nathan leaned over to join her. “Good morning, Brad.” If there was any feeling over their conversation last night, he showed no evidence of it. His greeting was warm and friendly. “Listen, it’s no big thing if this is a problem. I can just hitch a ride.”

“No problem at all,” Brad responded. “Today is Sunday. I don’t have to work, and I don’t teach my class. And Miri’s the guide. If she suggests Caesarea, Caesarea it is. Hop in.”

Miri climbed into the back seat, and Nathan handed her his bag and weapon and got in next to Brad.

“Where am I going?” Brad asked, putting the VW into gear.

“Straight ahead and then left at the first intersection,” Nathan commanded. He glanced at Brad as they started to move. “Would you mind if I join you at Yad Vashem?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. I want to see your reaction.”

* * * * * *

Brad’s reaction was one of profound somberness and a growing sense of horror. He had seen his share of Nazi war movies and even a documentary or two on the Jewish persecutions, but this wasn’t the movies. There were no Hollywood trappings to glorify things, just the grim documentation of an incomprehensible tragedy.

They had walked up the long driveway to the memorial in the bright sunshine, already hot at eight o’clock. It belied any sense of tragedy that Yad Vashem—”The Hill of Remembrance”—might hold. But when they entered the modern building that housed the archives of the Holocaust, the awful reality of the Nazi nightmare began to hit Brad.

They stopped in the entry foyer, where a huge relief sculpture took up the entire wall. Miri briefly explained its symbolic significance, and then they entered the museum itself. “This is the ‘Hall of Warning and Witness,’ ” Nathan said quietly, and he stepped back to let Brad enter first.

The walls, ceilings, and numerous partitions were painted black. Only the enlarged photos and documents and an occasional display case broke the solid blackness. It was all there. Brad was quickly absorbed as he moved slowly through the hallways, reading every document, studying each picture.

The exhibits were arranged chronologically, starting in the early 1930s with Hitler’s rise to power. Even madness is implemented step by step, Brad thought. At first there were “minor” harassments and persecutions—the call for Germans to avoid the Jewish shops, the amusement of the soldiers as they cut the beards and earlocks of the Orthodox Jews or made them scrub streets on hands and knees. Then came the book burnings, the requirement that all Jews wear the yellow star of David on their clothing, and Hitler’s brownshirts racing through Berlin smashing windows and burning synagogues.

It took Brad nearly an hour to come to the mid-1940s, and his mind was reeling under the shock. Virtually every photo now stunned the senses with brutal savagery. A line of naked men, standing in front of a trench already filled with the dead, patiently awaited the next volley from the firing squad. Ten limp bodies hung from a gallows, the star of David on their coats. A mountain of emaciated, twisted corpses of Dachau waited for the lime pits. Two grotesque figures hung on the barbed wire of Auschwitz, having preferred the swift suicide of electrocution to the “shower rooms” with their Zyklon-B gas. A storeroom was crammed with eyeglasses and shoes, spoils of the victors. A woman exhibited an eight-inch gaping wound in her leg, surgery performed without anesthetic by Nazi doctors in “scientific research” to see how much pain the human body can tolerate. A father huddled over his six-year-old son as an S.S. officer put a pistol to the back of his head.

Brad found himself swallowing hard as he read the eyewitness account of a German engineer who witnessed a mass execution in October 1942. “The people—men, women, and children of all ages—were forced to strip by order of an S.S. wielding a horse whip or dog whip. The people undressed without a cry or tear, stood together family by family, kissed each other and said goodbye, and waited for a signal from another S.S. man who stood near the trench, also whip in hand.

“During the fifteen minutes I stood there I did not hear a single complaint or plea for mercy. I looked at a family of about eight people, a man and his wife, both about fifty, with children with them, aged one, eight and ten, and two grown-up daughters aged about twenty and twentyfour. An old woman with snow white hair held the yearold child in her arms, singing to it and tickling it. The child laughed with pleasure. The husband and wife watched them with tears in their eyes. The father held the hand of a boy about ten and spoke to him gently; the boy tried to keep back the tears. The father pointed toward heaven, and stroked the child’s hand, and appeared to be explaining something to him.”

Brad turned away, deeply touched. He thought of his own family—of Susan, his older sister, and her toddler who gurgled happily whenever he saw Brad; of Kathy, now at BYU; of Craig, a sophomore tailback at East High School; of Jimmy, proudly ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood just three months ago; of Barbara and Brenda, so much like twins even though they were six and eight. Brad had baptized Brenda the week before he left. And he thought of his parents, herding them all naked to an open trench, and he felt physically ill.

Neither Nathan nor Miri commented when they moved to the hall documenting the world’s response to this horror. There was no need to. Brad felt the shame in every fiber of his soul. The document in front of him read: “We knew in Washington, from August, 1942, on, that the Nazis were planning to exterminate all the Jews of Europe. Yet, for nearly eighteen months after the first reports of the Nazi horror plan, the State Department did practically nothing…” It was signed by Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

It was a sober threesome that finally walked to the car. Miri quietly directed Brad to the freeway to Tel Aviv, but other than that they were silent, lost in their own thoughts.

As they pulled onto the four-lane freeway and started down the steep canyon that led to the Mediterranean plains from Jerusalem, Nathan began to speak. He was staring out the front windshield; his voice had a faraway quality, almost as though he were speaking to himself. He spoke softly, and Brad had to strain to hear him. Miri leaned forward so she also could hear.

“After the Six Day War, I was sick in my soul. My eyes had been filled with the blood and horror of battle. My heart was full of sorrow for David, my brother, who was killed in the Sinai. I needed to get away, to let my spirit heal.”

Brad glanced quickly at Nathan, noting that his hands were clenched into tight fists.

“I went to Europe. I began in Scandinavia, absorbing the beauty of the mountains and the fjords, and then I worked my way south until I came to Germany.”

He stopped. The silence stretched on for so long that Brad decided he wasn’t going to finish. But finally the soft voice continued.

“I found myself walking around Germany. I felt so strange there, because on the one hand it was a beautiful country, but every German sound, every German voice reminded me instinctively of the movies I had seen of the Holocaust. The discipline and the order of everything frightened me. Everything was neat and clean and in its place, with no mistakes. I saw the soldiers at the airports dressed exactly as in the pictures you just saw at Yad Vashem.”

Nathan’s voice had an almost ghostly quality to it, and Brad could tell he was deeply moved. “I felt very strange, as though I had gone back in time to World War II. I went to Munich and visited Dachau, where my grandfather died. And I was shocked. It was not horrible. It was not ugly. It was like walking around a Japanese garden. Everything was white, surrounded by green grass, with little stones lining the paths—everything fixed in its place. The gas chambers were all cleaned and painted. And there was a room over by the gas chamber—white and neat.”

Nathan stopped again and swallowed hard, angry at himself for his emotions. “It was the room where they made the Jews strip naked, and prepare for the ‘showers.’ In the room was a group of tourists from Italy. They stood quietly, not speaking or saying anything.”

Brad glanced back at Miri, who stared at her brother, totally captivated by his words. Her eyes were shining, her mouth tight, and Brad knew she was hearing this for the first time too.

Nathan sighed, a sound of tremendous inner pain. “And I felt very bad at their silence, that no words were being spoken. I felt like crying. But instead I shouted, ‘If you don’t hear the blood of my brothers screaming from the earth in this neat garden and from this neat room, I will scream so you will hear!’ And I screamed out with all my heart, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God he is one God.’ It is the prayer of every dying Jew. And then I turned and ran. I ran into the gardens. I wanted to get away, but the fences were still there.”

For the first time he turned to Brad, staring at him, his dark eyes like pools of immense sorrow. Finally he spoke. “And I raised my face there in that garden. I looked into heaven, and I shouted again. And this time I shouted ‘O God of Israel, why do you not hear the cries of your people?’ And then I knew. I knew that if there is a God up there, he couldn’t hear.” There was a long pause. “Or he didn’t care. I left Dachau, and I left Germany. I came home to Israel, where every Jew is welcome, where every Jew can hold up his head with pride, where our children will never again wear the yellow star. I came home to Israel, where we do not wait for help from a god who neither hears nor cares.”

Seventeen

For most of the ten-minute trip from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, the conversation had been light, rambling, and punctuated with smiles and occasional laughter. Now as they crested the last hill and the walls of the Old City lay before them, the color of a field of autumn wheat in the late afternoon sunshine, Brad, Ali, and Miri had all fallen silent.

As he guided the battered old Volkswagen through the light Sabbath-day traffic, Brad estimated they were about three or four minutes from the hotel where the branch held its sacrament meetings. He felt the faint tuggings of nervousness in his stomach. He checked the rearview mirror to see Ali’s face, but his friend was gazing out the car window with almost hypnotic concentration.

Miri gave Brad a warm smile as their eyes met briefly, and Brad decided she didn’t share his concern about the next couple of hours. Her hands were lying quietly in her lap, her long fingers toying absently with the ring she wore on her right hand. In a cool mint-green dress of soft crepe, Miri was as lovely as Brad had ever seen her. She had brushed her hair until the soft curls had the sheen of polished obsidian, and her tanned skin glowed like amber honey in the sunlight. A tiny star of David hung at the base of her throat on a delicate filigree chain. She wore it often, but now he wondered if she had not subconsciously chosen it to visibly maintain her Jewish identity in a crowd of Mormons. With that thought he fell to worrying again how the branch members would receive Miri, how she would react to the sacrament meeting, what she would say when it was over.

Suddenly he was aware of soft chuckling from the back seat. He glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Ali’s eyes, sparkling with amusement.

“What’s so funny?” Brad asked.

“You two.”

Miri half turned in her seat and looked at the handsome young Arab. “Us two? What is so funny about us two?”

“The way you are both playing it so cool and casual. Why don’t you just admit how nervous you are? Look at me, for example. I keep telling myself, ‘Ali, so what if this is the first time you’ve ever spoken in sacrament meeting. There is nothing to be afraid of. Relax.’ ”

“And does it help?” Brad asked.

“Of course. Instead of being absolutely petrified, I’m only in a mild state of sheer terror!”

“Okay,” Miri said, “I admit it. I am very nervous.”

“You are?” Brad exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes, I am.”

“Listen, Ali won’t be that bad. He has prepared for this talk for the last ten days.”

“Yeah, thanks a lot, Miri,” Ali chimed in. “Nothing like a solid vote of confidence with which to send a man into the jaws of death.”

“If he really bombs,” Brad said soberly, “we’ll sneak out the back and pretend we don’t know him. He can catch a taxi home.”

“Stop it you two,” she cried. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then why are you nervous?” Ali demanded.

The smile gradually faded, and she gave Brad a long, searching look. “Because I have never attended a Christian church meeting before.”

Brad’s eyes softened as he nodded. “I know, Miri. I know.” Then the teasing note crept back into his voice. “I understand that Daniel felt the same way about going to the meeting with those Babylonian lions.”

“You are hopeless, Brad Kennison!” she laughed.

“I came to the same conclusion weeks ago,” Ali said. “But being greatly given to Christian charity, I have reluctantly agreed to work with him a while longer.”

“Ha!” Brad snorted. “Some charity.”

Miri watched the two friends as they bantered on for a moment more, sensing the deep affection that had developed between them. As they stopped for the signal at the Damascus gate, they both fell silent, and Miri quickly turned to Brad.

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Come on. Ali laughed at both of us for pretending to be so nonchalant. I have admitted I am nervous about going to a Christian meeting. Ali confessed he is worried about his talk. What about you?”

Brad grinned in surrender. “I haven’t had butterflies like this since I played the part of a potato bug in the third grade school play.”

“Really?” Miri said, her eyes widening. “Why?”

He pondered that for a moment, and finally a slow, almost boyish smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Because,” he said gently, “I have never taken a Jewish girl to a Christian meeting before.” Nor tried to convert one to Mormonism, he added to himself, which, had he been totally honest with himself as well as Miri, was the greatest cause of the butterflies doing power dives in his stomach.

* * * * * *

But if he had planned the entire meeting himself, manipulated the setting in every way possible, and orchestrated every word, Brad could not have asked for a more appropriate introduction to Mormonism for Miri. The Jerusalem Branch met in the basement of the Jerusalem Star Hotel, since they had no building of their own as yet. Brad had not noticed before how simple and unadorned the room was until he walked inside with Miri, worrying how she would respond. But the branch members gave her no chance to study the surroundings. Brad had been tempted to warn them about Miri’s visit, but now he was grateful he had not.

The Jerusalem Branch had about ninety members. There were sixty or so Study Abroad students who rotated each six months from BYU, and five families—almost all Americans—who were permanent residents of Jerusalem. The response to Miri was spontaneous and warm without being overdone. Within two minutes President Marks engaged her in a conversation more like that between close friends than recent acquaintances.

The opening song and prayer were normal enough, but as the congregation began the sacrament hymn, a change took place. It was at first very subtle, elusive, almost undefinable. Later Brad decided it was the result of the sunrise service earlier in the day.

The BYU students—with Ali and Brad joining them—had met in the Garden Tomb at six o’clock that morning. They had moved quietly to the eastern end of the lovely garden in the center of Jerusalem and had stood somberly gazing at the small hillock known in Hebrew as Golgotha, “the place of the skull.” And indeed the small cavelike holes in the face of the cliff did look like the gaping sockets of a human skull. Here the Master had come, infinitely exhausted from his ordeal during the night when blood had oozed from every pore, when a kiss had betrayed, when Jewish hands had buffeted and pummeled him, when the Roman lash had left his back criss-crossed with bleeding stripes, when a Procurator had sought in vain to wash away the stain of guilt. Here the nails had been pounded home. Here the cross beam with its agonized burden had been lifted into place. Here the spear had been thrust deep into his side. A God had come to earth, and here men had tried in vain to put him away from them for good. Here Jesus Christ had died.

Deeply sobered, the group had moved to rows of benches overlooking the tomb cut into the side of a limestone hill. From where he had sat, Brad could clearly see the stone track cut to hold the massive sealing stone. For the next half hour, with President Marks leading them, they had immersed themselves in the scriptural accounts of that morning when crushing, devastating despair had turned to incredulous, blazing, overwhelming joy. The sunlight had filtered through the trees, and behind them a bird greeted the morning with joyous abandon, as though this were the very morning of the resurrection.

President Marks had closed the Bible slowly, and after a long pause, had turned and gazed down at the tomb. “There, in that small, insignificant grotto of stone, they brought Jesus and hastily wrapped his body for burial. Little did they know that within a few short hours, he would be back for that body, would raise it up from the cold stone, fold up those burial clothes, and lay them aside.”

He had turned back and searched the eyes of those who sat before him. “And because Christ did so, someday you and I will come back to where our bodies have lain in wait, put there with care by those who love us, and we too shall rise up and put aside our burial clothes.”

Now, as the congregation began the sacrament hymn, “I Stand All Amazed,” it began to happen. What had begun as ninety separate voices singing a hymn accompanied by a rather tinny and slightly out-of-tune piano was suddenly transformed into a single heartfelt cry of supplication that sent chills coursing up and down Brad’s spine. I tremble to know that for me he was crucified. The image of Golgotha, with its haunting face of death, flashed into Brad’s mind. He could almost hear the chilling ring of the mallet as it drove the nails home, and the tortured voice crying at that moment when others cursed and raged at their executioners, “Father, forgive them.” That for me, a sinner, he suffered, he bled and died. The chorister stood with tears streaming down her cheeks. The voice of the boy next to him suddenly faltered and dropped into silence.

I marvel—Brad bit his own lip as his heart poured out the words with all the fervency of his soul—that he would descend from his throne divine to rescue a soul so rebellious and proud as mine. He ducked his head, blinking rapidly, unable to say the last few words.

Oh, it is wonderful! The small room reverberated with the song of praise, but Brad could not join in—not until the middle of the third verse. Such mercy, such love, and devotion can I forget? The question was like a flame in his soul. No! No! he sang, his voice a fierce whisper of intensity. I will praise and adore at the mercy seat, until at his glorified throne I kneel at his feet.

The feeling of reverential supplication did not end with the hymn, and even the few small children present were subdued while the bread and water—on simple plates from the hotel’s dining room—were passed down the rows. Brad finally risked a glance at Miri as she passed the bread without partaking of it. In profile it was hard to see her expression, and he wondered if she could sense any of what the group was feeling.

When Ali finally stepped to the makeshift podium, clutching his notes tightly, Brad smiled his encouragement. Oh, how grateful he was to know this young Arab with the flashing grin and ready wit.

“My brothers and sisters…” Ali stopped and for a long moment stared down at his papers, visibly struggling for control of his emotions. He took a deep breath and tried again. “When I think what it means for me to call you brothers and sisters, I get a little overwhelmed. And so—” He held up the notes for all to see, his familiar smile flashing briefly. “In spite of the fact that I have here what is undoubtedly the best prepared sacrament meeting talk in Mormon-Arab history, I would like instead to tell you how I came to be your brother. And more importantly,” he said, looking directly at Miri, “I would like to tell you how I came to accept Jesus Christ as my elder brother.”

* * * * * *

By the time they had dropped Ali off in Bethlehem and returned to Miri’s apartment, it was dark, and the cool air held the slight nip of September in it. Brad turned off the lights and the engine; the nervousness he had felt earlier was suddenly back. After dropping Ali off they had been content to ride quietly. Now he knew it was time to talk.

Brad took a deep breath and cleared his throat, but before he could speak, Miri laid her hand on his arm, her face soft and radiant in the faint light of a streetlight a few yards away. “Thank you, Brad, for a very special day.”

He nodded, marveling at her loveliness, keenly aware of some feelings stirring deep inside him that he had never felt before. “Thank you! I think it really pleased Ali that you would come.” He shook his head slowly. “Why should Ali get all the credit? I am glad that you would come.” He took her hand, hesitantly, almost shyly, but she slipped her arm through his and returned his gentle squeeze.

“Good. I went to hear Ali, of course, but mostly I went for you.”

Immensely pleased, Brad searched her eyes, deep pools of almost liquid blackness, for clues to her inward feelings. “And?” he finally asked.

Miri’s eyes dropped beneath his probing glance. Her lips, soft and full, pulled down slightly in an expression of thoughtfulness. Finally she shook her head. “I don’t know how to describe it. As you know, my family is not religious. We do not go to synagogue except on special holy days. The holy-day services are times of great emotions—solemnity, rejoicing, mourning—but I don’t think we ever have the kind of feeling in our meetings that you had in yours.”

His brow furrowed as he considered that. “We try to have feelings of reverence and devotion in all of our meetings, but I’ve got to admit that today was very special.” His expression softened as he stared down at their hands. “It was the most meaningful sacrament meeting I have ever attended.”

Miri studied his face in profile, wanting suddenly to touch his cheek. Instead she squeezed his hand as she spoke, her voice husky and low. “I know, Brad. I could tell.”

His head came up, his eyes wide and searching.

“Your religion is very important to you, isn’t it,” she said.

The memory of the sacrament hymn and the feelings that had washed over him as he sang returned to his mind. “Yes,” he agreed. “Not nearly important enough, but it is the single most important thing in my life.”

“And for Ali too.” It was a statement, not a question and Brad just nodded.

“What he said today—” Brad unconsciously held his breath as she searched for the right words, “was very interesting.” She gave her head a quick shake of impatience. “No, not interesting.” She searched again, her face intense with concentration. “I don’t know the best word. Ever since his return I have wondered what would cause a Moslem to become a Christian. Ali talks about it so easily all the time. I would never have guessed that he went through such a struggle.”

“I knew it hadn’t been easy for him, but today was the first time I had heard about that final battle with himself—the fasting and prayer, and his wrestle with the Book of Mormon.”

Miri nodded, then leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. The dark lashes lay gently on her cheeks, her face a study of quiet repose. Brad watched her for a long moment, again keenly aware of the stir of emotions he felt in her presence. He gently withdrew his hand and turned in the seat to face her more directly.

“Miri?”

“Hmmmm?” Her eyes opened slowly, and her lips parted in a warm contented smile. Then she sat up and grew sober as she looked at Brad, sensing his sudden nervousness. “What?” she prompted again when he hesitated.

He had rehearsed the moment a dozen times, yet he still felt a quickening of anxiety. He took a quick breath and plunged in. “Today Ali talked about the Book of Mormon.”

“Yes.”

“And how it became the pivotal question for him.”

“Yes.” She was watching him closely now.

“Well, while that book has great significance for a Moslem, or anyone else for that matter, it was written by your people. It is a record of Jews who left Jerusalem. And more important, I guess, it was written for your people.” He reached under the seat and withdrew the book. “I would like you to have a copy.”

When Brad had first thought ahead to this moment, he had obtained a small paperback copy of the Book of Mormon. But the more he considered it, the less satisfactory that became. Then one day while in the Old City he had had a flash of inspiration. Olivewood was one of the most common tourist items of the Holy Land, and Bibles with olivewood covers were popular. From there it had been easy. Akhmud, Ali’s brother, was a major buyer of olivewood, and the manufacturer in Bethlehem was more than anxious to please him.

The Book of Mormon Brad handed Miri now was a large, hardbound edition with thin sheets of gleaming, highly polished olivewood bonded to each cover. “Miriam Shadmi” was engraved in small letters in the lower corner.

She took it from him slowly, her eyes finally raising to search his face. “Oh Brad, it’s lovely,” she whispered. She touched the cover, her fingers lightly caressing the smooth surface, then slowly opened it. She read softly what he had written inside. “To Miri, whose friendship I have, come to treasure more each day, I offer this gift, which I have come to treasure more than life itself. Brad.”

When she finally looked up at him, her eyes were swimming. “Thank you, Brad.”

He smiled and took her hand in his again. “Hey,” he said, keeping his voice light, “I just wanted to do something for the best guide in Jerusalem.”

Eighteen

Brad looked at the eager faces, tapping the chalk against his fingers. “Let’s see, what else can I show you?” he said to himself. His students sat at their desks, brown faces attentive, dark eyes sparkling with pleasure at their success. There were sixteen of them, nine boys and seven girls, the best of the school, according to Ali. But then Brad suspected that Ali thought all of his students were the best.

Brad hadn’t mastered all of their names yet, but nearly. He walked closer to their desks, watching them, feeling a great affection for these Arab children. Natasha, the oldest at fourteen, sat straight as an arrow, her jet black hair pulled back from her face and braided into two long pigtails. Abou, just barely seven and the youngest, sat next to her, squirming in anticipation, his cheeks round, his eyes sober. He was usually the first to shoot out an answer. Mahmoud, his older brother, usually tried to appear bored, but nearly always failed when Brad started challenging them. Nimra, Arabic for “tigress,” was very unlike her name. She reminded Brad of a darker version, almost a carbon copy, of his sister Brenda. Nimra was his favorite, with her shy little smile. But he had quickly grown to love them all: Ibrahim and Faisal, unable to stop poking at each other unless they were separated; Mohammed, his large dark eyes so expressive; Wojiha, at twelve already a lovely young woman.

Suddenly Brad had an idea. “Okay,” he said, pointing to them, “new word.” He turned to the chalkboard and sketched hurriedly, painfully aware of his lack of artistic talent.

Before he had even finished the drawing on the board, the class erupted into a cacophony of sound. The older boys jeered at him and started pounding their desks. The younger children made faces as they yelled and shook their fingers at him.

Brad was stunned. His pupils had been alert and attentive just a moment earlier, each intent on being the first one to answer his next question. Suddenly he had a miniature Arab riot on his hands. They were all shouting at him in Arabic, but gradually the older boys prevailed, and the whole class joined in, slapping the flat of their hands against the desk tops and chanting “La! La! La! La!”

That much Brad understood. It was Arabic for “no.” But no what? He stood looking bewildered, trying to determine what had broken the floodgates.

The door opened, and Ali stuck his head in. It was like pulling the plug on a blaring stereo. One instant there was ear-throbbing sound. The next a pin would have sounded like an amplified thunderclap.

“Mr. Kennison,” Ali said sternly, winking at the children as he entered. The older ones grinned, the younger ones squirmed in anticipation. Teacher was in trouble. “Your firm hand of discipline seems to be losing its grip. Do you have a problem?”

Brad held up his hands in a gesture of bewilderment. “I don’t know. The only thing I can understand is that they keep saying ‘La! La!’ ”

Ali nodded sagely. “Somehow, it was my impression that you were supposed to be teaching them English, not them teaching you Arabic.”

“Come on, Ali. Find out what I did. Why are they so upset?”

The young Arab principal turned to face the sixteen eager faces and spoke briefly in Arabic. Someone plugged in the stereo again. They all waved their hands, jumped up and down, and explained the problem simultaneously. Ali plugged his ears and pulled a face at them. Gradually bedlam subsided. Ali selected Natasha and spoke to her. She responded briefly, pointing at Brad.

“I didn’t do it,” Brad wailed as Ali turned and walked up to him, “and if I did, I was insane at the time.”

Ali gently pushed Brad aside, revealing his artistic handiwork on the board. “Um humm,” he mused, his head cocked to one side. “And may I ask who is responsible for this masterpiece?”

“What? The pig? I drew it. We are working on vocabulary. If you think that is bad, you should have seen my horse. What are they, half-pint art critics?”

Ali looked at the class and shook his head, his face long and sober. “Mr. Kennison,” he said in great solemnity, “do you have any concept of what a pig means to a Moslem?”

Someone turned on the light in Brad’s attic. “Oh,” he said with a long drawn-out sound. “So that’s it. I knew that the Jews—but I didn’t realize—Moslems, too, huh?” He erased the board quickly.

Ali nodded, unsuccessfully trying to suppress a smile.

“Would you apologize to them for me? I didn’t mean to offend them.”

“Actually, to call someone a pig is a gross insult—not quite profanity, but close. They thought you were calling them a pig.”

“Oh no,” Brad said in dismay. “They were supposed to say ‘This is a pig.’ I was just trying to teach them some new words.”

Ali turned to the class and again spoke briefly. “Ah,” said the group almost as one. They smiled and waved their forgiveness.

Ali turned back to Brad. “Class is about over. Shall we dismiss them? I need to talk with you anyway.”

“That’s fine.” Brad stepped forward. “Attention,” he commanded them, coming to a ramrod stiff position.

“Ah-ten-shun,” they echoed, following his example.

“Can we show off a little?” Brad asked.

“You bet,” Ali responded.

“I am—” Brad pointed to himself.

“Tee-chur,” they called out, aware that they were performing for the principal.

Brad’s sweeping gesture included all of them. “You are—”

“Stoo-dents.” Again their eyes were bright and shiny.

He picked up the objects on his desk one by one, and they called them out in unison—apple, pencil, book, orange, shoe, and so on. Then he turned to the board and wrote one word after another—this, that, is, are, will, I, you, me, we. Again, usually before Brad finished writing, they called the words out.

He gave a little bow and applauded. “Very good.” He dismissed the children with a wave. “Salam aleichem.”

“Salam! Salam!” they cried as they burst for the doors.

“Hold it!” Brad bellowed, freezing them in their tracks. They didn’t know those words yet, but the tone was in a universal language.

“La, salam,” he said sternly, shaking his head. “La! La!” he waved again, “Salam aleichem.”

This time they remembered, smiling. “Goodbye,” they said as one.

“Very good,” Brad nodded. “Goodbye.”

They were gone like a shot.

“Well?” Ali said, pulling up a chair and dropping into it.

Brad sat on a corner of the desk. “Well what?”

“How is the experiment going?”

Brad gave an audible sigh. “I don’t know. If I could speak even a little Arabic so I could explain things to them. It’s like trying to communicate with a very small child. I have to repeat and repeat.”

“When did you learn to speak English?”

“All right, as a baby, but—”

“Funny thing. That’s how I learned Arabic too. Maybe you’re onto something with this ‘new’ method of yours.”

“Well,” Brad conceded, “I do feel as though they’re making some progress. They can understand and make simple sentences now. Anyway, it’s fun. Have you heard from your other teacher yet?”

“Yes, she finishes her other job this week. She’ll take over from you starting Thursday.”

Brad nodded, a little sad to know he wouldn’t be continuing. “I am glad we changed the class to morning instead of afternoon, but I still feel guilty only teaching them four days a week.”

Ali shrugged that off. “Friday is their day, Sunday is yours. You came to Israel to see Israel, not to spend your time in a classroom.”

“I know,” Brad replied. “But this has been a delightful experience for me. I can see why you feel so strongly about your people. They are really special.”

“There are a few exceptions to that, but all in all I would have to agree with you.”

“You said you wanted to talk to me,” Brad reminded him.

“Oh, yes. Miri called.”

“She did?”

“Yes. She wants you to meet her here instead of at the hotel. She had to be out this way anyway.”

“Does she have a ride here?”

“I guess so. She didn’t say.”

“Okay. What time?”

“Ten.”

Brad glanced at his watch. “That’s right now.”

“I know. That’s why I came in. That, and to put down a small insurrection. By the way, how is she coming?”

Brad shook his head in discouragement. “You know Miri. She wants to know, and she seems to accept things, but I keep getting this feeling that it’s only an intellectual acceptance. I think she finds Mormonism attractive in the same way that a person finds Plato’s philosophy more attractive than Aristotle’s. It’s an intellectual preference, but there’s no spiritual commitment.”

“I don’t know,” Ali mused. “She’s constantly asking me questions. Every time I deliver something to the hotel, she corners me for fifteen minutes or so and quizzes me.”

“I know,” Brad laughed. “She keeps saying ‘Ali said this or Ali said that. What do you think?’ ”

“Maybe we’d better start checking our answers beforehand. I mean, I’m hardly an expert on Mormonism.”

“But what fascinates her about you is that you, a non-Christian, should decide to join the Church. Miri has told me that several times.”

“How did she react to Brother Spencer’s talk the other night?” The BYU faculty advisor had spoken on the prophetic relationship between Ephraim and Joseph, using Ezekiel, chapter thirty-seven, as his theme. He knew Miri was there, and he hadn’t pulled any punches. He had defined the stick of Judah as the Bible and the stick of Joseph as the Book of Mormon, and then had talked about the significance of their being joined together.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask Miri?” Brad suggested.

“Ask me what?” Miri said, as she came into the classroom.

Both Ali and Brad jumped. “Hi,” Brad called, aware of the sudden excitement he always felt when he saw her.

She smiled brightly, then turned to Ali. “So? Ask me.”

“We were just wondering how you felt about the fireside Saturday night.”

She laughed. “You two and your conspiracy to make me a Mormon. What hope have I?”

“Only one,” Ali replied soberly.

That caught her off guard. She had expected a light response in return. “What’s that?”

“There is a Church policy against baptizing unconscious candidates. Otherwise we would have knocked you over the head and dunked you in the River Jordan weeks ago.”

Brad watched the two of them as they continued to banter back and forth, envious of Ali’s easy manner concerning the topic. Brad knew he always reacted too intensely to any hint of progress or any sign of rejection. And he knew why he reacted that way. There was much more than a convert baptism at stake for him.

“So stop stalling,” Ali said. “Answer the question.”

Miri sat down on the desk next to Brad.

“Well, I read all those references he gave us again last night. The one big question in my mind is whether Mormons really do represent Ephraim. But,” she went on quickly as both Brad and Ali started to speak, “the thing that really bothered me was his interpretation of Ezekiel. He made such a point of the fact that the sticks were books—the stick of Joseph was the Book of Mormon, the stick of Judah the Bible.”

“Right.” Both Ali and Brad spoke as one.

“When I got home I got out my Bible in Hebrew and read that passage.”

“And?” Ali asked impatiently as she paused for a long moment.

“At first I was really bothered. The Hebrew word for ‘stick’ doesn’t mean book at all. Its basic meaning is wood. The meaning clearly seemed to be two staffs or rods on which the names of Judah and Joseph were written. It is a prophecy that the two tribes will be reunited, but it has nothing to do with books or records. But Brother Spencer made such a point that Joseph Smith claimed it was a book. I felt sure that your Mormon prophet was in error. He should not have spoken out on a Hebrew text without knowing Hebrew.”

“Sometimes a prophet knows more than a linguist,” Brad said stubbornly.

Miri smiled. “Another assumption that one must take on faith. But,” she added quickly, cutting off Brad’s protest, “let me finish. Before challenging you on this, I wanted to be absolutely sure. So I went to the Hebrew University this morning. I got out some Hebrew dictionaries and lexicons. I found out a couple of interesting things.”

“What?” Brad asked eagerly.

“Well,” she said, “to make a long story short, I finally ended up in the office of one of my former professors, one of the foremost archeologists in the Middle East. I won’t go into all the archeological trivia, but the professor told me that the Babylonians used wooden writing books to make records.”

Brad got the first glimmer. “So—”

“So,” Miri continued, “the Babylonian word for these wooden boards is close to the Hebrew word for ‘stick.’ My professor thinks a better translation of that verse would be: ‘And he took one wooden writing tablet and wrote on it for Judah.’ ”

“So it is a record,” Brad said, surprised at her information, and even more amazed at her.

Miri nodded. “I must admit I was very impressed. Your Joseph Smith has a remarkable record.” She looked at Ali. “So to answer your question about Saturday night, I am impressed, I am troubled, I am intrigued. In a word, I don’t know.”

“Grab your club, Brad,” Ali said happily. “This girl needs to be baptized, conscious or not.”

“Oh no,” Miri protested quickly, “Remember, one ‘stick’ does not a convert make.”

“Oh, ho ho!” Ali said, making a face at her. “Very punny. Very punny indeed.”

Miri bowed her head, acknowledging her just dues. “Thank you.” She looked at Brad. “I need to call the hotel and talk to my father before we leave. I’ll be only a minute or two. May I use your phone, Ali?”

“Sure thing. It’s in my office at the end of the hall.”

For almost a full minute after she had left, both men were silent, wrapped up in their own thoughts. Finally Brad spoke.

“She really is something. If she ever does convert, she will make a super Latter-day Saint.”

“And one heck of a wife,” Ali added.

Brad had learned that trying to hide his feelings from Ali was like trying to appear inconspicuous in a business suit on the beach. “I agree,” he admitted. “If she will join the Church. That’s still a very big if.”

“And if not,” Ali asked softly, “then what?”

“Then old Brad packs his bags and heads for home.”

“Just like that?”

“No, not just like that. But he’ll do it. It won’t work any other way. Besides, what are we talking about? I don’t even know if Miri is interested in me. She hasn’t said a word.”

“Oh, brother!” Ali groaned. “If you are that dense, drawing pigs on the blackboard may be the highlight of your life.” He walked to the door and leaned against the frame, where he could see Brad and look down the hall too. “If you can’t see her feelings for you in her eyes, you’re the only one who can’t. Even her father can see how she feels.”

Brad’s head shot up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Levi quizzed me the other day about you two.”

“He did? What did he say?”

“He wanted to know what I thought your intentions were—if you liked her, et cetera, et cetera.”

“And?”

“And what?” Ali asked innocently.

Brad scooped up the eraser and hurled it at his friend, missing his head by at least a millimeter. “You know what!” he exclaimed. “Come on, what did you tell him?”

“That you were madly in love with his daughter, seriously considering an elopement, but that you would be back in time to cover your evening shift and not to worry.”

The shoe on the desk used for vocabulary training followed the eraser, only this time Brad’s aim was true. It whacked Ali solidly on the shoulder.

“Ouch!” he hollered. “All right, all right,” he cried as Brad picked up the orange. “I surrender! I surrender!”

“So what did you say?”

“I told him the truth. I told him nothing formal was happening, but that I thought you were both starting to develop some deep feelings for each other.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“Not much. I think Levi has mixed emotions. He has concerns about Miri marrying a non-Jew, and a non-Israeli, and yet he really likes you. Her mother really likes you.”

“I really like them. They are good people.”

Ali gave Brad a long, searching look. “Actually, I think Levi is more concerned about her relationship to Mormonism.”

That brought Brad up short. “Oh?”

“You know, it’s funny. The Shadmis claim that they are not practicing Jews, and yet those traditions die hard. Levi grew up in an Orthodox home. If theirs was an Orthodox home now and Miri converted to Christianity, there would be a formal funeral. Her name would never be spoken in the home again. That would be true even if she married you and didn’t convert.”

“Do you think they would react that strongly now? Levi seems to have some positive feelings about Mormons himself.”

“I don’t know. I really doubt they would kick Miri out of the home, but it would, I think, introduce a serious strain into their relationship.”

“And that would be tough,” Brad murmured glumly. “They are a very close family. And yet now that I think about it, they were noticeably cooler when I picked up Miri for church that day when you spoke.”

Ali nodded, his dark eyes thoughtful. “Not that it would stop Miri. She has a mind of her own. If she decides for baptism, she’ll do it no matter what.”

“If she decides.” They both fell silent, considering the chances of that happening.

Finally Brad shrugged, his face long. “Well, that’s a secondary worry, anyway. First we have to get her converted, and that is a big enough task for the moment.”

Nineteen

Masada! Its very name meant mountain stronghold, and that it was. It was a superb natural fortress, its sheer cliffs towering thirteen hundred feet above the lowest spot on the face of the earth, the shores of the Dead Sea. Brad and Miri were climbing up what Josephus, the ancient historian, had called the “Serpentine Path.” It snaked its way up the eastern flank of the boat-shaped mountain, each sharp switchback becoming steeper and narrower as it came up under the lip of the cliffs that ringed the top. Brad let his eyes follow the path upward, awestruck at the choice of the Jewish Zealots some two thousand years before. A six-year-old with a basket of grapefruit-sized rocks could defend the final fifty or sixty feet from a thousand troops. Fifteen thousand of the Tenth Legion, the best Rome could field, were held at bay by a few ragtag rebels, probably less than three hundred actual fighting men. No wonder this spot had captured and fired the imagination of the Israelis. It personified their own struggles against incredible odds.

Miri pointed to a small bench where the trail made yet another switchback. “Shall we take a break for a few minutes?”

Brad nodded, and they plopped down, grateful for the small patch of shade provided by a thatched overhang. They had been climbing steadily for close to half an hour and were still barely two-thirds of the way up. The Dead Sea shimmered azure blue in the searing heat, a mile or two to the east and a thousand feet below them. Even though it was late September, the sun could still blister the skin, and it left the air hot and oppressive.

Brad unhooked his canteen and offered it to Miri, watching as she tipped her head back and drank. Even in the fierce heat of the Judean wilderness, she looked cool and lovely. A light cotton blouse, sky blue and sleeveless, with matching shorts emphasized the slimness of her figure and the graceful line of her legs. A bright yellow scarf protected her head from the sun.

“Tastes good,” she murmured, then leaned back against one of the thin metal poles that held up the protective covering. She was right about the water, but only because out here water was at a premium. It was tepid and tasted faintly of aluminum.

Brad studied her face, calm now in repose, and felt again the tug of conflicting emotions. He leaned over, picked up a pebble, and rolled it back and forth in his hands. Yesterday his hopes had soared when she had discovered on her own the meaning of the two sticks prophecy. At other times they crashed in hopelessness. This morning as they had driven down from Jerusalem, Brad had thought she was asleep, her head back against the seat of the car, her eyes closed. Suddenly she had said, “I just cannot accept it. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense?” he had asked.

“That God would let his own son be killed to save all men, when the vast majority don’t want to be saved anyway.”

Brad had started to explain, but it soon became clear she had been thinking out loud and did not want any intrusions in her thoughts. So he had lapsed into gloomy silence.

He flipped the rock away and watched it arc downward until it hit the mountain, making a little puff of dust. Miri opened her eyes.

“Are you ready to go?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No way.”

“Good,” she murmured lazily. “Neither am I,” and she closed her eyes again.

He watched her, knowing that soon he had to make some commitments of his own. He had left home in a state of turmoil and frustration. He had been without purpose, rudderless in the stream, irritated at his own inability to decide what to do. Those feelings were gone now. In his quest for ammunition to combat Miri’s incessant questions, he had found himself. He knew now what he wanted to do with his life, and the desire to embark on that path was becoming more and more powerful. Some of the greatest events of history were starting to unfold, and those events were intimately connected with the Mormons and the peoples of Israel—Arab and Jew. Brad wanted to learn everything he could about those intertwining destinies, and then teach it to others, ignite them with the flame that consumed him. He had been so overjoyed when he realized he’d found the answer he had been looking for, that the next morning he had spent several hours at the Hebrew University, checking out classes, programs, possibilities. By noon, however, he knew that he couldn’t get what he wanted there. He would have to become completely fluent in Hebrew to get a degree in Jerusalem, and that would take a year or more in addition to his studies. And back home, with the Middle Eastern Center at the University of Utah, he had one of America’s finest facilities right in his backyard.

He studied Miri, then shook his head. Only one thing held him here now—this beautiful dark-haired Israeli who sat next to him, totally unaware of his frustrations. How much longer should he hang on? He had money enough yet for several months. But every dime spent here now was robbing the achievement of his goal. And what if Miri converted? Would she be willing to marry him and go to America?

That thought surprised even Brad. Hey, c’mon Kennison, he said severely to himself. This girl is a nonmember. A Jew. And you’re thinking about marriage? It’s time to wake up and face reality. Just tell her goodbye, get on the plane, and go home before you’re in this over your head. He shook his head. Who are you kidding? You’re already in this up to your eyebrows and—

“Hey, you!” Miri’s voice startled him out of his thoughts. “Anybody home in there?”

Brad smiled, slightly embarrassed. “Oh, hi! Haven’t we met somewhere before?”

She nodded, only half smiling. “What in the world were you thinking? You’ve been frowning as if you were sitting on a thornbush or something.”

He searched for a quick reply. Then the rumble of the gondola broke in. The bright red car passed overhead, full of tourists who waved down to them. Brad waved back and pulled a face at Miri.

“I was thinking about those poor unfortunates who only get to ride up to the top in five minutes instead of experiencing the exhilarating pleasures of a forty-fiveminute hike in the bright and delightful sunshine.”

Miri pulled a face at him. “You’re the one who said you wanted to—”

“Don’t remind me. Tell me again how much money we’re saving by climbing up.”

Her dark eyes were thoughtful. “Was that really what you were thinking?”

“No,” he admitted after a long pause. “Actually I was thinking about how fooled we can be sometimes.”

“Fooled?”

“Yes. Like the Dead Sea.” He pointed to the panorama before them. “From a distance she holds out so much promise. She is beautiful from here. You might think at first you could satisfy all of your needs at her shores.” Brad looked into those sober, probing eyes for what seemed like an interminable moment, then finally looked away. “But when you get closer, you find the promise is not real. You have deceived yourself into thinking she can solve your problems. And you go away more thirsty than before.”

The gondola reached the top, and in the stillness they could hear the laughter and chatter of the group as they disembarked and climbed the last few feet to the top.

Finally Miri spoke, her voice soft, her eyes reflective. “But such is not always the case. Sometimes the promise is fulfilled.”

Brad glanced at her sharply, wondering if she had sensed more of his feelings than he thought. But Miri turned and gazed out over the valley and water below them so he couldn’t see her eyes.

“From the hills above Tiberias,” she continued, “the Sea of Galilee looks very much like the Dead Sea does from here. But when you come closer, you find no deception. The water is clear and sweet, the shore is lined with trees and shrubs, the depths are filled with fish. She fulfills all of one’s expectations. If one did not know there was a difference between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, one might never come down to drink and be satisfied.”

A moment earlier, she had asked him what he was thinking. Now he would have given far more than a penny to know her thoughts.

“Miri, I—” He stopped and then shook his head. What would he say? What could he say?

Again those deep, unreadable eyes probed his for a long moment. Then she brightened and smiled. “Which reminds me, how would you like a free trip to the Galilee for three days?”

“The Galilee sounds great, but not for free.”

“Hey, Mr. Proud, just listen for a moment. You’ve heard me speak about my good friend, Sarah Millstein.”

“The one who teaches school on the kibbutz?”

“Yes. She is taking the children on a tee-yool—an outing. Oh, there’s no really good English word for it. It’s kind of like a tour, a field trip, as you would say. Only in Israel it’s more like our national pastime. We love to see our land and our country.”

“I understand.”

“I promised Sarah I would serve as their guide. They leave next Sunday.”

“That sounds good, but I still insist on paying my way.”

“Just listen, please. The men of the kibbutz are just finishing up the harvest. They can spare only one sixteen-year-old to guard the children. They prefer two guards.”

That was one of the sobering realities of Israel that Brad had noticed. Every group of children was accompanied by armed men or women. The terrorists had no respect for age, and the Israelis knew from grim experience that they must protect their own.

“They just happen to be offering about fifteen dollars a day for someone who could accompany them. That would cover your guide’s fee.”

Brad laughed. “You are an incorrigible liar, for which I am grateful. Tell Sarah she has a guard.”

“Good. We’ll—”

“Oh,” Brad exclaimed in sudden disappointment. “I have to work for your father those nights.”

Miri blushed slightly. “I’ve already talked to him about it, hoping you would accept.” The blush deepened. “I mean, assuming you wanted to see the Galilee. Father said that was fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. He said at the beginning he promised you time off whenever you wanted it, and you haven’t asked for any yet. Sarah will hold classes for the children each afternoon and since we’ll be staying mostly on local kibbutzim, the children will be safe. I could then take you to the Christian sites, if you’d like.”

“I would like,” Brad said firmly. “The whole thing sounds great. Ali’s new English teacher should be here Thursday, so I’ll be finished at the school.”

“Fine.” Miri stood up. “Then enough of this decadent American laziness. Up, we must press on to the top.”

Brad groaned and stood up to join her, hoisting his camera bag to his shoulder. “And you criticize the Romans for being such terrible taskmasters.”

Three hours later they sat in the quiet coolness of the giant cistern on the southern tip of Masada. Cistern was a deceptive word if one thought of a well or similar storage facility. This one, hewn out of solid rock, was approximately the size of a small chapel, and in Roman times it held over eighty million gallons of water. Now it was dry and dusty, the aqueducts that fed it long in disrepair. The only light entered through the three or four openings near the ceiling, where the water had originally been funneled in. It was dim and gloomy, appropriate to the mood of Masada. They had explored the ruins on the top: the bath house, the storage buildings, the synagogue, the incredible “hanging palace” of King Herod, which clung to three levels of the northern face of the cliff.

Miri had told him the story of the last days in the fortress, back in the first century A.D. She talked of the huge dirt ramp built in the searing desert heat by Jewish slaves to provide a place for the Roman siege machines to batter the walls, of the shift in wind that drove the Roman fire into the wooden braces of the Jewish wall and signaled the collapse of their last defense against Rome. Miri’s voice grew subdued and husky with emotion as she told of the Jewish leader, Eleazar, and his impassioned plea to the defenders to cheat the Romans of their victory after three years of siege. If it was God’s will they perish, he demanded that they do so by their own hands.

Miri described those final moments when the men had embraced their wives and children and then, weeping, cut them down with the sword. The men had then drawn lots. Ten were chosen to kill the others who lay down next to the bodies of their families and bared their throats. Those ten next drew lots. One, whom fate chose, executed the other nine, set fire to the buildings, and then ran himself through.

Now as Miri and Brad sat on the bottom step of the flight of stairs hewn out of the walls of stone, Brad was keenly aware of the soft touch of her arm against his own.

“There were seven survivors,” she said, picking up the narrative without a break. “Two women and five children. They told the Romans what had happened. They had hidden in one of the cisterns—I like to think it was this one, where we are now—when the suicide pact was carried out.”

She looked around the giant cavern as though looking for traces of the seven. “Some scholars believe that two of the men didn’t have the courage to kill their families, or that the women fled here with their children to avoid death. But I believe Eleazar appointed them to survive so they could testify that the Jews would rather die than fall into Roman hands.”

She fell silent, and the gloom of the cavern seemed to permeate her mood as well as Brad’s. He started to speak, but just then six tourists started down the stairs into the cistern. Brad half expected Miri to leave, but she stood up and moved away from the stairs, smiling politely at the intruders, then waited quietly as they oohed and aahed and flashed their cameras. When they were gone she moved back to the stairs and sat down again. Brad joined her.

“Some people accuse us of having a Masada complex,” she said.

“What is that?”

“They say we view it as a national shrine. We bring all of our new military cadets up to the top of Masada to swear their oath of allegiance. They end it by saying, ‘Masada shall not fall again.’ It has become the motto, the cry of Israel.”

“Yes,” Brad said, “I’ve heard that.”

“The Western press says we have the same complex. We are so afraid of defeat that we would rather commit suicide as a nation than give in. They say Israel has a death wish, a suicide fixation.”

“Perhaps the Western press has never walked through Yad Vashem,” Brad answered quietly.

Miri gave him a long look. “It is hard for others to understand,” she finally said, choosing her words with great care, “but this land is part of me. It is a land with many difficulties and many challenges. Taxes are incredibly steep, the highest in the world, because one half of our budget goes for defense. Inflation is out of control. The Israeli pound was worth two dollars and eighty cents in 1948. Now it is worth twenty-three cents. Nearly every couple works two jobs to make ends meet. We call our children the ‘key children,’ because they wear their apartment keys around their necks since their parents are rarely there when they come home from school. We are a land of almost unbearable tension, a land of soldiers and war. Men and women are drafted in Israel, and all men stay in the reserves with three weeks of summer training until they are fifty. Childless women stay in the reserves till age thirty-four. There is hardly an apartment building without its war widow. We are a country of armed guards and barbed wire, of night patrols and terrorist attacks.”

Brad nodded, wanting her to know he understood, and yet not wanting to interrupt her.

“Some have come here, and they cannot stand living on the edge of the knife as we do. They go back home. I do not condemn them. Sometimes I long for peace, for relief, for rest. But if we fail here, now, if Israel falls again, then who will save my people when the next fuehrer comes to power?”

She stared at Brad almost defiantly, daring him to speak. Then gradually her face softened into a quiet smile. “That is the passionate speech of a guide who has forgotten her place. It will not cost you any extra.”

Brad smiled. “Do you know what I think?”

She shook her head.

“I think if you had been asked to be one of the two women survivors of Masada, you would have refused.”

To his surprise, she flared up at that. “Was life as a slave in Roman hands more sweet than death?” she said fiercely. “I think not.”

“Hey!” Brad said, taking her gently by the shoulders. “Put away your sword, Eleazar. I meant that not as an attack, but as a salute.”

And when he felt her stiffness slowly relax, he pulled her to him and gently kissed her. For a split second she started to resist, but then came willingly to him, her lips warm and responsive.

Miri pulled away and stared at him for a long moment. Then she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back, a soft, lingering kiss. Pulling away again, she shook her head, almost sadly. “This wasn’t supposed to be part of the guide service either,” she said, her voice very soft.

And then to his surprise, she stood up, turned, and ran swiftly up the stairs into the sunlight, leaving him to stare after her.

Twenty

They stood under the deep shadows of a poinciana tree, Miri close to him, her head against his shoulder. The chirp of an occasional cricket was the only sound louder than the slight rustling of leaves when the breeze stirred. The bright orange-red flowers of the tree, now barely visible in the light of the moon, poured their rich fragrance into the air around them.

She shivered slightly in the evening cool, and Brad put his arm around her shoulder. “Cold?”

“Not now.”

“Want to go in?”

“Not yet. It’s so lovely out here.”

“It’s been a lovely three days. I can see why Jesus loved the Galilee so much,” Brad said. “The whole area is beautiful. And the children have been delightful, Miri. I’m glad you needed some help with them.”

“So am I,” she murmured. “It’s been a wonderful time for me.”

“Miri?”

“Hmmmm?”

“Sometime we have to talk about some things.”

She nodded, reaching up to touch his hand on her shoulder. “I know.”

He was silent, torn with indecision. Three times he had decided to tell her about his decision to return to America. Three times he had turned away, unable to bring himself to say it because it committed him to a course he still fought against.

She looked up at him, then put her finger gently to his lips. “Not tonight. I know it is time we talk very honestly with each other. But not tonight, not now. Tomorrow we go back home, back to life and reality. Tomorrow is soon enough, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed, pulling her around to face him. She looked up expectantly, but as he bent his head down to kiss her, Brad suddenly remembered Mordecai, the sixteen-year-old from Sarah Millstein’s kibbutz who had accompanied them on this outing as the other guard. Because it was located close to Lebanon, the kibbutz posted a nightly guard, and the young man had insisted he take his turn.

“What is the matter?” Miri asked as he pulled back.

“Mordecai.”

“Mordecai?”

“Yes, he’s on guard duty right behind us.”

Miri giggled. “Don’t you think he’s ever seen a man and woman kiss before?”

“Well, I know, but—”

Her own kiss cut off his words.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Miri said, still sensing his hesitancy. “He can’t see us that well here in the shadows.” She stood on tiptoe and peered over his shoulder. “Besides, he’s not even there now.”

That surprised Brad. The young man had been standing under the yard light when he and Miri had strolled by. They had spoken to him briefly, and then stopped here under the tree. Brad turned around and studied the large parking area of the kibbutz.

“Maybe he went off duty,” Miri suggested.

“No,” Brad said, scanning the area with his eyes, aware of a sudden sense of foreboding. “He told me he was to stay on watch until midnight. He was very proud to be doing it, and very conscientious.”

Miri clutched at Brad’s arm, sensing his sudden concern. “Do you think something is wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice barely audible. He pushed her gently aside and reached for the carbine he had leaned against the trunk of the tree. He had carried it almost religiously for the last three days.

Brad touched Miri’s arm. “He may have just walked over to talk with the other guard, or maybe he got embarrassed eavesdropping on us, and stepped around the corner of the building. Stay here. If I’m not back in five minutes, sound the alarm.”

She nodded, gave his hand a quick squeeze, and stepped back deeper into the shadows.

It took Brad just one minute to reach the spot where Mordecai had been standing. He moved in a crouch around the perimeter of the open area, using the shadows of bushes and vehicles as cover. Even if nothing was wrong, he didn’t want to startle a trigger-happy kid.

But Mordecai was never going to be startled again. Brad found him around the side of the building face down in the dirt, a large dark spot staining his T-shirt in the center of his back. Fear hit Brad like a wave of icy water. He stood motionless, knowing from experience that it was the initial burst of adrenalin racing through his system. Every sense in his body was straining to read the night.

A minute later he was back with Miri. “Mordecai is dead.” He went on quickly, ignoring the sharp intake of her breath. “The fence has been cut, so they’re somewhere inside the compound.”

“Oh no!” she cried. “The children!”

Brad lunged for her as she started to dart away and jerked her back. “Listen!” he said urgently. “They can’t have gotten far yet. We saw Mordecai just two or three minutes ago.” He raised his arm and pointed. “They’ll head for the dormitories, and if we try and warn the others, they’ll see us.”

He gripped her shoulders and noted that while her eyes were wide, they held no panic. “Keep to the cover of the bushes and buildings. Go to the back gate and get the other guards. Tell them to watch out for me. I’ll see if I can delay these guys. Be careful!”

Sprinting away across the grass, Brad heard her one desperate whisper, “You be careful.”

As he cut around the equipment shed, Brad’s mind raced. All the old instincts jumped into life, and his mind clicked with deadly cool precision. The prime question involved how many there were. Three to six, he guessed. There was no question about their target—the two long, low buildings that housed the occupants of the kibbutz. Terrorists sought psychological shock effect, and blowing up empty sheds and stables was hardly the most effective way to achieve that.

As Brad dropped quietly to his belly and slithered around the corner of the kibbutz dining room, he saw the first man. The dark figure was crouched down over a bundle of some kind, fiddling with the flap. His rifle lay on the ground alongside him.

The terrorist was scared or an amateur, or both, for he had chosen terrible field position. The dim light from one of the windows left him in clear silhouette. His back was turned to the one most likely source of attack, and he had set his rifle down. The critical question was whether someone else was covering for him. There was no time to wait and find out. Once that bundle was armed, Brad didn’t want to be handling it. He leaped to his feet and darted toward the huddled figure.

Whether it was Brad’s footsteps that caught the attention of the terrorist or the sudden blast of automatic rifle fire that exploded the silence of the night didn’t make a lot of difference. The young Arab spun around and grabbed for his rifle about two seconds too late. Brad hit him with a sweeping blow from the rifle butt as he flew by him and dropped into a tuck and roll, slamming up behind the cover of the main steps.

The second terrorist who had opened fire may have been scared, but he was definitely not an amateur. The bullets tracked Brad’s path with deadly accuracy, chipping cement off the stairs, then whining away in angry ricochets.

Suddenly the whole compound erupted. Automatic rifle fire opened up behind him, then more blasted away to his left. He suddenly felt sick. Had Miri stumbled into them? Shifting his weight, Brad prepared to make a dash for better cover, but he was directly under the light over the front step of the dormitory, and his assailant could obviously see every twitch he made. He frantically jerked himself into a tight ball behind the steps as a hail of bullets bracketed his position like a furious swarm of hornets.

Slowly he inched over onto his back, and with one blast from the carbine he took out the light above him. Again he hugged the earth as the deadly hail sought him out.

Suddenly the front door squeaked loudly.

“Stay back!” Brad shouted, but if the man understood English he paid no attention. The door exploded outward, and a dark figure hurtled over Brad, clearing the steps completely. It was utterly courageous and utterly suicidal. The man came out of his dive and got three steps into a darting run when the “hornets” found him, jerked him violently around twice, then cut his legs out from under him.

“Can you hear me inside?” Brad hissed, now painfully aware that the lights from the doorway left him as exposed as before. “This is Brad Kennison,” he tried again. “I’m with Miri Shadmi. Can you hear me?”

“Yes.” It was a guttural whisper, urgent and commanding. “Cover me! I’m coming out!”

“No!” Brad shot back, but he could have saved his breath. The man near the dining hall opened up again, and the bullets slamming through the open doorway provided a far more convincing command than Brad’s.

“Cut the lights!” Brad called softly, not daring to raise his head.

There was a short bark in Hebrew, and the lights went dark. But there was still sufficient light in the area to make lifting one’s head a very foolish move.

“How many are there?” the deep voice whispered.

“Two here. One is down. The other one has an automatic rifle over by the dining hall. Can you throw something out the side window to distract him?”

There was another unintelligible grunt, and a moment later a muffled scraping from the inside. Then, “Ready?”

“Ready!” Brad swung his carbine around and tensed his muscles.

The shattering crash of glass brought a vicious response from across the grass. Brad popped up, saw the muzzle flashes coming from a clump of bushes near the building, and snapped off four quick shots. He grunted in satisfaction as he dropped back down and heard a sharp cry of pain and brief thrashing in the bushes.

“I think it’s clear,” he called in through the door. “I’ll cover you.”

The Israeli kibbutzniks came tumbling out of the doorway like skydivers out of the belly of an airplane. A barrel-chested man with no shirt barked commands in Hebrew. Two men ran to their downed comrade while four more darted for the two downed terrorists. Brad had hit the second man in the upper thigh and high in the chest. He was bleeding badly, but he was still conscious. The Israeli had not been as lucky.

The owner of the guttural whisper nodded once to Brad; then, amenities over, his face hardened. “It sounds as though the others are down by the dairy barns. Let’s go!” Again the short, barked commands in Hebrew sent the men running, this time Brad with them.

It was short but vicious. Three other terrorists had fled to the animal sheds when their surprise had been cut short, and now they fought like cornered wildcats. But the Israelis had a fury of their own. When two of the three Arabs went down in a withering cross fire, the third screamed wildly and tossed out his rifle.

The sudden quiet was almost as deafening as the previous bedlam. The big man jerked his head, and the terrified Arab was led away by three grim-faced farmers. “Come!” he said to Brad. “It sounds as if it is over. Let’s assess the damage.”

But the Israeli was wrong. As they came around the last dormitory building, they saw a large crowd milling around in a wide circle. Sarah Millstein turned and saw them, then burst into sobs. “Brad!” she cried. “He’s got Miri!”

With the large man clearing a path like an angry bull, Brad plunged into the crowd. Suddenly he understood why the milling group had formed such a large ring around the two central figures. A young Arab boy, eyes wild with terror, had Miri around the throat with one arm and was waving the encircling Israelis back with the other, which held a hand grenade clenched in white knuckles. The Arab, clearly not much older than Mordecai had been, was screaming at the crowd in hysterical Arabic.

Brad stared for a split second, his stomach a hard knot, then grabbed the big man’s shoulder. “What’s he saying?” he demanded.

A man next to them spoke up. “He’s saying he’ll let go of the pin on the grenade unless we stand back and let him out of here.”

“Okay,” Brad said, yanking on the big man’s arm. “Tell him we’ll do it. Tell the people to move back and let him go.”

The man thrust Brad’s hand away and shook his head. “We don’t allow hostages to be taken,” he said bluntly, turning away.

Brad spun around savagely. “Listen,” he hissed, “I know where they cut the fence and came in. Is there any other way out of here besides the gates?”

“No. And they are locked.”

“All right. I’ll meet him at the fence. Don’t let anyone follow him and panic him. I think he’ll go out the way he came in unless he’s cornered.”

The Israeli looked doubtful. “What if there are others?”

“This makes a total of six. I think that’s it. If not, I’ve got this.” He waved the carbine.

The Israeli hesitated. “Well—”

“Come on, man!” Brad cried, wanting to shake him violently. “If he sees me leave, he’ll know what we’re up to. I’ve got to go now.”

“Okay. Go!”

“Don’t let anyone follow him,” Brad commanded. As he turned and ran hard for the perimeter of the kibbutz, he heard a man’s voice start to boom out in Arabic.

Fortunately, the terrorists had picked their point of entry well. It was one of the darkest portions of the fence, and the cut lay between two large overhanging oleander bushes. Brad surveyed the setup quickly, then squeezed in against the fence behind the bush. It was tight, severely restricting his freedom of movement, but it was the only place of concealment that would give him a shot at the man’s hand. The rifle was useless in these close quarters, and he propped it under the oleander’s branches. Then he concentrated on trying to settle his breathing down to where it didn’t whistle like a force-six gale. He didn’t dare think about Miri with the Arab.

It didn’t take long. He heard the scrape of their feet on the gravel first, then the sharp commands in Arabic. Brad breathed a quick sigh of relief when they rounded the corner of the equipment shed and came past Mordecai’s body toward the cut in the fence. The young man’s back was to Brad as he watched for possible pursuit, but his grip on Miri was iron-tight. Everything depended now on how this terrified Arab decided to make his exit through the fence. He and Miri couldn’t go through together, and he wouldn’t dare let go of her for an instant.

He pushed her through first, holding tightly to her wrist, cursing her in a steady flow of Arabic. Brad heard Miri gasp as the cut edge of the fence scraped her arm. As the young terrorist crouched down to follow her through, the hand with the grenade arched back toward where Brad huddled in the bushes.

Brad lunged forward, clamping both hands tightly over the grenade. “Run, Miri!” he shouted, jerking the thin young body backwards and breaking his hold on Miri’s wrist. She fell backward, then leaped up and darted away. Brad saw her go and then promptly forgot about her. The Arab was onto his back like a terrified cat, scratching, clawing, screaming, pounding. Brad held on desperately to the boy’s fist and the grenade with both hands and hurled himself backward. They fell heavily against the shed, Brad’s body crushing the boy between it and him. The air whooshed out of the Arab like a popped balloon, and the flailing instantly stopped. Stunned himself, it took Brad almost a full second to realize that he was squeezing an empty hand. The grenade was gone!

With no idea where it had dropped, Brad jumped away in three mighty leaps, then dove for the ground, feeling searing pain as his face skidded in the gravel. The blast roared out behind him, peppering the building and fence with shrapnel.

Dazed, Brad got slowly to his feet, vaguely aware that there was still a very dangerous young man out here with him. He shook his head and tried to move into action. Then he saw the dark mass huddled up against the building and moved slowly toward it. Cautiously, he turned him half over, then felt sick. Like Mordecai, this boy would have no more surprises. The hand grenade had fallen within three or four feet of him, and he had caught a major portion of the blast full in the chest. Brad let the boy slump back again and stood up wearily.

“Miri!” he called, a great relief washing over him. He was dimly aware of the pounding of feet behind him. “Miri! It’s Brad. Everything is okay now.”

He held the fence back as she came running, stumbling out of the dark. She crawled through and threw herself into his arms.

“It’s all right,” he soothed, holding her tight, as great sobs racked her body. “Everything’s okay. It’s all right now.”

Twenty-one

Dawn was just starting to lighten the eastern sky when Miri peeked into the TV room off the main dining hall of the kibbutz. “There you are,” she said to Brad, her voice full of relief.

Surprised, he stood up. “Hi, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“So are you.”

“Fat chance,” he said. The uproar had not finally died down until after two in the morning, with police, military, and press swarming the place. Brad, painfully embarrassed at being the hero of the hour, had finally pled exhaustion and gone to his room. A doctor had forced a sleeping pill down Miri two hours before that, and had sent her to bed. Once it was quiet, Brad had slipped in here and had been staring at the walls ever since, thinking about two young boys—one Arab, one Jewish—and about a dark-haired, dark-eyed Israeli sabra.

Almost shyly, Miri looked up at him. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“I’d like that.”

She came and stood before him, then reached up and gently touched the angry red scratches on his cheek. “How do I ever say ‘thank you’?” she said, her eyes suddenly welling up with tears.

He reached out and pulled her to him. “Teach me how to dive into loose gravel and not lead with my face.” Then the image of the young Arab boy who hadn’t dived at all flashed into his mind. “It isn’t much,” he murmured.

“You know what I mean,” she said, struggling to control her voice. “Me. The children. They told you about the explosives?”

He nodded soberly. There had been sufficient to level a good portion of the two dormitories. Brad reached down and examined the four ugly red welts that ran across Miri’s arm where the fence had caught her.

“If I can’t take better care of you than that, you’d better shop around for a more efficient bodyguard.”

“Oh, Brad,” she cried, throwing her arms around him and clinging to him fiercely. “When I think—” She shuddered and held him even more tightly.

“Hey! Hey!” he said gently, tipping her head up and wiping the tears away with his hand. “I’m supposed to be the soft-hearted American, and you’re the stoic, brave Israeli. Remember?”

“I know, just give me a minute, okay?”

“Sure,” he said, and held her close to him.

Finally she pulled away and looked up into his eyes. “It’s tomorrow now.”

“It is?” he asked, not following the sudden switch in the conversation.

“Yes. We said we would talk tomorrow. Can we talk now?”

Brad nodded, and they moved over to a couch and sat down. He took her hand and began tracing the lines on her palm lightly with his finger. For the last two hours he had been asking himself if he could really leave this woman and return home. And yet the reply followed quickly. Can you be happy setting aside your goals and staying in Israel with a nonmember wife? After two hours, he was less certain of the answers than when he had started. “You know, Miri,” he said, trying to keep his voice light, “in some ways this could be even harder than what we’ve just gone through.”

“I know, Brad,” she said softly. “So let me start.”

Gratefully he nodded.

Miri took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then put her hand over his. “I love you, Brad Kennison.”

If she had jabbed him with a pin he wouldn’t have jumped more visibly. Completely taken by surprise, he stared at her.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she stammered, finding it very difficult to explain her feelings. “But it is not just because of what you did last night. It didn’t take a hand grenade to convince me of my feelings for you. I have known I love you for two weeks now. Last night only convinced me that I can’t hide it from you—or from myself—any longer.” Once again the dark eyes threatened to spill over. “When that young Arab grabbed me, I was terrified, of course. But over and over I kept thinking, if I die Brad will never know how I feel. So…”

“Miri,” Brad began, still half surprised, half overjoyed, “I—”

“No,” she said quickly. “I want to finish. If I don’t say it now—” She shook her head, her face determined. “I have finally had to face the fact that I feel something for you that I have never before felt for anyone. Remember David?”

“Do I ever!” Brad said, pulling such a face that it caused Miri to laugh. But the smile disappeared almost instantly.

“I thought for a while that I was falling in love with him. He’s handsome, charming—”

“Wealthy,” Brad added sourly.

“Yes. He is an Israeli girl’s ideal. He is a decorated war hero, has a brilliant career ahead of him. Then you came along.”

“Yeah. Poor, klutzy, abrasive.”

She touched his cheek. “And brave and gentle and kind. And so intensely committed to your convictions.” Her eyes were luminous as she looked into his. “This isn’t supposed to happen, you know. Guides don’t fall in love with their clients. Israelis don’t fall in love with Americans. And,” she paused, “and Jewish girls most certainly do not fall in love with Christians.”

Brad took her face in his hands and pulled her to within an inch of his own. “And good Mormon boys don’t fall in love with non-Mormon girls, Jewish, Catholic, or Anglo-Saxon Protestant. And yet I did. I have.” He kissed her, a long, gentle kiss that was returned fully and completely.

“I’m so glad,” she whispered, leaning against him snuggling in against his shoulder.

“Are you really, Miri? All things considered?”

She nodded. “Loving you is creating some real problems. But to not have you love me back would be infinitely worse.”

He thought about that, knowing she was right, wishing she weren’t. They sat quietly for several minutes, lost in their thoughts and basking in the warmth of their discovery. Finally she spoke.

“Tell me about marriage in the temple.”

Once again she brought him bolt upright.

Miri blushed furiously. “Oh,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean it that way. I wasn’t suggesting—” She stopped, thoroughly embarrassed.

Brad put his hand over her mouth. “Shhh!” he said gently, kissing her on the tip of her nose. “I didn’t take it that way. What I want to know is how you know about temple marriage. I’ve never said a word about it.” His eyebrows furrowed. “Has Ali been talking to you?”

“Only after I asked him about it,” Miri admitted.

“Then how—?”

“I read about it.” Seeing the question on his face, she continued. “There is a book in the library at Hebrew University called Meet the Mormons. It said that Mormons believe in marriage for eternity and that it is performed in their temples.”

Brad suddenly remembered Miri’s surprising knowledge of Mormons at the party in her father’s home. “Is that all it said?” he asked.

“Yes.” Her eyes had that gentle teasing look that he was beginning to recognize. “But President Marks explained it in much greater detail.” She looked up at him, waiting for his reaction.

“President Marks!” Brad had been up now for twentyfour hours—and an exhausting twenty-four hours at that. That was the only explanation for how sluggishly his mind was working.

“I’ve been meeting with President Marks for the past two weeks,” she confessed.

“You’ve what?” If she had just announced that Moshe Dayan had become a Franciscan priest and entered a monastery, he could not have been more surprised.

“I wanted to ask some questions,” Miri explained quickly, “and I couldn’t trust my reaction to you anymore. I couldn’t be objective. So I called him and asked if we could talk. Does that make you feel bad?”

“Bad? No, I’m delighted, Miri.”

Miri stood up, walked over to a chair across from Brad, and sat down facing him. “I said I wanted to have my part first in this little talk, so let me say it now.”

Brad nodded, noting the tension in her hands, the stress in her face.

She sighed, then plunged in. “I know it was terribly presumptuous on my part, but once I began to see that our relationship was getting serious—” She shook her head impatiently. “No. Why beat around the bush? Once I realized I loved you and thought that you might come to love me too, I began considering what that meant for us. I suppose I shouldn’t have. But I kept thinking, ‘What if this works out? What if we get married?’ ”

“Don’t apologize,” Brad said softly. “That ‘what if’ has been one of the primary things on my mind for the past two or three weeks. I’m glad you’ve thought about it too.”

She smiled her pleasure at that. “I remembered what I had read in the book about your marriages, so I asked Ali about it. I asked him not to mention it to you, for obvious reasons.”

“He didn’t.”

“From Ali I learned that temple marriage is not just a light thing, not just a slight preference for one kind of ceremony over another. That is when I called President Marks.”

She looked down at her hands as she went on. “He was very kind, but very direct. He said that if you were any kind of a Latter-day Saint, and he thinks you are, then there would be no option. Either I become a Mormon or we could never be married.” She looked up. “He was a little more diplomatic than that, but the message was clear.”

She gave him a long, searching look. “Are you any kind of a Latter-day Saint, Brad?”

There it was, the question he had been hurling himself against for the past two hours.

“Our only hope of working this thing through, Brad,” she said as he hesitated, her voice almost a whisper, “is if we are both totally honest.”

“I know, Miri. I know.” He took a deep breath and began. “All of my life there has never been the slightest question in my mind about my church commitment. Until you, I’ve never even dated anyone who wasn’t an active Latter-day Saint. I suppose it says more eloquently than anything else I could say about how much I love you that for the first time in my life I have seriously considered abandoning that position.” He gave her a rueful expression. “Thou art a sore temptation, Miriam Shadmi.”

“For that much at least I am glad,” she said, her eyes soft.

Brad’s expression was morose. “I guess what it all comes down to is, do your convictions guide your life or not?”

“So when all is said and done, Brad, what you’re saying is that President Marks is right. There is no other acceptable option for you.”

Brad nodded, his expression bleak. “I guess not, Miri. It sounds so selfish that it has to be done my way. But I can’t accept any other choice and live with myself. I can’t.”

“In a way, I suppose that makes me glad. That’s the very thing I admire the most in you. But it puts me in a very strange position. It’s like emotional blackmail. Now I want to accept Mormonism for that reason alone, so I won’t lose you.”

“I would never want that,” Brad said quickly.

“I know, I know,” she said. “But don’t you see? Now I want it, not just because it may be good or true, but because it gives me access to you.”

“That would be a sell-out for you, Miri, just as marrying outside of the temple would be a sell-out for me.”

“Exactly,” she said, grateful for his understanding. “So I have a suggestion, a proposed bargain, as it were.”

“I’m listening, eagerly.”

“For my part of the bargain, I will try to find out for myself if Mormonism is all that you say it is.”

Brad felt his heart leap with elation. “Great!”

“In the past, I have wanted to know what you believed, to understand it. Now my studies will take on a whole new purpose and dimension. I don’t just want to know it, I want to know if it is true.”

“I wouldn’t ask for any more than that,” Brad said, thrilled at her words.

“In fact, I have already started. That’s why I’ve been meeting with President Marks. I’ve been reading in the Book of Mormon you gave me. I’m now up to—how do you say it? Mos-ee-ah.”

“Moz-i-uh,” Brad corrected softly. “That is tremendous.”

“I have even started to pray about it and the whole idea of Mormonism. Do you know how strange and difficult that is for me, when I’m not even sure whether I accept the reality of God?”

Deeply touched, Brad got up and went to her, pulled her to her feet to face him. “You make me feel ashamed that my belief comes so easily. If you are doing that, what is my part of the bargain?”

“I’ll tell you in a moment,” she said, holding his hand tightly. “But I must say one other thing. Remember, we promised to be honest.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t let your hopes rise too high, Brad. I could find it very easy to accept Mormonism. So far I find the Book of Mormon very plausible, and the idea of Joseph Smith as a prophet is not difficult at all. Your religion is very logical and has many parallels to Jewish life. But—”

“But—” Brad repeated, knowing what was coming.

Miri shook her head slowly, her dark eyes deeply troubled. “The idea that Jesus was the Son of God strikes against everything I believe. Every portion of my soul cries out against the sheer illogic of the concept that a god had to become a man to save everybody. That a man who is born of God—is a god—would allow himself to be nailed to a cross while men jeer and spit upon him—it’s so absolutely contrary to what I can accept. I don’t know if I ever can change that, Brad. Not ever.”

“Miri,” he said quietly, “will you pray about that too?”

“To a god who let six million of my people go to their deaths in Germany and Poland?” she asked, the tears welling up in her eyes. “Can’t you see, that is what makes this so difficult for me. You accept a god with feelings and concerns, a god who listens to prayers and answers them. But how can I ask for an answer myself, when he refuses to listen to the cries of my people?”

She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, struggling to regain her composure. “But I want you to know that this whole thing may not work, Brad. And if it doesn’t, if I give it my honest sincere effort and it fails, I don’t want to lose you.”

Brad enfolded her gently into his arms and held her to him. “It won’t fail, Miri. I’ll be praying with you, for you. I’ll help you.”

Slowly she pushed away from him. “That’s your part of the bargain. I don’t want you to help me,” she said softly.

“But why?”

“I am going to ask you to not push me on this in any way. I promise you I will try to find an answer with all my heart. I ache for you. I want so badly for this to work out that if you start asking me, encouraging me, getting anxious about my progress, I’ll cave in. Your love is pressure enough.”

“Miri, I won’t pressure you, but I just have to help!”

“Please!” Her eyes were pleading. “If it happens, I’ve got to know it was not just for you. I have got to find it myself. President Marks has agreed to meet with me and to answer my questions. And he’s given me some other books to read. Please, Brad. It has to be my way!”

“Does that mean I can’t see you?”

“Oh no,” she said, quickly. “I’m not that noble. Just don’t press me on this. Let me find my own way.”

Brad kissed her then, hard and long.

“Does that mean ‘yes’?” she asked breathlessly.

“That means yes. You’ve got your deal.”

“Thank you for understanding.” She put her arm around his waist as she looked at her watch. “It’s nearly five. The kitchen crew will be arriving any moment now. We’d better go.”

He kissed her one more time, and they moved to the door.

She stopped and turned to face him. “Brad?”

“What?”

“You know how they have a canopy at Jewish weddings?”

“Yes.” Brad had been doing some reading of his own. “And do you know why?”

Surprised, Miri answered. “They say it represents the tabernacle that Moses built in the wilderness.”

“Exactly. And the tabernacle was the portable temple for the Israelites. In other words, though you don’t know it, you believe in temple marriage too.” He smiled.

“The parallels really are quite remarkable, aren’t they?”

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Go on.”

“Well,” she said, her dark eyes sparkling now, “if this does happen to work out and I join the Church, and if we then decide to get married, could we have a canopy? I mean, I know we’d be married in the temple. But at the reception, could we?”

Brad took her by the shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Miriam,” he said, “if this works out, you may have dancing elephants and the whole Israeli army at our reception, if that is what you want.”

* * * * * *

Brad glanced at his watch, his face lined with exhaustion. It was nearly ten o’clock, and he was beat. Since he and Miri had parted in the TV room early that morning, it had been one long, frantic day. They had delivered the children back to their kibbutz west of Jerusalem shortly after eleven, but by the time they had accepted the profuse and often tear-filled thanks of three dozen parents, it was after noon before they had started back to Jerusalem. Much to Brad’s dismay, a horde of reporters, photographers, and the curious were waiting for him in the hotel lobby. At first, grateful that he had dropped Miri off and saved her this, he stood patiently, embarrassed as they pressed him with questions and praise. But he quickly tired, feeling the drain of the last thirty hours catching up with him.

At that point Levi Shadmi had bustled in and driven the crowd out like a bull skinner handling a team of balky mules. When it was quiet, he had turned to face Brad. His normally piercing blue eyes suddenly grew moist, and Brad’s spine nearly cracked under the crushing bear hug that was thrown around him. “To bed with you,” was all that Shadmi had finally managed, his voice low and raspy.

But three hours later, Brad had awakened with a start. The huge Arab in his nightmare had leaped through the fence, pulling it closed behind him, then had tossed Brad the hand grenade, his mouth twisted in a wicked grin. Over Levi’s vehement protests Brad had come downstairs and insisted on taking his evening shift at the desk. Now he knew that had been a foolish mistake, for the phone had rung incessantly, and two more reporters had sought him out.

Brad groaned inwardly as he heard the lobby doors open again, but then brightened as he turned and saw it was Ali. “Hi,” he called, pleased to see his friend.

Ali snapped to attention, executed the perfect imitation of a drum roll with his tongue while he tapped his invisible sticks, then lifted both hands to form a mock trumpet and tooted out a fanfare. “Welcome home, the conquering hero!” he called out in his best herald’s voice.

“All right,” Brad growled in embarrassment. “Knock it off.”

Ali strode over and stuck out his hand. “Allow me to shake the hand of the man who made the front page of today’s Jerusalem Post.” He stepped back so as to get a better view of the unseen newspaper hanging in the air in front of him. “Viet Nam Veteran Battles Terrorists,” he intoned.

“Hey, come on, Ali. It’s bad enough as it is, without you chiming in. I even got a call from my folks this evening. It made the wire services in America.”

“No kidding? Not only nationally famous, but internationally as well. That is really something.”

“No it’s not. I’ve been hounded all day. And my mother! I kept telling her there was no danger here. Somehow I have lost my credibility.”

“Not with Levi Shadmi,” Ali said, coming around the counter to sit next to Brad. “He was in the shop picking up some things today. He could hardly talk about you without choking up.”

“That’s only because of Miri,” Brad said modestly. “He thinks about what could have happened.”

“How is Miri, anyway?”

“Fine. She went through a real shock, and she got some bad scratches on her arm, but she’s incredible. Today you wouldn’t know anything had happened.”

“She really is a remarkable person,” Ali said, then squinted at Brad. “How are things going with you two? Last night probably didn’t hurt, did it?”

“I’m very encouraged.” Brad told Ali about their early-morning talk concerning her study of Mormonism and about their bargain, but left out Miri’s confession about her feelings for him.

“Good,” Ali said, obviously pleased. “If she’ll give it an honest shot, I think you’ve got her. And President Marks is super. But can you really stay out of it?”

Brad shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m going to try, because she is right. If she joins, it can’t be for me.”

“So how long do you wait?”

Brad let out a long sigh. He had asked himself the same question several times today. “I don’t know.”

“And if she finally does decide against joining the Church? Are you really going to just walk away?”

“Just walk away? No, I won’t just walk away. But I will go. At least I’ve come to that. I will not marry out of the temple.”

“And what about your decision to return home and get started on your schooling there?”

“It goes into a holding pattern for now,” Brad said glumly.

Ali touched his shoulder softly with his fist as he stood up. “I don’t envy you. You’ve got your plow stuck in some hard ground. But listen, I’ve got to get going. See you tomorrow,” he called as he headed for the door.

“Hey!” Brad shouted. “I almost forgot.” He left the counter and joined Ali at the door. “What did you decide about the Sinai trip?”

“Oh,” Ali said, his brow furrowing. “I forgot about that in all the excitement. Tell me again. When are you leaving?”

“A week from next Monday, October the first. We’ll be gone five days, Monday to Friday. All you need is a sleeping bag and personal items. Miri and Sarah have planned out the menu. You won’t put any meat on those Arab bones, but you won’t starve either.”

“Sarah?”

“Yes, Sarah Millstein. The schoolteacher we were with this week. You and she could talk shop. I think Miri is hoping something will develop between Sarah and Nathan.”

“Nathan’s going?” Ali said slowly.

“Yes, he’s got a week’s leave for the Yom Kippur holiday. He was stationed in the Sinai in ‘67. He really knows the area.” Suddenly Brad sensed Ali’s hesitancy. “What’s the matter?”

“Does Nathan know I’m going?”

“I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t care. I’m paying for the majority of this trip. It’s my idea. It is the only part of Israel I haven’t seen. So if he doesn’t like it, tough! We can find our way around without him.”

Ali still looked unconvinced.

“Anyway, I thought you got along fine with him.”

“Oh, I do. It’s just that…” He sighed. “With Miri I don’t think of her as Jewish, and I don’t think it occurs to her that I’m Arab, unless she really thinks about it. We’re just people who like each other and do business together. I think the same is true of Levi. But I don’t think Nathan can ever quite forget it. I suppose being in the military is part of it. It might add strain to the trip for you.”

“I’ll chance it,” Brad said firmly. “So I say, let Nathan be hanged. I want you to come.”

Ali nodded slowly. “And I would like to come. Count me in.”

Twenty-two

The monastery of Saint Catherine lay near the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, nearly two hundred and fifty miles south of Jerusalem. The monastery looked more like a fortress than a center for meditation and prayer. Tucked up beneath the incredibly sheer granite cliffs of Mount Sinai, from a distance it looked unreal, almost toylike, like a model built by an architect to sell a client on his design. But when one stood at the base of the massive walls, six to eight feet thick and almost a hundred feet high, and saw that they enclosed an area about the size of Temple Square, any feeling of smallness was instantly dispelled.

In the harsher light of day one might agree with Ali’s dry comment that since the Emperor Justinian’s workers had left thirteen hundred years ago, nobody had touched the monastery. But now as Brad slipped out of his room, the arches and domes of the various buildings were lovely, almost ethereal in the pale light of the half moon that gleamed out of a stunningly clear sky.

Neither Nathan nor Ali nor any of the other six tourists in the men’s dormitory stirred as Brad carefully dressed and slipped out. He tiptoed past the windows of the women’s dorm-style room where Sarah and Miri lay sleeping and went down the stairs to ground level. Only then did he sit down and put on his tennis shoes.

The air was still biting cold with the desert night’s chill, and he shivered in his light windbreaker. The cold didn’t concern him, however, for he had before him nearly two hours of hiking with a vertical ascent of almost three thousand feet. He would quickly warm to the task.

Of greater concern to Brad was Nathan’s reaction when he awoke and found Brad’s note. Though it was supposedly Brad’s tour, Nathan had taken charge and wanted to be on the road by six this morning. They had a lot of hard, bone-jarring miles to drive across the Sinai. Brad knew he couldn’t climb up and back in the three hours left till six, but he thought if he pushed himself he could make it in four, maybe four and a half. Yesterday, the five of them had taken nearly seven hours for the round trip up and down Mount Sinai. But they had set a leisurely pace and had spent over an hour on the top, plus another hour eating lunch on the way down.

The heavy iron door blocking the only exit through the high walls was shut and padlocked. For a moment Brad felt cheated but then he checked his watch and saw he was a few minutes early. He had told the Bedouin gatekeeper three o’clock, and he was confident his promise of some baksheesh, a little green on the palm, would bring him.

As he waited in the moonlight, aware of the immense stillness and the soft fragrance of some unknown blossoms, Brad wondered again why he was doing this. The climb to the top was a man-killer, especially the last portion, where the steep slopes gave way to imposing granite cliffs. The only access to the top lay in a narrow cleft, breached by seven hundred crude rock steps made by the monks. But yesterday, when he stood on the top of Mount Sinai, he knew he had to get up there again alone. In every direction the upthrusting fists of granite mountaintops punched into the incredible blue-black sky. No trees softened the grandeur and majesty of the convoluted, jagged rock. Breathtaking was a gross understatement. Spirit-taking, if there were such a word, would come closer. It was inspiring, and Brad felt a desperate need for some inspiration.

He heard a shuffling sound and saw the little man with the wizened old face appear from out of the dark.

“Shukran,” the Bedouin said softly, as Brad slipped him three one-dollar bills, the universal trading medium of the Middle East.

Brad left the monastery quickly and settled into a steady pace that would eat up the distance without exhausting him, and yet leave his mind free to agonize over his dilemma. Two weeks ago he had been ecstatic over the prospects of Miri’s conversion. Now he didn’t know what to think. Miri had said virtually nothing about her quest. President Marks reported that they were still meeting regularly, and that he was pouring it onto her straight and undiluted. But when Brad pleaded with him for some indication of hopeful signs, the president just shook his head. “I don’t know, Brad. I just don’t know.”

If that worry hadn’t been hanging over him like the threat of a coming doomsday, Brad’s life would have been glorious. The cactus spines of his sabra were completely retracted, and each new day he saw more of the tenderness, more of the inner flower unfolding. Cautiously, almost shyly, she opened herself more and more to him. He found a woman of great strength and yet gentle tenderness, sparkling, almost teasing humor, and yet profound solemnity. She was vitally alive, and he found her physical presence distracting to the point of madness. Yet they could sit for hours talking, touching ever so softly, and not have the physical blot out the wonder of discovering each other.

Brad had bitten his lip nearly a dozen times to stop himself from violating his part of the agreement, and so far he had been faithful to it. If she sensed his growing frustration and despair, the only sign she gave was in her fierce longing as she clung to him when they kissed. More and more he questioned his ability to hold out in his resolve. More and more he rationalized that if she couldn’t commit before marriage, then after she surely would. More and more he asked himself what he would do if she came back at last and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Kennison. I love you, but I can’t abide your religion.” Brad hunched his shoulders and increased his pace. Maybe if he punished his body sufficiently, it would let his mind rest.

The moon was now low in the sky, the stars glittering like a thousand thousand diamonds spread out on a vast expanse of blue-black velvet. He stared up into the heavens for a long moment. Oh Lord, he cried out from the depths of his heart, Moses came to this mountain and received a law to govern Israel. I come to find answers to direct my life. What shall I do?

Moses and Brad Kennison were not the only ones who had come to the top of Mount Sinai. The sky in the east gradually paled from the deep velvet of dawn, through the pink of coming sunrise, to full light. Brad was puffing heavily up the last fifty or so steps, his thigh muscles feeling like beef jerky that had been left out in the sun too long, when he raised his head and saw her.

She sat at the apex of the granite summit, her arms hugging her legs, the first rays of the morning sun burnishing her black hair with highlights of gold. Her head was cocked to one side, the dark brown eyes filled with—what? Pleasure? Amusement?

Brad stopped and stared at her. “Miri?”

“Hi,” she said cheerily. “What took you so long?”

He shook his head. “What are you—?” He stood there, panting heavily, unable to believe what he was seeing.

“Hey, old man, when you get your breath, come on up. It’s a gorgeous view.”

He left the trail, scurried up the steep slope of rock, and dropped down beside her. Miri reached over and brushed a damp lock of hair away from his forehead, then kissed him gently.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked, as he took in huge gulps of air.

Brad glanced at his watch. One hour and a half. He had really pushed it. But to heck with that! He turned to her. “How in the world did you get here?”

“Rented a helicopter.” Little flickers of amusement danced in her eyes.

“Come on!”

“Would you believe a friendly caravan?”

“Miri!” he said in exasperation. “How long have you been here?”

“About fifteen minutes.” Gradually her smile faded away and she grew serious. “I overheard you talking to the gatekeeper last night, making arrangements to get out this morning.” Her eyes dropped, and her fingers touched his arm. “I know you wanted to be alone, Brad. But I—” She sighed unhappily. “Do you mind terribly?”

Brad put his hand over hers and gave it a quick squeeze. “Of course not, I’m delighted. But when did you leave, for heaven’s sake?”

“I slipped out at two-thirty, but I was afraid you might catch up to me, so I came up the front way. I wanted to surprise you.”

“Well, you succeeded in that.” Brad shook his head and stared at her, still unable to believe she was here. There were two ways up Sinai, the long circular back route Brad had taken and which most others took, and the much shorter route the monks had carved right up the face of the mountain into the rock. Virtually that whole way was like the last seven hundred steps Brad had just conquered. It was steep, precipitous, and, counting those last seven hundred, consisted of over three thousand steps of rock and dirt, some of which had a vertical rise of eighteen inches or more. They had gone down that way yesterday, and by the time they had reached the bottom, Brad’s knees were throbbing. And that was going down!

“You came up the steps?”

Miri nodded.

“And you sit here looking like you’ve been in a beauty shop all morning. That’s disgusting.”

She grimaced, as though she were clenching her teeth in pain. “It’s all show. Actually you will have to call for a stretcher to get me off the mountain. I left my legs behind somewhere on the way up.”

Brad put his arms around her and hugged her to him. “You are something else, do you know that?”

“No, tell me,” she murmured, putting her head against his shoulder.

Brad started to chuckle, and she looked up in surprise. “What?” she asked.

“Oh, I was just thinking. In Salt Lake City the kids drive up above the state capitol building or into the mountains so they can have a beautiful and private place to neck. But this is ridiculous.”

“Neck?” Miri asked, puzzled for a moment. “Oh yes, that peculiar American expression. I never could understand how it got its name.” Then she smiled. “If those are your intentions, Mr. Kennison, then maybe I’d better leave.”

“Hey, remember, I had no idea you’d be here.”

“I know. I’ve worried about that all the way up.”

“Well, stop worrying. We haven’t had a moment alone since we left Jerusalem. This is a delightful surprise.” Suddenly he groaned. “Except Nathan will be furious. He’ll think we planned this together.”

“No, I told Sarah the situation last night. She’ll tell him. Don’t worry about Nathan,” she added. “He likes to think he is much more intense than he really is.”

“Sounds like someone else I once knew—no names mentioned, of course.”

Miri dug him in the ribs with her elbow, then leaned against him again and sighed, a sound that Brad couldn’t decipher. Was it a sigh of happiness and contentment or of frustration and longing? He touched her gleaming black hair softly, aware that he was unable to untangle his own emotions, let alone hers.

“Brad?” They had been quiet for several minutes, both absorbed in their own thoughts.

“What?”

“Why did you come up here?” He had come to recognize that particular husky throatiness in her voice as a sign that she was struggling with her emotions.

“Oh,” he said, wondering how much to admit, “mostly to see this sight again.” His sweeping arm included the panorama before them. “It is really quite incredible.”

“Mostly?”

“And to think,” he added.

“About me? About us?”

Brad nodded.

“And so?”

“And so I found you here,” he said, touching her nose with his fingertip. “You know I can’t think when I’m around you.”

“Brad, please!” Her brown eyes were full of pleading. “Tell me.”

“How can I? We have an agreement.”

“I know,” she whispered, her eyes filling up. “And I know how hard it has been for you to keep it. You’ve been wonderful about it.”

Now it was Brad’s turn to sigh. “My part is no harder than yours,” he apologized.

“So I’m lifting the restrictions for a moment. I may impose them again, but please tell me what you’ve been thinking these past few weeks.”

He stared out across the granite peaks parading away before them. “I just wonder how it is coming for you. I wonder, and question, and yearn, and pray.”

“And fast?”

Brad looked at her in surprise.

“I’ve been checking up on you,” Miri admitted. “I ask the cook in the hotel dining room if you’ve eaten there.”

He winced slightly. “Sometimes I eat at Ali’s or somewhere else.”

“Sometimes,” she agreed. “I asked Ali too. He finally told me that you both were fasting and praying for me.” The tears brimmed over, and she wiped at them angrily. “I love you, Brad,” she whispered fiercely. “You are so good. Too good. How can I ever deserve you?”

He touched the wet streaks on her cheeks. “Too good for me? Only when it comes to hiking up mountains. If we get married, you will definitely have to restrain yourself.”

“If we get married. And what if I don’t find my answer?”

“I don’t know,” Brad said, his voice as full of sorrow now as her own. He began to trace a pattern with his finger on the dark tan of her forearm. “I think about not having you and I get this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know, Miri. I don’t know.”

She nodded, sniffing back the tears. “I understand.”

“Isn’t there any hope, Miri? Are you getting any answers?”

Her dark hair rippled in the sunlight as she shook her head. “Sometimes I feel very encouraged. I’m nearly through the Book of Mormon now. It seems true. I want it to be true. But the other, it is like trying to pierce solid rock with a sword made of tin. I cannot seem to penetrate.”

“Jesus?”

“And God, and the Atonement! Why can’t I get an answer?”

“Have you tried fasting?”

Miri ducked her head and nodded almost imperceptibly. “I’m fasting now.”

Brad suddenly remembered that at dinner last night she had pleaded that she wasn’t feeling too well and hadn’t joined them. “And you’re climbing Sinai? Miri, that’s not wise.”

“I’ve missed only one meal so far. If you care that much, then how can I not fast too?”

“The answers will come then,” he said, holding her close, fiercely proud of her, and yet unable to shake the nagging fear that she might not be able to accept the answers when they came. Maybe they were coming now and she refused to soften. Was the Jewishness so deep that it could not be rooted out? “They have got to come!” he said ardently.

She shook her head sadly and touched his cheek. “I so much envy you that deep faith, that burning knowledge.”

“It will come, Miri,” he promised, taking her hands. “Keep trying. Please keep trying.”

“I have not given up. And yet, it seems hopeless. President Marks said you believe that Jesus in his premortal life was the God of the Old Testament.”

“Yes, he was and is Jehovah.”

“The same God who delivered Israel from Egypt?”

“Yes.”

“Then if he was powerful enough as God to save Israel from bondage, why did he have to become a man to save other men from the bondage of sin?” Her eyes were liquid and close to overflowing again. “I know you don’t have any trouble with that, but can’t you at least see how illogical it sounds—that a god has to become a man in order to save others?”

“I can understand,” Brad said, trying to mask the discouragement in his eyes. “But there had to be someone who was like us, and yet free from our condition. If he had not been mortal and faced temptation, how could he say that he had triumphed over sin? And yet, if he had not been a god, he would have sinned too and then been in the same state as we are. How can a man locked in chains deliver others from captivity?”

Miri stood up, pulled Brad up to face her, and put her arms around his neck. He kissed her, pouring all the frustration and impatience and all the longing for resolution of their conflict into the embrace. She returned it, giving herself to him fully and without reservation. But when they parted, the barrier between them dropped back into place.

“I want to believe, Brad,” she whispered. “Why won’t God answer me?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe he is testing you.”

“And how long must I wait? Two thousand years, like my people? Why doesn’t your God listen to the cries of a Jew?”

Before he could answer, she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

Brad had an unexpected idea. He took both of her hands and brought them up, clasping them tightly. “Miri,” he said, “will you pray with me?”

She looked startled. “Here?”

He smiled gently, his face full of love for her. “If it was good enough for Moses…We could go a short distance back down and find a place where we won’t be seen if someone does come.”

She hesitated. “I don’t pray very well. Will you do it for us?”

“If you like.”

They found a small hollow in the granite, well off the path, about fifty yards below the crest. As Brad smoothed away some of the rocks and pebbles and folded his windbreaker to offer some protection to their knees, he cried out in his heart for help. Oh Lord, give me the words that I can say. Help me now. Please!

They knelt side by side, Miri suddenly shy and reserved. Brad took her hand, interlocked their fingers, and bowed his head. There had been three times in his life when he had raised prayer from a level of communication to a level of communion: at sixteen when his father was diagnosed as having cancer of the stomach; in the mission field when he and his companion had converted a Christian minister after a terrific struggle; and during that first night on the perimeter of the outpost of the Mekong Delta when he had sought for the courage to stay in his place throughout the night, though he had nearly bitten his lower lip clear through as he fought to control the terror.

On the top of Mount Sinai, Brad achieved it for the fourth time. The yearning reached the very core of his being, an intense burning fire of desire that started as an unspoken plea for himself that the Lord would make it possible for him to have this woman as his wife. But as he began to pray, to his surprise he found his heart changing its focus. Suddenly he felt the inner anguish of Miri’s soul, her doubts, her tortured questions about God’s love and indeed His very existence, and Brad’s yearning became hers. His words were not particularly profound; there were no forced dramatics, no straining to sound sincere. The words simply poured out of him as he pled with the God who was his Father and hers, to the God who so loved that He gave the world His most prized possession. He pled for light, for understanding, for courage.

When he finished, there was silence for a long moment. Then he started to rise, but Miri held him, pulled him gently back down beside her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“For the first time, I feel Him, Brad. I feel as if He’s here. I want to pray now too.”

Brad nodded. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. Her voice was barely a whisper.

“O God—” She stopped, then began again. “O Father, I thank you for this day, for this man you have brought into my life. Please help me. I want to know what he knows, to feel what he feels.”

Again there was a long pause as Miri struggled with her emotions. “I want to know if your Son was really the Messiah. And most of all, help me to understand Him—what He did, and why. I want to understand.” Her voice caught and she went on slowly. “But I can’t yet. Please help me, Father. Help me to understand you. I want to know you and to love you. Help me to know. Amen.”

Brad got slowly to his feet and pulled Miri up to him, holding her close. She put her face against his chest and hugged him fiercely. He buried his face in her hair. “I love you, Miri Shadmi,” he whispered.

“And I love you,” she responded, raising her face to him. “Don’t give up on me yet.”

“Give up?” Brad nearly shouted, his joy spilling over. “Are you kidding! We’re going to make it, Miri! It’s going to work. I just feel it.” He kissed her, long and hard and joyously.

When they parted, both a little breathless, she was smiling through the remains of her tears. “Do you really think so?”

He picked her up and swung her around and around. “Yes, Mrs. Kennison, I really think so!”

Twenty-three

Miri and Brad arrived back at Saint Catherine’s just before eight that morning. To describe Nathan’s reaction as cool would be to do great disservice to the art of under-exaggeration. He had the Volkswagen bus packed, and he, Ali, and Sarah were sitting inside, Nathan’s fingers beating a steady tatoo on the steering wheel.

“Well, well,” he said in parody of cordial welcome. “I hope we didn’t rush you two.”

“No, not at all,” Miri smiled, giving Sarah an excited squeeze on the arm as she climbed in the back seat.

“It’s my fault,” Brad apologized as he climbed in beside her.

Nathan started the engine, slammed it into gear, and left a spray of gravel, which is no mean trick with a Volkswagen bus.

“It was so incredibly beautiful up there, I wanted to go back,” Brad said.

Ali and Sarah both nodded, sensing a happiness in their two friends that deeply pleased them. Nathan just grunted. He mumbled and continued complaining about the delay until finally Miri quietly reminded him that it was Brad who was paying for the bulk of the trip, and if he wanted to climb Mount Sinai again, that was his right.

Thereafter the comments stopped, but it was evident from the way Nathan pounded the bus across the washboard roads that he was going to make it miserable for all of them, one way or another.

Nor did the blowout on the left rear tire cause him to ease up much. Miri again was the only one who had the courage to suggest that it was the direct result of his driving habits.

“Listen, little sister,” he snapped as he undid the lug bolts on the wheel, “we have got the rest of today and then tomorrow until sundown to get home. Or had you forgotten that tomorrow night begins Yom Kippur, and that our family will be waiting for us to go to Tel Aviv with them to spend the holiday with Aunt Esther? Sarah also has a family waiting for her.”

“No, I hadn’t forgotten,” Miri answered calmly. “We left only two hours later than you had planned. I find that hard to accept as quite the crisis you seem to make of it.”

“We’ve got approximately a hundred and twenty miles to El Arish, a good portion of that on gravel roads worse than these, and another hundred to Jerusalem—long, slow miles. Now we’ve got to go over to Abu Rodeis, at least thirty miles out of our way, to get this tire fixed. We don’t dare drive out here without a spare.”

“Not the way you’re driving,” Miri retorted. “That’s for sure.”

Look,” Brad interjected, “I really feel bad that I’ve caused all this. I shouldn’t have gone up there this morning. But we can make it up. All of us can drive. Let’s go as far as you planned to get by tonight, no matter how long it takes us.”

That seemed to mollify Nathan somewhat, but the sourness of his mood dampened the spirits of the rest of them. And things really got gloomy when they arrived in Abu Rodeis after dark to find all of the repair shops closed. It was Thursday night, and Friday was the Moslem Sabbath. Abu Rodeis was a small port city on the Red Sea, the center of the Sinai’s oil industry that the Israelis had captured from Egypt in the Six Day War. Nathan finally located a captain he knew in the armed forces stationed there, and was able to get the tire fixed. But by then it was midnight and they were all exhausted. Nathan reluctantly agreed to a four-hour rest, but got them up at dawn to push on.

Shortly after seven he pulled the bus over to the side of the road and consulted his map. “Our only hope is to take a shortcut,” he announced. His finger traced a faint line on the map for the others. “This road cuts straight from here over to the Mitla Pass. That will save us almost sixty or seventy miles. It should be about four or five miles ahead of us now.”

“That’s a road?” Sarah asked dubiously.

“Not much of one,” Nathan admitted. “But we used it in ‘67. It’s rarely traveled, but it’s passable.”

“Are you sure, Nathan?” Miri asked. “It’s been six years since the war, and you were in Jeeps and halftracks then.”

“Miri,” he said, not too patiently, “we aren’t going to make it otherwise.”

“We could go right to Tel Aviv,” she countered. But it was obvious she was not convinced of that herself.

“Good. That will save us half an hour.”

Brad shrugged. “Let’s do whatever it takes to get you home in time.”

“Good,” Nathan said, not waiting for any additional comments. “Miri, you drive. I need to watch the map.”

“Let me drive,” Ali volunteered. “I’m the only one who hasn’t taken a turn.”

“Okay,” Nathan agreed. “Let’s get going.”

It was slightly more than three hours later when the Volkswagen came to a lurching halt, throwing Brad sharply against the back of the front seat. He looked up wildly, unable to get his bearings for a moment after being asleep.

“What is going on?” Nathan demanded, half disoriented himself as he came out of a fitful doze.

Ali turned to face them, his face stricken. “I think we’re stuck.”

Brad glanced quickly around. They were in a low depression, which hid for the moment the interminable vastness of the Sinai wilderness. It was thirty or forty yards across, and the narrow dirt road was visible where it came out of the depression and disappeared again over the small rise. But between there and where they now sat, there was no road, only a smooth expanse of sand, which even now Brad could see was drifting in the substantial breeze that was blowing outside.

“Of all the stupid—!” Nathan exploded.

“Nathan!” Both Miri and Sarah spoke almost as one.

“I’m sorry,” Ali said in despair. “The road was really quite good, and I was making good time. I didn’t see the sand until it was too late. I came over the rise and was into it.”

“I told you to watch for that!” Nathan shouted as he opened the door and jumped out.

Brad heard Nathan groan, and as he got out to join him, he instantly saw why. All four wheels were up to their hubcaps in the soft drifts of sand. Ali had had enough momentum to propel the bus ten or twelve feet into the stuff before it bogged down.

“Of all the stupid fools!” Nathan said in disgust.

Again both Miri and Sarah started to protest, but Brad beat them both. “That’s enough, Nathan!” he said, his voice full of anger of its own. “It could have happened to any one of us, and you know it. So lay off Ali.”

Nathan bristled. “Lay off? I warned him about this very thing. You heard me do it.”

“Look,” Ali said, his face flaming red beneath his olive complexion. “I really am terribly sorry, I—”

“No!” Brad exclaimed. “Don’t you apologize. It’s not your fault.”

“Well, there goes Yom Kippur,” Nathan muttered, moving around to the back of the bus to get the shovel.

Miri stepped forward and took his arm. “Nathan,” she pleaded.

He pushed her hand away. “Don’t ‘Nathan’ me!”

Sick with shame, she turned to Ali. “Don’t pay him any attention,” she murmured. “He doesn’t really mean it. He’s just angry now.”

“I’m so sorry,” Ali said again, his voice stricken. “I didn’t see it.”

By three o’clock that afternoon it was clear that Nathan was not going to make it home for any part of Yom Kippur. They had dug, sweated, heaved, and coaxed the Volkswagen through all but the last ten yards of the sand when the rear axle gave a final weak whine of protest and burned out. Nathan kicked at it savagely, cursing in Hebrew. Then he grew surprisingly calm.

“Okay, we may as well make ourselves comfortable. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Just like that?” Brad demanded. “What do we do?”

“Sit and wait. The army patrols this area constantly, and we’re out in the open. They’ll find us.”

“Can’t we walk for help?” Brad persisted.

“The nearest well is thirty miles away, and only a pinprick on the map. We have no compass and only general area maps. We will wait here.”

“For how long?” Sarah asked.

“Probably two days,” Nathan said. “Tomorrow is Yom Kippur. Patrols will be minimal on the holiday. But on Sunday, I think we can expect to be found. Our bus is bright blue and easily seen. We’ll build a fire at night. We have enough food and water for several days yet.” He shrugged. “We’ll make ourselves as comfortable as possible in the meantime. Our parents will be worried, but they know we can take care of ourselves.”

Nathan smiled, as close as he would come to an apology. “We will show Brad and Ali how we Jews celebrate Yom Kippur.”

Twenty-four

It was Saturday, October 6, 1973—Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The Bible calls it in Hebrew Shabbat Shabbaton—the Sabbath of Sabbaths, for on this day of all days work ceases and great solemnity prevails. It is Israel’s day to expiate her sins, to receive atonement and forgiveness from God, and to restore her relationship with him. Even nonobserving Jews abstain from food and drink. One confesses his sins to God and also to his fellow men, since forgiveness from God is signified by obtaining forgiveness of one’s neighbor.

Except for the Arab towns in Israel, it was as though all life had come to a halt. All Jewish shops and businesses were closed, and traffic virtually ceased except for an occasional emergency vehicle. No public transportation was running; no places of entertainment were open. Even the Israeli Broadcasting Service shut down for the day. And nearly half of the regular Israeli army, like Nathan, were home on holiday leaves.

Thousands flocked to the synagogues for the five-hour morning service of atonement. Suddenly Israeli army messengers began appearing at the services. Young men folded up their prayer shawls and left, their faces grim. Devout worshippers left the synagogues to find the street filled with speeding trucks, buses, and jeeps, and the air filled with the wail of air raid sirens. Israeli Radio came back on the air, and its classical music broadcasts were continuously interrupted by coded messages laced with such incongruous phrases as “meat pie,” “sea wolf,” “lady of charm,” phrases that sent one hundred eighty thousand reservists to predesignated locations.

Friday night, as Yom Kippur was just beginning, Egyptian frogmen swam underwater and stealthily planted explosive charges in the sixty-foot-high embankment of the Suez Canal. Above them was the vaunted Bar Lev line, named after General Haim Bar Lev, whose brain-child it was. Impregnable bunkers, tank traps, gun emplacements, and miles of trenches laced the entire east bank of the Suez Canal. It was Israel’s buffer against another Egyptian attack. On that night of October fifth, Israeli soldiers sat in their bunkers quietly, thinking of families and Yom Kippur celebrations, envious of their buddies who were fortunate enough to be back home. They were totally unaware of what was happening in the water just sixty feet below them.

At precisely 2:00 P.M. on Saturday, a massive artillery barrage was unleashed by the Egyptian army across the canal. At the same time, plungers were shoved home, and the dynamite planted the night before blasted massive holes in the steep sides of the canal’s banks. Before the smoke had even cleared, a hundred Egyptian commandos picked up their boats, ran down to the water, and sped across. They stormed up the embankment and attacked the bunkers ferociously with grenades and flame throwers.

Within the next half hour three Russian-built tanks were ferried across to join them. One bulldozed its way into the main bunker and opened fire at point-blank range. Of the fifty Israeli defenders in the bunker, seventeen surrendered, a few fled, and the rest were annihilated. The highly touted Bar Lev line crumpled like soda crackers in a rainstorm, and Egyptian armor and men poured into the Sinai—the Sinai they had fled from in shame and panic just six years earlier. Now it was Israeli soldiers who were caught by surprise. Some fled, leaving their shoes behind; many were captives before they had time to comprehend what was happening. Many more died before they could know that the fourth war between Israeli and Arab in twenty-five years had begun with a vengeance.

As the Egyptian army punched across the Suez, Syria opened a second front on the Golan Heights in Northern Israel. A deafening bombardment from long-range artillery hurled tons of high explosives onto Israeli settlements. Six divisions—one hundred thousand men—backed by fourteen hundred tanks, launched a savage attack across the United Nations demilitarized zone. Israeli intelligence had reported frightening buildups along both Arab borders, but the government had not responded. Later they would claim they waited in order to let the world know without question that the Arabs had struck first. But mobilization had not been called for until a scant four hours before the attack was launched. There was little question but what the Israelis had been caught by surprise.

Later questions about that lack of preparedness would eventually topple Golda Meir’s government and bring Moshe Dayan, Minister of Defense and adulated war hero of the Six Day War, under severe criticism. But for now, a stunned nation rushed frantically to fill the breach. On the three o’clock news broadcast in Jerusalem, a newscaster nearly screamed into his microphone. “This is war! It is not just border ‘incidents.’ We are at war!”

* * * * * *

Brad sat quietly on the blanket, leaning up against the bus. Miri had her head in his lap, her eyes closed, though he didn’t think she was asleep. He studied her face, caught in the wonder of her. The tan skin drawn smoothly over high cheekbones, the long, finely sculpted nose, the firm chin and full mouth—they all blended together to create a very lovely face.

She half opened her eyes. “Tell me what you are thinking,” she said lazily.

“No way,” he said, shaking his head.

She opened her eyes wide. “And why not?”

“Because it would give you an inflated ego.”

“Mmmm. That’s what I need. Tell me.”

“I was thinking that you are very lovely.”

She smiled and started to get up, but Brad pushed her back down where he could watch her.

“Really?” she asked. “Was that what you were honestly thinking.”

“Cross my heart.”

“That’s nice. Tell me more.”

“You can’t handle more. Tell me what you were thinking.”

“Where’s Nathan?” she asked, turning her head to look around.

“He and Sarah are still up on the ridge. Ali’s in the back of the bus asleep. Why?”

“I wouldn’t want him to hear this or to tell my parents. But I was thinking that this is the nicest Yom Kippur I’ve ever had. I’m glad the bus is broken.”

Brad nodded. It had been delightful. They had eaten a simple meal yesterday afternoon, and then just before sunset, Nathan, embarrassed because he couldn’t remember more, had acted as cantor and had sung the kol nidre, the hymn used by Jews the world over to usher in the Day of Atonement. It supplicated the Lord, asking for forgiveness for any vows, promises, or obligations the individual may have overlooked during the year that would interfere with his obtaining God’s forgiveness. Nathan had a rich tenor voice, and the plaintive, haunting melody of the prayer, sung in the vastness of the Sinai, deeply stirred Brad.

Today they had spent in quiet relaxation, Ali and Brad joining the three Jews in their abstention from food. Nathan and Sarah had gone for several walks, giving Brad and Ali ample opportunity to talk Mormonism with Miri. She had not reimposed her previous restrictions on Brad again. In fact, she now seemed to welcome his earnest attempts to sway her. They had read the original requirements for the Day of Atonement as given to Moses and recorded in the Book of Leviticus, Brad pointing out the symbolism of Christ. It had been a slow, lazy, enjoyable day.

He touched her cheek lightly. “I love you,” he said happily.

Miri reached up and took his hand, but left it against her cheek. “And I you. I think back to how rude I was to you those first few days, and I get a cold, scary feeling. What if you hadn’t stayed?”

Brad smiled with the memory. “We had some real times, didn’t we? I used to stay up nights planning how to get back at you.”

“And was this part of your plan, to make me fall in love with you, so I would have to be nice to you?”

“Of course. Right from the beginning. Between my irresistible charm and brilliant strategy, you didn’t stand a chance.”

She stuck out her tongue at him. “It’s hard to believe now, but do you know what first attracted me to you?”

“No, what?”

“Your deep sense of humility!”

She squealed as he poked her in the ribs, and started to roll away from him, but he pulled her back.

“Don’t go, I’ll be nice.” She lay back and closed her eyes.

“Brad?” she said after a moment.

“What?”

“If things work out, what are your parents going to say?”

“About us?”

“Yes, about you marrying an Israeli.” She paused, her face sober. “About marrying a Jewish girl.”

“You mean what did they say?”

Her eyes flew open, and she sat up straight. “You’ve told them?”

He nodded. “More or less.”

“Brad, when?”

His gray eyes were teasing. “Oh, here and there.”

Miri looked at him and grabbed his arm. “Brad! Tell me!”

“Well, I wrote them about you two or three weeks ago and sent them a picture.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Where did you get a picture of me?”

“Promise you won’t get mad?”

“Where did you get it?”

“That first morning you took me on tour. Remember when we were on the Mount of Olives, and you were pointing out the significant sites as I took pictures? Well, I used the wide-angle lens on one shot and included you in a picture of the Dome of the Rock.”

“Well, aren’t you sneaky!”

“Sneaky and humble, that’s me.”

“So?”

“So what?”

She punched him solidly in the stomach. “Brad Kennison, you tell me what you said, and what they said.”

“In the letter or when I talked to them on the phone?”

“Brad!” Miri wailed, coming to her knees and starting to pound on him. “You called them?”

He grabbed her fists and pulled her down next to him. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you.”

“I can’t believe this. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I almost did, then decided it violated our agreement, that it would be putting pressure on you.”

“Well,” she said, not sure whether to forgive him or not. “So tell me. When did you talk to them?”

“Last Sunday night. My mother’s birthday is September thirtieth. So I called her. By then they had received the second letter I wrote them. That was the day after our little experience in the Galilee. I told them about my feelings for you, about how you are trying to find out if the Church is true, the works.”

Brad turned to look at her. “So when I called, they were all primed.”

“And?”

“Well, they had several questions,” he replied, pushing away the temptation to smooth over some of their concerns. “The fact that you are Jewish is their biggest worry.”

“Oh.” Miri’s shoulders sagged slightly, and she looked away quickly.

“Hey!” he said, gently taking her face in his hands and turning her to him. “That is Jewish as in religion, not Jewish as in race. They have grave concerns about my marrying a Jewish girl, but they have no real concerns about my marrying a Mormon Jewish girl.”

Her eyes brightened. “Really?”

He nodded. “Really. Their biggest question is what I’ll do if you decide not to join the Church. They would be devastated if I married outside of the temple.”

Miri dropped her gaze and studied her hands. “Just as my parents will be devastated if I do join the Church.”

Brad sighed. “I know. It seems as though we are not destined to have things work out very easily no matter what happens.”

Miri was silent for almost a full minute. When she spoke her voice was very soft. “What other concerns did they have?”

“Well,” Brad said, “they were mostly concerned about me. Whether I finally got my head screwed on straight.”

Miri laughed softly at that. “I think your head is very nicely placed.”

“Thank you. It is all your fault, you know.”

“What is?”

“That I got my head screwed on straight.”

She looked puzzled and pleased at the same moment. “Why?”

He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I came to Israel looking for something. I was filled with this terrible discontent, as if I was smothering in a sea of comfort and security. I was frustrated, bitter, irritable, and dissatisfied. Yet I didn’t know why. I was in a computer science program at the University of Utah and suddenly realized I wanted to do more with my life than that—as though there was something I had to do, was supposed to do. But I didn’t know what.”

He shook his head. “It was awful. And I was acting like a spoiled kid. My parents should have booted me out of the house. Dad thought it was because of Viet Nam. That’s why he encouraged me to come to Israel. To get away and rest.”

“I am so happy he did.”

Brad nodded. “Ah, so am I. I not only found you, but I found the answer to my other problems, too.”

She looked up in surprise. “What problems?”

“Well,” he said, “at first I started to study and read about Israel and the Jews so I could answer your questions intelligently. But suddenly I found myself fascinated, totally engrossed. I loved learning about this land, about its destiny. And I knew I had to be part of that destiny, to help others to feel it and see it as I did.”

Brad’s voice rose in excitement, and he released her hand so he could emphasize his words with his gestures. “The destiny of the Latter-day Saints and the destiny of the Jews and Arabs are just now starting to unfold. More and more they will become intertwined and interdependent.”

He turned to her, his eyes shining with excitement. “And then to find you, someone who feels so deeply about this too. It’s more than I could ever have hoped for, to find what I want to do with my life, and someone who can and will share in that goal with me.”

Miri smiled at his enthusiasm.

“When I told dad all of that, he was satisfied. He knew this wasn’t some whim, that you are not just some passing interest.”

“I’m glad,” she said, snuggling up against him. “I’m glad I am not just some passing interest. And I’m glad he knows I’m not.”

“I don’t know exactly what I’ll end up doing,” he went on. “I’ll probably teach college. I figure that I will major in history or maybe in Middle Eastern studies. The U of U has an excellent program.”

Miri’s head came up sharply. “The U of U?”

“Yes. The University of Utah. I figure it will probably take four or five years to get whatever degrees we need to do what we want. But I’ll find a job. I want you to be able to be with the children. I want you to teach them about their Jewish heritage, about Israel…”

He stopped when he saw the look on her face, then felt his heart sink. “Miri, what’s wrong? Don’t you want children?”

“Only yours,” she said with a forlorn smile.

“What’s the matter then?” And finally the light dawned, or so he thought. “Miri, it’s going to work out. I know you’re going to get your answers. I know it!”

“And if I do, then what?”

“You are baptized. We get married. We start our life together.”

“Where Brad? Where do we make our life together?”

“In America, in…” His voice trailed off as he saw her eyes drop.

“You would take me away from my people and my land?” She paused. “I think you know that I feel almost as strongly about Israel as you do about Mormonism. Couldn’t you go to the Hebrew University? If you feel that your destiny is intertwined with Israel’s, then why not stay here and raise our family?” She was pleading, beseeching him for understanding. “Couldn’t you do much more good here?”

Brad was silent for a long time, considering that. Finally he put his arms around her and pulled her close. “I have considered that,” he said slowly. “I even went up to the Hebrew University and checked out all their programs. I would have to become completely fluent in Hebrew before I could really get what I want.”

“I speak excellent Hebrew,” Miri said, “I could help you.”

“I know, but…” He stopped, seeking the words to express himself. “But somehow I feel that what I must do is with my own people at first. The Latter-day Saints need to understand our relationship with Israel, both present and future. We have to build Zion in America so Judah will have one ally when the Battle of Armageddon comes. Maybe later the Lord will have a purpose for us here as well.”

Miri pushed slowly away from him, her eyes moist, her lips tight. “Maybe this is the answer.”

Brad was shaken. “What do you mean?”

“Yesterday on Sinai we asked the Lord to show us what his will is for us. Maybe this is his answer.” Her lower lip trembled, and she bit it angrily. “I don’t think I could ever leave Israel to live elsewhere. Maybe it is time we face reality. Maybe your God is saying no to us.”

She stumbled to her feet and fled, leaving Brad to stare after her.

* * * * * *

Half an hour later Brad still sat where he was, sadly watching the lone figure on the nearest ridge. Ali awakened from his nap and, sensing Brad’s moroseness, stayed in the Volkswagen bus reading the scriptures. Three different times Brad started to rise and go out to her, then decided it wasn’t yet time. He hadn’t found the words. He wasn’t even sure but what Miri was right. Maybe this was the Lord’s way of answering them.

Suddenly Ali spoke through the open window of the bus. “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“Listen!” he commanded.

Brad cocked his head, feeling it now almost as much as hearing it—a low, rumbling sound coming from far away.

“Artillery?” Ali asked.

“Yes, but a long way off.”

Ali leaned back and reopened his book. “Probably another Egyptian-Israeli artillery duel across the Suez.”

“I suppose,” Brad answered, his thoughts already back on Miri. He glanced at his watch. It was one minute after two in the afternoon of Saturday, October sixth, the day called by the Jews Yom Kippur.

Twenty-five

“Are they Israeli?” Brad asked, closely watching the expression on Nathan’s face as he peered through the binoculars.

“Of course,” he answered, handing Brad the field glasses. They had climbed this high plateau about half a mile from the car when Nathan had first spotted the column of dust. Brad focused in and could barely make out tanks, jeeps, and half-tracks in the swirling dust. They were moving fast, heading north.

“That’s encouraging,” Nathan said as they rose and started back. “I would judge that road to be only two or so miles from where we are. We’ll build a signal fire as soon as it’s dark. If that doesn’t bring someone, we’ll hike to the road in the morning and see if we can intercept some traffic.”

They were nearly back to the car when they heard the distant throbbing of engines. Nathan stopped and waved Ali and Sarah, who were walking out to meet them, into motionless statues. “Helicopters!” he shouted, and sprinted up out of the depression they were camped in. Brad and the others followed close behind. There were six aircraft. They passed about a mile to the east of the stranded group, skimming a thousand feet above the ground. The noise even brought Miri running from where she had been sitting staring at the sunset.

They screamed and whistled and waved and jumped up and down, but in a few moments the helicopters disappeared, the sound of their engines dying away.

“We were in the sun,” Brad said, jerking his head in the direction of the orange-red ball of fire hanging low in the western sky. “No way could they have seen us.”

“Come on,” Nathan said, turning back toward the car. “Let’s gather some brush before it gets dark. We want to keep that fire going all night.”

“Do you think there will be others?” Sarah asked, falling into step beside him.

Nathan nodded. “The artillery has been pounding up north now for over three hours. That’s not typical. Usually they trade a few rounds back and forth, then quit. Maybe Sadat is going to get serious and try to regain a little face. He’s been threatening to revenge Egypt’s humiliation in the Six Day War for over a year now.”

“Do you think there will be war?” Sarah asked anxiously.

Brad stepped up his pace slightly so he could hear Nathan’s answer. Miri trailed behind, her mood returning with the disappearance of the helicopters.

“No,” Nathan responded to Sarah’s question. “It’s just that the other Arab countries are laughing at Sadat now, saying Egypt is all bluff and bluster. He’ll shell us for a day, maybe stage a quick raid across the Suez Canal or something to get people off his back. But that will work to our advantage. We seem to be moving up some forces as backup just in case. I expect more to pass us tonight, so we’ll have a fire going to attract their attention.” He smiled at her. “I fully expect to be home by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Really?”

“You bet. Later tonight when reception improves, we’ll try to get a news broadcast from Tel Aviv and see if they indicate what’s going on.”

If Nathan was aware of the sadness that lay over Miri and Brad, he gave no sign. They cooked a simple meal once the sun set, ending Yom Kippur and their fast. Then Nathan started piling the brush onto their little campfire, making it into a signal fire. They gathered around, each preoccupied with his or her own thoughts as they watched the leaping flames.

“It probably wouldn’t hurt for one of us to get out away from the roar of the fire and listen for any engines,” Nathan suggested shortly before eight. “We can’t keep the fire going full blast all night, or we’ll run out of brush.” He turned to Brad. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?”

“Miri and I will go,” Brad responded, glad for a chance to be alone with her and talk out their impasse.

She nodded and stood up, putting her sweater on. Ali watched them closely. He looked as though he was going to make some light remark, but finally said, “Good luck, you two,” as they passed him and headed for the ridge.

Brad put his arm around Miri, and she slipped her arm around his waist, but they walked in silence, both reluctant to revive the pain. It was another beautiful night in the Sinai, the stars like a generous sprinkling of silver dust on black velvet. The heat of the day was now completely gone, and the chill quickly deepened. By the time they were a hundred yards from camp, the silence was profound and deep, almost oppressive after the crackling of the fire.

Brad found a small patch of relatively flat rock, and they sat down. The moon had not come up yet, and he could barely see her face in the starlight. He touched her cheek gently and she leaned against him, sighing deeply.

“Miri?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s not give up yet, okay?”

He felt her face relax under his fingertips. “I don’t want to give up.”

“Let’s work on one problem at a time.”

“Brad, I can’t leave Israel. I just can’t! I’ve been thinking about it all evening. How can I leave my people when—”

He put his finger gently over her lips. “I know,” he murmured, torn with his own emotions. “But the first problem is to get you an answer to your prayers. We can work something out on the other.”

“What?” she cried in anguish.

He smiled at her in the dark, though it cost him a lot of effort. “Well, we could compromise and live in London. That’s about half way for each of us.”

To his surprise, Miri threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. “Oh Brad,” she whispered. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Remember,” he said, “if you try to do that, you’ve got a fight on your hands. So let’s talk about something more cheerful.”

She took a deep breath and then nodded. “Okay, like what?”

“Like our children,” he said. “I’d better warn you, families are very important to Mormons. We like big ones.”

“How about four little boys, just like you?”

“And four little girls with dark eyes and jet black hair just like their mother.”

“Eight? You weren’t kidding about large families, were you!”

“Nope. I love kids, and I don’t think there are many more important things you can do with your life than to raise a good family. How many do you want?”

She was quiet for a long moment, and Brad felt his anxiety start to rise until she spoke. “It’s funny, but all of a sudden I want eight, if they are ours. You can have your four little girls if I get my four boys.”

“A deal,” he said, burying his face in her hair.

“We’ll name the first one Brad…”

“And the second one Miriam. Little Miri.”

“Could we name the next one David?” she asked, warming to the game. Brad’s head shot up, and the frown was instantaneous.

For a moment Miri looked startled, and then she laughed out loud. “Not that David, silly. David, my brother.” The smile slowly faded. “The one who was killed in 1967.”

Brad relaxed, a bit sheepish. “In that case, of course.”

“I wish you had known him, Brad. He was so good.”

“Was he older than—,” Brad started, but suddenly Miri stiffened to attention.

“Listen!” she hissed urgently.

Brad jumped to his feet, and Miri joined him in excitement, straining to hear.

“Helicopters!” Brad cupped his hands and yelled. “Nathan, helicopters coming in from the west!” He grabbed Miri’s hand, and they ran quickly back to camp.

“More brush!” Nathan commanded, leaping to the stack of fuel they had collected. The fire shot up to twice its size as they hurled more branches on. The deep pounding sound of jet helicopter engines was now clearly discernible, even over the roar of the fire, as Miri and Brad waited breathlessly.

“If they can’t see this,” Ali shouted, “they had better have their eyes checked!”

The dancing flames were now brightly illuminating the landscape for thirty or forty yards in every direction.

But the pilots’ eyes were fine. There were two helicopters, and they came in low at about three hundred feet. For a moment the stranded party thought they were going to fly over, and once again they began to jump and shout. But the two craft circled immediately.

“Oh, they’ve seen us! They’ve seen us!” Sarah cried.

The lead helicopter suddenly turned on a high intensity spotlight, blinding them. The second followed suit. The two aircraft circled slowly, one spotlight frozen on the camp, the other methodically searching the landscape around the camp.

“What are they doing?” Miri demanded.

“Just checking things out,” Nathan explained. “This could be a typical Arab terrorist setup. They want to be sure no one is waiting out there to hit them when they come down.”

Evidently the man in charge was a very nervous type, or else the group on the ground looked particularly suspicious, for they were in no hurry to come down. The one craft hovered directly overhead, keeping them pinned in his beam, while the other swept the desert with his light in ever-widening circles.

“Keep your hands in plain sight,” Nathan shouted over the noise of the engines, as the helicopters finally began to descend. “Stay put. Let’s let them know we’re harmless.”

In spite of the blinding sandstorm whipped up by the rotors, Brad and Nathan saw the markings on the side of the helicopter before it even touched the ground. They both stared, unable to believe their eyes. The side door flew open and men spilled out, rifles ready and faces grim.

Ali was the first to find his voice. “They’re Egyptians!” he cried in stunned surprise.

Twenty-six

It was late afternoon, and the dark canvas was soaking up the heat of the Sinai, making the inside of the tent sweltering. The four of them sat listlessly, still in a state of shock. Miri and Sarah looked haggard and drawn. Nathan sat in a corner, his head in his hands. Brad was in the best shape of the group, but then what they had seen in the last twenty-one hours did not have the same personal impact for him as it had for the three Israelis.

The Egyptian commando raiding party had swooped them up after a brief but thorough search of the Volkswagen bus, and had dropped them at a small army camp, where they were placed under heavy guard. When the soliders discovered they had Israelis in their captivity, half the camp gathered around to gibe and jeer and to gleefully report the smashing success of their army in the afternoon’s attack. Ali, treated with cautious respect and some deference, was allowed to translate to his friends as the Egyptians bragged in great detail about the afternoon’s triumph. Nathan and the two women sat tight-lipped and silent, Nathan’s only comment a muttered reference to an Arab’s penchant for bravado and exaggeration.

But when they were transported north this morning to this larger camp near the Suez, it quickly became apparent that the almost ecstatic jubilation of the Egyptian army was not without cause. The road was strewn with the carnage of war: shattered hulks of tanks; still smoldering, blasted trucks; overturned half-tracks; and everywhere in the sand, bodies scattered in the grotesque, twisted agony of death. Some of the wreckage and many of the dead were Egyptian, but the clear majority were Israeli. The Israeli army had been clobbered and badly mauled. Brad held Miri’s hand tightly as the shock and horror in her eyes deepened with each new scene. The fury and frustration inside Nathan seethed with each new evidence of Israel’s defeat.

Most depressing of all were the hordes of Israeli prisoners. They lined the roads, filthy, barefoot, in some cases bloodstained, and in every case, stunned, their faces without hope.

The truck arrived at the camp about ten-thirty in the morning. A cluster of about fifty tents was surrounded by rolls of barbed wire. The five prisoners were pushed into a small tent and left under the watchful eye of a guard, a silent dark-skinned Egyptian soldier who stared at his prisoners without expression. At noon cans of American C-rations were brought in. Brad, who had eaten enough of those in Viet Nam to last him a lifetime, picked at his. Nathan ate absently, as though eating was a duty to be taken care of with as little thought as possible. Miri and Sarah left theirs untouched. Ali wrinkled his nose at the smell, but finished his.

At two-twenty, the intelligence officer arrived. He spoke fluent English and halting Hebrew. He began with Ali, then took Brad away next. It was a friendly and cordial interrogation but very thorough. He seemed satisfied with what Brad answered and returned him in the shortest amount of time. Nathan took the longest, Miri and Sarah about equal time. Then Ali was taken out again.

Now Ali, followed by the lieutenant, ducked in under the tent flap. “I’d like to speak to all of you together,” the lieutenant said. “But I have something I must attend to now. I’ll return in a moment.” The flap dropped back into place. The guard watched them in silence.

Ali sighed as he sat down on the cot next to Miri and Brad. “I’m not sure, but I think we’ve convinced him that we are telling the truth, that we are not some undercover group trying to infiltrate behind the lines.”

“Bully!” Nathan muttered.

“Listen, my friend,” Ali said, “you happen to be an Israeli officer carrying army ID, dressed in civilian clothes, and in a war zone. If he wanted to get nasty, he could treat you as a spy and make things very difficult for you. But he seems satisfied.”

“Do you have any idea how the war is going?” Miri broke in before Nathan could respond.

Ali shook his head. “Obviously he didn’t sit down and reveal all their plans, but as near as I can gather from what he did say and from hearing the soldiers talk, the Egyptians hold the entire east bank of the canal. The Syrians have attacked Israel on the Golan Heights, but much to the Egyptians’ disgust, they are evidently not doing as well.”

“What about the other Arab countries?” Nathan demanded.

“Staying out of it, except for token support.”

“What about Jerusalem and Tel Aviv?” Sarah asked.

Suddenly Brad felt ashamed. It had never occurred to him to assume the war had extended into the heartland of Israel. No wonder Miri looked so stricken. On every hand they had seen evidence that the Israeli army was smashed and in retreat. Why shouldn’t they assume that their homes and families were under siege too? He took Miri’s hand and held it tightly.

“I think the Egyptians had a limited objective,” Ali explained. “Get across the canal, grab some land, and dig in until the major powers halt the fighting. They’ve achieved the first part. There doesn’t seem to be any talk of pushing much further.”

“That seems like near-sighted strategy,” Brad said.

“Not if you understand Arab politics,” Ali explained. “Anwar Sadat is in a shaky position. He’s threatened again and again to avenge the humiliation of the Six Day War but has taken no action. He does not have the charisma of Nasser, and his people are restless. He must unite them behind him. That he has unquestionably achieved in this move. He has shown the world that the Arab can stand and fight.”

Brad couldn’t help but note the pride in Ali’s voice.

“Even if he were to be driven back across the canal tomorrow, he has won. He has achieved a stunning defeat of the Israelis. Every Arab can once again hold up his head and be proud.”

Nathan leaped to his feet, bringing the guard to alert attention. “The Israeli army is not defeated,” he cried. “The Arabs will yet turn their tails and run.”

Ali shrugged, obviously a bit angry himself. “Perhaps. But the Arabs I have seen here are not turning their tails. And the myth of the invincible Israeli warrior is shattered once and for all.”

Nathan leaped at Ali, unleashing the frustration and rage that had been boiling in him for the last twenty or so hours. His fist caught Ali high on the left cheek, catapulting him backward across the cot. Brad was on his feet in an instant, throwing his shoulder into Nathan’s chest and driving him hard against the far wall, but Nathan was on his feet again like a cat, thrusting Brad aside. The muzzle of the guard’s rifle stared directly at his head, pulling him up short. The flap of the tent flew open, and two more soldiers darted in, weapons ready.

Brad hurried over to where Miri and Sarah were helping Ali to his feet. The ring Nathan wore had laid open an ugly three-inch gash along Ali’s cheek, which was now dripping blood down the side of his face and onto his shirt. He touched it with the back of his hand and stared at it, then into Nathan’s eyes, which were still filled with fury.

“You Israelis!” Ali said softly. “You can insult us all you want. But you are not so good at facing the truth, are you.” He stood unflinching as Nathan lunged forward again and was shoved back roughly by the soldiers.

“What is going on here?” The lieutenant burst into the tent, pistol drawn.

The guard who had been in the tent throughout spoke rapidly in Arabic. The lieutenant listened and then stepped forward, tipped Ali’s head to the light, and examined the cut. He said something in Arabic, and one of the other soldiers darted out of the tent. He was back in a moment with a first-aid kid.

“What did you say to this brave Israeli to cause this?” the lieutenant asked Ali in English, as he began daubing at the cut with antiseptic.

“He suggested that the myth of the Israeli superwarrior was gone forever,” Brad said, still fighting to control his anger against Nathan.

The officer turned and gave Nathan an appraising look. “Ah,” he said sadly. “I think the Israelis are very good winners, but not so good as losers.”

He finished, taped a large gauze patch over the cut on Ali’s face, then stepped back. “You are a foolish man, Colonel Shadmi,” he said. “If it were not for Ali Khalidi, I would be dealing with you not as a prisoner of war, but as an undercover agent. It is tempting to follow my original instincts, but we Arabs are not a vindictive people. We honor our commitments. You shall be sent across the Suez in the morning for interrogation.”

The lieutenant then turned to Miri and Sarah. “I wish that I could release you ladies, but the Israeli military uses women. I see from your papers that you are both in the reserves. I am afraid you also must be treated as prisoners of war.”

Brad started to step forward to protest but caught Ali’s quick look and almost imperceptible shake of the head.

“I assure you,” the Egyptian continued politely, “you will be treated with the utmost respect and courtesy. We shall take you back to Cairo, so you will have better conditions than here. Supply trucks will be here in the morning, and you may return with them.”

Brad suddenly felt sick, but he kept his face impassive as the lieutenant turned to him. “Mr. Kennison. As an American you have no part in this war. I have just checked with a war correspondent from the London Times who is here now. He will be returning to Cairo at noon tomorrow to file his reports. He said he would be glad to have you share his jeep. We are sorry that you have been caught in our problems here in the Middle East.”

Again Brad caught Ali’s eye and the shake of his head. He nodded to the officer. “Thank you. I appreciate these arrangements.”

The lieutenant turned to Ali, but before he could speak, Ali stepped forward. “I have a special request, sir.” He shot Nathan a look of pure contempt, visible for all to see.

“Oh?”

“I would share in the glory of this hour that Allah has given us.”

The lieutenant looked surprised. “In what way?”

“I would like permission to join your command and help redeem the shame of six years ago.”

Nathan spat in disgust, and the lieutenant spun around and slapped him across the face with the palm of his hand, a ringing blow that rocked Nathan’s head back. “Pig!” he shouted to Nathan. “An Israeli does not spit in an Egyptian’s tent.” The lieutenant spoke rapidly in Arabic, and the two soldiers grabbed Nathan and prodded him out of the tent.

The Egyptian then turned back to Ali, his eyes angry, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

“I would like to help you teach all Israelis where to spit,” Ali said calmly.

“Done!” said the Egyptian. Once again he went to the tent door. He stuck out his head and called sharply.

Three men came in, and the officer rapidly barked out his orders. The first motioned to Ali, who passed Brad with his eyes lowered and left the tent.

“Ladies,” the officer said,” if you will follow these men, they will show you to your new quarters.” He stuck out his hand and blocked Brad’s movement toward Miri. “I assure you, Mr. Kennison, they will be treated as ladies.” He motioned with his hand, and Miri and Sarah followed the remaining two Egyptians out of the tent. The anguish in Miri’s eyes drove through Brad like a red hot spear.

“Mr. Khalidi has told me of your feelings for the beautiful young Israeli,” the lieutenant said, “not that one could miss that himself. All will be well, and after the war—” He shrugged, stroking his mustache. “We will see to your comfort here until tomorrow, Mr. Kennison.” He stepped to the flap. “However, under the circumstances, you will please confine yourself to this tent.”

Brad nodded glumly.

“Without exception,” he warned sharply.

“I understand.”

When the lieutenant had gone, Brad stared at the flap, then sat down heavily on the cot. “Oh, Miri!” he said softly.

Twenty-seven

Brad sat on the edge of his cot, his head in his hands. It was past three in the morning, but his mind was working at top speed. In an hour or two the trucks would come for Miri, Sarah, and Nathan, and there was nothing he could do about it. Once they crossed the Suez and were taken into Egypt, that would be it. The lieutenant had promised Miri and Sarah courteous treatment, and Brad believed he meant it, but once they left here, who would guarantee his promises? At best it would be months before they would be returned to Israel. At worst—Brad shook that off, not willing to face the possibilities.

It seemed hopeless. Brad lay back on the cot in despair, conjuring up one wild scheme after another, discarding them almost instantly. Somewhere around midnight he had heard the guard outside his tent changed, and he had tried to bluff his way past the new man. He had smiled, gestured, pointed, and talked enthusiastically, but the guard had never wavered. His face was as stony as that of the Sphinx, and the point of the rifle was the same. Though Brad’s Arabic was limited to less than a dozen words, he clearly understood the man’s harsh command and his implacable expression.

Back inside the tent Brad had searched meticulously in the pitch blackness on his hands and knees, for anything to cut through the canvas. But the two cots and a small portable toilet were the only items in the tent. He finally managed to pry off one of the thick wooden legs of one of the cots, but the edges were smooth and round, the wood too thick to break into a jagged edge. For a brief time he had considered trying to sneak outside and take out the guard, but when he peeked out the tent flap, he met the man’s gaze, wary as a mongoose watching a cobra, and Brad let the flap drop quickly.

He half hoped Ali would find a way to intervene, but as the hours wore on, his hope waned. And in spite of his deep disappointment, he could not blame his friend. He remembered the bitterness in Ali’s eyes that evening they first met, as he told Brad of the shame he had felt during the Six Day War. Who could point the finger of accusation at the young Arab for wanting to be with his people when their hour finally came? Add to that Nathan’s hottempered stupidity, and Brad was left with few expectations.

For the sixth or seventh time that night, he swung off the cot and knelt beside it, pleading for help. Then once again he resumed his staring into the darkness.

Ten minutes later, when four Israeli jets came rocketing over the camp at less than five hundred feet, the battering ram of sound they hurled along below them brought Brad to his feet in a startled leap. It was like the concussion of an artillery shell exploding beneath one’s chair, and he looked wildly around for a moment before he realized what had happened. Outside, the camp exploded in a wild hail of gunfire, but the startled soldiers might just as well have tried to shoot down the moon. At five hundred and fifty miles an hour, in the three or four seconds it took for the troops to react, the jets were half a mile away and unleashing their fury on the emplacements lining the banks of the canal. The wild shooting ended as Brad heard the officers and noncoms screaming at the men to hold their fire.

The second wave of F-4 Phantoms were less than thirty seconds behind the first, and Brad instinctively ducked as the deafening sound rocked the tent again. He understood almost instantly what was happening. Russia had furnished the Egyptian armed forces with the SAM VI, surface-to-air missiles with a deadly accuracy that had stunned the Israeli air force. This was their answer—treetop-level attacks at night using sophisticated groundsearching radar. And just as suddenly as Brad had understanding, he had an answer. Groping quickly around the cot, he found his makeshift club and stepped to the flap of the tent.

Come on, Israel, he urged fiercely, just one more flight. He didn’t have long to wait for his command to be obeyed. The third wave of fighters blasted overhead and were gone almost before the mind could register consciousness of their passing. The guard pivoted in his tracks as he tried in vain to follow the source of the earsplitting sound. It was his last conscious act for that night, for Brad was out of the tent in a flash, swinging the leg of the cot against the base of his skull. He collapsed with a soft moan. Brad caught him before he hit the ground and dragged him inside the tent. Then he opened the flap, intent on retrieving his club and the guard’s rifle, but he jerked up short with a grunt of disgust. In the light of the half moon, the figure of an Egyptian soldier running rapidly toward him was perfectly clear.

Cursing himself for not taking the rifle first, Brad stepped up against the wall near the doorway and held his breath. The footsteps pounded up, then stopped right outside. Brad made a club of his fists and raised his arms high as the flap of the tent pushed open slightly. Just as he tensed for the swing, he heard the urgent whisper.

“Brad!”

He nearly shouted for joy. “Ali!”

Stepping quickly inside, Ali turned on a flashlight and revealed his broad, grinning face, the white bandage a gleaming patch on his cheeks.

“Man! Am I glad to see you.”

“I tried to get away a little earlier,” his friend said, “but things at the office have really been hectic.” He dropped the beam of the flashlight so that it revealed the sprawled figure on the floor. “I see you have been busy too.”

“Yes, thanks to the Israeli air force. Do you know where they are holding Miri?”

“Yes, but hold on a minute. The initial surprise is over out there, and all we have now is a very alert camp. We’ve got to create some diversion of our own.” He swung up his other hand, which held a bundle wrapped in a khaki shirt. “They have been watching me like a hawk, so I haven’t been able to get much.”

As he opened up the makeshift pack, Brad saw two kerosene latterns and a sprawl of matches. “Directly behind us is the ammunition dump. It’s under guard.” He handed Brad one of the lamps and a handful of matches. “Wait here until I get into the motor pool. Once I get something going, see what you can do with the ammunition dump. I’ll meet you back here, and we’ll go get the others.”

Suddenly overwhelmed at what this meant, Brad touched Ali’s arm. “Thanks. I was afraid you really meant it when you said what you did to the lieutenant.”

“I did,” Ali said sadly, “but the Mormon in me has to take priority for now. Maybe later—” He shrugged. “Let’s go. Give me about two minutes.”

Two minutes later Brad was out of the tent in a flash, pausing only long enough to grab the guard’s rifle before running in a low crouch toward the rear of the camp. He could hear the angry rumble of explosions to the north, and saw the flashes of light that accompanied it.

The ammunition dump was exactly as Ali had described it, and Brad saw the silhouette of the lone, patrolling figure almost immediately. He dropped behind the cover of a small clump of brush and waited for Ali’s handiwork. A moment later a pillar of flame shot into the air, as the gas tank of a truck near the perimeter of the camp exploded. With a cry, the guard leaped away, unslinging his rifle.

Brad’s lips were tight as he ran to the dump. It wasn’t a particularly large cache of ammunition—less than a hundred boxes—but it would be sufficient. He pried the lids off the first three boxes with the bayonet on the rifle, pleased to see that there were mortar rounds packed in a strawlike material. He unscrewed the lid of the kerosene lamp’s reservoir and splashed the liquid inside the boxes.

Quickly he moved around the stack and popped open the lids on two different boxes. Hand grenades. On a sudden impulse he snatched three and shoved them into the pockets of his windbreaker. Again he splashed the kerosene. He was so intent on what he was doing that he nearly singed his eyebrows when he struck the match and the kerosene whooshed into flame. He tossed a match into the first boxes he had opened, picked up his bundle, and sprinted back the way he had come. His little blaze was nothing compared to the truck, but it would very soon attract someone’s attention.

Ali was waiting at the rear of Brad’s tent. He nodded in satisfaction as he saw the flickering light behind Brad. “We do good work, boy!” he said, grinning. “All right, let’s go.”

Fifty yards away, Ali darted around another tent like the one Brad had been in. “This is where Miri and Sarah are,” he whispered. “The guard out front is gone. Be careful. He may be inside.”

At that moment the first box of mortars went off with a tremendous roar. The concussion shook the ground.

“That will help!” Brad muttered with satisfaction.

“I’ll get Nathan and meet you right here.”

Brad smiled. “Think he’ll come with you?”

Ali patted his rifle. “It will be a pleasure to persuade him.” He leaped up. “Hurry now!” He darted off.

Brad slashed the canvas with one savage tear of the bayonet and heard startled movement within. “Miri, it’s Brad!” he whispered as he dove through the opening.

The dive saved his life, for he hit the legs of the guard, who, instead of rushing to join the others, had gone in to watch his charges. When Brad slashed the tent, the man swung his weapon at the opening. With a startled yelp, the guard dropped the muzzle of the weapon and pulled the trigger. It went off so close to Brad’s face that he felt the burn of the powder on his cheek. The roar nearly blasted out his left eardrum.

Brad lunged at the man’s legs and drove forward. They crashed heavily against the wall of the tent, rocking it violently, and the guard’s weapon clattered to the ground. As he went for it, Brad brought his knee up with all the force he could muster and caught the man full on the chin. His head snapped back, and he hit the floor like a sack of spoiled potatoes.

Brad was still for a moment, hunched over, gasping for breath, holding his left ear.

“Brad, are you all right?” Miri said, rushing over to him.

He stood up and shook his head violently to ease the pain. “I’ll be okay. Hurry, out the back.”

Miri’s eyes were wide. “But how did you ever—?”

“Ali! He’s getting Nathan right now.”

Another explosion shook the camp.

“That’s our little diversion,” he added with a touch of pride in his handiwork.

They saw Nathan and Ali almost immediately coming toward them in a running crouch.

“Oh, Nathan!” Miri cried, giving him a brief hug.

Ali whipped out a length of rope. “All right, wrap this around your wrists so it looks like I’ve got you tied up. Brad, keep that rifle hidden until we get to the jeep.”

“Jeep?”

“Yes,” Ali said modestly. “I didn’t want everything in the motor pool to go up.”

“Wait a minute!” Brad said in an urgent whisper. “Who’s going to drive the jeep?”

“I am,” Ali replied.

“With four dangerous prisoners to guard, you drive the jeep?”

Ali suddenly looked ill. “I didn’t think about that. I was so glad to find some transportation.”

“Inside the tent,” Brad commanded. “Quick! Ali, give me the flashlight.”

Once inside he flashed the light at the unconscious Egyptian. Ali grunted at the sight. “The Egyptians are going to love you.”

Brad ignored that. “Nathan!” he commanded, “you’re it. I could never pass as an Arab, not even in the dark.” He knelt quickly and started unbottoning the man’s uniform.

“I can’t either!” Nathan protested.

“We have no choice. Just keep your head down. Come on, man! Get that uniform on. We’ve got to have two Egyptians to pull this off. Move!” He yanked off the man’s pants.

Nathan quickly began making the switch in uniforms.

Sarah stepped up to Brad. “Do you know what it means if Nathan is caught in an Egyptian uniform?”

“Sarah!” Nathan commanded sharply.

She ignored him. “He could be shot as a spy.”

“Sarah,” he said more softly. “And what about Brad and Ali, and what they are doing?”

She bit her lip and stepped back.

Under any other circumstances it would have caused the other four to double over with laughter. By the time Nathan got the brown uniform buttoned over his clothes, he looked like two quarts of water poured into a pint jar. Brad simply gave him a quick smile and shook his head.

“All right, let’s go. When we get to the jeep, Nathan will drive. Ali, you’re in command so you sit in the back and keep the gun on us.”

The camp was in an uproar still, men running wildly about, and automatic rifle fire was splitting the night air, though Brad assumed they were blasting away at shadows. The moonlight was now overshadowed by the flickering light from the motor pool area, where three trucks and a half-track were blazing fiercely. The ammunition dump was putting on its own spectacular as explosion after explosion ripped the air.

They made it to the main entrance of the camp, a narrow zigzagged opening left in the rolls of concertina barbed wire, without a single challenge. Nathan and Sarah were in the front of the jeep, Miri and Brad in the back, with Ali perched on the rear platform where he could cover them all. Ali spoke rapidly to the guard, who nodded and walked back quickly into the makeshift guard station where a field telephone was visible. He picked it up and began to speak.

“What did you tell him?” Brad whispered to Ali, aware that twenty men were within fifty feet of the jeep in either direction, dug into foxholes and trenches.

“I told him Lieutenant Fahoud wanted the prisoners taken back across the canal immediately.”

“Who is Lieutenant Fahoud?” Miri asked.

Ali grinned. “The officer who interrogated us. He’s in charge of all POWs.”

“So what’s he doing now?” Brad asked, looking at the guard inside the hut.

“Calling Fahoud to check,” Ali said calmly.

“Ali!” Brad hissed.

“You think they’ll find him in this madhouse? If we get away clear, we are ten times better off.”

“Get away where?” Nathan hissed. “We don’t even know where we are!”

Ali savored the little surprise he had been saving. “One mile straight ahead and we come to the road that leads to the Mitla Pass.”

“And how many Egyptians between here and there?” Nathan murmured, unimpressed.

“You are on the perimeter of the forward command post,” Ali said proudly. “All the Egyptians are now alongside us or behind us. Why do you think Fahoud is so anxious to get you out of here by this morning?”

“Then we’ve got a chance,” Miri said, breathlessly.

“Oh oh!” Brad said between clenched teeth. “Your friend has got someone on the phone. He was waiting for a minute, but now look at him.”

The guard listened for a moment, then talked back into the phone, nodding his head vigorously. He glanced out quickly at the jeep, then nodded again.

“I think they’re on to us,” Brad said quickly. “All right, listen. I’ve got a grenade.” He handed it to Miri, ignoring her startled look. He eased up the rifle he had been hiding on the floor. “Miri, when I say, you lob the grenade next to the hut. Nathan, you punch this baby and move it. Stay down, we’ve got a dozen automatic weapons at our backs.”

Suddenly aware of his pounding heart, Brad took another grenade from his pocket and eased out the pin. “Okay? Now!”

The jeep shot forward as he lobbed the hand grenade toward the closest machine gun emplacement and whipped up the rifle. Ali was nearly hurtled off the back when Nathan popped the clutch. He grabbed wildly and caught Brad’s neck.

“Hang on, Ali!” Brad shouted as the two grenades went off almost simultaneously. He threw his arm around his friend and hauled him down as far as he could into the narrow seat on top of him and Miri.

The surprise was total, and it took nearly fifteen seconds for the Egyptians to react. But when they did, the perimeter erupted in a blaze of gunfire. Nathan had his foot to the floor and speed-shifted through the gears without lifting it. The jeep had blackout lights, but Nathan had switched those off at the gate, anticipating this very thing. The light of a half moon was enough to see the thin ribbon of asphalt stretching out in front of them. Nathan didn’t bother to zigzag, wanting distance more than movement. He cursed at the jeep in Hebrew, urging it to top performance.

“Stay down!” Brad shouted as he felt Ali suddenly grunt and lunge upward. The young Arab instantly collapsed back on top of Brad and went limp.

“Miri! Ali’s been hit!” He wiggled out from under Ali’s weight and squatted down on the floor, pulling Ali down onto the back seat. Miri, hunched down as far as possible herself, straightened halfway and tried to pull Ali’s head into her lap.

“Miri!” Brad screamed, “get down!” Her scarf whipped off and disappeared, her hair buffeted by the wind.

“No!” she cried, trying to straighten Ali’s twisted body around on the seat.

The jeep was now five hundred yards from the camp, and at sixty miles an hour was covering eighty-eight more feet every second. At that distance they were no longer visible, though still within killing range of the weaponry. The Egyptian line was pouring fire in their general direction, but it was blind and spreading out widely across the desert terrain.

A moment later Nathan shouted back at them. “Here’s the main road. Hang on!” The tires screeched as he leaned the vehicle into the corner.

For a moment Brad thought they were going to roll, but Nathan knew his job well. The jeep went into half a broadslide, then fishtailed back into line as Nathan opened it up again.

Brad leaned forward. “Ali’s been hit,” he yelled into the wind.

“How bad?”

“Can’t tell. How far to Israeli lines?”

“Who knows?” Nathan shouted back, the wind whipping his voice away. “I would guess five to ten miles. Maybe fifteen.”

“Will the Egyptians follow us?”

“Not in anything faster than this,” Nathan responded. “And not when we’re headed toward the Israeli army.”

Brad looked at Miri, who was staring at Ali and gently brushing his face, tracing the outline of the bandage on his cheek.

“Is he—?” Brad yelled, not daring to ask.

“He’s still alive,” she answered, “but he’s hurt bad.”

“We’ve got another problem,” Nathan shouted back. “We can’t go slamming into Israeli lines at sixty miles an hour in an Egyptian jeep. Once we’re sure we’re not being pursued, we’d better stop until it gets light, and get off this uniform.”

“No!” Miri shouted. “We’ve got to get Ali help as soon as possible.”

Brad reached over and touched her hand. “Nathan’s right, Miri. It won’t help Ali if an Israeli tank blasts us off the road. Dawn is in half an hour.”

“He’s going to die,” Miri sobbed, tears streaming down her cheeks. “He saved us, and now he’s going to die.”

Twenty-eight

They sat on empty ammunition boxes, staring at the closed flap of the tent that housed the Israeli field hospital. Brad was oblivious to the heat of the midmorning sun on his back, and incessantly smoothed the sand with the toe of his shoe, jerking up his head whenever someone came to the doorway of the tent, then dropping it again to stare at the ground.

Miri and Sarah sat next to him, their faces drawn, their eyes red and filled with anguish. For the first half hour, they had exchanged occasional comments of encouragement and hope for Ali’s recovery. Then gradually they had lapsed into a bleak silence.

The bloody carnage of war paraded before their eyes as helicopters clattered in from the front and disgorged their maimed and wounded cargo to be hastened into the field hospital. The camp was only ten or fifteen miles from where a massive tank battle was raging, and each new set of casualties bore witness that the Israelis were being badly mauled.

Once the Israeli commander had verified the escapees’ identities—a task requiring over an hour, since the Egyptian lieutenant had taken their wallets and identification—he strongly urged them to catch a ride eastward where things weren’t quite so tenuous. But Brad and Miri both adamantly refused. Nathan finally talked quietly with the officer, and he reluctantly agreed to let them stay. Nathan went off then in an attempt to find transportation to his own unit, which was engaged in a desperate struggle of its own in the Golan Heights of northern Israel. Brad, Sarah, and Miri came to this spot to await word of Ali.

Miri suddenly stood up. “Here comes Nathan.”

Somewhere the Israelis had found Nathan a uniform and he carried a Uzi submachine gun on his arm. His eyes were deeply sober, his face almost haggard. Brad and Sarah stood up to join Miri as he approached.

“My helicopter has arrived,” he said without preamble, taking Miri’s outstretched hands. He pulled her to him and gave her a fierce hug. “Captain Goldman has promised to get word to mother and father and let them know we are all right. As soon as you know about Ali, he’ll see that you all get back to Jerusalem.”

He pulled away and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “It will be okay,” he said firmly. “They caught us by surprise, but we’re recovering quickly.”

Miri forced a smile. “Take care, Nathan,” she said.

Brad could feel the anguish and fear that lay beneath that simple farewell and suddenly remembered she had done this once before, sent a brother off to battle with a kiss and a brave smile. No wonder her eyes were glistening.

Nathan turned to Sarah and, to everyone’s surprise, including Sarah’s, kissed her hard and long. “I’ll see you again, when this is over,” he said, his voice deep and growly to hide his emotions. “Okay?”

She nodded through her tears.

Nathan gripped Brad’s hand in that crushing grip of his, which Brad returned with equal firmness. “Brad,” he started, then shook his head. “What can I say? That’s twice you’ve risked your life for my family. We stand forever in your debt.”

Brad took a breath and was about to speak, but Nathan went on quickly. “I hope to be able to say this myself…” He glanced quickly at the hospital tent. “But if I can’t—if you get a chance to talk with him, will you tell him…” Again his voice trailed off, and he looked away.

Finally he went on. “Tell Ali I’ve known many brave and good men. He was the best. Tell him for me, Brad.”

“I will,” Brad said. “I will.” He put his arm around Miri, who was openly crying now.

“And tell him that I was a fool,” Nathan added lamely. “I wanted to tell him that myself, and I will if we both make it through this. I am so sorry.”

“I’ll tell him. Good luck, Nathan.” Brad pulled Miri close as they watched him turn and stride away without looking back.

* * * * * *

It was shortly after noon when an older man in a khaki-colored surgical gown and with a surgical mask draped around his neck stepped out of the tent and blinked at the bright sunlight. The three were on their feet as one, as he arched his back and stretched out the pentup tension in his body.

“You Kennison?” the doctor asked in heavily accented English.

“Yes.”

“He would like to see you, but only for a few moments, please.”

“How is he?” Miri asked, beating Brad to the same question.

The doctor shook his head. “Not good. The bullet hit his spine and fragmented. He’s been in surgery for over three hours. I’m still not sure we got it all. We’re going to give him blood now; then we’ll transport him to Tel Aviv, where they are prepared to treat him better.” The doctor’s eyes were bloodshot, and he rubbed the stubble on his chin wearily. “I don’t know. He’s in critical condition.” He motioned to Brad. “Come with me.”

Inside the huge tent there were no partitions, just row after row of beds filled with the battle-shattered refuse of war. The smell of antiseptic mingled with the unmistakable odor of blood, burnt flesh, and imminent death. It was a smell Brad knew only too well. Sinai or Saigon, it didn’t really matter much to bodies of vulnerable flesh and sinew. War was oblivious to geography.

The surgeon motioned Brad to a bed. “I shouldn’t let you be here,” he said, “but he insisted on seeing you the moment he came out of the anesthetic. Only a minute now.”

“Thank you,” Brad said, and he stepped up to Ali’s side.

Ali opened his eyes and managed a wan smile. Brad struggled to keep the shock from his face. The eyes were dull and almost gray, the face so pale it almost matched the new white bandage on his cheek. Brad took his hand and gripped it firmly.

“We did it, didn’t we,” Ali said weakly.

“You did it!” Brad answered. “Not we—you did it.”

Ali shook his head slightly, too feeble to protest.

“Nathan asked me to—”

“I know, I know,” Ali murmured. “Tell him I’m not angry with him.” His eyes closed for a moment, and Brad noticed with sinking heart the shallowness and rapidity of his breathing.

“How do you feel?” Brad asked

Ali grinned, a faint shadow of the infectious smile that Brad so loved. “Only my cheek hurts,” he said. “How’s that for logic?”

“Ali,” Brad said, leaning over slightly, “would you like me to administer to you?”

“That’s why I asked for you.”

Aware of other eyes watching, but not caring, Brad laid his hands on Ali’s head for the second time that day. Early that morning, while huddled in the jeep waiting for the dawn, as Ali’s head lay cradled in Miri’s lap, Brad had laid his hands on him and, filled with inspiration, blessed him with the strength to live until they could get help for him. Now he took a deep breath and began again. He had packed consecrated oil when they left Jerusalem, but it was in a Volkswagen bus stranded somewhere to the south of them.

“Ali Mohammed Gamal Abdel Khalidi,” Brad started, remembering with a sudden surge of emotion the image of a young man in a T-shirt and faded jeans hoisting an old bag into the storage bin of an airplane, then sticking out his hand to introduce himself.

He swallowed hard and then continued slowly, waiting, hoping for the promises he so desperately wanted to pronounce. But they didn’t come. He rebuked the pain, promising Ali comfort and rest. And then the tears came as, under the direction of the Spirit, Brad told Ali how the Lord felt about him, of the Lord’s great pleasure with this son of Abraham, of the special mission he had among the Arab peoples.

Brad finished and stepped back, blinking away the stinging in his eyes.

Thank you, friend,” Ali said with a deep sigh. His eyes closed, and he fell silent for a moment. Then his eyes fluttered open again. “Brad,” he whispered, “I want you to tell my mother something. And Ahkmud.”

“Tell them yourself,” Brad said, trying to keep his voice even. “You’ll be flying to Tel Aviv by helicopter in just a few minutes.”

Ali waved that aside, the effort exhausting him. “Please Brad. I’m not going to Tel Aviv. Try to help them understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why I did it. For Israelis. That will be difficult for them.”

Brad felt the tears spring to his eyes again, and he squeezed his friend’s hand gently. “I will, Ali. I will.”

“Tell Miri…” He stopped, mustering strength. “Tell Miri it is true.”

Brad nodded, unable to speak, anguish tearing at his soul.

For almost a minute Ali lay there quietly, his eyes closed, and Brad thought he had fallen asleep. But then his eyes flickered open again.

“I so much wanted to go on a mission,” he murmured. “To my own people.”

“You will, dear friend,” Brad said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “Think how many Arabs there are waiting for you in the spirit world.”

Ali’s eyes widened. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s right.” He smiled weakly. “You always were better at Mormonism than me.”

“Maybe so,” Brad said in a hoarse whisper. “But not at being a Christian.”

At that moment a nurse walked swiftly up to them. “I’m sorry, sir. You’ll have to go now.”

Brad nodded and took Ali’s hand in both of his, tears brimming in his eyes.

“Farewell, my good friend, “Ali whispered.

Brad squeezed his hand. “I’ll see you again. Until then, God be with you.”

He turned and followed the nurse blindly out into the brilliant sunshine.

Twenty-nine

Brad was standing with President Marks and the BYU students outside the mosque in Bethlehem when he saw Levi Shadmi’s car drive up. Levi and his wife were in the front, Miri and Sarah Millstein in the back. Brad excused himself and went over to meet them.

“Hello, Brad,” Levi said solemnly as he came around to open the door for his wife. Brad opened the rear door and helped Miri and Sarah out.

Both were dressed in black, as was Miri’s mother. Miri’s eyes were sorrowful and her face pale and drawn, which only served to heighten her loveliness and intensify the ache in his heart for her.

President Marks came over, and Brad quietly introduced him to Miri’s parents and to Sarah. Miri touched his arm after a moment. “Brad, I know they are almost ready to start the funeral, but may I talk to you for just a moment?”

He nodded, and they moved a short distance away.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I know today is hardly the time to bring this up, but—” She stopped, her lower lip trembling.

Brad felt a sudden sinking of his heart. “What?”

“They announced this morning that they are transferring my unit to the Galilee tomorrow.”

“Oh no! I thought you said you would stay in Jerusalem.”

“That is what they first told us. But we are a logistical support unit, and they need us on the Golan Heights.”

“For how long?” he asked, sick at the thought of her being that near to the fighting.

It was now Wednesday, the fifth day of the Yom Kippur War. The Israelis were slowly turning the tide of battle, but even the most optimistic military spokesman had stopped talking about a repeat of the Six Day War. There were not going to be any swift, decisive victories this time.

Miri shook her head. “Even if the war ends soon, they are saying that they will keep our unit on active duty for a time. At least three months, possibly six.”

“Oh, Miri! Can’t you do anything?”

She bit her lip and shook her head. “Sarah and I had to get special permission to come to Ali’s funeral today. We start loading up at six o’clock tomorrow morning.”

She looked up into Brad’s face, her dark eyes close to overflowing. “Many things have changed in the last four days,” she said. “I know you must be with the Khalidis after the funeral. But when you are finished, will you come and see me? I must talk to you before I go.”

“Of course.”

“No matter how late you are?”

“Yes, I’ll come.”

She touched his arm and went back to her parents. Brad watched her, a deep sense of foreboding adding its weight to the terrible sorrow that already lay heavy on his heart.

* * * * * *

When it was all over—the funeral, the burial in the Moslem cemetery, the long, poignant talk with the Khalidi family—Brad didn’t go to Miri’s. He drove the battered old Volkswagen to the crest of the Mount of Olives, parked it, and walked down to the spot where he and Miri had begun their first tour together.

The sun was setting, leaving the western sky a flaming orange and the golden roof of the Dome of the Rock a burnished crimson. He stared out across the Kidron Valley for a long time, barely aware of the settling darkness and the lights that blinked on one after another.

On that first morning the sun had been rising; now it was setting. He shook his head at the thought. Was his experience in Israel now setting too? What if Miri told him she had found her answer? When he had come out of the field hospital, Miri had taken one look at his face and begun to weep. Five minutes later, when the doctor had stepped out and shook his head, Miri had thrown herself into Brad’s arms and sobbed bitterly.

When she finally gained control of herself she had suddenly pushed away from him and cried out, “Why? Oh God, if you are God, why won’t you hear us?”

She had lapsed into a profound sorrow and had said little for the remainder of that day when they were finally sent back to Jerusalem with Ali’s body.

Brad stood up and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. Miri had commented on that first early morning about the irony of the name of this city—Jerusalem, the City of Peace. Now he fully understood the irony. Peace? Everytime he thought of Ali, he felt his insides knot up and twist with pain. Viet Nam should have made it easier, he thought bitterly. There he had learned to steel himself against the screams for the medics, against the still forms lying face down in the mud, against the empty bunks afterwards. But he hadn’t had any warning this time. There had been no time to throw up the old defenses again.

And now Miri. On the top of Sinai, his hopes had soared. Outside an army field hospital they had shattered. So what now? Could he set aside his convictions? Rationalize that all she needed was time? That after marriage she would accept the Church?

He shook his head with sudden intensity. No! How could he then face a man who had given his life for his convictions? How could he say, “But Ali, you don’t understand how much I loved her!”

The answer was simple and inescapable. He couldn’t. If Miri could not accept…He let the thought trail off in his mind, still finding too much pain at the end of that sentence. But he knew he would hold firm for his beliefs. He turned and walked slowly back to the car.

* * * * * *

The Shadmis were gone—perhaps at Miri’s request—and Brad and Miri sat in the living room alone, almost hesitant to talk.

Finally Miri spoke. “What will happen to Ali’s school now?”

“It will go on,” Brad answered. “Ahkmud said that Ali had gathered a very competent staff who will carry it on. The Khalidis will continue to fund it as a memorial to Ali.”

“I’m so glad,” Miri said, a tear in her eye.

“The gift your father and uncle gave will also help a great deal.”

“My father?”

Brad was suddenly hesitant. “Maybe that was to be a secret, although the Khalidis didn’t say anything about it. They gave—,” he paused, deciding to let the Shadmis reveal the details if they wished, “a substantial amount in gratitude for what Ali did for you and Nathan.”

“That makes me glad,” Miri said, “though nothing ever can fully repay what he did.”

Brad nodded.

Miri looked at him closely, took a deep breath, and sighed deeply. “So now it is time to talk about us.”

Brad nodded again, not trusting himself to look at her in return. “Yes, it is.”

“Have you given up on me?” she asked, so softly that he almost missed it.

Brad looked up in surprise. “No.” Had he? He was unquestionably discouraged, but had he given up? He shook his head firmly. “No, Miri. I haven’t given up yet.”

“You know that we have two major problems.”

“Two?”

“Yes. The first is whether I could ever join the Church.”

“You work that out,” Brad said fervently, “and there are no other obstacles.”

She smiled at him, eyes sparkling. “May I take that as a proposal, Mr. Kennison?” She lowered her eyes. “I understand the conditional part. But if I could ever be converted?”

Brad reached over, took her hand, and looked into her deep brown eyes, hardly able to say what he had to say. “If you were to feel right about being baptized—not just for me, but for yourself—then there are no other conditions. But—” He took a deep breath. “But if you can’t I…” He shook his head sadly. “I can’t, Miri. How could I face myself? How could I face Ali?”

She put her finger to his lips and stopped him from saying more. “I understand, Brad,” she said, her voice filled with emotion. “But when you say there are no other conditions, does that include not leaving Israel?”

Brad had known they had to face that one too, and he was ready. “There are no other conditions, Miri.”

Her eyes widened. “Do you mean…”

“I mean that I love you enough to stay in Israel with you. I will enroll at the Hebrew University.” He smiled. “But you would have to teach me Hebrew.”

Her eyes were suddenly brimming with tears, and she brushed them away impatiently. “You would do that for me?”

Brad nodded. “I understand what Israel means to you, Miri. I’ve asked you to give up enough already. However, I warn you that I will try to change your concept of Zion until you see that Zion—as we see it in the Church—is the only ultimate hope for Israel. I will try to convince you that the greatest thing you could ever do for your people is to raise sons and daughters who understand and love their Jewishness, but who understand Zion’s role in the future of Israel. It is a far greater challenge to raise Zion children than it is to raise Zionist children.”

“Could it be possible that you really love me enough to stay here?” she asked, her voice trembling with wonder.

“It is not only possible, but true,” Brad said gently, pulling her to him.

“Which brings us back to the first condition,” she said, turning away from him.

“Yes.”

“Are you still praying for me?” she asked after a long silence.

“Of course, night and morning and every time I think of you, which is constantly.”

“Do you believe the Lord will answer your prayers?”

Brad hesitated. “I don’t know. He won’t force you against your will, no matter how much I want it. And he surely knows how much I want it.”

Miri took his hand in hers and interlocked their fingers. “Brad, what would you say if I told you that he has answered them?”

Brad stared at her, unable to speak.

“He has answered your prayers, Brad. And mine.”

“Miri, what are you saying?”

The tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “I am saying that I know, Brad! I know! I understand! I believe!”

He took her by the shoulders, then gathered her into his arms. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

She smiled through the tears at his excitement and nodded.

“But how?” he asked. “How?” He was still unable to believe his ears.

“Ali,” she said, her voice breaking again. “It was Ali.”

Brad held her close to him as she struggled to get her emotions in hand. Finally she looked up. “On Mount Sinai you said that Jesus had to be a God and a man because he needed to be like us, have the same problems, but he had to be free from that situation so he could help us.”

Brad suddenly understood. He spoke again the words he’d said that morning on the mount. “How can a man locked in chains help others escape captivity?”

Yes,” she replied. “Ali was one of us in that Egyptian camp. But he was free. Yet he loved us so much—even Nathan, who treated him so shamefully—that he was willing to die to help us.” She fought for control again, then went on. “If a man, a good man, could love that much and that unselfishly, suddenly I can conceive how a perfect man could love enough to give his life for all men. When you told me about Ali’s last words in the hospital, I couldn’t get over it. Even then, his thoughts were only of others—for his family and their possible bitterness, for the Arab people, and—” Miri stopped. “And for me,” she whispered.

Brad nodded, still not daring to believe what he was hearing.

“Because of Ali, I could finally understand. And for the first time I wanted to know if Jesus was really the Messiah. Not just for you, Brad, but for me! So I could accept him and believe in someone who could love that perfectly.”

She stared down at her hands. “I didn’t sleep much the night we got home. I spent half the night reading and praying. Then I fasted all day yesterday. After I finished work at my unit, I remembered what you said about the special feelings you had in the Garden Tomb. It was what I wanted to feel too, so I went there.”

Her shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “For a while I almost gave up. Nothing happened. It was as though whatever I was seeking was just beyond my reach. If I could touch it, it would dissolve away. Finally, as I sat there, I decided to read the New Testament, the accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection.”

The tears brimmed over and ran slowly down her cheeks, but through them her face was radiant. “And suddenly it came. As I read, the most wonderful feeling of peacefulness came over me. And I found myself weeping—for joy! I knew that he was real and that he had heard my cries for him.”

Brad tenderly brushed a tear from the corner of her eye with his thumb. “You knew last night, and you didn’t call me?” he scolded gently.

“Yes, but once I had solved the first problem, I came face to face with our second problem. Could I leave Israel for you?”

“You don’t have to,” he said. “I’ll stay here.”

“I have a better idea,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “A compromise.”

“What?”

“I’ll go to the Galilee, and you go back to America.”

Brad jerked back and stared at her. “What are you saying? I just got you back. I’m not going to leave you. I told you, I’ll stay here.”

“And be happy?” she asked him gently.

“If I’m with you,” he said, not quite as firmly as he should have, “I’ll be happy.”

“You big, wonderful liar,” she said, kissing him firmly. “Okay, if you don’t like that idea, here’s another compromise.”

Knowing he was being teased, but not sure why, Brad narrowed his eyebrows with suspicion. “All right. Let’s hear it.”

Her eyes were literally dancing with pleasure. “I’ll go to the Galilee tomorrow with my unit, and you come up with President Marks and the rest of the branch on Friday afternoon.”

“President Marks?”

“Yes. And you’ll have to bring white clothes for both of us. I understand that is the appropriate dress for a baptism.”

Again she had him reeling, and she was loving every minute of it. “I met with President Marks this afternoon,” she said happily. “It’s all set. Except—” she smiled shyly, “I wasn’t sure who to get to do the baptizing.”

Brad grabbed her and pulled her to him, holding her tight. “Listen, you! There’d better not be any question about that.”

Finally she pulled away. “Wait,” she commanded, “I haven’t told you the rest of my second compromise yet.”

“All right,” Brad said, completely caught up in the joy of her mood. “Go ahead.”

“On Friday we’ll have the baptism. On Saturday, we’ll go to church. Then I’ll return to my unit, and you return to America.” She put her hand over his mouth to cut off his protest. “The moment I’m released from active duty, I’ll fly to Salt Lake City. And we’ll start planning our wedding. Remember, we have to wait a year from this Friday. That will be October 12, 1974. You’ll need to get into school as soon as possible, and I’ll have to find a job.”

Brad stared at her.

“And you promised me I could have a canopy at the reception.” She smiled in delight at his expression. “I love you, Brad Kennison,” she said softly, and kissed him before he could protest.

“But Miri!” he said finally, pulling away from their embrace. “What about Israel?”

“You must promise to make lots of money to bring me back here often.”

“I probably won’t make lots of money, but I promise I’ll bring you back.”

“And the children, too? All eight of them?”

“Absolutely. But what changed your mind?”

Her expression was soft and full of love. “You. And President Marks.”

“President Marks?”

“Yes. At my baptismal interview this afternoon, I told him everything. How I felt about you. How I felt about Israel. In his usual, kind way, he was very blunt.” She laughed at a sudden thought. “He would make a good Israeli.”

“What did he say?”

“He said if I loved anything, other than the Lord, more than you, I wasn’t worthy of you.”

“Bless his heart,” Brad said, still half in a daze with it all. “And you’ve been stringing me along all night? You knew it all along.”

Miri quickly sobered. “I’m glad now I did, Brad. I expected that you would tell me that I had to leave Israel. I was going to act hurt for a moment, and then tell you I would.” Her eyes were misty again. “But instead you said you would stay here with me. I’ll never forget that. Never! I want you to know I love you that much too. More than Israel.”

Brad kissed her then, putting all the joy and delight that was surging through his soul into it. She gave herself to him without reservation. This time there were no barriers waiting to drop between them.

Then gently he pulled away. “Miri, what are your parents going to think of all this?”

She touched his arm. “They think you are going to be one fine son-in-law.”

“Better than David?”

She gave him a long, speculative look. “Except for the Porsche.”

Miri yelped as he pinched her ribs.

“And what about your becoming a Mormon?” he asked.

“That is more difficult,” she admitted. “But I told them just before you came tonight. I think they knew it was coming.”

“And?”

“My father surprised me the most. He listened to it all without a word. Then finally he said, ‘If it makes you like Brad and Ali, I suppose there could be worse things happen to you.’ They won’t come to the baptism, but it could be much, much worse.”

“That’s wonderful!” Brad said. He took her face in his hands, gently and with great tenderness. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”

She snuggled up under his arm. “You had better believe it, Mr. Kennison. You made me a conditional proposal, and I’ve met your conditions. You’re stuck with me now.”

“Forever?” he asked, holding her close.

“Forever!” she murmured.

Thirty

The officiator looked around the room at the smiling, eager faces. He had finished his counsel and advice to the couple who sat on his right, and now he stood up. An expectant hush filled the sealing room of the Salt Lake Temple.

Miri was radiant in her wedding gown, her dark eyes glowing with happiness, the white veil in sharp contrast to her black hair. Brad held her hand, his eyes as full of joy as hers. They sat with their backs to the one great mirror on the wall, and facing the other one across the room so that they could see their reflection going on and on into eternity.

The officiator held a white leather Bible in his hands. He let his gaze travel around the room and finally stop at Brad and Miri.

“This is a very special privilege for me,” he began. “It is always an honor to seal a worthy young couple for time and eternity. But this has added significance today, for we are witnessing the fulfillment of prophecy.”

Brad’s mother, who was sitting next to Miri, reached over and squeezed her hand happily.

“May I read with you the words of Ezekiel,” the officiator said, opening the Bible to a premarked place. “From Ezekiel, chapter thirty-seven, verses sixteen and seventeen, we read: ‘Take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah,…then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim.’ ”

He paused and smiled at Miri and Brad, then continued. “ ‘And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.’ ”

Brad took Miri’s hand and slipped it through his arm.

“Now, we know that this scripture has reference to the Bible and the Book of Mormon becoming a combined witness of Jesus Christ. But I firmly believe it has a wider meaning as well. Let me read verse twenty-two. ‘And I will make them’…,” the officiator paused, “meaning Ephraim and Judah—’I will make them one nation in the land,…and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.’ ”

He closed the book and motioned to Brad and Miri to stand. “And so, Bradley Scott Kennison, if you will kneel here at the altar as a representative of the tribe of Ephraim—and you, Miriam Esther Shadmi, if you will kneel across the altar from Brad as a representative of the tribe of Judah—we shall proceed to make you one in the hands of the Lord.”

The Alliance

The Alliance

© 1983 Gerald N. Lund

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company, P. O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Bookcraft.

BOOKCRAFT is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

First printing in hardbound 1983

First printing in paperbound, August 1988

First printing in redesigned paperbound edition, January 2000

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lund, Gerald N.

The alliance

1. Title.

PS3562.U485A79 1983 813’.54 83-14359

ISBN 0-87747-982-8 (hardbound)

ISBN 978-0-87579-160-9 (paperbound)

Printed in the United States of America

R. R. Donnelley and Sons

16 15 14 13 12 11

Chapter 1

Before the world ended, the place was known as Star Valley, Wyoming. For the past eighteen years they had called it simply “the valley.” Eric Lloyd removed his broad-brimmed, crudely woven straw hat and wiped at his brow with his sleeve. The cornfield he was irrigating skirted the edge of the foothills and was slightly higher than the rest of the valley. From that vantage point he could see the whole sweep of it before him—the mountain ranges that hemmed it in on both sides, shoving some peaks up over ten thousand feet, still laced with winter snows; the neat patchwork of wheat, barley, corn, and alfalfa fields; the deeper green, more erratic lines of cottonwoods and willows along the creeks rushing down from the mountains to the Salt River; the meadowland dotted with dairy and beef cattle. From almost any spot in it, the valley presented a dazzling array of color and beauty, and Eric never tired of looking at it.

“Ricky! Ricky!”

Eric straightened and looked around, his gray eyes squinting in the early afternoon sunshine. For a moment the only sound was the soft gurgle of water as it slipped out of the irrigation ditch and into the furrows. Then the call came floating across the fields again. He replaced his hat and squinted into the sun, still unable to pinpoint the source of his sisters’ voices. Then he saw the tops of two heads—one dark brown, one a golden blonde—bouncing up and down above the level of the chest-high field of corn.

With a smile, he took two quick swipes with the shovel, slicing through the thick grass and soft dirt of the ditch bank to open up another furrow, then stuck the shovel in the opposite bank with one quick thrust. His boots made a pleasant sucking sound as he uprooted his feet from the soft mud and moved to dry ground.

“Lori! Becky! I’m over here.”

Two figures rounded the edge of the cornfield, then exploded into a spontaneous and uneven race toward him. Long-legged Lori, nine years old and three inches taller than her sister, easily outdistanced Becky. Her blonde hair streamed out in back of her as her face contorted with the efforts of victory. Becky, six and destined to be small all her life, tried valiantly to keep up, her ponytail bouncing as her feet pounded up little puffs of dust in the narrow path. They were both clothed in plain homespun woolen dresses with white pinafores. Deerskin moccasins covered their feet, standard wear for most of the children in the village during the summertime. Shoes laboriously cut and stitched from handcured and tanned cow hides were too expensive for anything but wintertime or Sunday wear.

“Ricky! Ricky!” Lori shouted as she slid to a stop, almost catapulting into the ditch. “School’s out!”

“I get to tell! I get to tell!” Becky cried as she collided with Eric’s legs.

“No more school,” Lori gasped between heaving breaths, determined to win the verbal race as well.

“Lori!” Becky wailed, swinging at her sister with a fistful of crumpled papers.

“Whoa!” Eric commanded, sweeping them both into his encircling arms and pulling them down next to him in the grass. “First, both of you get your breath. Then we’ll take turns.”

They both nodded, grateful for the reprieve.

After a few moments, Eric released them. “Okay, now. Who wants to start?”

Becky, still fresh from the regimen of school, shot up her hand. But Lori, ever the practical one, said, “I get to tell him about the party. Then you can tell him about your report card first.” She shot Becky one of her I-dare-you-to-disagree looks.

“Okay.”

“Oh, Ricky, it was so neat.” Her blue eyes danced with excitement. “Mr. Wilson checked in all our books and equipment, then we sang songs, had refreshments, played games, and—”

“Yeah,” Becky broke in, her eyes wide. “We didn’t do any work. Not any, all day.” Her nose, liberally sprinkled with a light dusting of freckles, wrinkled with the wonder of it.

“Becky,” Lori complained, “it’s not your turn.”

“Right,” Eric said sternly, giving her a quick wink. “Let Lori tell me.”

“We played Red Rover, and Run Sheep Run, and Kick the Can. I broke through the arms of Kenny Miller and Peter Carlson in Red Rover.” She beamed with a broad, thoroughly uninhibited smile. “Mrs. Crookston said that I proved girls were as strong as boys.”

Eric nodded soberly. “I have heard that’s true.” Then he shushed her gently, as she prepared to plunge in again. “Okay, it’s Becky’s turn now.”

Becky’s head ducked momentarily as she pawed quickly through her papers. When she looked up, she was radiant with excitement. “Look, Eric,” she said, thrusting her report card at him, “I got all ones except in writing and spelling, and those are two pluses.”

“And I only got two twos, too,” Lori blurted, holding her own card out for inspection.

Eric took the cards, smoothed them out on his legs, and leaned over to study them.

“My,” he said finally, “you both did really well. Mom and Dad will be proud of you.”

The girls beamed happily.

Eric peered more closely, comparing the two papers, then looked at Lori. “I thought you and Becky walked to school together.”

“We do.”

“Then how come you have six tardies and Becky has none?” The six for Lori was not a great surprise to Eric. Her immense curiosity about the world caused her to stop and inspect every new flower, chase any errant toad, or sometimes just brought her to a stop in the middle of the road to daydream for a moment or two. But the discrepancy puzzled him, for Becky was always a willing partner in such delays.

Becky cocked her head to one side, her brown eyes earnest. “Oh,” she said helpfully, “Mrs. Crookston is real nice. She doesn’t even mark us down when we are retarded.”

Eric nearly choked, then whooped with laughter.

“Not retarded,” Lori said in disgust. “Tardy.”

Becky blushed and lowered her eyes, her thick lashes lying softly on her cheeks. “Oh, yeah,” she said, that irrepressible grin breaking through her embarrassment. “That’s what I meant.” Then she giggled, causing Eric to laugh out loud again.

He leaned over and hugged her. “That’s my Becky.”

Lori suddenly jumped up. “Look!” she cried. “Here comes Stephanie.”

Eric stood up as their older sister, astride her sorrel mare, came at a hard lope from the direction of the village.

“Eric!” she cried, pulling the horse up to a sliding halt and leaping off to face them. “Dad is back. He wants you in the village right now. All the men are meeting at the church.”

“Dad?” Eric echoed in surprise. “He and Cliff aren’t supposed to be back for two more days.”

“I know, but last night they saw lights.”

“What kind of lights?”

She shook her head. “They were a long way away. But Dad said that they looked like the headlights of automobiles! Coming down old U.S. Highway 89 from the north.”

“Car lights? How can that be? How could there be automobiles?”

“What’s an automobile?” Becky asked, looking up at her brother and sister.

Stephanie ignored the question and thrust the reins into Eric’s hand. “I don’t know how it can be, but Dad is worried. So go! The meeting has already started.”

Eric swung up, kicked the mare in the flanks, and leaned over her neck as she leaped forward into a pounding run.

Eric’s eyes snapped open, and it took him a moment to realize he had dozed off again. He shifted his weight, trying to find a more comfortable position against the rough bark of the tree, then glanced up at the sun through the boughs of the pine trees. It was now just past its zenith and starting its downward slide toward the west. He had ridden all night, finally joining up with Cliff shortly after dawn. But Cliff had not given him any time to rest. They had immediately headed north again, not stopping until a little before noon. His eyelids felt as heavy as the anvil irons in Ralph Maddox’s blacksmith shop.

Eric turned his head slightly and studied the lean whip of a man, now in his seventy-first year, who sat a few feet away. His bony frame was cushioned in a small mound of pine needles, and his elbows rested on his knees, holding the binoculars to his eyes with steadiness. The afternoon breeze moaned in the pine branches above them, then softly ruffled Cliff’s short-cropped hair, once saddle-brown but now mostly gray. Except for that slight motion, he could have passed as part of the forest, a gnarled old stump clad in brown deerskin. Somewhere behind them a red squirrel scolded harshly, breaking the gentle quiet of the forest.

Eric shook his head. It must have been that kind of singleminded concentration that had made Dr. Clifford Cameron one of the foremost neurosurgeons on the West Coast—and the most consistently successful hunter in the village.

The Appaloosa mare and the black gelding tethered a few feet behind them stopped their stamping and turned toward the canyon below them, their ears cocked forward. “Cliff,” Eric said softly, “the horses hear something.”

There was no response for almost a full minute; then a deep grunt and a low whistle from Cliff brought Eric’s head up sharply. He peered down into the canyon below them, where the steep, thickly forested mountainside formed a V and allowed the Salt River to disappear from sight. Even to the naked eye it was evident that the bright orange object emerging from the gorge about half a mile from where they sat was not natural to the forest.

“It is!” Cliff exclaimed, his voice tinged with awe. “It’s an automobile!” He lowered the glasses, stared at Eric for a moment without seeing him, then swung back to peer through the binoculars once more. “And there’s another one! Can you believe it? After eighteen years—cars!” Cliff was rarely awed by anything, and Eric felt a tiny shiver, half fear, half excitement, run down his spine.

“Look!” Cliff commanded, tossing the glasses to Eric.

It took Eric a moment to find the vehicles, but then he too stared. Through the binoculars, he could see both vehicles clearly. They were not unlike the automobiles he had seen many times in books and in old videotapes, and yet they were different. Clear, bubble-shaped covers sat atop squat, nearly square bodies. Oversized tires held them well above the weed-strewn highway, giving them an awkward, overbalanced look. Though the hot afternoon sunshine glinted off the bubble, Eric could make out several figures inside each car. They were coming slowly, almost cautiously, moving not much faster than a man could walk.

He handed the glasses back to Cliff, his expression puzzled.

“Listen!” Cliff commanded, peering through the glasses again. “No motor sounds. Nothing! We would’ve heard a regular car’s engine at least a mile away in these mountains. That means—” He leaned forward intently. “Look! Here comes another—no, it’s not a car, it’s a truck.”

The third bright orange vehicle moved out of the canyon, but without the glasses, all Eric could tell for sure was that it was much larger than the lead vehicles.

“It’s an open truck filled with men.” Once again Cliff lowered the glasses to stare at Eric. “In uniform. Blue and orange, like the cars.” He turned back, and Eric watched his lips moving as he counted silently. “There are close to thirty of them.”

Cliff didn’t speak again, and Eric stared at the scene below as one orange truck after another emerged from the trees. Finally Cliff stood up. He shoved the field glasses back into the battered case and shook his head. “Two cars and ten trucks, one of which is carrying a bulldozer. I count about a hundred men in the first three trucks—the others seem to be empty. I can’t see any weapons, but the men are all in uniform.” He picked up his rifle and stared down at the long column moving toward them. “A veritable army.”

“They can’t be just another group of Marauders.” It was not a question. The occasional bands of men roaming the countryside raping and pillaging the pockets of survivors were like packs of wolves—vicious, savage creatures of the wild scavenging from the weak, then, likely as not, turning on one another. Their only weapons were clubs, axes, any other crude tools they could steal or make. Trucks, bulldozers, uniforms? No, they weren’t just another band of Marauders.

Cliff shook his head and scratched at the thick, grizzled stubble that lined his cheeks. Eric watched him closely, amazed how little weariness showed through the deep creases that lined his face. He, like Eric, must have been up most of the night, but it showed hardly at all. He seemed like a weatherbeaten piece of granite, impervious to all external forces.

“But trucks! Cars!” Eric exclaimed. “That implies civilization, industry, technology.”

“High technology,” Cliff agreed, his eyes troubled. “No engine noise means either they’re electric—which seems unlikely for any long distances—or they’re nuclear powered.”

“Nuclear? Is that possible?”

The doctor shrugged. “Who knows? There certainly weren’t nuclear-powered automobiles before.” His face reflected a curious mixture of hope and longing and worry.

Eric had seen that same look on the faces of those in the village who were old enough to remember before. He had also sensed it in his father, though he usually refused to talk about the times before life in the valley. Dipping into the pitcher of the past, his father often said, can only sour the cup of the present.

“What do you suppose they want?” he asked, staring down at the passing procession, now less than five hundred yards below the ridge where they sat.

That seemed to pull Cliff out of his thoughts. He turned and walked swiftly to where the horses were tethered. “That is what we’re supposed to find out. It will take them about twenty minutes or so to loop around the road and reach the spot where we dropped that tree across the highway. We can be there in half that. Let’s get into position.”

They cut directly down the back side of the ridge, the way they had come up earlier. In ten minutes they reached a place where they had a clear view of the road and the clearing where they had dropped a big pine across it and blocked it off.

Cliff pulled up and pointed with his rifle toward a thick clump of undergrowth. “You stay up here. That’ll give you a clear line of fire to the road where they’ll have to stop.” His face softened slightly. “But don’t, for heaven’s sake, get jumpy until I’ve had a chance to see if they’re friendly. Okay? You’ll be close enough you should be able to hear what we say clearly.”

“Yes, but—”

“Once I’m sure it’s safe, I’ll wave you down.”

“Cliff,” Eric protested, “I want to come down with you. If something goes wrong, I can’t be much help from up here.”

Cliff let his voice ease into what Eric’s father called his cornpone drawl. “Ricky, my boy, if somethin’ goes wrong, Ol’ Doc can handle hisself. You git yo’self off to where yo’ daddy is settin’ up at the river crossin’. You hear me, boy?”

“But Cliff!”

“Eric!” The sharpness in Cliff’s voice sliced off further protest. “That’s an order. We’ve had people come to our little valley before—some friendly, some with murder in their hearts—but we’ve never had a group this large or this well equipped. It’s my fervent hope that they come in peace.” His eyes darkened momentarily. “Surely after what the world has seen—surely they come in peace.”

As quickly as it had come, the dark mood had gone, and his mouth set into a firm line. “But if not, your job is to slow up this column and then get to your dad as soon as possible. Tell him what’s happening. Understood?”

Eric took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

Cliff’s hands, surprisingly gentle for their bigness, came up and rested briefly on Eric’s shoulders. “I’ll be fine. In fact, I have to admit, I’m actually tingling with excitement. Imagine—people! Civilization! You’ve no idea what that could mean.” Then he was gone, moving through the trees like the patterns of shadow and sunlight in the forest.

Eric watched him go, keenly aware that of all men, only his father engendered a fiercer sense of attachment and loyalty than did this man. His drawling reference to Eric as Ricky, and himself as Doc, brought old memories flooding back. Everyone in the village except his father and mother called Clifford Cameron “Doc.” And for as long as he could remember, Doc had always called him Ricky. That had changed six years ago, shortly after Eric’s eighteenth birthday. It had been late fall, and he had accompanied Doc and his father on a week-long hunting trip to supplement their winter meat stocks. Just after sundown of the third day, they had found a huge bull moose grazing in a marshy area of the forest. Eric could still vividly remember the huge rack of antlers, silhouetted against the sky.

Eric’s father had taken the shot, but to their surprise the moose gave a wild bellow, then crashed away into the brush. Positive it had been hit, the three had cautiously started out after it, his father taking the point, Eric and Doc about twenty yards back and thirty yards apart. The light was rapidly fading, but large splashes of blood were easily discernible in the wet grass. His father had just entered a thick stand of pines when the underbrush off to the right of Doc exploded. Out hurtled a black mass of fury, weighing over eighteen hundred pounds and standing seven feet high at the shoulders. With a startled cry, Doc spun around—too fast. His feet shot sideways in the mud, and he went down.

To this day, Eric still maintained he had reacted in blind panic, but he dropped to one knee and snapped off a quick shot over the prone figure. It was as though he had used a scythe on the moose’s front legs. Nearly a ton of raging flesh slammed into the mud and slid to a shuddering halt less than ten feet from Doc’s scrambling figure. The bullet had caught the bull just below his left eye and shattered in his brain.

Both of the older men expressed their breathless thanks, but it was later that night, as the long strips of moose meat were being cured in a heavy smoke, that Eric had started to say something to Cliff, calling him Doc. He had raised his hand, interrupting him. “Why don’t you call me Cliff?” Even now, the memory sent a thrill of warmth shooting through Eric. And that was the last time—until just a few minutes ago—that Cliff had called him Ricky.

Eric shook his head impatiently at the sudden surge of emotions, laid the rifle butt against his cheek, and sighted in on the fallen pine tree.

Chapter 2

The first man to the tree was tall and angular. As he took off his orange helmet, Eric could see that his thinning hair was plastered to his head with sweat. Unfortunately, he had stopped sooner than Eric expected, leaving only the lead vehicle in sight and the rest of the column hidden in the trees.

As two other men moved up to join him, the leader’s voice carried clearly up to where Eric lay concealed. “Look at this. This tree didn’t just fall across the road. It’s been cut, and in the last day or two.”

So at least they are Americans. Eric could detect no trace of accent, and that relieved him somewhat. Each man was clad in orange and blue and had what appeared to be a weapon strapped to his hip. And yet from this distance it was difficult to tell exactly what kind of weapon. It looked too long for a pistol, and yet too short for a rifle.

“It looks like it was done deliberately to block the highway.”

“Well, if it was, they chose their spot well.” The leader gestured to one of the men. “Bring up one of the trucks. We can use a winch to move it. It’s not worth getting the tractor off.”

“I wouldn’t do that, not just yet.”

It was comical in a way. Had the fallen tree instantly righted itself, it could not have created a more stunned reaction. All three men visibly jumped at the sound of Cliff’s voice and whirled to stare at the figure that had appeared from nowhere.

The leader was the first to recover. “Hello,” he called nervously, starting toward Cliff.

The muzzle of Cliffs Winchester 30.06 raised slightly. “Just stand easy,” he drawled, “until we get a little better acquainted. Who are you, and where do you come from?”

The tall man stopped, but if he was deterred by Cliff’s coolness, Eric couldn’t detect it in his voice. “My name is Bruce Byers. I am the commander of the First Corps of Guardians.” He waved toward the unseen column. “We’re from the city of Shalev.”

“Never heard of it,” Cliff said.

“That’s not too surprising. It’s up north, where Kalispell, Montana, used to be. The name comes from the Hebrew word meaning peaceful.”

“You’re a long ways from home.”

“Yes, about five hundred miles.”

“What brings you this far south?”

“We heard there were people living in a valley south of here.”

The surprise in Cliff’s voice made Eric smile. “Oh, really? Whereabouts?”

The leader shook his head. “We’re not exactly sure. That’s assuming there is a village.” It was evident he was fishing.

Cliff rejected the bait. “And if you find them?”

“We’re hoping they might be pleased to hear others have survived, that there are cities and civilization. We’d like them to join us, help us rebuild America.”

“Cities?”

“Yes. Shalev has nearly seventy thousand people—it’s the largest. There are four main cities in the Alliance, and numerous smaller towns and villages.”

“Seventy thousand?”

“Right. Close to a quarter million of us, altogether.”

“That’s incredible! We had no idea any groups that large had survived. Especially anywhere close to us.”

“Yes, and while we don’t have everything like it was before Termination, we have a very comfortable life. Electricity, schools, automobiles. We even have a university and a symphony orchestra.”

“Termination,” Cliff mused softly, making Eric strain to hear his words. “An appropriate title. We simply refer to it as before or after.” He lowered his rifle and stepped forward, extending his hand. “I’m Dr. Clifford Cameron, from the village you’re looking for.”

“Wonderful! Dr. Cameron, we’re delighted to find you.” The man gave a small laugh. “Or rather to have you find us.”

“Yes. I apologize for the initial wariness, but—”

“I understand,” the other said quickly. “We have to watch some of those wandering around the country too. Well, if you’d care to join us, we’ll get this tree out of the way and push on to your village.” He looked up at the late afternoon sky. “If we hurry, we can be there before nightfall.”

Eric could hear the edge in Cliffs voice as he stepped back suddenly. “By nightfall?”

“Yes. Not that we can’t travel after dark, but…”

“I thought you didn’t know where the village was,” Cliff said slowly.

“Oh,” the other man said, his voice tinged with nervousness. “We don’t. I was just assuming it must be fairly close. I mean—well, you’re here, and I just thought…” His voice trailed off, and it was obvious even he knew how flimsy his words sounded.

Eric was suddenly wary. The man was lying, and poorly at that, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. He jerked the rifle up again and notched back the safety. Cliff laughed softly. “Oh, I see. Well, you’re right. It isn’t really that far from here. In fact, I have my horse up in the trees. Why don’t I just cut over the mountain and tell the village the good news. Just follow this old highway. We’ll meet you where the highway crosses the river about five miles further on. It’s the first bridge. You can’t miss it. Then we can show you the way into the valley.”

“But, Dr. Cameron, it would be so much better if you’d help us find the way.”

Cliff shook his head, then raised his hand in farewell and started moving away. “Really, you’ll be fine. Just stay on this highway. I’ll be there before you. I’m much too excited to wait. The people will be so surprised.”

“Dr. Cameron,” the leader said sharply. All three men in the bright orange suits pulled their weapons up. “I’m afraid I really must insist.”

Eric squeezed the trigger, and his first shot caught the tall leader high in the shoulder, jerking him around violently. One of the other men evidently fired, though later Eric realized there had been no sound of a shot. Cliffs low grunt was audible even at this distance as he spun around with a jerk, then jackknifed forward into the grass.

Eric snapped off another shot, but the two men dove for cover, and he saw a puff of dust as the bullet tore into dry ground. As excited shouts for help filled the air, Eric grabbed the binoculars and focused them quickly on Cliffs still figure. For a long moment, Eric stared at the motionless figure, the shock hammering at his reason. Savagely he jammed the glasses back into their case and snatched up the rifle again. He squeezed off a shot at a quick flash of orange below him and grunted in satisfaction at the sharp cry of pain and the crash of a heavy body in the brush.

“He’s up on the ridge!”

“Stay down! Stay down!”

“Circle around him.”

“Stay low!”

Eric was aware of the voices below, but with cool precision, he brought the rifle stock firmly against his cheek and began methodically emptying the magazine at the biggest target in the clearing. His first shot ricocheted with an angry whine off the orange vehicle’s bubble, so he lowered the sights a fraction of an inch. First one tire exploded, then another. The remaining four shots stitched a neat pattern in the orange and blue hood.

With one last anguished glance at Cliffs inert form, he slithered backwards over the crest of the hill, then leaped to his feet and burst into a hard run toward the horses.

Eric tethered the horses in a thick clump of cottonwoods near the river, took the rifle out of its scabbard, and shouldered the saddle bags, which he had stuffed with hand-wrapped sticks of dynamite yesterday afternoon. Numbing shock hardened into a tight fist in his stomach whenever he thought of Cliff. He turned and trotted swiftly through the trees, pushing away a hunger for revenge so strong it was almost like acid on his tongue. His only task now was to stop that column long enough to give the village time to prepare their defenses.

The mountain air was still, filled with the heavy aroma of pine, and the heat of the afternoon was now at its fullest. As he came out of the trees and onto the old highway, a blue jay burst out at him, furious that he had startled it without warning. But if Eric heard it, he gave no sign, for he had a fury of his own driving him.

He jogged about two hundred yards up the road, then stopped to survey the scene. Sometime in the two decades since the Wyoming Highway Department had ceased to exist, the floodwaters of the Salt River had risen high enough to chew away at the base of what had once been U.S. Highway 89. Most of the outside lane had collapsed into the hungry waters. Given enough time, Eric could have planted his explosives in such a way as to drop the rest of the pavement into the river and block any hope of passage. But he didn’t have that time. Even allowing for the fact that the intruders had to move the tree before they could continue, he couldn’t have gained much time on them.

It could have been better, but the river’s work would suffice for his purposes. The vehicles could still squeeze through, but they would have to slow down to a crawl. Eric strode over to a heavy clump of brush clinging to the steep hillside at the edge of where the gaping slash in the pavement began. The crunch of tires and treads suddenly amplified, and he dove behind the bush, pushing into the heavy tangle of branches. Peering out, he saw the first vehicle round the bend and come into sight. The last rays of the sun caught the bright orange metal and turned it into flaming gold. He huddled deeper into the protecting foliage, grateful that his dark brown shirt and pants blended into the deep shadows of the oak brush.

As he stared at the approaching line of vehicles, Eric felt grimly satisfied. There was only one car now instead of two.

Not unexpectedly, the lead vehicle stopped at the edge of the pavement that had been ripped away by the flood waters. Eric heard the door open, then the crunch of footsteps coming toward him. He tensed, raising the muzzle of his rifle slightly.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” The steps moved closer. “It looks solid enough.” Again Eric felt a brief flash of satisfaction. Neither voice belonged to the tall, hollow-cheeked man who had shaken hands with Cliff. Cliff was dead, but he hadn’t gone totally unavenged.

“The bank isn’t undercut at all. I think we’ll be okay. Just tell the others to stay as far to the right as they can.”

“Right.” The footsteps moved back quickly. The low hum of the motor increased in intensity, and even before the doors were shut, the car began to creep forward.

Eric opened the flap of the saddle bag and quickly pulled the friction fuse out. It was simple enough—two patches of sulphur, like match heads, in which the fuse had been imbedded. He pushed the leaves of his hiding place aside gently and watched as the car passed slowly across the narrow strip of pavement; then he turned back to gauge the speed of the first truck. With a quick slap he grated the two sulphur heads together, and as they flared into life, catching the fuse, he started to count.

One. Two. Three. He grasped the root of the oak brush firmly and swung out.

Four. Five. The clump of brush kept him hidden from the driver of his target, but as he started the arching, upward swing of the saddle bags, the sudden movement caught the attention of the driver in the second truck. Eric knew that once the charge blew, he was going to have to get out and get out fast.

Six. Seven. Eric heaved the twenty pounds of explosives up over the edge of the pavement and under the truck, then frantically dove back under the bush and dug his face into the graveled hillside, throwing his free arm over his head.

The blast was deafening. Though the major part of the concussion was deflected off the pavement and went over Eric’s head, he felt as if he were lying prone on the back of a bucking horse. He bounced once, half turning as he tried to hold on, but his fingers tore free, and he slid two or three feet down the steep embankment. As he dug in his fingers to halt his plunge, he instinctively looked up.

The explosion had caught the truck almost exactly under the midsection and bounced it around a quarter turn to the right, leaving the left back wheels hanging precariously over the edge of the pavement. Even as his brain registered the wild scene—tumbling orange bodies, the screams of men, the sharp pain in his ears, the raw agony of clawing into gravel—it also registered his danger. In just a few seconds an angry swarm of blue and orange hornets would be zooming in on him.

He grabbed his rifle and leaped out, plunging down the slope, his boots leaving deep gouges in the soft gravel and dirt.

“There he goes!” he heard someone shout. “Get him!”

But Eric was already into the trees and running hard for the horses.

Chapter 3

As Eric came around the bend and the weed-strewn highway straightened out again, he pulled up on the reins, bringing the horses to a sliding halt. About fifty yards ahead of him, directly in front of the concrete bridge that spanned the turbulent river below, a huge barricade of trees and logs and earth had been erected. It completely blocked the highway, cutting all access to the bridge.

Before he had gone ten feet more, he heard a cry off to his right. Suddenly men sprung up everywhere, swarming out at him from behind the barricade, out from the trees, and up from the steep riverbank.

“It’s Ricky,” someone shouted. When he saw the tall figure of his father among those at the barricade, he kicked the horses into a trot.

“Ken,” Eric said, as he swung down and thrust the reins at the nearest man, “can you cool these horses down and then water them? I’ve pushed them pretty hard.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned to face his father.

“Where’s Cliff?”

Eric looked down and his shoulders sagged. “He’s dead.”

Karl Lloyd flinched, as though slapped across the face.

“They shot him down without warning.”

His father’s face, normally a deep tan, turned the color of wet clay, and his lips tightened into a tight line. “Marauders?”

“No. You and Cliff were right about the lights. There are cars and trucks. It’s a regular army. Over a hundred men.” That brought renewed exclamations from the villagers. Eric went on quickly. “Cliff went down to talk to them. At first they seemed friendly. They know about the village and are looking for us. Cliff got suspicious and tried to disengage, and they opened fire.”

“We heard shooting and an explosion,” one of the men said.

Eric shook his head, still dazed by the searing reality of seeing Cliff go down. “Their weapons don’t make a sound. It was really strange. I was up on the ridge and opened fire, but it—” His voice caught in his throat, and he went on angrily. “Cliff made me stay out of sight. There was no way I could get to him. I—it all happened so fast.”

Karl Lloyd laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Where are they now? How far behind you?”

“I dynamited one of their trucks three or four miles back and blocked the road. But it won’t take them long to clear that up. At most they’re probably an hour behind me. Maybe less.”

His father swung around to face the men. “All right, we’d better get ready. We know now that they don’t come in peace.” He took one of the men next to him by the elbow. “Fred, get Eric a fresh mount, and—”

Eric jerked up. “What?”

“I want you to go back to the village, start the—”

“No, Dad! We’ve got to stop them here. You need me here!”

Karl shook his head, his eyes resolute. “We’ll try to stop them here, but if we can’t, they’ll roll right on into the valley. I want you and Travis to take the rest of the dynamite, mine every bridge, every culvert along the road to the village. Anything that will delay them.”

“Travis is at the village,” Eric pleaded. “Send someone to tell him what’s happening. I want to be here when they come.”

“Travis doesn’t know how to work with dynamite. Besides, he’s only been with us a month. He’s a good man, but not proven. Not in this kind of a conflict. I will feel much better with you there.”

“The village needs you, Ricky.” That came from a man near the back.

“He’s right, Eric,” Karl said soberly. “We need you here, but the village needs you more. If you see them enter the valley, let Travis light the charges. You get the people up Dead Rock Canyon and into the high country.”

Eric suddenly surrendered, remembering his useless protest with Cliff, feeling the same sick feeling he had felt then.

Fred Carlyle trotted up, a large dun quarter horse in tow. “Your rifle is in the scabbard, Ricky,” he said, handing him the reins.

Eric looked quickly around the circle of tight-lipped, grimfaced men. The only sound was the soft rushing of the river off to their left. These were the men with whom he had grown up, played, hunted, worked, worshipped. The sick feeling became a heavy dread pressing down on him. Finally his gaze met his father’s.

“We’ll have a few surprises for them here,” his father said quietly. “Maybe we can turn them back, but we can’t take that chance. Take care of your mother and sisters.”

Eric nodded numbly, then swung up into the saddle.

“The Lord be with you.” It was Karl Lloyd’s standard farewell when anyone left the village for any length of time, but now it pierced Eric like the thrust of a knife.

He took a deep breath. “And with you,” he answered softly. Then with a savage jab of his heels, he sent the dun exploding into a hard lope around the barricade and across the bridge toward the valley road.

Travis Oakes had evidently been watching down the valley, for he came trotting down the main street, rifle in hand, and met Eric just beyond the first houses of the village. “Eric,” he called, “what are you doing here? Where are the others?”

“At the river bridge,” Eric answered as he pulled up the horse and swung down. He gave the lathered animal a quick slap on the rump, as he pulled the rifle out of the scabbard and turned to face Travis. “Come on, we’ve got big trouble.” He started up the street, leaving Travis staring at him.

Travis broke into three quick steps to join Eric. He was an inch or two shorter than Eric’s six-foot height and of a stockier build, with a dark handsomeness and a quick smile that had sent every unmarried female over twelve years of age into flights of hopeful, tittering anticipation. But he had quickly proven to be a valuable addition to the village and had been accepted as one of them. As he caught up and matched strides with Eric, he asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Cliff and Dad were right. They were automobile lights. A whole column of men and vehicles is moving toward us. They killed Cliff.”

Travis stopped abruptly, stunned. “What?”

“Yes.” Eric went striding on, once again making Travis hasten to catch up with him. “It’s a whole army of men.” Eric looked around, suddenly noticing the lack of activity in the village. “Where is everybody?”

Travis was startled momentarily by the question. “Uh—they’re in the schoolhouse. We were—uh—they’re having a meeting, trying to keep the kids occupied.”

“Good,” Eric said, oblivious to the sudden change in Travis. “That will save time getting everybody together. We may have to evacuate the village.” He pulled up short, causing Travis to bump against his arm. “Listen!” he commanded, raising his hand.

They both cocked their heads as the faint echo of rifle fire rolled up the valley toward them.

“It’s started!” Eric said, grabbing Travis by the elbow. “They’ve reached the bridge already. We’ve got to hurry.”

“What is going on?” Travis demanded. “There shouldn’t be shooting. What if they come in peace?”

“Cliffs dead!” Eric snapped angrily. “They don’t come in peace.” He dragged Travis into motion, talking quickly, outlining what had to be done, then answering Travis’s rapid-fire questions about the events of the past few hours.

As they rounded the corner and started up the street that ended at the white frame schoolhouse, Travis was shaking his head. “It’s all wrong,” he muttered. “Those stupid, blundering idiots!”

Eric spun around angrily. “You think it’s stupid to protect ourselves?”

That pulled Travis out of his thoughts, and he shook his head. “I don’t mean the villagers. I mean those idiot fools in the blue and orange uniforms.”

“Oh.” Eric took two more steps, then stopped short again, staring at Travis. “How did you know they were wearing blue and orange uniforms?”

Travis looked past Eric, then jerked his thumb behind him. “Did they look like that?” he asked softly.

Eric turned in time to see two men step out from behind a nearby building. They were clad in bright orange and blue onepiece uniforms and orange helmets. Each pointed a stubby, longbarreled pistol directly at Eric. Instinctively, Eric started to whirl, bringing up his rifle, but Travis was quicker; he snatched the rifle out of Eric’s grasp, jumping back from him.

Three more men in similar dress came running out from behind the schoolhouse as Eric stared, dumbfounded.

“All right,” Travis barked. “Get him inside with the others. Something has gone wrong. We’ve got to get down to the river bridge and stop a massacre.”

“You’re one of them!” Eric cried hoarsely, the understanding hitting him like a runaway hay wagon.

Travis smiled sadly. “How do you think they knew where the village was?”

Eric had risen to the balls of his feet, his fingers extended like the talons of a hawk. With a cry of rage, he launched himself at Travis, but as swift as he was, the nearest man was quicker. The barrel of the weapon swung a fraction of an inch. There was no sound, but Eric was caught in midair, as though hit by an invisible sweeping steel boom that instantly stopped his forward flight and hurled him backward. He bounced once hard against a hitching post, then slumped forward, face down in the street.

Chapter 4

Considering how important it was to the total function of Central Control, and indeed to the total function of Shalev and the entire Alliance of Four Cities, the Monitoring Room was really quite unremarkable. About thirty feet long and twenty feet wide, it was painted in pale blue and orange, as was much of the rest of Central Control. As one entered from the main hallway, the wall to the right was bare except for a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” Behind that door stood a dozen large CPUs—the central processing units for the entire computer system, the heart of Shalev and the Alliance of Four Cities.

But it was the wall to the left that made the Monitoring Room what it was. Along the entire length of the wall was a built-in cabinet system containing four computer consoles with keyboards. These monitoring consoles were overshadowed by the two large tracking screens filling the whole wall above them. If the CPUs held the heart of the system, these screens were the eyes. On them, the computers could pinpoint any one of the seventy thousand citizens of Shalev in a few seconds, a flashing light showing the person’s location on a grid map of the city.

Travis Oakes stopped outside the door to the Monitoring Room and rechecked his orange and blue dress uniform, tugging the jacket downward. Four weeks of farm work had tightened his waist muscles, he noted, not without some satisfaction. His fingers briefly straightened the Guardian emblem on his lapel; then, satisfied, he took a deep breath, opened the door, and slipped inside.

After the simple rooms and furnishings of the village, the gleaming glass and steel computer consoles and digital readout panels of the Monitoring Room stood in sharp contrast. He stopped and looked around, letting the room’s familiarity soak back into him.

His eyes fell on the figure bent over one of the consoles, and he felt a sudden quickening of his pulse. Nicole Lambert had not yet noticed him, so absorbed was she in studying the screen in front of her. He stepped back, content for a moment to study her in profile. The one-piece jumpsuit of the Guardians couldn’t fully hide the graceful cut of her figure. Had Travis been the sculptor, he might have changed her facial features slightly, lowered the cheekbones a touch, perhaps placed her large, green eyes a fraction of an inch closer together. Her mouth, which curved softly under an exquisite nose, he would have left exactly as it was now. It pulled the rest together perfectly, making her altogether more than satisfactory.

She leaned forward slightly and frowned. Her brows pulled together, giving her a girlish look, as though she were scolding an errant pet. Then she flashed a look of triumph and began typing rapidly on the keyboard. When she finished, she tossed her head in satisfaction, and her soft brown hair bounced back into place, settling gently on her shoulders.

Travis could name half a dozen women who might surpass Nicole in outward beauty, but not one who combined outward loveliness with the inner vibrancy, the spirited intelligence that this woman radiated. Every conversation proved to be a refreshing challenge. It was this vitality that most intrigued him, perhaps because it was so rare in the women of Shalev.

Travis frowned. Research and Development had been promising the Major a solution to that problem for years, but as yet the promises were unfulfilled, and a wooden sameness permeated all too many of the women he had been interested in. He shook his head, suddenly aware how glad he was to be home. Then he stepped forward. “Nicole,” he said softly.

Her head turned, then her eyes widened. “Travis!” In an instant she was on her feet and into his arms.

He spun her around once, a little surprised by the warmth of her welcome. As he sat her down, she pulled back, blushing deeply, obviously a little surprised. “I—we didn’t expect you until tonight. Communications said you radioed in last night from Serenity.”

“I did, but a few of the men took a vote—” he grinned and squeezed her hand—”with a little encouragement from me, and decided to drive all night. The rest of the men are bringing in the villagers and should be here by tonight. Except for one, and we brought him with us. But anyway, we’re back.”

Her eyes dropped slightly, the thick tangle of lashes turning them a beguiling turquoise. “I’m glad.”

“Does that mean I was missed?”

She looked up and smiled, almost shyly. “You know you were.”

Travis’s brown eyes teased her as he held up her left hand. “I see my warning worked.”

“What warning?”

“I told the men who stayed behind that if I came home and found a ring on your finger, they would get permanent duty on the Outer Perimeter.”

She laughed lightly and pulled a face at him. “So that’s why no one would eat lunch with me.”

“You’d better believe it. But to make up for it, how about dinner tonight?”

“Oh, I’d love to, but seriously, aren’t you exhausted?” She studied his face, deeply tanned since she had last seen him, and saw the weariness in his eyes. Suddenly she realized how much she had missed him, and she was tempted to throw her arms around him again. But she merely reached down and took his hand. “It must have been terrible.”

Travis took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “It wasn’t very pretty.”

“What happened?”

“I have to give a full report right now to the Major. He’ll meet us in Detention, in the observation room. He’d like you there.”

Nicole’s head jerked up. “Me?”

He nodded, then pointed to her console. “File off what you’re doing and let’s go.”

“Why does he want me there?”

“They’re going to start implanting the people we brought back, and—”

“I don’t want to be there, Travis,” she said, stepping back. “I always hate that. You know that.”

“Hey, listen! Let me finish. The Major doesn’t want you to be there for the implantations, but he has three or four men he wants to bring into the Guardians. One especially—the one we brought back with us—is going to be a real challenge. His father was killed trying to stop us.”

“How awful! But if he’s that much of a problem, why use him?”

“Because if we can bring him over, he would be perfect as a commander of the Perimeter Forces. He’s as much at home in the forest as in the village. He’s resourceful, innovative, and adaptable—a natural leader. Within one week after my arrival in the village, I knew he was the one the Major has been looking for.” He touched her arm. “The Major wants you in on the turn-around from the very beginning. So turn off your machine and let’s go.”

Nicole’s face softened. “Okay. I didn’t mean to stand here questioning you.” She stepped to the bank of instruments, punched a couple of keys on the keyboard, then shut the machine off. “Okay,” she said, turning back to face him.

On an impulse, he stepped forward, took her in his arms, and kissed her. For an instant, her body stiffened in surprise, but then she responded in a soft, warm acceptance of his embrace. When he pulled back, her eyes were wide, searching his. “Mr. Oakes,” she said softly, “is that what you learned from the girls in that village?”

“I missed you, Nicole. More than I expected.”

She cocked her head to one side. “I think you very neatly sidestepped my question, but I find your answer quite acceptable. Now, do we walk down to Detention like this, or do we act more like the two proper, senior members of the staff we’re supposed to be?”

Travis smiled, stepped back, and bowed. “After you, Miss Lambert.”

The Major had not yet arrived, and as Nicole and Travis entered the small, narrow observation room, Nicole moved to the window and studied the figure lying on the cot in the cell with his face toward her. He didn’t have Travis’s rugged handsomeness, but his features were pleasant, with a square chin and strong mouth. His hair was rough cut and dark brown, but lightened by hours in the sun. The sun had also left his face and neck a deep tan. His hands were farmer’s hands and his clothes plainly homemade. “Is that the one?”

Travis stepped up next to her. “Yes. Eric Lloyd.”

“He’s young.”

“Twenty-four. Same as you.”

“But I expected an older man. Is he married?”

“Hey!” Travis growled. “What kind of question is that? I know he’s good looking, but—”

She dug her elbow into his side. “Come on. You said his father was killed. Does he have any other family? That could make a difference in how quickly he responds.”

“His mother is here. He has a sister who’s twenty-one and two younger sisters, one nine and the other six. They’re all fine.”

“Will they be implanted?”

“Of course.”

Nicole frowned, thinking of the six-year-old. “Families of the Guardians are exempt from implantation. Why won’t that be true for his?”

Travis shrugged. “That’s up to the Major, but his policy in cases like this is to go with a Stage Two for now, pull them back to Stage One when the candidate begins to prove himself, then remove them completely once we are sure he is completely turned. That way he’ll have some leverage.”

He was watching her closely for her reaction, but Nicole continued to stare through the one-way glass. “Has he been sedated the whole time?”

“Yes. We used the stun gun on him and then put him under sedation before he came fully out of it. But we gave him the last injection late last night, so it should be wearing off any time now.”

“So he’ll have no idea where he is?”

“None. And he doesn’t know about his father either. That happened after he was captured.”

She shook her head. “Then he is going to have a lot of reason for hating us. That is going to make it very difficult. I—”

At that moment the door pushed open, and the Major strode in. “Travis!” He quickly crossed the room and gripped the younger man’s hand. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s good to be back.”

“Hello, Nicole. How are you?”

“Fine, sir, thank you.”

He stepped to the window and peered through. “This is our boy?”

“Yes,” Travis nodded, “that’s him. Eric Lloyd.”

“Good. Let’s go into the conference room and sit down.” He took Nicole’s elbow. “Did Travis tell you I’d like you to monitor this one, Nicole?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Come in with us. I want you to hear Travis’s report.” He guided her out of the room and down the hall to a conference room. He helped her with her chair, motioned Travis toward another, and sat down himself, crossing his legs carefully so as to keep straight the knife-sharp creases in his navy blue, pin-striped business suit. Nicole smiled inwardly. He was, as usual, absolutely immaculate. Not a strand of his short, gray hair was out of place, and his shoes gleamed like polished obsidian. Though in his early fifties, he was as tall and trim as a sixteen-year-old. His pleasant face appeared more solemn because of a perfectly groomed mustache and horn-rimmed glasses that made his pale blue eyes seem larger than they were. He looked more like a banker or an accountant than the most important and powerful man in the Alliance of Four Cities.

“What went wrong?” In his usual blunt way, the Major dismissed further formalities. “How come thirteen Guardians are dead?”

Travis took a deep breath. “Well, let me start at the beginning. As I indicated in my reports, I had no trouble being accepted in the village. After I was let off by the men, I spent three days circling around to come in from the south. I had food enough for only one day, so by the time I stumbled into the valley, I looked pretty authentic.”

“They had no idea where you were from?”

“No. I told them I had been with a small group of families living in northern Utah who had been caught by a group of roaming bandits—the villagers called them the Marauders. I said I was the only survivor.”

“Good, good.”

“I hid the radio transmitter away from the village.” Travis smiled. “It wasn’t always easy to slip away. That’s why I missed a couple of reports.”

“I understand.”

“Anyway, the village accepted me very quickly. In fact,” he added modestly, “normally, Eric would have been left in charge of the village defenses. His father is the accepted leader for the village, but surprisingly, Eric is viewed as the second in command.” He paused. “Well, actually, that isn’t really too surprising once you come to know Eric. He is very much like his father—bright, resourceful, courageous, and personable. I told Nicole that he’s a natural leader, and the villagers see that too.”

He took a breath. “But anyway, Eric’s father wanted Eric to join Doc Cameron, so he took the men down to the river and left me in charge of the village defenses. That, of course, made the capture of the village much easier.”

The Major nodded, obviously pleased. “For you to gain their confidence to that degree in less than a month’s time, that is remarkable.” He leaned back, putting his hands together to form a steeple. “So what went wrong? We’ve never had this much trouble taking a group before.”

“Two things. First, Captain Byers was delayed by a flash flood. He lost almost half a day and decided to travel at night to get back on schedule.”

“No!” the Major said angrily. “I warned them not to do that.”

“I know, but he figured he was still nearly thirty miles from the village, and it would be all right. But unfortunately, Eric’s father and Dr. Cameron were out hunting. They camped on a high ridge, and—” He shrugged.

“Cameron is the brain surgeon?”

“Yes. Eric’s father hightailed it back to the village to warn us and sent Eric with some dynamite to join—”

“They had explosives?” Nicole broke in.

“Yes, Eric’s dad was a chemist and an explosives expert. They make their own. They also have reloading equipment and make their own gunpowder as well.” He turned back to the Major. “Anyway, we would still have been all right. Lights meant civilization. The village was wary but very excited, eager to see who we were.”

“It was Cameron who made the first contact?”

“Yes. Eric was hidden in the trees, covering him with a rifle. At first Captain Byers made out as if they were looking for some unknown village. Then he inadvertently let it slip that he knew how far away it was. Doc was instantly suspicious and started to back off. Bruce panicked and tried to stop him. That’s when Eric opened fire, and Bruce was hit.”

“How is Captain Byers?” the Major asked.

“Still in a lot of pain. We took him straight to surgery this morning. The surgeon thinks he may never fully recover the use of his right arm.”

“It’s not that I have no sympathy,” the Major said curtly, “but he’s reaping the results of his own shortsighted stupidity. Well, either way, he is now relieved of his command.”

Nicole looked up quickly. The Major’s impatience with shoddy performance was legendary, but Bruce Byers was one of the original Guardians and second in command to the Major.

“Go on,” the Major commanded, prodding Travis out of his own evident shock at Byers’s dismissal.

“Well, that essentially set the course of events. Eric slipped away and ambushed the convoy a few minutes later with a satchel of dynamite. We lost three men there, with nine others seriously injured, and, of course, one of the trucks. Eric then joined the others at the bridge and told them what was happening. That ended all hopes of a peaceful meeting. They were waiting in ambush for the column, and we lost six more in the first volley. Lieutenant Carter, who had taken over from Byers, returned fire, and the battle was on. We lost four more men in the next two hours, with several others wounded. We also lost another truck when they blew the bridge out from under it.”

The Major slammed his fist against the table. “Thirteen dead, nearly two dozen wounded. And all because of sloppy execution of orders. This is intolerable!”

“How many villagers were killed?” Nicole broke in, watching the weariness etch deeper in Travis’s face.

“Six. Some of the best men in the village.”

“But how?” Nicole asked. “Strict orders were issued to put the weapons on stun capacity only.”

“Both Byers and Carter swear they never rescinded that order. But evidently, some of the men took it upon themselves to open up to full power.” Travis’s eyes were dark. “And who can blame them when they were under fire like that? Remember, they lost six, but we lost thirteen!”

“And for nothing!” the Major snapped. “That’s the tragedy.”

Travis took a deep breath and then looked up. “As you know, I was in radio contact with the group the chopper let off about twenty miles south of the valley. That was two days before Byers was spotted, and I had led them into position in the foothills overlooking the village. Once the others left, we took the village easily. That was when Eric returned and told me what was happening at the river. I took immediate action, but it was too late to do much except end it quickly.”

“You did well, Travis,” the Major said, leaning forward in his chair. “I should have had you take over the column from the first. Byers is obviously getting too old for a field command.” He shrugged off the thought, his irritation slowly fading. “So tell me about the village,” he added gently, sensing Travis’s discouragement. “They seem to have been quite well off compared to others we’ve found.”

“Yes. Eric’s father, Karl Lloyd, was in the Army, in the—”

“Colonel Karl Lloyd?”

“Yes, sir, did you know him?”

“Knew of him. He had a brilliant reputation among all the services. Perhaps the best chemist we had. And he was killed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah,” the Major sighed. “That is a tragedy.”

“He was a fine man, sir. Anyway, he had concluded that the nations had lost their senses. He resigned his commission and gathered a small group of others around him. They started preparing for what was coming. They purchased a large ranch in the upper part of what was then Star Valley, Wyoming. They took classes in wilderness survival, collected books on basic skills, even began looking for equipment that did not depend on petroleum, and so on. Unfortunately, it hit sooner than they expected.”

“Sooner than any of us expected,” the Major added sadly. “But then who could have predicted the total insanity we saw?”

“Well, he called it pretty close, except for the timing. He predicted that once it began, everyone would unleash everything they had in the ensuing chaos. He also guessed correctly that nuclear strikes would not be the only danger, that chemical and biological warheads would be as common as nuclear ones. And so he chose his spot well. Star Valley had no industrial or military sites close by. It was relatively isolated, hidden between two substantial mountain ranges, and the prevailing air currents would carry much of the fallout away from them. Even then the group roughed it out through the winter in the mountains. Lloyd’s wife died of pneumonia, and they lost several others. I guess it was pretty bad. Eric was six at the time. When spring finally came, they decided the valley was finally safe, so they moved down.”

“Then the valley didn’t escape being hit?” Nicole broke in.

“Yes and no. There were no direct strikes, but some biological agents and radioactive fallout drifted in from the west. Not a great amount, but sufficient to decimate the valley’s population. When the Lloyd group finally moved in, they picked up about thirty or forty survivors who were still there.”

“And so they set up their own community?” the Major asked.

“Yes. The men Karl Lloyd had persuaded to join him were all top-notch in every way. Dr. Cameron was a leading neurosurgeon. Monroe Wilson was an electrical engineer. Ralph Maddox owned a major machine and tool business, and so on. But it was more than the skills. Lloyd wouldn’t take anyone who wasn’t outstanding in his personal character as well. Most were deeply religious and active in church. They had to be strong family men, men of integrity—the best kinds of people. Karl Lloyd often said, as he told me about their survival, that if God hadn’t taken a direct hand in their lives, they would never have made it. That commitment to God influenced the whole village. Every Sunday, all work stopped. Everyone went to church, then spent the rest of the day with their families.”

Nicole studied Travis’s face, touched by the obvious feelings he felt for the people he had helped to capture. “You said Eric has two younger sisters?” she asked.

“Yes, half-sisters actually. Karl Lloyd married one of the women from the valley after several years. She had lost all of her family in the sickness. She’s a very fine woman too.”

“And technologically?”

“Oh, they built a small generating plant on the river to provide their basic electrical needs. Once the surrounding areas were decontaminated, they made scavenging trips to nearby towns and villages, such as Idaho Falls and Logan. They brought back commodities that they could not manufacture themselves—light bulbs, medical supplies, tools, and equipment. They also gleaned the best books from several libraries to help in the education of their children. They even raided a video shop. For years they had a video tape recorder, with about two dozen movies on tape, but gradually it wore out and the tapes gave out. They still talk about the old movies.”

“So other than a minimal level of technology,” the Major said, “they were essentially a nineteenth-century farming community.”

“That’s right. All in all, they lived very well off the land, both through farming and hunting.”

The Major stood up. “Great!” he said enthusiastically. “Some excellent farmers are exactly what we need. And won’t it be a thrill for them to have tractors and electric pumps for irrigation!”

“You do plan to send most of them to Serenity, don’t you?” Travis asked.

“All of them. I had originally planned to use three or four men from the village, but I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “We need the men too badly for farming. If we hadn’t lost those six—”

“We also lost thirteen Guardians,” Travis reminded him.

“Yes, I know. But we have the other villages we are working on right now. If all goes well, we’ll obtain sufficient replacements for the Guardians from them. Right now we desperately need help in getting Serenity fully operational, or we’re going to lose the wheat harvest. So all of the villagers will be implanted. Except for the Lloyd boy, of course. He’s exactly what we have been looking for.” He turned to Nicole and smiled. “Are you ready for a real challenge?”

“Yes, sir, I think so.”

“Good. Travis won’t be much good to us on this one.” He turned to him. “The boy will blame you for his father. You know him best, but you’ll have to work from the background.”

“Yes,” Travis agreed. “I still feel terrible about that.”

“I know. But you aren’t to blame. You did a great job for us.” He clapped Travis on the shoulders. “I want you to take a couple of days off before you take over your new command.”

Travis’s head jerked up. “Command, sir?”

The Major waved his hand impatiently, but there was a twinkle in his eyes. “Yes, of course. Byers’s command. Who did you think I would give it to?”

Before Travis could respond, he turned to Nicole. “I want you to work on Lloyd directly with me. He’s too important to me to botch up. We’ll begin Friday.”

Chapter 5

With a groan, Eric pulled himself up into a sitting position and grabbed his head to keep it from rolling onto the floor. Then he stared at the blue expanse of sky in front of him. Why was a white washbowl hanging in midair? And a mirror? Somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind, he recognized the bloodshot eyes and stubble-strewn face staring back at him. But why a mirror in the middle of the sky?

With a sigh he decided it was a problem of infinite complexity and limited interest. He collapsed back onto the bed, noting with fuzzy satisfaction that the sink and mirror rolled out of sight. Now he saw only the sun. He blinked. It was a tiny sun, shaped like a light bulb. The thought wrenched his eyes into focus, and he jerked to a sitting position again. It was a light bulb, protruding from a ceiling of the same sky-blue color as the walls.

He shook his head to clear the fog smothering his mind and began to reexamine his surroundings, this time more slowly. A small bar on the side of the washbowl held a set of dark blue towels. Above the basin on a small wooden shelf sat a shaving mug, a hairbrush, a safety razor, a bar of hand soap, a toothbrush.

He looked down, his mind clearing slowly. He was sitting on a cot built into the wall. A navy blue blanket was tucked neatly under the mattress, and near the top was a gleaming white pillow, slightly rumpled. A simple wooden stool sat near the head of the bed. To his right, a bright blue metal door stood slightly ajar. He leaned over to see through it and noted a small room with a shower stall and toilet. Just beyond the door, a rod below a shelf held several hangers with clothing that looked vaguely familiar to him. Suddenly he realized they were his own clothes. He glanced down and saw that he was still clad in his dark brown shirt and trousers. Somehow that comforted him, yet it puzzled him too.

Shutting his eyes, Eric massaged his temples gently with his fingertips. Then he stood up and moved over to the mirror to stare at himself, noting the gauntness of his face and his bloodshot eyes. He ran his hand quickly through his hair, then scratched at the heavy black stubble on his jaw. He needed a shave badly. His mother would light in on him like a coyote on a wounded rabbit if she saw—Finally the circuits in his brain connected. The village! His family! Cliff! It all came back with stunning clarity—the ambush at the river, Travis Oakes smiling sadly at him just before the hammer blow to the chest took him out. So where in the world…?

He moved instantly toward the far corner of the room. There was a door, but with no knob or latch of any kind. He ran his fingers along the thin crack, but the door was too finely fit. Not even a sheet of paper would slip through.

He sat back down on the cot. Now he understood the thick mud in his head. Somehow he had been drugged and taken away—but where? Obviously far from the village. And what about his family? Were they here too?

Suddenly Eric looked down and stared at his left wrist. Bound snugly around his wrist was a watch with a gold band. His father, Cliff, and a few others in the village had once worn digital watches, though the batteries had given out years before. This watch was slightly larger and thicker than theirs had been, but it was unmistakably a watch. As Eric held it up for a closer look, the numerals 9:18 were sharp and distinct. In the upper corner was a tiny “A.M.” He studied it closely. Two small buttons protruded on the right side. Curious, he pushed the upper one. To his surprise, the numerals disappeared, and bright yellow letters began flowing slowly across the face. TODAY IS TUESDAY, JUNE 5. THE TEMPERATURE IN SHALEV IS 76°, RELATIVE HUMIDITY IS 63%, WINDS ARE OUT OF THE SOUTHWEST AT 4 MPH, BAROMETRIC PRESSURE IS 29.02 AND STEADY. The letters ceased flowing for a moment, then TODAY IS TUESDAY, JUNE 5. THE TEMPERATURE…

Eric released the upper button and pushed the lower. Once again a message moved slowly across the tiny screen. IMPROVEMENTS TO LAKESHORE PARK ARE SCHEDULED TO BE COMPLETED EARLY NEXT WEEK. FURTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS ABOUT THE RIBBON-CUTTING CEREMONIES WILL BE FORTHCOMING…TRAGEDY STRIKES—CARL QUILTON, OF NORTH HEIGHTS, WAS SERIOUSLY MAULED BY A GRIZZLY BEAR WHILE BACKPACKING IN GLACIER PARK. HIS WIFE AND TWO SONS DROVE THE ANIMAL OFF WITH THEIR SCREAMS. QUILTON IS LISTED IN CRITICAL CONDITION AT SHALEV GENERAL HOSPITAL. PARK RANGERS WARNED CAMPERS AND…

Shalev. Eric shook his head. He had heard that name before. Then he remembered. The man who had killed Cliff said they had come from Shalev. Half-baffled, half-fascinated, Eric turned his arm, looking for some kind of clasp, but there was nothing. The watchband was uniformly the same all the way around. He put all four fingers of his right hand under the watch’s face and pulled strongly. A sharp, intermittent buzzing caused him to jump. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! flashed on and off the face. Then the letters flowed again, only this time they were not yellow, but blood red. THE WRIST COMPUTER CANNOT BE REMOVED. UNDUE PRESSURE ON THE BAND HAS TRIGGERED THIS ALARM. PLEASE RELEASE PRESSURE IMMEDIATELY TO AVOID AUTOMATIC PUNISHMENT MODE. The letters winked off, then almost instantly began again. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!…

Suddenly, as he stared at the flashing thing on his wrist, Eric felt the frustration inside him boil over, and the sharp buzz only infuriated him further. With a yank that dug the band into his flesh, he put his fingers under the band and tried to tear it off his wrist. A sharp gasp exploded from his lips as his left arm suddenly went rigid with pain. His muscles knotted into iron-hard balls of agony, and his arm jerked violently. With a cry of pain he grabbed at his arm. Instantly the agony stopped, and his arm dropped limply into his lap.

Stunned, Eric stared at the innocent-looking little box on his wrist, his chest rising and falling rapidly. THE PUNISHMENT MODE IN YOUR WRIST COMPUTER WAS TRIGGERED BY UNWARRANTED PRESSURE ON THE BAND. TO AVOID FURTHER ELECTRICAL SHOCK, DO NOT PULL THE BAND. The bright red letters repeated the message, then blinked off, and Eric was left staring at the numerals, 9:20, and a tiny “A.M.” in the upper corner.

Madeline Lloyd let out her breath slowly. Judy, their bus driver and guide, a young woman majoring in child development at the University of Shalev, was right. The city was beautiful. No, Madeline amended. It was stunning. Images she had long ago decided would never be seen again in her lifetime were assaulting her senses on every side.

A farm woman all her life, she was still a little dazed by it all. The three-day journey in the trucks had been exhausting, but after they had finally arrived, they were fed a delicious meal, taken to modern quarters, and allowed to shower and then sleep in comfortable beds. As they had on the trip here, the orangeuniformed men continued to closely guard all males fifteen and over and keep them separated from the women and the children, but they promised that the separation would be maintained only one more day, and then the people would be reunited.

At least some will be reunited. Madeline bit her lip and forced her mind away from Karl and the wrenching pain in her heart.

After breakfast, the women and children had been loaded onto buses to begin a tour of the city. At first it had seemed absurdly out of character. On the surface everything was so normal, and yet they were prisoners, ripped from their homes through treachery and death and carted off like so many cattle.

“This is one of our newest sections of the city,” Judy was saying, cutting into Madeline’s thoughts. “The city council has taken the city, section by section, and replaced all the homes that were here before Termination. It has been an expensive and lengthy project, but now the homes are modern, energy efficient, and attractive places for our people to live. Not only are the houses all heated by electricity, but the cars are electric and virtually all industry is powered by electricity.

“With only about two hundred thousand people in the Alliance of Four Cities—we call it the AFC—we obviously do not have everything as it was before.” She looked up into the rearview mirror and smiled. “My father still talks about coffee and cigarettes, but my mother says it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Other products found in warm climates, such as citrus fruit, bananas, pineapple, and several spices, we just do without. I would like to taste them some day. Rumor has it that an expedition may be sent south to see if any of those plants have survived and could be cultivated in greenhouses up here, but so far nothing has come of that.

“Metal products, especially aluminum and steel, are turned out in small quantities but are very limited and quite expensive. However, production is slowly expanding. We’ve reopened the copper mines around what used to be Butte, Montana, and have a large refinery near there.”

Curious in spite of herself, Madeline called to the cheerful young guide, “You say the cars are electric. Does that mean you don’t have petroleum?”

“No. We do have one fairly good-sized oil field in production east of here, near Browning. And there are several smaller areas. But most of that goes for the chemical and plastics industries. Our engineers have developed a heavy-duty, rechargeable battery, so virtually all vehicles in the AFC are electric.”

As the bus stopped at a traffic signal, Judy half turned in her seat and smiled back at her passengers. “The older people—those who lived before Termination—still complain a lot about what we don’t have, but as one writer put it, we have ice cream, television, and nylon stockings. What more could a person want?”

The bus turned a corner and entered a beautiful parkway with a center island of grass and flowers so brilliant that they dazzled the eye. About a block ahead of them, Madeline could see a quadrant lined on three sides with large, modern buildings of brick and glass.

“We are now entering Alliance Square,” Judy said proudly.

Stephanie leaned forward in her seat. “Oh, Mother, look at the buildings.”

“What you see before you is the heart not only of our city, but of the entire Alliance.” The bus pulled into a turnaround so the passengers had a clear view. “Alliance Square houses offices for all three levels of government. Those along the north side are the AFC buildings, or the equivalent of the federal level. The square building with the round dome houses the Senate and the judicial offices. The brown brick mansion is where the president, Peter Dobson, lives. As before, all our officials are elected by the people.”

She turned and pointed. “Along the south side here are the Shalev city offices and the Flathead District Council chambers.”

Becky suddenly jumped up and pressed her nose to the window. “Oh, Lori! Look! Look at the water.” She turned to her mother, her brown eyes wide with wonder.

Madeline Lloyd smiled as Judy explained, “That’s the Shalev Fountain. Shalev is a Hebrew word that means peace. As you can see from the sign, the building directly behind the fountain is the Museum of Remembrance. It’s a very special place for us all. It contains a collection of things from the world before Termination—things to help us realize what we are ‘missing,’ such as war, terrorists, crime, poverty, drugs, alcoholism. The museum houses weapons, relics, and documents from those horrible times so that we can teach our children how blessed we are in the AFC.” Again she turned around and smiled at the group. “You see, in Shalev and the Alliance, all of those things have been totally eliminated.”

Madeline looked up quickly. Totally eliminated? How could that be? She leaned forward, noting the amazement on the faces of the others as well.

Judy continued her explanation. “The museum was built to help us better appreciate what we no longer have—or better, what we really do have here. In it is a room for each of the wars America fought. There is a Civil War room, World War One and Two rooms, a room for Korea, one for Viet Nam, and, of course, one for the War of Termination. And we—”

“Eliminated?” Madeline asked. “How is it possible that all such things have been eliminated?”

Judy stiffened slightly, and for the first time her pride seemed to falter. “That is too complicated for me to explain to you here.” She took a quick breath. “That is another reason for your orientation session this afternoon. They will explain all of that to you.”

As she turned the wheel and started the bus again, Stephanie pointed to a long, brick building that occupied the entire west side of the quadrant. “Did she say what that building was?” Though nearly three stories high at the front, it butted up against a low pine-covered ridge. Only a front entrance interrupted the entire expanse of brick. It had the appearance of a brooding fortress with no eyes and one gaping mouth.

“No, ask her.”

“Judy?”

The bus stopped, and their guide turned around. “Yes?”

“What is that building?”

Again, for a fraction of a second, Madeline saw the guide’s smile falter, then snap back into place. “That is where you are going to have lunch in about ten minutes.”

“What is it?”

“That is Central Control, headquarters for the Guardians.”

“The who?”

“The Guardians.” She started the bus, lurching it forward. “Now around the next corner we have the University of Shalev. It is—”

“Judy,” Madeline said clearly, “are the Guardians the men in the orange and blue uniforms?”

She paused. “Yes.”

A sudden chill swept the bus like a blast in a winter storm, and sensing it, Judy fell silent.

Madeline brooded for several moments, lost in the bitterness of memory. Suddenly she noticed four boys waiting at the intersection for the bus to pass, staring up at her and smiling. Then she realized they weren’t smiling at her, but at Stephanie. She turned around in time to see Stephanie smile shyly back at them, which brought a quick wave from the nearest boy.

Once again Madeline felt a wrenching leap in her heart. Stephanie was strikingly beautiful, having inherited her father’s dark hair and her real mother’s finely cut features and slimness of body. And yet in the village there were only three eligible young men.

Maybe Shalev would change all that. The hope swelled inside her, and she would have given it full sway if it weren’t for an ominous sense of foreboding that gnawed at her. War eliminated? No more crimes? Then why are six bodies buried under the pines down near the river? And why are we in Shalev, imprisoned like sheep in a pen?

“Oh, Mother, “ Stephanie cried, “look at their clothes!”

They were passing a group of girls, apparently just leaving school. The women on the bus stared at the soft fabrics, the vibrant colors, the stylish cut, the variety of skirts, blouses, dresses, and pants. And nylons! Madeline almost cried aloud. After eighteen years of homespun and buckskin, hand-knit stockings and woolen sweaters, here were nylons and high heels, sandals, tennis shoes, purses that were more than thick leather pouches, necklaces, earrings, lipstick. How long it had been! How long had she forced her mind to forget there had once been such things? She turned away quickly and blinked back tears when she saw Stephanie’s fingers touching her own rough, homespun blouse.

The waitress was about the same age as their driver, with a short haircut and smiling brown eyes. She came up to Becky and placed a large, round tray of food on the table. “Hi. My name is Molly.”

“Hi,” Becky responded shyly.

“What’s your name?”

“Becky Lloyd.”

“How do you do, Becky. Is this your sister?”

“I’m Lori,” Lori responded, beaming.

The waitress stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Molly. You like hamburgers?”

Both girls nodded quickly.

“Have you ever had an ice cream soda?”

Stephanie laughed. “Even I haven’t had one of those since I was tiny.”

“Would you like one too?” Molly asked. “I didn’t think about that.”

“Yes, I would,” Stephanie replied, a bit embarrassed, but eager nevertheless.

Molly lifted two frosty glasses off the tray and set them in front of Lori and Becky. “Now normally you would have to wait to have your sodas until after you’ve eaten your dinner. But since you’ve never had one, maybe we could let you snitch just one taste. Is that okay, Mother?”

Madeline smiled and nodded.

“Be careful,” Molly said, sticking a straw in each glass. “It’ll tickle your nose.”

“What’s that, Mama?” Lori asked, pointing.

“That’s a straw, honey,” Madeline answered, suddenly realizing how many things had been lost to her children.

“Remember when Eric showed you how to blow bubbles with a reed?” Stephanie said. “It’s just like that, only you have to suck on it.”

Becky took a quick sip, her cheeks sucking inward. As the carbonated liquid hit her mouth, she grimaced and gave a quick shudder. “Ummmmm,” she said, “that’s good.”

Molly laughed with delight at the contradiction between Becky’s words and expression.

“Oh, Mama,” Lori cried, “that is good.”

“Well,” Molly said, “I’m a success. How does a breaded veal cutlet sound to you, Mrs. Lloyd, and…”

“Stephanie.”

“Stephanie. Does that sound okay?”

“Delicious.”

They were nearly through eating when suddenly Stephanie grabbed Madeline’s arm. “Look, Mother, it’s Travis.”

A sudden hush fell over the dining room as every eye turned to the figure in orange and blue and followed it as it moved to the platform at the front of the room. The Lloyds were sitting near the rear of the dining hall, but even from that distance it was obvious that Travis Oakes was very nervous. He shuffled, then reshuffled some notes in his hand, then looked up, cleared his throat, and plunged in.

“I have conducted many of these orientation sessions,” he began quietly, “but never has one been more difficult for me personally. I know that if it weren’t for us, some of you would not be sitting here today without fathers, without husbands, without brothers. Nothing I can say will lessen the tragedy of that. But I want you to know that extremely unfortunate circumstances brought about that situation, not deliberate intent. I want you to know that every widow will be cared for, every fatherless child watched over. Shalev cannot bring those six men back to you, but we can try to lessen the impact of the tragedy on your personal lives.”

As he continued, sober, earnest, and pleading for their understanding, Madeline watched him closely, then dropped her glance and continued eating her lunch. She had once hoped this man might be her son-in-law, that he might show some interest in Stephanie. Now all she could think about was Travis’s betrayal.

“—and while it will be difficult for you to understand at this point,” Travis was saying, “very shortly you will see that your coming to Shalev and the Alliance of Four Cities will be the turning point of your lives. Our purpose this afternoon is to orient you to our little pocket of surviving civilization, to show you what we have achieved.

“In a way, your children have grown up in the village with neither the advantages nor the disadvantages of so-called civilization. They have had virtually no experience with television, movies, transportation, modern conveniences, and so on. But on the other hand, neither have they had much experience with crime, violence, pollution, discrimination, greed, war, and similar ‘benefits.’ Their opportunities for education and culture have likewise been extremely limited.

“I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that in the Alliance we are prepared to offer you all of the advantages of civilization, and none of the disadvantages. When I say none, I mean that literally. You will find no crime here. None! I know that seems incredible, but we are not talking about low crime, we are talking about no crime! You can walk the streets of Shalev any time of the day or night and never fear a mugging, an assault, or a rape. None of those things exist here. None! There are no robberies, no burglaries, no shoplifting, no vandalism. In fact, it’s difficult to find locks in Shalev, except for simple ones that maintain privacy or protect small children from getting into danger.”

Becky slurped the last of her soda through the straw, yawned, then leaned against her mother’s arm. Madeline gave her a quick squeeze. Thoroughly bored now also, Lori pushed her plate away and laid her head on her arms. Stifling a yawn herself, Madeline turned back to Travis. Scheduling a heavy lecture after a meal was not the wisest course of action, she decided.

“Because I have come to know you, to respect you, I am thrilled to tell you that in the Alliance of Four Cities, there is no poverty, no unemployment, no drugs, no street gangs, no alcohol, no slums, no bars, no pollution. We have free elections, free enterprise, freedom to grow and be what we want to be. We have art, music, education, trade, business, science, and industry.”

He smiled for the first time. “Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?”

“Speaking of dreams,” Stephanie said out of the corner of her mouth, as she slumped lower in her chair, “I wish he’d hurry up and finish and let us go take a nap.”

“Shhhh!” Madeline said, fighting the heaviness in her own eyes.

“Well,” Stephanie grumbled, “how long is he going to drone on?”

Five minutes later, Madeline was beginning to ask herself the same question. Travis had turned off all the lights to show slides of the Alliance and Shalev. That was all it had taken. Stephanie had now joined Lori with her head on her arms, and Becky had wiggled sideways in her chair until her head was in her mother’s lap. Her breathing was deep and regular.

Madeline looked around. Perhaps Travis was excited about what he was saying, but he was obviously the only one. Over twothirds of the heads were down and several others were tipped way back, mouths open, dead to the world. The soft sound of snoring was evident whenever Travis paused in his narrative. Even as Madeline watched, Rose Browning, who was sitting at the table in front of them, surrendered, and her head dropped forward with a snap.

Somewhere in the back of Madeline’s head, an alarm clanged dully. Something was not quite right, and she tried feebly to sort it out in her head. Some drowsiness after lunch in a dark and stuffy room was normal, but it was barely one in the afternoon. Something was wrong! Then she decided that whatever it was, it wasn’t that important after all, as her own chin dipped lower and lower until it rested on her chest. Travis droned on, lulling her over the edge into a blissful, inviting cloud of sleep.

Chapter 6

Madeline turned her eyes slowly, letting things come into focus. A wall panel with oxygen spouts, a call button, light switches, bars on the side of the bed all seemed so natural and yet so strange.

Suddenly a figure in white loomed over her and spoke. “Mrs. Lloyd? Hello, how are you feeling?”

“What?”

“How are you feeling now?”

With a conscious effort, Madeline considered the question and finally nodded. She felt a dull ache at the base of her skull, but other than that, nothing seemed wrong. “Okay,” she mumbled.

“Good. I’ll be back in a moment. Dr. Abernathy wanted to know as soon as you came out of the sedation so he can start prepping your child.”

Madeline tried to stop the disappearing figure, but her body moved in slow motion, and the nurse was gone. She lay there for several minutes, gradually becoming more aware of herself and her surroundings. But greater awareness brought only greater confusion. She remembered now the conquest of the village, the trip to Shalev, and the tour of the city, but why was she in a hospital? She pushed up onto one elbow, found the call button, and pressed it, coming fully alert now.

Quick footsteps clicked out in the hall, and the door pushed open. Madeline wasn’t sure if it was the same nurse or not, but the smile was warm and gracious. “Oh good,” the nurse said before she could speak, “you are coming out of it now. I’m Mrs. Carter.”

“Hello.” Madeline pushed up further, and the nurse hurried to her side and fluffed the pillow up behind her. “Uh—where am I? Why am I in a hospital?”

“Dr. Gould is waiting to explain all that to you. As soon as you feel up to it, I’ll take you down to the surgery wing. The drug should be pretty well gone in another minute or two.”

“The other nurse—or was it you?—said something about my children.”

Again she gave Madeline a warm smile. “No, that was Miss Rasmussen. She went to tell Dr. Abernathy that they can start prepping your child.”

“Prepping?”

“Yes, preparing for the operation. Dr. Gould wants—”

Madeline sat bolt upright, “Operation? What operation? What has happened?”

The nurse patted her arm. “There’s nothing to worry about. Dr. Gould will explain that too.” She retrieved a long robe from the closet, stepped outside for a moment, and returned pushing a wheelchair. “If you’re ready, we can go.”

Deeply alarmed, Madeline swung her legs out of the covers and over the side. “I don’t need a wheelchair,” she said, but as she stood up her legs nearly buckled, and Mrs. Carter grabbed her quickly.

“Come on,” she soothed, “that sedation can fool you. This is what I’m here for.” She helped Madeline with the robe, then sat her down in the chair and bent over to lift her feet onto the foot rests. Madeline stared ahead, barely aware of the nurse. Child? Which child? Operating for what? She felt as though she’d been dropped into an unfamiliar world, and no one was going to help her identify where she was.

As they moved briskly down the corridor, Madeline’s eyes were wide. It was a modern hospital in every sense of the word, with the same smell of antiseptic and soap and sickness as every other hospital she had ever been in. Nurses, orderlies, and patients moved here and there, and the intercom chimed and called for this doctor or that doctor. As they approached the elevators, a Pink Lady smiled at them. Madeline felt as if she had somehow been thrust back twenty years in time.

While they were waiting, Madeline suddenly pointed to her left wrist. “What’s this?”

“That’s your wrist computer,” Mrs. Carter said, anticipating the next question. “Everyone in Shalev has one.” She held up her own arm, and the Pink Lady did the same.

“Wrist computer?”

“Yes, it’s like a watch, but more. Much more.”

“But why—”

“Mrs. Lloyd,” the nurse interjected, “I know this is all a little overwhelming to you, but if you’ll just be patient for a few more minutes, Dr. Gould will explain it all to you. Just be patient.”

Dr. Gould, a short, balding man, was dressed in green operating robes and hat, with a surgical mask hanging around his neck along with a stethoscope. He smiled at Madeline as Mrs. Carter wheeled her up, but the smile was brief and only touched the surface of his face.

“How do you do, Mrs. Lloyd. I’m Dr. Gould.” He nodded to Mrs. Carter. “Thank you, nurse.”

Mrs. Carter smiled at Madeline quickly and disappeared back around the corner.

Before the doctor could speak, Madeline’s anxiety took control. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “Why am I here?”

“Mrs. Lloyd, our time is relatively short at the moment, so I’ll get right to the point. A full explanation will be given to you later. But briefly, as an incoming citizen of Shalev, you’ve undergone what we call implantation.”

“Implantation?”

“Yes. A tiny piece of electronic equipment has been implanted at the base of your skull. Please,” he said, catching her hand as it jerked upward, “be careful of the dressing.”

Gingerly she raised her arm and touched the bandage at the hairline of her neck, staring at him as she explored it. “But why?”

“That will be explained later, as I said. It’s standard procedure for all citizens. Your children are also undergoing this operation.”

“What?” She started up out of the chair, but he pushed her back down firmly.

“It’s a minor operation. I assure you they’re all right. In fact, your two oldest daughters are already awake and doing fine.”

“My two oldest—” She stumbled to a halt, her eyes focusing on the surgical mask that hung at his throat. A sense of horror more numbing than the sedation was crushing down on her, and she felt a sudden clamminess down her spine. “Who gave you permission to operate on my children?”

He sighed, like a teacher wearying of a particularly slow pupil. “Mrs. Lloyd, this will all make perfect sense later. But it’s not a question of permission. It’s a government requirement.”

“A government requirement?”

“Mrs. Lloyd, I know this is all a bit of a shock, but we don’t have time to go through all that now. We have a problem with your youngest daughter.”

“Becky?” she cried. “What’s wrong?”

“No, no,” he said hastily. “It’s nothing serious. We just, well, we have a problem. She threw up her lunch—” He managed a brief smile, meant to show his fatherly concern, but which filled Madeline with revulsion. “Too much hamburger and ice cream soda, I guess. Anyway, she came out of the sedation too early.”

“Sedation?” Madeline shook her head, her mind reeling.

“Yes, you were all given a sedative with your lunch today. You’ve been asleep for about four hours. We find it’s much easier on both you and us.”

It came back to her then, the growing weariness during Travis’s lecture, the dull sense of alarm as she slipped into unconsciousness. The sickness and the revulsion and the horror were turning now, swiftly changing to a burning rage. “It?” she nearly shouted. “What do you mean it? It makes what easier?”

A searing pain wrenched her stomach, causing her to gasp sharply. She tried to ignore it as the rage against this awful man engulfed her. “What are you saying?” she cried, leaping up to confront him. “Who are you? What right do you have—?” But a scream of agony cut her off, doubling her over.

Dr. Gould watched, his eyes expressionless as she finally straightened, biting back the pain, her face white. “Mrs. Lloyd,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “anger will only hurt you. It will not help your daughter. Do you want to help your daughter or not?”

Madeline was dazed and shaken, not sure what was happening. The pain. His hammering words. But his final question registered, and she heard herself answering, “Yes, I do. Where is she?”

“Normally we use only a local anesthetic when we do implantations, but the patient must hold absolutely still. That’s why we sedated all of you. But Becky’s sedation has worn off, and the anesthesiologist would rather not put her under a general anesthesia when she has been throwing up. That presents a problem, for she must be perfectly motionless while we do the implantation, and Becky has been hysterical for the last hour and a half. She’s terribly frightened and wants her mother.”

“Oh, Becky,” Madeline whispered, still unable to shake off the horrifying dreamlike quality of what was happening.

“Unfortunately, you’d already been sent to surgery, so we’ve had to wait for you to recover. Now, time is critical. The next busload of people have to be implanted before their sedation wears off.” He looked at his hands, then finally raised his head. “Mrs. Lloyd, I don’t like to put it this way, but I must. We have no option. Your daughter must have this operation now. If you can calm her down, we can do it with a local anesthetic. If not, we’ll have to put her under. She’ll probably be fine, but there’s a greater risk that way. Do you understand that?

She leaped up, knocking away his hand as he tried to stop her. “I only understand—” She gasped as someone took a red hot iron and rammed it up from her stomach into her chest. She grabbed for the wheelchair. “I won’t let you touch my daughter!” she shouted. Then her body jerked violently, and she started to topple over, the wheelchair tipping beneath her weight.

Dr. Gould grabbed her, pulling her back upright. For a moment she thought she was going to faint, and she didn’t resist as he pushed her firmly back down into the wheelchair.

“Mrs. Lloyd,” he said, leaning over and peering into her face, “you must control your anger. It’s your implantation that’s causing the pain you’re experiencing now.”

She shook her head, drawing deep, hungry breaths of air. “No. It’s my stomach.”

“Just trust me. I’ll explain it all to you later. But you must not get angry, or the pain will return. Do you understand that much?”

She didn’t, but she slowly nodded.

“Good. Now I’ll say it again. You can either help us with your daughter or you can refuse. Either way we will proceed. Will you help us, or do we do it without you?”

She nodded, not daring to think, not daring to feel, lest she call back the searing pain. Tears welled up, and her lower lip trembled. “Yes, I’ll help you. Where is she?”

As they wheeled the hospital bed down the long hallway toward her, Madeline saw the tiny figure hunched up in a pitiful little ball, exhausted sobs racking the body. She felt a sharp pain in her heart far more intense than the blows that had hammered at her stomach. She swept Becky up into her arms, clinging to the trembling little body as desperately as Becky clung to her. For five minutes they sat in the hallway until finally the sobs subsided, the heart stopped its furious pounding, and Becky pulled away and looked around. Though her eyes were still swollen and her cheeks a blotchy red, her normal adventuresome spirit was returning, and when Mrs. Carter brought green gowns for both Becky and her mother and they went into surgery, she was bouncing with the newness of it all.

“Okay, young lady,” Mrs. Carter said, patting the operating table. “Let’s trade beds.”

“That’s a bed?” Becky cried, wrinkling her nose.

“Yup. A pretty funny one, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?” Becky was pointing to a circular device made of stainless steel and lined on the inside with thick foam rubber. It was attached to the head of the bed.

“That, kiddo, is where your head goes. How’s that for silly?”

“My head?”

“Yes, ma’am. Lie on your tummy, and rest your chin right here. Your mommy will come and sit in the chair here where you can see her.”

The nurse helped Becky rest her head in the cup, then began to adjust the stainless steel clamps. “I’ll just tighten this until it’s nice and comfy, and that way your head will be real still while the doctors fix you up. Okay?”

“Yes. This really is silly.”

Becky giggled happily, a sound that tore through Madeline like a serrated blade of steel. A scream started somewhere in the back of her throat, swelling up inside her until she had to clench her teeth to stop it from bursting out. Then just as suddenly, the silent scream was snuffed out by rolling waves of pain smashing at her body. Her knees buckled, and she sat down quickly, averting her face, glad that the surgical mask hid all but her eyes.

The nurse watched her sadly for a moment, then picked up a hypodermic needle from the tray and showed it to Becky, whose eyes suddenly grew wide with fear.

“Have you ever stuck your finger with a pin or a needle?”

“Uh huh,” Becky answered nervously.

“Well, this won’t hurt any more than that. Just one little teeny hurt for one teeny minute right here—” She touched the back of Becky’s neck. “Okay? Let your mother hold your hand.”

With great effort, Madeline leaned over and looked into the frightened brown eyes as she gripped the little hand. As her fingers encircled Becky’s wrist, she could feel the tiny pulse pounding and her daughter’s body stiffen.

“Ouch!” Becky’s body jerked slightly, then she gritted her teeth and squeezed her eyes tightly, preparing for more.

Mrs. Carter patted her. “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Is it done?”

“That’s it, kiddo.”

Becky’s eyes opened, bright with relief. “I didn’t cry, Mama.”

“You were a brave girl.” Madeline squeezed her hand and looked away.

For a few minutes the room was quiet while Mrs. Carter busied herself with several trays of equipment. Finally as she returned and touched the back of Becky’s neck, Madeline spoke softly. “What are they going to do to her?”

Mrs. Carter glanced quickly toward the window through which Dr. Gould and another doctor could be seen. A nurse was helping them on with surgical gloves. “Dr. Gould will explain it all to you. I—” She stopped, looking down quickly. “I can’t say anything more, Mrs. Lloyd. Except that I know how you feel. I want you to know, this isn’t something I approve of, but I’m implanted too. I—” She shook her head, her eyes pleading.

“I understand.”

“Dr. Gould is one of the original founders of Shalev. He and the Major developed the idea of implantation, and—” The door pushed open, and she busied herself checking Becky’s head position.

“Mrs. Lloyd?” With the surgical mask in place, Dr. Gould’s voice was slightly muffled. “This is Dr. Abernathy, our X-ray and computer specialist, and this is Miss Brighton, our head surgical nurse.”

It was difficult to tell what they looked like behind their masks, except that Dr. Abernathy looked young and had kind eyes, and Madeline guessed that Miss Brighton was very attractive.

Dr. Abernathy moved over to a large machine. Part of it looked like a traditional X-ray machine, but it had additional machinery with dials, a digital readout, and numerous switches. He moved it back to the bed and positioned it over Becky’s head.

Mrs. Carter bent down and peered into Becky’s eyes. “You’re all set now, young lady. I’ll see you in your room, and I’ll have that big dish of ice cream I promised you, okay?” She stood up, touched Madeline’s arm briefly, then left the room.

“Mrs. Lloyd?”

“Yes?”

Dr. Gould put his hands together, the fingers interlocking as he pushed the surgical gloves on more tightly. “Your presence here is necessary, but you must understand that we cannot have you interfere with the operation in any way. You may speak to Becky to keep her calm, and that’s all. Is that clear?”

Madeline met his gaze, her eyes flashing, but she finally nodded, then leaned down and looked at Becky. “My goodness, Becky,” she cooed, “doesn’t Dr. Gould have a wonderful bedside manner?”

Dr. Abernathy nearly choked, and Miss Brighton dropped a pair of scissors into a tray with a loud clang. Dr. Gould glared at Madeline for a moment, then stalked around the table and thrust his hand out toward the nurse. She slapped a scalpel into it with a sharp crack.

“Dr. Abernathy, are you ready?” he snapped.

“Yes, doctor.”

As Dr. Gould bent over the back of Becky’s head, Madeline took a deep breath and bit her lip. Dr. Abernathy adjusted the machine slightly, then bent down and looked into Becky’s eyes. “How you doing, squirt?”

“Is it going to hurt?” she asked, the quiver in her voice betraying her anxiety.

He smiled. “Have you felt anything yet?”

She tried to shake her head as Dr. Gould’s voice commanded softly, “Hemostat. Sponge.” Madeline caught the sudden flash of bright red on the fingers of his gloves and felt her stomach turn.

“Well,” Dr. Abernathy continued, “that’s your answer. Dr. Gould has already started. And see, you haven’t felt a thing.” He straightened and noticed Madeline staring at Dr. Gould’s hands. “Mrs. Lloyd.”

If she heard him, she gave no response.

“Mrs. Lloyd!” he said, more sharply, wresting her eyes to his. “The operation involves an inch-long incision at the base of the skull, which is only about half an inch deep.”

Dr. Gould shot his colleague a withering glance.

If Dr. Abernathy saw it, he ignored it. “At that point, this machine here—” he touched the gleaming surface, “which is a laser drill—”

“Dr. Abernathy!” Dr. Gould’s voice crackled with anger. “I told Mrs. Lloyd I will explain all of that afterwards.”

Dr. Abernathy turned slowly, his eyes glittering embers of challenge above his mask. “This is her daughter! She has a right to know what we are doing, and she has a right to know it now!”

Evidently not many people challenged Dr. Gould, for his eyes registered shocked surprise, as did the eyes of Miss Brighton. Without waiting for an answer, Dr. Abernathy turned back to Madeline. “Do you know what a laser is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, with an almost microscopic laser beam, four very tiny holes will be drilled in Becky’s skull. Please,” he said gently, as her hand flew to her mouth, “this is not nearly as terrible as it sounds. The laser cauterizes as it goes, eliminating any bleeding and any chance of infection.”

Somewhere far back in Madeline’s numbed mind pain registered as she bit down against the edge of her clenched fist to stop the cry of horror. Oh, dear Lord, make this be a dream. Make it not be real.

“Mama! What’s wrong?” Becky’s eyes were round and anxious.

Dr. Gould’s head jerked up and he glared at Madeline, then at Dr. Abernathy. With a feeling of cold death constricting her heart, Madeline forcibly drew her hand away from her mouth and managed a thin smile. “Nothing, Becky. I just had a little pain, sweetheart. I’m okay.”

She looked up, her eyes like stone. “I’m sorry, Dr. Abernathy. Please go on.”

He turned and took one step toward the tray of instruments in front of the nurse. When he turned back, he held a flat piece of black plastic about one-inch square. From it extended four incredibly thin wires.

“Inside this plastic is a silicon chip, a miniaturized computer, as it were. The chip will be implanted under the skin at the base of the skull. The electrodes will be inserted through the four laser holes and placed very precisely with the help of X rays and the computer into special areas of the brain.”

Not Becky’s skull—the skull. Not Becky’s brain—the brain. Even kind Dr. Abernathy had to depersonalize her to talk about it. It wasn’t a freckle-faced six-year-old lying face down on the table, it was a mannequin used in a physiology class, a paragraph from an anatomy book.

When he saw her eyes, he stopped and took a deep breath. “It sounds terrible, but the brain itself has no sensory nerves. The insertion of the electrodes causes no pain.”

“But why?” she whispered.

He let his breath out in one long, drawn-out sound. “I am afraid that is the one question Dr. Gould will have to answer.”

“Are you quite through, doctor?” Dr. Gould asked icily.

“Yes, Dr. Gould, I am.”

“Then, with your permission, may we proceed?”

Dr. Abernathy nodded. He turned and inserted the computer chip into a special slot on the underside of the machine and began to lower it until the electrodes nearly touched Becky’s neck.

“Mama!” Becky’s lip trembled, and clearly she was on the verge of tears.

“It’s all right, darling,” Madeline said, reaching out for her hand as Dr. Gould shot her a warning glance. “Hold real still. This won’t hurt.”

“Then why are you crying, Mama?”

Madeline blinked rapidly and sniffed back the tears. “I—I’m just so proud of you, how brave you are. Just hold real still, and be my brave girl.”

Chapter 7

Nicole Lambert stood up quickly as the Major entered the narrow, darkened observation room, but he waved her back into her chair. “Sit down, Nicole, please.” He stepped forward and peered through the glass. “How is our boy today?”

She smiled. “Bored stiff and increasingly restless.”

“Good. Do you think he’s ready?”

“Definitely. These two days have driven him up the wall. He should be ready for just about anything.”

“Good. What’s your evaluation? Can we turn him?”

Nicole pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well, it’s hard to say without any direct interaction, but he’s full of hate and frustration. He spotted the speaker and knows what it is. I also think he knows what the mirror is. He demands to know about his family and the village. He hasn’t said much the last while because we never answer him.”

He sat down next to Nicole. “Okay,” he said, with evident pleasure at what was about to take place. “Let’s give him a few pleasant surprises, see if we can’t lower the hate level a little.”

“Yes, sir.” Nicole took a deep breath, flicked a switch, then turned to watch the figure stretched out on the cot. “Eric Lloyd,” she said softly into the microphone.

He shot off the cot and looked quickly around the room, then at the speaker in the ceiling.

“Mr. Lloyd.”

“Yes. I hear you. Who are you?”

“My name is Nicole Lambert.”

“Are you behind the mirror?” He was staring almost directly at her.

“Yes.”

“Are you the head zoo keeper or just the overseer of the monkey’s cage.”

Nicole flushed in spite of herself. The caustic bitterness in his eyes burned through the glass between them. She took another breath, aware of the Major’s soft chuckle beside her. “May I talk with you a moment?” she asked, keeping her voice completely impersonal.

“I’ll have to check my calendar. It’s been a hectic summer.”

“Okay,” she snapped back, “have it your way.” She punched off the mike switch, knowing it would create an audible pop in the speaker. Ignoring the Major’s questioning glance, she watched with great satisfaction as Eric’s arrogant posture gradually slackened, and the bitter eyes filled with uncertainty.

“All right,” he said, only half erasing the defiance out of his voice. “Talk.”

“Beautifully done,” the Major murmured.

“Mr. Lloyd, you are presently being held in a detention cell in the city of Shalev, about five hundred miles north of where you used to live.”

“Where is my family?”

“I will answer your questions in a moment, but first I would—”

“First nothing!” Eric shouted. “I don’t know who you are or what this is all about. Why am I being held? Where is my family?”

“Yes,” Nicole said slowly, “I suppose that does need to come first. We came to your village in peace and wished only—”

“We?” Eric demanded. “Were you there?”

“No, but I—”

“I was! So cut the fairy tales please. Just tell me where my father and mother are. Are they here too?”

Nicole bit her lower lip, seeking for words. Then, at a nod of encouragement from the Major, she plunged in. “Mr. Lloyd, it is with deep regret that I must tell you that your father was killed in the battle for the river crossing. I’m very sorry.”

Eric visibly flinched, his face momentarily twisted with shock, but then he straightened, squared his shoulders. “And my mother?”

“Your mother and sisters are fine. In fact, your mother will be visiting you later today. But I’ve been given the assignment to help you get out of detention and be reunited with your family. I’m sure you have some questions about why you’re here and what you have to do to get out.”

She paused for a moment, half expecting another angry reaction, but the anger was gone now and his face was impassive, watchful, making her more wary than if he had been glaring at her.

“Do you have any questions, Mr. Lloyd? I’ll try to answer them for you.”

His head came up slowly. “I do have one.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Do you know Travis Oakes?”

Nicole felt a tiny shiver down her back as she looked into the gray eyes boring at her through the glass.

“Well, do you?”

“Uh—yes, yes I do.”

“Is he here?”

“No,” she answered quickly, almost blurting it out. Then she was angry at herself for letting him frighten her. “That is, he’s not right here with me, but he is here in Shalev.”

“Could you send for him? I’d love to see somebody from the village.”

The Major sighed. “This boy is not going to forgive easily, is he.”

“Well?” came the insistent voice through the speaker.

“Mr. Lloyd, I—” She shook her head, took a deep breath, and plunged in. “Travis Oakes didn’t kill your father. In fact, he tried to stop it from happening, but he was too late. I think I can under stand your bitterness and hatred for us, and your tremendous frustration at being imprisoned. But you are here. You are in detention, and whether I like it or not, or whether you like it or not, I have been given the assignment to help you so you can get out.” Her voice suddenly softened. “I can’t bring your father back, but I can help you now, if you’ll let me.”

“I suppose I ought to be deeply touched by your concern,” he said sarcastically, “but why do I feel this nagging doubt about your honesty?”

“I know you have no reason to believe me, but I promise that I’ll be totally honest with you. I’ll not lie to you, ever.” She stopped, waiting for a response, but he had put his hands under his head and closed his eyes, and he remained silent.

“I’d like you to believe that, but whether you do or not is quite irrelevant. The important thing is that we begin a program so you can be released and be with your family again.”

Still nothing. She glanced at the Major, who shrugged. “Do you have any further questions, Mr. Lloyd?”

His eyes opened slowly but he didn’t turn toward the mirror. “Yes,” he said finally.

“Okay, if I can answer it, I will.”

“Are you pretty?”

Nicole stared at him, too surprised to answer.

“Well?”

“I don’t see what my appearance has to do with anything,” she stammered.

“So much for total honesty, Miss Lambert.” The insolent challenge in his voice was unmistakable. “Or is it Mrs. Lambert?”

“No, it’s Miss, but I—”

The Major flicked the switch on his own mike and leaned over to speak into it, but Nicole gave him a quick shake of her head. He leaned back, watching her curiously.

“All right,” she said, watching the figure on the cot closely. “I don’t see why it matters, but—I’m five feet, three inches tall, of generally slender build. I have medium-length, brown hair, green eyes, and I’m twenty-four years old.”

“Quite normal looking then?”

Nicole smiled. “Quite. Why do you ask?” She again had the uneasy feeling that his gaze was piercing the mirror.

“You sound quite nice.”

“Why, thank you.” Nicole was baffled by the complete shift of mood.

“It would be more logical,” he continued, half musing, “if the Creator had made people look and sound to match up with what they are really like inside. That way people would at least have some defense.”

Nicole’s smile froze in place, then slowly died as his words scalded their way into her consciousness. Her hands clenched tightly; then she reached up and clicked off the switch, cutting off the temptation to scream back at this infuriating presence through the glass. With great effort she fought to keep her breathing even, not daring for a moment to look at the Major. When she finally did, he was staring at Eric.

“Oh, don’t sign off yet,” the voice called through the speaker with bitter mockery. “I thought you were going to help me.”

Nicole turned to the Major and forced a strained smile. “I don’t think he likes us very much.”

“He’s a very angry young man,” the Major agreed. He reached out and patted her arm. “But you handled yourself superbly, Nicole. Just superbly.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had one so bitter, so utterly caustic before. What if we can’t turn him?”

The Major reached up and stroked his mustache absently. When he dropped his hand, his expression brightened. “Then we’ll implant him and send him to Serenity to farm. No one is that indispensable. But we haven’t lost yet.”

“Sir, I don’t know if we ought to continue any more today, considering his present mood.”

“Most definitely not. But bring his mother in as you had scheduled tomorrow morning. And remind Mrs. Lloyd not to say anything about being implanted, or we’ll terminate her visit. Travis has already warned her to wear a blouse with a high neck to cover the bandage. If she doesn’t say anything, Eric will never notice anything.”

Nicole nodded. “She’s set to come at eight o’clock. I’ll brief her before she goes in.”

“Good. Limit the visit to ten minutes. Then we’ll play our next card at nine o’clock. Travis and I will meet you here a little before then. Okay?”

“Of course.”

He stood up and smoothed his suit. “All right, we’ll see you then.”

Chapter 8

“Oh, Mama!”

Becky’s eyes were wide as she stopped suddenly at the sight of the playground. Lori, always a pragmatist, didn’t bother with exclamations of awe. With a shrill “Yippee!” she dropped her mother’s hand and shot across the grass, heading for the slippery slide that was spewing children out of its mouth even as she ran.

Becky tugged on Madeline’s hand. “Come on, Mother! Oh, this is neat!”

Madeline smiled, the first time in four days, and released her youngest daughter. “Go. Don’t wait for me.”

She walked to the low cement wall that separated the lawn from the sand of the playground and watched her two daughters in amusement. They would barely get started up the slide or on the swing when they’d spot a new attraction and off they’d dart, too excited to stay in one place for more than a few seconds.

They had come to the park after her visit to Eric, a visit that had left her greatly relieved and yet full of uneasiness and dismay. Why were they holding her son when everyone else was free? Why were they so adamant about not mentioning implantation?

She shrugged off the questions, still too confused by the events of the past week to sort it all out, and looked at her daughters.

Once again Madeline felt that curious intertwining of poignant longing and overwhelming revulsion. She knew the source of her longing. Shalev was all that they had lost—electric stoves, supermarkets, automatic washers, parks and slippery slides, ice cream sodas, movies, symphony orchestras, a university, clothes with a variety of styles, colors, and materials. Maybe the AFC didn’t have everything, but compared to the village it was a dazzling array of plenty.

Then, as her hand raised slowly to touch the bandage at the back of her neck, she knew with equal clarity the source of the revulsion. Even now, as it welled up in her, she felt a quick clutch of fear. The revulsion always brought anger, and anger brought the pain.

“Watch, Mama! Watch me!” Lori was at the top of the slide.

“I’m watching, honey,” she called, glad for the interruption in her thoughts. Lori squealed happily as she shot downward.

“Very good!” Madeline called. Then slowly she turned and walked over to a bench.

“Mr. Lloyd?”

Mastering the impulse to glance up at the mirror, Eric lay motionless on the cot.

“Mr. Lloyd!”

He noted with satisfaction the edge of exasperation in the cool voice.

“You have a visitor waiting outside.”

In spite of himself, Eric opened his eyes. “Who is it?”

“If you would step to the back of your cell, please.”

For nearly thirty seconds Eric lay there defiantly, irritated by the impersonal voice coming from the speaker, but then his desire to see who his visitor was overpowered his pride, and he swung his legs off the cot and stood up and moved to the far corner. The door opened and a tall figure stepped through. For a long moment Eric stared, completely dumbfounded. Then he exploded with joy. “Cliff!”

“Hello, Eric.” Cliff Cameron stepped forward and clapped his hands on Eric’s shoulders.

“Cliff! But I thought—I saw you—” He stopped, words failing him.

“I know.” His leathery face broke into a wide smile. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Why didn’t Mom tell me? She was here just a little while ago.”

“I’ve only seen her briefly. They’ve pretty much kept me away from the other villagers.”

Eric shook his head, still stunned by the sight of this man. He was the same old Cliff, a little more tired looking but relaxed, poised, and confident. And yet he was different. Then Eric realized it was his clothes. The buckskin and homespun were gone, and he was dressed in tan slacks and an open-necked shirt. Eric stepped back to look at him, still unable to believe his eyes. “I was sure you were dead, or I would never have left you. I saw you go down.”

“Well, I went down all right. These people have developed a weapon that uses ultrahigh-frequency sound waves. They call it a stun gun—an appropriate name. It focuses sound waves much as a laser beam does light waves, making it highly concentrated and powerful. It’s like getting hit with a giant, invisible fist. On full power it can kill a man, but fortunately they only had it on stun capacity. It knocked me out instantly. When I woke up, I was tied up in the back of a truck.”

Eric bit his lip. “You know about Dad?”

“Yes, and the others too. With nearly a hundred men, our few villagers didn’t stand a chance.”

“But at least you are alive. I can’t believe it. I was so sure that you were dead.”

Cliff motioned to the cot, then pulled up the stool so he could face Eric.

“Have you seen the rest of the family?” Eric asked.

“Yes. They seem fine.”

“Are they? Did Mom tell you about some kind of operation they have forced her and the others to go through?”

Cliffs mouth noticeably sagged. “She didn’t have to.” He bent his head over and gently pulled the hair back. The bright red, inch-long incision was still held together with black stitches. “I took my bandage off this morning.”

“What is it? What happened? Mom could only whisper a word or two when she kissed me goodbye after her visit.”

Eric watched anxiously as Cliff paled slightly, and a brief flicker of pain touched his face.

“I’ve been implanted. I believe that is the correct terminology.”

“Implanted? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I have a microminiaturized computer chip planted at the base of my skull. From it four microelectrodes protrude into the hypothalamus.”

The woman next to her on the bench glanced quickly at the white bandage on the back of Madeline’s head. Then she looked away again quickly, obviously embarrassed. She was silent for a moment, then said, “Are you new?”

Madeline nodded.

“And those must be your children.”

To keep their hair off the bandages, Madeline had pulled it up into ponytails, and the patches of white were clearly visible.

“Yes, those are my girls.”

“Do you have others?”

“A daughter, twenty-one, and a son—” She took a quick breath. “A son, twenty-four.”

“Four children! Even without the bandages, that would give you away.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Most people here have one, sometimes two. I have six.”

That won her a surprised look, for she looked young. She laughed at Madeline’s expression. “I’m an outsider too. We were part of a small group of about fifty in eastern Oregon. They brought us in four years ago.”

“Against your will?”

“Oh, we came willingly enough, wide-eyed to think we had found civilization. Then we woke up with bandages on our necks. But, of course, it was all for our own good.”

Again Madeline nodded, warming to this woman who understood the bitterness and revulsion. “Which are yours?”

“The two boys there on the merry-go-round. The one in the blue shirt is nine; the one in yellow is eleven. I have two younger girls and two teen-aged boys.”

“What does your husband do?” The instant she asked, Madeline regretted the question.

“He’s an accountant for a chain of clothing stores. How about yours? Have they told him what they’ll have him do yet?”

Madeline bit her lip. “He was killed trying to defend our village.”

The woman touched Madeline’s arm. “I’m terribly sorry.”

“It’s all right. I’m gradually getting used to the reality of it now.” She looked away quickly. Why do you lie? Tell her you cry yourself to sleep every night, that never in your life, not even the first time you lost your husband, have you ever felt so terribly alone. But when she turned back she said only, “At least Shalev is a pretty place.”

“Yes, and you adjust to—” The woman’s eyes flicked up to the bandage again. “You adjust quickly. Even the children.”

“How quickly?”

The woman looked away. “It was especially hard on my boys. They were never mean or malicious, it was just that they could never pass one another without one poking or shoving at the other. It was terrible for them at first.” Her voice caught, and she had to finish in a whisper. “I used to get so angry with them for it. Now I’d give anything to have those days back again.”

Eric stared at Cliff, his face blank, uncomprehending. “Hypothalamus? Microelectrodes? What are you talking about?”

Suddenly Cliff’s eyes widened. “You mean, you haven’t been implanted?”

“Of course not.” Then Eric shot to his feet. “Wait a minute. I was drugged for several days.” His hands went up to the back of his neck.

“Let me see.” Cliff stood up and probed carefully at the base of Eric’s skull. “No.” He peered more closely. “No,” he repeated in surprise, “you haven’t been.” He stepped back and gave Eric a long, searching look.

Eric returned his gaze as he rubbed the back of his head thoughtfully. “So that’s what Mother meant?”

“Yes,” Cliff said. “Every one of us from the village have been implanted except for infants under a year old.” Again that searching look probed Eric. “Except you. Why not you?”

Eric sat back down on the cot heavily, and Cliff joined him. “Don’t ask me. I’ve been sitting in this stupid cell slowly going mad trying to find out what’s going on. Until Mom came, I didn’t even know if anyone else from the village was here, or even alive.”

“That’s another puzzling thing. Why are you being held here? The rest of us are free.”

“I don’t know! Don’t ask me what’s going on. Tell me more about this thing. What does it mean to be implanted?”

Cliff opened his hands, his eyes defeated. “It is, very simply, the perfect human-control device.”

“Control device?”

Cliff sighed wearily. “Let me back up and start at the first.” The frustration pulled down the corners of his mouth. “I don’t know the whole story yet. The man in charge is someone they call the Major. Evidently locating settlements like ours and hauling in people from all kinds of places is standard procedure, but newcomers aren’t the only ones implanted. Every person in Shalev and the Alliance gets one of these little numbers.”

“You mean everyone—” He left the sentence unfinished as the enormity of the thought hit him.

“Everyone, as near as I can find out. Over two hundred thousand in this so-called Alliance of Four Cities and every one of us penned up like sheep—only the fences are invisible, electronic ones.”

He stopped suddenly, breathing deeply.

“Are you okay?” Eric asked.

Cliff nodded, but he continued to take deep gulps of air until his color started to return. “Okay,” he sighed, “it’s going now.”

“What? What is it?”

“You have just witnessed the little black box in full operation. I’ve got to learn to be more careful. Whenever I start thinking about what this whole thing means, I start seething inside. That’s all it takes.”

Eric shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s really very simple. I got angry and the little black box slapped me down for it.”

“But how? How can it do that?”

Cliff took a deep breath. “Do you remember when you were in high school and I gave a lecture on operant conditioning to your social studies class? Pavlov and his dog and all that?”

Eric nodded. “Ring the bell when you bring the dog dinner, and he salivates. Pretty soon all you have to do is ring the bell to make him salivate.”

“Right. That’s conditioning in its simplest form. Well, I won’t bore you with all the technical details, but this Major, whoever he is, has developed the ultimate conditioning device. Compared to this, Pavlov is a piece of academic trivia. These guys are light years ahead of him.”

Eric shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”

Cliff took a deep breath. “Early in this century, brain research was crude and very experimental. But then with the development of space-age technology—computers, electronic probes with tips a thousand times smaller than a needle’s, electronic devices that measure the tiniest impulses from the brain—our knowledge was catapulted forward. In the fifties, they proved that all emotions—joy, anger, fear, ecstasy—all emotions begin as electrical impulses in the brain. They trigger physiological reactions such as rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, and so on, but to begin with, they are only electrical impulses in the hypothalamus.”

Eric nodded, beginning to understand. “And you said it was the hypothalamus where this implantation is put.”

“Yes. In addition to the hypothalamus being the seat of emotions, scientists found a thin stream of cells in that part of the brain, the source of all sensations of pain. They also found that if you stimulate those pain cells with an electrical impulse—a few hundred thousandths of a volt—it will ‘tell’ the body it is experiencing pain—even though there is no outside pain.”

He stopped again, raising his hands for emphasis. “Do you understand that, Eric? Pain may be artificially induced by electrically stimulating the brain. However, it is not artificial pain. It’s as real, as trauma producing, as terrible as a blow to the body or a bad burn.”

He stood up, moved to the washbasin, filled Eric’s cup, and drained it swiftly. “Next came the development of what is called a stimoceiver.”

“A what?”

“A stimoceiver, from the words stimulus and receiver. It’s a tiny miniaturized radio receiver with microelectrodes attached to it that can read, or better receive, the impulses of the brain. An electrical impulse can also be sent down those electrodes to stimulate certain areas of the brain. Thus it both stimulates and receives, and thus its name—stimoceiver.”

Eric stopped his pacing. “And that’s what they mean by implantation?”

Cliff hesitated, then took a quick breath and sat down again. “Yes. The concept is brilliantly—no, hellishly simple. What they’ve done is to combine a stimoceiver with a miniature computer, or better, a computer chip. The electrodes are planted in the hypothalamus, and impulses, thousands of them every minute, are sent to the miniature computer, which sorts through them all. When a pattern associated with unacceptable behavior shows up—guilt, violence, anger, dishonesty, hatred—the computer reacts by sending a mild electrical charge down another electrode into the pain center.”

His eyes were like dark pools in a muddy river as he turned and stared at Eric. “The result? A fiendishly effective teaching device. The perfect conditioning machine. You either salivate properly or you get burned. One step out of line and whammo!”

“Faster, Becky!” Lori shouted joyfully. “Let’s go faster.” She pushed up hard on the teeter-totter and shot up to the apex of the board’s path.

But as Becky came down to the bottom, she spied the nearby jungle gym. “Oh, that looks fun!” In one swing of her short little legs, she was off the teeter-totter and darting away. Lori plummeted like a boulder dropped over a precipice. The teeter-totter slammed to the ground with a bone-jarring thud, bouncing her off and sending her sprawling on her face into the sand.

For one or two seconds she was too startled to react; then tears of pain sprang to her eyes, and she burst out crying.

Madeline was off the bench and to her side in a moment, the other woman close behind. “What happened?” she said as she helped Lori up and put her arm around her.

“Becky made me fall!” She rubbed at her backside.

As her mother soothed her, Lori looked up and saw that the other children had gathered around her, wide-eyed and curious. One of the boys shook his head in disgust. “Girls!” he muttered. With an effort Lori bit back the tears, deeply shamed to be viewed with such contempt. Then she spied Becky, approaching slowly, head ducked in shame.

“Becky, you dummy!” she cried angrily. “Why did you—”

A sharp cry cut off her words, and she doubled over as though hit in the stomach with a huge fist. She stumbled forward, pulling out of her mother’s grasp, and fell to her face. One long, agonizing scream rent the air as she rolled back and forth, clutching at her stomach.

Chapter 9

“Is there any way to take it out?” Eric asked, a sense of horror crawling in his stomach.

The grizzled head shook once. “No. Technically, putting the chip in is a very difficult operation, because even though pinpoint precision is impossible, the electrodes still have to be placed with great accuracy. But physiologically, it’s a relatively minor operation. And getting the chip out is a snap. Just cut the surface of the skin and pull it out, electrodes and all.”

“But you said there was no way to—”

Cliff slowly lifted his left arm. “See this?”

“The wrist computer?”

“Yes. Have you tried to remove it?”

“Oh, yes.”

Cliff pointed to the spot where the band joined the watch itself. “In addition to being waterproof and shockproof, the band is connected to the face with pressure-sensitive relays, so you can’t take it off. A good, hard pull triggers what they so elegantly call the ‘punishment mode.’ Also, I don’t understand how yet, but the implantation and the wrist computer are somehow linked together with the main computers in Central Control. If you try and remove either one, it automatically triggers the maximum punishment response in the other. Either way it’s lethal.”

“There’s got to be some way to get this thing out.”

“Did you hear me, Eric? I said lethal. That means it kills you.”

“There’s got to be some way,” he said stubbornly.

Cliff leaped up. “Will you listen to me? You aren’t up against a bunch of amateur toy designers, Eric. They haven’t built an empire of two hundred thousand people by overlooking the obvious. It’s programmed to kill anyone who tries. They aren’t doing this for fun.”

He stopped, the pain suddenly twisting his features, and his voice fell to a whisper. “Eric, I haven’t just been sitting around these last few days. I have asked everyone. There is no way out of this thing. None!” He sat down heavily on the cot. “None, Eric. Welcome to Utopia.”

Eric’s jaw was rigid, and his eyes had narrowed to tiny pinpoints. “I can’t accept that. There must be—”

“Eric Lloyd!”

The blaring speaker caused them both to jump, and Eric spun around to the mirror. Cliff’s reappearance from the dead, and then the horror of his revelations, had totally driven Nicole Lambert and the mirror from Eric’s mind.

“Mr. Lloyd, we would like to talk to you and Dr. Cameron. We’re coming in.” As Nicole stepped through the door ahead of the Major, she watched Eric’s eyes closely, anxious to read his reactions. They flicked once to her, then to the Major. They were a hunter’s eyes, scanning quickly, missing nothing. Nicole was fascinated. The gray depths betrayed absolutely no expression as they probed. If the Major was bothered, he gave no sign, just waited patiently, as if amused.

Finally the eyes turned back to her. She caught what she thought was a flash of anger as he noted her orange and blue uniform, but it was gone so quickly that she couldn’t be sure. When the gaze returned to lock into her own, a faint smile of derision toyed at the corners of Eric’s lips, and she knew that he had deduced who she was.

The Major stepped forward and thrust out his hand toward the older man. “Dr. Cameron? How do you do. My name is Major Denison.”

The doctor’s eyes widened slightly as he accepted the proffered hand. “Dr. Major Denison? Curtis Major Denison?”

Eric’s head jerked around to stare at Cliff, but he was no more surprised than Nicole or the Major. “Yes. Do we know each other?”

“No, I just know of you. What neurosurgeon hasn’t heard of the pioneering brain research of Curtis Major Denison and the U.S. Air Force Cybernetics Team?”

“Well, thank you,” the Major said, obviously pleased. “For you to remember that, after eighteen years, I take as a special compliment.”

“When the others kept referring to ‘the Major,’ I assumed it was a title, a military rank.”

The Major smiled, revealing even white teeth. “I don’t know exactly how that came about. It just kind of happened over the years. Now everyone calls me ‘the Major.’” He chuckled. “I’ve never had the heart to tell them, but actually I was a brigadier general in the Air Force.”

Nicole’s expression caused him to laugh. “See, even my staff doesn’t realize they’ve demoted me.”

He turned slightly and again put out his hand. “You’re Eric Lloyd. I’m very pleased to meet you.” He held his hand in midair for a moment, then shrugged, unperturbed by the other’s implacable gaze. “Dr. Cameron knows me by reputation,” he said easily, “and I knew of your father in the same way, Eric. Though I realize it’s little consolation to you now, I deeply regret that he was killed. I admired his courage and integrity very much.”

Nicole expected that to trigger an outburst, but Eric just watched, his face an unreadable mask.

The Major turned and took Nicole by the arm. “May I present Nicole Lambert, one of our staff officers in the Monitoring Control Center.”

Dr. Cameron merely nodded, but Eric spoke for the first time. “We’ve met,” he said dryly.

Nicole nodded, holding his gaze until he looked away.

“Sit down,” the Major invited, motioning the two men to the cot. Not waiting for them to obey, he stepped over and picked up the wooden stool, flicked off a minute speck of dust, then sat it down for Nicole, placing it where she would be facing both men. As he straightened, he saw that neither of them had moved.

“Dr. Cameron, just before Nicole and I entered, you and Eric were speculating on his present condition, I believe.”

The doctor nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“I can understand your suspicions and your reluctance to trust me, or anyone else in Shalev, for that matter, but I assure you, our only desire is to get Eric out of detention as soon as possible. Now, if you’d sit down, both of you, we’ll not prolong this any longer than necessary.”

Dr. Cameron complied, followed a moment later by Eric. As he sat on the cot, the doctor’s eyes never left the Major’s face. “So,” he finally said, half to himself, “Dr. Curtis M. Denison. That explains a great deal. I heard you’d gone into top-secret brain research. Rumors kept cropping up, but…” He let the words trail off.

“Yes,” the Major responded, leaning easily against the wall. “Actually I proposed a project for the military and was given control of it. We called it ‘Benevolent Pacification.’ Our basic task was to explore ways of taking a hostile civilian population conquered in war and render them harmless and obedient without resorting to violence, threat, incarceration, or military occupation.”

“Benevolent pacification?” Eric said bitterly. “Is that what our village got? You make it sound so beautiful.”

“No,” the Major responded, “that’s what we called our research for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was crude and ill-conceived. I’m not really very proud of those years, as a matter of fact. However, it did provide the foundation for what was to come.”

“Obviously,” Eric said. “And what does your Bureau of Beautiful Names call what you have done here? ‘Brain Bending for Fun and Profit?’ Or how about ‘Self-Discipline Made Easy’?”

Nicole glanced at the Major, remembering how Eric’s rapiertongued comments could raise his ire, but if the Major had heard, he gave no sign. He was looking at Dr. Cameron and ignored Eric completely.

“Like Colonel Karl Lloyd, I sensed that the world’s insanity was plunging us toward the brink of annihilation. And like Eric’s father, I started to prepare.” He paused for a moment, his eyes wide and thoughtful behind his glasses. “However, instead of retiring from the military, I used the tremendous resources at our disposal. It was so closely related to the Benevolent Pacification program that, in those last hectic couple of years, no one took any real notice of our change in direction. We had tens of millions of dollars at our disposal.”

He smoothed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger, absently, as he thought back. “We chose this site very carefully. We figured Kalispell would not attract any direct strikes, which it didn’t. It has the natural resources we needed to survive afterwards—a relatively mild climate for as far north as we are, rich farmland, unlimited water and timber, a major hydroelectric plant nearby—it was the ideal location. We spent millions purchasing equipment—not just the supplies we needed to survive, but manufacturing tools, whole factories, and laboratories. And more importantly, we identified and gathered experts from a dozen fields we considered would be critical after the war was over. It took more than two years of intensive and extensive preparations, and we still weren’t ready when it came.”

“How did you escape the war?” Dr. Cameron was obviously interested in what the Major was saying, in spite of his outward coolness.

“We convinced the Pentagon we were setting up a model community in which to fully test our program. We stockpiled enough food and supplies to last a year, and then, like your group, rode it out. Once it was over, we began collecting survivors.”

The Major straightened, throwing off the somberness of the memories. “But the second way in which I differed from Eric’s father is that I wanted to do more than survive the war. I wanted civilization to survive—with the assurance that such a war would never happen again.”

He stretched out both hands in front of him, as though offering Cliff Cameron the concept in visible, tangible form for him to examine. “A moment ago, you and Eric spoke of Utopia. The ideal society. Civilization perfected. Do you know the one thing that has always stopped us from achieving that dream?”

“I’m at a total loss.”

The Major obviously missed Cliff’s faintly laconic sarcasm, for he nearly shouted the answer in his excitement. “People!”

“People,” the doctor repeated like a dutiful student.

“Yes, people. Even the most brilliant of plans, the most carefully structured organization can be totally destroyed by one unpredictable, wild-eyed rebel, or brought into the dust by the groveling, self-centered mindlessness of the very people who would most benefit from it. Many have tried to overcome the incredible inertia of the human factor and failed. They have tried everything—religion, coercion, government regulation, laws, philosophy, bribery, terror.” He punched out each word like a small explosion. “And all of them failed.”

It was obvious from the expression on his face that the Major was not completely heartbroken at the dismal record. “And do you know why they failed? Do you know why?”

Dr. Cameron’s slow, soft tone was like a dash of cold water in the face of that mesmerizing voice. “Let me guess. Because they couldn’t get at the mind?”

“Exactly!” the Major exulted. “Exactly right, Dr. Cameron! Even the most fiendish, diabolical torture cannot change the way a man thinks. Oh, it will bring him into line temporarily, but once the threat is removed, he will revert back to old patterns immediately.”

Eric had obviously taken a cue from the older man’s example. When he spoke, his voice was soft but musing. “So instead of fiendish, diabolical torture, you use gentle, sophisticated electronic massage.” His eyes came up and met Nicole’s. “And get lovely young ladies to push the buttons to make it all seem very elegant.”

Nicole flushed and fought the impulse to look away, to escape his gaze, but she couldn’t hold her eyes up to that brutal, probing stare.

“Sneer if you wish, my insolent young friend,” the Major snapped, for the first time stung by Eric’s response. “You were brought up in a tiny village isolated from the world. You’ve never seen the results of man’s uncontrolled nature. Rape, child molestation, terrorism, war, mass murder, genocide—ah, yes, Eric, you little know the effects of man’s uncontrolled nature. And nothing in history—not religion, not government, not torture, not executions—nothing has ever cured man’s animal tendencies. But we have! For the first time in history, we have taught man to suppress the evil in him and let only the good surface.”

“Through implantation?” Dr. Cameron asked scornfully, his eyes full of contempt. Then even as she watched, Nicole saw the first flickers of pain tug at the corners of his mouth. She looked down quickly, as he visibly struggled with his emotions.

“Yes, through implantation,” the Major said, his voice lowering again as he watched the doctor’s reaction with an understanding nod. “At this very moment you’re seeing it work. By punishing these negative tendencies in their earliest stages—with a very mild punishment, I might add—we teach an individual to give way only to his best impulses. We don’t change him by force, only teach the better part of his nature to surface.”

“It’s obvious,” Cameron said, wiping at the sweat on his forehead, “that your definition of force is very different from mine.”

But it was like putting out one’s hand to stop an avalanche. The Major rolled on without any detectable deflection from his course. He turned to Nicole, his eyes shining with excitement. “Just ask Miss Lambert. She’s spent nearly all her life in Shalev. Is it so monstrous, Nicole?”

“Monstrous?” she responded, meeting and holding Eric’s disdainful glare. “What is monstrous to me is what people tolerated before Termination. When I read what it was like then, or see the old movies, I find it difficult to comprehend that people could say that was an acceptable way to live.”

Dr. Cameron’s eyes held no condemnation like Eric’s, only sorrow. “How old were you at Termination, Nicole?”

“Six.”

“And your parents? Did they find life before so terrible?”

She lifted her head, her green eyes flashing fire. “My father, a Seattle policeman, was killed by six hoodlums when he tried to help an old woman they were beating up. My mother was eight months pregnant at the time. The shock caused her to go into labor. She died giving birth to me.”

Dr. Cameron’s face was suddenly very old and very tired. “I see.”

“Do you, Dr. Cameron?” the Major broke in. “Do you really see what we have accomplished here?”

“Yes, I see very clearly. I lived in Los Angeles for thirty years. I’ve walked the streets at night and feared for my life. I’ve read in the papers and watched on television the incredible evil of man’s dealings with his fellowman. And I watched as the world took the ultimate plunge and destroyed the work of a thousand years.”

His head came up, and he stared directly into the Major’s eyes. “But I don’t think I have ever felt deeper horror, that I have ever been more thoroughly terrified, than I am at this moment.”

The Major flinched as though he had been struck, and Nicole noted the almost instant flush of anger, but when he spoke, his voice betrayed nothing. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Dr. Cameron. I’m confident that as time goes on, your feelings will change. You expect some kind of chamber of horrors out there, but you’ll quickly see that just the opposite is true.”

He took a deep breath and turned to Eric. “But enough of this. I didn’t come to try and convert you. Shalev will convert you soon enough. We’ve come to make Eric a special offer.”

Only Eric’s eyes betrayed the fact that he had heard the Major.

“It’s obvious,” the Major went on smoothly, “that you detest the idea of implantation. I’m offering you an opportunity to avoid it.”

That broke through the mask momentarily, and Nicole smiled inwardly at the sudden start of surprise that flashed across Eric’s face. The Major was a master at this, using the bait and the prod simultaneously.

“Why?” Eric finally asked.

“We have an organization called the Guardians. Within the cities, they function only to help and protect people. They serve as our firemen, traffic officers, paramedics, and so on. They have no crime to fight, no riots to suppress, no disorders to worry about. So they’re not police, merely guardians. But that’s not our real challenge. We have an outer perimeter of over a thousand miles, much of it forest wilderness. Eighty percent of the total Guardian forces patrol that perimeter and keep out intruders—roving bands of savages who prey on the labor of others. I believe Travis said you called them the Marauders.”

Cliff nodded.

“An appropriate name. But anyway, we need someone of Eric’s experience in the mountains in that perimeter watch force.”

“You still haven’t answered the real why,” Cliff spoke up. “I can see why you’d have use for a man like Eric. But why not implant him too?”

“Good point,” the Major conceded. “The answer is that the nature of the work may sometimes require him to do things, such as engage in combat with the Marauders. The implantation would never allow him to do that. He must be free to act quickly and without fear of pain in such cases.”

“You are still begging the question, Dr. Denison. Why not simply take someone who has grown up in Shalev and make him a Guardian by removing his implantation?”

“A very perceptive question,” the Major responded with grudging approval. “I must admit that once someone has grown up under implantation, he becomes thoroughly conditioned to it. Simply removing it makes little difference. He continues to act as though implanted.”

“Yes, I understand that perfectly,” Cliff answered with disgust edging his voice again. “It says mountains about the effectiveness of your system.”

Eric broke in before the Major could respond. “Why should I be interested in joining you?”

The Major half turned. “Nicole, would you like to answer that for Eric?”

She nodded. “Obviously the most important and immediate benefit to you would be to avoid implantation yourself. But there are other benefits. The salary is very attractive. You’d be furnished with both a car and an apartment or a small home. But probably the second most important advantage is that your family would be brought up to a Stage One implantation as soon as you’d convince us you’re sincere about becoming a Guardian.”

“What does that mean—Stage One?”

“Implantations are not all the same. There are three levels of intensity. Stage Three is the most tightly controlled. This is rarely used. The majority of people in Shalev are at Stage Two. This is what Dr. Cameron and your family are under now. Dr. Cameron has described quite accurately how that works. Stage One implantation is minimal, protecting only against the grosser kinds of behavior. The assumption is that people will be motivated to control themselves if they know they may lose their Stage One status.”

“I’m sorry if I keep shaking my head,” Eric said, “but I’m still trying to adjust to this. You talk about it as if you were sticking a fork in a piece of meat to see if it’s done or not. These are people you’re talking about. People! Not halves of beef!”

Nicole flushed but went on firmly. “Once you have fully proven yourself as a Guardian, your immediate family members will have their implantations completely removed. I suggest that if you’re so horrified by it all, you seriously consider the Major’s offer.”

When Eric gave no response, the Major spoke up. “So you see, Eric, if you agree to join us, we benefit, you benefit, and your family benefits. It’s an opportunity that not many young men are offered.”

“I’m deeply touched.”

The Major ignored the sarcasm in Eric’s voice. “We’ll let you think about it for twenty-four hours. Nicole will be your controlling officer should you choose to accept. You may call her anytime before then. She’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have. If she isn’t in the observation room when you need her, they’ll get her.”

Nicole stood up, sensing the meeting had ended.

“Consider it carefully, Eric,” the Major said earnestly. “I know you’re full of hate and bitterness now. But be realistic. And think of your family as well as yourself.” He turned. “Dr. Cameron, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave with us now.”

Without answering, Eric turned to Cliff and gripped his hand. “At least you’re alive. That’s something.”

The older man nodded, his eyes probing deeply into Eric’s. “Eric,” he finally said, “Dr. Denison is right. Don’t let your emotions take the reins now. Think very carefully about his offer. I see no other options. If your father were here, he’d say the same thing. There are no other options. Do you understand that?”

Eric finally nodded, his mouth a hard line. “Yes, I think I do.”

Chapter 10

“Miss Lambert?”

His voice startled her, for he hadn’t stirred at all from the cot.

“Are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“When is the Major coming for my decision?”

She glanced at her wrist. “At nine o’clock, about an hour from now.”

“I have a request.”

“Okay.”

“I’d like to ask you some questions before he comes.”

“All right, ask them. If I can answer them, I will.”

“No, not this way. I want you to come in here.”

Her eyebrows arched upward, and, as though he sensed her reaction, he sat up and turned to stare into the mirror. “Well?” he demanded.

“Why? I can hear you very well from here.”

“Yes, and you can see me too. Which gives you the definite advantage. I want to be able to see you. Then I’ll have a better idea if you try to lie to me.”

She sighed, then leaned over the mike, as though her nearness would more accurately convey her earnestness. “Mr. Lloyd, I told you that I’d always be totally honest with you. I know you have no reason to believe that, but—”

“Well, ironically enough I do believe it.” He smiled at her through the glass, the first time she’d seen a real smile from him. “At least I want to. But I need to be sure, and I can’t do that through a microphone.”

“I—I’m not sure I can.”

“Are you afraid of me?”

“No,” she answered quickly, a little surprised that that hadn’t occurred to her.

“I’ll sit clear across the cell, if you’d like.”

“I’m not afraid that you’ll hurt me, Mr. Lloyd. It’s just that I’ll have to get permission from the Major.”

“I don’t have any other engagements pending at the moment,” he said dryly. “Get it. I’ll wait right here.”

“All right, I’ll ask. Just a minute.”

As she stepped through the sliding door into his cell, Eric got quickly to his feet and made a tiny bow. “Well,” he said, “I’d about decided I’d scared you off.”

“No,” she said, giving him a cool smile, “you didn’t.”

“Sit down.” He motioned to the cot, waited until she sat down, then pulled the wooden stool up for himself.

“Who’s minding the store?” He motioned toward the mirror.

“Travis and the Major.”

“Figured so. Well, shall we begin?”

“Yes.” She put her hands in her lap and tried to appear completely relaxed.

“Mother said you’re moving my family out of Shalev. Is that true?”

“Yes, they’ll be leaving in the morning.”

“Why?”

“All of your village are being transferred to Serenity—near where Great Falls, Montana, used to be. We have a great need for skilled farmers.”

“If I agree to cooperate, can they stay?”

“No. I’m sorry, but their transfer has nothing to do with you and your status. Serenity is our newest city. It received a direct nuclear strike during the war. The region was not fit for habitation until just a few years ago. It’s become a major source of food for the Alliance, but we don’t have sufficient people to run the farms.”

As she watched the hardness of his jaw, she continued quietly. “After your preliminary training, you’ll be allowed to visit Serenity and see them often.”

Without so much as a nod, he changed directions. “Why does the Alliance want to capture new populations? We were obviously no threat to you. We didn’t even know you existed. Why go to such great effort to seek us out?”

“Actually we have two reasons. First, we survived Termination as well as any group we know of. We still have civilization, technology, medical facilities, schools. We hope to share that with as many others as possible.”

Eric nodded. “You just don’t find that kind of generosity any more.”

She ignored his sarcasm and continued. “Secondly, the Alliance needs people—farmers, laborers, skilled professionals like Dr. Cameron.”

“That’s a little surprising. You talk about having limited food resources. You’d think natural growth would tax your abilities to keep up. Why such a vigorous program to bring in new people?”

Nicole hesitated, suddenly aware that the Major and Travis were waiting for her answer too. Then she remembered the Major’s counsel to be straight with him. “Because the growth rate is negative,” she said.

Eric’s gray eyes widened a little. “Negative?”

“Yes. The birthrate is not keeping up with the death rate. No one is exactly sure why, but the infusion of outside people is necessary to balance the population.”

“Well, well. Everyone in this little paradise just loves it to pieces—they just don’t want to bring children into it.”

“That’s a simplistic conclusion not justified by the data we have.”

The sudden sharpness in her tone only made him smile. “And you’re not married. Is that typical for twenty-four-year-olds in Shalev?”

Nicole felt her cheeks go instantly hot and was furious that her face betrayed her reaction. “It’s not unusual,” she said evenly, though it cost her a great deal of effort.

“Well, that’s clearly part of your population problem. Hardly a girl in the village is still single past eighteen. By twenty-four they have three or four children.”

“And how old are you, Mr. Lloyd?”

He gave one short bark of laughter and then shook his head. “Point well taken. I apologize for making reference to your personal life.”

“I accept your apology,” she said, her voice still stiff. “Is there anything else?”

He watched her for a long moment, his eyes wide and thoughtful. “Hey,” he finally said softly, “I really am sorry. I’m afraid that the last week in here has soured my manners. My mother would be appalled.”

“I understand. Do you have other questions?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay.”

“Are you implanted?”

She was instantly on guard again. “No. As we told you, Guardians are exempt. Why?”

“Oh.” He fell silent.

“Why do you ask if I’m implanted?” she finally asked.

“Oh, I just wondered what button to push to get you to smile.”

Her eyes flashed and her mouth snapped into a tight, hard line.

“Whoops,” he said, with a rueful expression. “Obviously not that one.”

She momentarily fought it, but she couldn’t contain it, and she laughed out loud.

“Well, that’s better. And while we’re at it, how about knocking off this ‘Mr. Lloyd’ business? Nobody in my life has ever called me Mr. Lloyd. Okay?”

Nicole nodded. “If you wish. I’m Nicole.”

“Does anyone ever call you Nicky?”

“No, thank heavens.”

“That’s too bad. My sisters call me Ricky. Ricky and Nicky, controller and controllee. It has a special ring to it.”

She pulled a face. “Ricky and Nicky? That’s awful.” She was amazed at the change in him. Suddenly he was a gracious host charming a visiting guest.

He nodded; then slowly the smile left his eyes. “And if you decide I’m not responding as the Major wishes?”

“I will so report.”

“And?”

“You’ll be implanted and sent to Serenity to be a farmer for the rest of your life.”

Eric leaned forward, studying her face so intently that she finally looked down. “And you could really do that?”

Her head came up and she met his stare unflinchingly. “Yes, I could.”

He leaned back, his face thoughtful, and once again he shifted direction, catching her off guard. “What stops people from running?”

“Running?”

“Yes. Going through the Outer Perimeter.”

“They’re happy here.”

“Sorry. You’ll have to do better than that.”

“It’s true!”

“Are you happy?”

Her head snapped up so sharply, her hair bounced lightly on her shoulders. “Of course.”

“How do you manage to hide it so well?”

The emerald eyes had suddenly become twin volcanoes belching fire. “I’m sorry if my basic nature doesn’t fit your picture of the giggly, happy-go-lucky female, Mr. Lloyd, but I am happy. Sorry. Try again.”

Undeterred by her anger, he bored in, his own voice rising. “Are you telling me that happiness is the only thing that keeps people in the Alliance?”

She was taken back by that and hesitated for a moment. He sensed his advantage and pressed in relentlessly.

“Or has the Major invented another one of his little electronic gimmicks to see that no one crosses over the line?”

“I—”

“Yes, I’m listening,” he said sarcastically. “They aren’t totally free, are they?”

“No, Mr. Lloyd,” she said, the anger at his attack suddenly giving her the control she needed. “The wrist computer is monitored by the central computers. If a person crosses the Outer Perimeter, it automatically triggers the Punishment Mode. Intense agony would result.”

“How intense?”

She bit her lower lip.

“Well?” he demanded.

“It would probably be fatal.”

“That’s what I figured. So much for happiness.”

“But, no one ever—”

“I’m sure of that. Now, I have one other condition for acceptance.”

“Somehow I thought the Major was setting the conditions,” she said dryly, “but go ahead. It’s your little show.”

“I want Dr. Cameron put on the same status as my family. As soon as I prove myself, he goes up to Stage One implantation, then has it removed when they do. Agreed?”

She shook her head. “The policy is strictly limited to immediate family members, and I can’t change that.”

Eric turned to the mirror. “Major? That’s my condition.”

The silence in the cell stretched out for a long moment. Then the overhead speaker popped.

“Nicole is right, Eric. That’s a very strict Guardian policy.”

“If it weren’t for your Guardian policy,” Eric shot back angrily, “my father would be alive right now. Since he’s not, Cliff is the closest thing to it. I want him counted as my father now. I figure you owe me that.”

Nicole watched his reflection in the mirror, a little awed that one minute he could absolutely infuriate her, and the next moment move her emotionally to his side, hoping that the Major would grant his request.

Finally the speaker blared again. “It’s against my better judgment, but Travis thinks we ought to make an exception in this case. Nicole? What do you think?”

Eric turned around and watched her, but she detected no pleading in his eyes, no submission on his face, just a patient scrutiny of her inner depths.

“Yes,” she finally said, looking past him. “I think the special circumstances warrant the exception.”

“All right,” the Major said after a moment. “You have your agreement, Eric. Does that mean you accept?”

Eric nodded. “How soon do I get out of here?”

The Major laughed. “Well, we didn’t expect your decision for another half hour. It will take that long to get ready. But I took the liberty of sending for your entire family. Your sisters are very anxious to see you. I’ll send them in now, and that will help pass the time.”

“All right. Thank you.”

As Nicole stood up and the door opened, Eric stepped back and bowed slightly, then lifted his hand in salute. “Well, Nicky,” he said with mock solemnity, “here’s to a great partnership.”

Chapter 11

Becky shot through the door first, with Lori close on her heels, and they nearly bowled Eric over as they leaped into his outstretched arms. He swung them both around once, like sacks of flour under each arm, then dumped them on the bed, making them squeal with delight. In two quick steps he was to Stephanie and swung her off the floor too.

“Eric,” she laughed, “put me down.” He did, but only so he could encircle his mother with his other arm and squeeze them both.

“Hello, son,” Madeline Lloyd said with a huskiness in her voice. “Travis told us the news about your release. That’s wonderful.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

Stephanie spoke up. “Travis said you’ll be trained for four weeks, and then you’ll get leave. We’ll be anxious to see you.”

He nodded, then turned and squatted down. “So what have my two favorite young ladies been up to?”

The girls came to him and put their arms around his neck, one sitting on each knee. “Oh, Ricky,” Lori said, “it’s so neat here. We went to the park yesterday, and they have swings—real swings, not just ropes and boards—and a slide, and teeter-totters, and a merry-go-round.” Her face wrinkled up with joy. “It’s so neat!”

“I got dizzy on the merry-go-round,” Becky said, holding her head and rolling her eyes around.

“Oh you did, did you?” Eric laughed.

“Yeah, and guess what, Ricky.” Her eyes were like two luminous brown saucers.

“What?”

“You can get ice cream here any time you want. Even in summer.”

“Really?” he said, giving her a look of serious doubt.

“Yes, real ice cream.”

Lori leaped off his knee and opened the blue metal door in the wall. “Oh look, Becky, Ricky has his own bathroom. And a shower too.” Becky jumped off his knee and followed her sister.

Eric stood up and turned to his mother. “Do they know about their implantation?”

“Yes, I’ve tried to explain it to them. I thought I’d better.”

“And?”

She looked down and bit her lower lip. “Yesterday, Becky jumped off the teeter-totter and let Lori clunk on the ground pretty hard. She flashed out at Becky, like any normal child would, and one second later she was writhing on the ground in pain.”

“Tell him about last night,” Stephanie said quietly, noting the fury in Eric’s eyes.

Madeline took a deep breath, then sighed. “About midnight, Lori woke up vomiting. At first I thought it was something she had eaten. But as nearly as we can figure, she had a dream about Billy Maddox. He was teasing her, as he usually did at school. In her dream she got so angry, she hit him.”

Eric stared at her. “You mean that even a dream can set this thing off?”

“Yes, if it’s real enough.”

“I can’t believe it.” He nearly turned to glare at the mirror, then caught himself.

“Becky!” Madeline had turned and was looking past Eric. “What are you doing?”

Becky had pushed the stool up to the washbasin and was looking at the things on the shelf above it. “What’s up here, Ricky?”

“That’s just my shaving stuff. Get down before that stool tips over.”

“What’s this?” She waved a brightly colored object.

Eric looked more closely, puzzled for a moment. “Oh, that’s a candy bar from my dinner tray last night.”

Becky jumped down, waving the bar. “Can I have it, Ricky? Can I?”

Eric started to nod, but before he could say yes, Lori’s hand snaked out and snatched the bar. “No, I get it.”

Becky’s reaction was as swift as Lori’s hand. “Give me that!” she yelped, and, doubling up her fists, she pounced on Lori’s back. But even as she lit, she gasped, her body contorted wildly for one second, and she collapsed into a crumpled heap on the floor.

“Becky!”

Eric wasn’t sure if his mother or Stephanie had screamed, but he beat both of them to the still form on the floor. He scooped her up, her legs, arms, and head dangling limply.

“Becky!” Madeline cupped the small head in her hands and lifted one eyelid with her thumb, but the eye was rolled clear back in the socket. She took the limp body from Eric’s arms. “Get help, Eric. Quick!”

But even as Eric turned, the door whisked open and Travis darted into the room. “Bring her here,” he commanded, shouldering Eric aside. “Stephanie! Lori! You come too. Let’s go!”

As they hurried out, he straight-armed Eric back into the room. “You’ve got to stay here. We’ll let you know as soon as we find out what’s wrong.”

Too stunned to resist, Eric stared at the door as it slid closed again.

“Eric?” It was Nicole’s voice. He half turned to the mirror.

“I’ll go down to the infirmary and find out how she is. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” The speaker crackled softly as she clicked off the mike.

It was nearly half an hour later before Nicole slipped into the observation room. The soft pop of the speaker jerked Eric around from his erratic pacing in the cell.

“Nicole?”

“Yes, it’s me,” she answered, still breathing hard from her swift pace back from the infirmary. “She’s fine, Eric. Everything’s okay.”

His shoulders sagged visibly as the air whooshed out of him in a great sigh of relief. “What happened?”

“They aren’t sure, but the doctor thinks the implantation may have been programmed too high.”

“What?”

“She’s small for her age. The stimulation triggered by her anger should have given her only a light dose of pain. Instead it was strong enough to knock her unconscious.”

“And if it had been slightly higher than that?” His voice was low and caused a shiver to run up Nicole’s spine.

“But it wasn’t. She’s fine now.”

“She could have been killed, couldn’t she?”

“Eric, she is fine. Stop torturing yourself.”

“I want to see her.”

“You can’t right now.”

“I want to see her now!” His face was murderous, and again she felt a sudden sweep of fear.

“That’s impossible. They’ve taken her back to the hospital for surgery to correct the—” She broke off, realizing instantly that she had made a serious error.

“To correct what, Miss Lambert?”

Her hand came up to her mouth as she stared at the raging in his eyes, so evident even through the darkened glass.

“To correct what?” he thundered, making the speaker crackle with the overload of sound.

“They’re going to reimplant her,” she said in a half whisper. “Correct the error.”

He swung around like a raging bull, looking for some kind of a weapon. In one swift motion he had the wooden stool by one leg and took a step toward her.

“Eric! Put the stool down.” She jabbed at the alarm button and heard the buzzer out in the hall start to sound. “Put it down, or I’ll have to trigger your Punishment Mode.”

“Do your best, lady!” he shouted, hurling the stool with all the pent-up fury that had been building up in him. Nicole instinctively ducked even as she leaned on the red button on the console marked PM.

The stool smashed against the mirror, and Nicole heard the sharp crack of glass. An intricate spider’s web instantly appeared. She stared through it in horrified fascination, as he staggered backwards, his whole left side twisting like an overwound spring.

“Is that the best you can do, Nicky?” he gasped, as he careened sideways, nearly losing his balance. But incredibly, he came up with the stool in his right hand. She could clearly hear him gasping in agony as the jolts from his wrist computer hit him again and again. Like a discus thrower in slow motion, he whirled once, and the stool came hurtling at her again.

Nicole threw up her arm as the glass shattered with a roar, spraying her with a stinging rain of a thousand tiny missiles. She spun around and dove for the stun gun in a rack near the door. For nearly thirty seconds she remained frozen, crouched in a firing position, but when no figure loomed to confront her, she straightened up slowly and peered through the shattered glass. Eric was lying in a twisted mass on the floor, not moving. Suddenly Nicole’s knees were so weak they wouldn’t support her, and she sat down quickly in her chair. Her heart was pounding so violently that she could feel it throbbing even in her fingertips.

A few moments later the door burst open, and Travis darted into the room. She started to give him a nonchalant wave, but then she realized her hand was trembling so violently that it would instantly give her away, and she stuck it down her lap. “Hi,” she managed, forcing a smile. “Have you got a broom?”

“Are you okay, Nicole?” the Major demanded, as he joined them at the table in the cafeteria.

“Yes, I’m fine. I—”

He clenched his fist and smacked it into his palm. “I can’t believe how stupid, how utterly stupid this boy is. Right on the verge of freedom, and he pulls this.”

“Sir,” Nicole said, “if it weren’t for his sister, I don’t think—”

“I know,” he snapped impatiently, “but we can’t have someone who goes berserk on us, even in a crisis.”

Suddenly, to her amazement, Nicole wanted to defend Eric Lloyd, the sight of Becky collapsing into a heap on the floor still vivid in her mind. “Major,” she said evenly, “I know that what he did is unacceptable, but I think what happened was very unusual provocation.”

“Agreed,” he conceded reluctantly. “Travis, I want to know who implanted his sister and why she was overprogrammed.”

“I’ve already ordered an investigation.”

“Good. Everything we do with this young man seems to be botched up. If we do turn him around, it’ll be a wonder.”

Nicole’s head shot up. “You mean you’re not rejecting him?”

“Oh, no. We’ll give him one more shot at it. But starting right now, I want a twenty-four-hour monitor of his movements kept in Central Control. If he so much as tweaks his nose in the wrong direction, that will be it. We’ll slap a Stage Three implantation on him.”

Even Travis’s eyes widened at that. Nicole knew personally of only five in Shalev who had ever received Stage Three—two vilelooking men caught trying to penetrate the Outer Perimeter, and three others declared to be incurable psychopaths.

“Nicole, I want you to oversee the monitoring of his movements. Check the tapes every day.” The Major turned to Travis. “Who’ll be his training officer? Have you decided yet?”

“Clayne Robertson.”

“Ah, yes, a good choice. Have you told him yet?”

“I was briefing him when Eric went off his gourd.”

“I want Clayne to actually move in with Lloyd until we’re perfectly satisfied he’s turned. We’ll give him a month and then decide whether to lift the implantation.”

“You’re going to implant him?” Nicole blurted, feeling her stomach drop.

“Of course,” the Major said, surprised at her question.

“But you said you were going to give him another chance.”

“We are, but not without implantation. We can’t risk any more outbursts.”

“Oh.” Nicole dropped her eyes under his probing gaze.

“Can we?”

“No, sir, of course not. I don’t want to face any more flying stools.”

“You seem bothered by that, Nicole. Why?”

She considered that, noting again that it was not images of Eric that she saw, but of his mother and sisters. “I think surprised is a better word,” she said, looking up to meet his gaze. “When you said you were going to give him another chance, I assumed you meant with the same status.”

“Stage One or Stage Two?” Travis broke in, winning a grateful look from Nicole.

“Stage Two.” The Major glanced at his watch. “In fact, it should be done by now. That’s why we’ve got to turn him in a hurry. If we wait very long, he’ll be so conditioned to it that he’ll lose his value to us. So get Clayne on it now. He’ll be out of sedation within the hour.”

Travis straightened, aware that the interview was over. “Yes, sir. Consider Eric Lloyd under control from this point on.”

Chapter 12

Nicole watched wide-eyed as Clayne Robertson polished off his third piece of pie and washed it down with the last of a quart of milk. She turned to his wife and shook her head. “Adrienne, you must spend your whole life cooking.”

Adrienne Robertson smiled, the well-formed, white teeth a startling contrast to her ebony-brown skin. She looked at her husband with obvious pride and fondness. She was lighter skinned than he, and as slender as he was muscular, with delicately shaped features and jet-black hair that was fluffed into a short but full Afro cut.

Clayne smiled back at his wife. They were in the comfortable, modern dining room of the Robertson apartment, lingering over the remains of dinner. He turned to Nicole. “If you don’t put fuel in the boilers, you won’t get any power in the turbines.”

Nicole laughed. “Turbines are a good analogy. I’ll bet you burn more fuel than an ocean-going liner.”

He gave a deep chuckle and patted his stomach in easy contentment. An ocean-going liner wasn’t too far off, Nicole decided. A former middle linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Clayne was built like a fifty-gallon oil drum. Central Supply had his uniforms specially tailored to cover the massive shoulders and thick legs. He had no neck, just a square block of a head precariously stuck on his shoulders. Football was not played anymore in the Alliance of Four Cities, because a player had been killed some years before. He had smacked helmets with another player with particular force, and the implantation had misfired into his brain. But Nicole had seen movies of football games, and it caused her to shudder slightly when she thought about running headlong into this bull of a man.

“Tell you what,” he rumbled good-naturedly, “if you’re so worried about Adrienne, tell the Major to pull me off this babysitting job and let me come back home before she gets out of practice.”

“Oh, no,” Adrienne said quickly, her dark eyes teasing. “I miss you. But I figure I’ve saved enough out of my food budget in the last four weeks to buy a new car. I say let the Guardians feed you another two weeks, and we’ll be completely out of debt.”

A deeply hurt expression flattened Clayne’s features even more. Then suddenly he lunged forward, causing the dishes on the table to jump and Adrienne to squeal as he caught her arm. “So that’s how it is, huh?” he growled.

“Clayne!” she wailed, as she tried to pull free. “Let me go!”

“Buy a new car, huh? Get out of debt, huh?”

“Clayne! You’ll wake the children. Nicole! Help!”

But Nicole just waved her away, laughing too much to render even psychological assistance.

Suddenly Clayne sobered, and Adrienne instantly followed. She leaned forward and gazed into his eyes. The meat-cleaver hands came up and brushed at her cheeks gently, and Nicole looked away, embarrassed to witness such open and unabashed love between two people. She knew that she and Travis were moving in that direction, but they weren’t there yet. Few people she knew were.

“Forget the car,” Adrienne said softly. “Just come home again. Okay?”

“I will, soon as we get this young bronco tamed. You know that.”

Slightly flustered at her own emotions, Adrienne put her hand over Clayne’s and turned to Nicole. “How soon are you going to let this man of mine go?”

She shook her head. “Clayne can answer that better than I. The training period is over now, but until Eric has proven himself on the job, the Major wants Clayne to stay with him. I’d say another two weeks probably.”

“Did they ever move his family up to Stage One?” Adrienne asked.

“No. Because of that little show with the stool, the Major insists that he totally prove himself first. Eric still has a Stage Two.”

Clayne stood up and motioned to them. “Let’s go in the living room to talk.”

They moved into the next room and sat down, Clayne and Adrienne on the couch, Nicole in a comfortable chair facing them. “Well, I know he’s a challenge,” Adrienne said, once they were settled, “but I think he’s nice. The kids just love him.”

Without thinking, Nicole pulled a face.

Clayne laughed. “I don’t think Nicole is quite as taken with Eric as you are, dear.”

“Why?”

“He’s insolent, arrogant, and totally self-centered,” she shot back.

“Translated, that means he takes particular delight in needling his Monitoring Officer,” Clayne explained. “And he has a peculiar talent for that. And as if that weren’t enough, the first day on the job he nearly decked her fiancé.”

“Your fiancé?” Adrienne cried.

“Yes—Travis. If I hadn’t pulled him off—”

“You lunkhead,” Adrienne said, smacking Clayne’s leg with her fist. “You didn’t tell me Nicole was engaged.”

“Oh. I meant to when I called you last night.”

“You,” she said, doubling up her fist at him. Then she turned to Nicole. “When?”

“Night before last. We get the rings next week.”

“That’s wonderful. Had I known, we’d have made Travis come tonight in spite of his meeting. Have you set a date yet?”

Nicole shrugged. “No, not yet. Travis thinks we ought to be engaged for a little while before we make final plans.”

“Ah, cold feet already,” Clayne teased.

“Oh, Clayne,” Adrienne said, slapping his leg again. “I’m so happy for you, Nicole.”

“Thank you. I have to admit I’m pretty happy myself.”

Then just as suddenly as she had dropped it, Adrienne picked up the conversation again. “Well, don’t be too hard on Eric. He’s going through a terrific adjustment.”

“That’s my Adrienne,” Clayne chuckled. “Watcher of the downtrodden, protector of homeless boys, Mother Superior to the wayward—”

Adrienne elbowed him in the ribs. “Feeder of the hungry.”

“Right on, babe,” he agreed without rancor.

“So,” Nicole spoke up, wanting to get off the subject of her feelings about Eric, “is he going to make it?”

“You’re his Control Officer,” Clayne shot back, goodnaturedly. “What’s your evaluation?”

“That he’s biding his time, waiting for a chance to run. You’re his training officer,” she countered, “what’s your evaluation?”

“Well, he’s a very bright kid, the best all-around trainee I’ve ever seen. His training is over now. Tomorrow night we begin his first shift. It’ll be interesting to watch him in action.”

“Honey,” Adrienne cooed, “you’re evading the question.”

“Oh,” Clayne said in innocent surprise. “No question about it. Nicole’s right. He’s biding his time, looking for some way to beat the system. I think at first his plan was to hurry and get accepted, have the implantations for his family removed, then find some way to beat the Outer Perimeter.”

“You say he thought that at first?” Adrienne asked. “But not now?”

“When he lost control in his cell and ended up implanted, it blew the whole plan for him. By the time he completely proves himself to the Major, his family will be conditioned to the implantation. He’s asked me quite pointedly how long that takes. I’ve told him that if they are real careful not to trigger it too often, they’ll be good for three months, maybe four at the most.”

“And it’ll be six, if he’s lucky,” Nicole broke in. “Perhaps even a year, before the Major frees his family.”

“Exactly,” Clayne said. “So he’s got to find a quicker way.”

“There isn’t a way,” Nicole said flatly.

“I know that,” Clayne agreed with a note of regret, “and you know that, but he won’t accept it. That’s why I don’t know if he’s going to make it.”

They were purring through the nearly deserted streets, the electric motor barely audible, as Clayne let the orange and blue squad car roll slowly along. An early evening rainstorm had buffed the night air crystal clear, with puddles here and there in the streets and a few droplets still clinging to the clear plastic bubble over their heads. Both windows of the Guardian car were down, and Eric took a deep breath, savoring the cool, moist air.

“Beautiful night,” Clayne said lazily. It was the first they had spoken in over ten minutes, but the silence had been easy, comfortable, with no strain.

“Yes. It reminds me of nights in the valley.”

“Travis said it was a beautiful place.”

“It was.”

“So is Shalev.”

“True,” Eric conceded. “It really is.”

“We love it here.”

Eric turned and gave Clayne a long, searching look. Again there was silence for almost a minute. Then Eric spoke again. “Was your application for the country club accepted?”

Clayne’s head jerked around. “How did you know about that?”

Eric laughed softly. “My dad used to talk about scuttlebutt in the Army. I never really understood what he meant until I started training with the Guardians. Rumors and gossip fly everywhere in that place.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure,” Clayne grumbled.

“So?”

Eric noticed Clayne’s hands tighten on the wheel, but when he spoke his voice was light and nonchalant. “No, our application was deferred. We’ve been put on a waiting list.”

“Uh huh,” Eric said gently. “And what about George Marshall?”

“What about him?” Clayne said, more quickly than he had intended.

“He applied after you, so they say. And he’s been accepted.”

“Who told you that?”

“What? That he applied after you, or that he’s been accepted?”

“That he was accepted.”

“Oh, George told us in the locker room a couple of days ago.”

Clayne grunted, then turned back and stared out the window, concentrating on his driving.

“It’s not the first time, is it.”

“The first time for what?” Clayne snapped, obviously irritated.

“Racial discrimination.”

“Buzz off, Lloyd,” he said, really angry now. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sorry. I was just wondering.”

“Look, Eric,” Clayne said, pulling the car over to the curb. He shut off the motor, and half turned in his seat. “Why don’t we cut the innocent, wide-eyed, child-wants-to-know routine? What’re you driving at?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You’re about as subtle as a pack of wolves running down a moose.”

Eric laughed. “I get the feeling you’d be some kind of moose to bring down.” Then, cutting off Clayne’s retort, he added, “and I don’t mean that in just the physical sense.”

Clayne’s dark face held its anger for a moment, then split in a wide grin. “I think physically, too.”

“Yeah,” Eric said ruefully. “Did they pick you as my training officer before or after I threw the stool through the window?”

“Before. Now stop the runaround. If you’ve got something to say, get it out.”

“Okay, I will. Why is it everyone is so eager to talk about all the wondrous advantages of life in the Alliance, and yet every time I raise a question about some problems, defenses spring up like dandelions on a ditchbank?”

When Clayne didn’t immediately answer, Eric pushed on. “Nicole tells me everyone here is ecstatically joyful, but she admits that an electronic fence keeps people in the Happiness Corral. The penalty for escape is merely death. Every time he turns around, the Major is pontificating on how they’ve eliminated all evil in men, and yet your family is experiencing one of the most ancient and persistent of all evils—racial discrimination. Everyone raves about what a thoroughly delightful place the AFC is, and yet the hospitals are clogged with neurotics and psychotics, and the birthrate is so low you have to drag people in by the hair to maintain a growth potential.”

Eric raised his hands in a gesture of puzzlement. “I was just curious, that’s all.”

Clayne looked at him, his features expressionless, then finally shook his head. “Leave it alone, Eric.”

“See. That’s what I mean.”

“Leave it alone, or it’s going to break you. You’re here. You’re in it. Your only hope is to get it through that boyish head of yours that this is the way things are. They’re not perfect. Nobody claims they are. But if you want to get any freedom at all, leave the rest alone.”

Eric started to smile, about to quip something cute and deflect Clayne’s sober intensity, but then suddenly he became equally serious. “I don’t think I can, Clayne. It’s too terrible to leave be.”

“I was afraid of that.” Clayne turned back around and started the motor. As he eased off the clutch, he looked at Eric again. “I’m just telling you, it’s going to break you. So—”

Suddenly the radio blared. “Baker Able Seven.”

Clayne picked up the mike and pressed the button. “This is Baker Able Seven, over.”

“Baker Able Seven,” intoned the female voice in a bored monotone. “We are getting a three-six-six at the power substation on Overhill and Pepper Streets. Investigate and advise.”

“Ten-four. We’ll check it out and advise.” Clayne hung the mike back onto its hook, started the car again, and accelerated smoothly.

“What’s a three-sixty-six?” Eric said, raising his voice over the noise of the wind rushing through the windows. “I don’t remember that one in the code list.”

Clayne leaned the car into a curve, and then, as it straightened out, glanced quickly at Eric. “It’s what we call an interference signal. Something’s on the fence at the power substation.”

“You mean an alarm?”

“Kind of. Several years ago, a young boy climbed a substation fence and was badly burned when he brushed against one of the transformers. Since then any place that constitutes a danger zone has been fenced off and wired with a pressure-sensitive switch. If something pushes against the fence, a mild electrical shock is given. If it continues, the shock steadily increases until it is a pretty stiff jolt. That’s what we call a three sixty-six. It rarely happens, because the system works so well.”

“So what could this be?” Eric asked. “An animal?”

“Not likely, unless it’s stuck somehow. The first charge would drive it away. No, I’m afraid it’s an MC.”

“A what?”

“A masochist. We call them MCs.” He swung around another corner. “Okay, here’s Pepper Street. Less than a minute now.”

“A masochist?”

“Yes. You know, the opposite of a sadist. A sadist likes to inflict pain on others. A masochist likes to have pain inflicted on him.”

“I know what the word means. I just don’t understand what—”

“Occasionally we find people who deliberately seek to create pain for themselves. They get some kind of sick satisfaction out of it. I haven’t seen one for several years now.” He flicked the lights on bright. “There’s the substation, coming up.”

He braked down hard, and the car slid a few feet on the wet pavement. The headlights illuminated a small fenced area and a heavy-set figure with his back to the light, arms outstretched and fingers interlocked into the fence. As Clayne flipped on the spotlight, the figure whirled around.

“Well, I’ll be—” Clayne breathed. “It’s Charlie Bird. I thought he was still in the psycho ward of the hospital.”

He swung open the door. “Bring the stun gun,” he commanded, “but don’t use it unless I say.”

Eric got out of the car, taking the long pistol off its rack underneath the dashboard.

The man was peering at them, blinded by the lights. He was young, probably less than twenty-five. His hair was wildly tousled, his eyes wide and glassy.

“All right, Charlie,” Clayne called easily. “The fun’s over. Come away from the fence.”

The hands snaked backward and grasped the chain links. Eric saw the man’s arms stiffen slightly and his eyes widen.

“Who is it?” the man cried. “Who knows Charlie Bird?”

“It’s Clayne Robertson, Charlie.” Then to Eric, more softly, he said, “Call Central Control. Tell them to cut the juice here.”

As Eric obeyed, he saw Clayne move forward, talking softly. Eric called in quickly, then got out of the car and moved forward, the stun gun ready.

“Come on, Charlie,” Clayne soothed, approaching slowly.

Suddenly Charlie gave a little cry of dismay and released his hold on the fence. “No! Don’t turn it off. Don’t!” It was almost a sob, as from a child deprived of a favorite toy. Then he leaped at Clayne like a clawing tiger. Eric ducked into a half crouch, looking for a clear shot with the stun gun, but Clayne saw him and shouted, even as he spun Charlie around and flung him off his shoulders. “No, Eric! Don’t!”

Charlie bounced off the fence and lit on his feet, quick as a cat. He launched himself again, his fists flailing, but this time Clayne was waiting for him. He side-stepped the rush, then swept up Charlie from behind in his massive arms.

“Get the cuffs, Eric,” he grunted, trying to hold himself clear from the kicking feet. “They’re in the glove box.”

In a moment they had Charlie’s arms pinned behind him and the cuffs on. The fight went out of him, and he wept quietly.

“All right, Charlie,” Clayne said gently, “it’s all over.” He brought him back to the car and gently pushed him into a halfsitting position on the fender. “Just stay right there for a minute, then we’ll take you home.”

He jerked his head at Eric. “Watch him for a minute. I think he’ll be okay now.” He slid into the driver’s seat and picked up the mike.

Ten minutes later, as Eric watched the ambulance drive away with Charlie Bird, Clayne turned to him. “Well, Mr. Lloyd, that’s more excitement than I’ve had on shift for months. Welcome to your first night as a Guardian.”

“I don’t understand,” Eric said. “How can he attack you like that?”

“Oh, he was infuriated that we turned off his pain. He’s not a bad kid, just a very sick one.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. How can he do that with implantation?”

“Oh, I see. The MCs have their implantation removed.”

“They do?”

“Sure. Otherwise they could constantly create pain for themselves deliberately. With their problem, you want to avoid any and all pain. That’s why I didn’t want you to use the stun gun.”

“And why you can’t use the Punishment Mode in his wrist computer.”

“Exactly. That’s what makes them such a challenge to handle.” Suddenly Clayne brightened. “Tell you what. Since I did all the work on this one, I’ll let you buy me a malt to celebrate. Okay?”

Eric laughed. “All right, you’re on.” Then gradually the smile on his face died away, and he looked upward. The clouds were scattered and broken now, and the stars glittered with startling clarity through the gaps in them. Finally, he turned back to Clayne. “I’ll only say this once, then I’ll drop it.”

Clayne sighed. “All right. Say it.”

“Somehow, it seems as though everything in Shalev is covered with a highly polished veneer. But I suspect that if you pry up any corner of the box, the stench of something rotten would bowl you over.”

Chapter 13

Eric signed the check-in forms and returned the warm smile the brunette clerk gave him. Clayne followed suit, then frowned at Eric. “How come I don’t get the flashing white teeth and fluttery eyes when I step up to that counter?”

Eric grinned, his eyes full of innocence. “From Carol, you mean?”

“From Carol, you mean?” Clayne mimicked in a high voice.

“She’s a nice girl.”

“Not to me, she isn’t. All I ever get is a polite, ‘Sign here, Lieutenant Robertson.’”

“Well, if you didn’t come up to her like a porcupine with a migraine headache, maybe she’d smile at you too.”

“I treat her just like I do everybody else,” he rumbled.

“Like I said…”

Eric jumped as the massive elbow nearly knocked him against the wall. “Keep it up, and you’ll spend your day off in traction,” Clayne retorted.

Eric just grinned and pushed open the locker room door, but Clayne stopped in the hall. “Nope, sorry. I’ve got a short staff meeting before I can call it a day.”

“Oh? Do you want me to wait and give you a lift home?”

Clayne rolled his eyes in mock terror. “Are you kidding? I’d rather face the whole front line of the Dallas Cowboys.” He pulled a face. “That’s a football team, or was.”

“Hey,” Eric said, with a wounded look, “my driving isn’t that bad. I’m learning fast, I think.”

“True. I can see some real improvement. Now I don’t worry until you start the motor. “ Then he touched Eric’s arm. “No, really, Adrienne’s coming for me.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow. Tell Adrienne and the kids hello for me.”

Five minutes later Eric came out of the locker room, waved to the men going on shift, and started for the parking lot. As he opened the door into the garage, Nicole Lambert came around the corner, her head down, and nearly collided with him.

“Oh!” she blurted, looking up. “Oh, hello, Eric.”

“Hello, Nicky,” he said, bowing slightly as he held the door for her. “And how is my illustrious Monitor today?”

“Weary of being called Nicky, actually.”

He sighed, his face contrite. “That’s right. You must forgive me. It just kind of slips out. Nicole it is. Or would you prefer Miss Lambert?”

“Nicole is fine.” She tried to push past him.

“I hope you brought a book,” he said, smiling at her stiffness.

“A book? Why?”

“Because I’m going to bed, and I’d hate for you to sit in front of Big Mama all day with nothing to do.”

“You flatter yourself if you think I sit and watch the tracking screen and your every movement all day long.”

“Tell me, is Big Mama sensitive enough that you can tell when I turn over in my bed ?”

“Big Mama, as you so flippantly call it,” she said acidly, her eyes snapping with anger, “can even tell me if you’re having a bad dream.” This was a slight exaggeration, but not much. She started away, then spun around. “And the sooner you start taking Central Monitoring and our abilities seriously, the sooner you’ll get some serious consideration for release from implantation.”

“Why, Miss Lambert,” he drawled, “what ever made you think I don’t take Big Mama seriously?” A sudden glint of hardness darkened his eyes. “I can’t think of anything I have ever taken more seriously.”

“Well,” the Major said, looking around the table, “shall we begin? Clayne, you’re on. By the way, is your wife glad to have you back?”

He chuckled. “It’s been three days now. I think it’s starting to wear on her.”

“I’ll bet,” Nicole interjected. “I saw her down at the supermarket the other day with a flatbed truck getting ready for his return.”

“I know, and that was only for my welcome home dinner. Well, anyway,” he said, turning back to the Major, “I really don’t have much to say. Eric is a model trainee. He learns fast and is quick to take the initiative. If it weren’t for the other question, I’d recommend that he be transferred to the Perimeter Forces.”

“But unfortunately,” Travis spoke up, “there is the other question.”

The Major tapped his pencil on the table thoughtfully. “He was in training for four weeks and has been on regular duty for two more. Has he at any time acted in a way that is erratic or unacceptable?”

Clayne glanced at Travis. “Other than that first day when he lost his temper and nearly decked Travis? No. His behavior has been exemplary.”

The Major turned to Nicole. “How many times has he triggered the Punishment Mode from his wrist computer?”

Nicole pursed her lips as she scanned the computer printouts quickly. “Five. The worst was that day he started to attack Travis. Other than that, they’ve been relatively mild responses. Nothing unusual in any way. Two at night during dreams.”

“I’ve warned him,” Clayne said. “I told him if he triggers pain responses too often, he’ll start conditioning himself so heavily that he’ll lose his usefulness to us.”

“So what’s the bottom line, Clayne?” the Major pursued. “His behavior is above reproach. Does that mean we have really turned him, or is he just biding his time?”

Clayne traced circular patterns on his napkin for a long moment. “I have nothing to base it on except for a gut feeling, but no, I don’t think we have turned him. I don’t even think we’ve bought a serious glance in our direction as yet.”

“Exactly!” Nicole flashed. “It’s a game with him, a front. He’s laughing at us behind our backs, just waiting for a chance to make us look like fools.”

“Travis?” the Major said without looking up. “Do you agree with that?”

His dark eyebrows pulled together as Travis considered the question. “Yes and no.” He smiled at Nicole to soften his disagreement with her. “I think Nicole and Clayne are right in that he’s merely waiting. But I don’t think it’s a game with him. Whatever he’s up to, he’s deadly serious about it.”

“Absolutely,” Clayne agreed. “His Mister Innocent routine is a deliberate, calculated attempt to keep us all off balance. But he and his family are threatened. It’s a matter of survival now. What you said, Travis, is exactly right. He’s deadly serious about this whole thing.”

“Isn’t that just a bit overdramatic?” Nicole asked dubiously.

Clayne shrugged, and for a moment he hesitated. He liked Eric—very much, in fact, and he knew that his report could drastically alter what happened to him. But on the other hand, if they didn’t stop Eric soon, he was going to do something very foolish, and a Stage Three implantation would be the result.

“Well?” the Major probed, taking off his glasses to watch Clayne steadily. He seemed content for the moment to collect all the data from his staff before making a decision.

“I don’t think you fully understand how deeply this whole thing has affected him,” Clayne answered. “He’s far too shrewd to throw any more stools through the window. He realizes he made a serious mistake in getting himself implanted. It cut him off from the easiest way out of here.”

“Meaning going through the Outer Perimeter?” Nicole asked.

“Yes, so now he’s fighting with the only weapon we have left to him—his mind. So he treats each of us in exactly the right way to get the reaction he needs. It’s a carefully calculated strategy with him.” He turned to Nicole. “If he was gushy sweet to you, what would you think?”

She answered instantly. “That it was a snow job.”

“Exactly. So he needles at you constantly to keep you half angry, but not enough to bring you to the point where you say he’s beyond hope.”

Before Nicole could protest, he swung around to face Travis and the Major. “He knows I’m the second most important factor in determining what happens to him, but with me he’s the model trainee. And with you, Travis? How has he been?”

Travis leaned forward and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Since that first day, fine. Cool and reserved, but polite.”

“Do you think he’s forgiven you for betraying the village and getting his father killed?”

“Well, I suppose forgive is a little strong, but he does seem to have accepted it.”

“I rest my case,” Clayne said, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t think he’s accepted that for one minute, but each one of us gets exactly the response that serves his purposes best.”

“So what’s he waiting for?” the Major asked quietly.

“You’re the ones who keep using the term ‘biding his time,’” Clayne said. “Me, I don’t think he is waiting.”

“What do you mean by that?” the Major said, putting his glasses back on to peer more closely at Clayne.

“Remember this is just a hunch, a linebacker’s intuition, okay? I might be reading the play all wrong.”

“Go ahead.”

“Eric has had one goal, and one goal only, since the first day when he came out of sedation. He has never wavered in pursuit of that goal, and that is freedom for him and his family.”

“But,” Travis reminded him, “we are offering him that freedom, for him and his family.”

“Not freedom by his definition. He’s been stymied by the system, and that’s the only reason he hasn’t made his move. But…” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“But what?” Nicole demanded.

“This is where my instincts come in, all right?” They nodded and he plunged on. “But now he’s worked it out. Just in the last week or so, he’s worked it out.”

“Worked what out?” Travis asked.

“His escape.”

He savored the look on their faces, his own expression one of benign satisfaction.

“Escape?” the Major said, for the first time looking skeptical. “How? How could he possibly escape?”

“That I don’t know,” Clayne admitted. “But he’s worked it out in his mind, that much I’m sure of. And he’s moving forward on it, whatever it is, as swiftly as he can. I’d bet my breakfast on that.”

“Then I believe you,” Nicole laughed. But almost instantly she was sober again. “If that’s true, then—”

“When did it turn?” the Major cut in. “Can you remember which day you first sensed the change?”

Clayne wrinkled his brow in thought. “Definitely by last Monday, maybe a day or so sooner. I wasn’t sure at first what it was, but that’s when it started.”

“All right,” the Major responded. “Clayne, I know you’ve been on shift all night, so you go home and get some rest. Travis, I want you and Nicole to go back two weeks. Make a careful analysis of his movements every minute since then. Cross-check every item that forms a pattern, every action that seems even the tiniest bit out of the ordinary. Use the computer to check anything that catches your eye.”

He stood up. “We’ll meet in my office at six tonight and decide then what to do about this difficult young man.”

Chapter 14

The office of the Major was a direct extension of himself, Nicole decided as she looked around. It was her first entry into the inner suite of offices that housed the chief executive officers of the Guardians, and she was a little awed by it. The rich, lustrous walnut paneling on two of the walls was so highly polished that she could see her own reflection in it. Bookshelves completely filled with books lined two of the walls clear to the ceiling, and they were arranged so that each shelf had books of the same height.

She glanced at her wrist computer. It was two minutes after six, which surprised her a little. The Major was renowned for being punctual almost to the second. She shrugged and turned to examine the desk, whose top gleamed like polished glass. The only things on the entire expanse were a gold desk set and a picture of the Major’s family—his wife, four children, their husbands and wives, and his twelve grandchildren. The twin pens of the desk set framed a small, gold plaque on which were engraved three lines, and Nicole leaned forward and read it upside down:

To Curtis Major Denison

For service beyond our highest expectations

The United States Air Force Cybernetics Research Team

Nicole sat back just as the door opened, and she jumped guiltily, but it was only his secretary, an older woman with her hair pulled up into a bun at the crown of her head.

“The Major just called, Miss Lambert,” she said. “He and Captain Oakes are on their way up. They’ll be here in a moment.”

“Thank you.” Nicole opened her file and began studying the computer readout again.

The door opened again, and she stood up swiftly as the Major swept into the room with Travis close behind.

“Oh, don’t get up, Nicole,” the Major said with a wave of his hand as he moved behind the desk.

“Hi, hon.” Travis moved to her side and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

“I see,” the Major said with a smile. “It wasn’t me for whom you stood.” Before either of them could respond, his mind had left preliminary amenities. “No Clayne yet?” he asked.

As if on cue, a soft knock sounded on the door, and Clayne Robertson entered. “Good evening,” he rumbled.

“Ah, Clayne, you’re just in time.” The Major waved them all to chairs. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

He turned to Nicole. “Travis has shared your preliminary findings with me, but go over them quickly again for Clayne’s benefit. Travis and I have been checking a couple of items the computer search turned up, and we can add some information as you go along.”

He sat back and formed a steeple with his hands, a typical pose when he was thinking. Nicole opened her file and turned to Clayne. “Only four things seem out of the ordinary, really. There are typical patterns, such as visits with Dr. Cameron, walks in the park, movies—”

“He’s like a kid about movies,” Clayne broke in. “That and ice cream.”

“Well,” Nicole went on, “I checked the last two weeks, and four unusual things caught my eye. Or better, two patterns and two one-only items—a trip to the Nielsen Building and Lumber Company, and a trip with Clayne’s family to Glacier Park and Hungry Horse Dam.”

Clayne spoke up. “Both of those were with me. He said he wanted to see the park and the dam, so we made it a family outing. He seemed to really enjoy it, but he didn’t do anything strange. And I was with him when he went to the lumberyard. He bought a large redwood burl and a two-foot length of two-by-twelve board.”

“A redwood burl?” Nicole said.

“Yes. A burl is a knot in the wood. In redwood trees, some of them get huge. He paid a bundle for it, because the lumberyard can get them only occasionally from traders coming in from the West Coast.”

“What does he want with a knothole?” Nicole said.

“Not a knothole,” Travis said with a smile. “It’s the knot itself, a twisted, gnarled piece of wood where the branch once tied into the main trunk.”

“He wants to carve it,” Clayne added. “Once they’re shaped and polished, they’re very beautiful. In fact, he’s already working on it.”

The Major leaned forward. “What is he carving it with?”

“A set of woodcarving tools,” Travis answered. “I authorized Clayne to let him buy them.”

“Are they dangerous tools?”

Travis shook his head. “Not really. I mean, they’re sharp but not like a dagger or a butcher knife or something. He asked for permission to get them, and I agreed. He carved all the time in the village. He’s really quite good.”

That seemed to satisfy the Major, and he leaned back again. “Okay, Nicole, what about the two unusual patterns of behavior?”

“In the last two weeks he has suddenly started visiting the university library and also the Museum of Remembrance.”

“Travis and I were just checking those two things,” the Major said. “It’s very interesting. Travis, tell them what we found.”

“Well, he made his first visit to the library a week ago yesterday. He’s made four additional visits since, averaging about an hour to an hour and a half each.”

“Eric’s mentioned some novels he’s reading,” Clayne said

“True. He’s checked out six books, all of them novels, but—” Travis paused to give emphasis to his next sentence. “While he’s at the library, he has not been in the fiction section. According to the librarian, he spends most of his time in the psychology section, asking for books on the physiology of the brain.”

“Maybe it’s not significant that all of a sudden he has a great interest in the human mind.” The Major pulled a face. “But we find the coincidence of interest.”

“Okay,” Travis continued. “The Museum of Remembrance. He first visited it on his day off three weeks ago. His tracking report shows he wandered throughout the various rooms, spending roughly the same amount of time in each. A very normal first visit. But he returned last Monday. He spent over twenty minutes in the World War Two Room. He returned on Tuesday, on Friday, and again yesterday. In each instance he goes quickly through a room or two, probably to maintain the appearance of a normal visitor, then makes a beeline for the World War Two Room, where he spends up to half an hour.”

He let the words sink in for a moment. Then, obviously saving the best for last, he added, “And in every visit since the first, he has spent almost the entire time in front of one large display case.”

“Ah,” Clayne breathed softly. “And what does that case contain?”

“We were just there. Numerous items, but the most significant would be an M-1 rifle, a Thompson submachine gun, a bazooka, and three or four hand grenades.”

“But surely none of that stuff is still useful,” Nicole said with a frown. “I mean, are the hand grenades still live?”

“No, of course not,” said the Major, “but have you forgotten? Eric’s father was a leading chemist. They made their own explosives in the village.”

“And loaded their own ammunition,” Travis added.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes widening.

“But he’s implanted,” Clayne said, his brow furrowing as he worked through the information Travis had given them. “Even if he gets it, he can’t possibly use it against us. And why steal a rifle? He can get a hunting rifle at any sporting goods store. Or for that matter, why not take a stun gun from supply?”

“He can’t do either of those,” Travis responded, “because he knows we’re tracking his every movement. A visit to the museum is innocent enough, but if he walks into a store and buys a rifle, we’ve got him immediately.”

Clayne’s expression was still dubious. “I don’t know. It doesn’t quite fit. He’s smarter than that.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” the Major said. “If he’s so obsessed with breaking loose, who knows what twisted logic he’s laboring under.”

Silence prevailed in the office as each of them considered Eric Lloyd. Finally Travis spoke up. “So what now?”

“Good question,” the Major said. “Do we let him play it out and learn his lesson, or do we just assume now that we have failed with him, drop him to a Stage Three implantation, and send him to Serenity?”

“No,” Nicole blurted, and then flushed slightly at her vehemence. “Stage Three is so—” she paused, groping for a sufficient word. “So final.” She didn’t like Eric and his mocking arrogance, but to make him little more than a functioning vegetable? The thought made her shudder. “If we can’t use him in the Guardians, can’t he just be left at Stage Two?”

The Major was watching her, his eyes thoughtful.

“No, Nicole,” Travis said gently. “He’s at Stage Two now, and here we sit worrying about what he’s up to. Stage Two is obviously not enough for Eric.”

“Aren’t we jumping the gun a little?” Clayne mused, half to himself. “We’re basically acting on my hunch that he’s going to go for it, and it is only a hunch at this point. Let’s play it out. Knowing Eric, he may have to test the system once to really believe he has no options.”

“I agree,” said Travis. “We have got to prove to him that our option is the only way to escape implantation. Let’s allow him to bump his nose once, then if he doesn’t change…”

The Major nodded slowly, then turned to Nicole. “You’re his Monitor. What do you say?”

“I agree. If he weren’t implanted…But obviously he can’t do anything too drastic.”

“All right. That seems to be a consensus.” The Major leaned forward, his expression hardening. “But that doesn’t mean we just sit back and let him have a free hand. Nicole, I want a ‘tickle’ notice put into the tracking computer. Anytime he heads for either the library or the museum, I want that computer to start buzzing. Also if he heads for anyplace that has chemicals. Tell all the Monitors to call you immediately, day or night. Put a blow-up floor plan of both buildings in the tracking center so we can see exactly where he is when he’s inside either one.”

He turned to Travis. “Also, I want a TV camera put in the World War Two Room and a link-up to the screen in the Monitoring Center. Make it as inconspicuous as possible, but I want a clear shot of that one case.”

Clayne straightened and spoke. “Is access to the inside of the case difficult?”

“Well, yes and no,” Travis responded. “Since it’s a permanent display, the back is hinged across the bottom but clamped shut at the top. You’d need a screwdriver and about five minutes to undo the clamps.”

“Good. Mount the camera so we can see the back of the case. Travis, I want a twenty-four-hour monitor on his family. Anything suspicious there and I want to know instantly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Travis, call our electronics specialist. I want a tap put on his telephone and a microphone in his apartment.”

Travis stared at the Major, as did Clayne and Nicole.

“But sir,” Clayne blurted, “under the laws of Shalev, that’s illegal!”

“Except in a case of national emergency,” the Major said. “If Eric somehow escapes, he could threaten our whole system. Put one on Dr. Cameron’s phone and in his apartment too. If Eric is up to something, you can bet Cameron is also in on it.”

Travis took a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

The Major looked from one to the other. “All right. Is there anything else? What are we overlooking?”

Clayne stirred as if about to speak, then shook his head. When neither Travis or Nicole said anything, the Major stood up. “Then that does it. We’ll meet at nine o’clock every morning until the status changes one way or the other. Thank you.”

As the three of them moved out into the hall and down to the elevator, Travis put his arm around Nicole and smiled at her. Then, as he pushed the button for the elevator, he turned to Clayne. “Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t know. Something still doesn’t add up.”

“Do you really think the fox can outsmart this hound?”

Clayne considered that, then shook his head. “No. We’ve got him covered. There’s no way he can pull it off.”

“The real problem,” Nicole said, “is that the fox isn’t aware of just how smart the old hound on his tail really is.”

The elevator door opened and Travis and Nicole stepped in. For a moment Clayne stood and looked at Nicole without really seeing her. Then he too lumbered in, and the elevator dropped slightly with the additional weight. As the door closed, he turned and stared at the door.

“I think you’ve just hit on it, Nicole.”

“What?”

“That’s what’s troubling me. I think the fox knows exactly how smart we are, and it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. He’s too shrewd not to know we suspect him, but it doesn’t stop him. That’s the real question. Why doesn’t it?”

Chapter 15

“Let’s stop here,” Cliff said, slowing their leisurely pace along the pebbled path through the park and pointing to a bench. It was a beautiful summer’s evening, with the last of twilight lingering far past its expected stay.

As they sat down, Eric picked up a small pebble from the path and flipped it into the water.

“Okay,” Cliff said, “let’s hear it. And I’m warning you, I’ll be playing the part of a very skeptical critic. We’re not the first ones to ever try beating this, you know. I’ve now documented thirteen cases—and there are probably many more—where people have tried to break free of the Major’s little Utopia. Four are burned-out hulks—living bodies with no minds—and the rest are dead.”

“I know,” Eric said, “but I’ve got it all worked out.” Then he shook his head ruefully. “Except for one question.”

“All right, let’s hear your solution first, then the question.”

Eric took a deep breath, determined not to let his excitement show through. “We have two problems, as I see it. First, we have to get the implantation out, and second, we have to get the wrist computer off. Right?”

“Three problems,” Cliff corrected. “Have you forgotten that the wrist computer and the implantation chip are electronically interdependent? If you could break the band of the wrist computer—which you cannot do, because any pull automatically triggers the Punishment Mode. But if you could—”

“I can.”

“How?”

“I’m not going to break it. I’m going to cut it.”

Cliffs head jerked up, and he stared at Eric. “It can’t be done. As I told you before, the band is made of specially hardened steel. You’d need a saw with a very hard blade—which would probably be very hard on your arm—or special cutters. And we’ve already checked those. All are carefully controlled. You need a special permit to even touch one. With the Major monitoring your every movement, you won’t get within a mile of one.”

“I’ll get it off,” Eric said. “I’ll tell you how in a minute. So go on with my third problem.”

“We went through all this before. The wrist computer, if cut, triggers the implantation. The implantation, if removed, triggers the Punishment Mode in the wrist computer. Either or both are fatal.” He sighed. “Eric, the third problem is the problem. The other two are irrelevant until you solve it. Every one of the nine who were killed was killed in one of those two ways. No, you’ve got to give the Major and Dr. Gould credit. They have devised a very effective, interlocking system.”

“True, and that’s what’s been absolutely stumping me. But I’ve worked it out.”

“How?”

“Remove both of them at precisely the same instant.”

Cliff stared at him, disbelieving.

“If you have heavy-duty bolt cutters, you can do it. Have the incision in the neck already made, and don’t even touch the chip until the cutters are in place. Then simply yank the implantation out at the exact moment you cut the other, and all you have is a very clever interlocking system sizzling in thin air. Right?”

Cliff shook his head slowly. “Your timing would have to be absolutely precise. A second or two off and…It’s very dangerous.”

“Dangerous yes, but impossible? No!”

Cliffs eyes were narrowed in deep concentration, and for a moment he started to nod, then suddenly he shook his head. “It’s a brilliant plan, except for one tiny item.”

“What?”

“Who’s going to perform these two simultaneous maneuvers with such perfect timing?”

Eric smiled, fully enjoying the fact that he had already anticipated this question. “If you’ll teach me a few fundamentals of minor surgery, I’ll take yours out, you take mine. Fair enough?”

Cliff sighed, the disappointment drawing the corners of his mouth down sharply. “And have you forgotten that we are implanted? Illegal removal of an implantation is a capital offense. As much as I hate this thing—” he touched the back of his neck in disgust, “how steady do you think my hands will be with the chip sending jolts of electricity into my brain every time I think about what we’re doing?”

He stood up, angry that he had let his hopes rise. “Steady hands! I’ll be lucky to stay on my feet. Sorry, Eric, but I’ve never operated from a prone position before.”

“Okay. Now you’ve come to my question.”

“Great!” Cliff grunted irritably, “and since the whole plan depends on that one question, why don’t we just wait until then to work it out.”

“I know, I know. But I know there’s a solution. I’m on the verge of it, but I need your help to break through.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Let me read something to you. This is from a book on positive thinking.”

“Come on, Eric! Face reality. We need more than positive thinking to come out of this.”

“Will you just listen?” Eric said patiently, smoothing the paper out across his knee.

Cliff sat back down on the bench wearily. “Why not?”

Eric took a breath and plunged in. “‘Man’s brain and nervous system is a remarkably engineered, interwoven system. Man is the only known creature with an imagination. A person’s imagination has a very direct and visible effect on his nervous system. Outside reality is not nearly as important in determining man’s reaction to things as what he thinks about that reality. A human being acts not so much according to what reality is as he does on the basis of how he perceives that reality. Or, to put it another way, his body reacts according to what he believes reality is.’”

Eric looked up, but Cliffs expression was impassive, unmoved. So he hurried on. “‘For example, in a horror movie, consciously the person knows that reality is simply moving images projected on a screen. He knows that what he is seeing is not real, but his imagination quickly begins to accept it as real, and his central nervous system reacts as though it was reality. He starts to sweat, his heart races, he grips the edge of his chair. It becomes real to him.’”

Eric looked up, then rushed on. “Note this,” he said eagerly. “‘Your nervous system does not distinguish between a real and an imagined experience. What person has not awakened in the middle of the night with pounding heart or cold with fear? A dream is a totally fictional experience, but if the mind believes it is real, the body will react accordingly.’”

He stopped, pleased to see that he had now captured Cliffs attention and erased the skeptical look from his face. “Hasn’t that happened to you, where you had a dream trigger a pain response?”

When Cliff nodded slowly, Eric raced on.

“So have I! That has got to be a key. If somehow we could make your mind believe—just even for five minutes—that operating on me is not wrong. Then once mine was out, I could do yours with no problem.”

Cliff was staring at the water, deep in concentration.

“But how? That’s where I’m stumped.”

Suddenly Cliff jerked up. “Hypnosis!” He nearly shouted it, then quickly looked around and lowered his voice to an excited whisper. “Hypnosis would have the same effect.”

“Hypnosis?”

“Yes, that’s it! Of course that’s it!” He grabbed Eric’s arm. “Listen. When people are placed under a hypnotic trance, they react in remarkable ways, do incredible things. It’s nothing mysterious or supernatural, it’s merely that the hypnotist is able to convince the person to believe differently about himself. He leads the subject to believe whatever the hypnotist says is true!”

Eric leaped to his feet. “Do you mean—”

But Cliff was too excited for interruptions. “I took a hypnosis class in medical school. We watched a dentist do a root canal without anesthesia. The patient was conscious the whole time and felt no pain or discomfort. Why? Because his mind believed there was no pain.”

“That’s it! That’s our answer. Can you teach me how to hypnotize you?”

For a long moment, Cliff was silent. Then finally he shook his head. “I don’t know. Somehow the whole subject left me a little nervous. I always felt we were toying with powers we didn’t fully understand, so I never used it in my practice. It’s been decades since I’ve tried to do it. But…” Again he was deep in thought. “We don’t need some deep and total trance, just enough to let me take your implantation out without feeling guilt.”

“Once mine is out, we’ll have to work fast, because our Guardian angels will know it immediately. But we can do it! I know we can!”

“Let’s walk.” Cliff stood and put his hand on Eric’s elbow. For several minutes they strolled quietly through the thinning crowds in the park while he challenged Eric with questions, and in turn he listened while Eric challenged his objections. Finally he fell silent, deep in thought.

“How soon?” he suddenly demanded.

“As soon as you can train me.”

“We’ll need three or four training sessions to be sure. Also, I’ve got to show you how to make the incision and stitch it up again.”

“That’s fine. I think it will take me about a week to get what I need to cut the wrist computers.”

“What?”

“A set of bolt cutters used by Navy frogmen in World War Two. There’s a set in the Museum of Remembrance that I can get to.”

There was another long silence. Then, “Are they still tracking your movements?”

“Yes. Twenty-four hours a day. But at least Clayne is no longer living with me. That gives me some breathing room.”

“How can you get the cutters without them knowing?”

“I can’t.”

Cliff’s head spun around, as Eric went on.

“Remember Sam Gillespie’s magic show that he always did for Halloween?”

“Yes.”

“Well, as a teenager I asked him one day how he did it. He would never tell me, but he finally said, ‘The art of the magician is to make the eye look where you want it to look.’ That’s what I plan to do. I’m carving a duplicate set of cutters to put back in the case. The tricky part will be getting the guards to look where I want them to while I make the change.”

“That’s no problem,” Cliff grumbled, “it’s the only tricky phase of the whole operation. Everything else is a piece of cake.”

“Agreed,” Eric said. “Can you get the necessary instruments and stuff?”

“Yes. No problem. Do you want some help?”

Eric looked up in surprise. “Help?”

Cliff nodded.

“Who?”

“Dr. Chester Abernathy. He is one of the surgeons on the implantation team with Dr. Gould. As a matter of fact, he assisted with your family.”

“And you want him?”

“I think he’ll come if we ask him. He absolutely loathes the whole system, and after doing this last batch of implantations from the village, he refused to do any more. Gould blackballed him out of surgery because of it, and he works in the emergency room now, stitching up minor cuts and dispensing aspirin.”

Eric’s face softened, but his expression was still dubious. “It would be taking a tremendous risk just to ask him.”

“I don’t think so. I’m ninety-nine percent sure of him. I’m not talking about doing it at the same time as we do you and me. But if we pull it off, we’d do him next. Once we’re free, we could use a drug on the others to avoid triggering their guilt responses. Sodium Pentothal would be perfect. Relieve their anxieties enough to perform the surgery.”

“How long after us would you do it? We’ll have to move fast to get to Mom and the girls. And would he come with us back to the valley?”

Cliff stopped and turned to face Eric. “I’ve been thinking a great deal about afterwards. I don’t think we ought to head for Serenity the minute we are free.”

“What?”

“I mean, I don’t think we ought to get your family and go back to the valley.”

Now it was Eric’s turn to stare. It was nearly full dark now, and they had moved just out of the circle of light from an overhead lamp post. Cliff’s eyes were hidden in the shadows, but Eric could see that his mouth was drawn into a hard line. “Eric,” he finally said, so softly that Eric stepped closer to hear him, “we can’t just walk away from all this. It isn’t enough for us to get free, or even to get your family free.”

“What do you mean, it isn’t enough. What isn’t enough?”

Cliff had never been much of a frivolous man or given to a great deal of levity, but Eric had never felt the depth of gravity that he sensed now, as Cliff reached out and gripped his arm.

“Eric, your father was a deeply religious man. He believed in God, and he tried to bring his life into conformance with that belief. As you know, when he began forming a group to survive the coming war, he selected men who were like him in that respect. They were good men, honest men, and for the most part, religious men like himself.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Many people wondered why he chose me.” He shook his head. “I wondered why he chose me.”

“But you’ve always gone to church, Cliff.”

“Once we were in the valley that was true, but before then I didn’t have much patience with organized religion. There was too much promise, too much rhetoric, too much running after the ways of the world trying to keep people happy, with little or no attention paid to true religion. I went to several churches when I was younger, but finally gave it up. But anyway, it surprised me that your father would choose me under those conditions.”

He released Eric’s arm, and dropped his hand to his side. “But I think I know now why he did.”

“Why?”

“Because I think he sensed that while I was not outwardly religious, I do feel deeply about good and evil.”

He shrugged, obviously embarrassed to be talking about himself so openly, then looked up at the stars for a long moment. “Ironically enough, though it would surprise some of my former associates to hear me say so, I believe in God. And I also believe in a devil. Oh, not in the sense of some horrible demon who peeks into windows to frighten little children, who wears a red suit and has a forked tail. No, I picture him to be much like us, only brilliant, cunning, enormously talented, and totally dedicated to evil. I guess I’m like C. S. Lewis in that regard. Maybe Satan is a fallen angel who now, knowing that he can never succeed in dethroning God, devotes every thought, turns every purpose to frustrating God’s will for us.”

Once again he stopped, peering into Eric’s face with intense earnestness. “So what has Satan and evil got to do with all this in Shalev? Normally we think of good men and bad men in classical, almost Hollywood terms. The good guys wear badges or calvary uniforms or Superman capes, while the bad guys are dark, with twisted faces, hiding a perpetual sneer behind a bandana or a gun.

“But let me tell you something I’ve learned from seventy years in this old life. Most of the truly evil men in the world do not wear masks or carry guns and knives or slink through the back alleys of the world. They wear custom-made business suits and fifty-dollar ties and meet around polished conference tables.”

“Like C. Major Denison?” Eric asked softly, beginning to understand.

“Precisely! And the fact that he has created much that is good and eliminated much that is bad in no way lessens the fact that he’s a deeply evil man. Even God, with all his incredibly majestic power and infinite knowledge, chooses not to force men to be good. And the reason is clear. When man has no choice but to do good, there’s no point in calling him moral. Men cannot be good without making that choice themselves. They can be made to act in good ways, but they cannot be good.”

He shook his head wearily. “The Major can spout on forever with his high-sounding motives, but this society is as evil as any that has ever stood upon the face of the earth. And we can’t just walk away and leave it intact, to prey upon others. We must try and bring it down.”

“And you really think we can do that, Cliff?”

“I don’t know. I think a lot of other people in this city are just like Chester Abernathy. Most have accepted what is because the alternative carries too much risk. But a lot of people would join us in a moment if we can show them we’ve beaten the system. We’ll have to pick them carefully at first—not only to protect ourselves, but to find those who can be of the greatest help to us.”

“But we’ve got to get my family free.”

“Your family is the family of man, and you can’t just abandon that larger family.”

“But what about Mother and Stephanie and—”

“They must be freed too, but—” Cliff’s hand came up and rubbed at his eyes. “But Eric, while they may be more important to you and me, in the greater perspective they are no more nor no less important than the seventy thousand slaves living around us.” He waved his hand. “Or the hundred and thirty thousand others living out their lives of programmed existence in the Alliance of Four Cities.”

The iron quietness in Cliffs voice shook Eric deeply. “Do you know what you’re asking of me?” he whispered, his eyes stricken.

Cliff sighed. “And of me. Your father and your family are the only family I’ve ever had. But Eric, if we free the others, we’ll free Madeline and the children. If we don’t free them, freeing the four who mean the most to us will never justify us before God or our fellow beings.”

“The longer the implantations are in, the more permanent the conditioning will be,” Eric said. “I can’t just forget them.”

“We won’t forget them. But we can’t just forget the others either.”

For almost a full minute, Eric stared out into the darkness, his fist clenching and unclenching. “Can we do it, Cliff? Can we pull all of this off?”

“I don’t know. We face terrible risks, tremendous obstacles. But the greater question is, can we not try and ever face ourselves as men again?”

Chapter 16

Nicole picked up the phone, expecting that her dinner engagement with Travis was about to be cancelled. “Yes, this is Nicole.”

It was Shirley Ferguson, the afternoon tracking monitor who had taken over for Nicole at four o’clock.

“Nicole, cancel the alert. Eric isn’t headed for the Museum of Remembrance.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. When he entered Alliance Square, we assumed that was his destination, but actually he’s coming here.”

She frowned. “To Central Control?”

“Yes. He’ll be inside the building in another minute or two. Which surprises me a little. Isn’t this his day off?”

“Yes, it is. Maybe he left something he needs.” Nicole was too relieved to really care. As long as he wasn’t headed for the museum, he could roller-skate down the hallways of Central Control for all she cared. “Thanks, Shirley. Keep an eye on him just in case.”

As she dropped the phone back onto its cradle, she thought about Eric for a moment. Then she returned to her paperwork.

A few minutes later a knock sounded at the door, and she looked up, a little surprised. She and Travis were supposed to work until five, and it was still only twelve minutes to.

She brushed at her hair quickly with her hands and swept the papers into the top drawer of her desk. “Come in,” she called.

The smile of welcome froze on her face as the door opened and Eric stepped inside. He was dressed casually, in jeans, an opennecked knit sports shirt, and tennis shoes. A large, odd-shaped package wrapped in brown paper was tucked under one arm.

“Hello, Nicole.”

She managed to recover and keep her composure. “Hello, Eric. This is a surprise.”

He closed the door, moved to the chair in front of her desk, and sat down. “You mean nobody is watching me on Big Mama?” he said, teasing her gently.

“Well, I—I mean I’m surprised that you’re here to see me. What can I do for you?”

He lifted the package and set it carefully on her desk. “Well, believe it or not, I’m here on a mission of peace.”

“Oh?”

“During the past weeks I’ve decided something about you.”

“What?”

“You don’t particularly enjoy this, do you.”

She started at that, and gave him a long, searching look. “I enjoy my work,” she finally said.

“Oh, I know that. But being my electronic supervisor—you don’t particularly enjoy that, do you. Or the thought of having to recommend me for Stage Three implantation if I don’t make it?”

She dropped her eyes, unable, in her surprise, to meet his. The Major’s threat of Stage Three implantation was supposed to be a secret. How had he found out?

“You even find the whole idea of implantation distasteful, don’t you.”

“I…”

“You promised me once that you’d always be totally honest with me,” he said softly. “Remember?”

“I—yes, I’ll have to admit, I don’t like some things about this particular assignment. And I’ve never been overly thrilled with implantation.”

“I thought so.”

“But make no mistake, Eric Lloyd. If you aren’t smart enough to accept the way things are, I’ll recommend whatever is necessary. Please believe me on that.”

“Oh, I do. And I suppose in some ways that still raises my hackles a little. But not as much as it would if you enjoyed doing it.”

Her face softened. “No, I don’t relish the task. I can honestly say that. Not for you or anyone else. So give in,” she pleaded, leaning forward. “You can’t win. Don’t make me recommend anything but removal of the implantation.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, and she thought she sensed sudden rebellion in them, but they were as fathomless as the gray mists that shroud Flathead Lake during a winter storm. Then suddenly they were filled with wide innocence. “Give in? What makes you think I haven’t already?”

Before she could answer, he leaned forward quickly and pushed the package toward her. “I’ve been working on a project in my free time. I’d like you to have it.”

Nicole stared at him, completely disarmed by the surprise move.

“Go ahead,” he said. “It’s not a bomb.”

She waved that aside, embarrassed. “I know that, it’s just that—” She stopped and looked at the package.

“I thought about giving it to Clayne, but decided this would be a way to tell you I’m sorry I happened to come along and put you in a situation you’d rather not be in.” He stood up, suddenly anxious to go. “I suppose also that I have a bit of a selfish motive as well. I hope it’ll help you understand why I’ve made it so difficult for you.”

He stepped to the door and opened it.

“Eric, wait! Let me see what it is.”

He shook his head. “I’ve got to get some things out of my locker. Good-bye, Nicky. Take care.” He flashed her a quick smile, tinged with sadness, and then he was gone.

For a long moment she stared at the door. Then she turned to the package. Opening the drawer of her desk, she took out a pair of scissors and snipped the twine. The brown wrapping paper slipped partially off, and she pulled it away. She stared for a moment, then slowly set the scissors down.

Travis had said Eric was good at woodcarving, which made him a master of understatement. From the redwood burl, using its natural shape and grain, Eric had carved an American bald eagle, suspended in flight, its wings nearly forming a V. For a moment she thought he had caught it in the moment of descent, just before it landed on the tree limb that formed the base for the sculpture. But the balance was off. The bird was almost tumbling over backwards, its neck bowed grotesquely.

Puzzled, she leaned forward and turned the piece slightly. And then she saw why. The eagle was not landing but taking off—or more correctly, trying to take off—in flight. But one leg was shackled to the limb with a heavy chain, and the eagle was clawing at the air with wings and talons, trying to break free. Eric had left the detail rough and the surface unpolished, which only added to the riveting force of the piece.

Something happened inside her as she stared at the carving. A deep revulsion welled up, a revulsion focused on the chain that bound this wild creature, born to ride the wind. A small, rectangular area smoothed into the rough wood, with numbers on it, caught her eye. She pulled it closer, not understanding. Six numbers had been left raised in the smoother area. Then suddenly she knew. Four-four-five-five-one-two. It was Eric’s computer file number.

For some unaccountable reason, Nicole was deeply stirred. She was looking not just at the artist’s signature, but at the title of the piece. And for the first time, she understood Eric Lloyd and what was driving him.

Several minutes later, a soft knock on the door interrupted her thoughts, forcing her attention away from the carving on her desk. “Come in,” she called.

“Hi, honey,” Travis said, as he stepped through the door. “Are you ready?” He stopped as he saw her uniform. Then his eyes dropped to the desk. “Hey, what’s this?”

Nicole glanced quickly at the statue, then looked up. “Eric brought it to me a few minutes ago.”

“Well, well,” Travis said, moving closer. He picked it up and turned it over slowly in his hands. “It’s beautiful.”

“He’s going, Travis.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Yes. In his own way.”

“Well, we figured that.”

“Tonight, Travis.”

He set the carving down slowly. “Tonight? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. You’d better call the Major.”

He looked dubious, torn for a moment, and then the phone rang. Nicole picked it up, then nodded. “Yes, he’s right here.”

“This is Captain Oakes.”

The dubious look disappeared instantly as a wave first of surprise, then of anger, clouded Travis’s face. “Yes, thank you. We’ll be right down.”

He slammed the phone down. “It’s Eric. He just went inside the Museum of Remembrance.”

From his vantage point near the windows on the second floor of the Museum of Remembrance, Eric spotted Clayne Robertson’s huge figure hurrying across the quad toward him. Eric smiled grimly. If he hadn’t been watching, he’d never have seen him. And it made his throat constrict for a moment. If Clayne came in after him, it would be blown. But Clayne didn’t come into the museum. He slipped in behind a large blue spruce tree near the front entrance, and Eric saw him take out a walkie-talkie and speak into it quickly.

He turned away from the window, a look of triumph on his face. They’ve taken the bait!

Glancing at his wrist computer, Eric patted the hard object tucked in underneath his belt. It was 5:27. The loose-fitting shirt had been chosen specifically to hide his second and far more important piece of sculpture. He moved past the War Rooms at a leisurely pace, checking to make sure he was alone. Once he was sure, he ducked into the custodial closet and pulled the door closed behind him. Reaching high up on the top shelf, he groped in the dark behind the cans and bottles, then gave a little grunt of satisfaction as his fingers closed on the screwdriver he had hidden there three days earlier. Burrowing behind a stack of dirty linen, just in case the museum’s caretaker felt impelled to check every room, he settled down to wait, trying to ignore the dull pain now hammering steadily in his stomach. With a conscious effort he pulled his mind away from the next few minutes and what he had to do, for he knew that was betraying him, and would only cause the pain to increase until it wracked his whole body. He began to whistle softly, thinking of summer days spent in the mountains around the valley. Today was August first, he suddenly remembered. A good day for starting something new.

“Central Control?”

Clayne’s voice was almost a whisper as it came through the speaker in the Monitoring Room. Travis, the Major, and Nicole all looked up, but it was Travis who answered. “Yes?”

“The caretaker of the museum is just now leaving. He’s locked the door.”

“Roger,” Travis responded, lowering his own voice. He glanced at the monitoring screen. “Eric is still sitting tight in the janitor’s closet.” He glanced up at the clock. “But he’ll have to move pretty soon. The cleaning crew starts arriving by 6:30. That gives him only forty-five minutes.”

“There he goes,” Nicole called.

“He’s moving, Clayne. Just to be sure, from this point on we’ll communicate with you via your wrist computer. A window may be open, and he’ll be in the front of the building directly over you.”

“Ten-four.”

Travis turned to Shirley Ferguson. “Okay, Shirley. Don’t wait for our command. Just keep Clayne posted with a running commentary into his wrist computer. And for heaven’s sake, don’t make it buzz first.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s moving toward the War Rooms,” Nicole said, watching the blip of light on the enlarged plan of the museum’s second floor.

“Okay,” the Major commanded. “Activate the camera.”

The large screen sprang into life as Nicole flipped a switch. She recognized the World War Two room almost immediately. The back wall, covered with a huge enlargement of Pearl Harbor and the battleship Arizona billowing clouds of dark smoke filled the screen. She pushed some buttons and zoomed the lens in on the nearest display case.

“Can he see the camera?” the Major asked.

“No, not unless he looks closely,” Travis responded. “It’s hidden in a heating vent, but we had to make a small hole for the lens.”

“He’s been in that room twice since it was installed,” Nicole added. “He hasn’t ever given any hint that he’s seen it.”

“Here he comes,” Shirley called, watching the board. Then she typed rapidly on her terminal to keep Clayne informed.

“Look,” Travis said, pointing. “He’s got a screwdriver in his hand.”

“Well, you were exactly right, Nicole,” the Major said with a trace of sadness. “I was half hoping you weren’t.”

“So was I,” she answered softly.

“Keep me posted on the readings from his implantation,” he commanded, then turned to watch.

On the screen they saw Eric pause for a moment at the entrance to the War Room, then move swiftly to the case.

“Pain response at the point-zero-four level,” Nicole called.

“Ah,” Travis said, “so he’s already starting to feel it. And he hasn’t even started on the case yet.”

“Pain response at point-zero-eight-five,” Nicole intoned as Eric knelt down next to the case and took a screwdriver from his pocket. “Going up—point-zero-nine-six.”

“Zero-nine-six!” the Major echoed. “How can he stand it?”

“Look!” Travis was nearly shouting as he pointed at the screen. “You can see him trembling. Look at his hands.”

Nicole looked, then glanced away quickly. “Pain level holding steady,” she said, staring at the computer console.

Suddenly Eric leaped to his feet, took one lurching step away from the case, then doubled over, retching violently.

“That’s more like it,” the Major exulted. “Did he really think he could ignore his implantation?”

“Pain response dropping, point-zero-six-two.” She watched as Eric slowly straightened. Give it up! she urged him silently, but he turned slowly and lifted the screwdriver again. “Pain level climbing again.”

“If he can override those feelings,” the Major said, a little awed by the sight of the figure kneeling down again at the back of the display case, “then we’ve got to implant him at a Stage Three level immediately.”

“Well,” Travis said, “he’s not giving up. There goes the last clamp. In a moment we’ll know what he’s got his eye on.”

“He just jumped to point-two-five milliamps,” Nicole said.

“That’s incredible!” the Major exclaimed. “Look at him. He can barely work the screwdriver, he’s shaking so badly.”

“He’s got the back free!” Shirley cried, momentarily forgetting that she was Clayne’s eyes and ears.

“Pain level climbing sharply,” Nicole said. “Point-six-two. Point-eight-eight. Now it’s steadying.”

“He’s fighting for control.” Travis’s voice was tinged with awe. “I can’t believe he can endure that and just stand there.”

Nicole thought of an eagle clawing the air for its freedom, and dropped her eyes to the monitor, unable to watch any longer. The tension was as tangible as a steel cable stretched to the breaking point.

“He’s reaching inside the case.”

“What’s he going for?”

“I can’t tell with his back to us.”

“Point-eight-four,” Nicole said in a hoarse whisper. “Pointnine-two. One-point-four!”

“That’s impossible!” Travis shouted. “How can he still be on his feet?”

“Blackout!” Nicole cried. She looked up just in time to see Eric’s knees buckle as he toppled forward across the case. His fingers clutched desperately at the top of the glass, but he couldn’t find a grip, and he slipped slowly to the floor.

“Look!” Travis said. “It was the M-1 rifle he was after.” The muzzle of the rifle projected out of the back of the case about six inches.

“Well, he didn’t get it,” the Major murmured, obviously pleased.

“What now?” Nicole asked. “Shall we send Clayne in to get him?”

“No,” the Major said quickly. “No, he should come out of it in a moment or two. Let’s see what happens.”

When Eric finally stirred and got slowly to his feet, he looked like a toy robot whose battery had run down. His head hung down, and his movements were jerky and trancelike. The four of them watched in silence as he made an attempt to push the rifle back into place, then gave up and let the screwdriver slip out of his hand and bounce noisily on the floor.

He turned so he was half facing the camera, then shuffled slowly out of the room.

“Tell Clayne he’s coming out,” Travis said to Shirley. He turned to watch the flashing light on Nicole’s monitoring screen as she flipped a switch, and the screen that had carried the television signal went dark. The Major also turned in his chair to watch Eric’s slow progress toward the front door of the museum.

“Do you want me to have Clayne pick him up?” Travis asked.

“Wait a minute,” Nicole said. “He’s stopped again.”

“He’s near the front door.” Travis pointed to the floor plan superimposed on her screen.

“That’s a pay phone there,” Nicole said, touching a small square on the grid plan. “He’s stopped at the telephone.”

“Patch us into Dr. Cameron’s phone,” the Major commanded. “Quickly!”

Nicole typed a command on her keyboard, then leaned over to the control panel and flipped a switch. For a brief moment a dull hum came over the speaker, and then a click sounded, followed by a sharp buzz and then another.

“You guessed it,” Travis whispered, as though he could be heard over the phone line. “He’s calling Dr. Cameron.”

“Shhh!” the Major commanded.

Another click popped, and then a deep voice spoke. “Hello.”

“Cliff?”

“Eric? Is that you?”

“I couldn’t do it, Cliff.” His voice held an infinite weariness.

“I was afraid of that. I tried to tell you.”

“I got into the case, but I couldn’t get the rifle.”

“Eric, it’s okay.”

“I couldn’t get it out, Cliff.”

“Did you put everything back?”

“I didn’t get it.”

“I know, Eric,” the deep voice said patiently. “But did you leave things like they were, so they won’t know?”

“I—I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t get it.”

“Eric, go home. You sound terrible.”

“It was terrible, Cliff. So much pain—”

“Look,” Cliff said, “why don’t you come over here for a while. We’ll watch some television.”

“No. I’ll just walk.”

“Eric!” The voice grew sharp. “Stay there. I’ll be right over for you.”

A deep sigh sounded over the line, then finally Eric replied. “All right.”

“Stay at the front entrance.” He paused, then, “Eric, it’s not the end of everything. I told you we couldn’t beat the system.”

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t believe you.”

“Okay, stay put, and I’ll be there in five minutes.”

The speaker clicked, and the hum sounded again. Travis switched it off.

The Major looked at Shirley. “Tell Clayne to wait until they’re gone. I want to let Eric go with Dr. Cameron, see what they say. Tell Clayne to go in and check the case to make sure nothing is missing once Eric is clear. If it checks out, tell him to come back here.”

He stood up. “Nicole, you and Shirley continue to monitor Eric. If they don’t go to Cameron’s place, or there is anything out of the ordinary—anything—call me immediately. Otherwise, I want you to patch the bugging device in Cameron’s apartment into my office. Travis and I will listen to it there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Nicole—”

“Yes, sir?”

“A job well done, Nicole. Thanks to you, we caught him in time.”

“So what now?” she asked, suddenly feeling as weary as Eric.

He shook his head sadly. “We don’t have any choice. He’s an incredibly brave young man, but he’s too resourceful, too dangerous. We’re not ever going to feel safe with him running around uncontrolled.”

“But he’s already implanted.”

“Yes, and obviously Stage Two is not sufficient. We’ll let him and Dr. Cameron have their little talk, see what they plan next. Then we’ll pick them up and take them in for Stage Three.”

He sighed deeply. “Such a waste. Such a tragic waste.”

Nicole nodded, staring numbly at the monitoring screen as a point of light moved slowly across the streets of Shalev.

Chapter 17

When Cliff’s car drove up the circular driveway, Eric stood up, threw one last pebble in the Fountain of Peace that stood in front of the museum, and moved slowly to the curb, his head down.

Cliff leaned over and opened Eric’s door, then laid his hand on his shoulder as he got in. Eric let his head drop until it almost touched his chest. Nor did he raise it again when he spoke. “Clayne’s in the shrubbery directly off to our right.”

“Okay,” Cliff murmured.

“Let’s wait a moment or two before we leave,” Eric said in a low voice, “but he can’t hear us over the noise of the fountain.” He stifled a grin. “Give me some solicitous comfort to help me deal with my disastrous failure.”

Cliff leaned forward, his face earnest. “So you got them?”

“I got them!”

“You sounded so convincing on the phone, I was afraid you really had failed.”

Eric shook his head and pushed Cliff’s hand away from his shoulder, as though in anger, but his eyes were bright with excitement. “I wasn’t faking the shakiness in my voice.”

Straightening back into his own seat, Cliff started the car moving. “Do you think Clayne’ll follow us?”

“I don’t think so. He walked here across the quad from Central Control, but let’s take it slow and easy to your place just in case.”

They drove in silence until they were clear of Alliance Square. Eric glanced quickly out the back window, then unbuttoned his shirt and extracted the set of heavy bolt cutters he had stuffed in his belt.

“So there they are,” Cliff said.

“Those are the babies. Used by Navy frogmen to cut through submarine netting, shore defenses—you name it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Well, I had some minimal pain going in and while I was waiting, but I forced myself to think of other things. But once I started on the case, it was pretty bad. When I had the back off and made the switch, I could feel myself going. I fought it desperately, keeping my back to them while I got these under my shirt. But suddenly I lost control. The last thing I remember as I blacked out was saying to myself, ‘Fall on your stomach! Fall on your stomach!’ I could picture me lying there on my back in front of that hidden camera with this conspicuous bulge under my shirt.”

“Are you sure they didn’t see you take them?”

“No, I’m not positive, but nearly so. But if they had seen me take them, I think Clayne would’ve confronted me as I came out. Remember the magician’s trick—make them look where you want them to? I pulled the M-1 rifle partly out so they could see it once I turned around.”

“I hate to sound like the worried mother, but how much chance is there they’ll spot the phony cutters?”

Eric shrugged. “I’ve never carved anything with so much care before in my life. And I think the job I did with the modeling paints was pretty fair too. If this set and the phony cutters were side by side, you’d spot the difference in a minute, but they aren’t. I was very careful to place the phony cutters in the exact position as these were in.”

“Good.”

And then suddenly Eric’s excitement boiled over. “We’re going to pull it off, Cliff!” he shouted exuberantly.

Cliff nodded. “I think you’re right, but we’ve got a hairy hour yet to go.”

“Yes, I know.” And with that they both fell silent for the rest of the way.

Eric stopped outside the apartment door, glanced quickly up and down the hallway, then turned to Cliff. “Dr. Cameron?”

“Yes.” His voice was dull, his eyes disinterested, his shoulders slightly stooped.

“From this point on, you will obey only written commands. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“You will take only written commands until you are told to wake up. At that time you will be totally awake. You will not remember what you have done. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

Eric took a deep breath, pushing aside the pain that was back again now, his heart pounding. If they were waiting for them inside—He breathed a great sigh as he opened the door and saw that the apartment was empty. Cliff had been in such a high state of excitement when they reached the carport behind his apartment building that it had taken Eric nearly five minutes longer than they had planned to settle him down enough to go under. Eric was keenly aware that even though they had “failed,” the Major and Travis couldn’t let this go. Now time was everything.

He shut and locked the door, stepped quickly to the coffee table, and picked up the note pad Cliff had left there. Cliff had printed out all of the commands in large block letters.

Eric turned around and shoved the first one under Cliffs nose. Cliff began to speak loudly, reading as he was told. “Eric, sit down. I’ll turn on the television. I’ll get some dinner. You sit here and relax.”

Eric winced. Cliff had spoken slowly, loudly, and in a monotone, like a first grader painfully sounding out each word. If Cliff’s apartment had been bugged, as they suspected, Eric’s only hope was that they would assume Cliff was speaking to him like a child because of his condition.

In three quick steps, Eric moved to the television set and turned it on, letting the sound blare out through the apartment. Then, taking Cliff by the hand, he led him into the kitchen, opened a cupboard door, took out a pan, and banged it on the stove. He took the cutters out of his shirt and set them on the table where Cliff had laid out the surgical gloves, scalpel, suturing thread and needles, and syringes. His mind leaped ahead as he saw the things Cliff had pilfered from the hospital, and suddenly he was on his knees, gasping as ribbons of pain sliced through him like fire. Cliff watched him, curious but unmoved.

“Oh baby!” he whispered as it gradually subsided. “One more of those mistakes, and you’ll have the Major and his boys running here on the double. Think of the valley. Think of Becky. Think of anything!”

Breathing heavily, he picked up the nearest syringe and handed it to Cliff, then tore off the top page of the note pad and showed him the second message. YOU WILL GIVE ME THIS SHOT AT THE POINT WHERE MY FINGER IS TOUCHING. Eric lowered his head, touching the back of his neck.

Dutifully Cliff lifted his arms. Eric felt a sharp sting as the local anesthetic was injected under the skin. The pain in his chest and abdomen surged upward again, and he clutched at the chair as he tore off that sheet and held up the next command.

I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU A SHOT IN THE BACK OF YOUR NECK. YOU WILL NOT FEEL ANY PAIN.

Cliff offered not so much as a shrug. And he had no reaction at all when Eric stuck him with the needle.

But Eric was not impervious, and he had to drop onto one of the kitchen chairs, gasping for breath, his face a sheen of cold sweat. He had thought the preliminaries would be easy. What if he blacked out as he was supposed to cut the band? Cliff would go right ahead and yank out the implantation, and that would be it.

Eric shook his head impatiently. Adding worry to guilt would certainly not ease the pain. “It is not wrong,” he muttered fer vently. “Implantation is wrong. It’s good to take it out. What you are doing is not wrong!”

It helped a little, and he stood up again, feeling the time factor squeezing in on them. And all the time, Cliff stood beside him, watching him with a curious detachment while the television blared some inane musical variety show.

Eric took a deep breath, tapped the back of his neck, and grunted in satisfaction when he felt nothing. “Okay, I’m ready if you are,” he said to himself, and shoved the next note in front of the dull eyes. DR. CAMERON. THE OFFICIALS OF SHALEV HAVE DETERMINED THAT ERIC LLOYD’S IMPLANTATION IS TO BE REMOVED. PLEASE MAKE THE INCISION AND PREPARE TO REMOVE THE PLASTIC CHIP. DO NOT—WE REPEAT, DO NOT—REMOVE THE CHIP UNTIL YOU ARE INSTRUCTED TO DO SO.

Climbing quickly up on the table, Eric lay face down, grateful that he no longer had to stand, for his legs were trembling violently. Cliff put on the surgical gloves with maddening slowness, then moved slightly and leaned over his head. The scalpel flashed briefly, and then, a moment later, Cliff stepped back, and Eric saw the bright red of his fingers. He snatched up the note pad and tore off the next page.

DR. CAMERON. PREPARE TO TAKE OUT THE IMPLANTATION. YOU MUST YANK IT OUT SWIFTLY WHEN ERIC SAYS THE WORD THREE. DO NOT TAKE IT OUT UNTIL YOU HEAR HIM SAY THE WORD THREE.

Cliff nodded and stepped forward again.

As Eric picked up the bolt cutters, the ribbons of pain became rivers of molten lava coursing through his body. He jerked once in agony, almost knocking Cliffs hands away. Clenching his teeth against the pain, he inserted the band of the wrist computer into the jaws of the bolt cutter, ignoring the sudden warning buzz. Yellow flashes of light edged in around his vision, and he felt himself slipping away, blackness rushing toward him.

“One!” It was a hoarse gasp. “Two!”

He rose up and slammed down his full weight on the handles of the bolt cutters. “Three!” he shouted.

He heard a sharp snap and a brief, odd sensation at the back of his neck, but those impressions were instantly swept away with the sudden, total cessation of the pain, which left him gasping in amazement and relief. With one great sob of release, Eric collapsed back on the table, drawing breaths of air like a threshing machine gobbling up harvest wheat.

Finally he looked up. “We did it, Cliff!” he whispered exultantly. Cliff watched him steadily, holding the bloody black plastic chip in his fingers.

Eric tore off the next sheet on the pad and held it up. STITCH UP THE INCISION AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED, LIE FACE DOWN ON THE TABLE.

Cliff nodded, unconcerned, stepped forward, and picked up the needle and some suturing thread.

“We did it!” Eric whispered again, hardly able to fathom the total absence of pain. It provided a pleasure more exquisite than anything he had ever known. He slapped the table with his fist, careful not to move his head. “We did it!” he said again in a joyous whisper of triumph.

Nicole gave a sideward glance at the monitoring screen, stared for a long moment at the blinking white light and the small sentence across the bottom of the screen, TRACKING ERIC KARL LLOYD, &num;445512, then leaned back and closed her eyes. The aspirin she had taken immediately after Travis and the Major had left had not yet taken hold, and she massaged her temples with her fingertips, ignoring the questioning look Shirley Ferguson shot in her direction.

She felt angry—angry at herself for letting her emotions override her good sense, angry at Clifford Cameron for not stopping Eric’s foolhardy recklessness, and most of all, angry at Eric. She had tried to warn him. Travis had tried to warn him. Clayne had put it to him straight again and again. But by tomorrow at this time, he would have a Stage Three implantation in the back of his neck. And it would be his own stupid fault.

A soft knock came at the door behind her, and Nicole and Shirley both turned as Clayne Robertson entered, gave them a quick wave, and moved over to stand behind Nicole and stare at the monitoring screen. “They’re still at Cameron’s place?” he asked.

“Yes. The doctor is cooking them some dinner. Eric’s in the living room.” She made a face at the noise coming from the speaker. “That’s the television you hear.”

Clayne shook his head as he leaned forward and peered at the placement of the blinking light on the simple floor plan of Clifford Cameron’s apartment. “He’s not in the living room,” he corrected. “That’s the kitchen.”

Nicole turned to look at him. “Are you sure? I got the impression Dr. Cameron left him on the couch.”

Clayne shook his head, and his finger touched the screen. “I’ve been in there two or three times. That’s the kitchen. This is the living room here. He’s probably gone in to be with Cliff.”

“No,” Shirley said. “He hasn’t moved out of that room since Cliff—Dr. Cameron—told him to sit down.”

Clayne shrugged, not really caring one way or the other. “Sorry, but he’s in the kitchen. Any word from the Major yet?”

Nicole shook her head. “He’s going to have them picked up tonight, and then he’ll put them both on Stage Three.” Before Clayne could respond, she returned to the other question. “Are you sure that’s the kitchen?” She didn’t like the fact that she had so clearly pictured him in the living room, only to find him in the kitchen.

“Yes, I am. Can you bring both Eric and Cliff on the screen at the same time? Bet you a malt they’re in the same room.”

Nicole punched the keys, and a second light came on the screen so close to the first as to almost form one point of brightness. The line of print beneath the two blinking lights expanded to read: TRACKING ERIC KARL LLOYD, &num;445512 AND CLIFFORD CLARK CAMERON, &num;446823.

“See,” Clayne said, pleased with himself, “they aren’t moving, and they’re right next to each other. I’d guess they’re eating dinner together. Eric can’t be too emotionally crushed if he’s eating already.”

“I could have sworn—” Nicole didn’t get to finish her sentence, because suddenly the monitoring alarm clanged wildly. The two points of light disappeared and bright red letters flowed across the screen. WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTER, &num;445512, ERIC KARL LLOYD HAS BEEN SEVERED. TERMINAL VOLTAGE SEQUENCE NOW INITIATED.

“What!” Nicole exclaimed, unable to believe her eyes.

Then just as suddenly as it had begun, the alarm shut off, and a dull buzz took over. ERIC KARL LLOYD, &num;445512, HAS NOW BEEN TERMINATED. SUBJECT CAN NO LONGER BE MONITORED.

Nicole’s hand flew to her mouth. “No!” she whispered.

“Terminated!” Clayne cried. “How can he be terminated?”

Shirley snatched up the phone on her console and punched two buttons. “Get the Major!” she shouted. “Eric Lloyd has been terminated.”

Nicole shot one stricken look at Clayne, then spun back around to gape at the screen again.

“What is it?” Clayne roared.

“He must have cut his band,” she whispered hoarsely. “That triggers the automatic termination voltage sequence in the computers.”

“Cut it?” Clayne cried again, shaking her gently, trying to pull her out of her shock. “How could he cut a wrist computer band? That’s impossible.”

“They did, Clayne! Look at the screen. He’s dead. Eric’s dead!”

“Something’s wrong. Maybe a computer error.”

“No,” Shirley answered firmly, “in that sequence there are three back-up systems. Only one thing can bring this up on the screen. They have somehow cut his band.”

Suddenly the buzzing stopped, the flashing red letters faded away, and a single point of light reappeared. Across the bottom came the white explanation. TRACKING CLIFFORD CLARK CAMERON, &num;446823.

“That’s Cameron. He’s still there, standing in the same place as before.” Then suddenly his eyebrows shot up in surprise. “He must have cut Eric’s band.”

He spun around and started for the door. “Tell the Major I’m headed for Cameron’s apartment. I want to see what’s going on over there.”

As the door shut behind him, the two women stared at the screen for several long seconds before Shirley finally said, “He was so depressed. Maybe he did it deliberately.”

Nicole turned and gave her an empty stare, then finally her eyes focused, and she shook her head. “No, he wouldn’t do that. They were trying to get it off. Didn’t they know what would happen?”

Before Shirley could answer, the door crashed open and the Major strode in with Travis at his heels. “What’s going on?” he shouted. He crossed the room in three steps and leaned forward to stare at the monitoring screen.

“It’s Eric. They’ve cut his wrist computer. He’s dead.”

“Dead? He can’t be dead!”

“They didn’t give up,” Nicole said, the tightness in her throat making her voice harsh. “They were in the kitchen together. I was getting some pain readings from Eric, but I assumed he was simply remembering what he had done at the museum. Dr. Cameron must have cut his band, not knowing what would happen.”

“Not knowing?” Travis interjected. “Of course he knew what would happen. He explained the whole system to Eric back in the detention cell, remember.”

That brought the Major upright. “That’s right. So why would he do it?”

“Maybe Eric did it,” Shirley volunteered. “He was very depressed when he came back.”

“Eric wouldn’t commit suicide,” Travis snapped, his mind racing. “Somehow they thought they could beat the system.”

“Is that Cameron now?” the Major demanded, jabbing his finger at the screen.

“Yes. He hasn’t moved since it happened.”

“That’s odd. Is he all right? What’s his reading?”

Nicole turned to her terminal and quickly punched in the code numbers. The readouts appeared almost instantly, causing her eyebrows to lift in surprise. “He’s lying down, and his brain scan shows a comatose state.”

“Comatose?” the Major said, his eyes narrowing. “Eric’s just been terminated, and he’s comatose? What’s going on there?”

“Lieutenant Robertson is on his way there now,” Shirley said.

“Was Eric lying down when this happened?”

“I can check.” Again her fingers flew over the terminal keys. Then, even more surprised, she nodded. “Yes, in exactly the same place. And look, just before termination, his pain level jumped sharply. That’s when Clayne came in, and we were checking on Dr. Cameron’s position, so I didn’t see that.”

The Major’s fist crashed down against the top of the table so hard that Nicole jumped. “They’re operating on each other!”

“What?” Nicole and Travis had blurted it out together.

“Eric’s not dead. If he were, would Cameron be lying there like a sick ox?”

“But how could they take out the implantations without triggering the wrist computer?”

“Because they’ve cut off the wrist computer!” he roared, his face a mottled patchwork of red and gray. “Somehow they’ve done it simultaneously. The computer shows Eric terminated, but if the silicon chip was out of his head when the terminal voltage was sent, it would be completely harmless.”

Travis shook his head, his expression dubious. “I don’t think—”

Suddenly the Major’s face contorted in shock as his mind carried his conclusion one step further. “Nicole, hit Cameron’s PMT button!” he shouted.

Nicole’s head jerked around as though he’d yanked on it with a rope. “What?” she cried out in stunned surprise.

“They’ve got Eric’s out and now they’re operating on Dr. Cameron! Hit the PMT button! We’ve got to stop them!”

Stupefied, Nicole just stared. The Punishment Mode—Terminal button was on every console, bright red, in the far upper left corner. She had never used it, had even avoided looking at it because of what it did to her when she pictured what would result if she touched it.

“Terminate him!” the Major thundered. “Now!”

Nicole’s hand raised, hung for a moment over the keyboard, then she snatched it back as if it had been burned. “I can’t,” she whispered.

In a rage, the Major grabbed her chair and whirled her away from the terminal. He turned to Shirley, but she was white-faced and shook her head in shock.

“Travis! Which button is it?”

Travis too was rigid, staring at the Major’s hand hovering over the keyboard.

“Travis!” His voice was an explosion echoing inside the small room.

Travis jumped to the Major’s side. “Hit this blue release button first. Then the PMT button is here.”

Nicole bit her lip to stifle a cry as she saw the Major’s finger stab down twice and heard the electronic beep. The flashing light on the screen flared into a bright point twice its normal size, then slowly faded. Then the red letters began to unfold onto the screen. WRIST COMPUTER &num;446823, CLIFFORD CLARK CAMERON. PUNISHMENT MODE-TERMINAL VOLTAGE INITIATED. SUBJECT TERMINATED. UNABLE TO READ FURTHER MOVEMENT.

The Major turned back around, shot Nicole one quick, withering look, then turned to Shirley. “Send a message to Lieutenant Robertson via his wrist computer. Tell him that Eric is free and dangerous. We’re on our way.”

He leaped up and started for the door. “All right, Travis! Let’s go!”

Chapter 18

Nicole sighed and stood up, averting her glance from the oddshaped brown package on the coffee table. She made herself think of how good a hot shower and then cool sheets would feel, tempting as it was to collapse now on the couch and give in to a stupefying weariness. She had come into the living room to put the redwood sculpture down, and staying here with it would only keep the turmoil and shock churning. Tomorrow she would put it away somewhere or perhaps give it to someone. The eagle had broken free, but it had cost an honorable, decent man his life doing it.

Pushing away the sudden guilt, Nicole clicked off the light and started for the bedroom, realizing how totally wrung out she was. As she opened the bedroom door, the soft chime of the doorbell stopped her. She glanced at the clock on her dresser. 12:47. Who would be calling at this hour of the night? Without turning on the lights, she slipped to the door and moved back the curtain a crack.

“Oh!” she said in surprise, then flipped on the lights and opened the door. “Travis, what are you doing here?”

“Hello, Nicole.” He came inside as she stepped back. He was in street clothes now, a pair of jeans and a soft pullover shirt that emphasized his broad shoulders and lean waist. “They said you’d left just a few minutes before I came back to Central Control, so I thought I’d take a chance on catching you. I saw your light go off just as I was getting out of the car.”

“Did you find him?”

“No, not yet. But we will. Every Guardian has been called out, and we’re combing the city. I’m going to grab a few hours of sleep and be back at seven.”

“How’s Clayne?”

“Fine. His pride is hurt more than anything.”

“It shouldn’t be. Eric must have seen him drive up and been waiting for him inside the main entrance.”

“That’s what I told him, but it still hurts him a little to think Eric could get his stun gun away from him that easily. And then to use it on him after he carried Dr. Cameron’s body out to the car, that—”

“Carried Dr. Cameron’s body?” Nicole blurted. “That wasn’t in your reports coming in.”

“Yes. Eric was in a rage. Said he wouldn’t leave Cliff as a trophy for us to parade. He made Clayne carry him out to the car, then used the stun gun on him. Clayne was just coming to when the Major and I pulled up.”

“I heard the report that you found Clayne’s squad car about nine.”

“Yes, in the Cherry Heights section. We spent a fruitless hour searching the area from house to house before a lady came running out to tell us her car was missing. We found it just a few minutes ago over on Spruce Street. But he could go on stealing cars all night. Half the people in Shalev leave their keys in their cars.”

“He’ll head out of the city, probably hole up in the mountains for a day or two, and then head for Serenity and his family.”

“That’s exactly what we figured, so we’ve put up roadblocks on all the roads out of town, and a twenty-four-hour surveillance on his family. But I think he’s still in town. We figure he took some time to find a place to bury Cameron and then went back for Dr. Abernathy. He wasn’t operated on until almost ten o’clock, so they couldn’t have gone very far since then.”

“That was a real surprise,” Nicole admitted. “Cameron must have brought Abernathy in on this from the beginning.”

“That’s been puzzling me, too. If Abernathy was in with them, why wasn’t he at the apartment helping them? If he wasn’t, how did Eric know he could trust him?” Travis passed his hand across the stubble darkening his chin. “I don’t know. Who can tell what’s going on in Eric’s mind?”

“I can’t answer that,” she answered softly, “but whatever it is, it’s been there from the beginning.”

“They almost made it, you know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We found Cameron’s wrist computer in the apartment along with Eric’s. And both computer chips. They must have been within seconds of getting Cameron’s out when the Major hit the PMT button.”

“You mean that Eric cut Dr. Cameron’s wrist computer off anyway?”

“I guess so. Cameron’s wrist computer was completely burned out from the Terminal voltage, and Clayne said he noticed a charred spot on the back of his wrist as he picked up the body.”

“Don’t!” Nicole whispered, averting her face.

“I’m sorry.”

They both fell silent for almost a full minute. Then Nicole looked up. “Is the Major angry with me?”

Travis shook his head quickly. “He understands.”

“Travis, I don’t want to be a Monitor anymore.”

“Hey!” he said in surprise. Then his voice gentled. “You’ve had a rough day. Things will even out again once we get Eric.”

“I mean it, Travis. I’ll do anything else, but I can’t do that again.”

He held up his hands. “That’s fine. But you don’t have to decide that tonight. We’re both exhausted. Let’s get some rest and talk about it tomorrow.”

Quickly she ducked her head to hide the tears that welled up and spilled over onto her cheeks. “You’re right. It’s just that all I can think about tonight is an old man lying face down on a table, being terminated long distance by computer.”

He took her face in both hands and tenderly brushed the tears back. “I understand, honey, that was awful tonight.”

But you showed him which buttons to push! To her surprise, Travis continued to smile gently down at her, and she realized she had only shouted the words in her mind. She took a deep breath. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

Suddenly the door into the kitchen slammed open, causing both her and Travis to jump. “Don’t count on it!” Eric said, stepping into the living room, a stun gun held easily in his hands.

Nicole and Travis whirled around to stare at the figure facing them. “Eric!” Nicole cried, as Travis pulled her behind him and stepped forward to face him.

“Easy, Travis.” Eric’s voice held a mocking dare, like the soft rattle of a snake. It froze Travis in midstep.

Even as she gaped at him, Nicole’s mind registered that Eric had changed his clothes. His short-sleeved sports shirt and light cotton pants and tennis shoes had been exchanged for heavy hiking boots, work pants, and a long-sleeved, flannel shirt. He stood easily, half leaning against the doorway, but his eyes gave him away. As they stared at her and Travis, they were like the gray ashes in a campfire through which one could glimpse the smouldering, red-hot coals beneath.

“This is an unexpected bonus, Travis,” Eric said. “I thought I’d have to leave a note. Now I can tell you directly.”

“Tell me what?” Travis snapped, recovering his balance quickly.

“I’m taking Nicole with me.”

Nicole’s mouth dropped open, but if Eric heard her sharp gasp, he ignored it. “You’ll receive word from us day after tomorrow sometime in the afternoon. The exchange will be made a day or two after that. We’ll tell you where.”

“The exchange?”

“Yes. You will have my mother and three sisters with you by then. Their wrist computers and their implantations will have been removed.”

Travis laughed, a short, derisive bark, touched with nervousness. “Oh? Just like that?”

“Yes, just like that.”

“And if we do, then—”

“You get Nicky here back in one piece—still pretty, still healthy, and perhaps even a little wiser. Otherwise, you won’t see her again.”

Travis’s fists clenched and half raised. “You wouldn’t dare harm her, or I’ll—”

“I didn’t ask for commentary,” Eric said as he squeezed the trigger of the stun gun.

Nicole screamed as Travis slammed back into her, spun around once, then crashed heavily to the floor. In one bound she knelt at his side and cradled his head in her lap. “What have you done to him?” she cried.

Eric crossed the room swiftly, ignoring her and the icy shock in her eyes. He bent over Travis, patted his pants pockets, then extracted the keys to his car and tossed them behind the couch. As he bent over, Nicole’s eyes caught sight of the crude bandage taped to the back of his neck. Smears of dark brown were clearly evident beneath the edges, and she shuddered involuntarily.

“All right, Nicky,” he said, taking her elbow. “On your feet.”

Nicole jerked away, swinging at Eric’s head with her free fist. He caught her arm roughly and dragged her to her feet, causing Travis’s head to fall heavily on the floor. He spun her around. “My father taught me to treat women and old folks with respect,” he said, “but after tonight, my manners are wearing a bit thin.”

Nicole tried to yank free, kicking at him, but with ridiculous ease, his arm circled her throat. He jammed the muzzle of the stun gun in the small of her back. “You listen,” he hissed in her ear, “and you listen good. You’re coming with me. And it doesn’t much matter whether you come under your own power or over my shoulder like a sack of dried beans. Now, which will it be?”

Nicole made a croaking sound, as if she were choking. Surprised, Eric loosened his grip slightly, and she dropped through his arm like a block of granite. She hit the floor, rolled once, leaped over the coffee table, and darted into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. But before she could move, the bedroom door exploded inward, blasted off its hinges, and crashed to the floor.

“Now,” Eric said, standing in the shattered frame, “I’ll ask you once more. Vertically or horizontally? It’s your choice.”

Her shoulders sagged, and suddenly the fight was gone. “All right.”

“Okay. Get some warm clothes—a jacket of some kind, some warm pants, warm socks. It’ll be chilly.” He gave her light summer clothing a quick glance. “There isn’t time to change now, just get whatever you need. Toilet articles. Whatever. Do you have hiking shoes?”

“No.”

“Tennis shoes, sneakers? Anything you can walk in?”

“Yes, I’ve got tennis shoes.”

“All right, get them. You’ve got exactly one minute.”

As they came back out into the living room, she glanced at the still figure on the floor. “What about Travis? You can’t just leave him. What if he’s badly hurt?”

He took her elbow and pushed her toward the telephone on the desk. “Since he strayed into this, we may as well make him useful.” He held up the stun gun so she could see the power dial on the side, then twisted the pointer into the red zone. “They tell me the red zone signifies a lethal stunning force. Never having used it, I’ll have to take their word for it.”

She stared at the dial, her heart dropping like a stone.

“Now, I’m only going to say this once, okay? No commentary.”

Her tongue darted out quickly as she wet her lips.

“You’re going to pick up the phone,” he said softly, “and call Central Control.” He swung the muzzle of the weapon around so it pointed down at Travis’s head. “Now here’s what you’re going to say, nothing more, nothing less, or else Travis terminates. Isn’t that the charming little phrase you people use?”

Nicole’s eyes were wide with shock, and her mouth opened slightly as she glanced quickly at Travis on the floor.

“If you’re wondering if I’d really do it, just remember, I watched a seventy-two-year-old man electrocuted tonight. Understood?”

“Yes.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“All right. Tell them Travis just phoned you. He tried to call in to them but couldn’t get through. Something is wrong with his radio. He called you to relay the message.”

He paused, and she nodded quickly. “I understand.”

“Good. Here’s Travis’s message. I was waiting at Travis’s house when he came home. He attacked me, but I escaped. Travis has me trapped in the neighborhood but needs every unit—every unit—sent to his home, Code Three. Have you got that?”

“They’ll never believe that. It’s too flimsy.”

“Sure it is, once they stop to think about it. But they’re too eager for the kill now to stop and evaluate.” His eyes were suddenly very frightening. “But Nicole, if you want Travis still sleeping peacefully on the floor when we leave, you’d better be convincing.”

She swallowed once, aware of the sudden dryness in her throat, and picked up the phone. For almost a minute she spoke quietly but urgently, then hung up with a curious mixture of sinking despair and vast relief. They had accepted her story without blinking. She had barely finished when in the distance a siren suddenly wailed, then another and another.

He grunted in satisfaction. “Okay, now let’s get out of here.”

Once they cleared the town limits, Eric pushed the car up to its maximum speed, still leaving the lights off. They headed north, on the highway leading to Glacier Park. Nicole was forced to grab wildly for the dashboard several times as the onrushing ribbon of road suddenly veered away from them and Eric had to brake hard and lean the car into a curve.

The ruse with Travis had worked perfectly. They encountered no roadblocks, no Guardian checkpoints. By ten miles out, any hope Nicole had of interception melted away.

She glanced at Eric, seeing only the hard line of his jaw and his rigid grip on the wheel in the semidarkness. Her physical exhaustion combined with the numbing shock of being kidnapped to act like a hallucinogenic drug, giving the whole experience a sense of eerie unreality. Feeling the first tentacles of madness squeezing at her mind, she spoke quickly to bring her back to sanity.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Up.”

“Where?”

“Away from the tender clutches of C. Major Denison.”

“Why me?”

Silence. It stretched on for several minutes before she spoke again. “Eric?”

Silence.

“I—I didn’t push the buttons to terminate Dr. Cameron. They wanted me to, but I—” She sighed, giving up in the face of the hostility hanging like a barrier between them.

Silence. He could have been miles away. Angry now, she bit her lip and rolled down the window, staring into the night. She jumped and gave a startled cry as a cold nose pushed over the seat and touched her bare arm. “Lay back down, Cricket!” she commanded sharply, pushing the dog away.

As Eric had led her to the back alley behind her house, Nicole’s German Shepherd had bounded up happily, wagging her tail. In Shalev, watchdogs were unnecessary, but a bark or two? Was that too much to ask? Even a curled lip and low growl would have been appreciated, but Cricket had never lost her puppylike friendliness, and she bounded up to everyone in welcome. When Eric had opened the door of the stolen car and motioned for Nicole to climb in, the dog had beat her to it, slipping into the back seat quickly. To Nicole’s surprise, Eric had given in when she pleaded that the German Shepherd would starve with no one to care for her. She had been glad then, but now, irrationally, her anger boiled over, and she jerked away from Cricket’s nuzzling. “Lie down!” she snapped, knowing even as she did so that it wasn’t really Cricket she wanted to lash out at.

The dog whined, then pulled away and lay back down in the rear seat. Suddenly chilly, Nicole rolled up the window and stared out at the moon-bathed trees whipping by.

“So who did?”

“What?” For a moment she wasn’t even sure he had spoken.

“Who did push the buttons?”

She hesitated, thinking of Travis, how he had jumped guiltily when the Major shouted at him.

“At your house, Travis said the Major did. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“He told me to, but I couldn’t.”

“I thought we had done something wrong.” He spoke as if from another world. “I thought we’d missed our timing. Mine came out without a hitch, then suddenly, just as we were about finished—” He lapsed into silence again for almost a full minute. Then finally he added, almost laconically, “It must be a real source of pride to work for an organization with so much compassion for people.”

“I—” She bit her lip. “I am terribly sorry about Dr. Cameron.”

Silence. She looked away again, too tired to care anymore.

A few minutes later, Eric slowed suddenly and veered to the other side of the road. After a moment, he gave a little grunt of satisfaction, stopped, and clicked on the headlights for a brief moment. A small sign with hand-lettered lines was nailed to a tree. “Kurt’s Circle K Ranch. Riding—Backpacking—Wilderness Guides.” He turned in, and after a hundred yards the pines thinned out into a small clearing. He stopped and turned off the motor.

“Come on,” he said gently, anger no longer tightening his voice. “I can’t offer you a lot of comfort tonight, but I think I can give you one pleasant little surprise.”

He got out of the car and came around and opened her door, but she was frozen in place, staring at the two figures who had emerged from the trees and were approaching them. As they came out of the deep shadows of the trees and into the full moonlight, her mouth dropped open. The first man was tall, angular, with wavy gray hair.

“Dr. Cameron!” she whispered, stunned.

Eric nodded, watching her reaction. “Let me introduce you to a couple of friends of mine.”

Nicole got out slowly, dazed, certain that the madness had broken through the walls of her mind.

“Hello, Nicole,” Clifford Cameron said.

“Dr. Cameron! But you—how could you be…”

“It’s the real me,” he said, chuckling softly. “In the flesh.”

“Nicole’s a little taken back, Cliff,” Eric said. “She thought you were dead.”

“So did we,” Chet Abernathy said, stepping forward.

“Nicole,” Cliff said, “this is Dr. Chester Abernathy. You probably heard about him in Central Control tonight. Chet, this is Nicole Lambert, Eric’s Monitor.” He laughed quickly. “Only now I think it’s the other way around.”

“Nicole explained what happened,” Eric spoke up. “Our timing was fine. The Major was on to us—figured out what was happening and pressed your termination button.”

Even in the moonlight, Nicole could see the lines around his eyes deepen. “Oh?”

“Yes, it was even closer than we thought.” Eric turned to Nicole to explain. “We had a system worked out once the incision was made. On the count of three, I was to cut the band and Cliff would yank out the computer chip. Cliff had a hold on the chip and I had just said ‘one’ when suddenly he jerked violently. Fortunately, his hand pulled the chip out. That must have been when the Major hit the button. Cliff was writhing on the table, screaming with the pain, and it took me another second or two to cut the band. By then he was unconscious. I thought he was dead. I even listened for a heartbeat, but I must have been in too much of a hurry.”

“I think it was stopped,” Cliff said. “Eric gave me mouth-tomouth resuscitation. I think he saved my life.”

“Then I heard a car drive up,” Eric continued. “It was Clayne.”

“Thank heavens you didn’t just leave me there,” Cliff said.

“I did that once before. Not again.”

“Did you have any trouble clearing the roadblocks?” Chet asked.

“No. Travis was at Nicole’s when I came in the house. He gave us a helpful, though somewhat unwilling, hand and pulled all the units into Shalev. We left him sleeping peacefully on Nicole’s living-room floor. In fact, if you hurry, it may help you get back in with less trouble.”

Back in? Nicole was still reeling from seeing Dr. Cameron alive and had been having trouble following anything coherently for the last two minutes.

“Good,” Cliff said. “Come on, the horses are over here in the trees.”

“Did the ranch owner suspect anything?” Eric asked.

“No. We just told him we were off to a very early start, headed for the high country. We’ve got two good riding horses and a pack horse. Everything is loaded, all set to go. Use those pain pills and antibiotics in the pack. The ultimate irony would be to get infection in that incision and die.”

Eric laughed shortly. “Right.” He took Nicole’s elbow and firmly guided her as Chet and Cliff walked to where the three horses were tethered.

“Have you got the cutters?” Eric asked.

Chet reached into the saddlebags of the nearest horse and retrieved a heavy set of bolt cutters.

So that’s how they got the wrist computers off. Nicole stared as Chet turned back around and stepped next to her and Eric. She tried to jerk away, but he was too fast for her, and his fingers dug into her flesh. “Just relax, Nicky,” he said easily. “All we want to do is make you free.”

She gave a short, bitter laugh. “Then let me go.”

“All in due time.” He turned her arm over, and Chet inserted the band into the jaws of the cutter.

“The minute this is cut, they’ll have a fix on us,” Cliff said, even as the computer started its shrill buzzing, “so we’re going to have to move out of here fast.”

The cutters snapped sharply, and the wrist computer dropped into Eric’s hand. He released Nicole’s arm, spun around, and flung the buzzing object smashing into a tree. “There. Now you’re free from the Major’s all-seeing eye. Let’s get Cricket and get out of here.”

She rubbed her wrist, and the bitterness made her voice almost a whisper. “It isn’t the Major who’s taken away my freedom.”

Chapter 19

Eric reined up his horse and looked around. They were at the edge of the thick stand of pines that clung to the north side of the slope. His eyes methodically scanned the open area and then the sky. Finally he clucked softly and nudged the horse with his heels. The mare flicked her ears once, then reluctantly moved forward into the bright sunshine. Nicole’s horse followed without urging. Cricket raced forward ahead of them and disappeared over the ridge into a clump of heavy brush.

Nicole drew in a quick breath and stared, the numbing weariness momentarily forgotten as her eyes drank in the panorama before them. Spread out as far as the eye could see to the north and west was a lush carpet of deep green, rolling over gentle hills, surrounding a turquoise jewel of a lake, then racing up steep mountainsides and spilling over the top. A glint of the afternoon sunshine caught her eye, and she could see a thin ribbon of silver at least a mile below them. It was the North Fork of the Flathead River, which they had forded shortly after dawn.

Above them, towering monolithic peaks propped up a sky so incredibly blue as to hurt the eyes. Jagged spots of glaring white signaled the location of several small glaciers clinging to the twisted, convoluted cliffs as they tried to stave off the steady, hungry embrace of the August sunshine.

For almost a full minute they both sat transfixed, and then Eric spoke. “I always thought our valley was about the prettiest place on the earth, but I think this tops it.”

Nicole didn’t answer, his voice bringing her sharply back to the where and why of reality. Then Eric turned and gave her an appraising look. “How are you doing? Are you about ready to stop?”

Pride is a seductive master. By dawn, after only three hours in the saddle, she had felt as though her backside had been pounded steadily with a heavy wooden paddle. By ten she had decided that the horse knew that every inch of her from the hips down was one combined mass of searing agony and was deliberately walking stifflegged to add to her misery. By noon she was praying fervently that lightning, or some other act of God, would strike either her or Eric or the horse—preferably in that order. But when she heard Eric’s question, her head came up, her jaw jutted out, and her eyes were defiant. “I’m fine. Don’t stop for me.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course. I’m doing fine.”

“Good.” He squinted up into the sky. “I figure we should make it to our base camp by late tonight, another six or seven hours maybe.”

Nicole barely stifled a groan. “Whatever you say.” Her chin came up defiantly as she sensed his probing gaze.

He chuckled softly to himself. “On the other hand, we could drop back to that little spring we passed about a quarter of a mile back and call it a day.”

She couldn’t help it. The rest of her body rebelled against her reckless tongue, and she had such a look of longing, hope, and relief on her face that he laughed out loud. “Maybe you can go on all day,” he said, “but after two months without riding a horse, I’m getting just a mite tender. So unless you feel strongly about it, I vote we stop.”

She nodded, knowing that he had read her precisely, but too sore and tired to care. Tomorrow she could be proud and angry again. Now she just wanted to detach herself from this hated horse and its conspiracy to pound the lower half of her into a shapeless, unrecognizable pulp.

The spring gurgled out of the ground in a small clearing, forming a tiny creek less than a foot wide. The tall pines were so thickly clustered that only a tiny portion of sunlight filtered down to the ground. The sounds of the horses’ hooves, soft and muffled in the thick carpet of forest needles and leaves, barely interrupted the gentle sighing of the wind through the upper branches.

Eric swung down and tethered his horse and the packhorse to a tree branch, then turned and watched as Nicole gingerly dismounted. Reaching up, he fumbled in his saddlebags briefly, then extracted a dark brown bottle. “Here,” he said, tossing it to her.

She grabbed quickly and caught it. “What is it?”

“Some liniment Cliff put in. He knew we’d both be needing it.” He moved to the packhorse and began untying the ropes. “We can’t do anything about the stiffness—that will just have to wear off—but I imagine the skin on the inside of your legs is pretty chafed, right?”

She nodded, keeping her face impassive. Never, to her knowledge, had she heard such an understatement.

“Well, this will help it heal and toughen up more quickly.” He took down the bag she had packed her things in and walked over to her. “Here. I’d suggest you change into something warm. It’ll be very cool tonight.”

Her eyebrows shot up, but before she could speak, he went on. “You and I are going to be living together for the next few days, so we need some ground rules. I have every intention of respecting your privacy.”

“Thank you,” she murmured, as she felt her cheeks color slightly.

“However, I can’t have you slipping away from me either. So whenever you want to be alone, just stay within shouting distance. Call to me every minute or two, and I’ll stay clear of you.”

“I understand.”

“But,” he added firmly, “don’t forget to call, or I’ll come charging down, ready or not. Now go change, and don’t be afraid to rub that liniment on liberally. We’ve got another two full days of riding.”

When she returned ten minutes later, dressed in tennis shoes, jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a hooded sweatshirt, he was squatting down in front of a small fire. Two forked sticks had been thrust into the ground on either side of it, and an iron kettle hung suspended over the flames from a cross bar between them. He was slicing something into the pot with a hunting knife.

He looked up. “Hungry?”

The pot was steaming slightly and giving off a delightful aroma. “Yes,” she admitted, realizing that famished would be a better word. “What is it?”

“Stew.”

Nicole sat down gingerly next to the fire and leaned back on one elbow, feeling the weariness and yet strangely content for the moment to forget the harsh realities of the situation. She was a hostage, he a fugitive. But sitting here in a shaded mountain glen, with the delicious aroma of food tickling her nose, it was hard to believe that.

A few minutes later Eric sipped a spoonful of the stew, murmured his approval, and then served them with a flourish. Cricket was first and had gulped her portion down before Eric could even finish getting Nicole’s in the plate. To her surprise, once he had served her, he walked over to the spring, bent down for a moment, and came back, a bunch of small pink flowers in his hand. He bowed slightly as he handed it to her, ignoring her astonished look. “I know you’d rather be dining somewhere else tonight, so I hope this will make up for it a little.”

Too surprised for words, Nicole reached out and took the flowers. Then suddenly, she was angry—at him and at herself. “Is this supposed to make me glad I’m here?”

His expression had been friendly, offering a temporary truce. Slowly that faded. “Look, Nicole, I just wanted you to know that I—well, I don’t like this any better than you, and I—”

“You don’t like this any better than I!” she cried. “How dare you stand there and make a condescendingly stupid statement like that? You break into my home in the middle of the night at the point of a gun, you nearly kill my fiancé, you threaten his life and mine, you drag me up into the mountains against my will, then you have the unmitigated gall to stand there and say you don’t like it any more than I.” She flung the flowers into the flames. “Your arrogance is incredible, Mr. Lloyd. You think one tiny bunch of flowers makes all of that all right?”

His eyes narrowed into gray slits, which sent a chill up her spine. “You are the wonder, Miss Lambert. Because of your precious fiancé, six good men lie buried in the black dirt of a riverbank. Six! And you’re upset because I left him lying peacefully on the floor of your living room? You say you’re outraged that I dragged you up here against your will? Then tell me, Miss Lambert, where was your outrage when a whole village was trucked like cattle to a place five hundred miles from their homes? Why wasn’t your voice trembling with fury then?”

She rocked back, as though he had struck her, her face drained of color.

“You talk about gall to me?” he said, spitting out the words like red-hot slivers of steel. “When I stick probes into the brain of a six-year-old and send her crumpling to the floor because she was accidently ‘overprogrammed,’ then you can talk to me about gall. And on the day I push the buttons to execute an old man for the highly treasonable act of wanting to be free, then you can fill your voice with horror and talk about my arrogance.”

“I didn’t push the buttons,” Nicole whispered.

“You were there!” he thundered. “Did you try to stop them?”

The blood drained from her face. “I—”

His voice was suddenly deathly quiet. “Did you even so much as protest?”

She looked down quickly and stared at her knuckles, white now as they gripped the plate.

“Did you?”

She shook her head almost imperceptibly.

“Well, so much for offended conscience and flowers in the fire.”

Chapter 20

For several moments Nicole stared at the flickering shadows on the pine needles directly over her head before her mind registered where she was. After the blowup at dinner, Eric had worked swiftly to construct a small but snug shelter of pine boughs stacked against an A-frame. He had then laid nearly six inches of additional branches on the ground and rolled out her sleeping bag on top of them. When she had crawled in, she found it surprisingly soft and comfortable and had dropped instantly into a deep sleep.

Now it was full dark, though moonlight filtered through the trees and mixed with the faint light from the campfire. As she lifted up on one elbow, she saw Eric’s dark shape across the fire, dragging a large rectangular-shaped object, and realized that that was what had awakened her. As she watched, he sat down on a rock, leaned over the dark shape, then began to speak.

“Home Base, Home Base, this is Eagle One. Do you read me?”

Nicole sat up, bringing a thumping welcome from Cricket, who was stretched out at her feet. The air had taken on a definite chill now, and for a moment she debated about snuggling back into the pleasant warmth of the bag. But she had seen the radio strapped on the packhorse and wanted to hear what was going on.

After a burst of static, Cliff Cameron’s voice answered, clearly recognizable even through the distortion of the speaker. “Eagle One, this is Home Base. We read you loud and clear. Over.”

Nicole moved with infinite slowness, every muscle in her legs and hips screaming in protest, as she put on her tennis shoes, then walked stiffly to sit down next to the fire. A twig snapped under her feet, and Eric’s head jerked around. He watched her for a moment, then turned back to the radio. “You’re coming in fine, Eagle One. How’s everything going? How’s Nicole holding up?”

Eric half turned again. “She’s sitting right here. Why don’t you ask her?”

“Nicole?” Cliff called. “Is Eric treating you okay?”

Eric held up the mike in her direction.

“Hardly!” she muttered.

“I didn’t catch her answer.”

Eric watched her across the fire as he put the mike back to his mouth. “She said, ‘Superbly.’ How are things in Shalev?”

There was a deep chuckle. “Alert. I think that would be the best word.”

“Are you out of the city now?”

“Yes. We’re all clear.”

“Have you done the other operations yet?”

Nicole’s head jerked up. Operations?

“Yes, they’re all complete.”

“Any problems?”

“Not really. It’s too bad we couldn’t use Sodium Pentothal on you. Once we gave them a shot of that, just enough to put them in a state of relaxed euphoria, they didn’t have a moment’s problem.”

“Good. Who all have you done?”

“We did Dick Andreason and his wife and their two children first. He’s the radioman Chet told us about. In fact, these are his radios we’re using now. We cleaned out a bit of his equipment before he closed up his shop. Also, he’ll have walkie-talkies, set on an unused frequency, for each of us once we reach the dam.”

Nicole leaned forward to hear better. Dam? That could only be Hungry Horse Dam, a few miles northeast of Shalev. The only other dam in the area was Libby Dam, but that was almost ninety miles west of the city.

“Good,” Eric was saying. “Who else?”

“We also did Dick’s friend, a man by the name of Rod Loopes.”

Nicole leaped to her feet. “Rod Loopes!”

“Hold it, Cliff,” Eric said, turning to stare at her. “I think you just got Nicole’s attention.”

Cliff’s chuckle was distinctly evident, even over the speaker. “He wanted to see Nicole’s face when she heard. He’s the one I told you about. He was, until this afternoon, the head of computer services at Central Control.”

“I don’t believe you,” Nicole cried.

“She says she can’t believe that,” Eric dutifully repeated.

“You think Nicole is shook—you should’ve heard the Major on the news broadcast tonight. He was absolutely livid.”

Nicole sat back down slowly, dazed by what she had heard.

“So we have four men?” Eric asked.

“Five counting you, and each one is good to very good with a rifle.”

“But can they use them? Or have they been so conditioned to implantation that they’ll freeze up in a crisis?”

“I don’t think so. Chet and I have talked about that with them. They may have to make a conscious effort to overcome their conditioning, but they all feel very strongly that what we’re doing is right. We think they’ll be fine. We’ll have a few surprises of our own for Travis on Saturday if he decides not to play it straight.”

“You made contact with him all right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think we can trust them to hold to the bargain?”

“Not for a minute. I expect the Major will come early to lay a trap, but we’re camped up above the dam now, and the exchange is not for two more days. We’ll see whatever he does and be ready for him.”

Nicole turned, suddenly tired beyond measure, the two more days before she would be free stretching out before her. But as she got up, she froze in position. Eric had built himself a lean-to shelter a few feet away from hers, and sticking out from beneath his sleeping bag, glinting dully in the faint light of the moon, was the barrel of his deer rifle. He had carried it in the scabbard on the saddle all day long, and she had eyed it longingly several times, hoping he would step away from it for just a moment or two. Now it lay there, invitingly.

She glanced up quickly at Eric, but his back was to her again, the bandage on his neck glowing like a target in the moonlight. With her heart pounding wildly, she began inching slowly toward the weapon, silently praying that Eric would not turn around and that Cricket would stay put. With a leap she covered the last few feet, yanked the rifle out, and spun around, levering a shell into the chamber.

“Eric!” Her voice cracked like a bullwhip.

He jerked around and stared for a moment, his eyes widening. Then he slowly stood up, his arms lifting into the air, bringing the microphone up with them.

“Get away from the radio, Eric.”

For what seemed like an eternity he stared at her, his expression lost in the darkness; then he brought the microphone back down to his mouth. “Cliff,” he said, “we’d better quit for now. I’ve got a slight problem here. I’ll call you again tomorrow night at the same time.” He clipped the mike back in place without waiting for a response, then straightened slowly.

“Well, well,” he mused.

“Stay where you are, Eric. I’m not bluffing.” She jumped slightly as Cricket brushed against her leg, looking up at her curiously.

“I know the accommodations are not first class, Miss Lambert,” Eric drawled, “but I’d hoped the rates would kinda make up for that.”

“I mean it, Eric. Move away from the radio. I’m going to call Central Control.”

She could see him smile in the dim light as he dropped his hands. The smile infuriated her. “Now, Eric!” she shouted. “Move away from the radio.”

“But you told me to stay where I was.” He took a step toward her. “You’re not nervous, are you, Nicky?”

“Eric, stay back!” she commanded, raising the muzzle higher.

“Make up your mind. Do you want me to stay back, stay where I am, or move away from the radio?”

When she spoke, her voice was steady and cool. “It’s not funny, Eric. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I must.”

He cocked his head to one side. “Oh, really? I have a hard time believing that.” He took another step toward her.

The rifle bucked in her hands with a deafening roar, and Eric jumped to the side as the bullet cut the air a foot wide of his head.

“I may seem to you to be a foolish, frightened female,” she said, levering a new shell into the chamber, “but I know how to use this. Now move away from the radio, slowly.”

Eric shook his head sadly. “I’ve never thought you were either foolish or frightened.” He took another step toward her. “But I don’t think you can blow a man’s head off either.”

“Eric! Stay back!”

“I’m coming, Nicky. Either use the rifle or give it back.”

As he took another step, she dropped the muzzle, aimed just wide of his feet, and squeezed the trigger again. As the bullet plowed into the dirt and forest debris, Eric jerked backwards and fell to the ground, writhing violently. “My eyes! My eyes!” he screamed, digging at his face with his clenched fists.

Nicole gaped at him in stunned surprise. She had missed him by almost two feet—unless the bullet had ricocheted or kicked dirt into his eyes. Cautiously she moved around the fire toward him, rifle ready.

Eric rolled wildly, moaning in agony, but suddenly as she neared him, his feet shot out, smashing into her leg just below the knee. With a startled cry she went down, the rifle flying from her grasp. She rolled frantically, but Eric was already to the rifle, and he spun around to face her. For several moments, he didn’t move, just stood there, half hunched over, breathing heavily. Then he straightened. “Well,” he said softly. “I can see I’ve been taking you for granted.”

Nicole stared at him. Then she felt the tears of rage and frustration well up. Without a word she got up, limped past him, crawled back into her shelter, and buried her face into her sleeping bag, biting back the tears. A moment later she heard his footsteps. She yanked off her shoes and burrowed into the sleeping bag.

“Nicole?”

She pulled the bag over her head. “Please go away.”

He sighed wearily. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

“Please! Just leave me alone!”

For a moment he was silent, then she felt a sudden weight lifted off the sleeping bag. She jerked up into a sitting position. “What are you doing? Why are you taking my shoes?”

“You’ve proven yourself to be a very resourceful young woman,” he said softly. “I can’t take you for granted anymore.”

“But why my shoes?” Then suddenly she understood. Barefooted people don’t go very far in the mountains.

He moved away, not answering.

“You must be real proud of yourself, Mr. Lloyd,” she said. “Real proud.”

Chapter 21

The full moon had cleared the trees and bathed the tiny clearing and campsite in softly diffused light. The fire had nearly died, leaving only a few glowing embers. Even with the bright moon, the clarity of the star-filled sky was breathtaking. Eric sat and stared across the embers into the night, hunched in his jacket against the chill. The soft hoot of an owl mingled with the sighing of the wind in the trees, giving the night a quiet sense of peace and tranquillity—a feeling totally lacking in Eric Lloyd. By noon tomorrow he would join up with Cliff and the others. At five-thirty he would walk onto the top of the dam, very likely into a trap.

Irritated at the tightness in his stomach, he glanced at the lean-to where Nicole was asleep. As he peered into the darkness of her shelter, he acknowledged another conflict churning inside him. Since her attempted escape, they had settled into a sullen truce that left him filled with a nagging sense of guilt. She spoke only when it was absolutely necessary and steadfastly ignored him whenever he tried to be even minimally sociable. And yet, over the past three days he had developed a grudging admiration for her stubborn courage. Only today had his own body begun toughening up, the chafed skin callousing over and the crippling stiffness leaving him. And he had spent his life on a horse! Yet never once had Nicole complained or asked for an early stop. Part of that was the result of her anger at him, but part was sheer courage.

He picked up a log and set it carefully on the fire so as not to awaken her, but Cricket suddenly stood up and trotted to his side. Eric reached over and scratched behind her ears as she lay down next to him contentedly. A moment later Nicole emerged out of the shelter. She walked over to the fire, picking her way carefully in her stockinged feet, and sat down across from him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t wake me. I was already awake.”

“You too?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow’s a big day. For both of us.”

She didn’t reply, and for several minutes they both stared at the flames licking hungrily at the log Eric had added to the fire.

“Nicole?”

“Yes?”

He hesitated, trying to sort out his thoughts. “Are you sure you want to go back?”

Her head came up slowly, and in the moonlight he could see a look of disbelief on her face.

“I mean, well, I know you want to go back home, but do you think you really can go back to Central Control and be a Guardian again?”

“Again? I didn’t realize I had stopped.”

“I heard what you said to Travis that night in your living room. You don’t want to be a Monitor anymore, right?”

“That was before you came back,” she snapped. “That changed a lot of things.”

He ignored that. “It’s open war now, Nicole. I wish we could stop the Major without an open confrontation, but we can’t. Are you ready to face another Cliff Cameron choice? Because that’s what it’s coming to.”

She brushed that away. “You’re free. Tomorrow your family will be free too. Why can’t you just go away?”

“What about the rest of my village—do I just write them off? And what about the other villages and towns dragged into this mess—do I have any obligation to them?”

“Is it your obligation to save the whole world?”

“Look,” he said, suddenly weary of the verbal fencing, realizing she had steered him away from what he wanted to say. “I’ve said some things about you during the past two months, about your lack of concern, about your commitments, and about your insensitivities. I want to apologize for them.”

“What? Do I hear something that sounds faintly like a conscience?”

“You have a lot of reason to be bitter, but then so do I. So for once why don’t we stop talking to each other as if it’s an artillery duel. I want to say something and your blistering replies don’t help.”

She looked at him steadily and then finally said, “Okay, I’m listening.”

“In the past three days you—well, frankly, you’ve really surprised me. I thought I was going to have to drag you every step of the way.”

“And you haven’t!” she snapped.

He stopped and sighed, shaking his head in frustration.

Her eyes softened slightly, and the tightness around her mouth gradually relaxed. “I’m sorry. I’ll just listen.”

“I knew it was going to be a rough few days. I expected you to be—” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought you were going to be a pampered, whining female and that by the time these four days were up, I’d be a screaming wreck.”

“I have been all you say. It’s just that I’ve kept it all inside.”

“Maybe so, but even that says a lot. I was wrong about you. You are courageous, determined, and, I’ve got to admit, you’ve earned my respect.”

That took her by surprise, and for once she had no reply.

“You lack only one thing for making an outstanding Guardian.”

Instantly she was defensive again, the coolness back in her voice. “Oh?”

“You’ve got the courage and the ingenuity and the determination—”

“But?”

“What you lack is conviction. You don’t have the emotional nature, or perhaps a better word would be spiritual nature, to be a Guardian.”

“And maybe,” she said quickly, “the problem is that you don’t really know my nature.”

“I meant that as a compliment, but you may be right. I don’t know Nicole the person, only Nicole the Monitor. But I do feel I know her. If the Major or Travis had had the rifle the other night, they wouldn’t have shot at my feet.”

“I wish I hadn’t either.”

His head came up slowly, and his eyes challenged hers. “Do you really mean that?”

“Yes.”

He laughed softly. “I think you do.”

“I do!”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I’d be free now.”

“Free of what?”

“Free of you!”

“If you’d killed me the other night,” he said, “you’d never be free of me again, and you know it. That would haunt you for the rest of your life.”

Nicole stared at him, the anger draining slowly out of her. He was right. “Were you the resident psychiatrist in your village?” she muttered, not willing to openly acknowledge what he had said.

He smiled. “I don’t have a diploma on the wall, but my references are impeccable.” When she didn’t answer, he went on more soberly. “Should I be really honest with you? Give you the full diagnosis?”

“Can I stop you?”

“You could always go for the rifle again.”

She shook her head. “Is turnabout fair play?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, you first. I’m braced.”

“You said the Major pushed the buttons to terminate Cliff. Right?”

In a flash, and against her will, he had thrust her mind back to that horrifying moment. She stared down at her hands, unaware that she was twisting the ring on her left hand around and around.

“Why? Why could he do it and you couldn’t? He may pontificate about his great love for mankind and his desire to protect us from everything from first-degree murder to dirt under our fingernails, but however benevolent his dictatorship may appear on the surface, when the crisis hit, his real nature surfaced. He’s willing to kill to maintain his little empire.”

“You killed three Guardians when you dynamited the truck that was headed for your village. That was a crisis too. What does that mean?”

He shook his head slowly. “A man is justified in resorting to violence as a solution to his problems only under a very limited set of circumstances—when he is defending his life, his liberty, or his family, and when he has no recourse to normal law-enforcement procedures. We approached your men in peace, and they shot Cliff down without warning. Come on, Nicky. Are you telling me that what I did trying to protect the village and what the Major did to Cliff are equivalent acts?”

After a long silence, she finally shook her head. “No.”

“But let’s get back to that night in the monitoring room. The Major pushed the buttons, but you were caught in exactly the same crisis situation as the Major. You were faced with the same choice, but you refused to terminate Cliff. Why?”

When she looked up, he could see in the firelight that her eyes were shining. “I just couldn’t.”

“Exactly, which makes you a very different person indeed.”

But Nicole went on as though she hadn’t heard him. “The Major didn’t know which buttons to push. When I wouldn’t push them, he demanded that I show him so he could. I couldn’t do that either.”

“Who did show him?” he asked gently.

She looked up, startled as his question broke into her thoughts. “What?”

“Who did show him which buttons to push?”

She turned her head away, shaking it quickly.

“It was Travis, wasn’t it.”

A long silence stretched out between them before he spoke. “I rest my case.”

When her head came around slowly to meet his gaze, he added, “You make a lousy Guardian, but a remarkable woman.”

Suddenly she was angry—at him, at his perceptiveness, at his accurate guess about Travis, at the tears abruptly threatening to spill over. “Okay, Dr. Lloyd,” she said. “Now it’s my turn.”

Startled by her sudden bitterness, he nodded. “Have at it.”

“Who are you to sit in pious judgment on others?”

“I—”

“You puff yourself up with pride, telling yourself that your crusade is for the good of man, that you’re the great deliverer, the gallant rescuer of a society plunged into the dark ages of slavery. Hogwash! Your motives are as self-serving and self-centered as the Major’s.”

He rocked back slightly. “There’s no need to coddle me, doctor. Give it to me straight.”

She leaped up, her eyes blazing. “Don’t be cute, Eric! I listened to your little speech. I’m not as clever as you, but now it’s my turn.”

“I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. Go ahead, I’m listening. Why do you feel that I’m self-serving and self-centered?”

“Because you cloak your true motives in noble and altruistic clothing every bit as much as the Major does. A desire to save mankind is not what’s really driving you.”

“What is?”

“Revenge. The Major killed your father, destroyed your village, and carried your family here and implanted them.”

He broke in dryly. “How could I have gotten so angry over nothing.”

“I know that!” she cried. “I know you have reason to be bitter, but then admit it. Admit that that is what’s making you do all this. You want to get even. With the Major. With Travis. That’s why you kidnapped me and not just any Guardian, isn’t it.

He shook his head, but there was no stopping the torrent of her words. “You’re the destroyer, not a builder. You say the Major’s system is grossly evil. But what do you offer in place of it?”

“Freedom.”

“No! That’s not sufficient. In Shalev we have freedom. The implantation seems so drastic and terrible to you because it’s new and painful. But most people never even know it’s there or think about it. They live normal, productive lives. In a way, you could even say that implantation enhances their freedom.”

“Come on, Nicole,” Eric said, angry now too. “Get your head out of the Major’s propaganda booklet. Shalev is a festering sore. We’ve already got a dozen people who are willing to risk their lives to join us. That’s how much they prefer our brand of freedom over yours. Okay, I’ll grant you that the Major’s desires, though misguided, are sparked by noble sentiments. But what happens when he’s gone?”

“What do you mean?”

“The system he has devised has an incredible potential for evil. Suppose you get a man who sees other possibilities in the wrist computers and the implantations? Suppose he threatens a woman with the Punishment Mode if she doesn’t grant him sexual favors?”

“I—I never thought of that.”

“A really inventive mind could bring about the most effective tyranny in the history of the world.”

Nicole’s anger gave way abruptly to an earnest pleading. “Eric, I was born an orphan because six animals, with long hair and beards, were running around ‘free.’ So you’ve got to offer us something better than simply freedom, Eric. Much better.”

“No one can fault the Major for his dream of a society where men have learned to control themselves, but he overlooked the most important element of that dream. Even infinite power cannot make men be good. You can make them act in good ways, but to really be good, an individual must choose good things freely. It’s man’s most basic and sacred stewardship—to serve as the guardian of his own behavior.”

His eyes were in deep pools of shadow, but Nicole could almost feel them burning into her flesh as he stared at her and continued. “And it’s man’s blackest and most fundamental evil to try and overthrow that stewardship. You cannot—no matter how highminded your motives—you can never make a man good. Not with guns, not with the rack, and not with a silicon chip planted in the back of his neck.”

Shaken by his intensity, Nicole met his gaze for almost a full minute. Then finally, her voice barely a murmur, she asked, “Is implantation so horrible?”

His chin came up sharply, but he saw that she was not challenging him, but was accepting what he had said. It was her way of saying she understood. His hand came up slowly to rub at the back of his neck. “Before coming here, I might have asked that question myself,” he said. “But never again, Nicole. Never again.”

Chapter 22

For unknown millennia, the south fork of the Flathead River had been relentlessly chewing its way deeper and deeper into the floor of the canyon. Rushing and turbulent in spring, subdued and depleted in late summer, ice-encrusted in winter, the river had for countless generations sent its waters into the massive Columbia River system and eventually on into the Pacific Ocean. Then one day, the newest—and puniest—intruder into the forest had dropped a massive concrete plug into the ravine, wedged it tightly against the shoulders of both hillsides, and cut the water’s relentless flow. Now the river had to pay toll for passage by turning the huge generators buried deep in the concrete bowels of the dam.

It was a massive cork for such a narrow river. As high as a fiftystory building and nearly half a mile across the top of the curving arch, the Hungry Horse Dam had finally let the river pass, but not before it had stolen three and a half million acre-feet of water and formed a ten-mile-long lake of incredibly deep blue waters.

Normally the sight brought a quick intake of breath from all who saw it, but today Eric Lloyd had no eyes for the view. He, Cliff, and Nicole were hidden in the trees a few yards from the west end of the dam, and Eric stared out across the concrete road way where, in a moment, he would step out to meet Travis. He turned and gave Nicole and Cliff one last look. “I guess I’m ready.”

Cliff sighed. “You know what we’re up against as well as I do, so watch yourself.”

Eric nodded. The Major had been pouring men into the area steadily for the past thirty-six hours. In addition to the fifteen or twenty he was openly displaying around the Visitors Center across the dam, he had sent two truckloads a couple of miles up the reservoir to wait for his signal. An equal number had been left down canyon below the dam. A dozen more had been seen going into the powerhouse at the base of the dam. The last group worried Eric the most. The powerhouse was six hundred feet below the area where the exchange would take place, but an elevator connected it with a small concrete blockhouse at the center of the dam. Though it supposedly hadn’t been used for years, there was no question but what it would be used today.

Eric patted the heavy padlock in his back pocket. He and his companions had a surprise or two of their own for the group in the elevator shaft. Eric took a deep breath. In terms of manpower, the odds were about twenty to one, but surprise and high explosives would be the equalizing factors.

Cliff lifted his walkie-talkie. “Chet? Are you two all set up there?”

Rod Loopes and Chet Abernathy sat across the dam on the east mountainside, hidden in the trees about a hundred and fifty yards above the Visitors Center. They had rifles, a stun gun, binoculars, and a walkie-talkie. That was surprise number two for the Major. Chet Abernathy answered almost instantly. “Affirmative. We’re standing by.”

“Dick?” Cliff asked into the radio.

“Roger, I’m ready too. Good luck, Eric.” Andreason was on the ridge directly behind them, also with binoculars and a rifle and a clear view of the top of the dam. Surprise number three. In addition, a small radio transmitting device was linked to a detonator planted in thirty pounds of high explosives hidden in an outcropping of rock above the road. Surprise number four. No truckloads of men would be coming up from below the dam.

As soon as Eric called for Nicole to be sent out to join him, Cliff would head south along the lake to where he had planted explosive charges at the base of a huge pine tree. Surprise number five. It wouldn’t be as effective as the rock outcropping, but it was the best they could find, and it would slow the Guardians down enough for Eric and his family to get back off the dam and to the horses.

The only question was, how many surprises did the Major and Travis have planned? Eric shook off that thought and squared his shoulders. “Okay, then, I guess this is it.”

Cliff touched his arm. “I don’t think the Major will call for his dogs until he’s sure Nicole is safe, so that should give us a few minutes to get in place, but watch yourself. And bring them home.”

He gave Cliff a thumbs-up sign and moved out onto the dam.

He had gone only twenty yards toward the center of the dam when a burst of static at his waist broke his stride. He unclipped the walkie-talkie and pressed the button. “Yes?”

It was Chet Abernathy’s voice. “Someone is just starting out onto the dam—tall, dark-haired, wearing a Guardian uniform. He’s not armed, as far as we can tell.”

“Is he alone?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, that’s Travis. Have they brought my family out yet?”

“No, not yet. They’re still inside the Visitors Center.”

“Okay, cover him. I’ll leave the transmit button switched on so all of you can hear what is going on.”

The engineers who designed Hungry Horse Dam had shaped it into a sweeping concave curve so it could better withstand the almost unbelievable weight pushing at its back. The roadway that spanned the half-mile long crest had been lined with concrete retaining walls chest high, and so, for a minute or two, as Eric walked steadily toward the center of the dam, all he could see of Travis was his head and shoulders. Only as they got to within the last hundred yards of each other did he come fully into view.

Eric slowed his pace slightly and then halted next to the concrete blockhouse that housed the central elevator shaft. He took the padlock out of his back pocket, keeping it behind him, and tested to make sure it was open.

“Hello, Eric.” Travis stopped about twenty feet away.

Eric nodded. “Travis.” Then he turned and stared at the door of the blockhouse. It was just as Cliff had said. “Well, well,” he drawled, “would you look at that carelessness.” Moving quickly enough to make Travis jump, he reached the door in three steps, slammed shut the metal hasp on the doorway, and clicked the heavy-duty padlock over it. “Someone could get hurt, leaving a doorway unlocked like that.”

He grinned at the sudden flash of anger that swept across Travis’s face. But as quickly as the anger had come, it fled, and Travis’s face became a carefully controlled mask of composure. “Where’s Nicole?”

“Safe. Where’s my family?”

“Here. Shall we begin?”

“I’d say it’s time.”

“You start Nicole out here, and I’ll send for your family.”

Eric shook his head. “Uh uh. For some reason, we have this nagging suspicion that you and the Major are not playing this completely straight, so you get my family out here first, where I can make sure everything is all right; then I’ll bring out Nicole.”

Travis shrugged, then turned around, lifted his arm, and waved it back and forth slowly.

From the center of the dam to the Visitors Center measured nearly four hundred yards, so it was difficult to tell for sure, but Eric thought he could see the heads and shoulders of two women. He unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt. “Dick, can you see them?”

Eric knew the radioman behind him was studying the figures through the binoculars. Then the radio crackled. “Roger. It’s a long way from this side of the dam, but I see six people—two women, two children, and two Guardians.”

“My, aren’t we organized,” Travis mocked. “Radios, men on the hillside, guns. This is better than TV.”

“Travis, tell your men to stay where they are. My family is to come out alone.”

“They will.”

Almost immediately Andreason’s voice spoke again. “They’re starting out onto the dam. The guards have stopped.”

Travis and Eric fell silent as they watched the steady progress of the small party coming toward them, but Eric was aware of a prickling sense of uneasiness. Travis was still too confident. Eric’s locking of the elevator shaft had set him back, but only temporarily. The battle was not over yet by any means.

When Eric’s family came around the gentle curve of the roadway and into full sight, Becky exploded into a run, her short legs pumping like pistons, her ponytail bouncing wildly. “Ricky! Ricky!” she screamed with delight.

Travis turned quickly and intercepted her in midstride, swinging her up off the ground. “Hey, Tiger!” he said, “just hang on a minute.”

“Put me down! “ she wailed, pummeling Travis with her fists. He swung her back down and gave her a gentle shove into the arms of her mother. “Mrs. Lloyd, stop right there until I say.”

“Mother,” Eric called. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “We are now. Are you okay?”

“Never been better. Have they removed your implantations?”

“Yes.” It was almost a sob, and Stephanie put her arm around her mother’s waist.

“For all of you?” Eric persisted. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, Eric,” Stephanie answered. “They let Mother and me watch them do it.” She held up her left arm. “And they took off our wrist computers too. We’re all free.”

“Now are you satisfied?” Travis sneered.

“Not quite. Mom, Steph, come over here behind me.”

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Travis snapped, raising his arm to block their progress. “They stay right here until I see that Nicole is okay.”

Eric shrugged and lifted the walkie-talkie. “Okay, Cliff. Send Nicole.”

As Travis had done with Becky, Eric had to intercept Nicole as she almost broke into a run when she saw Travis. “Just stay behind me, Nicole,” he said, not taking his eyes from Travis.

“Nicole, are you all right?”

She started to answer but the words caught in her throat, and she finally nodded. Before Travis could answer, a loud thump rattled the steel doorway of the blockhouse, and Eric heard a muffled cry of surprise.

Eric smiled briefly. “Sorry to spoil their little welcoming party.”

“Sergeant Decker,” Travis shouted, “the door’s locked. Just stand easy for a while.”

Eric half turned around to face Nicole. “I’m sorry for the last few days. I really mean that.”

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes as green as the depths of the sea. “I appreciate your treating me with respect.”

“I hope you can find peace within yourself.” He turned back to Travis. “Okay, start my family over, and Nicole is all yours.”

Becky lurched forward, but Travis’s arm was like a steel bar holding her back. “Just like that, huh?” he said softly. “Then we all walk away and everyone is happy?”

Nicole too had started around Eric, but he yanked her back against him, suddenly wary. “Yes. Just like that.” His eyes were riveted on Travis’s face, and he felt his muscles tensing rapidly.

“Sorry, Eric,” Travis said, “but it can’t go down that way. If it was simply your family for Nicole, the Major might have bought it. But when you started removing the implantations on other people, that set it in concrete. No way can the Major let it go now. We’ve got a hundred men closing in on you right now. There’s no way to get out of here.”

Eric jerked Nicole around to shield him as his hand whipped down to his boot and pulled out the hunting knife hidden there. “Did you hear that, Dick?” he shouted, ignoring Nicole’s sharp gasp of surprise.

“I sure did,” came the answer from the walkie-talkie. Almost instantly the blast of the explosive rocked the air, spinning everyone on the top of the dam around to look northward. A huge cloud of dust and smoke billowed upward about a quarter mile away.

“So much for those truckloads,” Eric said. He looked past Travis to his family. “Mother, you and the girls start walking slowly toward me.”

Travis didn’t turn around, but the menace in his voice was like the quiet rustle of a cobra lifting its head to strike. “Mrs. Lloyd, for your sake and that of your children, don’t move. A dozen rifles are trained on your backs at this moment.” His eyes narrowed as he glanced at the knife. “You’re a fool, Eric. We know you won’t hurt Nicole. Now that you’ve brought her back to us, she’s home free. You know that and so do we. You can’t get away from here.”

In an instant, the point of the knife was touching Nicole’s throat, and she gave a sharp cry of fear. “I think,” Eric said, so softly that his voice was almost lost in the gentle breeze blowing across the top of the dam, “I think you’re about ninety-five percent sure of that. But what if you are five percent wrong?”

Travis hesitated a moment then said patiently, as though to an errant child, “Oh, Eric, Eric, what will you do? Cut her throat? Come on.”

“Let my family come over here, Travis, or you’ll see exactly what I’m willing to do.”

Again for one split second, Eric saw the hesitation in Travis’s eyes; then it was gone. “Give it up, Eric. You’ve lost the game.”

In an instant, it was clear why Travis hadn’t given up. Behind him, a low, throbbing noise was rising rapidly, and then suddenly it exploded into a deafening roar as a helicopter swept over the ridge behind Eric and swooped down toward them. As Eric’s head swung around to look up, Travis quickly stepped behind the corner of the elevator tower. His hand darted out, and when he straightened up, he held a deer rifle pointed at Eric and Nicole. “You’re playing against the Major now, Eric. Amateur night is over. Give it up. Let her go.”

“Mother!” Eric shouted. “Come now. Quick!”

Travis spun around, pointing the rifle directly at Madeline Lloyd’s stomach. “You’ll start back for the Visitors Center, Mrs. Lloyd,” he hissed. When she hesitated, his voice exploded. “Now! Move it!”

She reached out for Becky and Lori, who had both started to cry, and the little group started back in a dazed, stumbling run. For a moment Eric nearly threw himself at Travis, the rage in him boiling like molten lava, but the helicopter was coming fast now, skimming across the top of the water toward them. As quickly as it had come, the rage was gone, and his mind raced over his alternatives. He yanked Nicole hard against him and backed up. “So much for your loving fiancé,” he hissed into her ear. “Stay with me, Nicole. If I have to fight you, you’ll get hurt.”

“Let her go, Eric. I’m warning you.”

“Please, Eric,” Nicole gasped. “Let me go. Don’t hurt me.”

But Eric was too busy swinging her back and forth to answer. He kept her moving, keeping her between the muzzle of Travis’s rifle and the muzzle of the stun gun held by a Guardian hanging out the doorway of the helicopter. Dick opened fire from behind them. The clattering roar of the engine drowned out any noise from the shot, but suddenly the window of the chopper exploded in a shattering spray of glass. Eric had a fleeting impression of a terror-stricken face, and then the helicopter peeled off sharply, seeking escape from the attack.

Travis stopped dead, his eyes wide with shock. “Hey!” he screamed.

At that moment a second shock wave rippled through the canyon. Cliff had just dropped the tree across the road from above.

Eric dragged Nicole backwards again. “Sorry, Travis. There goes your second source of help.”

Like a raging bull, his face contorted with fury, Travis whirled around and ran to the door of the elevator shaft. At point-blank range, he fired at the lock Eric had clipped into place, then kicked the door in. Instantly, orange-clad bodies came pouring out like popcorn spitting from a popper.

“Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Travis screamed at them. “He’s got Nicole. Form a line. Take your positions.” He grabbed a man by the shoulder. “You! Get the Lloyd family back to the Visitors Center.”

By now Eric was in a half run, pulling Nicole back with him, and was nearly thirty yards from Travis.

“Stop, Eric, or we’ll shoot!” Travis had formed a skirmish line with his men and was moving swiftly toward him. The Guardians held no stun guns now, only deer rifles.

Eric knew that Travis’s threat was a bluff. They wouldn’t dare shoot with Nicole in the way, but why hadn’t Dick opened fire on the Guardians pouring out onto the dam? Then in a flash he understood. His family was just starting to disappear around the curve of the dam, out of the line of fire.

“Form a line! Stay behind me!” Travis waved his men into position behind him. “Don’t shoot. The others are coming. They’ll cut him off.”

Eric watched his family go around the curve of the retaining wall. Now! It was an inward shout, but as though Dick Andreason had heard it, the flat crack of a rifle, followed swiftly by another, burst out from behind him. The man next to Travis gave a sharp cry as the bullet slammed into him, cutting him down like a scythe.

“Under fire! Under fire!” Travis’s warning was totally unnecessary, for the orange-suited Guardians were already scrambling wildly for cover. But the top of the dam offered no cover, not from the vantage point of the hillside where Dick sat. The third shot sent another Guardian thudding off the retaining wall.

“Let’s go!” Eric shouted, grabbing Nicole by the arm and breaking into a pounding run for the west end of the dam.

Travis fired at them twice, but the shots were wide and high, and Eric knew he was still afraid of hitting Nicole. He risked a quick glance back as they ran, and saw the earlier scene reversing itself. The only cover on the top of the dam was the elevator tower, and the open doorway was sucking men back into it like a concrete vacuum cleaner. Off to his left, up the lake, the clatter of rifle fire split the mountain stillness. One seventy-year-old man had locked battle with two squads of Guardians.

By the time Eric got off the dam and dragged Nicole up to the ridge where Dick Andreason was methodically firing at flashes of orange, both he and Nicole were gasping for breath. As he released her arm, she dropped to the ground and rolled into a ball, holding her stomach.

“We’ve got them pinned down for now,” Andreason said. “But Cliff won’t be able to delay those others for too long. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’ve got to go help Cliff,” Eric blurted between breaths. “Watch Nicole.”

But as he got back up to his feet, their radios blared simultaneously. “Eric, this is Rod. Can you hear me?”

He jerked up his radio. “Yes, this is Eric. Go ahead.”

“They’ve brought your family back into the Visitors Center. If you could draw off the troops to your side of the dam, we think we can get to them.”

The surge of exultation that flashed through him was like a jolt of electricity. “Understood. We’ll do our best.”

“We have a stun gun, but right now the men are afraid to go out on the dam when you command the heights. Get them to come to you—it looks like the Major will leave only a man or two with your family. We’ve held our fire so far, and they have no idea we’re here.”

“Good work!” Eric exclaimed. “We’ll draw them to us.” He turned to Dick Andreason. “All right, Cliffs on his own for now. We’ve got to make it look like we’re falling back so they’ll come after us. Shoot once or twice more, then hold your fire. Let them come clear to the edge of the dam, if necessary, before you open fire. Then we’ll engage them long enough for Rod and Chet to get clear.”

Dick stood up. “Eric, you’ve got to get Nicole out of here. Take two of the horses. I’ll cover the dam.”

“No!”

“Eric, don’t be bullheaded.”

Stubbornly he stood his ground. “Not until I know about my family.”

Andreason held up the walkie-talkie. “Eric, by the time you reach the spot where you left your horses, you’ll still be in radio range. If Rod and Chet can get them out, you’ll know it. If they don’t…” He shook his head. “Cliff and I will stand a better chance of getting away if we don’t have you two.”

He was right, and Eric knew it. “Okay. Good luck.” Eric turned and reached for Nicole’s elbow. She was still lying on the ground, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she tried to get her breath from the hard run. “Come on, Nicole. One shout and I’ll gag you, out of breath or not.”

“No, Eric. Please. I can’t. I can’t go any further.”

“You can and you will,” he said firmly, pulling her up and putting his arm around her to support her. “It’s only a hundred feet, then the horses will do the work. Come on!”

Eric had just released their lathered mounts and was untying their own horses when the radio at his belt burst out again. “Eric, this is Rod.”

He swung up the walkie-talkie. “This is Eric. Have you got them?”

“That’s affirmative, Eric,” came the jubilant cry in his ear. “We’re away and clear. We’re headed up now and hope to get another half an hour or more head start before they even know we’ve gone.”

Eric’s head dropped momentarily, and the breath went out of him in a great whoosh of relief. “Thank you.”

“You are most welcome! See you at Home Base. Over and out.”

His arm slowly lowered until the radio hung limply by his side. When he finally looked up, he saw Nicole watching him. “They got my family out,” he said.

She nodded. “Believe it or not, Eric, I’m glad.” Then she turned and walked quickly to her horse and untied the reins. As she put her foot in the stirrups and started to swing up, the horse shied a little, and she lost her balance, nearly falling. She moved to try again, and Eric strode over and took her elbow. “Here, let me help you.”

She spun around as if he had laid a hot iron on her arm. “Don’t you touch me!”

Eric jerked his hand away in stunned surprise. Tears had spilled over and left wet streaks down her cheeks, but her eyes were twin sparks of emerald fire behind the glossy shininess.

“I was just going to help you up,” he apologized.

“Don’t you understand?” she shouted at him through the tears. “I hate you. I hate what you’re doing. To me, to my city, to everyone you touch. Now leave me alone!”

She gave the reins a vicious yank, tried to mount again, this time successfully, and sank her heels into the mare’s flanks.

“All right, Miss Lambert,” he snapped, swinging up onto his horse and yanking on the lead rope of the packhorse. “Have it your way. But I don’t think I’m the only one you’re angry with right now.”

Chapter 23

Eric watched Nicole climbing out of her sleeping bag and gave her a tentative smile. “Good morning.”

She nodded curtly, still bitter from the day before. “May I have my shoes, please? It’s very cold.”

He scrambled to his sleeping bag, retrieved her shoes, and tossed them to her, then sat down on a stone next to the creek. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I wish I dared make a fire, but the mountains will be crawling with company today.” When she didn’t answer, he looked up at the sky. “The sun will be high enough soon to take off the chill.”

Nicole slipped into her shoes without looking up, then tied them with an angry yank. She stood up and ran her hands through her tousled hair, her back turned on him.

“Nicole,” he ventured, “look, I’m sorry about yesterday. I—”

She spun around. “Are you?”

“Yes.” He took a deep breath. “Yes, I am.”

“Then let me go!”

He shook his head slowly. “I can’t, Nicole.”

“Your family is free!” she cried, clenching her fists. “You can let me go now!”

Eric stood up. “Cliff hasn’t come back to the camp yet. They think he was caught.”

Her head shot up in surprise; then her eyes narrowed into angry slits.

“And so it goes, huh? Everytime your little revolution loses somebody, Nicole is dragged back up the mountain.”

Her fury was suddenly so intense that she no longer trusted her voice. She grabbed her tote bag and, without so much as a second glance, stalked off toward the creek.

“Nicole,” Eric called as she disappeared into the trees. “Don’t forget to shout every minute or two.”

He gave her a full five minutes before he called the first time. By then she had washed and was pulling a brush through her hair with short, angry strokes. His voice floated through the trees, almost lost in the gurgle of the stream.

“Nicole,” he added after his third call, “I know you’re angry. But if you don’t answer now, I’ll have to come down there.”

“Go ahead,” she muttered, stuffing her brush back into her bag.

“Nicole!” His calls were coming more rapidly and sounded louder now. “I’m not playing. Either you answer or I’m coming down.”

“Don’t bother,” she said to herself as she stood up and picked up her bag. Suddenly her eyes widened. What if you do come down! The thought nearly took her breath away. Quickly she scanned the ground and found what she was looking for: a stout tree limb with a thick protrusion on one end. Her heart pounding, she dropped her bag and snatched up the limb. It was heavy, and she clutched it tightly to steady the trembling in her hands. She looked around quickly, then darted up the trail a few feet and ducked behind the thick trunk of a towering spruce. As she raised the club high in the air, her eyes widened in terror. Cricket! What if the dog came around the tree first and started wagging her tail? Nicole felt her knees go weak as the crunch of Eric’s feet could be heard coming through the trees. Cricket gave a sudden yelp, and Nicole heard her crash off through the forest, barking wildly.

“Be quiet, Cricket!” Eric hissed, now only a few yards above Nicole. “You’ll have every man on the mountain after us over a stupid rabbit. Nicole, don’t you be stupid either.” He was muttering to himself now as he came down the trail. “If you’re trying to run away, I’ll—” Both his words and footsteps stopped simultaneously, and Nicole knew he had spied her bag on the trail.

With an exclamation of surprise, he leaped past her hiding place and crouched down to look at the bag. She took two steps forward and swung the club down, putting four days of frustration, pain, and bitterness into the blow. The knobby end of the limb caught Eric above his right ear. With a sharp grunt, he sprawled forward, crashing onto his face.

Nicole flung the club away, turned, and ran blindly up the path. Not until she had gone fifty or more feet did she get a hold on her panic and pull herself to a halt, leaning against a tree to catch her breath. As she stared back down the path, she straightened slowly, exultation shooting through her. Eric hadn’t moved. She had done it! She was free!

For a moment Nicole nearly turned back to see how badly she had hurt him and to get his pistol, but then panic hit her again, and she broke into a run back toward the camp.

Eric had left the horses saddled in case they were discovered by Guardian patrols and needed to move swiftly. Now she murmured a quick thanks for that. She undid the halter rope of the packhorse, slapped its rump sharply, and yelled. The horse leaped forward in fright and bolted off through the trees.

In an instant she grabbed the rifle from Eric’s sleeping bag, untied the other two horses, swung up on the mare, and, yanking on the reins of Eric’s mount, dug her heels into the mare’s flanks.

By the time she had dragged Eric’s horse through the heavy timber for over an hour, Nicole decided he wouldn’t be able to find it again. She emptied the food and extra ammunition out of his saddlebag and shooed the horse away to fend for itself.

Two hours later she heard the helicopter. At first she felt it as much as heard it. When the pulsating waves became the distinct roar of an aircraft, she gave a cry of joy. Swinging down quickly, she wrapped the reins of her horse around a tree limb and ran toward a large area where the trees were widely scattered and the brush was low. But before she reached the clearing, the helicopter came in at about five hundred feet, almost directly overhead. She screamed and yelled and waved her arms wildly, but she was still in a fairly thick stand of trees, and the helicopter swept over her and was gone.

With disappointment so sharply bitter it almost made her choke, Nicole slowly lowered her hands and turned back. “Hey!” Her mouth dropped open as she saw her horse, frightened by the pounding noise, disappearing through the trees, taking her bag, the rifle, her food, and her transportation with it. She leaped forward, dodging branches and jumping over logs in a wild attempt to catch it. “Come back here!” she screamed.

For a maddening half an hour she tried to recapture the horse, but every time she got within thirty or forty feet of it, the wildeyed animal bolted headlong into forest. Exhausted, on the verge of tears, afraid that Eric was conscious now and looking for her, she finally gave up and let it go.

With a moan that was half pain and half pleasure, Nicole peeled off her socks and thrust her throbbing feet into the icy water of the stream. Wearily she lay back on the grassy bank and closed her eyes, letting the sun, now full of afternoon heat, beat on her face. The warmth soothed and relaxed her, and for the five-hundredth time she cursed her stupidity in tying the horse so carelessly.

In the three hours since she’d lost the horse, her feet had felt every rock, every twisted root, every uneven stump and log she’d stumbled over. Soon after the horse bolted, Nicole had found a small creek and followed it downward. It joined another creek and then another until it formed a small, turbulent river, now a good fifteen or twenty feet across. Three times she had had to ford streams, and her wet socks and tennis shoes only added to the misery of her feet.

She thought about Eric. She had no doubt he would try to find her. She was certain he could track the horses, but she’d been on foot for the past three hours. That would make it far more difficult, if not impossible. And even if he could do it, it would certainly slow him down considerably. He’d be at least two hours behind, perhaps three or four.

Nicole sighed, telling herself to get up and race the night and the man coming after her, but her body rebelled, and she decided that she had a right to pamper it for once. She closed her eyes again and thought only of how good the sunshine and the cool water felt.

Nicole awoke with a start and lifted her head, looking around wildly until her eyes focused on the river and she remembered where she was. She sat up with a jerk, and her hands flew to her cheeks, feeling the hot, sunburned skin. She squinted up at the sun and gave a cry of dismay. It was noticeably lower. Perhaps an hour, maybe an hour and a half, had passed since she had lain down.

Berating herself for her stupidity, she reached for her shoes and socks, but her hand froze in midair. A loud crash in the underbrush off to her right was clear and distinct, and with a start she realized that that was the sound that had awakened her. She scurried the few feet to the nearest clump of brush and dove into the foliage, her heart pounding furiously.

For a moment she heard only a curious shuffling sound, then the distinct noise of something heavy moving through the brush. Suddenly she went deathly still. It was not Eric. From around a thick clump of mountain-currant bushes, a massive brown shape lumbered into view, sniffing at the ground. Though it was still nearly forty or fifty yards upstream, the golden-tipped fur, the jutting front shoulders, and the square snout were clearly visible. It was not just a bear—it was a grizzly!

Not daring to move, Nicole watched in horror as the animal stopped and stripped several branches of their berries, then pried up a rock as big as a bread box with ease, looking for grubs. If it smelled her—she shuddered. For the moment the wind was blowing downriver, carrying her scent away from the grizzly, but in a few more yards the animal would be close enough to catch her scent no matter how the wind blew. It splashed into the river, looking for fish, and turned its back on Nicole’s hiding place. Gently and with infinite care she backed out the other side of the bush, giving her shoes and socks one last longing glance.

In a sudden flash of inspiration, Nicole decided to circle wide and head back up the hill. The bear was moving downriver, and she wanted to be where it had already been, not where it was going.

By the time she had moved in a wide circle around the bear, her hopes were soaring and she moved a little more quickly. She was concentrating so hard on watching the brown mass in the river that she didn’t see the cubs until she nearly stumbled onto them behind a mountain birch tree. They had their backs to her and were trying earnestly to pull open a rotting log half buried in the forest soil. They gave one startled bawl, leaped straight up in the air, raced across the ground, and shot up the nearest pine tree like two simultaneously ignited brown rockets.

With a roar that split the mountain stillness, the mother grizzly swung around and exploded into a lumbering run of incredible swiftness. Bare feet forgotten, Nicole leaped into motion, her legs a blur. She covered the tiny clearing in three great leaps, then darted back to her right when the thick trees cut her off. The mother bear didn’t even slow down to check on her cubs—she had the threat to her offspring in sight and was bearing down on it like a missile.

Nicole screamed and changed directions, cutting back down the hill toward the river to get greater speed. But the brown mass of fury instantly corrected her own charge to head her off, closing now at three times Nicole’s speed. Intent only on escape, Nicole did not see the sharp stone protruding out of the soil, and her bare foot slammed down on it with full force. She gave a sharp cry of pain and sprawled headlong, like a baseball player in a desperate slide toward home base. Too close to brake its lumbering attack, the bear overshot her and hit the river in a great spray of water. The momentum carried it completely across the stream, and chunks of turf flew as the animal clawed at the ground, trying to halt her charge and change direction.

Comprehending only that she had been given another few seconds of life, Nicole scrambled to her hands and knees just as a white streak flashed past her, snapping and snarling as it hit the river to meet the onrushing bear head on. Nicole stared for a moment, then cried out with a sob of relief, “Cricket!”

The German shepherd, though outweighed by nearly a thousand pounds, was a flashing fury of its own, darting in to nip at the grizzly’s flanks, then barely jumping clear of a swipe that would have taken her head off had it connected.

“Nicole! Run!”

She jerked around. Eric was running pell-mell down the river bank toward her, pistol in his hand. She leaped up, only to collapse instantly as her foot hit the ground, leaving a smear of blood.

Eric reached her and jammed the pistol back in its holster. “Come on,” he said urgently, jerking her to her feet and putting his arm around her waist to support her. “Let’s get out of here!”

The mother grizzly saw the movement and, with a bloodcurdling roar, caught Cricket with one massive paw and sent her tumbling tail over nose and yelping in pain. The bear crossed the river again in two splashing leaps.

“Run, Nicole!” Eric shouted, giving her a hard shove as he spun around, yanking at the pistol. As it came out of the holster, the bear was on him. He had time only to hurl it into her face as he dove to the side. The gun caught the bear just above the eye, causing her to jerk away, but her paw flashed out as she hurtled past him, catching Eric’s leg in a sweeping blow that turned his diving fall into a head-over-heels crash into the brush.

“Eric!” Nicole’s scream was lost as the bear wheeled around. But once again Cricket smashed into the fight, slashing at the bear’s hind flank and heading off the attack. With an astonished cry of rage, the grizzly swung around to meet her attacker, forgetting Eric. But Cricket had learned a painful lesson. A snarling, snapping fury, she circled the bear again and again, driving her slowly down the hill but always staying clear of those massive, flashing paws.

Nicole reached Eric in a hobbling run. He rolled over, writhing in pain, and she gasped as she saw his upper thigh. A two-footlong patch of his pant leg had been sheared away as cleanly as if cut with scissors, and even as she stared in horror, four bright red streaks blended into one great smear of blood.

“Eric, help me!” She put her hands under his arms, trying to drag him up the hill. “Help me! We’ve got to get away!”

“Get out of here!” he cried hoarsely, trying to pull himself up. Then suddenly his eyes rolled back and he collapsed, dragging out of her grip.

“No, Eric! No!” Nicole sobbed. She tried to drag him but his dead weight was too much to move more than an inch or two.

The battle between Cricket and the grizzly was still raging only twenty or thirty yards from where Nicole and Eric lay defenseless. Another lucky swipe of the paw and Cricket would be—

With a cry of surprise, Nicole spied the pistol lying on the ground a few feet away. She scrambled for it, then hobbled to her feet. Fearful of hitting Cricket, she pointed the gun above the bear’s head and pulled the trigger.

The grizzly jumped five feet sideways with a startled roar, and as Nicole fired again, it broke into a lumbering run into the trees and out of sight with Cricket at her heels. Nicole continued firing blindly, compulsively, until the hammer clicked on already spent shells; then, trembling violently, she let the pistol drop, put her hands to her face for a long moment, then hobbled back toward Eric’s still form.

Chapter 24

Eric’s eyes fluttered open. For almost a full minute he stared up into the trees without blinking, as if in a trance; then his eyes closed again slowly. Five minutes later they opened again, revealing wide, gray pools of pain. Suddenly they widened, and Nicole knew he was remembering. His head turned slightly until his eyes met hers.

“Hello,” she said softly.

He started to lift himself up, but the pain contorted his face, and he sank back again. His hand came up and touched the bare skin of his chest, then ran across his stomach.

“I had to use your shirt for bandages,” Nicole said. “I didn’t have anything else.”

Gritting his teeth, Eric tried again and got up on his elbows high enough to see the crude bandage around his leg.

“There are four deep gashes,” she explained. “There was a lot of blood, but no arteries were cut. I don’t think your leg’s broken.”

He nodded, his head dropping back to the ground. Then he caught sight of another strip of the red plaid material from his shirt wrapped around her foot, over which she had slipped her tennis shoe. His eyebrows shot up.

“I stepped on a sharp rock,” she said with a shrug.

“That’s why you fell. Be grateful. The bear went right over the top of you. It saved your life.”

“You saved my life,” she whispered, tears welling up again.

He sank back to the ground. “And you saved mine. What happened? I must’ve passed out.”

“Cricket held the bear off long enough for me to get the pistol. That scared it away.”

Again a sharp stab of pain twisted his features, causing him to draw in his breath quickly. “Where is Cricket?” he said finally, turning his head to look. “Is she—?”

“She’s limping badly, but I think she’ll be fine. She’s out exploring again now, so she can’t be hurt too badly.”

“Good.” He forced a wan smile. “That’s a ridiculous name, you know.”

Nicole laughed. “I know. When she was a small puppy, it seemed to fit.”

“The Cricket and the Grizzly. It sounds like a fable or something.”

“Is the pain terrible?” she asked, watching the lines etch deeper into his face.

His hand raised slowly to touch the lump behind his ear. “First time I’ve ever been attacked by two she-bears in the same day.”

Nicole dropped her head. “I’m sorry! But—”

His hand reached out and touched her arm. “No, please don’t. I—” He closed his eyes again, breathing deeply to combat the pain.

“So what do we do now?” Nicole asked.

“Make camp here. I don’t think either of us will make it very far for a while.”

“Make camp! With what? Night’s coming on, you don’t even have a shirt, we have no food, no ammunition, no tools—and an angry grizzly is prowling in the neighborhood.”

“Let’s not lose hope,” Eric said. His voice was strained but his eyes were teasing beneath the pain. “I have a knife in the sheath underneath me.”

“A knife?” she said bitterly. “Good. I’ll go hunting.”

“That’s a good idea. We could use some of Cliff’s pain pills and that antibiotic he gave us. A couple of sleeping bags would also be appreciated.”

“Please. I know you’re trying to cheer me up, but don’t. Okay?”

“If I were to provide all that, would you let me call you Nicky without getting angry?”

“Eric!”

“Is it a deal?”

“Yes. Now what are you saying?”

“I left the packhorse tied up in the trees above us.”

Nicole’s mouth dropped open. “But I drove it away when I left you.”

“True. But it only went a few hundred yards and started grazing. I didn’t take time to pack everything, but I got the essentials.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I spotted you lying down by the river from up on the ridge. I was trying to sneak up on you. Then I saw the bears heading downstream. I didn’t dare yell to warn you. I was afraid you’d jump and run. So anyway…” He let the words trail off, and she could tell he was tiring quickly. “Do you think you can hobble up there and find it?”

“I can’t believe it. I’ve been sitting here for an hour worrying about how we’re going to survive a night in the mountains in the open.”

“Now haven’t I taken better care of you than that?” Then he went on quickly. “Sorry. Don’t answer that.”

“How did you catch me so quickly?”

“Cricket. Once she caught on that we were trailing you, I just followed her, and we made good time.”

“I am so glad,” she said, the relief flooding through her again.

“So am I, Nicky,” he said gently. “So am I.” Again a spasm of pain caused his jaw to clench.

“Hang on,” she said, limping to her feet. “I’ll go get the horse.”

Nicole pulled her jacket around her more tightly and held her hands out to the fire. Cricket’s head lifted and she yawned widely, revealing her teeth, then dropped her head again. Nicole reached over and pulled Cricket’s body against her own. Though it was not yet nine o’clock, the chill was deepening rapidly. She turned to look at the dark shape in the sleeping bag next to her and listened to his deep breathing.

The pain pill had put him under quickly, almost before he could direct her on securing the camp. Wrap the food in plastic bags—carefully so as to not attract shuffling brown visitors—build a fire, get enough wood to keep it going all night, hobble the horse and turn it loose. No wonder she was exhausted, hopping around, chopping wood, drawing water from the river.

She had finished fifteen minutes ago, but instead of crawling inside her bag, she had sat and stared at the fire, trying to sort through her thoughts. In a way it would have been easier if Eric hadn’t come. Her feelings had been clear enough up to that point: bitterness, resentment, determination to get free of him. Now? As much as she longed for home and a bath and clean sheets over a mattress, she knew she couldn’t leave him. The image of the mother grizzly bearing down on her, and Eric standing between her and the hurtling fury with nothing but a pistol in his hand, was etched so deeply in her memory that she would never be able to put it fully from her mind. Once he could cope on his own, the debt would be paid, but for now, she had to stay.

But it was more than that. Eric’s words about freedom and individual rights kept battering at her as they had done for the past two days. Today she had come within a fraction of losing her life, and never had it seemed so sweetly precious. Why was it that life meant so little to Eric and his friends that they would risk it so easily? Or was freedom of greater worth than life itself? Had she taken the loss of others’ freedom so lightly because she herself had never lost it? Until this week.

She shook her head, and suddenly her thoughts flashed to the events at the dam—and to Travis. She frowned as she thought of the expression in his eyes when Eric had put the knife to her throat and challenged Travis’s willingness to sacrifice her. At that moment Travis’s eyes had flicked to hers, then to the knife at her throat, and then away, and she knew the answer. He was only ninety-five percent sure Eric wouldn’t hurt her. And yes, five percent was acceptable.

Nicole ran her fingers through her hair, hating how dirty it was, hating the hard ground and the chill air, hating the turmoil churning inside her. She sighed and stood up, wearily tossed four more logs on the fire, and turned to her sleeping bag. As she knelt down to unzip it, she stopped short. Eric was watching her.

“Oh!” she said, startled. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“How come you’re still awake?” he mumbled, obviously struggling to sound alert.

She shrugged and sat down to take off her shoes.

“How’s your foot?”

“It’s okay.”

“Did you take a pain pill?”

“Yes, just a few minutes ago. How’s your leg?”

He pulled a face.

“Are you ready for another pill?”

He started to shake his head, then caught his breath as the pain hit him. When it passed, he let it out in a long sigh. “Yes, maybe I am.”

Nicole found him a pill and poured him a cup of water from the canteen. She helped him sit up enough to get it down. When she was finished, she crawled into her bag, grateful even for the hardness of the ground as long as she was lying on it rather than standing.

They fell silent for several minutes, both looking up at the brilliant stars spread out like a protective net overhead, until Nicole felt the drug starting to work on her. Or maybe it was just sheer exhaustion.

“Nicky?”

Her eyes came open with a tremendous effort. “What?”

“I…” She heard him sigh.

She half turned in her bag so she could see him. He had his hands under his head, staring up at the stars. “What?” she asked again.

“You are really something else. Did you know that?”

His earnestness caught her by surprise. “Something else? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean today. After all I’ve done to you these past few days. After yesterday at the dam. Why didn’t you leave me?”

She looked down. “You forget, I’m not in very good shape to travel either.”

“And?”

“You saved my life!” she whispered fiercely, shuddering at the vivid memory of the grizzly hurtling down on her. “If you hadn’t come when you did—” She took a deep breath, then turned to look at him.

“If I hadn’t come when I did, that night in your house, you wouldn’t have been in the mountains trying to get away from me,” he said.

“Well, I certainly can’t disagree with that logic.”

“I know, and I’m very sorry.”

She leaned on her elbow and stared at him. “How sorry?”

“We’ll have to stay here for a day or two at least. I don’t think either of us is in any shape to go very far. But then, if you’ll help me get to base camp, I’ll have one of the men take you down.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“Yes, Nicole, I really mean it. I’ll see that you get home again.”

Chapter 25

They’d been there for two long, lazy days. Nicole hobbled around with a makeshift cane, keeping the fire going, getting water, and fixing simple meals. Other than that, they rested on their bags, letting the sunlight warm them as they talked, or lay silent, or dozed off and on. Even Cricket seemed content to take a day off from her wide-ranging explorations to let her body mend.

By unspoken agreement, Nicole and Eric never approached the topics of conversation that laid bare so much emotion and conflict. The Major, Travis, implantation—all were tacitly avoided. Instead they talked of life in the valley, of life before Termination, of what life was like for a girl growing up in Shalev.

This was a side of Eric that Nicole had not seen before—relaxed, pleasant, often showing a wry humor. She sensed the warm affection he had for his family and the steady but pleasant life of the village. And she realized more and more why this eagle had so hated the chains of bondage.

Now, as dusk settled in, she almost wished they didn’t have to leave it all tomorrow, go back to face the pain, the choices, the conflict.

Suddenly Eric rolled over and pulled up into a sitting position with a grunt of pain. He gritted his teeth and tried to stand up.

“Eric? What is it? What do you need?”

“I’ve got to get up.”

“Why?”

“It’s sundown. I’ve got to call the others. They should have a new base camp set up by now. Where’s the radio?”

“It’s with the other stuff. Can’t it wait until morning? You’ll be stronger then.”

He was up now, grimacing with the pain. “No, we set sundown as the time for calling. They won’t be listening any other time. I should have called the night before last, before they moved, but neither of us was functioning very well then. I couldn’t get them last night, so I’ve got to try again. They’ll be worried sick about us.”

She sighed. “Sit down, I’ll get it for you.”

Nicole’s foot still hurt, but she managed to drag the heavy radio to him, then sat down and stared into the fire.

He flicked the switch, waited a few moments for it to warm up, and pressed the mike to his mouth. “Home Base. Home Base. This is Eagle One. Do you read me?”

The radio crackled in response almost instantly, as the rich, deep voice of a woman came through. “Eric, is that you?”

“Mother? Yes, this is Eric. How is everything?”

The relief in Madeline Lloyd’s voice was evident even through the tinniness of the speaker. “Thank heavens. Where have you been?”

“Nicole and I had a slight run-in with a bear. We were kind of out of it, but—”

“A bear! Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he soothed. “It autographed my leg, but I’ll be fine. We think we can come to you tomorrow. What about Cliff? Did he finally show up?”

There was silence for a moment, then, “No, I—Wait a minute. Here is Dr. Abernathy.”

“Eric, this is Chet. What’s this about a bear?”

“Nothing serious. What about Cliff? Have you heard from him?”

“Yes.”

“What?” Eric demanded.

“They captured him at the dam.”

The air went out of Eric’s lungs in a sudden burst of pain. “Oh, no.”

“Yes. We’ve been monitoring the radio broadcasts from Shalev.”

“Was he hurt?”

“No. But—”

“But what?”

“An announcement came over the air about four this afternoon. All citizens of Shalev are to report to the soccer stadium tomorrow afternoon at one o’clock. All stores and businesses, except for critical services, will close at noon. Attendance is compulsory.”

“Attendance at what? What’s going on? And what has that got to do with Cliff?”

Again there was a pause. Then, “They’re putting Cliff on trial.”

Nicole watched Eric tear her long-sleeved, cotton blouse into long strips and bind them tightly around his bandaged leg. He finished and looked up. “Will you hand me my boots, please?”

“Eric, this is insane. You can’t use that leg.” Her voice was pleading, tight with worry.

His chin jerked up, and in the flickering light of the fire, his eyes were glittering, hard, bright. She flinched and finally crawled over to where his hiking boots lay next to his sleeping bag.

“Will you help me put on the left one?”

“No. I won’t help you lose your leg. I understand how you feel about Cliff, but you can’t—”

He leaned over, gritting his teeth against the pain, fumbling with his boot. Finally Nicole shook her head and knelt down in front of him. “I know why you feel this way, but there’s no way you can ride or walk. You can’t help Cliff this way.”

“I’ve taken another pain pill, and I’ll take more if necessary.”

“You can’t even be off the mountain by noon,” she pleaded, “let alone into Shalev.”

“Chet’s going to meet me at the bottom.”

“You won’t make it to the bottom! And if you do, then what? Don’t you think the Major is doing this to lure you down? Don’t you know he’ll be expecting you?”

“I hope so.”

She tied the boot with a vicious yank and looked up at him. “Spoken with the courage of a lion and the brains of a bean.”

His eyes surveyed her for a long moment. “I appreciate your concern, but Nicole, I’ve got to try. You know as well as I, this is no trial. It’s a public hanging, an execution. I’ve got to try!”

“Yes, I suppose you do.” She stood up and moved to her own bag, picked up her tennis shoes, and sat down to put them on.

In one lurching motion Eric was at her side and snatched her shoes away. “No, Nicole. Not you.”

She stared up at him, too stunned to speak.

“We have only one horse, remember? With the pack on it to carry the essentials I need, there isn’t room for two people. One of us would have to walk, and neither of us can do that.”

Suddenly she was frightened. “You can’t just leave me here.”

“As soon as I get down, we’ll call the Guardians and send them for you.”

She glanced quickly at the darkness of the surrounding forest. “Eric, no, please, not alone. I can walk with my cane. My foot is feeling better. I’ll keep up.”

He shook his head.

She jerked away angrily. “I’m going. Give me back my shoes.”

He moved away to the packhorse and stuffed her shoes into a small bag tied onto the pack. “No, you know you can’t walk very far.” He dragged the radio over and hoisted it up and tied it on the pack.

“Then at least call the Guardians now. Tell them where I am. Have them come for me.”

He shook his head.

“Why?” And then she knew the answer. “Eric, I won’t tell them about you. I won’t let them know what you’re doing.”

He finished tying the radio down and turned to face her. “Come on, Nicky, be realistic. That won’t work, and you know it.”

“It will. I promise I won’t give you away.”

He bent over the pile of gear, then straightened. “Here’s the hatchet. The flashlight is under my pillow. I wish I could leave you the pistol, but I may need it tomorrow.”

“Please, Eric. Please don’t leave me alone. I give you my solemn word I won’t tell them anything. Perhaps I can persuade the Major not to hurt Cliff. I can tell him that you let me go. Why won’t you believe me?”

“I do believe you,” he said as he hauled himself up on the horse. “But I know Travis and the Major too well. They’d have it out of you in two minutes.”

“But why are you taking my shoes?”

“I’m afraid you’ll try and follow me and get lost. Then they’ll never find you.”

“So much for promises,” she cried bitterly.

“Please sit down until I’m gone, Nicole. And tie Cricket up so she doesn’t follow me. She’ll keep animals away from the camp.”

“Please sit down until I’m gone, Nicole,” she mimicked. “Here are some things for your safety, Nicole.” Her voice sparked like the edge of a knife striking a whirling stone. “My, aren’t we just full of manners this evening, Mr. Lloyd? I’m sorry to have to abandon you, Nicole. I’ll leave you with a hatchet and a flashlight and my good wishes, Nicole. Of course, I must take your shoes with me, Nicole. Please forgive me, Nicole.”

The urge to cry or scream or hurl herself at him was so overpowering that for a moment she just stood there trembling. Finally she ducked her head and dropped to her knees. “Come here, Cricket,” she said, fighting to maintain control of her voice.

Eric reined the horse around. “I’ll have someone here shortly after we get down.”

She didn’t look up as she slipped a rope through Cricket’s collar. “Whatever you have to do to ease your conscience.”

“I don’t want Cliff Cameron on my conscience,” he snapped.

“Oh no!” she cried, her throat tight. “I can’t stop you from going, but don’t leave here with righteous piety swelling your breast. I told you I’d help you help him. Taking me with you now won’t make that much difference to Cliff Cameron. Cliff is just your excuse. The Major has won another round, and you can’t stand the thought of that. It’s the Major you’re really after, isn’t it?”

She had stung him, for when he answered, his voice was heavy with anger. “It’s the Major who has Cliff Cameron and two hundred thousand others under his electronic thumb.”

“Oh? Tell me, Eric, other than in numbers, how do you differ from him?”

In the dim and dancing firelight she could not read the expression on his face. For a long moment he just looked at her across the fire, and then he spoke softly. “Good-bye, Nicky.”

She leaped to her feet. “You brought me an eagle chained to a limb,” she shouted as the horse started away from her. “Did you do that to make me feel sorry for you? Well, it worked. So go, Eric. Go down and save the world. But while you’re going, just ask yourself one question. You have my shoes in your bag. How is that any different from putting a black box in the back of my neck?”

Nicole woke up with a start and groped for the hatchet before she realized it was just Cricket. The dog had stood up and crossed over Nicole’s feet to reach the end of her tether. With a sigh she slid the hatchet back under the sleeping bag near her head and lay down again. Eric had been gone for an hour and a half, perhaps two, and she still had five or six hours until light. It seemed an eternity.

Suddenly Cricket gave a low growl, and Nicole heard a crash in the brush across the river. In an instant the adrenalin pumped through her system, causing her heart to pound violently. Groping for the hatchet once more, she leaned forward, straining to read the night. Cricket exploded into a frenzy of barking as the noise sounded again.

Nicole leaped up, forgetting her foot, and gave a cry of pain as it nearly crumpled beneath her. She sank to her knees, the terror leaving her as suddenly as it had come. Gripping the hatchet firmly, she reached out and put her hand on Cricket’s back. “Be quiet, Cricket. Shhhh!”

And then she heard it, the voice floating softly on the night air, and the relief was as hot and as swift as the terror had been. “Nicky! It’s Eric. It’s all right. I’m coming in.”

“Eric?” Nicole whispered, unable to believe her ears. The hatchet slipped out of her fingers and hot tears of relief burned at her cheeks as she fumbled to untie the rope from Cricket’s collar. Like a shot Cricket leaped free and was gone into the night.

Finally Eric stopped across the fire from her and slid off the horse, his face drawn with pain and weariness. “Hello, Nicole,” he said softly.

“Hello.” Her voice surprised her. She had not shouted it nor had she thrown herself at him. He had come back and, at least for the moment, had ended the terrifying aloneness of the night, and she had merely said hello. She felt a quick burst of pride that she could demonstrate such control. “Did you forget something?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I did.” Moving almost in slow motion, he untied the sack from off the pack animal, set it on the ground, and fumbled inside it. When he stood, he had her tennis shoes in his hand. “I forgot these.”

“Oh?”

He hobbled slowly around the fire until he came within two feet of her. She stood straight and unmoving, watching him closely. “I also seem to have forgotten a lifetime of teaching as well,” he said. “I would consider it an honor if you’d let me help you put these on.”

Though her eyes had suddenly misted up, she didn’t look away from him. “That isn’t necessary. I can do it.”

“Yes, I know, but I can’t think of any other way to say I’m sorry.”

“You came back. That says enough.”

“I should never have left. But if you’d like to put these on, I’ll go find the radio.”

“The radio? But you took it.”

“I know, but I dropped it off in the trees a short distance down river to lighten my load. Perhaps once you have your shoes on, you could throw whatever wood you have left on the fire.”

She stared at him, unbelieving.

He smiled briefly. “The bigger it is, the more quickly the helicopter will spot it.”

“What about Cliff?”

“I’ll start down again as soon as I’m sure they’ve picked you up. I know I have no right to ask anything of you, but would it be too presumptuous to suggest that when they arrive, you might tell them you escaped from me and don’t know exactly where I am?”

She nodded, blinking at the sudden burning behind her eyelids.

“You could tell them you hit me over the head with a club.”

Nicole laughed and brushed at the corner of her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yes, I guess I could say that.”

“Good.” He started to turn away, then swung back. “You wouldn’t need to tell them that you did it twice.”

“Twice?”

“Yes, once with a length of spruce—once with some very blunt words.”

Chapter 26

Nicole checked the time on her wrist computer, trying to ignore the quick flash of irritation. She had barely left the helicopter and been ushered into Central Control before the Major had slapped a new wrist computer on her arm. It was all done very cordially, but the Major’s underlying nervousness at her bare arm was evident.

They had not finished at Central Control until nearly 6:00 A.M. Then Travis had brought her home, and she had collapsed into an exhausted sleep for five hours. Now the dread of what was coming lay heavy on her mind.

Frowning, she limped to her closet, reached in, and had her dress uniform half off the hanger when she stopped. For a long moment she stood there indecisively; then, with a quick shake of her head, she put it back and took out a tailored, navy-blue blazer and gray skirt and dressed quickly. As she buttoned the last button and peered at herself in the mirror, the doorbell chimed.

“Come in,” she called loudly.

“Hi, honey,” Travis called through the shattered door to her bedroom. “Are you ready?”

“Almost. I just need to put on my shoes.”

“Would you like me to help you?”

The memory of Eric standing before her with her tennis shoes flashed into her mind. “No,” she called out quickly. Then more slowly, “No, I’m all right. I’ll be just a moment.”

Travis, in full dress uniform, looked trim and fresh, as though he had not been up half the night rescuing girls from mountain campsites. He stood up and started toward her as she came into the living room. “You look lovely, Nicole…” His eyes dropped to note her clothes, and his voice trailed off.

“But?” she supplied for him.

“But the Major said we were to wear our uniforms. He said so this morning, just before we left. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes, I remember.” Her eyes met his calmly.

“Then…” He was obviously flustered, but he quickly recovered. “Whatever. You really do look lovely.” He swept her into his arms, crutches and all, and bent down to kiss her. She stood motionless, accepting it dutifully.

“I am glad you’re back home.”

“Me too.” She pulled away. “My purse is there on the desk. If you’d carry it for me, I’ll see if I can’t get the hang of these crutches.”

“Of course.” He retrieved her purse and moved to hold the door for her. As she came alongside him she stopped and looked up, searching the depths of his face. “Travis?”

“Yes?”

“Is this really a trial, or is it to be a public execution?”

“An execution?” He gave a short laugh. “Of course not. The Major just wants the citizens of Shalev to see what happens to those who try to overthrow our society. Dr. Cameron will be punished but not executed.”

“Can you promise that?”

“I guarantee it. Now let’s get going, or we’ll be late.”

As they entered the dressing room under the grandstand of the stadium, Nicole stopped short. The Major stood nearly hidden in a cluster of blue and orange uniforms, but as she and Travis entered, a sudden hush fell over the room; then the group broke into a babble of welcome and congratulations. Clayne Robertson was the first to reach her. “Welcome back, Nicole.”

She pulled her eyes away from the Major, who was staring at her. “Hello, Clayne.”

“When I told Adrienne you’d been found, she cried. She’s been worried sick about you. The kids too. They remember you in their prayers every night.”

Her eyes softened and she smiled. “They’re sweet.”

“You up to a good dinner tonight, or do you want to recuperate for a couple of days first?”

“I’d like that. I’m going to Mount Pleasant tomorrow, to stay with my aunt and rest up. But after almost a week of camp food, Adrienne’s cooking sounds wonderful.”

His eyes dropped to her foot. “Eric do that?” he rumbled, his mouth tightening.

“No, I—” Suddenly she didn’t want to try to explain with everyone listening. “I had my shoes off and stepped on a sharp rock.”

“Good. I kept telling Adrienne that Eric wouldn’t harm you. I—”

“Nicole?”

Clayne stepped back as the Major approached.

“Yes, sir?” Unconsciously she hitched the crutches back a little to make herself stand up straighter.

“Again, welcome back.” His eyes flicked down to her clothes and then back to lock into hers. One eyebrow raised slightly. “We’re so glad everything has worked out to bring you back safely.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He glanced at his wrist computer and turned around briskly. “It’s 12:55. Bring out the prisoner.”

Every head swung to face the corridor leading to the equipment room, where Cliff Cameron had been kept under guard.

Cliff emerged first, walking easily, his head erect. He was dressed in a navy blue suit, long sleeved white shirt with gold cuff links, and maroon tie. With his wavy gray hair and craggy features, he looked every inch the distinguished brain surgeon he had once been. A step behind him came another man, also in a suit and carrying a briefcase, and Nicole assumed this was his attorney. As they came out into the dressing room area and Cliff turned to face the Major, Nicole saw the fresh bandage at the back of his neck.

Suddenly he turned and saw her. A smile broke out across the somber face, and he stepped quickly to her. “Ah, Nicole. I heard you had gotten away from Eric. I’m glad. I haven’t felt good about that whole thing from the very beginning.”

Before she could respond, the Major cut in curtly. “Dr. Cameron, it’s time to go. If you would follow me, please.”

“Yes,” he said, his eyes still on Nicole. “As we used to say in the old days, ‘On with the show.’”

As the group walked out into the bright sunshine, the silence of the crowd was almost stifling in its intensity. For one quick moment Nicole wondered about Eric. Had he made it down? Was he here? But then she saw the numerous orange uniforms scattered throughout the crowd and posted at nearly every exit, and she knew he could not have made it in, even if he had made it down from the mountain.

The procession of prisoner, lawyer, and Guardians proceeded to the center of the field, where some risers provided a platform about thirty feet by thirty feet. Several rows of chairs had been placed in front of it. On the platform were three tables, one large and imposing, two smaller ones side by side in front of the big one. To the left of the large table was a single row of chairs. A television camera crew was perched on the one corner of the platform, filming as the procession approached.

Nicole saw a second group of people, men and women, coming from the visiting-team tunnel. As she sat next to Clayne, they filed past and sat on the back row of chairs on the platform.

“Who are they?” she whispered.

“That’s the jury. The first jury to hear a criminal case in the history of Shalev.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, would you please rise?”

The Major spoke into a microphone in front of the risers as Travis escorted Clifford Cameron and his attorney to the first small table on the platform, then joined another man at the second table. Nicole assumed the man next to Travis was the prosecuting attorney. Behind them, the jury sat quiet and soberfaced.

Slowly, reluctantly, almost rebelliously, twenty thousand people came to their feet in response to the Major’s command. If he noticed their reticence, he gave no sign. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Honorable Judge Lorenzo R. Bradford, who will be presiding at these proceedings.”

From the row in front of Nicole a man stood, clothed in long black robes, and moved to take his seat at the center table on the platform.

“You may be seated.”

The sound of the crowd settling back onto their seats was a soft rustle, but no other noise could be heard—no talking, no laughter, no cheering, no cries of disappointment—none of the sounds that were so typical of this stadium. As Nicole peered upward at the people, then dropped her eyes to study the Major and those on the stand, she felt a sudden bitterness. This isn’t a trial. Cliff was right. Before it had ever begun, he had known. It was a show. A well-staged, manipulated event.

And then as she scanned the sullen faces of the crowd, she understood, and knew the Major understood as well. It was a show, and the show was for them—for every one of them who had asked himself the question, “What will I do if Eric Lloyd and his men ask me to join them?” Television coverage alone was not sufficient to answer that question. Only a live demonstration, where the shock and reality would be undiluted, would suffice. And then the Major spoke and pulled her thoughts away from the crowd.

“Citizens of Shalev.” His voice gave the impression of one caught in sudden mourning. “For the first time in our eighteenyear history, we begin a trial—not the first civil trial, for we are still human and have had to work out our differences with the aid of the courts and counselors and legal processes—no, for the first time, we convene to conduct a criminal trial. And I cannot fully express the inner feelings that tear at me now. How many times in all of history has mankind gone eighteen years without a single criminal action? How many times have they gone two decades without crime, violence, or unrestrained passion?”

He half turned so that he could see Dr. Clifford Cameron. “Now, for the first time we have had violence, we have had killing, we have had treason. One of the men responsible for that breach of history is here now. He must answer for robbing us of our chance to extend that remarkable, unequalled record of peace and security and harmony to three decades, or four. Or even a century. That was my dream.”

The two men locked gazes, the Major’s expression a mixture of sadness and anger, Dr. Cameron’s one of curious amusement.

The Major turned back. “Ladies and gentlemen, we will now proceed with the case of the Alliance of Four Cities versus Dr. Clifford C. Cameron.”

Judge Lorenzo R. Bradford smacked his gavel against the table and leaned forward into the microphone in front of him. “Will the defendant and his counsel rise and approach the bench?”

Cliff and his attorney stood and came around to stand before him. Travis also stood, unhooked the microphone on his table, and handed it to Cliff’s attorney.

“None of us have a lot of precedence for conducting a trial of this nature,” the judge continued, “so we shall proceed as best we know how.”

He picked up a long sheet of paper before him. “Dr. Clifford C. Cameron, you stand here today accused of the following charges: eight counts of high treason through the illegal removal of the implantations of citizens of the Alliance of Four Cities; six counts of aggravated assault; six counts of illegal manufacture, possession, and use of high explosives; three counts of illegal possession and use of dangerous weapons; four counts of conspiracy to commit treason; and one count of being an accessory to forcible abduction and kidnapping.”

He leaned back in his chair, his face grave. “Those are the charges. Do you understand them?”

Nicole saw Cliff nod, but heard no answer. “I’m sorry, Dr. Cameron, but would you speak into the microphone. Would you repeat your answer, please?”

As his attorney held the microphone up to him, Cliff’s voice boomed out over the speakers in the stadium. “Yes, your Honor, I understand the charges.”

“And how do you plead?”

“To these particular charges?”

“Of course.”

“Guilty.”

Nicole’s head jerked up as a gasp of surprise swept the stadium. “No,” she whispered.

“What was that again?” the judge said, leaning forward in his chair.

“I said guilty. I plead guilty to the charges read.”

Cliff’s attorney stepped forward and took the microphone. “Your Honor, may I speak?”

“Yes.”

“Your Honor—” He paused, evidently as stunned as everyone else. “I don’t think my client fully understands the implications of what he’s saying. He doesn’t—”

Cliff gently took the microphone back. “Your Honor, I appreciate Mr. Wingate’s concern, but I do fully understand what I am doing. The Major, in his opening address, charged me with trying to overthrow peace, introduce violence, foster crime. Now if those were the charges, I would plead not guilty and defend myself vigorously. But you said I am charged with operating on people and taking out their implantations, with using weapons and explosives,” he shot Nicole a quick glance, “in aiding and abetting in a kidnapping. To those charges I must plead guilty.”

“Well…” The judge gave the Major a searching look, pleading for help.

Cliff continued, his voice amiable and friendly. “Does there have to be a trial now? I mean, do we still need to call witnesses, argue the case, all of that?”

“Well, I—no, I mean, I guess not. If you refuse to deny your guilt, I guess we just—sentence you.”

Again the judge glanced at the Major, who nodded curtly.

“Good.” Cliff turned and surveyed the crowd, then looked up at the sky. “Well then, your Honor, Major Denison was kind enough to give all these good people half a day off from work. It’s a hot day. Instead of sitting here sweltering in the sun, why don’t you hurry and pronounce sentence and leave them some time to catch a swim or take a picnic to the lake or something.”

As a startled wave of laughter swept through the crowd, punctuated with shouts of approval and a smattering of applause, Nicole stared at Cliff Cameron, and suddenly her eyes were swimming.

“What do you say, your Honor?”

Totally bewildered, the judge again turned to the Major for support, and again Nicole saw the almost imperceptible nod of the head.

He cleared his throat quickly. “Well, then. Since the defendant pleads guilty to all charges—uh—I guess we’re ready to pass sentence. Would the defendant please—oh, yes, you’re already standing.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Dr. Clifford C. Cameron, as the judge over these proceedings, I hereby sentence you to be remanded into the custody of the Guardians. Stage Three implantation is hereby declared permanent.”

Clayne whispered into Nicole’s ear, “They knew what the sentence would be before this ever happened.” The disgust in his voice was evident.

“And also,” the judge intoned, “you are to be placed in a confinement cell for the rest of your natural life.”

Once again the sudden intake of twenty thousand pairs of lungs caused a rippling of sound across the stadium. Nicole felt the tears well over and trickle down her cheeks as Cliff Cameron nodded.

“That concludes this trial,” the judge said, banging his gavel. “Court is adjourned.” Cliff nodded again, then turned and walked back to his seat, leaving his attorney staring at him.

In an instant the Major was up and to the microphone in front of the platform. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please.” The babble of noise quickly died, and the people sank back into their seats. “We want to express our thanks to Judge Lorenzo R. Bradford and to the jury members, who, fortunately, were not needed today.” His voice was tinged with a hardness Nicole had heard only once or twice before.

“The accused now becomes the convicted, by his own confession.” He turned to look at Dr. Cameron. His hand came up and covered the microphone, and Nicole heard his savage whisper. “Travis!”

Even as Travis came off the platform to join him, the Major was back at the microphone. “Dr. Cameron has graciously suggested that we cut these proceedings short. We shall do that, only delaying you a moment or so longer.”

Again his hand came over the mike, and Nicole leaned forward, straining to hear what he said as a low murmur of disappointment rippled through the crowd. “Travis, get on your radio and patch us in to Central Control. I want a direct radio link with the Monitoring Room.”

The Monitoring Room! Nicole stared, the first glimmer of horror pushing against her stomach.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Major said smoothly, even as Travis, obviously caught off guard, unhooked his radio and began speaking into it. “It appears that while Dr. Cameron has confessed his guilt, he has exhibited no real remorse. And it may even be that some of you are thinking that his punishment is not all that bad. Confinement for life is a depressing thought, but considering that he tried to overthrow our entire society, the magnitude of the crime seems to demand a more severe punishment.”

He glanced over at Travis, who nodded. Up came the hand, and once again the microphone was covered so the crowd did not hear the exchange. But Nicole and those around her heard it clearly. “Tell them to stand by on Dr. Cameron’s frequency. I want them prepared to give me ten percent increments of his Punishment Mode on my signal.”

Several members of the press corps and the television crew audibly gasped, and next to her, Clayne Robertson started in his chair. Nicole stared numbly, knowing better than any of them what the Major was up to.

“Travis! That’s an order!” The Major’s voice snapped out like a rifle shot, and Travis flinched. Then slowly, he lifted the radio to his mouth.

“Under no circumstances are they to exceed eighty percent of the maximum. I don’t want him killed. Tell them that!”

“Yes, sir!”

The Major swung back to the microphone, and his eyes scanned the rows of faces staring down at him. “Some of you may think that Dr. Cameron has gotten off easily, but that is only because you do not fully understand what Stage Three implantation entails. Few people in Shalev have it, and so relatively few of you have seen its effects. Perhaps a demonstration is in order. Travis, if you’d hand me the radio, please.”

The walkie-talkie changed hands slowly. “Now, will you go up and stand by Dr. Cameron. Hold the microphone for him. I wish the people to hear whatever he has to say.”

As Travis moved back onto the platform, Cliff stood up slowly. He licked his lips once, then straightened and squared his shoulders. His right hand came up slowly until it touched his forehead, and with dignity he saluted the crowd.

“Ten percent!” the Major said quickly into the radio.

Cliff gave an involuntary gasp, and his arm jerked away from his forehead, but he forced it back, biting his lip to stop the violent trembling of his upper body.

“Twenty!”

A sharp cry was torn from Cliff’s lips as he dropped to his knees and grabbed his head with both hands.

“Ladies and gentlemen, what you are now witnessing is only twenty percent of the Punishment Mode under Stage Three implantation.” He turned and looked at the trembling figure. “Dr. Cameron, are you ready to express regret for your crimes?”

“No.” The word was barely audible, but Travis had lowered the microphone to the kneeling figure so that it was touching Cliffs lips, and his answer went booming out over the speakers.

“Thirty percent!” the Major commanded.

Cliff screamed in agony as Nicole clamped her eyes shut, her fingernails biting into the flesh of her palms.

“Fifty!” The Major’s voice was an angry bellow. “Now, Dr. Cameron, now are you ready to speak to us?”

“Yes! Yes, oh help me! Yes! Please, yes!”

“Cut the power,” the Major said quickly, nodding in satisfaction.

A great sob of relief echoed out of the body that suddenly collapsed and went limp.

“Travis,” the Major said, now fully composed again, “will you help Dr. Cameron up? I believe he is ready to make a statement now.”

Travis’s arm went around Cliffs waist. He was trembling so violently that he could not stand alone. Travis helped him to his feet, heavily supporting him. Cliffs eyes were bulging and he was gasping for breath as Travis held the microphone to his lips.

For a long moment the only sound in the air was the tortured rasping of his breath. Then suddenly his head came up. “Eric!”

It was a cry of such anguish that it tore through Nicole and went bouncing off the grandstands in echoes that would haunt her forever. “Eric, don’t give up! Help free this people!”

For a split second the Major stared, his mouth open in stunned surprise. Then his hand flew up, jamming the radio to his mouth. “Eighty percent!” he screamed hoarsely. “Eighty percent capacity! Now!”

Cliff’s body jerked so violently that he was torn out of Travis’s grip, as though hit at point-blank range with a high-powered rifle. One long scream rent the summer air before Cliff collapsed into a crumpled heap at Travis Oakes’s feet.

For a full ten seconds there was not a sound in the stadium. Every eye was riveted on the still form on the platform in the center of the field. Then suddenly, high up in the center bleachers, a man leaped to his feet. In the stillness his voice echoed like a pistol shot, the sarcasm twisting it into a mocking cry. “Let’s hear it for Major Denison and the Guardians,” he shouted, “keepers of the peace, protectors of our freedom.”

And then he began to clap his hands. Almost instantly someone else leaped up, and then another. Like gasoline vapors ignited by sparks from a torch, twenty thousand people exploded, leaping to their feet. There was no open anger, for years of instantaneous punishment had long ago flattened such responses. But they were up, pounding their hands, many of the women with tears streaming down their cheeks, paying tribute to the crumpled figure on the stand, and, as openly as they dared, rejecting the man who had put him there. The sound rolled down out of the stands in a smashing wave, engulfing the small group of people standing in the center of the soccer field. Nicole stared straight ahead, seeing nothing because of the burning in her eyes.

Chapter 27

Nicole set down her book and unfolded her legs as the soft chime of the door bell echoed through the house. She stopped briefly to look at herself in the small entryway mirror, then pulled the door open.

“Hi.”

“Hello, Travis.” He gave her a quick kiss, which she accepted absently. Then she stepped aside so he could enter the living room.

“Did you get unpacked?”

“Yes, I was nearly done when you called.”

“And how was Mount Pleasant?”

“Beautiful. It’s such a lovely place there.”

“Yes, it is. And how’s your aunt?”

Nicole smiled. Outwardly Travis seemed his usual confident self, but these were exactly the same questions he had asked her on the phone. “She’s fine. Lonely since Uncle Arthur died, but doing quite well. Please, sit down.”

Though she sat on the couch, he chose the easy chair opposite her. He really is unsure of himself tonight, she thought. For a moment there was an uncomfortable silence. Then he turned and looked down the hallway where the shattered door frame to her bedroom could be seen. “Now that you’re back, we’ll have to get that fixed.”

“Yes, I’ll have to do that.” Before I sell the house, she nearly added, but caught herself. Finally she asked, “How’s Dr. Cameron?”

He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. “About the same. The doctor says that it’s as if he had a massive stroke. At this point they can’t tell whether the paralysis is permanent or whether it’s just a temporary shock to his nervous system.”

“And still no sign of Eric?”

“None. We expected a real blow-up after the trial, but there’s been nothing. I can’t believe he’s given up or been scared off.”

Nicole nodded. Except for the ticking of the mantel clock, the living room was filled with silence. Finally Travis drew a deep breath. “Nicole?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been thinking about us, and…”

His inward nervousness had finally surfaced. His hands were up, fingertips to fingertips, and he was tapping them.

“Yes?”

“And…well, I’ve decided I’ve been a fool about our marriage, saying we ought to wait until next summer. If you want a Christmas wedding, that’s fine with me. Or we can even do it sooner than that if you want.”

Do it? What a peculiar choice of words. As though it were a task to be gotten out of the way. But she showed no response. She had known this was coming sooner or later, had even told herself she welcomed it so she could stop agonizing over what she would say. But now that it had come, her courage wavered. Just two weeks ago—was it only that long ago?—what she would have given to hear those words.

Travis was watching her closely, the drumming of his fingers increasing in tempo. “I mean,” he added, “it’s clear to me now just how flimsy my excuses were. Since you’ve been gone, first with Eric, now with your aunt, I realize just how much you mean to me. And I—”

She took a deep breath and plunged in. “Travis?”

He stopped.

Once started, her words came out in a rush. “Travis, when I report to work Monday morning, I’m turning in my resignation from the Guardians.”

“What?” The stunned look on his face was almost comical. He had played his best hand, and she had just trumped it.

“Yes. Effective immediately. Then I’m moving to Mount Pleasant to stay with my aunt for a while.”

“But why?”

“I’ve talked with a computer manufacturer there. They have an excellent opportunity in their testing department.” She reached down and slipped off the engagement ring. “I think it’s better if you take this back for now. Maybe later, if we can get the whole thing sorted out, then…” She trailed off, not sure how to finish.

“But why, Nicole? Why?”

“I can’t be a Monitor anymore. I think you’re right. I don’t think Eric has run away. I don’t think the battle is over. If I stay, there will be more commands to push the red buttons, more Dr. Camerons in the hot summer sunshine. And—and I don’t have any more of those battles in me. I can’t face those options. Maybe they have to be done, but not by me.”

She moved over in front of him and held out the ring. “So I think it’s best if you take this back now.”

He just stared at her, so she dropped the ring in his hand and moved back to the couch.

“It has something to do with what happened at the dam, doesn’t it.”

Nicole considered for a moment, then finally nodded. “Yes, in a way it does. Not as much as you think, but some.”

“Nicole, I didn’t have any choice. The Major wouldn’t let Eric’s family go.”

“I know. And I guess I understand, but have you ever considered what the game of soccer must be like from the ball’s point of view?”

He didn’t answer.

“Well, I was the ball that day—to you, to the Major, to Eric—and that isn’t a very uplifting feeling. But it’s much more than that, Travis. Much more.”

“What?”

Showing the Major which buttons to push, holding microphones to a seventy-two-year-old man’s lips as he screams in agony. But she merely shook her head. “Maybe after it all dies down, things will return to normal, and we can start building something again.”

Travis stood up quickly and came over to sit next to her. He took her hand. “Nicole, do you still love me?”

“I—” Her head dropped, and she stared at their hands. “I don’t know. I need time to sort this all out in my mind.”

He sighed deeply, then finally nodded. “Okay. I guess I can understand how you feel.” He stood up abruptly. “Well, then, I guess I’d better go.”

The hurt in his voice was obvious, and for a moment she almost relented. Then something inside her stiffened, and she stood up too. Suddenly he put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to him. His kiss was gentle, longing, imploring. One part of her ached to return it, but she couldn’t.

“Good-bye, Nicole.”

“Good-bye, Travis.”

At the door he abruptly stopped. “Have you considered what leaving the Guardians means for you?”

A thousand questions from friends, loss of one of the bestpaying jobs in the city, giving up this home, which was furnished by the Guardians—her mind flicked quickly over the things she had already considered. “Yes, I think I have.”

“Implantation?”

Nicole faltered, the color draining from her face.

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “But you know that’s true.”

“I—”

“With your uncle dead, you’re not immediate family anymore. The Major won’t make an exception, especially not now.”

Nicole’s mouth was a pale, tight line across the chalky hue of her face. How stupid. That above all should have occurred to her, and it had never crossed her mind.

“Look,” Travis said, moving to her and taking her by the shoulders, “you’ve still got until Monday to think about your decision. That gives you another thirty-six hours. If being in Central Monitoring is what concerns you, just ask for a transfer. You could go in—”

They both spun around at the sound of scratching at the door. “What’s that?” Nicole said. Then, as she opened the door, she cried out in surprise and delight. “Cricket!”

The German shepherd was sitting down, her nose pressed to the screen, her tail beating furiously against the porch.

Nicole threw open the screen and dropped to her knees. “Cricket, where did you come from?” She laughed with delight as the dog tried to lick her face.

Travis stepped out onto the porch and peered into the night. “That’s what I want to know too. Where did she come from? You said Eric had her when you escaped from him. Do you have a flashlight?”

“Do you think Eric is here?” she asked incredulously.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. Do you have a light?”

“No. Surely, Travis, he wouldn’t be here. He had no reason to try and keep Cricket with him. She probably just came down on her own. I’ve been gone—she could have been back for days.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But he did come here for you once, so let’s be sure he hasn’t come again.” He stepped off the porch and began a methodical search of the yard.

For a moment or two Nicole watched, a little angry at the sudden clutch of anxiety for Eric’s safety. She had spent the last week telling herself she was through with Eric Lloyd and his futile little rebellion. Then she shook it off as Travis moved around the back. “Come on, Cricket, let’s get you something to eat.”

She had just opened a can of dog food when Travis knocked at the back door. “It’s open, come in.”

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “But I’d better get back to Central Control and alert them just in case. Lock your doors and shut all the windows. If you see or hear anything, call me.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and was gone.

Nicole moved out onto the front porch and watched him drive away, amused, half sad. “Well, so much for all those regrets over broken engagements,” she murmured. “Half time is over, the ball game resumes. Only this time, they’ll have to find another ball to play with.”

She sighed and went back inside, shutting the door. As she turned back into the living room, she gave a startled cry. Eric was kneeling behind the couch, elbows on the back of it, his head resting in cupped hands.

“Hi,” he said with a smile.

“Eric! What are you doing here?”

“If I promise to stay across the room, would you mind if we talked with the lights out?”

Nicole’s eyes flicked to the front window, but Travis had gone. Curiously, she was glad. “I—why are you here?”

He held up his hands quickly. “No abductions, no shattered doors this time. I promise.”

“Good. I couldn’t help but wonder.” She walked over and clicked off the lights, leaving only the light from the kitchen doorway.

Limping noticeably, Eric stepped over to Cricket and reached down to rub her neck. “You rascal. How did you get out of the garage? I locked you in there.”

“That was your first mistake,” Nicole said. “I used to lock her in the garage when I wanted to go for a walk without her. Then she learned to climb up on the workbench and push the little sliding window open with her nose.”

“Well, she about did me in. That was a little too close.”

“How did you get in here?” And then her face colored slightly. “And how long have you been behind the couch?”

“About two minutes is all,” he answered quickly. “I had just started up the front porch when I saw the headlights coming.” He grinned. “Believe it or not, I was going to call on you in a normal fashion for once. When I saw it was Travis, I dove into the bushes around the side of the house. I was going to wait until he left. Then Cricket started scratching on the front door. When you two came out the front, I scurried around the back and came in here.”

When she nodded, obviously relieved, he grew serious. “However, I must tell you, I was hiding directly under these windows.” His thumb jerked over his shoulder.

“So you did hear?”

“Yes. I didn’t want to eavesdrop, but I was afraid to move for fear Travis would hear me. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I appreciate your telling me.”

“I felt I owed you that.”

“How’s your leg?”

“Coming. How about your foot?”

“Fine. The doctors in Central Control opened it up again the morning I got back and cleaned it all out. I had the stitches out yesterday. If I’m careful, I hardly know it’s there.”

“Good. I saw you on crutches at the stadium.”

“Were you there?”

“No, we didn’t get down until almost dusk. But I watched the news broadcast that night.”

“I see.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Where is he, Nicky?”

“What?” she blurted. “No ‘didn’t I tell you so, Nicky’? You told me that if I returned, I’d be forced to face unpleasant alternatives. It took less than eight hours to prove your seeric gift. Why don’t you call that to my attention before you ask me to betray my employer?”

“Nicky, I—”

“Don’t call me Nicky!” she cried. “Please, don’t call me Nicky.”

He was watching her steadily. “It was Nicky who dragged me away from the claws of the bear. You’ll always be Nicky to me.”

“And Nicole works for the Major, right?”

“Nicole,” he corrected slowly, “is a woman of remarkable grace, courage, and integrity. She has more of my respect and admiration than any woman I’ve ever known. And to call her Nicky in no way lessens what I think of Nicole.”

For a long moment she stared at him. Then finally she murmured, “Please don’t.”

Eric looked surprised. “Please don’t what?”

“Don’t be nice. Not now. I don’t want to like you. I want to get away from you and Travis and the Major and Shalev and Cliff Cameron and—” She had a sudden thought. “Were you going to ask me to join you?”

“I have no right to ask that. If you remember, I was one of those who played soccer, using you as the ball. I have no right to toss you back into the game now. Except for Cliff. If you’ll tell me where Cliff is, I’ll leave you alone.”

“So you can get him out?”

“Yes. Your people abandoned you on the dam. We can’t do that.”

Her voice was barely a whisper. “Even if he won’t know that you’ve gotten him out?”

Eric’s eyes were stricken. “I heard what Travis said.” She saw him swallow hard. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll get him out.”

“He’s heavily guarded.”

“It doesn’t matter!” he shot back angrily. “Will you tell me where he is?”

Nicole stood up, walked to the fireplace, and leaned on the mantel, looking away from him. “If I did that, it would mean treason,” she said. “I don’t have to go with you into the mountains, or operate on somebody. Even the simple act of telling you where they’re holding Cliff Cameron becomes treason against the Guardians, against my people, and against everything I’ve always believed in. With one word I become as guilty as if I held the knife.”

“I understand.”

She whirled to face him. “Do you?” she cried. “You’re asking me to risk everything—my career, my freedom, Travis—”

“You’ve already—” He bit back the angry retort.

“I’ve already what?” she demanded.

“Nothing. I have no right to say that either. I’m sorry I bothered you, Nicole. You’re correct, I have no right to ask such a thing of you.”

“I’ve already lost Travis. That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

Eric knelt down by Cricket. “Good-bye, old girl. Take good care of her, will you?”

“Say it!” Nicole cried, taking a step toward him. “You’re thinking it. Why won’t you say it?”

He straightened slowly, his eyes gentle. “If I ever ask a woman if she loves me and her answer is, ‘I don’t know’…” He shrugged.

Surprisingly enough, she did not flash back at him.

“Up in the hills you accused me of being the village’s resident psychiatrist,” he went on. “At the risk of supporting that accusation, let me say something. My father used to tell us that love and goodness are interwoven and interdependent. The more goodness a person exhibits in his life, the easier it is to love that person. Selfishness, cruelty, exploitation—any evil act makes it harder and harder to feel love for a person. And you and Travis—” He stopped and then shrugged. “I think your head is still struggling with what your heart has already decided.”

“I know,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Every time I think about him, I can’t blot out the image of him showing the Major the terminal voltage buttons on the computer.”

“Or last week in the stadium?” Eric asked softly.

“Yes, that too.” Her shoulders straightened, as if the saying of it had relieved her of pain.

“I’m sorry. Travis is a good man in many ways.”

“I know.” She took a deep breath. “So what now?”

He smiled, the slightest touch of teasing in his eyes. “I could always drag you back to the mountains again.”

“Against my will, of course.”

“Of course.” He laughed gently, then instantly sobered. “What about implantation, Nicky? Travis is right—the Major won’t make an exception.”

“I know.”

“Nicole, I—” Then he stopped and his shoulders dropped.

“What?”

He took a breath, hesitated as though ready to speak, then finally shook his head.

“Ask me, Eric,” she said.

“I lost my right to ask you anything.”

“I know. But you earned it back when you brought me my shoes. So ask me.”

His hands came up, as though he was about to take her by the shoulders, then they dropped again. But his eyes were steady and his face determined. “Nicole, come with us. Help us free this people.”

He used almost exactly the same words Clifford Cameron had screamed out as his final answer to the Major, and they hit Nicole hard. When she looked up at him, tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Why did you come back? I don’t want to be part of this. I want to get away and not think about it anymore.”

“Yes,” he said, thinking of the valley and irrigating in the warm summer sunshine. “That does have its attractions.”

Suddenly Nicole walked into the bedroom. When she returned, she held the carved redwood figure of a tortured eagle straining upwards. “Why did you give me this?”

“He sighed. “I carved that because it was me, then. It represented everything I was feeling.”

“And why did you choose to give it to me?”

Eric took the statue, turning it over in his hands as he looked at it carefully. Finally his eyes lifted to meet hers. “I told myself it was to throw you off, to confuse you, but I really think it was because I wanted you to understand me. I wanted you to know why I had to do what I did.”

Once again her eyes were glistening. “Is freedom so precious?” Before he could answer, she went on quickly, talking to herself as much as to him. “I guess having always had it, I’ve never thought about it much. Implantation never appeared that horrible in others. They seemed happy. I kept telling myself it was really for their good. But as I’ve watched you and the others—” Her voice caught for a moment. “Cliff saluting the crowd—I…How can I go on supporting the very thing that denies that freedom to tens of thousands of people? How could I ever have been part of that?”

“Nicole,” Eric said, his own voice husky with emotion. “Come with us.”

“And if I say yes, then what happens?”

“I’ll take you with me right now. We’ll cut your wrist computer, and as soon as we get Cliff free, we’ll go back to base camp. You can meet Mother and my sisters.”

“I’d like that very much.”

“And—”

“But that’s not the answer, is it?”

He looked startled.

“You don’t need me in the mountains. Not really. What you need is someone in Central Control.”

“No. That would be too dangerous.”

“Eric,” she pleaded, “for the past week I’ve been agonizing with myself, wondering what to do, not wanting to face what I feel has to be done. Now you’ve given me another option. I don’t like it. I don’t want it. But if I’m going to join with you, then put me where you need me.”

“After what you’ve told Travis, it’d be very dangerous.”

“I know, and I’m frightened to death. I’ll have to tell him the threat of implantation changed my mind. But Eric, do you really need me?”

He stared at her for several moments, then slowly handed her the eagle, putting his hand over hers as she took it from him. “Yes, Nicole, we really need you. Will you join us?”

She smiled, a strange mixture of relief and sadness. “I joined you up there in the mountains. I just needed you to come and let me know that I had.”

Chapter 28

Nicole was in the cafeteria on her afternoon break when it began. She had forced herself to go with Shirley Ferguson, though her stomach was tied in knots. With tremendous effort she managed to smile and respond at the proper places and tried to avoid looking at the clock a dozen times a minute.

“Nicole?” Shirley’s voice penetrated her thoughts. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

“You look pale. Are you sure you should have come back to work this soon? You haven’t been yourself all day.”

A wave of panic went flooding through Nicole. Shirley was a whiz on the computers and a steady and reliable Monitor, but definitely not one of Central Control’s more perceptive lights when it came to interpersonal relations and interactions. If Shirley had noticed her distracted state, she was flirting with disaster with the Major and Travis. The Major had interviewed her relentlessly when she came on shift. “Why did you come to the stadium out of uniform?” “Why were you going to resign?” “Why did you break off your engagement with Travis?” “What changed your mind about resigning?” “What if you falter in the Monitoring Room in the next crisis?” She had answered him honestly wherever possible, telling him everything except the decision to join Eric. She had satisfied him, and he agreed to allow her to continue as a monitor, but she knew she was on probation and would be watched closely.

Suddenly the public-address system blared out through the cafeteria, the feminine voice high-pitched and clearly excited. “Attention, all personnel. Attention, all personnel. We have a Stage One Alert. All personnel report to your duty stations immediately.”

“Stage One!” Shirley exclaimed as they both raced for the door. “That’s a full-scale emergency. What’s happening?”

It’s Eric! Nicole nearly shouted out loud, her heart soaring with relief. But she just shook her head quickly and broke into a trot toward the Central Monitoring room.

When they reached the room, Travis was already there, a phone in one hand, staring at the monitoring board above the blue-and-orange computer consoles. Three lighted panels were blinking brightly.

Three! Nicole stared. If they had removed three implantations at the same time, they’d be slowed down considerably and highly vulnerable to capture.

And then, even as she slid into her chair, the big board clanged sharply and a fourth set of flashing letters began to wink on and off.

WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTER &num;116543, DONALD LEON BROWNLEY, HAS BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCE NOW INITIATED. DONALD LEON BROWNLEY IS NO LONGER READABLE VIA WRIST COMPUTER.

“Four now!” Travis shouted into the phone, then spun around to Shirley and Nicole. “Eric’s back. They’ve removed four implantations. Nicole, I need a tracking on where they were when the wrist computers were severed.”

“Right.” Her fingers began to fly across the terminal keyboard.

“Shirley,” Travis barked, “pull up personal data files on each of these people and stand by.”

“Yes, sir.”

At Nicole’s command the computer searched its massive brain with breathtaking swiftness and fed the data to the screen. For one split second, she thought about delaying the data for Travis in order to give Eric even a small margin of time, but then she rejected the idea. Eric had specifically warned her against doing anything that would give her away. Even as the letters began flowing across her screen, she called out to Travis. “Richard Dawson was at the Kooska Mill and Lumber Company, 345 Green Street. That’s in the northwest sector.”

“Kooska!” Travis shouted, stabbing his finger at the flashing lights on the board. Nicole looked to where his finger pointed and saw the next two names, Stanley R. Kooska and Darla B. Kooska.

“Check the last one, check Brownley.” Without waiting for her response, Travis picked up the phone again. “Units Two and Four, Code Three to 345 Green Street. Watch for any vehicles or personnel fleeing the vicinity.”

He turned back to stare at Nicole’s monitoring screen, where the impersonal brain was spewing out the information on Brownley’s location at the time of severance. But before it had finished, another sharp clanging shattered the silence.

WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTERS &num;124667, &num;124668, &num;137125, AND &num;138976, CHARLES KEITH METCALF, DAWN JOANN METCALF, LISA RAE METCALF, AND JAMES CHARLES METCALF, HAVE BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCES NOW INITIATED.

Travis swore softly, the first profanity Nicole had heard since she was a small child. But it wasn’t Travis that had her shocked attention. She too stared at the screen. A whole family. Four at the same time. And that was in addition to the other four. But before she could comprehend what that meant, the flashing lights on her screen reverted to the message on Brownley’s tracking.

Travis, looking over her shoulder, burst out with another expletive. “Brownley’s somewhere else!”

“Yes,” Nicole answered with a cool precision that in no way revealed the exultation sweeping through her at that moment. “This time it’s in south central sector, 1461 Page Lane. That’s the home of—”

“The Metcalfs!” Travis exclaimed. “That means they have two operating teams.” Again he began to bark orders into the phone, sending additional teams racing to the second site.

“Captain Oakes,” Shirley broke in, “I have the data files on the first four.”

“Good. Read them out to me.”

Before she could speak, the door to Central Monitoring flew open and the Major strode in, his face red. He stopped and stared at the flashing board. “What?” he shouted. “Eight!”

“Yes,” Travis said quickly, “done in two different locations. I’ve got teams on the way to both places right now.”

“I can’t believe this!” the Major shouted.

“Shirley is giving us a run-down on who’s been operated on.”

“Proceed,” he snapped, not turning away from the screen.

“Richard Dawson,” Shirley began to read in a timid voice, “age twenty-five, male, Caucasian, single, born in Toledo, Ohio, came to Shalev—”

“Yes, yes,” Travis prodded. “Just give us his name, age, and occupation for now.”

“He’s a medical student, presently in his internship at Shalev General Hospital.”

“A doctor!” Travis cried out. “Who’s he doing his residency under?”

“I don’t have that here. Just a moment.” She punched some keys. “Dr. Chester Abernathy, sir.”

“Abernathy!” the Major exploded. “I should have known.”

“What about the others?”

“Stanley R. Kooska is forty-seven and owns his own lumber mill. His wife does their bookkeeping. Brownley is a chemistry professor at the Technical College and is also a partner in the Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer Company.”

“I have the Metcalfs,” Nicole said. “Care to guess who the other partner in Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer is?”

“So,” the Major said, stepping back to glare at the monitoring board, which was now nearly covered with flashing lights, “they’re tapping their close associates. That’s how they choose their next victims.”

“But why take the whole family?” Travis said, staring at Nicole’s screen.” The girl is sixteen, the son eighteen. Why take them?”

“I can answer that,” Nicole replied. “I heard them one night on the radio. They said they’d take only single men or whole families, in case you tried to apply pressure through their relatives.”

“Thus providing a very close and tight-knit group,” the Major added.

“The teams should be arriving at the two locations any moment now,” Travis said. “Maybe we’ll catch them.”

“Don’t count on it,” the Major snapped back at him. “Eric’s no dummy. He knows how swiftly we can pinpoint the locations. He’s got some kind of transportation away from the site, and he’ll fix them up someplace else.”

“They must have found additional heavy-duty bolt cutters,” Nicole volunteered. “All four of the Metcalfs were cut so close to the same moment that the computer registered them all at the same time.”

“Yes,” the Major said. “But now they’re going to have to fix their people up. They have eight bleeding people; they’re not going to be easy to hide.” He glanced up at the clock. “Nicole, how long ago was it when the first person was severed?”

She punched a button again, recalling Dawson’s profile. “Dawson was cut at 3:13, nearly eight or nine minutes ago.”

“Okay,” the Major said. “They can’t have gone far. Travis, tell your men to start cordoning off both sectors. Once they are secure, begin a house-to-house search. I want every garage, every basement, every possible hiding place covered.”

“Yes, sir.”

The phone rang sharply, and Travis snatched it up. “This will be the first team reporting in now, sir.” He jammed the phone to his ear and barked, “Captain Oakes speaking…Yes, put him on.” He covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Captain Burton from Serenity. I—yes, this is Captain Oakes. Hello, Cal, what is it?”

And then his face blanched. “What?” he shouted. He listened for a moment longer, then stared at the Major. “Burton is in Serenity’s Central Monitoring Center, Major. They’ve just had five wrist computers severed there. All of them are people from Eric’s village.”

By 6:30 that evening, Central Control looked like a castle under siege. Orange-uniformed men and women rushed here and there, their faces drawn, stopping to share the latest shock of news in hurried whispers. The call from Serenity had come in at 3:22 P.M. At 3:29, Travis’s first group commander called to report that the Kooska Lumber Mill and surrounding areas were deserted. At 3:31, his second commander reported that the house on Page Lane was likewise empty except for some bloodstained sheets and four wrist computers and implantation chips on the floor. Neighbors reported that a brown van had driven off swiftly a few minutes before the Guardians arrived.

At 3:44, Captain Burton called again from Serenity to report six additional removals, all family members of the previous five.

At 4:17, Shalev General Hospital sent in a fire alarm. A small blaze had started in the basement laundry. It was quickly contained, but ten minutes later a shamefaced corporal rushed into Central Control to report that while he and his men were downstairs fighting the blaze, two men in orderlies’ uniforms entered Cliff Cameron’s room, stunned two Guardians into unconsciousness, and disappeared with Dr. Cameron.

At 5:11, the monitoring board clanged again. WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTER &num;G2632, JOSEPH PAUL JENSEN, HAS BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCE NOW INITIATED. JOSEPH PAUL JENSEN IS NO LONGER READABLE VIA WRIST COMPUTER. TERMINATED SUBJECT WAS A MEMBER OF THE GUARDIAN STAFF. Shirley Ferguson went white. Joe was a corporal on the city patrol, and he and Shirley had been dating steadily long enough that the office had been buzzing about a potential marriage. With a long face but soaring heart, Nicole called that bombshell to the Major, who had gone to his office with Travis to try to get ahead of the escalating crisis.

At 5:15, even as Nicole was still trying to find out where Joe Jensen’s duty station had been, a call, almost incoherent, came from the sergeant in charge of a road checkpoint leading north out of Shalev. A large truck covered with a tarp had pulled up to the checkpoint. Just as the sergeant and one of his men yanked back the tarp to reveal a mass of people huddled in a hollowed-out pile of lumber, a man with a stun gun had sprung from the thick underbrush on the side of the road. That was surprise enough for the sergeant, but worse still, one of his own men had joined the stranger in attacking the other Guardians. When the sergeant came to, his tires were flattened, his radio shattered, two of his men were still unconscious, and the third had fled with the truck and the people. The traitorous Guardian? Corporal Joseph P. Jensen.

And finally at 5:57, a patrol near Hungry Horse Dam called in to report they had found the abandoned lumber truck hidden in a stand of pines. Numerous horse tracks were found around the truck and disappeared into the forest.

Even Nicole was reeling by the time the Major burst back into the Monitoring Room at 6:30, Travis at his heels. The Major seemed under perfect control again now, but Travis was looking hounded, his face strained and lined with weariness. The Major came straight to Nicole and thrust a paper into her hand. “I want this to go out on all wrist computers immediately.”

“Yes, sir.” She cleared her terminal and pushed the keys that would set her up for a general broadcast to all citizens of Shalev. Only then did she look at the paper. Her eyes widened, and she looked at the Major.

“Send it.”

“Yes, sir.” Her fingers punched away even as her mind pictured the effect this was going to have throughout the city.

ATTENTION, ALL CITIZENS. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, SHALEV IS UNDER A STATE OF EMERGENCY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES AT ONCE. ALL WORK AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES ARE HEREBY TERMINATED FOR THE EVENING. SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES OF A CRITICAL NATURE THAT ARE EXEMPT WILL BE NOTIFIED IMMEDIATELY. ALL OTHERS MUST BE IN THEIR HOMES BY EIGHT P.M. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS ORDER WILL TRIGGER THE PUNISHMENT MODE IN YOUR WRIST COMPUTERS. REPEAT, AUTOMATIC PUNISHMENT MODE WILL RESULT FOR ALL CITIZENS FOUND OUTSIDE THEIR HOMES AFTER EIGHT P.M. UNLESS ON EXEMPT STATUS. A GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT AND FURTHER DETAILS WILL BE GIVEN ON THE TEN O’CLOCK NEWS THIS EVENING.

When she was finished, the Major nodded. “Nicole, there will be a special meeting for all section heads at 9:00 P.M. in the general conference room. I’d like you to be there. Also, I want you to contact the president of the AFC, the mayor of Shalev, all city council members, the editors of both papers, and the directors or presidents of both the radio and television stations in Shalev. They are all to be in attendance. This is not optional.” He spun on his heel and strode out, Travis right behind him.

“Wow!” Shirley said softly, leaning back in her chair.

“Yes,” Nicole answered. “Wow indeed!”

Chapter 29

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention?”

The Major’s request was totally superfluous and about five seconds too late. The moment he entered the conference room, the excited babble of hushed voices came to an immediate halt. Now every eye was on the somber face.

“I have a brief statement to read,” the Major said, letting his eyes sweep across the faces in the room. “After that, you may ask questions.”

Roy Hartford, editor of the Shalev Daily Herald, lifted his pencil to his small notepad. The movement caught the Major’s eye.

“Roy, I’ll have copies of the statement for each of you when you leave.”

“Good. Thank you.”

The Major lifted a paper and adjusted his glasses slightly, looked up once more, then began to read in a clear voice, enunciating each word carefully.

“‘A state of grave crisis exists in the city of Shalev and throughout the Alliance of Four Cities tonight. The security and peace of our society face a challenge potentially more deadly and destructive than at any time in our eighteen-year history. Therefore, as authorized in section nine, article four of the Laws of Incorporation of the Alliance of Four Cities, we hereby declare a formal state of national emergency and put the entire Alliance under martial law.’”

He paused to let the ripple of shock flutter through the assembled group, then went on firmly. “‘Beginning at 8:00 P.M. this evening, a state of emergency went into effect. It will remain in effect until further notice. Under martial law the following rules will be in effect: One. All civil government in the AFC, including the senate, the courts, and elected officials, will be temporarily suspended, and the Guardians will assume all governing powers until further notice.’”

Nicole saw the stunned look Peter Dobson, president of the AFC, gave Estelle Hardy, Shalev’s mayor, and heard the exclamations of dismay even as her own mind reeled.

“‘The Commander-in-Chief of the Guardian forces will be the chief executive officer and director of government. He is directly responsible for all law, all policies, and all enforcement of the same for the duration of the state of emergency.

“‘Two. For as long as martial law is in effect, all citizens of the AFC are on restricted movement status. All travel outside the city of residence is forbidden without a written permit from the Guardians. A strict curfew will be in effect from 8:00 P.M. until 6:00 A.M. each day. Only those with evening or night employment or those carrying special permits will be allowed outside their homes during those hours. All noncritical activities and services will cease until further notice. Violation of the curfew or travel restrictions will be subject to the Punishment Mode response via the wrist computer.

“‘Three.’” If the Major was aware of the battering effect his words were having on the group, he gave no sign. “‘Beginning at 8:00 A.M. tomorrow morning, all citizens of the Alliance not now implanted will report to their nearest hospital for Stage Two implantation.’” He went on swiftly, overriding the startled cries from the senior Guardian officers. “‘This will include all family members of the Guardian staff, heretofore exempt, and all Guardian personnel in noncritical positions. Lists of exempt personnel will be given to Guardian commanders immediately after this meeting. Failure to report for implantation will warrant maximum Punishment Modes.’”

Maximum! Maybe the others in the room didn’t understand what that meant, but every Guardian did. Maximum meant termination voltage. Nicole looked up at Travis and flushed. It was an effort to keep her face expressionless, for her mind was hurtling through white-water rapids of thought. Monitors were classed as critical personnel, so she was under no threat personally. But her aunt would be implanted, and that made her stomach drop. Then she saw Clayne Robertson sitting in front of her, and she felt ill as her mind leaped to Adrienne and Sarah and Timmy.

Eric’s final sardonic comment as he slipped out the back door Saturday night had been, “I think it’s time to see if we can bloody the Major’s nose a little, goad him into action.” He had gotten his reaction all right, and Nicole felt a burst of despair. Eric was underestimating the Major. Shalev had just been clamped down so tightly that Eric’s rebellion would be crushed like a bug under the wheels of a juggernaut.

“The fourth rule,” the Major continued, cutting into her thoughts, “will be in effect, but is not included in the official statement. It will not be announced to the people, but will affect some of you in this room directly. The fourth order of action is that during the state of emergency all media reports—broadcasts, press reports, any announcements—must first be approved by a special public communications committee in Central Control.”

“No!” Roy Hartford of the Herald had leaped to his feet. “You can’t do that!”

The Major sighed. “Roy, of all the requirements of this sordid mess, that one causes me the greatest sorrow. We have never had censorship of the media in Shalev.” His voice grew suddenly hard and cold. “But Eric Lloyd is depending on the media to make him into some kind of twisted folk hero, to turn the hearts of this people so they support him. To some degree, that has already been happening. The media are partially responsible for generating a base of action for Lloyd and the other criminals who have joined him.”

His fist crashed down on the table. “And that is going to stop!” he thundered. “You will not in any way help this man. Is that clear?”

The editor rocked back, stunned by the savagery in the Major’s face, but he was not totally cowed. “May I ask what events have justified this? All we know is that everyone has been put under curfew.”

The Major’s anger disappeared with the same swiftness with which it had flared up. “Yes. That finishes the formal statement. I’ll now answer your questions. The rebels have begun a major offensive. Nine people in Shalev have had their implantations illegally removed since three o’clock this afternoon. Arsonists set a fire in Shalev General Hospital today to cover an attack on the team guarding Dr. Clifford Cameron.”

“Cameron?” Charles Cowles, the president of KSHV-TV, asked. “Was he rescued?”

“Rescued? I think kidnapped would be a better term.”

“Nine people?” The voice was that of Karl Francis of KAFC radio. “Have any of them been found?”

“Not yet. A Guardian checkpoint north of Shalev was attacked this evening and a truckload of people broke free to the mountains. We assume all nine were in that truck along with some of the other rebels.”

The editor of the Morning Tribune, whom Nicole did not know, stood up. “If they’ve escaped, why the martial law now? Isn’t that a kind of shutting-the-barn-door approach?”

Nicole expected the question to trigger another flash, but the Major was now in complete control, and he responded evenly. “Bob, I’m partially responsible for what has happened today. I’ve been dealing with Eric Lloyd as if he were simply a minor skirmish, an irritation on our rear flank. Obviously that’s my mistake. This is an all-out war, and I won’t make the mistake of underestimating him again.”

The editor started to speak, but the Major went on quickly. “We were not able to get a count of how many were in the truck. But as you know, Eric Lloyd and Dr. Cameron removed the implantations from several others prior to the battle at Hungry Horse Dam. It’s possible that some of those—perhaps Lloyd himself—remained in the city. My secretary will furnish you with pictures of all the people who have joined the rebellion thus far. You will begin to publish and circulate the pictures immediately with a warning to all citizens to report any information they have on the whereabouts of these people.” A hand came up, and the Major acknowledged the president of the AFC. “Yes, President Dobson?”

“You said the state of emergency was being declared for all the AFC. Not just Shalev?”

The Major nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. Eleven implantations were also removed in Serenity this afternoon. Thus far, it has not spread beyond that. But we must assume nothing. This is war now. And we are acting accordingly.”

Clayne Robertson rose slowly, bringing a sharp frown to the Major’s face, but he finally nodded toward him. “Yes, Clayne.”

“Sir, why are you implanting our families?”

The Major took a deep breath. “I said the restriction on the media was the saddest decision I had to make. The recommendation for implantation of Guardian personnel and their families was the hardest. But as you know, Clayne, two members of the Guardian staff have defected—Rod Loopes from Central Monitoring, and Joe Jensen this afternoon. When there is no implantation, all a person has to do to beat the system is to cut his wrist computer. This makes it very simple for Guardian members to defect. Since we cannot implant certain key personnel without inhibiting their ability to function as needed, the implantation of family members will discourage any of them from considering foolish alternatives.”

“I see,” Clayne said, not trying very hard to hide the bitterness in his voice.

“Once martial law is lifted, those implantations will be removed.”

“Major Denison?” Estelle Hardy, the mayor, spoke.

“Yes?”

“You said that the Punishment Mode will be applied to people breaking curfew. Surely that is not the same as treason. Is such drastic action really necessary?”

“Mayor Hardy,” the Major said patiently, “these rebels can only function effectively with the help of the citizens—either deliberate help or unsuspecting help. We must isolate them, cut off their ability to move freely about the city.”

He smiled, and Nicole supposed it was meant to be a kindly smile, but in the context of what he was saying, it became grim, almost macabre.

“Actually, for tonight, the first night, we will use only small increments of the voltage, just give them a sharp jolt or two. But—” his voice rose sharply, “thereafter, it will be a very painful experience. And for anyone found helping or abetting the rebels in any way, the Punishment Mode will be the maximum. And that means a very painful death. Please make that very clear to the people. Treason threatens our very society and, therefore, will bring the maximum penalty.”

“Major?” It was Roy Hartford again. He spoke quietly into the hushed silence that followed the statement. “You said all media reports on the crisis had to be cleared by committee. How is this to be done, and how long will it take?”

“Good question. Our intent is to expedite the clearance as much as possible. Captain Travis Oakes will chair the public communications committee. He has personnel already standing by to clear your reports of this meeting immediately after we close.”

Charles Cowles, president of KSHV-TV raised his hand.

“Yes, Chuck.”

“And violation of this media blackout on our parts would also constitute treason. Is that correct?”

The Major’s eyes narrowed into icy blue slits. “Yes, that’s correct. I don’t like to—”

A sudden sharp buzzing filled the room, causing Nicole and everyone else to jump and stare at their wrist computers. They were all buzzing in synchronized rhythm. Nicole stared at the face as a message flowed across it in bright yellow letters.

ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS OF SHALEV. AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT WILL BE SHOWN ON KSHV-TV BEGINNING EXACTLY THREE MINUTES FROM NOW. PLEASE TURN ON YOUR TELEVISIONS AND STAND BY.

Then it began again. ATTENTION ALL CITIZENS—but the Major’s angry roar jerked Nicole’s attention away from her wrist.

“What’s going on?” he shouted. “Chuck! What’s the meaning of this?”

But the president of KSHV-TV was as stunned as anyone in the room. “I don’t know,” he stammered, his face white. “I told them to stand by with normal programming until they heard from me.”

“Who’s sending out unauthorized messages on the wrist computers?” Travis said. “That’s what I want to know.”

Once again the Major demonstrated his ability to take a shock and recover quickly as he began barking orders. “Chuck, there’s a phone there in the corner. Call your station immediately and find out what’s going on. I want whatever announcement they are making stopped until it’s cleared. Travis, get down to Central Monitoring and find out who’s sending out messages to the wrist computers. Clayne, there’s a TV in the training room. Get it up here on the double.”

The buzzing of the wrist computers stopped, leaving the room in hushed silence as Travis and Clayne hurried out the door.

Clayne was the first one back, pushing a television on a cart. He was still in the process of getting it plugged in when Travis burst back into the room. He ran to the Major and whispered urgently into his ear. And for the first time in her life, Nicole heard the Major swear.

“The line is dead,” Cowles called from the corner. “I don’t understand it. I know someone’s there.”

“I understand it,” the Major hissed. “It’s Lloyd again. Shirley Ferguson, one of our monitors in the computer center, is missing. She programmed the announcement into the wrist computers and then fled. We’re looking for her now.”

Shirley! Nicole nearly fell off her chair. Plain, plodding Shirley Ferguson? That was the same as being told that your donkey had just won the AFC Race of Champions. And then Nicole remembered Joe Jensen. He and Shirley—of course. She shook her head, stunned.

“We’ve dispatched a team of Guardians to the station,” the Major said, “but I’m not sure they can get there in time to stop the broadcast. But if they are there—”

“Here it is!” Clayne called as the insipid comedy on the screen went blank. He turned up the sound, and for a moment the soft hiss of static filled the room. Then the face of Mark Van Dam, KSHV-TV news anchorman, appeared on the screen.

“Van Dam!” Cowles shouted. “What’s he doing?”

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of Shalev. We interrupt our regular programming to bring you a very special announcement.”

The announcer was easily one of the most widely recognized men in Shalev and immensely popular. But now his face was as somber as Nicole had ever seen it, and tinged with pain. And Nicole understood. His implantation had not been removed, and he was suffering the consequences.

“At eight o’clock this evening, the city of Shalev was put under strict curfew,” Van Dam said, speaking softly. “We have all been wondering what is happening and why. At this very moment, Mr. Charles Cowles, president of KSHV-TV, is in a meeting at Central Control with other media representatives and Curtis Major Denison, commander-in-chief of the Guardians. At this time we can only speculate what is being announced in that meeting, but we feel certain it bodes evil for the citizens of the AFC.”

“I want him stopped,” the Major commanded Travis. “Tell that team to hurry.”

“Listen!” Clayne exclaimed, bringing every eye back to the screen and the face of Mark Van Dam.

“—felt that you, the citizens of Shalev, should fully understand what is going on, we have arranged an exclusive interview with the man who began this whole movement for freedom and who now leads the rebellion against the Guardian forces.” His face twisted, and Nicole could see his lower lip trembling slightly. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to introduce Mr. Eric Lloyd.”

The camera moved back slowly to reveal Eric sitting next to Van Dam. He was dressed in a light blue sports shirt, and his expression was as serious as the anchorman’s. He reached out and gripped Van Dam’s arm, giving him an encouraging nod.

Nicole felt her heart drop. Guardians were speeding to the studio and would be there momentarily.

“Good evening,” Eric said, looking as though he realized he was staring directly into the Major’s eyes. “I bring you greetings from the free people of the AFC.”

“Nicole!”

“Yes, sir.” She jumped, startled by the Major’s sharp call.

“Get on the phone to Central Monitoring. I want a location trace put on Mark Van Dam as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Major.” It was the president of KSHV-TV. “This isn’t live. It’s a videotape.” Nicole looked down quickly, afraid the relief sweeping through her would be evident for anyone to see.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Look at the window behind them. It’s still light outside, probably a little before dusk. I’d say it was shot about two hours ago. They probably started the videotape and then fled.”

“Do it anyway, Nicole. Van Dam’s in on this, and I want him.”

“Yes, sir.” She strode to the phone and dialed quickly. A minute later, as she hung up, she forced a frown. “Mark Van Dam’s been cut loose,” she said. “He and Shirley were cut together near Alliance Square a few minutes ago. They’ve both disappeared. The Monitoring Room was trying to call us, but the line’s been busy.”

The Major swore again and slammed his fist down against the table.

“So he’s done it again,” Travis raged, his fists clenched as he stared at the screen.

Eric went on evenly. “We must talk swiftly, since the Major has undoubtedly already sent his troops out for us. Citizens of Shalev, our intent is not to simply be free, but to free all of you, to overthrow this twisted, sick attempt at paradise that Major Denison and Dr. Gould and the others who stand with them have forced upon you. We hereby declare our implacable opposition to the Major and all he has done here. We do not expect you to come out openly to join us. You saw the Major’s reaction to opposition last week at the soccer stadium. We do not expect you to put your lives or those of your families in jeopardy. But you can help us. Let us move freely among you without betrayal. Let us strike at the Major from within the confines of Shalev and slip away undetected. We can hide from the eyes of the Guardians, but we cannot hide from you and still succeed. We ask only that you become blind for the next few days. For that we shall free you all. That is our pledge.”

“And I pledge to you it shall not be!” the Major shouted.

As though Eric heard the cry, his head suddenly lifted and he stared into the camera. “Major Denison, I know you’re listening, so let me close with a word to you. Hear me well. We feel it only fair that you should do more than simply sit on your orange and blue throne and pronounce lofty judgments upon us and the people who willingly help us. You are the cause of the war; therefore you should not be immune from its effects.”

The room had grown deathly quiet except for Eric’s voice, and every eye stared at his face on the screen.

“At first we toyed with the idea of sending a Punishment Mode to your wrist computer. That would be poetic justice, I suppose.”

The Major visibly started, and the eyes of the group swung to him.

“But strangely enough, what you deem necessary for your subjects, you yourself decline to share. You have no Punishment Mode in your wrist computer, do you, Major. And yet,” Eric went on, “you can’t be left untouched when it’s your claws that tear at the vitals of this people.” Eric brought his hand up in a mock salute. “So, Major, we bring the battle to you.”

Suddenly Eric disappeared, and for several moments the screen went dark. No one in the room spoke, but several glanced furtively in the Major’s direction. Then the screen flashed on again. It was obviously nighttime, and a huge, well-lit house, surrounded by what appeared to be acres of lawn and gardens, could be seen dimly. The camera was badly out of focus, and the details were heavily blurred.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” It was Eric’s voice again. “Mr. Van Dam has gone downtown to have his implantation removed and has not yet joined us. He asked that I continue without him. We are now broadcasting live. I am here at the outskirts of the city, standing at the edge of the thick lawn that marks the beginning of the palatial estate of one of Shalev’s foremost citizens.

“Most people in Shalev have never seen this view, since the estate is walled off and hidden in a thick stand of trees.” Eric spoke slowly and clearly, as though doing a documentary for a group of school children. And then the cameraman began to bring the house slowly into focus.

Before it reached full clarity, the Major gave a sharp cry. “That’s my home!” For one long moment he stared, his eyes wide; then he spun around and darted out the door, Travis hard on his heels.

“Perhaps Major Denison has recognized where we are by now,” Eric said, as the stately French Provincial home finally came into sharp focus. “We’re at the edge of the estate of Dr. Curtis Major Denison, commander-in-chief of the Guardian Forces in the Alliance of Four Cities.”

“Major,” Eric said, stepping into view in front of the camera, “your wife is here with me. She has not been nor will she be harmed. I suppose it would be to our advantage to take her hostage, hold her for some concessions, but she’s an innocent bystander in this affair and therefore should be exempt from the war. Your maid and cook have likewise been escorted out.”

The camera swung around to reveal three women. One was dressed in a long, white, silk pantsuit with her hair swept back off her face, and Nicole recognized Mrs. Denison immediately. The other two cowered close to her, dressed in robes and slippers.

“Oh, yes,” Eric said as the camera revealed three still figures stretched out on the ground, each clad in an orange and blue uniform, “and the three Guardians you left here to watch things are likewise safe, though sleeping peacefully at the present.

“Major, we have checked the house carefully to make sure no one is there. Even your poodle is safe here with us.” The camera swung once more to verify his word, revealing briefly a gray poodle on a leash held by Mrs. Denison. Then it swung back to Eric.

“We have no desire to hurt innocent people, only to let you know of our intent to bring you down.” He turned his back to the camera to face the home and lifted his hand. For one moment it was poised there, like an ax over a chopping block; then it dropped.

With a shattering roar, the front of Major Denison’s beautiful French Provincial mansion bulged outward and then exploded into a thousand thousand pieces as an orange-yellow ball of flame burst out of its puny confinement. The roof lifted up, then settled down on the billowing blast of flames, flattening them as they swept outward.

Even as she stared, Nicole felt Central Control shudder, and the windows of the conference room rattled softly. She and the others ran to the windows and threw back the drapes. High up, near the base of the mountain that formed Shalev’s western flank, a tiny ball of orange light flickered upward, pushing back the darkness around it.

Behind her, Nicole heard the television speaker. It was Eric’s voice, and he spoke only two words. “Goodnight, Major.”

Chapter 30

It was nearly two-thirty in the morning when Travis came down the deserted halls of the fourth floor suite of offices and knocked softly on the Major’s door, then slipped inside when he heard the muffled command to enter.

The Major sat behind his desk, looking as fresh and tireless as if he had just risen from a long night’s sleep. His suit and tie were still immaculate. Sometime since the shattering loss of his home, he had taken time to shave. Travis shook his head wearily as he sat down, rubbing at the stubble on his own jaw. He felt rumpled, strung out, and ready for a shower and bed.

“No sign of them, I presume,” the Major said.

“None.”

“That’s no great surprise.” He leaned back, his reflection clearly mirrored in the polished expanse of the empty desk top, and his hands came up to form a fingertip steeple.

“Major, I haven’t had much chance before now to say this, but I’m sorry about your home.”

The older man shrugged. “Houses can be rebuilt.” Then in a musing tone he continued slowly. “In a way, it has value, for it’s revealed a flaw in Eric Lloyd that could prove very helpful to us. Eric is a man of principle and has a rather highly charged sense of fairness.”

“Your wife, you mean?”

“Yes. He could have taken her hostage or even killed her and done me great harm. But he didn’t. If he won’t go for the jugular when he has the chance, that gives us a decided advantage.”

Travis shook his head dubiously. “Maybe.”

To Travis’s surprise, the Major smiled. “Actually, in addition to Eric’s high principles, we have another strong advantage.”

“What?”

“Joe Jensen.”

“Joe Jensen?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean—”

“Yes. Joe came to me a couple of days ago. He and Rod Loopes are old friends. Rod had called him and offered him a chance to join Eric. Joe played along with them. Said he wanted time to consider it. Then he came directly to me.”

“Well, well, well,” Travis breathed in admiration as he leaned back in his seat.

“I told him to go along with anything up to serious injury of our people. If it comes to that, he’s to get out.”

“And Shirley?”

“Yes. Her too. We figured that having Joe ask her to join him was a natural for Eric to swallow.” He groaned. “I didn’t expect her to send that message over the wrist computers. But on the other hand, I gave her the same instructions as Joe. I suppose it’s worth it. I think Eric has bought their authenticity.”

“Have you heard anything from them?”

“Not yet. It’s still too early. I told them to watch for a chance to use the radio, call in to us when they can. If we could find that base camp…But they are to risk calling only if they can bring us to Eric or if something critical is going to happen. I don’t want the others without him.”

“Well, well, well,” Travis said again, his spirits suddenly soaring.

“I thought you’d be pleased. I think you can understand why I didn’t tell you earlier. I wanted your reaction to be completely natural.”

“Of course.” Travis sat back, unable to believe that the tide had just turned in their favor. “So the Trojan horse is inside the enemy camp.”

“Yes, but the battle isn’t won yet. I—” At that moment, a soft knock came at the door. “Oh good, that’s Dr. Gould now. Come in.”

The short, balding man entered, still clad in the brown suit he had worn at the conference the night before, his face lined with weariness. They exchanged greetings, and, as Dr. Gould sank into the chair with a groan, the Major sat back down. “What did you and Max decide?”

“Yes, he says he can do it. In fact, he brought a unit that will fit inside her wrist computer nicely. We’re ready any time you are.”

Travis started. Her wrist computer? But the Major broke into his thoughts.

“Do you remember Max Grant from our Research and Development Department in Mount Pleasant?” the Major asked.

“Yes.”

“I sent the chopper for him last night. He and Wayne have been working on an idea.”

“Good.”

The Major rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, you may not think so when you hear it.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“It has to do with Nicole.”

“Nicole?”

“Yes. First of all, let me say that my hope is that with the help of Joe and Shirley, we can find Eric and put an end to the whole matter. But if not…” He took a deep breath. “Travis, I think Nicole has gone over with them too.”

For a long moment Travis stared back at the Major. “Why do you think so?” he finally said softly.

The Major held up the fingers on one hand and began to tick them off with the index finger of his other. “First her ‘miraculous’ escape. She says she hit Eric over the head and fled, yet she had the presence of mind to take the packhorse, the radio, matches, and so on, so she could signal us for the rescue.”

“Don’t underestimate Nicole’s resourcefulness.”

“I don’t. But the whole thing looks a bit too pat.”

“Then why did she come to the stadium without a uniform? Why did she insist on running to Mount Pleasant to see her aunt? If she was with Eric, she would have come right back to us. Why did she tell me she was going to resign from the Guardians?”

“All excellent questions, and I must admit they threw me too. But number two, why did she suddenly change her mind when she felt so strongly about it? And third, why all of a sudden is she so cooperative, almost eager to please?”

“I—”

But the Major went on, swiftly overriding his answer. “When I called her in after the meeting last night, why did she agree to continue in Central Monitoring during the period of martial law? If she’s so squeamish about what happened to Dr. Cameron, why is she willing to stay on now when we are threatening maximum Punishment Modes all over the place?”

“So she won’t be implanted.”

“Maybe,” the Major agreed. “Yes, that’s a possibility. But I still wonder. I think Eric let her go in the mountains. She wasn’t completely convinced then, but she was wavering. She wanted time to think. After talking to you Saturday night, she finally decided. Or maybe Eric or one of his men finally got to her and convinced her to join them.”

“What do you want to do?” Travis asked.

“Put another Trojan horse inside the gates. Only this time even the horse won’t know it.”

“How?”

“Two things. First, we want an electronic bug on Nicole’s person. If she is teamed up with the rebels, that will be the quickest way to know it.”

Travis took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And second?”

Dr. Gould leaned forward and turned to look at Travis. “In the early stages of our research, even before Termination, Dr. Denison and I experimented with different kinds of implantations, and—”

“No!” Travis shouted. “No implantation! It will destroy her!”

“Hear him out, Travis,” the Major said gently.

“It was crude by our standards today. We took a tiny radio receiver with two stubby little electrodes and inserted it under the skin at the base of the spinal column. A patient would be put under observation. If he misbehaved, we triggered a signal that pumped an electrical charge into the spinal cord. Intense pain resulted as long as the signal was maintained. But it was very unwieldy and impractical because the person had to be kept under twenty-four-hour observation, and only outward behavioral symptoms could be punished. That’s when we started developing an internal, automatic control system implanted in the brain.”

“There is no automatic punishment response in this system, Travis.” The Major waved his hand. “She won’t even know it’s there. Unless we push the button, she’ll never have any pain.”

“You insert a radio receiver in her back, and she doesn’t even know it?”

“Yes. I’ll explain how in a moment.”

“Why the implantation?” Travis demanded, obviously wavering. “Bugging her wrist computer will lead us to Eric, if—” he paused, his eyes bitter, “—if she’s really with them. So what’s the purpose of implanting her?”

The Major looked away, unable to meet Travis’s demanding stare. “We think something may be developing between Eric and Nicole, Travis. I’m sorry, and I sincerely hope we’re wrong. But if we’re right and somehow he cuts her wrist computer and she slips away to him, the implantation will give us leverage. We’ll have a hold on Eric. We can trigger intense pain from virtually any distance.”

Travis was silent for almost a full minute, his face drawn. Finally he nodded. “How can you implant her without her knowing it?”

The Major smiled. “We have arranged for a minor accident to happen tomorrow in the Monitoring Room.”

Chapter 31

Clayne Robertson stared at the patches of white on Sarah’s neck as she bent over the stack of blocks to help her younger brother. He looked away angrily.

Adrienne leaned across the table, pushing aside the dishes from the quick dinner she had fixed for him, and put her hand over his. He looked up, his own eyes softening when he saw the moistness in hers. He swung around to face her, covering her slim fingers with his massive palms. “Hi.”

“Hello, big man.”

“I love you.”

The tears welled up and spilled onto her cheeks. “And I love you,” she whispered fiercely.

He started to rise, but she reached out with her other hand to hold his on the table. “Clayne, do you really want them to catch Eric?”

His eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You liked him, didn’t you?”

“Once,” he snapped. “Once I thought he liked me until he blasted me with my own stun gun.”

Adrienne nodded, “He was hardly himself that night.”

Clayne shook his head stubbornly. “Be that as it may, my feelings have nothing to do with it. He’ll be caught, and the Major won’t be as lenient with him as with Clifford Cameron. Eric will be executed.”

“I know,” she whispered, “ and yet what he’s doing is right.”

“Adrienne!”

“Well it is, and you know it.”

“That’s treason talk, and I won’t hear any more of it. The Major is not playing. He’ll stop Eric and anybody who tries to help him. Now that’s enough.”

“What if Eric asked you to join him?”

“Adrienne!” Though he had meant to whisper, his voice was so sharp that both Sarah and Timothy looked up, their eyes wide. Clayne leaned closer to his wife. “Adrienne, I mean it,” he said in a fierce whisper. “No more!”

“I have a right to ask that question, because whether the answer is yes or no, it profoundly affects me and the children. So I want to know, Clayne. What would you do if Eric said, ‘Clayne, come with us’?”

“I’d whip his fool tail into custody so fast he wouldn’t know what hit him.”

“Would you?”

“You’d better believe it. The man’s insane to try this.”

“Is he?”

Clayne leaped to his feet. “Woman, what’s the matter with you tonight? You’re acting as crazy as he is.”

Once more her eyes swam with tears. “You know as well as I do that even if you were to catch Eric tonight, the Major will never remove our implantations. He’s losing his grip on the city, and even killing Eric won’t change that. Not ever. He can’t risk decontrolling us again.”

“That’s not…” His voice trailed off, and he looked away.

“Your children and your wife are very soon going to be just like everyone else in Shalev. Is that what you want?”

He put his hands on the table and leaned forward, his eyes stricken. “Adrienne, the Major implanted you and every other family member of a Guardian officer precisely for this reason. One misstep and he will terminate you or one of the children. There will be no more mercy.”

“I know that.”

“I waited ten years to find you and start a family. I would rather have you and the kids implanted and alive than—” He broke off and shook his head angrily. “No, Adrienne. The risk is too great.”

“Eric has freed almost two dozen people now. Not one has been either punished or caught.”

“Except for Dr. Clifford Cameron.”

“All right. One. And that was only because he stayed behind to cover Eric’s escape. Whole families have been freed, Clayne. Whole families.”

“Not since martial law was imposed,” he countered angrily. “It’s a whole new ball game now, Adrienne. They’ve rigged up the computers so that the moment someone’s wrist computer is cut, it begins an automatic trace on them. Nicole says they can pinpoint the location of removal in under thirty seconds. And Travis has blanketed the city with roving teams of Guardians so they can respond quickly. No, Adrienne,” he finished firmly. “I can’t risk losing either you or one of the kids.”

A figure suddenly stepped out of the hallway that led to the bedrooms, and Clayne shot up out of his chair, sending it crashing to the ground.

“Is that the only thing stopping you?” Eric asked. “The risk?”

“Come in, Eric,” Adrienne said calmly. “As I told you, he isn’t very easy to convince.”

“Eric!” Sarah and Timothy leaped up and threw their arms around his legs.

“Hi, kids.” Eric bent down and swooped them into his arms and swung them around. When he came full circle, he came face to face with the muzzle of Clayne’s stun gun.

“Put them down, Eric.”

Eric smiled. “Hey, big fella, you don’t need that. I came unarmed, and I sure don’t want to tangle with a moose like you.”

“Put them down!”

Eric let them slide down his arms to the floor. “Okay, kids, away you go. Your dad and I need to have a little talk now.”

Adrienne motioned toward the family room. “Okay, you two. It’s time for television. Off you go.”

“But, Mama,” Sarah wailed plaintively.

“Now!” thundered Clayne, causing both children to jump and scamper into the next room. Timothy stopped long enough to peek around the door and give Eric one last wave.

Adrienne stepped directly in front of Eric and stared at her husband. “Clayne, I let him in.”

“You what?”

“About ten minutes before you got home. At least listen to him.”

“Clayne,” Eric said, stepping out from behind Adrienne, “you’re in it now, like it or not. Your wife has committed a treasonable offense by even letting me in the door. So what have you got to lose by listening to me? If I can’t convince you, you can still take me in. Tell the Major you set me up in a trap.”

The muzzle of the weapon lowered slowly, and Eric plunged in. “I find it interesting that in countering Adrienne’s arguments, you only talked about the risk.”

“So?”

“I heard no cries of betrayal, no speeches supporting the Major’s cause, no affirmations of loyalty. Suppose I told you we have eliminated the risks. Then what?”

“Garbage!”

“Not all the risks, of course. You’d be in with us, and until this is over, that means danger. But what if I could guarantee that the Major cannot terminate your family via implantation?”

“Stop the snow job, Eric. You heard what I said about the computers.”

“Clayne,” Eric said softly, “Adrienne and the kids are not implanted.”

Both husband and wife stared at him in stunned surprise.

“They’re not,” Eric continued calmly. “They were operated on, but nothing was inserted. We have a doctor and a nurse sympathetic to our cause who operated on Adrienne and the kids. An incision was made and the implantation was palmed. Then they were simply stitched back up again.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Adrienne, have you felt even one pain response since your operation?”

“No. But I’ve been careful.”

“Have the children?”

“No,” Clayne said. “But there again, we’ve been making a special effort to prepare them.”

“If I can prove to you that they are not implanted, will you join us?”

Clayne shook his head slowly, but Eric eagerly pressed in. “You’re right about the increased risk now. We don’t want to jeopardize people’s lives, so we’ve changed our strategy. We’re planning one swift and final blow, one stroke designed to end it all and put the Major’s little black boxes out of commission for good. Everybody is out of the city now except me and two others. And we’re going tonight. If you come with us, your family will be safe.”

“You can’t get out of the city,” Clayne said firmly. “We’ve doubled the patrols and—”

“We’ve sent six people out in the past two nights.”

“I don’t believe it,” Clayne retorted, but it was obviously more of a startled reaction than an open challenge.

“We need you, Clayne.” Eric’s voice was full of earnest pleading. “We need your courage, we need your leadership, we need your knowledge of Shalev.”

The older man watched Eric steadily, unblinking.

“And besides that,” Eric added softly, “I think a great deal of you and your family. I’d like them to be free and safe from all this. I can’t promise you no more snubs at the country club, but I can promise you that when people treat you right, it won’t be because they’ve been electronically blackmailed into it.”

Clayne finally turned to Adrienne. “And you knew this all along?”

“No. He only asked me to get you to listen to him.”

“You keep forgetting this is the little twerp who blasted me unconscious.”

Eric laughed softly. “The Bible says to turn the other cheek, to pray for them that despitefully use you.”

Clayne looked first at his wife, then at Eric. Then he nodded. “Okay, how can you prove Adrienne isn’t implanted?”

“Hit me, Adrienne.”

“What?”

“Hit me. Slap my face. If you’re implanted, you’ll get an instant response the moment you lift your hand.”

“I—I can’t do that.”

“Let me do it,” Clayne broke in with a wicked grin.

“No way, you moose,” Eric said. “You’re not the one implanted. Come on, Adrienne, do it before he does.”

Still she shrank back.

“Adrienne, hit him! It’ll serve him right for sneaking in here and making a revolutionary of my wife.”

The swiftness of Adrienne’s hand caught both men by surprise, and the sharp sound of palm against cheek cracked like a rifle shot. Instantly she grabbed Eric’s arm. “Oh, Eric, I’m sorry! Are you all right?”

He nodded as he rubbed his cheek. “Are you all right? That’s the question.”

Her hand shot to the bandage at the base of her skull. “Yes. I’m fine.” She whirled around and threw her arms around Clayne’s neck. “I’m fine!” she whispered, burying her head against his chest.

“Okay, Eric,” Clayne said, his voice husky. “You can add four black folk to your little slave rebellion.” He stuck out his hand.

Eric gripped it firmly. “It’s a growing company,” he said, “and you’re getting in on the ground floor.” Then he became businesslike. “Okay, Adrienne. Pack a few essentials. Warm clothing primarily. Remember we have to carry everything on horses once we hit the mountains. Clayne, bring your weapon and good hiking boots. Let’s take your stun gun and your squad car. Any other vehicles may be stopped in the curfew.”

“I’ve got a deer rifle and a hunting pistol.”

“Bring them. Any ammunition too. Hurry, we’ve got another stop to make.”

Clayne’s bushy eyebrows raised. “Oh?”

“Yes. We’ve got one more person to persuade to join us.”

With a sigh, Nicole set the book down and turned off the light over her bed. Sleep would probably still elude her, but…

She sat up suddenly as a soft rap on the screen was followed by an urgent whisper. “Nicole!”

She snatched her robe from the chair where she had thrown it and was at the window in three quick steps. “Eric? Is that you?”

She put her face next to the screen and saw his, split with a wide grin. “Hi, Nicky,” he said softly.

“What are you doing here? We thought you’d left the city.”

“May I come in?”

“Of course. Come around to the back door. I’ll get dressed and be there in a moment.”

She dressed swiftly, leaving the lights out, then moved through the house and unlocked the back door. Eric pulled open the screen and entered, a very happy Cricket at his side. As she pushed the door shut again and locked it, Eric clunked a set of heavy bolt cutters on the kitchen table.

“One of these days I’m going to come calling on you properly, ring the doorbell, come in the front door—the whole works.”

“Why’re you here? It’s so dangerous. What if they’re watching me?”

“They’re not. I’ve spent the last half hour checking very carefully. Hey, what happened?” He gently touched the small strip of adhesive tape on her forehead.

“Oh, that. I got hit by a falling ladder.”

“You what?”

“It was nothing really. Tuesday one of the custodians was changing a fluorescent tube over my monitoring station. He lost his balance, and he and the ladder fell on top of me.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. It knocked me out for a few minutes, but other than a bad headache, a small cut on my back, and a few bruises, I’m fine.” She looked up at him and smiled. “After a mother grizzly bear, a man with a ladder is hardly worth talking about.”

“Good.”

He picked up the bolt cutters. “Hold out your arm.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nicky, we’re leaving tonight. You’re coming with us. It’s getting too dangerous.”

“But—you said you needed me in Central Control. Hasn’t the information I’ve been sending you been valuable?”

“Extremely so. But we’re pulling out now. The lives of too many people are at stake, yours included.”

As he stepped toward her, raising the cutters, she grabbed his arm. “Now more than ever you need someone in Central Control. Isn’t that true?”

“No. We need you with—”

“It is true. I’m terrified every moment, but if that’s where you need me, that’s where I’ll stay.”

Eric stared at her for a long moment, set the cutters on a chair, and took her by the shoulders. “Nicky, I wish there was time to say all this just right, but there’s not. So here it is, straight out. I want you to come with me. I don’t care how much we need you in Central Control—I can’t leave you there any longer. I won’t risk losing you. Do you understand that?”

Nicole’s lips parted softly as she looked up into his face, wanting so much to believe what she thought she was hearing. “Eric, I—”

He shook his head, then put his arms around her and gently pulled her to him. “I’m saying I want you with me. Okay? I want to sit with you in the mountains again, talk about trivial things, throw pebbles in the river. I don’t want to take any chances of that not happening.”

She tipped her head back and looked up into his face. “I’d like that too, Eric. Very much.”

A sudden urgent knock behind them spun Eric around and brought a sharp bark from Cricket. He unlocked the door and yanked it open, and Clayne Robertson thrust his head in.

“Eric, we’ve got to get out of here. They’re coming!”

“What?”

“The radio’s gone wild. They know you’re here. Every available unit is on its way here right now. Let’s go!”

Nicole stood rooted in place. “Clayne?” she cried in shocked surprise.

“Give me your arm,” Eric commanded, snatching up the cutters. He inserted the jaws over the band, ignoring the sudden warning buzz, and snapped through the band, then whirled to Clayne. “Give me yours. We’d better cut you loose now too.” Again there was a sharp snap, and Eric thrust the cutters at Clayne. “Cut Adrienne and the kids. Hurry!”

“Adrienne?” Nicole asked, still half stupefied by the sight of Clayne.

“Yes.” Eric grabbed her elbow and propelled her toward the door. “Clayne and his family are going with us. They’re out in the alley.”

“But my clothes and things—”

“Go!” he thundered.

By the time they darted out through the garage and into the alley behind Nicole’s home, Clayne was leaning through the window of the squad car and cutting Adrienne’s band. The crackling of the radio shattered the quiet. As he pulled back out, Adrienne leaned forward, her face twisted with fear. “They’re coming Code Three, but with no sirens,” she said.

“They want to catch you by surprise.” Clayne’s expression was grim.

Eric opened the back door of the car. “Nicky, get in and help Adrienne cut the kids loose. Cricket, you get in there with them.” Without waiting for compliance, he darted around to the back of the car, where Clayne had left the trunk open. He snatched up the deer rifle and a box of shells, slammed the trunk lid shut, tore the top of the box off with a savage jerk, and began jamming shells into the magazine.

“Listen, Clayne. The people who will get you out are at 536 Fairfax Avenue. They’re expecting us. I’ll try and keep these guys busy long enough for you to get clear.”

Nicole’s head popped out of the back window. “Eric, you can’t stay!”

He ignored her. “Go to 536 Fairfax and tell them what happened. Now get out of here!”

Clayne hesitated for a fraction of a second, then nodded and moved swiftly to his door. “Good luck,” he called softly. The door slammed, and the car shot forward in a spray of gravel. Eric caught a glimpse of Nicole’s face, white and torn with fear, and then they were gone.

“All right, Major,” he muttered, “one surprise deserves another.” He broke into a run toward the front of the house. Less than a minute later, he saw the flash of headlights, and then the first car rocketed around the corner onto Nicole’s street, tires squealing in protest. The round plastic top and orange and blue markings were unmistakable.

One quick breath, half out slowly, squeeze the trigger.

The windshield of the car shattered with an explosive spray of glass, and the car careened wildly to the right, hit the curb, bounced upward, then plowed into a chain-link fence with a shriek of metal on metal.

The second car, hard on the tail of the leader, slammed on its brakes when the first car veered off, then skidded broadside, rubber shrieking. Eric dropped the muzzle slightly and sent his second shot slamming into the front tire. It was like kicking one leg out from under a three-legged stool. The car flipped over, bounded hard on its side, then seemed to float momentarily before it slammed down on its bubble top and came to a shuddering halt in the middle of the street.

Eric heard the screech of brakes, car doors slamming, and the excited yells of men. Lights flicked on up and down the streets, and he prayed that none of the people would come out to see what was happening.

He scooped up the box of shells, crossed the sidewalk in two quick leaps, and vaulted the fence around Nicole’s house. As he hit the grass, he gave a sharp cry of pain, and his left leg buckled under him. Nearly two weeks had passed since the grizzly’s claws had laid him open, and the surface cuts were all but healed, but his leg was still too weak to take that kind of punishment. Biting back the pain, he pulled himself up, blasted off a quick round, then headed for the back alley in a lurching, hobbling run.

The alley that ran down the center of Nicole’s block had no lights, and Eric welcomed the darkness. As he cut around her garage, he turned left, hugging the deeper shadows of a high wooden fence. But before he had gone ten steps, the sharp sound of shoes running on gravel spun him around. Two dark, barely discernible figures were running hard down the alley toward him. He swung the rifle up and pulled the trigger even as it cleared his hip. With a startled cry, the two figures split, each diving for a different side of the alley. Before Eric could lever another shell into the chamber, he saw the first dark shape rise, and then a blast of air smashed past his head, sharply enough to feel like a slap against his cheek.

Directly across from Eric’s position, a high grapestake fence ran the length of the lot, coming to an end in a gate next to the garage. Taking a deep breath, he raised the rifle and snapped off a shot up the alley, then hobbled across to the gate—but not quickly enough. The stun gun blasted out with its highly concentrated and focused ultrasonic sound waves, catching him shoulder high. Had he been facing his attackers directly, he would have been knocked unconscious, but since he was moving sideways across the alley he took the main force of the shot in his upper arm and shoulder. Even then it slammed him backwards, spinning him into the fence. His head cracked against the wood, and his hands jerked out wildly, grasping for support. He was dimly aware that the rifle had been torn loose from his grip and clattered to the ground. He felt his legs buckle, and with a soft moan he went down. Through the daze he tried to push himself up, groping desperately for his rifle. But the footsteps came pounding up, and with one swift kick, the rifle was sent skidding away from his reach.

“Well, well!” Travis’s voice was shrill with triumph. “Look who we have here!”

Chapter 32

“It’s not like you to leave your back unguarded, Eric,” Travis said as he jammed the muzzle of the stun gun into Eric’s ribs and searched him quickly. “Where’s Nicole?”

Eric got up on all fours, then staggered to his feet, as dazed by the bitterness of defeat as by the stunning blast he had taken. Travis grabbed him by the arm and shook him savagely. “Where’s Nicole?” he shouted.

“I don’t know. She left.”

“I know that. With Clayne. Where are they? Where were they going?”

Again Eric shook his head. Travis slapped him hard across the face, the blow cracking sharply in the narrow alleyway. “Where are they?” he thundered.

Eric looked at Travis as a trickle of blood oozed from a split lip. “They took the dog for a walk.”

Travis’s eyes narrowed into slits, and he thrust his stun gun at the second man and said, “Hold this.” When he turned back, his fist was cocked, pointed at Eric’s face.

Eric tried to roll away from the blow, but it slammed him against the fence with stunning force. Travis grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head up roughly, his fist raised again. “Let me ask that question one more time, Eric. Where’s Nicole?”

“I’m right here, Travis.”

Travis and the sergeant whirled as Nicole stepped into the alley behind them, a stun gun raised and pointing at them. Her first shot took the sergeant squarely in the solar plexus. His hands flew up into the air, and both stun guns went flying. Travis lunged to the left, diving for the corner of the nearest garage, but Nicole had squeezed the trigger even as he jumped. The blow caught him in midair, flinging him clear of the garage. He bounced once on the gravel, then slid to a halt on his back.

“Nicole?” Eric cried, unable to believe his eyes.

She ran past him, kicked the stun guns away, and looked quickly at the two still figures lying in the alley. Satisfied, she whirled back to Eric and put her arm around his waist. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry. There’ll be others.”

Half running, half stumbling, she got Eric through the gate and shut it behind her. He stopped, dragging her to a halt. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, still half in shock, swiping at the blood on his mouth. “You’re supposed to be with Clayne. Where is he?”

“Gone,” she said. “Now let’s go!” She grabbed his arm and pulled him forward again. “We’ve got to get across the next street before they start fanning out to cover our escape.” She dragged him along with her, past the dark shape of a house, then along a length of hedge lining a driveway out to the curb.

“Can you run?” she asked, peering up and down the empty street.

Eric’s head was clearing fast, and he nodded. “More or less. Let’s go.”

They leaped up, and Nicole supported him as he half ran, half hobbled across the street and into the deep shadows of a large willow tree. Suddenly the sweep of headlights filled the street as a Guardian squad car swung around the corner and moved toward them.

“Quick,” Eric whispered urgently, giving her a shove toward the house, “into the bushes.”

Nicole burrowed into a lilac bush while Eric made a leaping dive into a thick tangle of pfitzers, ignoring the fiery clutch of the needles. The squad car went by swiftly, its electric engine a low hum, and Eric breathed a sigh of relief. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he whispered, rolling out from under his cover.

“Wait!” Nicole cried. “He’s turning around.”

At that instant the front door of the house opened almost directly over where Eric was crouching, and a dark figure stepped out. “Quickly!” a deep voice commanded. “Come inside.”

“Come on, Nicky,” Eric said, grabbing her by the hand and virtually hurtling through the open doorway, pulling her with him.

The door slammed shut, and a hand touched Eric’s shoulder. “Follow me. Hurry!”

All the lights in the house were out, and Eric held Nicole’s hand tight as they followed the man through the living room and down a hallway. Then he gave a startled grunt as the man stopped so quickly that he bumped into his back.

“Wait a moment.” A small lamp flicked on, causing Eric to blink sharply. A tall, lean man bent over a telephone, his back to them. Nicole stared at Eric for a moment, then raised the stun gun.

“Jeff, this is Don Anderson. I…yes, yes. I heard it. It’s the rebels. I have two of them in my house. I…yes, of course I mean it. I have them right here. Can you take them and send them on? There are Guardians all over the neighborhood.”

Nicole dropped the muzzle of her weapon, a great wash of relief flooding over her as she squeezed Eric’s hand.

“Good,” Anderson said quickly. “We’ll come through the garage.” He hung up the phone and turned around. “All right, let’s go.”

“Thank you for what you’re doing,” Eric said fervently.

The man waved that away and then clicked off the light. “Let’s go.”

For the next hour, that was the pattern—one neighbor passing them through his house and on to the next. Sometimes they skirted as many as three or four houses, sometimes they crossed the alleys straight across, but steadily they moved farther away from Nicole’s neighborhood. Each time there was a quick handshake, a fleeting touch on the arm, and a solemn wish for luck. If any of the people—sometimes a single man, often a couple, once an elderly widow—were thinking of the consequences of their actions, they gave no sign. They were grim-faced and talked little, sometimes moaning in pain as their fear triggered bursts from the implantations, but no one hesitated or seemed regretful.

Eric had lost count of how many homes and yards they had transversed when one of their hosts—a man in his early forties, with two wide-eyed teen-aged boys—stopped them just as they were about to leave his garage. “Wait,” he said. “I have an idea.” He spun around and went back into the house, leaving his sons posted in the alley to watch.

Eric sank down on the cement and leaned against the car parked in the garage. For a moment Nicole stared at him in the darkness; then she joined him. It was too dark to see her face, but he could hear the anxiety in her voice when she spoke.

“How’s your leg?”

“Sore,” he admitted, massaging it gently, “but at least it’s functioning. I’ll be okay. How’re you doing?”

“Marvelous, considering. I can’t believe these people.”

“Neither can I. Aren’t they something?”

“That’s not what I mean. How can they help us without triggering the implantation more violently than they do? Some seem hardly bothered by it at all. This is treason, a capital crime, and yet it seems to have no effect on them.”

Eric nodded. “That’s the one flaw in the Major’s design. Something inside a man has an inherent sense of right and wrong. It doesn’t matter what the Major says—these people know that helping us is not wrong. It’s a capital offense only by executive fiat. Therefore, they get little or no pain response. If they were doing more than that, they’d probably have more trouble, but just to help us on our way…”

For a moment they were both quiet; then Eric spoke again. “When I see Clayne, I’m going to kick him in the shins for letting you go. However, I’ll file a complaint later.”

“He didn’t let me go,” she corrected. “When he wouldn’t stop, I grabbed his stun gun and threatened to use it if he didn’t let me out. I don’t think I really scared him, but I did convince him you needed help.” She paused. “Are they going to make it?”

“I hope so. If they get to Fairfax, they’ll be fine. Clayne has the squad car, and squad cars are running everywhere right now. The way out is all set. I think they stand an excellent chance. In fact, they should be on their way out by now.”

“And what about us?”

“Actually, that’s an interesting question. I—”

The door behind them opened, and Eric stood up, pulling Nicole up too. “Hold on a minute,” the man said, pushing past them. He slowly lifted the garage door and called to his sons. “Watt Thompson should be coming up the alley. Watch for him.”

A moment later he grunted in satisfaction and stepped back inside. A short, squat man followed, no more than a darker shape in the thick blackness of the garage. The garage door slid down, and then the owner of the house opened the car door. The dome light inside was dim but provided enough light for them to see each other.

“This is Watt Thompson,” the man said, motioning.

Eric stuck out his hand. “I’m Eric Lloyd. This is Nicole Lambert.”

“Well,” Thompson said in a voice that boomed even though he was whispering, “Lloyd himself. I’m proud to meet you.”

Eric turned to the host and his two sons. “We didn’t even hear your names and here you are risking your lives for us.”

“Bill Johnston. This is Alan and this is Craig.” The two boys grinned, half embarrassed, but obviously proud and excited.

“We think we may be able to help you,” Johnston went on.

“How?”

“I’ve got a permit to leave the city,” Thompson said.

Eric’s eyes widened. “A valid one?”

“Yes. I’m the foreman on the graveyard shift at a large lumber mill south of town.”

Nicole’s heart leaped with sudden hope. “Really?”

“And,” he continued, “I happen to drive a camper. There’s some dead space under the benches on both sides of the camper, back where the wheel wells are. It’d be pretty tight for you, but I think you can squeeze in. We’d nail it shut. I don’t think they’d ever guess.”

“We’ll do it!” Eric exclaimed. Then he turned to Nicole. “That is, if you’re willing.”

She nodded quickly. “It’s no more risk than staying in town.”

“Good,” Thompson said. “I understand your camp is somewhere up toward Glacier Park. Once we clear the checkpoints, I could swing around north and drop you off wherever you say.”

“No way,” Eric said. “You just get us out of town, and we’ll do fine from there.”

“Okay,” Johnston broke in, “we’ll have to hurry. Watt has to leave by 11:30. That’s less than half an hour from now.”

“How can we ever thank you?” Nicole said, looking first at the father and then his two sons.

Bill Johnston held up his left arm so that the wrist computer gleamed in the dim light. “When it’s time, come back and get these things off. That’ll be thanks enough.”

“Within the week,” Eric said. “You have our word on it.”

Chapter 33

Shirley Ferguson moved away from the campfire, zipping her jacket against the chill night air. She forced herself to walk nonchalantly, as though bored and absently looking for something to do. This took an effort of will, for her mouth was dry and her heart pounding wildly.

It was a beautiful, crystal-clear night, the smell of pine and woodsmoke filling the air, but Shirley had no eyes for the stars, nor was she aware of the scents in the air. She licked her lips nervously as she glanced around the circle of tents. Stephanie Lloyd was at the door of the children’s lean-to, and Shirley could hear bursts of childish giggles. Other tents and lean-tos were dark, and only a few women and none of the other children were still awake. Charles Metcalf, the one man left in camp, was fussing around inside his lean-to, and Shirley noticed Madeline Lloyd sitting near the fire alone, staring into the night.

For the hundredth time, Shirley cursed Eric’s thoroughness and caution. As soon as he and Nicole had come back to camp, he had insisted that they change locations immediately, moving down closer to the highway. He had also packed the radio in the gear stowed next to his lean-to. Neither she nor Joe had had a chance to get even close to it for a broadcast, so the Major still had no idea where they were or what was happening. Now Joe had gone back to Shalev with Eric and the others, and the final act was unwinding. Shirley had still not been able to get to the radio as Joe had told her she must. They had drawn times for watch turns, and Shirley had tried to maneuver for a night watch, but she had drawn the ten-to-noon shift. With the whole camp up and about and the radio only fifty or so yards away, she hadn’t dared even lift the microphone.

At the edge of the clearing, she gave one last look at the camp, then turned and walked quickly toward the creek where Dick Andreason had rigged the aerial up a tall pine tree for better reception.

Dawn Metcalf, a middle-aged, graying woman, looked up in surprise as Shirley approached her through the low underbrush. “Hello, Shirley.”

“Hello, Mrs. Metcalf. Any word?”

“None, but it’s probably just as well. Charles showed me how to work this thing—” she patted the radio near her feet—“but I’m not sure I could.”

Shirley dropped to the grassy creek bank, leaned back on her elbows, and tried to look bored, though once again her heart was pounding inside her chest like a series of tiny, repetitious explosions. You must give Travis at least three or four hours’ warning. Joe had said it so easily as he had hurriedly kissed her good-bye that morning. He acted as though he was merely suggesting she walk down to the corner phone booth and place a call. If you can’t get to the radio in an inconspicuous way, then wait until after dark and knock out whoever is there. But you must warn Travis and the Major that we’re coming. Joe could do it—or Captain Oakes, if he were here—but Shirley went into cardiac arrest at the sight of a spider. She had never hit a person in anger in her whole life that she could remember.

She thrust her hands under her legs to stop the sudden trembling. Could she hit this kindly woman over the head with a rock? The very thought made her nauseated.

“You ought to be sleeping,” Mrs. Metcalf said.

Shirley sat up and hugged her legs. “I tried. I just lay there and worried about Joe and the others.”

“I know,” the older woman answered. “The waiting is the hardest part.” Then she ducked her head. “I suppose in a way that I have the easiest task, what with Charles being left here to supervise the camp. But he wanted to go with them so badly that I—”

“I know. He’s still over there banging things around in frustration.”

“He’s too old. That’s what he thinks, no matter what Eric said.”

Shirley straightened, holding her breath. “Say, would you like me to take your turn? You could go be with him.”

Mrs. Metcalf looked up, startled. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. You already had your watch today.”

Shirley pressed in, trying not to appear too eager. “That’s okay. There’s no way I’m going to sleep anyway. I may as well sit here as in my tent.”

“Well, I don’t know if I should.”

Shirley felt her heart leap at the hesitation in the woman’s voice. “Go on. Your husband needs you. Really, I don’t mind.”

“Are you sure?”

“Really.”

Mrs. Metcalf stood up and brushed off the back of her skirt. “Well, he does need some cheering up. Thank you, Shirley. Thank you for being so thoughtful.”

Not until the woman was out of sight did Shirley let out her breath in an explosive burst of relief. “Thank you, Mrs. Metcalf,” she whispered triumphantly. “Thank you very much.”

Madeline Lloyd sat staring into the small campfire, lost in her thoughts, her face lined with worry. As Stephanie came across the clearing and into the firelight, Madeline looked up. “Are they asleep?”

“Yes, finally.” Stephanie sank down onto the log next to her mother.

“How many stories did they worm out of you?”

“Well, actually it wasn’t stories. They wanted to talk about Eric and Nicole.”

“Ah,” Madeline said with a smile.

“How come Nicky had to go with the men? Does Ricky like her? Will they get married? Will I get to be a flower girl?”

“Married? Aren’t they rushing things a little?”

Just then Adrienne Robertson came out of a small lean-to and walked over to join them. “Who’s getting married?”

“Eric and Nicole, if our children have their way,” Madeline answered.

“And me too,” Adrienne said firmly. “I’m all for it.”

“Well, they’re hardly to that stage yet,” Madeline responded.

“The children saw Eric kiss her last night,” Stephanie said. “That’s what started all the speculation.”

Adrienne nodded. “I saw it too. I don’t think Eric realized that half the camp could see them there in the trees.”

They all chuckled and then gradually fell silent.

“And so,” Madeline said, after a few moments, “here we all sit and worry about our men.”

“And one woman,” Stephanie shot back. “Why did Eric take Nicole down?”

Madeline’s answer was patient. “You know why. She was the one who convinced them that they needed her. Clayne and Joe and Eric all know their way into Central Control, but only Nicole and Rod Loopes know how to run the computers. And Rod will be busy with Eric setting the charges. That leaves Nicole.”

Stephanie sighed. “I know, I know. I just can’t stop worrying about them.”

The lines on Madeline Lloyd’s face deepened. “Neither can I.”

Adrienne stood up. “It’s all this sitting around waiting with nothing to do. Come on, Madeline, let’s go for a walk.”

“You’re right.” She stood up. “Steph, do you want to come?”

“No, I think I’ll go up and join Shirley at the radio—see if she’s heard anything yet.”

“Shirley?” Adrienne echoed. “I thought Dawn Metcalf was on the radio tonight.”

“She was, but I think Shirley is worrying too, about Joe Jensen. She volunteered to take Dawn’s turn.”

“Okay,” her mother answered. “If you hear anything, call us.”

Stephanie, who had already started toward the creek, turned and waved. “I will.”

As she approached the clearing through the trees, Stephanie could see Shirley’s white sweater in the pale light of a quarter moon. She nearly called out to her; then she heard over the quiet gurgling of the water the murmur of Shirley’s voice speaking into the radio. Stephanie felt a sudden clutch of anxiety. Had something gone wrong that they were calling in so early? She quickened her pace, moving through the short grass of the creek bank as swiftly but as quietly as possible, so she could catch Shirley’s words. Shirley’s first distinguishable sentence froze Stephanie in midstride.

“Yes, Captain Oakes, that’s right.”

Captain Oakes? That was Travis! Stephanie stared at Shirley’s back and dropped into a crouch, inching forward to hear better.

“I will. If they call in, I’ll radio immediately. Yes, I’m positive about the target. Eric hasn’t given them any of the details, in case someone gets caught going in, but he did tell them what they were going to do. Joe said he’ll try to get clear and call you as soon as he gets the details.”

Stephanie reached down to the soft earth and pried loose a baseball-sized rock, then straightened slowly as Shirley finished. “Thank you, Captain. I’ll call in again if we hear anything.”

Shirley took the headset off and ran her fingers through her hair, then jumped and gave a startled cry when Stephanie appeared from nowhere.

“What are you doing?” Stephanie cried. “Charles!” she shouted. “Come up here—quickly!”

Shirley looked around wildly, her eyes large and white in the darkness.

“Move away from that radio,” Stephanie said, raising the rock high and starting forward. Then she tipped her head back and screamed again with all the power in her lungs. “Charles!”

“No!” Shirley lunged forward, head down, and bulled into Stephanie, coming up under the swinging arc of the stone. The rock flew out of Stephanie’s grip, and the air whooshed out of her with a soft explosion of sound. She flew backward and hit the grass sprawling. With one swift movement, Shirley whirled and snatched up the radio, snapping the aerial with a sharp ping. Raising it high above her head, she hurled it against the rocks in the rushing waters of the creek. Then, like a deer pursued by a pack of wolves, she crossed the water in one splashing leap and disappeared into the trees.

Stephanie was on her hands and knees, gasping for breath, when Charles Metcalf came pounding up. He helped her to her feet. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

“Shirley!” Stephanie managed to gasp. Her cry had aroused the camp, and the others were coming quickly through the trees.

Metcalf looked around. “What about Shirley? Is she hurt? Where is she?”

Stephanie shook her head, then blurted out the words between desperate gulps of air. “She ran—she was broadcasting—to Shalev. She told them—about Eric coming. I was too late—couldn’t stop her.”

Stephanie’s mother and Adrienne Robertson had arrived in time to listen to the gasping account, and her mother’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, no!”

Metcalf ran several yards upstream, his head turning quickly as he searched the night. Then he spotted the canvas bundle in the water. He retrieved the dripping hulk and set it down on the ground to examine it.

“We’ve got to warn Eric,” Stephanie cried. “It’s a trap.”

“Nobody is going to warn anybody,” Metcalf replied. “Not with this.”

“That means Joe Jensen is probably one of them too.” That was from Darla Kooska, whose husband was with the men.

“Yes,” Stephanie said, gradually getting her breath back. “She said Joe will call Travis as soon as they’re down there.” She turned to her mother, her face stricken. “We’ve got to warn them!”

Metcalf shook his head and stood up, giving the radio a disgusted kick. “Both Eric and Clayne went down prepared for trouble. We can’t do anything for them now. But we’ve got to get out of here. We have to assume Shirley told them where we are. We don’t dare assume otherwise.” He turned quickly. “All right, everybody, you know your jobs. We’ve trained for this very thing. Let’s go.”

He took Stephanie’s arm. “If your mother helps with Dr. Cameron, can you handle the children?”

“Of course.”

As one body, the frightened little group turned and ran for camp.

“Shirley called in!” Travis nearly shouted into the phone. “Eric is on his way here now.”

“Great!” the Major said. “I’ll be right down.”

Travis paced back and forth nervously, his mind racing. When the door opened, he spun around. Then, without waiting for the Major to take a chair, he began giving him the report.

When he was finished the Major frowned. “The central computer banks. Then we were right. As much as he hates me, he hates what I have done even more.”

“Exactly. That’s why he’s got Rod Loopes and Nicole with him. He’s going for the heart of the system.”

“Well,” the Major said, “he’ll never make it. We’ll cut them down like young wheat in a hailstorm.”

“Where?” Travis asked slowly.

“Where? Anywhere. In the city, at the outskirts. What do you mean where?”

“I have a suggestion.”

“What?”

“Suppose we let Eric take Central Control.”

The Major shot up out of his chair. “What? Are you crazy?”

Travis went on. “Maybe, but think about it for a minute. We both know that Eric is coming here, but Shirley didn’t know exactly when or from which direction. Evidently Joe can’t get away or get a radio to tell us what’s happening. But we both know that Eric has the sympathy and support of many of the citizens. If we start moving men—the numbers of men it will take to trap him—somebody will see it. Maybe they’ll warn him. Eric could slip away from us again.”

The Major nodded. “Go on.”

“Even if we let him come to Alliance Square and try to take him in the central quad, we still stand a good chance of some of them slipping away. Perhaps even Eric himself. But Central Control is like a fortress. Besides the front entrance, there are only two ways in or out—the fire doors on the north and the south sides. They’re heavy metal and locked. He’d have to blow them off to get in that way.”

As the Major sat down slowly, Travis went on.

“Eric knows there’s a skeleton shift at night, only one man at the front desk. So let’s let him take his whole team inside, where we’ll have two squads of men set up, one hidden in the cafeteria, the other in the main conference room. Once Eric and his people are inside, we’ll have them trapped. And there won’t be any citizens around to help him escape.”

For a few seconds the Major was silent, considering the proposal. “With explosives, we’re taking a tremendous risk. What if something goes wrong?”

“The computer banks are on the lowest level, at the very back of the building. Just to be sure, what if we put a third squad of men in the equipment room, which is just two doors away from the Monitoring Room. If for some reason the other two teams let anyone past them, the third group would still be in their way. For that matter, we could attack too, from the outside, the minute he’s inside. We’ll cut him off from both directions.”

The Major slapped his hand down against the table. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I agree. How long will it take you to get ready?”

“Less than half an hour. Shirley said the target time was set for roughly two in the morning. That gives us plenty of time.” He picked up a pencil and rolled it back and forth in his palms. “We also pinpointed the location of the mountain camp from Shirley’s transmission. We’ll sweep in there at dawn and get the rest of them. We can end this thing once and for all.”

“It’s time, Travis,” the Major said grimly. Then he gave the younger man a long, appraising look. “And if something does go wrong, we always have our ace in the hole.”

Travis’s head shot up and then he finally nodded.

“If it becomes necessary, will you be willing to use it?” the Major asked.

“Nicole, you mean?”

The Major nodded, watching him closely. “Shirley confirmed that she will be with them. If it comes to that, can you watch Nicole suffer?”

Travis stared at the table for several moments; then he snapped the pencil in two and let the pieces bounce noisily off the polished surface. “Nicole who?” he said bitterly.

Chapter 34

So where is he?

Travis paced back and forth like a caged animal. His head turned each time he changed directions so he could watch out the huge glass windows of the Shalev City Library across the quad toward the dark shape of Central Control. Once again he glanced at his wrist computer. It was seven minutes after two.

The Major watched him check the time and stirred in his chair. “Well,” he asked, “where do you suppose he is?”

Travis shook his head, the tension and frustration pulling down at the corners of his mouth. Then suddenly the radio crackled behind him, and the young woman manning it jumped to turn up the volume. “Command Base, Command Base, this is Charlie Four. Someone is coming into the quad from around the president’s mansion.”

Travis leaped to the microphone. “Charlie Four, how many do you see?” Charlie Four was the four-man team Travis had hidden on the top floor of the building closest to Central Control.

“Just one so far.” There was a short pause. “It’s a man. Seems to be alone. He has a rifle, but it’s slung over his shoulder. He’s heading for Central Control. And he’s in a hurry. He’s running.”

“I’ve got him,” the Major said, staring out the window with the field glasses. “But why just one? Surely they’ll send more than one to make entry.”

“All units stand by,” Travis barked into the radio. “Don’t anybody move until I give the signal.”

Suddenly one of the units, too excited to identify itself, shattered the silence. “It’s Corporal Jensen! It’s Joe Jensen!”

Travis spun around in time to see the lone figure run up the steps of the front entrance and into Central Control. Travis jammed the mike back to his mouth. “Zebra Six, Zebra Six, the man coming in is Corporal Jensen. He thinks we’re in Central Control. Send him over to Command Central. Tell him to hurry. I don’t want Lloyd’s men to see him.”

He turned back to the window and nodded in satisfaction as a moment later the dark figure reappeared and broke into a run toward them.

For the past ten years, Donald Brownley had taught graduate chemistry classes at the Shalev Institute for Technical Studies, and for eight years he had been Charles Metcalf’s partner in the Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer Company. Neither position had prepared him for tonight, and as he swallowed back the dryness in his mouth, he decided that all the fiction writers who had described the effects of fear on a man had grossly understated the case.

He and Eric were standing in the deep shadows of Central Control’s western wall, where it was more than two stories high. Brownley fought back the almost overpowering urge to let his eyes measure exactly how high the wall was. Instead he forced them to watch calmly as Eric extracted a heavy coil of rope and a threepronged grappling hook from the sack at his waist.

“Did I ever tell you I’m terrified of heights?” Brownley whispered as Eric carefully took the coil in his left hand and the hook in his right.

Eric chuckled softly. “Yeah, me too. Stand back.” The hook sang softly in the darkness as he swung it in a cirle, its speed increasing with each revolution. Then he heaved it upward, the rope hissing after the hook. He jumped back as there was a soft clang of metal against brick, and the grappling hook plummeted back to the ground.

Eric again coiled the rope, stepped to the right to get a better angle, and started the hook swinging once more. This time it sailed up and over the top of the wall. He pulled slowly until the hook grabbed, tugged hard two or three times, then tested it with his full weight. Satisfied, he turned back to Brownley. “You want to go first, or me?”

Brownley shrank back from the extended rope. “I’m not kidding, Eric,” he whispered. “Heights absolutely petrify me. I can’t do it.”

“What?” Eric stepped closer to see if he really was serious. What he saw evidently convinced him, because his eyes widened. “Why didn’t you say something back in camp?”

Brownley forced a weak smile. “And have all the women think I have no machismo?” Then he added quickly. “I kept telling myself I could do it.”

“And you can,” Eric said firmly. “I’ll go up first and then help pull the rope.”

“Look, you don’t need me up there. All you do is uncork the bottles and pour them into the air conditioning ducts.”

“Oh yeah,” Eric retorted. “Heights may frighten you, but that little concoction you put together gives me the jitters. No way am I going to mess with it.”

“Really?” Brownley peered more closely at him to see if Eric was putting him on.

“Really! No way am I going up there alone with that stuff. Besides, we don’t know what we’ll find up there. It may take us both.” Without waiting for an answer, he swung the bag so it hung directly behind him and moved up the side of the building hand over hand.

The moment he cleared the small retaining wall around the edge of the roof, he looked around, then leaned over the edge. “Okay, Don,” he called softly. “Come on up.”

For several anxious moments, Eric didn’t think the middleaged man was going to do it. “Come on, Don!” he urged in a low hiss. “Do it! We’ve got to hurry!”

For several long seconds Brownley stared up, shaking his head, a mindless, unreasoning panic paralyzing him. Then Eric flipped the rope, and it brushed against his face. With a sudden burst of will, he grabbed at it, bit his lip, and muttered, “Otherwise how will I ever face my fans?” He leaped up, pulling on the rough hemp, his eyes shut tight.

“Climb, Don,” Eric urged, the dead weight nearly pulling his arms out of the socket. “Use the building. Help me!” Bracing his feet, Eric started hauling the rope up until Brownley’s head appeared, and one hand shot up to grab the edge of the wall. Eric quickly grabbed that hand, then both hands, and hauled him up and over the top.

“Man,” Brownley gasped, “that’s terrible!”

“You made it! Come on, let’s get moving.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Tarzan,” Brownley moaned, gasping for air. “You’re only twenty-four. I’m forty-nine—or I was before I started up that wall. Now I’m sixty-nine.”

“Let’s go, old man,” Eric said with a grin. He moved quickly in a low crouch to a dark shape that was emitting a low hum.

Brownley lurched to his feet, muttering to himself, “Which means I’ll be eighty-nine when I get down.”

“Here’s one,” Eric said, tapping on the air-conditioning unit. Then he pointed. “There’s the other.”

Brownley could manage only a nod as he collapsed next to Eric, who was opening the sack and pulling out the two plastic bottles.

“Will the air conditioning send this stuff all the way through the building?”

“Oh, yes,” Brownley said. “These will do just fine.” He uncorked the first bottle. “Avert your head and cover your face, please,” he said, following his own command. “It would be a shame if we took a whiff of this and ended up sleeping peacefully on the roof.”

“Are you sure this stuff will work?” Eric put his arm across his face as Brownley poured in the liquid.

“Of course. As I told you before, it’s colorless, odorless, brings unconsciousness in less than thirty seconds, and the person wakes up in about an hour with no side effects other than a slightly fuzzy head. One of the chemical companies I consulted for before Termination developed it for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.”

“And you’re sure it’ll be gone by the time we’re ready to go in?”

Brownley shook his head. “You make me feel a little better about being afraid to climb up that wall.”

“Well, this stuff makes me nervous.”

“It breeds a healthy respect in me too,” Brownley agreed. As they moved across the roof to the second air conditioning unit, he continued. “But, yes, it’ll be gone by the time we go in. It gassifies on contact with air and dissipates very quickly.” He uncorked the second bottle and, averting his head, poured it slowly into the whirling fans. “All right. That’s it.”

“Good, let’s get out of here.”

“Any other way down besides the back elevator?”

“Sure, I’ll call you a helicopter.”

“Your empathy and understanding are really touching,” Brownley sighed. “Why don’t you just throw me off?”

They had reached the edge of the roof, and Eric handed him the rope. “That’s my second option,” he growled, “so get going.”

Stanley Kooska, former owner and operator of the Kooska Mill and Lumber Company, liked to tell people he was a big-game hunter. Elk, moose, mountain goat, bear—he’d shot them all, he would say, and watch their eyes widen. Then when they were dutifully impressed, his wife or one of the kids would break in. “Ask him what he shot them with,” they would suggest. And then Stan would trot out the finest examples of his photography. Though people invariably oohed and aahed over his work, they were never quite as impressed when they found that his weapon was a camera. This always left Kooska faintly irritated, because his hobby required far greater stalking skills and infinitely more patience than that of a hunter.

That was why Eric had placed him in command of this team, he decided. He stopped in the thick darkness of an aspen tree near the southwest corner of Central Control and let his ears sift the soft sounds of the night.

“No one should be guarding the south fire door,” Eric had said. “But it’s our way out, and we need to be sure we can use it. If anyone is there, you’ve got to see them without their seeing you. Move as if you were part of the night.”

Kooska had taken him at his word, and now it paid off. A soft cough and brief rustle of the foliage were barely audible over the sighing of the wind in the trees, but to Kooska’s ears they sounded like a chain saw in the vast silence of a forest. It took him one minute to find the man, sitting in a thick patch of foliage. In ten more minutes he circled slowly and found eight more, all facing the circle of light that illuminated the fire exit, all armed and waiting.

Satisfied that he had located all there were, Kooska backed away slowly, puzzling over what he’d found. Eric’s little rebellion had unquestionably put Shalev on alert, and the Major was known to be a careful man, but this was no precautionary guard. It was an ambush, a trap set to slam shut on the first person who stuck his nose out the door. And that was an ominous sign. For the first time since they had left the mountains, Kooska felt the uneasy pricklings of fear rumble in his stomach.

He had left the six other members of his team waiting near the low ridge that protected Central Control’s back flank, and it took nearly ten minutes to make his way back there, still moving with the utmost care. As he called out softly, he noted that several of the men jumped, which made him smile. He had moved undetected to within twenty feet of them—and they were watching for him!

“We’ve got trouble,” he said, as he stepped forward to join them. “Get Eric on the radio.”

“So do we abort?” Clayne Robertson’s voice was angry.

Eric shook his head and drummed his fingers against his leg. “How long ago do you think Joe left us?”

“We’re not sure,” Nicole answered. “No one actually saw him go. We thought he had gone with Kooska’s team, but Stan said he assumed he had stayed with us. He must have gone not long after we left the van.”

“Was he with us when we split into two teams?”

Rod Loopes shook his head. “No, I’m sure of that.” The former head of computer services for the Guardians was deeply upset, for he had recommended that Joe Jensen be brought into the movement. “Maybe he just got behind and got lost.”

“We have to assume the worst,” Clayne broke in, impatient with their unwillingness to grapple with the real question. “Joe’s gone, and nine men are waiting at the back door. We’ve been blown—there’s no question about that. So the question is, do we abort or do we go ahead anyway?”

“If Joe is the Major’s man,” Rod Loopes broke in, “then Shirley Ferguson is probably with him.”

Dick Andreason, the radioman, nodded. “Which puts the camp in danger.”

“These radios,” Eric said, touching the walkie-talkie at his belt, “there’s no way they can reach the camp?”

Dick shook his head. “No, but we’ve got the big radio in the van. I can be there in two minutes. We told the camp to keep a watch on the radio all night.”

“All right,” Eric said. “Go call them. Tell them to pack it up and move out fast. Tell them also to watch Shirley.”

“Right.” Andreason turned and hurried back up the hill.

“Okay,” Eric said, turning back to face the others. “We’ve got two things in our favor. We didn’t tell you any of the details of how we were going to get into Central Control, not because we didn’t trust you, but because we didn’t dare risk your knowing too much if you got caught. So that means Joe doesn’t know the details either. He left before we split into teams. He knows we’re going out the side door, but he doesn’t know Stan is there and has spotted the ambush. And the Guardians there don’t know they’ve been spotted either. That gives us another advantage. Also, we didn’t tell any of you about putting the knock-out liquid in the air conditioning until we arrived here at the building. Only Don and I knew anything about that, so that’s another surprise in our favor.”

He looked around the circle of anxious faces. “Clayne is right. We have to assume that Joe and Shirley have betrayed us. If so, we also have to assume the Major and Travis have planned a little trap. But why haven’t we hit it yet? Why didn’t we see any Guardians before this?”

Clayne saw his reasoning almost instantly. “Because the trap is here, at Central Control.”

“Inside. They’ll be waiting for us inside,” Nicole said, also seeing what Eric was getting at. “Which means they too will be knocked out.”

“There are nine at the south door,” Abernathy said, shaking his head. “What if there are others elsewhere out here?”

“A valid possibility,” Eric agreed. “But we’re committed now. We’ve put the stuff into the vents. If we do abort, they’ll know we were here, and we can never use this tactic again. It’ll mean a head-on assault to get to those computers.”

The silence hung heavy for a moment. Eric took a deep breath. “If my father or Cliff Cameron were here, they’d say we have yet another advantage.”

“What?” Dick Andreason asked. “We need every one we can get.”

Eric looked from face to face, finally stopping with Nicole. “Heaven favors the just cause.”

“I say we go,” Clayne said. “If we don’t take them out tonight, then our chance is gone.”

“I agree,” Loopes said.

“Nicole? Chet?”

Nicole felt her chest tighten and her stomach twist at the thought of what could be waiting for them. “I’m very frightened,” she finally answered, “but I think we owe it to Cliff.”

Chet Abernathy took a deep breath. “We never thought it would be a piece of cake,” he said with a shrug.

Eric turned to his last man. “Don?”

“Will I have to climb any more ropes?”

Eric gave a brief laugh. “No, that I promise you.”

“Then I think I can handle anything else.”

Eric nodded, feeling a swift surge of pride. These weren’t warriors, they were common people, everyday men and women caught suddenly in a web of war. He pulled the radio off his belt. “Stan, are you there?”

“Roger. Standing by.”

“We’re going in. Can you be ready to neutralize our friends?”

“Roger. How soon?”

“We should be coming out in no more than twenty to thirty minutes. Stay low until you see the door open. No matter what happens, don’t let them see you until we come out. Then we’ll try to catch them in a crossfire.”

“Will do.”

“And Stan?”

“Yes.”

“If we’re not out in forty-five minutes, we’re not coming. Pack it up, get back to camp, and get our people clear out of the Alliance.”

There was no answer.

“Is that understood?”

For a moment the soft hum of static was the only sound, and then Kooska’s voice came soft but clear. “That’s a roger, Eric. Good luck.”

“Same to you.” Eric looked quickly into his team’s eyes, then spoke into the radio again. “Mark, have you been getting all of this?”

Mark Van Dam responded instantly. “Yes, Eric. We got it all.”

“Are you all set there?”

“Roger. We’re inside the studio waiting to broadcast. You buzz the people’s wrist computers and wake them up, and we’ll talk to them.”

“Nicole will program the message the minute we get into Central Monitoring. Tell them we need them, Mark.” His voice had lowered, and Nicole could tell he was feeling the strain. “Once we knock out the computers, their implantations will be neutralized. They can help us. Tell them that.”

“We will,” Van Dam said. “We’ll send you the whole blinking city.”

“Right. Thanks, Mark.”

“Good luck.”

When Eric looked up, his face was grim. “That’ll be our last little surprise for the Major.”

Just then Dick Andreason rejoined them. To Eric’s questioning glance he shook his head. “There’s no answer. I couldn’t raise anyone.”

“Oh, no,” Nicole whispered, thinking of the children. “We’ve got to help them.”

Eric shook his head, his face unreadable. “If they’re in trouble, the best help we can give them is to wipe this building off the face of the earth.” He reached out and took her hand. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 35

“You’ve done a great job, Joe,” Travis said. “We’ll wait until they’re inside, and then we’ll close in. There’s no way they can get away.”

At that moment the radio crackled into life. “Command Base, Command Base. This is Charlie One. We have a group of people coming out of the trees on the north side of Central Control. There are four—no, five—no, seven—seven people in all. One appears to be a woman. They’re all carrying rifles, and three have heavy sacks.”

“That team watching the north fire door had better stay out of sight,” the Major growled. “I don’t want Eric to see them and get spooked.”

Travis had his binoculars up. “No, they’re coming right along the building. Our men are up in the trees, out of sight.” He turned to the radioman. “Winters, tell all units to stand by. I don’t want anybody moving so much as an eyelash until I give the signal.”

Joe shook his head. “There are more than seven. There were fourteen of us altogether.”

Travis and the Major both looked startled. “Some of them must be going to wait in back to cover them.”

“Or Eric may have sent them around to the south door,” the Major said. “Winters, alert the team by the fire exit to watch for them. Tell them to stay out of sight.”

Then both he and Travis lifted their binoculars again and peered out the glass front of the Shalev Library.

The men went in quickly, Eric going first, rifle at the ready, the others following. For a moment they stood together in a tight clot inside the main lobby; then one of them (Travis couldn’t tell which) moved over and peered behind the desk.

“Where’s Hendry?” Travis asked.

“Who’s Hendry?” the Major demanded. “And how come they got in so easily?”

“Hendry is the desk sergeant tonight. I told him not to appear too alert and not to fight them coming in. But he’s not even at his desk. That could make them suspicious.”

“He was there when I went in,” Joe Jensen said.

Just then the lights inside the lobby went out, except for a dim light over the desk. Travis half turned. “Winters, tell Zebra Six they’re inside and should start moving down the hall any moment now. Tell them to stay alert. I don’t know what’s going on with that desk sergeant. Tell him to report to us the minute things are secure.”

“Yes, sir.” The young radio operator began barking out the order into the microphone.

For the next two minutes no sound from the radio broke the growing tension in the room, and Travis grew more and more impatient. Suddenly the Major swore. “What’s the delay, Travis? They should have them by now.”

Travis stared first out the window and then at the back of the radio operator’s head, willing him to make the radio speak. “I don’t know. Carlson has probably forgotten us in the excitement.” He strode to the radio and snatched up the mike.

“Zebra Six, this is Central Control. Come in, please.”

No answer.

“Lieutenant Carlson, this is Captain Oakes. What is your report? Have you made contact?”

Silence.

The Major leaped to his feet. “Something’s wrong! Why doesn’t he answer?”

“Lieutenant Carlson!” Travis shouted. “Anyone in Zebra Six! Come in, please! What’s going on over there?”

Suddenly the silence was shattered by the shrill, synchronized buzzing of their wrist computers. As the four men jerked up their hands and stared, the bright yellow letters flowed across the tiny screens.

ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ALL CITIZENS OF SHALEV! STAND BY FOR AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT. PLEASE TURN YOUR TELEVISIONS TO CHANNEL FOUR. AN ANNOUNCEMENT CRITICAL TO ALL CITIZENS WILL BEGIN IN EXACTLY TWO MINUTES ON KSHV-TV, CHANNEL FOUR. And then it began again. ATTENTION! ATTENTION!…

The Major, his face purple, grabbed Travis’s shoulder and spun him around. “What’s the meaning of this?” he screamed in fury.

Travis was stunned. “They’ve gotten into the Monitoring Room. But that’s impossible!”

“Van Dam!” Jensen cried. “Mark Van Dam left camp the day before we did. I asked Eric about it, but all he said was that he had to go down and get some things ready for us.”

“He’s going to announce his victory to the people!” the Major shouted, almost incoherently. “We’ve got to stop them, Travis!”

Travis broke out of his shock and thrust the microphone up to his mouth. “All units! All units! Something’s wrong. The enemy force is inside Central Control. Move in! Move in!” Then, without hope, he screamed into the mike once more. “Carlson! Answer me! Where are you?”

Eric poked his head around the door marked “Authorized Personnel Only” and looked across the Monitoring Room to where Nicole sat at one of the consoles. “Did you get the message off?”

“Yes, it’s sent. I repeated it three times. It should wake everyone in the city.”

“Good.” He pointed to the woman who lay on the carpeting. “You’d better drag her out of here. Take her far enough away that she won’t be hurt when this blows. Then see if you can find the unit locations for the Guardians. If we’re in a trap, let’s find out.”

Without waiting for a response, Eric went to the room where the rows of central processing units lined each wall and took clumps of reddish-gray putty from the sack. He was grateful they had found Don Brownley and Charles Metcalf, both excellent chemists. In the village they had been unable to make anything more complex than dynamite and gunpowder, but this plastic explosive, made by the two partners in Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer Company, was far more sophisticated and better suited for their task.

The plan was very simple. While Nicole stayed in the main room at the console, Eric, Rod, and Dick worked on the CPUs. Moving swiftly from computer to computer, Rod and Eric slapped the putty in large globs at the base of the machines. Then Dick, moving right behind them, inserted detonators into each glob, stringing a thin red electrical wire from patch to patch.

The detonating system was almost as simple as the plan. The heart of it was a small blue metal box with a red plastic button, much like a doorbell, only about three inches square. Andreason had wired both boxes—he had insisted on a back-up in case the first one malfunctioned—with two small flashlight batteries as the power source. A thick roll of electrical wire, long enough to stretch from the Monitoring Room out to the south fire exit, was connected to the clip at the edge of the blue box. From the other end of the wire dangled a small circuit board with a ten-second delay switch. Once connected to the wires leading from detonator to detonator, the circuit board required only one light push on the red button. The delay switch would activate, and ten seconds later a fury of explosive power would be unleashed. The device was simple, the results spectacular.

Almost a full minute later Eric heard Nicole cry, her voice muffled by the noise of the big units in the room. “I can’t get access to the Guardian code. Someone has changed it.”

“Try again!” he called. “We’ve got to know where they are.”

“I’ve tried everything. They’ve changed it all.”

Rod Loopes looked up, sweat pouring down his broad nose. “That’s the Major’s doing. He’s nobody’s fool.” Then he turned his head and shouted, “Nicole, try tracking Travis with the regular monitor. See where he is right now.”

Nicole’s fingers flew over the keys, typing in the familiar number. Almost instantly the flashing light appeared on the board, and below came the sentence: PRESENTLY TRACKING TRAVIS OAKES, &num;G14332.

For a moment Nicole stared, trying to orient herself to the grid symbols appearing on the screen. Then her eyes widened in shock.

“Eric!” she shouted, “Travis is right across the square from us, in the Shalev Library.” And then suddenly the light, which had been stationary, began to move. “He’s coming here. Running!”

Clayne Robertson blinked once, then peered more closely through the glass doors out across the quad. The only light inside the lobby came from outside, making it difficult to see. “Don,” he hissed, as he moved closer to the entrance, “someone’s coming.”

Don Brownley and Chet Abernathy both jumped to his side and peered out across the quad, unable to believe what they saw. The quad was suddenly alive with dark shapes running across the grass toward them, and they could hear the shouts of men through the doorway.

“We’re under attack!” Clayne shouted as he pushed the door open and blasted off a shot at the nearest figure. As though he had used a cannon with an incredibly wide span of shrapnel, every figure suddenly disappeared, diving for cover or sprawling on the grass. Then, almost instantly, they returned his fire, and the front of Central Control exploded in a shattering spray of plate glass.

“Take cover!” Clayne screamed, diving for the sofa to his left. “Pin them down!”

The Guardians’ opening volley had cleared the front entrance of everything but the metal framework, studded now with jagged shards of glass, and Don and Chet opened fire, the blast of the rifles deafening in the confinement of the lobby.

Clayne swept up his walkie-talkie. “Eric, we’re under fire. It’s a trap. We’ve got Guardians all over the place coming at us.” He instinctively ducked as a bullet slapped through the back of the sofa, leaving a four-inch gaping hole not more than a foot from his nose.

With a cry he scrambled around the corner, glancing quickly at his two companions. Chet was behind the desk, while Don was in the corner almost totally without shelter, levering shells into the chamber and blasting away with a vengeance. “Don, get down!” Clayne yelled.

“Clayne!” the radio blurted.

He jammed the radio to his ear to hear over the explosion of the rifles and the angry whine of ricochets. “What?”

“We need another two or three minutes,” Eric said. “Can you hold them?”

“Not here. We’ll fall back down the halls, delay them at every corner. But it won’t be long. There must be several dozen of them, and most of them have rifles.”

“Do your best. We’ll hurry. Give us two minutes, and we’ll go out the back all together.”

Eric slapped his last wad of putty against the base of one of the metal cases and turned around. “Leave the rest. Dick, wire up whatever we’ve got, and let’s get out of here.”

“No,” Rod cried. “I can be finished with them all in another thirty seconds.”

“And I’m right behind him,” Dick added.

“All right, but hurry!” Eric darted out the doorway into the Monitoring Room. Nicole was standing at the door, looking anxiously up the hallway, rifle at ready. Eric grabbed his rifle and ran to her. “You cover the side doorway that leads to the back exit just in case.”

The muffled blasts of rifle fire grew louder. Then suddenly the clatter of footsteps echoed in the corridor, and the three men dashed around the corner about thirty feet away and came pounding toward Eric. Chet whirled and fired a shot back the way they had come. In the narrow confines of the hallway, the reverberating blast was a sharp stab of pain against the eardrums.

“Come on, Chet!” Eric shouted. “I’ll cover you. Don, get inside!”

An orange-clad figure hurtled around the corner, took one startled look down the corridor at Eric, and tried to change direction in midflight. He bounced off the wall and dove back behind the corner as both Clayne and Eric fired together. They ducked instinctively as the black snout of a rifle was thrust around the corner and fired wildly back at them.

“Inside!” As they dove through the door, Eric shouted through the opening of the doorway into the room with the CPUs. “Rod! Dick! Let’s get out of here before they cut off the side exit.”

Rod Loopes came out of the computer room in three strides. “That’s it. Dick’s almost done.”

Andreason was right behind him, carrying the blue box and unreeling the spool of wire as he came. “Okay,” he called. “It’s hooked up.” He handed the box to Rod Loopes. “You take this and let me take the rifle. Just don’t bump that button!”

“All right, let’s go,” Eric commanded. “Don, check the hallway—see if we’re clear. Clayne, you and I’ll cover the rear while Rod unrolls the wire.”

Don Brownley opened the side door that led out of the Monitoring Center, peeked around the frame, then nodded. “It’s clear, let’s go!” But as he stepped out, turning back to see if the others were coming, he suddenly flew backward and upward, jerked completely off his feet. He slammed back hard against the door, staggered once, then pitched face down to the floor.

“Don!” Nicole screamed.

In one leap, Eric was to the door, now propped half open by Don’s body. “Help me, Nicky. I’ll cover the hall while you pull him in.”

He stuck the muzzle of his rifle around the door, fired two quick shots, then leaped over Don’s form into the hallway. His first shots had sent the two Guardians coming down the hall frantically back around the corner where they had been hiding. He pumped another shell after them, hoping the screaming ricochet would drive them even farther back, then whirled and helped Nicole drag Don back into the room.

“Stay clear of the doors,” Eric commanded. “Cover them from the center of the room.” Then he turned to where Chet was kneeling over Don Brownley. “Chet, how badly is he hurt?”

Chet Abernathy pressed his finger into Don’s throat just below his jawline, then removed his hand slowly and rocked back on his feet. “Dead.”

“No!” Nicole gasped, her face white.

“Yes. They’re using maximum power on the stun guns. He died instantly.”

“Shhh!” Clayne commanded, pointing at the main door of the Monitoring Room. The lock rattled almost imperceptibly as he raised the rifle. The blast was like the explosion of a stick of dynamite in the small room, and the heavy wood panel of the door shattered. There was a sharp, muffled cry and then a heavy thudding sound. The smell of gunpowder filled the room.

“That’s one for one!” Clayne said savagely.

“At that rate,” Eric snapped, “we don’t stand a chance. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Suddenly the overhead speaker blared. “Eric!”

The six of them jumped in surprise and then stared at the ceiling.

“Eric, this is Major Denison. You’re cut off in both directions. I can hear every word you’ve been saying. If you’ll flip the switch on the control panel, you can talk to us. Nicole knows where.”

Nicole swung around and stared at the switch in front of her but didn’t move.

“Eric, it’s foolish to go on killing each other. Let’s at least talk about it.”

Eric finally nodded, and Nicole stepped to the board and flicked the switch. “All right, Major,” he said wearily. “Talk.”

The Major shot Travis a look of triumph and covered the microphone. “Can you cut off the monitoring consoles from here?” he asked. They were in the confinement-cells section, sitting at the control panel Nicole had once used to trigger Eric’s wrist computer.

Travis shook his head. “No, this gives us access only to the public-address system. But we can cut off the power upstairs.”

“Do it! They can set off your punishment mode if they think about it. Shut the whole system down.” He turned back to the microphone. “I must give you credit, Eric. You’ve been very clever. You didn’t even open the doors to the cafeteria or the conference room. If you had, you would have seen that we had three squads of men waiting for you in here. What did you use to knock out the whole building?”

“Major,” came the sharp reply, “you’re not here to discuss tactics. What do you want?”

“True,” the Major responded, almost amiably. “Actually, I wish to negotiate your surrender.”

“Sorry.”

“Look, Eric, you’re no fool, never have been. A wise man knows when he’s defeated.”

“True. And so far, we don’t see it that way.”

A look of exasperation briefly marred the smooth features, but the Major spoke with a tone of patient goodwill. “We can come in there, overwhelm you with sheer numbers. I have over fifty men out here. But I don’t want either my men or yours to die needlessly. You cannot win.”

“Major, that depends totally on what you mean by winning.” Now Eric’s voice was easy, almost conversational. “We have one hundred fifty pounds of plastic explosives wired up to your little machines in here. We hoped to get away clear, but our primary objective is to wipe out the heart of your little psychological dictatorship. So we haven’t really failed, have we?”

“You’re sitting right on top of those explosives. You won’t annihilate yourselves.”

“Eric!” Nicole’s whisper was muffled but still clearly understandable through the speaker, and the Major cocked his head to listen. “We have the monitors in here. We can trigger the punishment mode in Travis’s wrist computer.”

There was a moment of silence; then Eric’s voice responded in a whisper. “Get Travis on line.”

At that moment, the door opened, and Travis came back into the observation room. The Major shot him a questioning glance, and he nodded. “The monitoring terminals are shut down completely.”

The Major nodded, unable to repress a tiny smile of triumph. For several minutes things had looked bleak, but they had turned them around. “Eric, the time for bluffing is over. You have a problem and no way out of it.”

“No, Major. You have a problem. We’re not bluffing. I’d like the side hallway cleared immediately.”

“Or?”

“Or we’ll push the punishment mode on Travis’s wrist computer. We can terminate him just as you tried to terminate Cliff Cameron.”

The Major shook his head. “Nice try, Eric, but it won’t carry.”

“As soon as Travis dies, we’ll send your next man down. And the next and the next. We regret, Major, that you have been wise enough not to link yourself up to—”

A sharp cry of dismay cut him off. “The terminals are off!” Nicole cried.

The Major sighed. “Now, Eric, are you ready to negotiate? There’s no way you can win.”

For a long moment there was no response. “Give it up, Eric,” he said softly. “It’s pointless to die for nothing.”

“Major, we didn’t come here as a suicide squad, but you may not leave us much of an option. Suppose we do surrender. Then what?”

“You’ll be arrested, of course. But there’ll be no need for punishment. You’ll simply be implanted once more, and then you’ll not be any threat to us.”

“Come on, Major,” Eric said in disgust. “You said I wasn’t a fool. We both know you’d never dare let me go around with nothing more than just implantation.”

The Major sighed. “True, except for the fact that in your case—and I’ll be honest with you—in your case it would be a Stage Three implantation. It would be sufficient. It’s not very pleasant to contemplate, but certainly better than death.”

“Only in your mind, Major. I think we prefer the swiftness of high-powered explosives to any tender mercies you can promise. And at least that way, we would know that you hadn’t won either.”

“You’re bluffing again, Eric.” The Major spoke with arrogant confidence, but for the first time Travis saw his eyes cloud with worry.

“Am I? Two hundred thousand people out there are anxious to get their hands on you, Major. If I free them, it won’t matter whether we live or die. Your empire is finished.”

Travis grabbed the microphone. “If you care so much for those two hundred thousand people, you’d better not blow the central computers. It will automatically trigger Maximum Punishment Modes for everyone. And then, so much for freedom.”

“Sorry, Travis.” It was Rod Loopes’ voice. “You forget I’m here.”

Travis was unperturbed. “We’ve reprogrammed since you left, Rod, just in case something like this happened.”

For a long moment there was silence; then in a whisper they heard Eric’s voice. “Rod? Could that be true?”

The Major gave Travis a quick look of triumph, but it was instantly erased.

“No way!” Loopes said. “They couldn’t risk that. Suppose they had a power failure and the back-up generators didn’t work.”

“Nice try, Travis,” Eric called. “Major, we’ll blow the computers unless we get a better alternative than what you’re offering us now.”

The Major stared at the microphone. “All right, Eric, we seem to have a standoff. What do you want?”

“Freedom for all of us,” Eric said without hesitation. “Let us go, and we’ll not blow your little game here. We’ll leave the Alliance, and you’ll be free of us.”

“Now who is shamming who? But I think there’s one other thing for which we might bargain.”

“What?”

Very quietly the Major said one word. “Nicole.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Eric demanded, as Nicole gripped his arm.

“Travis,” the Major’s voice said over the speaker, “why don’t you explain our little plan?” The flush of victory was so clearly evident in his voice that Eric felt his stomach drop. This was not just another bluff—the Major was pulling out his trump card. “Did Nicole happen to mention her little accident in the Monitoring Room the other day?”

Nicole’s fingernails dug into Eric’s arm as she visibly jumped, her face drained of color.

“It wasn’t an accident, Eric,” the Major broke in. “We put a little device in her back, which, like your explosives, is electronically controlled. We regret that you doubt our word and force us to provide a demonstration.” There was a pause, and then with sadness he added, “I’m truly sorry, Nicole.”

Before Eric could react, Nicole gasped, then screamed in agony as her back arched violently. She staggered against him, clutching wildly for his arm. He grabbed for her and held her as her body jerked in violent spasms, each wrenching shudder driving screams of agony out of her throat.

As suddenly as it started it left her, and she collapsed, nearly dragging Eric down with her, gasping in huge, desperate, hungry gulps of air. His face a twisted mass of shock and horror, Eric laid her down gently on the carpet. Chet and Dick leaped to help him. As Chet reached for her wrist to check her pulse, her eyes fluttered open.

“It causes us great sorrow to resort to that,” the Major said softly, “but you leave us no choice. We’d like to start some serious negotiations now.”

Eric leaped to his feet, his eyes wild. “You animal! What kind of monster are you?”

“My little kingdom, as you so condescendingly call it, happens to be very important to me,” the Major said triumphantly. “I will save it.”

“Though we could, we will not kill her,” Travis broke in evenly. “But we can produce that kind of pain at will and prolong it indefinitely.” Eric stared up at the speaker, his eyes wild. “Give it up, Eric. You’ve got one minute to surrender, or we turn it on again.”

“Eric.” Nicole’s voice was a hoarse whisper. He dropped to his knee and gently cradled her head against him. “You can’t surrender.”

“Shhhh,” he soothed, pulling her close against him.

“You can’t give up!” she cried, trying to raise up.

Eric looked up and stared into the faces of the men.

“There’s no choice,” Chet said, his voice barely above a whisper. Dick nodded in agreement. Eric turned to Clayne. He started to shake his head; then he looked at Nicole and turned away quickly.

“Thirty seconds,” Travis called.

“I’ve got to have more time,” Eric shouted, not looking up.

“Twenty-five seconds.”

“No, Eric,” Nicole whispered. “Don’t do it. Please! Not for me.”

“I can’t speak for my men,” he shouted, staring at her. “We need time to discuss it. Give us five minutes.”

Then the triumphant voice of the Major boomed over the speaker. “Talk. But you have exactly one more minute. Then we want your decision.”

“We need at least three minutes.”

“One minute!” the Major thundered.

Eric stood up and walked over toward the speaker in the ceiling. When he spoke, his voice was soft and menacing. “Major, I said we need three minutes. If anyone so much as pokes his nose in here before three minutes are up, or if Nicole twitches with even a flicker of pain, we’ll blow this whole place apart and us with it. You’ll hear from us in three minutes.”

Chapter 36

Eric jumped to one of the monitoring stations and grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil. The others gathered closer as he scribbled furiously. He turned and held it up. THEY CAN HEAR EVERYTHING WE SAY! ROD, MAKE NOISE. THE REST COME WITH ME. Then he spoke, “We can’t take a chance that they will move in on us while we debate. Block the doors with the furniture—anything you can move over there.” He picked up one of the vinyl chairs near the corner and hurled it toward the door.

As they stared at him for a moment, he turned to Rod and mouthed the words while he pointed, “Make noise! But don’t block the side door.”

Then he motioned to the others, and they went quickly into the room with the CPUs, leaving Nicole lying on the floor, watching them anxiously. As Eric shut the door, Loopes carefully set the blue box in a far corner, then grabbed a table and pushed it across the floor, banging it into the consoles along the wall.

“Is there a speaker in here?” Eric whispered.

Clayne peered up at the ceiling. “No.”

“All right,” Eric said grimly. “For now, let’s reject surrender as an option. Any ideas?”

Andreason spoke up first. “Nicole is the problem. If she was free, we could try and fight our way clear. But—”

“I could remove the implantation,” Chet said, “if I had something sharp and some time to work on her.”

“What if it won’t come out? What if you trigger it automatically or something?”

“I doubt it,” Chet replied. “They’re controlling it from out there, which means it must be an independent device. I’ll have to check once I see it, but my guess is it’s a simple receiving device with electrodes implanted into her spinal column.”

“I’ve got a pocketknife in my tool kit,” Andreason said. “It’s probably not very sharp though.”

“It’ll do,” Abernathy said.

“She’ll have to be kept absolutely quiet.” Clayne sounded dubious. “If the Major hears her cry out, that will be it.”

“And I’ve got to have time,” Chet said. “I can’t just start hacking away like a wild man. Three minutes isn’t enough.” He shook his head. “Two now.”

“I’ll get you the time.” Eric’s voice was hopeful again. “How much do you need?”

“Four minutes minimum.”

“You know what you’re asking of Nicole?” Andreason asked.

Eric’s eyes flashed. “Is the alternative any better?” He turned. “Clayne, can you keep her quiet?”

“Yes, but how are you going to get us more time? The Major and Travis are through with any stalling.”

“I’m going out in the hallway to negotiate with them.”

“They’ll cut you down.”

“Not if I have the detonator button in my hand.”

Before Clayne could answer, Eric spun back around to Andreason. “Dick, can you fix that control box so that it’ll detonate when you release the button rather than when you push it?”

Andreason looked puzzled for a moment. “Yes, I guess I could. It should be fairly simple.”

“Good, do it! Get me the back-up box and the extra roll of wire. I’ll take that out into the hallway. You can fix the main one while Chet operates on Nicole.”

“What are you going to do?” Clayne demanded.

“I’ve got an idea, a way to get the time we need, and maybe a way to get us out too.”

“What?”

Eric shook his head. “Don’t push me for details. I’m still working it out. But remember, if we can get out of here, we’ll have an army of people waiting to help us.”

“Who won’t be able to do a thing for us unless we blow these computers,” Andreason interrupted.

“I’m working on that too. But time is critical. Let’s get moving.” He jerked the walkie-talkie off his belt. “Stan, can you hear me?”

The building was interfering with the reception, and the answer was faint and full of static. “I’ve got you, Eric. Can you speak up? What’s going on in there? We saw Guardians going inside after you.”

“They’ve got us trapped,” Eric said, jamming the mouthpiece against his lips so he didn’t have to speak too loudly. “But we’re going to try to break free. Stay down, but the minute we come busting out of that door, open fire on any Guardian you see out there.”

“Roger. We’re ready and waiting for you.”

He looked back to the others. “Let’s go.”

They reentered the Monitoring Room just as Rod Loopes crashed a secretarial chair solidly against the door. “All right,” Eric said clearly, “that should do it. It’s time to make a decision. Let’s hear how you all vote.” He motioned vigorously with his hands for them to start speaking, even as he pointed to Chet to get ready.

Clayne spoke first. “I say no. Let’s see it through. The Major will kill us, or at least turn us into vegetables like Cliff Cameron.”

Andreason chimed in even as he got the pocketknife out of his small tool box and handed it to Chet. Eric tuned out the conversation, grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil from one of the monitoring stations, and wrote for almost thirty seconds. He dropped to his knee beside Nicole and gently raised her head so she could read it.

WE ARE STALLING. CHET WILL TAKE OUT THE IMPLANT. CLAYNE WILL COVER YOUR MOUTH. YOU CAN’T MAKE ANY SOUND. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Her eyes widened as she read and then looked up at him, seeing the anguish in his eyes. Finally she nodded.

He wrote again, I WON’T GIVE YOU UP, held it for her to see, then kissed her quickly. “Turn over,” he whispered into her ear.

With an effort Nicole rolled over onto her stomach. Chet knelt down and raised the back of her blouse, exposing the red scar just above the small of her back. Eric stood up and motioned to Clayne.

“Don’t be stupid, Clayne,” Chet said loudly, as he opened the blade of the pocketknife, wiped it on his pants, then ran the blade along his finger and shook his head. “We’ve lost. We have to face that.”

“We’ve got to surrender,” Rod Loopes was saying hotly, understanding what they were up to. “Otherwise what will they do to Nicole?”

“They’ll do it anyway!” Clayne shouted as he knelt down next to Nicole. His fingers gently touched Nicole’s cheek; then he clamped his hand over her mouth.

As Andreason finished connecting the roll of wire to the second control box and handed it to Eric, the loudspeaker over their heads blared.

“Eric, your three minutes are up. What’s your decision?”

Eric looked around at the four men. “Do you trust me to make our decision for us?”

“Yes.” It was spoken as one.

He pulled Andreason next to his mouth and whispered, “Dick, take the end of the wire into the computer room. Connect it to anything; then come out and shut the door. It’s got to look authentic. Then get the real button switched over as soon as possible.”

As Andreason jumped to obey, Eric looked up at the ceiling. “Major?”

“Yes, I’m still here, Eric. What is your decision?”

“The detonator button for the explosives goes off if it’s released. I’m holding it down at the moment. I’m coming out into the hallway.”

“No, Eric!” the Major said loudly. “Your time is up.”

“If I let go of the button,” Eric continued calmly, “it’ll close the circuits, and the whole place will go. If any of your men get jumpy and shoot me, it’s all over.”

“What is your decision, Eric?” the Major snapped. “No more talk!”

“I’m ready to negotiate,” Eric answered, turning his head away as he saw Nicole’s arms and legs stiffen and then start to tremble violently. “But I’m coming out to do it. Tell your men to hold their fire. If my thumb is knocked off this button, all negotiations will be over. There’s no way to reverse that then.”

Almost instantly, loudspeakers all over the building screamed out, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

“Rod, clear me a way through to the door,” Eric called, concentrating on uncoiling the wire carefully so as not to look in Nicole’s direction.

“There’s nothing to talk about!” Travis screamed. “Surrender or we’ll terminate Nicole. We’re not playing anymore, Eric.”

“You’re a real sweetheart, Travis. Major, I’m coming out.” He stepped out of the door and into the hallway, tensing for the unseen blow. But the hallway was empty, and then a moment later, Travis and the Major stepped into view about thirty feet away.

Eric held up the box and uncoiled another foot or two of wire. “It’s rather a bitter irony, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?” the Major said, searching Eric’s face for any sign of surrender.

“You have a destructive device planted at the spine of something I treasure very much—” he paused long enough to note Travis’s look of fury—”and I have a destructive device planted at the heart of something you treasure very much.”

The Major’s nod was barely perceptible.

“I have a suggestion. Why don’t we trade boxes?”

The Major gave a short, humorless laugh. “I must admit, Eric, you don’t give up easily.”

Travis held up a black panel with a dial on the face of it for Eric to see. “Tell your men to throw down their weapons and come out now, Eric.” His hand went up to the dial. “Now, or Nicole begins screaming again.”

Eric’s eyes remained riveted to the Major’s face. “You see, Major, I am willing to trade victory for Nicole, but you haven’t offered me that yet.”

“That’s exactly what I am offering you.”

“No. If we surrender, she will either be executed or at least put through a repeat of Cliff Cameron’s ordeal. I’d just as soon see her dead.”

The Major’s eyes narrowed, and Eric knew he believed him.

“Suppose I promise you I won’t do either.”

“Sorry, Major. Trust is not the going commodity today.”

“Suppose I promise nothing more than implantation. You know I’m a man of my word, just as you are.”

“Death is preferable to implantation,” Eric roared, suddenly angry.

“He’s bluffing!” Travis’s fingers flicked up and rested on the dial. “Tell them to come out, Eric. Now!”

Eric’s own hand came up slowly so the box and his thumb on the button were clearly evident, but again he refused to even glance at Travis. “Major, if I hear so much as a whimper from Nicole, that is it. Do you understand?”

The Major’s hand darted out and grabbed Travis’s arm. “Give the controls to me, Travis.”

Travis turned around in shock. “He won’t do it! Not with Nicole in there!”

“Give me the controls, Travis!” The two men stared at each other, eyes locked in anger, and then Travis finally lifted his fingers. The Major took the transmitter and turned away. He relaxed visibly, then turned to face Eric. “What is your proposal?”

“It’s simple. I have about two hundred to two hundred fifty feet of wire tied to this box.”

“Yes, go on.”

“Clear the side hallway of all your men. We’ll leave the Monitoring Room, unreeling the wire as we go. You and Travis can come around the corner into that side hallway and watch as I do it. One wrong move, one trigger-happy Guardian, and I let go of the button. But once I can see that my people are clear, I’ll walk back down the hall to you. I hand you my box, and you hand me the transmitting controls. You save your computers, I save Nicole.”

Both Travis and the Major considered for a moment. Finally the Major nodded. “Travis and I will confer on this for a moment to see if it’s acceptable.”

Eric shrugged. “Take whatever time you need. I’ll be inside.” Without a second glance, he went back in the room.

The Major turned and looked at Travis. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. It sounds too pat.” His mind raced over the possibilities. “On the other hand, we’ve got a couple of surprises for him.”

“Exactly,” the Major said. “We can send our men out the front and still catch them outside. And I have another set of controls for Nicole in my office. I’m sure they plan to get the implantation out as soon as possible, but our transmitter has a range of ten to fifteen miles. That should give us plenty of time.”

“What if he’s pulling a fast one on us? Is there anything he can be doing in there right now?”

The Major frowned, then strode down the hallway to the door and pounded on it, leaning down to peek through the bullet hole in the upper panel. But someone was standing close to the door, blocking the view. “Eric, I want the door opened so I can watch you, see that you’re not up to something.” Then he whispered to Travis, “Clear the way to the fire door and then send Lieutenant Lowry and the men out the front.”

As he turned back to the door, he heard Eric’s muffled cry. “Open the door for him.”

The door swung open to reveal Rod Loopes with a rifle pointing directly at the Major’s chest. Eric was standing next to Nicole, holding her by the arm. Her face was chalky white, and the Major could see that she was leaning on Eric for support. Clayne was next to him and Chet Abernathy behind them.

“You can watch from there, Major,” Eric called, “but if you try to come in—” He left it unfinished. “What have you decided?”

As Travis moved up to stand next to him, the Major nodded. “All right, we agree.”

“Good.” Eric turned. “Chet, you and Nicole go first, Dick and Clayne next. Rod and I will bring up the rear so the Major can see me and the box clearly.” He looked up. “Is the way to the exit cleared, Major?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, let’s move out,” Eric said. “Keep together.”

As they moved toward the door, he stopped next to the dark form on the floor. He dropped to one knee and turned the body halfway over. “Major, will you give this man a decent burial? We are obviously in no position to do it.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. I’m going out now. You and Travis move around to the side hallway where we can watch each other.”

As they backed out into the hallway, Eric moved out of the Monitoring Room through the side door, unreeling the wire. “I might suggest, Major, that even though I can’t see into the room now, if someone slips in and cuts the wire, you’ll have the automatic detonation.”

“I won’t run that risk,” the Major said evenly. “We’ll play it your way.”

Eric backed up the hallway as swiftly as he could unreel the spool, following the others. When he ran out of wire, he was about five feet short of where the hallway turned the corner and went out the door. He stopped. “Clayne,” he called, “are you at the door?”

“Roger. We’re set to go out.”

Eric returned slowly, coiling the wire in big loops, and approached the two men. Halfway down the hall, the Major stepped forward to meet him. Five feet away from each other they both stopped. The Major studied Eric for a moment.

“Well, it comes to this, I guess,” he said.

Eric nodded. “Yes.”

“I thought I had planned so carefully, considered every factor. I was so sure that I finally had a foolproof system for creating the ideal society.”

Eric shook his head. “This time you captured the wrong fools.” He held out his hand with the box and the wire.

“You know we can’t let you get away,” the Major said, extending his own hand with the transmitting controls.

“I know,” Eric responded. “But once we’re clear of this building, we’ve got a chance. Out in the open, so far we’ve held our own pretty well.”

Travis, still standing at the end of the hall, laughed derisively. “We’ll see.”

“Keep your thumb firmly on the button,” Eric said as he transferred the box to the Major’s hand. He held onto the wire until the Major handed him the control panel with the small dial. Both he and the Major backed away from each other slowly. Suddenly a fury gripped Eric, and he whirled, hurling the transmitting control against the wall with all his strength. It hit and shattered, spraying pieces across the hallway. Then he turned and darted down the corridor and around the corner.

“We have another one, you fool!” Travis screamed after him. “We’ll still get your precious Nicole.”

“Travis,” the Major commanded, “get inside. Make sure no one bumps this wire until we can defuse it.”

Moving quickly but carefully, the Major stepped inside the Monitoring Room, holding the red button firmly. As Travis moved over to join him, the sound of rifle fire came faintly down the hallway.

“We saved it, Major,” Travis said, his eyes following the Major’s as he looked round. “And we’ll get them too.”

“Let Lowry handle it for now,” the Major said. “You stay right here until we get this thing unhooked.”

He turned and surveyed the room with its scattered furniture, letting his free hand run lightly over the keys of one of the computer consoles. “We came so close, Travis,” he murmured. “So close to losing it all.”

“I know.” As Travis turned, his eyes fell on the body near the side door, and he moved over to it. “Which one of them did we get?”

He dropped to one knee, grabbed the dead man’s shoulder, and turned him over as the Major came in closer to look.

“No!” The Major’s cry and Travis’s stunned gasp of surprise echoed in the Monitoring Room simultaneously, but it was not the face of Donald Brownley they stared at. A blue box was lying on the floor beneath the body—a blue box identical to the one held in the Major’s hand, except that when they turned Donald Brownley over, the red button on that box popped up into its full position.

For several moments they both stood rooted to the spot, frozen with shock. Then Travis leaped to his feet. “Run!” he screamed, shoving the Major. He had barely cleared the doorway when the ten-second delay switch closed a fraction of an inch, sending the voltage from two small flashlight batteries racing down the wires to the detonators. With a stupefying roar of yellow and orange fire, the computer banks and monitoring consoles, the tracking screens, and most of the lower level of Central Control disappeared in a shattering blast of flying glass, broken bricks, shards of red-hot metal, and shredded silicon boards speckled with circuitry.

And in a time span so small as to be almost incomprehensible to the mind of man, two hundred fifty thousand silicon chips in the necks of the residents of the Alliance of Four Cities became nothing more than harmless disks.

Chapter 37

Lieutenant Fred Lowry was still fifty yards from the south exit and running hard, his men fanning out behind him, when the trees above them erupted with a withering fire. A bullet slapped past his ear so close that he felt the air smack against his cheek.

With a startled cry, he veered sharply to the left and dove for cover behind a thick clump of bush. “Get down! Get down!” he screamed. But the man behind him didn’t have a chance to heed the warning. He was hit full in the chest, and his body jerked violently, the bullet hurling him back two or three feet before he tumbled to the ground. Another man screamed as a shot took him high in the shoulder, slamming him back against a tree.

“Take cover!” Lowry screamed again.

Had it been daylight, it would have been a massacre, but as it was, the Guardians still had the lights of the city behind them, silhouetting them faintly. Pinpoints of light flashed from several points above them as the rebels poured in the fire.

“Fan out! Circle around them!” Lowry’s commands were nearly lost as the Guardian line erupted with return fire, shooting blindly at their unseen attackers. Lowry raised up on one knee and peered over the bush. Suddenly the south door flew open.

“They’re coming out!” he cried, snapping off a quick shot in the direction of the exit. A hand with a rifle appeared from out of the doorway, stabbing upward at the overhead light. The bulb shattered, and the south side of Central Control was plunged into darkness. Taking aim this time, Lowry blasted off another round and heard a sharp cry of pain.

The rebels saw the flashes from Lowry’s muzzle, and suddenly his position was under heavy fire. He jumped instinctively, rolling once, then came up in a darting, crouching run across a small open place and dove behind a tree where two other Guardians were firing up the hill.

For several seconds the fire fight raged unabated; then the ground beneath Lowry heaved upward, bouncing him hard against it. Looking up, he saw the building bulge outward, then explode, spraying bricks like straw in a hurricane. Both Guardian and rebel were momentarily stunned into immobility, and every person on the hill stared at the gaping hole in what had once been Central Control. Even as they stared, the flames cast an eerie light across the hillside and through the trees.

“Lieutenant Lowry!”

The booming voice rolled down to him over the crackling noise of the fire.

“Fred, this is Clayne Robertson! Can you hear me?”

He hesitated for a moment, then stood up, staying behind the tree. “I can hear you,” he shouted.

“You know what that explosion means, don’t you?”

Turning, Lowry stared at the inferno raging inside the smashed hulk of the building.

“The Major’s gone,” Clayne called. “So is Travis. It’s over, Fred.”

“We’re still here!” he shouted back, but there was little conviction in his voice.

“The computers are gone, Fred. Central Control is gone. Think about that. Your families are free now. The people are free.”

“Look behind you, Lowry.” It was Eric Lloyd. “Here come the people of Shalev.”

The flatness of Alliance Square gave way to the ridge behind Central Control. The point where Lowry stood was probably fifty or so feet higher than the quad. As he turned and looked down, he could see dark shapes pouring into the quad, outlined in the dim lights of the square and its buildings. There were hundreds of them, and swelling even as he watched, pouring toward them like an angry torrent.

“It’s the people, Fred,” Clayne shouted. “They’re free now, and they’re not coming to help the Guardians. Give it up, before you cause a bloodbath.”

The two men who were crouched down next to Lowry stood up, transfixed at the sight below them. “Look at them!” one of them breathed in a mixture of awe and terror.

“Lieutenant Lowry!” It was one of his own men, somewhere behind him. “What about the squads of men unconscious inside the building? They’ll be killed.”

Clayne heard and replied, “We’ll help you get them out, Fred.”

Lowry hesitated, torn with indecision.

“Come on, man!” Clayne screamed. “It’s over. Let’s not make it any worse than it already is.”

Lieutenant Fred Lowry looked at the two men next to him, who nodded quickly. He turned to stare at the shattered wall and the fire, which was swelling in size even as he looked. Suddenly he threw his rifle down and stepped out into view. “Guardians! This is Lieutenant Lowry! Throw down your weapons. Let’s get those men out of that building.”

Nicole stopped in front of the Fountain of Peace and watched the dancing waters, now edged with pink from the fiery sunrise that filled the sky. Eric stopped too, and she slipped her arm through his. Chet had stitched up the incision in her back and given her a pain pill, but her face was still pale and drawn. “The Fountain of Peace,” she murmured, her voice barely audible over the sounds of the splashing water. “Maybe now it really can become one.”

“I think—” Eric started to speak, but a shout cut him off.

“Eric!”

They both turned. Chet Abernathy had come out of the library and was running across the grass toward them. “Clayne’s found them,” he called.

Eric’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Are they all right?”

Chet smiled broadly. “Yes, everyone’s fine. They’re bringing them down now. Your family will come first.”

“Thank heavens,” Nicole breathed. “Where were they?”

“Well, Clayne found Shirley Ferguson at the first campsite. Needless to say, she was quite surprised to see him. She had radioed Travis, and Stephanie caught her. So she ran, and the camp moved to the fall-back site. Clayne found them there.”

“What a relief that is,” Nicole said, squeezing Eric’s hand.

“Do you want the other good news?” Chet said, barely able to hide his excitement.

“What?”

“President Dobson just finished talking with Mount Pleasant on the radio. The Guardian Forces have laid down their arms and agreed to submit to whatever government comes out of all this.”

“So that’s all of them!”

“Yes, every unit of Guardians has now surrendered. It’s over, Eric.” He clapped Eric on the shoulder. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the wounded. I just wanted you to know about your family.”

Surprisingly, as Chet left them, the elation left Eric as abruptly as it had come, and he felt only a deep weariness settling in upon him. It was over. Don Brownley was dead. Cliff was bedridden and paralyzed. Richard Dawson had a bullet in his left leg, and Dick Andreason had been blasted into unconsciousness by a stun gun. The rest were exhausted but safe. On the other side, in addition to Travis and the Major, four Guardians were dead, several more badly hurt. But Central Control, with all that it implied, was a burned-out shell.

Eric pulled his thoughts away from all that and turned toward Nicole. “Hello,” she said softly.

He reached out and touched her cheek. “We did it.”

“Not we did it,” she said. “You did it. You and Cliff.”

He shook his head slowly.

“And now what do you do with Joe and Shirley?” she asked.

“Dr. Gould and any others who planned this must be dealt with, but as for Shirley and Joe, I’d say get them to a preacher as soon as possible, marry them off, and start them raising a family.”

“Nothing else?”

“How can you punish people for being loyal? We don’t need any more revenge at this point.”

She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s good. It’s over now.”

“Is it?”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Of course.”

His eyes were dark and brooding. “You say we did it. What have we done?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You freed the people.” Her voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. “You freed me.”

He shook his head, half smiling. “You freed yourself. I only came along to watch.” Then he was sober again. “Yes, we freed the people.”

“Eric,” she cried, “what’s the matter with you?”

“Up in the mountains I told you that the Major had taken away the most sacred of all stewardships, the right to guard the gate of the mind.”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’ve just thrown open that gate and put man back in charge of his own destiny. Don’t you find that just a little bit frightening?”

“I find you a little bit frightening,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I want to go back to the way it was before.”

He nodded. “You’re right. Whatever we face in the years ahead, it won’t ever be what it was before. And that has got to be worth it all.”

“And what about the years ahead?” Nicole murmured.

“What?”

“Where will Eric Lloyd be in those years? Back in the valley?”

His eyes widened for several moments, and then he put his arm around her and pulled her close. “Is that what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. I have no right to ask that, but I want to know.”

“Nicole, going back to the valley hasn’t been part of my plans since you and I tangled with that old she-bear in the mountains.”

“Really?”

“Really. I wouldn’t miss the challenges and the excitement of what lies ahead now for all the valleys in the world.”

“Oh.” Her chin dropped, and she looked away.

He reached out and lifted her head, his eyes twinkling. “And I also promised one young lady I was going to start calling on her in a proper and acceptable fashion.”

She looked up again, her eyes suddenly shining. “No more hiding behind the couch?”

“I promise.”

“No more shattered doorways?”

“My solemn word.”

“It sounds dull.”

He laughed. “I know.”

“But I’ll cope with it somehow.”

Leverage Point

Leverage Point

© 1985 Deseret Book Company

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company, P. O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book Company.

BOOKCRAFT is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

First printing, November 1985

First printing redesigned paperbound edition, January 2000

Visit us at deseretbook.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-72843

ISBN-10 0-87579-525-0

ISBN-13 978-0-87579-525-6

Printed in the United States of America

R. R. Donnelley and Sons, Harrisonburg, VA

10 9

To those few in the Middle East on either side who see the only lasting and acceptable solution as resting in faith in God and in love for one’s fellow man.

Preface

Though the characters in this novel are fictional, they are based on the lives of people who do exist. For example, many of the feelings and thoughts of, and even some of the words spoken by, Alex Barclay reflect the feelings, thoughts, and words of a man who makes a lucrative living as a legitimate arms dealer. The personalities, traits, and experiences of many others in the novel, including Israelis, Saudis, and Americans, are drawn from the lives or are composites of real people. Thus, while the characters are fictional, they are true to the character and culture of their respective nationalities and social settings.

Many of the events, though changed sufficiently to protect the privacy of those involved, are based on actual happenings. There have been penetrations of Saudi air space, including the defection of an Iranian pilot who reached the massive oil complex at Ras Tanura. Covert support by the U.S. government of illegal arms sales has happened and will happen again. The introduction of Marc Jeppson, a relatively obscure educator from a small town in Utah, into the heady world of business, finance, and high technology in the culture of Southern California represents actual happenings in the lives of real people.

To insure the accuracy and realism of Leverage Point, the authors conducted numerous interviews and pursued considerable research in such areas as Islamic culture, Saudi Arabia and her peoples, the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, arms and arms sales, high-performance jet aircraft, and high-tech radar systems.

The artistic relationship between the authors has been a collaborative one. Roger Hendrix developed the original story idea, created most of the characters, and wrote the preliminary outline. Gerald Lund was responsible for plot development, more extended character definition, and the writing of the novel. Both were involved in researching, interviewing, and reviewing and editing the work.

Gerald’s wife, Lynn, made numerous suggestions about characterization and plot development that improved the novel immeasureably. Jack Adamson, currently serving as senior vice president of Bonneville International Corporation, provided encouragement and valuable advice throughout the project.

Characters in Leverage Point

Marc Jeppson, professor of Near Eastern Studies, Claremont Colleges

Brett, his eight-year-old son

Matt, his six-year-old son

Alex Barclay, president of Barclay Enterprises; arms dealer and entrepreneur

Ardith, his wife

Mary Robertson, widow; Marc Jeppson’s housekeeper

Valerie, her twenty-six-year-old daughter; computer programmer

Jacqueline Ashby, executive secretary to Alex Barclay

Quinn Gerritt, president of Gerritt Industries, a high-tech conglomerate

Jessica, his wife

Derek Parkin, lawyer; associate in Barclay Enterprises

Lyman Perotti, financier; reputed crime boss in Southern California

Arthur Hadlow, representative for Lyman Perotti

Russell Whitaker, Undersecretary of State, United States State Department

Taylor Canning, General, United States Air Force

Jonathan Taggart, engineer, Gerritt Industries; VSM-430 radar system designer

Mildred, his wife

Charlene, his seventeen-year-old daughter

Michael Shurtliff, Senior Vice President, Gerritt Industries

Theodore Wuthrich, Controller, Gerritt Industries

Harvey Edwards, owner, Edwards Automotive

John Talbot, Colonel, United States Air Force; senior test pilot

Israelis

Yaacov Shoshani, philosophy professor, Hebrew University; civilian advisor to the Mossad, Israel’s equivalent to the CIA

Esther, his wife

Nathan, his son; Mossad operative; team leader for Los Angeles operations

Moshe Gondor, control officer, Mossad

Eli Weissman, Deputy Director in Charge of Special Operations, Mossad

Yehuda Gor, nicknamed Udi; Mossad operative

Yossi Kettleman, Mossad operative

Yitzhak ben Tsur, Mossad operative

Saudis

King Abdul Aziz, also called Ibn-Saud; founder of modern Saudi Arabia; died 1953

The King, current head of the royal family and ruler of Saudi Arabia

The Crown Prince, next in line for the throne; close advisor to the king

Prince Feisal, brother to the king; Minister of Defense, Saudi Arabia

Prince Khalid, brother to the king; Commanding General, Royal Saudi Air Force

Prince Abdullah, half brother to the king; Minister of Finance, Saudi Arabia

Sayeed Amani, General, Royal Saudi Air Force

Sheik Ahmed al-Hazzan, vice-Minister of Defense, Saudi Arabia

Prologue

It was barely past noon. The air temperature stood at an even fifty degrees Celsius—one-hundred-twenty-two degrees Farenheit—making the air shimmer so violently that only the first hundred yards or so of the twelve-thousand-foot runway was visible. The control tower, off in the distance, seemed like some sinuous serpent weaving to the sound of an unheard reed flute.

With a howling shriek, two McDonnel Douglas F-15s touched down, leaving bursts of blue-white smoke as the tires hit the hot concrete. Almost instantly the needle-nosed, twin-tailed craft disappeared into the superheated air, only to reappear a few moments later off to the left, one behind the other, taxiing toward the row of hardened shelters. On the ground, they looked awkward, almost grotesque, belying the incredible destructive power each craft carried within its bowels. Just below the cockpits, in sharp contrast to the gleaming aluminum skin, was a circular emblem—a palm tree with crossed swords beneath it. Next to the emblem, the inscription “Royal Saudi Air Force” was neatly stenciled in English and flowing Arabic.

To a thousand generations of Bedouins and village dwellers in the Arabian peninsula, the date palm had meant life and survival. The crossed swords, always unsheathed, represented strength through faith in Allah. It was that faith and the naked sword that had brought some of the world’s most formidible landscape—covering an area roughly the size of the United States east of the Mississippi—under the control of the Royal House of Saud.

The whims of some geologic genie had long ago placed beneath that blistering sand a black ocean of staggering magnitude. Allah had indeed smiled kindly on the Saudis. Twenty-six percent of all the world’s known oil reserves lay pooled below the desert kingdom. The Ghawar field, the largest onshore oil field in the world, contains more petroleum reserves than all the oil fields of the United States put together. Thirty-two of the nearly fifty other fields are capped, awaiting future need. Even with less than half their fields in current use, the Saudis still pump about ten million barrels of oil a day. The crude sells for somewhere around thirty dollars a barrel. It costs the Saudis fifty cents a barrel to extract, refine, ship, and market their oil. The arithmetic is simple but staggering. A profit of just under three hundred million dollars per day pours into the Saudi treasury.

It was that simple but staggering arithmetic that made the Thirteenth Fighter Interceptor Squadron of the Royal Saudi Air Force possible. It was that simple but staggering flow of oil that made the King Abdul Aziz Air Base outside of Dhahran not only possible but necessary. For while the blessings of Allah had left the kingdom of Saudi Arabia very, very rich, they had also left it very, very vulnerable.

At that moment, just past noon of August twenty-third, ten billion dollars of detection, command, and control systems failed. The Boeing E-3A Airborne Warning and Controls Systems (AWACS), one of the most expensive pieces of hardware in the world, was on the far end of its patrol duty station. An Air India 737, on its way to Riyadh, strayed a hundred miles off course. A squadron of Northrup F5-E Tigers, flying routine patrol, were vectored south to check it out. In the brief flurry of activity associated with all that, a tiny blip on one of the screens was missed.

In the pilot’s lounge there was only one American, a colonel from North Carolina who served as the Commander of the Technical Assistance Team sent over by the United States Air Force to work with the Saudi squadron. He was tanned almost as deeply as his Saudi counterparts. He sat in a chair, feet up, sipping a Coke, eyes half shut, listening to the low chatter of the pilots around him.

The sudden blast of the Klaxon from the overhead speakers shattered the lazy somnolence that lay on the airbase. Airmen in the cafeteria leaped up, overturning drinks and food. Pilots in the ready room grabbed helmets and raced for their planes. Mechanics hit the buttons and started shelter doorways rolling upward. Radar and computer operators darted to consoles and terminals, hands poised and ready.

The control center, deep underground in the heart of the headquarters complex, had gone into a state of hushed but frantic urgency by the time two men burst through the doors. The first was a Saudi with stars on both shoulders. He was the base commander and director of the Eastern Coast Defense Sector. He was followed closely by the American.

The director of operations, a major with a thick moustache, saluted smartly, and broke into a stream of rapid Arabic.

“Speak English!” the general snapped. English was mandatory in the Royal Saudi Air Force.

The major stopped, took a quick breath, and started again. “A bogey just crossed the Fahad line coming in low and fast, sir.”

The base commander spun around and stared at the radar screen. The Fahad line was an imaginary line running through the center of the Persian Gulf from the Iran-Iraq border on the north to the Strait of Hormuz in the south. It was the action line for the Royal Saudi Air Force. Any unidentified aircraft crossing that line was considered hostile and intercepted by fully armed Saudi fighters prepared for combat engagement.

“Aircraft identification?” the general barked at one of the airmen hunched over a console.

“F-4 Phantom, sir!”

“Iranian!” the American exclaimed. It was the most logical guess. Iran had over three hundred Phantoms in their Air Force.

The overhead speaker blared: “This is Cobra Leader to Tower. We are ready to roll.”

Another voice, heavier, touched with excitement: “Cobra Leader, you are cleared for takeoff.”

“We’re scrambling the F-15s,” the major said tersely.

“If he’s across the Fahad line, they’ll never make it.” The general whirled to stare at the situation board and the lines appearing. “Can Blue Leader intercept?”

The major’s eyes dropped. “They were vectored off to the south five minutes ago. They are three hundred miles south of the intercept point.”

“What!”

The major swallowed hard, but his eyes came up and met the other’s fury.

An airman behind them cried out, “Computers predict ninety-two percent probability intended target is Ras Tanura!”

Ras Tanura. The general felt his heart lurch. One of the largest oil refinery complexes in the world, a storage facility with nearly a hundred tanks—some holding a million-and-a-quarter barrels of crude apiece—an offshore loading facility that would have six to eight supertankers docked there, guzzling millions of barrels of oil into their holds. If they took out Ras Tanura, it would virtually destroy the Saudi economy and cripple the energy needs of the Western world for years to come.

“Range eighty-three miles, closing at Mach one point one.”

“The F-15s will never make it.” The general’s voice was a whisper as he stared at the line the target tracker was making on the situation board. The F-15 Eagle can climb at a rate of seventeen thousand feet a minute at Mach 0.9, around seven hundred miles an hour. But even with that and their head-on attack capability, they would still not close on the bogey in time. At Mach 1.1, the Iranian fighter was approaching Ras Tanura at better than one mile every second. They had less than a minute.

“Cobra Leader to Charlie One,” the speaker blared again. “We are leveling at zero five thousand feet. We have radar contact and are tracking. Missiles are armed. Missile range in zero eight seven seconds.”

From somewhere behind them a man cried, “Ground batteries have radar contact. Will commence firing in twenty seconds.”

“They’ll never touch him.” the American muttered. “Not at that speed and altitude.”

“Time to target?”

“Thirty-three seconds!”

“Ground batteries standing by.”

“General, listen to this!” The airman at a radio console had leaped to his feet and was flipping switches. The speaker instantly blared with static, then a heavily accented voice, almost incoherent with hysteria.

“Saudi Air Base! Saudi Air Base! This is Captain Mohammed Pahlavi. I am defecting to your country. Do not shoot! Do not shoot!”

Every eye had swung up to stare at the overhead speaker.

“I have approaching aircraft on my radar screen! I am unarmed! Please do not shoot!”

Another airman’s voice sang out. “Bogey is zero one eight miles from the coast. Maintaining speed and altitude. Computers reject Ras Tanura as probable target.”

The general leaped to the radio and snatched a headset. “Captain Pahlavi? Do you read me? This is the base commander.”

“Yes! Yes! I read you!” It was almost a sob. “Don’t launch your missiles. I want to surrender.”

“Turn back out to sea. Turn instantly or we will fire!”

“Target turning!” came a cry from the radar man.

A burst of relief swept the room, and the general’s shoulders sagged. Finally he straightened and lifted the mike again. “Cobra Leader, this is General Hammad. Did you copy that last transmission?”

“Roger, General,” came back the laconic voice. “We’ll bring him in.”

General Hammad handed the headset back to the airman, then turned slowly to his American advisor, who was shaking his head.

“Holy Hannah, General!” was all the man from North Carolina could think of to say.

Chapter One

As Marc Jeppson turned the yellow Volkswagen Beetle onto Bridgeport Avenue in Claremont, California, he was muttering to himself. In his mind he could hear the voice of his dean—thin and reedy, almost bordering on a whine: “Professor Jeppson, you have missed the last two meetings of the faculty grievance committee. Is there some compelling reason why?”

“Two that I can think of,” Marc answered aloud, wishing he had had the nerve then to say them. “First, I hate that assignment. I mean, come on! The current crisis is that no one is changing the filters in the coffee percolator in the faculty lounge.”

He slowed and pulled into his driveway. “Second, I am enrolled in UCLA’s MBA program because I am bored absolutely out of my gourd with my life right now, and tonight happens to be my first test in my marketing class, and I also have a ten-page paper due, and the last thing I need is to spend time worrying about coffee percolators.”

He turned off the engine, grabbed his briefcase, and got out of the car. The sixteen-year-old who lived next door was bouncing a basketball in front of his garage. He grinned. “Talking to yourself again, Mr. Jeppson?”

“Yeah, I don’t know if it comes from being a parent or a teacher.”

“Probably from being a parent. My dad does it all the time.”

Marc laughed, waved, and walked quickly into the house. He dropped his briefcase on the couch, took off his sports jacket, and let it follow. “Mary,” he called. “I’m home.”

There was no answer. He turned to the lamp table where his housekeeper always put the mail. There was none. “Mary?” he shouted again, more loudly now.

Puzzled, he stuck his head in the family room. The television was on with no sound, but the room was empty. He walked over, flipped off the TV, turned back, and stopped dead. The carpet on the far side of the room was crisscrossed with dozens of white tracks that came from the kitchen, looped around the couch, and then headed for the hall. He crossed the room, still staring, bent down, and put his finger to one of the tracks. It looked and felt like flour. He raised it and touched his tongue. It was flour, with a taste of sugar to it. And the marks looked suspiciously like tricycle tracks.

With a sinking feeling he straightened and followed the tracks into the kitchen. He stopped in midstride, his jaw dropping. Five of the eight cupboard doors were open. The sugar cannister was tipped over near the blender, its contents over the edge and on the floor. A can of honey was also on its side, spreading an amber coat over a three-foot area of the counter. He watched a long drip break loose and hit the puddle of honey on the floor. Tracks marred this smaller pool and led off to the grand masterpiece. In the very center of the linoleum, someone or something had taken the flour cannister—still visible near the dinette—and carefully covered a five-by-five square of the floor. This had been the primary palette for the mobile artist. Two dozen tracks led through the flour, to the sugar and honey and then out onto the carpet canvas of the halls and family room. The avant-garde artists at the college would have been inspired by the results.

“Mary!” This time he bellowed it with desperation. A slight noise from the garage caught his ear. Stepping gingerly so as to stay in the clearer spots, he crossed the kitchen and opened the door that led to the garage. The four-year-old heard the sound, jerked up, and stopped his tricycle dead. No question about it. This was the artist, and this was his brush. The tricycle’s back tires were a gummy white, and a floury paste was caked around the fender of the front wheel. Nor had the young artist escaped fully unscathed—only by the closest of examination could one tell the tee shirt and jeans were blue.

“Matthew David Jeppson! What are you doing?”

The large green eyes lowered, half hidden by long dark lashes. “Hullo, Daddy.”

The doorbell rang, and Marc looked up from spooning the honey off the counter. “Wonderful!” he muttered. He looked around to where his eight-year-old son was working on the floor. “Brett, get the door.”

Brett was up and off like a shot, grateful for any reprieve. A moment or two later he was back. “Dad, it’s some lady.”

He turned with a quick frown. “Who?”

Brett shrugged. “She wants you.”

Marc set the spoon down, washed his hands quickly, and with his sleeve wiped at the sheen of sweat on his forehead, leaving a smear of flour across his cheek. As he started for the living room, he looked down, saw that he was leaving white tracks of his own, and quickly removed his shoes.

He stopped short as he came around the hallway and into the living room. “Lady” in Marc’s mind suggested a grandmotherly forty or fiftyish. But the woman standing at the door was no more than twenty-five, possibly less, and very definitely not a grandmother. She was maybe five five or six, with short dark hair that framed her face. White cotton pants and a knit top with bold red and white horizontal stripes emphasized the slenderness of her figure. He was suddenly conscious of his stocking feet and floursmeared sweatshirt.

“Mr. Jeppson?” She smiled tentatively, dark brown eyes crin kling slightly at the corners, the lips softening.

“Yes.” He brushed quickly at his pants.

“My name is Valerie Robertson. I’m Mary Robertson’s daughter.”

His face darkened almost instantly. “Where in the world is your mother?”

The smile faded. “I—She asked if I would come and take care of the boys while you go to your class.”

“Well, that’s nice!” Marc snapped. “I wish she had thought of that about two hours ago.”

Valerie flinched, taken back by the caustic tone.

“Come with me!” He turned on his heel and started away. He stopped and looked back. “Come on! You need to see this.”

Valerie followed him into the kitchen, then stopped and stared. “Oh my word!” she breathed.

“I think that would qualify as a slight understatement.”

She stepped in far enough so she could see where the tracks led into the hall and the family room. “What happened?”

Brett snorted in disgust. “Matthew! That’s what happened.”

“Whatever your mother’s doing, I hope it was worth it.” Marc didn’t try to contain his irritation.

Valerie turned back slowly, her dark eyes snapping, but before she could reply, a voice from behind them cut in, turning them all around. “Daddy, I’m cold.”

Matthew was standing in the far doorway, a towel draped around his shoulders, water dripping from the rest of him and making dark spots on the carpet.

“Matt, I told you to stay in the tub until you’re clean. You haven’t even touched your face.”

“But I’m cold, Daddy.”

Marc went over to his son, squatted down, wrapped the towel around him, and started to rub him vigorously. Valerie watched, her anger softening. Brett was darker in both hair and complexion, and must have taken after his mother, but Matthew was a miniature of his father. Large, gentle eyes, angular features, shortcropped blond hair, firm mouth and chin. The flour smears on both faces completed the impression.

“Get back in the tub and wash your face and your hair.” Marc reached up and pulled a sticky glob from behind one ear.

“But Daddy, the water’s dirty and cold.”

“That’s no surprise. We’re lucky the water hasn’t turned to dough.”

Valerie laughed softly, and Matthew looked up, his voice dropping. “Who’s that, Daddy?”

Marc had forgotten they had company. He straightened slowly. “This is Mary’s daughter, uh…”

“Valerie.” She smiled at Matthew. “So this is the architect of the disaster?”

“Yes. This is Matt. He’s four and in big trouble.” He half turned. “And this is Brett.”

Valerie nodded. Both eyed her with open curiosity.

Marc gave Matt a swat on the bottom. “Brett, run him more water and see that he gets all this junk out of his hair.”

As the two disappeared he turned back to Valerie. “It’s amazing what a four-year-old can accomplish when he is left totally on his own for two hours.”

Valerie took a breath. “Mr. Jeppson, I took my mother to the hospital this morning. She underwent an operation for kidney stones.”

“Oh, no!”

Valerie nodded, mollified somewhat by the instant contrition. “She’s been having pain for several days. This morning it became acute.”

“I am really sorry.” He stepped forward. “I should have known she wouldn’t leave Matthew without good reason.”

“But she said you would be here when Matt came home from preschool. Otherwise I would have come sooner.”

Marc hit his head, suddenly understanding. “I was supposed to be. Then I got roped into a committee meeting.” His lips pulled down in a quick expression of disgust. “But we did get filters for the percolator.”

Her eyebrows raised, but he went on quickly. “So how is she?”

“Much better now. The doctor said the operation went fine. She’s resting now, but she wouldn’t go to sleep until I promised to come over. She said you have a big test tonight in your class.”

Marc nodded, feeling stupid. “Look, Valerie, I really apologize for being so rude. When I came home and saw all this…” His hand swept outward toward the kitchen, then dropped lamely to his side. “I feel like a creep.”

“I understand. It’s all right.” She smiled fully now, and he saw the resemblance between mother and daughter.

It had been that warm smile that had first drawn Marc’s attention to Mary Robertson at church. When Marc’s wife had been killed in an auto-pedestrian accident two years earlier, Marc had been in immediate need of someone to come in and help a totally nondomesticated widower cope with caring for two small boys and a house. He had heard that Mary, herself a widow of several years, was looking for work. He approached her. She accepted. He had offered his thanks countless times since, for not only had she proven to be a cook and housekeeper of competence, she had won over his boys and became a mother to them, filling with warmth and gentleness much of the gap Lynette’s death had left.

Marc smiled back at Valerie, grateful for her quick forgiveness.

“Look, Mr. Jeppson—”

“Marc, please.”

She smiled again. “Okay, Marc. Let me take over now. You go to your class. Brett can help me find whatever I need. I’ll take it from here.”

He hesitated.

“Really. Mom sent me over to do just that.”

“Well…”

“Go on! We’ll be fine.”

“Well,” Marc said again, “maybe I will.”

“You may want to remove some of your makeup before you go,” Valerie said soberly, tapping her cheek.

Marc swiped at his cheek with the back of his hand and saw the flour on it. He grinned sheepishly. “Thanks.”

Chapter Two

About twenty-five miles south of UCLA, where Marc sat taking his test, a stiff breeze pulled at the leaves of the eucalyptus trees on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. But Alex Barclay didn’t mind. The winds had scoured the Los Angeles Basin clean of smog, and the city spread out below them, a vast prairie of lights, cut through with the rivers of fire that marked the freeways.

“I can’t believe this!”

The woman’s voice brought Barclay’s head around. She was next to a man near the low wall at the back of the patio area. Just beyond it, the hillside dropped away precipitously. They were gazing out at the stunning panaroma, and she waved her martini in the general direction of Los Angeles.

“He must have paid a bundle for this land!” Her voice was already thickened by the liquor.

The man glanced around quickly. “Megan, for heaven’s sakes, be a little bit discreet.”

Barclay set his own glass on a nearby table and moved to join the couple. “How about that?” he said amiably, nodding toward the city below.

The man turned, startled, then recognized their host. “I’ve got to admit, it doesn’t look like this from my apartment in West Covina.”

Barclay laughed softly, and then for several seconds they stood in silence, shoulder to shoulder. When Barclay spoke, it was absently, without turning his head. “Four hundred seventynine thousand.”

“What?” They both spoke as one.

“Four hundred seventy-nine thousand dollars. That’s what I paid for the lot. Then you throw in a house with sixty-eight hundred square feet on the main floor, a separate four-car garage. You’re talking just about a million four for the whole layout.”

The man just stared, but the woman swore, her jaw slack.

Then Barclay remembered. Peter Shapiro, senior partner in the firm that handled Barclay’s legal needs, had brought them. “He’s one of the comers,” Shapiro had said yesterday over the phone. “He might interest you.”

Barclay chuckled. “But I figure the view is worth that alone.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Alex Barclay.”

“Derek Parkin, Mr. Barclay. I’m delighted to meet you.” It was almost too eager, but controlled, held in check.

“My pleasure.”

“This is Megan McArthur.”

She transferred the martini quickly, and held out her hand.

Brunette, built well, good eyes, nice legs. Probably five years younger than Parkin’s thirty or so. Hardly world class, but very nice. Except for the cool, limp handshake. Barclay let go of it quickly. “Welcome to our little ranch house, Megan.”

“Little ranch house!” she blurted. A quick frown of annoyance flashed briefly across Parkin’s face. “It’s incredible!”

The naked covetousness made Barclay smile even more broadly. “Well, we kind of like it. You’re with Shapiro and Myers?” Barclay asked, turning to Parkin before Megan’s effusiveness spilled over the patio area and washed away the hillside.

“Yes, sir.”

“Peter mentioned you were one of his bright stars.”

“Well, thank you. I certainly enjoy working with him.”

With him, not for him, Barclay noted with interest. Again there was the quick appraisal. Dark-brown hair combed straight back. Blue eyes, quick and alert. Rounded features that somehow still conveyed an impression of sharpness. Three-piece business suit—gray, pin-striped, tailored—with an impeccably perfect maroon tie and silk handkerchief tucked in the pocket. His was the only coat and tie at the party, and yet he did not seem out of place. In fact the appearance secretly pleased Barclay, for he sensed Parkin had wanted it this way for their first meeting. This guy was definitely magna cum laude, Harvard Law School.

“Peter said it was you who pulled the Clayson contract out of the fire.”

Megan opened a small clutch purse she had tucked under one arm and took out a pack of Virginia Slims. She put one to her lips and turned to Parkin expectantly.

Again there was that brief flicker of irritation, and Barclay guessed that Megan McArthur had just dropped off Derek Parkin’s active list. Parkin reached for a lighter, lit her cigarette perfunctorily, as though for a passing stranger, then turned back to Barclay.

“That was an interesting case. For a while I thought they had us nailed.”

“Me nailed, you mean.”

Parkin’s laugh was easy and amiable. “Yes, I suppose so. But, I don’t think we—you—will see any more trouble on it now.”

“That’s great. I—” His head lifted slightly. Ardith had just come out of the house and was trying to catch his eye. She gave the slightest jerk of her head when she saw she had succeeded.

“I’m glad to have that one over,” he finished. Then quickly, before Parkin could respond, he continued, “Well, it looks like my wife is giving me the nod. Just make yourselves to home.”

As he moved toward the house, he nodded here, called a quick greeting there, and moved through the crowd, leaving people smiling or laughing as he passed. Alex Barclay was well liked. He knew that. He had cultivated that natural ability until it had become one of his most important assets. He was tall, broad through the shoulders, with no more than a hint of middleage paunch. Thick, wavy, silver-gray hair, trimmed weekly by a very high-class barber, gave him the look of a distinguished and prosperous banker. That too had not hurt him, though for a kid raised in a tenement in Chicago, it made him smile inwardly.

He speared a couple of slices of Verona salami from the hors d’oeuvre tray, popped them into his mouth, and entered the house. Ardith was just inside the family room arranging another tray of food. He stopped for a moment. Casual elegance. That was how Barclay always thought of his wife. Never overdone. She was one of the few people, outside himself, that Barclay was willing to credit for his success. He had been twenty-four, she seventeen when they had first met. It had taken him nearly a year to convince both her and her parents that he was totally serious about marrying her. Neither she nor they had ever regretted it. Nor had Alex.

She glanced up, saw him, and frowned slightly. “Russell Whitaker is here.”

“Already? Why didn’t you invite him to come out?”

“He wouldn’t.” Again there was the quick frown. “He has someone with him.”

He nodded and started down the hall.

“Alex?”

He turned. Her eyes were pleading. “Don’t be too long. Not tonight.”

The smile was brief and cool. “When an Undersecretary of the State Department comes all the way out here to see me, I’ll give him what time he wants. You can cover for me for a while.”

He walked quickly down the hall and opened the door. Barclay’s study was very much a reflection of his own tastes. Along the entire length of one wall ran oak cabinets polished to a rich warm luster. The top of the cabinets held four bronze pieces, one of them a Frederic Remington original. Above the cabinets, book shelves were stocked with leather-bound books, including several first editions. Two leather side chairs flanked a huge, antique mahagony desk. The mounted head of an African kudu with its gracefully spiraling horns was on the wall opposite the desk.

Two men were standing beneath it, talking quietly. Both turned as Barclay entered. The shorter of the two smiled and extended his hand.

“Hello, Alex.”

“Russ.”

They shook hands firmly, and Whitaker turned. “Alex, meet Lieutenant General Taylor Canning, United States Air Force.”

If Whitaker’s grip was powerful, Canning’s was like getting a fist caught in the treads of an M-60 tank. He was tall, with gray eyes that seemed kindly and grandfatherly, not those of a professional man of war. His hair was also gray and short-cropped, his features heavy but pleasant. And yet there was something rock hard about the man that was felt more than seen.

“Welcome to my home, General Canning.” Then to Whitaker, “We’ve got a healthy party going on out on the patio. Are you sure you won’t join us?”

“Thanks, but we’ve got to meet some other people.”

“Then how about a drink? I’ve got some stock right here.” He moved to one of the cabinets and opened the door on a small refrigerator and a collection of bottles and glasses.

Whitaker started to decline the invitation, then changed his mind. “Scotch and soda for me.”

“That’s fine,” Canning nodded.

Barclay mixed three of the same, passed them around, then gestured to the chairs. As they sat, Barclay moved behind his desk, set his drink on the gleaming surface, then sat back and waited.

Whitaker sipped his drink for a moment, glanced once at the general, then looked at Barclay steadily. “We need your help on a project.”

“Okay.”

“This one is a little sticky. Like the Jakarta deal.”

Barclay kept his face impassive. “Go on.”

“This is an official request from your government, but…” He stopped and sipped again at his drink, staring into the dark liquid.

“But,” Alex finished for him, “officially, it’s unofficial.”

“Exactly.”

“Come on, Russ. The last deal like that, my man spent six weeks in a hellhole of a prison. He was lucky at that.”

“I know.” The Undersecretary’s dark eyes bored into Alex steadily.

Finally Alex sighed. “What this time?”

“A certain African nation—which for the present shall remain unnamed—wishes to purchase arms to fight against Communist insurgents.”

“Heavy or light stuff?”

“Light. Sixteen thousand M-16 rifles, four million rounds of ammunition.”

“That shouldn’t be so tough. Why come to me?”

“Same scenario as before. Officially the U.S. is neutral. The Saudis and Quwaitis are willing to bankroll the deal—they’re absolutely paranoid on the growing Soviet influence in Africa—but they want their role hush hush too. It will all be strictly under the table.”

Barclay was silent, then took a long drink from his glass. “All right. I think that can be arranged.”

Again Whitaker shot a quick glance at the general, then turned back. “You won’t be able to buy the rifles from the Colt Arms Company.”

Alex snapped forward. “What?”

Whitaker spoke calmly. “Sale of arms to this particular country is strictly illegal. The State Department will not give you the permit. Don’t even apply.”

“Hey, come on, Russ. How do I get that kind of hardware without a permit?”

Whitaker just continued to look at him steadily. Canning watched the interchange with interest, staying out of it for now.

Suddenly Barclay understood. “The North Vietnamese!”

The Undersecretary of State sipped his drink, his eyes never leaving Barclay’s face.

“Tell me you’re joking.”

“You’re the one who told us they contacted you in Paris.”

“Yes, I did,” Barclay retorted, his voice rising. “That was just to let you guys know I’m completely on the up and up with you.”

“We know that. That’s why we’ve come to you now.”

Barclay waved that off angrily. “If buying from Colt Arms on this deal is illegal, what does that make purchasing captured U.S. weapons from the number one country on the State Department’s hit list?”

“I told you this one would be sticky.”

“Sticky! Who’s going to keep the CIA off my back while I work out all of these little arrangements?”

“We’ll do what we can to smooth things for you, but if you’re caught, we’ll deny any knowledge.”

Canning leaned forward. “Will the North Viets sell you the weapons if they suspect they are to be resold to anti-Communist guerrillas?”

“North Viet Nam is so desperate for hard currency, they’d sell the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Boy Scouts of America if they’d pay in cash. No, that’s not the problem.”

Agitated now, Barclay got up, started to pace, thinking quickly. “You’re talking a four or five million dollar deal at best. Small stuff like this, I’m lucky to clear one or two percent. I could lose everything, not to mention facing Joliet or Leavenworth. The profit doesn’t justify the risks.”

The Undersecretary flashed General Canning the briefest of looks. Canning leaned forward, the kind gray eyes unreadable. “What if we were to sweeten the deal a little?”

That brought Barclay around.

“Three weeks ago,” Canning went on, “an Iranian fighter pilot defected to Saudi Arabia. By the time they’d picked him up on radar and scrambled their fighters, he was right over the most important oil installation in the Middle East.”

Barclay whistled a low soundless whistle.

“Had he been hostile…” He shrugged.

Whitaker picked it up. “About four months ago, another plane—this time a cargo jet with a full crew—defected from Iran to Egypt. They not only crossed the Persian Gulf, they crossed several hundred miles of the northern edge of Saudi air space. The Saudis didn’t even know until Egypt announced the plane had landed and the crew was asking for asylum.”

“There have been other similar incidents,” Canning added.

“Needless to say,” Whitaker went on, “the Saudis are not the only ones who are worried. Take out the oil, you topple the royal family. Take out the Saudis, and the stability of the whole Middle East—not to mention the world’s energy supplies—is in jeopardy.”

They were working him like a pack of wolves bringing down a caribou. The general paused briefly. “Another deal is in the wind. A little larger deal.”

“How much larger?”

Canning spread his hands. “About two billion.”

Alex’s jaw dropped, and Whitaker nodded slowly—the stag was down. Whitaker continued, “The president is about to authorize the sale of sixty of the most sophisticated jet aircraft in the world—the F-22 Barracuda—to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

“They go for around twenty-five million apiece,” Canning added. “Add in parts, support systems, additional radar…” He sat back, rolling his drink back and forth in his hands. “Because of the nature of this deal, the Saudis are willing to set aside the law that no commissions be paid on arms purchases. It could run as high as fifty or sixty million.”

Barclay could scarcely restrain himself from shouting the figures. He finally managed a shrug. “How soon?”

“Don’t misunderstand,” Whitaker said, his voice flat. “We can’t promise you the deal. We can only promise you a good shot at it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There will be others trying to put together a package. The Saudis are pretty shrewd negotiators—they’ll take the best one. But we’ll put you on the inside track. That should give you about ten jumps on anyone else.”

“If I pull off the African deal,” Barclay said slowly.

Whitaker smiled. “But of course.”

For several long seconds, Barclay looked back and forth between the two men. Then, “I’ll need some help on this. If this is as big as you say…” He turned to Whitaker. “I have my eye on one man—in fact, he’s here tonight. But I’ll need another. Can

I tap your computer banks again?”

“Certainly. I’ll have Bates out here Monday.”

“Does that mean you’re willing to accept the risks on this other deal?” Canning asked.

Barclay looked surprised. “Risks? What risks?”

Valerie heard the garage door opening and quickly took off her apron. She stuffed it in a drawer, made one last swipe at the counter as the car door slammed, then turned as the door opened and Marc entered. He stopped, staring around the room, then he started to back out the door again.

“Sorry. I must have the wrong house.”

She laughed, pleased at his reaction. He came back in, spun around slowly. “My kitchen has a two-year supply of flour and sugar and honey on the floor. Surely this could not be the same room.”

“The boys and I had nearly as much fun cleaning it as Matt did creating it.”

He set his briefcase down. “Hey, I didn’t mean for you to do all this.” His hands came up quickly. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you.” He moved to the doorway and looked into the family room. “And you had a new carpet installed as well.”

Again she laughed with pleased merriment. “It was mostly on the surface. The honey gave us a few challenges, but the rest came up pretty easily.”

“Really, I never expected this. Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome.”

“How’s your mother?”

“Doing very well, really. I talked to her earlier.”

“You said she’s been having pain for several days? Why didn’t she say something? Here she worked all day yesterday, came this morning and cooked breakfast for the boys while I was at my early class, and I didn’t even know she was having problems.”

“Mom didn’t want you to worry about it. She says you have enough on your mind already.”

“Thanks,” he said ruefully. “That makes me feel wonderful.”

She shook her head quickly. “You know I didn’t mean it that way. To hear Mom talk, you’re more like a son to her.”

The lines around Marc’s eyes softened. “And she is much more than housekeeper to us,” he said softly. “I don’t know what we would do without her. She’s like a grandmother to the boys. They both absolutely adore her.”

“And she them.” Valerie turned to look down the hall toward the bedrooms. “And no wonder. Matt is such a delight.”

Marc hooted. “You can say that after tonight?”

She nodded. “We had a wonderful time together. And Brett. So sober and yet so sweet.”

“Well, I really appreciate you coming. I don’t know what I would have done.”

“How did you do on the test?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?”

Valerie watched his face as the smile faded and he was lost in thoughts of the class. Finally she straightened. “Well, I’d better be going.”

That pulled him back. “Look, we have some lemonade in the refrigerator—” He pulled a face. “At least we did before Matt started his hatchet job on the kitchen. Would you like a glass? You’ve earned that, at least.”

For a moment she hesitated, then smiled. “Yes, thank you.”

When they were seated at the table, Marc watched her sip from the glass. “So you’re Valerie.”

She looked up in surprise.

“Youngest in the family, graduated from Cal Poly, Pomona, majored in math and computer science. After graduation spent eighteen months in Hong Kong knocking on doors.”

While he was reciting soberly, as though to a class, she saw the amusement dancing in his eyes.

“Plays the piano,” he went on, “dabbles in watercolors, currently works as a systems analyst for a large oil firm in Denver.”

“You forgot my shoe size,” she laughed, shaking her head. “I can’t believe my mother.”

“She’s very proud of you.” He took a drink of lemonade, watching her. Mary kept a snapshot of her family in her wallet—a family shot at a cabin, the men holding fish, the women in jeans and woolen shirts. She had pointed out her youngest daughter to him, but Marc hadn’t paid much attention. He had expected her to be…what? He wasn’t sure, but certainly not this. “So when did you come out? Your mom didn’t say anything about that.”

“She didn’t know. She started having pain a week or two ago. We had a family council.” Her shoulders lifted and fell. “I’m the only one not married, and I’ve been threatening to come out anyway. All my brothers and sisters live out of state, and Mom’s getting older.”

Now it was Marc that was surprised. “So you’re moving here?”

“Moved,” she corrected. “My stuff is a few days behind me, but I got here yesterday.”

“Well, welcome to California. If you give us a little advanced warning next time, I’ll have Matt do the living room and bedrooms as well.”

She groaned. “This was sufficient, thank you!” She finished her lemonade and pushed back from the table. “Well, I’d better go. I want to stop off and see how Mom is.”

“How long will she be in the hospital?”

“Three days.”

“Then rest for some time, I would imagine.”

“The doctor said it would be two to three weeks until she’s really back up and at it again.”

The lines around his eyes deepened. “Well, tell her not to worry about us. I’ll see if I can get a girl from the college.”

Valerie had started toward the living room. She stopped. “Oh, no. That’s one of the reasons I came down.”

“It is?”

“Yes. Mom didn’t want to lose her job with you.”

“Well, she doesn’t have to worry about that. But I don’t expect you to have to fill in for her. I can find someone.”

Valerie smiled, faintly teasing him. “Does that mean my work is not satisfactory?”

“Are you kidding? I had planned on renting a back-hoe to clean up the kitchen. This is terrific!”

“Then it’s settled.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. If that’s all right.”

“All right? It’s great! Thank you.”

They moved from the kitchen to the living room. Valerie opened the door. “Well, good night. I’ll be here tomorrow in time to fix breakfast and get Matt off to his preschool.”

“Thanks.”

She opened the door, started to exit, then hesitated. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“No.”

“Mom said you’re working on a Master’s of Business Administration at UCLA.”

“Yes.”

“But you teach in Near Eastern Studies at the Claremont Colleges?”

He nodded, amused. “Is that your question?”

She shrugged, suddenly embarrassed. “I was just wondering if I had gotten it straight.”

“Why is a man who has a doctorate in Near Eastern Studies working on a master’s degree in business?”

Now he had really flustered her. “Well, yes. It is a little curious. But I didn’t mean to pry.”

The amusement in his eyes slowly died. “That’s what the dean of the college wants to know,” he said slowly. “I wish I could think of a clever answer.”

Chapter Three

The man at the computer keyboard let his fingers drop and started to type rapidly. Alex Barclay watched him idly. He hardly fit the typical image of the computer expert. With his blond wavy hair and tanned features, he looked more like a naval cadet or the captain of the Yale University rowing team.

Lines of data began to flow across the terminal screen, and Alex started to watch what was coming up on the screen.

PROFILE SERRCH COMPLETED TOTRL PROFILES SERRCHED: 82 PROFILES MRRKED AND SAVED: 9 DO YOU WISH COMPLETE FILES ON THOSE PROFILED? Y/N

Without looking up for affirmation, the man hit the Y key, then leaned back. “This will take a few minutes. It has to go back to the original database and add complete files on each man.”

Benjamin Bates stood, drew heavily on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in an overflowing ash tray. He was an oak of a man—short, thick, facial features like weathered bark. He stretched, limbering up his body. They had been at it for over three hours, Barclay leaning over the man at the keyboard, reading each profile quickly as the computer spewed out the data feed, Bates alternately smoking and dozing in the corner.

Barclay ran his fingers through his hair and turned to Bates. “Just exactly how big is that data base you tap?”

Bates smiled. This was part of the ritual. Four times Barclay had asked Russell Whitaker of the State Department for help. Four times Whitaker had sent Benjamin Bates. Every time Barclay had asked that same question, Bates had given the same response, “We left out Idaho. That helped.”

Alex laughed softly and let it drop. In fact, he didn’t even know if Bates was from the State Department or some other agency. He just always came with some bright-eyed assistant whom he never bothered to introduce, a terminal, a phone modem, and access to a data base that always left Alex feeling slightly uneasy. He leaned over and picked up the phone.

“Jackie, is lunch ready?” He listened for a moment, then, “Good. I’ll be out and help you.” He hung up and exited the room.

The man at the keyboard rubbed his eyes, then moved his fingers up to massage his temples. Bates watched for a moment, then grinned. “If Jackie brings lunch in, that’ll rest your eyes.”

The even white teeth flashed. “Hey, isn’t she something?”

“And every bit as sharp as she looks. Barclay calls her his executive secretary. But I’ve watched them operate. I think she’s more like a partner.”

“On or off the job?”

Bates pulled out another cigarette, retrieved a lighter from a crumpled coat pocket and lit it thoughtfully. “I’ve wondered that myself,” he said finally, “but according to Whitaker, it’s strictly on the job. He says Barclay takes great pride in playing it straight with his wife.”

“Who is this Barclay, anyway?” the man demanded of his boss. “I can’t believe the way he races through the data. He’s got each individual marked or rejected while I’m still reading the stuff.”

Bates just shook his head. “The uncanny thing is yet to come. Just watch him. Sight unseen, he seems to have a sixth sense about who will work out for him.”

“Work out for what?”

There was the slightest shrug. “Depends which project he’s putting together. Whenever he’s starting on a major project, he goes on a hunt for help. Sometimes he gets him through his own means. Other times, if it has to do with a government project, he searches our data base.”

“Why does he need help? I thought you said that he and Jackie ran this whole operation.”

“They do. Oh, there’s the hired help—warehousemen, drivers, custodial staff, that kind of thing. But no other executives. Just Alex and Jackie—and temporary help as needed.”

“Like this Derek Parkin who picked us up at the airport last night?”

“Yeah. He’s brand-new from what Alex said. Hired him away from some law firm.” Bates drew out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, extracted one, and lit it. He drew deeply, then blew the smoke at the ceiling. “This must be some project. To my knowledge Alex has never brought on more than one new man before.”

“Why doesn’t he use the same men over again?”

Bates looked surprised. “Oh, they never survive.”

The other visibly started, which brought a laugh from Bates.

“No, I don’t mean that. Though one did end up in an Indonesian prison with his knuckles broken.”

The blue eyes widened, which only added to Bates’s amusement. He took another heavy draw on his cigarette. “No,” he went on, “it’s not like that. Barclay just burns them out. By the time he finishes with them, they’re either too frustrated or too disillusioned or too exhausted—” He paused. “Or too scared. Alexander Barclay goes at hired help like sixteen linebackers at a rookie quarterback.”

“Scared? Scared of what?”

Again there was an enigmatic shrug. “The world of the arms dealer—even the legitimate arms dealer—has its ups and downs.”

“Like what?”

But before Bates could answer, the door pushed open, and Jacqueline Ashby pushed in a cart carrying white sacks emblazoned with a bright yellow sun and the words CASA DEL SOL RESTAURANT. Both men watched her appreciatively. Barclay paid her well, and she obviously spent a goodly portion of it on clothes. The white skirt and navy blue blazer were accented with a soft, red and blue plaid blouse with a white bow at the neck. It was elegantly understated and complimented the slenderness of her figure. Cool green eyes, looking out from under eyebrows as black as her hair, held a faint touch of amusement, as though accepting the unspoken praise being directed at her as part of her due.

Barclay followed close behind her, carrying a tray of Coke and Seven-Up and glasses filled with ice. With swift efficiency, Jackie had napkins and the food spread out across the desk.

For a few moments they were all occupied with getting their food and drinks sorted out, then Alex turned to Bate’s assistant. “Okay, let’s get started. I’ve asked Jackie to stay.”

It was not a request, and Bates nodded almost imperceptibly as the other man shot him a startled look. Barclay and Jackie noted both reactions without expression. “Bring up number six,” Barclay went on.

“Number six?”

“Yeah. His name was Jeppson.”

The computer operator took a huge bite of a chimichanga and a quick swig of drink, then banged out the commands quickly. All three of the others inched their chairs closer so they could watch as the data started to fill the screen.

PROFILE: MRRC RLLEN JEPPSON

RGE: THIRTY-TWO

RDDRESS: 717 E. BRIDGEPORT RVE., CLRREMONT, CRLIFORNIR

OCCUPRTIONRL PROFILE: MISSIONRRY SERVICE IN URUGURY/PRRRGURY, THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS (72-73); TEACHING RSSISTANT, U OF U (74-75); PERCE CORPS, EGYPT ROD SUOAN (75-76); ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY (80-82); ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, CLAREMONT COLLEGES (82-PRESENT)

EDUCRTION: BR, POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH (75) MR, MIOOLE ERSTERN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH (77) PHD, NERR EASTERN STUDIES, UC BERKELEY (80) CURRENTLY ENROLLED, MBA, UCLR GRRDUATE SCHOOL OVERALL GPR: 3.92

LRNGURGES: ARABIC (FLUENT), SPANISH (FLUENT), HEBREW (CONVERSANT), PARSI (CONVERSRNT)

PERSONAL: MARRIED LYNETTE THOMPSON (78); WIFE KILLED IN AUTO ACCIDENT (83); TWO SONS, BRETT MARC, B, RND MATTHEW DRVID, 4. INTERESTS/HOBBIES: WRITING, SKIING, WATER SKING. NO RECORD OF RRRESTS. NO KNOWN DETRIMENTRL HRBITS. CREDIT RRTING 1R. KNOWN DEBTS, RBOUT &dollar;12,000. ACTIVE CHURCH ATTENDER. MEMBER CLRREMONT KIWRNIS CLUB

“Well, well,” Barclay said as the lines finally stopped coming up.

“Not bad,” Jackie agreed. “Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies. Fluent in Arabic. Not bad at all.”

“And working on an M.B.A. at UCLA,” Barclay said. “That’s an unexpected dash of frosting on the cake.”

“And he lives in Claremont,” Jackie added.

“Is that nearby?” Bates asked.

Barclay turned. “Out near Pomona. About thirty miles east of L.A.”

“What about the others?” Bates’s assistant asked, sensing a decision had already been made.

Barclay stared at the screen, lost in thought for several moments. Finally the words registered. “No, I don’t think so. Mark the others so we can retrieve them if we need to.”

The man was shaking his head in disbelief as he tapped out the instructions.

“Attach to our printer and get Jackie a printout of Jeppson’s profile, will you?” He turned to Jackie as the man nodded. “Get a copy of it to Jarvis this afternoon. I want a full report on this Jeppson by the time I get back from Paris next week.”

He took Bates by the arm. “I need to have you take some things back to Washington. Let’s go in the other office.”

It was nearly half an hour later when the man brought from Washington to run the computer set down his magazine in the outer foyer of Barclay Enterprises and looked at Jackie. She was at the reception desk, her head bent to her work.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She looked up. “What?”

“What happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

“With this Jeppson guy. How does Mr. Barclay go about getting him to join his staff? I mean the guy is happily employed as a college professor.”

“Maybe,” she agreed with a half smile. “Maybe not. Why the M. B. A.?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? But suppose he is unhappy. I mean, how does Barclay even approach the guy?”

“It varies. About a week ago, Alex was invited to be one of the guest lecturers at a seminar sponsored by the UCLA Graduate School of Business. He declined.” Her smile broadened, showing flawless white teeth. “Among other things, I suspect that sometime this afternoon, I’ll be calling UCLA to tell them Mr. Barclay’s plans have changed and that he can lecture there after all.”

“And if Jeppson doesn’t come to the lecture?” He shook his head. “Even if he does. Then what?”

She laughed right out loud. “You don’t understand, Mr. Davies. That is the part Alex enjoys the very most. Marc Allen Jeppson will never know what hit him.”

PROFILE SERRCH COMPLETED TOTRL PROFILES SERRCHED: 82 PROFILES MRRKED AND SAVED: 9 DO YOU WISH COMPLETE FILES ON THOSE PROFILED? Y/N

Without looking up for affirmation, the man hit the Y key, then leaned back. “This will take a few minutes. It has to go back to the original database and add complete files on each man.”

Benjamin Bates stood, drew heavily on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in an overflowing ash tray. He was an oak of a man—short, thick, facial features like weathered bark. He stretched, limbering up his body. They had been at it for over three hours, Barclay leaning over the man at the keyboard, reading each profile quickly as the computer spewed out the data feed, Bates alternately smoking and dozing in the corner.

Barclay ran his fingers through his hair and turned to Bates. “Just exactly how big is that data base you tap?”

Bates smiled. This was part of the ritual. Four times Barclay had asked Russell Whitaker of the State Department for help. Four times Whitaker had sent Benjamin Bates. Every time Barclay had asked that same question, Bates had given the same response, “We left out Idaho. That helped.”

Alex laughed softly and let it drop. In fact, he didn’t even know if Bates was from the State Department or some other agency. He just always came with some bright-eyed assistant whom he never bothered to introduce, a terminal, a phone modem, and access to a data base that always left Alex feeling slightly uneasy. He leaned over and picked up the phone.

“Jackie, is lunch ready?” He listened for a moment, then, “Good. I’ll be out and help you.” He hung up and exited the room.

The man at the keyboard rubbed his eyes, then moved his fingers up to massage his temples. Bates watched for a moment, then grinned. “If Jackie brings lunch in, that’ll rest your eyes.”

The even white teeth flashed. “Hey, isn’t she something?”

“And every bit as sharp as she looks. Barclay calls her his executive secretary. But I’ve watched them operate. I think she’s more like a partner.”

“On or off the job?”

Bates pulled out another cigarette, retrieved a lighter from a crumpled coat pocket and lit it thoughtfully. “I’ve wondered that myself,” he said finally, “but according to Whitaker, it’s strictly on the job. He says Barclay takes great pride in playing it straight with his wife.”

“Who is this Barclay, anyway?” the man demanded of his boss. “I can’t believe the way he races through the data. He’s got each individual marked or rejected while I’m still reading the stuff.”

Bates just shook his head. “The uncanny thing is yet to come. Just watch him. Sight unseen, he seems to have a sixth sense about who will work out for him.”

“Work out for what?”

There was the slightest shrug. “Depends which project he’s putting together. Whenever he’s starting on a major project, he goes on a hunt for help. Sometimes he gets him through his own means. Other times, if it has to do with a government project, he searches our data base.”

“Why does he need help? I thought you said that he and Jackie ran this whole operation.”

“They do. Oh, there’s the hired help—warehousemen, drivers, custodial staff, that kind of thing. But no other executives. Just Alex and Jackie—and temporary help as needed.”

“Like this Derek Parkin who picked us up at the airport last night?”

“Yeah. He’s brand-new from what Alex said. Hired him away from some law firm.” Bates drew out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, extracted one, and lit it. He drew deeply, then blew the smoke at the ceiling. “This must be some project. To my knowledge Alex has never brought on more than one new man before.”

“Why doesn’t he use the same men over again?”

Bates looked surprised. “Oh, they never survive.”

The other visibly started, which brought a laugh from Bates.

“No, I don’t mean that. Though one did end up in an Indonesian prison with his knuckles broken.”

The blue eyes widened, which only added to Bates’s amusement. He took another heavy draw on his cigarette. “No,” he went on, “it’s not like that. Barclay just burns them out. By the time he finishes with them, they’re either too frustrated or too disillusioned or too exhausted—” He paused. “Or too scared. Alexander Barclay goes at hired help like sixteen linebackers at a rookie quarterback.”

“Scared? Scared of what?”

Again there was an enigmatic shrug. “The world of the arms dealer—even the legitimate arms dealer—has its ups and downs.”

“Like what?”

But before Bates could answer, the door pushed open, and Jacqueline Ashby pushed in a cart carrying white sacks emblazoned with a bright yellow sun and the words CASA DEL SOL RESTAURANT. Both men watched her appreciatively. Barclay paid her well, and she obviously spent a goodly portion of it on clothes. The white skirt and navy blue blazer were accented with a soft, red and blue plaid blouse with a white bow at the neck. It was elegantly understated and complimented the slenderness of her figure. Cool green eyes, looking out from under eyebrows as black as her hair, held a faint touch of amusement, as though accepting the unspoken praise being directed at her as part of her due.

Barclay followed close behind her, carrying a tray of Coke and Seven-Up and glasses filled with ice. With swift efficiency, Jackie had napkins and the food spread out across the desk.

For a few moments they were all occupied with getting their food and drinks sorted out, then Alex turned to Bate’s assistant. “Okay, let’s get started. I’ve asked Jackie to stay.”

It was not a request, and Bates nodded almost imperceptibly as the other man shot him a startled look. Barclay and Jackie noted both reactions without expression. “Bring up number six,” Barclay went on.

“Number six?”

“Yeah. His name was Jeppson.”

The computer operator took a huge bite of a chimichanga and a quick swig of drink, then banged out the commands quickly. All three of the others inched their chairs closer so they could watch as the data started to fill the screen.

PROFILE: MRRC RLLEN JEPPSON

RGE: THIRTY-TWO

RDDRESS: 717 E. BRIDGEPORT RVE., CLRREMONT, CRLIFORNIR

OCCUPRTIONRL PROFILE: MISSIONRRY SERVICE IN URUGURY/PRRRGURY, THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS (72-73); TEACHING RSSISTANT, U OF U (74-75); PERCE CORPS, EGYPT ROD SUOAN (75-76); ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY (80-82); ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, CLAREMONT COLLEGES (82-PRESENT)

EDUCRTION: BR, POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH (75) MR, MIOOLE ERSTERN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH (77) PHD, NERR EASTERN STUDIES, UC BERKELEY (80) CURRENTLY ENROLLED, MBA, UCLR GRRDUATE SCHOOL OVERALL GPR: 3.92

LRNGURGES: ARABIC (FLUENT), SPANISH (FLUENT), HEBREW (CONVERSANT), PARSI (CONVERSRNT)

PERSONAL: MARRIED LYNETTE THOMPSON (78); WIFE KILLED IN AUTO ACCIDENT (83); TWO SONS, BRETT MARC, B, RND MATTHEW DRVID, 4. INTERESTS/HOBBIES: WRITING, SKIING, WATER SKING. NO RECORD OF RRRESTS. NO KNOWN DETRIMENTRL HRBITS. CREDIT RRTING 1R. KNOWN DEBTS, RBOUT &dollar;12,000. ACTIVE CHURCH ATTENDER. MEMBER CLRREMONT KIWRNIS CLUB

PROFILE: MRRC RLLEN JEPPSON

RGE: THIRTY-TWO

RDDRESS: 717 E. BRIDGEPORT RVE., CLRREMONT, CRLIFORNIR

OCCUPRTIONRL PROFILE: MISSIONRRY SERVICE IN URUGURY/PRRRGURY, THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS (72-73); TEACHING RSSISTANT, U OF U (74-75); PERCE CORPS, EGYPT ROD SUOAN (75-76); ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY (80-82); ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, CLAREMONT COLLEGES (82-PRESENT)

EDUCRTION: BR, POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH (75) MR, MIOOLE ERSTERN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH (77) PHD, NERR EASTERN STUDIES, UC BERKELEY (80) CURRENTLY ENROLLED, MBA, UCLR GRRDUATE SCHOOL OVERALL GPR: 3.92

LRNGURGES: ARABIC (FLUENT), SPANISH (FLUENT), HEBREW (CONVERSANT), PARSI (CONVERSRNT)

PERSONAL: MARRIED LYNETTE THOMPSON (78); WIFE KILLED IN AUTO ACCIDENT (83); TWO SONS, BRETT MARC, B, RND MATTHEW DRVID, 4. INTERESTS/HOBBIES: WRITING, SKIING, WATER SKING. NO RECORD OF RRRESTS. NO KNOWN DETRIMENTRL HRBITS. CREDIT RRTING 1R. KNOWN DEBTS, RBOUT &dollar;12,000. ACTIVE CHURCH ATTENDER. MEMBER CLRREMONT KIWRNIS CLUB

“Well, well,” Barclay said as the lines finally stopped coming up.

“Not bad,” Jackie agreed. “Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies. Fluent in Arabic. Not bad at all.”

“And working on an M.B.A. at UCLA,” Barclay said. “That’s an unexpected dash of frosting on the cake.”

“And he lives in Claremont,” Jackie added.

“Is that nearby?” Bates asked.

Barclay turned. “Out near Pomona. About thirty miles east of L.A.”

“What about the others?” Bates’s assistant asked, sensing a decision had already been made.

Barclay stared at the screen, lost in thought for several moments. Finally the words registered. “No, I don’t think so. Mark the others so we can retrieve them if we need to.”

The man was shaking his head in disbelief as he tapped out the instructions.

“Attach to our printer and get Jackie a printout of Jeppson’s profile, will you?” He turned to Jackie as the man nodded. “Get a copy of it to Jarvis this afternoon. I want a full report on this Jeppson by the time I get back from Paris next week.”

He took Bates by the arm. “I need to have you take some things back to Washington. Let’s go in the other office.”

It was nearly half an hour later when the man brought from Washington to run the computer set down his magazine in the outer foyer of Barclay Enterprises and looked at Jackie. She was at the reception desk, her head bent to her work.

“Can I ask you a question?”

She looked up. “What?”

“What happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

“With this Jeppson guy. How does Mr. Barclay go about getting him to join his staff? I mean the guy is happily employed as a college professor.”

“Maybe,” she agreed with a half smile. “Maybe not. Why the M. B. A.?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? But suppose he is unhappy. I mean, how does Barclay even approach the guy?”

“It varies. About a week ago, Alex was invited to be one of the guest lecturers at a seminar sponsored by the UCLA Graduate School of Business. He declined.” Her smile broadened, showing flawless white teeth. “Among other things, I suspect that sometime this afternoon, I’ll be calling UCLA to tell them Mr. Barclay’s plans have changed and that he can lecture there after all.”

“And if Jeppson doesn’t come to the lecture?” He shook his head. “Even if he does. Then what?”

She laughed right out loud. “You don’t understand, Mr. Davies. That is the part Alex enjoys the very most. Marc Allen Jeppson will never know what hit him.”

Chapter Four

Marc Jeppson stopped abruptly as he came out of the front entrance of the social sciences building. The rain was coming down in sheets, sometimes almost horizontally as the wind caught it. It was only the first week in October, which made this first real rain of the season early, but it was coming in with a vengeance.

For a moment he hesitated, glaring up at the heavy grey sky. He started back, then glanced at his watch. He lowered his head, hunched his shoulders, and darted across the quad toward the faculty parking lot.

With the rain, the traffic was moving even more slowly than usual down Euclid Avenue, and he caught three red lights in a row. It was already nine twenty-eight, and he had promised Mary Robertson he would be on time, if not early. His past record was not totally impeccable, so she had made him swear solemnly that he wouldn’t add another black mark to the list.

As he approached the next intersection, the light turned yellow. He hit the gas pedal. The 1977 Volkswagen Beetle had a hundred and twenty thousand miles on it, and it lurched forward like an old plow horse. It was too little too late. Marc jammed his foot on the brake and slid to a stop squarely in the middle of the crosswalk.

Two middle-aged women joggers, their sweatsuits dark with rain, detoured around the front of his car, and shot him a dirty look. The one yelled something, and while he wasn’t up on lipreading, he was pretty sure it was a comment you wouldn’t hear from the pulpit.

“May your shin splints multiply and your gym socks turn to mold!” he shouted after them through the closed window.

It was a quarter to ten when he swung the beat-up VW into a parking place outside the mall and darted through the rain to the main door. As he entered, the smell of the rain on his sportcoat made him wrinkle his nose. He took out a handkerchief and wiped the moisture from his glasses and made a quick pass at his damp hair with one hand.

Before he reached the center plaza of the mall, he could see Mary and Valerie standing at the top of the escalators looking around impatiently. “Oh, brother!” he muttered, then ran up the moving stairs lightly, bracing himself for the attack. Valerie spied him first and touched her mother’s arm.

“Marc!” There was more exasperation than anger in Mary’s voice. “You promised!”

“I know,” he started lamely, “but some students caught me after class—”

She grabbed his arm. “We’ll have to hurry. They open the main doors about six minutes to. They always do.”

Suddenly she turned and surveyed the rain spots on his clothes. “Marc, where’s your raincoat? I sent it with you this morning.”

Valerie was smiling as Marc rolled his eyes. “I didn’t know it was raining until I came outside, and then I decided I was already late and—”

She dragged him into a quicker pace. “We’ve got to walk faster!”

“Mother,” Valerie cried. “You’ve only been out of the hospital a week. You shouldn’t be hurrying.”

The older woman waved that aside as if she were waving away a fly only half noticed.

“Now listen, the toy department is closest to the main door so you’ll go in there. Valerie and I will go to the south door, but that little man up there never opens the door until two minutes to. It’s maddening!”

He nodded. “Probably has to take a belt of something or other to build his courage.”

She shot him a quick look. “What are you mumbling about?” But she didn’t wait for an answer. “Remember, the Super Cycle is not just on sale. It’s what they call ‘the door crasher.’ The quantities will be limited, and they’ll go fast. You can’t be timid or polite, or they’ll be gone.”

“Yes, sir!” he barked crisply. “Chin down, bayonet up, and watch my back, sir!”

That finally broke through to her. She stared at him for a moment and then laughed. Valerie was trying hard to maintain a straight face. “Will you stop it!” Mary said firmly. “I’m just saying that you’ll have to get in there and hold your own.”

“Mary, if this is going to involve hand-to-hand combat with other women, why don’t you or Valerie do it?”

“Because the winter coats for the boys are also on as a door crasher, and it will take two of us to get one for both Brett and Matt, so by the time we could get down to the toys, all the Super Cycles will be gone, and you know the Super Cycle is the one thing Matt wants for Christmas more than anything else.”

Marc was awed. She had got it all in one sentence without missing a step or taking a breath. “Tell me again how much we’re saving.”

“Normally they’re forty-nine ninety-five. On the door crasher they’re only nineteen ninety-five.”

“Thirty bucks!” he yelped, causing a lady headed in the opposite direction to turn and stare at them. “I’ll give you that thirty, and throw in another twenty if I don’t have to do this.”

Instantly, Marc knew he had pushed her too far. Her back stiffened, and her heels popped sharply on the marble floor. “You think I like it? I try to help you get a little Christmas shopping done, and this is what I get.”

“Mary, I was just kidding.”

“I try to save you some money, stretch things so your kids can have a nicer Christmas, and the one time I ask you for help—”

“Mary, for crying out loud! I was just trying to bring some humor into the morning. Heaven knows I could use some.” He heard Valerie snicker and shot her a dirty look. “I’ll be happy to buy the Super Cycle.” He glanced quickly upward, wondering what it would take to get forgiveness for that one. “Okay?”

They rounded the corner, and Marc could see the clot of women already milling in a tight circle around the main entrance to Mervyn’s.

“Okay,” Mary said, only partially mollified. “We’ll meet you back at the escalators.” She gave him a little push toward the crowd of women. “Remember, you’ve got to get in there and go for it. Okay?”

He nodded glumly as the two of them turned and hurried away.With a quick eye, Marc surveyed the crowd, estimating there were close to a hundred women milling in a tight circle around the door. He moved around the periphery, looking for an opening of any kind, drawing several curious looks as he circled. He was the only male in the group.

“Ain’t no use,” a voice behind him said in a slow drawl. “They’re packed in tighter than a quart of pickles in a pint jar.”

Marc turned in surprise. An older man, near seventy, sat on a bench, a look of infinite patience carved into his features. Marc grinned. “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” he admitted. “But I have no choice. I either throw myself into the breach, or face a fate too horrible to contemplate.”

The older man just shook his head slowly. “May as well sit down No one’s going through that herd until they disperse across more of the prairie.”

Marc laughed, turning and eyeing the women again. “You may be right, but it occurs to me that this may be more a time for strategy than for strength.”

He went up on his tiptoes, peering over the sea of heads. Through the glass doors, at the far end of the store, he saw a man in a dark suit coming toward them, dangling a ring of keys in his hand. Marc checked his watch. It was nine fifty-four. Six minutes to ten. Uncanny, he thought. His housekeeper couldn’t fill the car with gasoline, but she knew the door opening routine at Mervyn’s down to the second.

“Watch this,” he called softly to the old man. “Strategy doth prevail.”

Walking swiftly back around to the center of the crowd, he took out his car keys, held them high in the air and began to jingle them vigorously. “Excuse me, ladies,” he called in a loud voice. Again he rattled the keys. “Ladies, if I can get through here, we’ll see if we can get the doors opened for you.”

Several of the heads in the rear swiveled around to stare at the keys suspended in the air, and then as if by some invisible hand, a path started to open directly in front of him.

“That’s it,” he sang sweetly. “None of us can get in until the doors are unlocked.”

In less than twenty seconds Marc was standing at the door, the Red Sea of women closing in tightly behind him.

Through the glass, the man in the dark suit was coming, but was still about twenty yards away. A rather frowsy-looking woman in a brown ski parka standing next to Marc was eyeing him with open suspicion. Fumbling with the keys, he gave her one of his best smiles, turning his body enough to block her view of the lock.

“Double locking system,” he said, lowering his voice to a half whisper. “Can’t be too careful.” He raised his other hand to cover the fact that his key did not even come close to fitting into the lock.

The clerk from Mervyn’s, obviously deep into boredom already, reached the door. The keys came up, and in a moment the bolt clicked. Marc helped him slide the door open about two feet, then slipped in quickly and pulled it shut again, cutting off the surprised cries from the women and catching the clerk off guard as well.

Marc patted him warmly on the shoulder. “The supervisor said to hold them here for another couple of minutes.”

The man stared at Marc, his pencil thin-mustache twitching. “What?”

“She said two more minutes, but I’d trust your own instincts.”

“What?” It was obvious the man was still opening doors because of limited mental speed.

“I’d give them thirty seconds, then get out of the way.”

Marc moved off with a friendly wave, leaving the man staring.

Six minutes later Marc was standing in the line waiting to pay for his purchase, a Super Cycle tucked under one arm and a smug look on his face. He felt a little sheepish for hassling Mary over this. These sales weren’t so bad after all—even door crashers. One merely needed to know exactly what door crasher meant.

“You!”

For almost a full second Marc could not place the woman standing there, pointing her finger at him like a policeman’s nightstick. He knew he had seen her before…Then it came. This was the woman in the brown parka. At the time he had thought her frowsy. Now all he could think of was a mother grizzly coming down on him like a heat-seeking missile.

Marc managed a grin. “Well, hello again. I hope you’re having a wonderful day here at Mervyn’s.” The line moved forward one place.

“I knew you weren’t a store employee. How dare you use deceit to get in ahead of the rest of us?”

“Deceit? I never said I was a store employee.”

“You got a Super Cycle and I didn’t because you wouldn’t wait your turn like everyone else.”

Marc shook his head, not about to be intimidated. “As the saying goes, the race is not to the swift, but to the sneaky.”

With a “Hmmph!” she turned abruptly and left.

He had only moved three places forward when she reappeared. Several other women moved closer to hear. “I want that Super Cycle,” she demanded. “I was here half an hour early.”

“Lady,” Marc said wearily, “in the Guiness Book of Records, you just took the lead for poor losers.”

There were some angry murmurs around him, and Marc felt his face going red. This was getting to be ridiculous.

“So you admit that you got a Super Cycle by impersonating a store employee.”

“I held up keys and rattled them. Some impersonation.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear!” she cried triumphantly, beckoning vigorously behind her. A man in a dark suit stepped out from behind a display. “Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Abbott, head of store security.”

Valerie and her mother were standing in almost the exact same place at the top of the escalators, only this time when Mary spotted him, carrying a large polyester sack, she almost ran to meet him.

“Marc, for heaven’s sake! Where have you been? We’ve been here almost half an hour.”

Swinging the sack around behind him, he merely grunted. “Where’s your car?”

“Marc! Where were you? We’ve looked all over. Val even went back down to the toy department.”

“Look,” Marc said wearily. “Do you want me to carry this to the car for you or not?”

Valerie eyed the sack, and Marc turned slightly, keeping it behind him. This time Mary moved, and he turned again, but it was a feint. She had the sack, turned it, then gave a cry of dismay. “Marc! This is a J. C. Penney’s sack!”

“Mary, a group of Serbo-Croatian terrorists are about to bomb the Orange Julius stand. I suggest we get out of here immediately.” He heard Valerie cough. She was trying hard to maintain a sober demeanor.

Mary stared at him in disbelief, then she rummaged inside the sack. “And you paid full price?” she cried when she finally came up with the sales slip. “Marc, I could have gotten it anywhere for forty-nine ninety-five. I told you Mervyn’s!”

Marc sighed, a deep, weary sound of resignation. “Remember the deal I offered you earlier?”

“Deal? What deal?”

“I offered to give you the thirty dollars we were saving in the sale plus an additional twenty if I didn’t have to go in there.”

“Yes, I remember. So?”

“I’ll double that on one condition.”

“What?” she asked, thoroughly exasperated now.

“From now on, I’ll give you whatever money you need. Just don’t make me help you spend it.”

Chapter Five

Allahu akbar!

The words of the muezzin, the crier who calls the faithful to prayers, blared from the loudspeakers atop the graceful minaret of the mosque. “God is great!” the voice cried with great solemnity, repeating the cry four times.

Ashhadu an la illallah.

“I bear witness that there is no God but Allah.”

Each muezzin throughout the Muslim world calls more than half a billion Islamic worshippers to morning prayers in his own distinct tone and style. Some make it a low, mournful dirge; others make it a cheerful, lighthearted chant. The voice calling the faithful to prayer from the stunningly modern and beautiful mosque at the King Khalid International Airport at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, made it into a fierce, almost threatening, command.

Ashadu anna Muhammad rasulu Allah.

“I bear witness that Mohammad is the Messenger of God.”

It was that time of day when, as the law stated, one could first distinguish the difference between white and black threads without artificial light. The sky in the east was showing the faintest of pale yellows and golds, but full dawn was still some time away.

Hayya ala-as-salah. Hayya ala-as-salah. As-salutu khayrun mina-an-nawn.

“Come quickly to prayer. Come quickly to success. Prayer is better than sleep.”

A dozen men in flowing robes and headdresses were gathered in the courtyard of the mosque around the place of washing, performing the wudu, the partial ablution. Each man went through the cleansing process quickly but thoroughly. The hands, the feet, the arms and the face—each were washed before coming before the face of Allah. Almost as one the men were finished. The king nodded, almost imperceptibly, then stood and led them inside the mosque.

Alahu akbar, Allahu akbar. La illaha ilallah.

“God is great! God is great! There is no God but Allah!”

The Muslim prays with more than his mouth. The entire body is involved as first he stands, then kneels, then prostrates himself so he touches his forehead to the ground. It is a solemn ritual, and the king felt a familiar thrill as he thought of this same act being repeated at that very moment all over the kingdom. In palaces, mud huts, mosques, fields, or even kneeling on a small prayer rug in front of a Bedouin tent—across the breadth of his land, his people were beginning another day by renewing their allegiance to Allah.

Finished, the king stood up, glancing at his diamond studded Cartier wristwatch. “It is time,” he announced to the crown prince, and they walked swiftly out of the mosque and headed for the main terminal and the departure lounge reserved for the royal family.

Twenty-five minutes later, a line of black limousines left the terminal building and the mosque behind, moving in the direction of Riyadh. As the sleek and lushly furnished automobiles reached the outskirts of the airport, they pulled off to the side of the road. The king stepped out of the lead vehicle and moved around to the front of the car. No one else followed suit, just rolled down mirrored glass windows to watch. It was still a few minutes before sunrise, and the sky was a brilliant burst of pink and turquoise. The air was pleasantly cool but held the first promise of the coming heat.

The king turned his head, thinking of those he had just embraced and sent onto the plane. The king was a handsome man, round of face, quick to smile and with dark, jet black eyes that could flash with fierce anger or soften with quick humor. Now the corners of his mouth pulled down as he thought of the crown prince and those who accompanied him. What kind of reception would their proposal find in America? The king had great respect and admiration for America, and yet he knew his allies too well. There would be a great outcry from the Zionists and their supporters when they learned the president was considering the sale of F-22 Barracudas to an Arab nation. Could the president hold to his promise?

The king sighed. While he did not have a Congress and voting constituents to worry about, he knew that a ruler is never truly his own man. In his own country there were the royal family, the council of ministers, the ulema or council of religious scholars who interpreted Islamic law, the tribal sheiks, and a host of others to satisfy.

The rumble of massive engines brought his head around. He watched impassively as the jumbo jet lifted off the ground, letting the sound batter at him like a cleansing wind. Slowly the huge craft banked around to the north. It caught the first rays of the sun, flashing them back at him as though they were a signal.

“The light of Allah is upon you,” he murmured. “Go with God, my brothers.”

Aboard the plane, the crown prince; the king’s half brother; Prince Feisal, Minister of Defense; and half a dozen others chatted quietly as the 747 climbed steeply, then banked to the west.

A few minutes later the seat belt sign winked out. The crown prince stood, and the others followed. They moved across the sumptuously furnished cabin to private compartments. Long, ankle length robes and cotton thobes came off and went into closets. Out of those same closets came three-piece business suits, gleaming Gucci shoes, and hundred-dollar ties.

When they gathered back in the lounge of the Royal family’s private airliner, the transformation was nearly complete. Except for the dark olive skin and the white headdresses held on with braided black cords, they had crossed that invisible line that separates the Orient from the Occident.

The same sun that caught the burnished skin of the 747 over Riyadh had risen above the Mount of Olives enough to bathe Jerusalem in the first golden-pink glow of morning. Nathan Shoshani put his head back and drew in a deep breath of the cool, fragrant air, listening to the sounds of an awakening city. In an hour or so the roads would be swarming with tourists and Arab street hawkers selling olivewood camels and Holy City bookmarks. But now there was only the braying of a donkey, out of sight somewhere below him in the village of Silwan. Behind him he heard the soft cooing of a dove.

He glanced at his watch grudgingly, knowing that this would be his last look for some time to come at the city he loved so deeply. He was tall and broad across the shoulders. His hair was black, thick and curly, as was the hair on his arms, chest, and back. Dark-brown eyes looked out from heavy brows that almost touched when he frowned. At thirty-six he still had the lean look of an athlete, with trim waist and rock-hard stomach. But then, a field agent for the Mossad—Israel’s intelligence agency—was expected to stay in top-notch physical condition.

Like most Israelis, he was casually dressed—leather sandals with no stockings, faded jeans, and a plain cotton shirt, open at the neck. He too would change into a business suit before his arrival in New York. But for the long Atlantic crossing he much preferred the comfort of something less confining. With a sigh he turned and climbed the few steps to his car, thinking of the coming confrontation with his father.

A few minutes later, he pulled into a parking place outside a small apartment building in West Jerusalem. Like most other buildings in the city, it was made of the beige-white Jerusalem stone that gave all of Jerusalem—even the most modern of buildings such as this one—a sense of antiquity in keeping with the history of the ancient city. As he stepped out of the car he could see the gleaming white dome of the Shrine of the Book, home of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But his mind was not on Jerusalem stone or the Shrine of the Book. He ran up the three flights of stairs and rapped on the door sharply.

For someone in her midsixties, Esther Shoshani was a strikingly handsome woman, slender of build, fine of feature, with only the first streaks of grey touching her hair. When she opened the door and saw her son, her face softened instantly into a radiant smile. “Ah, Nathan, we were afraid you wouldn’t have time to stop by before you had to leave.” She spoke in nearly flawless English.

He gave his mother a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and a quick squeeze, then pulled away and moved into the apartment. “Where is he?”

Esther Shoshani was not only still attractive at sixty, she was also very perceptive, especially when it came to the two men in her life. She caught her son’s hand. “He’s in the alcove,” she said, holding him back. “He’ll be out in a minute.”

But Nathan pulled free and strode across the small living room. He stopped as he caught sight of his father near the window of the small room off the kitchen. The morning sunlight streamed through the window, backlighting his father and leaving him in dark silhouette. Nathan stepped back. It was forbidden to interrupt in any way a person engaged in morning prayers.

Yaacov Shoshani was shorter than his son and beginning to stoop slightly at the shoulders, but any sense of age was dispelled by the graceful dignity of his movements as he rocked slowly back and forth. The prayer shawl or tallit was over his head, the square shape of the tefillin on his forehead silhouetted in the light. More commonly known as phylacteries by Christians, the tefillin were small, hollow boxes made of one single piece of black leather. Sealed inside were intricately inscribed scrolls containing selected passages from the Torah. One was worn on the forehead, a second on the bicep of the left arm.

Though it had been almost a decade since Nathan had donned the tefillin and prayer shawl on other than special occasions, he knew every move, every word of the blessings, every phrase of the recitations. He felt a curious mixture of the old childish awe and a growing irritation. This particular set of tefillin had been in his family for five generations. To know that his great-great-grandfather had donned those same phylacteries in the same exact ritual over a hundred years ago touched him with a sense of continuity that was unlike anything else he had experienced.

He turned and saw his mother watching him, her eyes pleading. “Do you have time for breakfast?” she asked.

“No, Mama, thank you. My plane leaves at nine. And I have to stop by the office in Tel Aviv before I go.”

“Some coffee, maybe?”

“No, thank you.”

Her eyes looked past him, and he turned to see his father coming to join them, holding the folded tallit and the velvet bag that held the tefillin.

“Boker tov, Nahtan.”

“In English,” Esther chided. “He is going to America. He needs to practice his English.”

“I know he is going to America,” Yaacov mocked her gently.

Nathan’s mouth tightened. “Eli told me about your assignment.” It was spoken harshly, more than he had intended.

Yaacov’s eyebrows came up slightly, quizzically. “Eli?”

“Eli Weissman, the deputy director.”

“Oh yes, of course.”

“Why, Papa? Your field is not intelligence work.”

“Nathan!” Esther said sharply.

Yaacov laid his hand on her arm and smiled sadly. When he spoke, it was to her rather than to his son. “The president of the United States is informed that Saudi Arabia has had two or three very sobering incidents with enemy aircraft penetrating their airspace. He panics and authorizes the sale of the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world to our sworn enemies. When our own prime minister hears of this, he personally asks me to serve as an advisor to the intelligence team set up to prevent the sale from occurring. Personally mind you. The prime minister himself. And my son asks why I did not decline. I should have said perhaps, ‘But Prime Minister, my son will not like it. Surely you must reconsider your request.’” He turned to Nathan, and hurt finally crept into his voice. “Tell me, Nathan? If this upsets you so much, why didn’t you refuse the assignment?”

Their eyes locked for a long moment. It was Nathan who looked away first. “All right, Papa, I’m sorry.”

“When the Prime Minister called last night, he did not tell me that you would be the team leader. I learned that later, when the director called to brief me.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

“Is it so terrible,” Esther Shoshani asked softly, “to have to work with your father?”

“You know it is not that, Mama. It’s just that—”

“It’s just that he’s afraid that I’ll bring my tefillin and tallit to the meetings and embarrass him.”

“No! No, I’m not!” Nathan retorted hotly. “But I do fully expect that we will hear a lecture or two about this being a time for faith, that what Israel needs is not good intelligence or a strong military, but more prayers, more dedication to Torah.”

Now it was his father who was nettled. “I have never said that a strong military or good intelligence work is not necessary. But I do say that those who trust in man’s arm alone, including my own son, are sowing the seeds of destruction for the very Israel they think they are defending.”

“Please,” Esther pleaded, looking first at one, and then the other. “Not now. Not again.”

“Do you really think,” Nathan shouted, “that standing in the alcove every morning, putting on a piece of cloth and two leather boxes is going to make one bit of difference in this world?”

“It could make as much difference as sending a team of faithless men to America!”

“Enough!” Esther cried. “That is enough!”

Both men stopped, breathing hard, shocked by the fierceness of the woman who had stepped between them.

“Nathan is leaving today,” she went on in a hoarse whisper. “Must it always be like this? Can you never speak of things without attacking one another like two blind scorpions? Now sit down, both of you. I will get some coffee, and then we will visit like normal human beings.”

She glared up at them, daring either to challenge her command. They looked at her, then at each other. Finally Yaacov smiled ruefully. “She is well named, this woman of ours. Even the king of Persia would not have dared to cross such an Esther.”

Nathan laughed, nodding and putting his arms around his mother.

“Well, I mean it,” she said, much of the storm blown out of her by the sudden switch of moods. “Now, sit down, and I’ll get some coffee.” She pushed her husband and son toward the couch and then disappeared into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Nathan said. “I shouldn’t have said those things.”

“You say what is in your heart,” his father answered sadly. “That is what causes me the greatest sorrow.”

Chapter Six

Marc broke off what he was saying as a Western Airlines DC-10 thundered past, rattling the windows, and both he and Valerie turned to watch. The Proud Bird Restaurant sits just a few dozen yards south of the main runways of Los Angeles International Airport, where a plane lands on the average of about every sixty seconds. The whole north side of the restaurant is glass, providing a perfect view of the planes as they approach final touchdown. Marc and Valerie sat next to the window, the remains of two excellent prime rib dinners still on the table.

The DC-10 lumbered over Aviation Boulevard and disappeared; and they turned back to face each other. “I’m sorry,” Valerie said. “What were you saying?”

Marc turned his glass idly, watching her. “Your mother tells me you’re a runner.”

She shook her head. “Not really. I just jog four or five times a week for the exercise.”

“Oh.”

“Why? Do you run?”

Marc looked up in mock horror. “Not me. I collect articles on the dangers of running.” That startled her for a minute, but then she laughed merrily, and a tiny smile broke through his sober expression.

Valerie sat back, liking the way the smile danced in his eyes and softened the line of his jaw. All through dinner he had been tense and on edge. This was more like the Marc she saw fathering his two sons around the house, or joking with her mother.

He was watching her as well, and finally spoke. “Tell me what you were thinking just then.”

She blushed a little and dropped her eyes.

“Come on.”

Finally she looked up. “I was thinking now that you’ve survived dinner, you’re feeling a little more comfortable.”

There was a flicker of surprise, then the smile was in his eyes again. “That obvious, huh?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not really.”

He looked out the window and watched an American Airlines 737 gliding downward. “It’s been a while,” he mused. “I’m out of touch.”

“Well, now that I know it’s my running that makes you nervous, I don’t feel quite so bad.”

He chuckled softly, then the green eyes seemed to deepen as he became more serious. “I just wanted to say thanks for these last four weeks. We wouldn’t have survived without you.”

“Thank you. It’s been a delightful time for me. I’m going to miss being with your boys now that Mother’s back up to full steam.”

“What do you mean you’re going to miss them?”

“I’ve been unemployed long enough. I’ve got to start looking for a job.”

“Well, that’s fine, but you’d better not stop coming over or you’re going to have two very disappointed young men on your hands.” He gave her a searching look. “Maybe three.”

That caught her completely off guard, and she felt a sudden rush of pleasure. “Well, Mother’s not completely better,” she said softly.

He smiled. “Definitely not up to heavy work yet.”

“Definitely.”

Marc pushed his chair back and looked at his watch. “We’ve got a lecture to catch. Are you ready?”

She nodded, and they both stood.

As they left the restaurant and headed for the car, Marc suddenly slowed his pace. “Will you answer me something?”

“If I can.”

“Did you think it was odd when I invited you to attend the lecture at UCLA with me?”

“Odd? No, why do you ask that?”

“I happened to mention it to one of my colleagues today, and he about fell off the chair laughing. Like I said, I’m out of touch with this dating scene.”

Valerie slipped her arm through his. “It’s been a delightful evening so far, and I look forward to the rest of it. Thank you for asking me.”

As the applause filled the lecture hall, Marc looked around, joining in. With less than two hundred graduate students present, it couldn’t be described as a thunderous ovation, but it was warm, sincere, and enthusiastic. He turned to Valerie, who smiled and nodded. “That was very interesting.”

Before he could answer, the dean of the graduate school stood to join the lecturer at the podium. The applause continued for another few moments, then died out quickly.

“On behalf of UCLA and the Graduate School of Business, thank you, Mr. Alex Barclay, for a stimulating and thoughtprovoking lecture.” The dean glanced at his watch. “We still have about ten minutes. Mr. Barclay has agreed to answer questions from the floor.”

There was a brief smattering of hands as the dean sat down and Barclay stepped forward again. “Thank you, Dean Sandberg. And thank you, for being a warm and gracious audience. Okay, any questions?”

A hand shot up directly in front of Marc and Valerie.

“Yes, please.”

It was a girl, midtwenties, thin boned, with short, cropped hair and huge round glasses. “Mr. Barclay.” Her voice was stronger than Marc had expected. “You titled your address, ‘The Creation and Use of Leverage in Effective Business Transactions.’”

Alex nodded.

“You said that one way to create leverage with clients or potential clients is by doing special things for them, things that are not directly related to your business. Sometimes, you said, those acts of service may actually be disadvantageous to you or cost you considerably.”

“Yes, I feel that is very important.”

“I understand that and agree totally. My question is, how do you get clients in the first place so you can create leverage with them?”

“Ah!” Barclay leaned forward, his face thoughtful. “That is a very good question.” Let me answer it in two ways. First, I have one rule in business I never violate. I call it performance integrity. No matter how small or insignificant the deal or the client, you deliver”—he punched the air with his finger as he hit each word emphatically—“always. On time. As ordered.”

He smiled easily. “Do that without fail, and word starts to get around. Your reputation creates leverage for you—it becomes an important basis for client attraction. Do you see that?”

Marc was nodding along with the girl and several others.

“But there is a second way. This is more subtle, and in some ways not as easy to see. But I consider it almost as important as the first. Besides clients and potential clients, there is a third group of people—those who will never be clients. Now,” he said, warming to his subject, “we’ve already talked about creating leverage with the first two groups. But most businessmen ignore the last group. If they aren’t potential clients, they write them off. That’s a mistake. I do things for this group as well—even when there is not the slightest chance they will buy my services or my products—and it often pays off with rich dividends. The more markers you have out on the table, the greater the likelihood you can call them in when you need them.”

Marc’s hand shot up, surprising himself almost as much as Valerie. Barclay stopped. He adjusted his glasses and looked more closely. “Yes?”

Marc stood up tentatively, aware that he had acted before thinking. He took a deep breath. “On the surface, that philosophy sounds a little manipulative and self-serving, doesn’t it?”

There was an instant murmur of disapproval, and Barclay noted several dirty looks directed at the questioner. He opened the folder he had brought with him to the podium, studied the black-and-white photo attached to the first page and then looked up. Bingo! No doubt about it. The young man standing before him was Marc Allen Jeppson. He looked up and smiled.

“No, that’s all right,” he said to the audience. “That’s a fair question.” He turned to Marc. “I suppose it does sound a little manipulative and self-serving the way I stated it. But I assure you, I do not view people as mere chips in a poker game.”

He removed his glasses, took out a handkerchief, and began to polish them. “Let me use an example to make my point a little more clear. Suppose I’m in the business of making widgets. I have a neighbor who has no use for widgets—never has had and, as far as I can determine, never will. Okay?”

Marc nodded.

“One day I find out my neighbor has a problem. Or, better, let’s say he has always wanted something that I happen to be in a position to get for him. So I do it. It even costs me. Why do I do it? Because I like to do nice things for others. Okay? My motives are sincere. I’m just a nice guy.” He grinned. “Will you grant me that?”

“Yes,” Marc agreed with a smile.

“How is my neighbor going to feel toward me?”

“Grateful,” Marc responded.

“Does the fact that my neighbor feels gratitude toward me make me manipulative?”

“No.”

“Opportunistic?”

Marc sensed that he was being boxed in, very neatly and with great finesse. Yet he couldn’t resent it, for Barclay was doing it with such charm. He shook his head. “No, of course not.”

“Okay, good. Let’s continue the example. Several months later, my neighbor is at his men’s club. He’s having lunch with some of the guys, and, lo and behold, the conversation happens to turn to widgets. Mr. X mentions that he needs a whole trainload of widgets and is trying to decide where to get them.”

He paused, savoring the moment, for the trap had just shut tight. “Now, tell me, what is my neighbor very likely to do at that moment?”

Marc grinned good naturedly, conceding defeat. “He’s going to say, ‘Well, Mr. X, I just happen to know a man…’”

Barclay chuckled, a deep, rich, pleasant sound. “Exactly! I have created leverage. Not through manipulation. Not through caculating narrowness. But through being a good guy. Agreed?”

“Agreed. Thank you.” Marc sat down, feeling a bit foolish. Valerie touched his arm in encouragement.

And so the questions went for the next few minutes. Barclay was candid, witty, and direct. Even when he occasionally attacked the logic of the questioner, he did it with the greatest of charm. And when the Dean finally stood up to cut off the questions, the applause swept the hall again—warm, appreciative, and enthusiastic.

“Well, what did you think of Alex Barclay?” Marc asked as they exited the building and started for the car about ten minutes later.

“Fascinating. I guess I’ve always known there were people who make a living selling weapons, but I’ve just never thought about it I guess. I would have pictured them as having swarthy skin, hair that was glossy black and slicked straight back with a comb, pencil thin mustache, trench coat.”

He laughed. “With the collar turned up.”

“And mirrored sunglasses.”

“Right. Barclay certainly doesn’t fit that.”

“He’s very charming, almost delightful.”

“What did you think of his idea of leverage?”

Valerie pursed her lips slightly. “Well, I can see what he’s saying, but like you, I find it still seems pretty calculated and self-serving.”

“And yet,” Marc chose his words carefully, “if you could keep your motives right, it would be exciting. I mean, to know that what you were doing—your own creativity, your own ingenuity, the ability to bind people to you with positive relationships—was what made the difference.”

She looked up at him and made a shrewd guess. “And that’s why a man with a doctorate in Near Eastern Studies is pursuing an MBA.”

He glanced up, then looked out across the campus. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I guess it is. I’ve always enjoyed teaching, but I’ve felt so stifled lately, so boxed in. This kind of stuff just rejuvenates me.”

They had reached the Volkswagen. Marc unlocked the door and threw his briefcase in the back. Valerie looked up at him and smiled. “Well, tomorrow when you see your colleague, you can tell him that the last laugh is on him. I really enjoyed the lecture.”

“Good.” He shut the door and came around to the driver’s side. As he slid in and inserted the key in the ignition, he paused. “Would you like some ice cream or something?”

She leaned her head back against the headrest. “Not really, unless you do.”

“Would you like to do four laps around the parking lot before we drive home? I’d be happy to drive along with you.”

“You’re never going to forgive my sins, are you?” she laughed.

He turned the key, liking the way she laughed—deep, with softness and rich with enjoyment. But instantly his face fell. The engine of the VW did not turn over. Not even a whimper. Surprised, he released the key, pumped the gas pedal twice, then tried again—with exactly the same results. Valerie sat back up again and turned to watch. He waited a full ten seconds and tried again. Nothing.

“Wouldn’t you know it,” he said in disgust. He opened the door and got out.

Valerie was fighting back a smile. “My mother warned me about California boys. Are you sure this isn’t a put-on?”

He pulled a face at her and walked around to the rear of the car, mumbling to himself. He opened the hood, wiggled a couple of wires, tentatively poked at something that resembled a greasy tin can, put his foot on the bumper, and bounced the car up and down a couple of times, then came back around and slid in alongside Valerie.

Now Valerie was appropriately serious. “Can you see what’s the matter?”

He shook his head. “I was only joking about the four laps around the parking lot. How about a quick fifty-mile run out to Claremont?” He turned the key once more, without much hope. His expectations were correct. The car was dead.

“Wonderful!”

“What if we push it?”

Thoroughly disgusted now, Marc surveyed the situation. There was a slight incline to the parking lot, but he had parked facing uphill. “It’s worth a try. Can you steer if I push us around? There’s a bit of a hill going the other way.”

“Sure.”

As Marc got out, Valerie slid across into the driver’s seat, careful not to snag her nylons on the gear shift. He rolled down the window, then shut the door and leaned down. “Have you ever done this before?”

“I used to drive a Beetle. How do you think I got started into running?”

Getting the car turned around was easy enough, and Marc stepped to the window again. “Is the ignition on?”

“Right.”

“Are you in second gear?”

“Yes.”

“Then here we go.” He leaned into the door, and the little car began to roll.

“Now!”

Valerie popped the clutch. The car bucked heavily, lurching to a stop. They tried it three more times with exactly the same result.

“It’s no use. She’s not going to start.”

Valerie shook her head, feeling bad now that she had teased him about it. She could tell he was terribly embarrassed by it all.

“Problems?”

That brought both Marc and Valerie around with a snap. Two cars had pulled up alongside the VW. The first one was a white Mercedes 450 SL convertible. The second he didn’t recognize. It was low to the ground—not much higher than Marc’s belt buckle—and a gleaming metallic blue. It looked like a cross between a Formula I racer and air-to-air missile. The engine purred deeply, like some jungle cat after a successful kill.

The window of the sports car was down, but in the glare of the overhead arc lights Marc couldn’t make out the driver. Then the doors of both cars opened. A stunning black-haired woman got out of the Mercedes, then Alex Barclay stepped out of the blue sports car. Surprised, Marc opened the door for Valerie, and she got out of the VW as the two joined them.

“Won’t she start?” Barclay asked.

“No way. She’s gone.”

“I can help push it.”

Marc shook his head. “We tried that. It’s no use. It’s completely dead. Thanks anyway, Mr. Barclay.”

The older man’s eyes widened. “You know me?”

“I was in the lecture.”

“Oh, of course. In fact—” He peered at him. “You asked a question, didn’t you?”

Marc flushed slightly, pleased to be remembered. “Yes. My name is Marc Jeppson. This is Valerie Robertson.”

Barclay stuck out his hand, gripping Marc’s firmly, and nodded to Valerie. “This is my executive secretary, Jacqueline Ashby. Jackie, actually.”

“How do you do?” Jackie smiled and stuck out her hand to both of them. First class all the way, Valerie noted, feeling suddenly very plain. Hairdo, makeup, clothes, figure. This was a very lovely woman.

“The faithful secretary sacrifices evening at home to listen to the boss’s lecture.” Alex made it a compliment even though it was said lightly. Alex turned to survey the VW. “That’s too bad about your car.”

“Yeah,” Marc answered glumly. “I don’t understand. I just had it tuned up two weeks ago. And it ran fine all the way in.”

“So what are you going to do with it?”

“Why? Do you want to trade?”

For one split second Barclay looked startled, then he laughed deeply, Jackie and Valerie joining in.

“Well,” Marc added, straight-faced, “You’d have to throw in the all-leather steering wheel cover.”

“Whoo-ee,” Barclay chuckled, “that isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

Marc shrugged. “What kind is it, anyway?”

“A Lamborghini Contach Five Thousand.”

“How about my car and a couple of thousand?”

“How about your car and ninety-five thousand?” Jackie laughed. It could have been barbed, but her look made it clear she had joined in the game.

Marc whistled softly. “Ninety-five thousand! My eight-yearold son would go bananas just to see it.”

“Then we’ll have to make sure he sees it,” Alex went on. “But actually what I was going to ask was, where do you live?”

“Claremont.”

“Let’s see…”

“That’s out near Pomona, isn’t it?” Jackie broke in.

“Yes.”

“Do you have a mechanic in this part of town?” Barclay asked.

“No.”

“Well, I do, over in Culver City. He’s terrific. If you have it towed to Claremont, it’s going to cost you a bundle. I’ll call him and have him pick it up.” It was obvious that in Barclay’s mind, the whole thing was settled. “Just leave the key in the ignition.”

Marc shook his head. “Look, Mr. Barclay—”

“Alex, please.”

“Okay, Alex. I—”

“You’re worried about how you’re going to get home, right?”

“Well, yeah. The thought had crossed my mind.”

“I’d be delighted to run you and Valerie home.”

Marc’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut again. “That’s fifty miles from here! If you could just get us to a bus stop, that would be great.”

“At this hour of the night? In this part of town, even the bus drivers mug the passengers.”

Jackie stepped forward and touched her boss’s arm. “Alex, I have an idea. There’s not room in either of our cars for three people. Why don’t we let them take one of the cars? We can switch back once Harvey checks out the VW.”

Alex quickly cut in on Marc’s protest before it was fully formed. “Great idea, Jackie!” He reached into the Lamborghini and pulled out the keys. “Here, Marc, you take this, and I’ll call you tomorrow—”

“Mr. Bar—Alex! I can’t take your car!”

“Why not?” he asked as if the answer were not really obvious.

“Well, for one thing, I live in a very high-class neighborhood. You just don’t drive up in any old car. What would the neighbors say.”

Again that won him a hearty laugh from Alex.

“How about mine?” Jackie asked. “Even I’m intimidated by Alex’s Lamborghini.”

Marc was completely nonplussed now. “Really, this is very kind of you, but I can’t.”

“It’s the company car,” Jackie smiled. “If you wreck it, I’d have to get a new one. That wouldn’t be all bad.”

“Then it’s settled,” Alex said firmly. “Jackie only lives a few miles from my home. I’ll drop her off.”

“Alex,” Marc tried again. “I just can’t.”

“Nonsense.” His eyes suddenly narrowed suspiciously. “Do
you belong to a men’s club?” “What?”

“A men’s club. Do you belong to any men’s clubs?” Valerie nodded, understanding, but Marc was still lost. “No,
why?”

“Do you know anyone in the market for widgets?”

Marc smiled, finally catching up. “No, I don’t think I do.”

Alex clapped him on the shoulder. “Then what’s to worry?

Grab your things—you just got yourself a ride home.”

Marc swung the Mercedes into the driveway of the Robertson home, which was only one street over from his own, and turned off the lights and the engine. Valerie’s head was back against the seat, and he looked to see if her eyes were open.

She turned her head slightly. “I appreciate you bringing me home in the style to which I’ve grown accustomed.”

“Isn’t this something? I can’t believe it. I can’t believe the whole night, as a matter of fact.”

She pulled a face. “Thanks a lot.”

“I didn’t mean you—that part has been delightful. It’s just everything else.”

“I know. When you think about it, it really was something for him to lend his car to a total stranger.”

He wrinkled his nose. “I still can’t believe the VW. That is really strange. I just had it tuned up.”

Valerie opened the door a crack. “Well, in spite of it all, I had a delightful time. Thank you very much.”

“Thank you. I really enjoyed it too.”

She swung her legs out.

“Valerie?”

She turned back.

“Running is really hard on your body. Have you ever tried racquetball?”

“Once or twice.” She shook her head. “I’m terrible at it.”

He grinned wickedly. “That’s wonderful. How would you like to try a game tomorrow night?”

Chapter Seven

Nearly eight thousand miles east of Claremont, California, the sun was just coming up over the peaks of the Jungfrau Massif in central Switzerland. Quinn Gerritt stood at the bedroom window of his luxurious chalet, watching the light tip the peaks with gold. He reached for a set of binoculars on the dressing table, adjusted the focus slightly, then began sweeping slowly down the narrow valley, past the tiny village of red-roofed houses. The sound of the helicopter was growing louder. Then he had it. The helicopter was coming in from the direction of Interlaken, and though it was still too far away to see the circular GI logo, the red-and-white markings were unmistakeably those of the Gerritt Industries.

Behind him, Jessica Gerritt stirred lazily. “Is that them?” she murmured.

“Yes.” He turned. She was sprawled across the bed like a contented cat, one hand tucked under the spray of honey-blond hair that covered the pillow.

Gerritt walked to the bed, leaned over, and kissed her. Her eyes opened, and she smiled, then reached up and touched his cheek. Jessica Hawthorne had been on her way to a highly successful modeling career, with screen opportunities likely to follow, when Quinn Gerritt had met her, dazzled her with a jet-set courtship, and proposed three weeks later. Seven years later, it was one of the few things that virtually everyone agreed he had done right.

“Are you sure you don’t need help down there?” she asked.

“I’m sure. Freda set everything out before she went in to the village. And Karl is out back if I need him.”

The clear blue eyes closed slowly again, long lashes lying softly on her cheeks. “Good,” she purred. “This is a ridiculous hour to hold a meeting anyway.”

“Anything before noon is ridiculous to you,” he agreed amiably. Then, conscious that the noise from the helicopter had ceased, he straightened. “We may have to go back to the States tomorrow.”

Jessica turned over on her side. “Whatever,” she mumbled, already sinking back into sleep. Gerritt patted her arm softly, then rose and exited the room.

The east end of the living room of the chalet was a two-story wall of glass framing a panorama that stunned the eyes and made one involuntarily draw in a breath. To the south, the village of Lauterbrunnen lay below them, looking much like a miniature cluster of Monopoly houses flung across a board of unbelievable green. Behind it, a sheer granite cliff provided the leaping-off point for a thundering waterfall that dropped nine hundred eighty-four feet to the valley floor. Above and beyond the falls were the knife-edged peaks of the Jungfrau—the Wetterhorn, the Schreckhorn, the Eiger, the Monch, the Jungfrau itself—jagged masses of granite towering to the thirteen-thousand-foot level and beyond.

Gerritt sat with his back to the window, facing the two men who had come on the helicopter to the village, then motored up to the chalet. As they sipped their coffee, he studied them. Rarely were these men totally at ease in his presence, though he had worked with them for a combined total of over twenty years. But it was more than that now. He had seen it in the nervous flutter of their fingers, the quick aversion of the eyes when he looked at them, the shifting of their weight now as he watched them steadily.

These were shrewd, bold men, tenacious in every respect. One did not come into senior management positions, at least not in Gerritt Industries, by ducking confrontations or sidestepping the unpalatable. But they were on edge, more than he had ever seen them before.

Quinn Gerritt had been born to wealth, and the fates had seen fit to dress him in the physical presence that his position required. In his midfifties, his blond hair was still thick and full with only the first touches of gray. His face was sharply cut, angular, almost too narrow, but a full mouth and ready smile softened it without making him look weak. Most people found Quinn Gerritt charming, witty, and immensely likeable. Only his eyes hinted at the combination of drive, power, and ruthless determination that was the real Quinn Gerritt. And now he focused those eyes on Michael Shurtliff, senior vice-president of Gerritt Industries.

“All right, Michael,” Gerritt finally said, “cut the fancy dancing. What’s the bottom line?”

Shurtliff, a short but stocky man with jowls that made him look a bit like a bulldog, took a deep breath. “The bottom line is, Gerritt Industries is bankrupt.”

A nervous tic started pulling at the corner of his mouth. When Gerritt continued to watch him with those pale blue eyes, he licked his lower lip quickly. “The final blow came yesterday. Bank of America called. We have until the first of the month to meet that twenty million dollar note or we go into receivership.”

Theodore Wuthrich, controller and senior accountant, jumped in. He was a small man, nervous and quick, and his voice was high-pitched now with the strain. “We’ve been late on payroll in three of the four divisions for the last two pay periods. The unions have given us the ultimatum. One more and they walk.”

“Ted, you’ve been crying in your beer for a year and a half,” Gerritt said contemptuously. He slipped into a whining, singsong voice, “‘We can’t make payroll. We can’t pay the suppliers. We’re behind on our taxes.’” His voice suddenly took on a knife edge. “We haven’t gone belly up yet.”

“Yes we have!” Shurtliff cut in sharply. “What is it going to take to convince you? Come the first, we are belly up! Belly up, gutted, stuck on the spit, and roasted over the open coals.”

“It isn’t the first yet!” Gerritt snapped.

“Come on, Quinn!” Shurtliff shot back. “We’ve been on a collision course with disaster for five years. We haven’t put a dime into research and development. Our plants are ten years out of date. The last four products we’ve introduced have bombed. Our stock has fallen to three dollars a share! Three dollars. I mean, come on! We’ve begged and pleaded and warned, but all we ever get from you is there’s always tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is here. It’s over! We’re finished!”

Shurtliff sat back, breathing hard. Wuthrich was staring at him, half in awe, half in astonishment. For almost a full ten seconds, Gerritt stared at his senior vice-president, his mouth hard, but Shurtliff was through dodging. He met Gerritt’s gaze with a fury of his own.

“Did you tell the bank about Taggart and the radar system?”

“Sure. Bring a signed contract with Taggart’s name on it, and a ten percent payment on the note, then they’ll talk.”

Gerritt loosed a string of bitter expletives describing the mental capacities of all bankers in general, and the Bank of America specifically. “And what about Taggart?” he finally asked.

Wuthrich rich looked quickly at Shurtliff, who nodded. “Meet his price and he’ll sign tomorrow,” Wuthrich said. “Otherwise, he won’t budge.”

“Why should he?” Shurtliff blurted. “Jonathan Taggart has developed the most significant breakthrough in radar technology in the last ten years. If he goes to Hughes or TRW, they’ll snap him up so fast he’ll wonder why he ever gave us first option.”

“He gave us first option because he’s one of our engineers!” Gerritt shouted.

The senior vice-president sighed and leaned forward. “Quinn, we’ve plowed that ground a thousand times. We have no legal hold on him. He developed this totally on his own. It was not a Gerritt Industries project.”

Off somewhere in the house a phone began to ring. Shurtliff turned to look, but Gerritt ignored it.

“I’ll talk to him again,” Gerritt said, for the first time badgered by the brutal finality of their logic.

“You’ve talked to him already!” Shurtliff exploded. “Four different times. I’ve talked to him. Ted’s talked to him. We’ve wined and dined and cursed and pleaded. He’s not going to change his mind. You either put four hundred fifty thousand dollars on the table or you’re whistling in a wind tunnel.”

The sound of a door opening and closing caused them all to look up. Jessica Gerritt came to the railing of the loft above them, tying the sash on her robe. She leaned over, ignoring the two men with her husband. “Quinn, that was Maurice on the phone. He’s having a private showing of his winter designs this afternoon. He wants me to fly up.”

“Fine. Tell Peter to keep the jet in Paris. I’m going home tomorrow. I’ll meet you there.”

She blew him a kiss, started to sweep away, then turned back. “I’ll need a letter of credit. Ten thousand dollars should be plenty.”

Gerritt nodded absently. “Ted, there’s a typewriter in the study. Can you draft that for her?”

Theodore Wuthrich just stared, his mouth open.

“Quinn!” Shurtliff was also widemouthed in disbelief.

“What?” Gerritt was still preoccupied.

Shurtliff threw up his hands. “Hasn’t anything we’ve said all morning gotten through to you?”

Gerritt’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward slowly. “Yes, Michael, it has. Why do you ask?”

Shurtliff flinched, chilled by the sudden tautness in Gerritt’s voice. But then he straightened. Quinn Gerritt was not the only one going down with this ship. “I ask,” he retorted bitterly, “because normally—” He stopped, suddenly realizing that Jessica Gerritt had returned to the rail and was watching them with a faint smile of contempt.

He took a deep breath. “Because normally, a man staring bankruptcy in the face doesn’t send his wife on a private jet to Paris with a ten thousand dollar letter of credit in her purse.”

Gerritt shot out of his chair, his face livid. “You listen to me, Mr. Senior Vice-President! The day I cannot take care of my wife’s needs will be the day you and this toadie you brought with you will be out on the streets peddling toilet paper! I am Gerritt Industries! Do you understand that?” His voice had gone shrill and piercing. “I am Gerritt Industries! We are bankrupt if and only if I tell you that we are bankrupt. Is that clear?”

The color completely drained from Shurtliff’s face as the withering onslaught smashed at him. Wuthrich’s hand fluttered to his tie, which bulged out momentarily as he swallowed hard.

“I asked you a question, Mr. Shurtliff! I said, is that clear?”

“Yes, Mr. Gerritt.”

“Are we bankrupt, Mr. Shurtliff?”

“No sir, not until you say we are.”

“Then why is Mr. Wuthrich standing here with his thumb in his ear like some retarded tree sloth? Why isn’t he in the study typing a letter for my wife?”

Wuthrich jumped as though someone had stuck him with a red-hot sliver of iron. He was up and out of his chair and scurrying across the living room like a startled chipmunk. Shurtliff looked up in time to see Jessica give him a tiny smile of triumph and disappear. Disgusted he stood up abruptly. “I need a smoke.”

“Not in here, you don’t!”

“I’m well aware of your habits, Mr. Gerritt,” he muttered. “I’ll be outside.”

He moved to the door, not waiting for Gerritt’s permission. As he opened it, Gerritt spoke softly. “Michael.”

Shurtliff stopped, not turning around.

“When you hear the crack of the hammer and the cry of ‘Sold!’ then you can talk to me about bankruptcy. But not before, Mister. Not one minute before.”

Shurtliff paused for only a second, then walked out, shutting the door firmly behind.

Chapter Eight

This close to the coast, the sky was gray and overcast, with just a trace of mist in the air. Marc was driving the Mercedes convertible slowly down Sepulveda Boulevard in Culver City when Brett leaned forward pointing. “There it is, Dad!”

“Where?” Matthew cried.

“See the red-and-blue sign? On the other side of the street.”

Marc saw it then, pulled into the left lane, and started blinking. Even this early on a Saturday morning, the noise of the traffic on the San Diego Freeway, which ran parallel to them, was a steady roar.

“Edwards Automotive.” Brett read slowly as Marc waited for a break in the oncoming traffic. “Yup. That’s it, Dad.”

“Yes, it is.” He made the turn and drove through the chain link gate that had been pulled open. “Look, Alex is already here.”

“I see the Lamborghini!” Brett shouted excitedly.

“Where?” Matt said, not knowing what he was looking for.

“The blue car, Matt. Isn’t it cool?”

“I dubs it!”

A Ford pickup was parked next to the sports car, and Marc pulled in alongside it and shut off the motor. Edwards Automotive consisted of a small fenced yard with several cars parked around the perimeter, some in the process of being dismantled. The building itself had three high garage doors marking the repair bays, and a regular door on one end, with “Office” written on it. Above the larger doors, in red-and-blue letters ran the options: “Tune-ups—Alignment—Major and Minor Repairs—Radiators—Transmissions.”

As they got out, Alex Barclay came out of the office door, followed by a black man in coveralls. Alex was dressed casually—gray plaid shirt, heavy-knit white cardigan sweater with shawl collar, white trousers, and grey mesh duck shoes. The top two buttons of the shirt had been left open. A gold necklace lay against the thick tangle of black and grey hair on his chest. It was, Marc supposed, what some of his students would call laid back and mellow. And it reeked of money.

“Good morning, Marc,” Alex called. “Looks like you found it.”

Marc took Alex’s outstretched hand, and they shook firmly. “Yes, your directions were easy to follow.”

“Good. Harv, this is Marc Jeppson. Marc, meet Harvey Edwards, the best darn mechanic west of the Mississippi.”

“Well, at least west of the Colorado,” Edwards said with a grin. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jeppson.” His voice was a rich tenor and pleasant. He was close to forty, built like a long-distance runner, and had quick dark eyes. They shook hands, Marc finding himself liking the man almost instantly.

“These are my sons, Brett and Matthew.” He turned, but there were no boys alongside. He looked around in surprise as Alex chuckled deeply. Both boys were at the Lamborghini, Brett pointing out the features in a low voice.

“Brett, Matt! Come over here.”

They came over immediately, Brett looking sheepish. “This is Brett, and this is Matthew. Boys, this is Mr. Barclay and Mr. Edwards.”

They shook hands shyly, then Brett glanced quickly over his shoulder. “You sure have a neat car, Mr. Barclay.”

“Why thank you, Brett,” Alex said seriously. “Would you like to sit in it?”

Brett’s eyes widened in disbelief. Matt’s head bobbed up and down like a piston.

“Oh no,” Marc said quickly. “You just look at it from outside.”

“Come on, Dad,” Alex chided. “A couple of good-looking boys like these two won’t hurt anything. Will you?”

The deep sobriety as they both shook their heads caused Edwards to laugh in delight. “Well, you’ve got to admit,” he said, “they know class when they see it.”

“Go on,” Alex said, waving his arm. “It’s all right.”

“Brett, watch Matt!” Marc called as they darted away. “And don’t touch anything.”

“They’ll be fine, Marc. Those are two fine boys you have there.”

Edwards clapped Marc on the shoulder. “Well, let’s go in and take a look at this car of yours.” He turned and went through the office door. As they followed, Marc noted the sign in the window giving the hours of business. The last line read: Closed Saturdays and Sundays. Closed Saturdays for everyone except Alex Barclay, Marc decided.

The repair area was neat and well kept, with tools and other equipment lining the walls. They were the only ones in the shop. Marc’s Volkswagen was on one of the hoists, about three feet off the ground.

Edwards slapped it on the rear fender. “This look familiar?”

“Afraid so. How bad is it?”

“Well, let’s just say if I were a doctor, I’d call in the family to break the news.”

Marc’s face fell.

“The engine is gone.”

“Great!” Marc muttered, eyeing the rusting fenders.

“So it’s beyond hope?” Barclay spoke up.

“No, I said this engine has had it. But I’ve found a good rebuilt engine. They’ll deliver it Monday. I can have it in and running by next Friday.”

“Great!” Barclay said. “That’s really great, Harv.” He turned to Marc. “See what I mean?”

“But I can’t—” He stopped as both men looked at him. “Look, I really appreciate this, but a new engine will cost more than the car is worth.”

“If you’re talking resale value,” Edwards agreed. “But with it you can get another fifty to seventy-five thousand miles.”

“I know, but what’s a new engine going to cost?”

“Is that your only concern?” Edwards said with a slow smile. “The money?”

Barclay watched, amused. Marc looked down. It grated on him to have to admit it in front of Barclay, but reality was reality. “Yeah,” he said shortly, “that’s a problem.”

“Well, then, let’s negotiate a price you can live with.”

“Look,” Barclay said quickly, “while you two are doing that, I need to make a call. Can I use your phone, Harvey?”

“Sure thing. You need a book?”

“No.” Barclay turned on his heel and went in the office.

“Well, let’s see what we can do, Mr. Jeppson,” Edwards said, his smile even broader than before. Marc had the distinct impression Edwards was enjoying this.

“Really,” Marc went on. “I appreciate your looking at it, but…”

“Are you familiar with Griswold’s?” Edwards asked, still smiling.

“What?”

“Griswold’s Restaurant. Do you know it?”

“Yes. In fact, there’s one not far from our home.”

“I know. Mr. Barclay said you were from Claremont.”

“Yes, I’ve eaten there several times.”

“Is it as good as they say?”

“I like it very much.”

“Good. How about this? If you and your wife treat me and my wife to dinner at Griswold’s, my crew and I will put a new engine in your Volkswagen. Does that sound fair?”

Marc just stared at him.

Edwards laughed right out loud. “I’m deadly serious.” Then he held up his hands. “Look, before you answer, let me tell you a story. A true story, in fact.”

“Okay.” Marc was still reeling, trying to catch up with what the man was saying.

“Three years ago, this guy comes in to my garage. He said his gas tank had a leak in it. I checked it out, found that it did, and fixed it. I billed him something like thirty-three bucks. Okay?”

Marc nodded.

“Two weeks later this guy’s wife is rear-ended by a delivery truck. The car bursts into flames. She escaped but had secondand third-degree burns over a good part of her body. She was hospitalized for several months. Next thing I know, I was slapped with a three-and-a-half-million-dollar law suit for negligence and malicious dereliction of duty.

“Things started to unravel pretty quickly then. Within two weeks, my insurance company had managed to wiggle out on a technicality. I’m on my own, they politely inform me. The other guy’s lawyer, dripping with sorrow for my plight, generously offers to settle out of court for half a million bucks.”

The smile had disappeared, and a deep bitterness had hardened Edwards mouth. “Three different lawyers told me I didn’t stand a chance of winning, that I was crazy not to settle. You with me so far?”

“Half a million!” Marc echoed.

“Right. It meant my garage, my home, my savings—a life’s work and then some.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, one day I was working on a car for one of my regular customers. By now I have ulcers, I’ve lost twenty pounds and look like an anemic zombie. So this guy asks me why I look so terrible. Before I know it, I’ve spilled out the whole story to him, him all the time nodding, first with sympathy, then with anger.”

Suddenly Marc saw where all this was leading. “Alex Barclay!” he blurted.

“Exactly,” Edwards said. “He left that day without saying much more. But that afternoon, I got a call from one of the most prestigious law firms in Los Angeles. They send a lawyer out. He takes everything down, nods, makes notes, nods, makes notes, shakes my hand, says, ‘Mr. Edwards, we think we can help you. You’ll hear from us.’”

He stopped, his eyes glistening. “Three weeks to the day, the same lawyer comes out again, shows me a paper. It’s from the law firm of the guy suing me. The suit has been dropped. All action on their part is suspended. The lawyer shakes my hand, says, ‘If you hear anything more—anything at all—let me know.’ He waves good-bye and drives away, leaving me standing there bawling like a baby.”

“There were no legal fees from the firm?”

“None. At least not for me. I don’t know what they did or how they did it, but it was done!”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that! Ever since then, I’ve been trying to find a way to say thank you to Mr. Barclay. I give him free service, but shoot, he only drives brand-new luxury cars. I change his oil and give him a tune up now and then, but that’s all. Your little VW is the first real chance I’ve had to pay the man back. There’ll be no cost to you, and no cost to him. Do you understand, Mr. Jeppson?”

“I understand,” Marc said softly, looking past Edwards to where Barclay was talking on the phone. “I understand even more than you think.”

“Good. The dinner at Griswold’s isn’t necessary. The engine is on me, either way.”

Marc stuck out his hand. “Harvey, my wife died a couple of years ago, but I think I know a young lady who will join me, and we would be delighted to spend an evening with you and your wife. And the dinner is on us.”

Edwards grinned, his eyes sparkling. “Then, Mr. Jeppson, it looks like you and I have a deal.”

Valerie was at the sink, peeling potatoes, when she heard a car door slam and Brett’s voice crying, “Mary! Mary!”

Her mother looked up from her needlepoint. “What’s that?”

“It sounds like Brett.”

There was a pounding on the back door, and Valerie wiped her hands on her apron and walked over to open it. Matt and Brett were there, grinning like they had just won a year’s supply of jelly beans.

“Valerie! Come and see!” Matthew grabbed her hand and started tugging on it. “Come and see what Daddy’s got.”

“Come on, Mary,” Brett joined in. “You’ll never believe it.”

As they came out the door, Valerie stopped. Marc was leaning with casual nonchalance against the blue Lamborghini parked in the driveway. Matt dragged her forward again. “Isn’t it cool, Valerie?”

Brett, striving to be more adult, simply went and stood by his dad, beaming proudly.

“Well,” Valerie said, as she walked around it slowly. “I suppose a Mercedes convertible is a little tacky.”

Marc grinned, no longer able to contain himself. “I fought him, believe it or not. But saying no to Alex Barclay is like spitting into high surf. You may feel a little better for doing it, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.”

“You mean he let you borrow this one too?” Mary said.

“Yup,” Brett said matter-of-factly. “Ours won’t be done until Friday.”

“Which is a story in and of itself,” Marc said. He quickly told Mary and Valerie about Harv Edwards.

“I can’t believe it,” Valerie said when he finished. “A new engine for two dinners.”

“Remember what Alex said in the lecture about creating leverage? I think we just witnessed it in action. Harvey Edwards was actually delighted to find a way to repay Alex.”

“He took us to his warehouse,” Brett broke in, his eyes shining. “I got to shoot an Uzi!”

“A what?” Mary said.

Matt stuck out his chest proudly. “Even I know what an Uzi is.”

“Well, I don’t, so you’d better tell me.”

“An Uzi is a gun,” Matt said solemnly. “It shoots real fast.”

Brett nodded. “It’s the world’s best submachine gun. It’s made in Israel. It’s named after the man who made it.”

“He shot a submachine gun?” Valerie turned to Marc in surprise.

“Among other things,” Marc answered. He nodded to Brett to continue, not wanting to lessen his moment of glory.

“Mr. Barclay sells all kinds of guns,” Brett went on. “He’s got a whole firing range in the basement of his warehouse. I shot pistols and rifles and submachine guns. It was so neat! You should have been there.”

Matt was tugging at Valerie again. “I got to put ear muffs on while Brett and Daddy shot the guns.”

“Well,” Mary said, shaking her head at Marc, “I’m glad that at least you had sense enough not to let Matthew shoot them.”

“Matt got to drive the boat instead.”

“The boat?”

“Yeah!” Matt’s eyes were round and shining with excitement. “It’s a great big boat, and I got to steer it all by myself.”

Marc’s face still registered disbelief. “He took us down to the marina. You wouldn’t believe it. This is not some motorboat. It’s a small yacht. I mean, a full-blown yacht. It sleeps ten comfortably.”

Valerie went down to one knee so she was looking Matt in the face. “You’ve had quite a day of it, haven’t you?”

He nodded solemnly. “And besides that, Jackie took us to lunch, and I got my very own can of pop.”

“Jackie?” Valerie looked up at Marc, who nodded.

“She’s Alex’s secretary,” Brett supplied. “She’s really nice.”

“And she’s pretty too,” Matt said.

Valerie straightened. “I know,” she said slowly. “I met her last night.”

Matt tugged at her again, and when she leaned down, he put his arms around her neck and whispered in her ear, loud enough for all of them to hear, “I think you’re pretty too.”

“Well, thank you, Matthew. What a sweet thing to say.” She hugged him back, and he ducked his head in embarrassment.

“I’m really hurt,” Mary said, making a long face. “I thought you were my boyfriend.”

Matt immediately pulled away and darted to her side. “You’re not just pretty,” he said loyally. “I love you.”

“Oh, brother,” Marc laughed. “Talk about the diplomat.”

Brett tapped Marc’s arm. “Can I go tell Jed now, Dad?”

Marc shook his head. “We’ll be going home in just a minute.”

“It’s only a couple of blocks,” Brett pleaded. “Please!”

“Oh, I don’t care. Go on!”

Brett gave a whoop and was off on a dead run.

“Well,” Marc said, as he turned back to Valerie, “I came over to see if we might take a rain check on that racquetball tonight.”

There was one brief look of surprise and disappointment, then she recovered. “Sure. That’s fine.”

“Trying to wean you away from your running habit with racquetball is the easy way out. Wanna go cold turkey?”

She looked at him quizzically.

“How about spending an hour or two perfectly motionless in the bucket seat of a Lamborghini Contach Five Thousand?”

Valerie’s eyes were sparkling, though she kept her expression sober. “Could I think about jogging just a little?”

“No way. Cold turkey is cold turkey.”

“I’ll come over and stay with the boys,” Mary said, trying not to appear too pleased.

“No,” Marc said. “I can get a baby-sitter.”

Mary put her arm around Matt’s shoulders and gave him a squeeze. “Nonsense. After the compliment Matt just gave me, I wouldn’t think of sharing this boy with anyone else.”

“Well, all right,” Marc said.

“Yippee!” Matt yelled, throwing his arms around Mary’s legs.

Valerie turned back to Marc. “What does one wear to go riding in a Lamborghini?”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry, Miss. Alex Barclay is Lamborghini people. Marc Jeppson is pure Volkswagen Beetle.”

Chapter Nine

Quinn Gerritt, president and CEO of Gerritt Industries, was at the window of his office, staring down at the traffic on Wilshire Boulevard thirty-three stories below him. It was a gray, drizzly November morning, and the cars were moving slowly, though his thoughts were far from centering on the traffic flow. The intercom buzzed, and he moved to his desk and punched a button.

“Mr. Gerritt. A Mr. Andrew Hadlow is here to see you.”

Gerritt frowned. Andrew Hadlow? Somewhere far back in his mind that rang a bell.

“He doesn’t have an appointment, but he says he met you at a cocktail party at Mr. Perotti’s house several months ago.”

“Oh, yes.”

His secretary lowered her voice. “He said it’s about our financial problems. That’s all he would say, Mr. Gerritt.”

“All right. When I buzz you, send him in. And hold all calls.”

He sat down and leaned back. Perotti. The enigma. When he and Jessica had gotten the invitation to the cocktail party at Perotti’s house, Gerritt had been totally surprised. And totally intrigued. Perotti lived more than a mile away in a massive home on the crest of a ridge overlooking the Pacific. He had said then that he wanted to get to know some of the neighbors, but many closer “neighbors” had not been invited. Afterward, Gerritt checked to find out who Perotti was but turned up little. He was into real estate, owned an import-export business, had major interests in some financial institutions. There were recurring hints that Perotti was tied to organized crime, but Gerritt had shrugged those aside. Someone always threw in organized crime when they couldn’t pin down a man’s source of wealth. But whatever it was, one thing was certain. Lyman Perotti was big money.

Gerritt opened the lower drawer on his desk, checked the cassette in the built-in recorder, flipped a switch, then shut the drawer again. He leaned forward and punched the intercom. “Send Mr. Hadlow in, please.”

Hadlow was short, no more than five seven. His hair was jet black and graying at the temples. He combed it straight back, which added to the severity of his angular features. His eyes were a pale blue, like Gerritt’s, but alert, always moving. The suit was custom tailored; the shoes, Italian. Even the briefcase was pure elegance. Clearly, Mr. Hadlow did very well in his own right.

Gerritt came from behind his desk and extended his hand. “Mr. Hadlow, good to see you again.”

“Thank you.”

Gerritt motioned him to a chair, then drew another up across from it. “Can I get you a drink?”

Hadlow smiled as he shook his head. It was a smile that only touched the surface of his face. The eyes remained cool and aloof.

“How is Mr. Perotti?”

“Fine. He sends his regards.”

Gerritt nodded and leaned back. Hadlow had obviously not come to see how things had gone since the party.

“I apologize for coming without a prior appointment.”

Gerritt waved that away.

“But we understand the timing is critical.”

“Timing?”

“Yes. Before Gerritt Industries goes into receivership.”

Gerritt swore inwardly. He knew that rumors about the company’s troubles were rampant, but the receivership was strictly hush hush…

“Look, Mr. Gerritt, I’ll come right to the point. My people know all about your situation. We know about Bank of America. We know about the union’s ultimatum. We’ve seen the receivership papers that are being drawn up.”

Gerritt was struggling to keep his face impassive. Whoever “my people” included, they were up to the minute on the death struggles of Gerritt Industries.

“We think we could arrange some financing, if certain conditions were met.”

“Oh?”

Hadlow nodded in satisfaction. “Thank you. Expressions of shocked surprise and bland denials would have been a disappointment.”

Gerritt smiled fleetingly. “I must admit, you have my attention.”

“Please turn off the recorder and we can proceed.”

Again there was the quick temptation to bluff, instantly rejected. Gerritt shrugged, stood up, and walked around behind his desk.

As he came back to his chair, Hadlow was getting a paper from his briefcase. He handed it to Gerritt as he sat down again. “Are these figures correct?”

As Gerritt studied the sheet his amazement grew. It was all there—the note to Bank of America, the missed payrolls, back taxes, research and development needs, operating capital. It wasn’t to the penny, but the dollar figures were almost right on the nose. He looked up, not trying to disguise his surprise. “You’ve got it all.”

“All right. We have a group that will fund you the total amount, one percent above prime. Seventy-five percent of all profits will go toward the payback until fifty percent of the principal is paid back. Thereafter, fifty percent of the profits will go toward the pay back until the debt is retired. Agreed?”

Gerritt looked at him for several seconds. The conditions were stiff, but not unreasonable under the circumstances. Gerritt Industries was hardly providing the top collatoral. Finally he nodded. “Are those the only conditions?”

Hadlow’s eyes were expressionless. “First, two questions. Is the radar device your engineer developed—I think his name is Jonathan Taggart—as revolutionary as he claims it is?”

This time, Gerritt was openly stunned. Only he and his two top executives knew about that. In a world of rampant industrial espionage, secrecy was paramount. “Yes,” he said slowly.

“How long would it take to bring it into full production?”

He took a deep breath. “Two to three months to develop the prototype. If we pushed hard, we could complete testing in another six to eight weeks. We could also start tooling up during that time. I’d say six to nine months, altogether.”

“You’ve got six. Here are the conditions. You will meet with Jonathan Taggart at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. The appointment is already made in your name. You will offer him one hundred thousand dollars cash now, one hundred thousand more when the prototype is tested, and ten percent royalties on all sales.”

Gerritt was staring. “Are you crazy? I’ve offered him twice that, but he won’t budge. If we don’t give him four hundred fifty thousand by—”

Hadlow’s eyes had narrowed, and Gerritt felt a sudden chill. “Second condition. I will be appointed to the Board of Directors of Gerritt Industries as of this morning. I will not be a member of record or attend any meetings. You will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board, but I will be senior member next to you.”

Gerritt swallowed hard, then nodded. “Go on.”

“A Mr. Alex Barclay of Barclay Enterprises in El Segundo is beginning preliminary work on a major sale of jet aircraft to Saudi Arabia. There are a lot of competitors. Your radar package would go a long way to cementing the deal for him, not to mention creating about fifty or sixty million dollars worth of immediate business for Gerritt Industries.”

“How do you know all this?”

“When you make contact with Barclay, you are not to mention Mr. Perotti or myself in any way.” He paused, but Gerritt didn’t speak.

He took a small slip of paper from an inside pocket. “You will be having some openings on the night shift at the Hawthorne plant. These two men will be hired.”

He sat back, watching Gerritt closely.

Gerritt knew some kind of response was expected, but he was still a bit dazed.

“We have no desire to take Gerritt Industries away from you, Mr. Gerritt. If we did, we would have taken action after Bank of America made its move.”

“I understand that. Your offer is very generous.”

Hadlow stood, moved to the desk, and scribbled on a pad. He tore it off and handed it to Gerritt, who stood now also. “If the conditions are satisfactory, call me at this number once you have Mr. Taggart’s decision. Funds will be transferred immediately. If you decide you do not wish to work with us, simply cancel your appointment with Mr. Taggart.”

“What if I have further questions?”

“You know the conditions. You know the arrangements on the loan. There are no further questions. It’s either play or pass, Mr. Gerritt.”

Jonathan Taggart had come into the office of Quinn Gerritt promptly at nine o’clock the next morning. He had been in a jubilant mood then. Now he stared at the contract before him with disbelief. “A hundred thousand dollars…” He looked up. “Is this some kind of a joke, Mr. Gerritt?”

Gerritt was tipped back in his chair, fingertips pressed together. “No, Jonathan. In the long run, considering the royalties, you could come out of this with much more than what you are asking for.”

Taggart shook his head. He was a large man, thick through the shoulders and chest. He removed his glasses. “I told you before, I told Shurtliff, I told Wuthrich. I know what my design is worth.” His voice rose. “I didn’t have to come to Gerritt Industries. I’ve been more than fair with you.” He tossed the contract back across the desk with contempt. “And this is what I get.”

Gerritt picked up the contract and looked at it curiously. “I think you ought to consider this very carefully, Jonathan. Take the longer view.”

Taggart shot to his feet. “I don’t appreciate playing games, Mr. Gerritt. Good day.” He turned and stalked to the door.

“I’ll keep the offer open until tomorrow morning,” Gerritt called. Taggart didn’t break stride, just went out, leaving the door to close softly behind him.

Charlene Taggart was a junior at Cypress High School and one of the varsity cheerleaders. She and the rest of the cheerleading squad had just finished the pep assembly for that night’s game with Long Beach, and she was still flushed with excitement as she came to her locker.

“We’re gonna kill ‘em tonight, Char!” a student called out behind her.

“You better believe it!”

“Good job, Charlene!”

Charlene half turned and smiled at her English teacher as she opened her locker. “Thanks, Mrs. Townsend.”

As she turned back to get her books, the smile on Charlene Taggart’s face froze. Then she threw her hands to her face and screamed and screamed.

Staring out at her from the top shelf was the head of Charlene’s pure white Persian cat, Muffy.

Mildred Taggart looked up from her counted cross-stitch, then reached over and turned down the stereo. This was her favorite of all the Mozart piano concertos, and she had immersed herself in the sound. She waited, her head cocked. Then the doorbell rang again.

The man was dressed in a suit and a tie, and as she opened the door wider, she saw he had a wallet in his hand. There was a quick flash of a badge.

“Karl Belknap, Los Angeles Police Department, Ma’am. Are you Mrs. Jonathan Taggart?”

She felt a sudden lurch of fear. “Yes.”

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh no!”

“May I come in?”

“Of course.” She opened the door and stepped back. He smiled sadly as he entered, and she shut the door behind him. Mildred started for the living room when suddenly she felt him move behind her. There was not even time for a surprised gasp. One hand grabbed her arm and yanked it up viciously behind her, the other clamped over her nose and mouth. She fought wildly, flailing with her free arm, twisting her body, but she was like a child in the grip of some gargantuan creature. He pulled her body in against his, lifting her off the floor.

“Come on, Mrs. Taggart,” he hissed in her ear, “this won’t take but a minute.”

He pushed her, then dragged her down the hall toward the master bedroom. She clawed at him over her shoulder, tried to gouge his shins with her heels, but he just laughed and jerked her arm up higher toward her shoulder blade. The scream of pain choked off in her throat as he tightened the pressure across her nose and mouth. The terror of the man gave way to the greater terror of suffocation. Now her body fought too, chest heaving, muscles contracting in agony. But the grip only tightened, crushing her nose and lips against the bones of her face.

And then suddenly they were into the bedroom. He flung her away from him, sending her crashing into a chair, then onto the bed sprawling. In an instant she was on her back, scrambling away from him, eyes wide, gulping air in huge, desperate gasps.

The man watched her for a moment without moving, then straightened his tie, pulled down his coat, and ran his hand quickly through his hair. He smiled, that same sad smile she had seen in the entryway. “I would suggest you call your husband before you talk to the police, Mrs. Taggart.”

He nodded, turned, and was gone. Mildred Taggart leaped off the bed and ran to the door. She slammed it shut, fingers scrambling at the lock. When she felt it click, she collapsed to the floor and began to sob.

The car rounded the corner with screeching tires, hit the driveway with a bang, and slammed to a halt. Jonathan Taggart was out and running for the house, leaving the car door wide open. The hysterical, nearly incoherent call from his wife had completely shaken him.

He burst in the door, looking around wildly. Everything was in order. He darted down the hall to the bedroom, rattled the knob. Through the door he heard a soft cry, filled with terror.

“Mildred, it’s me!”

There was a sob of relief, a quick fumbling at the door, then it jerked open. Mildred Taggart threw herself into her husband’s arms. “Oh, Jonathan!”

“Daddy!” Charlene Taggart rose shakily from the bed. He opened one arm and swept her into his grasp along with her mother.

It took almost five minutes to calm them to the point where they could stammer out their stories, and even then he had to let them pause, as the horror of the morning would overwhelm them again and again. But when they were finished, a fury lay on Jonathan Taggart.

“Everything’s okay, now,” he soothed, moving them both over to the bed. “You just lie here. I’m going to call the police.”

“Don’t leave Jonathan!”

“I won’t, Mildred. I’ll be in the kitchen. But we need to get the police. You just stay here with Charlene.” He patted her hand and then pulled loose from her grip.

The muscles along his jaw pulled into a tight line as he picked up the phone and angrily punched out the 911 number. He put the phone to his ear. There was nothing. He hit the numbers again. They beeped in his ear, but again nothing happened. Then a sudden prickling went up his spine as he realized someone was breathing into the phone.

“Who is this? Who’s on the line?”

“Mr. Taggart?” It was a man’s voice, deep, rich, pleasant, and yet full of chilling menace.

“Who is this?”

“The police cannot help your family, Mr. Taggart. Only you can. If you choose to be difficult, we can find them anywhere, any time.”

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“Remember, only you can keep your family safe. Look on the front porch.”

There was an audible click, then the dial tone cut in.

Taggart stared at the phone, then put it back in its cradle slowly. He moved back into the entry hall and opened the front door. There was nothing on the porch. He opened the screen door to step outside, but it bumped up against something soft. He pushed harder, felt it give, then recoiled in horror. A dark red stain was on the cement. Taggart gave the screen a hard shove, stepped around it, and stared.

The headless body of Muffy was blocking the door through which he had entered his house just minutes before.

“Mr. Gerritt, Jonathan Taggart is on the phone.”

Gerritt was startled. It had been little more than an hour since Jonathan Taggart had left his office. “Put him on.”

“Mr. Gerritt?” There was a deep bitterness, but also resignation.

“Yes, Jonathan, this is Mr. Gerritt.”

“I’ve been talking over your offer with my wife.”

“Yes?”

“We’ve decided to accept. I’ll be in this afternoon to sign the contract.”

“Well,” Gerritt said, feeling a sudden chill of his own. Barely an hour! What had Hadlow done. He shrugged the thought off, not wanting to know. “Well, that’s a pleasant surprise. I know you won’t regret it.”

“Just tell your people.”

“What?”

“You know what I mean!” Taggart nearly shouted, then fought for control. “Just tell whoever you need to tell that we have accepted your offer.”

Chapter Ten

It was one of those winter days for which Southern California was justly famous. The overcast had burned off, and the temperature was nearing seventy, even though it was the first of December. Golfers were out on the course of the Wilshire Country Club in great numbers, taking advantage of the day.

The clubhouse sat at the eastern extremity of what surely must have been some of the most expensive recreational acreage in California. Sprawling fairways, immaculate greens, sand traps, water hazards, palm trees—hundreds of acres rambled through the heart of high-rise condominiums, office buildings, and expensive private homes in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

Jacqueline Ashby and Alex Barclay were on the front steps of the clubhouse, waiting for Marc. They had been chatting leisurely, but had fallen silent. Without looking at him, Jackie finally spoke. “I can take Marc to get his car, if you’d like.”

That brought a sharp look from Alex.

She smiled, knowing there was no hiding from his razor-sharp intuition. “Does that surprise you?”

“Well, yes, a little.”

“At first, on the night of the lecture, I just thought he was kind of cute. And nice. But then last Saturday, when he came to the office…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I could get interested.”

“Well, I did have an appointment right after lunch and was going to ask if you might have time to run Marc out to get his car.”

She laughed lightly. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I know, but adorably so, don’t you think?”

Again she laughed.

“Derek will be envious.”

Jackie gave a derisive hoot.

“No desire to return the rather obvious interest of Mr. Parkin?” Alex chuckled. “He’ll be crushed.”

“Only his ego, and I’m not sure it’s possible to crush that.”

“True. Derek does think rather highly of himself. But he’s competent. He’ll do for what we need.”

“How about Marc Jeppson?”

Alex bit his lip thoughtfully. “Still a little too early to tell. But so far, just as you, I kind of like what I see. Today will give us a better idea.”

“Well,” she said, looking up. “Here he comes, so let’s both of us move in a little closer and see if we like what we see.”

As Marc pulled the Lamborghini into the parking lot of the Wilshire Country Club, he was suddenly grateful Alex had insisted that they pick up the VW from Edwards Automotive after lunch and not before. The lot was like a dozen new car showrooms rolled into one. Mercedes dominated, with Lincolns and Cadillacs close behind. Sports cars were sprinkled liberally throughout. Marc could identify the Porsches and Corvettes, but several other sleek-looking ones were beyond him. Ferraris? Maseratis? Jaguars? He wasn’t even sure he knew all the names.

As he pulled into a parking space he took a deep breath. When he had called Alex the previous evening to arrange for the exchange of cars, Alex had insisted on lunch and named the place. After Marc hung up and told Mary and Valerie about it, his tone was awestruck enough that Mary had chided him a little for being so intimidated.

“Come on, Mary,” he had said, “this is one of the most exclusive country clubs in California. A membership costs twentyfive thousand dollars and monthly dues run just over a thousand a month. Wouldn’t that make you a little nervous?”

Valerie had looked up from the puzzle she was helping Matt and Brett put together. “He does that quite a lot, doesn’t he?”

“Who? Does what?”

“Alex. He likes to tell you how much things cost, doesn’t he?”

Marc, a little to his surprise, had jumped to Alex’s defense. “Why do you say that?”

She shrugged. “You know how much his car cost. He told you about his yacht and what he paid for it. Now the country club.”

“Well, it’s not like you think. It’s just that he—I don’t know. It’s just not like that.”

He shut off the engine of the Lamborghini with some regret. This would be his last time with it. After this, driving the Volkswagen would be like going from piloting high-performance jet aircraft to driving go-carts at the Kiddie Track. He gave one last look around, caressed the upholstery, then opened the door.

“Hello.”

He looked up in surprise and climbed out. “Hi, Jackie. I didn’t know you were coming.”

She was dressed in a light grey suit, white silk blouse with a ruffle at the throat, and matching gray hose and high-heel pumps. With her dark black hair and green eyes, she was stunning. Marc noticed the guard watching them with open admiration.

“I wasn’t,” she responded, “but Alex wanted me with him to check some things downtown, so he invited me along.” She tipped her head slightly to one side. “Do you mind?”

“Mind? Between driving up in the Lamborghini and you coming out to meet me, the security guard just violated every commandment ever made about coveting.”

She glanced quickly at the man, then laughed, a warm and delightful sound. She slipped her arm through his. “Then let’s make him think you’re the luckiest man in the club today.”

As he took another sip of his Perrier water with a dash of lime, Marc kept his face impassive. The stuff was awful. Flat bitterness with strong carbonation. The lime was the only redeeming quality to the whole drink. Well, maybe the ice too.

There had been no drinks listed on the menu. When the waiter—a young man in black coat and bow tie—had asked about their drinks, Jackie had said water was fine for her, but Alex had ordered the Perrier water. Feeling suddenly awkward, Marc had simply nodded. “That’s fine for me too.” He had barely stifled a shudder at the first sip, and now, with lunch cleared away, he was still nursing two thirds of his glass.

The other thing Marc had noticed about the menu was that there were no prices listed. Too gauche, he decided. A person shouldn’t be here in the first place if cost mattered.

“The other day you mentioned you teach at the Claremont Colleges,” Alex said, bringing Marc back to the present. “Is that in the college of business?”

“No. I’m in the Near Eastern Studies department.”

“Oh!” Alex seemed surprised. “I guess I assumed you were in business after seeing you at the lecture at UCLA.”

“No, I just started an MBA for fun.”

Jackie wrinkled her nose. “Fun? I could suggest half a million better ways to find relaxation.”

“Hmmmm,” Alex mused. “Near Eastern Studies. What does that include?”

“Oh, a variety of things. I teach classes in Islamic culture and religion, Near Eastern geography and history, that sort of thing. I also teach beginning and advanced Arabic.”

“Really?” Jackie said. She reached in her purse and brought out a long envelope. “Write me something in Arabic. I always thought their writing was so mysterious and so beautiful.”

Marc felt inside the pocket of his jacket and brought out a felt-tip pen. “Well, actually, I’ve been playing with some Arabic calligraphy lately. I’m not very good yet, but…“ He lapsed into silence and went to work on the envelope. Jackie pulled her chair around a little closer to watch him as he worked.

“The Islamic faith prohibits the representation of the human figure in art, and so calligraphy was developed as one of the alternatives. I think it’s one of the most beautiful of art forms.”

Long, flowing lines were starting to appear on the paper, curling, jutting up sharply, only to flow back in on themselves.

“That is beautiful,” Jackie said, more impressed than she had intended to be. “I mean really beautiful. What does it say?”

Marc finished, capped the pen, and pushed the envelope toward her. “That’s what is known as the Shahada—the profession of faith for a Muslim. It says, ‘There is no God but Allah. Mohammed is his messenger.’”

She handed it to Alex, who studied it with interest. “That really is remarkable, Marc.”

“Only because you don’t know Arabic. This is crude and poorly done. I have a framed picture in my office with the Shahada done fifteen different ways, each one its own work of art. What they do is really incredible.”

“How about Saudi Arabia?” Alex asked casually. “Have you ever been there?”

“No, unfortunately. I’ve studied a great deal about it, but it’s nearly impossible to get in there without a sponsor.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.” Alex leaned forward. “Say, if you’re an expert on the Arabs, let me ask you a question.”

“Okay.”

“A couple of weeks ago, I met a Saudi delegation in Washington, D.C. It was led by the crown prince himself. What a charismatic man he is.”

“Really?” Marc was impressed. He knew enough about the Saudi royal family to know that not just everyone met the designated successor to the throne.

Alex shrugged, somehow conveying the impression that he had not meant to drop names. “They were here working on some business deal. I happened to be in town, and a friend at the State Department invited me to sit in. I may get a little piece of the action. In fact, it may turn out that I get a chance to go over there.”

“Really! I’d love to go there. Saudi Arabia is the heart of the Islamic civilization. That’s where it all began.”

“Well, actually, I’m a bit intimidated by it all. I understand they are very strict about their religion.”

“Absolutely. There are places where they still stone a person for committing adultery.”

“Well,” Alex grinned, “that’s not all that bad, considering the whole place is sand.”

Jackie and Marc both laughed aloud. “Good line,” Marc said. “I’ll have to remember that one.”

They fell silent as the waiter cleared the table. Finally Marc turned back to Alex. “You said you had a question.”

“Yes. If this business deal with the Saudis starts to shape up, I’d like to get a gift for the crown prince. I understand that is appropriate.”

“Most appropriate. Gift-giving is very much a part of their culture.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“There is a famous story about King Abdul Aziz ibn-Saud, the first king of modern Saudi Arabia. One day a visitor presented the king with a magnificent gray Arabian stallion. The king was delighted. Such a gift called for a return gift of thanks. He called for the great leather-bound book in which he kept a record of all gifts given to his visitors. Next to the man’s name, he started to write ‘three hundred riyals.’ This was considerably more than the horse was worth. But as he wrote, the nib of the pen snagged on the paper, then flipped loose, showering three ink blobs across the line. The Arabic zero is a dot, so…”

“So he added zeros?” Alex asked.

Marc nodded. “Instead of writing ‘three hundred riyals,’ it now read ‘three hundred thousand riyals.’ His advisor, noting what had happened, pointed out the problem. The king looked closely at the ledger. ‘Pay it immediately,’ he said, ‘for I will not have it be said that the hand of King Abdul Aziz is more generous than his heart.”’

Jackie’s jaw dropped. “So he paid it?”

“Without hesitation.”

“Jackie,” Alex said with a frown, “let’s be sure we type everything to the Saudis. No nibbed pens.”

Marc chuckled at that. “Let me give you another example.” Then suddenly he shook his head. “No, I’m doing all the talking, and I’m not really answering your question.”

“Yes. Yes, you are,” Alex insisted. “Go on.”

“Well,” Marc said hesitantly, but when they both nodded, he gave in. “All right. Just one more, to show how much understanding their culture and choosing a suitable gift can help.”

“Near the end of World War II, America and Great Britain had come to realize that this little desert kingdom had become a pivotal power in the politics of the world. Both Churchill and Roosevelt started to woo the Saudis. As you know, America won out, and while there are probably many reasons why this was so, a good part of it revolved around the fact that Ibn-Saud liked President Roosevelt and did not like or trust Churchill.”

“Now you’re talking my language,” Alex said enthusiastically. “This is leverage you’re talking about, right?”

“Exactly.”

“So what made the difference between the two?”

“Two things. First, though the Islamic religion has no specific ban on tobacco, it does forbid liquor. The sect of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia is strongly fundamentalist, and so they don’t just forbid liquor, it is strictly outlawed. King Abdul Aziz neither smoked nor drank. As you know, President Roosevelt was a chain smoker, but he knew the king’s code and didn’t want to smoke around him. One night, after a long meeting, they went directly to dinner. Roosevelt was so desperate for a smoke, he sent the king on a separate elevator to the dining room. Roosevelt hit the emergency stop button on his elevator and hurriedly smoked two cigarettes before going on, blaming a stuck elevator for his delay. He also had no alcohol served at the dinner.”

Alex was watching this young professor with great interest. Besides being more and more impressed with his abilities, he found himself taking a real liking to him. That didn’t happen very often with the men he brought on board for projects.

“When it was over,” Marc was saying, “Roosevelt presented the king with a DC-3 as a gift.”

“You mean an airplane!”

“Yes. It was a huge success with Ibn-Saud. He was the first to own one in all of Saudi Arabia.”

Alex grimaced. “I wasn’t thinking of something quite that elaborate.”

Marc smiled. “Let me finish the story. Three days later the king met with Winston Churchill. None of this self-sacrificing attitude for him. Right off he told the king that abstaining from alcohol and tobacco might be part of the Saudi religion, but he, Churchill, considered smoking cigars and drinking alcohol as a sacred rite in and of itself. He proceeded to puff on his cigars and sip whiskey throughout their meetings.

“In his memoirs, Churchill makes it all sound hilariously funny. And while the king was a man of the world, and didn’t expect others to observe his standards, Churchill’s cavalier attitude set the relationship off to a bad start. Churchill had also heard about Roosevelt’s gift, so in a grandiose, off-the-cuff gesture, he told the king that the first Rolls Royce off the assembly line after the war would be his.”

“Hmmm,” Alex mused. “Airplanes, Rolls Royces? You are really starting to discourage me.”

“Ah, but here’s the point of the story. One would think a Rolls Royce would be a pretty impressive gift. But when it finally arrived, it had the steering wheel on the right side, like all British-made automobiles. When the king went to get in, he saw that this would leave him sitting on the left-hand side of his driver. In Saudi culture, the left hand is the inferior hand. One doesn’t even eat with it. And the left-hand position is definitely the inferior position. For the king to be on the left of a servant was unthinkable. So he gave it away.”

“You’re kidding! He gave a Rolls Royce away?”

“That’s right. And America, not Britain, became the Saudi choice for an alliance.” Marc paused, suddenly a trifle embarrassed by his long speech. “So you are absolutely right to be concerned about what you give the prince.”

Alex was sober. “That’s unbelievable. The whole of history changed by the choice of a gift.”

“Well, as I said, there were many other factors too.”

Alex ignored that, watching Marc closely. “Would you ever consider doing me a favor?” he finally asked.

“After what you have done for me on my car, are you kidding? What do you need?”

“Could you help me choose the gift? Give it some thought, then tell me what to get the prince? I’d really appreciate it.”

“Of course.”

“Terrific!” He lifted a hand, and the waiter moved toward them instantly. “You just made this a very profitable luncheon for me.”

“Oh no,” Marc said swiftly. “This one’s on me.”

Alex shook his head firmly. “No way. I invited you to lunch, remember.” He turned to Jackie. “Do you want anything else?”

“No, thank you. The lunch was lovely.”

“I think that’s it, then,” he said to the waiter. “We’re ready for the check.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man disappeared.

“Alex, I mean it,” Marc persisted. “I’ve had that incredible car for almost a week. You got my car fixed for nothing. Please, let me buy lunch.” He pulled his wallet out.

Alex was both pleased and amused, but he finally shrugged. “If you insist.”

In a moment the waiter was back, carrying a small tray with the bill on it. He started to hand it to Alex, but Marc quickly slid his American Express card onto the tray. The waiter turned slowly, stared first at the card in disbelief, then at Marc with such a look of contemptuous scorn that Marc visibly flinched, his face flushing almost instantly.

Alex burst out laughing. He reached across, took Marc’s card, and tossed it back to him, then signed the bill with a quick flourish.

“Thank you, sir.” The boy retreated, shooting Marc one last look of total disbelief.

“I’m sorry,” Alex said, fighting back another round of laughter.

Marc was blushing. “What’s the matter?”

“Did you see that look?” Alex said to Jackie. “You would have thought Marc was offering to pay in wampum or sea shells or something.”

“Don’t they take American Express?” Marc persisted.

“They don’t take anything!” Jackie laughed.

Alex leaned across the table and patted Marc’s arm. “I’m sorry for that, Marc. Here in the club they don’t take any money. Not even if you purchase golf balls in the pro shop. You just sign. For everything. Then they put it on the monthly bill. I really do apologize. I wasn’t trying to embarrass you. I’ve never tried paying before. I wasn’t sure what the waiter would do.”

“It was good of you to offer, anyway,” Jackie said, sensing Marc’s humiliation.

Marc managed a thin smile, but inwardly he was deriding himself. The Lamborghini and lunch at the Wilshire Country Club and Jackie’s arm through his as they passed the guard had temporarily dazzled him. When the toad is the guest of the peacock, he told himself, it would be well if the toad remembered who is the toad and who is the peacock. A few minutes later, as they walked out into the sunshine, Alex stopped and peered at his watch. “It’s two thirty already. Listen, Marc. I’ve got to stop at the law office. Would you mind if Jackie rides out to the shop with you to pick up your car. Could you do that, Jackie?”

“That’s fine with me. I was just going back to the office anyway. I’ll leave your car at the warehouse.”

“Great.” He turned to Marc. “It’s been a delightful lunch. Your knowledge of the Saudis was an added bonus.”

“I’ll get that information on the gift to you right away.”

“Super. Just put the bill in with it.”

Marc shook his head firmly. “No way. This is my way of saying thanks for the car.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I planned to find a consultant to help me on this. I wasn’t suggesting you do it for nothing.”

“Am I going to have to pull out my American Express card?” Marc asked, dead sober.

Alex chuckled. “Okay, okay. Thanks.”

“Thank you for lunch.”

“Let’s do it again.” He started away, then suddenly turned back. “Say, Marc?”

“What?”

“If I get into this Saudi deal very big, I might need a consultant with some expertise in dealing with Arabs. Would you consider that?”

Marc was completely caught off guard. “I…I’ve never done any consulting. The Saudis aren’t really my area of specialty.”

Alex turned to Jackie. “What do you think, Miss Ashby?”

“Based on what we saw today, I think he would be terrific.”

“I agree. Are you busy between Christmas and New Years?”

“Well, no. I…”

“Great. We’re taking the yacht on a cruise to Baja, California. The weather in Mexico is great this time of year. We’ll do a little deep-sea fishing, play a lot, work a little—just enough so we can take it as a tax write-off. Anyway, will you join us? I’ll be ready for some real help on the Arabs by then.”

Marc was shaking his head slowly, a little dazed. “Alex, really, I’m not qualified.”

“You let me be the judge of that. Plan on the twenty-seventh to the thirtieth. All you need to bring are some clothes and personal things. We’ll have everything else. I’ll have Jackie call you.”

Jackie nodded, but before Marc could respond, Alex continued. “By the way, Jackie, did you get those tickets for Universal Studios?”

“Yes, I did. They came today.”

“Good. Marc, every now and then we get what we call ‘trades,’ free tickets for services we render. How would your boys like to spend the day at Universal Studios?”

“They’d be delighted.” He was suddenly suspicious. “Are you sure they’re free?”

“Jackie, tell him.”

“Completely. And they’re VIP passes.”

“In fact, just the other day, Jackie was saying how long it’s been since she’s been out there.” He nudged Marc. “We’ve got four passes.”

“Alex!” She blushed instantly, and it was clear that Alex had caught her by surprise too.

“I’d be delighted,” Marc said. “But going with two boys is hardly the way to enjoy the day.”

“I think your boys are darling. I’d love to go with all of you, but…” She shot Alex a dirty look, but he was beaming innocently.

“Then it’s settled,” Marc said. There was no need to feign his pleasure. To spend the day with Jackie would be tough duty indeed.

Alex was pleased with himself and didn’t try hard not to show it. “That’s great. Well, I’ve got to run. See you later. We’ll keep in touch, Marc.” And he was gone.

For a moment the two of them stood there, both a little embarrassed. “Look, Marc. I didn’t expect that. Alex sometimes—”

“You heard the man. If you really don’t mind taking the boys, I really would be delighted to have you with us.”

She looked up at him closely, then smiled. “I would like that too. Very much.”

“Good.” He reached in his pocket and extracted the car keys. “Do you want to drive?”

She gave a quick shake of her head. “Are you kidding? And ruin your image with the security guard?”

Barclay’s black Lincoln Mark VII came out of the parking lot first, followed closely by the blue Lamborghini. The Lincoln turned south, the sports car north. In a parked car half a block away, Nathan Shoshani lowered his binoculars and picked up a microphone. “Shana, did you get confirmation on those plates yet?”

A woman’s voice, heavily accented, responded almost immediately. “Both the Lincoln and the Lamborghini are registered to Barclay Enterprises in El Segundo.”

“Thank you.” Shoshani pushed the button on the mike again. “Yehuda, you take Barclay. We’ll take the new man and the girl.”

There was no response, but a second car a block down the street pulled out and fell in a discreet distance behind the Lincoln. Nathan let the Lamborghini pass him, waited for two more cars, then started the engine and pulled a quick U-turn. As he accelerated, he reached across to a pad and jotted down some quick notes.

Chapter Eleven

“Mom?”

Mary Robertson looked up from the book she was reading. The late afternoon sun came in from the window, framing her in soft back light.

“Mr. Williams called today.”

“Mr. Williams?”

Valerie was on the couch, folding Matt’s shirts and jeans. She paused, not looking up. “Yes, my boss in Denver.”

The book lowered slowly to rest in Mary’s lap. “Oh?”

“My job has come open again.”

There was a brief deepening of the wrinkles around her eyes. Valerie looked at her more intently, trying to read the expression, but with her face in shadow, it was difficult. “He offered me a substantial raise if I come back.”

“I see.” Mary picked up the book again.

Valerie waited a moment, but when her mother continued reading, she sat up straighter. “You’re pretty well back on your feet again now, and it’s time I go back to work. The only thing I’ve been able to find here is in downtown L. A. I don’t relish driving forty miles in that traffic twice a day.”

“And Marc is on a yacht in sunny Mexico, with one Jacqueline Ashby, who is charming and very beautiful.”

“Mother!”

“Well, as long as you’re listing the reasons, let’s get them all out on the table.”

“Mom! You’ve been trying to match Marc and me ever since you started working for him.”

“That’s right, and it took having kidney stones to finally do it.”

“Well, it isn’t going to work.”

“Not if you go back to Colorado.”

“Not if I stay, either!” She dropped her head and started folding the clothes with quick, hard strokes. Mary watched her for a minute, then closed the book and set it aside.

“Valerie, don’t let Jackie blind you.”

“Blind me!” she blurted. “What about Marc? She’s all he seems to see lately. He’s taken her to dinner, to a concert. And two weeks afterward, Brett and Matt still talk about what a wonderful time they had with her at Universal Studios. And Baja!” She spit the word out with distaste.

“I guess you’re right,” her mother mused. “The fact that Marc invited Jackie for a cruise on his private yacht does put her one up on you.”

Valerie bit back a sharp retort, then got up and moved over to sit on the floor in front of her mother. “All right, so Alex invited him. But Jackie’s there!”

“Not by Marc’s doing.”

Valerie sighed and started drawing patterns idly on the carpet.

“And who did Marc take to that Christmas party at Mr. Barclay’s house last week? Jackie was there too. If Marc was as serious about Jackie as you seem to think, would he have taken you to that, knowing she would be there?”

“And do you know how I felt around those other women, Mom? I felt like a little girl in pigtails, come to a grownup party to stand in the corner and watch. Jackie, Jessica Gerritt, Ardith Barclay. Everyone with their hair just done, and their elegant clothes, and…” She stopped, biting her lip, close to tears.

“I thought you liked Ardith Barclay.”

“I do. She is a lovely and gracious woman. I think she and I could be good friends. But even she is so far out of my class, Mother.” She shook her head forlornly.

Mary leaned forward slightly and waited until Valerie looked up at her. “I chided Marc once for thinking he was outclassed by the Wilshire Country Club. Am I going to have to start giving you lectures on what constitutes real class and what doesn’t?”

Valerie sighed, smiling in spite of herself. “Tell me how classy I am. I could use a little propaganda right now.”

Her mother didn’t return the smile. “Valerie, you know I’m hoping and praying that something will work out for you and Marc. Nothing could make me happier. But I’m not interfering. I have not pushed Marc in any way—not hinted, not arranged things behind the scenes—which,” she added with just a trace of asperity, “is not true for Alex Barclay, as near as I can tell. But be that as it may, I know my daughter, and I know Marc Jeppson.”

She took a deep breath, picked up the book again, and found her place. Then and only then did she look at her daughter again. “I’ll only say this. I think you’re selling yourself short, and I think you’re selling Marc short. And your boss in Colorado better make that raise a mighty big one, because it’s going to take a lot to cover what you’ll lose by leaving here.”

Valerie would have been quite surprised to know that at that very moment Marc was not with Jackie, but sitting in a deck chair, eyes wide open behind his sunglasses, watching the people around him. They had been anchored off Ensenada for a full three days. The first two days had been filled with skin diving, deep sea fishing, shopping in the village, and long walks along the beach. Now, everyone seemed content to spend their last afternoon langourously and lazily on board ship.

Alex was deep in conversation with Quinn Gerritt and General Taylor Canning at a small table. The large beach umbrella kept their faces in shadow and hard to read, but the talk was earnest, and Marc suspected this was the real reason for the cruise.

John DeLorean. That’s who Marc thought of when he looked at Gerritt. His physical presence was almost electric, but there was something deep in the man that was like rock. No nerves, no blood, no pulse.

Taylor Canning was military all the way. He was genial, open and friendly, yet always precise and ordered, cutting through any superficialities. Marc liked him.

Alex? Marc smiled inwardly as he watched him. There was a lot of depth in the man yet to be probed, but Marc knew he would like what he found there. Not that there weren’t weaknesses and flaws—a tendency to flamboyance, the attitude that people were markers in an intriguing game, a slight streak of underlying cynicism. But there was also his enthusiasm for life, the acceptance of every challenge as a shot of adrenalin in life’s blood stream, his total devotion to Ardith.

Marc turned to where she sat talking with Jackie and the general’s wife. Casual elegance. That was Alex’s phrase for his wife, and Marc nodded now as he thought of the term. Here was one of Alex Barclay’s most important assets.

Jackie looked up, saw him watching her, and flashed him a warm smile. He smiled back, then turned to look at the two figures sunning in the deck chairs near the main cabins. Derek Parkin lay next to the latest bauble he had added to his string, his pale skin sharply contrasting with the tawny gold of hers. Gaylene. Marc could never remember her last name. She was a stunning ash blond with flawless skin, bright green eyes, and beautiful features that covered one of the most inane minds Marc had yet encountered. But then, one didn’t have to be too shrewd to guess that Gaylene’s mind was not what had won her Derek’s invitation to join the cruise.

Marc shifted his gaze slightly to Derek. Here was a hard one to read. The outer man was quick, competent, and very assured. The inner man? Marc had decided to set aside judgment on him for now. But one word kept cropping up when he thought of Derek. A user. Derek Parkin was a user. Of things. Of people. Of opportunities. It surprised him a little that Alex had hired him as an executive vice president of Barclay Enterprises.

On the other side of the deck, Jessica Gerritt lay tanning in her white bikini. Marc was warming to his little game of categorizing people in a single word or phrase. Iced mink, that was how he thought of Jessica Gerritt. Cool, infinitely poised, sophisticated down to the tips of her brightly painted toenails. And as aloof and superior as her husband.

And what of Jackie? He swung back to watch her talking with the two older women. He studied her, comparing her to Jessica and Gaylene. And Valerie. That brought a slight frown, and he lay back and closed his eyes. Though many might have chosen either Jessica or Gaylene over Jackie on the basis of pure physical beauty, with Marc it was just the opposite, though he knew his judgment was colored by what each was like inside as well as out. In contrast to Jessica’s icy superiority and Gaylene’s mental vacant lot, Jackie was bright, warm, genuine, and open. She had an ability to put him completely at ease, and yet did so without becoming doting or patronizing.

Last night, on their way back from shopping and dinner in the village, he and Jackie had left the others to walk along the beach. They had stopped and talked, and he had felt himself drawn to her powerfully. But at the last moment, as she tipped her head up to him, he backed away, turning to stare out across the water. It had been an awkward moment, and the hurt was evident on her face.

He suspected Jackie had blamed his sudden loss of nerve on the memory of his wife floating up at the last moment to jab him with guilt. But now, with more clarity than he had had then, Marc realized that what had come between him and Jackie was not the memory of Lynette. It was Valerie—Valerie with a loveliness all her own;Valerie with an inner depth like a quiet pool where one came for strength and rejuvenation.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. For two years he had gone on with life, lonely and missing Lynette, fiercely at first, but later content to be alone with the boys. He had firmly and successfully resisted the numerous efforts of the inevitable matchmakers and maintained his stance. Then suddenly, almost at the same time, two remarkable women had entered his life. Most men would have accepted such a fate with joy. Marc only found it more and more frustrating.

Suddenly, he felt hands on his shoulders. He opened his eyes and removed his sunglasses. Jackie was standing behind him, and began to massage his neck muscles softly. She smiled. “Did I wake you?”

“No.”

Closing his eyes again, he let the relaxing pressure on his shoulders soothe him. “Ardith has sent me over with a request.”

His eyes opened again.

“Alex would like to take us to dinner tonight. Just the four of us.”

“Oh?” He sat up, and she came around and sat beside him. Her hand lay easily on his arm.

“I don’t know for sure, but I think you are about to become the official Near Eastern consultant for Barclay Enterprises.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She smiled. “And I’m glad. I think you’ll be a great asset.”

“Thank you.” That meant Alex had liked his report on the prince and his recommendation for a gift.

“Want to go for a swim?”

He looked up at her, sensing her hesitancy at leading out after last night’s rejection. She submitted to his scrutiny with a faint smile. There was no question about it, he concluded. She was one lovely woman. He rubbed his arm, feeling the heat of the sun on it, then stood and pulled her up. “Why not?” he said with a grin.

It was past ten when they finally finished dessert, and Alex pushed back his chair. He fumbled in the side pocket of his jacket and came out with a package of cigarettes. Ardith’s eyes widened, and then she frowned.

“Alex.” The gentle reproof was evident.

“Now don’t you be Alexing me,” he said with mock severity. “This is my first cigarette in almost a week.” He took a matchbook from the table, lit the cigarette, and inhaled deeply.

“You know what Dr. Goodrich said about your heart.”

“I know, I know. And I’ve almost quit.” He turned to Marc. “Have you ever smoked?”

He shook his head.

“Smart. I wish I had never started.” He inhaled again deeply, then set the cigarette in the ashtray and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “Well,” he said, looking steadily at Marc, “I suppose you guessed there may have been more to this invitation than just a chance to get to know you better.”

How did you answer that? Yes, that’s all I’ve thought about for the last four hours? No, Alex, I’ve always trusted your surface motives, and I never gave it a second thought? He just watched, keeping his face expressionless.

“You probably sensed that General Canning and Quinn Gerritt were invited on this trip for more than social reasons.”

Marc nodded.

“There are some things starting to shape up. One of those opportunities that doesn’t come along every day.”

Marc picked up his spoon and toyed with it absently, his eyes never leaving Alex’s face.

“It could be very big.” Pause. Alex was choosing his words carefully.”It will heavily involve the Saudis.”

Here it comes. Marc felt his excitement rising.

Alex leaned back, picked up the cigarette, looked at it, then set it back down again. “Marc, what would it take to get you away from the Claremont Colleges?”

Marc had started to twirl the spoon, but it stopped in midair.

Alex grinned. “I thought maybe I could catch you off guard with that.”

Marc set the spoon down slowly.

“I happen to know what your current salary is. I’ll double it.”

Marc looked at Ardith, who smiled gently at his dazed expression. Then he turned to Jackie. She reached over and squeezed his hand. Finally, he looked back at Alex.

Alex laughed aloud at the expression on his face. “You didn’t suspect it at all?”

Marc shook his head. “I thought maybe you wanted to talk about me being a consultant, but…” He shook his head again.

“Well, then, while I’ve got you reeling, let me close in for the kill. I took the liberty of speaking with the dean of your college. I wanted to know what the possibilities were before I approached you.”

“The dean?”

“Yes. I explained the whole situation.” He laughed again. “Well, at least enough of it to let him know that this would be a great opportunity for you, and that the experience you’d gain would benefit the college as well. He agreed. If you accept, they will grant you a one year’s leave of absence, beginning January first.”

“January first! That’s the day after tomorrow!”

“Well, actually, that’s when your official leave of absence begins. But since you’re already on holiday, how about saying that you started working for me the day we left Los Angeles? Can you handle being paid full salary for lying around in the sun?”

Marc was speechless, much to their amusement. Jackie spoke first, to Alex. “I do think you should point out to Marc that this is not a typical work week.”

“Wait until we have a yes answer from him, then we’ll break the realities of life to him.”

“The leave of absence is ideal in a way,” Ardith said. “You can try this for a while. If you don’t like it, you can go back to Claremont with no real loss. And if you do like it, well, who knows what might come of it?”

“But—what would I do?”

“Well, for starters, you said you’ve been dying to get into Saudi Arabia. If all goes well, we’ll both end up going there in the next few months. Probably several times.”

Marc held up his hands. “Whoa! Would you stop throwing right hooks at me until I get my head cleared.”

Alex now became very serious. “This may seem sudden to you, Marc, but it isn’t for me. I’ve been thinking about this ever since that day at the Country Club. You’re exactly what I need.”

“But I’m not a businessman.”

“No, though you are halfway through your MBA. I’ve hired Derek to help me on the business end of things. I need you to help me walk through the Arabian labyrinth.”

He pushed his chair away from the table. “Look, we’re not holding you hostage here until you give us your decision. Take all the time you need.” He got that impish look that made him look ten years younger than he was. “At least until we get home tomorrow.”

They all stood. Alex extracted a fifty-dollar bill from his wallet and tossed it on the table. Then he looked up at Marc. “You think it over, Marc. Think it over very carefully. This kind of opportunity doesn’t come along every day.”

Marc gave him a long, quizzical look, then a tiny smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Does this mean I have to sell my Volkswagen?”

It was almost midnight when Ardith and Alex Barclay finally came to their cabin and began preparing for bed. Alex sat on the edge of the bed and slipped off his shoes as his wife went into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

“Gerritt cornered me a few minutes ago,” he called quietly, mindful that others were just on the other side of the bulkheads.

Ardith poked her head around the door. “Oh?”

“He asked me why I brought a college professor along on this trip.”

“And what did you say?”

He laughed and let one shoe drop. “I told him I thought he was a promising young man and refreshing to have around.”

There was a pause as she rinsed out her mouth. Then she reappeared with a towel. “It’s called integrity.”

“What?”

“The thing you find so refreshing about Marc Jeppson.”

He looked at her sharply. Even after so many years, she could still bring him up short with her insights. “Yeah, I suppose it is. I don’t deal with many who have it in great abundance anymore.”

“So, did that satisfy Gerritt?”

He finished undressing and slid under the covers. “No. Gerritt is sharp enough to know I didn’t bring Marc along just to provide a refreshing change.”

Ardith turned off the light and slipped in beside him. “Gerritt is too sharp. I’m not sure I like him.”

“If I did business only with people you like, or that I like, for that matter, we wouldn’t be sitting in a yacht off the coast of Mexico nor would we be considering building a new home in Pacific Palisades.”

In the dark he couldn’t tell whether she agreed. They were both silent for several minutes. Finally Ardith turned her head. “Do you know what it is about Marc that you like so much, Alex?”

“No what?”

There was a soft touch of sadness in her voice. “You and I were like that once, too.”

Chapter Twelve

Nathan Shoshani suppressed a yawn and glanced at his watch as the team filed into the room. It was nearly 7 P.M., which meant he was coming up on thirty-six hours without sleep. He had stayed up the greater part of the night, supervising the watch on Quinn Gerritt and his wife as their high-rolling party covered half the exclusive bars in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. And the loss of sleep had been basically for nothing—as had most of their last week’s work on Gerritt. When Nathan had returned to his apartment just after dawn, word was waiting that Moshe Gondor was on his way to Los Angeles. That had been a blow, for Gondor had been Nathan’s control officer before. While he was competent and supportive of his operatives, he kept a tight leash, keeping his hand in rather than letting his men have their head. Nathan had spent the rest of the morning getting ready for his arrival, and most of the afternoon briefing him on where they stood.

Gondor entered at that moment and almost instantly the room grew quiet. Then Nathan’s head came up sharply. Yaacov Shoshani, white hair in gleaming contrast to a simple black suit, shuffled in behind Gondor and took a seat in the back. Their eyes met briefly—Nathan’s full of surprise and questioning, his father’s veiled and noncommittal. The older Shoshani was drawing curious looks from several others in the room as well.

Gondor came forward and took a seat next to Nathan.

“What is he doing here?” Nathan asked in a low voice.

“I just found out he was here. He’s been in California for better than a week. You’d better let me introduce him.”

A week! And not even a call. Nathan didn’t know whether to be grateful or angry. Gondor’s coming was bad enough, but this? He let out a long breath, stood and faced the small group scattered around the room. “All right, let’s get started. This is Moshe Gondor, who is taking over as control officer for this operation. As of today, Moshe has moved the headquarters of the operation here to L.A.”

There were a few murmurs of surprise. This meant their team was in the heart of the action and was no longer on the periphery.

“He’s read all of the reports, and I’ve briefed him on where we stand, but he’d like to get a feel directly from each of you. Then we’ll talk about where we go from here.” He stepped back. “Moshe.”

Gondor stood and took Nathan’s place behind the small table, opening a thick folder, laying out some papers, then finally facing the group. “Before we begin, let me introduce to you Yaacov Shoshani.” His tone of voice left no questions about how Gondor viewed the presence of the man in the room. “Most of you know that the Prime Minister has appointed Mr. Shoshani as a civilian advisor to this operation. He is to have full access to all information and is free to sit in any planning sessions. However, he is not considered as part of the operational team. While his counsel should be considered carefully, it has no binding force.”

Yaacov was nodding thoughtfully, as most of the room turned and surveyed him openly. Nathan leaned forward, staring at the floor.

“Nathan will continue as team leader. Because of the importance of this particular operation, I am reporting directly to the Deputy Director. Are there any questions about the chain of command?”

There wasn’t, and the uncomfortable silence stretched on for several moments. “Okay. I want a brief rundown from each of you. Yitzhak, you begin. What about Barclay? What’s your gut reaction? Can a small-time arms dealer really put together a two-billion-dollar arms deal?”

Yitzhak ben Tsur, a descendant of numerous generations of Moroccan Jews, was small and dark, lean as a greyhound and just as quick. He stood. “Well, at first I thought this assignment was going to be no big trouble. Barclay is an established and legitimate arms dealer, but he has never handled anything near this big. Mostly light stuff—rifles, mortars, a few vehicles.” He shrugged. “Basically, he is a little boy playing soccer in the World Cup Championships. Except for one thing. If Gerritt Industries ties up with Barclay, it would make a tremendous difference.”

“More than one thing,” Gondor corrected. “While in Washington, I learned that Barclay also has some powerful support in the State Department.”

Yitzhak nodded soberly. “Yes, that too. There is still much that he must do. The competition will be very fierce for this one, but I am no longer thinking that the Barclay deal will die its own death. It is going to need some help from us.”

“And what of this new radar system Gerritt Industries is supposed to be developing?”

The Moroccan Israeli lifted his shoulders briefly. “We think Gerritt and Barclay are close to striking a deal. Yossi has the details on the system itself.”

“Okay, thank you.” Gondor turned to a larger man on the third row. Even on the streets of Jerusalem, few people would have guessed Yossi Kittelman was a third-generation Israeli. He had fair skin, flaming red hair, and a thick coating of freckles. “Yossi? Tell us about Mr. Quinn Gerritt.”

Yossi stood. He too had spent the night tracking Gerritt, but either he had slept during the day or had a face that showed no weariness. “Ah yes, Mr. Gerritt. This one is harder to get to know. He has been very rich all of his life, and so he knows how to protect his privacy. There is no question but what Gerritt Industries was in serious trouble a few months ago. Then suddenly they received a massive transfusion of capital. We have not yet found out exactly where the money came from, but we are sure it came as a result of this new radar system.”

He shifted his weight, not sure how much detail Gondor wanted. “As you know, many of the high tech companies engaged in weapons research for the Defense Department allow Israeli technicians to study critical new projects. But to this point, Gerritt Industries has not done that. Since this system is being developed privately and not being funded by the government, that is not likely to change.”

Nathan stood and stepped forward. “Unfortunately, we did not know Gerritt was going to be a principal until he came to Barclay’s office a week or two before Christmas. So we haven’t been tracking him as long, and, as Yossi says, he is much more difficult to keep under the microscope.”

Gondor let his gaze sweep the room. “Okay. Gerritt is critical. We will continue to place the major portion of our manpower on that connection. Anything else Yossi?”

The redhead shook his head and sat down.

“What about the two men Barclay has hired?” Gondor asked.

A couple of men in the room stirred.

“Udi?”

Yehuda Gor stood slowly. He was large-boned and seemed awkward, more like a farmer than one of the Mossad’s best operatives. He said little, but when he spoke, he was listened to. He and Gondor had been raised in the same kibbutz, which accounted for the use of the nickname.

“Bringing in new men for a project like this fits Barclay’s pattern,” he began. “Those who know Barclay call these kind of men ‘throwaways.’ He uses them on one project, then dumps them. Derek Parkin came out of the law firm Barclay uses. He is very bright. His expertise is in law. He also has a reputation for being ruthless in negotiating his way through complex situations. The college professor, Jeppson, was almost certainly brought in because he’s a qualified Arabist. Both have recently applied for passports, so we expect Barclay plans to use them heavily.”

“Thanks, Udi.” Gondor surveyed the men. “All right, anything else?” No one moved.

“You need to know that while we had great hopes that this whole problem could be solved in New York and Washington, it looks more and more pessimistic. The president is holding firm on his promise to sell the planes to the Saudis. Congressional and other pressure is not helping much. Even the Prime Minister has talked to him, but the president will not back down. As a sop to us, he told the Prime Minister that he would authorize sale of the F-22 to us as well. That could help him get it through Congress. The Iran-Iraq war, the latest penetrations of Saudi air defenses, the growing madness of the Ayatollah—these and other things have America very worried.”

Gondor sorted through the papers and picked up a letter. “I have here a directive from headquarters. The essence of it is that we here in this room are to undertake every covert effort possible to torpedo the deal before it is made. That is the best way to prevent the sale without alienating American goodwill toward Israel.”

Yaacov Shoshani stirred, as if he was going to speak, and Gondor paused, fixing his eyes upon him. But finally, he settled back in his chair, his face impassive.

Yitzhak raised his hand, and Gondor nodded in his direction. “We have found a way to get someone inside the Gerritt laboratories. We could sabotage the prototype.”

Gondor shook his head, starting to pace back and forth as he continued. “No. At this point, we are only looking for a way to throw gravel in the gears, to let the deal fall apart naturally. If we fail in that, then we will have no alternative but to go to more direct methods.”

“Sabotage is illegal.”

Every head in the room jerked around to look at Yaacov Shoshani.

“If you were caught, or if the Americans found out, it would be very bad for us. It could do us irreparable harm.”

“I said we would only resort to that if we could not find another way,” Gondor snapped, openly irritated.

“Sometimes we say there is no other way, simply because the wrong way is the easier way.”

Nathan groaned inwardly. Here it comes.

When the older man spoke it was almost as if to himself. “If we abandon our commitment to doing what is right and use expediency to justify such a course of action, then we become no better than those we fight against.”

“Look, Mr. Shoshani! I admire your ideals, but what we need here is not preaching. We are after solutions. Do you have solutions, or just lofty phrases?”

Yaacov stood slowly. “What would you say if I told you the name of the man who came to Quinn Gerritt with fourteen million dollars?”

There was a startled intake of breath throughout the room.

“Or what if I told you the name of the engineer who designed the radar device? And that he was on the verge of selling that device to another company because Gerritt Industries couldn’t meet his price, then suddenly changed his mind and signed a contract with Gerritt for one fourth the amount he had originally asked?” He removed his glasses and started rubbing them with his tie. “Tell me, Mr. Gondor, would you think those were solutions, or just lofty phrases?”

Nathan was staring. Gondor spluttered. “Well, I…If you really have that information. Where did you get it?”

Yaacov shuffled forward, looking at the floor as though lost in thought. “I read the reports. One of them indicated that a Mr. Theodore Wuthrich, the controller for Gerritt Industries, is dissatisfied with his boss, Mr. Quinn Gerritt.”

So that was it! Nathan had flagged Wuthrich as a potential, and they had made a low-key, first contact. But so far it had produced nothing.

Yaacov had reached the front of the room and stood face to face with Gondor. “Actually, to say Mr. Wuthrich is merely ‘dissatisfied’ is a vast understatement. He hates Mr. Gerritt bitterly, totally, and with great passion. A possibility for revenge came as a golden opportunity. Then, with the recent financial troubles of Gerritt Industries, Mr. Wuthrich has also lost considerable income from bonuses, stock options, and so on. He is experiencing a rather acute need for some ready cash at the moment. Together, those conditions made him very easy to talk with.”

Nathan was shaking his head slowly, half amazed, half irritated at himself. This was basic intelligence work. If they hadn’t been running Gerritt so hard…

His father reached in his coat and drew out a slip of paper. “Here is the name and address of the man bankrolling Gerritt. Also, there are two other names on the list. These men were recently hired under Gerritt’s specific orders to work the night shift in the shipping department of the Gerritt plant in Hawthorne.”

He handed Gondor the paper. “I find that somewhat touching, don’t you? That a man as important and busy as Mr. Gerritt would take the time to see that two very minor positions were filled properly.”

Gondor was reading the sheet, his face flushed, his mouth tight. “What about the engineer?”

“I would like to follow up on that myself.”

For one moment, Gondor opened his mouth, then his mouth clamped shut and he turned to hand the list to Nathan. “Get on these right away.”

Nathan took the list, but he didn’t look at it. He was staring at his father, who had turned and was walking slowly back to his seat. The older Shoshani did not notice the grudging admiration that had replaced the earlier resentment in the eyes of those in the room, including those of his own son.

Chapter Thirteen

“Daddy, is this a volcano?”

“Uh-huh.” Marc was typing rapidly on his computer and didn’t turn.

“Daddy! You didn’t even look.”

Marc turned to where his son was sprawled on the floor with the World Book Encyclopedia, and gave it a two-second look. “Yes, Matthew, that’s a volcano.”

“Daddy?”

“What, Son?”

“Have you ever sawn a real volcano?”

“Seen, not sawn. But no, I haven’t.” He turned a few pages of the book he was working with, found the reference on Saudi currency, and started to type it into the computer.

“Why not?”

“Hmmmm?”

“Were you too scared?”

Marc let out a quick breath of exasperation. “Scared of what?”

Matt sat up, the green eyes showing his own efforts to be patient. “A volcano! Is that why you never saw one? ‘Cause you were scared?”

“No, Matt. Volcanos are a long ways away. I’ve never been there. Now, Matt, I’ve got to get this report written. Just look at your book.”

“Oh.” He turned back to the book, disappointed. He turned a few pages, then looked up at his father again. “Daddy?”

“What?”

“At breakfast you said you’d play a game with me.”

Marc took a deep breath, then turned clear around. “I know, Son, but I’ve got to get this paper written. See if Brett will play with you.”

“Brett’s at Cub Scouts.”

“Oh, that’s right.” And Mary, who was assistant den leader, had gone with him. He took a deep breath, feeling the frustration build. He had promised Alex he would have this report for him in the morning, and he was still two or three hours away from completing it.

He turned back to the computer and his books. “Look, Matt. It’s still an hour before bedtime. Go out and see if Martin or Jody can play with you for a while.”

“I can’t, Daddy.” He held up one leg. “I’ve got my bare feet on.”

Swinging back around, Marc held out his arms, laughing. Matt was up and onto his dad’s lap in an instant, grinning happily. “Well,” Marc said, holding back a smile, “why don’t you take off your bare feet and put some shoes on?”

“I got my shoes wet in the gutter. Mary said I had to stay in the house.”

He shook his head helplessly. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Play a game with me, Daddy. Please! You promised.”

At that moment, Valerie stepped into the doorway. “Hi. Your housekeeper sent her daughter over to rescue a beleaguered father.”

“Valerie!” In an instant Matthew was off his father’s lap and throwing his arms around Valerie’s legs.

“The beleaguered father is in desperate need of rescue,” Marc said, shaking his head. “You came in the nick of time.”

Taking Matthew’s hand, she started back out. “Come on, Matt. Let’s you and I go find something to do.”

“Daddy won’t play with me, Valerie. Will you play a game with me?”

Marc winced at that, watching the two of them retreat down the hallway.

“Your daddy has to work, Matt. It’s part of his job. That’s how he earns money.”

The plaintive little voice came back to him clearly—”But daddies have two jobs. One is to work and earn money; the other is to tend their kids.”

Marc stared at the computer screen for several seconds, then he sighed, filed off what he was working on, and turned off the main power switch.

An hour later, Marc finished his glass of milk, put the carton in the refrigerator, and started back for the study. As he entered the hallway, he heard the soft murmur of Matt’s voice from his bedroom. On a sudden impulse he turned back around.

Valerie and Matt were kneeling at the bedside, and Matt was saying his prayers. “And keep us safe when we cross the desert to go to Grampa’s house this summer. And bless Jody that her mom will be nicer to her. Name of Jesus, amen.”

He looked up at Valerie, who was smiling down at him, gave her an impish grin and an impulsive hug, then bounced into bed.

As she started to tuck his blanket over him, she asked, “Where does your grandfather live, Matt?”

“InWillard.”

“Willard? Is that in Utah?”

“Yup.”

“And you have to cross the dessert to get there?” There was a soft note of amusement in her voice.

“Yeah. And it’s really hot. Brett says if the car broke we’d die.”

“I’m sure your daddy would take care of you. And I think it’s called a desert, Matt, not dessert. Do you know what a desert is?”

“Sure.” There was the slightest trace of disgust at her question. “A desert is a big beach with no ocean.”

Valerie’s laugh filled the room, and Marc started to laugh too. He entered, shaking his head. “Where did you come from, kid?”

“He is a delight.” Valerie leaned down. “Do I get a kiss good night?”

He threw his arms around her and hugged her tight. As she straightened and stepped back, Marc moved next to the bed. Again the little arms came up and he sat down to receive the embrace. “Thanks for playing with me, Daddy.”

“You’re welcome, Son.” He smiled and tousled his hair. “After all, a daddy does have two jobs.” He kissed him, then took Matt’s blanket and spread it over him. “Now you go to sleep.”

Valerie was waiting at the door, watching him with a smile. As Marc turned, there was an exasperated cry. “Daddy!”

“What?”

He pointed to two bare feet sticking out from the bottom of the small blanket. “My feet are tucking out.”

“Sorry!” Marc said solemnly, returning to tuck the edge of the blanket under, then giving his son another quick kiss.

As he came out into the hall, Valerie was waiting. She was shaking her head, still chuckling softly to herself. “That’s quite a boy you have there Mr. Jeppson. I wish I could have had him in my creative writing class at college,” she said. “He has a gift for coining a phrase.”

Marc nodded. “Earlier he told me he couldn’t go outside because he had his bare feet on.”

They stopped where the doorway led into the kitchen and family room. She looked up at him. “Three games of Spit and two games of Uncle Wiggly, and you didn’t show one moment of impatience. I’m very impressed.”

He let out his breath, shaking his head. “It’s not that I wasn’t feeling it.”

“I’m sorry. I really came over to stop that from happening.”

“I know.” His face was turned in profile, and she watched as he sobered. “But Matt’s right. These last two weeks since I started with Alex, all I’ve done is work.”

“But you love it, don’t you?”

That brought him around to look at her closely.

“That night at the restaurant, when you talked about Claremont, I could see the frustration in your face. Now it’s gone. Even Mom has commented on it. She says this is more like the old Marc Jeppson she used to know. Happy, joking. She’s really pleased.”

“You’re right about the frustation. I still can’t believe it all. One night, thanks to a broken down old VW, Alex Barclay drops into my life and everything changes.”

And with Alex came Jacqueline Ashby, she thought, then pushed it aside with a little shake of her head. “I’m glad for you.” She took a quick breath and started to move past him. “Well, you’d better get going again.”

Marc put out his arm, blocking her path. She looked up, a little startled. “Matthew and Brett are not the only ones I’ve been neglecting lately.”

“I’ve noticed that too,” she murmured.

“So maybe daddies have three jobs,” he said. “To earn money, to tend their kids, and to take the housekeeper’s daughter out for an ice cream cone and a long ride.”

Her laugh was soft and happy. “I think I like that job description.”

Marc stepped forward and gathered her in his arms. For a moment she was startled, then leaned forward into his arms. He just looked down at her, his face full of wonder. Then he kissed her, softly and with great tenderness.

When he pulled back, her eyes were shining, almost luminescent. Her lips parted, but she suddenly shook her head and laid it against his chest.

“What?”

She looked up, but again just shook her head. This time when he kissed her, she put her arms around him and returned it, with the same feeling of joy and tenderness she felt in him.

“I didn’t really come over with that in mind, either,” she said when they finally parted, her voice husky. He touched her cheek, and she laid her head against the palm of his hand. Then she straightened, put both hands on his chest and pushed him away. “Mother should be home with Brett in about ten or fifteen minutes. Why don’t you work on your report until she gets home? Then she can stay with the boys while you finish your third job.”

“Do you think she’ll mind?”

She managed to keep a straight face. “No, I don’t think she’ll mind.”

Chapter Fourteen

Unlike his study at home, which was warm, comfortable, and subdued, Alex’s office in the Barclay Enterprises warehouse building bordered on the flamboyant, the deliberately overstated. A huge driftwood sculpture stood in one corner, a full-grown stuffed cougar sprawled across its lower trunk. One whole wall was glass and held a small arboretum, complete with trickling fountain and stuffed birds in the trees. The opposite wall was papered with a textured burlap and held framed prints of horses, foxes, and hounds centered around a larger scene of the hunt progressing across English countryside. The desk was solid oak and massive, nearly taking the whole end of the office. A wooden mallard duck sat on one corner, opposite the phone and a picture of Ardith.

On the wall behind the desk, a plaque hung centered between a matched set of antique Derringers. It read:

Top Ten Distributor Award

Colt Arms Company

Barclay Enterprises

1984

Alex was leaning back in his chair, sipping a cup of coffee as he talked. When Marc pushed the door open and saw he was on the phone, he started to back out again, but Alex waved him in, setting down the cup. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Come in. I’m mostly listening anyway.”

Pulling one of the brown leather chairs around, Marc sat down. A folder was on the desk in front of Alex. It was the report he had turned in the day before yesterday—a day late. He sat back, watching Alex.

The president of Barclay Enterprises was dressed casually—light-blue flannel slacks, navy-blue pullover sweater. Marc smiled inwardly, thinking of the horrified look on Mary’s face when she saw his jeans, old Adidas tennis shoes, and comfortable sweatshirt. Marc had held out against her. “It’s Saturday. The office won’t be open. Alex said to come casual.”

At that moment, the door opened and Derek Parkin stepped in. Once again Alex motioned. He took the second chair and pulled it alongside Marc.

“Hello, Derek.”

“Good morning, Marc.”

Marc eyed him quickly. Though Derek hadn’t worn a suit either, he was Gentlemen’s Quarterly all the way. He smiled inwardly, as he turned back to Alex. Alex and Derek spent considerable time with the men’s fashion magazine. With Derek, Alex was both mentor and counselor, commenting on the style or cut of a suit, suggesting a special brand of shirt or shoes. Yesterday, he had even taken Derek to his very high-priced barber for a razor cut of his thick, dark hair. And yet with Marc, it was almost like Alex was secretly pleased that he neither cared for the latest fashions nor worried about whether he was in keeping with what others around him were wearing.

A movement caught Marc’s eye. Derek carried a folder identical to the one on Alex’s desk and had raised it briefly. “I finished your report last night.”

“Oh?” Marc responded softly so as not to disturb Alex, still murmuring assent from time to time.

The sharp buzz of the intercom sounded. Alex leaned forward. “John, can you hold a second? Jackie’s buzzing me.” He punched a button, then another. “Yes, Jackie.”

There was a moment’s pause. “No, I’ll take it out there. Tell them to hold a minute.” Again there was the pop of buttons. “John, look I’ve got Jakarta on the line. Can I call you back? Okay, thanks.”

He stood up. “Sorry, but this should only take a minute or two, then we’ll get started.” He was out the door, and in a moment they could hear him again, faintly now.

Derek leaned forward, frowning slightly. Again he held up the folder. “Is the Saudi culture really that—” He paused looking for a suitable word—”orthodox?”

Marc nodded. “King Abdul Aziz came to power with the help of a strict, fundamentalist Islamic sect called the Wahabis. That fundamentalism still dominates the country.”

“So we’re going to have to pray to Mecca five times a day while we’re there?” he said, with obvious distaste.

Marc wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be irritated at Derek’s deliberate obtuseness. “If you were Muslim and didn’t comply, you might get a good whack across the bottoms of your feet, but no, Nasrani are not required to comply with Islamic rites.”

“Nasrani?”

“Yes, Christians. Literally, followers of the man from Nazareth.”

“Oh, but all the other stuff—no liquor, the ads—all of that is for real?”

“The religious police are very conscientious about protecting their society from the corrupting influences of the West. If you bring in magazines, even Time or Newsweek, they’ll go through and cut out any offensive advertisements, or black out such things as low-cut gowns.”

“And they really black out the pelvic area on panty hose packages?”

“That’s what they say. Anything with even remote sexual connotations is illegal.”

“No smoking, no drinking, veiled women? Sounds like a great place to spend a weekend.”

Marc took a quick breath. He and Derek did not work directly together much. And that was fortunate, for he found himself increasingly annoyed by the egocentric narrowness of the man. In spite of the smooth urbanity, Derek Parkin cared only for those things that fostered the position, pleasure, or patronage of Derek Parkin.

“Smoking is not banned,” Marc said quietly. “Many of the Wahabis voluntarily abstain, but the Islamic religion doesn’t forbid it like it does drinking liquor.”

“Who’s smoking and drinking liquor?” Jacqueline Ashby was standing at the door. She held a tray with a coffee pot and two cups. There was also a glass of ice and a can of Seven-Up.

“Oh, hi, Jackie,” Derek said, standing. Marc followed suit. She smiled, noticeably more warmly at Marc than Derek, then set down the tray. She took the coffee pot, poured two cups and turned to Derek.

“Black?”

He nodded and reached for the cup.

“And how about your Seven-Up, Marc? Cream and sugar, or would you prefer it black?”

He grinned good-naturedly. “On the rocks is fine, thanks.”

She handed him both the glass and the can of pop, then picked up the pot again and refilled the cup Alex had left on the desk.

“So who’s smoking and drinking?” Jackie asked again, taking a third chair.

“We were just talking about Marc’s report.”

She nodded. “That was very well done, Marc. I found it fascinating.”

“Thank you.” He was pleased by that. In addition to being an attractive woman, Jackie was quick, astute, and did not pass around compliments cheaply.

“If you do have to go to Riyadh, I’m glad I won’t have to go. Any place where it is illegal for a woman to drive a car, or even ride in a car with a man other than family members, you can leave me out.”

She had said it in fun, but Marc felt himself going on the defensive. He had always loved the Arabic culture, and in the last three weeks had become especially intrigued by the Saudis and what they had accomplished. “It’s not that bad. The status of women has gotten a lot of bad press, but in a way they are more protected than exploited. And great strides are being made. Several of the women of the royal family have done a lot for them in terms of education, work opportunities, that sort of thing.”

She sipped her coffee. “Do they really have banks just for women that are staffed solely by women tellers and clerks?”

“Yes. It is forbidden for women to come in direct contact with strange men. That’s one reason why they wear veils. A male doctor may examine a woman patient, but only with another woman in the room. That’s true if she is fully dressed and getting only an eye exam.”

“And you call that progress?” Derek exclaimed.

Realizing that he was on the verge of becoming evangelical, Marc deliberately caught himself and shrugged. “That’s an interesting question. The Saudis want our technology and twentieth- century advancements, but they’re leery of some of our other exports.”

“Like what?” Derek demanded.

“An overpermissive society that breeds insolent, irresponsible children. Media that is obsessed with sexuality and promiscuity. Men who are steeped in alcohol, immorality, and self-indulgence.” Derek flushed at that, but Marc went on steadily, almost as though to himself. “Alcoholism, drug abuse, child and spouse neglect, armed war in the streets of every city. Actually they’re anxious to leave quite a few things strictly to us Americans. I guess that does make them sound a little primitive.”

“Hear, hear!” Alex said enthusiastically, pushing the door open.

Marc looked up, startled.

Alex moved to his chair and sat down. “You’re one hundred percent right, Marc. And if we are going to work with the Saudis, we’ve got to remember that difference between them and us.” He raised one eyebrow as he looked at Derek. “If we don’t, we could lose everything.”

“I never said they were primitive,” Derek said sullenly. “Archaic is a better word, I think.”

Marc bit back a retort, opened the can of pop, and poured it over the ice, aware that Jackie was watching him with open interest. Finally she turned to Alex. “Well, whatever it is, primitive or archaic, I think you got the right person to help us deal with it.”

“I agree,” Alex said, nodding. “And with that, let’s get on with it. Jackie knows why the Saudis are of such peculiar interest to Barclay Enterprises right now. I think it’s time we bring you two up to date on what is starting to shape up.”

“Excuse me.”

The man and woman bent over in the flower garden straightened and turned around. Their seventeen-year-old daughter playing with a pure white Persian kitten on the lawn nearby also looked up.

“I…I seem to be lost.” He had a deeply lined face, a thick head of white hair, and spoke with a pronounced accent. His black suit was definitely not American.

The man working in the yard smiled encouragingly and stepped carefully out from among the flowers. “What are you looking for?”

“I think I got on the wrong bus.” It was said hesitantly, almost apologetically. The stranger took a watch from his vest pocket and squinted at it. “Oh, dear. I think I am not going to make it.”

Jonathan Taggart, engineer and chief designer of the VSM-430 radar system, set down his hoe and walked over to the man. “Where is it you were going?”

“To synagogue. It is Shabbat.”

“Which synagogue?”

“Temple Beth El.”

Taggart wrinkled his face, perplexed. “Temple Beth El?” He turned to his wife. “Mildred, do you know of a synagogue in town?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t remember seeing one.” Charlene now moved to join her mother, stroking the kitten gently. She also shook her head.

“I have the address here.” The old man took out a slip of paper and handed it to Taggart.

“But this is in Long Beach! You’re in Cypress. Long Beach is fifteen or twenty miles from here.”

The old man smacked his forehead. “Oi vavoi! I thought it did not feel right. But the city is so big. I could not tell. I… Could you show me where to catch a bus? The services start at ten.”

Taggart shook his head slowly. “I never ride the bus. I don’t know the schedules at all. And to get to Long Beach?” He turned to his wife. “Do the busses here even go to Long Beach?”

Mildred came over to stand next to her husband, and laid her hand on his arm. “Why don’t we take him, Jonathan? It’s already nine thirty.”

“Oh, dear lady, I did not mean to ask for that.”

“No,” Taggart said, brightening. “Mildred’s right. We’ll take you. Even if we could find a bus, you’d never make it in time.”

“But such an imposition. It would not be right.”

“Nonsense,” Mildred said firmly. “We’d be delighted. It’s a beautiful Saturday morning. The ride will be delightful.” She looked to her daughter. “Charlene, would you like to go?”

“I’ve got cheerleading practice at ten, Mom.”

“Fine,” her father said. “We’ll be back in a little while.”

“This is most kind,” the old man said. “Most kind. I had heard that Americans were so full of—how do you say it? Hospeet-al…”

“Hospitality?”

“Ah yes, hospitality.”

“We’re happy to help. Are you from Israel?”

The old man was instantly surprised and pleased. “Yes, how did you know?”

Taggart grinned. “The synagogue helped.”

“But of course.” He bowed with great grace and dignity.

Taggart held out his hand. “My name is Jonathan Taggart, and this is my wife, Mildred, and my daughter, Charlene.”

Again there was the slight bow, which was somehow both quaint and stately at the same instant. “My name is Yaacov—Jacob in English. Jacob Shoshani.”

Alex leaned far back in his chair, his mood expansive. “I guess the primary question is, why should Saudi Arabia work with us anyway? Obviously they know where to purchase jet fighters.”

“I was wondering that myself,” Derek said. “Surely Northrup or General Dynamics, or whoever, would be happy to deal directly with them and save the commissions.”

“For sure!” Alex took a sip of coffee, enjoying his role as instructor. “There are various names given to what I do. Some call me a middleman, others say we are agents or sales representatives. I like to think of myself as a marriage broker. But whatever the name, we become critical in a contract such as this for a couple of reasons. One of the most obvious is that governments are very big entities. They move slowly. There is a horrendous amount of bureaucracy and red tape.”

He began drumming his fingertips together slowly. “Another reason is, though at first it may seem to contradict what I just said, governments are in some ways very much like children. They are naive in the ways of the world. They can be ripped off like any individual. Worse, because of the size of the purchases involved. So the middleman becomes a protector to them, helping them negotiate the shoals of shallow water.

“A third reason. Remember the Lockheed scandal of a few years ago?”

Marc looked a little puzzled, so Derek broke in. “Lockheed executives were paying huge sums of money in bribes to get orders in foreign countries.”

“Oh, yes.”

“It wasn’t just Lockheed,” Alex continued. “Everybody was doing it. When all of the dust and fooforah settled, Congress had passed the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act, outlawing all such practices. Today, an executive of a corporation can end up in jail if he tries to influence the sale of his products through illegal payments.”

He took a deep breath. “Now, you need to listen to this part very carefully so you understand the fine line we have to walk. A bribe is one thing, but a ‘commission’ is something else again. What many Americans would call a bribe is really a way of life in most of the world. Everyone has their hand out for a piece of the action. I call them the five-percenters. Everywhere you go—Latin America, the Orient, the Middle East—anyone who helps wants a cut of the action. It’s part of the culture, and I’m sure Saudi Arabia is no different.”

Marc was nodding. He had seen it in South America, but the Middle East had raised it to an art. Someone had once said that the favorite biblical passage in the Middle East was, “I was a stranger, and ye took me.”

“If a corporate executive or a government official pays someone a commission,” Alex was saying, “it may be interpreted under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act as a bribe, and then the man’s in trouble.”

“But a middleman is different,” Derek finished for him. It was not a question. Derek had followed the discussion perfectly.

“Right. We’ve got to be very careful, and I want it perfectly clear. We will not be bribing anyone. But I expect to pay out something like three or four million dollars in commissions before we’re through.”

Jackie did not seem at all surprised at the figure, but both Marc and Derek were suitably impressed. “Another way to look at it is this: An agent becomes an arbitrator between life-styles. In the Middle East the payment of commissions is a life-style. In America it is not. Both parties know the realities of life, but can’t change—or won’t. So I become the arbitrator between the two life-styles. That’s why I call myself a marriage broker.

“This deal is a case in point. Here we have two parties who want a marriage—namely the sale of sixty high-performance jet aircraft. But there are obstacles. Some years ago, the Saudis passed a law against paying commissions on the purchase of military hardware. But they know this deal is so hot and so sensitive, normal channels will fail. America on the other hand, also has a problem. No executive of the aircraft company can pay the necessary ‘grease money’ required to make things work. And yet they know that without it, the deal will bog down completely. So, both governments say, ‘We want the marriage badly. We’d better get a broker.’”

“And brokers have to be paid,” Jackie concluded for him.

“That’s right,” Alex added with a beatific smile, “and if so, why not let it be us? The challenge will be to bind the Saudis to us and no one else. We’re not the only ones who’d like to sew this one up. So we’ve got to put together a package that the Saudis can’t get anywhere else.” He turned to Derek. “Do you have your passport yet?”

“Yes, it came last week.”

“Good. I want you to fly to Jakarta day after tomorrow.”

That surprised everyone but Jackie. “Jakarta?” Derek echoed.

“Yes. I think we’ve found a way to leverage the Saudis to us. If this Gerritt Industries radar system proves to be all they’re claiming it will be, that will be our biggest selling point. But every other thing we can do will put it in concrete.”

“So what’s coming down in Jakarta?” Derek asked.

“A few months ago, I worked a deal in Indonesia. I didn’t make a dime on it. In fact I nearly lost my shirt. But it was a great favor to a very important general.”

He saw the look on Marc’s face and smiled. “Everything was perfectly legal. The president had given the army a certain percentage of the oil being pumped from one oil field. The general needed money, not oil. So he called us for help in marketing it. Oil is not my line, but I decided to do him a favor.” He grinned more broadly at Marc. “Remember the lecture at UCLA?”

Marc had already been thinking about that very thing. “How one goes about selling widgets and all that?”

“Exactly! Well, Mr. Indonesian General is now in the market for some widgets.”

Jackie turned in surprise. “The arms deal is going through?”

Alex nodded smugly.

“But I thought they couldn’t get the funds.”

“They can’t.”

She waited, knowing Alex well enough to sense when he had pulled off another coup.

“The army is willing to pay off one hundred percent in a countertrade transaction.” He turned to Derek and Marc. “That’s what common folk would call bartering.”

“What’s the product?” Jackie asked.

“Bauxite ore.”

She sat back, nodding with understanding. “Very good.”

Marc and Derek were still baffled, and Alex laughed out loud. “So what does Barclay Enterprises want with several thousand tons of bauxite?”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Derek said.

“Do you know what bauxite is used for?”

“It’s used in making aluminum,” Marc answered.

“Right.” He paused, savoring the moment. “A couple of months ago I heard that several companies, including Reynolds and Kaiser, have been asked to submit preliminary proposals for building an aluminum foil factory in the Middle East. In Jeddah, as a matter of fact.”

Marc sat back. The complexity of it all was almost breathtaking. And Alex thrived on it. He was a master at it.

“If we could promise a cheap source of ore, we could make a few bucks on the side and at the same time get one more peg nailed down around the Saudi tent.”

“That’s great, Alex,” Jackie said, almost as pleased as her boss.

“I know. That was good news at the right time.” Suddenly he was all business. “Derek I want to brief you on exactly what has to be done in Indonesia. The groundwork is all laid, but there will be contracts to write and get signed, details to work out. That’s where you really shine.” He swiveled in his chair. “Jackie, I want you and Marc to put some real thought into Gerritt. I don’t want him slipping out from under us.”

“Gerritt?” Marc asked. “I thought you already had an agreement with him.”

“Oh, we do. But if that prototype performs next Monday like he says it will, Quinn Gerritt will move from starving industrialist with hat in hand to the hottest item on the defense industry circuit. Right now, he needs us. We’re a guaranteed market for his product, and that keeps his financing secure. But once he’s got a pocketful of chips, you can bet he’ll start looking to see if there are any other games in town.”

“But haven’t you signed a contract?”

Alex hooted. “Sure I have. But to a man like Gerritt, a contract is like a napkin at the dinner table. You use it so folks will think you’re polite, but once the food is served, you forget the paper and go for the meat.”

“Then maybe somebody ought to teach Gerritt what table manners are all about.”

It was said so calmly that for a moment Alex just blinked. Then he recovered and leaned forward. “Are you serious?”

Marc nodded, meeting Alex’s gaze.

Derek snorted in disgust, and Marc caught Jackie’s quick glance of warning. He ignored both of them. Alex sat back, his expression still incredulous. “Without Gerritt’s radar system, we’ve got nothing with the Saudis. The whole deal goes down the tubes.”

“So you let Gerritt do whatever he wants?”

“Look!” Alex exploded, “I don’t like Quinn Gerritt any better than you do, but I’m not about to lose the biggest opportunity of a lifetime just to make some point about who’s right and who’s wrong. There’s too much riding on this one.”

“It’s your game, Alex,” Marc said evenly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You hired me to help you deal with the Saudis, not tell you how to run your business.”

“I was beginning to wonder,” Derek murmured.

Alex spun around. “That’s enough, Derek!” Then he was back to Marc. “It’s my game, but I’m doing it all wrong, right?”

“I didn’t say that, Alex. I simply said that I don’t think you have to take Gerritt on his terms.”

Alex threw up his hands, but Jackie cut in smoothly, smiling kindly to ease the sting of her words. “Aren’t you being a little naive, Marc? This isn’t a class on ethics where you can debate what ought to happen. This is the real world.”

“You’d better believe it!” Alex said, jabbing his finger at Marc. “Sometimes what ought to be and what you’d like to be gets bulldozed under by what is. Sometimes you have no choice.”

“I guess that’s where we differ. I think there’s always a choice.”

Chapter Fifteen

The pull out of Redlands, up and over Beaumont Pass, is not particularly dramatic, but enough that the thunderous roar of the six diesel locomotives shattered the quiet before dawn of the late January morning. A hundred and twenty-six cars were strung out over a mile behind the engines in a serpentine trail of black and silver, glinting dully in the moonlight. Formed the previous day in the sprawling Southern Pacific yards at Colton, every car was loaded to capacity. Even with eighteen thousand horsepower pulling it up the grade, the speed had dropped to less than twenty miles an hour.

Two men lying flat in the brush alongside the track felt the train before they heard it. A powerful, throbbing vibration pulsed through the ground. Both men were nearly invisible, even in the light of the half moon. Their faces were blackened, and dark caps and clothes covered everything else. The smaller of the two men came up into a low crouch. He was motionless for almost a full minute, then gave a low grunt of satisfaction. Three quarters of a mile away the swinging beam of the lead locomotive had rounded the hill.

The second man pulled a walkie talkie up. Though they were several miles from the nearest dwelling, he still spoke in a low murmur, and he spoke in Hebrew. “We’ve got it in sight. Is this the one?”

The radio crackled softly. “Affirmative. We have visual confirmation on the engine number.”

The radio was clipped onto a belt. Canvas bags set to one side were lifted and quickly tied to the belts as well. There was a quick, last minute check of equipment. Gloves were pulled on. Then they moved deeper into cover as the first rays of the engine’s searchlight caught the tips of the sagebrush.

They let all six engines lumber past them, the deafening roar and stench of diesel fuel filling the sagebrush and the air. Only after the engines had passed did they come up, peering at the box cars towering over them, both of them counting as the cars rocked slowly past. The thirty-fifth car was the first of a whole string of flatcars carrying truck-trailers piggy back. Still they didn’t move.

“Forty-six!” the lead man yelled suddenly. “Let’s go.”

They were up and running. Twenty miles an hour seems pitifully slow for a moving train, but for a running man it can be fatally fast. The smaller man grabbed the steel ladder and swung up. His partner missed the car behind, nearly stumbled, caught himself, then dropped back slightly. He looked over his shoulder, gave a sudden burst of speed and swung up onto a flat car two back from the first man.

He was still hunched over gasping for breath when the first jumped the gap between the swaying cars and ran to his side.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine. Let’s go.”

The second man reached in his bag and pulled out a powerful flashlight.

“If I counted right, this is car fifty-three or fifty-four. We want sixty-one.”

They moved swiftly down each flat car, leaping the gaps between cars easily. They started checking registration numbers on the truck trailers on the sixth car back and found what they were looking for three more beyond that.

Each knew exactly what to do. They circled the trailer working swiftly. Small globs of plastic explosive were slapped around the half-inch steel eyelets where the chains holding the trailer were snubbed down tight. Bolt cutters snapped the locks on the back of the trailer, and the doors were swung open to bang free. A small sledge hammer battered away the chocks beneath the wheels.

“Ready?” They had moved one full car away. The smaller man held two wires and a square battery. The second man grabbed onto a rail and leaned far out, peering forward into the night.

“All clear!”

The wires touched the terminals on the top of the battery. There were four flashes and a muffled explosion. Both men darted back to the trailer. The chains were swinging loose now, doing a slow dance in rhythm to the swaying of the train.

“Let’s go!”

They moved to one side, watching ahead. The first man’s arm raised up to point. “There’s the crossing!” They turned their heads so the flashing red semaphores would not destroy their night vision. As it passed, they jerked back around. A pair of headlights, back fifty or so meters from the crossing, flicked on, then off again.

The man in the rear tapped the other on the shoulder. “Watch yourself.”

Canvas bags were dropped over the side, then they leaped, one after the other, out into the night.

Some fifteen minutes later, as the engineer passed the point where Highway One Eleven leaves Interstate Ten and angles off toward Palm Springs, he had all hundred and twenty-six cars over the top of the pass and pushing at his back. He laid on the whistle as they rocketed past a crossing at close to seventy miles an hour. The first of the engines laid into the sharp curve that turned the line into the long, flat run to Indio. One after another the cars behind followed suit.

As car sixty neared the curve, the chains on the trailers snapped tight with a sharp crack. But the sixty-first trailer had no such restraint. There was a screech of metal as the prop beneath the front of the trailer tore loose. Forty thousand pounds of trailer and cargo careened sideways, then hurtled off the flat car. Six tamarisk trees lining the track, planted to hold back the eternally blowing sands of the desert, were sheared off like twigs beneath the blades of a power mower. The thin aluminum shell of the trailer exploded, and as the nose of the trailer hit the earth, boxes and crates flew in every direction.

The caboose flashed by the clouds of dust and the shattered truck a few seconds later. There was a quick impression of a startled face at the window, followed almost instantly by the shriek of metal against metal as a thousand steel wheels locked against brake shoes and the mile-long monster fought to bring itself to a halt.

The wind off the pass quickly cleared the dust and the fine layer of sand particles from above the wreckage. In the moonlight the carnage was everywhere. Here and there, amid the smashed boxes, which carried the red and white circular logo of Gerritt Industries, small cloth bags could be seen. Some had split open, and a fine white powder trickled out to mingle with the sands of the Mojave Desert.

Rod Bigelow came out of the diner next to the truck stop in Tucamcari, New Mexico. He stopped for a moment, took a deep breath of the frosty morning air, then headed for the line of eighteen wheelers. He popped a piece of chewing gum in his mouth, considering the day ahead. He could easily make Tulsa by nightfall, maybe even push on to Springfield. Then the run on into St. Louis would be an easy half day.

He came around the cab of his White Freightliner, whistling softly. He had started it idling before he went in for the shower and breakfast, and it was ready to roll. But his whistling died instantly as he saw the man waiting at the door of his cab. He stopped, wary, but before he could move, someone stepped in quickly behind him, and he felt a sharp jab against his neck.

“We don’t want to hurt you. Get in.”

As they climbed up and into the cab, the muzzle of the pistol was kept firmly against the back of Bigelow’s neck. He slid over beneath the wheel, and the man climbed up into the sleeper behind him. The second man moved without haste across the parking lot to a blue Ford sedan.

“Just follow him.”

Bigelow licked his lips. He had heard too many stories across the country. Truckers disappearing, cargos hijacked. “Hey, man. I don’t want no trouble. Just tell me what you want.”

“You’ve got nothing to do with this,” the voice behind him said easily. There was an unmistakeable foreign accent. “You just happened to draw the truck carrying what we’re after. Just stay cool, and you’ll be on your way in an hour.”

The sedan turned off the Interstate twenty-three miles out of town, taking a small two-lane highway headed south toward nowhere. Again Bigelow felt a sudden clutch of fear. His jaws worked rapidly, chewing the stale piece of gum like it was the one thing that could pull him through this safely.

Ten miles down the road, the blue Ford pulled off the road into a wide graveled turnout. Bigelow’s heart fell. They hadn’t passed a single car going either direction.

“See that tree over there?”

Bigelow’s head turned, feeling the pistol move with him.

“Just lean against that tree and keep looking south. Do that, and we’ll be out of here before you know it.” The cold pressure against his neck was gone.

Bigelow climbed down, wanting to turn around to get a clearer look at the man with the gun, but he didn’t dare. He moved swiftly to the tree and leaned into it. There was a murmur of voices then a sharp snap, followed by the creak of doors opening. He sneaked a quick look beneath one arm. A large carton hurtled out and hit the ground with a crash.

“Keep your eyes away from the truck!”

Bigelow’s head snapped around, and he concentrated on the horizon with studied intensity.

There was a second crash, and then a third. He heard the tearing of cardboard, footsteps, something heavy being tipped, then all fell quiet. He strained to hear, fought the temptation to look again, cursed his impulse to drive on to Tucumcari instead of stopping in Albuquerque last night as he had first intended.

Suddenly, car doors slammed. The engine of the Ford roared, and Bigelow spun around as the car fishtailed across the gravel, hit the pavement with a screech, and disappeared rapidly toward the north.

The trucker swore, darted to the cab of his truck, and grabbed the CB. Then, suddenly curious, he set the microphone down and walked around to the back of his trailer.

They had ripped open three cartons, all bearing the markings of Gerritt Industries. Boxes of small appliances lay scattered on the gravel. He started to turn, then spun back around, pushing one of the smaller boxes with his foot. The top had been torn open and inside, packed around a hand mixer, were three long, cloth bags. Each had been slashed open. White powder had spilled out onto the gravel. Bigelow knelt down, touched the tip of one finger to his tongue, touched it to the powder, then brought it back to his tongue.

He gave a low whistle, swore again, and darted around to grab the CB microphone.

It was late that same night that a soft knock sounded on Nathan Shoshani’s apartment door in Los Angeles. Surprised, he walked over and looked through the peep hole. There was a soft exclamation, part surprise, part exasperation. He unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped back. “Hello, Papa.”

Yaacov nodded, sweeping off his black felt hat. “I’m sorry to be so late, but…” He left it unsaid, and came inside.

“I just got home a little while ago.” He waved in the direction of the table, covered with dishes. “I still have some fish and some chilled wine. Would you like something?”

“No. Thank you.” There was a gentle smile as he looked around the apartment, most of which was in the same state as the kitchen. “Sarah should visit you for a week, maybe?”

Nathan nearly flared, then realized he was tired. His father was only trying to make conversation. “Come in, Papa. Sit down.”

“I cannot stay.” The hat was twirling round and round in his hands.

“What is it?”

“I read the reports this evening.”

With a sigh, Nathan sat down on the couch. “Please, sit down.”

His father nodded absently and took a chair across from him.

“Let’s get it over with.”

“What if that trailer truck had come off the train in a city or at a busy crossing? People could have been killed.”

There was a deep intake of air, then a long exhale, as Nathan fought for patience. “Papa, we chose that train because we knew it would be crossing the desert early in the morning. And we knew exactly where that track curved and how fast the train would be going. We did not leave it to chance.”

“And the truck driver in New Mexico? What if he had tried to resist?”

Nathan threw up his hands. “What if? What if? You can spend your life asking what if? The point is we ran two very tightly planned operations today and had perfect success with both. Because of our little ‘accidents,’ the police called in the federal narcotics people. They found drugs in six other shipments coming from Gerritt’s plant in Hawthorne. I just came from Gerritt’s house. He had four visitors tonight. All of them are federal agents.”

“And so you violate the law to gain success?”

Nathan slammed his fist against the couch. “Do you want the Saudis to have the planes?”

“Expediency, always expediency. You violated the law!”

“Abraham told the Egyptians that Sarah was his sister in order to save his life. Wasn’t that expediency?”

Now it was Yaacov who flared. “So my son quotes me from the Bible now? My son, who hasn’t read Torah in ten years? My son who can’t be bothered with morning prayer, or synagogue?” He looked up at the ceiling. “Oi! And he uses Torah to justify crime.”

Nathan shook his head wearily. “Papa. The point is, we have brought Gerritt into a dangerous position. Not only is he under investigation, but he will also have to account to the men who put up the money for him.”

“You think you will stop Gerritt in that way?” Yaacov cried angrily. “He did not know what those men in his plant were doing. He did not want to know. They can prove nothing to convict him. And Mr. Andrew Hadlow will not be hurt either. You are like a horsefly buzzing around the horse. You may sting him slightly, but he will flick the tail and shoo you away. For that you break the law and risk innocent people’s lives.”

Nathan stood, too tired to fight. “It’s time for us both to go to bed, Papa.” He started for the door, then turned back slowly. “Gondor called the Deputy Director today. You will be asked to turn over the running of the informant in Gerritt Industries to us. And the radar engineer. You will have to leave him to us as well.”

Yaacov stood also, the fire gone out in him as well. “Yes, your Moshe Gondor called me to gloat. You think I refuse to turn them over to you just to be difficult, don’t you?”

“I—”

“Don’t you? And yet you and Moshe both know that one of the primary rules of intelligence is to protect your sources. If you switch controls too early, the rabbit will flee.”

“You could help us make the transfer. You are not part of the operating team.”

Yaacov moved past his son and opened the door. “I am now.”

Nathan’s head came up. “What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid I pulled rank on your Moshe Gondor. I called the Prime Minister and explained why I have not turned these two men over to you. He agrees that things are still too sensitive to risk losing them. Along about now, Gondor should be receiving a telephone call. You will be ordered to leave Wuthrich strictly to me. Also, Mr. Taggart, the engineer.”

He put on his hat and opened the door, ignoring the look on his son’s face. “Erev tov, Nahtan,” he murmured in Hebrew, and left.

Chapter Sixteen

It was one of those cases where people were watching people who were watching people who were watching people. The first watcher was Jacqueline Ashby. She stood next to Marc in a small circle standing in the family room of the Barclay home. Her eyes never left his face as he told the story of his first experience riding a camel when he was in the Peace Corps. He had the whole group rocking with laughter.

Valerie Robertson sat in a chair across the room, sipping a glass of ginger ale. The cocktail party swirled around her. People would smile down at her politely, and she would return the smiles. But she was watcher number two, and she was watching Jacqueline Ashby. The story was hilarious, and she found herself smiling at Marc as he told it. But primarily her focus was on Jackie. Elegant, beautiful, charming Jackie. Jackie, whose eyes were sparkling with delight as she watched Marc talk. Jackie, who would lay her hand on Marc’s arm when she laughed, letting it linger there for a moment or two.

Valerie looked down into her glass, chiding herself for her pettiness. Marc was not encouraging Jackie in any way. In fact, he was so caught up in the telling of the story, he seemed unaware of either her touch or the rapt attention she was giving him. Valerie looked away as Marc finished and Jackie slipped her arm through his. The chiding of herself had not helped in the least.

The third watcher was Ardith Barclay. She had brought out another tray of canapes and had started to transfer them to the dishes on the table when her eyes lifted and caught the expression on Valerie’s face. Ardith turned slightly to see what Valerie was staring at. Her expression softened as she looked back in time to see the quick frown and the averted head.

She finished quickly, set the tray aside, then moved over to Valerie. “Did you know that I hate these parties?” she asked with a smile.

Valerie looked up, then smiled. “They must be a tremendous amount of work for you. How often do you have to do this?”

The older woman shrugged. “Much of what Alex does takes place in informal settings like this. So I do it. But I’m much happier with a book and some classical music.”

“Well, you’d never notice it,” Valerie said warmly. “You’re always such a gracious hostess.”

Ardith was pleased, knowing it was said sincerely. “Thank you.”

“Can I help you do something?”

For a moment, Ardith started to shake her head, then remembered the expression she had seen. “Well, I was going to get some more drink stirred up for the punch bowl.”

Valerie was up. “Then let me do it. I’d love to be doing something.”

Suddenly Marc was at her side. “You’d love to be doing what?”

Valerie turned in surprise. “I was going to help Ardith fix some more drink.”

Marc took her elbow. “Good idea. I’ll help too.”

Over Marc’s shoulder both Valerie and Ardith saw the sudden narrowing of Jackie’s eyes as she saw Marc take Valerie’s arm. She turned away quickly and walked over to join another group. Ardith felt a certain sadness, for she thought a great deal of her husband’s secretary, but then she smiled up at Marc. “I shouldn’t really let the guests do this, but Janet’s in the kitchen. She can show you what needs to be done.”

As they moved off, Ardith watched them go, her face thoughtful. At that point, Alex, who had been the fourth watcher through it all, disengaged himself from the couple he was with and joined his wife.

“Sweet couple,” he commented.

She cocked her head with a serious expression. “Them or us?”

He slipped his arm around her waist. “Well, you know we are. I was thinking of them.” He watched Marc and Valerie through the door of the kitchen getting instructions from the maid. “I’m not as hopeful as I was for Jackie anymore. Those two seem to be getting pretty serious. But Valerie is a sweet girl.”

“I’m sure she would be flattered to hear you say that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know that I think a lot of Jackie. But Valerie is more than a sweet girl, Alex. She’s a lovely woman in her own right.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean otherwise.”

“She’s better for Marc than Jackie.”

He gave her a sharp look. “And when did you come to that conclusion?”

She ignored that. “How is Marc working out for you?”

“Terrific! He keeps surprising me.” He paused, frowning slightly. “He tends to be a little naive about some things, and he certainly speaks his mind now.”

“But?”

“But he is also quick to learn and shrewd at sensing what needs to happen. I don’t know, Ardy. He’s an unusual young man with some real promise. I’m finding myself more and more impressed with him.”

“Maybe that’s not so good.”

That really took him back, and he turned so he could look at her fully. “What do you mean by that?”

“Marc’s been with you almost a month now. You’re working him pretty hard.”

“No more than me!” he retorted. “Or Derek and Jackie, for that matter.”

“Derek and Jackie don’t have two little boys at home who need a father.”

“Ardith, what has gotten into you? You’ve never given a hoot who I hired or what I did with them.”

She didn’t look at him, just finally shook her head. “Don’t burn him out, Alex. Not this one. Okay?”

She left him staring after her as she crossed back over to the table, picked up the tray, and headed for the kitchen.

Marc kissed Valerie, then sat back, fingering the wheel of the Volkswagen. They had driven home from the party in Palos Verdes with long lapses of silence. Now Marc was again quiet, his thoughts far away from her.

She watched him for a minute. “What?” she asked softly, noting the sudden creasing of his eyebrows.

“Alex is going to have us work tomorrow again.”

“I know.” She turned to look out the window. “I heard him telling Jackie.”

“Look, I’m sorry, Valerie. This is the fourth Saturday in a row, but Derek is back from Jakarta and needs to report. And this delegation of Saudis coming to Washington on the fourteenth is critical. I’ve never seen Alex so nervous.”

“I know.” She turned back. “Mom’s got an all-day meeting downtown tomorrow, but I can take Brett to soccer. And then I’ll go with them to the party at the church.”

“I should be home by four. Couldn’t we go after that?”

She shook her head. “My Aunt Edna is coming over in the evening. And the party only goes until dark.”

Marc’s face fell. “That’s right.” He took a quick breath. “Valerie, once we get this Saudi deal put together, things should lighten up.”

She reached out and took his hand. “You don’t have to justify anything to me. It’s the boys that will be disappointed.”

“I see,” he said soberly. “Just the boys?”

She sighed. “You know I will too. I was looking forward to being with you.”

“Look, let’s plan on something for Monday night. We have to be to Edwards Air Force Base by nine o’clock for the demonstration of the prototype, but it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. I think I can be home by three or four. Let’s take the boys out to McDonald’s, then go to a movie.”

“That sounds fun. And that will help ease tomorrow.”

He moved back over to her, and she laid her head on his shoulder. For several moments they were both quiet, then she looked up at him. He was looking out the window, seeing nothing.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said softly.

He glanced at her quickly, then turned back. “I was thinking about Alex Barclay.”

“What about him?”

“Remember what you said about him, that he always seems to want people to know how much money he spends on things?”

“Yes.”

“I used to think that was what made him tick. The money.”

“And now?”

“It’s not the money. That’s just a nice side benefit. It’s the deal.”

“What do you mean, it’s the deal?”

“To Alex, the deal is everything. There’s something about putting it together, through all the challenges, with all the risks. It’s what drives him.”

“I think I know what you mean.”

He kissed her, then pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. “And do you know what is scary?”

“What?”

“I’m starting to know exactly how he feels.”

When the doorbell rang, Quinn Gerritt looked up in surprise. After the party at Barclay’s, Jessica had gone straight to bed, but he had stayed up to pore over the papers on the prototype. Jessica stirred, then turned over as he put down the book. “Who’s that?” she mumbled.

He shook his head, glancing at the clock on the lamp table. It was nearly midnight. “I don’t know.”

As he stood, Jessica came fully awake. “Quinn, be careful.”

He laughed that off. “Maybe it’s a burglar. I’ll take a gun down and see what he’s got. We could use the cash.”

But in spite of his outward amusement, Gerritt padded through the massive living room without turning on the lights. At the intercom system, he stopped and pushed a button, just as the bell rang again, more insistently. “Yes? Who is it?”

“Gerritt, this is Arthur Hadlow.”

As Gerritt ushered the small, dark man into the living room, there were no apologies for the hour, no inquiries as to whether he had been asleep. He sat down on the couch, watching as Gerritt turned on two lamps.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“No.”

Gerritt shrugged and took a chair facing Hadlow.

“You know why I’m here.”

There was the briefest of nods. “I thought you might come.”

“You caused us a significant loss yesterday, Mr. Gerritt.”

“I caused you a loss!” Gerritt blurted. “What about my loss? I had four federal narcotics agents here last night.”

“Can they tie the hiring of those two men directly to you?”

Gerritt shook his head. Only he and Theodore Wuthrich knew about that, and Ted wouldn’t implicate himself. “You should have told me why you wanted those men hired.” There was an accusing note in his voice.

“As I remember,” Hadlow said dryly, “you didn’t ask.” He leaned forward, his voice still bland and expressionless. “On Monday morning, you will find that all of your funds are frozen.”

“What!”

“When you get things in your organization under control, let us know.”

“You can’t do that! We show the prototype Monday. We’ll need massive amounts of cash to take it into production.”

Hadlow could have been discussing gardening across the back fence for all the emotion that was in his voice. “My people are not happy, Mr. Gerritt. You cost us two men and eleven million dollars in street value.”

“How do you know it’s my problem? Somebody in your organization could be the leak.”

Hadlow shook his head. “If it were somebody in my organization, the cocaine would have disappeared. It wouldn’t have been spread out in the sunshine for the whole world to see. Someone is trying to destroy you, Mr. Gerritt, not get our coke.”

“But why?”

“When you find that out, the funds will be released.”

“But you’ll ruin everything!” Gerritt’s voice had gone hoarse. “We’ve got to go into production this week, or lose the deal.”

Hadlow stood. “If you were to seek other financing, we would assume you weren’t happy with our relationship.”

Gerritt sagged back, a sickness twisting his stomach. Hadlow moved to the door, then stopped and turned. “There is one other possible option.”

Gerritt shot up. “What?”

“We have a replacement shipment waiting in Columbia. If we could find someone who could bring that into the country…” He lifted his palms.

“Are you crazy? The feds are watching me now.”

“A man with a large organization and many contacts would be foolish to do everything himself. Especially if he has high exposure.”

He opened the door and stepped out. “Good night, Mr. Gerritt. My best to your wife.”

Chapter Seventeen

The sky in the Los Angeles basin had been gray and overcast when Alex, Derek, Jackie, and Marc had left the city, but by the time they reached Edwards Air Force Base, the high deserts were cloudless, and the air temperature stood at a delightful sixty-nine degrees.

General Taylor Canning and a staff sergeant walked them into the pilot’s ready room, and two men in g-suits and full flight gear stood. The nearest saluted the general smartly. Canning returned the salute, and then turned to the group behind him. “This is Colonel John Talbot, our senior test pilot.” Talbot nodded. He was just starting to gray and had a quick, easy smile.

Canning motioned to the other man. He was slightly shorter than Talbot, with olive skin, a neatly trimmed mustache, and jet-black eyes. “And this is General Sayeed Amani, commander-in-chief of the Royal Saudi Air Force.”

Marc gave a deferent nod of his head. “Is-salaam ‘alaykum.”

The dark eyes widened slightly. “Wa-’alaykum is-salaam.”

“Ahlan Wa Sahlan. Welcome to America.”

General Amani smiled, white teeth flashing. “Your Arabic is excellent.”

“As is your English.”

Canning watched the interchange, pleased. “This is Marc Jeppson, one of the associates in Barclay Enterprises. And Derek Parkin, another associate.” They shook hands quickly, then Canning touched Jackie’s elbow. “And this is Jacqueline Ashby, Mr. Barclay’s executive secretary.”

Amani and Talbot both inclined their heads, the admiration clearly evident in their eyes.

“And this is Alex Barclay, president of Barclay Enterprises.”

Alex nodded and gripped the other’s hand firmly. “General. Welcome.” He also shook hands with Talbot. “Colonel.”

Talbot turned to Alex. “I understand you’re going to be flying back seat with the general.”

That brought both Derek and Marc up in surprise. Alex just nodded. “Yes. I’d like to see what this little system of Gerritt’s can do.”

Canning turned. “Sergeant. Show Mr. Barclay where to suit up. Then have someone bring him out to the flight line.”

“Yes, sir.”

They moved off, but at the door Alex turned back. “Jackie? Tell Gerritt I want to talk to him after the test. In fact, you can take the car back. He and I can have lunch.”

“Okay.”

Canning watched them go, then turned back to the group. “You can watch everything from the control center. We’ve got it wired so you’ll see exactly what Colonel Talbot and General Amani are seeing on their HUD’s—Head Up Displays—as well as what ground control is feeding into the system. They’ll be flying what is known as a DACT mission first. That’s an acronym for Dissimilar Air-to-Air Combat Tactics. It means Colonel Talbot will be flying a different plane—the McDonnell Douglas F-15—and will be the ‘enemy.’”

Talbot grinned. “I’ll be simulating a Soviet pilot in a MIG-22. Since the Barracuda is the test platform for the new radar system, the General will fly that, see what he can do.” The goodnatured challenge in the Colonel’s voice was obvious.

Amani laughed softly. “This system had better be good. Colonel Talbot has a reputation for being one of the most cunning ‘enemy pilots’ in California.”

“After we test the air-to-air capability,” Canning went on, “we’ll try some ground targets. The people at China Lake Naval Weapons Center up north of here have laid out some simulations that will test the mettle of the system.”

The sergeant returned. “About three more minutes, sir.”

Amani and Talbot picked up their helmets.

“Fi Aman Illah,” Marc said, as the two men turned and started for the flight line.

The Saudi turned back, obviously pleased. “I shall need it. Shukran. Thank you.”

As they started down the corridor, Jackie increased her pace and fell in step with Marc. “What did you say to him?”

“Well, really it’s just ‘good-bye,’ but literally, it means ‘Go in the care of God.’”

“If the colonel’s as good as they say, he’ll need some help,” Jackie said.

“He is,” Canning said. “Talbot’s the best.”

Marc turned to Jackie. “I didn’t know Alex was going to fly with them.”

“Oh, yes. When they granted permission, he was elated.”

Canning gave a short laugh. “Didn’t you know? Alex flew jets in Korea. He maintains a commercial pilot’s license.”

“We lease a Lear Jet,” Jackie added with a nod. “Alex flies it most of the time.”

Marc just shook his head, and they fell silent as the sergeant led them through the long corridors. Alex Barclay was full of surprises. How much more was there to the man that he had yet to learn?

“Radar confirms a definite kill.” The triumph in the voice of General Amani was evident even through the overhead speaker in the control center.

“That’s a roger here, too, General,” the fire control officer for the tracking center said into his headset. “That’s four for four.”

“Very impressive,” came the laconic voice of Talbot. “I’m glad this system belongs to us.”

“Gerritt?” It was Alex’s voice.

Gerritt stepped forward. “This is Gerritt.”

“You’ve got yourself a winner!”

A faint smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. But it was Jonathan Taggart who was beaming. Marc leaned over and shook his hand. “Congratulations, Mr. Taggart, you’ve designed yourself quite a system there.”

“Thank you.”

“Control? This is Dolly Leader.” Talbot was all business again now. “Do you wish further DACT testing?”

The fire control officer turned. “What do you say, Mr. Gerritt?”

Again Alex’s voice was heard. “What do you say, General Amani?”

The deeper voice of the Saudi came in almost instantly. “I’m satisfied. Let’s proceed.”

“Roger, Dolly Leader. China Lake? Do you copy?”

A new voice came on. “We copy, Edwards Control. We’re standing by.”

“Proceed with phase two, Dolly Leader.”

As the speaker continued to chatter, Taggart stepped to the large computer display in front of them and picked up a pointer. The glass prism display feeding from the ground control at China Lake showed the images of more than a dozen vehicles. Four were tanks; two were missile launchers; the rest, trucks and jeeps. A jagged line ran clear across the screen in front of the vehicles.

“A jet fighter has two basic functions,” Taggart began, “airborne intercept and ground attack. You’ve just seen what the system provides in the air intercept category—complete flight envelope coverage, head-on attack capability, fire-and-forget missile control for up to eight missiles simultaneously. The VSM-430 system has included some significant improvements in this area, but basically that is all they are, improvements. Most current radar systems have all those capabilities. We have just refined them somewhat.”

He tapped the screen with the pointer. “But what is significantly different is that we have combined the air intercept potential with greatly enhanced ground attack capability. The technology utilizes what we call a millimeter wave radar seeker. This has the ability to seek out, detect, identify, lock on, and track tactical military ground vehicles.”

The tip of the pointer touched the images one after another. “Here you see a typical ground emplacement.” The pointer traced the jagged line. “They are in excellent concealment behind a steep ridge. You’ll also note they have surface-to-air missile capability.” He tapped the two long, slender shapes pointing into the sky.

“The SAMs are, of course, controlled by ground radar systems that can lock on and track high-performance jet aircraft. Thus, the attack capability of the fighter is jeopardized by the counterattack capability of the ground forces.”

“Approaching China Lake Naval Testing Center.” Talbot’s voice interrupted the lecture, causing Taggart to talk faster.

“Millimeter wave radar technology is not new, nor is the hardware we’ve developed dramatically different. What we have accomplished with the VSM-430 is an innovative use of the data gathered by the seeker device. And we’ve greatly enhanced its ability to screen out other ground clutter that can deceive the radar tracker.”

“Edwards Control, this is China Lake Ground. We’re patching in the video of the target area.”

Marc and the others swung around to where six television monitors were mounted in a bank against one wall. Vivid color pictures sprang to life, each focusing from a different angle or distance on the various vehicles. The same images that were just computer graphics on the prism screen now leaped into life. The tanks were dug in with camouflage netting. The missile carriers were in similar concealment. A jagged and rocky ridge, bare of vegetation, could be seen in the background.

“China Lake Control, this is Dolly Leader. We are on station and standing by.”

“Roger, Dolly Leader. Proceed to designated coordinates and stand by for your approach run.”

“Proceeding as directed, China Lake.” Then Talbot’s voice became less official. “General, I’ll stay right in your six o’clock until you launch the missiles and break off. I’ll follow the missiles in to the target area with the cameras rolling.”

“Roger, Dolly Leader.”

The designer of the VSM-430 turned to an airman. “Could we get the radar display from General Amani’s plane on one of the monitors please?” Almost instantly the far screen went blank, then filled with the images from the radar tracker. Taggart turned back to those watching the demonstration and pulled up a chart that had line drawings of tanks and a missile carrier nestled behind a ridge. The simplified outline of a jet fighter was in the far upper left corner, with arrows diagramming the attack run. He swung up the pointer again.

“What you are about to watch is drawn in this diagram. General Amani’s F-22”—he tapped the drawing of the fighter—”carries two rocket pods under the belly. Each pod holds twelve WASP antitank missiles. The VSM-430 system allows the pilot to make his attack run with no inherent restraints on either the approach or escape. In other words, there are no required altitudes, speeds or other limiting factors. It allows for a low-altitude, high-speed launch from a large standoff range. That means he can launch and break off before he even enters the range of the SAMs.”

“And the radar can tell the difference between a truck and a missile launcher from that distance?” Marc asked, a little bit awestruck.

“That’s what we’re hoping,” Gerritt said shortly.

“Hope nothing, Mr. Gerritt!” Taggart snapped. “That is exactly what the VSM-430 will do, and with great precision. The system sets target priorities and specific attack modes prior to launch. Once launched, the missiles will climb or descend to search altitude. Digital processors in each missile control all flight- and target-search functions. Once the target is selected, the missiles lock on, arm a contact fuse, and make a diving attack on the selected target.”

“China Lake?” Jackie had raised her hand, but Talbot’s voice over the speaker caused it to drop again. “This is Dolly Leader. We are at our coordinates.”

“Begin your attack run, Dolly Leader.”

“Watch the tracking screen,” Taggart said excitedly. “I’ll tell you when to watch the video.”

“Roger, China Control. Okay, General. Here we go.”

“Dolly One to Dolly Leader.” The general’s voice was calm, unhurried. “We’ll take it in the weeds. Here we go.”

“In the weeds means on the deck,” General Canning supplied. “Very low altitude.”

A radar tracker behind them sang out, “Dolly One is dropping fast. He’s under a thousand feet. Speed, Mach one point four.”

“One point four!” Gerritt said. “He’s not holding her back.”

“Good,” Canning said in a clipped voice. “Go for it, General!”

“I have the ground targets on my HUD,” Amani said.

The monitor duplicating Amani’s Head Up Display in the cockpit now showed the images of the vehicles hidden behind a ridge several miles in front of him.

“No joy.”

“That means he has no visual sighting of his target,” Canning said.

“Lock on.” Amani’s voice was almost like that of a computer’s now. “Six seconds to launch.”

The tension in the room heightened visibly.

“Missiles away! Jinking hard.”

“He’s breaking off the attack, pulling away sharply.” Even Canning was getting a little excited.

“Six missiles on their way.”

“Watch the target! Watch the target!” Taggart yelled, but it was unnecessary instruction. Every eye had already swung to the other video monitors.

“There they come!” Gerritt shouted, pointing to the wide angle shot. Six smoking trails were coming in with blurring speed.

And then it was too fast to see it all. There was no sound with the video, but the effect was almost as dramatic. A black streak homed in on the lead tank. The turret disappeared in a flash and a burst of smoke. On another screen, Marc saw one of the dummy missiles on the SAM launcher hurtle end over end as the WASP from the F-22 hit it just above the tracks. And then the five screens were filled with fire and black smoke.

“Dolly One, this is China Control. We have confirmed hits on six out of six of the designated targets.”

Jonathan Taggart leaped into the air. “All right!”

Chapter Eighteen

“So that’s it. I think all the essential elements are in place now.” Though a few hours had passed since the test, Alex was still so keyed up from the success of the testing and from his luncheon with Gerritt that he couldn’t stay seated for more than a minute or two. He was up again, and Marc, Jackie, and Derek had to swing around in their chairs to watch him as he paced. “I haven’t dared hope we could really pull this off, but I think we can. I think we can.”

“General Amani seemed very impressed,” Marc offered. “I think what he said afterward went far beyond mere Arab courtesy.”

“I do too.” Alex beamed happily. “And Gerritt is absolutely elated.”

“He should be,” Jackie said. “This will put Gerritt Industries back into the black and then some.”

“Yes, and then some is right. So we have our radar system. Derek’s got the Jakarta deal on its feet. I think we’re ready to lay out the whole thing for the Saudis. Amani will go back and confer with the powers that be.”

“Will he be part of the delegation that comes to Washington?” Marc asked.

“Yes. Which will be in our favor.” Alex moved back around behind his desk and sat down, giving them each a long searching look. “I really think we’re going to do it!” he said again in wonder. Then suddenly, he was all business. “Well, we got an early start this morning. Let’s call it a day, and hit the ground running tomorrow.”

They stood. “Thanks again to all you,” Alex said. “I think we’ve got ourselves one heck of a team.”

They started to move to the door, and Alex stood up to see them out. Jackie was first with Marc and Derek right behind her. As Marc passed, Alex touched his arm. “Oh, Marc. Could I see you for a minute or two?”

“Sure.” Surprised, he moved back to his chair.

“Jackie, if you’ll lock up the front, Marc and I will go out the back and do the warehouse.”

“Okay.”

Alex shut the door, which was the second surprise. Alex rarely shut his office door. “Well,” he began as he pulled a chair alongside Marc and sat down, “what did you think of that little demonstration today?”

“As the kids would say, it was awesome. Almost disturbingly so.”

“Why disturbingly so?”

Marc considered that. “When I was teenager, I got to sit in an M-60 tank once. I can remember thinking, ‘Now, if I had to go to war, this is where I’d like to be.’” He took a breath. “Watching those tanks go up today, with absolutely no chance to defend themselves…I don’t know, it was kind of sobering.”

“Yes. This high-tech warfare is really something.”

Marc was looking at the derringers on the wall, absently. “Does it ever bother you?”

“What?”

“Knowing you’re dealing in death.”

For one second, anger flashed, then suddenly Alex threw back his head and laughed. “Marc, do you know what the difference between you and Derek is?”

Now it was Marc that was caught off guard. “No, what?”

“Well, in the first place, the ethics of arms sales would never have crossed his mind. And second, if it had, he would never have asked that question of his boss, who makes a living selling arms.”

Marc’s face flushed. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Yes, you did. And I find that quality in you admirable. Sometimes it startles me, and often I don’t agree with you, but I know I can trust what you’re saying.” Suddenly he sobered. “And that’s not true of very many people I know.”

“I…”

Alex cut in. “No, I mean it. It’s what I like most about you. I believe in integrity, but you also know that part of me is a crafty old coyote that watches every word he says.”

He went on quickly, cutting off Marc’s attempts to extricate himself. “Don’t change, Marc. It’s one of your strongest qualities.” He paused, still chuckling to himself. “But, to answer the question…”

He sat back, the lines around his mouth and eyes deepening. “Well, believe it or not, I have thought a great deal about that. But before I answer it, let me tell you a little bit more about middlemen.”

Marc nodded.

“Basically, there are three kinds of people who become marriage brokers in this business. First, there are the flakes. The money to be made attracts them by the hundreds. They take the money from investors, promising returns of one or two thousand percent. Then they fly to Europe, move into five-hundred-dollar-a-night suites and blow everything.”

“I can believe that.”

“The second kind is in it for profit. This guy can deliver, because he’s got high-level entry. Probably the most famous of this type is Adnan Khashoggi. He is a multibillionaire, and it was commissions from arms sales that got him started. Over a ten-year period, Khashoggi made commissions of six hundred fifteen million dollars. That’s over sixty million a year!”

Marc gave a low whistle. Sixty million a year! Alex had never said what this deal would involve, but if it was even half that… No wonder he was elated with the day’s success.

“But there is a third kind of broker,” Alex was saying. “These are not as common, but they are the most important. Most are not highly visible like Khashoggi. The world never knows who they are. They just stay in the background making things happen. Of course, they’re interested in making a profit too. But it’s more than that. Theirs is a different kind of commitment. Take the Jakarta deal I told you about. At the time I handled the oil for the general, I actually lost money. It was a royal pain in the neck and took about three months of solid hard work. Most brokers would have said, ‘No way!’ So why did Barclay Enterprises take it on?”

It was not a rhetorical question, and Alex was watching him closely, waiting. Marc considered the question. “Well, I suppose partly to create leverage.”

“Yes, that too, but there was something else as well. The president of the United States called me personally. Officially the government didn’t want to get involved, but neither did they just want to turn their backs on the Indonesian request. So Alex Barclay got a call directly from the president of the United States. And why did he accept the job when he knew it would be a royal pain? Because believe it or not, he’s a bit of a patriotic slob, and when the president directly asks him to help, he does it.”

Marc studied Alex’s face as he talked. He suspected that maybe the idealism didn’t burn quite as brightly as Alex was saying. He also sensed that the profits weren’t quite as unimportant as he was suggesting, but there was no question: idealism was there, and the profit motive was secondary. It was an insight into Alex that was revealing.

“Now,” Alex went on. “You think I’ve forgotten your question in all this rambling, but I haven’t. You question whether the sale of arms is ethically acceptable. I answer that with a resounding yes! Let me give you an actual example. I can’t tell you the details, but recently I was asked, again by the president, to arrange for the sale of some rifles to anti-Communist guerillas in a country that has already gone over to Communism. Because of political sensitivities, the sale was officially illegal. I could have been sent to prison, ruined both financially and professionally. I made less than ten thousand dollars on the deal. That doesn’t even cover my overhead. So again I ask, why should I take on a lousy deal like that?”

“To help the country?” Marc supplied.

“Yes. But in this case there was more. I happen to strongly believe that if we don’t stop the Communists, eventually they will take over the world. So I sold the guerillas sixteen thousand rifles and four million rounds of ammunition. That’s a lot of death, Marc. A lot of death!”

“And yet, what it prevents…”

“Exactly. Arms can lead to war and death, but they can also prevent it. Take the very case we’re working on. As you saw today, the F-22 Barracuda is the ultimate killing machine. If we sell it to Saudi Arabia, we have greatly enhanced their ability to destroy.”

“Yes.”

“But you know the Ayatollah Khomeini would give up his beard and mustache if he could overthrow the Saudis and take control of the Islamic holy places. He also knows one of his defecting pilots got in right over the oil fields a few months ago without being stopped. So he starts thinking about the odds. If he tries that, we’re talking about an Arab blood bath in the Middle East.”

“At least! Maybe World War III.”

“And what effect would sixty F-22s have on his temptation to launch an attack against the Saudis?”

“I think the word is deterrent.”

“And who is going to bring about all this peace in the Middle East and prevent World War III?”

“Alex Barclay,” Marc laughed.

“No, no! Not just me. It’s Alex the marriage broker and his conscience, Marc Jeppson. Not bad, huh?”

Marc threw up his hands. “All right, all right. I should have learned in that lecture at UCLA not to try and debate with you.”

Alex leaned back, savoring the moment, and the warmth and bonding between them was palpable. He was lost in his thoughts for several moments, and Marc waited, still a little puzzled about the whole conversation. Finally Alex took a deep breath and leaned forward again. “The big question is Mr. Quinn Gerritt.”

“But you said you felt really good about your meeting with him today.”

“I did, but like I said the other day, he’s got success in his pocket. Now we’ve got to find a way to bind him to us and us alone.”

Marc hesitated for a moment, then took a quick breath. “I have some ideas about that. I was going to talk them over with Jackie, then make some recommendations.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Well,” Marc smiled, a little sheepishly. “I’ve been trying to think like Alex Barclay. How do we get leverage with Gerritt?”

“Ah,” Alex sighed, feigning sadness, but actually deeply pleased, “the corrupting influence of the coyote. But Quinn Gerritt is a challenge. If I’m the coyote, then he’s the wolf.”

“Good comparison. Anyway, I asked myself, what is it Quinn Gerritt needs? And what can we do to fill those needs?”

“Astute question. What did you come up with?”

“This may seem pretty far out, okay?”

“Okay.”

“For the longest time I couldn’t come up with anything. Then it hit me like a hammer. What does Quinn Gerritt want and need more than anything else right now?”

For a moment Alex was silent, then suddenly his eyes widened.

Marc nodded. “Money!”

“And lots of it!”

“The VSM-430 will probably turn that around, but not for a while, right?” Alex nodded, and Marc went on slowly, thinking it through as he went. “Our problem is, we offer him a chance for a major sale of his system, but it’s not an exclusive chance. Another middleman could come in and set up the sale of the Barracuda’s using Gerritt’s system too.”

“Exactly! And that’s what’s giving me ulcers.”

“So what if you make him an offer no else does.”

Alex slouched down deeper into his chair. “Go on.”

“Remember what you said about the five percenters? Well, make Quinn Gerritt one of them. Suppose you make him a limited partner, or a consultant, or whatever. Pay him five or ten percent of whatever you make. That could be several million dollars. But it would not be part of the profits made by Gerritt Industries, which will have to go toward paying off his rather substantial debts. We would pay the commission directly to him as one of our sales agents.”

“That’s a hefty cut,” Alex said, but he was not so much protesting as thinking out loud.

“True, but you set him up as our agent on one condition: you become his agent for the sale of the radar system to other users. He’s got to pay those commissions to someone. So he’s out nothing. I’ll bet you could recoup whatever you pay him in the long run.”

For almost a full sixty seconds Alex just watched him through half-closed eyes, his face impassive, his body motionless. Finally he stirred, then rose from his chair and walked over to the driftwood sculpture and the cougar. He stroked the fur absently. Suddenly he turned around. “It will work. I know it will. We’re talking Gerritt’s language.”

“And everything is perfectly legal and above board.”

“There is one other thing that will help. Gerritt needs a favor.”

“What?”

Alex glanced at his watch. “Actually, that was what I wanted to talk to you about. Can you spend some time tonight? This is pretty urgent.”

Marc’s face fell. “I promised the boys we’d go to a movie.”

Alex frowned. “I don’t mean kind of urgent, Marc. This is very urgent. It could be the key to turning Gerritt. Look, if it would help, I could call your boys, explain things.”

Marc hesitated, then shook his head slowly. “No, I’ll call. How long will we be?”

Alex pursed his lips, then moved behind his desk and sat down. “Probably late. Let me ask you one question first, then I’ll go lock up the warehouse while you call home.”

“All right.”

“I can’t remember who it was now, but someone told me that you speak fluent Spanish. Is that right?”

Valerie’s voice was flat and lifeless. “I knew when the phone rang that it would be you.”

“Val, I know I promised. I tried to tell Alex, but he’s got to get back with Gerritt tonight. And a lot has to happen in the meantime.”

“Gerritt! What has he got to do it?”

“His copper supplier in South America just fell through. That puts his whole appliance division in jeopardy. He wants us to try and pull it out of the fire.”

“That’s fine, Marc. The boys are all dressed, but I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“Valerie!”

“Well, what am I supposed to say? That’s wonderful, Marc? I’m happy that Alex has such confidence in you?”

“Val, this could tie everything together. I don’t know what else to do. It’s got to happen tonight.”

She sighed. “I know, Marc. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pressure you. I’ll take the boys.”

There was a long pause. Then, “There’s one other thing.”

“What?”

“Alex wants me to go to Bogotá for him.”

“Oh.” Now the silence became heavy over the phone.

“We leave Wednesday morning. He needs someone who can speak Spanish.”

“We?” she said slowly.

“Yes, he wants Jackie and me to go. He’s got to be in Washington.”

He paused, but she remained silent.

“It should only be for three or four days.”

“So you’ll be gone Saturday?”

“Probably, why?”

“Well, I’m sure you have more important things to worry about, but you did promise Brett you would be here to help him with the pinewood derby for Cub Scouts.”

“Oh, that’s right!”

She waited, her mouth drawn into a tight line.

His voice was so soft she almost didn’t hear him. “I totally forgot.”

“You’ll have to tell Brett. He’s been so excited about this.”

“Valerie, I…” His voice trailed off. “I’m sorry.”

She softened a little, but her voice still held a touch of hurt. “It’s not me you need to apologize to.”

“Yes, it is. You too.”

“I’d better go, Marc. We’re going to miss the show.”

“Valerie, I really am sorry.”

“I know.” There was a brief pause. “Good-bye, Marc.”

She hung up the phone and turned. Her mother was watching her, shaking her head slowly and sadly.

Chapter Nineteen

Although Bogotá, Colombia, is only three hundred fifty miles north of the equator, it sits on a high plateau at more than eighty five hundred feet above sea level. At one forty A.M. on the tenth of February, the air was crisp and cool, almost biting. It had rained earlier, and the tires of the Toyota pickup hissed softly on the wet concrete as the pickup pulled up to one of the back gates of Bogotá’s international airport. The headlights of the truck went out.

The guard came out slowly from the small booth, holding a paper in his hand. He checked the license plate, then the paper, then moved to the gate and pulled it open. As the truck drove away, he slid the gate shut again and went back inside to his magazine and heater. He had been paid handsomely to do just that and nothing else.

The tie-down area for the small private planes was not very well lighted, but through the magnification of the binoculars, the silver gray Lear Jet, registered to Barclay Industries of El Segundo, California, clearly stood out. So did the blue Toyota pickup as it pulled up alongside the sleek aircraft.

The man with the binoculars was a hundred yards away, sitting in the driver’s seat of an unmarked panel truck. He leaned forward, suddenly intent. Without lowering the glasses, the man reached across and elbowed his partner, who was slouched down and snoring softly. He was instantly awake.

“Look!” his partner said softly in Hebrew, and handed him the binoculars.

Moshe Gondor was angry and made little effort to hide it. “Come on, Mr. Shoshani! What do you think those two men were doing in Barclay’s aircraft at two in the morning? Stocking the refrigerator?”

Yaacov’s head came up slowly, his eyes glittering. “You have an annoying habit of hearing only what you want to hear, Mr. Gondor.”

Gondor blinked in surprise, as did Nathan and Yehuda Gor. To this point, Yaacov had maintained the sleepy, good-natured, old-man demeanor, nodding slowly, speaking in a patient voice. Nathan knew very well it was not the real Yaacov Shoshani, but the sudden attack caught Gondor completely off guard.

“I think the two men were removing panels inside the cabin and hiding fifty or sixty kilos of cocaine,” Yaacov went on. “I have no question about that.”

They were in Gondor’s apartment in Westwood, which was now the team’s operating headquarters. Gondor had received the report from Colombia around four A.M. California time and had called a meeting for six. He had not called the older Shoshani, but somehow he had arrived just the same. That, and the interrupted sleep, left Gondor’s temper short.

“Then what are you saying, Mr. Shoshani?” he snapped.

“Marc Jeppson and Jacqueline Ashby had no idea that those drugs were being planted on their plane. You know that as well as I do.”

“Did I ever once suggest I thought they were in on this?”

“Yet all you do is to call the federal drug people and give them an anonymous tip about a planeload of cocaine.”

“I have one interest and one interest only, and that is to halt Barclay’s deal with the Arabs.”

“But these two are innocent! This could ruin their lives. All you have to do is tell the Americans what we know. It is Gerritt we’re after, not these two.”

“You know that we have the strictest instructions not to give the Americans the slightest indication Israel is tampering with this affair.”

“Jeppson and Ashby are one half of Barclay’s total team,” Nathan broke in. “Eventually they will be proven innocent. But if they are arrested, it can only help our cause by delaying Barclay.”

Yaacov turned on his son. “You too, Nathan? You would play with people’s lives like players on a chess board?”

“I don’t like it,” Nathan answered, “but if you’re in the game, you take the knocks along with everyone else. And Jeppson and the woman are in the game.”

“Your Sarah works for a businessman, just like Jacqueline Ashby. Suppose it were her, Nathan, who had been used as an innocent dupe. Would you be so calloused then?”

Gondor had just lit a cigarette and taken a deep draw on it. He grabbed it from his mouth and waved it angrily in Yaacov’s face. “Nathan’s wife is not involved in the sale of jet planes to our enemies!”

Yehuda Gor, who had remained silent through it all, now spoke. “Gerritt is the key, and he acts increasingly desperate. If the Americans do arrest these two people of Barclay’s, they will tell them that they were in Colombia for Gerritt. Gerritt is already under suspicion. It is Gerritt we are after.”

Gondor nodded firmly. “Barclay is the only agent close to a contract with the Saudis. If we can delay this, that will give our people in Washington more time to overturn the sale once and for all.”

“And in the meantime our clandestine actions ruin the lives of people.”

“By this weekend the listening devices will be planted in Gerritt’s home and office. We’ll also have Barclay and his people covered. If we can find a way to put the drug people directly onto Gerritt, we will. Knowing the drug people as we do, they’ll likely let Jeppson and Ashby walk away from the plane anyway, put a watch on it, and see who comes to get the drugs.”

“You hope,” Yaacov said softly.

“Yes, we hope!” Gondor shot back. “We have no desire to see these two hurt, but we have our instructions. The sale of the planes must be stopped. And right now, it is up to us to do so.”

By six o’clock that same evening, the large hall was full. Almost everyone had crowded around the four highly polished, parallel wooden tracks that were set up near the stage. There were half again as many children as adults, and many of the boys were in Cub Scout uniforms. The sound level was deafening, and the official starter for the pinewood derby races had to shout to make himself heard. “All right, let’s hold it down a little. We’re ready for the next heat.”

His plea had no effect on the noise, and with a shrug he looked at the clipboard, then yelled: “Darrin Warner, Kevin McInnes, Seth Anthony, and Brad Armstrong.” He looked around. Three boys in Cub Scout uniforms stepped forward with their fathers. “Darrin? Where’s Darrin Warner?”

A muffled shout from behind the crowd was heard, and another boy in a blue uniform pushed his way to the front, with his father trailing close behind. As they passed Brett Jeppson, he saw that Darrin’s car had been shaped into a sleek, Corvettelooking shape. It was painted metallic blue and had neatly stenciled, white racing stripes. As Darrin reached the track and handed his car up to the starter, Brett saw the underside of the car. Just in front of the rear wheels there was a round hole that gleamed with the dull sheen of metal.

Valerie saw the look on his face. “What’s the matter, Brett?”

“See, I told you. Did you see Darrin’s car?”

She shook her head.

“They drilled a plug out of the bottom and filled it with lead. You gotta do that, Valerie.”

Valerie put her arm around his shoulder. “Brett, we didn’t have anything to drill the hole with. And we don’t have any lead.”

He pulled away from her. “It doesn’t have to be lead. It can be pennies or nails. Anything to give it weight.”

“I’m sorry, Brett. I’m sure it will be all right.”

Mary touched his shoulder. “Your car looks very nice, Brett.”

He glanced down in disgust. The back end was still square, the nose rounded like the front end of a lawn mower. The only paint they had been able to find was the pale yellow latex his father had used to paint the bathroom some months before. Even the numbered decals weren’t on exactly straight. Brett dropped the car closer to his leg, so no one could see it.

The official had the four cars now and set them on the track. They rolled forward to rest against the starting gate. Brett edged forward to see better.

“We’ll run two heats. The winner of the first heat will drop out for the second. The winner of both the first and second races will compete in the final ‘Race of Champions.’”

There was a momentary drop in the noise level, then a shout went up as the starting gate was raised and the cars shot down the incline. Darrin Warner’s blue Corvette flashed ahead, hit the level stretch, and coasted to a stop a good two feet further out than any other car.

Seth Anthony’s car easily won the second heat. There was brief applause, and then the man consulted his clipboard again. “Josh Morgan, Brian Keebler, Brett Jeppson, and Kyle Carver. Let’s have the next four.”

Mary pushed gently on his back. “Okay, Brett. That’s you.”

He held his ground, dropping his head. “I don’t want to.”

Valerie leaned over, putting her arm around him. “Brett. It’s your turn. You’ve got to go up there.”

“I don’t want to race.”

At that moment, Matt pushed in to stand beside his brother. “Brett, they called you.”

“Brett Jeppson,” the official called again, more loudly this time.

Valerie gave him a little shove, and he took a deep breath, then stepped forward to hand the car to the offical without looking up.

“Same rules apply to this heat. The two winners will compete in the finals.”

The starting gate went up. Brian Keebler’s car shot forward into the lead, the other three close behind. To that point, Brett’s yellow lawnmower was holding its own, but as it hit the bottom of the incline, where the track leveled out, the front end was too long, or perhaps the wheel base was not aligned properly, because the car bottomed, jerking the front end to one side. The left wheel hit the side of the track, and the car ground to a halt several feet short of where the others had come to rest.

Brett felt a hand on his shoulder. “What happened, Son?” An adult den leader was at his side. He picked up the car, spun the wheels. “Hey, don’t worry about it. Let’s try it again.”

“Okay,” cried the starter, “bring them up here for the second heat. Winner drops out.”

Brett felt his face burning with shame, and he didn’t even look up this time as he heard the quick hush, the sudden shout, and the sound of the cars on the track. As several disappointed “ohs” sounded in his ear, he looked up, then blindly reached out and grabbed his car. It had been an instant replay of the first heat, and his car sat far back from all the rest.

“It’s all right, Brett,” Matt said loyally as he rejoined Mary and Valerie. Brett just stared straight ahead, dimly aware of the looks of the other boys and the murmured attempts at comfort from the adults. Valerie, close to tears herself, put her hand on his shoulder. He jerked away.

“Brett,” Mary said kindly. “It’s all right.”

He whirled around, tears streaming down his face. “It’s not all right!” he whispered fiercely, aware that others were turning to watch. He ducked his head and pushed through the crowd.

“Brett!” Mary called after him.

“It’s all right, Mom,” Valerie said. “I’ll go talk to him. You stay with Matt.”

She found him in the back hallway, shoulder against a doorway, staring at the floor. “Brett,” she called softly, moving slowly toward him.

“Leave me alone!”

She stopped a few feet away. “Brett, I’m sorry it didn’t go better. Let’s see if we can fix it. I’m sure they’ll let you try again.”

He spun around. “I won’t race this stupid car!” he shouted. “It’s a dumb, stupid car!”

Valerie flinched. “Brett, that’s not true. It didn’t win, but—”

“I didn’t want to come! You made me come!”

Suddenly he whirled and threw the car against the wall with all his might. It shattered, spraying pieces across the hall. A black plastic wheel bounced twice, then rolled several feet down the polished tile.

“I didn’t want to come with you!” he shouted, crying openly now. “I wanted to come with my dad!”

It was nearly eleven-thirty when Marc slipped through the garage door and into the kitchen. As he set down his bag, he noticed the light in the living room was on. Surprised, he crossed softly to the entryway and into the other room. Valerie was sitting on the couch watching him steadily.

“Hi,” he said. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”

“I told Mother to go home and sleep.”

He came over and sat down beside her with a weary sigh. “I’m sorry we’re so late. We left early this morning so we could get back, but then we had to wait two hours to refuel in Guatemala, and it took almost three hours to clear customs in L. A.”

“How was the trip?” Her voice held little life.

“Kind of odd, actually. We got the job done, but it wasn’t nearly as critical as Gerritt led us to believe. But it went well.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re home.” She stood. “I’d better go.”

He looked at her closely. “Let me run you home.”

“It’s only a couple of blocks. I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not going to have you walking out this late at night. Come on.”

He stopped for a moment, fumbled in his bag, then led her out to the car. The Volkswagen was gone now, but in its place Marc had a Chrysler LeBaron convertible, another company car from Barclay Enterprises. He was glad, for he didn’t want bucket seats between them tonight.

Valerie was quiet the short distance to her home, and when he pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine, she immediately reached for the door handle. “Thank you, Marc. Good night.”

“Valerie!”

She didn’t open the door, but neither did she turn around. “What?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. It’s late. I’m very tired.”

“I know. I really am sorry we were so late.” He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a small box. “I brought you something from Bogotá.”

Finally she turned around to look at him. He reached across and set the box in her lap. She took it without looking up, unwrapped it slowly.

“It’s a tiny replica of one of the artifacts in the Gold Museum in Bogotá.”

“It’s very lovely.”

He sat back. “Well, I’m glad you’re able to contain yourself.”

Her head snapped up, and for several seconds her eyes locked with his, bitterness tightening her mouth. Then she suddenly shook her head and looked away, but not before he saw the glint of tears in her eyes and the quiver in her lips. He moved over and touched her arm. “Valerie? What is the matter?”

She shook her head. “I need to go in, Marc.”

He took her hand. “No, not yet. I want to know what’s wrong.”

She turned then, brushing angrily at the streaks on her cheeks. “You don’t even know?” she cried.

He blinked in surprise. “No. What?”

“You think about it a minute.”

He did, then suddenly understanding dawned. “Is it Jackie?”

Valerie just stared, then laughed bitterly. “Did you have a wonderful trip together?”

“Valerie,” he said softly, “I don’t have any say in who Alex sends. Jackie is a charming and lovely woman, but—”

“It isn’t Jackie,” she snapped. “So don’t worry about trying to explain things to me.”

“Then what?” he demanded in exasperation.

She whirled, her eyes blazing. “Why don’t you ask how Brett did in the pinewood derby? Did that even cross your mind?”

Marc felt like he had been kicked in the stomach. “Oh!” He put one fist to his forehead and banged it softly. “I totally forgot.”

“Good! That will make Brett feel better.”

“Valerie, I’m sorry. I was thinking about it this morning, hoping we’d get home in time, but the day has been such a nightmare since. I…”

She was looking out the window, fingering the necklace and tiny gold figurine without looking at them.

“How did he do?”

“He got the ‘Safe Driver’ award.”

“The ‘Safe Driver’ award? Is that good or bad?”

She opened the door, suddenly very weary. “Why don’t you ask him tomorrow, Marc? That is assuming you’re going to be home long enough to see him.”

He sat back, took a deep breath, and started running his hands slowly over the steering wheel.

Valerie started to get out, stopped, and turned back half around. She sniffed back the tears. “I’m sorry, Marc. I know you’re tired too. Let’s just talk about it tomorrow.”

Marc nodded, not looking at her. She raised one hand, as though to touch him, hesitated, then let it drop again. “Thank you for the necklace, Marc.” Then she shut the door and walked slowly into the house.

Marc tiptoed quietly into Matt’s bedroom, picked up a dump truck, and set it on the toy chest. One hand was tucked under the tangled blond hair, the other was entwined in the small blanket that was Matt’s inseparable sleeping partner. Marc pulled the covers up and placed them across his son’s shoulders softly, then tiptoed out again.

The moment he entered Brett’s room, he knew his older son was still awake. There was no movement, but the thin body was rigid, the breathing shallow and controlled. Marc walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Hello, Son.”

There was neither answer nor movement.

“Valerie told me about the derby.”

Silence.

“I tried to get back. We left real early this morning from South America, but we had several delays in flight. I’m sorry, Brett. I know I promised I’d be there.”

Still nothing.

“Who had the fastest car?”

The shoulders moved slightly, and Marc waited. Finally, “Darrin Warner.”

“What did they give him?”

“A gold trophy.”

“Valerie said you got an award.”

No answer.

“Can I see it.”

“I threw it away.”

Marc sighed wearily. “I understand.” He laid his hand on Brett’s shoulder. “One of those they give just to try and make a guy feel good.”

There was an almost imperceptible nod.

“Look, Brett. I know that saying I’m sorry isn’t much better than getting the ‘Safe Driver’ award, but I am, Brett. I’m going to make it up, too.”

He stopped, but again Brett did not respond, and after several seconds he went on. “I’ve been gone a lot. It’s been hard on you guys. But I’m going to change that.”

“Does that mean you won’t be going to Washington, D.C., on Monday?”

Marc winced. “No, Brett. That’s one I just can’t get out of. But when I get back, we’ll go over to Puddingstone Reservoir and do some fishing. How would that be?”

“You can take Matt. I don’t want to go fishing.”

“What?” Marc teased. “Is this Brett Jeppson I hear talking? The Brett Jeppson who can cast a line farther than any kid I know?”

There was no answer.

“Brett?”

Nothing.

“I brought you and Matt something from South America.”

Nothing.

“We’ll talk about it in the morning, okay?”

Nothing.

Marc stood, leaned over, and kissed his son on the cheek. “Good night, Brett.”

He waited for a moment, and when the silence became too heavy to bear, he turned and walked slowly out of the room.

Chapter Twenty

The old man standing next to Marc in the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum gazed upward, where the fragile “Wright Flyer,” the plane flown by Orville and Wilbur Wright, hung a short distance from the sleek, rocket-like X-15, the first aircraft to fly at six times the speed of sound.

“The old and the new, the new and the old,” the man said in a heavily accented voice. “It seems impossible that they come from the same generation.”

Marc nodded, taking note of the man for the first time. He was lean, but with a kind face and wise eyes. His hair was completely white, and he wore a slightly rumpled black suit and a black Homburg hat.

“My grandfather was born in 1903,” Marc said. “His life spans the first powered flight to the space shuttle.”

“He is still alive then?”

“Yes. He still runs his farm in a little town in Utah.”

“Utah,” the older man smiled. “I was there not long ago. In Salt Lake City.” He held out his hand. “My name is Yaacov Shoshani. I am from Jerusalem.” He smiled, with a sparkle in his eye. “That is in Israel.”

Marc laughed. “I know.” He shook the other’s hand, which had a surprisingly firm grip. “My name is Marc Jeppson.”

“I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Jeppson. So you are from Utah?”

“No, I live in California now.”

“And you came to Washington to see the sights? Is that how you say it?”

Marc nodded. “Yes, but actually, I’m here on business. Or at least I’m supposed to be.” He frowned. “I’m here with three associates, and we’re waiting for some meetings to be arranged.”

Yaacov tapped his chest with understanding. “I too.”

Marc raised an eyebrow, curious but not wanting to pry.

“While I was waiting, I decided to see some of the famous Smithsonian Museum.” Yaacov rolled his eyes. “I did not realize the famous museum is a whole city of museums.”

Marc laughed. “I know.”

“Well.” Yaacov looked up one last time at the two aircrafts suspended in midair. “It was delightful to meet you, Mr. Jeppson. Have a good visit to Washington.”

“You too, Mr. Shoshani. Good luck to you with your business.”

He laughed. “I will need it. Mazel tof to you as well.”

“Mazel tof and shalom,” Marc returned with a wave.

The old man shuffled off, peering up at one of the space capsules.

There was a soft knock on the hotel door. Marc was sprawled out on the bed studying a map of the downtown area, trying to decide where he would go tomorrow if they had another day free. He went to the door, still carrying the map.

It was Jackie, still dressed in the skirt and blouse she was wearing when they had all had breakfast together that morning. “Hi,” he said, noticing the weariness around her eyes.

“Hello, Marc. Can you stick your head out a minute while I get Derek? I have a message from Alex.”

“Sure.” He followed her out into the hallway and watched as she tapped on the next door. When it opened, Derek stepped out, smiling broadly. Then he saw Marc, and the smile faded.

“No luck, yet,” she said. “The earliest we can meet with the delegation is tomorrow afternoon.”

Marc groaned inwardly. That meant at least another two days here. It just kept mounting up, and every call home was getting to be more and more difficult.

“Alex would like you to be on hand from noon on, just in case, but it will probably be tomorrow evening.”

“But nothing tonight?” Derek asked.

“No.”

“A classmate of mine from Harvard lives in Alexandria. He wants me to spend the evening with him. If that’s okay, I’ll call him.”

Jackie nodded. “Fine.” As Derek went back inside, she turned to Marc. “And what did you spend the day doing?” She pulled a face. “Not sitting in your room drinking, like Derek, I hope.”

That surprised him a little.

“You mean you couldn’t smell him?” she said in disgust, waving her hand in front of her face.

Marc looked thoughtfully at the door. Derek had had several drinks the night before at dinner, to the point that Alex had finally made a comment. Derek had not liked being called down in front of Marc and Jackie and had bristled. Marc shrugged and turned back to her. “So what about tonight? Do you and Alex want to do dinner again?”

“Alex will be at the State Department until late.” There was a fractional hesitation. “Does the offer hold if it’s only me?”

Just as he had noticed her hesitation, she noticed his, even though he tried to recover quickly. “Of course,” he said. “What time?”

She reached up and rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, I feel like I’ve been in a gym all day. I’d like to shower and rest for a bit. How about eight-thirty?”

“Eight-thirty is fine. I’ll knock for you.”

The phone rang in Quinn Gerritt’s suite in the Marriott Hotel, and Jessica swept across the room in her satin evening gown to pick it up. “Yes?”

She listened a moment, then called into the bedroom, where Quinn was putting on a black tie and tails. “Quinn, a Mr. Derek Parkins is downstairs.”

He came out, putting on his coat. “Tell him to come up.”

She frowned but spoke quickly into the phone. When she hung up, he pulled her into his arms.

“You look lovely, Jessie. As usual.” He kissed her lightly, so as not to smear her lipstick, then pulled two tickets from inside his jacket. They were for box seats at the Kennedy Center where Aida was playing. He handed her one of them. “Give me five minutes. Then go. I’ll catch a cab.”

There was a momentary flash of annoyance, then resignation. “Try to hurry, Quinn.”

“I didn’t think he was coming until we got back.” He turned to check his bow tie in the mirror. “But this is important. I’ll catch up.”

She gave him a quick wave and swept out the door.

Jackie opened the door to her room a few inches, then leaned against it, looking up at Marc. “Thanks for the company. It was a delightful dinner. The thought of eating alone was pretty depressing.”

“Thank you. It’s easy to be gallant when Alex is picking up the tab.”

“Would you like to come in for a few minutes? I think I could find a Seven-up or something equally daring.”

He laughed, seeing through her fear of rebuff, then took a deep breath. “Jackie,” he started, then stopped and took another breath.

“Don’t tell me,” she said lightly, trying to keep the hurt out of her eyes. “You want to go to your own room and get smashed on caffeine-free Coke, right? Or,” she rushed on, before he could respond, “are you going to be what Alex calls your brutally honest self?”

He put a finger to her lips and shushed her gently. “Just listen, will you?”

Now it was she who took the deep breath, her eyes not meeting his. “I’m listening.”

“Jackie, until this year I hadn’t gone out but once or twice in the two years since my wife died. I don’t think that was caused by any deep and sustained mourning. Within a few months I had come to accept the fact that Lynette was gone. But I was satisfied being alone, just me and the boys.”

Finally she looked up, watching him closely as he sought the right words. “Remember that night when you and Alex found Valerie and me in the parking lot? That was my first date with her. I felt like a sixteen-year-old teenager again—awkward, stumbling over my words, feeling like a fool. And then ironically, on that same night I met you for the first time.”

Her face softened, and she smiled up at him. “I remember. You and that ridiculous little VW.”

“You got out of that Mercedes convertible, and I just stared. You were so striking. So lovely.”

Her lips parted softly, and her eyes were suddenly moist as she sensed what was coming.

“And that night on the beach.” He shook his head. “I came so close to taking you in my arms and kissing you.”

“I wanted you to,” she said in a half whisper.

“I know. And I wanted to. But I guess, even then, somehow I knew that as much as I admired you and was attracted to you, we are two different kinds of people. You’re a class act all the way. Me, I’m just a farm boy from Willard who strayed into the big city.”

“I have no complaints.”

He shook his head slowly. “That doesn’t change what is.”

“And Valerie is part of what is.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well, I thought she was. I’m having trouble convincing her.”

Jackie’s chin came up. “Then tell her to get out of the way.”

“I can’t.”

She looked away. He took her chin and brought her gently back to face him. “But it’s important to me that you understand this. My turning from you makes you no less charming, no less beautiful, no less a remarkable woman in my eyes, Jacqueline Ashby.”

The tears welled up and trickled down her cheeks. He brushed at them with the back of one finger. “I mean that.”

She suddenly reached up, brought his head down, and gently kissed him. He could feel her lips quivering, and then she pulled away and buried her face against his chest. “I’m sorry, Marc. I’ll go watch “M. A.S.H.” reruns and be all right in an hour or so.”

Marc nodded, stroking her hair, not knowing what to say.

“Well, well!”

The insolent sneer in the voice spun both Marc and Jackie around with a jerk. Derek Parkin was standing unsteadily in the hallway of the hotel, leering at them. “Isn’t this a cozy little scene?”

Jackie touched Marc’s cheek quickly and opened the door. “Good-bye, Marc,” she whispered and slipped inside.

Marc turned and pushed past Derek without speaking.

“Valerie would love to know how you spend your time while you’re on the road.”

Marc fished for his room key without turning around. “Derek, why don’t you just go to bed?”

“So the fair-haired boy does have some flaws, after all.” He shook his head, clucking his tongue. “And all this time, Alex thought his little goody-goody was above reproach.”

“Good-night, Derek.”

“Well, you’re not the only game in town anymore, buddy!” he shouted as Marc stepped inside and shut the door. “You and Alex will find out that I have a contribution to make too.”

It was nearly seven-thirty the next morning when Alex stopped by at the breakfast booth. Marc looked up and started to slide over, but he shook his head quickly. “No, I’m on my way to the State Department.” He looked at the breakfast menu longingly, then pulled away. “Jackie and I are going to hit it again this morning. But hopefully, by noon, we’ll have some word.”

“Good. I’m ready.”

At that moment, Jackie entered the hotel coffee shop, spied them, and came over. “Good morning, Alex.” She looked at Marc quickly, gave him a fleeting, wistful smile. “Good morning, Marc.”

“Good morning, Jackie.”

“Hi, Jackie,” Alex said. “I was just going to ask Marc what’s on his agenda today.”

Marc lifted his shoulders and let them drop again. “I feel like a knickknack in a bathroom. I may add to the decor, but I’m not terribly useful.”

“You just hang on until tonight. Then you’ll earn every penny I’m paying you.”

“Well, anyway, I thought I’d go down to the kennel and check on the dog again, then—”

“No need to—I presented it to the prince last night.”

“You did?”

“Yes.” He clapped Marc on the shoulder. “You earned your money right there. Russ Whitaker, the Undersecretary of State, called afterward and just went on and on.” His voice dropped to mimic that of Whitaker’s: “‘A purebred Saluki hound? The famed hunting dog of the Bedouin princes? It was perfect, Alex, just perfect. How did you ever think of that?’ I modestly admitted that we had given it quite a bit of thought.”

“I’m glad.”

Alex looked at his watch. “Well, Jackie, we’ve got to get out of here. I’ll bring the car up and meet you out front.”

“Okay.” She watched him go, then slipped in across from Marc. “I wanted to apologize for being such a boob last night.”

He reached across quickly and took her hand. “Look. You and I have to work together for some time to come. We have two choices. We can go around feeling awkward and averting our faces every time we meet, or we can take it as it is, and be friends and associates—a thing that I would like very much.”

She squeezed his hand back. “I would like that too.”

“Good.”

She rose. “I’ll try and call around noon.”

“Okay, I’ll be in my room.”

As she started away, he called after her, “By the way, Derek called and apologized this morning.”

“I know. He called me too. I think he felt pretty foolish.”

Marc shook his head. “I don’t know about him.”

Jackie went stern. “Look. You and he have to work together for some time to come. You have two choices. You can go around averting your faces, or I can talk Alex into firing him.”

Marc laughed. “Now that’s a tough choice.”

She sobered again, and this time it wasn’t feigned. “Thanks, Marc.” She waved and was gone before he could respond.

Marc picked up the menu and began to study it again. A few moments later, he realized someone had come up to him again. He looked up, then smiled in surprise. It was Yaacov Shoshani, the man he had met in the museum.

“No!” Shoshani said, pointing at him. “You are in this hotel?”

“That’s right.”

“And still waiting?”

Marc laughed. “Yes, still waiting.”

“I too.”

“Have you had breakfast yet?”

“No, I was just coming down.”

“Then join me. I haven’t ordered yet.”

Shoshani removed his hat, and slid in the opposite side of the booth. “I would be delighted.”

Marc leaned over, picked up his watch from where it lay on the lamp table, looked at it, then turned to Yaacov. “I’m expecting a call anytime. Would you mind if we just ordered lunch from room service?”

Yaacov looked at his own watch. “Oi vavoi! I have kept you here talking for two-and-a-half hours. You must have other things to do.”

“No, no. Really. I just have to be in the room around noon. I’d like to continue our talk, unless you have something you must do.”

Yaacov shook his craggy head quickly. “No. And this has been very enjoyable. You make a persuasive advocate for the Arab cause.”

“And you make a very persuasive advocate for the Jewish cause.”

“Ah,” he said with a slow smile. “But I am Jewish, and you are not Arab.”

“I used to teach a class at Claremont on the Arab-Jewish political situation. I would take the first half of one period and present all the arguments for the Arab side. Before I was through, the students would be so angry at the Israelis for all the injustices they have done to the Palestinians and other Arabs. Then I would take the second half of the class and present all the arguments for the Jewish side. By the time I was done, all of the students would be saying, ‘No wonder the Israelis do what they do. It is only right. What’s the matter with those Arabs, anyway?’”

Yaacov nodded sadly. “That is what makes the whole situation in the Middle East so difficult. Until the hearts of the people—my people as well as the Arab peoples—are changed, there will be no solutions, no lasting peace.”

Marc nodded, then got up and found the room service menu. “Well, what would you like for lunch?”

They spent the next half an hour waiting for and then consuming the food. The conversation stayed light—Marc’s early life, Yaacov’s pilgrimage to Israel in the early thirties, and half a dozen other topics. As they were finishing, Jackie called to report that the meeting with the Saudis had been set for four o’clock that afternoon.

As they finished their meal and turned to two heaping dishes of strawberry shortcake, Yaacov leaned back. “You seem to be a man who thinks deeply about things, so let me pose for you an interesting question. I too teach at a university—the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. I give this problem to my students in philosophy.”

“Okay.”

“In World War II, the British, through an incredible intelligence feat, cracked the codes of the German High Command.”

“Yes, I remember. They called the whole project ‘Ultra’ or something like that, as I recall.”

“Yes. Very good. So you are familiar with that part of the story. Well, one day the British decoded a transmission intended for the Luftwaffe. They learned that a massive bomber raid had been planned against the city of Coventry, England, on a certain night in the near future. Now Churchill and his military staff were faced with an interesting dilemma. They could warn Coventry and save thousands of lives. But if they did, it could easily tip off—is that how you say it? Tip off?”

“Yes. It would tip off the Germans.”

“Exactly. If the Germans suspected that the British had cracked their codes, they would change them. The information the Allies were gaining through Ultra was saving thousands of lives.”

He leaned forward, bringing his hands together. “What should you do? Warn Coventry and jeopardize thousands of lives? Or not warn Coventry and jeopardize thousands of lives?”

“Well, I remember what they did do.”

“Yes. They chose to protect the secret, and many, many innocent people in Coventry were killed. But I ask you. If it had been up to you, what would you have done?”

Marc grinned. “Do I get some time to think about it?”

Yaacov laughed merrily and pulled the shortcake in front of him. “Only as long as it takes for you to consume this delicious monument to the passions of the flesh.”

Marc chuckled, pulled over his own plate, and started to eat, lapsing into deep thought.

Finally, he pushed his plate away. “Okay, I think I am ready.”

Yaacov scraped up the last wisp of the whipped cream, licked it off the spoon, and then rubbed his hands in delight. “Then proceed. What would you have done?”

“I would have warned Coventry.”

“Why?”

“Because it was the greatest known good. The other choice was based on conjecture and hope. They believed that if they protected the secret, they could save a greater numbers of lives. But that was guesswork. What if the Germans, shortly after they bombed Coventry, learned that their codes had been compromised, and changed them anyway? Then the people of Coventry would have died for nothing.”

“But they didn’t. Ultra saved many other lives.”

“Oh, no,” Marc protested. “You’re using the vantage point of hindsight now. We know what eventually happened, but the people making the choice could only choose on the basis of what they knew or could project. And I say the known value of the human lives in Coventry should have become the overriding factor in their decision. They knew for sure they could save those lives.”

The dark brown eyes in the old leathered face were sparkling with enjoyment. “But when you cannot know the future, you must go on probabilities. If there was a good probability that a greater number of lives could be saved by keeping the secret, that is the way you would have to go.”

Marc just shook his head. “No, there is another dimension.”

“What other dimension? When you are dealing with the future, what other dimension is there but to balance all the known facts and decide as best you can?”

Marc hedged, suddenly a bit embarrassed.

“Yes? What is this other dimension of which you speak?”

Marc took a deep breath. “Faith.”

“Explain!” It was a curt command, but not harsh or critical. Yaacov was watching this young professor with increasing interest.

“It’s hard to explain.” Marc began tentatively, still formulating the thoughts in his own mind. “If one believes there is a supreme being who concerns himself deeply with the affairs of men, and if he also believes that that being gives men laws and principles that they can use to govern their lives, then those principles become the basis for action. They override desire or wants…or probabilities.”

“Do you know how the leaders of the British military would have responded to such counsel?”

“Yes. They’d laugh me right out of their map room. They would say I was being ridiculous.”

“But you don’t think you are being ridiculous?”

“Sure, I do. As ridiculous as marching a horde of Israelites into the Red Sea with the Egyptian army at their backs. The British generals would have laughed Moses right out of their map rooms. I mean the probabilities for success there were absolutely zilch.”

Yaacov clapped his hands. “Excellent analogy! Zilch. It is a good word. Go on.”

“Same principle applies. You use the laws and principles given to make your decisions. You don’t trust solely in your own abilities.”

The older man was staring down at his hands now, and Marc sensed a sudden sadness in him. He paused, but when Shoshani did not look up, he finished his line of reasoning. “The British sacrificed the lives of the people of Coventry to save Ultra. But what if they had warned the people, yet the Germans still did not suspect what was wrong. The Ultra secret would have been saved anyway.”

Finally, Yaacov looked up, nodding very slowly.

“You want to talk about probabilities. Consider that one, that all those people were sacrificed for nothing.”

“Exactly,” Yaacov said in a voice so low that Marc had to lean forward to hear him. “And so few of my students could ever see that. So very few.” There was a long pause. “Including my own son.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Alex and Derek were about eighth or ninth back in the line of people coming off the United Airlines flight from Dulles International. Valerie spotted them at the same time Ardith did. “There they are,” Ardith said. She waved, and they both started forward, but Valerie suddenly stopped. Two or three paces behind Alex, she saw Jackie, with Marc at her elbow. He was carrying her overnight case along with his own clothing bag and briefcase.

Valerie looked away quickly, the stab of disappointment like a physical blow. So much for the schoolgirl flutter and quickening pulse, she thought bitterly.

Alex kissed Ardith soundly, then looked past her. “Hi, Valerie.”

She moved forward slowly. “Hello, Alex.”

Derek nodded curtly to her, then shot a quick glance over his shoulder to follow her eyes. Triumph flashed across his face, but almost instantly it was gone, and he was sullen and impassive once again.

Marc saw her then and smiled at her over the tops of the heads.

“Hello, Valerie,” Jackie said quietly, as they came up.

Valerie nodded. “Hello, Jackie.”

Marc came to stand next to her and gave her a warm smile. “Hi.” He looked around. “Where are Mary and the boys?”

“We called, and they said your plane was going to be an hour late. Matt had already fallen asleep by then, and Brett was close behind, so Mom decided to stay home with them.”

“We had heavy snow in Denver. They wouldn’t let us take off until it cleared a little.”

“That’s one thing about California,” Alex growled. “By late February, we have spring, while the rest of the country is still having winter.”

As they moved toward the exit, a small man with dark eyes and olive skin increased his step. He had come off the same plane but had hung back as Alex’s group had paused to greet Ardith and Valerie. Now he moved more quickly to keep up. Suddenly he spotted a tall man with flaming red hair. There was no flicker of recognition, but both timed their pace so that one stepped on the down escalator immediately behind the other.

“Any problems?” Yossi Kettleman asked quietly.

Yitzhak ben Tsur shook his head almost imperceptibly. “No. Does Nathan want us to stay with them?”

“No. He and Gondor are waiting for us in Westwood. They want a strategy session as soon as we can get there.”

“So how was the trip?” Ardith asked, as they walked through the tunnel area toward the main terminal and the baggage claim area.

“Tremendous!” Alex fairly bubbled. “Better than I’d hoped.” He turned to Valerie. “And this young man right here”—he grabbed Marc’s elbow—”was no small part of it. You should have seen him charm that delegation. I mean, it was something to watch. Wasn’t it, Jackie?”

She nodded, glancing sideways to catch Valerie’s expression. “Yes, it was. Marc made a great difference.”

Derek grunted, and his lips pressed into a tight line as Alex chattered on about their experience in Washington. When they reached the baggage carousels, he turned to Alex. “Well,” he said shortly. “Good night.”

“Oh, Derek,” Alex said, turning. “We’ll meet tomorrow afternoon to start the plans for next week’s session.”

Marc had just started to say something to Valerie, but that brought him around sharply. “Alex, tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“I know, I know. But two weeks from today we’ve got the final meeting in the Hotel LaRoche. We’ve got a heck of a lot to do before then.”

“I promised I would take my boys to the San Diego Zoo tomorrow.”

“Fine. Let’s make it four o’clock. That should give you plenty of time and give us all a chance to rest up.”

“Fine with me,” Derek said quickly.

Valerie turned and looked away as an awkward silence fell on the group. She heard Marc take a deep breath, then she turned back to watch the surrender.

“Alex, between South America, the New York trip, and this one to Washington, I’ve been gone eleven of the last sixteen days. I need to spend some time with my boys.”

There was a quick flash of surprise, then slight irritation. “Look, Marc, I know it’s been tough, but it all comes together or falls apart in these next two weeks. We can’t—”

“I promised them, Alex. All day tomorrow is their day. I can’t go back on that.”

Valerie’s eyes widened, and Jackie looked surprised too.

Ardith laid her hand on Alex’s arm. “And you promised me a little time tomorrow too,” she said softly. “Can’t it wait until Monday?”

That swung Alex around with real anger on his face, but she didn’t flinch, just met his gaze steadily. Suddenly he capitulated. “You’re right. We’ll all do better with a weekend off. But let’s hit it early Monday. Say, six-thirty?” There was a bit of a challenge as he looked at Marc.

“Fine. Thanks Alex.”

“Good night,” Derek said curtly and strode away.

“Well,” Marc said, “All I’ve got is carry-on luggage, so we’ll see you all later.” He handed the overnight case to Jackie. “I guess you’ll want this.”

“Yes, thank you, Marc.” There was the slightest pause. “For everything.” She turned her head slightly and nodded to Valerie. “Good night, Valerie.”

The sadness in her eyes was unmistakable, and it took Valerie back slightly. “Good night, Jackie.” She hesitated for a moment, then turned. “Good night, Ardith. Alex.”

Marc took her by the elbow, and they moved out the front door of the terminal.

As the three of them waited for the luggage to come onto the carousel, Ardith turned to her husband. “Was Marc as good as you say?”

“Absolutely. In more ways than one. I think we’ve got Quinn Gerritt nearly in the bag. We go to Switzerland next week to wrap everything up with him. That was all Marc’s idea. And with the Saudis, Mark was really something.”

Jackie nodded. “He was superb. All the rest of us, even some of the Air Force and State Department people, stood around feeling a little bit awkward. But Marc started in with his Arabic, and in ten minutes you would have thought he was a member of the royal family.”

Alex gave his wife a searching look. “While we are on the subject of Marc, what’s with you challenging me about tomorrow, Ardith? That’s not like you.”

She shrugged, her eyes thoughtful. “I was trying to help you save face.”

“Me?” he blurted. “You bailed Marc out of a hole, not me.”

“He wasn’t going to back down, Alex. Even if you had pushed harder.”

Alex started to respond, then let it die, thinking about what she had said.

“And what about Derek?” Ardith asked.

“What about him?”

“You hurt him deeply tonight when you were so open in your praise of Marc and didn’t say a word about him.”

“He ought to be grateful I didn’t say anything about him,” Alex snapped. “Mr. Derek Parkin did not do a lot to endear himself to me on this trip.”

The sudden anger in Alex’s voice surprised Ardith, but no less than the expression of contempt that crossed Jackie’s face. “What happened?” she asked.

“I think the proper word is boor,” Jackie said. “He was an absolute boor.”

“Derek?” she said, disbelieving. “Mr. Harvard himself?”

“First of all, he had been drinking,” Alex said. “He wasn’t drunk, but you could smell the whiskey on his breath. After all that Marc had told us about the Islamic prohibition against liquor.”

“He drank for three solid days in his room,” Jackie said in disgust. “He and Marc had a lot of free time, and Derek spent it drinking and sulking.”

“That really surprises me,” Ardith said.

“I think he knows Marc is outpacing him,” Jackie said. “And his overinflated ego finds that hard to accept.”

“But it was more than the drinking. The Saudis are men of the world; I don’t think that would have bothered them.” He took a quick breath. Just talking about it was getting Alex angry all over again. “But he nearly ruined things for us at the reception.”

“My goodness,” Ardith said, looking back and forth between the two of them. “I think I struck a raw nerve in both of you.”

“At least!” Alex retorted, with Jackie nodding vigorously. “Everything we are doing depends on how the Saudis feel about us, okay? Marc had told us again and again that there are things you do and don’t do in carrying on a conversation with the Arabs.”

“It is considered bad manners to discuss religion, politics, or family affairs with strangers,” Jackie explained. “It is in especially poor taste to ask about female members of the family. Care to guess how many of those basic rules Derek violated?” Jackie took a deep breath. “Alex finally sent him back to the hotel. He’s been pouting ever since.”

Alex picked it up from there. “Marc cautioned us that patience is one of their fundamental rules of social etiquette. To break off a conversation abruptly, no matter how good the reason, or to interrupt and try to change the subject is very rude. The Saudis view impatience or undue haste in conversation as either a sign of bad manners, or worse for us, a lack of confidence. Three different times, Derek broke into the conversation and tried to steer it onto the contract. Three different times!”

His eyes were smouldering with the memory. “The last time, I was watching the crown prince. That’s when I sent Derek packing.”

“For good?” Ardith asked.

The luggage had started to come onto the carousel now, and Alex turned to watch for their bags. She thought he hadn’t heard her question, but finally, without turning, he shook his head. “Not yet. He’s drawing up the contracts and all of the paper work. He’s too far in to change horses now, but I’ll tell you, the minute this is over, he’s back on his own.”

Ardith fell silent as Alex waved to a porter and started pointing out the pieces of luggage. They followed him out the door to the curb. Ardith handed the porter her keys and explained where the car was parked. As he moved away, Ardith spoke again. “And what about Marc?”

“What about him?”

“Do you send him packing when the deal is all completed?”

He turned slowly. “Ardith, I’ve been bringing in men for fifteen years. Why all of a sudden are you interrogating me on how I deal with them?”

“So you are dumping him?”

“Dumping!” he exploded. “Every man who has worked with me has gone on to better things. Even Derek. He’ll use this experience to find something better for himself.”

“You call it whatever you want, if it makes you feel better, but I want to know if you plan to dump Marc too.”

Jackie was watching Alex and Ardith with some concern. These were the two people she felt closest to in her life. She loved them both deeply, but she had never seen Ardith filled with such quiet determination, and it was striking sparks from Alex.

“And what if I do dump him?” Alex said. “Marc’s resilient. He’ll be fine.”

“It’s not Marc I’m worried about.”

Alex just stared at her.

“You don’t even see it, do you?”

“What?”

“The effect that Marc is having on you.”

“The effect he’s having on me? I’ve brought that boy out of the doldrums. He’s come alive again. He’s having a ball.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Ardith! I can’t believe this is you.”

“Alex, you run the business and I don’t interfere. But I’m telling you, if you throw Marc away, something he has revived in you is going to die once and for all. And that saddens me. More than I can possibly express.”

It had been a warm day in Los Angeles, and though the evening overcast had moved in, the night was still pleasant. As Marc and Valerie got in the Chrysler LeBaron, he turned to her. “Do you mind if we put the top down?”

She looked at him sharply, then shook her head. “No. I brought a sweater if it gets too chilly.”

“Good.” He punched the buttons, got everything secured, and then drove out of the parking terrace. As they drove along Century Boulevard and out of the airport complex, Marc reached for Valerie’s hand and pulled her gently toward him. She came an inch or two, not turning her head.

He laughed softly and pulled again. “I traded in my bucket seats, remember? Come on.”

Reluctantly, Valerie slid closer, and accepted without response the arm he put around her shoulders. The silence continued, hers strained, his amused, until he turned south on the San Diego Freeway instead of north. Her head came up. “Where are you going?”

“I know a little seafood place in Long Beach that has terrific steak and lobster.”

“Marc! It’s almost ten o’clock.”

He grinned. “They stay open late on Fridays.”

“Marc, really. It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late for steak and lobster.”

She took a quick breath, not trying to hide her irritation. It only made him smile more.

“I do have a job now, Marc. I’m really tired tonight.”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday. You can sleep in before we go to the zoo.”

“Marc, please. I’d really rather not.”

“I used to date a girl in high school,” he mused. “Her dad always insisted that I have her home by ten-forty-five. I thought when I passed thirty, all that would change.”

She tried to fight it, but a tiny smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.

“You could tell me that your mother told you to be home early, but knowing your mother, she probably told you not to worry about how late it was.”

Valerie laughed in spite of herself. “That’s almost a direct quote.”

“Then, Val, unless you start to scream, you’re on your way to Long Beach.”

“Marc, I—”

He lifted a finger to her lips and pressed them gently. “Valerie, before you say anything, let me just talk for a few minutes. Okay?”

She looked up at him, searching his face, and he saw the hurt that still lingered in her eyes.

Taking a deep breath, he plunged in. “Look, I know I am incredibly dense, but not so much so that I don’t know what’s bothering you. I saw your face when you looked up and saw Jackie and me coming off the plane together.”

She looked away, not meeting his probing look.

“Jackie is a beautiful, charming, and very capable woman. I told her that at dinner the other night.”

Valerie’s hands were twisting together in her lap. He reached out and covered them with his. “I also told her that while I was deeply flattered that she should be interested in me, there was a computer programmer from Colorado whom I had found to be a totally lovely woman and whom I couldn’t get out of my mind.”

That finally brought her head around.

Marc smiled, somewhat sadly. “I also said that I was making that young woman miserable and that I intended to come home to remedy that situation once and for all.”

He laughed at her expression. “What I didn’t say to Jackie was that I was scared to death one Valerie Robertson wouldn’t give me a second chance to show her I could make some changes in my life.”

Valerie’s eyes were wide, and her lips parted softly. “I’m a sucker for second chances.”

“I’m glad.” He pulled her closer, and this time she came clear over to sit next to him, squeezing his hand tightly. “My dad has a favorite saying. I heard it so many times when I was a kid, I used to resent it. Now…“ He shrugged. “I spent a lot of time thinking about it while I was in Washington.”

“What is it?”

“He says, ‘If your life is out of order, it’s because your priorities are out of order.’”

She nodded, looking up in time to see the line along his jaw tighten.

“There are several things in my life out of order right now.”

“Such as?”

“Such as making you the pinewood derby mechanic.”

She saw the shame in his eyes, and sudden tears welled up in her own as she realized how much this man meant to her and how really good he was deep inside. She laid her head on his shoulder, not trusting herself to speak.

“Such as making other people take my boys to the movies. Such as working nearly every night and every Saturday for the last two months.” There was a long pause. “Such as starting to think that the deal is everything.”

“So what do you do about it?”

“Put the priorities back in order.”

About twenty miles north, six men were sitting around the living room of Moshe Gondor’s apartment. Yitzhak and Yossi had just arrived from the airport. Nathan sat in an easy chair across from Gondor. Yehuda Gor sat crosslegged on the floor, drumming his fingers silently on the carpet. Yaacov Shoshani was in a straight-backed chair facing the others, as though he were the witness facing a hostile jury. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke and tension.

Gondor was shaking his head angrily. “Mr. Shoshani, by now I know the whole lecture by heart, okay? What we are facing here is not a theological problem. We have a sale of sixty of the most advanced fighter planes in the world—with a dramatic new advancement in radar technology—to a country that daily reiterates its undying hatred for what we are and what we stand for. And frankly, your talk of spiritual Zionism and returning to the traditional values of Torah and the law of Moses don’t make much of a dent in that fact.”

When Yaacov spoke, his voice was tinged with deep sadness. “And so you, and so many others like you, press ahead, trying to save the state of Israel while you ignore the very God who made the state of Israel a reality.”

“Be that as it may,” Gondor said slowly and evenly, “I am in charge of this operation and you are not. To talk to Barclay would do nothing more than reveal our hand in all this. I forbid it.”

“Barclay is a man of the world,” Yaacov agreed. “Where Gerritt gets his money and how will mean little to him. But Jeppson—he is a man of honor, a man of integrity. If he knew what Gerritt has done, he would persuade Barclay to cancel the deal. I know it.”

“Papa,” Nathan said patiently, “we know that Barclay has already spent nearly a million dollars setting this up. He will not turn his back on that.”

“True. But tell Jeppson about the drug shipments, tell him what they did to Taggart and his family in order to get the radar device, show him the pictures taken by the customs agents on his airplane, and he will either get Barclay to break off the deal with Gerritt or he will quit. I know it!”

Yehuda spoke up. “Jeppson is playing an increasingly important role in the negotiations, but he is not pivotal. If he quits, it is only a setback, not a victory.”

“That’s right. Jeppson is not pivotal, not by himself. But let me also tell him what we know about Derek Parkin. I’ll play him the tape of his conversation with Gerritt in Washington. Barclay will have to fire Parkin.”

Gondor started shaking his head, but Yaacov went on doggedly. “That’s two of Barclay’s key people out. It may not stop him, but it will delay him long enough to buy us the time we need in Washington.”

“We cannot let them know that the state of Israel is involved in this affair in any way. We have come this far because we have stayed completely out of sight. There is to be no contact made with either Barclay or Jeppson. Is that clear?”

The men locked eyes for several seconds. When Yaacov made no expression either way, Gondor played his final card. “And appealing this to the Prime Minister is useless. The director has met with him this very day. I have full authorization to determine what action is taken.”

“I had no plans to try to go over your head, Mr. Gondor,” Yaacov said dryly. He didn’t add that such was the case because he had also talked to the Prime Minister earlier and had seen the handwriting on the wall.

“Then it would be most helpful to me if you would let us proceed with our plans without further interruption.”

The silence grew heavy, every man in the room feeling awkward and uncomfortable, except for Yaacov Shoshani who was in deep thought on another matter. When there was no response from him, Gondor turned to the others. “All right. Our next task is to get set up for the Hotel LaRoche.” He reached for a folder on the table and extracted a piece of paper. He looked around at the operational team, finally settling on Nathan.

“Nathan, here’s the list of the rooms Barclay’s secretary reserved for the big meeting on the thirteenth. As you can see, they’ve reserved some pretty high-class suites.”

“Barclay is determined to get this deal.”

Gondor nodded. “I want someone in every one of those rooms in the next few days. Shana has already made reservations for one night each. The dates are on here too.”

He handed the list to Nathan who read it quickly, then looked up. “Okay.”

Gondor handed him another sheet. “We’ve booked the Laguna Suite on the thirtieth floor starting tomorrow night through the meeting. That will be the monitoring center.”

“I assume you want every room tapped—Barclay’s people as well as the Arabs.”

“Barclay, Jeppson, Gerritt. Anybody who comes to that hotel for this meeting.”

Yaacov Shoshani stood, shaking his head, and walked out of Gondor’s apartment.

Marc pulled the car into the parking lot of the restaurant and shut off the lights and engine. He turned to Valerie. “So that’s it, I guess. I’m going to talk to Alex on Monday and tell him where I stand. I hope that’s enough to convince Miss Valerie Robertson that I’m serious about getting her back.”

She slipped her arm through his and squeezed it happily. “I’m convinced, and I’m so glad. I’ve never been so miserable in my life before. But what is Alex going to say when you tell him?”

There was a long pause as Marc stared out into the night. “I don’t know. The next few weeks are critical. I can’t pull back completely, but things are going to change, or else I come back to Claremont.”

She watched the disappointment around his mouth and reached up and touched his face, smoothing the lines along his jaw. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“No more than I. I’ve loved these last two months. I feel like I’m alive again.” He shrugged. “But…” He let it trail off, thinking of what Alex would say.

Valerie gently turned his head, and his eyes softened.

“I love you, Valerie. I want you to know that.”

“And I love you, Marc Jeppson.” She kissed him then, a long, lingering kiss that held all of the joy she was feeling. “Well,” she said a little breathlessly when she pulled away, “I’m famished. Shall we go eat?”

“I thought you were tired.”

She dug him in the ribs with her elbow. “Don’t get smart.”

“Okay, but before we go in, there is one other priority I’d like to get straight first.”

“What?”

He reached across the back seat and fumbled until he got his briefcase open. When he straightened back around, he held a small gift-wrapped package. “After your enthusiastic reception of the necklace I brought you from Columbia, I don’t know whether I dare do this or not.” He handed it to her.

For several moments she just stared at it, then finally looked up at him, her eyes luminescent. “Go on,” he encouraged her. “This has very much to do with priorities.”

There was no careful opening of the paper, no saving of bows and ribbons. She tore the paper off quickly, then looked up at him again when she saw it was a blue velvet ring box. “Oh, Marc!”

“Come on, I thought you were famished. Open it.”

She lifted the lid slowly, then her jaw dropped. The box was empty. Marc laughed at her expression, then gathered her up into his arms. “I actually went to a jeweler,” he said, “but then at the last minute I decided I didn’t want to pick your engagement ring without you. The man looked at me very strangely when I told him all I wanted was the ring box.”

Valerie was rubbing the inside velvet softly, the happiness evident in her eyes.

“If you’ll accept an empty ring box for now, we could get back early from San Diego and go shopping together. I think—”

She clamped her hand over his mouth. “Will you be quiet and kiss me, please?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jackie opened the door to Alex’s office and stuck her head in. “Alex, I’m going home now. Is there anything you need before I leave?”

Alex did not look up at her, just kept staring at Marc. “I’d like you to hear this, Jackie. Come in.”

Jackie came in tentatively, sensing the tension crackling in the air, and sat down next to Marc. Marc took a deep breath. He had been afraid it wasn’t going to go down easy.

“Go on, Marc, tell Jackie.”

Marc glanced at her, then turned back to Alex. He took another quick breath and began, talking slowly and quietly. “You were in the meeting this morning, Jackie. Between now and next week, when we go to the LaRoche, Alex has set up three more trips. He wants you and me to leave with Derek in the morning and go to Switzerland to meet with Gerritt. Then there’ll be another trip or maybe two to Washington. And if all goes well at the LaRoche, then it’s off to Saudi Arabia for two or three weeks. In the meantime, we’ll be over our heads trying to get everything put into place.”

Jackie nodded, waiting.

“Brett’s teacher called Mary, my housekeeper, while I was in Washington. In the last few weeks, Brett’s performance in school has nose-dived. For the first time, he is a behavioral problem. Matt has started to wake up every night now and has to sleep with an adult.”

“So,” Alex cut in, “Marc informs me that he cannot give his full devotion to Barclay Enterprises anymore.”

“Alex, that’s not what I said.”

“All right, what did you say?”

“I said that my family is going to start taking a higher priority than it has. I’ve got to spend some time with my boys.”

Alex swore. “You know, Marc, when you first came on board with me, you said you couldn’t work on Sundays. I’ve honored that, even though there have been times when the rest of us have had to. Now, this. This is not an eight-to-five job, Marc. You don’t get eighty-five thousand a year for eight-to-five jobs.”

Marc bit back an angry retort, fighting to keep his voice even. “I have never asked for an eight-to-five schedule, and you know it. But I am asking that I have some time with my family. We work every Saturday. Night after night I’m gone, or when I am home, I’m working on something. And now you tell me the real pressure is just beginning.”

“You’d better believe it. You think these deals just put themselves together? If you can’t stand that kind of heat, then you’d better get out of the kitchen, kid.”

Marc flushed as Alex turned to Jackie. “Can you believe this? And Friday night Ardith is trying to tell me how valuable he is to me. I was even thinking of bringing him into partnership with you and me.” He gave a derisive hoot of disgust. “And now this!”

Jackie looked at Marc, who had looked up again in surprise. “That’s right. He mentioned it to me this morning. Marc, I know it’s been rough. On all of us. But you can’t quit now.”

“I’m not talking about quitting. I’m just saying that my family is no longer going to come second. I’ll still give a hundred percent.”

“Sure! But he gets to say when and where the hundred percent goes.” He was still talking to Jackie as though Marc were not in the room. “I can’t believe it! I take him from some jerkwater college, double his salary, bring him up to a full executive level, and what do I get? I mean a cruise to Mexico, trips to South America, bonuses, a company car—and what do I get? He comes in and starts crying about being overworked.”

“Alex,” Jackie said, trying to soothe him.

“Alex nothing!” He jerked back around to Marc. “You owe me, Marc! And I’m calling in the markers.” He sat back, breathing heavily, glaring at him.

Marc stood slowly, looked first at Jackie, who looked away, then at Alex. “I’m not one of your markers, Alex, and I’m not much for playing poker with people. You’ll have my resignation in the morning.”

Alex’s mouth dropped open as Marc moved to the door. He stopped and turned back, fishing for his keys from his pocket. He pulled two of them off the ring and tossed them on the desk. “There’s your company car, Alex. I’ll find my own way home, like I should have that first night at UCLA.”

And he walked out.

For several seconds Alex and Jackie both sat there, half stunned by the suddenness of Marc’s departure. Then Alex swore again. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!”

“And I can’t believe you,” Jackie said softly.

He whirled on her, raging. “Don’t you start on me! If I hadn’t given into Ardith the other night, he wouldn’t be in here demanding his rights.”

“Alex Barclay,” she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken, “the master of leverage. The man who gives lectures on how to bind people to him. And you just violated every principle, I mean every principle, you ever taught on the subject.”

His mouth opened, but Jackie bored in on him. “I don’t think Marc is right on this, but do you think you bought him with company cars and Mexican cruises? Derek, yes. Even me, maybe. But not Marc Jeppson.”

He sat back, his eyes still smouldering, but getting control again. “All right, I’m listening.”

“I guess the first question is, do you want him back or not?”

“You know I do.”

“Simply to keep the deal together?”

He paused, then sighed wearily. “You know it’s more than that too.”

“You have leverage with Marc, Alex, but not through any of the things you tried to use right now. You called in the wrong markers.”

“Come on, Jackie! We’re in the biggest deal of our lives right now. I can’t have him just waltzing all over me with his personal demands.”

“I guess you’re right. And you surely straightened him around on that account.”

He winced. “Okay, okay. Between you and Ardith, I’m starting to feel like a dog on a freeway. So what are the right markers?”

“Friendship. Loyalty. Integrity.” She took a deep breath, then proceeded to explain, talking earnestly for five minutes.

When she finally sat back, Alex stared at the ceiling for almost a full thirty seconds. When he turned back to look at her, it was with a rueful expression. “Do I pay you enough?” he asked.

She smiled. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Suddenly he straightened. “If he’s on foot, he can’t get too far. See if you can find him.”

Jackie stood. “Maybe we both ought to try to find him.”

But ten minutes later, when Alex drove back into the parking lot in front of the warehouse, Jackie was waiting next to her car, shaking her head.

“Matt,” Marc said firmly, “we are not going on our walk until you get all those towels folded.”

Brett scowled at his younger brother. “Hurry, Matt! Valerie and I are all ready.” He walked over and knelt beside him. “Look, let’s pretend we’re making a mountain. You fold the towel, and then put it on top of the mountain. You’ve only got three or four left.”

“I’m not making a mountain,” he said matter of factly, starting to fold more rapidly.

“What are you making?”

“I’m making the Entire State Building.”

“The Empire State Building,” Brett corrected, as Marc and Valerie both laughed.

At that moment, the phone rang. Brett darted to it and picked it up. “Jeppson residence.” He listened for a moment, then held the phone out toward his father. “Dad, it’s Mr. Barclay.”

Valerie turned slowly, unconsciously starting to twist the diamond ring on her left hand. Marc gave her a questioning glance, then took the phone. “Hello.”

He listened for several seconds, his face expressionless, then finally nodded. “Yes. I’ll be here.”

When he hung up, he turned slowly, looking at Valerie. “He and Jackie are over on Indian Hill Boulevard. They want to talk.”

“Good.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know if it is or not.”

“Yes it is. You don’t want to leave it like this.” She put her arm around his waist. “I’ll take the boys for the walk so you can be alone.”

He kissed her lightly. “Okay.”

He turned to Brett, dropping into a squat, and pulled him around to him. “Son,” he began, fumbling for words. “As you know, Mr. Barclay and I are having some problems right now. I know I promised you a long walk, and I’ll join you as soon as I can. Okay?”

Brett nodded, very adult. “I understand, Dad. It’s all right.”

Marc swung one arm and pulled him in tight. “Thanks, Brett. It shouldn’t take long.”

He straightened, looking glumly at Valerie. “There’s not a lot to say.”

“You’re not wrong, Marc,” she said earnestly. “He’ll try and talk you out of your decision. But you’re not wrong.”

“I know. My mind is made up. It just isn’t going to be very pleasant.”

Valerie nodded then turned. “Matt, get your jacket. Brett, will you take the Entire State Building and put it in the linen closet?”

Alex sat on the couch in Marc’s living room, as close to true nervousness as Marc had ever seen him. Jackie sat next to him. Marc was in a chair where he could face them both.

“Marc, I…” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. That was stupid of me to get angry.”

Marc nodded. “I understand. I shouldn’t haven’t gotten in a huff and walked out.”

Jackie stirred. “How did you get home? We came looking for you.”

Marc smiled fleetingly. “I found a cab. The driver was delighted to make the run to Claremont. And I talked to my banker. He thinks he can get me a second mortgage to cover the fare.”

Alex laughed. “I’ll cover the fare.” He held up his hands quickly at Marc’s expression. “No conditions. It’s my fault. I’ll cover it.”

Marc shrugged and sat back. There was silence for several seconds. Alex glanced once at Jackie, who nodded in encouragement, then turned to Marc again. “Marc, let me tell you some things about myself that not a lot of people know.”

Marc nodded. “As you’ve seen, Ardith and I live rather well. Home on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, yacht, private plane, fancy sports car.”

Again Marc just nodded, not sure where this was leading.

“I’m good at what I do,” Alex continued, without any false modesty, “and it pays off. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have financial challenges. I buy on credit just like you do. The only difference between you and me is my payments. If you count the house, the boat—all the rest—my payments run about fifty or sixty thousand dollars a month.”

Marc gave a low, soundless whistle.

“That,” Alex added dryly, “keeps my cash flow needs at a moderately high level.”

“Slightly,” Marc said, still a bit shocked at the figure.

“If we pull this sale off with the Saudis, all of that will change. But for now, I’m hurting. I’ve let other deals go to pursue this one. And we’re talking significant out-of-pocket expenses for the deal even at this point. I’ve already had to put up more than half a million on that bauxite ore deal. Then you count the quarter of a million Gerritt is demanding up front for his part of the agent’s fees. Add travel, what we’ve already paid to the five percenters in Saudi Arabia, your salary, Derek’s.” He shrugged. “I’m not trying to give you a sob story, just laying out the realities of life. And we’re just beginning. I figure I’m in close to a million five already, and that could double or triple before we start seeing the first returns.”

Marc remained silent, seeing where Alex was leading, and knowing that in spite of himself, the figures were staggering and rocking his determination.

“We’re borrowing to the hilt to bring it off.” He spread his hands. “I guess what I’m saying is, if this deal goes down, I go down with it.”

Jackie leaned forward. “There’s something else, Marc. And Alex doesn’t know I’m going to say this. In fact, he doesn’t even know I know it.”

Alex turned to her with a quizzical look on his face, but she ignored him. “Alex has a heart problem. A serious heart problem.”

From the instant surprise on Alex’s face, Marc knew this had not been part of the script. Jackie had caught Alex completely off guard. Ardith’s reaction at the restaurant in Ensenada when Alex had lit a cigarette flashed into his mind. Marc had not seen him smoke since. And Alex had started an exercise-and-weight-loss program that he joked about from time to time.

Jackie was watching Marc intently. “Two weeks ago, the doctor told him that he was on the verge of having a major heart attack or a stroke. He has high blood pressure. He’s had pains in his chest. He’s on medication.”

“Jackie, that’s enough,” Alex said quietly.

She whirled on him. “No, it’s not enough!” she cried. “Ardith is terrified.” Suddenly there were tears in her eyes, and she brushed at them quickly. “And so am I.” She turned back to Marc. “The doctor says he’s got to get out from under the stress. It’s killing him.”

Marc looked at her, then at Alex, who was looking at the floor. Finally his head came up to meet Marc’s gaze, and Marc saw something in Alex’s eyes he had never seen before. Alex was pleading. “Marc, I…I understand about your family. But I need you. I can’t give it to Derek. You know that. And Jackie and I can’t do it alone.”

Now it was Marc that looked at the floor.

“You can set your own hours. Take what time you need. I know you won’t neglect the work.” He paused. “But I won’t try to deceive you. These next three to four weeks are going to be unbelievably hard.”

Marc’s head finally came up. “I know.”

Jackie’s lips parted, and the tears welled up again in her eyes. “Does that mean yes?” she asked softly.

Marc nodded, his eyes sorrowful.

Alex was up and to him in an instant. “Do you really mean that?” he said, his voice husky.

Marc stood slowly to face him. “Yes,” he finally murmured. He looked down, realizing that Alex was pumping his hand.

As they came out on the porch ten minutes later, Alex reached in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “Would it offend you if I gave you back your company car?”

There was a brief laugh, tinged with some sadness. “No.”

“We parked it around the corner.” He pointed. “We didn’t know if you’d open fire on us if you saw it out front.”

“There’s no way we can postpone the Switzerland trip?”

Alex shook his head. “No. We’ve got to tie Gerritt up once and for all. I’d go, but the Jakarta people will be here tomorrow, and—”

“I know,” Marc sighed, then turned to Jackie. “I’ll see you at the airport at nine.”

Alex stuck out his hand. “Marc, I—” As Marc gripped it, Alex’s voice faltered. Suddenly he pulled Marc to him and embraced him. “I won’t forget this.”

He pulled free and turned to Jackie. “Well,” he said gruffly, “let’s you and me be going.”

Jackie nodded. “Go ahead. I’ll be right there.”

They watched him go down the walk and get in the Lamborghini. Then Jackie turned to Marc, her dark eyes moist. “Thank you.”

“You knew I didn’t stand a chance, didn’t you?” It was said sadly, almost wistfully.

“I did,” she whispered, “because I know what kind of man you are.” She went up on tiptoes, reached up and pulled his head down, and kissed him hard on the lips. Then she averted her head, turned, and ran down the sidewalk to the car.

Valerie had just rounded the corner with the boys when she saw Alex come down the walk and get in his car. She stopped. “They’re just going,” she said to Brett, pulling him and Matt back so the shrubbery hid them from view. Puzzled that Alex was alone, she moved forward enough to see the front of Marc’s house.

A moment later she stumbled back, grabbed Brett by the shoulders, and turned him around. “We’ll go around the block the other way.”

Brett looked up at her sharply. “What’s the matter, Valerie?”

She shook her head, groping blindly for Matt’s hand. “We’re going to walk around the block the other way, that’s all.”

“Brett, you and Matt go watch TV for a few minutes. I need to talk to Valerie. Then we’ll have root beer floats.”

“I want root beer floats now,” Matt cried plaintively.

Brett looked up at Valerie, who was staring out the living room window, not seeing. He grabbed Matt’s hand. “Come on. We’ll watch that video again.”

Marc moved behind Valerie and put his arms around her.

She jerked away from him, still keeping her back to him. “I knew you would.”

Her voice was caustic and sharp and rocked him back. “You knew I would what?”

“You’re going back, aren’t you?”

“Val, will you listen?”

“I’m listening.”

He talked quietly for several minutes, trying as much to convince himself as to convince her. Throughout, she stood at the window, not turning.

“So you leave for Switzerland in the morning?”

“Yes,” he answered, barely audible.

“I’ll tell Mother.” She started away from him, toward the door.

“Val!” he cried, shaken by the implacability in her. She stopped, and he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her gently. “Val, I can’t just walk away from him now.”

“I know. That’s exactly the point.”

“You won’t even try to understand?”

She wouldn’t meet his gaze, just continued to stare at his chest.

“Valerie, can’t we talk about it?”

“I thought we had talked about it Friday night.”

“You know I meant what I said, but there are new factors now I didn’t know about before.”

“I see.” She slipped the engagement ring off and held it out to him. “There are new factors for me too.”

He gaped at it blankly. “You’re not serious?”

“You don’t want a wife. You want a babysitter. And as much as I love your boys, I need more than that, Marc.” She set the ring on the lamp table and walked out the door.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The LaRoche Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica downtown Los Angeles, is a stunning architectural achievement. Circular towers cluster together, thirty-five stories of mirrored glass reflecting the soaring skyscrapers surrounding it. Inside, the five-story central nave captures and recaptures the circular motif. Curves, ellipses, parabolas, spirals, arches, cambers, bends—all are dazzling to the eye but yet curiously restful. The Gallery—a miniature mall—along with restaurants and cocktail lounges fill the first five levels of the hotel complex. The main lobby itself is like a gigantic atrium, with fountains, lakes, trees, and shrubbery.

As Marc walked swiftly through the main lobby with General Amani and Sheik Ahmed al Hazzan, vice-Minister of Defense, they drew curious looks from the people. Amani was in uniform, which looked much like American Air Force dress. Hazzan wore a business suit but also had the red-and-white checked headdress. But Marc hardly noticed the attention they drew. His eyes lifted to the spectacular architecture towering above them, and he thought of Valerie with a sharp pang. This would be perfect for a honeymoon.

He shook the thought away in self-derision. Before that happened, they would have to move beyond the point of nodding politely to each other at church. She had not been to the house since that night two weeks before when she had given back the ring.

General Amani noted the frown as they stopped at the elevators and punched a button. “Worried?”

Marc pulled out of his thoughts. “About tonight?”

Amani nodded, and Marc saw the sudden interest in Hazzan’s eyes. “No. You have prepared well. We have prepared well. All will go as planned.” He paused for a fraction of a second. “Insh’ allah.”

Amani laughed in delight. “Do you even think like an Arab?”

Marc just grinned without answering.

Each bank of elevators in the LaRoche ascends up through the central enclosure and emerges at about the sixth floor to glide the rest of the way on the outside of the main towers. All but the back wall of the elevator is glass, providing a dizzying view of the city lights spread out below as far as the eye can see. Both Amani and Hazzan commented quietly on that view as they rose to the thirty-first floor. But Marc was back with his thoughts of Valerie.

Insh’ allah. God willing. Many Westerners accused the Arabs of fatalism, for this was their standard injunction for any event, and the customary response to whatever befell them—be it blessing or curse. But it was more than simply fatalism; it was a form of a prayer, an invocation on any undertaking. I am going to get through to Valerie, he thought, insh’ allah.

Even her mother, Mary, couldn’t penetrate the stone wall of silence and hurt she kept between them. At first, Mary had been distinctly cool at the news that Marc had gone back on his decision with Barclay. But she had thawed when she saw the efforts he was making, in spite of a staggering schedule, to spend time with his sons.

He frowned again. If Mary had said anything to Valerie to that effect, it had made little difference.

The doors opened, and the three of them moved to the La Jolla Suite. Marc took a deep breath. Amani and Hazzan were the last ones in from the airport. They were about to launch into the final negotiating session, and there would be no trial runs.

The La Jolla Suite occupied the entire top floor of one of the outer glass towers, providing a sweeping two hundred seventy degree view of the city of Santa Monica and beyond that, Los Angeles. The suite was like a large house, with nearly twenty-six hundred feet of floor space. It had a large parlor, a dining room, a library, five bedrooms with walk-in closets and full baths, a wet bar, and serving pantries. It was the finest accommodation in the hotel and ran just over thirteen hundred dollars a night. Marc knew because he had helped Jackie make the arrangements. He had felt extravagent, staying on the eighteenth floor in one of the San Simeon Suites for a hundred and eighty-five dollars a night, until he saw what they were paying for the Saudi suite.

Alex broke away from the small group clustered around a table when he saw the three enter, and he came over, smiling broadly. “General, good to see you again.” They shook hands warmly. “I hope your six o’clock has been clear.”

It was jet jockey slang, and Amani warmed to it noticeably. To have an enemy in the six o’clock position puts him looking right down your tail pipe, the most vulnerable position a fighter pilot can face. The general nodded and smiled. “And yours as well.”

Marc half turned. “Alex, may I present Sheik Ahmed al Hazzan, the honorable vice-Minister of Defense. Sheik, this is Alexander Barclay, president of Barclay Enterprises.”

Again there were the formal bows, a quick shaking of hands, then Alex took the two men in tow and moved them over to where General Taylor Canning, Russell Whitaker of the State Department, and the crown prince were standing. Marc stepped back, moving to the window, out of the way and yet where Alex could beckon to him.

There were nearly thirty people in the dining room and the parlor, almost half of them Saudis. Some, including the prince, were in flowing robes and headdresses, some in business suits. A good share of the Saudis were part of the royal body guard, and as Marc studied them, he decided he would rather not find out how efficient they were at their jobs.

Quinn Gerritt was off in one corner conversing with a major and a colonel in Saudi air force uniforms. State Department personnel in suits mingled with the Arabs, and Marc recognized a face or two from the reception in Washington. There were no women present. This was to be a business session, and not even Jackie would be allowed to participate. Nor was Derek here. Alex had booked him a suite alongside Marc’s and Jackie’s, but he would be called only if absolutely necessary.

A waiter brought a tray of hors d’oeuvres and soft drinks, and Marc helped himself, knowing the social hour would continue for some time before the prince gave the signal to move to the next phase. Then the work would begin. It would be bone-crunching, head-to-head, nerve-banging work—all done, of course, with the finest of manners and courtesy. When it came to the fine art of negotiating, the Saudis were some of the best in the world.

He turned to the window, took a sip of his Seven-Up, and fell back to thinking about Valerie.

The Israelis were in the Laguna Suite on the thirtieth floor, directly below the La Jolla Suite. Nathan and his team had spent many nights in the hotel in the past two weeks. The result of all that was a large bank of tape recorders and listening devices along one wall. Every room booked by Alex Barclay had tiny, almost invisible microphones. The man whom Gondor had given Nathan was one of the best, and the Israelis were confident their surveillance devices could survive even a professional security sweep. In addition, every phone was tapped through the main circuitry downstairs.

The hotel staff thought of the group in the Laguna Suite as a group of well-heeled European businessmen. They were quiet, well-mannered, and ate all of their meals in the finest of the hotel’s restaurants.

Yehuda Gor was at the console with a pair of headphones on. The reels on three banks of tape recorders were turning slowly off to one side. Nathan and Yossi were at a table playing a desultory game of gin rummy. Gondor was asleep in the nearest bedroom, and Yitzhak and two other men in the one next to that. They had maintained the surveillance around the clock and took turns sleeping. Yaacov was on the couch, reading a book.

“Nathan,” Yehuda called softly. “I think they are preparing to start work.”

Nathan nodded, slipped into the bedroom, and a moment later reappeared with Gondor.

“Yes,” Yehuda confirmed. “The prince has suggested they move the chairs into a circle. I think the social time is over.”

Gondor grunted, sat down, and picked up another set of headphones as the others came around to listen.

Nearly two hours later, Valerie got out of her car and handed the parking attendant her keys. As he drove away, she turned and saw the signs pointing to the main lobby.

Ardith was waiting for her near the reception desk and came quickly over. “Thank you for coming.”

Valerie nodded, still not sure what to make of the telephone call and the insistence that she come. “I’ve got a table reserved for us in the Paris Cafe if that’s all right.”

“That’s fine.”

As they walked, Ardith watched Valerie’s eyes lift to stare at the mass of curved lines rising in every direction above them. “Isn’t this an incredible place?” she said.

Valerie nodded and let her eyes drop to take note of the women passing by them or seated around the lobby area. There was no question that she was mingling with the moneyed class. The dresses were expensive, the hair flawless, the jewelry abundant. Valerie was at least grateful she had followed her impulse to wear her camel-colored wool suit and cream-colored silk blouse. And yet as she looked around, she felt the gnawing sense of plainness dogging her heels again. A quick stab of pain hit her as she thought of Marc here in this setting with Jackie.

Ardith reached out and took her hand as they sat at their table. “You look lovely tonight, Valerie.”

Valerie gave her a sharp look, wondering if Ardith had known her thoughts, but the waiter came at that moment to take their order.

When he walked away, Ardith looked up. “I really do appreciate you coming.”

Valerie waited, not sure how to respond to that.

“I took the liberty of booking a room for you.”

That completely knocked her off guard. “You what?”

“It’s late and a long drive back home.”

“I…I can’t do that.”

“Barclay Enterprises is picking up the tab,” Ardith said evenly. “When I told Alex what I wanted to do, he agreed instantly.”

Valerie was nonplussed. “But my mother is expecting me back.”

Ardith shook her head. “I’ve already talked to your mother. She thought it was a wonderful idea.”

Valerie sat back, dazed. “You talked to my mother?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Look, Valerie, at the risk of seeming like a meddling old lady, let me come right to the point. Alex and I owe a debt that needs to be paid.”

“To Marc?” Valerie asked.

“Yes.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

She laughed quickly. “No. And if he finds out we’ve had this little talk, he’ll probably kill me.”

Valerie watched with deepening bafflement as the smile quickly faded and Ardith grew very serious. “Valerie, your mother told me why you gave Marc the ring back.”

“My mother talks too much,” Valerie said softly.

“Your mother loves you very much.” She paused, studying her hands. “As does Marc Jeppson.”

Valerie gave a little shake of her head, suddenly fighting tears.

Ardith leaned forward. “Do you know how happy Jackie is that you’ve given Marc back your ring?”

“What Jackie feels is not my affair.”

“You saw Jackie kiss Marc that night on the porch, didn’t you?”

Valerie’s head jerked up. She hadn’t even told her mother that.

Ardith smiled kindly. “Jackie told me. I just put two and two together. Let me tell you exactly what happened that night, and why Marc went back on his promise to you. And why Jackie kissed him. Then maybe you’ll understand why I insisted you come here tonight.”

It was nearly midnight when Marc got off the elevator on the eighteenth floor. He was exhausted but exuberant. The session had been a success. The Saudis were still holding out on one or two minor items, but the agreement was made. Alex Barclay had just sewn up his deal.

As he came around the curved hallway toward his room, he stopped dead. Valerie was leaning against the wall next to his door.

“Hello,” she said softly.

“Valerie?” he asked, not believing his eyes.

“I understand there’s a little restaurant downstairs that serves a pretty good hamburger until one o’clock on Friday nights.”

He was still speechless, just staring at her.

“Unless you start to scream, I was thinking of taking you down there and buying one for you.”

Quinn Gerritt got off the elevators and moved purposefully to his suite. He glanced around quickly. At this hour, the corridors were empty. Extracting a card from his shirt pocket, he inserted it into the computerized door lock. The lock clicked softly, and he stepped inside.

Derek Parkin stood almost instantly, leaving his drink sitting on the coffee table. Quinn nodded as he took off his jacket and hung it in the closet. “Did anyone see you come up?”

“No. I’ve been here almost an hour.”

“Good.” He walked to the phone, punched some numbers quickly. “We’re ready.”

Ignoring the curious look on Parkin’s face, Quinn poured himself a drink and sat down in the chair.

“Well?” Derek asked, his hands nervously pulling at some unseen lint on his shirt.

“It’s done,” Gerritt answered with satisfaction. “There are a few more tricky things to be ironed out, but it’s done.”

“Great!”

Gerritt just nodded, not revealing how great it was. Gerritt Industries had just been pulled back from the edge of disaster. He thought of that morning in Lauterbrunnen when his two top executives had cried wolf. Wait until you hear the crack of the hammer before you say we’re belly up, he had told Shurtliff. Well, the hammer had been set aside. Now, they were about to move from the edge of disaster to something very much more attractive.

With a soft click the lock shot open again, and the door opened. Derek whirled in surprise as a small dark man, carrying a thin and very expensive-looking briefcase entered. Gerritt stood quickly and went over and shook hands with Andrew Hadlow.

“Would you like a drink?”

Hadlow shook his head, and Gerritt turned to Parkin. “This is Derek Parkin.”

There was a curt nod, and Derek noted return introductions were not forthcoming. Gerritt motioned to the chairs, and they all sat down. Gerritt sipped his drink, watching Parkin thoughtfully for several moments. Then he smiled.

“Derek, I’ve been very happy with our little arrangement.”

Parkin picked up his own drink and gulped the remaining third of it down quickly, aware of the sudden prickling sensation down his back. He had come expecting the fifteen thousand dollar payoff Gerritt had promised him. Now he sensed that something else was in the wind.

Hadlow opened the briefcase and pulled out an envelope. He handed it to Gerritt, who tossed it to Derek. Parkin nearly dropped his glass as he caught it. He checked it furtively, counting the fifteen bills quickly. When he looked up, he saw the quick look of distaste on the small man’s face.

“The information you have given us has been most helpful,” Gerritt went on expansively.

“Thank you.”

“This, along with the bonus Barclay will pay you, should fix you up for some time to come.”

Parkin’s eyes narrowed. “What bonus?”

Gerritt looked surprised. “Alex has promised Marc Jeppson a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars when the deal is finalized. You mean…?” He looked a little embarrassed at having revealed something he should not have.

Derek slammed his glass down on the table and swore bitterly.

“Jackie, too, from what I understand,” Gerritt lied smoothly.

Derek swore again, his face dark with anger. “That doesn’t surprise me. Barclay has been squeezing me out ever since his darling Marc Jeppson came on board.”

Gerritt nodded sympathetically, watching this sullen man brood, wondering how Barclay had ever come to hire such a liability. He stood, got the bottle of whiskey, and poured Derek another drink. As Parkin drank deeply, Gerritt glanced at Hadlow, who gave a quick inclination of his head.

“How would you like to make that bonus and a great deal more?”

Parkin’s head snapped up like Gerritt had yanked on it with a baling hook. The sudden hunger in his eyes was unmistakable.

Gerritt held out his hands, a bland expression on his face. “As you know, I am now a limited partner with Alex in this thing. I’ll get five percent of the total commissions.”

“Yes, I know.”

“It seems to me that Alex is treating me as shabbily as he is you. I mean, if it weren’t for my radar system, there would be no deal with the Saudis.”

“That’s right. Alex has said that again and again.”

“And yet Alex takes ninety-five percent. I get five. Marc gets a hundred thousand bonus, and you get nothing. Somehow, that doesn’t seem right to me.”

“It’s rotten, that’s what it is!”

Gerritt leaned forward suddenly. “How would you like to change all of that?”

Derek, suddenly very sober, set his drink down carefully. “How?”

“You know about Alex’s heart condition?”

Derek nodded, a sudden chill hitting him at the base of the neck.

“If he were to have a heart attack about now, that would take him out of the action for a time. Perhaps long enough that a different deal would have to be negotiated.”

Derek was absolutely motionless now, his eyes following every nuance on Gerritt’s face.

“Who would be a more logical choice for a replacement than me? I’ve got the contacts with the aircraft company. I have the radar system. The Saudis already know me, and I’ve been in on the negotiation phase from the beginning.” He paused as Derek licked his lips. “And who would I need by my side but the man who has already drawn up all the contracts and knows the ins and outs of all the paper work?”

Hadlow opened his briefcase again and extracted something, but when he shut it, whatever he had gotten was in the palm of his hand, and Derek couldn’t see what it was.

“The commissions are going to run around sixty million, Derek,” Gerritt continued. “I’d be willing to give you a ten percent partnership. I’m not talking about hundred thousand dollar bonuses. I’m talking six million dollars!”

Hadlow leaned over and handed Gerritt a small brown prescription bottle and a plastic card. Gerritt looked at them curiously, his gray eyes hooded and veiled. Finally he looked up.

“Alex is on medication for his heart. He takes one pill every night before going to bed.”

Derek’s face was suddenly gray.

“He is not back in his room yet. He’s down in the main bar celebrating his victory with General Canning and Whitaker from the State Department.”

“What are you saying?” Derek whispered.

“This medication, which looks identical to his, will trigger the heart attack we were just discussing. Here is a card that will get you in his room.”

“Are you mad? What if it kills him?”

Hadlow spoke for the first time, mildly and quietly, but it frightened Derek even more than Gerritt’s calloused blandness. “It won’t. This has been prepared very carefully. We don’t want Barclay dead. Only out of commission for a while.”

“I can’t!” Parkin said hoarsely. “If something went wrong, you’re talking murder!”

“Nothing is going to go wrong!” Gerritt snapped. “All we’re going to do is make the inevitable happen at a more convenient time.”

Derek was shaking his head in horror.

Hadlow leaned forward. “Do you know Jonathan Taggart, Mr. Parkin?”

For a moment, Derek was blank, then recall came. “The designer of the radar system?” he asked Gerritt.

Both men nodded.

“Let me tell you a little story about Jonathan Taggart,” Hadlow said quietly.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Valerie twirled around slowly in front of Marc.

“You look terrific!” He turned to the salesgirl. “She’ll take it.”

“Marc!”

He ignored her. “Can she wear it?” he asked.

The woman smiled, liking this handsome young man’s assertiveness. “Certainly. I’ll put her other dress in a box.”

“Good. I’ll clip the tags on this one.” He stepped to Valerie and took out his fingernail clippers. Valerie turned her head. “Marc! I can’t take this!” she whispered.

“Why not? You said you liked it.”

“I love it, but—”

“You only have the dress you wore. You need something for the celebration luncheon today.”

“I know, but it’s a hundred and seventy dollars!”

He spun her around and kissed her firmly. “Right now, I’d pay five hundred dollars just to have you here.”

“You’re crazy,” she laughed, thoroughly delighted.

“I know, and I also know who made me that way.” He finished clipping the tags. “Come on, let’s go pay for this and go to some other stores. The morning is still young. You’d better take advantage while I’m in this affluent mood.”

Half an hour later, they were just coming out of a hotel gift shop, laden with packages for the boys, when an urgent cry spun them around. Jackie came from the direction of the elevators, half running.

“Marc, wait!” she called.

They turned on their heels and walked swiftly toward her. She stopped, trying to catch her breath. “Marc. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Alex has had a heart attack. They’ve just rushed him to the hospital.”

When Ardith came out into the waiting room, everyone stood. Her face was drawn, her eyes swollen and red. Russ Whitaker, Undersecretary of State, stepped up to meet her. “How is he?”

She took a deep breath, then sighed heavily. “They’ve taken him into surgery. They’re going to have to do a bypass. But the doctor is very optimistic.”

Derek sagged back and sat down heavily, relief coursing through him like a cold mountain stream.

Gerritt shot him a warning glance, then stepped forward. “Ardith, if there’s anything we can do, let us know.”

“Thank you, Quinn. For now, there’s nothing really.” She turned to the others. “Really, I so much appreciate you coming, but you may as well return to the hotel. It will be several hours before anything further develops.” She looked to Marc. “I would like Marc, Jackie, and Derek to stay for a few minutes.”

The others offered quick condolences and took their leave. Valerie murmured something to Marc and started to turn, but Ardith moved quickly to her side. “I’d like you to stay too, Valerie.”

Once the others were gone, Ardith motioned to the chairs. “Sit down, please.” She waited until they were seated in a semicircle facing her, then pulled a chair around.

“Alex wouldn’t let them put him under until he made me promise to do this.” A fleeting expression of desperation crossed her face. “There he was, so sick he could barely talk, and—” Tears welled up, and she fumbled for a Kleenex in her purse. “And he wouldn’t let them take him until he made sure I knew what to do.”

Jackie nodded, her own eyes red and swollen.

Ardith turned to Marc. “Alex was worried sick something like this would happen. Once you agreed to stay with him, he had all the papers drawn up and executed. You are now the acting president of Barclay Enterprises, Marc.”

Marc rocked back, stunned. Jackie took a quick intake of breath. Derek stared, his mouth working but making no sound. Valerie, wide-eyed, was watching Marc’s reaction.

“You have full power and authority to act.” She stopped, fighting again for control. Finally, sniffing back the tears, she was able to continue. “He begged me to tell you not to wait around here, Marc. He said you’ve got to act immediately, or everything will start to fall apart.”

Marc nodded slowly, still dazed as Valerie reached out and squeezed his hand. Derek jumped up, his mouth a thin hard line. “Well,” he hissed. “I guess that makes it clear where I stand with Alex.” He shot Marc a withering glance, then whirled and stalked out.

Jackie reached over and touched Marc’s arm. He was staring after him in shock and bewilderment. “Don’t worry about him, Marc. He’ll be all right. He’s just extremely jealous.”

“I…” He shook his head, then turned back to Ardith. “I don’t know what to say.”

Ardith smiled despite her tears. “Don’t say anything. Alex has tremendous confidence in you.” She turned to Jackie. “He would have made you the president if the Saudis didn’t have this thing about dealing with women.”

Jackie was up instantly and put her arms around her. “Ardith, you don’t have to explain anything to me. All I care about is Alex getting better.”

“I know,” Ardith said, the tears starting again. She looked at Marc. “So go, Marc. You’ve got to keep things together.” Her voice caught. “If he loses this, it will kill him.”

Valerie and Marc were at the entrance to the hotel parking garage. She reached up and kissed him quickly. “You don’t need to be worrying about me right now. I’ll go and stay with the boys and Mother.”

He shook his head, still a little dazed. “I…” He finally nodded. “I guess you’re right. Thank you for understanding.”

She threw her arms around him. “I love you Marc Jeppson. I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult.”

He held her tightly. “Just knowing you’re back is enough. If it weren’t for that…” He kissed her hard, not wanting her to leave, but knowing she was right.

She pulled back, her eyes shining. “Did you take the ring back to the jeweler?”

He smiled, touching her cheek. “It’s in the top drawer of my dresser.”

“Will you get me for breaking and entering if I go get it?”

“Won’t matter,” he said gruffly. “A man can’t testify against his wife anyway.”

By four o’clock that afternoon, the scramble for repositioning was starting to settle. The parlor of the La Jolla Suite had become the equivalent of the majlis, the council room, where so much of Saudi business and social interaction takes place. The men were seated in a rough circle, drinking the bitter coffee ground fresh from the beans they’d brought with them from Saudi Arabia. Except for the luxurious surroundings and the business suits scattered here and there, it could have been a gathering of sheiks in the black, goat-skinned tents of the Bedouins.

Quinn Gerritt had been the first to come, oozing reassurances that the deal was in no way jeopardized. Then with subtlety, but clarity, he made them a new offer.

Marc Jeppson came an hour or so later with the announcement of his new authority and calm assurances that all would be well.

Now they sat in council, sipping the bitter coffee. General Amani spoke first, shaking his head firmly. “Do not trust this Mr. Gerritt. If he so quickly turns on Barclay in a time of tragedy, he will as quickly turn on us, given half a chance.”

Several others nodded their agreement, but Sheik Hazzan was adamant. “Gerritt has the radar system. And he has offered to work with us for ten percent less commission. That is a substantial difference.”

Prince Khalid, full brother to the crown prince and the king, and Commander-in-Chief of the Saudi Armed Forces, spoke softly. “Do the Saudis change camels in the middle of the race? Last night we agreed that Mr. Barclay would represent us.”

Hazzan nodded in deference but was still firm. “Alex Barclay is lying in a hospital. That changes everything.”

“He has designated Mr. Jeppson as his legal representative,” General Amani pointed out. “And while nothing has been signed, Khalid is right. Our honor states that we must wait to see if Barclay Enterprises can carry through what they have promised.”

“Mr. Jeppson is a young, inexperienced agent. He has no expertise.”

The crown prince stirred, and the others turned to watch. His eyes were bright and alert, his face handsomely etched. For several moments, he looked above their heads, considering all that had been said. Finally he spoke. “Ahmed is right in one thing. Our first concern is to make the best arrangements we can make for our government.”

The vice-Minister of Defense tipped his head, acknowledging the support.

“However, my brother also makes a telling point. I would not have it be said that when a stranger trips on the tent peg, the Saudis use his body for a carpet.”

They all nodded, thinking of Alex Barclay lying in a hospital bed. The crown prince turned to the general. “You know this Jeppson best. What is your assessment?”

Amani spoke slowly, choosing his words with care. “He is young. In that Feisal is correct. He is also inexperienced in the area of being a representative.”

Hazzan was nodding vigorously.

Amani hesitated, then spoke quietly. “Ibn Saud was twentysix when he recaptured Riyadh from the hated Ibn Rasheed.” It was a telling point, for he was referring to the apex of modern Saudi history. In 1902, Abdul Aziz, the leading son of the famed house of Saud, had crossed the incredibly fierce environment of the Empty Quarter with a small force of loyal followers to fall on Riyadh and reclaim it for the house of Saud. It was the beginning of the modern kingdom and the center of song and legend.

Amani let the point sink in, then continued. “Jeppson is a man of honor, and Barclay evidently has great confidence in his abilities. And,” he paused, to give emphasis to what he felt was an important factor, “he knows our people and respects and admires what we have achieved. He will not use us and throw us aside when he is done.”

The crown prince was impassive, letting that rest on the others’ as well as on his own mind. He looked around, but when no one else wanted to speak, he nodded. “Then we will see what the young Mr. Jeppson can do.” He turned to Amani. “Convey to Mr. Gerritt our interest in his proposal, but that for now we regretfully feel we must honor our commitment with Barclay Enterprises.”

One floor below, the Israelis were also holding council. Gondor was at the head, the rest were scattered around the suite watching him attentively. Eli Weissman, the deputy director was a new addition, having just arrived from Washington, D.C., about twenty minutes earlier. There was a small chalkboard, and on it Gondor had listed the current status of the various participants in the drama unfolding in the Hotel LaRoche.

“That’s where it stands now,” he said to Weissman. “At first, it looked like the pieces of the tapestry would start to unravel, and Barclay’s tragedy would prove to be a blessing for us. But Barclay’s foresight and Jeppson’s quickness seem to have pulled things back together. The Saudis are committed to follow through if he can deliver.

“And he withstood Gerritt?” Weissman asked.

He turned to Yehuda. “Udi, you were monitoring that line. Tell us again what happened.”

Yehuda shrugged. “Parkin came straight from the hospital to Gerritt with the news that Jeppson had full authority. So Gerritt acted swiftly. He went to the Saudis and tried to undercut Barclay and to squeeze him out. When that failed, he called Jeppson to his room. He threatened to pull out of the deal unless Marc cut him in for half of the total commission. Jeppson seemed at first stunned, but he held his ground. Gerritt has already signed all the agreements with Barclay. Jeppson told him flatly that if he tried to pull out, he would have a massive law suit on his hands.”

Weissman nodded. “Go on, Moshe.”

“We cannot wait any longer,” Gondor continued. “Our options are narrowing fast. The sabotage teams will hit Gerritt’s laboratory and plant tomorrow night. The bauxite shipments will be the next targets.”

Yaacov, who had sat quietly in the background for most of the last four hours, sat up. “Would you add shame to the shame we have already brought upon ourselves?”

Gondor spun around, fire in his eyes. “I told you that we were not monitoring Gerritt’s room! We had listening devices in eleven rooms. You cannot listen to eleven conversations at once. We did not learn about the switch of the medicine until we heard the tapes several hours later.”

“Does negligence lessen the shame?”

“It was not negligence, Papa!” Nathan exploded. “We’ve told you that. If we had known what Gerritt was doing, we would have warned Barclay, but all of us were focusing on the Saudis.”

“And now you take the law in your own hands.”

Gondor threw up his hands in disgust and turned to Weissman, his expression clearly asking for deliverance. Weissman was thoughtful for a moment, then turned to face the white-haired patriarch on the couch. “Mr. Shoshani, I know the prime minister has great confidence in you. I also know that you know the gravity of our present situation. Though we disagree in philosophy, we both want to stop the sale of these planes to our enemies. What do you suggest?”

“Let me talk to Marc Jeppson.”

Gondor snorted in derision behind him. “And tip our hand. You know that from the very first we’ve had to be very careful that the Americans don’t find out we’re in this.”

Yaacov didn’t turn, just watched Weissman steadily. “I have a good friend who is an FBI agent. They already know some of what we’re doing, and they want Gerritt and Hadlow badly. They’re willing to work with us.”

Gondor started to say something, but Weissman motioned him to stay quiet. He had read all the reports. He knew what Yaacov had proposed and why it was rejected. But that was before Barclay had turned over the reins to Jeppson. He also knew of some things starting to transpire in Washington, if only they could buy some time. Finally he nodded.

“You’ve got until noon tomorrow. If Jeppson turns you down, then we move.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Brett stood before his father, ramrod stiff, submitting to the quick inspection.

“Do you have your toothbrush?” Marc asked.

“Yes.”

“Pillow?”

“Don’t need one. Jed’s mom says they’ve got plenty.”

“Okay.” Marc looked him up and down. “Now look, kid, this is your first sleepover. You know how Jeppsons are supposed to act?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Polite.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Always say ‘Thank you.’”

“Yes, sir.”

Valerie had come to the kitchen door and was watching the interaction fondly.

“Help with the dishes,” Marc continued.

Slight hesitation, a little less enthusiasm. “Yes, sir.”

“Have a great time.”

Brett’s eyes widened. “Yes, sir!”

“Get out of here!”

“Yes, sir!” Brett whooped and was out the door like a shot.

Marc sighed, shook his head at Valerie. “One down and one to go.” He walked to the hall just in time to see his youngest son dart across the hall and into the bathroom.

“Matt! Come on!”

“Just a minute, Daddy. I’m putting gasoline on my lips.”

“You’re what?”

Valerie poked her head around from the kitchen. “I think the word is Vaseline.”

“Oh,” Marc laughed. Sure enough, a moment later Matt emerged, his lips glistening. “All right, you,” Marc ordered gruffly, “into bed. You’ve had your drink, you’ve said your prayers, you’ve been to the bathroom, and you’ve got gasoline on your lips. Now get in there, and I don’t want to hear another peep.”

Matt disappeared through the doorway, then peered back around at his dad. “Peep!”

Marc stomped a foot. There was a squeal and the sound of a running dive onto the bed.

When he came back into the kitchen a few moments later, Valerie was smiling.

“What are you smirking at?”

She turned back to the counter where she was putting the final touches on a chocolate cake. “Peep, peep!” she said in a tiny little voice.

He laughed and came up to her, putting his arms around her. “What do I have, rebellion on every hand?”

Before she could answer, the doorbell rang. They both looked up in surprise. “I’ll get it,” Marc said.

As he opened the door and stepped back, his mouth dropped. The man standing in his doorway was Yaacov Shoshani.

“Hello, Marc,” Yaacov said, smiling faintly.

“Yaacov. How did you…?” He caught himself, still a little dazed, looked at the second man, who smiled politely. “Come in,” Marc said, opening the door wider.

Yaacov took off his hat and stepped inside. The other followed, and Marc noted he was carrying a briefcase. He was a heavy-set man but trim and very fit. He was dressed in suit and tie, like Yaacov.

“Marc, this is Lynn Braithwaite. Lynn, Marc Jeppson.”

They exchanged greetings as they shook hands, and Marc noted the strong grip of the other. Valerie stepped into the entryway from the kitchen, taking off her apron.

Marc beckoned to her to join him. “This is my fiancée, Valerie Robertson. Val, this is Yaacov Shoshani. I met him in Washington, D.C. He’s from Israel.”

Valerie tossed the apron into the kitchen and came to stand by Marc. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

“And this is Lynn Braithwaite.” He motioned to the chairs. “Sit down, please.” When they had done so, he and Valerie sat together on the couch and Marc turned to Shoshani. “What a surprise this is. How did you ever find me?”

Yaacov took a deep breath. “Marc…” He stopped, took another quick intake of air, and let it out in a weary sigh. “Before we begin, you ought to know that I am here on behalf of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, and Mr. Braithwaite is a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

If Marc had gaped at the first sight of Shoshani, now he was dumbfounded. He glanced at Valerie, who was as stunned as he.

“We have something you need to hear, Marc.”

Valerie started, then looked at Marc. “I’ll go in with Matt.” She moved to get up.

Yaacov shot Braithwaite a quick look and got an imperceptible nod. He turned to Valerie. “Miss Robertson, we think it might be well if you heard what we have to say. It could have implications for you as well as Marc.”

She sat back, and Marc reached out and took her hand.

With Yaacov leading out and Braithwaite filling in, they laid it all out for them, starting with the account of the financial state of Gerritt Industries and a visit in October from Andrew Hadlow. The agent took the lead then, sketching in brief but sobering detail the interest the federal government had in Andrew Hadlow and his sponsor, Lyman Perotti.

To that point, Marc was shocked but puzzled. So Gerritt had Mafia connections. He wasn’t sure why they were telling him all this. But then they began describing a trip to Bogotá. They handed him more than two dozen black-and-white photographs. He looked at them slowly, the puzzlement growing at first, then turning to a cold fury as Yaacov talked quietly. It was all there. Alex’s plane parked at the airport, two men jimmying the door, the same two carrying sacks inside, the close-ups—much more clear and sharp now—of sacks of cocaine stuffed into the paneling of the cabin. The last had been taken by federal narcotics agents as Marc and Jackie had sat inside the terminal for three hours waiting to clear customs. When he finally looked up, his mouth was drawn into a hard, tight line.

“Understand, Marc,” Braithwaite said, noting the expression. “There is not the slightest suspicion that either you or Miss Ashby had knowledge of the fact that you were being used as couriers. It would be helpful if you could tell us how you came to make that trip for Mr. Gerritt.”

Marc did so, his voice low and filled with loathing. Braithwaite took out a small notebook and scribbled quickly as Marc talked. When Marc finished, the agent leaned forward. “The ones we’re really after are Hadlow and Perotti, but I think for the first time we have a shot at getting them if we can get Gerritt.”

Valerie was seething. “You and Jackie could have been arrested. Thrown into prison.”

Yaacov cleared his throat. “I do not wish to deceive you, Marc. The FBI’s interest in all this is clear. But you are probably wondering why Israeli intelligence is involved in an American crime case.”

Marc nodded, his eyes never wavering from those of Yaacov’s. “Yes. That’s exactly what I was wondering. What is your interest, Yaacov?”

The old man sighed again, a sound filled with pain and sorrow. “My country knows about the sale of the F-22s to Saudi Arabia. Our interest is to see that the sale does not take place.”

“And the chance meeting in Washington—”

“It was not by chance. I took it upon myself to meet you and get to know what you were like.”

The pieces were beginning to fit together for Marc. “And you’re telling me all this now so I will no longer deal with Quinn Gerritt, thus stopping the sale.”

Yaacov hesitated, then decided that this young man deserved to be told the truth. “That is our hope.”

“The Israelis have provided us with some very helpful information,” Braithwaite spoke up. “Unfortunately, we cannot use anything they have obtained as evidence. We need your help to nail Quinn Gerritt and his associates and send them away for a very long time.”

“What about the drug shipments?” Valerie asked. “Isn’t that enough evidence?”

“Not much of that will stand up in court. Gerritt is cunning and has covered his tracks well. And Perotti and Hadlow are pros, Marc. You don’t just pick them off the streets.”

“Gerritt is evil, Marc,” Yaacov said. “And the men he runs with are evil. They live by marketing filth and destruction.”

Marc leaned forward. “I know that. But what can I do? I hope you nail Gerritt to the wall, but I can’t just throw away a deal Alex has worked toward for three or four months.”

“There is more, Marc,” Yaacov said sadly. “Much more.”

Braithwaite stood abruptly and went to the door. He opened it and beckoned. A moment or two later, Jonathan Taggart, chief engineer and designer of the VSM-430 radar system, walked in.

When Taggart finally left fifteen minutes later, Marc had his head down in his hands. Valerie was staring at the door in horror and revulsion. “That poor man,” she whispered.

“It is not a pretty picture is it, Marc?” Yaacov said quietly. “But now you see the kind of man with whom you are partners. Gerritt has managed to get in on this deal only through criminal action—extortion, coercion, drug smuggling, using innocent people, including yourself. Are you really willing to work with a man like that?”

Marc finally looked up. “You don’t understand—this is not my choice. If it were, Gerritt would be out this instant, but I am only Alex’s representative.”

“Barclay has given you full power and authority to act.”

“To act in his name! Not go off on my own and overturn everything he has worked for.”

“So you just turn your head aside? Ignore what Gerritt is and what he has done?”

“You can’t!” Valerie cried. “You can’t work with that man!”

“Don’t you understand? It will ruin Alex!” He turned to Valerie. “And right now, that could cost him his life.”

“Could?” Yaacov challenged him softly. “Aren’t you talking probabilities, Marc?”

Marc’s head came around.

“I remember a young man telling me that there are higher considerations than probabilities. Things like faith and integrity and trust in a supreme being.”

Marc just stared, unblinking, almost dazed.

“To save a friend, or destroy an enemy? You have your own Coventry dilemma, Marc Jeppson. I do not envy you.”

For several seconds Marc’s breathing was the only sound in the room. As Valerie watched her fiance struggle with the decision, she suddenly loved him more intensely than she had cared for anything or anyone in her entire life. She took his hand, gripping it tightly, not knowing what to say or how to help him, only knowing that the one thing she wanted at this instant was to stand by him and strengthen him in whatever he decided to do.

Yaacov watched the inward struggle, knowing with terrifying clarity what he had laid on this man’s shoulders. When he finally spoke again, his voice was low and grave. “Marc, there is one more thing you must know.” He took a cassette from his pocket, and Braithwaite opened his briefcase and brought out a small tape recorder. Yaacov put the cassette in the machine and pushed the play button. “This was recorded last night in Quinn Gerritt’s suite at the LaRoche approximately eight hours before Alex Barclay’s heart attack. I think you’ll recognize the voices of Gerritt and Derek Parkin. The third man is Andrew Hadlow.”

Long after the two men had left, Marc was still standing at the living room window, staring out into the darkness. Valerie came back from covering Matt, stopped and watched him for a moment, then walked quietly to stand by his side. His arm came up and around her shoulders.

“Val, what do I do?”

“What would Alex want you to do?”

There was not an instant’s hesitation. “Stick with Gerritt and see the deal through.”

“Even if he knew what Gerritt tried to do to him?”

Marc nodded, the sureness of his conviction not helping his emotions. “Yes. I know Alex. ‘We’ll worry about that later,’ he would say. ‘Right now, you just worry about putting that contract to bed once and for all.’”

Valerie knew he was right. “Surely those tapes are enough to convict Gerritt. Then it’s out of your hands.”

Marc shook his head quickly. “You heard Braithwaite. The tapes were illegally obtained. They are not admissable as evidence.”

He fell silent, struggling with the emotions raging within him. Finally Valerie broke the quiet, “Are there any other options?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. But so far all you’ve considered is whether to stay with Gerritt and compromise with evil or dump him and destroy Alex. Couldn’t there be a way to dump Gerritt and still see the other through?”

He turned slowly, looking at her in wonder.

She smiled up at him. “After hearing how you crashed the door at Mervyn’s last fall, I have great faith in your ingenuity.”

His face softened, as he chuckled with the memory. “Can you believe I did that?”

She shook her head firmly. “No. Not my level-headed, basically serious Marc Jeppson.”

“I could have won, you know. The store security guy was trying his darndest not to laugh when I told him how I got through that door. But suddenly I said to myself, ‘What are you doing? You’re a college professor, not some juvenile delinquent trying to con a woman out of a sack of marbles.’”

She slipped her arm around his waist. “So put some of that ingenuity to work now.”

Turning, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. “Where did you come from?”

She laughed, her eyes sparkling with a mixture of tears and joy. “I jogged in from Colorado, remember?”

He didn’t smile, just suddenly pulled her in tight against him. “Do you know, can you even begin to fathom, what you mean to me?” He sighed, coming back to the realities facing them. “I need to think this through. Do you want to go for a walk?”

She looked up again, searching his face, then finally shook her head. “You go. I’ll be here when you come back, and then we can talk.”

It was almost one-thirty when Marc opened the front door and came into the living room. Valerie was sitting in the dark, the light from the entryway putting her face in soft shadow. Marc came slowly to her, sat down, and took both her hands in his.

She waited as he sorted out his thoughts, wanting to touch his face and make the deep lines go away.

“You know what this is all about?” he began.

“What?”

“What Alex calls leverage points. Everything in this whole situation comes down to one person or group of people trying to leverage others. Alex and Jackie leveraged me into staying by telling me about Alex’s condition. Quinn Gerritt leveraged Derek into betrayal with money and by nursing his hurt ego. Jonathan Taggart was leveraged by playing on the terror of his wife and daughter. The Saudis leverage just about everyone with their incredible wealth. It goes on and on.”

Valerie leaned her head against his shoulder. “But Alex is a born infighter, and Hadlow and Gerritt knew they could neither scare him out nor buy him out, so they leveraged him out with a heart attack.”

“Exactly, which then gives Yaacov Shoshani the perfect opening to leverage me, because he knows I can’t just look away from that.”

“And you can’t, can you?”

“How could I? No matter what Alex would do, how can I just turn and look the other way?”

“And what about Alex?”

He stood and walked to the window, pulled the curtains back, and stared out into the night. “You know the answer to that, too. For all his faults, for all his bluster and blow, Alex Barclay is a decent man. He has been very good to me and for me. I won’t ruin him.”

“So?” she asked again.

“So, maybe it’s time I start using what the master taught me. I’m not the only one in this game who can be leveraged.”

She went to him, and he held out his arms. “So you found another way!”

“Yes, I think so. I think I can get Gerritt out and and still save the deal.”

“Marc, that’s wonderful!”

He was shaking his head slowly. “No, it’s not. When Gerritt finds out…” He let it hang, not wanting to finish.

Valerie went cold, remembering the look on Jonathan Taggart’s face as he described what had happened to his wife and daughter. Marc was watching her closely, and when she looked up, he nodded.

“That’s right. If you want to talk about my ultimate leverage point, it is you and the boys.” He pulled her to him, holding her with a fierceness that frightened her. “Valerie, if I just let everything ride, there would be no threat to you.”

She looked up at him for several seconds, feeling the fear tightening her stomach. But she shook her head. “You can’t deal with Gerritt.” She buried her head against his chest. “You just can’t.”

“Okay,” he said with sudden determination. “Call your mother. Tell her to pack some things for both you and her.”

Valerie’s head came up swiftly.

“I don’t think they will bother Mary, but we can’t be sure. So all of you have to go.”

“But where?”

“I’m taking you to Utah.”

“Right now?”

“As soon as we can get some things packed for the boys. If you’ll do that, I’ll go get Brett from his sleepover.”

It was two-thirteen A.M. when Marc carried two suitcases out and put them into the trunk. Mary locked the front door of her home, then walked hurriedly with Valerie to the Chrysler Le-Baron, where she got in the back seat next to two very sleepy little boys. As Marc came around and got in the front seat with Valerie, Yitzhak ben Tsur, in a car half a block away, lowered the binoculars and picked up the microphone.

“This is Claremont One. We have definite confirmation. The fiancée’s mother has been picked up with her luggage. The bird is in flight.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

They left Claremont, California, Sunday morning at two-fifteen A.M. and drove straight through, stopping only for gas, food, and one time when Marc made a half-hour call to Washington, D.C. They arrived in Willard, Utah, shortly after five that evening. By five forty-five they were back on the road south again, this time not in Marc’s car, which had been left locked in his father’s garage, but in his father’s minivan. There was a quick, tearful farewell at the Salt Lake International Airport, with urgent warnings from all that Marc be extremely careful. Even Brett sensed the somber mood of the adults and was subdued. Matt, exuberant at the thoughts of two weeks at a small mountain resort with his grandma and grandpa, was the only one whose spirits weren’t dampened.

Marc disembarked from the Salt Lake to Los Angeles flight at ten thirty-two that night, California time, made one quick phone call, then rented a car and drove directly to a fashionable neighborhood in Cypress, about twenty-five or thirty miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Jonathan Taggart always watched the news at eleven, then late night reruns before going to bed. When the doorbell rang at ten minutes to twelve, he looked up in surprise, fighting down the instant fear that had become a part of his life since he had pushed open the door to find a headless cat lying on his porch. Hurrying, before the bell rang again and woke his wife, he padded into the living room, leaving the lights out, and peeked quickly out a window. His eyes widened when he saw the two men. He stepped back quickly, turned off the porch light, and opened the door.

“Mr. Taggart,” Marc said, “we apologize for the hour, but it is very important that we talk to you.”

Taggart’s eyes were frightened. “Why did you come here?” he demanded. He peered up and down the street, then opened the door wider. “Please come in. Quickly!”

It was one-nineteen A.M., Monday, March 16, when the phone rang in Yaacov Shoshani’s apartment. He was awake instantly and picked it up.

“Yaacov, this is Marc Jeppson. I have Lynn Braithwaite with me. How soon could you get your people together? We would like to talk with them.”

Marc could feel the burning behind his eyelids and knew that if he looked in a mirror, he would find them terribly bloodshot. The physical weariness was also starting to seep into his mind and dull his thought processes. He had slept for three or four hours while Valerie and Mary took turns driving, and caught another half an hour on the plane back to L. A. Other than that, he had been up for about forty-two hours. He stood up, shaking it off, willing himself back into alertness.

The others were also a little bleary-eyed from being yanked out of bed in the middle of the night, but in addition to having slept more recently, Yaacov had also served coffee to all the others, and it was starting to have it’s effect. Except on Lynn Braithwaite. He was in the large overstuffed chair, his coffee on its arm, untouched. His head had tipped down onto his chest, and he was dozing. Nathan Shoshani sat near his father on the couch, talking quietly. Moshe Gondor was at the table, staring into his cup, lost in his own thoughts.

The doorbell rang, and they all started. Yaacov hurried to answer it and came into the room a moment later with Eli Weissman, the Deputy Director of Operations for the Mossad. The others all came to the table. Gondor introduced Weissman quickly to Marc, they shook hands, then they all sat down.

“Sorry to be so long in getting here,” Weissman apologized, without explanation. Then he turned to Marc. “Mr. Jeppson, you called us together. Let’s hear what you have to say.”

Marc nodded. He had rehearsed this often enough in the last twenty-four hours, but now that the moment had arrived, he found a sudden tightness in his throat. He took a deep breath and plunged in.

“Mr. Braithwaite and I have come to ask for your help.” Gondor stirred, but Marc went on quickly. “Before telling you exactly what it is we need, let me say a couple of things as prelude to our request.”

He paused, but every eye was on him and no one spoke, so he continued. “As you know, Yaacov’s coming to my house put me into a moral dilemma, as I’m sure you meant it to. I have now resolved that dilemma, at least partially.”

Again he paused, choosing his words carefully. “I have made two decisions. Number one, as acting president of Barclay Enterprises we are breaking off all relationships with Gerritt Industries.” All four of the Israelis stirred, but he went on smoothly. “That decision goes into effect immediately, though we will not tell Gerritt until Mr. Braithwaite and his people decide when the timing is most advantageous for their purposes.”

“Decision number two. I have agreed to work with the FBI in helping them obtain sufficient evidence to convict Mr. Quinn Gerritt and those who work with him.”

“Bravo!” Yaacov said softly. “I knew you could not do otherwise.”

“Excellent!” Gondor beamed. “Excellent.”

Yaacov suddenly sobered. “And what of Mr. Barclay?”

“That is something else I want to lay out clearly before I say more.” He was more hesitant now, knowing this next part was crucial. “My decision to see Gerritt brought to justice in no way lessens my determination to act in Mr. Barclay’s best interest, speaking both of his physical health and as his official representative.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nathan said warily.

Marc straightened, looked around at the others. “Alex Barclay will be in intensive care until Wednesday or Thursday. I will use that time to make every effort to put together another deal that the Saudis will find acceptable, in spite of the fact that Gerritt Industries is out.”

Gondor came half out of his chair. “What!”

Yaacov was stunned. “But—” He caught himself and clamped his mouth shut.

“I fully expect that you and your people will continue to make every effort to prevent that from happening. Fine. But know that I plan to explore every possibility to hold the deal together. If, on Thursday, I can tell Alex that the deal is still alive, even with Gerritt out, that will significantly lower the stress on him, and I will have solved my dilemma.”

Weissman was thoughtful. “In three days? No way, Mr. Jeppson.”

Marc smiled now for the first time. “The oddsmakers would certainly bet with you, Mr. Weissman.”

Yaacov’s mind was racing. They needed time. That was the purpose of his visit to Marc in the beginning, and they had gotten that. Weissman was correct. Marc was bright, and it would be dangerous to underestimate him. But not in three days. And yet…There was a confidence in Marc that was unnerving.

“And that brings us to the basic question,” Marc said to Weissman. “We need your help.”

Gondor had just taken a sip of his coffee and nearly choked. “You tell us you plan to go ahead and sell planes to our enemies, and you want us to help you?”

“We need your help in bringing Quinn Gerritt to justice. I expect nothing more.”

“You’re a fool!” Gondor snapped, his face incredulous. “Break off the sale, then you’ll have our help.”

Marc ignored Gondor, just watched Weissman steadily. The round face was impassive, unmoved. There was no way to fathom what was going on behind those mild, brown eyes.

“You people used my sense of honor and integrity, Mr. Weissman. You used it in a calculated and cunningly devised manner to achieve your ends. Now all I ask of you is the same. You too claim to be men of honor, men of principle. You know what Gerritt is as well or better than I. We want you to help us bring an end to his freedom. Or is all this talk of principle and integrity mere rhetoric, an expediency used only when it suits your convenience?”

“No!” Yaacov cried hoarsely.

Marc whirled around. “I’m not asking you, Yaacov!” Then his voice softened. “I know how you feel.” He turned back, his words coming out sharp and clipped. “What I do not know is how Eli Weissman and Moshe Gondor and Nathan Shoshani feel.”

The silence in the room was heavy as Marc leaned forward, breathing hard. Gondor glared back at him, but finally looked away under the glittering challenge of Marc’s gaze. Nathan was staring into his cup, his dark eyes unreadable.

“He asked the question of all of us,” Weissman finally said mildly. “Moshe, how do you answer?”

“Of course we do not condone what Gerritt is or what he has done. But we are official representatives of the state of Israel. We cannot interfere in the domestic affairs of the U.S., unless that interference would be of direct benefit to our government.”

“Courageously spoken!” Marc said with mocking praise.

Weissman grabbed Gondor’s arm as he shot out of his chair. He pulled him back down, not looking at him but turning instead to the younger Shoshani. “Nathan?”

Nathan finally looked up. He glanced quickly at his father, then turned back to Weissman. “I say we help.” Yaacov sat back, the tenseness that had stiffened his body, suddenly gone. He smiled at his son.

Weissman nodded slowly. “I agree.” He turned back to Marc. “What did you have in mind, Mr. Jeppson?”

Marc felt a lurch of relief but kept his face expressionless. “You know what happened to Jonathan Taggart. You also know he has a deep and abiding hatred for Quinn Gerritt but is too terrified to come forward and testify against him.”

They nodded. Marc went on swiftly. “He has agreed to come forth if we can absolutely guarantee his safety and that of his family.”

Weissman turned to Braithwaite. “Protective custody is not an unusual request. Why come to us?”

Braithwaite spoke for the first time since entering the apartment. “Hadlow and Perotti have both openly bragged that they have sources of information in every police department.” He dropped his eyes momentarily. “Even the FBI. We think that is bluff, but if we’re wrong, it would mean death for Taggart.”

“We want Taggart and his family taken to Israel,” Marc said quietly.

For the first time, Marc broke through Weissman’s aplomb. His eyes widened, and he swallowed in surprise.

“They must disappear without a trace and remain totally incognito until the time is right.”

As quickly as he had lost it, Weissman recovered and was back in control. “What else?”

“I was followed to Utah yesterday. I assume that was your people.”

Now it was Nathan and Gondor who rocked back. Marc grinned. “A blue Ford sedan. Then a red-and-white pick-up. Those two vehicles I’m sure of. Others I could guess.”

When neither man answered, the grin faded. “Come on,” Marc said, “if they were not your people, then I have cause to worry.”

“They were ours,” Weissman said.

Marc breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. So you know where my fiancée and my boys are?”

“Yes.”

“You know that when Gerritt finds out I’m going after him, he’ll try to get to them, use them against me.”

“I think the probability is high.”

“I would appreciate it if you could see that nothing happens to them. Again, we can’t rely on the FBI or other law enforcement agencies for the same reason as before.”

Weissman shook his head.

“Why not?”

The deputy director chose his words carefully. “While we can appreciate your concern, providing protection for your family frees you up to pursue the deal with the Saudis. That works directly counter to our interests and is not in the same moral realm as the help with Taggart.”

Marc had anticipated that and was ready. “It will not directly aid in the arms sales. I will pursue that with or without your help. But I do have a quid pro quo to offer.”

Weissman’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“I was in contact with the State Department yesterday,” Marc said blandly. “As yet, Gerritt Industries has refused to let your technical advisors get a close look at this new radar system.”

Weissman gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“Sooner or later, I suppose you’ll get those plans.” Marc shrugged. “I am proposing it be sooner.”

“Go on.”

“All things considered—the sale of the F-22 to Saudi Arabia, the pressure being brought to bear by your government, the help you are providing in the Gerritt situation—considering all of that, the State Department, with direct permission of the president, has authorized me to make you an offer.”

The room was almost totally silent as the Israelis waited for his next sentence. Marc smiled faintly. “They have agreed that they would look the other way if Jonathan Taggart were to take a set of plans for the VSM-430 radar system with him to Israel.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The alarm went off at eight-thirty Monday morning, and Marc groaned and rolled over, groping for it blindly until he found the button and hammered it down. Up on one elbow was as far as he made it. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was that had been so urgent that he had set his alarm for just three hours after he had arrived home. With a long sigh of surrender, he collapsed back onto the pillow, vowing to reset the alarm for sometime around Thursday morning.

The insistent ringing of the phone brought him up again with a start. He peered at the clock radio as he grabbed the phone. It was ten-sixteen A.M.

“Hullo.” His voice was a clear confession of what he had been doing.

“Marc?”

“Yeah.” He shook his head, trying to bounce a brain cell or two off the walls of his mind to get them functioning again.

“This is Jackie.”

He swung his feet off the bed and let them drop to the floor with a thud. “Oh, hi, Jackie,” he said, barely stifling another moan.

“Marc, were you asleep?”

“Well, not really. It’s just an act to throw you off.”

She laughed. “At ten-fifteen in the morning, Marc Jeppson is still in bed? I can’t believe it.” She paused but when he didn’t respond, went on. “Where in the world have you been? I tried to get you all day yesterday.”

Finally, the Jell-o in which his synapses were immersed began to melt, and he felt some modicum of alertness returning. “Oh, yeah. I took the boys on a little trip. I got back kind of late.”

“I tried Valerie’s house too.”

“No answer?”

“No. Not even late last night.”

“Hmmmm.” He managed to sound really puzzled. “Generally one or the other of them is home. How’s Alex this morning?”

“Still in intensive care, but he’s improving all the time.”

“I called the hospital yesterday and got to talk to Ardith. She seemed much more optimistic than she did on Saturday.”

“Yes, he’s doing very well, which is such a relief.”

“Are they still projecting he’ll be out of intensive care on Wednesday or Thursday?”

“The doctor told Ardith this morning that it will be Thursday, just to be safe.”

“Good.” For more reasons than one. This was going to be a busy three days. “Still no visitors till then?”

“Only Ardith.”

“Well, I’ve got to go down to the LaRoche this afternoon anyway, see the Saudis one more time before they take off for home. I’ll stop by the hospital while I’m down there, see how Ardith’s doing.”

“She’d like that.” There was a moment’s pause. “Well,” she said, getting down to business. “The phone has been ringing like crazy here. Are you coming in this morning?”

“Uh…Well, probably not. A couple of critical things have come up that I need to follow through on. Who’s called?”

“Gerritt. He’s the most insistent. Even called me yesterday at home. Said he’s been trying to reach you. Says he wants to talk about the offer he made you Saturday.”

Marc frowned. Knowing Gerritt, he had hit on some new angle for intimidating the acting president of Barclay Enterprises. “Can you stall him? Tell him you finally reached me, but I was flying out the door to get to the LaRoche. Which is nearly true. I’m starting to taxi out onto the jetway now.”

She laughed. “I can tell.”

“Have him call me there after three.” By which time he would be gone again. “Who else?”

“The sales rep from Northrup. The executive vice-president of Hughes. Seems like word is out that we’re representing Gerritt Industries on the radar system. There’s been a lot of courtesy calls about Alex. Also, Jakarta called, but I think Derek can handle that one all right.”

Marc’s mouth tightened subconsciously, and he began to tap the table top with his index finger. “Is Derek there?”

“Not yet, but he called and is on his way.”

“Okay. Listen, Jackie, some of this I’m in on could have important implications for us. Can you and Derek meet with me about five-thirty?” He considered that. “No, make that six.”

“Well, yes, I’m sure that would be all right.” He could hear the question in her voice and hated himself for putting her off.

“Great! Thanks for the wakeup call. I might have slept right through ‘Days of Our Lives.’”

“Good-bye, Marc,” she laughed merrily. “See if you can’t get your wheels off the ground so I won’t have to lie to Gerritt.”

“That’s a big roger, Control Tower, ten-four, over and out.”

But as he hung up, the humor in him died, and the smile on his face slowly faded away. He found his pants, dug out his wallet, and got the slip of paper he had put in there on Saturday, then picked up the phone again.

“Hotel LaRoche.” It was a pleasant female voice, and he pictured her as being the attractive blond who had checked him and Valerie out Saturday.

“Yes. Could I speak with the La Jolla Suite.”

“I’m sorry, sir, calls to that room are restricted.”

“Yes, I know that. This is Marc Jeppson. I’d like to speak with General Sayeed Amani. I’ll hold.”

The line went dead for several seconds, then Amani’s voice came on. “Good morning, Marc.”

“Good morning, General. How is everything with you this morning?”

“Very good. And how is Alex this morning?”

“Doing much better thank you.”

The small courtesies continued for almost a minute. Halfway through them it suddenly hit Marc that the Israelis had a tap on the line. If they had bugged Gerritt’s suite, they had certainly tapped into the Huntington Suite as well, and that would include the phones.

When an appropriate opening occurred, Marc broke in smoothly. “I was hoping to get a chance to say good-bye to you and the crown prince before you leave.”

“He would be pleased.”

“I’ll be in Los Angeles this afternoon.”

“Good. Hold a minute.” The phone was covered, and Marc could hear muffled Arabic rapidly spoken. Then, “The prince would be honored if you could join us for lunch in our suite.”

The thoughts of talking into Israeli microphones did nothing for him, especially with what he planned to say to the Saudis. He cursed his stupidity for not thinking of it sooner. “I would be much more honored if you would allow me to take you and the prince and Sheik Hazzan to lunch at a favorite restaurant of mine.” He would have to do some quick thinking to decide what favorite restaurant he was talking about.

Again there was the muffled consultation. “Marc, the prince insists. We shall have lunch up here. Shall we say one-thirty?”

Marc’s face fell. “General, that is most kind and generous of the prince, but he has done so much already. Tell him it would be the greatest of honors if he would but allow me to host the lunch this last time we are together.”

He clenched his fist. Come on, General. Think! You know I wouldn’t offend the prince by refusing his hospitality unless there was a very important reason. “The restaurant is not far from the hotel. It would be a delightful opportunity for all of you to see another part of Los Angeles before you leave.”

This time the pause was long. Marc strained to hear, but if they were talking now, it was inaudible. A moment later, Amani spoke again. “The crown prince is most grateful for your generosity. If you insist, he will accept your invitation.”

Marc’s shoulders sagged in relief. “I insist. I’ll come by your room at one-thirty. Shall we make the reservation for your whole party?”

Again the brief pause. “No. The prince suggests there will just be the three of us.”

“Very good,” Marc said, and hung up.

A little later Marc stopped at a phone booth a few blocks from the Barclay warehouses in El Segundo. He punched in the phone number he had memorized early that morning, then hit the numbers for his credit card. It rang twice, then Marc recognized the deep voice of Eli Weissman, Deputy Director of Operations for the Mossad.

“This is Marc. How did it go with Taggart?”

“Very nicely.”

“So they are gone?”

“Yes. The plane left New York forty minutes ago. They’re in the air.”

“Thanks. We’ll put the backfield in motion.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s an American expression. It means we start the ball rolling.”

“That one I understand. Good luck.”

Jackie suggested that they meet in Alex’s office, but Marc decided that looked a little too presumptuous, so they gathered in his. It was small but well decorated and comfortable. He waited until Jackie and Derek were both seated, then took a deep breath.

“I appreciate you staying late, both of you. I was hoping that things would work out so we didn’t have to have this meeting, but…” His face became very grave, and he finally just shook his head in disbelief.

“What, Marc?” Jackie asked with concern.

“I’m dumping Quinn Gerritt.”

Jackie rocked back. Derek’s jaw dropped, and he gaped at Marc. Jackie recovered first, her eyes incredulous. “What!”

“Gerritt’s out of the deal as of this afternoon.”

“Are you crazy?” Derek blurted hoarsely.

Marc sat back, letting the worry and fear he had felt for the last two days show clearly on his face. “I have no choice.”

“Gerritt is central to everything!” Jackie said in alarm. She couldn’t believe he had said what he did.

“I have no choice!” Marc repeated firmly.

“But why?” Derek demanded, his voice thin and reedy with the shock.

Marc let out a long sigh of pain and weariness. “I had visitors Saturday night.”

“Who?”

“Israeli intelligence.”

If the news of Gerritt had dumbfounded them, that declaration left them completely speechless.

“They know about the sale of the planes to the Saudis. They’re trying to stop it.”

“Alex expected as much,” Jackie finally said, “but why did they come to you?”

“They’ve been investigating all of the principals in this—Alex, you, me, and Quinn Gerritt.” He picked up the folder with the photographs. “Jackie, remember when we went to Bogotá for Gerritt?”

“Yes.”

“And we were surprised how easily we were able to solve what was supposed to have been a major crisis?” She nodded again, and he handed her the photographs and watched as she thumbed through them with growing bafflement. Derek moved his chair closer and leaned over to see.

“What are these?”

“Recognize the plane?”

“Sure, it’s the company plane, but who are those men?” She held up another photo. “And what are these sacks?”

“Cocaine.”

The photos lowered slowly into her lap as she stared at Marc.

“That’s right. The copper crisis was merely a guise to get us down there. You and I became the couriers for somewhere around ten million dollars worth of cocaine.”

“The Israelis gave you these?” Derek said contemptuously.

“Yes.”

“How do you know this isn’t just a set-up and you’re playing right into their hands?” Derek’s mouth was an open sneer. “They want you to break off the deal!”

“There’s more.” Marc told them about the other drug shipments, then sketched out the story of the intimidation and extortion of Jonathan Taggart.

Jackie was reeling, but Derek was furious. “And you just sat there and let them tell you all that garbage and never even questioned their motive?”

“Of course, I questioned their motive!” Marc snapped. “I know what their motive is! But their motive has nothing to do with this. The point is, Quinn Gerritt is a man with no scruples, a man who has flagrantly violated the law, and used us as dupes in doing so.”

“According to the Israelis!” Derek shouted. “Talk about being duped!”

When Marc spoke, his voice was quiet, but the edge in it was unmistakable. “I talked with Taggart personally,” he said. “And I will not deal with Quinn Gerritt for one more minute.”

Derek threw up his hands. “So you blow a sixty million dollar deal because your conscience is tweaked? Come on, Marc. This isn’t your decision.”

Jackie took a breath. “Derek’s right, Marc. We can’t just drop everything.”

“And it doesn’t matter to you that you—Jacqueline Ashby—were used to bring in ten million dollars worth of cocaine?”

“Of course, it bothers me!” she flared. “It makes me physically sick, but—”

“There are no buts!” Marc cut in sharply. “We will not deal with him!”

Derek’s lips had pulled back into an angry snarl. “You’re a generous man with Alex’s money.”

“Marc,” Jackie pleaded, “this will kill him. If the deal falls apart, it will kill Alex.”

Marc lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I’m not going to let the deal fall apart. I’m going to see what we can do to save it.”

“Wonderful!” Derek seethed. “He’s going to see what he can do to save it. And what about the contracts we have already signed with Gerritt?”

“We won’t say anything yet. This is strictly hush-hush. Everything is to continue as though its status quo until we have something else set up.”

“And when do you tell Alex all of this?” Jackie asked quietly, deeply shaken.

“Not until he’s much stronger,” Marc said, not looking at her. “I hope by next week I’ll know more. If I can show him the deal is still in place without Gerritt, then I won’t worry as much about what it will do to him.” He gave her a stern look. “Jackie, you’re not to tell Alex anything yet. Not until he’s considerably better than he is right now.”

She met his stare sullenly, not giving in.

“I mean it, Jackie. You tell him too soon and it could kill him.”

“If you lose this deal, you’ll kill him anyway. You can’t do this on your own, Marc. Wait until Thursday, then let Alex decide.”

“He won’t be strong enough yet. And I can’t wait that long. I’ve got to act now if we hope to salvage anything.”

“Salvage!” Derek cried. “The only thing that needs to be salvaged is what you’re destroying right now!”

“You have no right!” Jackie said bitterly. “I know you have the authority, but you have no right.”

Marc put his hands to his head and rubbed his temples with his fingertips, starting to question all over again the path he had chosen for himself. Finally he looked up at Jackie, stricken. “I have no choice.”

When Andrew Hadlow opened the door of his palatial home in Pacific Palisades, his eyes were smouldering with anger. He nodded to the guard who had escorted Quinn Gerritt and Derek Parkin up from the main gate, and the man turned on his heel and left them.

“What are you doing here?” Hadlow demanded of Gerritt even before the man had gone. “I told you never to come to my home.”

“This is urgent!” Gerritt snapped back, in no mood for cloakand-dagger mentality.

Ten minutes later, when Derek had finished his account of the meeting at Barclay Enterprises, Hadlow was in a cold fury. “We’ve got fourteen million dollars invested in you,” he said to Gerritt. “You lose that radar system, and my people will not look kindly on that.”

“‘My people!’ ‘My people!’” Gerritt shouted. “What about me? It’s my corporation. It’s my life that’s being ruined. You’re the ones who terrified Taggart. If he talks—”

“Taggart won’t talk!” Hadlow said flatly. “The question is Marc Jeppson. What happens if we take him out as well?”

Derek swallowed hard, his fingers fluttering nervously at his tie.

Gerritt hesitated too, but obviously it wasn’t because Hadlow’s words had shocked him. “No,” he said finally. “With Alex down, everything is hanging in the balance anyway. It could break off everything. No, all we need to do is bring him into line.”

“Money?” Hadlow said. “What if we offer him a hundred thousand cash now, another when the deal is completed?”

“No.” Gerritt was firm. “The money wouldn’t phase him.”

“Blackmail? Is he into anything kinky? Or what about Barclay’s secretary? Didn’t you tell me she was kind of sweet on him? What would she be willing to do for ten or fifteen thousand?”

Both Derek and Gerritt were shaking their heads.

“Come on!” Hadlow hissed. “Everybody’s got a handle. What’s Jeppson’s?”

Both men looked to Derek. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back. He licked his lips nervously, looking cornered.

“What, Parkin? What is there?”

“He’s got two little boys. And a fiancée.”

Hadlow spun around and walked to the phone. He punched the buttons with sharp, deliberate jabs, then turned his back.

“Mr. Perotti,” Derek heard him murmur. “We’ve got some complications here. I need a couple of men.”

Gerritt grabbed Derek’s arm. “Let’s go.” They exited as Hadlow continued to speak softly into the phone.

Derek Parkin fished for the key to his apartment, feeling a sudden surge of fear. Two men had gotten out of the car that had pulled up behind his. Now they were coming up the walk toward him. He finally got the key out and jammed it in the lock.

“Derek Parkin?” one of the men called.

Derek turned around slowly, feeling his knees turn into cotton. “Yes?”

The lead man flashed a badge. “FBI. You’ll have to come with us, please.”

Lynn Braithwaite turned off the tape recorder and sat back. Marc, sitting across the desk from him, didn’t look at him. His mouth was set in a hard line, and his eyes had narrowed to dangerous slits. They had just listened to the recording made of the conversation that had taken place at the Hadlow home and Hadlow’s phone call to Perotti.

“Well,” Braithwaite finally said. “We knew they would play rough.”

“Weissman had better keep a tight watch on Valerie and my boys.”

“I called Weissman and played this for him as well. He knows the stakes are getting higher and higher.”

“So what happens when Hadlow’s men can’t find Taggart or Valerie?”

Braithwaite shook his head slowly. He was a plain man with thinning hair, horn-rimmed glasses, and a heavy beard. He hadn’t shaved since morning, and it gave him a slightly sinister look.

“They come after me, right?”

Braithwaite pursed his lips, considering the options. “You heard Hadlow. He wants a handle, and if there’s no handle, he’ll break the jug.”

Marc nodded glumly, trying to ignore the ball of brass that had suddenly settled in his stomach.

“Marc, are you sure you want to go through with this? You can bet Perotti will have nothing but professionals.”

“Thanks,” Marc said dryly. “Have you ever thought of going into counseling? You have a way of comforting the troubled soul.”

Braithwaite gave a short, mirthless laugh, then sobered instantly. He leaned forward and tapped the cassette tape in the recorder. “The only consolation is this—for the first time we’ve linked Perotti in directly.”

“And you’re sure these will be admissable in court?”

“Absolutely. Your testimony and Taggart’s gave us sufficient probable cause. Getting the court order was a snap. Everything now is strictly legal.”

“It’s too bad the tape of Derek and Gerritt planning Alex’s heart attack is not.”

“True,” Braithwaite mused. “But it’s still been of great value. Derek tried to stonewall it until we played that to him. Then he broke, and he’s been talking nonstop ever since.”

Marc’s mouth pulled down. “And he gets immunity from prosecution?”

The FBI agent shrugged philosophically. “I know it galls you, but Parkin is a little fish—one that stinks, that’s true—but if we can use him to reel in the big ones, I can live with throwing him back in the pond.”

Marc stood abruptly. “Well, I’m going to try to get a good night’s sleep.”

“In a motel?” Braithwaite asked innocently.

Marc jerked around.

“Look,” he went on. “I think you’re fine until they discover Taggart and your family are not available. But these guys play rough. We’ve got men covering you, but a motel lessens the risk.”

Marc nodded soberly. “All right.” He turned and started for the door.

“So,” Braithwaite persisted, “I’m asking you again. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

Marc frowned deeply. “If we stop now, how much will Gerritt and Hadlow get?”

“So far, all we’ve got them for is conspiracy and extortion. We might be able to make the drug thing in Colombia stick, but I’m not sure. I’d guess five to ten years, with eligibility for parole in three or four.”

“And for attempted murder?”

“I think we could double that.” He paused. “But if they can’t find Taggart or Valerie, there’ll be no actual attempted murder. Just conspiracy to commit murder.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Taggart or Valerie,” Marc said grimly.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It was a private room on the third floor, and the buildings of Los Angeles were visible through the hospital curtains. The heart monitor was mounted to the wall above the bed, and two chairs were pulled up alongside where Alex lay. Marc let the door shut softly behind him, and the sound caught the attention of all three in the room.

The look on any one of their faces would have been sufficient to tell Marc what he had already suspected. Jackie had told Alex everything. Jackie’s head lifted in defiance as Marc looked at her. Ardith’s face held a mixture of anger and imploring beseechment. Alex, drawn and pale from the operation, looked like one of the Furies from hell itself.

Marc took a deep breath and came into the room. He had considered bringing flowers or a gift, then under the circumstances, settled only for the tape recorder and cassette.

“Before you say anything, Alex,” he said quietly. “There’s something I want all of you to hear.”

“What?” Alex demanded with heavy sarcasm. “More evidence from the Israelis?”

Marc ignored that, just plugged the tape recorder in and set it on the stand in front of Alex. “You’ll recognize Gerritt’s voice and also Derek’s. The third man is Andrew Hadlow. This tape was made last Friday night, approximately eight hours before you had your heart attack.”

Five minutes later, when Marc reached up and pushed the stop button, Ardith had gone white. Jackie was staring at him in horror. Marc turned to Alex and saw that he was deeply shaken too.

“Did you know this Monday when you talked to Derek and me?” Jackie’s voice was hollow and filled with loathing.

He nodded.

“Have you told the police?” Ardith whispered. Her fingernails were digging into the palms of her hands.

“The FBI. But the tape was gotten illegally by the Israelis. It cannot be used in court.”

Alex raised up weakly on one elbow. “Maybe the Israelis made the tape. They’d do anything to stop this sale from—”

“Right, Alex.” It was a gentle reproof. “And it was nice of you to have your heart attack to coincide with it.”

He fell back on the pillow. “All right, all right. But it still doesn’t change anything.”

That brought both Ardith and Jackie up sharply.

“We’ll deal with Gerritt when the time is right. But you are not to break off the deal, Marc. Do you understand me?” He clutched at Marc’s jacket. “You are not to break off the deal under any circumstances.”

“Alex!” Ardith was staring at him in wide-mouthed disbelief. “Quinn Gerritt tried to kill you.”

“No,” he said, breathing heavily. “No, he just tried to squeeze me out. And I won’t squeeze.” He turned back to Marc. “Don’t you see, Marc. This is exactly what the Israelis want.”

Marc took Alex’s hand and laid it back across his chest gently. “Alex, listen. I’ve talked to the Saudis. They won’t automatically cut us off if we break with Gerritt. They’re willing to listen. I can put another deal together without Gerritt.”

“No! You’ll lose everything if you start tampering with things at this point.”

“That’s right, Alex,” Marc said with soft bitterness. “The deal is everything, isn’t it. Hang the principles. Stuff the ideals. Just keep the deal together.”

“Yes!” He had tried to shout it, but it had come out weakly, pathetically impotent.

Ardith stepped to his side quickly, shooting Marc a warning glance. Marc touched her arm. “Ardith, I didn’t want to go through this until he was stronger, but now that he knows, it’s got to be resolved.” He turned back to Alex. “You know I’ll try everything I can to make it work. But I will not work with Quinn Gerritt.”

“You fanatic!” Alex cried hoarsely. “Don’t try to jam your lofty ideals down my throat! Just do what I say!”

Jackie’s sharp intake of breath behind him registered only peripherally in Marc’s mind, as did Ardith, who was trying in alarm to calm her husband. The only thing that was vivid in Marc’s perception was Alex, lying on the pillow, breathing in quick, shallow breaths, eyes burning into Marc’s flesh like pokers drawn from a fire.

“You really mean that?”

“This is my deal. Don’t you mess with it!”

When Marc spoke it was with a deep calm and soft sadness. “Alex, you once told me that my commitment to values was what you admired most about me. Now that commitment has become inconvenient for you, and you want me to change. Well, fanatic or not, I am what I am. If you don’t like it, then take me out. Because if you leave me in, you take me as I am.”

The door burst open, and a nurse rushed in. “What’s going on in here?” She darted to Alex’s side where Ardith was stroking his face, trying to soothe him.

Marc glanced at Jackie. Tears were streaming down her face. “I’m sorry,” she said in an agonized whisper, “I shouldn’t have told him.”

“He had to know sooner or later,” he said simply. He laid his hand briefly on Ardith’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Ardith.” And he turned and walked to the door.

“Marc?”

It was a hoarse whisper, but it jerked Marc around like a rifle shot. Alex had turned his head, one hand raised in supplication, and Marc stepped back quickly and gripped it.

“I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t want to make you go through this now.”

There was an attempt to shake his head, but it failed. He took a breath, then another, then his eyes raised to meet Marc’s. “I want you in,” he whispered. “As you are.”

“Please!” the nurse exclaimed. “He must be left alone now.” She put one hand on Marc’s arm and started to turn him away, very firmly, but Alex held Marc’s with a sudden fierce determination.

“Will you stay?” Alex whispered.

Marc grasped the trembling hand with both of his, looked deep into the haggard eyes, then finally nodded. “Yes, Alex. I’ll stay.”

Willard, Utah, is a small farming community in northern Utah, known for its fruit orchards and nearby Willard Bay on the Great Salt Lake. Since Interstate Fifteen was completed several years ago, the old highway that ran through the town had lost ninety percent of its traffic.

It was on the same morning Marc was visiting Alex that two men left the bank in Willard and drove along the old highway to the nearest phone booth. Both were in their early thirties, dressed in suits and ties and neatly groomed. That, coupled with their badges and I.D. cards, made it easy for the people of Willard to accept them for what they claimed to be, two special investigative detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department.

The shorter of the two dialed a number and waited for several seconds while the private phone in Andrew Hadlow’s office rang. Hadlow himself answered.

“Mr. Hadlow?”

“Yes.” There was no need for further identification. Hadlow recognized the voice instantly.

“We’ve come up short here.”

“Nothing?”

“No. There’s no question that Jeppson brought them here. His car is in the garage. A couple of the neighbors saw him drive up with the women and the boys. They left a few minutes later in his parents’ van. From there they just disappear. They left a note for one son to take care of the dog and the yard, but he has no idea where they are.”

For one moment Hadlow nearly pushed them on that. Maybe the son or some of the neighbors were lying, but then he shook his head. These men were the best, and they would have known.

“We even checked the bank for cancelled checks or some kind of clue, but there’s nothing. Maybe in time…” He left it hanging, making it clear how much chance he thought there was of that.

“No.” Hadlow’s mind was racing. They had underestimated Jeppson’s ingenuity. The Taggarts had also disappeared without a trace, and time was running out. “How soon can you get back?”

“We can be back to the airport in an hour. We’ll take the first flight.”

“Okay, but not to L. A. Go to the house in San Diego. Wait there.”

“Yes, sir. We should be there by late afternoon or tonight.”

“Good. We’ll have need of you by then.”

He hung up the phone and stared out the window onto the towering buildings of downtown Los Angeles. His fingers drummed silently on his desk; the dark eyes were sulfurous. Then he made up his mind, grabbed his briefcase, and walked out to his secretary.

“Call Mr. Gerritt, please. Tell him I’m on my way over to see him.”

“But they’ve got to be somewhere!” Gerritt blurted. “They can’t have just disappeared.”

“Of course they’re somewhere!” Hadlow snapped, deeply irritated by Gerritt’s growing intransigence. “If we had another week or two, my men would find out where. But we don’t. Jeppson leaves tomorrow for Saudi Arabia. If he makes that trip, you’re out.” His voice dropped to a soft menace, like the soft snick of a pistol’s breech being pulled into place. “And if you’re out, Mr. Gerritt, you have real trouble.”

Gerritt paled. “Then what do we do?”

Hadlow came to the desk, took a pad, and wrote quickly. “Here’s an address in San Diego. I want you to bring Jeppson there tonight.”

“San Diego? How do I get him there?”

Hadlow just watched him steadily. Gerritt swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay, then what?”

“You just get him there.”

Marc hung up the phone and turned to look at Jackie and Lynn Braithwaite, sitting in front of him in his office at Barclay Enterprises. “Surprise. Gerritt wants me to meet him in San Diego.”

Jackie’s eyes widened. One of Braithwaite’s men had already called to appraise them of the conversation between Hadlow and Gerritt taped moments before in Gerritt’s office.

“You played it just right,” Braithwaite praised him. “If you had given in too easily, they might have suspected something.”

“Marc,” Jackie said, “I don’t think you ought to do this. What if something goes wrong?”

He gave her a wan smile. “That’s it. Fire me with enthusiasm before I hit the beach.”

“I mean it!” she cried. “They plan to kill you!”

“Which means all that money I spent on that assertive leadership course was for nothing.”

Braithwaite sighed. “She’s right, Marc. Even I’m starting to have second thoughts.”

“Come on, Lynn!” Marc exclaimed. “Don’t you start! I’m already scared spitless. I’m counting on you and your people to make sure this whole thing comes off.”

Braithwaite merely nodded, thinking of how many things could go wrong in an operation like this. When he spoke, it was with more confidence than he felt. “We’re just going to have to make sure we leave nothing to chance.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Marc paused for a moment before the hotel door, keenly aware of the dryness in his throat, took a deep breath, then rapped on the door. Gerritt answered almost immediately.

“Ah, Marc. Thank you for coming. Let me get my jacket.” He stepped back into the room, then reappeared, putting on a suit coat. He shut the door and steered Marc down the hall.

“Did you drive down?”

“No, I came down on the company plane. I’m anxious to get back as soon as possible. I leave first thing in the morning.”

“I have my car.” He put his hand on Marc’s arm. “I know this is a terrible time to ask you to break away, what with your trip overseas tomorrow, but I think you’ll find it worth the time. If it proves to be as good as it sounds, you should know that before you see the Saudis.”

“And who are these men again?”

“General Dynamics, aircraft division. They’re biggies.”

“So they know about the VSM-430?”

He punched the elevator button, then shrugged. “Word’s out all over the place. But if they can combine their system with ours, we could really have something.”

Marc nodded, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart. “Well, let’s hope they can. Where is it we’re going?”

“They have a house out by Mission Bay. It’s not far.”

It had rained earlier in the evening, and the walks were still damp. A heavy gray mist had moved in from the ocean and left little rainbow halos around the street lamps. As they got out of the car and walked to the door of the home in the Mission Bay area, Marc had to fight the temptation to peer out into the night for some sign of Lynn Braithwaite and his men.

This must be what weightlessness feels like, he thought. A curious lightheadedness, perpetual queasiness in the pit of the stomach, surrealistic detachment from reality. He was vaguely aware that Gerritt had made some comment to him, and forced himself to smile and nod, hoping it was an appropriate response.

A pleasant-looking man in a business suit opened the door and smiled briefly. “Mr. Gerritt?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Mr. Hadlow said you would have some form of identification from him.”

“Yes.” Gerritt already had it out and handed it to the man.

He looked at it carefully, grunted in satisfaction, then stepped back. “Come in.”

Marc felt a sudden prickling sensation as they walked into the entryway. “This is Marc Jeppson, president of Barclay Enterprises.”

Marc smiled grimly to himself. Gerritt’s last official act had been to promote him from acting president to the full title.

The man grunted and ushered them into the living room where a second man of approximately the same age stood near the couch. His suit jacket was off, and he wore a shoulder holster. A thirty-eight Smith and Wesson hung heavily beneath his armpit.

Marc stopped short at the sight of it, but the man behind him was instantly at his back, and there was a jab of steel against the base of his neck, so sharp it made him gasp.

“Come in, Mr. Jeppson.”

“What!” Marc blurted. “What is this? Who are you?”

The other man grabbed his coat from the couch and put it on. He took out the pistol, then got a short stubby cylindrical object from his pocket. He began to screw the silencer onto the barrel, all the time his eyes never leaving Marc’s face.

“All right,” the first man said. “We’re going out the back. I suggest that resistance would be very foolish, Mr. Jeppson. Gerritt, you lead the way.”

Gerritt blanched. “Me! I’m not going.”

The second man nodded. “Hadlow said you’re to see it all the way through so you’re up to your neck in this as much as he is.”

“I’ve got to get back,” he stammered, “I can’t—”

The man behind Marc fixed Gerritt with a hard stare. Gerritt swallowed hard, then nodded. “All right.”

Marc swung his head around. There was no need to fake the fright. The hard pressure of the steel was an effective prompter. “Gerritt?” he whispered hoarsely.

“Move!” the man behind him said, giving him a shove. Gerritt didn’t look at Marc, just stumbled out ahead of him in his own daze of confusion.

There was a dark maroon Ford LTD in the garage in the alley. Gerritt and the man with the silencer got in the front. Marc was shoved in the back, the pressure against his neck never lightening for a moment. As they drove out and onto the street, Marc risked a glance out the side window. Come on, Braithwaite, he urged fervently. Don’t lose me now.

They stayed to the back streets, and the traffic was light until they turned onto the main street leading to Interstate Five.

The driver looked up at the rearview mirror for the fifth or sixth time in a minute. “We’re being followed.”

Marc’s heart plummeted as both Gerritt and the man at his side whirled to peer out the back window.

“It’s a blue Chevy sedan, about eight cars back, and he’s been with us since the house.”

The man next to him swore softly. “You’re sure?”

The driver nodded.

“It could be Israelis,” Gerritt said. “They’ve been following him trying to stop this deal we’re working on.”

“I don’t care who it is,” Marc’s companion answered bluntly. “Get rid of them.”

Again the driver just nodded, concentrating on his driving.

When they stopped at a red light just west of the freeway, Marc considered jumping out for one wild moment but fought it down. The one thing you’ve got to fight is panic, Braithwaite had said in his final instructions. You’re going to be in a tense, risky situation. Just keep your head.

They turned south on 1-5 and drove steadily for almost ten minutes. They passed downtown San Diego, then entered National City. Signs were indicating they were headed for Tijuana, and there was a sudden clutch in Marc’s chest. Could the FBI cross the border and follow them into Mexico?

But they didn’t go that far. The driver kept the Ford at an even speed until they reached Chula Vista, then took the E Street exit and turned east. Once again they went off the main thoroughfare and into quiet residential streets.

“All right, hang on.” The driver hunched lower in the seat, and the others tensed. He came to an intersection, signaled for a right turn, and took it slowly. Marc caught a quick glimpse of some headlights about two blocks behind. But the instant they were around the corner and out of sight, the driver jammed the accelerator to the floor. The car shot forward, engine howling. They covered that block and half of the next in a matter of seconds, then were slammed forward as he hit the brakes. The tires screamed in protest as he laid the car into a hard slide, then shot into a narrow alleyway that ran through the center of the block.

The headlights went off instantly, and the speed dropped to a sedate twenty miles an hour. But it was enough. Marc jerked around along with his guard and peered back down the alley the way they came. There were no street lights here, and with the heavy overcast and mist, the darkness was total. A moment later, a pair of headlights flashed by, and they could hear the howl of an engine under hard acceleration. It was at that moment Marc Jeppson’s last flicker of hope was blown out.

“All right,” the man next to him growled to the driver. “Let’s head for the reservoir.”

“Out!” his captor commanded, giving him a hard shove with the muzzle of the pistol.

Marc stumbled out of the car, the man hard on his heels. In the nearly total darkness, Marc saw the faint gleam of water and heard the soft sounds of waves lapping at the shore. Crickets and night birds could be heard in the distance.

“Just stand there by the car, Mr. Gerritt,” Marc heard the driver say as the other two car doors opened and shut.

The driver walked around to face him, the pistol and silencer in his hand. He raised it until it was pointing at Marc’s chest. At that point the pistol held against the back of his neck was removed. The man behind him jerked his arms behind his back, and there was the sudden burn of rope against his wrists. Then he was led roughly to the edge of a sharp incline. He could hear the soft lapping of water below.

At that moment, Marc passed beyond fear and felt a sudden icy calm. There was an intense burst of sorrow, not for his own life, but because he wouldn’t have one last chance to gather Matt and Brett in his arms and tell them how much he cared for them. And Valerie. That brought a pain so sharp and intense that he had to bite his lip quickly and felt a burning in his eyes.

The man who had ridden next to him made a last check of Marc’s bonds, then backed away. The driver stepped forward, pistol steady.

“Gerritt,” the first man called sarcastically. “You want to do this?”

The president and chairman of the board of Gerritt Industries dropped his head, feeling suddenly sick.

The other man laughed contemptuously. “What’s the matter? Haven’t got the stomach for it?”

When Gerritt still didn’t answer the first chimed in again. “We can stop right now if you want. We’ve all but scared this poor dude to death anyway.” He laughed raucously, and Marc felt a tiny surge of hope.

Gerritt’s head came up, and he was staring at the two men. “Whaddya say, Gerritt?” the first needled. “Shall we call it a night?”

“No!” It was a hoarse, desperate cry. “Just do it!”

“Gerritt,” Marc called softly.

Gerritt’s head jerked up, and he stared at the dark shape standing apart from the other two.

“You think you’ve won, Gerritt.” Marc’s voice floated to him out of the darkness. “But you haven’t. I—”

There was a sharp but muffled crack. A massive hammer blow hit Marc full in the chest. He stumbled back. Crack! The second shot caught him in the stomach, knocking him over the incline. There was a brief sensation of falling, a dim awareness of his body hitting water with a tremendous splash, a sudden rush of coldness, then darkness—a suffocating, all-encompassing darkness.

Gerritt stared at the two dark shapes standing in the night. One moved to the edge of the incline and peered at the water. Gerritt heard a soft grunt of satisfaction, then the two men moved toward the car. Only gradually did Gerritt become aware of the sound of lapping water and crickets off somewhere in the night.

“Get the car turned around,” Gerritt heard the one say. “Let’s get out of here.”

The sharp buzzing of the phone brought Hadlow up from his book, and he checked the clock on the mantle. It was past eleven. He set the book down and reached for the phone.

“Yes.”

It was the guard at the front gate. “Mr. Hadlow, a Mr. Gerritt and two other men are here, sir.”

“What?”

“They say you wanted to see them.”

Hadlow’s face twisted with anger. “Put Gerritt on.”

“This is Gerritt.”

“What are you doing here?” Hadlow hissed. “Are you crazy? I told you to go home.”

“What am I doing here? It’s your men that insisted we come and report.”

“They what?” Hadlow bellowed, the fury boiling over.

“They said you wanted a first-hand report. So let’s get it over with. I want to get out of here.”

Hadlow swore. “Those fools! I told them to stay in San Diego.” He slammed a fist against the table. “All right, get up here!”

When Hadlow opened the door two minutes later, Gerritt was standing on the step, the two men close behind. The angry rebuke forming on his lips froze as he gaped at the men with Gerritt. “What!” he shouted. “These aren’t my men!”

As Gerritt whirled, the nearest man jerked open his suit jacket, and the .38 Smith and Wesson was instantly in his hand. The other man, the gunman who had shot Marc Jeppson, reached inside his coat and brought out a thin leather wallet. He flipped it open to an ID card. “FBI, Mr. Hadlow. You’re under arrest.”

Chapter Thirty

There was a soft knock at the door.

“I’ll get it,” Ardith said and walked quickly to open it.

Marc and Valerie were seated next to Alex’s hospital bed and looked up curiously as Ardith stepped back and a man entered the room.

“Lynn!” Marc jumped up and gripped Braithwaite’s hand, pumping it hard. They were both grinning like old combat buddies who had just found each other after the war.

“Come in, come in,” Marc said. “Let me introduce you. This is Ardith Barclay, Alex’s wife.”

Braithwaite nodded. “Mrs. Barclay.”

Marc turned to where Valerie sat next to Alex. “You can probably guess which of these two is Alex.”

Braithwaite laughed and stepped forward to shake Alex’s hand. “I think I can. You’re looking very well, Mr. Barclay.”

That was true. The week that Marc had spent in Saudi Arabia had brought a notable improvement in Alex’s condition. The color was back in his face, he was much stronger, and more of the old Alex was evident when he talked.

Marc motioned toward Valerie. “You already know my fiancée.”

Yes. Hello, Valerie.”

“Hello again.”

“Come in and sit down,” Alex said, smiling. “We were just talking about you.”

“Then I’d better sit down. I can imagine what this guy has been telling you.”

“I’ve been telling them I have some questions for you,” Marc said. “What kind of a guy are you anyway? First, you have me shot. Then you pull me out of the reservoir, shake my hand, and disappear into the night.”

Braithwaite shrugged. “I wanted to be sure you were okay, then I had to join the strike teams. We had a busy night that night, as you’ll remember. Sixty-four warrants, forty-two arrests, including Gerritt, Perotti, and Hadlow.”

There was no attempt to lessen his feeling of pride. It had been a great night, the culmination of several years work for Lynn Braithwaite. “And then you left for Saudi Arabia first thing the next morning. When did you get back?”

“I just got back last night.”

“How did it go?”

“Oh, no you don’t. I want some answers. How did you engineer that whole thing?”

“It was simple enough. We had Hadlow’s phone bugged and recorded the full conversation with his two hit men. That made it easy to pick them up and substitute our own. Gerritt had never seen them, so that ploy was safe. Actually, you deserve the credit. We had tape recorders in the car and on both men. I’ve listened to those tapes again and again, and you played your part to perfection. Even your voice was trembling there at the last.”

Marc pulled a face at him. “It was your men who were convincing. I wasn’t playing a part. I was scared. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“If you had known those were our men, what would you have done?”

“Been much more relaxed!”

“Exactly the point. We had to be absolutely sure Gerritt thought this was for real, to see if he would follow it through all the way. He did, and now we’ve got him.”

Valerie shuddered, even now hearing the horror that tinged Marc’s voice as he described those last final moments.

“Besides,” Braithwaite went on, “you had on that bullet-proof flak jacket. Didn’t you remember that?”

Marc shook his head. “Not till after! Remember, I had worn that thing for several days by then. I wasn’t even conscious of it anymore. And when I entered the house and saw that both men had guns, all I could think of was, ‘When is Braithwaite and the cavalry going to ride in and put an end to this?’ Then we lost you…” The memory welled up, and he had to stop for a moment.

“Yes, losing your tail. That was a nice touch, don’t you think?” Braithwaite grinned.

Alex laughed right out loud at Marc’s expression.

“But why did you have to use real bullets?” Valerie demanded. “What if your men had missed the jacket, or if it didn’t stop them?”

“You’ve got to remember that we had to have Gerritt accompany our two men back to Hadlow. If Marc’s ‘death’ had been the least bit suspicious, we would have had trouble. But actually, we didn’t use ‘real’ bullets in the full sense of the word. We used what we call a wad cutter. We use them in target practice. It takes less powder, uses a flat slug, and has only about half the regular muzzle velocity.”

“Don’t tell me they weren’t real!” Valerie retorted. “You should see the bruises on his chest.”

Braithwaite nodded. “I know. That’s why I have complete confidence in those flak jackets. I took a direct hit in the stomach once from a three fifty-seven magnum at point-blank range. It never even pierced the skin, but I couldn’t move for a week. So we knew we’d be all right with the wad cutters.”

He turned to Marc. “The trigger man moved in close to be sure he hit you where you wouldn’t be hurt. He also happens to be our best marksman.”

Ardith shook her head, then looked at Alex. “Well, it was one thing for Gerritt to change your medicine and cause a heart attack since he didn’t think he was going to kill you. But to participate in the cold-blooded murder of Marc—” A shiver ran down her spine, and she gripped Alex’s hand.

“Gerritt’s first mistake” the agent said, “was when he accepted the Hadlow/Perotti money without questioning the conditions. From there he just got in deeper and deeper.” He turned to Marc again. “A lot has happened since you left. Things are wrapping up nicely. So how did it go with your trip?”

“Good.”

“Good!” Alex exclaimed. “Not only is this boy one of the best negotiators in the business, his humility is downright disgusting. Go on, tell him, Marc.”

Marc blushed slightly before beginning. “Well, as you know, Gerritt Industries was dependent on the funds Hadlow and Perotti put up. Those automatically cut off when the arrests came, and so Gerritt Industries went back on the blocks. I was able to convince the crown prince that if the banks here took Gerritt Industries into receivership again, we could kiss the radar system good-bye for some time to come. The bottom line is, the Saudi National Bank will fund Gerritt Industries until they get on their feet.”

Alex beamed. “With the stipulation that two new members be put on the board of directors to see that things are run properly.”

Braithwaite’s eyes widened with surprise. “You two!”

Marc nodded.

“Putting Alex on the board was Marc’s idea,” Valerie said proudly. “Putting Marc on the board was General Amani’s.”

“I’ve talked with Taggart,” Marc went on. “His contract with Gerritt for the radar system is null and void, of course. So we’ve renegotiated his contract, with the original asking price plus a bonus for what he’s been through. We are also going to make him the chief project engineer, with a substantial increase in salary.”

“So you did it. You dumped Gerritt and still saved the deal.” Braithwaite was obviously impressed.

Marc nodded. “Thanks to you and a lot of others.”

“That’s not all he saved,” Ardith said in a whisper, her eyes shining. Embarrassed she leaned down and kissed Alex soundly on the lips.

“Do the Saudis know the Israelis have the VSM-430?” the FBI man asked.

Marc, who had been touched by Ardith’s sudden emotion, turned back to the agent. “What?”

“The Saudis. Do they know the Israelis have the radar system?”

Marc shook his head. “No more than the Israelis know that the Saudis are funding Gerritt Industries. Oh, they’ll know soon enough, I suspect, but they won’t hear it from me.”

Braithwaite stood. “Well, you’ll be happy to know the judge denied bail for all of our three main defendants. After what they tried with Marc, they’re not going to take a chance on letting them out.”

Valerie gripped Marc’s hand tightly. “Is there still any danger they’ll try to retaliate against Marc or Mr. Taggart?”

The agent shook his head. “No.” He saw the dubious look on her face and raised his hand to start ticking off the reasons on the fingers.

“Number one, if their convictions depended solely on testimony from Marc and the engineer, we’d be more worried. But we already have sworn depositions from both Marc and Taggart, and a whole body of other evidence that would be enough in itself to convict them. Second, we’ve busted Perotti’s organization wide open. Arrests are still being made. Whoever is left has fled the country. Third, word on the street is that the other crime families are not heartbroken to see Perotti go. They warned him against this whole Gerritt tie-in in the first place. The one thing those people hate more than anything else is high profile. So they’re going to let it die.”

Valerie stood to join Marc and put her arm around his waist. “That’s wonderful.”

“Well, I’ve got to be going,” Braithwaite said. “I heard you were back and just wanted to see how things were.”

“Come on,” Marc answered. “We’ll walk you out.”

Braithwaite had pulled away, and Marc and Valerie had just reentered the hospital when the loudspeaker boomed.

“Mr. Marc Jeppson. Mr. Marc Jeppson. We have an emergency call for Mr. Marc Jeppson. Please report to room 405-A immediately. Mr. Marc Jeppson.”

Valerie clutched at Marc’s arm. “Oh no!” she cried.

“Come on, let’s go!” He grabbed her hand, and they broke into a run for the elevators.

To their surprise and immense relief, as they burst in the room, Alex was sitting up in bed, and Ardith was standing near his side. There were no doctors, no nurses, but Alex was gray, and his face a mask of shock.

“Alex, what’s the matter?” Marc asked.

He stared at Marc, unseeing.

“Ardith, what is it?”

She looked up, deep lines of concern tightening her mouth. “Do you remember Russell Whitaker of the State Department?” When Marc nodded, she went on. “He just called from Washington.”

Marc spun back around to Alex. “What did he want?”

“The sale is off,” he said woodenly.

“What!”

“The president has backed down. The F-22 deal is off.”

“But they can’t…What happened?”

“Whitaker doesn’t know. We may never know.”

“But they can’t do that! We’ll fight it.”

“No, Marc.”

“Yes!”

He grabbed Marc’s arm, his eyes urgent. “No! Don’t you understand? That’s the way it is in this game. You can spend months on a deal, then suddenly one phone call ends it all. You never fight it, Marc. If you do, you’re out of business permanently.”

“Just like that? All for nothing?” Marc’s shoulders sagged.

“Oh,” Alex said, the life completely gone from his voice. “We’ve got Gerritt Industries and the radar, thanks to you. We’ll come out all right. But the deal is off.” He lay back on the pillow and averted his face, his mouth a tight line. “Just like that. All for nothing.”

An hour or so later, Marc and Valerie were walking slowly across the parking lot to their car. As they reached it and Marc started to unlock the doors, he suddenly stopped and looked up. An old man in a black suit and Homburg hat was shuffling toward them.

“Yaacov?” Marc said in surprise.

“Boker tov, Marc,” the old Israeli said with a slow smile.

“What are you doing here?”

“I called your office. Miss Ashby thought you’d be here at the hospital, so I took a chance.” He bowed slightly toward Valerie. “Valerie. I am most happy that things have worked out so well and that you and the boys are safely back with Marc.”

“Thank you.”

“Tell Mr. Weissman I appreciate his protection for them,” Marc said.

Yaacov brushed that aside. “You did your work too well. Hadlow’s men never even got close.” He paused. “And your work with Gerritt. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!”

“Thank you,” Marc said, a little embarrassed by the effusiveness of the praise. “It was really Lynn’s basic idea.”

“Of course,” Yaacov said with a laugh. “But I have already told Mr. Braithwaite, and he gave much of the credit to you.”

“Well, tell Weissman for me anyway.”

“He has gone back to Israel, but I will tell him when I get there. I am leaving tonight.”

“Really?” Marc was surprised at the stab of disappointment. In spite of it all, he had developed a deep affection for this whitehaired philospher.

“Yes, that is why I wanted to come. To say good-bye and to thank you for what you have taught me.”

“Taught you?”

“Yes.” There was a twinkle in his eye. “About the Coventry dilemma. I can hardly wait until fall when I teach my philosophy class again.”

Marc was still puzzled, so Yaacov asked “Surely you see it?”

“No,” Marc admitted ruefully. “I guess I don’t.”

“Another solution to the dilemma is to not accept the fact that there are no more than two possible solutions.”

Suddenly Marc’s head snapped up. “You did it!”

Now it was Yaacov’s turn to be puzzled. “Did what?”

“The sale of the F-22s was cancelled today.”

Yaacov nodded slowly, solemnly. “Yes, I had heard.”

“You found another option for solving your dilemma.”

“I played only a small part. There were many others.”

“Don’t you be modest on me, you old rascal!” Marc said, surprised at the affection he felt for the man.

Yaacov shrugged. “As in the arrest of Gerritt, you must share in the credit. It was you who broadened my perspective of the Coventry dilemma.”

Marc laughed right out loud. “Thanks a lot! Just promise me you won’t say that to the Saudis.”

Yaacov chuckled softly. “That’s a promise.” Then he straightened. “Well, I must be going.” He took Valerie’s hand. “Good-bye, Valerie. Happy life with this man. He is a good one.”

There was a sudden catch in her voice and her eyes were shining. “I know,” she whispered.

“I’ve promised Val to take her to Israel soon,” Marc said. “Then you shall call me when you arrive, and you will have a complete, escorted tour. And you shall meet my Esther. I have already told her much about you.”

He stuck out his hand, and Marc gripped it hard. “Shalom, Marc.”

“Shalom, Yaacov.”

Instead of going directly home, Marc swung north, then took the Foothill Freeway east. The traffic was light, and he was moving along at a leisurely speed. Valerie sat close to him, her arm through his.

“Are you terribly disappointed?” she asked softly, after they had both been quiet for some time.

“No. Surprisingly, it’s almost a relief.”

That surprised her, and she looked up at him, questioning.

“Well, first of all, this should take off some of the pressure we’ve been under. And I’m going to need some time, what with a wedding coming and such.”

“Ummmm. I like that idea.”

“And then…” He got a faraway look in his eyes again.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Who is right in this whole thing? Can you blame the Israelis for fighting to stop the sale? If another war should break out, I’m not sure the Saudis could resist the pressure from the other Arab countries. Maybe they would use the F-22 against Israel. And yet, sometimes what is a legitimate concern with the Israelis becomes paranoia, almost an irrational hysteria.” He paused.

“But if two or three hundred million Arabs were shouting for my annihilation, I guess I could get a little paranoid too.”

“Yes, after the Holocaust, it’s pretty difficult to reassure them that all the threats are just rhetoric.”

“Then take the other side. Communist-backed rebel movements are gaining power all around Saudi Arabia—South Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda, Kenya. Add to that Iran and the madness of an Ayatollah Khomeini, and no wonder the Saudis want the best weapons systems in the world.”

He turned to Valerie. “So who’s right? Or do we just say they both are, or neither are, and go our own way, arming both sides at random?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t either.”

Valerie reached up and touched his cheek. “What are your options? Go back to teaching?”

“Well, believe it or not, I’ve been considering it. That’s not a bad way to change the world. Or, I could apply to the FBI. Serve as one of their pop-up targets on the firing range.”

She gave a little shiver. “Don’t joke about that, Marc. I still can’t think about that night without feeling sick to my stomach.”

He took her hand and held it tight. “Actually, with the Saudi deal out the window now, Alex has got to find other things. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just leave the arms sales to Alex and develop some of his other interests. You heard what he said this morning. It’s time that Barclay Enterprises diversifies.”

Valerie sighed and rested her head against his shoulder.

Suddenly he smiled, putting an arm around her. “Well, I know one thing for sure I plan to do.”

She looked up at him. “What?”

“Marry you and raise a flock of kids just like their mother.”

“No,” she said softly, “just like their father.”

“Resident fanatics?”

“Every one of them.” She smiled. “I can’t think of a better thing to do for the world.”

The royal majlis or council in the palace at Riyadh held five men—the king; the crown prince; Prince Abdullah, Minister of Finance; General Amani; and Prince Feisal, Minister of Defense.

The jet-black eyes of the king were like twin fires smouldering in a Bedouin tent. He turned to Abdullah. “Did you get the reports, my brother?”

The half-brother of the king was taller, his face more angular. His eyes, like those of the king, were dark with anger. He nodded, pulling a thin stack of computer printouts from his robes. “We have an estimated one hundred forty-three billion dollars currently on deposit in American banks.”

The king nodded curtly. “Allah has been kind to us, my brothers. The vast pools of oil were put in our trust, not just to bring us wealth and comfort. It is a weapon in our hands as surely as the naked sword was a weapon in the hands of our fathers.”

Feisal, the smallest of the three members of the royal family, leaned forward. “The Americans are fools to treat us as women and back down on their promise. Do they think we do not have the courage to use the weapons Allah has given us?”

“The American president is a man of honor, but, like all rulers, his is not the only voice that must be satisfied.” The king paused, reflecting momentarily on his own powers and their limitations. “It is those other voices we must silence,” he finished quietly.

“Those other voices give in to the pressures from the Zionists who infest their country,” the crown prince said slowly. “It is time we brought pressure of our own.”

“Are we agreed?” the king asked.

They all nodded gravely.

He turned to Abdullah. “Then begin. Be cautious at first. Just let it be known in the proper circles that all current deposits in American banks will be withdrawn over the next ninety days. Let it also be known that we, of course, have no desire to destroy the American banking system. We only wish to be treated fairly and with justice.”

“And what of Barclay Enterprises?” General Amani asked.

The king’s eyebrows deepened in thought. “If the president of the United States again changes his mind and grants our request for the planes, it will not be because of the negotiating skill of Mr. Barclay. On the other hand, he has done us good service.”

“I suggest an alternative,” the crown prince spoke up. “Offer him one half of one percent commission instead of the four percent we have now agreed to. That would provide him with a lucrative profit but saves us about fifty million dollars.”

The king nodded, then nodded again more decisively. “A wise suggestion.”

“We would work with the young Mr. Jeppson, of course. He is a man to be trusted.”

“Of course,” said the king, “but first we must get the president and his Congress to change their minds.” He turned to his Minister of Finance. “Abdullah, proceed. Keep us informed.”

Prince Abdullah stuck the printouts back in his robes and bowed deeply. “It shall begin at once.”

“We shall have those planes,” the king said firmly.

“Insh’ allah,” Feisal said softly.

“Insh’ allah,” the others intoned solemnly.

Epilogue

It was just coming dawn across the Persian Gulf. The first hints of pinks and yellows were barely lighting the eastern horizon when the faint strains of the muezzin reverberated across the runways and bounced off the hardened shelters, painted in light and dark camouflage browns.

Airmen rolled out prayer rugs. Pilots with two and three thousand hours of flight time performed the ablutions, then bowed before Allah. Mechanics knelt beside the sleek aluminum bodies of jet aircraft. As it was across a thousand miles of desert, so it was here in the Thirteenth Fighter Interceptor Squadron at the King Abdul Aziz Royal Air Base—it was the time of morning prayer.

Allahu akbar! God is great.

Ashhadu an la illallah! I bear witness there is no God but Allah.

At that moment, high above and far to the northeast, the Boeing E-3A Airborne Warning and Controls Systems (AWACS) was moving on the outward leg of its regular patrol. Manned by a mixture of Saudi and American crewmen, there were no prayer rugs on board, no muezzin or minarets, which was just as well, for at that precise moment, an airman jerked forward, staring at his radar screen. For two or three seconds he just gaped, unable to believe his eyes. Then he shouted hoarsely. “I have unidentified bogeys on the screen, bearing zero four niner degrees.”

The control officer leaped to his side.

“Nine, twelve, no, fourteen! I count fourteen bogeys! Speed, Mach one point one.”

Another airman sang out, this time with a decided Arabic accent. “Computer identification shows F-4 Phantoms and F-14 Tomcats.”

The control officer swore. Phantoms and Tomcats—the two mainstays of the Iranian Air Force.

“Here’s another flight right behind them,” the first man yelled. “Sixteen additional aircraft. Identical bearing, speed, and altitude.”

“Red alert! Red alert!” the communications officer said quietly into the radio. “This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill. We have approximately three zero, repeat, three zero unidentified fighter aircraft approaching, bearing zero four niner degrees, speed…”

At the King Abdul Aziz Royal Air Base, morning prayers were instantly abandoned. Prayers rugs were left where they lay. Mecca was temporarily forgotten. As the pilots raced for their planes, the doors to the hardened shelters started to roll upward, revealing the F-22 Barracudas sitting side by side, two planes to each shelter.

Several things make the F-22 the hottest fighter aircraft in the world. It has rapid engine start, fast alignment of the ring laser gyro inertial navigation system, advanced avionics that can operate around the clock and in the most adverse weather conditions. It can climb at a rate of just over fifty-three thousand feet per minute and has unbelievable maneuverability, pulling around nine g’s—nine times the force of gravity—in a hard turn. Its rapid scramble time and stupendous climbing power, coupled with the VSM-430 radar system, allows it to engage hostile aircraft at thirty thousand feet and sixty-five miles downrange from liftoff in just under two-and-a-half minutes.

The Thirteenth Fighter Interceptor Squadron of the Royal Saudi Air Force had twenty-four Barracudas in the air within three minutes after the alert was received from the AWACS. The first engagement took place over the Persian Gulf while some Saudis in the western part of the kingdom were still rolling up their prayer rugs. Two F-14 Tomcats came within sixty miles of the coast of Saudi Arabia before they were blown out of the sky by intercepting Barracudas. That was the closest any hostile aircraft came. By the time the sun had cleared the horizon twenty minutes later, the abortive attempt of the Ayatollah Khomeini to destroy the Ras Tanura oil facilities on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia had become history.

About the Authors

Gerald N. Lund received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in sociology from Brigham Young University, and has done post-graduate work on the New Testament and Hebrew at Pepperdine University and the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, California.

Retired from employment by the Church Educational System, Brother Lund has been a seminary teacher, an institute teacher and director, and a curriculum writer. His Church callings have included bishop, stake missionary, counselor in a bishopric, and teacher development director.

Brother Lund has authored many books in addition to Leverage Point, including Jesus Christ, Key to the Plan of Salvation; The Alliance; One in Thine Hand; The Freedom Factor; and the best-selling The Work and the Glory series.

Roger Hendrix received his B.A. from the California State University system, his M.A. from Brigham Young University, and his Ph.D. in higher education and educational psychology from the University of Southern California. He has traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East. He has served in a number of positions in the Church, including as a member of a stake presidency.

Brother Hendrix is president of the management consulting firm Delphi Management, Inc. His syndicated daily radio program on future trends has won several national awards.

The Freedom Factor

The Freedom Factor

© 1987 Gerald N. Lund

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company, P. O. Box 30178, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Deseret Book Company.

BOOKCRAFT is a registered trademark of Deseret Book Company.

Visit us at deseretbook.com

First published in hardbound 1987

First published in paperbound 1995

First published in redesigned paperbound 2000

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lund, Gerald N.

The freedom factor.

1. Title.

PS3562.U485F7 1987 813’.54 87-15548

ISBN 0-87579-098-4 (hardbound)

ISBN-10 0-87579-961-2 (paperbound, redesign)

ISBN-13 978-0-87579-961-2 (paperbound, redesign)

Printed in the United States of America R. R. Donnelley and Sons

18 17 16 15 14 13

Chapter 1

“Ladies and gentlemen.”

The television news reporter, a stunning blonde with a glitzy smile, was looking earnestly into the camera set up on the steps of the United States Capitol.

“This is Senator Benjamin Hawkes, senior senator from Massachusetts and co-sponsor of what some are calling the most important piece of legislation of this century.” She half turned, smiling at the slender, impeccably dressed man standing at her elbow. “Good morning, Senator.”

“Good morning.” The senator looked directly at the camera and gave the several million people who might be watching the easy, relaxed smile that had been a major factor in winning him five consecutive terms in the United States Senate.

“Senator, the Hawkes/Larkin bill calls for the most sweeping governmental reform since the signing of the Constitution. How do you predict the vote will come out this afternoon?”

He chuckled softly. “Oh, I think we’ll win.”

Bryce Sherwood, who was standing slightly behind Hawkes in the crowd that had gathered quickly, felt a quick flash of irritation. What did Ms. Glitzy expect him to say?

“It takes a two-thirds vote to pass a proposed amendment to the Constitution, Senator. The media count shows you one or two votes short of the needed sixty-seven at the moment.”

The senator smiled warmly. “Well, Kathy, the media have been known to be wrong.”

She pounced on that. “Does that mean you have senators who have changed their vote?”

Senator Hawkes cut her off smoothly. “Only the next two hours will tell for sure. That’s why I’ve got to get inside and keep things moving.” He turned. “You know Bryce Sherwood, my legislative assistant. He helped me draft the bill. He can answer any questions you have about it.”

Bryce groaned inwardly as Senator Hawkes pulled him forward. “I need you!” he hissed into Bryce’s ear. “Hurry!” He turned back to the camera, waved and flashed a quick smile, then slipped through the circle of people.

The smile on the newswoman’s face had slipped slightly, but she hitched it up as Bryce stepped forward. “Mr. Sherwood, for our viewers who may not be familiar with the Hawkes/Larkin bill, could you briefly summarize why it is so significant?”

Bryce nodded thoughtfully, trying to look appropriately somber and yet pleasant at the same time. “Well, actually this bill simply proposes that there be a twenty-seventh amendment to the Constitution. Since a similar bill has already passed the House, if Senator Hawkes’s bill passes today, the proposed amendment will then go to the states for ratification, and, as you know, three-fourths of the states must pass it before it becomes law.”

“Yes, of course.”

Bryce leaned forward slightly, getting more earnest now. “Again and again in recent years, we’ve seen how the government can get bogged down in a stalemate between the president and the Congress. Right now, there is no way to break the impasse except to wait for new elections. In this day and age, waiting up to four years to form a new government can be catastrophic.”

“And the new amendment will change all that?”

Bryce laughed easily. “Well, to say ‘all that’ may be a little optimistic, Kathy. I’m not sure we’ll ever completely do away with the warm and loving relationship that traditionally prevails between the White House and Capitol Hill.”

There were a few appreciative chuckles and nods from the surrounding crowd.

“But under the new amendment,” he continued, “Congress can pass a resolution of no-confidence in the administration. If two-thirds of both houses concur in this no-confidence vote, the government is dissolved and new elections are held within six weeks.”

Suddenly a reporter standing on the sidelines broke in. Bryce remembered that he was from the Washington Post. “Mr. Sherwood, critics of the bill say it does away with some of the checks and balances set up by the founding fathers. What’s to stop the Congress from throwing the president out every time he wears a tie they don’t like?”

Bryce laughed. “Well, John, I know you know the answer to that, but it’s a good question. Many people don’t understand that this amendment has an important set of checks and balances of its own. First, you’ll note that I said that if Congress passes a no-confidence resolution, the government is dissolved. That doesn’t mean just the administration is dissolved. It means Congress too. Every senator and representative will have to go back and face their own constituents for reelection as well. That should make them think twice before voting to turn the president out.”

He took a quick breath, warming to the subject now. “But there is also a second set of checks and balances, and in my opinion, this is the most exciting thing about the proposed amendment. It makes government directly responsible to the voice of the people. Remember that a vote of no confidence by the Congress doesn’t mean there will necessarily be a new president, only new elections. The people may disagree with Congress and put the president back in office. Then he comes back with a real mandate to govern. Or if the people think it is time for a change, the new president comes in ready to try something new. Either way the stalemate is broken.”

The cameraman swung around as another reporter at Bryce’s left broke in. “So this really does put government back into the hands of the people, doesn’t it?”

Before Bryce could respond a feminine voice behind cut in sharply. “Which people? The rich and powerful?”

Bryce swung around and was mildly surprised. From the acrid bitterness of the voice, he expected something very different than what he saw—an attractive, well-dressed brunette in her midtwenties. He smiled directly into her angry eyes, wide and green and disturbingly lovely. “The people I think he was referring to are the people, as in ‘We, the people.’ That’s in the preamble to the Constitution, in case you were wondering.”

The crowd quickly sensed the potential for an interesting confrontation and stepped back enough so the woman was put into the front row facing Bryce. The newswoman was motioning quickly to the cameraman to get both of them in frame.

But if Bryce had meant to throw his opponent onto the defensive, he was wrong. She smiled right back at him, sweetly, but her eyes were crackling. “As a matter of fact, I was reading the Constitution again this morning. And when was the last time you read it, Mr. Sherwood?”

That won her a few guffaws from the crowd, and Bryce flushed.

She pressed her advantage. “Don’t you find it a little intimidating to try to rewrite a document that took some of the finest minds in American history several months to create? But then,” she went on, before he could answer, sarcasm dripping from every word, “I suppose graduating magna cum laude from the Harvard Law School does qualify one to sit right up there with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.”

Bryce had not taken three national titles in college debate or won ninety percent of his cases in court by being slow on the uptake. He shook his head, seemingly puzzled. “You obviously have the advantage of knowing more about me than I do about you, Miss…?”

“Adams. Leslie Adams.”

“And which newspaper are you with, Miss Adams?” he asked pleasantly. “The Washington Hatchet?”

There was a ripple of approving laughter. The crowd had stopped to watch an interview and gotten a prize fight instead.

Now it was she who flushed deeply. “I’m not with a newspaper. I’m a volunteer worker with a citizen’s group called Save the Constitution.”

“Ah, yes,” Bryce said, understanding now. “The STC. No wonder you’re a little depressed this morning.” He looked around innocently. “I suppose you have American flags edged in black in case we win today.”

“That’s right!” she retorted bitterly. “Flash the boyish grin, spread a little cutesy humor around. But whatever else we do, let’s not focus on the real issues.”

Bryce caught himself. It wouldn’t do to be too brutal with her. Not on national television. He turned back to the blonde newswoman and the camera and noted with satisfaction that it swung away from Miss Adams. “I agree,” Bryce said pleasantly. “Why don’t we focus on the real issue, which in my mind is this: Is it time that big government becomes more responsive to the will of the people, or do we continue to lumber forward into the future with a government that grows more cumbersome and unworkable every day?”

He glanced quickly at his opponent, then turned away, before the flashing eyes could fire back at him. “And with that, I too had better excuse myself. There is a very important vote coming up in an hour or so, and there is much yet to be done.”

The newswoman, glad to have the ball back in her court, nodded smoothly. “Thank you, Bryce. Good luck to you on what will prove to be a very important vote for all of America.”

Bryce lifted his arm in farewell and started out of the circle. On impulse, he turned back to face the dark-haired young woman. “I wish we could continue this,” he smiled. “I haven’t had this much fun since my last root canal.” Again he waved and pushed through the crowd, not unaware of the good-natured laughter rippling through the group, nor of Leslie Adams’s tightlipped glare boring into the back of his head.

Outside, the heat was stifling. It was the first week of August, and the temperature stood at ninety-seven degrees, the humidity only four points lower than that. Tourists, queued up to enter the White House, wilted like parched corn in a West Texas drought. At the far east end of the Mall, the gleaming dome of the Capitol shimmered as though it were slowly evaporating in the summer sunshine. Tourists dutifully followed their guides through the Capitol rotunda, sensing but not understanding the hush that had fallen over the building. And in fact, for a moment it seemed the whole city paused, cocking one ear to catch the proceedings just beginning to unfold in the Senate chambers.

It was at that moment that the buzzer signaling the roll call sounded. It brought instant response. Senators and their aides poured from doorways and down the hallways. Senate pages, in their neat blue uniforms, began lining up for duty. In less than three minutes, the Senate floor was filled, every eye riveted on the man seated in the black leather chair next to the American flag.

The vice president of the United States leaned forward, let his eyes sweep the chambers slowly. A hundred senators accepted his silent census gravely. Finally he nodded with satisfaction. “All time having been yielded back, the question before us is the bill by Senator Benjamin Hawkes and Senator Howard Larkin. On this question, the yeas and the nays have been ordered. The clerk will call the roll.”

The third-floor windows of Bryce Sherwood’s office were on the south side of the Richard B. Russell Senate Office Building, providing a stunning panorama of the Capitol. But at the moment, Bryce Sherwood had no eye for the view. The office looked a little like a war zone. The desk was strewn with newspapers, computer printouts, and scribbled vote projections. A half-eaten hamburger and an untouched soft drink were perched precariously on a pile of manila folders. Normally a fastidious dresser, now Bryce had tossed his coat across a chair. His vest was open and the top button of his shirt undone, with the tie pulled loose. Behind him a computer screen waited patiently for data, its cursor blinking with monotonous regularity.

But Bryce Sherwood had no eye for that either. He had the phone jammed up to his ear, his shoulder holding it in place, one hand poised with a pencil. It was that pose, with head cocked to one side, that caused people to compare him to Robert Redford as the crusading journalist in All the President’s Men. Blue eyes, the color of an early morning sky, and short sandy-blonde hair with just the touch of a natural wave were complemented by cleanly cut features and a mouth that always seemed to be toying with a smile.

He listened intently to the voice drumming into his ear, then broke in. “You’re sure of that, Jim?”

The response was unequivocal. “Absolutely! I just left him two minutes ago.”

“Great!” Bryce stabbed down on his secretarial call button, then began to scribble furiously on a notepad. “That’s terrific, Jim! We owe you.”

The door to his office pushed open, and Bryce’s secretary poked her head around the corner. He waved her in.

“No, I mean it, Jim. Senator Hawkes won’t forget this. You have my word.”

Dropping the phone into its cradle, he ripped the sheet off the pad and thrust it at his secretary. “Call a page and get this to Senator Hawkes immediately. Joseph Larson is changing his vote!”

The secretary’s eyes widened. “Senator Larson! Wow! That should help.”

“Help!” Bryce crowed jubilantly. “That could do it! That could just do it!”

Taking the note, the secretary stepped quickly to the large walnut cabinet on one wall and slid back the doors. She pushed the “power-on” button on the television set built into the cabinet. “They’ve just started the roll call.”

Bryce waved his thanks to her as he swung around in his chair. The screen was filling with the face of the vice-president of the United States. Bryce pulled over a pad already marked in two columns—one titled “yea” and the other “nay”—and poised his pencil.

The camera switched to the legislative clerk, a pleasant looking man in steel-rimmed glasses. He took a deep breath, consulted his list, then called out: “Mr. Anderson.”

The junior senator from Nevada, whose privilege it was to be first in every roll call, leaned forward. “Yea,” he said loudly.

“Mr. Atwood.”

“Yea.”

Even with the volume turned low, Bryce heard the murmur that swept through the Senate chambers. Two yea votes did not a victory make, but it was a good omen.

The phone rang and Bryce snatched it up. “Sherwood.” He listened for one moment, then yanked the phone toward him so sharply he almost spilled the soft drink. “What!” he shouted.

This time the voice on the line was apologetic, almost whining, which only fueled Bryce’s anger.

“I don’t care what kind of pressure he’s getting, Weatherby gave Senator Hawkes his word.”

The whining started again, but Bryce cut it off, smacking his hand down sharply on the desk. “That’s not acceptable, Karl, and you know it! Now you get word to that distinguished Senator Weatherby of yours that if he backs down now, Senator Hawkes will not, I repeat will not, support his farm bill.”

The line was silent.

“He’s not bluffing, Karl. You know that. And you know as well as I do, that Senator Hawkes can be a very powerful ally…” He let that sink in, then added quietly, “or a potent adversary.”

Again there was a pause, then finally over the line came a weary, “Okay, I’ll try.”

“You’d better do more than try!” Bryce snapped, swinging around again toward the television. “And you’re going to have to hurry. They’ve started the vote.” He slammed the phone down, still fuming.

Three blocks farther east, in an older office building beyond the inner circle of government buildings, a group of eight or ten people watched the television with equal avidness. This was a smaller office, more subdued. An old walnut desk in one corner was also covered with papers, but it was arranged in orderly piles. The outer door, standing open, showed a large round plaque with the initials STC in the center. Forming an oval around the letters were the words SAVE THE CONSTITUTION. One wall held a framed replica of the Declaration of Independence, another a large print of Howard Christy’s painting “The Signing of the Constitution.”

Leslie Adams was the youngest person in the room. Like Bryce Sherwood, she also had a notepad and was tallying the votes as the clerk continued through the roll call. The grandfatherly man who sat next to her leaned over and did a quick count, then shook his head. “Not good. That’s forty-five votes so far—thirty yeas and fifteen nays.” He let out a discouraged sigh. “Thirty votes is exactly a two-thirds majority so far.”

“Mr. Larson,” intoned the clerk from the television set.

There was a pause, and a sudden hush settled over the Senate chambers. A heavyset man, with his head down, appeared on the screen. Finally he looked up. “Yea,” he said softly.

The hall erupted in a wild burst of noise clearly evident even over the television’s speakers. The vice president rapped the gavel sharply. The screen changed abruptly to show the face of one of America’s best-known television anchormen. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said breathlessly. “Senator Joseph Larson, senior senator from Michigan, and a man who this morning was considered a solid opponent of the Hawkes/Larkin bill, has just stunned the Senate by voting in the affirmative. That gives the bill an unexpected vote in the yes column.”

Leslie looked into the face of the man next to her and just shook her head slowly.

The phone rang again, but Bryce ignored it now. It was too late for any further action at this point. He continued marking the votes as the roll call droned on.

“Mr. Van Orden.”

“Yea.”

Bryce marked it, counted quickly. If he had not lost track, they were two short of what they needed, with five names to go.

“Mr. Washburn.”

“Yea.”

One to go!

“Mr. Weatherby.”

Senator Roger Weatherby was a vacillator. He was famous for it on the Senate floor. Most knew it was merely a ruse to see what benefits he could pick up for himself if he came down on either side. Bryce suspected that was the reason for the last phone call. Weatherby wanted that farm bill badly. The question was, had anyone else gotten to him with something better?

Bryce leaned forward, suddenly tensing. “Come on, Senator! Don’t cave in on us now.”

There was no answer, and a sudden tension filled the Senate chambers. The camera cut to a view of the Senate floor, adjusted slightly, then focused on a dark-haired man near the back.

“Mr. Weatherby,” the clerk repeated with just a trace of annoyance.

Even through the television, Bryce could feel the electricity in the air as every eye swung to the junior senator from Washington State. Finally his head came up. He looked toward the clerk, ignoring everyone and everything else.

“Yea,” he said in a voice that was barely audible.

There was an angry cry from the back of the room from some unseen senator, but Bryce didn’t hear it. He leaped to his feet. “All right!” he shouted, punching his fist into the empty air. “All right!”

Chapter 2

Bryce was standing at the window, gazing at the Capitol Building. Sixty-eight yeas—one more than they needed—and thirtyeight nays. That represented nearly six months of head-banging, bone-jarring work, planning, and negotiations. In spite of his confident response during the interview earlier, he had not been sure they were going to pull it off. Now it was sweet indeed!

There was a soft knock at the door. He turned, and his secretary was there. “Bryce, Elliot Mannington’s chauffeur is here. He says Mr. Mannington would like to see you.”

Before Bryce had even reached the gray-and-black limo parked in the underground garage, Elliot Mannington III was out of the car with his hand extended. “Bryce, congratulations! A great victory today!”

A little overwhelmed at the warmth of the greeting, Bryce took his hand, returning the firm grip. “Thank you.” He stepped back a little dazzled. Elliot Mannington, scion of one of Boston’s wealthiest families, senior partner in Mannington, Carlson, Frederick, and Brown, Boston’s most prestigious law firm, and the man who was personal advisor to senators, cabinet members, and the president of the United States, was smiling at him like an exuberant fan. Though barely five feet seven, Elliot Mannington was an event. Just over sixty, he was as lean as a marathon runner and every bit as wirey. Dark, thick hair, just now graying at the temples, only added to the youthfulness of the man. The dark eyes were quick, piercing, always alive. One only had to be with him for a few moments before his size was forgotten, for the man wore an unmistakable aura of power and influence.

Mannington laid a hand on his shoulder. “Senator Hawkes is at the White House. The president wants to congratulate him personally, so he asked that I come and get you. We’re having a little victory celebration over at my place in Georgetown. Call your secretary on the car phone and tell her I’ll have you back about five.”

“Well,” Bryce said, not trying to hide his pleasure. “Thank you, Mr. Mannington, I—” “None of this Mr. Mannington, Bryce. It’s Elliot, please.”

Mannington’s condominium was palatial, luxurious, and awash with people. In spite of almost four years in Washington, where one became accustomed to rubbing shoulders with the nationally and internationally famous, Bryce was impressed. He counted over a dozen senators, easily that many members of the House, two cabinet members, several undersecretaries of various agencies, the British and French ambassadors, and more diamond-studded women than one could find at a Cartier’s modeling extravaganza. He also noted wryly that as near as he could see, he was the only senator’s aide in the entire bunch.

At the moment, the group in which he was standing included Hawkes and his wife, the undersecretary for Middle Eastern Affairs from the State Department, the junior senator from Massachusetts and his wife, and a Supreme Court Justice. Just as Hawkes started one of his famous anecdotes, Bryce looked up. Elliot Mannington was standing nearby. He motioned, almost imperceptibly, with his head. Bryce waited a moment, then excused himself and drifted away. As Bryce moved up next to him, Mannington murmured softly, “Slip away in about ten minutes and come to the condo directly below mine, room eight-oh-seven.” He smiled enigmatically at Bryce’s surprised look and moved away.

The name on the doorplate read “Sterling Jennings.” That surprised Bryce. Jennings, formerly secretary of defense, was now the president of one of the largest of the Fortune Five Hundred companies. Jennings had not been to the party above, of that Bryce was almost certain, for though he had never met the man personally, his face was a familiar one to most of Washington.

Bryce rang the bell, still puzzled by the unexpected invitation. Almost instantly, Mannington was there, smiling broadly.

“Ah, good, Bryce. Come in, come in.”

Though not quite as large as Mannington’s, this condominium was just as richly furnished. A painting that looked like an original Gaugin hung in the entryway, and an elegant marble bust of a young girl sat on a bronze table in front of a huge mirror.

As they entered the main living room, another man stood. It was Jennings.

“Let me introduce you,” Mannington said. “This is Bryce Sherwood, legislative assistant and senior staff member to Senator Hawkes.”

Who isn’t here! Bryce realized with a sudden start. Hawkes had not been invited! That really set his mind racing.

“And,” Mannington was continuing, “this is Sterling Jennings, former secretary of defense.”

“Yes, sir. A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

Jennings smiled. “The pleasure is mine.” He was smoking a cigarette. He stubbed it out quickly, then shook Bryce’s hand. Surprisingly, his grip was not particularly firm. But the penetrating gaze more than made up for it. “Great job today, Sherwood. Great job.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ve read a lot about you. It’s a pleasure.”

“Sit down, Bryce,” Mannington offered, pointing to a chair that would put him facing both of them. As they sat down, Jennings motioned toward a well-stocked bar off to one side. “May we get you something to drink, Bryce?”

He saw that both of the men had drinks on the table in front of them, but he shook his head. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

That seemed to please Mannington. “We won’t hold you too long. Wouldn’t want anyone upstairs to miss us.” Jennings smiled with him on that. “Besides, we think we can offer you something a little headier than wine tonight.”

Mannington cleared his throat. “Bryce, as you know, I’m on the board of directors for a group known as the Committee for Constitutional Reform.”

“Yes. The CCR was very helpful in what happened today.” Which was more than just back-patting. The Committee for Constitutional Reform was a powerful lobby group made up of two or three hundred of the country’s most influential business, political, and professional leaders. They had thrown their considerable support behind the Hawkes/Larkin bill, and there was no doubt that was a major factor in the day’s victory.

Again it seemed to have been the right thing to say. Mannington nodded, pleased. “Sterling and I are on the executive committee for the board of directors.”

Bryce just nodded, feeling his pulse stirring.

“Today was a major hurdle, Bryce.” Mannington was now very sober in his demeanor. “We cleared it successfully, thanks to you.”

The former secretary of defense leaned forward as Bryce started to deprecate a little. “Oh, we all know that Senator Hawkes played a major role, but your role was pivotal.”

“Today was a tough hurdle,” Mannington said, picking up the lead again, but it certainly wasn’t the last, or perhaps even the toughest.”

That sobered each of them. There were fifty states. Threefourths had to ratify the amendment before it became law. That meant thirty-seven hurdles to go.

“We need someone,” Mannington went on, “someone who’ll see to it that we clear those other hurdles as well.”

Bryce watched them, eyes attentive, but his mind was tumbling wildly. So that was it! He felt a sudden surge of excitement.

“We think you are that man, Bryce,” Jennings said softly.

Bryce felt a chill go through him. “I…Well, thank you. I’m deeply flattered. As you know, I believe strongly in this amendment. I want to see it pass.”

“This could mean a lot to you,” Mannington said, sitting back and sipping his drink.

“Yes, sir. It’s a great opportunity.”

The former secretary of defense flicked a lighter and touched it to another cigarette. “It’s more than that, Bryce,” he said soberly. “Senator Hawkes is thinking about retiring after this term.”

Bryce’s head snapped up.

Jennings puffed deeply, then smiled through the smoke as he blew it out. “That’s right. Massachusetts is going to be needing a new senator in four years. You’ll be thirty-one then. Minimum age for a senator is thirty.”

Bryce looked to Mannington, who was smiling and nodding. “Why not?” he said. “You’ve got the qualifications—Harvard Law School, courtroom experience, public service. You’ve got the looks and personality. Your father is a well-known surgeon and medical professor in Boston.”

They had him now, and they were working him smoothly, jumping from one stunning comment to another. Jennings took the ball now. “Three or four terms in the Senate and we think you might even have a good shot at the White House.”

When Mannington saw the expression on Bryce’s face, he laughed right out loud. “I warned you this would be heady wine.”

“I…“ Bryce blew out his breath, shaking his head in wonder. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.” Jennings said with a smile. “Just nod your head if you like what you’re hearing.”

For a long moment, he looked to each of the two men in front of him. Their eyes never faltered. Finally, he smiled tentatively, and nodded his head slowly.

Chapter 3

It was just coming dusk, and the temperature in Washington, D.C., had still not dropped below ninety. As Bryce wheeled his red BMW around the corner and up the ramp of the Senate’s underground parking garage, he turned the air conditioning up to full and loosened his tie.

Traffic was thinning now, but there was still enough that he decided to just let the sports car roll with the flow. He flipped through his box of cassettes, picked out Prokofiev’s “Lieutenant Kije Suite” and pushed it into the tape deck. As the haunting strains of the trumpet solo began, Bryce, for the tenth time, began rehearsing in his mind the meeting with Elliot Mannington and Sterling Jennings. And for the tenth time, he chided himself for the soaring euphoria he was feeling. And yet, on the other hand, somewhere deep inside him he also knew he was not dealing with backyard players. These were the power makers, and if they said it was possible, it was possible! And that left him a little dizzy.

Three blocks later, sitting on the bench at a bus stop, was a familiar figure. He peered through the windshield, then gave a short bark of laughter. It was her! Miss Leslie Adams, with the dark hair, flashing green eyes, and rapier sharp tongue.

On impulse, he buttoned his top button, cinched up his tie again, then shut off the music as he let the BMW pull up smoothly to the curb in front of her. Her head was down, studying a folder of papers. Not until he was directly in front of her did she finally become aware of the car. She looked up, then her eyes widened.

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

Good start, he thought with a inward smile. The tone of her voice had lowered the outside temperature by no more than five degrees.

“Say, I’ve been having some pain in my jaw. Any chance for another root canal?”

The temperature dropped five more degrees. “Very funny. Do you do parties?”

“Sorry, I thought a little humor might help.”

“Emphasis on the little.”

He laughed. “All right, so I’m a politician, not a comedian.”

Her head came up slowly. “I didn’t know there was a difference.”

Bryce shook his head ruefully, deciding that her green eyes were very nice, in spite of the glacial ice in them at the moment. “Are you sure you don’t work for the Washington Hatchet?” he asked.

For the first time there was the slightest hint of softening. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“Apology accepted, subject dropped.”

She seemed to accept that, then promptly dismissed him again by returning to her reading.

“May I give you a lift somewhere? You’ll melt in this heat.”

She continued reading. “I’m fine, thank you anyway.”

“Hey, really. I promise, no more cracks.”

She shook her head.

Now the challenge was on him. “What if I promise to focus on the real issues?”

Leslie closed the folder and put it in her lap. He thought he saw the tiniest smile crinkling around her eyes. “I debate only in front of television cameras.”

“Let’s call it a rehearsal for the next appearance.”

“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but the bus will be here in a minute.”

Suddenly his eye caught a figure about fifty feet down the street. A man was leaning against a tree, watching them. In the dimming light, Bryce couldn’t see him too well, but he had long hair and was dressed in some kind of strange getup. Bryce seized the opportunity.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t want to push you, but seriously, Washington is not the place for a single woman at night.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Maybe. But there’s a guy over there who looks like he would like to test that theory.”

Leslie turned. The man hadn’t moved, but now he was watching them intently. Bryce saw her give an involuntary shudder and knew he had won. There really was something half creepy about the guy.

“Really,” he said, his voice softer now, “I only attack the Constitution. Young women are perfectly safe with me.”

She looked at him for a long moment, turned back once more to eye the man, then gave in. “I live in Arlington,” she said tentatively. “If that’s out of your way—”

“It’s not.” He opened the door. She got in quickly, and Bryce let out the clutch, moving slowly to merge into the traffic. The man had stepped out from beneath the limbs of an overhanging tree and into the light. As they approached, he stared intently at Leslie. She stared back, and just as they passed him, he suddenly smiled at her, eerily, as if he knew her and exactly what she was thinking. She looked away quickly, suppressing another shiver that ran down her back.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “My car’s in the garage. I don’t normally have to do this.”

He laughed easily, trying to ease the pain of surrender. “Hey, I don’t think I would have stayed at that bus stop with him around.”

Bryce swung up and around past the Capitol, then turned west on Constitution Avenue. It wasn’t the shortest route, but if she noticed, she didn’t comment. As they drove slowly past the Ellipse, with the White House glowing brightly on their right, and the gleaming needle of the Washington Monument on their left, he finally spoke. “So, what do you do besides work for the STC, or is that a full-time job?”

“No, it’s strictly volunteer work. I teach American History at Arlington High School.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding. Does that surprise you?”

“Yes, I guess it does.”

“Why?”

“I thought all high-school teachers wore combat fatigues and carried nightsticks.”

For the first time she laughed. He liked it, enough to try to get her to do it again.

He turned left on Twenty-third Street and looped once slowly around the Lincoln Memorial. This was not just for Leslie’s benefit. Bryce had been in Washington for over four years. He loved the city—its pulse and continuing drama. He loved the pressure and the challenge of pitting his own ingenuity and resourcefulness against it. But every now and then, after a harried week or a particularly brutal battle, he would come home this way, past the monuments—the Washington, the Jefferson, the Lincoln, the Kennedy Center, the somber black marble of the Viet Nam Memorial. Often he would get out and walk around, or sit on the grass, or linger in the shadows of the massive pillars. He called these times—which not even Senator Hawkes knew about— his way of keeping in touch with the things that really mattered.

He was pleased to see that Leslie’s eyes were also drawn to the Lincoln Memorial and that she too seemed moved by it. Suddenly, without turning to him, she spoke.

“Do you believe in God?”

That startled him. Finally he shrugged. “Yes.”

“Do you believe he takes a hand in the affairs of men?” She finally turned to watch him.

He let out his breath slowly. He had hardly expected this turn in the conversation. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think he’s got more important things to do than watch over a slightly wobbly, terribly out-of-tune world, but other times…“ His voice trailed off.

“Other times what?”

“Well, believe it or not, I minored in history in college. And there are some times when it certainly makes you wonder if he didn’t take a hand in things.”

She nodded, then with the same unexpected swiftness as before, totally changed tacks. “Your accent isn’t Bostonian.”

It wasn’t a question. He smiled. “No, Californian. We moved to Boston when I was ten.”

“Oh.”

He laughed. “Do you do this with your students?”

“What?”

“Keep throwing them conversational hand grenades?”

That won him his second laugh, deep and throaty. “It drives my father crazy,” she said, nodding.

He pressed her further. “You know that I was raised in Boston, and earlier today you knew I graduated from Harvard Law School. How is it you happen to know so much about me?”

She flushed slightly and dropped her eyes. He waited, a little amused that he had her bobbling the hot potato now.

“I looked you up in Who’s Who in the East.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You don’t need to be, not when you’ve made Who’s Who before you’re thirty.”

He gave her a quizzical look. “Is that a compliment or a cut?”

She smiled faintly. “A statement of fact. Just because I totally disagree with you philosophically doesn’t mean I don’t respect what you have accomplished with your life.”

“Oh.” Though that pleased him, he decided not to pursue it any further and lapsed into silence, asking only for directions as they moved onto the Arlington Memorial Bridge and crossed the Potomac.

Three minutes later she tossed him another one. “How well do you know Elliot Mannington?”

That brought Bryce around sharply to stare at her, and then she really blushed. “On the news this afternoon your name was mentioned as being at the victory celebration. I wasn’t spying on you.”

He nodded, only partially mollified. Nothing in Washington went unnoticed.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“How well do you know him?”

“He and my father belong to the same club in Boston. His firm hired me as a law clerk while I was in law school. I joined his law firm when I graduated. He’s also a longtime friend of Senator Hawkes.”

“Are you a member of the Committee for Constitutional Reform?”

“No.” At least not yet, he added to himself.

“Oh.”

“What?” he drawled. “Not even a ‘Praise the Lord’ or a ‘Hallelujah’ or two?”

“Mr. Sherwood,” she snapped, her voice suddenly cold again, “I know you believe that our governmental system needs reform. I happen to disagree, but I understand how you could feel that way. But the CCR has openly stated that their goal is to completely overhaul the Constitution.”

He kept his voice light. “So maybe it needs some over-hauling.”

“Just like that,” she retorted, the tartness in her voice raising it a notch in volume. “Two hundred years of the finest government the world has ever seen and now you’re going to fix it.”

“Ah, just the point. Two hundred years! You said your car is in the garage? How come?”

She saw it coming but was honest enough to answer him anyway. “The mechanic says the valves are gone.”

“How many miles does it have on it?”

“Eighty-nine thousand.”

“The Constitution has two hundred years. I’d make that just about equivalent to eighty-nine thousand miles, wouldn’t you?”

She took a deep breath, then shook her head quickly. “Turn left here,” was all she said.

For the next five minutes the cool silence in the car prevailed except for her occasional directions. They were moving through a residential section, modern apartment buildings and some single family dwellings.

“It’s not far now,” Leslie said. “Just turn right at the next intersection; then it’s only a few blocks.”

Bryce, feeling a little guilty about his final barb, decided to try to save the ride from ending in total disaster.

“So where do you come from originally?”

She smiled faintly. “I’m a real woman of the world. I was born and raised here in Arlington.”

“No kidding?”

“All right, let’s hear it.”

“Let’s hear what?”

“The last time you said, ‘No kidding,’ there was some kind of crack about combat fatigues and nightsticks. So what have you got to say about natives of Arlington?”

“I envy them,” Bryce said soberly.

She glanced at him sharply.

“I mean it. I love Boston; it reeks of history. But Washington! This is the center of everything. To have lived here your whole life—that must give you more perspective than traveling around the world a dozen times.”

She was watching him closely, to see if he was teasing her again. When she realized he was completely serious, she nodded. “Thank you.”

“You probably know about places to see I haven’t even heard of. I—”

Bryce stopped, staring out the window. They were just passing a streetlight. Standing beneath it, thumb out, was a manlong haired, strangely dressed. Bryce felt a chill. It was the same man at the—

He shook his head and blinked twice. It couldn’t be! He jerked around as they passed. The man was staring directly at him with exactly the same eerie smile he had given Leslie.

“What’s the matter?” Leslie was staring at him, startled by the look on his face.

“That hitchhiker.”

She turned and looked out the window. “What hitchhiker?”

Bryce whirled, but a line of trees now blocked his view.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“Back there. I could have sworn…”

“What?”

“It…It looked like the same guy as the one at the bus stop.”

Her eyes widened. “How could that be?”

“That’s just it, it couldn’t. But he looked right at me.”

“Well,” she said slowly, “I suppose it’s possible. We didn’t take the shortest route through the city.”

He shook his head. “The chances of him taking exactly the same route are astronomical.” He glanced once more in the rearview mirror, then shook his head again. “No, it couldn’t be. It must have just been a look-alike.”

She shrugged. “All these weirdos look the same to me— creepy!”

“True.” He let out his breath slowly, trying to get his pulse to stop pounding as if he had just run a marathon.

Two minutes later, Bryce pulled up in front of an older home with a well-kept yard and turned off the engine and the lights.

Almost immediately Leslie opened the door. “Thank you for the ride. I’m sorry I was so difficult about it. I really do appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.” He gave her an apologetic smile. “I really hadn’t planned to carry on the debate we started on the Capitol steps.”

The corners of her mouth curved up slightly. “Me neither. I apologize for the hand grenades.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

She got out.

“Listen,” Bryce said suddenly, “I…”

She turned back, her eyes curious.

“I’d like a chance to cross swords again sometime. How about dinner Friday night?”

He was pleased to see that caught her completely by surprise and momentarily flustered her. Most of the girls he went out with had been manuevering toward another date the whole night.

“Who knows,” he added quickly, “maybe you can show me the error of my ways.” He paused, then smiled. “Or vice versa.”

“I…That’s very nice, but I think I’d better not.”

“What?” he asked in amazement. “Can this be the same Leslie Adams I met in battle today in front of national television? Surely your faith is sufficiently strong to face the infidel.”

She looked at him steadily for a long moment, then slowly a smile crept into her eyes. “Do you really think a device as transparent as that can work on someone who deals with a hundred and seventy teenagers every day?”

He pulled a face. “It was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment. Perhaps I should have slapped you on both cheeks with my glove.”

The smile stole downward to soften her mouth. “It would probably suit my nature better.”

He grinned. “Well, then, let’s call it a duel. What do you say?”

“All right, you’re on.”

“Great! Pick you up at seven-thirty?”

“Fine. See you then. And thanks again for the ride.” He watched her run lightly up the walk and into the house. As the door shut behind her, Bryce started the engine and flipped on the lights. He reached down and turned on the tape deck. As the music from “Lieutenant Kije” enveloped him again, he smacked the steering wheel once with the flat of his hand. “And how about that?” he asked no one in particular.

Chapter 4

As Bryce pulled back onto one of the main streets of Arlington, he decided to swing over and pick up the Capital Beltway that looped all the way around the metropolitan area. He was in no particular hurry to get home, and on the Beltway he could give the BMW its head and let his mind savor the events of the day.

From the time he was ten, Bryce Sherwood knew he did not want to follow in his father’s footsteps and pursue a medical career. This was a severe disappointment to his mother, but, surprisingly, not to his father. Theodore B. Sherwood was a pragmatic man, and rather than trying to push his son in a predetermined direction, he began to lay opportunities before Bryce like some kind of experiential smorgasbord. As a nationally famous heart surgeon, there were few financial limitations to what he could offer; and being on the faculty at the Harvard Medical School only added to the broad base of social contacts and growth opportunities Bryce was given. Boston, with its rich historical and cultural heritage, provided a fertile seedbed for a bright and inquisitive mind, and summers spent yachting and fishing in Cape Cod also added to his formational experiences.

By the time Bryce entered an exclusive prep school, he knew he was going into law and then into a public career. Nothing deflected him from that point on, and his father saw to it that the proper connections were made on the way up. His mother had not really completely forgiven him until Elliot Mannington had come to the house some four years ago and told them that Senator Benjamin Hawkes was looking for a legislative aide. At first she had balked. “Aide” hardly fit her concept of a move upward, but when Mannington, with some amusement, explained what this would mean for Bryce, she, from that moment on, became a fierce advocate and total supporter of his life’s career.

Bryce laughed quietly to himself. His mother—so slight and diminutive, so elegant in every respect, so Boston, even though she was not a native—would be absolutely beside herself with joy when she learned what the CCR had offered her son today.

Bryce took his foot off the accelerator and let the BMW slow. He was approaching a major intersection and could see the signs directing him to the Beltway. Then suddenly he stiffened. Leaning casually against a light pole was a hitchhiker. Bryce blinked, trying to clear his vision. It couldn’t be! But this time his car was moving slowly, and the man was directly under a streetlight. There were the same round features, the same shoulder-length hair, the same long jacket that looked like it had come fresh off the racks at Goodwill Industries. And most unmistakably, it was the same haunting, mysterious smile that sent chills coursing up and down Bryce’s spine.

Stunned, Bryce just stared as the car rolled slowly past the man. Instinctively, his eyes lifted to the rearview mirror as he passed. For a second or two he tried to make his eyes adjust, then he yelled and slammed on the brakes, whirling around to stare out the back window. The lamp pole was still there, the street brightly lit. But the sidewalk was empty!

A woman in a van swung out around him, laying on the horn. There was a clipped burst of obscenity. But Bryce neither heard nor saw. There was no one there!

Bryce put a hand to his forehead. What was happening to him? Once more he peered down the empty sidewalk. Feeling like an idiot, and yet fighting a sudden trembling in his hands, he turned off the tape deck, then hit the power door-lock button. With the hair on the back of his neck prickling, he released the clutch and slowly moved away.

Getting onto the beltway was completely forgotten now. Barely conscious of where he was going, he moved deeper into a quiet residential neighborhood, his mind searching for some logical explanation, feeling a sense of madness creeping up on him.

Suddenly he started. The hamburger! Of course! His secretary had gotten him a hamburger for lunch. He had taken two bites, then left it until he had returned from the Mannington party. Without thinking, he had finished it and the lukewarm soft drink over the last of his paperwork. That meant the meat had been sitting out for several hours!

Bryce slapped the steering wheel and laughed out loud. That was it! He had gotten some bad hamburger. Relief flooded over him like a wave. Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he slowed the car, pulled a U-turn, and headed back the way he had come, fighting the temptation to open the windows and sing something ridiculous.

And then he turned the corner.

This time the man was standing directly in the center of the road, once again in the circle of light from a streetlamp. Both hands were up, and he was smiling pleasantly into Bryce’s horrified stare.

“No!” Bryce punched his foot down on the accelerator, swung the wheel hard, and rocketed out and around the man, engine howling. He went through the next intersection at close to fifty, not even seeing the stop sign. There was a white blur off to his right, a squeal of brakes, a blare of a horn. Bryce jerked his foot off the accelerator, his eyes snapping up to the rearview mirror.

A Volkswagen convertible with a teenage boy and girl was stopped in the middle of the intersection. He had missed them by no more than inches.

Shaking violently, Bryce let the BMW roll to a stop. He shut off the engine, forcibly loosened his grip on the steering wheel, took a deep breath, then another, then cautiously lifted his eyes to the rearview mirror.

He hoped to see a man standing in the street. Mentally, he was prepared to see nothing. But nothing could have prepared him for the face that filled the mirror, grinning at him happily!

Bryce screamed, then jumped so sharply he nearly ripped the shoulder belt out of its mount. He whirled, his mouth agape, then screamed again. The man was sitting in the back seat, smiling pleasantly back at him!

“Good evening!”

At that moment Bryce’s instincts took over. He clawed wildly at the seat belt. As he felt the catch snap and the belt release him, he lunged for the door, yanking hard on the handle. It wouldn’t open. Terror drove him like a madman. The power door lock! Something in the far recesses of his mind screamed the words at him. He stabbed at the button so hard he broke a fingernail. There was no corresponding click. He hit it again and again.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bryce saw the man lean forward over the seat. “Lands a mighty, Boy!” said the deep voice. “Settle down! I’m not going to hurt you.”

Bryce raised one shoulder and heaved with his full strength against the door. Nothing! He began to hammer at the window with his fist. Somewhere in the wild haze gripping him, Bryce heard the man speak again, half to himself. “Bad choice on my part, I guess.”

Suddenly the man was standing outside the car, in the full glare of the headlights. Bryce jerked up short, staring, not comprehending. He spun around. The back seat was empty!

He whirled back around, too stunned to move. The man had one foot propped up on the bumper, hands in his coat pockets. “There, is that any better?” he said.

But Bryce had passed into one mode and one mode only, and that was escape. He cranked the ignition. Nothing! He hammered the wheel with his fists, tried it again. The engine was grinding, but there was no answering roar of power. Desperate now, he swung his feet up and started hammering at the passenger door.

“Sherwood!” the man barked sharply, “get hold of yourself!”

Bryce blinked as that registered, and his feet came to a stop.

The man peered at him through the windshield. “Good heavens, Boy. I expected surprise, but not stark terror.”

“You know my name?” Bryce whispered, barely audible.

“Of course I know your name. You think I just pop in on anyone like that?”

“Who are you?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Nathaniel Gorham.” The man waited, expectantly, then his face fell. “You don’t recognize it?”

Bryce could do no more than shake his head.

“Figures. If I’d said George Washington or Benjamin Franklin then you would have perked up. But Nathaniel Gorham? No.”

Bryce was still staring, the words only half registering.

“But my name’s right there next to theirs.”

“Right where?” Bryce echoed, still too stupefied to make sense of what the man was saying.

“At the bottom of the Constitution. Big as life, just like Ben’s and General Washington’s.”

Gorham watched him for a moment, then shook his head sadly. “Well, I can see this isn’t the time to try to talk this out. Look, Son, I’ll see you tomorrow.” And with that he lifted one hand and instantly disappeared!

Bryce looked around wildly. There was nothing. Not outside, not in. He jerked around to check the back seat. Nothing! Tentatively he reached for the keys, still looking around trying to find the man. But he was gone.

The engine caught on the first try and roared into life. But as Bryce reached for the gear lever, hand trembling violently, the power window on the driver’s side suddenly started downward. He jerked his hand away, but no part of his body was even near the switches.

“One other thing,” Gorham said into his ear.

Once again Bryce jumped sharply enough to crack his head on the ceiling. Gorham was at his window, his face not two inches from Bryce’s.

“At least you had the good sense to take that young lady home.”

“Leslie?” Bryce echoed numbly.

He nodded. “Now there’s an intelligent young woman. Has her head on straight, as you moderns would say. She’s an Adams, you know. Fifth great-granddaughter of John Quincy. He has a right to be proud.”

He noticed the look on Bryce’s face.

“Blood always tells, I say.”

And once again he was gone, leaving Bryce to stare at nothing but empty air.

It was past ten when Bryce climbed the stairs to his apartment. But instead of stopping at his door, he went up one additional flight and knocked hard on the door of apartment 5-B. He heard a muffled voice, so he hammered again. Finally the door opened a crack, hitting the chain.

“Mr. Chapman?”

“Bryce? What the…?” The door shut again, there was a brief rattle, then it opened widely to show a middle-aged, balding man in a rumpled bathrobe.

“Roy, look, I’m sorry to bother you this late. But I need to borrow an encyclopedia.”

“What?” He was staring at Bryce, not believing what he had just heard.

“An encyclopedia. You know, like the Britannica or something. Don’t you have one?”

“Of course, but…” His eyes narrowed. “Have you been drinking?”

“I don’t drink,” Bryce said curtly. “Please may I borrow the encyclopedia?”

Chapman took a breath, shaking his head. “I suppose. Which one?”

“Which one?”

“Yes, which one? Or do you want to borrow the whole set?”

“Oh. No, I…C. I need the C volume.”

Chapman nodded, shuffled away, and was back in a moment. “You can keep it until tomorrow.” He rolled his eyes.

“Thanks. Thank you very much.”

In his apartment, Bryce didn’t even sit down, just dropped his briefcase and his suit coat and started thumbing rapidly. “Constantine, Constantinople,” he murmured. “Ah, Constitution, U.S.” He skimmed quickly through the article, then suddenly stared. There it was, the list of delegates from each of the colonies. He started slowly down the list, finger pointing, hardly daring to breathe. Then very slowly he sat down, his eyes reading the names of the two delegates from Massachusetts—Rufus King and Nathaniel Gorham.

Chapman had obviously gotten back in bed, and Bryce had to bang on his door louder than before. The door opened, and there was an instant groan. “I thought I told you to—”

“I’m really sorry, Roy. But I need G, too. Could I borrow the G volume?”

And it was in there as well. Not more than a paragraph, but it was there! “Nathaniel Gorham (1738-1796). One of the original signers of the United States Constitution. Served in the Massachusetts legislature during the Revolutionary War from 1771 to 1775. Also served several terms in the Continental Congress, including a term as president of that group in 1775. Supporting a strong central government, Gorham chaired an important committee in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and was one of the instrumental figures in the drafting of that document.”

For several minutes Bryce just stared, reading it over and over, his mind whirling. Then suddenly he shut the book and walked swiftly to the desk. He found the phone book that covered Arlington County, Virginia, and turned to the A’s and started looking for the name of her street.

“Hello?”

“Leslie?” Thank heavens she had answered and not one of her parents. “This is Bryce Sherwood.”

“Bryce?” Any sleepiness in her voice was instantly dispelled.

“Yes. I’m really sorry to bother you, but—”

“What?”

Any guilt was swallowed up in the urgency of his quest. “Leslie, this is going to sound stupid, but I need to ask you something.”

There was a long pause, then a very tentative “All right.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be…“ Suddenly the absurdity of what he was doing hit him, and he let out his breath in a little self-deprecating laugh. “You’re really going to think this is strange.”

“I’m listening. Go ahead.”

“Well,” he said lamely, “I was thinking about your name on the way home. You wouldn’t happen to be a descendant of John Quincy Adams, would you?”

If the first pause was a long one, this one went on for what seemed like the rest of the summer. “Yes,” she said, finally. “Why?”

“Do you happen to know what the relationship is?”

“Yes, he is my fifth great-grandfather. But why?”

“Well,” he said, feeling suddenly very cold again. “I just suddenly got to wondering about it. I…Thank you very much, Leslie. Sorry I bothered you.”

“Is that all?” There was no mistaking the perplexed tone.

“Uh…yeah. See you Friday night.” He hung up the phone gently and turned to stare at the encyclopedia opened up on the couch in front of him.

Chapter 5

Bryce made one last swipe with the razor, ignoring the bloodshot eyes that stared back at him from the mirror, then glanced at his watch. It was already a minute past seven o’clock. He grabbed a towel and moved quickly into the living room of his apartment and turned on the television. The pleasant voice of the host of “Good Morning, America” came on immediately. Bryce watched for a moment, wiping the last of the shaving cream off his face, then moved back into his bedroom and finished dressing. The brief news summary carried a one-line item on the passage of the Hawkes/Larkin bill, but he only half listened to the other news, the weather, and the stock-market reports.

Several times his face pulled into a frown as his mind jumped back to the bizarre happenings of the previous night, but each time he thrust the thoughts away quickly. He would try to sort out that experience when he had some quiet moments.

He walked into the kitchen as the show’s host began to introduce their first special guest, the star of a controversial television series. He screened out the inane chatter as he got a glass of orange juice, a bowl of “Total,” and a piece of toast.

As they took another commercial break, Bryce rose and took his dishes to the sink. He stopped long enough to jot a note or two on a pad. The senator had a speech to give to the Washington Press Club tomorrow, and he was mulling some phrases over in his head. By the time the advertisements had finished and the voice of the host came back on, Bryce was in brushing his teeth in the bathroom, only half listening again now, his mind already practicing some of the phrases to see how they felt. He reached for a glass and turned on the water.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the affable host of the show was saying, “in our news summary, we heard about yesterday’s significant Senate victory on the Hawkes/Larkin bill.”

Bryce shut off the tap, took a swallow of water from the glass and began to rinse out his mouth.

“Our next guest will have to do with that Senate action yesterday.”

Curious, Bryce stopped, cocking one ear.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to our studio a very special guest. Here by special permission of the Council of Founding Fathers is Mr. Nathaniel Gorham, one of the original signers of the Constitution of the United States.”

The glass slipped from Bryce’s fingers and hit the washbasin with a crash, spraying the front of his shirt and pants with water and glass.

Bryce crossed his bed in two great leaps, lost his balance as he hit the floor, and slid into the chest of drawers, cracking his shin hard against the corner. With a yelp of pain, he grabbed his leg and half hopping, half hobbling made it into the living room. He stopped, staring, then slowly sank down onto the couch. The nightmare was starting all over again.

There on the screen, sitting in the same chair the movie starlet had occupied a few minutes previously, was Nathaniel Gorham. And the host of “Good Morning, America” sat across from him, relaxed and smiling, as though having someone from eighteenth-century colonial America was not in the least bit out of the ordinary.

“Mr. Gorham, welcome to our show. It is indeed a privilege for us to have you here.”

“Thank you.” Gorham looked around. “So this is how they do this television thing? Amazing, just amazing!”

There was no mistaking it. It was the same deep voice, the same thin face and sharp angular features, the same piercing dark eyes that had confronted Bryce last night. And the costume—it looked totally authentic. His shirt was ruffled at the throat and sleeves, the coat black and long enough that if he were standing it would come to mid thigh. His pants, also black, ended at the knee. White stockings and buckle shoes completed the outfit. The only difference was the hair. Last night it had been loose and shoulder length. Now it was pulled back tightly from his face and fastened in a bun at the nape of his neck.

Once again Bryce’s mind was tumbling like a rubber ball down a coal chute. There had to be an explanation. He clenched his fists, feeling the edge of madness pressing in on him again. He forced his mind away from it, concentrating on the television set before him.

“Tell us more about this Council of the Founding Fathers,” the host was saying.

Gorham readjusted himself slightly, then nodded thoughtfully. “Well, all of us who were privileged to have had a part in the forming of this great country still get together on a regular basis.”

“In the world of spirits?” the host broke in.

“Well, I suppose you could call it that. We prefer to think of it as the adjoining sphere.”

“Could you name some of those on the council?”

“Well, there are all of the names you would recognize—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Tom Paine, Paul Revere. There are over three hundred of us, actually. I wish all were as well known to this generation as the others. Every one played a part—along with thousands of others whose names are not in any history books.”

The host of “Good Morning, America” nodded thoughtfully. “We are most interested in hearing more about what this great council of yours does, Mr. Gorham. But first let’s take a commercial break.” He looked straight into the camera. “Stay right with us, we’ll be back in a moment.”

Bryce leaped to his feet as an idea struck him. Last night, in the encyclopedia, as he had been looking for Gorham’s name, there had been a full-color picture of the signing of the Constitution, the famous one—he couldn’t think of the artist—that hung in the Capitol building. He looked around, saw the book on the desk where he had dropped it the night before, and limped over to get it. He turned quickly, found the heading for the Constitution, then turned more slowly. There it was. Painted by Howard Chandler Christy. And below it, as he had remembered, was the little sketch that gave the key to the forty or so figures in the painting.

Bryce ran his finger down the names quickly, passing over George Washington’s and Ben Franklin’s. Then he saw it. Number twenty-two! Nathaniel Gorham. It was the man on the far left, nearly out of the picture. With his pulse suddenly pounding, he forced his eyes up to the copy of the painting. There was a involuntary gasp, then Bryce let the book down slowly until it sat on the desk.

One could dress in costume, and a television studio could bring on an actor posing as one of the founding fathers as a gimmick. But could they make him into the same man as the picture in the encyclopedia?

Suddenly he had another idea. He moved quickly to the television, turned on the video recorder, and checked to see if it had a tape in it. If there was some evidence, something to show to others, then he could validate his sanity. He punched the buttons and started the tape rolling, just as the host’s cheerful face reappeared on the screen.

“Once again, ladies and gentlemen, we have in the studio with us, Mr. Nathaniel Gorham, one of the original delegates to the Constitutional Convention held in 1787. Mr. Gorham, tell us why this group you call the Council of the Founding Fathers has sent you to visit the twentieth century.”

Bryce leaned forward, listening intently.

Gorham grew very serious. “Well, the primary reason is that we are still very much interested in what you people are doing with the nation we gave you.”

“And is the council pleased?”

“With some things, most definitely. You have come to greatness in so many ways.”

“But in other things…?” he prompted.

“We see some things that are deeply alarming.”

“Such as?”

“Well, just let me give you one example. When we drafted the Constitution, we went to great lengths to provide a set of checks and balances between the three branches of government. That was the only way we saw to create a strong central government and yet still keep it from becoming a tyranny. Yet today, you have created numerous so-called government agencies that violate this system of checks and balances.”

“In what way?”

“You’ve given some of these agencies not only the power to make laws, but also to adjudicate and enforce them. In other words, some of these agencies now have administrative power, judicial power, and legislative power all under one head.”

Gorham’s voice was rising in intensity. “And what is worse, these agencies are under the direction of people who are appointed officials. They are not elected by the people!”

The horror was so evident on his face that the host smiled. “Well, there are certainly plenty of people who would agree with you on that. And this new amendment that passed the Senate yesterday? A lot of people are saying that this will return government back to the people. How do you feel about that?”

Gorham smashed his fist down against the arm of his chair, startling even the host. “That is a damnable bill!” he roared. “Damnable! It cannot be passed. It threatens the very heart of the freedoms we fought for. You may as well gut the whole Constitution, for it breaks down the check-and-balance system almost completely. How can you have a strong president if he can be tossed out of office at every whim? And how can the Congress function without set terms of office? Already your senators and congressmen are so worried about winning the next election, they can hardly function. This amendment will put that completely in shambles!”

The camera had moved in tight on Gorham now. He leaned forward and peered into the lens. Bryce felt a sudden chill, as though Gorham were looking directly at him. “We gave the best blood of our generation to win liberty for ourselves and our posterity. Would you throw it away so cheaply? And with the very instrument we gave you to protect it? How can you be so blind?”

“Okay, Bryce, what is it you want me to see?” Senator Hawkes settled into the chair across from Bryce’s desk.

Bryce got up and walked to the cabinet and opened it up. He turned on both the television and the video recorder. “It’s only about a three-minute clip.”

He hit the play button then returned to his seat. The recorder clicked and whirred; then settled into a low hum, but the television screen was filled with snowy whiteness.

Bryce waited a moment or two, then got up and returned to the cabinet. He pressed the fast-forward button. He could hear the recorder respond, but still no picture appeared. “Hmmm. I thought it was right there.” He hit the stop button, then ejected the cassette. It was at the beginning, exactly as he had rewound it before he had left his apartment. He put it back in and fastforwarded it for a moment, then hit the play button again. But still there was nothing but a blank screen.

“Maybe it’s further in,” the senator suggested helpfully.

Grimly, Bryce leaned on the fast-forward button again, a sense of foreboding coming over him. Suddenly the screen filled with images, and he let off the button, stepping back.

The tape slowed to show a sleek Mercedes Benz sports coupe racing through the Swiss Alps. Bryce stabbed at the buttons and the tape stopped.

Bryce turned slowly, somehow not really surprised. “I guess I lost it.”

“Well, at least you got the commercial,” Hawkes said with a laugh. Then sensing Bryce’s disappointment, he added, more kindly, “What was it?”

“An interview on ‘Good Morning, America’.”

“You mean Michaelson?”

Bryce blinked. “Who?”

“Michaelson.”

Bryce was still uncomprehending, and Hawkes gave him an odd look.

“Representative Michaelson, Republican Representative Howard Michaelson, from Oregon. Our most vocal opponent in the House.”

“Oh, that Michaelson.” Bryce was groping wildly.

“Yes, they did a quick interview with him on the show this morning. Didn’t you see it?”

“I…I must have bumped channels or something. I didn’t see Michaelson. I must have recorded something else.”

“What?”

Bryce let out his breath slowly, shaking his head, feeling as though the ground were swirling around him. “I don’t know exactly who it was. Somebody talking about the Constitution.”

“And?”

“And…well, he made a point or two that could harm us. I…I wanted you to see it,” Bryce finished lamely. “See what you thought.”

“Hmmm. Too bad you lost it.” For a moment, Hawkes gave him that shrewd, appraising look that Bryce knew so well, then finally shook his head and moved to the door. “Why don’t you write me a summary of what it was?”

As the senator shut the door, Bryce once again walked to the cabinet and started the recorder. He rewound it to the beginning then stared at the blank screen as the whole thing replayed through to the point where the commercial appeared. Then he sat down slowly and stared out the window at the nation’s capitol.

Chapter 6

Bryce leaned forward in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck slowly as he stared at the computer screen, rereading the concluding lines of the speech he had just written. He nodded in satisfaction. It was good. Good enough to give to the senator for his review in the morning.

In fact, it had been a good three hours—not only because he was pleased with the product, but also because it had kept his mind occupied with something besides Nathaniel Gorham. He raised his hands to the keyboard again, typed in the commands for filing the document, shut the computer off, and stood up. The building was quiet now. It was nearly six, and the rest of the staff had left over an hour ago. He liked this time of night best. No phones, no constituents dropping in with this or that request, no media people pressing for information.

At that moment the phone in his secretary’s office started to ring. He grabbed his phone and pushed the line that was blinking. “Senator Hawkes’s office.”

“Yes, is Mr. Sherwood there?”

It was a feminine voice, pleasant, with just a trace of huskiness to it. His mind raced, trying to place it. “This is Mr. Sherwood.”

“Oh, hello. This is Leslie Adams.”

Of course. He smiled. “Well, hello. This is a surprise.”

Slight hesitation. “I didn’t know if you’d still be in the office or not.”

“Just finishing up.”

“I see. Well, I…”

There was a short pause, and he sensed what was coming.

“I’m sorry, but a problem has come up with Friday night.”

“Oh?”

“There’s been a meeting called. I have to be there. I really am sorry.”

“I see.”

“Perhaps some other time.”

It had been a long and frustrating day. And playing games had long ago ceased to interest him. He took a breath. “Look, Leslie, I’ll tell you what. We’ve both been out of high school for a while now, so let me ask you straight out. Do you really mean that about some other time, or is that just a polite way of saying, ‘I’d really rather skip it’?”

There was a soft intake of breath, a pause, then finally she laughed. “That is the straightest talk I have ever heard from a politician.”

He smiled back, softening a little. “And that non-answer makes you as good as any politician I’ve ever heard.”

“No evasion, I was just a little bit taken aback by your question.”

“So?” he pressed.

“Well, I would have to admit that I am a little nervous about the coming duel, as you call it, but no, this is not a polite brushoff. I really do have a meeting that’s just been called, and I really do have to be there.” There was a brief pause. “And I really would like to do it some other time.”

“How about tonight?” he asked bluntly.

Silence.

He relented a little, feeling a twinge of guilt for his abruptness. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s been kind of a crazy day here. Why don’t I just call you sometime.”

“Could you give me an hour?”

Now he was the one caught by surprise. “What?” he finally managed to say.

“I promised Frank—the president of our group—that I’d finish a project for him, but I can be finished in an hour.”

“You’re serious?” he asked, more pleased than he had expected to be.

“Why not? You keep slamming these stinging serves into my court. So I’m returning one. Did you really mean it about tonight, or was that just an attempt to call my bluff?”

“I really meant it.”

“Then I accept.”

“Great! Do you like Chinese, Mexican, or Italian food?”

“Mexican,” she said without hesitation.

“Wow!”

“Wow what?”

“Thank you for not saying, ‘It doesn’t really matter to me, Bryce, whatever you like.’ That is refreshing honesty for a change.”

“Ah, the heavy burdens of the single male.” There was just the tiniest trace of tartness in her voice.

“Sorry, I was trying to compliment your honesty.”

“And I’m sorry. I tend to bristle too easily.”

“Probably a good characteristic in a duel.”

She laughed.

“So, seven o’clock then?”

“Fine. Do you know where the Cooper Building is on Third Street?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be out front.”

“Great, I’ll see you then.”

Bryce watched the six o’clock news and was relieved that there were no surprises. No weird stuff. And in fact, the reports on the passage of the proposed amendment were overall very favorable. Several polls were showing a 65 percent approval rate from the people.

Just as the news was finishing, the phone rang again, this time on his private line.

“This is Bryce.”

“Bryce, Elliot Mannington.”

“Oh, hello.”

“Listen, I’ve just got a minute. I’m glad I caught you. The full board met this morning. Your appointment is finalized.”

“Great!”

“I talked to Senator Hawkes a few minutes ago and gave him the news.”

“Oh.” Bryce felt a stab of disappointment. Senator Hawkes had been very good to Bryce Sherwood, and he had wanted to tell him personally, break it as gently as he could.

“He was disappointed, of course, but he’s pleased for you. Can we meet sometime tomorrow, start working out the details of the transfer?”

“Sure.”

“Shall we say three-thirty at my office?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good. See you then.” And he hung up.

It was a quarter to seven when Bryce straightened the papers on his desk, stood, and put on his coat. He checked to make sure everything was off, then started out. He made it to the doorway of the outer office when he suddenly froze in midstride. He turned back slowly, feeling the hair on the back of his neck start to rise. The sharp click from inside his office had been unmistakable. Now he jumped, his eyes widening as a new set of sounds came clearly from his doorway. There was no mistaking what it was. The combination of buzzes, beeps, and hums was as familiar to him as the sounds of his BMW. It was his computer booting up!

In one instant he grabbed an umbrella that hung on a coat rack behind the secretary’s desk, and lunged toward the door, the umbrella poised to strike. There was a sharp crash as the door flew back and hit the wall, then Bryce pulled up short, dumbfounded.

The office was empty! It was still full daylight, and Bryce’s chair and computer were fully bathed in the last rays of the sun. No one was there!

He whirled around, jerked the door back, and looked behind it. Nothing!

Then suddenly he jumped, nearly dropping the umbrella. The keyboard started to click! Someone was typing, slowly, almost hesitantly. In one leap he was on the other side of the desk, his umbrella-sword pointed at the space beneath his desk—the only place left where a person could escape detection. Nothing!

Bryce lowered the umbrella slowly, chills racing up and down his back, his breath coming heavily as he stared at the computer terminal. The cursor was blinking steadily on a new line. Directly above it were the words, HELLO, BRYCE SHERWOOD.

Then, even as he stared, there was a distinct click, and on the screen the letter “T” appeared.

Bryce clutched at the umbrella, raising it like a ball bat, and took one step toward the computer. Then the “H” key clicked down and up. He stopped, too shocked to move further, and watched as slowly but inexorably one key after another clicked and the letters appeared on the screen.

T-H-I-S B-E-A-T-S A Q-U-I-L-L A-N-D A-N I-N-K-W-E-L-L-!

No! It couldn’t be! He tossed the umbrella on the desk and leaned over the keyboard, his mouth tight. He was a competent typist and his fingers fairly flew.

W-H-O A-R-E Y-O-U-?

There was a two- or three-second pause and then a key clicked. Once again, slowly, as though each key had to be sought for, the next line began to fill.

W-E-L-L-, I-T I-S-N-’-T B-E-N F-R-A-N-K-L-I-N-.

Bryce stared, then fell back two steps. There over the keyboard, looking almost like flecks of dust in the sunlight at first, but gradually forming, appeared two hands. At first totally transparent, they quickly took on form and shape. They were big and well worn, the knuckles gnarled and scarred. The fingers were searching back and forth, then suddenly stabbed at a key, then another. Now wrists began to materialize, then black sleeves and white ruffles protruded from them, and finally the rest of the body formed rapidly—the broad shoulders, the finely cut head with the nose sharp and aquiline in profile.

Bryce sank slowly into a side chair as Nathaniel Gorham finished typing and peered at the screen. He gave an audible grunt of satisfaction, then turned to look for Bryce. When he saw the look on Bryce’s face, his eyes widened.

“Oh,” he said, a bit startled. He looked at his hands, then down at his feet, which were just becoming fully visible now. Finally, he turned back to Bryce. “Well, judging from your expression, I guess you can see me now, huh?”

It didn’t register. Bryce just continued to gape at him, his jaw slack.

Gorham’s heavy eyebrows narrowed. “Look, I know this all comes a little hard for you, but the sooner you start accepting what your eyes are telling you, the sooner we can get on with this.”

“On with what?” Bryce finally managed.

“With getting this amendment thing put to rest.”

“The amendment?” Bryce echoed.

“Of course. You think I came down just to play with your writing machine?”

“Are you…Are you really Nathaniel Gorham?”

“Of course. You think I’d make up a name like that?”

“And…” Bryce let his breath out slowly, still fighting off the dreamlike quality of what was happening. “And you really are from…the seventeen hundreds?”

“Absolutely.” He peered at Bryce closely. “So now what? Are you ready to talk?”

Bryce rubbed his eyes, still dazed. “Am I really supposed to just sit here and accept the fact that I’m talking with a ghost?”

Gorham winced. “Please! Not ghost. I mean, really, that word has such ridiculous connotations.”

“Then what?” Bryce burst out, the frustration suddenly boiling over. “Spirit? Specter? Spook?” He laughed, a bit more wildly than he had intended.

“Are you about through?” Gorham said dryly.

“Or, how about goblin? Or…or boogeyman?”

“How about human being?” Gorham asked quietly.

That brought Bryce up short, and the twisted smile slowly disappeared.

“I’m no different than you,” Gorham went on softly, “except for the fact that you still inhabit your mortal body and mine lies in a churchyard in Massachusetts.”

Once again Bryce felt the rush of madness rising. “Why are you here?” he finally whispered.

“The Council of the Founding Fathers sent me. I was chosen because you’re from Massachusetts, and I was a delegate from that state.”

“But why? Why me?”

“I told you. The Council of Founding Fathers is deeply concerned about this amendment you and the senator rammed through the Senate yesterday.”

Gorham began to pace, obviously getting agitated. “It’s foolish business, Boy, foolish! We couldn’t just stand by and let you throw away all we worked for.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

That caught the older man in midstride. He turned back, puzzled. “What question?”

“Why me? If this is really happening, why did you come to me? Why not to Senator Hawkes, or the president of the United States for that matter?” He shook his head. “Or if you really wanted to change things, why not appear during a full session of the Senate?”

Gorham nodded. “Good question. There are two reasons, actually. The first is simple. The Council of Founding Fathers is not allowed to interfere directly in the events of your world. To appear directly to the president or to try scare the Senate into a different vote is much too direct.”

Bryce threw up his hands. “And this isn’t!” he cried.

“Not in the same way. But the second reason is as important as the first.”

“What?”

Gorham suddenly reached into a vest pocket and pulled out a pocket watch. “But I believe you’ve got to be meeting Miss Adams for dinner. I—”

Bryce started. For some obscure reason, his date with Leslie had completely slipped his mind. He glanced at his watch. It was eight minutes to seven.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Gorham said, putting his watch away. “Then we can really talk.”

He started to fade rapidly, to the point that Bryce could see things starting to appear through him.

“Wait!” he cried.

The fading halted, and Gorham’s quizzical look was barely discernible in the dimming light of the office.

“What is the second reason?”

“You are more important than you think in this whole thing,” Gorham said quietly. “The council sent me to see if I could change your mind.”

Bryce gave a bark of derisive laughter. “You came to a senator’s aide to try to change the course of American history?” Bryce laughed again, a hollow sound without mirth. “Boy, do I have some bad news for you.”

Gorham didn’t smile. “Don’t underestimate yourself, Son. Even though they were just trying to flatter you last night, what Mannington and Jennings said was true. You do have great potential.”

Bryce’s head came up sharply. “You know about that?”

“Of course. That’s what finally convinced us we had to do something.” He smiled faintly at the dazed look on Bryce’s face. “But in spite of their motives for doing so, what they were telling you was the Lord’s truth, Lad. You’re at a pivotal spot.”

When Bryce just stared back at him—or through him—he smiled again. “Well, don’t you keep Miss Adams waiting. She doesn’t know it, but she’s on my side. Listen to her. She’s got some good common horse sense. And we’ll talk some more tomorrow.”

And with that Gorham was gone, leaving Bryce to stare into the empty air where he had been just moments before.

Chapter 7

Still churning from his encounter with Nathaniel Gorham, Bryce swung over to Third Street and found Leslie waiting for him at the curb. She was wearing a dress of soft floral pastels and a pale pink linen blazer. Bryce caught an envious look from a passing male as he helped her into the car.

She seemed genuinely pleased to see him, and as they drove south out of the city and along the Potomac, they kept the conversation easy and filled with lighthearted banter. Bryce felt the tension slowly melting away, and he realized that he was finding the company of this crusading young volunteer very pleasant medicine.

The Casa del Sol was a small Mexican restaurant tucked off one of the main streets of Alexandria, Virginia. It wasn’t long on decor, but the two olive-skinned brothers from Guatemala played authentic Central American music, and the food beat anything Bryce had found between D.C. and Boston.

Dinner was pleasant, and Leslie seemed to enjoy both the music and the food. Now as Bryce watched her, he noted how the pale pink of her blazer set off the tanned skin and wide, green eyes. That, added to the dark hair that framed her face, made the overall effect very nice indeed. Washington had a considerable number of lovely women, and at twenty-seven, Bryce had dated his share of them. But while there were some who might outdo Leslie in sheer beauty, Bryce couldn’t remember one that had drawn his approval quite so readily. There was an openness, a frank earnestness about her that he found even more attractive than her physical beauty.

She looked up suddenly, catching him, and cocked her head, her eyebrows rising quizzically.

“Would you like some fried ice cream?” he said quickly, to cover himself.

“Fried ice cream?” she echoed, pulling a face.

He nodded. “Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. It’s great stuff. What they do is take a ball of ice cream, dip it in a caramel sauce, roll it in some kind of crunchy stuff, then put it in a deepfried pastry shell. It really is good.”

She hesitated only for a moment. “All right, I’ll take your word for it.”

Bryce beckoned for the waitress, chalking up another point in Leslie’s favor. One of the things that irked him most about women he dated was when they went to great lengths to let him know they had offered all on the altar to the great God of Slenderness. Nothing deterred these worshippers—not social etiquette, not the risk of offending a hostess who had labored for hours preparing a meal. They shrank in horror from anything with more than three and a half calories per ton, and watched him with sad, mournful eyes, daring him to be so insensitive as to eat as if there were no Bathroom Scales awaiting him at the judgment. When Leslie had hesitated, he had expected more of the same, and it pleased him greatly that she had surprised him.

Again he suddenly realized she had caught him watching her and was returning his gaze with questioning eyes. He smiled and looked away, then looked back in time to see a smile start to play around the corner of her eyes. “Is all this being nice to me an initial feint to throw me off guard before the duel begins?”

“Absolutely,” he said in mock seriousness. “Want to eat your fried ice cream before I unsheathe the swords?”

She laughed lightly. “The condemned is given a hearty meal, right?”

“Exactly!”

At that moment, the waitress reappeared with their order. He fell silent until she left, then nodded toward the ball of ice cream. “You first.”

Picking up her spoon, she took a bite, then smiled. “Ummm. That really is good.”

“Great, another convert.” He picked up his spoon and they ate in silence for a few moments. He finally spoke without looking up. “So how did you ever come to be a high-school teacher?”

“My father teaches history at George Washington University. From the time we were little, he took us to every major historical site along the eastern seaboard. I grew up loving history.”

“And is high school just a stepping stone to a college professorship some day?”

Her eyes widened slightly at his perceptiveness. “Well, at first that was my plan. I was sure I would hate dealing with teenagers—I mean all the horror stories you hear about what goes on in the classroom.”

“I heard that’s where the nuclear arms race first started.”

She smiled. “I guess that’s true of some of the inner-city schools, but not at Arlington.”

“And now? Have you changed your mind?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just finishing a master’s degree at Georgetown. I’d like to go on for a doctorate. Right now I find the high-school age exciting. Their minds are so pliable.”

“So’s Play Doh,” Bryce remarked dryly.

She tossed back her head and laughed. “Are you really that cynical about today’s youth? It isn’t that long ago that you were one of them.”

He pulled a face. “Actually, I had to speak at a high school once not long ago. Covered an assignment for Senator Hawkes. I found the kids as a whole loud, obnoxious, overdressed, growing up too fast with too much. And yet they were also bright, articulate, full of so much potential. Somehow it was exhilarating and depressing all at once.”

She nodded soberly. “The permissiveness of this generation is creating numerous tragedies, but I find it more exhilarating than depressing to think that I might shape and mold those minds.”

For some reason, at that moment, the image of Nathaniel Gorham popped into Bryce’s mind. He frowned slightly, playing absently with his ice cream. “And so, do you teach those pliable young minds that the Constitution is the answer to all of our national dilemmas?”

She rocked back slightly, taken by surprise. Finally she forced a small smile. “Did I just detect the launch of the first strike?”

He pulled a face, cursing himself. He had spent the night steering the conversation safely through the mine fields; then, without thinking, he had opened up with a broadside salvo when she was least expecting it.

He tried to cover it with a smile. “Sorry, I lost my head there for a moment.”

But there was no answering smile. She was silent for several seconds, then nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact that is what I try to teach them. Guilty as charged.”

Mentally kicking himself, Bryce searched for a way to rectify the damage, but she wasn’t about to sit dead in the water waiting for him to fire again.

“I guess it is a little disconcerting,” she said evenly, “for you and the Committee on Constitutional Reform to have young people who value this country and who understand what made it strong. That will certainly make your task more difficult.”

Bryce gave her a long searching look, knowing that there was little choice left now but to answer. “And you don’t see any danger in that? I mean, treating the Constitution with this sense of reverential awe?”

“No,” she replied, with just a touch of barb in her own voice. “I think the danger lies with those who view their own wisdom with reverential awe.”

“Look,” he said, trying to keep his voice light, “I have as much respect for the Founding Fathers as you do, but I don’t think we honor them by blindly accepting the Constitution as though it were the Ark of the Covenant or the tablets from Sinai.”

Bryce had cut his teeth on debate, and in spite of his previous resolve he found himself being drawn into it. “Leslie,” he said, “we’re no longer talking about a collection of small, rural colonies that were protected by two oceans. We’re part of a worldwide community that is interdependent economically, socially, and militarily. The farmer in Montana or the steel worker in Pittsburgh can be as profoundly affected by Japan’s economic policies as they can by a decision of Congress.”

“Not nearly as profoundly as they will be if they lose their Constitutional freedoms!”

“We are not talking about losing Constitutional freedoms!” he burst out. “All we are trying to do is make a very large and unwieldy government more responsive to the voice of the people.”

“Now you sound like a recording of Elliot Mannington the Third,” she said quietly.

It hit home and he instantly bristled. “Why is it all you pulpit thumpers insist that you’re the only ones who love the Constitution? I love America as deeply as you do.” Nathaniel Gorham’s face flashed before him again. “And I think I love it every bit as much as the Founding Fathers.”

He sat back, a little surprised at his own intensity. Leslie’s eyes had dropped, and she studied her hands carefully. Finally, she set down her spoon. “It’s been a lovely evening,” she said, voice low. “I guess it’s time to go.”

Bryce took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Leslie, look, I…”

She looked up at him, her eyes unreadable.

“I apologize. That remark about pulpit thumpers was totally out of line.”

“It was no more out of line than my comment about Elliot Mannington. I’m sorry too.”

He forced a smile. “What say we put away the swords and sign a truce, at least for tonight?”

She smiled faintly. “Where’s the pen?”

But the damage had been done. They finished their dessert pretty much in silence, and though the ride home was pleasant enough, the earlier warmth was gone, and the barriers were clearly back in place.

When he let her off at her house his nerve failed him, and his previous determination to try to set another date with her faltered. He drove home slowly, his mind alternating between self-recriminations for blowing it with Leslie and the depressing realization that tomorrow he had to face additional visits from one Nathaniel Gorham, whose body lay somewhere in a graveyard in Massachusetts.

Chapter 8

Even though it was barely 7:00 A.M., someone was already at the bank using the automatic teller machine, so Bryce shut off the BMW’s engine, stepped out of the car, and leaned back against the fender. It was going to be another scorcher in the nation’s capital—it was already getting uncomfortably warm, and the humidity was rapidly becoming oppressive.

The woman at the machine, a slender, well-dressed young brunette, finished her transaction and returned to her car. Bryce watched her, absently comparing her to Leslie. He shook his head in sudden irritation and moved to the machine. What was it about Leslie that he couldn’t shake her out of his thoughts?

He inserted his card and punched in the code number without thinking. Suddenly he started. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that a man in a business suit had come up behind him. Bryce moved his body slightly so the man couldn’t watch the screen, a little annoyed. ATM etiquette called for standing back a polite distance while another completed a transaction.

Punching in the amount on the keypad, he asked for a hundred dollars, then waited. There was a soft whir, then the machine started clicking out the five twenties.

“Well I’ll be a two-legged stool!”

Bryce whirled, then groaned.

“How’d you do that?” Gorham demanded, staring at the money.

“Gorham?” Bryce blurted, unable to believe his eyes. “Is that really you?” The face was unmistakable, with the sharp, angular features, the hooked nose. But what a transformation! Threepiece gray pinstripe business suit, maroon handkerchief in the pocket, gray and maroon tie, gleaming black wing-tipped shoes, hair short and neatly trimmed, expensive-looking steel-rimmed bifocals. He could have walked through any corporate boardroom in America and never raised an eyebrow.

He looked down at himself, then smiled primly. “Judging from the expression on your face, I guess I look okay.”

Bryce just nodded slowly, still eyeing him up and down.

Gorham stepped forward and peered at the machine, leaned over, tried to see where the money had come from, all the time shaking his head. “Incredible,” he mumbled softly. “Absolutely incredible.”

Suddenly Bryce’s irritation was back. “Can’t you just leave me alone? Why don’t you go haunt the IRS or something?”

The gray eyes narrowed slightly as Gorham straightened. “You know, Sherwood, sometimes you can be an insolent pup. My patience is starting to wear a little thin.”

“Your patience is wearing thin! What about mine?”

“I’m not here to keep your patience intact!” he shot back. “I’ve tried the gradual approach, tried to let you get used to the idea of me. And all you do is moan and complain.” His eyes narrowed. “But I’m through, Lad. This is serious business I’ve come on, and it’s time we talk.”

Bryce looked around quickly. Then he turned back, his voice a low growl. “I don’t want to talk to you. Especially not here.”

“Fine,” Gorham snapped. “I’ll see you at the office.” He raised a hand, one finger up, as though he were hailing a taxi. Then he was gone.

“Wait!” Bryce looked around wildly, suddenly picturing the results of having Gorham show up in Senator Hawkes’s office. “Come back!”

“What?”

He jerked around. Gorham was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, arm resting comfortably out the window.

Bryce sighed. “All right. You win.”

“Good. I’ll ride as far as the Capitol with you.”

Muttering angrily, Bryce collected his money, stabbed at the keypad, waited for his receipt, then stalked to the car.

“That would sure make life a whole lot easier,” Gorham said slowly as Bryce got in beside him.

“What?”

“Having your own money machine.”

Bryce stared at him, then suddenly roared with laughter.

Gorham looked surprised, then instantly his mouth tightened. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Bryce said, trying to hold it in. “Just welcome to the twentieth century.”

“Well, so much for the twentieth century.”

Bryce looked over at his traveling companion to see what had drawn the comment. They were moving slowly, one of the tens of thousands of cars carrying the army of federal workers to their battle stations in the central city. There was an occasional honk, and now and then someone would spurt forward, cutting in and out, trying to pick up a space or two in the traffic jam, but for the most part the drivers were docile and patiently inched forward at a stop-and-go pace.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

Gorham swung his head to look back on the long lines of cars. “I could drive my wagon from Boston to New York faster than this.”

“It’s only like this at rush hours.” Gorham snorted. “I’ve seen your so-called freeways. What an ironic name that is! I don’t know what hell is like, but I would think that New York City at five o’clock is enough to make any sinner totally repentant.”

Bryce chuckled. “Except for about eight million New Yorkers.”

“You think the twentieth century is so hot?” Gorham pushed on, obviously still smarting from Bryce’s comment fifteen minutes earlier. “Well, you can have all your fancy little gadgets and your money machines. You’re the instant-on, instant-off generation. Everything’s got to be fast for you people.” He lifted his hand in disgust, waving at the sea of cars around them. “I guess it’s only right that this is where it all gets you.”

There were several seconds of silence as Bryce, sobered, considered that. Then his curiosity got the better of him. “So you watch us?”

There was no response, and he decided to push it a little. “What do you do up there?”

“What makes you think it’s up?”

That startled him. “You mean it’s not?”

“You’ll find out for yourself, soon as not.”

Bryce’s head snapped up. Gorham ignored his questioning look, but Bryce wasn’t about to let that pass. “Do you know how soon…I mean, do you know when I’m coming up—uh,… or over, or whatever it is?”

There was a faint smile. “Don’t know when. But you are, sometime, sure as Molly’s cow gives white milk.”

Bryce relaxed, feeling a little ridiculous for the sudden rush of fear that had grabbed him.

“Now,” Gorham said, “let’s get on with what I’m here to talk about.”

“The amendment,” Bryce said flatly, feeling any enthusiasm go out of him.

“That’s right. Why is it you can’t see the long-range implications of what you’re about?”

“I guess for the same reason you can’t see that the document you drafted, good as it was for your time, needs some revision.”

“Ah, yes,” Gorham drawled sarcastically. “My time. Tell me again how wonderfully advanced you people are, how far you’ve come since we simple folk inhabited the earth.”

Bryce flushed a little. “I’m not saying you were simple, but can you really sit there and tell me that the age of the musket and the bayonet is the same as the age of thermonuclear weapons and the B-1 bomber?”

“Now you’re being asinine. You know I’m not saying that.”

“Well, then. Our society faces a set of challenges that are much different than the ones your generation faced.”

“No question about that,” Gorham said tartly. “I mean, all we had to do was try to keep people free and happy, see that they had good honest work to do, tame a continent, fight off a big superpower that was trying to colonize the world. Nothing really unique like your generation faces.”

“All right, all right!” Bryce cut in. “I get the point.”

“Do you?” Gorham retorted, peering at him. “Every generation has tended to look on the past with an air of condescension. I call it historical snobbery, and your generation is smitten with one of the worst cases ever.”

Bryce had no answer for that.

Gorham stopped, shaking his head. “Good land, Boy, are you really that naive? Can’t you see that the real question isn’t whether it’s bombs versus muskets or wagons versus automobiles? It still comes down to more basic things like people’s right to life, to liberty, and to peacefully enjoy the fruits of their labor.”

They were moving into the city now, and Bryce slowed to a stop as the light turned red and pedestrians streamed across the walk in front of them. He glanced at them, then at Gorham, then solemnly put his hand over his heart. “Amen, Brother!”

Gorham’s mouth tightened into a hard line.

“Well,” Bryce said, as the light changed and the sports car accelerated smoothly again, “isn’t that what I’m supposed to do when I hear the words, ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’? Come on, Gorham! You know this amendment does not take away those basic human rights. Not in the least.” Gorham gave him a long, searching look, then finally said quietly, “And that is where you are wrong, my young and very foolish friend.”

“No!” Bryce retorted sharply, suddenly tired of it all. “That’s where you’re wrong. Regular elections and a congress and president hammering out national policy were fine when there were thirteen colonies and a population of less than five million. You haven’t seen the docks of Boston lined up with acres of Toyotas and Hondas. You haven’t walked through the empty steel mills of Pittsburgh.”

He threw up his hands. “You accuse me of being narrow minded. Well, maybe it’s time you opened your eyes, Mr. Colonial America. Maybe it’s time this tired old democracy you created got a new shot of adrenalin.”

“We didn’t create a democracy,” Gorham said softly.

That cut Bryce’s next sentence off before he even started it. His mouth opened, then clamped tight again.

Gorham just shook his head, sadly and with infinite weariness. “You still can’t see it, can you?”

“All right, so you created a republic and not a democracy. It still is supposed to represent the voice of the people.”

“Do you really understand the difference between a republic and a democracy?”

“Yes,” Bryce snapped right back. “First class in law school, thank you.” He lifted his voice, as though reciting. “In a democracy, authority is derived directly from the masses, through mass meetings or other forms of ‘direct’ expression of will. In a republic, authority is derived from elected representatives who best represent the people they serve.”

Gorham snorted in disgust. “Yes, that sounds about like the depth that your modern universities are teaching it. Land a mighty, Boy! Can’t you look any deeper than that?”

Bryce opened his mouth to fire off a sharp retort, but Gorham’s eyes were suddenly snapping fire. “Don’t you know why you’ve got a national debt big enough to build every man, woman, and child in the solar system a solid-gold outhouse?

And why half the world is on the verge of bankruptcy? Don’t you see the basic flaw in a true democracy?”

There was no response from the driver of the BMW.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government because sooner or later the people come to realize that they can vote themselves direct benefits out of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate or the program promising the greatest benefits from the public treasury. That’s what killed Rome. Even the emperors couldn’t keep up with the constant demand for bread and circuses. Sooner or later the government goes bankrupt. Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, and inevitably, no matter how long it may take, it will always be followed by a dictatorship.”

Bryce’s mouth had opened again, but now it shut slowly. Gorham sat back, staring out the windshield into space, breathing hard. “And all this talk about giving more say to the people. That’s what’s happening here. In the last few years the primary function of the United States government has become the redistribution of wealth—taking money through taxation from one segment of society and giving it to another. And all of those who keep wailing about giving more power back to the peoplemen like Mannington and Sterling Jennings, men like Senator Hawkes and the other bubbleheads up there on Capitol Hill— they think they can stay in power by continually gratifying—” his voice grew heavy with sarcasm, “—the will of the people.”

Finally, he turned and looked at Bryce, his eyes grave. “Let me tell you something, Sherwood, and if I can’t get one other thing through your head, you let this one stick. The real movers behind this amendment, the ones who drive those long black cars and live in the luxurious apartments in Georgetown, don’t give a tinker’s dam about the voice of the people. They’re after power, pure and simple. The Constitution stands in their way, and their sole purpose is to remove that and every other stumbling block that prevents them from reaching their goal.”

Bryce blinked. “That’s a little strong, don’t you think?”

“You think you’re in some game of mumblety-peg here?” he roared. “They’re users, Sherwood! You can help them achieve their ends, and so they’ll use you. Oh, they’ll reward you handsomely in the process—until your usefulness ends. Then they’ll cast you aside, just as they’re doing to Senator Hawkes.”

That snapped Bryce’s head up sharply.

Gorham gave a short, bitter laugh. “Your myopia is something to behold, Boy. You think Senator Hawkes wants to retire next term?”

“He’s…he’s almost seventy.”

“And how many senators do you know who are currently over seventy and still serving well?”

Again Bryce started at that. There were at least a half a dozen, maybe more. And with their seniority, they were some of the Senate’s most powerful voices.

Gorham just shook his head. “You know what your problem is, Sherwood? The other day Elliot Mannington stuck stars in your britches and you haven’t been able to sit down comfortably ever since.”

Bryce felt like he was standing at the bottom of Niagara Falls, trying to look up. Gorham’s words cascaded over him one burst after another.

Gorham took a deep breath and finally turned to Bryce. When he spoke again, his own voice was low and tinged with sadness. “It’s bread and circuses all over again, Lad. And your amendment is one more step on the long road to so-called democracy. If you can’t see that, and get others to see it, then may God help you, Son. God help you all.”

Chapter 9

As Bryce drove up to the Marriott Hotel and gave the BMW to the parking attendant, his mind turned to Nathaniel Gorham. Since their confrontation in the car the previous morning, Gorham hadn’t reappeared. Bryce was on his way in now to listen to Elliot Mannington give a speech on the proposed amendment to the League of Women Voters, and what Gorham had said about Mannington kept running through his mind. “After power pure and simple. He’s put stars in your britches. They’ll cast you aside once they’ve used you.”

He shook it off angrily as he walked into the hotel, realizing that this was exactly what Gorham had meant to do—sow seeds of doubt. True, the old man had made some good points. His analysis of the weakness of a democracy had been sobering, and Bryce was still weighing it in his mind. But the attack on Mannington showed that Gorham still ignored the hard realities of the day. He had never gone through a session of Congress and watched the paralyzing crawl at which it moved. He hadn’t lived through the “imperial presidencies” of a Johnson or a Nixon.

Bryce entered the banquet hall and scanned it quickly. There were several empty places at tables up nearer the front, but before he could start for one, a waiter approached. “Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening.” Bryce handed him the ticket Mannington had sent over.

“Just a moment, sir. The tables are preassigned. I’ll get your number from the maitre d’.”

“Fine.” Bryce had known he would likely end up at a table with someone he didn’t know. He really didn’t look forward to that, but he could hardly miss a major speech by his future boss.

Suddenly he started. The waiter had gone to a small desk where a man in black tie and tails was sitting with a book open in front of him. Several other waiters were also there, waiting to get their assignments. But it was not the waiters that Bryce was staring at. It was the maitre d’, who looked very much like Nathaniel Gorham. Someone stepped in front of him, blocking Bryce’s view. Unable to believe what he thought he had seen, he started toward the desk, but suddenly his waiter was back. “This way, sir.”

Bryce glanced once more over his shoulder, but there were too many people now, and he finally shrugged it off. They threaded their way through the elegantly dressed crowd, drawing some curious looks as they went, but Bryce saw no one he recognized. As the waiter approached a table with two empty seats, Bryce stopped in midstride. A couple was already seated. The man, in his late twenties, was laughing at something his partner was saying. Bryce had never seen him before. But the woman sitting next to him was Leslie Adams.

The man looked up and smiled in tentative greeting. Leslie started to do the same, then her jaw dropped as she saw who it was.

“Here you go, sir,” the waiter said, pulling out a chair.

Bryce swung around. “Uh…” he said in a low voice. “Don’t you have something a little closer to the front?”

“Sorry, sir. All the places are assigned.” He bowed and departed hastily.

Bryce turned around, sighed, then smiled wanly. “Hello, Leslie.”

By the time they were starting on the salad, Bryce had dreamed up and then rejected nearly a hundred reasons for excusing himself from the table. The fact that Daniel Fowler was the associate editor for the American Conservative, a well-known and prestigious national magazine; and the fact that Leslie was there as his partner; and the fact that he was not only very good looking, but a very likable guy; and the fact that when she watched him, her eyes followed his every expression—none of that added greatly to Bryce’s comfort. And he could hardly wait until Mannington started his speech. That would really relax things.

Suddenly the waiter was back. “Mr. Fowler?”

Fowler looked up. “Yes.”

“You have a telephone call. There’s a phone in the cloakroom.”

Fowler excused himself and then walked away. Leslie turned back and began toying with her salad. Bryce took a breath and plunged. “Look, Leslie, I’m really sorry about this. I had no idea you were here. And then to end up at the same table. I can’t believe it.” He thought of the maitre d’ again, and was pretty sure he had his answer now.

She smiled faintly. “It’s all right. Daniel’s a good friend. He doesn’t mind.”

Good friend, Bryce thought, enviously. Was that what it took to get those eyes to look at you like that?

Leslie said, “I guess if I had thought about it, I should have expected you’d be here.”

Bryce gave her a rueful grin. “Well, I did think about it, and the last place I ever expected to see you was at a speech given by Elliot Mannington.”

She laughed softly. “Daniel’s magazine wanted him to cover this and gave him two tickets. When he invited me, I thought, ‘Why not?’”

“It’s always good to take the measure of the opposition, right?”

She nodded, then dropped her eyes to concentrate on her salad.

Bryce watched her for several seconds, working up his nerve. “Leslie?”

Her eyes came up, wide pools of emerald, watching him carefully.

“Look, this is going to sound crazy, but remember what I said the other day about not playing high-school games?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t know what it is about you…” He stopped. Was that stupid enough? He took a quick breath, and tried another tack. “These last few days, well, we’ve hardly gotten off to the best start.”

Though her face was sober, her eyes were flecked with little sparks of amusement. “And here I was trying so hard to impress you.”

He laughed. “Yeah, me too.”

For a moment both were lost in thoughts of their previous encounters, then Bryce cleared his throat. “Look, this is really tacky. I mean, here you are with Daniel and all, and soon as he leaves I make this pitch.”

“Oh?” Her face was sober, but her eyes were teasing him. “Just what pitch are you making?”

“I’d like a chance to try again.” He held up his hands quickly. “I promise, no philosophical discussions, no politics. I’d just like a chance to get to know you better.”

She took a deep breath, not meeting his gaze, and Bryce felt his heart sink. “I…All right, I’ll be honest too. I would like that. I really enjoyed dinner the other night.” His hopes leaped, but then she pulled a face. “Up to a certain point.” Down they went again.

She hesitated, obviously groping for the right words. Then suddenly she looked up and past him. Bryce turned and saw that Fowler was coming back toward the table.

She spoke more quickly now, and softly. “I’m not sure we can leave the other out of it, Bryce.”

“I know, but I’d like to try.”

Fowler was nearly on them. She looked away. “Let me think about it,” she murmured. Then she looked up and smiled, a radiant smile meant only for Fowler. “Anything the matter?” she asked.

He shrugged. “We had a bad connection. Whoever it was finally hung up.”

The waiters were just clearing the salads away when a deep voice behind Bryce spoke. “This is your table here, sir.”

Bryce looked up, then nearly dropped his fork. It was the same waiter that had escorted him, but this time the man with him was banker Gorham—three-piece business suit and all. The steel-rimmed glasses were back, and the hair was considerably more gray than maitre d’ Gorham’s.

Bryce opened his mouth to protest, then clamped it shut again as Gorham sat down and smiled at each of them and Fowler made the introductions. He sat back, face grim. As if it hadn’t been bad enough before.

All of a sudden Gorham snapped his fingers, pointing to Leslie. “Didn’t I see you on television the other day?”

Bryce groaned inwardly. That Gorham was up to some mischief, there was no doubt, but Bryce had at least expected a decent interval before he launched into it.

Leslie seemed pleased as she nodded. Gorham snapped his fingers again. “Let’s see, you’re a volunteer worker with that organization, uh…tell me the name of it again.”

“The STC. Save the Constitution.”

“Yes, that’s it. It’s a great work you are doing, young lady. I’m sure the Founding Fathers would be proud of you.”

Bryce rolled his eyes, then went immediately stone faced as Leslie glanced in his direction. She smiled. “Mr. Sherwood was my opponent in the debate that day.”

Gorham glanced at him, nodded briefly. “Oh, yes. I remember.” Then instantly he turned to Fowler. “And you, Mr. Fowler. Why does your name ring a bell with me?”

Leslie answered for him, telling what Daniel did.

“Of course,” Gorham crowed, “the American Conservative. I’ve read several of your articles. In fact, I thought your recent series on the effect the Constitution has had on other world governments was superb. Just superb.”

And so it went for the next ten or fifteen minutes. Gorham charmed both Leslie and Fowler, neatly steered the conversation away from himself, and all but virtually ignored Bryce. For the most part Bryce sat quietly and listened, contributing only a polite nod or a strained smile at the appropriate places.

Finally, the bridgehead had been laid, and Gorham got down to what he was there for, which was, of course, to get in a few more licks at the senior aide to Senator Benjamin Hawkes. He turned the discussion to the subject of Mannington’s upcoming speech and proceeded to batter away at the foolishness of the whole concept of the amendment. Leslie kept glancing in Bryce’s direction, sensing his growing irritation.

Finally Bryce had had enough. “Just out of curiosity, Mr. Gorham,” he broke in, “your name rings a bell with me. Wasn’t there a man by that same name during the Revolutionary War?”

Gorham shot him a warning look, which Bryce fielded with bland innocence. “A British spy or something?”

“I beg your pardon,” Gorham said archly. Then instantly his eyes narrowed as understanding dawned.

Bryce just put on a more thoughtful look. “I know there was somebody by that name,” he mused. He turned. “Leslie, you’re the American history major; does that name sound familiar to you?”

She thought for a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”

Bryce bit back a smile as he saw the look Gorham flashed her. A couple of more shots like that and Bryce figured he’d be even with Gorham for sending him to this table.

Gorham drew himself up to full height. “There was a man by that name,” he said archly, “but he was not British. He was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention from Massachusetts.”

“Really?” Leslie asked in surprise.

“Yes, really,” Gorham responded, just a bit tartly. “In fact, he’s one of the original signers of the Constitution. His signature is right there on the document.”

“Along with George Washington’s and Benjamin Franklin’s?” Bryce breathed in wide-eyed wonder. “And are you related to him in any way, Mr. Gorham?”

To watch Gorham wiggle out of that one would have been sweet indeed, but unfortunately, at that moment the president of the National League of Women Voters stood up and rapped the microphone sharply. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please?”

Though Bryce had been around Elliot Mannington quite a bit, he had never heard him speak. He had expected to be impressed. In actuality, he was totally dazzled. No wonder he was a confidant of presidents. Mannington was poised, witty, extremely articulate, and thoroughly charming. If he had prepared notes, he had memorized them completely. There was no reading, no lecturing. This was a master orator in tune with his subject, and more importantly, completely in touch with his audience. By fifteen minutes into the speech, the crowd had interrupted him five times with warm and enthusiastic applause.

“I’ll grant you this,” Gorham murmured in an aside to Bryce during a new spate of applause, “he’s good. Too good.”

Bryce merely nodded. Mannington was a lot more than good. He was superb. The other three at the table became increasingly more grim as the speech continued, and it became painfully obvious that Mannington had the vast majority of the crowd with him.

After another burst of applause, Bryce leaned slightly to his left. “You think the new amendment is out of touch with the will of people?” he said into Gorham’s ear. “Well, you just take a look at that, Mr. Gorham!”

Gorham didn’t even look at him, just stared straight ahead.

Ten minutes later as Mannington finished with a ringing call for change in government, the audience shot to their feet, and the applause was deafening. Bryce came up too, clapping enthusiastically. Slowly, Leslie and Fowler stood too, but Gorham sat stubbornly in his seat, ignoring the angry glances he was getting from those around them.

When the president of the League of Women Voters had effusively thanked their speaker and all for coming, Gorham excused himself quickly and walked away, face grim. Fowler pushed back his chair, then turned to Bryce. “Is it true that you’ve been asked to chair the national committee for ratification of the amendment?”

Leslie’s head snapped around like it was on a rubber band.

“Yes.”

Fowler stood up. “Congratulations,” he said, his face expressionless.

Leslie stood quickly.

Bryce stood too, watching only her. “Leslie, I…”

She shook her head quickly. “You know that thing we were talking about earlier?”

He felt his heart sink. “Yes.”

“All things considered, I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

He nodded, hardly surprised. “I understand,” he said softly.

Bryce waited for nearly five minutes, then finally decided there was going to be no chance to get with Mannington tonight. He was still mobbed with some of Washington’s finest. Bryce maneuvered to the point where he could catch his eye. When he looked up, Bryce mouthed, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Flushed with triumph, and obviously enjoying every moment of the results of it, Mannington waved his assent, then turned back to a woman who was heavy with diamonds.

As Bryce moved into the main lobby of the Marriott, he pulled up in surprise. Most of the crowd had gone now, but Leslie was standing on the far side of the lobby, alone. He changed direction in midstride and came up on her blind side.

“Hello.”

She turned around in surprise. “Oh, hello.”

“I thought you had gone.”

Nodding toward the cloakroom, she shook her head. “That call for Daniel came through again.”

Bryce nodded, and for a moment considered trying just one more time to pick up the pieces. Then as quickly as the thought had crossed his mind, he dismissed it. The damage from the dinner seemed total. So he just smiled briefly and lifted a hand in farewell. “It was good to see you again, Leslie. Good night.”

“Good night.”

He got about five steps, then, “Bryce?”

He turned back.

Her voice was soft. “I’m sorry for being so rude in there. Congratulations on the new assignment.” She took a breath. “Even though I deeply disagree with what you’re doing, I have to admit they’ve chosen the best person to head up the campaign for ratification.”

Why did she do that! Here he was, ready to walk away; then she turned those deep green eyes on him and melted every resolve he had made to put her behind him once and for all. He nodded his thanks. “Coming from you, that means a lot.” Pause. Ideas for prolonging the conversation popped into his head, but Fowler was still just a few feet away on the phone. “Good night, Leslie.”

“Good night, Bryce.”

Just as Bryce turned and started away, there was the sharp sound of a phone being slammed into its cradle. Fowler’s voice burst out, angry and frustrated.

Not wanting to eavesdrop, but still curious, Bryce moved across the lobby and took up station near a pillar where he could watch. Fowler was in front of her, obviously upset. Leslie kept nodding sympathetically. Then, to Bryce’s surprise, Fowler thrust something into her hand, turned and walked swiftly out of the hotel. Leslie watched him for a moment, then moved toward the desk of the bell captain. Bryce leaped into action. He headed directly for the desk.

“Leslie?”

She turned, surprised to hear his voice again.

“I just saw Daniel go hurrying out. Is everything all right?”

She sighed, looking toward the door. “There’s some kind of problem at the press that does his magazine. He had to go right over.”

Bryce shook his head, managing to look appropriately stricken. He hesitated for an appropriate moment, then gave her a tentative smile. “Listen, if you need a ride, I know the way to Arlington.”

She searched his face, then finally shook her head. “Thank you, but he gave me money for a cab.”

He grinned. “Washington, D.C., at night is not a safe place for a single young woman.”

Again those green eyes probed his, unreadable. Then slowly they softened. “That’s what I’ve been told.”

They were standing at the front entrance to the hotel, in the softness of the night, not talking, content to look at the lights of the city. The red BMW pulled around and stopped directly in front of them. “Here it is,” Bryce said, as the parking attendant started to get out. Bryce leaned down and opened the door for Leslie. She slid in, and as he shut the door, the attendant came around behind him.

Fishing a dollar from his pocket, Bryce turned. “Thank you very—” He stopped, his eyes widening.

“Thank you, Sir!” Nathaniel Gorham said, taking the dollar and dropping the keys into his hand. He was now in coveralls and baseball cap and smiling sardonically at him. Gorham glanced at Leslie in the car, and the smile broadened. “Too bad about the young lady’s escort.”

Bryce gave him a sharp look. “Yes, isn’t it.”

“Good night, sir.” There was a soft chuckle. “And good luck.”

On the ride home Bryce drove leisurely. This time he wasn’t about to make the same mistake he had made before. He skirted widely around any talk of the amendment or the Constitution or Elliot Mannington or anything that stood one chance in a million of somehow leading them back into the quicksand again. At first, Leslie was quiet, almost reserved, but when he started telling her some of his experiences in law school, she started to come out of it, and soon they were swapping horror stories about graduate school and she was laughing softly along with him.

And even more heartening, when he pulled up in front of her house, she wasn’t out the door and into the house before he could shut off the ignition. That was definite progress.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. He watched her for a minute, then asked, “When do you start school?”

“The week before Labor Day.”

“Do you look forward to that?”

She turned her head and nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but yes, I do. I really do.”

“I don’t think it sounds crazy at all.”

“And what about you? You always hear about the Labor Day recess in Congress. Do Senate aides get a recess too?”

“For the most part.” He chuckled. “Not quite as long as the senators do, but yes. I’m going home to Boston, as a matter of fact. Then down to Cape Cod with my folks.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I haven’t been home since Christmas. Mom’s threatening to shut down the government if I don’t come.”

“Cape Cod,” Leslie said dreamily. “You always read about that. Is it as wonderful as they say?”

“It’s delightful. We’ve been going up there since I was a kid. I love it.”

She turned back, watching out the window as the leaves rustled with a soft breeze. Finally she straightened. “Well, this seems to be getting to be a habit, but thank you once again for the ride home.”

“Two times does not a habit make. But you’re welcome.”

She reached for the door handle.

“Look, Leslie, I—” He stopped, not sure where to go from there as she turned back to face him.

“What?”

“All right, look,” he said, suddenly determined. “I’m going to give this one last shot. Then, I promise, I’m out of your life. No more rides from the bus stop. No more horning in on you and Daniel at dinner.”

She gave him a mock scowl. “That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Daniel this evening. I told you, he’s a good friend. That’s all.” She let him digest that, then, “And what if I told you that I’m not sure that’s what I want?” she said softly.

“What?”

“To have you out of my life.”

He looked at her closely, his hopes leaping. “Then let’s give it a chance. Let me show you that underneath this bumbling, stick-the-foot-in-the-mouth exterior, there actually lives a halfdecent guy.”

She smiled, almost shyly. “I’ve known that since that first day on the Capitol steps.”

Bam! Two in a row. He was really soaring now. But the corners of her mouth pulled down slightly, and he instantly felt that familiar sinking feeling.

“But that doesn’t change things between us.”

“So what if we do have a few philosophical differences—”

She hooted at that.

“All right, so I’m on Alpha Centauri and you’re on Betelgeuse. I accept that, but I can’t just walk away without giving it one more try.”

“I don’t want you to just walk away either, and yet—”

Bryce exploded. “There you go again. ‘And yet,’ ‘but,’ ‘if only.’ I know all of those are there, but I don’t care. I’d like to see what it is that’s clicking between us. Or else let it die once and for all.”

“But—” She caught herself at his look and laughed, holding up her hands. “Okay, I see what you mean.”

“All right, Miss Adams, here’s my deal. It’s the sixth of August. Let’s give this thing until the first of September. Until then, no duels. As far as this amendment thing goes, I’ll listen to every argument you can throw at me. I really will listen.”

She started to answer, but he held up his hand. “I’m not even asking for equal time. I’ll listen to you, that’s all. We’ll start with Saturday night. The New York Philharmonic is in town giving an all-Beethoven concert at the Kennedy Center. Then you can choose the next activity. I’d love to have you take me to some of the historical sites around here. Then I’d like to take you to a great little pizza place up in Chevy Chase, and then—” He stopped, a little breathless. “And then, come the first of September, if we find we’re still cruising in different star systems, I’ll say thank you very much, it’s been wonderful, and I really will bow out of your life.”

There was silence in the car for several long seconds, then finally she laughed quietly, but her head was half turned and he couldn’t read the emotion behind it.

“What?” he asked, holding his breath.

“No wonder the Hawkes/Larkin bill passed the Senate.”

He grinned in relief. “That bad, huh?”

Her hand came over and touched his arm. “Bryce, if I tell you I want to think about it, are you going to throw a hammerlock on me and insist I decide this minute?”

“Is that what you’re going to tell me?” he shot right back.

“No hammerlocks?” His expression was so rueful that she laughed aloud. “Promise?”

“All right, I promise.”

“Okay, then my answer is yes, I want to think about it.”

He sighed, so deeply that she laughed and shook her head helplessly. Then she opened the door. “Thank you, Bryce. For the ride.” She paused, her lips softening. “And for not giving up.”

“On that you do have my promise.”

Forty-five minutes later, Bryce unlocked the door to his apartment, tossed his suit coat on the couch, and went straight to the phone.

“Leslie?” he said, when she answered on the other end.

“Yes?”

“This is Bryce. Have you thought about it?”

She laughed, and it was the same delightful sound he was coming to love. “You promised.”

“It’s been almost an hour. Work on a problem much longer than that and your brain cells turn to rubber.”

“I can’t believe you!” He could picture her shaking her head.

“Would you like me to talk to your parents or something? Give references? Send my blood type?”

Now he really had her laughing. “Thank you, no.”

“Well,” he said sadly, “I thought it was at least worth a try.”

“I’ve already talked to my parents.”

“Good. Listen, I really wasn’t going to bother you tonight. I’ll call—” He stopped. “You what?”

“I already talked to my parents.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Now she was laughing at him. “I told them I really liked Beethoven.”

Bryce sat back slowly. “I thought you said you wanted to think about it.”

“I did think about it. All the way up to the front door.”

“Are you kidding me?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, Bryce, I’m not kidding you.” Then suddenly her voice became serious. “But there’s one condition.”

“What?”

“I don’t want it to be all one sided. I don’t want you to hold back what you are thinking and feeling.”

He thought about that. “All right, but I really am willing to listen to your side.”

“How willing?”

He sensed a trap but didn’t care. She had said yes. That was enough. “Willing willing. Why?”

“Would you like to come to dinner Sunday?”

That really threw him, but he had the answer processed in milliseconds. “I’d be delighted. But what has that got to do with being willing to listen?”

“You think I’m an avid constitutionalist?” she said, her voice suddenly teasing. “Just wait until you meet my father.”

Chapter 10

In some ways, the next two weeks were like a cross-country flight—for the most part smooth, but with occasional patches of turbulence.

The concert at the Kennedy Center went without a hitch, and Bryce was delighted to find that Leslie had the same deep love for classical music he did. Dinner at the Adams home the following day turned out to be a more pleasant experience than he had expected. Leslie was the eldest of three children, and Bryce was an instant hit with Kellie, a sixteen-year-old younger version of Leslie, and Keith, a mischievous and yet delightfully bright twelve-year-old. The conversation had barely touched on the amendment, and so Leslie’s solemn prediction about her father had gone unfulfilled. The one time Paul Adams turned the conversation in that direction, his wife shot him such a look that Bryce had to bite back a smile. What he would have liked to have known was, who had given the warning—Leslie or her mother.

On Monday he picked Leslie up after work. They went to Old Georgetown, leisurely strolled through the shops, had dinner, then walked for almost an hour through the posh residences. When they returned to her home, her parents were in the living room, her father reading, her mother doing counted cross-stitch. It was that night that Bryce came to realize why Nathaniel Gorham had gone to such trouble to set things up between him and Leslie at the Marriott Hotel. Between Leslie and her father, Bryce was suddenly getting all the pro-Constitution arguments he could handle.

They had dinner twice more at the Adams home, and now any restrictions on Paul Adams had been lifted. Dessert was barely over before the kids were off to do other things and the debate picked up where it left off the time before.

Paul Adams, a tall, wiry fifty-year-old, taught history and political philosophy at Georgetown University. He was articulate, had a quick wit, and was brilliant in debate. It was not hard to see where Leslie got her rapier tongue and deep, passionate patriotism.

Vera Adams, a gentle woman of immense graciousness, reminded Bryce of his own mother. For the most part, she would sit back, content to watch her husband and daughter lead out in the conversation. But when she spoke, she almost always made a telling point. Occasionally, when the debate became too fierce, she would even jump in on Bryce’s side, much to his gratitude.

But that in no way meant Bryce was going down to defeat. In some ways, it was just the opposite. He found that the debates forced him to crystalize and articulate his own thoughts and feelings. It was excellent preparation for the coming battle over ratification. Though officially Bryce would stay with Senator Hawkes until the day after Labor Day, he and Elliot Mannington were meeting regularly now to plan strategy and set up the national network for the campaign. Often Bryce would serve as the devil’s advocate and throw Paul Adams’s logic at the chairman of the Committee for Constitutional Reform, telling Mannington they needed to sharpen their response to the opposition. And Mannington was no mean opponent. He seemed to relish the challenge and would tackle Bryce’s arguments headon, providing some excellent rebuttals. Then Bryce would take that and his own thoughts back to the next session at Leslie’s home. It was a roller-coaster ride, but he loved it.

And yet some days, he and Leslie seemed content, almost glad, to set the whole subject aside and let the relationship have its head. One Saturday they spent a lazy afternoon playing in the surf of the Atlantic. Another, they spent all day wandering through the numerous buildings of the Smithsonian.

That night, after a visit to the little pizza restaurant Bryce had told her about, they came back into the city and walked slowly along the Mall, past the Reflecting Pool, talking quietly of trivial things, sometimes not talking at all. They ended inside the Lincoln Memorial, and there, beneath Lincoln’s brooding gaze, he kissed her for the first time. She pulled back, looking up into his face, her eyes troubled. But finally she just sighed and laid her head against his shoulder, letting him hold her.

The following Saturday they went on what Bryce called his “Civil War orientation tour.” They visited a couple of national battlefield monuments; stopped at Richmond, capital of the Confederacy; swung over to Appomattox, where General Lee signed the surrender document that ended the Civil War; then ended at the elegant and serene Monticello, home of Thomas Jefferson. It was dark by the time Bryce pulled the car up outside her house and turned off the engine.

Leslie laid back with a contented sigh and closed her eyes. “Thank you, Bryce. That was a delightful day.”

“Thank you.” Then he laughed softly. “You know how inadequate you make me feel?”

She opened her eyes in surprise. “Inadequate? Why?”

“I minored in American History at Harvard. And yet I learned as much today as I did in my whole undergraduate career.”

She smiled, closing her eyes again. “Is wild exaggeration a typical Sherwood family trait?”

“No, I mean it. You made those places come alive. I’ve studied about those battles, but you can tell me exactly what happened and their overall importance to the Civil War. You know every monument, every item in the museums and why they’re significant. I was impressed.”

She turned and laid her head against him, snuggling in as he put his arms around her. “Well, even if it is a shameless lie,” she murmured contentedly, “I love it. Keep it up.”

He laid his cheek against her hair, his mind returning to something that had happened that afternoon. They had been walking across the great sweep of lawn that fell away from the graceful mansion at Monticello. They were holding hands and Leslie’s head was half turned, looking at the view below them. And suddenly, at that instant, it had hit Bryce with a jolt how much this dark-haired, emerald-eyed woman was coming to mean to him. It was sobering, for he wasn’t sure that Leslie felt the same. That she cared for him was clear enough. But at that moment he realized that he was thinking more and more in terms of long-range commitments, something he had never done before.

She turned her head to look up at him. “Tell me what you are thinking.”

He looked into her eyes for several moments, almost sinking into their depths, then leaned down and kissed her softly. “I was thinking,” he said, when he pulled back, “that this was a great day. Thank you.”

“Ummm,” she murmured. “It was for me too.” She reached up, touching his cheek. “One of the best yet.” Then she straightened and kissed him back, a warm, soft acceptance of his thanks.

When she finally pulled away, her eyes were shining.

“Leslie, I—”

Her hand flew up, and she pressed one finger to his lips. “No. Not tonight, Bryce.”

His eyes widened in surprise. Had she known what he was going to say?

“We’ll come back to reality tomorrow. But let’s not spoil today.”

“Okay.” He sighed, wishing something could somehow just wipe away the differences that lay between them.

“Speaking of tomorrow, Mom wants to know if you would like to come to dinner.”

He shook his head. “You know I always enjoy that, but I’m starting to feel guilty about how much I’m over here.”

“Look, Mr. Sherwood,” she said with a laugh. “My mother is a quiet woman, but underneath it all she’s every bit as strong minded as my father.”

“And her older daughter,” he said with mock gravity.

She smiled. “That too. But when Mom says ask Bryce to dinner, I ask you to dinner, and you’ll just have to live with your guilt, Mr. Sherwood.”

Leslie’s mother shooed Bryce and her husband out of the kitchen with gentle but insistent firmness. Leslie smiled at Bryce, and he finally surrendered. He tossed Leslie the dish towel and went out into the living room where her father was waiting. Evidently, Bryce had left him smarting a little after their last session, and he had barely sat down before Paul picked up the discussion exactly where it had left off. Bryce smiled to himself. No wonder Gorham hadn’t appeared to him for the last week or so. There was no need. He couldn’t have a better advocate for his position than Paul Adams.

But on this Sunday afternoon, somehow the mood imperceptibly changed. Paul said something about the logical fallacies of “Bryce’s amendment,” and Bryce retorted a little more sharply than he had intended. Paul fired right back, and suddenly the usual amiability was gone. They were head to head, impassioned, intense, their voices rising.

Leslie was suddenly at the doorway, bringing them both to silence. She didn’t meet the gaze of either of them, just looked out the window. “Bryce and I are going to walk down to the park for a while.”

Her mother was suddenly beside her. “Good idea.” She gave her husband a sharp look.

Bryce stood, puzzled, and yet glad for the reprieve. “Thanks again for the dinner, Mrs. Adams. It was great as usual.”

“You’re welcome.” She looked at Leslie. “You go on now. We’ll have some pie in an hour or so.”

“Leslie?”

She looked up from where she had been pulling up blades of grass and making a little pile in her lap.

“What’s the matter?”

She shook her head, suddenly fighting tears.

Bryce moved over and put his arm around her. “What is it?”

Again she shook her head, turning away so he couldn’t see her.

He took his arm off her shoulder, and leaned back, debating whether to venture a guess. Then he had a better idea. He raised his hand, and with his finger began tracing letters on her back. I L-O-V-

“Please, Bryce, don’t.”

He took her firmly by the shoulders and turned her around. “I do,” he said softly. “Don’t ask me how it happened, but I do love you.”

“I told you it would come to this.” She brushed away the grass from her skirt, not looking up.

“To what?”

“There in the living room, with Dad.”

“What?”

“He was saying nothing more than what I believe.”

“I know that.”

“But suddenly I was angry with him.”

“With your father?” he echoed in surprise. “Why?”

“For what he was doing to you.”

Bryce just stared at her, not sure he understood.

“It’s tearing me apart. I’m so sure that he’s right and you’re wrong. But suddenly I find myself saying that I don’t care whether you’re wrong or not. I don’t want him hurting you.”

He reached out and touched her cheek, moved by what he saw in her eyes. “He’s not hurting me. That was our deal. I told you I wanted to hear your side of things. We just got a little warmer than usual today.”

“I know, but it’s more than that. Nothing has changed. Has it?”

He thought about that, searching his own feelings. “Perhaps. I don’t know what to think sometimes. You and your father have some reasoning that’s pretty hard to answer.”

“And so do you.” Her head came up in challenge. “Are you ready to turn in your resignation to Elliot Mannington?”

That caught him off guard. “I…No, not really.”

“Exactly my point. And so we just keep making it more and more difficult.”

He straightened. “That may be. I’m not sure of all my philosophical feelings any more, but this much I do know. I know how I feel about you.”

She forced a smile through the tears. “You think that makes it easier?”

“It would if I knew you felt the same way.”

The tears welled up again and spilled over. “Don’t you know?” she whispered. “Do you have to ask?”

He nodded. “I’m pretty dense. I don’t read nonverbal cues very well.”

She threw her arms around him and buried her head against his shoulder. “I love you, Bryce Sherwood. Darn it all, I love you too.”

Bryce laughed right out loud. “That’s the most tender confession I’ve ever heard.”

She sniffed, laughing now too, in spite of herself. “It’s not funny. I don’t want to love you.”

He took her into his arms and kissed her gently. “Well, force yourself.”

He held her that way for a long time, both of them silent; then Bryce sat bolt upright.

“What?”

He was staring at her, his mind racing.

She sat up now too. “What?”

“Oh, wow,” he said, shaking his head. “This is going to sound crazy.”

She laughed. “More crazy than what I just said?”

“Yes.” He took a breath. “Leslie, I…”

She waited, watching him closely, sensing his sudden excitement.

“You start teaching tomorrow?”

“Yes, why?”

“How early could you be through on Friday?”

“Probably by two or two-thirty. Why?”

“Why don’t you come to Boston with me? No, wait,” he rushed on, when her mouth dropped open. “You’ll love Cape Cod. And our summer home up there is big enough. You’d have your own bedroom. There’s only my eighteen-year-old sister at home now. My brother’s in medical school at Stanford. Mom and Dad would love to have you. We’ll leave right from school and come back Labor Day evening.”

She was staring at him incredulously. Finally she shook her head in wonder. “And this is supposed to be a solution to our problem?”

“I know. I told you it would sound crazy, but just listen. This will give us a chance to really talk things out. No more debates. No more arguments. We’ll just talk about us. What we’re feeling. Where we’re going. Sort the whole thing out.”

She was looking dubious and so he rushed on. “You haven’t lived until you’ve spent some time in Cape Cod. We’ll go sailing. Lay on the beach and burn. Explore the little villages.”

“Wait!” she said, throwing up her hands. “I feel like I just tangled with the Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce.”

He grinned. “Sorry.”

“That won’t solve our basic problem, Bryce,” she started, then quickly put her hand over his mouth when he started to protest. “No, you listen. This will only make it harder.”

He nodded, moving her hand away gently. “I know what you’re saying, and I understand. But we’ll talk it out, just you and me. There’ll be no Elliot Mannington. No Senator Hawkes.” He grinned. “No Paul Adams. Just you and me.”

“And what if we can’t?” she said sadly. “What if we can’t work it out?”

He took a deep breath, not wanting to consider that possibility. “Then I’ll do whatever you think is right.”

“Oh, no. That’s not fair.”

He grinned. “Okay, then you’ll do whatever I think is right.”

She poked him hard in the ribs.

“Leslie,” he said, sobering, “I don’t know what we’ll do. But I want to give it every chance, do whatever it takes. Okay?”

Suddenly she was smiling. “Is your father going to badger me like mine does you?”

“Oh, no,” he responded. “My worry is my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes. I have never taken a girl home with me before. She is going to go absolutely bananas.”

Chapter 11

One thing you had to say for Elliot Mannington. He never did anything halfway. Not even lunch. The Ristorante Mediterranean, a long brick building with a red tile roof, sat on the brow of a low hill, not far below the Arlington National Cemetery. It wasn’t much of a rise, but still the city, shimmering in the summer heat, stretched out below them. As they waited to order, Bryce let his eyes run over the familiar landmarks—the Washington Monument, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, and, almost lost in the haze, the dome of the Capitol.

With Leslie starting school, Bryce hadn’t seen her since Sunday, but they had a date for tomorrow night. It would be here, he decided. At night the view must be spectacular. Then Friday, it was off for Cape Cod. He was looking forward to that with more anticipation than he had anything for some time.

Mannington took a sip of water, letting his gaze roam over the scene as well. “Quite a town, isn’t it? If we get this amendment passed, and we will,” his arm swept out in the direction of the city below them, “then you can write your own ticket down there.”

Suddenly Bryce remembered what Gorham had said about Senator Hawkes in the car that morning. On impulse, Bryce picked up his spoon and starting drawing patterns on the napkin. “What if Senator Hawkes decides not to retire next term?” he asked casually.

Mannington shot him a quick look, then laughed. “Don’t you worry about that. Ben won’t be a problem. We’ll get him an ambassadorship or something.”

We? Bryce thought. It was rumored that Mannington had almost open access to the White House, but…Suddenly the feelings of uncertainty began to well up again.

Mannington seemed not to sense the change in his mood. As they finished dessert, he leaned back comfortably, took out a gold case, and extracted a cigarette. He tapped it lightly on the table, watching Bryce. “Are you going home for the recess?”

“Yes. I leave Friday. You know Mom. If I’m not there by dark, Senator Hawkes will have a delegation of the National Guard on his doorstep.”

Mannington smiled, then reached again into his coat and took out a matching gold cigarette lighter and flicked it into flame. “I suppose your family’s going down to the Cape.”

“Yes. It wouldn’t be Labor Day if we stayed in the city.”

“Good. Look, we’re going to be in Hyannis Port. There are some people I’d like you to meet. Why don’t you come over for dinner Saturday night?”

Bryce was startled. No Mannington, he had vowed solemnly to Leslie. Just you and me. He could picture her face if he suggested dinner with him! Finally he shook his head. “I’d like that, but I’m going to have a guest with me.”

“Fine, bring him along.” He caught the expression on Bryce’s face and chuckled. “Or is it bring her along?”

Bryce flushed a little. “Well…I’d feel a little funny doing that.”

“Nonsense! I’d like to meet this lucky young lady. Anyone I know?”

Bryce shook his head quickly. “No, just a friend.”

Mannington winked knowingly. “Okay, then bring your friend. Let’s say Saturday then. Seven o’clock?”

It was like saying no to a D-9 Caterpillar. “Really,” Bryce started, “I think another time—”

Mannington’s smile hardened just the slightest trace. “These are important people, Bryce. They’ll play an important role in our national strategy.”

Bryce sighed. He could always leave Leslie with his folks. “Fine.”

“You know where we live, don’t you? Just down from the Kennedy compound.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Bryce let out his breath, feeling as if Mannington had taken his elbow and was steering him down a crowded street.

For the next half an hour, and then all the way back into the city, they talked about the ratification drive—which personnel to recruit, where to set up various state headquarters, which states to target first. Bryce nodded, made appropriate sounds at the right time, and tried to put away a growing sense of uneasiness. Senator Hawkes gave Bryce a lot of head, and Bryce liked that. It was how he operated best. Was Mannington going to be this intimately involved every step of the campaign? Bryce tried to shake off his growing sense of dismay.

As the chauffeur pulled up in front of the Senate Office Building, Bryce opened the door and started to get out. “Thanks for lunch.”

“Oh, by the way.”

Bryce turned back.

Mannington smiled briefly. “Word on the street is that you’ve been seeing one of the volunteer workers from the Save the Constitution group.”

That startled Bryce enough that the expression on his face gave Mannington his answer.

“Is it the same one who challenged you during that television interview that day?”

“Yes.” Bryce kept his voice even, even as he cursed the town in which he lived. The proverbial glass house had nothing on Washington, D.C. A man could miss one day of washing his socks and find it plastered on the front pages of every newspaper in the city the next morning.

Mannington smiled again, but there was no mistaking what was in his eyes. “I’d think about that carefully, Bryce.”

Bryce nodded, keeping his own face impassive.

“People could misconstrue that, you dating someone from the opposition.”

“I suppose they could.”

“Not only could, but would,” Mannington said pointedly. “Well, think it over. And we’ll see you Saturday.”

He shut the door, and the limo moved smoothly out into the traffic. For a long moment, Bryce stood at the curb, barely aware of the stifling heat as he thought with growing resentment about the neat little box into which Mannington had just shoved him.

“Leslie?”

She looked up.

It was her principal. “Telephone.”

Surprised, she hurried to the office and picked it up. “This is Leslie.”

“Hello, Miss Adams. I don’t know if you know me or not, but my name is Elliot Mannington.”

“Yes,” she said, feeling a sudden catch in her throat. Had something happened to Bryce?

“Look, Miss Adams, I don’t normally interfere in other people’s affairs, but…”

Five minutes later as Leslie came out of the office, her mouth set in a tight line, she had her second surprise. An older man was waiting in the hall. He straightened when he saw her. “Miss Adams?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if you remember me. The other night at the Marriott?”

“Oh, yes, of course. Mr. Gorham.”

His eyes showed pleasure for a moment but then instantly sobered again. “I happen to know what that phone call you just got was all about. Would you mind if we talked?”

Bryce was at his computer, working hard to finish the draft of the farm bill that Senator Hawkes was co-sponsoring in return for Senator Weatherby’s swing vote on the Hawkes/Larkin bill. His buzzer rang.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Sherwood, it’s a Leslie Adams on line one.”

“Good.” He punched the button. “Hi, Leslie.”

“Hello, Bryce.”

Her tone was even, almost cool. He didn’t notice. “I tried to call you earlier, but I didn’t want to get you out of class.”

“Yes, I got your message.”

“Good. Listen, I talked to Mom and Dad last night. Everything’s set. They’re really excited about your coming.” He laughed. “It took me almost half an hour to calm my mother down.”

There was no response, and Bryce felt the first stirring of a warning bell. “I told them we’d arrive around seven or eight on Friday. We’ll just meet them at Cape Cod.”

“And what about Saturday?” Leslie asked quietly.

“On the beach and in the sailboat,” he said exuberantly.

“I meant what about Saturday night?”

There was a long pause as Bryce felt the bottom dropping out from under him. “Saturday night?”

“Yes. I believe the time is seven o’clock somewhere in Hyannis Port.”

Bryce just stared at his desk, stunned. He had barely left Mannington an hour and a half before. He had said nothing to anyone…

“I appreciate getting the invitation directly from him. It gives it so much more meaning that way.”

“Mannington called you?” Bryce said in disbelief.

“Yes.” Her voice was hard with bitterness. “Of course the invitation came only after a very broad hint that it would really be better for your career if I didn’t accompany you to Cape Cod, but if I insisted, he would really love to meet the girl who finally has Bryce Sherwood on the hook.”

Bryce sat back slowly, cursing Mannington. Where did the man get off taking a hand in Bryce’s private life? “Leslie, I—”

“But the phone call wasn’t nearly as interesting as the visit I just had with another friend of yours.”

Feeling battered, Bryce barely managed a quiet “Who?” but he was not sure he wanted to hear.

“Oh, it’s been quite the afternoon.”

“Who?”

“Nathaniel Gorham.”

Bryce felt the breath go out of him.

“What? no innocent protestations that you don’t know the man? You put up such a good show the other night at dinner.”

“Look, Leslie, yes, I do know Gorham. He’s…” His voice trailed off as he thought about how to finish that sentence.

“Why did you pretend you didn’t know him?”

“That is a long story. But I give you my word, it had nothing to do with trying to deceive you.”

“Is it true Mannington has offered you a shot at Senator Hawkes’s job next election?”

That caught him completely off guard, and he didn’t answer.

“And that they’re talking about the eventual possibility of the White House?”

“Leslie, I—”

“No wonder Mannington suggested I could hurt your career.”

“Leslie, listen to me. I don’t know what Gorham has been telling you—”

“Well, I’ll tell you one more thing he said.”

Bryce sighed, cursing the old man from Boston, cursing Mannington, cursing the fact that all this had blown up in his face before he had had a chance to talk with her. “What?”

“He said that Mannington has already suggested to you that it would be better if you stopped seeing me. Is that true?”

“Yes, but—”

“And what did you say to him when he said that?”

Somehow Bryce should have been surprised, but he wasn’t. Gorham was too efficient to let an opportunity like this pass. “I…He caught me totally by surprise. I guess I just stared at him.”

“How courageous.”

Bryce flared at that. “That’s not fair, Leslie. If you really think I’m going to let Mannington tell me what to do with my private life, that doesn’t say much about your opinion of me.”

She was silent for several seconds, then sighed. “Bryce, it doesn’t really matter what I think, or what you think. This whole thing just makes it clear that we have our heads in the sand. It’s not going to work.”

He took a breath, not wanting to ask, but knowing he had to. “So no Cape Cod?”

Her voice was suddenly low and husky. “I’m sorry, Bryce, but I can’t take any more of this.”

“Leslie, I can explain everything. Just give me a chance.”

“Bryce, I…You really do have a wonderful career ahead of you. I wouldn’t want slow you down.”

“Leslie,” he cried, pleading now.

“Good-bye, Bryce. Thank you for everything.”

And with that there was a soft click, and Bryce was left to stare at the dead phone.

Chapter 12

Bryce worked until nearly midnight that night, finishing up the last of his work for the senator and cleaning out his office. He kept telling himself that he wasn’t sure he would move his things into the office Mannington had leased for him, but underneath he knew it was a bluff. In spite of his anger at Mannington for calling Leslie, he knew he still wanted a shot at the ratification campaign. Besides, it was Gorham that was the primary target for his fury.

By eight o’clock the next morning, Bryce was packed and ready to leave for Boston. He threw the last of his luggage in the trunk and got in. As he made his way through traffic to the Capital Beltway and took the northbound on-ramp, he thrust away the thought that if it weren’t for Nathaniel Gorham, he would be turning south for Arlington. But now, Leslie Adams was a dead issue. This time there would be not resurrecting it, and the sooner he accepted that the better. He selected a Beethoven symphony from his box of cassettes, put it in the tape deck, laid the speedometer on sixty-five, set the cruise control, and settled back in his seat. There would be lovely women by the ton dotting the beaches of Cape Cod, any dozen of which would be thrilled to get an attentive look from a senior senator’s senior aide.

He shook his head, knowing that when he reached the point of trying to lie to himself, he was in bad shape. He cranked up the volume on the stereo and hunched down in the seat, scowling out at the world.

He crossed over into Connecticut shortly before noon and stopped for gas at Norwalk. As he got back in the car, on impulse he got out the map. He had followed Interstate 95 all the way up through Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. Tired of the urban corridor, he decided he was running enough ahead of schedule to try a little of New England’s back country. If he took U.S. 7 north, he could pick up Interstate 84 at Danbury and follow it all the way to Boston. It would take him through Hartford, but that was the only large city he would have to go through.

What had started to be a cloudless day had now socked in with a solid overcast, and as he finished lunch at a small diner next to the gas station, a warm drizzle started to fall. He drove more leisurely now, letting the strains of a Mozart piano concerto and the rich green countryside massage him until the tension slowly began to slough off. The rain had increased now, and the steady swipe of the windshield wipers seemed to almost match the tempo of the music.

Half an hour out of Norwalk, the weather really settled in, and Bryce had to turn the wipers up to full speed. The clouds were dark and low to the ground, and flashes of sheet lightning rippled occasionally in the gray mass above him, followed immediately by the deep rumble of the thunder. He had driven smack into the middle of a good old-fashioned New England summer thunderstorm. Not that he minded. He had loved thunderstorms from the time he was a kid. He turned off the tape deck so as to hear the thunder better.

Five miles north of a little town called Cannondale, he came around a gentle curve where the road followed the line of the Norwalk River. The rain was coming down hard enough that he had let his speed drop to under fifty. As he crossed over a narrow bridge, a dark figure suddenly loomed up in front of him, standing right on the edge of the pavement. Bryce gasped, instinctively jerking the wheel to the left even as he stabbed at the brake. The BMW had a superb suspension system, or he might have thrown it into a broadside spin on the rain-slick pavement.

“You idiot!” he shouted as he straightened the car out, the surge of adrenaline instantly putting his heart into a thudding drumbeat. Then suddenly he slammed on the brakes and brought the car to a sliding halt. The details of the figure who had loomed up out of the storm finally registered in his brain. He yanked at the door and leaped out, staring back the way he had come.

The dark figure was trudging steadily toward him—long dark coat, knee-length trousers, white socks, head erect. Bryce groaned.

He got back in the car and slammed the door. In a moment the other door opened and Gorham slid in beside him. There wasn’t a drop of water on him. “Much obliged,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

Gorham smiled briefly. “Heard you were going to Boston. Thought I’d see what my hometown looks like nowadays.”

“Just like that, huh?”

Gorham scowled right back at him. “Just like what?”

“After that little trick you pulled with Leslie that’s all you’ve got to say?” He waited, but Gorham didn’t answer. Finally, in disgust, he put the car in gear and started out again. “I asked you a question.”

Gorham swung around, his mouth tight. “I thought I was doing that young lady a favor by getting you two together. But when I saw what you were doing to her, I knew I had made a mistake.”

“What!” Bryce yelled. “What was I doing to her? You know that dinner appointment with Mannington was not my idea. I tried to get out of it.”

“Yeah, you really stood up to him.”

“You meddling old fool! You think I’d let Mannington tell me what to do with Leslie? No way, man. This was just your way of getting back at me because you can’t convince me you’re right.”

Gorham was silent, but there was a pained expression on his face as he stared out through the windshield and the rain. Finally, when he spoke, it was not directly to Bryce. “It’s not surprising really,” he mused. “You grew up in a wealthy home, never wanting for anything, having everything done for you. Socially sheltered, gently reared—it’s no wonder you’ve lost the capacity to feel any commitment to something besides yourself.”

“Oh, brother!” Bryce exploded. “Shall we have a little funeral music while you lament my passing?”

The old man finally turned to Bryce, eyes filled with sadness. He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “You familiar with this document?” he asked.

“What document?”

He started reading. “‘When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands…’” His eyes dropped further down. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights—’”

“Come on, Gorham,” Bryce cut in rudely. “I know what the Declaration of Independence is.”

“Do you know how it ends?” the old man asked softly.

Bryce’s mouth opened, then shut again. His mind was racing, but he couldn’t remember.

“Well,” he said wearily, “let me read it to you. Perhaps you can learn something.” He turned a page, skimmed quickly, found the place. “ ‘And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.’”

Finally he looked up at Bryce. “You think that was an empty boast, a little grand theatrics with which to conclude the document?”

“No, I—”

“Five of those whose signatures are at the bottom of that paper were captured by the British, tortured as traitors until they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost sons in the war. Carter Braxton of Virginia was a wealthy planter and trader. He saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He had to sell everything to pay his debts, and he died a pauper.

“At the Battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson learned that General Cornwallis had taken over his home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General Washington to open fire anyway. The home was destroyed. Nelson died bankrupt.

“John Hart…” Gorham’s voice suddenly faltered. He took a breath, then went on, a huskiness deepening the tone noticeably. “John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she lay dying. Their thirteen children had to flee for their lives as well. For over a year he lived in caves and in the forest. After the surrender, he returned to find his wife dead, his children gone. Thirteen children, and every one of them vanished! He died a few weeks later of a broken heart.”

Bryce let our his breath slowly, moved in spite of himself. “All right. I’ve never said that those men were—”

“No!” Gorham suddenly roared. “Don’t you say it! Don’t you even speak of those men. They gave their lives! They gave their blood! And here you are, pouting like a child because a young lady finally saw you for what you are.”

Surprised by the sudden intensity in Gorham, Bryce did not respond, just drove on silently, moodily.

“And what about the amendment?”

Bryce snapped around, incredulous. “The amendment?”

“Yes. What are you going to do about it?”

He slammed his fist against the steering wheel. “You can’t give it up, can you?”

Gorham just looked at him steadily, his eyes dark pools that could not be fathomed.

“Well,” Bryce said, breathing heavily, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do about the amendment. When I return to Washington the day after Labor Day, I start work for one Mr. Elliot Mannington. And we’re going to put together an organization that will roll through the states of this Union like a thunderclap through the Appalachians. You think I was committed before? Well, you watch me now!”

Gorham again made no response, just stared morosely out into the blackness of the storm. Bryce watched him out of the corner of his eye, his chest heaving with anger.

But Gorham’s next words caught him completely off guard. They were spoken so softly that Bryce had to lean over slightly to pick them up. They were also spoken with a sadness so deep, it left him staring at the man. “Is there no way I can change your mind, Lad?”

“About the amendment? Absolutely not!”

Gorham sighed, a sound of deep pain. “I truly regret to hear you say that. You leave us no other choice.”

Bryce snorted in disgust, and shook his head. “Oh, wonderful! Now come the dark threats, right? Shall we dance around the witch’s cauldron?”

But at that instant, lightning struck about a hundred yards off to the right of the road, directly in line with Bryce’s vision. He jumped sharply as the flash and shattering crack of thunder came simultaneously, rattling the car.

“Man!” he cried, “That was close!” He turned to see Gorham’s reaction, then his mouth dropped open. Nathaniel Gorham had disappeared!

Any thoughts of Gorham were instantly blotted out as another deafening crack slammed off to his right. He slowed the car, momentarily blinded by the intensity of the flash. He was coming around a curve, and the rain was coming down in sheets, making everything a blur. Suddenly he yelled. A blinding whiteness was coming at him, like the high beams of some gigantic vehicle in the dead of night. He slammed on the brakes, felt the back end of the car swing sideways, then screamed as it went into a slide and slammed into the wall of whiteness at close to thirty miles an hour.

There was no shattering crash, no splintering collision. There was one brief burst of whiteness so intense that it seemed to burn his retinas, then instant, all-consuming blackness.

The first thing Bryce was conscious of was the cold wetness along the whole back side of his body. The next was the incredible glitter of stars that filled his vision. He blinked once, then again. Somewhere in the back of his mind it registered that it had stopped raining and the sky had cleared. Gradually other things began to impinge upon his consciousness—the steady, rhythmic droning of crickets; then, in deeper harmony, the raspy seesaw of frogs further away; then, finally, the fact that he was flat on his back in deep, rain-soaked grass. Slowly he pulled himself up to a sitting position, the memory of the storm and Gorham and the blinding whiteness returning.

There was a sound behind him, faint but growing rapidly in volume. He turned toward it, saw a flickering, ghostly light flashing through a stand of trees. Then the headlights of a car came from behind the trees and whipped past him, the hiss of tires on wet pavement rising, then falling in time with the sound of the engine. He ran his hands through his hair, looking around wildly, seeing little because of the temporary night blindness caused by the headlights.

Half dazed, he stumbled toward the highway, instantly soaking his pants up to the knees in the rain-soaked grass. By the time he reached the road, his night vision was returning. There was only a quarter moon, low in the sky, but it was enough to show him, as he looked back and forth in dismay, that his BMW was nowhere to be seen. What had happened? He remembered blacking out as he hit the wall…That brought him up short. It had been somewhere around one thirty or two o’clock in the afternoon when he had stopped for Gorham. Now it was… He lifted his hand, turned his wrist until the face of his watch picked up the moonlight. He drew in a quick breath. It was nine thirty-six! He had been laying there for seven or eight hours!

Alarmed now, he tipped his head back and studied the heavens above him until he spotted the North Star. To the left was north, the way he had been driving. He remembered the small town he passed just before seeing Gorham. With sudden determination he turned to the right and headed south.

He had only gone about ten yards when he saw a flash of white on the ground in front of him. He changed directions slightly, leaned down, and picked up the sheaf of papers slowly. They were barely damp. He brought them up close to his face. The light was faint, but it was bright enough that he could discern the typewritten title: “Declaration of Independence.”

For a long moment he stared. This was the sheaf of papers Gorham had taken from his pocket, the papers from which he had read to Bryce. He looked around now, searching the empty roadside. There was nothing else. No car, no luggage, no other sign of Bryce’s having been here except for the papers Nathaniel Gorham had somehow left behind.

Bryce folded them slowly, stuck them in his back pocket, then turned and trudged southward again.

Chapter 13

The town was small, no more than half a mile in length from outskirts to outskirts, and there was no highway marker to identify it. The houses were also small and older frame structures. For the most part they were dark. He passed one or two with lights and nearly stopped, but up ahead, near what must be the center of town, he could see a blue neon light blinking on and off. Dimly he thought he could make out the word motel.

It was a motel, and a small cafe, now closed, which together carried the rather questionable title of “Dew Drop Inn.” Beneath that, the offerings of the place were listed in peeling paint—“T.V. in every room. Telephone.” Singular, Bryce noted. Not “telephones,” just “telephone.” He shook his head and checked his watch as the neon flashed on again. It was a few minutes before eleven.

Walking to the door that had an “office” sign over it, Bryce paused. At first he thought he was going to have to roust someone out of bed, because the office was dark. But now he could see a faint light coming from a back room. From the bluish glare and the way it varied in intensity, he decided someone was still watching television. He raised his fist and knocked sharply.

He waited a moment, then knocked again, more firmly. A light came on, blinding him momentarily. Then he glimpsed a figure of an older woman who came into the office. There was the click of a lock, and the door opened slightly.

“Yes?”

“Hello. May I use your phone?”

She looked him up and down carefully, then peered past him. She was in her late fifties, perhaps early sixties. The face was narrow, the cheeks hollow, almost gaunt, the eyes quick but holding a promise of pleasantness. She was obviously suspicious but didn’t seem frightened. She finished the check behind him and looked back at him.

“My car’s been stolen.”

Her eyes widened slightly.

“Is there a police station in town?”

She shook her head.

“I was afraid of that. Then may I use your phone?”

“I’m sorry, but state law requires that you be a guest to use the phone.”

“What?” Bryce had heard sick excuses before, but that was the most transparent ploy for business he’d ever run into.

Her eyes were troubled, not wanting to meet his. “I’m really sorry. But I could lose my business permit.”

Bryce opened his mouth to fire off a hot retort, then shut it suddenly. Unexplainably, he believed she was telling him the truth. “Is there a public phone in town so I could—”

Again she was shaking her head.

“Then could you call the police for me? Tell them my car has been stolen.”

She took a breath, fumbled nervously with the doorknob, not meeting his eyes. “I can, but the nearest ISD station is Norwalk.”

“ISD?”

She nodded, not reading the question in his voice. “They likely won’t come this late, unless it’s really serious.”

“My car has been stolen! What do they want, a dead body across the hood?”

“It would be better if you waited until morning.”

“All right,” he said, throwing up his hands. “Do you have a room? Then I’ll call them myself.”

“Yes, I have a room.” Suddenly her eyes were pleading. “But please believe me when I tell you that you are making a serious mistake if you call them tonight.”

Bryce scanned her face, trying to fathom what it was that he saw there. But finally he gave up. The weariness was on him like a blanket. He didn’t give one whit at this stage if there were some fat, backwoods sheriff who was going to be in a foul mood for being yanked out of bed, but he wasn’t going to fight this woman over that. Once he was checked in, he would call whomever he wanted. “Just give me a room,” he said tiredly.

She nodded and stepped back, opening the door wider. Bryce entered, following her as she went to the small counter. The television was playing softly, a man’s voice speaking. Bryce listened absently as she fussed behind the counter. It was some kind of documentary on farming.

“Here,” she said, pushing a registration card and ball-point pen at him.

He took them, noting the heading on the card: “Dew Drop Inn, Bollingbroke, Connecticut. New England Confederation.” He looked again at the last three words. New England Confederation. Maybe it was the motel chain. He gave a short laugh. A chain of two, maybe. And for that matter, Bollingbroke wasn’t the name of the town as he remembered it. But at this point the tiredness was seeping deeply into him, and he didn’t trust his memory in the least.

He filled out the card in quick bold strokes. As he looked up, he caught her looking curiously at his clothes. Suddenly he remembered that he was still quite damp from his trip through the meadow.

He looked at himself, then laughed briefly. “I had to cut through the field. I got a little wet.”

She nodded, knowing he had caught her in her open appraisal, but not seeming to care. She took the card, read the name and address, then slowly looked up at him again, one eyebrow arching upward. But all she said was, “That’ll be eight dollars.”

Bryce reached for his wallet. Eight dollars? Was that just for the room or did he get a bed with that? He took out a ten and slid it across to her.

She glanced at the bill, then shook her head, and slid it back toward him. “Sorry.”

That caught Bryce completely off guard. “What?”

“I can only accept local currency.”

“What?”

“Local currency only.”

“Local currency only?” He fought to keep from screaming at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“There’s a bank in the general store. You can exchange it in the morning.”

Bryce just stared at her, trying to make that register. Shaking his head, he took out his American Express card and tossed it onto the counter. Again she picked it up. Again there was a curious look on her face. She turned it over slowly, examined the back, turned it again, examined the front.

Bryce took a breath and bit his lip to keep hold of his temper. “Don’t tell me you don’t take American Express either.”

“What is it?”

He rolled his eyes heavenward, pleading for help. “How about VISA? Or Diners Club?”

There was no change in her expression, just the same look of blankness. He picked up the ten-dollar bill again and shoved it in front of her. “And you’re telling me you won’t take cash?”

She started to shake her head, then her eyes dropped to the bill. Suddenly she snatched it up and stared at it. She moved slightly so the light fell on it. She read something on the front of it, then her eyes lifted to stare at him, now for the first time frightened. “You’re from the United States of America?” she asked in half a whisper.

Now it was Bryce’s jaw that dropped.

She dropped the bill back on the counter as though it were suddenly hot. “You can pay in the morning,” she said hurriedly, pushing a key at him. “Room one-oh-six. Around the side, then down the hall.”

“What was that crack about the United States supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I…I was just curious. The bathroom’s at the far end of the same hall. So’s the telephone.”

Bryce stifled a groan. Bathroom, singular. Telephone, singular. What kind of burg had he fallen into? “Thank you,” he said wearily, taking his key. He couldn’t resist one parting shot. “They don’t shut off the telephones at night, do they?”

She shook her head, ignoring his tone. “There will be a charge of five cents added to your bill for each call.”

“Five cents?” Then he laughed, on the verge of wildness. “How did Ma Bell ever miss this place?”

She just watched him, eyes veiled.

“Five cents is fine. Thank you very much.”

The room was tiny but neat and comfortable. Baseboard electric heaters ran beneath the window. There was a framed photograph of a man in a military uniform with lots of ribbons and medals whom Bryce did not recognize. It hung above the single, narrow bed that was covered with a plaid bedspread. The television was as tiny as the room. Half curious, Bryce clicked it on. It was black and white. A head shot of a man in a suit appeared, and as Bryce turned up the volume, he realized it was the same voice he had heard in the office. The man was droning on about farm production, and Bryce turned the channel. Nothing. He clicked it again. Then again. Nothing. Really surprised now, he went all the way around the thirteen slots. Only the farm report. Shaking his head as much in disbelief as in disgust, he turned it off again, made sure he had his key, then stepped out into the hall and went to the phone.

By the time Bryce had gone through his third operator, his head was pounding. “Look,” he said, trying with every ounce of willpower left in him to hold his patience, “all I want to do is call Boston. I have given the operator the number, I have given you the number. I know the number is correct. It has been the same number for the past seventeen years. It’s my home, for crying out loud!” He took a deep breath, then spoke more pleasantly. “Did you get the area code correct?”

“What is an area code?”

“What is an area code?” he yelled. “Tell me you’re joking!”

There was no response, just the sound of her steady breathing.

He tried again. “Boston’s Area Code is six one seven, then five five five, three two—”

“I am sorry, Sir,” came the curt reply.

This was definitely the voice of a night supervisor. And if she looked like her voice sounded, Bryce pictured her as broad shouldered, barrel chested, and big enough to eat hay and pull a wagon.

“I don’t know if this is some kind of joke,” the curt voice continued, “but there is no number like that in the Boston area. There is no number even close to that. Now if there is anything else we can do for you, please let me know.”

Bryce threw up his hands. “All right. Let’s try something else. Can you connect me to Maryland. The area code is—”

“Maryland?” The voice deepened with a sudden note of suspicion.

“Yes, you know Maryland? Mary. Land. Just north of Virginia.”

“I know where it is,” the voice answered him coldly.

“Okay, then, I want to call Maryland. The number is—”

“Give me the number of your permit please.”

That stopped Bryce cold. “My what?”

“Your permit.”

“You mean my credit card?”

“No, your permit. You must have a government permit to place a call out of the country. I need the number of the permit.”

“Out of the country?” Bryce shouted. “Maryland?”

There was a long pause, and he pressed one hand against his forehead. “Okay, okay. Let’s go very slowly. I know it’s late. Perhaps you’ve had a long day. How about connecting me with the police station in Norwalk.”

“The police?”

Bryce gritted his teeth. “Or the county sheriff, or whatever they happen to call themselves in this part of the country.”

“You mean the ISD station?”

There it was again. “What is the ISD?”

This time the pause was positively deafening.

“I asked you what ISD stands for.”

“Internal Security Division.”

“Is that the state police?”

“Sir, what is your name?”

“My name?” Bryce repeated in exasperation. “Why do you need my name?”

“Just give me your name if you will.”

“Bryce Sherwood.”

“And where are you calling from?”

He blew out his breath, then lost the battle with his patience. “I am calling from a narrow hallway just outside the public bathroom in a little motel called—yes, ladies and gentlemen, called— believe it or not—the Dew Drop Inn. Not the ‘Do Drop In.’ No, that’s D-E-W D-R-O-P I-N-N. It is not one of the world’s finer hotels, but it will do for the night. And so, Ms. Supervisor, whoever you are, if you could simply place a call for me, I am no longer fussy about which call it is. I will take any call. Boston, Maryland, or even this ISD station if you will. Then I will go back to my small and totally inadequate bed, snuggle in for the night, and try to get some sleep.”

“Which room are you in?”

“Room one-oh-six. What! You want to come and see it for yourself?”

“I will call the ISD station in Norwalk for you. If you return to your room I will call you when I have them on the line.”

And with that there was a sharp click and the line went dead. For several seconds, Bryce just stared at the phone in disbelief, then slammed it back onto the receiver and stalked back into his room. Fifteen minutes later, when the phone had still not rung, he kicked off his shoes and lay back. Three minutes later he was sound asleep.

Just as Bryce managed to lather himself up with a foulsmelling bar of dark-brown soap, he discovered that the capacity of the Dew Drop Inn’s water heater was somewhere around three quarts. The water went from hot to warm to cold in a little under a minute, leaving him gasping as he tried to rinse off.

That didn’t add a lot to the dark mood that had been building for the last twelve hours. He had finally awakened again about 2:00 A.M., gotten undressed, and climbed under the sheet. The bed was so narrow that even when he folded his arms both elbows hung over the side. He slept fitfully until the sunshine coming in through his window finally awakened him about six. Then came the cold shower and the remembrance that his shaving kit was stolen with his car. Growing more foul by the minute, he combed his hair as best he could with his hands, then brushed his teeth using a finger and cold water. By the time he came back into the hall to use the phone, his mood had darkened to a full-blown thunderhead.

Ready for battle, he dialed “O” and waited. There was no response. He clicked the receiver hook sharply and lifted his finger to dial again, but it stopped in midair. He had half turned, and a small bulletin board on the wall caught his eye. In the dim light of the previous night, he hadn’t seen it. Now in the full light of day he simply stared.

There was a cheap brochure advertising the wonders of the Dew Drop Inn, a colored photo of someone holding a string of fish. But that was not what he was staring at. It was the fullcolor map that covered two-thirds of the board.

Stunned, Bryce stepped closer. “THE CONFEDERATED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA.” The title was boldly placed across the top in inch-high letters. North America it certainly was. There were the Great Lakes, the familiar lines of the east and west coasts, the huge blue gouge of the Hudson Bay in Canada. Correction. Not Canada. What should have been the eastern third of Canada was colored a light purple and labeled “The Confederation of Canadian States.” Everything west of the province of Manitoba was colored orange and labeled “Republic of Canada.”

Bryce’s eyes ran over the map slowly, not comprehending. Instead of the familiar outlines of forty-eight contiguous states, everything east of the Mississippi was covered by three divisions. In addition to the Confederation of Canadian States, there was a small section of pink-colored area labeled “The New England Confederation.” That caused him to start. That was what he had seen on the registration card last night. The pink section included everything from Maine to the southern border of New York State and westward to Lake Ontario. The rest of the eastern section of the U.S. stretching all the way down into Florida was a pale lavendar color. Across the whole expanse was emblazoned the words “Atlantic States Alliance.”

The western half of the continent was even more shocking. Everything west of the Mississippi River was in a dull beige color, with hardly any more detail than the line of a few rivers and the blue splash of the Great Salt Lake. It too had three main divisions marked off. As he had already seen, the top was called “The Republic of Canada.” As he looked closer, he saw someone had penciled in below it the words “Free Canada.” The central section, which went down only as far as what would have been the northern borders of New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, was labeled “The United States of America.” Below that, the area continuing into Mexico and off the map, was labeled “The Republic of Latin American States.”

He leaned closer. A bright-red two-inch-wide band separated the eastern third of the continent from the beige portion of the map, running from top to bottom, most of it following the line of the Mississippi River. Bryce leaned closer, then gave a soft cry. In three or four different places the red band was labeled “Demilitarized Zone.”

He stepped back, feeling the hair on the back of his head start to prickle. Had the map been hand drawn, he might have put it down as someone’s sick joke. But this was printed, professionally done. He felt his head whirl and the strange sensation that reality was moving away from him, retreating into the mists.

There was a soft noise behind him, and Bryce turned. A large man was just coming out of his room, clutching some papers. He saw Bryce, looked startled, then spun and started swiftly down the hall in the opposite direction.

“Hey!” Bryce yelled.

The man broke into a run and disappeared around the corner. Bryce dropped the towel he was carrying over his shoulder and sprinted down the hall. The door to his room was open. His mouth opened and then shut as he saw inside. On the night table, his loose change was still there but his wallet was gone! He heard a door slam somewhere behind him.

Bryce swung around and dashed down the short hallway to where it turned and opened into a small alcove. Empty! He took stock quickly. There were two doors, the one he had come through last night from the outside, another marked “Private.” He was out the first in two strides. The sun was up, and a beautiful late summer morning was breaking on the world. He scanned quickly in every direction but no one was in sight.

Ready for battle now, he ran back inside, stepped to the second door. Bam! Bam! Bam! The door rattled with the fury of his pounding. Nothing! He hit it again! Five times. Six. Still no sound. He grabbed the doorknob, twisted it hard. Locked. Jaw tight, he straight-armed the outside door, and with growing fury ran around to the front office, stopping only long enough to grab a solid piece of spruce from a stack of firewood piled against the building.

Chapter 14

Through the window of the motel office he could see the woman working behind the counter. Twice she glanced around nervously. He turned the knob on the door slowly, then gave the door a hard shove. It slammed against the wall with a crash, and she visibly jumped, knocking over a can full of pencils.

“Oh!” She fumbled quickly, trying to pick them up.

“All right, lady!” he said, stepping up to her and thrusting his face right next to hers. “Where is he?”

She shook her head, almost imperceptibly, eyes darting sideways. For one instant Bryce had the distinct impression of being warned, but detecting subtleties was not his strong suit at the moment, and he reached across the counter and clamped one hand over her arm. “Somebody just broke into my room and stole my wallet. He went in that back door that leads straight into your apartment.”

She just stared at him, eyes now full of fright. And sadness! Somewhere in the far back of his mind that registered. There was a deep sadness.

He shook her arm. “I know he’s in there! Get him out here! Now!”

“This what you’re looking for?”

Bryce dropped her arm and spun around, the club coming up instinctively. The man who had stepped out of the doorway was of medium height and build, fair skinned, but with narrow, darting eyes. He wore a black suit—slightly rumpled—and a narrow tie. He held Bryce’s wallet up in his left hand. But it wasn’t the wallet that Bryce was gaping at. It was the small-bore, snubnosed automatic that pointed directly at his stomach.

“Drop the club!” he demanded.

Bryce lowered his arm slowly and let the piece of firewood clatter to the floor. A second man stepped out. Everything about this man was big—his hands, his shoulders, his neck and head, his brutal features. It also registered in Bryce’s mind that this was the same man who had come out of his room.

The shorter man inclined his head slightly, and the other sprang into action. He moved to Bryce, kicked the wood aside, then frisked him—quickly and very thoroughly. Then he stepped back.

“Mr. Sherwood, I presume?” the first man said pleasantly.

Bryce licked his lips, feeling the blood pounding in his head.

“Oh, come, Mr. Sherwood, let’s not be bashful. Certainly not now.” He shot the woman a hard glance. “We’ll be talking to Mr. Sherwood in his room. We are not to be disturbed. Do you understand that, Mrs. Lambert?”

She met his gaze, then finally nodded. To his surprise, Bryce saw her eyes smoldering with hatred. She wasn’t in on it, and that was why she had tried to warn him.

“You’re already in serious trouble for not reporting this last night,” the smaller man said to her. “Don’t add to your problems.”

“I understand, Captain,” she said quietly. Again Bryce noted the bitterness, but, strangely, no fear. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer, but this middle-aged woman showed no fear.

The man stepped forward and jammed the gun into Bryce’s ribs. “All right, move!”

At first the interrogation totally baffled him. They sat him down on the bed, and then the captain, as the woman had called him, started firing questions at him. Where are you from? Is this address in Maryland correct? This, as he jammed Bryce’s driver’s license under his nose. Where did you get this driver’s license? How did you get here? What route did you take?

Suddenly, Bryce realized, with a rush of relief so strong it was almost palpable, that the men confronting him were policemen.

“You’re police?” he blurted, incredulously.

The other’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Who did you think we were?”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Bryce blurted. “I tried to call you last night. My car was stolen. I hit something. There was a storm. When I woke up my car was gone. I—”

“A car?”

“Yes, a red BMW. About five miles north of here. I—”

“BMW?” He had a small notebook and pencil and was making notes now, the pistol back in his jacket pocket. “What is a BMW?”

Bryce gaped at him, then bit back a sharp comment. “It’s made by the Bavarian Motor Works—BMW.”

“You say you tried to call us last night?”

“Yes. The operator said she would call back, but—”

“You also tried to call Boston and to make a call to Maryland without a permit. Who were you trying to call in Boston?”

“My parents. They were expecting me and…” He stopped as the man’s words registered. “The operator? She told you all this?”

He ignored that. “We also have no record of your crossing the border, Mr. Sherwood.”

“Border? What border?”

The ferret eyes narrowed. “You wish to play stupid, Mr. Sherwood? I assure you this does not make things better for you.”

“Hey, look,” Bryce started, beginning to feel like the only one at a party who couldn’t speak the language, “I don’t know what you guys are up to, but this has gone far enough. Let’s talk about my car and how it was stolen.”

“First, I would like to hear how you crossed into our state without passport or identity card and driving a car I have never heard of.”

“Passport?” Bryce laughed nervously. “You need a passport now to get into Connecticut? I heard you weren’t wild about tourism, but this is ridiculous.”

The man stepped forward menacingly, his mouth twisting into an ugly gash in his face. “You think traveling without a passport and identity card is amusing?”

At that point, Bryce’s patience gave out. Jerkwater policeman or not, this had gone far enough. “I’d like to make a phone call,” he said evenly.

The big man tipped his head back and laughed. The captain only smiled grimly. “And where will you call, Mr. Sherwood, to some nonexistent number in Boston?”

Bryce felt his head starting to whirl. Something was terribly wrong. The operator had called these men last night. And yet… He looked up. “I don’t appreciate being treated like a common criminal. My car was stolen. I demand you take some action to find it.”

“You demand?” the man said incredulously.

“Yes, I demand. I’m a lawyer. I know my rights. If you want to avoid the biggest lawsuit Connecticut has ever seen, I suggest you stop the television tough-guy act and find my car.”

What Bryce saw in the other man’s eyes was suddenly very frightening. He had known one other man like this—short in stature and shorter on self-esteem, who made up for it with a wicked, sadistic streak when anyone pricked at his enormously inflated ego. At that moment Bryce realized he had made a serious mistake.

The big man leaped forward, grabbed Bryce’s shirt, and yanked him to his feet. “How did you get into this country?” he screamed into his face.

The whiff of bad breath tinged with alcohol was so strong that Bryce wrinkled his nose. “You know,” he said, trying to keep his voice conversational, “I think I walked into the state looney bin last night. You, the operator, the motel lady—you’re all crazy.” Then his own self-control snapped. He put his hands against the big man’s chest and shoved free of him. “Look, buster,” he shouted, “I don’t know where you went to police academy, but you lay another hand on me and the governor will hear about this one.”

The man smiled, a thin, mirthless smile that looked more like a grimace. Then suddenly he doubled his fist and drove it with the full force of his body into Bryce’s stomach. Bryce gasped and dropped to his knees like he had been poleaxed. Both men watched him impassively as he retched frantically, trying to get air.

Dimly Bryce felt the huge hands sweep down and grab him by his shirt. Buttons ripped as he was yanked to his feet. Bryce saw the blur of the massive fist. He jerked his head, but not fast enough. It caught him a glancing blow along the jaw. Lights exploded in his head and he catapulted backwards, unconscious before he even hit the bed.

Bryce groaned and rolled over. His eyes opened slowly, trying to focus on the bulk towering over him. There was the warm, salty taste of blood inside his mouth. The big man stepped back, and Bryce pulled himself into a sitting position, grunting as the pain in his stomach nearly doubled him over again. The captain was leaning against the door, looking bored.

He watched absently until Bryce swung his feet off the bed. “Now, Mr. Sherwood. I think we’ve really had quite enough of your being cute.” The captain glanced at the big man. “Sergeant, call Captain Rodale in Hartford. I want a complete rundown on this man.”

The big man gave him a questioning look, but the other frowned quickly. “I’ll be fine. Get out there and call him!”

He exited quickly.

“While he’s at it, he’d better call you guys a lawyer,” Bryce said hoarsely, still trying to recover his breath. “This is still the United States of America, and you’re in more trouble than you’ve ever dreamed of.”

There was an instant narrowing of those dangerous eyes, and he stepped forward. “The United States of America?”

“You’d better believe it!”

“So that is why you carry U.S. currency? Are you from the USA?”

Bryce just gaped at him.

“Why then do you carry papers from the ASA?”

“The ASA. I don’t know anything about any ASA.”

“The Atlantic States Alliance.”

“Never heard of it.” Then suddenly Bryce’s head came up. On the map. Stretching from Florida to Pennsylvania. The fear abruptly returned, sending chills coursing up and down his back.

The man reached in the inside coat of his jacket and withdrew a sheaf of papers folded longways down the middle. He opened them, looked at them, then looked at Bryce over the top of them. “The United States of America. But of course. That would explain everything.”

“What are you talking about?” Bryce said slowly, trying to maintain some semblance of defiance but feeling only a growing sense of baffled horror.

His inquisitor suddenly thrust the papers under his nose. The top page was titled “The Declaration of Independence.” Bryce knew what they were instantly. The documents from Nathaniel Gorham.

“Where did you get this document?”

Bryce leaned back against the headboard, fighting for calm. “I refuse to answer any further questions until I have an attorney present.”

In one swift movement, the captain’s hand whipped to his coat, then out. In an instant the barrel of the pistol was jammed up hard against Bryce’s face, grinding the flesh against his cheekbone. “Now let me tell you something,” the captain hissed softly into his ear. “This document has been outlawed in the Confederation of North American States for over a hundred years. The penalty for having it in your possession is death.”

Bryce didn’t dare move, but his eyes flew open with the shock of the man’s words.

“I can shoot you on sight as a spy from the United States government and no one will bat an eye here. Do you understand me?”

He twisted the muzzle hard, and Bryce yelped with the pain.

“Now I’m going to ask you one more time, Mr. Sherwood. Where did you get this document?”

Bryce hardly heard the last question. Death! For the Declaration of Independence. Something snapped inside of him, and he laughed wildly, unable to control himself. “A ghost gave it to me.”

The laugh died in his throat as the captain stepped back, the pistol coming up slowly to point directly at Bryce’s head. The man’s hand was trembling, but Bryce, his clarity sharpened by the sudden horror of the moment, saw the man’s finger start to tighten on the trigger.

There was a heavy clump against the door. The noise seemed to cause something in the captain’s head to click, and suddenly he was rational again. “It’s open,” he snapped over his shoulder. The wave of relief hit Bryce like a blast of water from a fire hose. He had come within a fraction of an inch of having his head blown off.

“I said it’s open,” the captain snarled, jerking around to grab the doorknob. He yanked the door open, then jumped back as the sergeant’s body tumbled into the room. A man was standing in the doorway, deer rifle covering the small room. The captain leaped back, his pistol whipping upward. Both weapons fired simultaneously, and the blast in the small room was deafening.

The captain’s shot hit high, burying itself in the plaster just to the left of the man’s head, but he was slammed backwards as the heavy-grained bullet from the rifle caught him square in the chest. Eyes bulging in horror, Bryce stared as the man slid slowly downward to a sitting position, leaving a red smear on the wallpaper, then toppled forward onto the body of the sergeant.

The man with the rifle was young, dressed in overalls and a long-sleeved shirt. He stared at the two bodies for a moment, breathing hard, then finally lifted his eyes to Bryce. There was a soft sound, and the woman, Mrs. Lambert, was at the door, eyes wide and filled with fright. She motioned quickly to Bryce. He didn’t move, just stared at her, still in shock.

“Come!” she hissed. “We must move quickly!”

Still he just stood there. She came to him, gently took his arm as the boy leaned over the two men, checking quickly for vital signs. “Please!” she pleaded, pulling him toward the door. “We don’t know how soon there will be others.”

Bryce followed her dumbly, like a child in a stupor. The man with the rifle stood. “Go!” he commanded. “Get him out of here!”

The events that followed became the rapid blur of a nightmare for Bryce. The woman half dragged and half shoved him out a back door and to a beat-up old pickup truck hidden in a stand of trees. “Get under the tarp,” she commanded, pointing to the back of the truck. “You mustn’t even stick your head out until we stop again.”

Still dazed, Bryce obeyed, feeling her tuck the canvas around him. The engine coughed into life, died once, then started again. There was a lurch, the crunch of the tires on gravel, then they turned onto pavement. They drove at a sedate speed along the highway for only five or six minutes, then turned left onto a rough dirt road. Now she really put the pedal to the floor, and for the next fifteen minutes Bryce’s body was battered and bruised as the truck bounced and careened wildly over a road that could not have been much more than a deer track. Several times he was tempted to peek out, then his mind would flash back to the image of the captain’s body slamming against the wall and the bright red smear he had left as he slid to the floor. That was enough to keep him under cover.

Finally the truck careened to a stop in a spray of gravel. The truck’s door opened, there was a soft step, then the canvas was pulled back. Bryce sat up slowly, blinking at the light.

“Hurry!” she urged. “You mustn’t be seen.”

He climbed stiffly out of the truck. They were in front of a one-room cabin, roughly built, half hidden in a heavy stand of birch and white pine. Thirty yards in any direction and one would be lost to sight in the thick trees.

She motioned with her head. “This way.”

They went only ten or fifteen yards, and for a moment Bryce thought she was going to hide him in the forest, for they had stopped in front of a thick clump of mountain laurel. But then she reached down and pulled. Bryce was startled to see a door open. It was a root cellar, dug right into the hillside, with its door still covered with soil and grass. His estimation of the woman went up yet another notch. One could walk into that clump of brush with a magnifying glass and pass right over the door.

The cellar was small, no more than ten by ten, and had a dirt floor. The air was musty and smelled of rotten potatoes. Inside was a small wooden bin filled with sawdust, a beat-up old army cot, and a wooden crate turned upside down. On the crate sat the lid of a jar with a small candle stuck vertically in its own wax.

She lit the candle with a match retrieved from somewhere. “I’ll bring you some food tonight.” She pointed to the sawdust bin. “There are a few carrots in there.”

Bryce nodded, sensing her urgency, but also feeling his own grasping need for some answers. “Who were those men? Why are you doing this for me?”

She looked surprised, then quickly shook her head. “I’ve got to get back and help my son.” She moved back to the door. “I’ll be back after dark. Keep the door closed. Don’t go out for any reason.”

He fought back the urge to grab her and shake the answer out of her, but again he just nodded numbly.

Satisfied, she opened the door, slipped out, and pushed it shut again. Bryce stared at it, watching his shadow flicker and dance in the dim light of the candle.

Chapter 15

Bryce was half dozing in the darkness, trying to ignore the discomfort of the narrow cot and wondering why after seven or eight hours his nose had still not grown completely accustomed to the smell of rotting potatoes. The door above his head scraped softly. He was up instantly and crouched in the corner.

“It’s me.” It was her voice, and he saw a dark shape framed against the starlight as the door to the root cellar opened, then closed again almost immediately. “Just a moment,” she said.

There was a loud scratch, a match flared, and she raised the glass on a kerosene lantern and touched the match to the wick. As the light filled the cellar, she set it on the upturned crate, then turned and smiled. “There. Is that better?”

Bryce nodded gratefully. He had never been claustrophobic, but the candle had burned out after a couple of hours, and after six or seven more hours in total darkness, he better understood the feeling.

She turned. Next to the door was a small cardboard box which she lifted and put next to the lamp. Bryce stepped forward, catching the sudden whiff of something wonderful. Fried chicken. Sandwiches. A bottle of milk. Some peaches. After his eighth or ninth carrot, he had finally lost his ability to get another one down and had tried to ignore the gnawing hunger.

“Eat,” she commanded, pulling the cot over close enough to serve as a chair.

Bryce obeyed without hesitation, biting into a chicken breast eagerly.

“I’m sorry it took so long.” She looked away. “There was much to do.”

Bryce stopped chewing, feeling a sudden lurch in his stomach. “Are they dead?”

“Only the one.” She saw the look on his face, and frowned. “We had no choice.”

“I know,” he said, slumping back. He had been interrogated like a common criminal, slugged in the stomach, and smashed in the jaw. He had seen the rock-steady muzzle of a pistol poised at his head. But in spite of all that, he had hoped that he was not party to a killing—especially the killing of a policeman. And yet, in reality, there had been no hope. The horror of the captain smashed backwards by the bullet would never again leave him.

He sighed, wearily. “What about the big man?”

“He’s in another cellar, not far from here. We’ll send him north to Boston, ship him out on a freighter headed for Africa or India. They won’t hear from him for at least three months.”

Bryce nodded, grateful that they hadn’t killed the second man too. On the other hand, he knew he owed a great debt to this woman and the man who was her son. If they hadn’t opened the door when they did…He stopped, remembering. Would the captain have pulled the trigger? He wasn’t sure. The man’s rage had been enormous. Bryce shuddered, pushing the thought away. “Who were they, anyway?” he asked woodenly.

She shrugged, her face forlorn. “ISD.” At his blank look, she added, “Internal Security Division.”

Internal Security? There it was again. “What is this Internal Security Division?”

That surprised her. “From the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They’re the secret police. That makes it very, very serious for us.” She gave him a reproving look. “Why didn’t you listen to me? I warned you not to call them.”

“Secret police?” There it was again, the whirling sense of surrealism, like being part of a conversation, understanding every word, but not comprehending a thing.

He set the piece of chicken down slowly. “Secret police? In the state of Connecticut?”

“The province of Connecticut,” she corrected. “But no, the ISD is the national police, for all of CONAS.”

“CONAS? What is that?”

She gave him a sharp look. “The Confederation of North American States.”

The vision of the map on the bulletin board swam before his eyes. “What is happening?” he asked of the empty air. “One moment I’m in the United States of America, and the next, I’m in some wild, insane nightmare.”

That brought her head up slowly. “So you are from the United States?”

“Of course, I—”

She grabbed his arm. “When?”

“When what?”

“When did you come from there?”

He rubbed his hand across his eyes, fighting for some semblance of sanity. “Yesterday.”

She leaned back, eyes glowing. “When I saw your currency, I couldn’t believe it. The United States!”

“Look, lady—Mrs. Lambert, I—”

“Please, my name is Jessie.”

He grabbed her arm, swallowed hard, took a deep breath. “Look, Jessie, I am very, very confused. Something is terribly wrong here, and I want to know what. Let’s start right at the beginning. See if I can sort this out.”

“First, I must ask two questions.”

He sighed. “Okay, what?”

“Could you lead us back to the United States of America?”

He just stared at her.

“I mean if we get the necessary papers? We’ll need new passports, identity cards—”

“But we are in the United States of America!” he said, fighting not to scream it at her.

Now it was her turn to stare. “Is that what you think?”

“Of course that’s what I think. Where do you think we are?”

“In the Confederation of North American States,” she said slowly, “and more specifically, the New England Confederation.” She was looking at him strangely.

He rubbed his hand across his eyes. “The map,” he mumbled. “That’s what it said on the map.”

“What map?”

“The one on the bulletin board in the motel.”

“Yes, what about it?”

“Is that…” He swallowed. “Is that accurate?”

She gave him a long look. “Yes, of course.”

He felt like the sergeant had slugged him in the stomach again. He dropped his head into his hands, staring at nothing.

Jessie stood, went to the box she had brought and fished out a thin sheaf of papers from the bottom, then turned back and thrust them at him. “Here’s my second question.”

He didn’t really need to look. He already knew what it was as he took the papers from her. He glanced down to confirm, saw the title, then started slightly. There was a dark red stain in the upper corner, next to where it read “Declaration of Independence.” Bryce felt his stomach turn. The captain had been holding these papers when the gun battle began.

“Is this authentic?” Jessie asked softly.

He handed the papers back to her. “Yes, it’s just a copy, but it is authentic.”

Jessie sat down slowly on the cot, her hands trembling. She caressed the paper reverently with her fingertips, and Bryce was stunned to see sudden tears well up and trickle down her cheeks.

“We always heard it was real,” she whispered, “but we couldn’t be sure.”

The penalty for possession was death. That’s what the captain had shouted at him. The penalty for possession of this document is death. It has been outlawed for a hundred years. Now as he watched this middle-aged woman weeping over it, Bryce suddenly knew that everything here was very, very real. He didn’t understand it. He couldn’t comprehend how it had happened. But of this he was sure: this was no dream, no nightmare, no temporary flight into insanity. He was right smack in the middle of something very horrible and very, very real.

He straightened slowly. “Jessie, we have got to talk.”

The next morning, just before dawn, Jessie returned. She brought Bryce more food and a can of kerosene for the lantern. She looked drawn and haggard but brushed aside his solicitations. They had to leave by tonight, and there was still much to be done in preparation. She had brought a small box camera, and they went out into the daylight long enough for him to stand in front of a makeshift background made from a blanket and have three pictures taken.

“Jessie?” he asked a few minutes later, watching her hands as she took the food from the box and put it on the crate.

She looked up, brown eyes dark and tired.

“Do you believe what I told you last night?”

Straightening, she looked away for several seconds, then met his gaze. “It seems so crazy, so impossible.”

“I know,” he said forlornly.

“And yet.” She took a breath, then sighed. “And yet, it is the only explanation that makes sense of everything—the United States currency, the foolishness of your phone calls, your driver’s license with the Maryland address.” There was a long pause, then, “Yes, I believe you.”

Bryce opened his mouth, then shut it again, surprised at the sudden burning in his eyes and catch in his throat. For the last twenty-four hours he had been skirting a mental breakdown. To have this woman, who exuded such New England practicality and common sense, say she believed him meant more to him than he could express. Finally, he got control. “What ever prompted you to intervene in my behalf?”

There was a short hoot of disgust. “You heard the captain. I was in serious trouble for not calling in and reporting you when you first showed up.”

He shook his head. “Trouble, yes. But not anything like you’re in now.”

Her eyes were suddenly glistening, and she turned, so he couldn’t see her face. Bryce took a step closer to hear as she continued softly, “Eight years ago my husband went south, into the Atlantic States Alliance, to buy some things for the motel. His papers were not in order, or so they said.”

She turned back to him slowly, and Bryce saw the lines around her eyes deepen and her mouth tighten. “He was arrested.” She swallowed, fighting for control. “No one helped him.”

“Is he still in prison?” Bryce asked softly.

She shook her head. “He died of tuberculosis three years ago.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

Her head came up. “But it was more than that.”

“What?”

“When I saw your money, I couldn’t believe it. We hear rumors about the USA. But no one is allowed to travel there, and no one from there has ever come here. I thought it was some kind of test by the secret police or something. I almost called them, but I kept thinking, ‘What if he is really from the United States?’ Then, after the big man searched your room, I heard the captain talk about the document they had found.” She finally met Bryce’s gaze, steadily and proudly. “That’s when I decided I would help you, no matter what the cost.”

Chapter 16

Bryce lay on the cot, staring at the roof of the root cellar. He had turned the lantern down until the wick barely glowed. Suddenly he jerked up, aware that he was not alone. In the dim light he saw the figure of a man perched on the orange crate.

“You!” he shouted.

“Hello, Laddie.”

Bryce leaped to his feet. “Gorham! Man, am I glad to see you. The most incredible thing has happened.”

Gorham didn’t move, but suddenly the wick of the lantern flared higher, filling the cellar with light.

Bryce rushed on, not even noticing. “You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve been dropped right in the middle of the most bizarre nightmare. The United States is gone. Well, not really gone, but it’s not here anymore. It’s out west. Here it’s… it’s—there’s secret police, different currency. I was arrested, nearly shot. A captain of the secret police was killed. I’m implicated in the murder and now…”

His voice trailed off as he peered at the old man. “You already know all this.”

Gorham nodded slowly.

“My car? The motel? Jessie? You know it all, don’t you?” The thoughts were coming faster now. “The Declaration of Independence? That’s why you gave it to me, wasn’t it. For Jessie?”

Gorham just watched him steadily, face expressionless.

Bryce turned and started to pace angrily; then suddenly he spun back around. “You did this!” He stepped forward, understanding coming in a rush now. “You did it! You brought me here!” His voice was hoarse with shock as he stared at Gorham. “You tried to warn me. There in the car, just before I hit that wall of whiteness.”

“Yes,” Gorham sighed. “I tried to warn you.”

Bryce’s eyes were blazing now. “Then take me back! Get me out of here!”

There was no response.

“I mean it, Gorham. Your little joke has gone far enough. Get me out of here!”

Gorham stirred, his eyes brooding. “In the first place, none of this is a little joke, as you call it. Secondly, I didn’t put you here. You did!”

“Oh sure!” Bryce snapped. “I was driving through the countryside of Connecticut, and thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to—’”

“Look!” Gorham thundered, startling Bryce enough that he fell back a step. “It was very difficult for me to get here. I can only stay for a short time. Are you going to sit there and whine, or do you want to hear what I’ve come to say?”

Bryce sat back down on the cot slowly. “All right, I’m listening.”

“For a while, I thought we were making progress with you. Between me and Leslie and her father, I thought we were really going to convince you.” Gorham sighed, and it was a deep, painful sound. “Then came the thing with Mannington and Leslie. Perhaps it was foolish of me to interfere—”

“Perhaps nothing!” Bryce blurted. “You blew the whole thing.”

“Well, be that as it may, when it became apparent that you had become absolutely rigid in your determination to continue on in the same course, there was a meeting of the Council of Founding Fathers. It was their unanimous decision to take more drastic action.”

“Wait a minute,” Bryce cut in. “You didn’t know for sure how I felt about the amendment until we were in the car. There were only a few seconds between when you disappeared and when I hit that wall of light. When did this meeting with the council take place?”

“Time, as you think of it, does not hold sway in that other sphere. Though it was only a few seconds for you, actually the deliberations of the council went on at great length.”

Bryce was shaking his head. “And because I wouldn’t kowtow to you guys on this amendment thing, you zapped me into another world?”

“Your stand on the amendment was an important factor, but it was not the only one, and not even the most important one.”

“Then what was?”

Gorham stood and began to pace the narrow confines of the root cellar. “Over the past few decades, the principles that we fought so hard to establish have been eroded again and again. In and of themselves, none of the losses were that critical. But the aggregate effect has become very serious. When added to all that has gone before, the proposed amendment is potentially devastating. It could be the straw that finally tips the camel over.”

“Come on,” Bryce scoffed. “I can see where it might reduce some of the checks and balances set up by the Constitution, but it’s not that different from what we have now.”

He stopped and looked at Bryce. “It is very much different than what you have now. But it’s more than just that. There are evil people at work now. People who seek for power. People who clearly understand that the Constitution stands in their way. This new amendment is enough to give them the bridgehead they need to completely overthrow it.”

“Then why not zap some of those people over here? Just leave me alone.”

“I told you before,” Gorham answered evenly, “don’t underestimate yourself. By some strange combination of circumstances, Bryce Sherwood has become a pivotal player in events—not only the current events, but in the shape of things yet to come. He serves as a catalyst for much of what is to happen.”

“Well,” Bryce snapped, “so much for your policy of not directly interfering in the lives of others.”

“Because of the gravity of the situation, the council received a special dispensation to remove you from the scene. Whether that will turn the tide remains to be seen, but with you in, there was little question of what would happen.”

“I am truly flattered,” Bryce said with soft bitterness. He sat back, letting it all sink in, one part of him on the verge of laughing wildly at the whole insane situation, another part of him chilled by the finality of Gorham’s words. Finally he looked up. “So where am I?”

Gorham turned and sat back down on the orange crate. “It is very difficult to explain. Perhaps an analogy will help. What do you call it in your railroads, when two tracks split off from one another?”

Bryce gave him a baffled look.

“You know, where the two tracks come together and can be changed.”

“You mean a switch?”

“Yes, that’s it. A switch. It is a very small thing, yes? Just a fraction of an inch between the switch and the other track.”

“Yes.”

“People on the train go over a switch and don’t even realize they have changed tracks.”

Again Bryce nodded.

“And yet, they can end up hundreds of miles away because of that little switch.”

“I understand all that. What has it got to do with where I am now?”

“The train is the same. Even the people on the train are the same, but because of that little switch, the train is now in a very different place.”

He took a deep breath. “Think of the United States as the train, and the year 1787 as the switch. Suppose that after we met at Philadelphia and drafted the Constitution in 1787…“ His voice trailed off, and his eyes took on a faraway look. Finally, he pulled back, looking at Bryce. “Suppose that the Constitution was never ratified.”

Bryce leaped up. “But it was ratified!”

Gorham shook his head. “Not here it wasn’t. In this world, the Constitution was never ratified.”

Bryce just stared, his jaw slack. “It can’t be!” he whispered.

“Well,” Gorham said slowly, “it is! You are now in an America that has never had the Constitution.”

For the next few minutes, Bryce sat with his head in his hands, listening as Gorham described the history of this new America.

When ratification failed, the colonies broke up into several factions. The three Southern colonies formed a monarchy. They tried to persuade George Washington to be their king, but he adamantly refused and died in 1799, broken-hearted to see all for which he had fought so hard unraveling at every seam.

The New England colonies formed their own confederation using a loose constitutional monarchy. Under Thomas Jefferson’s direction, the remaining states formed a small nation they called the Atlantic States Alliance. Using the Constitution as the basis for government, for a time they did quite well. To the north, Canada formed its own confederation of small states.

But the three little nations in America were too small. Expansion became critical, and by the early 1800s all three countries were locked in battle over the western territories. Then in 1833, the generals in the Atlantic States Alliance overthrew the democratic government and set up a military dictatorship. They quickly overran the southern monarchy and consolidated their power base.

Bryce lifted his head to watch Gorham. He was far away now, staring off at nothing as he droned on in a dull monotone, as though even the very speaking of it caused him pain.

Battling Canada and the New England Confederation to a standstill, the generals finally signed the Treaty of 1836, which formed the Confederation of North American States—CONAS— a commonwealth of three socialistic, totalitarian states.

In the meantime, the peoples of the West used the paralyzing war in the East as an opportunity to form their own free nations. Western Canada broke off from the Confederation of Canadian States and created the Republic of Canada, or Free Canada, as it was more popularly known. The heavy Spanish population in the southern part of the country formed the Republic of Latin American States, which included what should have been California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Between these two nations were the twenty-seven states of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains.

The pioneers had carried the now defunct Constitution with them and used it as the basis for governing themselves. They chose the name proposed by the Constitution, and the twentyseven states became the United States of America.

“There was a map at the motel,” Bryce interrupted for the first time. “Now I understand what I saw.”

“Yes. So now you have two groups of nations—three totalitarian states in the East, three free republics in the West.”

“And that explains the demilitarized zone I saw on the map.”

Gorham nodded. “CONAS doesn’t like having a free nation on their borders, beckoning to their citizens. So you have the Mississippi Demilitarized Zone—a twenty-mile-wide stretch of machine guns, electric fences, barbed wire, dogs, and land mines. Dozens are killed every year trying to cross it.”

“What about my family?” Bryce asked softly. “Are they here?”

Gorham nodded. “I told you, it is the same train with the same people. It’s just on a different track.”

“Where are they?”

“Well, fortunately, they never left California. Who wanted to emigrate to the New England Confederation under the circumstances? Your family are all healthy and safe and doing fine.”

Bryce looked at his hands, then finally back to Gorham. “Okay, I’ve learned my lesson.”

The older man searched his face, but didn’t answer.

“I said I’ve learned my lesson!” Bryce exploded. “You’ve made your point! I was wrong about the Constitution. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you sooner. I’m ready to go back to reality now.”

“This is reality now.”

Bryce rocked back. “You know what I mean.”

“Didn’t you listen to anything I’ve been saying?” Gorham shot back. “This is it! There is no other reality for you. It is not possible for me to take you back.”

Bryce leaped to his feet and gave the cot a vicious kick, sending it crashing against the wall of the cellar. “You make it possible!” he yelled. “You’re the one who got me into this.”

Gorham just shook his head stubbornly in the face of Bryce’s fury. “I tried to warn you, but you refused to listen. Now I can do nothing.”

Bryce felt his fingernails digging into his palms. “You’ve got to, Gorham!” he pleaded. “You’ve got to get me out of this nightmare!”

Gorham’s patience ran out. “And what if I could? Would I? Should I? Oh, sure, mentally you’re deeply shaken, but has anything else really changed? If I could take you back this instant, are you ready to tell Mannington the deal is off?”

That caught Bryce totally off guard. “I…Well, yes, I guess I would—”

“Are you ready to go to work and fight as hard to see that the amendment isn’t ratified as you did to get it passed?”

Again Bryce hesitated. He had been consumed with thoughts of getting back. What he would do if he made it there hadn’t yet received much consideration.

“I rest my case,” Gorham said soberly. “Little has changed. Not in the heart, where it really matters.” He swung around abruptly. “And now I must go. I have stayed longer than I was supposed to already.”

“So there is nothing you can do?” Bryce whispered.

He shook his head sadly.

Bryce leaned against the wall, shattered. Gorham’s face softened. “Is there nothing you would know from me?” he asked softly.

Bryce looked up. “What?”

“You asked about your family. Is there no one else?”

Bryce’s head came up slowly, the blue eyes suddenly wide. “Leslie! Is she here?”

“I told you. Same train, same people.”

“She is here! Where?”

“I am only allowed to say this much. Her family still lives near Arlington, Virginia.” He stopped, sighed. “Find her, Bryce. Before, you needed her. Now, she needs you.” He shrugged and instantly began to fade. “You must be very careful, Bryce,” his voice echoed ethereally. “As you learned in the motel, this is not just some dreamscape you are passing through. It is real. The people are real. The bullets are real. And you are a stranger in a difficult land.”

Jessie and her son arrived shortly after dark. As they shut the door to the root cellar behind them, Bryce took more careful stock of the young man who had saved his life. He was in his early twenties, lean as a split-ash rail and dressed in simple overalls and a long-sleeved cotton shirt. He still carried the rifle in his hand. His eyes were those of his mother, the mouth too.

Bryce stuck out his hand. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you yesterday. If you hadn’t come when you did…”

He took Bryce’s hand, pumped it once, then dropped it, obviously embarrassed.

“I’m sorry, Bryce,” Jessie broke in. “I forgot you haven’t been formally introduced. This is my son, Neal.”

Bryce smiled. “I would never have guessed.”

Suddenly Jessie was all business. “We’ve got the papers,” she said, her voice low with excitement. She handed him a passport and some other papers.

Bryce examined them closely. His picture looked sick—unruly hair, thick stubble. But it would be hard to identify him later from the photograph alone. “Are you ready to go?” Neal asked.

Bryce had been thinking about nothing else for the last four hours. “I am.”

“We’ve decided that the easiest way will be to cross into the Canadian Confederation, then head west until—”

He stopped. Bryce was shaking his head slowly.

“What?” Jessie demanded.

“I’m ready to take you to the United States,” he said evenly, looking to each one of them. “But not north.”

Neal shot his mother a quick look. She ignored it, watching Bryce steadily. “They know you came from the south,” she said. “They’ll be watching the southern border very closely.”

“I’ve got to go to Virginia,” Bryce said stubbornly. “Then I’ll see that you get to the United States. I owe you that, for saving my life. But first, I’m going to Virginia.”

Chapter 17

They drove south for two hours, keeping to the back roads, then slept fitfully in the truck until dawn. Leaving the old pickup hidden deep in a clump of underbrush, they walked into a small village on the main highway and joined a ragtag group of people waiting outside a small general store.

This had been Neal’s idea, once he saw that Bryce was not going to back down from his determination to go south. Starting in July and August, the ASA imported itinerant farm workers from all over CONAS to help with the tobacco and cotton harvests in the South. There was always a shortage of laborers, and getting included was not that much of a challenge. At seven o’clock, an overweight, slovenly constable came to the store and began writing out travel permits. In their shabby clothes and unshaven condition, the three newcomers blended in and received their permits without a hitch.

Two hours later and a mile or two from the border, the rickety bus pulled to a stop in a long line of traffic. Bryce felt Neal tense alongside him. “This isn’t normal?” Bryce asked, low and under his breath.

Neal shook his head as Jessie, sitting across the aisle from them, flashed a warning look. Bryce leaned back, feeling his heart suddenly pick up its tempo as he sensed the sudden fear and tension on the bus. If the others were nervous, where did that leave him and the Lamberts as they traveled on forged papers? In addition, Jessie had the Declaration of Independence sewn into the side of her suitcase. Bryce had balked at taking it, remembering the penalty for being caught in possession of it, but Jessie was absolutely adamant. It was not to be left behind.

There were nearly thirty people on the bus. Though Anglos dominated the group, there were half a dozen blacks, two or three Orientals, and a couple of Latin extraction. There were only three other women, and that worried Bryce a little. Jessie was not dressed conspicuously different than them, but he wasn’t sure she could ever feign the air of forlorn, broken-spirited hopelessness that the others carried like a burden. There was a fierce streak of independence in her that radiated like the inner core of a nuclear reactor. Jessie was a fighter and a proud woman. And thank the Lord for that, he thought fervently.

It took nearly half an hour for the bus to creep forward until it approached the heavy, fortress-like building of the border checkpoint. When Bryce saw the high barbed-wire fence with its V-shaped barrier on the top stretching off in both directions, he shook his head in disbelief. Two days ago, he had driven across this border between New York and Connecticut at about sixtyfive miles an hour with hardly a second thought.

The low murmurs that had filled the bus since they had entered the long line of traffic suddenly dropped off to silence. Bryce craned his neck and saw two uniformed soldiers approaching the bus, submachine guns hanging over their shoulders, pistol butts jutting from holsters around their waists.

Neal leaned slightly toward Bryce. “Don’t look at them until they come to you. Just look submissive.”

The bus driver swung open the door, and the two men came aboard. “Identity papers, passports, and travel permits!” barked the first. Suddenly Bryce’s heart was pounding in his throat. This is not some dreamscape you’re passing through, Gorham had reminded him. These are real people and real bullets.

He leaned back, pulling the dirty baseball cap lower over his eyes, then reached for his papers, forcing his mind into a numbing blankness.

Bryce jumped as there was a sharp rap on his shoulders. “Papers!”

He looked up into the hard coldness of the soldier’s face and handed him the documents. He jumped again as his hat was ripped off his head and dumped in his lap. It took every ounce of willpower to hold his head up, eyes steady, as the man looked at him, then at the passport photo, then back at him. Then the eyes went to the identity card, then the travel permit. The man dropped them back into his lap. “Papers!” the man demanded, and Neal Lambert handed his across.

The burst of relief and wild exhilaration that hit Bryce was the most intoxicating thing he had ever experienced. He had jumped the abyss, he had come up from the blackness! He was alive!

Neal passed muster and so did Jessie. A look of triumph flashed between the three of them as the soldier moved on past them toward the back of the bus. Bryce put his hat back on, slouched low again and closed his eyes.

“Where did you get this permit?”

Bryce opened his eyes a crack. The first border guard was about six rows from the front, standing next to where two of the women sat. He had papers in his hand and was glaring down at the woman in the aisle seat. Even from where he was, Bryce could see the terror in her eyes. He sat up straighter, and Neal’s hand shot across to grab his arm. He gave a quick shake of his head. Bryce dropped his eyes.

“I asked you where you got your travel permit?” the soldier shouted.

“At…at Norwalk.” Her voice was high pitched, quavering.

In spite of himself, Bryce lifted his eyes. She was the youngest of the three other women, probably in her mid twenties. Bryce had watched them board at Norwalk, and had absently noted that in spite of the shabby dress and furtive air, this one was passably attractive.

The guard laughed, an ugly, rasping sound. “Of course. Norwalk,” he said amiably. Then suddenly his voice hardened. “From the underground, right?”

“Oh, no! From the government offices.” She clutched at his jacket. “Please. They told me everything was in order.”

The woman next to her started to rise, but the guard straightarmed her back down. “You! Stay out of this!” Then to the first. “Stand up!”

The second guard laughed loudly behind Bryce and moved swiftly back up the aisle, weapon high, daring the crowd to interfere with his partner’s little drama. Bryce turned his head quickly and stared out the window. Something outside had suddenly caught the interest of everyone else on the bus as well.

He heard a soft gasp and couldn’t help himself. He turned his head enough to see. The girl’s arms were up high, and the first guard was searching her for weapons, his hands moving slowly as they followed the lines of her body. She was rigid, eyes locked on a spot on the ceiling.

Again Bryce felt Neal stir in warning, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away.

The first guard grabbed the woman’s arm and yanked her roughly out into the aisle. “Off the bus!”

“Oh, no. Please!” She was near hysteria now, sobbing, pleading.

The other woman leaped to her feet and grabbed at his arm. “Please, let her go.”

Now the second guard stepped forward and hit the older woman full across the face with the back of his hand. Her head snapped back and cracked sharply against the bus window. “Sit down!” he roared.

Bryce was on his feet, barely conscious that Neal was pulling hard at his coat. The lead soldier, who was dragging the weeping girl toward the door, stopped, shooting a warning glance in Bryce’s direction. The second guard whirled, weapon snapping upward.

Bryce sat down slowly, averting his eyes. He heard the heavy footsteps approaching, felt Neal tense in the seat next to him. Bryce kept his head down, cursing his stupidity.

The black boots stopped directly in his line of sight.

“You got a problem, friend?”

“No, sir,” Bryce murmured.

He sensed the movement, tried to duck, but the clubbed fist caught him directly alongside the head. Lights exploded and he reeled back.

“I’m talking to you, Mister! Look at me when I talk to you.”

Bryce forced his head up slowly. The barrel of the submachine gun was two inches from his nose.

“You think she’s pretty? Maybe you’d like to join her!”

“No, sir.”

The hand flashed out, knocked his hat flying. Meathook fingers grabbed Bryce by the hair and yanked his head back hard. “What did you say?” he screamed.

“I said, no, sir.”

He gave a vicious yank, nearly pulling Bryce’s scalp off, then he let go and laughed raucously. “That’s what I thought you said.”

Then backing down the aisle slowly, weapon high, he let his eyes challenge everyone else on the bus. No one moved. No one looked at him. The first guard, who had watched the whole thing with faint amusement, waited until his partner pushed by him and stepped off the bus. Then he shoved the girl toward the door. “Get this bus outta here!” he snarled at the driver, and with one last glare at the passengers, he stepped off the bus with the sobbing woman.

Even as the bus carrying the itinerant workers rolled through the last of the barricades and headed south into the Atlantic States Alliance, a small white car pulled up in front of the Dew Drop Inn in Bollingbroke. Before the driver had shut off the engine, the man who had been nervously peeking out the front window of the motel office was outside and opening the door on the passenger’s side.

He stepped back, snapping to attention as the short, distinguished-looking man got out of the car, stretched, and looked around curiously.

“Sir! Captain James Rodale, ISD commander for the Hartford district.”

The other finished his survey, then finally turned back. His face was pleasant enough, the eyes dark and compelling. The dark hair, thick and wiry, was starting to gray around the temples; the suit was expensive and hand tailored. Rodale quivered slightly in excitement. Here, standing within a foot of him, was the minister of internal affairs for all of CONAS. That surely made him one of the five most powerful men in the entire Confederation of North American States.

“How was your flight up, sir?”

The minister nodded, looked up at the motel sign, then started for the office. “Any sign of the owner yet?”

“No, sir. She’s disappeared along with her son. No one has seen them since Friday morning. The question is, did this Sherwood kill them, too?”

The minister stopped, looking at him. Rodale nodded grimly. “We’re pretty sure Captain Talbot is dead, sir. Possibly Sergeant Walker too. Come inside and look at what we’ve got.”

When the Hartford office had received the call Friday morning from a Sergeant Walker in Bollingbroke asking to speak directly to Rodale, a call which was cut off before Rodale got to the phone, the head of ISD in Hartford had done two things. First he had listened to the tape of the phone call again and again. Then he had brought a full investigative team and a completely equipped portable crime lab with him to Bollingbroke. Now it paid off. He rolled out the evidence one piece at a time for the minister—the bullet dug from beneath a newly plastered patch on the wall; the blood samples from the freshly scrubbed wall and carpet—samples that matched Captain Talbot’s blood type; Sergeant Walker’s fingerprints from the hall phone; fibers from the hall carpet where the bodies of both men had been dragged that matched the colors of the suits they had been wearing when they left.

By the time he finished, the minister was impressed. “You’ve done good work, Rodale. I commend you.”

Rodale managed to keep his face sober, even though praise from such a source made his head reel.

“I’m sending up another dozen men. They’ll be under your command.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Scour the whole province if you have to, Rodale. I want our two men found. I want the woman and her son found.” He swung around, and Rodale felt a sudden chill when he saw the fire smoldering in those dark eyes. “Are you sure about the name of this other one?”

“Yes, sir. When the sergeant called, he gave the name of Bryce Sherwood. That was also the name given to the telephone operator.”

The minister reached inside his suit coat, brought out a long envelope, and handed it to Rodale. It wasn’t sealed, and the captain opened it. There were three colored photographs inside, all head shots of the same person. Rodale looked at them carefully, one at a time. It was a man in his late twenties, quite good looking, light blond hair combed straight back and with a slight wave, blue eyes, strong jawline, pleasant smile. Finally he looked up.

“I don’t want these circulated publicly yet,” the minister said shortly. “Only your men are to have copies.”

“Who is it?”

The minister looked up from staring at the pictures, his mouth a tight line. “This is Bryce Sherwood.” He ignored Rodale’s startled look. “The question is, is this the same man that was here?”

Bryce Sherwood and Jessie and Neal Lambert slipped away from the rest of the group as they shambled off the vehicle to line up at reeking public restrooms in a small park.

For the next three days they moved south through what had once been the states of New York and New Jersey, keeping to the countryside as much as possible, foraging as they went, sleeping in the wooded areas, hopping slow-moving freights under the cover of darkness. Twice they moved into small villages and made contact with the local resistance movement. Each time, Jessie and Neal would go in first, talk quietly, give appropriate code words and verification, and then Bryce would be invited in. There were never any names exchanged. They were never asked from where they had come or where they were going. Once identification was sure, food was supplied along with updates on local ISD activity or military patrols. There would be a quick handshake and fervent good wishes, and they were on their way again.

As they moved steadily southward, the characteristics of life in the Atlantic States Alliance began to embed themselves deeper and deeper into the mind of Bryce Sherwood. Everywhere he saw three primary qualities of life in this new America—spartan conditions, unremitting labor, and ever-present government control.

It was not abject poverty like he had seen on a tour he had taken with Senator Hawkes to India and Pakistan, but it was still life at subsistence level. There were few cars, and most of these were old. Houses were small and usually held several families. Food stores carried a few basics and whatever fresh fruit and vegetables might be grown locally, but little else. Bicycles were omnipresent. Walking, even ten or fifteen miles, was commonplace. He smiled grimly at that. The President’s Council on Physical Fitness would be truly proud, for in the ASA, obesity was no longer a national problem.

It was the grim economic deprivation that drove the unremitting, relentless labor. There were some factories and light industry, but mostly it was muscle power—both animal and human—that fueled the nation. The ASA was the bent back, the shouldered hoe, the sweat-streaked face.

The images began to burn into his consciousness like firebrands—a six-year-old with an angelic face digging in a trench alongside older brothers and sisters; a teenager, up to his knees in the muck of a dairy corral, loading manure into a cart with a wooden pitchfork; two sisters with long blond hair, barely twenty, heaving huge forkfuls of hay onto a horse-drawn wagon; a whitehaired, gaunt old man staggering down a rutted road with a wheelbarrow full of potatoes.

But it was the oppressive, omnipresent government influence that was most depressing. Uniformed soldiers were everywhere, the bureaucracy stultifying. Identity cards were required to transact the simplest business. Getting permission to visit an adjoining village could take hours of standing in lines. Hospital stays required an endless nightmare of forms and permissions.

To Neal, who had never been out of the New England Confederation, it was an exciting time. He consumed the sights and new experiences with an insatiable hunger. He stood slack-jawed at the high-rise buildings of New York City and the traffic of Philadelphia. Jessie, on the other hand, seemed interested but unimpressed. She lived for one thing, and that was to get Bryce to whatever it was he had to do in the south, then turn west for the United States.

But to Bryce, it was like being fed a diet of one revolting food after another. He had seen worse things. He had even been in countries where the oppression was more severe. But this was America. This was the countryside he knew; these were the cities he had visited, the people he had mingled with. Before, he had never given any of it much thought. Now every new sight hammered at him like a constant stream of filth and garbage.

They entered Washington, D.C., on the evening of the fourth day. Correction, Bryce thought to himself. Not Washington, D.C. Just Washington. There was no District of Columbia. The states of New York, Maryland, and Virginia were now just provinces or districts within a province. Some of the familiar names had disappeared altogether.

As they moved slowly into the city itself, Bryce was sickened. The city laid out under George Washington’s direction was still there, with its great mall cutting down the center, its wide, radial boulevards and spacious vistas. But that was the only recognizable thing. A squat, ugly government building stood at the west end of the reflecting pool, replacing the stately marble columns of the Lincoln Memorial. MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE, read the sign as they passed. The Tidal Basin was almost completely hidden behind high-rise apartment buildings stuck into the grass like giant stakes around a muddy pond. There was no Jefferson Memorial, no Washington Monument. And across the Ellipse, where the White House should have been, was a sprawling gray palace bathed in spotlights.

Bryce slouched down deeper in the seat and closed his eyes, unable to look anymore.

Chapter 18

They were sitting in a small apartment in central Washington. In espionage parlance, this was what was known as a safe house, a place where people could hole up, find a place to stay overnight while on the run, or hold a meeting with people whom they weren’t sure about and whom they did not want to know where they really did their business—which was the reason the four of them sat in the safe house now. It was sweltering and stuffy, even though it was past ten o’clock, which left them all in short temper.

“Look,” Jessie finally said, with some asperity. “For the last five years, our group has been serving as a conduit to help you send people from the ASA north. We’ve taken great risks.”

The man they knew only as Lewis shook his head stubbornly. “I know that, and that is the only reason you are here right now. But that doesn’t change the fact that this man is an unknown.”

No one turned to look at Bryce, who sat on a hard-backed chair in one corner.

“You yourself admit he has been with you only for less than a week.”

“We have been through much together,” Neal snapped.

“In less than a week?” Lewis sneered. “Do you think the ISD is so foolish they wouldn’t have their agents appear authentic?”

Bryce laughed out loud at that. “Right. An ISD agent. That would about round out the picture.”

Jessie stood up abruptly. She looked at Bryce, then to her son, then finally back to Lewis. “I want to show you something.” She walked to where they had set their luggage in one corner.

Neal leaped to his feet. “Mom, are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” She knelt, took a small pocketknife from her purse, and began to slit the stitching on her suitcase. When the opening was big enough, she reached inside and withdrew the thin sheaf of typewritten pages. Then she stood and tossed them on the table in front of Lewis.

Curious, he leaned over, then his eyes widened. He looked up at her, shocked.

“Go on,” she said, “look at it.”

For the next several minutes the room was completely silent. Twice more he looked up at the others in the room, his face registering disbelief. Finally, he pushed the papers aside, turned slowly, and looked up at Jessie, who had stood over him the whole time. “Where did you get this?” he said in a low voice.

Jessie turned and pointed at Bryce. “He brought it to us.”

Bryce stopped across the street and half a block down from the headquarters building of the Virginia Provincial Educational District and took a deep breath. He took the envelope out, opened the letter, and read it again for the twentieth time. It introduced him as Mr. John H. Carrol from the Ministry of Education. As he read it, Lewis’s words echoed in his head again. “These papers are of excellent quality, but you must remember, they are what we call shallow cover. There is no John H. Carrol in the Ministry of Education. If anybody decides to check on you, you’re blown!”

That had sobered Bryce. If Bryce was blown, then Lewis and Jessie and Neal and who knew how many others were also at risk. Once Lewis had read the sacred document—for that was how Bryce was starting to think of it—he had instantly and completely accepted the three refugees from New England. When they had told him of their plans to escape to the West, he agreed to provide critical support. When Bryce told him of his need to find a certain person around the area of Arlington, Virginia, who might be a teacher, he had gone to work immediately, and by late afternoon of the next day, Lewis had produced the letter Bryce now held in his hands.

There were two women at their desks in the Office of Teacher Placement. A man was partially visible in a smaller office. Bryce stepped up to the counter and cleared his throat. Both women looked up, then the older of the two stood and came to him.

“Yes, may we help you?”

Bryce nearly smiled, then remembered Lewis’s reminder. Government officials hold power. Petty power, it may be true, but power nevertheless. Never ask. Demand. So he kept his face impassive as he took out the letter and slid it across to her. “I’m John Carrol, from the Ministry of Education.”

The woman straightened, and Bryce noted that the other woman was staring at him. The first read the letter as Bryce held his breath. All she had to do was call and check and—

She looked up at him with new respect. “Let me get Mr. Buckner.”

But the man in the office had already heard and was coming toward Bryce, smiling obsequiously.

“Yes, Mr. Carrol, how may we help you?”

“I want to see a current list of all the teachers in your district.”

Buckner, a small, nervous man in wire-rimmed glasses, nodded quickly, at the same time reading the letter that was on the counter.

“Yes, sir.” He turned and snapped his fingers. The first woman instantly went to a file and brought back a folder.

“Is there something specifically I could help you with?” Buckner said, as he slid it across to Bryce.

“The list will be fine.” He looked the man squarely in the eye as he opened it.

Buckner backed away quickly. “If there’s anything else, just call.”

Bryce didn’t like this role. He softened a little. “Thank you, you’re very helpful.”

The list was alphabetized, and with a leap of excitement he saw what he was looking for third name down. “Leslie Adams: Teacher, history and government studies, Hillsburg Secondary School. Home address: 667 Walquist Avenue, Hillsburg, Virginia, ASA.” No phone was listed.

Remembering where he was and who he was supposed to be, he fought down the urge to shout in triumph. Buckner was watching him closely. So Bryce thumbed idly through several pages, as though searching, found a name in the L’s that lived in Hillsburg, and took out a paper. He wrote that one down, then two more from the S’s. Finally, he turned back to the first page as though he were finished and quickly memorized Leslie’s address. He closed the folder, put the paper back in his pocket.

“Thank you, Mr. Buckner. You’ve been most helpful. Could you tell me which bus number goes to Hillsburg?”

“Bus seven.”

Bryce suddenly realized the foolishness of what he had just done. He looked at his slip of paper. “Let’s see, actually it’s Marysvale I need.”

“That would be bus thirteen.”

“Thank you.”

Only when he was two full blocks away from the school did he suddenly leap upward and punch his fist in the air. “All right!” he whispered exultantly.

Hillsburg was a small town—almost a village—adjacent to Arlington. Finding the Hillsburg Secondary School was easy. He went to the principal’s office first—or headmaster, as they called him—and produced his credentials. The result was the same. Instant respect and anxious compliance. No, there was no one in particular Bryce wanted to see. He would just walk around and talk with some of the teachers if that was all right, look at the school, see how things were going. He had to be firm with that, or the man would have trailed him like a puppy, wringing his hands nervously.

He actually talked to only one teacher before he saw her walking down the hall toward him. He stopped, unable to keep from staring. It was Leslie! The same graceful walk, the same dark hair, though it was cut a bit more severely than he remembered. And her clothes, though all right, were clearly not the same as before.

She smiled faintly at him as she passed, obviously a little embarrassed by the frankness of his stare. There was no flicker of recognition.

“Uh…say,” Bryce blurted. “Excuse me.”

She stopped and turned back slowly.

Flustered now, all he could think of was to fall back on his cover. “My name is…uh…John H. Carrol. I’m from the Ministry of Education.”

He saw the quick wariness in her eyes that was the standard response whenever he pulled rank. “Yes?”

“I’m visiting the school, talking to teachers, just seeing how things are going now that school has started.”

“Oh?”

“Would you have a minute or two we could talk?”

She hesitated, then nodded, her face impassive. “Of course.”

They were sitting in the faculty lounge. Her hands were folded in her lap, her legs were crossed. She met his eyes only occasionally, responded only to his direct questions, volunteered no more, no less than he asked. He decided to push a little.

“We’ve had some recurring reports about the classes in government.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Parents are reporting that some students are coming home with revisionist notions.”

“Like what?”

Good question! He shrugged. “Like saying that the government may be too repressive.”

She looked at him steadily.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, what?”

“Do you think the government is too repressive?”

“Have my students been reported as saying that?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Oh.”

This was maddening. This wasn’t the Leslie he knew. This woman was dull and listless. Evasive. If there was one thing Leslie had not been before, it was evasive. “You didn’t answer my question,” he finally said.

“What question?”

“Do you think the government is too repressive?”

“And you didn’t answer my question.”

Bryce laughed right out loud, startling her. Maybe she was evasive. But this stubborn streak—that was more like the girl he knew.

She watched him for a moment, then stirred. “Is that all?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She sat back, her eyes dropping to watch her hands.

“I would like to have dinner with you tonight.”

For the first time, he penetrated the wall she had erected. And what was worse, for the first time he saw fear in her eyes.

By seven o’clock, the temperature had dropped down into the eighties. The humidity was also down, and the summer evening was beautiful. As Bryce turned up Walquist Avenue and started watching for Leslie’s house number, he was actually whistling softly to himself. Not that he had unrealistic expectations about the night. He shook his head. The coldness with which she had accepted his invitation after he had made his veiled threat was like a hard slap across the face. But he had found her, he had made contact, she had agreed to go to dinner with him. That was more than he had ever hoped he could do in one day.

It was an old house, probably thirty years or more, and rundown and dreary. A screened porch ran across most of the front. The paint was faded. One corner of the screen mesh on the door had torn loose. The grass was not dead but was badly parched, and a few scraggly looking petunias and azaleas grew along the walk. It was a sharp contrast to the neat and well-caredfor rambler in Arlington where Leslie lived before. With a sudden sense of gloom, he turned up the walk.

As he lifted his hand to knock, he stopped. A movement at the far end of the porch caught his eye. He turned, stepping back a little, so as to see more clearly through the screen. An older man sat in a rocking chair, hands folded in his lap, chin down on his chest. Bryce would have thought he was sleeping if it weren’t for the fact that the rocker was going back and forth very slowly.

He knocked sharply, watching the man. His head came up slowly and turned toward Bryce, and Bryce’s jaw dropped. The hair was white and thinning, the cheekbones high and protruding, adding to the sense of gauntness about the face, but there was no mistake. It was Leslie’s father! His hands moved, and Bryce saw that they were twisted and deformed.

The effect was palpable, a jolt that shook him deeply. There was no question that Paul Adams had seen him, but he made no move to get up. He just watched Bryce steadily, the rhythm of the rocker never stopping.

Footsteps sounded in the house, and Bryce turned as the door opened and Leslie stepped out. She looked at him with the barest of acknowledgment, turned back, said something to someone inside, then shut the door firmly behind her. Finally he got a nod. “Good evening,” she said. It was cool. Not curt, but cool.

“Hello.”

She was dressed in a navy-blue skirt and pink blouse. It was hardly Neimann-Marcus, but it showed off the slimness of her figure and nicely accented her dark hair. It was a definite improvement over the severity of the dress she had been wearing at the school.

Instead of coming directly toward him, she turned and walked to the old man in the chair, bent over and kissed him on the cheek. Bryce barely heard the soft murmur of her voice. “Goodbye, Dad.”

He said something to her, too soft to catch, and one of the twisted hands came up and brushed her cheek. She took the hand in both of hers and kissed it quickly. It was a tender gesture, full of love and affection, and Bryce blinked, surprised at a sudden burning in his eyes.

In a moment she was back to him, ignoring his questioning look toward her father. She started down the walk briskly, not waiting for him. Bryce looked once more at Paul Adams, then moved quickly to catch up with her.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a car,” he said as he fell into step beside her. “Is there a good place to eat in Hillsburg?”

She shot him a withering look. “Only a government worker would apologize for not having a car.”

Bryce winced at his blunder, then just as suddenly laughed softly to himself. Maybe it would be all right after all. This was more like the Leslie he knew.

“What?” Her lips were pressed into a tight line.

“Nothing.”

“Do you enjoy laughing at me?”

He shook his head quickly. “I wasn’t laughing at you. I—I just remembered something, that’s all.”

From the look on her face, she took that about as well as a cat takes to having its tail pulled, but she said nothing, just increased her pace. “Look, Leslie—”

Her head jerked up.

“Sorry. Look, Miss Adams, I know you’re not wild about this whole thing. How about if we just go get a root canal instead?”

She looked at him blankly.

“Sorry, just a little joke. My attempt at some humor.”

She somehow managed to contain the gales of laughter.

“Look, I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to badger you into this.”

She stopped. “How sorry?”

Wow! This wasn’t conversational hand grenades. This was a full-blown artillery duel. He grinned. “Not that sorry.”

Off she went again, her heels popping sharply on the sidewalk. They walked on for several moments in silence before he tried again. “I…Look, hinting that I would write a negative report on you if you didn’t accept my invitation was really a cheap shot. I wouldn’t really have done it, you know.”

The look she shot him out of the corner of her eye was like getting jammed with a needle. That and seeing the broken hulk of her father on the porch was enough to change his mind about the wisdom of this whole idea. He stepped forward quickly, turned to face her, and stopped. She stopped too, head up, lips tight with defiance.

“I really am sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.” He took a quick breath. “Actually, I didn’t come to the school today to check up on teachers. I came only to see you.”

That caught her off guard, and he pressed his advantage.

“If I give you my word that there will be no report of any kind, no coercion, no pressure, then will you consent to have dinner with me?”

Her eyes were still like flint. “You have my consent, remember?”

He shook his head. “No, I have your compliance, not your consent.”

“You take what you get, Mr. Carrol!” she snapped.

He shrugged, suddenly tired of what he was doing to her. “Then I don’t want it.” He stepped back. “I’m sorry for the whole mess. Good night, Leslie.”

He turned, thrust his hands into his pockets, and started away.

“Wait!”

He turned back slowly.

“Why did you come today?”

He let out his breath in a long weary sigh. “I met you once before.” He shook his head at her sudden surprise. “No, you would never remember. But I did and…I wanted to meet you again.”

Suspicion, surprise, and curiosity were all tumbling around in the depths of her eyes as she gave him a long, appraising look.

“But it was stupid of me to do it this way. Maybe sometime we can meet under better circumstances.” He risked a quick smile. “Like maybe when you’re really desperate to go out to dinner or something.”

Still she looked at him. “You really do mean it!” she said, still disbelieving.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

This time he laughed out loud. “What? I can’t even back out without you interrogating me?”

She didn’t smile. “Why are you telling me this?”

Suddenly he was very serious. “Because as much as I’d like to have dinner with you, I’m getting a little tired of people throwing their weight around. I suddenly looked at myself and didn’t like what I saw.”

“Neither did I,” she said bluntly.

“Oh, come on,” he said soberly, “don’t hold back on me. Give it to me straight.”

That won him the closest thing that he had yet seen to a smile.

“Really,” he went on, “I don’t blame you in the least for being really burned with me. So…” He shrugged. “Maybe some other time.”

“Maybe,” she said slowly. He met her steady gaze, seeing what he hoped was some hint of softening.

“Of course, if you were to change your mind…” He let it hang hopefully in the air.

“Then what?”

He kept his face very serious. “I’d promise to use my napkin and not steal any silverware.”

There was no answering smile, not even the glimmer of one. “You give your word there is nothing more to this than just dinner?” she asked gravely.

Bryce nodded, as sober as she. “Yes.”

She took a deep breath, still hesitant; then, while it did not reach her mouth, a smile did touch her eyes. “All right, then. You have my consent, Mr. Carrol.”

“Just call me Bryce, please.”

She was staring at him, and for a second he was caught completely off guard. Now what had he done? Then the realization hit him with a cold shock. “I mean…Mr. Carrol is all right. John would be better. But my name is John B. Carrol. B as in Bryce. My family and friends call me Bryce.”

Their date would hardly go down as a smashing success, but by the time they brought dessert—a raisin pudding with some kind of sauce—Bryce had to admit it had gone better than expected. She had finally picked the restaurant, as much, he suspected, because it was within easy walking distance as for the food. It was a small, corner cafe with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and a waiter/cook who looked like he’d just mustered out of a thirty-year stint with the merchant marines. The food was plain but passable. The prices, like those at Jessie’s motel, were ridiculously cheap.

As they were walking in, Bryce suddenly remembered that Lewis had only given him a little over ten dollars in ASA
currency. But he had no need to worry. He ordered a spaghetti dinner for a dollar fifteen, she had a chicken and broccoli casserole for one twenty-five. Lukewarm, watery soft drinks were a dime.

Short of standing on his head in the corner and singing an aria from The Marriage of Figaro, Bryce did everything he could think of to keep the conversation light and moving. He decided his charm was considerable because he managed to get her to smile three separate times, and once she laughed right out loud. But it was a painful task for him. Those brief moments of sunshine came hard. Most of the time she was withdrawn and quiet. It was hard to pin down an exact word for it—aloof, wooden, subdued. None of them completely fit. But whatever it was, it was a long way from the vibrant aliveness of the Leslie Adams he had known prior to last Thursday.

Through what little she did say, he also learned that the Adams family of this world was completely different from the one he had known before. He learned nothing about her father, and in fact she quickly steered the conversation away from him both times Bryce brought him up, but she revealed that her mother worked at a clothing factory. He also found out that Leslie was an only child. There was no sister named Kellie and no bright and mischievous brother named Keith. This was typical of many city families in CONAS. The economic realities of life were too harsh to encourage larger families, but it left him with a deep and profound sense of loss.

But none of that affected him as much as watching Leslie herself. He found only the briefest glimmers of the old Leslie he had come to love, and something began to happen somewhere deep inside him. As he had moved south across the countryside, he had been sickened by what he saw. But this was more than that. One could talk about the poverty, one could rail against the ever-present government oppression, one could shake one’s head at the never-ending, backbreaking labor forced upon the people, but this! This was the bottom line. The ultimate impact of the system was on the individual human spirit, and when he saw what it had done to Leslie, the sickness began to give way to a deep and smoldering anger.

As they finished, there were several moments of awkward silence, then Bryce pushed his chair back. “Well, shall we go?”

She stood up. “Thank you for dinner.”

He nodded, smiling. “Thank you for accepting. You had every right to refuse.”

“I know.”

He winced, then she softened it with a smile. “But I’m glad I didn’t.”

With that he even winked at the merchant marine as they walked out of the restaurant.

On the street, she stopped. “There is no need to walk me back,” she said abruptly. “I can find my own way.”

He opened his mouth to protest, then clamped it shut again. “Whatever you say.”

Her lips parted in surprise.

“I told you,” he smiled ruefully, “no pressure. If you say head for the bus stop, I head for the bus stop.”

For the first time he saw something really soften in her. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Again there was an awkward moment of silence, but neither of them turned to go. “Look, Leslie,” he finally went on, “I would really like to see you again. Maybe we could just go for a walk or something sometime?”

Again there was the long, searching look.

“You have my promise,” he added quickly. “Anytime you say the word, I’m gone.”

She put her hands in the pockets of her skirt, looking at the ground.

He felt a sharp pang of disappointment. “I understand. Bus stop, here I come.”

Her head came up. “I didn’t say that.”

“What did you say?”

Again there was the hesitation, then she smiled a little. “When?”

His heart leaped. “Well, I’m in no hurry. How about tomorrow?”

She laughed. “Okay, tomorrow.”

“After school?” He was really pleased. “I could even meet you there, walk you home—”

“No!” She saw his surprise at the way she had blurted it, and went on quickly. “It…It would be better at the house.”

“Fine. How about five o’clock?”

“Yes. Five o’clock would be fine.”

Charles Buckner had deliberately stayed late at the office. He reached for his phone for the seventh or eighth time, only this time the director of the Office of Teacher Placement for the Virginia Provincial Educational District had made up his mind. He picked it up and dialed the number out of his desk-top directory. He drummed his fingers as the phone started to ring. He and Quenton Norris had been roommates at the Washington Teachers College, but Norris was still a big shot in the Ministry of Education, and Buckner was still a minor official in a provincial office.

The phone clicked. “Hello.”

“Quenton! Charlie Buckner.”

“Well, Charlie, hello. This is a surprise. How are you?”

Buckner was encouraged by the warm cordiality in the other’s voice. “Good, thank you. And you?”

“Fine. How’s everything out in Arlington?”

“Well, pretty good. I just had a question for you.”

“What?”

He lowered his voice. “Quenton, I thought you promised me you’d warn me any time someone from your office was going to drop in on us for a check.”

The voice on the other end lowered just as swiftly. “That’s right, why?”

“Well…” He took a breath. “Yesterday we kind of got caught off guard. We had this guy named John Carrol drop in on us and—”

“Hold it,” Norris said, reaching for a pencil. “We don’t have anyone by the name of Carrol in our office.”

Chapter 19

“We’re really happy you’ve found her,” Jessie said the next morning when she and Lewis heard Bryce’s report. She hesitated a moment. “Did you talk to her about going to the United States?”

That startled Bryce. Thoughts of the United States hadn’t even crossed his mind. “No. She knows nothing about that.”

“Good,” Lewis said. “We think you ought to go slow with that.” He too hesitated now, and Bryce could see they both had something on their mind. “We’ve been doing some checking,” Lewis went on. “Her father is Paul Adams.”

“So?” From his face it was obvious he expected Bryce to be impressed.

Jessie leaned forward in surprise. “You’ve never heard of Paul Adams?”

Bryce shook his head.

“Even in the New England Confederation we know about Paul Adams.”

“What?”

“He happens to be the most famous dissident in all of CONAS.”

“Dissident?” Bryce gave a quick, derisive laugh. “Hardly. Not the Paul Adams I saw.”

“He used to teach at a university,” Jessie explained. “He and three others spoke out against the government. They sent them to prison, then to work camps.”

“Have you seen his hands?” Lewis asked.

Bryce’s head snapped up. “Yes.”

“He used to be an excellent pianist, almost concert level. No one knows exactly what happened in the camps, but…” He shrugged. “Well, you saw his hands.”

“You must be careful,” Jessie urged. “He has been home for several years now, but the government may still be watching him.”

Bryce was only half listening. He was remembering Leslie’s face when she reached down and kissed the grotesque hand that had caressed her cheek.

Leslie had said to come at five. Bryce deliberately timed it so he was there at four-thirty. The suit and tie of the day before had been replaced by jeans, a short-sleeved sports shirt, and tennis shoes. He looked down at the ragged shoes. Compared to the hundred-and-fifty-dollar shoes his mother had given him last Christmas, these weren’t much, but then somehow in CONAS, jogging and tanning salons had not fared so well.

As he started up the walk, he noted with satisfaction that Paul Adams was sitting in the rocking chair where he had been the day before. Bryce knocked softly on the screen, then stepped inside. A book sat unopened on Paul’s lap, but the head turned and the eyes watched him steadily as he walked up to him.

“Mr. Adams? Hello. I’m Bryce Sher…uh…Carrol. I’m a friend of Leslie’s.”

It was no mystery from whom Leslie had gotten her eyes. His were the same deep green flecked with brown and were filled with the same bright alertness. The previous impressions of a broken shell of a man were certainly not confirmed by the piercing look he was getting now.

“May I sit down?”

There was a quick nod, half a smile, and he started to rock again.

“I’ve come to take Leslie on a walk. Guess I’m a little early.”

“It’s warm today.”

The richness of the voice caught him by surprise. It was deeper than the other Paul’s. Bryce shook his head. The other Paul. This Paul. It was crazy. They were the same man. Then he shook his head again. He was staring at the hands. If a man was the product of what happened to him, this was not the same man.

“Doing some reading, I see,” he said, looking at the book.

Paul nodded, looking down, and the hands gathered in the book. It was old and scarred, but there was no title on the leather, either on the front cover or the spine. One twisted thumb began to rub along the cover, back and forth, back and forth. Again Bryce found himself staring. They—whoever “they” happened to be—must have broken every bone. The palms were twisted and deformed, the fingers bent and twisted, the knuckles bulbous knobs. Could these misshapen lumps ever have played the piano?

Bryce’s head came up as he realized the rocking had stopped. He looked away quickly, embarrassed to have been caught staring. Suddenly the revulsion welled up in him like bile, and he lifted his eyes to meet the other’s gaze.

“They say you were a marvelous pianist,” he said softly. “I wish I could have heard you.”

There was a quick impression of surprise followed by a long pause, then the deep richness of the voice spoke again. “It was a long time ago.”

“Which would only make the memory sweeter now,” Bryce replied.

There was another slow nod, then the rocking began again.

“Why?” Bryce burst out. “I can understand prison. I understand work camps. But why your hands?”

For a long time there was no response, and, embarrassed again, Bryce nearly stood up and left to wait for Leslie out front. Then Paul Adams spoke, very softly. “Evil men,” was all he said.

Bryce sat back. “Evil men did this to you?”

There was a quick shake of the head.

“What?”

“Evil men hate beautiful things.”

And in a sudden flash of insight Bryce understood. “They hated you because you played the piano?”

The gnarled old hands opened the book, pushing it slightly toward Bryce. He leaned over to see better. It was filled with short lines of poetry handwritten in a beautiful script.

“Music and words,” said the voice. “Beautiful things in a sea of ugliness. They could not bear it.”

“I understand.” And he did. More powerfully than he ever had before. And the anger that had started the previous evening with Leslie suddenly was a hard, tangible ball in the pit of his stomach.

Bryce jumped as one of Paul’s hands swung over and rested on his knee. Bryce looked up in surprise and was even more startled. The eyes, sunk deep in hollow cheeks, were peering at him, and they were filled with triumph. There was no other word for it. His eyes were filled with a blazing triumph!

Paul Adams leaned back. “But they cannot break the fingers of your mind.”

A sudden sound brought Bryce’s head around. Leslie was standing in the doorway to the house, staring at them, her eyes round and wide and glistening with tears.

They were sitting in a small park a few blocks from her home. They had talked little as they had come, she answering his questions about her day briefly and noncommittally. Bryce sat on the grass. Leslie was in one of the swings of the playground, not moving, just smoothing the sand with the bottom of her foot.

Finally she looked up at him. “How long had you been there?”

“About five or ten minutes.” He stopped. “How long were you there?”

She lowered her eyes, the dark lashes almost hiding them. “I heard voices. I…I shouldn’t have listened.” Suddenly tears welled up again, and she shook her head, angry with herself. “I’ve never heard him talk about it before,” she whispered. “He will with Mama, but never with me.”

He wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he just watched her.

“What did you say that got him started?”

“I asked him about his hands.” He looked away. “They’re horrible.”

She closed her eyes. “I know. I have nightmares about them.”

They sat that way for almost a minute, both lost in their own thoughts. He finally looked up when he realized she was looking at him steadily.

“Who are you?”

That visibly startled him.

“And I’m sorry,” she cried, “but John B. Carrol, or John H. Carrol won’t do anymore. Who are you?”

Bryce felt his stomach drop.

“Are you from the government?”

He shook his head quickly. “No. I’m not John Carrol, and I am not from the Ministry of Education or any other government agency for that matter.”

“Why should I believe you?” she said bitterly.

“My name is Bryce Sherwood. I’m…I’m from a long ways from here. Boston, to be exact.”

“What are you doing here? What do you want?”

He sighed, knowing that he could no longer lie to her, but knowing also that he could hardly reveal but very little. “Like I told you yesterday—I met you a long time ago. I’ve never forgotten. I wanted to meet you again, so I used the letter to find you. I’m sorry. It was stupid.”

“How can I believe you? How do I know you’re not lying now?”

He stood to face her, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “Because you were there when I talked with your father.”

That stopped her. She blinked quickly, remembering. “That’s the only reason I’m here talking to you now,” she said, then instantly she was fierce again. “But I’ll do anything to stop him from being hurt.”

“I am not here to hurt him. Or you.”

She looked away, torn with indecision.

“Leslie, I’ll tell you what. You’re worried that I will hurt you or your father. Well, all you have to do is call the Ministry of Education and tell them I was using false papers. You can have me taken out at any time. I’m now as vulnerable as you.”

She didn’t turn back, just kept smoothing the dirt with her foot over and over. “Do you want to know the crazy thing?” she finally said softly.

“What?”

“As we were leaving today, when he called me back…”

“Yes?”

“He asked me if you could stay for dinner.”

Now Bryce was staring. “You’re kidding!”

Suddenly her eyes were brimming with tears. “Four years. It’s been four years since we had someone for dinner. Mama won’t believe it.”

“So what did you tell him?”

She smiled through the tears, and suddenly she was so lovely Bryce had to force himself not to reach out and touch her cheek.

“I told him you steal silverware and that we don’t have that much to lose.”

Chapter 20

Captain James Rodale, district commander for the Hartford District of the Internal Security Division, was awed. Here he sat, in the heart of Washington, in the office of the Minister of Internal Affairs. Out one window was an impressive view of the presidential palace that housed the prime minister. Out another stood the National Assembly Building.

Nearly as intimidating as the presence of the minister himself was the personage of the third man in the room. Colonel Anthony Burkhart, Chief Director of ISD for all of CONAS— it was a name that every ISD agent throughout the world knew and respected. His picture hung in Rodale’s Hartford office next to that of the prime minister. Now Rodale was in his presence.

The three men watched the minister’s secretary pour coffee and waited until she exited. Then the minister turned to Rodale. “Okay, Captain, let’s hear what you’ve got.”

Rodale stood, cleared his throat, and looked first to Burkhart and then to the minister. He gave the report of his findings in quick, terse sentences. He also summarized his conclusions, ticking them off quickly. When he finished, the other two men sat quietly for a moment, sipping their coffee. Finally, the minister took a silver cigarette box on his desk, offered it to Rodale and Burkhart, then took one himself.

When all three had lit up, the minister sat back, inhaled deeply, then blew the smoke out in a cloud over his head. “You really think Sherwood didn’t kill the captain?” he asked finally.

Rodale shook his head emphatically. “Everything points to the Lamberts as the killers. First, we know that the body was carried in their truck. Second, the son was seen at the place of burial. Third, the Lambert boy had a rifle of the same caliber that killed the captain. And fourth, the Lamberts are on the list of suspected resistance people in the Bollingbroke area. There were some things we found in the motel that would be enough to send them to prison. Maybe the captain stumbled onto something when he came looking for Sherwood.”

He paused, but neither man spoke, so he went on. “Sherwood is a puzzle. He drops into the picture from nowhere. No one in the village knew him, we’re pretty certain of that. We have those odd attempts to make a phone call the night before. And yet we’re certain he is traveling with the Lamberts now. The driver of that itinerant worker bus identified them as the three who got on his bus in a little village south of Bollingbroke.”

He shook his head. “Like I say, Sherwood is a puzzle.”

The minister nodded, then straightened and looked directly at him. “How would you like to come to work for Colonel Burkhart, Captain?”

Rodale started, staring at the minister, then at the head of ISD.

Burkhart smiled. “We’re bringing your investigative team down too. We’d like you to stay in command of them.”

“Yes, sir!”

The minister looked to his head of ISD. “Anthony, tell him what’s happening.”

Rodale leaned forward, watching the colonel closely, thrilled to be part of something that had “big” written all over it.

“We know who Sherwood is,” the colonel said abruptly, then smiled faintly at Rodale’s surprise. “More importantly, we know where he is.”

“Really? That’s great, sir!”

Burkhart accepted that without expression. “He showed up here about a week after the New England thing using false papers from the minister of education. We got positive ID on him day before yesterday. He’s taken up with a teacher out in Hillsburg, a little town in Virginia province.”

The minister took another deep drag on his cigarette, then blew the smoke gently upward. “The teacher is the daughter of Paul Adams.”

Rodale had just started to pick up his coffee cup. He set it down slowly. “The Paul Adams?”

Both men nodded, and Rodale gave a low whistle.

“That’s why you’re here,” the minister said. “We’re going to put a blanket of surveillance over Sherwood so tight he can’t even untie his shoelaces without us knowing what color they are…“ His eyes narrowed and bored in on Rodale. “And so loose that he won’t have the slightest—and I emphasize, the slightest—suspicion that we are on to him.”

“I understand, sir,” Rodale said slowly, realizing that he was about to either make or break his career.

“Good.” The minister stood abruptly. “I’ve got another meeting, so I’ll leave you two to work out the details.”

Burkhart nodded.

The minister smiled down at the director of ISD. It was a pleasant smile, but when he spoke his voice was like a sudden blast of air rolling off the Arctic tundra. “Let’s find out what our friend is up to, shall we?”

It was Thursday, September 22, three weeks to the day since Bryce had skidded his car into a wall of light and his life into another dimension. He was thinking about that as he chewed on a blade of grass outside the Hillsburg Secondary School, watching the last of the uniformed students filter away from the campus. There had been no more sign of Gorham since the root cellar, and though something inside Bryce fiercely resisted giving up hope, nevertheless that hope was dimming every day, and the possibility of being locked in this time and place for the rest of his life was becoming more and more a reality.

He looked up, then stood quickly. Leslie was just coming out with another teacher. Both had an armload of books and papers.

“Hi.” He waved to the other teacher, then took the books from Leslie.

“Hello.” She smiled up at him warmly and slipped her hand through his arm.

It was the only thing that made the thoughts of staying bearable. In the last ten days, his relationship with Leslie had blossomed. In fact, he had kissed her last night for the first time. At first she had pulled back, startled and surprised, then suddenly she had put her arms around his neck and kissed him back, softly and without reservation.

It had not come easy, for somewhere deep inside her was the suspicion, the lingering fear, that somehow he brought danger to her family. And at that thought, Bryce frowned. He was intimately involved with the resistance movement and there was a dead ISD captain buried somewhere in the Connecticut woods. If they found Bryce and connected him with Paul Adams in any way…

Maybe it was best to pack it up and head west with Jessie and Neal. They were pressuring him with increasing insistence now. So far he had stubbornly put them off, unable to face the thought of leaving Leslie, even if it was the best for her. Neal had finally suggested he bring the Adams family with them, but Bryce thrust that aside immediately. The risks of being caught were high. Paul Adams would go directly back to the men who had shattered his hands. And thus with each day, Bryce’s dilemma and frustrations deepened.

Suddenly he realized Leslie was looking up at him with a quizzical expression. He forced a quick smile. “What?”

“What in the world were you thinking that had you so far away?”

He gave her a long, searching look. “I was thinking about how different things would be now if you hadn’t agreed to have dinner with me that first night.”

She laid her head against his shoulder and just nodded, squeezing his arm. They walked on for several moments in silence, then she said, “Mom wants to know if you can stay for dinner tonight.”

He shook his head, causing her to look up in surprise. “Only if your mother will let me buy some of the food.”

“You know better than that.”

Bryce nodded glumly. He had already tried it before and lost. The Vera Adams of this dimension was just as sweet and kind and hardheaded as the Vera Adams of the other. She had adamantly refused to let him help out with the food budget and also refused to let him help with the dishes afterwards.

“She will be eternally grateful to you for what you have done for Daddy,” Leslie said softly. She squeezed his arm. “And so will I. You’ve done enough to earn dinner at our house for the rest of your life.”

Bryce pushed back from the kitchen table, groaned, then patted his stomach and rolled his eyes. “Just lay me on a stretcher and carry me straight to the mortuary.”

Leslie pulled a face at him. “Well, that’s a wonderful compliment for the cooking.”

He ignored her and just kept looking at her mother. “And let it be written on my tombstone: Here lies Bryce Sherwood. He ate the pie, gave a sigh, and died with pleasure in his eye.”

Vera laughed, but Leslie just groaned. “Oh, brother! Now you can carry us all out on a stretcher. That was awful.”

“That kind of poetry certainly would never have gotten you in trouble in the work camps,” Paul Adams agreed dryly.

“Well, I liked it,” Leslie’s mother said firmly. “Thank you, Bryce.”

He smiled at her warmly, amazed at how quickly he had come to feel completely at home with her. He still found Paul Adams a little overpowering. Even during light conversation, Bryce’s eyes would stray to the twisted, misshapen hands, and all that this man represented would well up again. But with Vera he felt perfectly at ease.

Leslie’s mother pushed back her chair, then stood. “Paul, why don’t you and Bryce go in the living room? Leslie and I will get the dishes done.”

Bryce stood and picked up his plate. “I think it’s about my turn to do some dishes around here.”

“No,” Vera said firmly, taking it from him.

Leslie nodded as she stood and began clearing the table. “You and Daddy go out and talk. We’ll just be a minute.”

Paul Adams got up slowly, his eyes twinkling. “You are not a good influence in this kitchen, young man. Next thing you know, these two are going to start expecting me to do the same.”

“Both of you, get!” Vera said, shooing at them with a dish towel.

As they settled in the living room, Paul leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, and the silence stretched out between them for almost a full minute.

“Any idea why Leslie doesn’t fully trust you yet?”

Bryce looked up in surprise. The man could still be very deceiving. He could sit for ten or fifteen minutes, his eyes staring off at something, a hollow vacancy filling his face, then pow! he would come off the wall with a comment that caught Bryce completely off guard.

Bryce almost tried a quip, changed his mind and merely shrugged.

Paul said, “It’s more than the fact that you used false pretenses to find her.”

Again Bryce tried not to show his surprise. Had Leslie told him about the John Carrol thing?

“She’s afraid for me.”

Bryce sighed again, this time with great weariness. “Yes, I know.”

“Are you going to make trouble for me?” he said slowly, and suddenly the green eyes bore in with fierce intensity.

“No, sir,” he said quietly. “Nor Leslie. I wouldn’t do anything that would harm your family.”

There was silence for several seconds as the eyes continued their steady probe, then finally they closed again. “I know.” He laid his head back. “Don’t give up on her.”

Bryce was staring at him but the eyes stayed shut.

“Just give it time.”

“I plan to.” And at that moment, he made up his mind what he was going to tell Lewis and Jessie and Neal. “I really plan to,” he said again, with more firmness.

Paul Adams’s mouth pulled into a tiny smile. “I know that too,” he said softly.

Chapter 21

“Look,” Bryce said, deciding there was no use in prolonging the issue, “I’ve got to be honest with you.” He spread out his hands. “I can’t go with you.”

They were in another safe house, this time in Arlington. Bryce had gone to see Jessie Lambert the previous night as soon as he had got home from Leslie’s and told her they needed to meet with Lewis. This evening, he had waited until dark, then caught the bus to Arlington, met Jessie and Neal, then spent nearly an hour moving through the city, carefully checking to be sure they were not under surveillance. Once they were in the safe house, Bryce plunged in the moment Lewis sat them down around the kitchen table.

“You don’t need me. Sure, I’m from the United States, but that doesn’t help you much. I don’t know the country between here and there. I’ve never crossed the demilitarized zone. I’m just not going to be that helpful.”

Jessie shot a quick look in the direction of Lewis and her son. There was a definite impression of surprise, but it was certainly not dismay, which of itself caught Bryce off guard.

“Have you talked to Leslie or her parents about this?” Lewis asked.

Bryce shook his head firmly. “No, they know nothing about it. Nothing.”

Again there was the quick exchange of glances, and Bryce had the sudden suspicion that he was missing out on something.

He looked at Jessie, realizing how much he owed this quiet woman and her son. “I feel lousy, after all you’ve done.” He turned. “And you, Lewis. You’ve given me clothes, money, papers, found me a place to live—and now this.” He sighed. “But I just can’t walk away from Leslie.”

Jessie shot Lewis one more searching look, at which he smiled slightly and gave a quick nod. She turned back to Bryce. “Suppose we told you we don’t want you to go.”

Bryce’s head came up slowly, causing Neal to laugh softly at his expression.

“Suppose we told you we’re not going either,” Jessie continued.

“What?” Bryce was staring. That’s all they had talked about since they had fled the New England Confederation. “Why not?”

Both mother and son looked to Lewis. He took a deep breath, then plunged in. “If we could make it to the United States it would be wonderful—” There was a long pause. “For us.”

“What does that mean?”

“It would be great for whoever ends up going, but who else does it help?”

“I still don’t understand.”

“How widespread do you think the resistance movement is here in CONAS?”

Bryce shrugged, a little surprised by the question. “I don’t know.”

“If you count the New England Confederation, the Confederation of Canadian States as well as the Atlantic States Alliance, we estimate that we have somewhere between five and seven thousand actively involved.”

Bryce gave a low whistle. Seven thousand!

Neal leaned forward eagerly. “And for every person actively involved we have five to ten more who support us.”

“And,” Jessie broke in, “the vast majority of the population hate the government. They are sick to death of the oppression, the stagnant economy, the constant fear.”

Bryce looked back and forth between the three of them. “What are you suggesting?” he asked warily.

Again the three of them looked back and forth. Again there was the imperceptible nod, then suddenly Lewis stood and walked to the door leading off to the bedroom.

Half a block away, in a small van crammed with electronic gear, Captain James Rodale leaned forward over the radio, listening intently to the sudden silence. He could clearly hear the footsteps of the man they called Lewis, but nothing else. He grabbed his walkie-talkie. “All units stand by,” he whispered. “If they start to move, close in fast.”

He had done his work well, putting a rolling surveillance on Sherwood and the Lamberts all the way in from Hillsburg. It took an incredible amount of manpower, one person following for a block or two, then passing them on by radio to the next shadow. But Burkhart had given him the teams, and he used them well. He was sure his people had not been spotted.

At that moment the door to the van opened and Colonel Anthony Burkhart stepped inside.

“Glad you’re here, sir.” Rodale turned and took the notes from a stenographer. In addition to taping the conversation taking place in the safe house, Rodale was keeping summary notes of the dialogue. He handed the sheets to his commander.

Burkhart nodded crisply. “The minister should be here in a few moments.” He dropped his eyes and started skimming quickly. His eyes narrowed and his lips pressed into a tight line as he read.

Suddenly over the speaker came the sound of a door opening and shutting and more footsteps. Rodale held up his hand for silence.

Lewis opened the door and stepped back. From the hallway came a medium-built man in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers. His hair was sandy and tousled, the eyes a light blue and filled with soberness, his body that of an athlete in superb shape.

“Bryce,” Lewis said, “let me introduce Wesley Quinn…”

The man stepped forward, extending his hand. Bryce stood and accepted the grip, which was firm but not crushing.

“…a representative from the Agency for Internal Security.”

“Good to meet you,” Bryce said, liking the man’s face almost immediately.

“The AIS, or Agency for Internal Security,” Lewis went on, noting Bryce’s lack of reaction to the title, “is the primary espionage agency for the government of the United States of America.”

That got the reaction Lewis had hoped for. Bryce’s jaw dropped. “The United States?” he echoed.

Lewis chuckled and moved back to the table, gesturing for them all to sit down. “We thought that might get your attention.” Then instantly he sobered. “Wes is taking a tremendous risk to be here, so let’s jump right into it, shall we?”

Wesley Quinn took the chair directly across from Bryce, leaned forward on his elbows, and started to talk, quietly, with little dramatic expression—but the words staggered Bryce.

“I’ll be brief and to the point. The United States of America, along with the Republic of Latin American States and the Canadian Republic, or Free Canada, as you call it, are tired of sharing the continent with states that threaten our way of life. We’re tired of states that seek the overthrow of our governments. We’re tired of states that try to subvert our peoples through propaganda and infiltration. And we’re tired of states that publicly declare that their goal is to bring all of North America under their dominion.”

He stopped, but Bryce was still just staring at him, so he took a quick breath and continued. “We are not willing to declare open hostilities—unless of course, they do first—but earlier this year a secret agreement was signed creating a Western Alliance of Free States. One of the articles of the agreement states that the Western Alliance will actively support any viable movements within CONAS that seek to change the existing order of things.”

He leaned back, letting that sink in.

“So you’re saying…“ Bryce stopped, the enormity of the thought suddenly hitting him. He turned to Jessie, then Lewis.

Lewis nodded soberly. “If we leave CONAS, we help no one but ourselves. If we stay, our influence could become immeasurable.”

Quinn picked that up. “For the past few months we’ve been exploring options, looking for some way to crystalize the various resistance movements within CONAS.”

Neal, excitement crackling in his eyes, swung around to Bryce. “Wes thinks they can smuggle Mom out of CONAS to the U.S. She’ll travel through the three nations of the West on a massive fund-raising drive. There are tens of thousands of people who have escaped to there over the years. Our goal is to raise ten million dollars or more to help finance the movement.”

“Like Golda Meier did for Israel,” Bryce said.

“Who?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“In the meantime,” Lewis broke in, “the rest of us stay here. We’ll unify the various freedom movements, try to marshal the support of the people, set up the necessary support structure for a full-scale revolution.”

“Do you know what you’re saying?” Bryce blurted. “You don’t just wave your hand and overthrow a government, especially a government with as much entrenched power as CONAS has.”

The AIS agent from America nodded soberly. “We know that, but for the first time we think the conditions are right. No one is kidding themselves; it isn’t going to be easy. Even the different freedom movements within CONAS tend to distrust one another.”

Jessie reached across and laid her hand on Bryce’s arm. “But it will never happen unless we start somewhere.” Her eyes were moist and full of quiet determination. “We’ve got to begin sometime!”

Bryce sat back, his mind racing. This was treason talk. What had already been said in the room was worth an automatic death sentence for every one of them. Suddenly, he thought of Nathaniel Gorham’s accusation in the root cellar. Had Bryce really changed that much, or was he just reeling from the intellectual shock of his new environment? There in the cellar, he hadn’t been sure. Now? In the last three weeks he had traveled the land. He had tasted the fear. He had seen the twisted hands and battered lives. The image of a terror-stricken girl cowering before two border guards flashed into his mind. And then he thought of Leslie. He thought of the anger that seethed in him every time he saw what the system had done to her. Always before, when he thought of freedom and the Founding Fathers, it had been in the abstract. Now he understood the fires that drove those early patriots, and suddenly Bryce wished Gorham were here, in this room, at that very moment, asking him those questions again.

He cleared his throat. “What do you want me to do?”

Wesley Quinn gave him a long steady look. Finally, he spoke. “The conditions have been right for a rebellion for many years, but up until now we’ve lacked the spark that will ignite the tinder. We’ve needed something that will seize the imagination of the people and fire their will. The document you brought will help. It’s electrifying! Even in the United States we do not have a copy of the Declaration of Independence. When the time is right, we’ll publish it for the people. It can become the rallying cry for the revolution.”

He sat back, and every eye in the room was fastened upon him. “But something more is needed, something more than a document, something more than just a cause.” He stopped, the blue of his eyes darkening with sudden intensity. “What we need is the right person.”

Bryce laughed right out loud. “Surely you don’t think I’m that person? Look, if you need someone to pass out pamphlets on the street corner, or even throw a Molotov cocktail at a tank or two, maybe I’m your man. But…”

He stopped. Quinn was shaking his head slowly. “You’re not the person we had in mind.”

“Oh.” Embarrassed for jumping to such a conclusion, Bryce dropped his head. “Then who?”

“Paul Adams,” came the quiet reply.

In the van filled with electronics gear, the minister of internal affairs clenched his fist and slammed it against the wall, causing the man monitoring the transmission and the stenographer to jump sharply. “I’ve heard enough!” he thundered. He swung around to Colonel Anthony Burkhart. “Bring them in!”

Rodale, standing next to Burkhart, leaped into action, grabbing his walkie-talkie. “All units! All units! This is a go. Close in on the targets. I repeat, close in on the targets.”

“You’d better not lose one of them,” the minister said, his voice suddenly deathly quiet. “And I don’t want Sherwood so much as bruised.”

“Paul Adams is known all over the continent. He is admired and loved.” The AIS agent from America jabbed a finger at Bryce. “We’d like to call a meeting of all the leaders of the various resistance movements in the next few weeks. They won’t come—they’re too independent, too worried about being caught…unless we can tell them Paul Adams is with us. If Jessie can tell the people in the West that Paul Adams is leading the movement, we’ll double the contributions. The governments of the Western Alliance will know we have a viable movement with Paul Adams leading it.” He suddenly sat back, wearily. “I could go on and on. Paul Adams is the key to everything, Bryce, and you are the key to Paul Adams.”

Bryce shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t understand. I can’t ask him to risk his life again.”

Quinn shook his head slowly. “You asked me what you can do. I’m telling you now. Get us Paul Adams!”

There was a soft tinkling sound from somewhere behind them, and suddenly Lewis was on his feet, waving his hands urgently. “Someone’s coming!” he hissed. In one leap he was to the light switch and plunged the room in darkness.

But Captain James Rodale had done his work too well. As the five of them scrambled frantically down a back staircase and through the small patch of fenced yard, floodlights suddenly bathed them in brilliant whiteness. Blue uniformed policemen appeared everywhere, rifles steady, and in less than thirty seconds it was over. Five stunned conspirators were handcuffed to the chain-link fence, and Rodale had won his triumph.

Bryce leaned against the fence, feeling the metal of the cuffs cutting into his wrists, not much caring in his dazed shock. The words of the ISD captain had hit him like a fist to the stomach. “You are hereby charged with conspiracy, consorting with agents of an enemy power, treason, and murder.” In that moment Bryce understood perfectly that their conversation in the safe house had been monitored and what that meant to all of them.

But that was nothing compared to the jolt that hit him when the captain turned and spoke to two shadowy figures in business suits standing just beyond the circle of lights. “What about the Adams family?” he called. “Shall we move in on them now?”

Bryce didn’t hear the reply. Suddenly his stomach was twisting violently and he felt that he was going to be sick. All of his promises. All of his assurances. For nothing! He had betrayed Leslie and her father.

“All right,” the captain said to his men. “Move them out. Separate cars. Separate cells. None of the prisoners are to talk to each other or communicate in any way.”

They led the others away one at a time. A uniformed policeman stepped up to Bryce, released the handcuff from the fence, and put it on his own wrist. As they started for the van, the two men in suits finally stepped out into the light and moved toward where the biggest of the cars was parked. The taller man Bryce didn’t know. But as the shorter one came fully into the brightness of the floodlights, Bryce stiffened and gasped.

He was short and wiry, built like a marathon runner. The hair was dark and thick and just starting to gray at the temples. The dark eyes were brooding and grim as death. He stopped for a moment and looked directly into the shocked face of Bryce Sherwood. “Well, well,” Elliot Mannington said softly. “Look who we have here.”

Then he swung around to the second man. “Colonel, I am late for a meeting with the prime minister right now. But as soon as I’m back, I want to see Bryce in my office.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mannington turned back to Bryce, his voice hard. “We’ll have our little talk then, and let me tell you, mister, it had better be good.”

Chapter 22

The events that followed were a blur in Bryce’s mind—the ride in the police van, the arrival at the prison, the hasty booking process, then being shoved roughly into a foul-smelling cell. Now as he sat on his cot, head in hands, two things kept going through his mind over and over—the first was Elliot Mannington, the second was Leslie Adams and her father.

He had been so stunned by the sight of Mannington that he had done nothing more than gape at him. The thought that Mannington might also be present in this sphere had never entered his mind. And yet he knew that was simply his own shortsightedness. Leslie and her father were here. Gorham had said his parents were also here. Then why not Mannington?

But who was he? Now, other details began to come back to him—the unmistakable aura of power and authority that surrounded him, the obvious deference the others had shown him, even the one they called the colonel. And why should he be present at the arrest of a small group of underground resistance fighters?

There were no answers, and finally Bryce would push the questions aside. But that only opened up the way for the waves of guilt as he thought of Leslie and her family. Even at this moment they might be here in the prison. Did Leslie know? Did she know it was Bryce who had led the hounds to their door? From the beginning she had been afraid he meant danger for them. But no, he was so confident, so sure he had escaped from New England without detection. He had looked her father straight in the eye. “I wouldn’t do anything that would bring you or your family danger. I only care for Leslie. Trust me!”

The bitterness welled up in his throat like a lump of bile.

“Things may not be as bleak as they seem, Laddie.”

Bryce whirled. Just inside the bars of his cell, slowly materializing in the semidarkness, was the figure of Nathaniel Gorham.

“Gorham!”

The old man’s fingers flew to his lips. “Shhh! You keep bellering like a calf for its mother and you’ll have the whole prison awake.”

Bryce instantly dropped his voice to a whisper. “Where have you been?”

Gorham ignored that. “We must talk very quickly. Mannington will be returning very soon now and sending for you.”

“Mannington!” Bryce hissed. “Who is he anyway?”

“Mannington is what is known as the minister of internal affairs. The ISD comes totally under his jurisdiction. He is one of the three or four most powerful men in the Confederation of North American States.”

“Great!” Bryce said in despair. “What other little surprises have you got in store for me? What about Senator Hawkes? Is he here too?”

“Benjamin Hawkes is a minor official in the New England Confederation up in Boston.”

“And Sterling Jennings? I mean, who else is going to jump out at me?”

“Who’s Jennings?”

“Former secretary of defense. He was with Mannington the night they offered me the ratification chairmanship.”

“Oh, yes.” Gorham shrugged again. “I don’t know. He’s one of the officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Doesn’t really matter.”

Bryce sat back, digesting that.

“You’ve not asked about the most important one.”

“Who?”

Gorham looked at him steadily.

“Who?”

“Did nothing strike you as strange tonight when Mannington confronted you?”

Bryce was suddenly nodding, the memory coming back like a flash. “Yes. He called me by name, spoke as if…” He was staring at Gorham. “He did know me!”

“That’s right. Leslie and Paul Adams are here in this dimension. Elliot Mannington is here.” He paused, then finished softly. “And so is Bryce Sherwood.”

“That’s impossible!”

Gorham put up his hands. “Look, let’s not start that again. I’m afraid my little analogy with the railroad track and the switch has misled you. There are not parallel tracks, not two separate, coexisting dimensions. There’s not another Bryce Sherwood somewhere out there right now sailing off the coast of Cape Cod. It doesn’t work that way.”

“Then how?” Bryce started, his head swimming. “How can all of this be?”

Gorham sighed. “When you hit that wall of light, it was as if you had instantly been hurtled backwards in time to 1787, the point where the railroad switch was located. Then in another instant you hurtled forward again. You were on the same train, with the same people, only now it’s in an America that never had the Constitution.”

“So I’ve had a whole life here?” He rubbed his hand across his eyes. “Then why can’t I remember it?”

“Look,” Gorham said, with growing exasperation. “You were put here by direct decree of the Council of Founding Fathers. I’m sorry if every detail doesn’t happen to fit into some neat, logical compartment for you. But that’s the way things are. Get that through your head, because time is running out fast now.”

Bryce finally straightened. “Who was I—or am I, then?”

“You are Bryce Sherwood. As a boy you were brought to Boston by an uncle. That’s where you were raised. From there it’s much the same as what you know. You graduated from Harvard Law School. Benjamin Hawkes spotted you and hired you as an assistant. That’s how Mannington met you.”

He stopped, and Bryce felt his heart sink.

“For the past four years, you have been the special assistant to Elliot Mannington III, minister of internal affairs.”

“Special assistant? What does that mean?”

“You’re Mannington’s fair-haired boy. It’s a low-profile but high-responsibility position. He uses you for things he doesn’t fully trust anyone else to take.”

The implications of what Gorham was saying were exploding in his mind, and none of those implications were very cheering. “So here I am, special assistant to the minister of internal affairs, caught conspiring with a group of resistance fighters? No wonder he said what he did tonight.”

“Are you?” Gorham asked sharply.

“Am I what?”

“Conspiring with the resistance movement?”

“No,” Bryce retorted bitterly. “Actually, I’m in here for loitering.”

The sarcasm had no effect on the old man. “There in the meeting tonight, you asked the American agent what you could do to help them. Did you really mean it?”

Bryce was suddenly angry. “If you knew I was there, why didn’t you appear then, warn us about the police? What does it matter now what I said?”

“It matters very much. Did you mean it?”

Bryce took a deep breath, meeting the probing gaze. “Yes.”

“I didn’t appear earlier because I was not allowed to. That meeting was a test to see if you had really changed.” He stopped, and a smile stole across his face. “Now you’ve passed the second one as well.”

“What second one?”

His eyes were gleaming. “Do you realize that you haven’t demanded that I take you back to the other dimension tonight. Not once. Do you realize that?”

That rocked Bryce back. “I…I guess I assumed it isn’t possible.”

“No. It’s because you’ve forgotten yourself. For the first time, you’re wrapped up in something bigger than your own needs.” He straightened suddenly. “Because of this, the council has authorized me to help you.”

Bryce just stared at him. “How?” A sudden hope leaped up in him. “Can you get to Leslie and her father, help them get away?”

Gorham shook his head.

Bryce suddenly felt sick again. “Is it too late?”

“No. No action will be taken against Leslie’s family until after your meeting with Mannington tonight. They’re still safe.”

The relief that hit him was like a blast of fresh air in the cell. “Then what? What do we do?” he asked.

Gorham pulled at his lower lip. “Once, in a speech you wrote for Senator Hawkes, you quoted something from Winston Churchill. Do you remember?”

Bryce started to shake his head; then, in an instant, it flashed back into his mind. He nodded and began to quote softly: “‘We fight not for glory, not for riches, not for honor; we fight only and alone for freedom, which no good man surrenders, save with his life.’”

“It’s one thing to say that in a speech,” Gorham said slowly. “It’s something else again to say it when you’re facing a death sentence in a prison cell, right?”

Bryce nodded slowly, the chilling reality of the possibilities hitting him hard.

“I won’t fool with you, son. What I am about to suggest carries great risk. It could put you in the gravest danger.”

“Will it help Leslie and her family?”

“They too are in grave danger. You are now their only hope.”

“Is there hope?” Bryce burst out, almost pleading.

“There is always hope for those who dare.”

Bryce sighed.

“Well?” Gorham asked quietly.

“There are no guarantees, I assume.”

There was an almost imperceptible shake of the head. “I’m not a guardian angel. I can help, but only to a limited degree.”

“I guess your generation didn’t have any guarantees either, did they?”

Gorham considered that, then smiled faintly. “Only the guarantees that spring from faith in God and the knowledge that we gave ourselves to a righteous cause.”

Bryce suddenly straightened. “That’s good enough.”

Gorham was suddenly all business. “Good. Then listen carefully, for everything now depends on what happens between you and Mannington.”

Chapter 23

The minister of internal affairs was sitting behind his massive desk, face impassive. He waited until the guard took the handcuffs off Bryce, then dismissed the man with a wave of his hand. Colonel Anthony Burkhart stood slightly behind Mannington, eyes alert. Bryce suspected that he was armed and that that was why they allowed him to be freed from his restraints.

“You know Burkhart,” Gorham had told him in the cell, “but not well. Don’t underestimate him. You don’t get to be head of ISD through being inept or stupid.”

Bryce waited until the door closed behind the guard, then swung around to face Burkhart. “You idiot!” he burst out.

His intent had been to startle, and he fully achieved his objective. Both men’s mouths dropped open in surprise. Bryce bore in, pressing the advantage. “Weren’t you monitoring the conversation? Didn’t you hear what they said?”

“Of course,” Burkhart said, still caught off guard, “but—”

“But nothing!” Bryce roared. “We were on the verge of setting up Paul Adams, setting him up once and for all. But more than that. You heard the American agent. He was ready to bring in the leader of every major resistance movement. Every one!” He threw up his hands and turned to Mannington in disgust. “And then in comes Colonel Burkhart with blazing sixguns.”

Burkhart’s eyes had narrowed dangerously now, and Bryce could see he had skated out onto thin ice. But he was committed now. Into the breach and damn the torpedos. He sighed wearily and dropped into a chair. “Did you really authorize this, Elliot?”

“Don’t call him Mr. Mannington,” Gorham had warned. “You are one of the inner circle. You must be natural. You must be confident.”

Confident? Bryce nearly hooted aloud at that. His heart was pounding so hard his ribs hurt.

Mannington was watching him steadily, the dark eyes hard to fathom. For a moment, Bryce was tempted to press, but he decided there was a fine line between playing his role properly and suicidal overconfidence.

“Well,” Mannington finally said, his voice low and almost conversational, “let’s suppose before I answer that question that you explain to Anthony and me how it is that you can leave for a short vacation, turn up at a motel where two ISD men are murdered, and—”

“Two?” Bryce cut in. He looked puzzled. “Wait a minute. You didn’t find the sergeant?”

“No we didn’t,” Burkhart sneered. “Do you know something we don’t?”

“But I told you where they were holding him. You didn’t get him?”

“Come on, Sherwood,” Burkhart snarled. “Stop playing coy with us. We haven’t heard one word from you for a month.”

“But…” He looked to Mannington for support. “Didn’t you get my report?”

“What report?” he said flatly.

Bryce sat back, stunned, or so he hoped it looked. “But—I don’t understand. I finally got clear and called in a full report on the fourth day. I told you exactly where they were holding the sergeant.” He shook his head. “But he’ll be gone by now. They were taking him to Boston, smuggling him aboard a freighter—”

“You’re lying!” Burkhart snapped. “We had no report from you.”

Bryce shot to his feet. “Look!” he cried hotly. “Don’t call me a liar! You’ve already blown this operation. Find out who took my report!”

Both men glared at each other until Mannington broke in. “Day and time?” he said to Bryce. “We can easily check.”

Bryce paused, wrinkling his brow. “Let’s see, I left here on Thursday, August thirtieth. So it would have been the second of September. Yes, the second. Somewhere around 2:30 A.M. I had to slip away while the others were asleep.”

Burkhart picked up the phone. “Get me Major Powers.” There was a pause, then, “Major. Check the logs for the second of September—”

“I could be a day off,” Bryce spoke up, “but I’m almost positive it was the second.”

“Start at midnight on the second and check twenty-four hours in either direction. We’re looking for a telephone contact from Mr. Sherwood.” Pause. “Yes. I’m in the minister’s office. Bring it immediately.”

Bryce held his breath. Now came the test of Gorham’s ingenuity. When he had outlined their strategy, Bryce had instantly protested. There had to be some kind of irrefutable evidence if the story was going to stand. Gorham had merely smiled. “I think I can handle that,” he had said. Now they would see, because if the Elliot Mannington of this dimension was as shrewd as the Elliot Mannington Bryce had previously known, there could not be even the tiniest flaw.

Mannington turned to Bryce as Burkhart hung up the phone. “While we’re waiting for the major to check, why don’t you start at the beginning and tell us exactly what is going on?”

Bryce took a deep breath. They had had only a few minutes to rehearse this, and this was where it would all be decided. He sat back down again, face thoughtful. “Well, as you know, you gave me a week off to go to Boston for a vacation with my uncle and his family. I had no plans other than lying in the sun and doing some sailing.”

He looked up into Mannington’s dark eyes. “I did know, of course, that recently you have been very concerned about the increasing penetration of CONAS by foreign agents from the United States.”

Mannington nodded. “Go on.”

And so Bryce launched. For the most part, it was built on the framework of what had actually happened. He changed only one or two details, embellished only enough to build his case.

His car had broken down. It was night, so he hiked back into town. Realizing he would have to wait until morning to get it fixed, he took a room at the Dew Drop Inn. At first, Jessie Lambert and her son seemed exactly what they appeared to be, operators of a small motel and cafe in a very small town. But later, unable to sleep, Bryce had gone to see if the proprietors might have some aspirin for a splitting headache. As he reached the office, he heard the soft murmur of voices. Curious, he stopped to listen and had been stunned to realize he was eavesdropping on a clandestine meeting of the local resistance group.

Realizing the seriousness of what he had stumbled upon, Bryce had tried to call ISD, but just as he got the operator on the line, the son came out into the hallway of the motel. Thus Bryce had gone into his stupidity act, giving a false number, acting as though the operator wasn’t making sense. When the boy didn’t leave, Bryce gave up. He would find another phone first thing in the morning and report to ISD what he had learned.

Mannington seemed content to listen, but Burkhart interrupted frequently, and often with deliberate rudeness. He challenged the story, demanded details, called for exact times and other corroborating information. The first attempt at crossexamination by Burkhart nearly unnerved Bryce, but the fact that 98 percent of his story really happened made it easier. And the further he went with the colonel unable to shake his story, the more confident he became.

“Evidently the telephone operator got suspicious and called ISD.” He turned to Burkhart and frowned. “I know part of ISD’s strategy is to terrorize and cow people into submission, but that captain…I’m sorry about what happened to him, but if he hadn’t been such a conceited, arrogant idiot, he’d still be alive today.”

“I’ll mention that to his family,” Burkhart said coldly.

“The next morning I had just gotten out of the shower,” Bryce continued, ignoring that. “The boy, this Neal Lambert, was still curious about me and was hanging around, so I was trying to act as natural as possible. Suddenly the captain and the sergeant burst onto the scene. Next thing I knew, I was pinned up against the wall with Captain Talbot’s pistol jammed into my ribs. At first I stalled, because we were in the room with the boy and his mother. That didn’t help the captain’s mood. Finally, he and the sergeant took me in my room. That’s when I tried to tell them who I was. I showed my ID.”

There was no need to try to enhance his emotions to make it more believable; the horror of that morning was on him again. “The captain didn’t believe me, accused me of having false papers. When I demanded that they call you, the sergeant slugged me in the stomach. I guess I wasn’t completely without blame, because I really got angry then. I told them what I thought of their highhanded tactics.”

He took a deep breath. “That’s when something snapped in the captain.” Bryce proceeded quietly now, giving the precise details of what happened next—his coming within an ace of being shot by the captain, Neal Lambert bursting into the room, the blast from the rifle, the hurried flight to the mountains in the back of the pickup. As he talked, he watched both men closely. Burkhart was still skeptical but finding it harder and harder to cross him. Mannington seemed more and more impressed, or so Bryce desperately hoped.

“As I sat in the root cellar all that next day, waiting for the woman and her son to return, it finally hit me what kind of opportunity I had been handed. Suddenly, by an ironic twist of events, I had been thrust right into the heart of the resistance movement. I didn’t have to establish any validity with them. I had won that with the blast of that rifle in the motel room.”

He looked to Mannington. “We’ve been trying to penetrate the inner core of the resistance movement for years, with little success. That’s when I decided this offered us an opportunity that would not come again.”

Mannington just nodded, his expression inscrutable.

“We fled south. I looked for an opportunity to call in, but I didn’t dare risk exposure. Finally on the fourth night I got away long enough to call. In my report, I told you exactly what had happened and asked for your permission to continue the mission. There was to be a code word given in the 8:00 P.M. radio news broadcast every day for the next week if you wanted me to pull out. I listened. There was nothing, so I continued. I also told you in my report that the risk of making further calls was too great and that I wouldn’t report in again until I had something definite.”

He lifted his hands. “But if you never got that first report…”

“We’ll talk about the report when the major gets here,” Mannington said, almost half musing. “Continue. Tell me what happened next.”

And so he continued, describing the events in the days and weeks that followed. He told of how the resistance movement was trying to find a way to get to Paul Adams and how they had hit on the idea of the approach through his daughter. Thus the false letter from the Ministry of Education.

He talked steadily for the next ten minutes and was just coming to the events of that evening when there was a knock at the door.

The major entered, followed by a lieutenant who looked scared to death. Both were stiff as ramrods as the major handed Burkhart a folder. Bryce tensed and had to forcibly struggle to keep his face calm and outwardly confident. Burkhart opened the folder. The major leaned over and pointed something out to him. Burkhart’s eyes scanned quickly, and he gave a soft grunt.

Bryce felt a sudden, blinding surge of relief. Burkhart was not pleased.

“Well?” Mannington demanded impatiently.

The colonel stepped to the desk and laid it before his boss. Then he whirled back to the lieutenant. “You were the duty officer on the night of the second of September?”

The lieutenant stiffened even more rigidly. “Yes, sir!”

“You took the phone call and made the entry in question?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Were you aware of the standing orders of the minister that any contact from Mr. Sherwood was to be reported directly to him immediately?”

There was a sheen of sweat on the lieutenant’s upper lip. “Sir, as is indicated in the log, I typed the report myself and sent it to the minister’s office, marked for his eyes only.”

“And to whom did you give this report, lieutenant?”

“To one of the couriers, sir. An older man.”

Mannington was reading the log. “A Sergeant Nathaniel Gorham.”

Bryce started slightly, then fought hard to bite back a smile. So that was how Gorham had pulled it off. How he had known enough back then to call in the report baffled Bryce. But then he had once said that time, as Bryce knew it, didn’t hold in the world of spirits.

The lieutenant started to tremble. “Yes, sir. Sergeant Gorham.”

The major was sweating now too. “He had the proper ID and security clearance. That’s noted there too.”

“All right, then get this Sergeant Gorham in here,” Burkhart snapped. “I want to talk with him.”

The major swallowed hard. “There is no such man on the roster, sir.”

Burkhart leaned forward, his mouth open; then his jaw snapped shut.

The major rushed on desperately now. “Lieutenant Royas, as is customary, filed a backup copy of the report.” He handed another folder to Burkhart.

Burkhart opened it, stared for a moment, then swung around to Mannington. “The backup file is properly marked, but there’s nothing in it.”

The major was now about the shade of a casaba melon. “We can only assume the Signals Division has been penetrated, sir. I assure you that whoever is responsible will be found and dealt with.”

Bryce was on his feet, eyes blazing. “You mean someone else knows about this? My cover has been blown?”

Even Colonel Burkhart was deeply shaken now. “I don’t know what this means,” he said in a low, tight voice. “But I will find out.”

The minister of internal affairs stood slowly and leaned over his desk until his face was a few inches from that of his ISD head. “I think that is a very good idea, Anthony,” he said softly. “I want a full report by 7:00 A.M. tomorrow morning.”

As the other three exited, Mannington sat back down, his face flushed and his hands pressed tight against the desk top. Finally he turned to Bryce. “Well, it looks as though I owe you an apology.”

Bryce waved it aside. “My only concern now is, who knows about who I really am?”

“Hopefully, we can find that out.” He sighed. “So what now?”

Bryce took a quick breath. Here came the plunge. “Elliot, I have a suggestion.”

“What?”

“Maybe we can still salvage this. Why don’t you send me back to my cell while Colonel Burkhart tries to track this leak down? And maybe it would be wise to bring in the other prisoners for interrogation as well. That way my being called out won’t look suspicious. Then, come morning, we can decide where to go from there.”

Mannington gave him a long searching look, then finally nodded.

For some time after Bryce left, Mannington sat in his chair, smoking one cigarette after another. Finally he lifted the phone.

A few moments later there was a soft knock at the door, and the guard was there with another of the prisoners.

“Leave him manacled,” Mannington said gruffly. “Return for him in five minutes.”

The guard saluted and exited. As the door shut, Mannington was instantly out of his chair and around the desk, smiling. They shook hands firmly.

Mannington stepped back and looked at the man before him. Agent in place, a mole, a sleeper—those were the terms in espionage parlance. Though this man was listed in the files of ISD’s Special Operations Branch by the code name “Red Fox,” not even Colonel Burkhart knew his real identity. Mannington was his control, his field operations officer, and his one and only contact. It had been thus for nearly six years since Mannington had hand-picked him and sent him out to make his way in a dangerous and clandestine world.

Mannington took the silver cigarette case from the desk and offered it to the other. The man lit up, then took a deep draw, watching Mannington closely, his eyes filled with questions.

The irony of it all made Mannington laugh, for he had been nearly as startled to see this man come out of the safe house as Bryce Sherwood had been to see Mannington step into the light.

He went back around the desk and sat down, lit a cigarette of his own, then laughed again. “Who would have dreamed that you would be caught in a net meant for other fishes?”

The other shook his head in disgust. “Well, you just blew six years of work.”

For a moment Mannington considered telling Red Fox about Bryce Sherwood, then suddenly thought better of it. Mannington was a firm believer in covering every bet. One way to do that was to keep most of the cards to yourself.

He smiled again. “I’ll be sending you for interrogation along with the others. But don’t be dismayed. I think there may be a way to salvage this whole thing without too much damage.”

Chapter 24

By 8:25 the next morning, Bryce had again been hauled out of his cell past the silent, grim faces of the others down the cell block and taken back to Mannington’s office.

The guard shoved him through the door, and then immediately things changed. Mannington was waiting with a smile and a full breakfast spread out on the desk. Bryce tore into it with relish, feeling guilty as he thought of the others, but knowing that refusal to eat would look peculiar. Burkhart came in a few minutes later and stood nearby, watching Bryce as he finished, his eyes brooding.

Burkhart, with occasional glances at Bryce, reported the findings of the night. The lieutenant who had logged in the entry had passed an exhausting and grueling interrogation, including the use of a polygraph. There was no question but what he was telling the truth. His recall of the contents of the report perfectly corroborated Bryce’s story. The investigation Burkhart had thrown over his entire operation was thorough and exhausting, but it turned up nothing. There was no indication of how the reports had disappeared.

Mannington grunted as Burkhart finished, then turned to Bryce. “So, where does that leave us now?”

Bryce sat back and pushed the rest of the breakfast aside. “I’ve been thinking about that all night.” Which was certainly true. He had slept little, elated beyond belief that they had pulled it off, but deeply sobered by the challenges with which it now put him face to face.

“Go on.”

“My biggest fear is, who took the report? Who knows I am really working for you?”

Burkhart nodded grudgingly. “I also have been asking that question. It doesn’t make sense. If it was the resistance movement, Bryce would not be here now talking to us. He would be dead.”

Bryce gave a quick shudder. “Exactly.”

“So?” Mannington said.

“So,” Bryce plunged in eagerly, “I don’t think I’m blown. That means we may still have an opportunity to let this thing unfold. I have a suggestion. If I can persuade Paul Adams to join us, we could very likely snare every major leader of the resistance movement from all over CONAS, to say nothing of the possibility of exposing the entire network of AIS agents.”

Mannington shook his head slowly. “It would be extremely dangerous for you.”

Just how dangerous you hardly know, he agreed silently.

Burkhart was thoughtful. “But on the other hand, we’ve known about this so-called secret agreement of the Western Alliance. We know they’re anxious to support any movement that will create problems for us.”

Mannington was nodding. “It would be a perfect way to lure those countries into a trap. It would be terribly embarrassing for them. And it could even give us an excuse to retaliate against them in new ways.”

“So,” Bryce said quietly, “isn’t that worth the risks?”

“Yes,” Mannington said, suddenly decisive. “Yes, it is.”

“You said you had a suggestion,” Burkhart spoke up. “Why don’t you lay it out for us?”

And so Bryce proceeded to tell them what he thought they should do.

An hour later, as the first steps of Bryce’s plan were being put into motion, Colonel Anthony Burkhart came back into the office of Elliot Mannington, Minister of Internal Affairs.

Mannington gestured to a chair, then took out the cigarette case and extended it to the other. Finally, Mannington spoke. “So, Anthony, tell me how you peg this whole affair.”

The other was silent for a time, brooding again. He took a deep breath, shook his head. “I don’t know. Too many things don’t make sense. I have the nagging feeling that something isn’t right, but I just can’t put my finger on it.”

Mannington nodded. “Exactly.” He paused, thoughtful. “I have three theories.”

Burkhart straightened a little to watch his boss more closely.

“One, there is a conspiracy within ISD, of which you are aware and with which you, Colonel Burkhart, are in collusion.” He laughed softly at the sudden paleness on Burkhart’s face. “That’s the least likely, of course.” But his voice suddenly hardened. “But if it proves to be true, it would show you to be a very foolish man, Anthony.”

Burkhart did not respond. Denials would be seen only as weakness.

“Second possibility. There is outside penetration into ISD or possibly an internal conspiracy of which you know nothing.” He puffed deeply and blew the smoke into the air above his head, watching it idly. “But that doesn’t add up either. Why would Bryce Sherwood be in on such a conspiracy? The ISD is not his bag. Nor is he theirs. In fact, few people except you and the prime minister even know of him. I like it that way. Keeps him low key. Allows him to do some critical things for me. But he knows very few ISD people, rarely even goes over there.”

“Besides,” the colonel finished for him, “what has he to gain? Only the top three or four people in my organization are as high as he is now. The risks would be tremendous for very little gain.”

“Right again, so theory two seems weak. Unless, of course, the conspiracy has nothing to do with Sherwood, and the disappearance of his report just happens to be one tip of an iceberg we accidently discovered.”

Mannington puffed on his cigarette, then stubbed it into an ashtray. “Theory three is that somehow Bryce is up to something and has managed to pull off a very, very clever deception.”

“But how? I’ve gone over and over that possibility. There’s no question but what the duty officer is telling the truth. He did get that report. And what is most puzzling, who was this Gorham? And even if he was working with Bryce, how could Bryce ensure that he would be the one to get the report? There are always three or four couriers on duty, and they rotate as the messages come in. There’s no way Bryce could control that.”

Mannington was pulling at his lip, equally troubled, but pleased that his ISD commander had been thinking about this as much as he had.

“And here again,” Burkhart was saying, “there seems to be no motive. Unless it’s to somehow to pull a coup against you, but that doesn’t make much sense either. That would take the subversion of the entire ISD, plus he would have to have the support of others on the Central Committee, and there is not the slightest hint he has been working with them.”

“So,” Mannington concluded, “what is the answer?”

The colonel shook his head, and both men fell silent for a long moment before Burkhart responded. “Isn’t there a fourth possibility?”

“What?”

“That Sherwood is telling the truth exactly as it happened and that he has given us the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Mannington smiled—a brief, humorless smile that did not touch his eyes. “Of course. That is the most likely. And we must proceed on that assumption.”

“Of course,” Burkhart said evenly.

“It answers the most questions.”

“Yes, it does.”

Mannington formed a steeple with his fingers and peered into it moodily. “But as you know,” he said slowly, “I never like to sit with my back to an open window.”

“Only the foolish do,” Burkhart agreed. “What would you like me to do?”

“Let it run as Bryce has outlined it. But I want a detailed contingency plan on my desk by tomorrow morning. How do we guarantee that Bryce is not going to hand us any little surprises?”

Burkhart rose. “You’ll have that today.”

“Good.”

As the colonel exited, Elliot Mannington sat back, making the steeple again, staring into nothingness. He had not come to this position by being careless nor by ignoring his instincts. And every instinct was whispering that something wasn’t quite right.

As the heavy army truck leaned slightly into a curve, Bryce let the motion carry him enough to bump Jessie Lambert’s shoulder. They were headed up a sizable grade, and the engine was in a high-pitched roar. For the first two and a half hours out of Washington, the two guards riding in the back with their prisoners had stayed completely alert, watching for the slightest provocation, jabbing hard with a gun barrel to emphasize their grunted commands for silence. But for the last fifteen minutes, the monotony of the ride had started to tell. Bryce saw that the larger man was fighting a valiant battle against heavy eyelids.

“I’m going to try to take the guard’s weapon,” he whispered loudly, though he almost could have shouted it and not been heard over the roar of the truck’s engine. Jessie’s head barely came up, but he saw the alarm in her eyes. There was an almost imperceptible shake of her head, which he answered with an emphatic nod.

The five of them were chained together with leg irons, and also individually handcuffed. Bryce, Jessie, and Wesley Quinn were down one side of the canvas-covered back, and Neal and Lewis were on the other. In addition to the guards back with them, there was another in the cab of the truck, and the driver was armed as well.

“Tell Wes to take the other one once it starts.”

Though she obviously did not approve, Jessie waited until the truck lurched again, then passed the message on to Quinn. Out of the corner of his eye, Bryce caught the AIS agent’s quick nod. Within moments, Neal and Lewis had read the unspoken warning in Bryce’s eyes. They were ready, though for exactly what they weren’t sure.

Somehow sensing that the mood in the truck had changed, the one guard’s head came up, and he eyed them warily. Bryce leaned forward to look directly into the eyes of the man. “Where are you taking us?” he shouted.

The second guard came back to full alertness as the first waved the muzzle of his rifle in Bryce’s direction. “No talking!”

“We have a right to know where we are being taken.”

This time the muzzle came up level, and steady as a rock. “Shut up! Do not talk!”

“Is it to the Blue Creek Work Camp like they say? We have a right to know.”

Bryce took a quick breath. He had finally persuaded Mannington that the guards should not be informed about what was going to happen lest things look too pat. When the time was right, Bryce would tell the others about his involvement with Mannington, but in the meantime he didn’t want to be shot by a suddenly suspicious group of resistance fighters.

For the same reason, he had insisted that the guards carry live ammunition. It greatly increased the risks, but again, blanks would be a dead giveaway. He pulled a face at the lousy pun. He had finally agreed to one concession. The guards had been given the strictest orders that none of the prisoners were to be harmed. He hoped that would be enough of an edge to carry the day. That was assuming, of course, that Colonel Burkhart had passed on those instructions.

Bryce felt a sudden lurch in his stomach, for Colonel Burkhart was not the highest man on his list of those he could trust.

The nearest guard had lumbered to his feet and was coming toward Bryce, his eyes murderous. The second man was standing now too, weapon raised. The guard stopped in front of Bryce, coming down into a half crouch. He jammed the muzzle hard against Bryce’s ribs. “I said no talking!” he screamed into Bryce’s face.

Bryce raised both hands into the air, the fear suddenly as much real as pretended. “We have a right to know where we are going,” he said stubbornly.

The man, face flushed with anger, reached out with his free hand and grabbed Bryce by the throat, his fingers digging viciously into his windpipe. “Shut your mouth! Do you hear me!”

Bryce brought his hands down with all the power he could muster, letting the chain of the handcuffs catch the man squarely on the bridge of his nose. At the same time, he thrust his body to the side and away from the man’s rifle. There was a scream of pain, a deafening blast, and Bryce felt the bench at his side splinter. At that moment, the second man made his mistake. He leaped forward to help his partner. Lewis and Wes Quinn were up and clubbed him from behind simultaneously. He went down hard, the rifle clattering away.

“Get their weapons! Get their weapons!”

Bryce wasn’t sure who had screamed it. His ears were ringing, and the man’s weight had pinned him against the bench. Dimly he was aware of the truck lurching hard as the driver slammed on the brakes. He grabbed frantically for the weapon, trying to keep the man’s writhing body pinned against him. But suddenly he felt the weapon pull free. He looked up in time to see Neal wrench the rifle away and jam it up against the man’s ribs. Quinn already had the other rifle pointed at the head of the second guard.

“Shhh!” Quinn commanded as he moved toward the back of the truck as far as the leg chains would let him. There was the sound of a door opening in front of them, then quick footsteps. The guard Bryce had hit groaned, but Bryce clamped a hand over the man’s mouth. The footsteps stopped.

“Dave! Manny! Are you okay?”

Lewis threw both hands to his mouth, cupped them, and made a muffled, strangled sound. The flap lifted a crack, then was thrown back. But all the guard saw was the muzzle of Quinn’s weapon pointing directly at his head. “Drop it!” Quinn yelled.

There was a moment’s hesitation, then instant realization that the odds were definitely not in favor of heroism. The weapon clattered to the pavement.

Neal swung around, parted the canvas that hung over the window to the cab, and slammed the butt of the rifle against the glass. As it shattered, he shoved the muzzle of the weapon through the opening and into the face of the startled driver. “Okay, friend,” he said quietly. “Get the keys to these chains and come around slowly or your three friends are going to get blown away.”

And as rapidly as it had started, it was over.

They drove the truck five or six miles up a small dirt road, stripped the four men of their clothing and shoes, and sent them down the mountain in the opposite direction. It was then the argument began. Lewis and Quinn were for heading south, into the province of West Virginia, where Lewis knew of a stronghold of freedom fighters who would provide them safety, food, and rest. Jessie and Neal argued that they should follow the mountains north, into the New England Confederation, where they knew the people and could set up a new base of operations.

Bryce listened quietly for a moment, then walked around to the back of the truck and got one of the uniforms. He began donning it. Quinn and Lewis stopped in mid-sentence to stare at him.

Finally Jessie and Neal turned, then started in surprise.

“What are you doing?” Jessie demanded.

“North or south, it doesn’t matter to me. Just tell me where to find you.”

“Where are you going?”

“And you’ll have to commandeer a vehicle. I’m taking the truck back to Washington.”

“What!” All four shouted it as one.

“If we were going to the Blue Creek Camp, we should have been arriving around nightfall, right?”

Quinn nodded.

“So that gives me about four hours to get back and get the Adams family.”

This time it was Lewis who found his voice first. “That’s insane!”

“Probably,” Bryce agreed, finishing the buttons on his shirt. “But once the ISD learns we’ve escaped, they’ll pick up Leslie and her family first off.”

“Look,” Quinn started, “I understand why you’re doing this, but—”

But now it was Jessie who sided with Bryce. “No!” she said flatly. “He’s right. They won’t stand a chance.”

“You yourself said Paul Adams was the key to everything,” Bryce said evenly to Quinn.

Lewis nodded dubiously. “But that was if you could persuade him to come with us.”

“Well, things have changed. I’ve got to get them out. We’ll try to convince him later.”

Neal was shaking his head too, but he didn’t say anything, and Bryce had the quick impression he was responding negatively to the challenge involved more than the idea.

Quinn blew out his breath. “You’ll have to dump the truck once you hit the city.”

“I know. Where do I meet you?”

Quinn looked to the two Lamberts. “They know you’re from New England. That’s the first place they’ll look for us. I say we head south.”

Jessie hesitated.

“Come on, Jess,” Bryce said softly, “time’s running.”

“Okay, south it is.”

Lewis stepped forward and laid his hand on Bryce’s arm. “If you’re in the clear, find the village of Quaid’s Crossing. It’s about a hundred miles east of Charleston. Stop at the general store. Ask if there are any jobs in Richwood. They’ll direct you from there.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll also need transportation. I have a car in a garage not far from your apartment.” He gave him quick directions as to its location and where the keys were hidden.

Bryce blew out his breath, then shook their hands one by one, except for Jessie, and he gave her a quick, hard hug.

“Good luck,” Quinn said for all of them.

“Thanks.”

And with that, he climbed into the truck and headed down the mountain toward his rendezvous with Elliot Mannington and then his dinner appointment with the Paul Adams family.

Chapter 25

“So you did it!” Mannington spoke even as Bryce climbed down from the army truck in the old warehouse somewhere on the north outskirts of Washington.

He nodded.

“Any problems?” Burkhart asked.

Bryce turned slightly, pulled on one corner of his shirt, and showed them the burn marks where the muzzle of the rifle had been lying when it went off. “It was a little closer than I care to think about, but no one got hurt.” He turned to Burkhart. “Your men are barefoot in the mountains, but they should be back to the highway about dark.”

The third man with Mannington and Burkhart grunted softly, and Burkhart turned. “Bryce, this is Captain James Rodale. He’s directing the field operations.”

Bryce nodded. This was the man who had arrested them the night before, but he made no move to shake hands. Nor did Rodale.

“So there was no question about it being a setup?” Mannington asked.

“None. It could just as easily have gone the other way. And for the moment, they’re elated to be free. They’re on their way to a place somewhere in West Virginia.”

“Where?” Rodale said eagerly.

Bryce ignored him. “Is there still surveillance on the Adams family?” he asked Burkhart.

The head of ISD gave a slight nod.

“Well, pull them off! If Paul spots one of your men now, it could blow the whole deal.”

Burkhart shook his head slowly. “We can’t just pull back all surveillance on your say-so. We—”

“I didn’t say pull them back,” Bryce shot back. “I said pull them off.” He swung around to Mannington. “Everything now hinges on Paul Adams. If he comes with us, we can pull in the others. But at this point, I can’t guarantee he will.”

“Oh, he’ll come,” Burkhart said. “He’s a fanatic. He’ll see this as the perfect opportunity to get back into the spotlight.”

“And if he does,” Captain Rodale broke in grimly, “we can’t take any chance of losing track of him.”

Burkhart was now appealing directly to Mannington too. “If Adams or the others ever suspect Bryce—and we still have to remember that someone knows who he is and what he’s up to— they can dump him in a minute. Then where are we?”

Mannington seemed content for the moment to listen and referee. He turned back to Bryce, one eyebrow lifting questioningly.

“Look,” Bryce said, not trying hard to hide his disgust. “It was that kind of paranoid mentality that nearly blew the whole game yesterday. We’ve managed to patch it up again, but all it will take is one more stupid slip and I will be blown.”

“Is there some reason you are so eager to have all surveillance removed?” Burkhart asked softly.

Bryce threw up his hands. “I give up! Just because Paul Adams is a scarred and broken shell physically doesn’t mean he’s not still as shrewd as a wolverine. So you get your little binoculars and your earphones, and you hover around us like a cloud of flies over a piece of rotten meat, and then when he tells me to take a flying leap, we’ll all sit down and have a good cry together. That’s assuming I’m still alive.”

“Will Adams agree to all this?” Mannington finally said.

Bryce shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s no question about the bitterness he feels for the government. But the work camps are still pretty vivid in his memory too.” He shrugged again, this time also shaking his head. “I don’t know how to predict it. As you know, I haven’t made any kind of approach to him yet, so thus far he’s clean as a new plate. We have nothing on him.”

He turned on Burkhart. “Did you get me a radio?”

The colonel nodded.

“Good. Lewis has a car I’ll be taking. Could you ever hide the radio in there somehow?”

Rodale nodded for the both of them. “We could put it behind the back seat. That would be easy.”

“All right. Then I can call in every night, whenever possible. You can track my location from that. Or put a homing device in the car, if you’re so worried about losing us. Just pull off the live dogs so Adams doesn’t smell a trap!”

Mannington laughed quietly. He and Burkhart had already discussed at some length how to make sure they didn’t lose track of one Bryce Sherwood. They had already gone into Bryce’s apartment and imbedded a small but powerful transmitter in the battered suitcase they hoped he would take, and another one in the heel of one of his shoes. Now to have Bryce hand them such a simple solution, Mannington had to chuckle at Burkhart’s disappointment.

He turned to Burkhart. “Bryce is right. We can track him with the car. Pull off the men.”

Bryce blew out his breath gratefully. “Well, thank heavens someone listens to reason.”

Rodale started to say something, then clamped his mouth shut and turned and walked to the car and picked up his radio.

“How long do you think it will take before you’ll know on Adams?” Mannington said, ignoring the sullen look his ISD chief was giving him.

Pursing his lips, Bryce considered that. “I’m not sure. If the opportunity presents itself, I’ll start feeling him out tonight. But I’ve got to go slow, see how it develops.”

“I agree.” Mannington gave him a shrewd and appraising look. “How much is this interest you’re showing in his daughter genuine and how much is just doing your duty as an obedient espionage agent?”

Bryce laughed, trying not to show his surprise. Anyone who underestimated Elliot Mannington was a fool. He grinned, a bit sheepishly. “Let’s just say I haven’t found the duty to be unpleasant.”

Now it was Mannington who chuckled. “I thought as much.”

Bryce sobered. “But frankly, she’s going to prove to be as difficult as Paul himself.” He gave a little self-deprecatory laugh. “I think the interest is mutual, and that may help. But she is extremely protective of her father. She’ll do anything to stop him from going back to the work camps.”

“That’s understandable. But I’m like Anthony,” Mannington mused. “I think if you appeal to Paul Adams’s ego and his sense of destiny, he will swallow the bait whole.”

“So where are your friends headed in West Virginia?” Burkhart asked, still not ready to totally surrender.

“You think they’d tell me that already?” Bryce asked incredulously.

“I thought they trusted you.”

“They do trust me, but at this stage of the game it’s information on a need-to-know basis only. If one of us gets caught…” He shrugged. “I make contact in a little village called Quaid’s Crossing. I’ll get further directions from there.”

That seemed to satisfy Burkhart, and Bryce felt himself relax a little. He straightened. “Now, one other thing.” He looked at Rodale, who was still at the car, and lowered his voice. “Any progress on finding what happened to my first report?”

Burkhart shook his head and so Bryce turned to Mannington. “So what are you doing to make sure my next reports don’t disappear?”

“We’re taking care of it,” Burkhart said coldly.

“Look, colonel,” Bryce flared, “it’s not your neck out there on the block. Your people already dropped the ball once, so I want to know what—”

Mannington held up his hands. “All right, that’s enough. We’ve taken every precaution. You’ll be on a secure communications link reserved strictly for your calls. Believe me, we are as anxious to keep you safe as you are.”

Bryce looked dubious but finally let it pass. “Anything else? If not, I’d better get going. I don’t want Adams and the others comparing notes later and finding out that I spent an inordinate amount of time getting back into the city.”

“Where’s this car you’re talking about?”

“Oh, yeah.” Bryce gave him directions, knowing full well that in addition to a homing device, the car would likely be rigged up with a microphone somehow. But there was nothing he could do about that.

As he finished, Mannington stepped forward. “I don’t need to tell you, Bryce. This is perhaps the single most important mission we have ever undertaken. The fate of the nation depends on its success.”

“Yes, I know,” Bryce said quietly. “I know.”

By four o’clock, Bryce had gone to his apartment and showered, changed clothes, and walked quickly to the garage where the car was. It was an older model and beat-up. But the engine turned over immediately and ran smoothly. He nodded in satisfaction. He looked quickly behind the back seat and found that Rodale’s men had already done their work. The radio was small and compact but looked efficient and powerful. He tried it, got a brief response from the operations center, then locked the garage again and left.

He stepped off the bus several blocks from Leslie’s house and started a leisurely stroll through the area, but his eyes were constantly searching for any sign that Rodale had not fully complied with his wishes. He spent nearly an hour circling through the neighborhood, one part of his mind occupied with the search for any ISD presence, the rest of it filled with the tumbling melee of his thoughts.

As Bryce had left Leslie’s house the previous night…He stopped and shook his head. Was it really only last night? It seemed like a week ago. But as he had left her house, he had had only one thought on his mind—get out of the commitment to head west with the others. He would stay with Leslie, perhaps even settle into some kind of normal life.

How vastly things could change in twenty-four hours! From the moment the alarm had sounded in the safe house, Bryce had been plunged into a maelstrom of peril, conspiracy, and battle for survival. His mind was numbed by the constant, highvoltage tension, his body ached for sleep. And yet…

What he was feeling was something akin to “runner’s high,” only so much more intense, so much more consuming that it left him a little breathless. He was numbed, yes, and unquestionably exhausted and strung out to a fever pitch, but there was something more. There was not the slightest question in his mind that one slip in the next days and weeks could, and would, bring him face to face with death. It was deeply sobering and yet positively exhilarating to discover that it didn’t matter. Not enough to make him turn back.

As Bryce started up Walquist Street, finally satisfied that there was no surveillance, his brow furrowed deeply. And what now did this neophyte convert to freedom say to the family that meant so much to him? He had thought of little else on the way down from the mountains.

There was one sure way to remove them from danger, and that was to not say anything to Paul Adams and then to tell Mannington he had refused to join the movement. The man had been through hell. He had already paid his dues to freedom. Who could blame him if he declined, considering the risks?

Bryce gave a quick, frustrated little shake of his head. On the other hand, in these past twenty-four hours he had come afire with the realization that they just might do it. With Gorham’s help he had snatched victory right out from under the nose of Elliot Mannington. Now, Bryce was convinced they just might pull it off.

The thought of that sent a shiver of excitement through him. And if they did make it, if they did pull off their own Concord and Lexington, would Paul Adams thank him for being kept safe? Would Leslie?

Bryce sighed deeply as he turned up the walk toward her house. Though mentally he was still agonizing, deep inside he already knew what he had to do. And it filled him with dread, for he very much feared he could lose Leslie in the process.

Chapter 26

Bryce managed to keep his mood light and the conversation safe during dinner. But this time, as they finished, he adamantly refused to take a no answer on his offer to do the dishes. He shooed Vera and Paul out onto the front porch, donned an apron, and picked up a dish towel. During the meal, Leslie had shot him several questioning looks, somehow sensing that something was troubling him.

Now as she put some powdered dish soap into the sink and started the water running, she looked up at him. “Is everything okay?”

He laughed softly, simultaneously cursing and loving her perceptiveness. “Couldn’t be better,” he answered lightly.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, thanks a lot.”

She turned off the water, swirled the soap suds idly with her hand, then finally looked up again, the wide, green eyes much troubled. “Bryce?” She was pleading with him now. “What’s wrong?”

He set his dish towel down, gathered her into his arms, and kissed her gently. “Only that I’m finding myself falling deeply in love with a certain teacher from the Hillsburg Secondary School.”

For several moments she looked up at him, probing his face. Then she sighed and went back to toying with the suds.

“There is an appropriate response to that last line,” he said softly.

“I know.”

This time he found it more difficult to force the lightness into his voice. “I don’t think that was it.”

She spoke so softly he almost missed it. “I know,” she said again.

And with a deepening sense of gloom, he stepped back and picked up the towel again. They didn’t speak again until they were finished.

As they came out into the living room, Vera was just turning on the television.

“The ballet is on tonight,” Leslie murmured, still subdued. “Do you mind if we just stay here and watch it?”

So we don’t have to be alone and try to talk things out? he thought. But he just nodded. “That’s fine.” What had to happen tonight was going to be tough enough without her probing further to see what was bothering him.

They sat on the couch, across from her parents who were in the two easy chairs. On the television, the camera focused on the orchestra as it began that unique cacophony of sounds peculiar to a group of instrumentalists warming up. Suddenly Bryce rubbed the back of his hand. “Hmmm,” he said, looking at it. “I’ve got something sticky on me, from the dishes I guess. I’ll be right back.”

He went in the kitchen, turned on the water briefly, then moved quickly to the small desk where there was a pad of paper and a holder with several pens and pencils. “I need to talk with you alone,” he wrote swiftly. “Can we go outside?” In the other room, the orchestra’s tuning sounds died out.

He folded the paper into a small square, waited a moment until he heard the sound of applause, and then, as the orchestra began to play, he walked back into the living room. All three glanced up at him idly, then turned back to the television. He slipped the note under Paul’s arm as he passed, then gave him a quick, warning shake of his head as he looked up in surprise.

Paul waited almost a full minute before he quietly retrieved the note, and, holding it low, unfolded and read it. He looked at Bryce, then away. Three minutes later, he suddenly stood. “Sorry, dear,” he murmured, as he bent down and kissed his wife on the cheek. “I’m too fidgety for television tonight. I think I’ll go dig around in the flowers for a while.”

Vera looked up at him surprised, but then, as though she was used to such unexpected turns, smiled. “Need some help?”

“No. You’ve been waiting to see this. I’m just going to putter.”

Bryce waited for almost five more minutes, then withdrew his hand from Leslie’s. “I guess I’ve got the same case of the fidgets as your father. I’ll go out and keep him company.”

There was a long, appraising look, filled with sadness. “All right,” Leslie finally said softly. “We’ll have some ice cream after this is over.”

“Good.” He walked out of the house into the backyard. Paul was bent over in the roses, using a small hand rake to stir up the ground around the plants. Bryce picked up a hoe and took a few desultory whacks at some small weeds. It was nearly sunset, and the late September air was still and pleasantly comfortable. But most important, unless Rodale and Burkhart were much more thorough than he thought, they were also free from any possible electronic listening devices.

Bryce stopped, leaned on his hoe, and gave Paul a long searching look. “Sir, may I ask you a question?”

Paul smiled, sitting back on his heels. “If you’ll answer one for me.”

“Okay.”

“Why is it you insist on calling me sir? Paul is just fine.”

Bryce laughed softly. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve asked me twice now, but…” He laughed again, a little embarrassed. “But when I think of who you are and what you’ve done, somehow it seems disrespectful for me to call you Paul.”

“I did no more than others.”

“Maybe so, but I don’t call them Paul either.”

He chuckled. “I give up. Okay, what’s the question?”

Bryce took a deep breath. “Have you ever heard of the Declaration of Independence?”

Paul set the rake down slowly, his eyes narrowing. “Why do you ask?” It was said slowly, almost as though it were forced from him a word at a time.

“Because I’ve seen it.”

“There is no such document.” It was flat and harsh, almost angry.

“I’ve seen it,” Bryce repeated slowly.

He shook his head stubbornly.

“I have it!”

For several seconds the penetrating eyes glared at him from the deep sockets that heightened the sense of gauntness in the face, then he picked up the hand tool and began digging at the earth again. “There is no such document,” the deep voice said again in a soft whisper.

Bryce dropped the hoe and moved over to him, sitting on the grass to face him. “I know what you think. But I’m not trying to trap you. There’s something I must tell you.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” The look in his eyes was suddenly frightened, cornered.

“I give you my word that all you have to do is listen. Then if you tell me to go away, I will.”

“I don’t want to listen to you.”

“If you don’t hear what I have to say,” Bryce started, “what I must say, then—” His eyes dropped to the twisted, shockingly deformed hands, and he drew in his breath quickly, suddenly unsure of himself.

Paul Adams was watching Bryce’s face, and then his own eyes dropped to look at his hands. “Then what?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

Bryce shook his head.

“Then what!” he said sharply.

“Then the evil and ugly men of the world will have won again.”

For almost a full minute there was silence except for the quiet scratching of the metal against the soil and the sound of a bus engine far off in the distance. Paul did not look up, just kept digging, but finally he said, with sudden firmness, “If you must, you must.”

Bryce leaned back, letting his breath out in a long sigh. And suddenly at that moment he knew he had to tell it all. From the beginning. He looked up. “This is going to sound insane.”

There was the tiniest crinkle of a smile around the corner of Paul’s eyes. “Perhaps that’s best, for I think it is insane of me to listen.”

And so he began. He had never told anyone all of it. Jessie Lambert had heard part. She knew about the wall of light and the second dimension, and miraculously she had believed him. They had never talked of it again, nor had she even hinted of it around Neal or the others. But now Bryce started long before that. He spoke of a fantasy world, of a great nation on the North American continent, forged from the fires of revolution and built on a remarkable document called the Constitution. He described the nation of 235 million people and what they had accomplished.

Then with a sigh, shifting uncomfortably on the grass, he began to speak of a young man—bright, aspiring, an aide to a U.S. senator—and of his attempts to change what he thought were faults in the system.

As Bryce talked slowly and without emotion, Paul Adams stopped his digging in the soil. The rake was laid aside. He sat down next to the tree. At first he watched Bryce intently, then he leaned back and the deep-set eyes stared off into space, as they had that first day Bryce had met him on the porch. He never interrupted, never asked a question, just listened with an intensity that was frightening.

Paul gave Bryce a flash of incredulous disbelief as he began to speak of a young woman challenging the bright young lawyer in front of national television. The look only deepened as Bryce went stubbornly on and told of the night a hitchhiker had appeared, and of what had followed. But as Bryce continued, describing the final bitter argument between him and Leslie, his journey north alone, and the events that followed, Paul seemed to retreat deeper and deeper within himself. The face became as stone, completely impassive and unreadable. And even as Bryce outlined the plans Lewis and Wesley Quinn had proposed for Paul Adams and of the ensuing arrest and confrontation with Mannington, he showed no reaction. None. He might have been carved from the trunk of the tree against which his back rested.

Finished at last, Bryce sat back, a tremendous sense of burden lifted from him. Believed or not, insane or not, it was a catharsis to tell it all, to put it into words, to completely uncork the bottle.

Idly, almost as if his hand belonged to another person, Paul’s fingers began plucking up individual blades of grass and letting them drop into his lap. Like Leslie, Bryce thought, remembering how she had done the same thing that day in the park.

Suddenly Bryce stood, feeling foolish, awkward, embarrassed, discouraged.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s…” He lifted his shoulders, let them drop again. “Like I said, it’s insane. Maybe I’m insane.”

For the first time in almost fifteen minutes, the figure stirred. “Several times,” Paul said in a low voice that was almost a hollow echo, “in the camps, I thought I was insane. Now,” he finished sadly, “I no longer know what is sanity and what is insanity.”

A tiny ray of hope lit Bryce’s face. “Then…?”

Finally Paul was looking at him again. He shook his head slowly. “It is an incredible tale.”

Bryce laughed shortly, mirthlessly. “You’re telling me? At least you didn’t laugh in my face. That’s what I would do, if I had heard it from someone else.”

“I believe you believe it.”

“Thanks,” Bryce said, suddenly profoundly discouraged, knowing he had lost. “I suppose I ought to be grateful for that.” He stood again. “I think it’s best if I go now. Tell Leslie I’m sorry.” He forced a smile. “But somehow ice cream seems a little anticlimactic right now.”

The frail figure got slowly to its feet. “We’ll talk more tomorrow,” he said wearily.

Bryce just nodded forlornly. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow,” he answered. “I’ll come around to say good-bye to Leslie.”

It was nearly midnight when Paul Adams stole quietly out of bed, put on his robe, and tiptoed to the door. He stopped as Vera stirred and made a soft sound in her sleep, but she quieted and lay still again, and he went out and shut the door carefully behind him. As he moved down the hall, he paused momentarily at the next door. A slight frown wrinkled his brow as he thought of his daughter and the young man who loved her. Then he slipped out of the house and into the soft patterns of moonlight and shadow that dappled the backyard.

He moved to the deeper shadows beneath the tree, where he had sat earlier that evening and listened to the fantastic tale of Bryce Sherwood. With a tired sigh, he lowered himself against the rough bark of the trunk and closed his eyes, trying to sort it all out. Subconsciously, he began to massage the twisted knots of one hand with the bumpy fingers of the other. For half an hour or more he sat like that, motionless except for the slow and gentle movement of his fingers.

He started, hearing a soft sound nearby, feeling a quick surge of fear, but almost instantly he smiled at himself. There was nothing but the familiar shapes of flowers and shrubbery around him. There were no sounds but the softness of the breeze rustling the trees.

Then suddenly, he cried out. In the darkness, directly in front of him! Something was there! He tried to scramble backward, away from it, but he was already against the trunk of the tree and only succeeded in scraping his skin against the rough bark, even through his robe.

With eyes gaping and heart pounding hard, Paul Adams stared, frozen into immobility. It was almost as though the moonlight itself was taking form. Gradually the figure of a man became fully visible, glowing softly in the shadows. The face was narrow and angular, though the eyes were kindly and held open amusement. The white hair was pulled back and tied at the back of his neck. The man wore a long coat, and there were ruffles at his throat and wrists.

As the figure became fully visible, he bowed slightly at the waist. “Good evening, Dr. Adams.”

Paul swallowed hard, pulling his legs up underneath him in preparation for flight.

“There is no need to fear. I assure you, I mean you no harm.”

“What…Who are you?” he stammered.

The man smiled kindly. “Don’t you know?” The voice was as soft as the night breeze.

Paul gave a quick, frightened shake of his head.

“Think about it.”

And then understanding came. “Nathaniel Gorham,” Paul breathed.

Gorham nodded, quite pleased. “It is a pleasure to have the privilege of meeting you, sir.”

Chapter 27

Paul Adams stopped on the sidewalk, just short of the screen door that led onto his front porch. “Are you sure the house has been bugged?”

“No.” Bryce took a deep breath. “I’m only going on the probabilities. Neither Mannington nor Burkhart make many mistakes. You’ve probably been monitored for some time, possibly since your return from the work camps, but almost certainly in the past week since they got onto me.”

“And it’s got to happen in there?”

Bryce nodded. “If it is bugged and Leslie and Vera react in a way that seems forced or unnatural, we’re dead before we start.”

The older man sighed. “I’ve never lied to Vera.”

“We’re not going to lie,” Bryce said patiently. They had gone over this at his apartment, after he had finally gotten over the shock and then the elation of having Paul Adams show up at his door at 6:30 A.M. to tell him what had transpired during the night. “But we can’t tell them everything. Not here. Not even in the car because it may be bugged too. We’ll tell them about Mannington later, but not until we’re sure, absolutely sure, that there is no chance Mannington is listening.”

Again there was the sigh of resignation. “All right.” He opened the screen door. “This isn’t going to be easy, you know.”

“You’re telling me,” Bryce answered glumly.

“Leslie…” Her father stopped, then shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what she’ll do.”

The line along Bryce’s jaw tightened. “Well, waiting isn’t going to make it any easier. Let’s go.”

The women were waiting in the living room, faces tense, eyes full of anxiety. Paul had left a note that Leslie was not to go to school, nor was Vera to go to work, until he returned. Little wonder they were on edge.

Paul walked over and sat down next to Vera and took her hand. Bryce stood awkwardly near the bookshelves, not meeting Leslie’s worried, questioning gaze.

Paul took a deep breath and plunged right in. “For several weeks we have suspected that Bryce Sherwood, alias John H. Carrol, alias John B. Carrol, was not all that he was representing himself to be.”

Leslie’s eyes dropped, and Bryce saw that her fingers were twisting at her belt.

“We were right,” Paul said quietly. “He is not from the ministry of education, which he has already confessed. Nor is he from the government, sent here to spy on an aging old dissident—” he shot a look at Leslie, “as some of us thought.” He took a deep breath. “Actually, he is a member of the resistance movement.”

There was a quick intake of breath from Vera, a sudden wide-eyed shock from Leslie.

“He has come to us—to me, with an offer, an opportunity.”

Vera paled and was staring at Bryce, suddenly frightened.

“It’s something that will have a profound effect not only on me, but on both of you as well. You need to hear what he has to say.”

Leslie’s eyes were suddenly blazing. “No!” she cried.

“Yes, Leslie,” Paul said softly, “we must at least listen to him.”

She whirled on her father. “Stop it! Stop it this instant!”

The vehemence caught all of them by surprise, even her mother.

“We do not have to listen to him! We must not listen!”

Bryce stepped closer to her. “Some things cannot be stopped, Leslie.”

“Go away! Leave us alone!” she cried.

“As a matter of fact,” he said quietly, “I am leaving this morning.”

She blinked, and her lower lip trembled slightly. “Then go,” she said in a bitter whisper. “I knew all along that you meant nothing but danger to us.”

“Nothing?” he asked in a low voice.

She looked away. “Please! Can’t you just leave us alone?”

“I invited him to come this morning,” Paul broke in with sudden determination. “We will hear what he has to say.” He looked up. “Go ahead, Bryce.”

Bryce did so, quietly and fighting to control the pain he felt as he saw the anger and alienation on Leslie’s face. He told them of Lewis and Jessie and Neal. He spoke of Wesley Quinn, an agent for the United States government, and of his proposal and the pivotal part that Paul Adams could play in it all. He said nothing of Elliot Mannington and Colonel Anthony Burkhart.

“They’re waiting for me somewhere in West Virginia,” he finished quietly. “If I bring Paul Adams with me, we’ll begin immediately. If I don’t…we’ll go ahead on our own, do the best we can.”

Leslie was crying softly now. “You have no right to ask him to go with you,” she said. “No right!”

Bryce shook his head. “And you have no right to ask him to stay.”

“He’s my father!” she shouted.

Bryce stepped up to her, looking down into the angry face. She looked away but he gently took her chin in his hand and turned her back. “No, you listen!” he pleaded with infinite gentleness. “Leslie, I know how you feel. I understand your fear for him, the horror of all he’s gone through. But daughter or not, you have no right to make this decision for him.”

Bryce’s voice softened even more. “If he says no, I’ll turn and walk out that door without another word. I know what he’s done. There’s not a man alive who will think the less of him if he stays here. He’s paid the price. Far more than you or I. That’s right!” he said fiercely, as she started to shake her head. “Far more than you or I. And so, I cannot speak for him.” He straightened, sorrowed by what he had to say. “And neither can you.”

There was a deep sigh of pain from Vera as she turned to her husband. “You have already made up your mind, haven’t you?”

He shook his head. “No. If we tell Bryce to go without us, he will do so and life will go on for us…“ He stopped, then finished more slowly. “Life will go on for us as it was before.”

“Oh, Paul,” she said, her voice suddenly catching. “Do I know you better than you know yourself? How can you say you haven’t decided?”

He turned and took her face in those gnarled, twisted hands and lifted it to him. When he spoke, his voice was deep with emotion. “Vera, if you know me as well as you say you do, then you know that if you ask me to stay, we will stay. I’ve put you through enough. I have no right to ask any more of you.”

Tears welled up and overflowed, and Bryce had to swallow hard as he saw the love that passed between these two aging and battle-scarred partners. “And you, Paul,” she answered in a whisper, “you know my heart is your heart, and if your heart says go, then I will go.” She wiped quickly at a tear-stained cheek and forced a smile. “Will there be something I can do this time? I so much hated the waiting last time.”

Leslie leaped to her feet. “No!” It was a stifled sob, a strangled sound of pain and agony. “You can’t!” And suddenly Leslie was standing in the middle of the room, as alone as she had ever been in her life.

With surprising alacrity, her father was up and had her in his arms, soothing her, stroking her hair gently. As she buried her head against his shoulder and began to shake with convulsive sobs, he spoke gently. “It looks like your mother and I have decided, Leslie.” She shook her head fiercely against him, but he smiled gently. “Yes, I think we have. And now the question is, what about you?”

She straightened slowly, looking up at her father, then over his shoulder at Bryce. Their eyes locked, hers red and swollen, his filled with anguish. But it was Vera Adams who spoke. She stood and turned to Bryce. “How much time do we have to pack?”

Bryce shrugged. “The sooner we leave, the better chance we have of getting away clear.”

Paul took his wife by the hand. “I don’t have much worth taking,” he said, “but I’ll help.” And smiling briefly at the two young people standing in the living room, they left and went down the hall.

For a long moment, Bryce and Leslie did not look at each other; then finally, Bryce held out his hand toward her. “Will you walk with me?” he asked softly.

He held his breath. He had some things he wanted to say. If he had to, he would say them here, beneath the microphones and into the tape recorders of Colonel Anthony Burkhart, but he much preferred to say them only to Leslie.

She searched his face for a long moment, brushed angrily at the wetness on her cheeks, then shrugged and turned, ignoring his outstretched hand. She walked slowly out the front door.

He caught up with her on the sidewalk and fell into step, and they walked for several moments in silence. Finally, Bryce stopped. She walked several steps more, then stopped, not turning around.

“Leslie…”

She waited.

He sighed, not sure where to start. Finally she turned, her face tear stained, her eyes filled with pain—and pleading.

“You know,” he said, in a low voice. “It’s more than love.”

Her chin came up, and he saw the questioning in her eyes.

“With your mother. It’s more than just standing by the man she loves. She believes it too.”

She finally spoke. “Believes what?”

“In what your father is doing. That the cause is worth the cost. That’s what she meant when she said, ‘Your heart is my heart.’”

Leslie turned then and began walking again slowly. As Bryce moved up beside her, she said, very softly, “I know.”

He reached over and took her hand and pulled her around to face him, and this time she didn’t pull away. But neither would she meet his gaze. “If somehow you could ever come to love me—”

Her head came up.

He had to stop, the sharp intensity of what he was feeling for this woman taking his breath away. He sighed and started again. “If somehow you could ever come to love me as deeply as I love you, there might be a day when we could have what your parents have.”

He saw the tears starting again.

“But even that wouldn’t change how we feel about this other thing.” Suddenly he shook his head, half muttering to himself. “I can’t believe this. Here I am, trying to convince you? If I ever go back, I’d like to have a video of this moment.”

“If you ever go back where?”

He brushed that aside and plunged in with renewed determination. “Leslie, I know what drives your father. For the first time in my life, I know what it’s like to be driven by that kind of commitment. Here at last is something to fight for, something to throw myself at with all the fury I can muster. If only you could feel that too, then…” He let it trail off. Then what? Then we can walk hand in hand into the jaws of hell singing love songs? Then you can join me in front of the firing squad? What, it suddenly hit him, was he offering this woman?

“Then what?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Then what!” she cried, grabbing his other hand and holding them both with a sudden fierceness.

“Then we can stand together in this.” He laughed bitterly at how empty that sounded. “I’ve heard better offers than that from used-car salesmen.”

Her eyes dropped. “I’ve always stood in awe of my father,” she said, barely whispering. “His commitment, the courage to go through what he has and never back down—it frightens me.”

“It frightens me too. He is a remarkable man.”

“I don’t think I have that kind of courage.”

“And I think you are one of the most courageous women I have ever met.” He laughed softly. “After all, you went to dinner with me that first night.”

She didn’t smile. “I’m terribly frightened, Bryce. For me. For my father and mother.” She suddenly threw her arms around him and gripped him tightly. “For you.”

He reached down and put a finger under her chin and lifted her head. “You don’t have to be frightened for me,” he said gravely. “I’ve already got that base covered very well.”

She swallowed and managed a tremulous smile. “And you’d take me under those conditions?”

He stared at her, then nearly threw back his head and shouted with joy, but again he forced a solemn look. “Will there be any kind of dowry?”

She slugged him hard against his chest, then instantly sobered again. “Can you really forgive me if I’m not all that my father is?”

It took a moment for what she was saying to sink in, then he swung her up and around once, laughing aloud. He put her down and took her face in his hands. “As long as you let me do this—” he kissed her eyes, “and this—” he kissed her nose, “and this—” and he kissed her full on the mouth, and she kissed him back hard, fiercely, with all the pent-up emotions that were welling up inside her.

He pulled back and looked at her in wonder. “As long as you let me do that,” he said, a little breathlessly, “I’ll forgive you if you’re not exactly all that your father is.”

Chapter 28

The next five or six days were some of the most glorious Bryce had ever spent. They had left the Washington area before noon on that first morning, driving leisurely, two couples in love, knowing that this idyllic time would be short-lived and ever too brief. That night, they made the contact in the general store of Quaid’s Crossing, a tiny village on the western slopes of the Allegheny Mountains. From there they were taken by a solemnfaced teenager deep into the hill country where an old logging camp had been converted into a temporary headquarters for the freedom movement.

Only Jessie Lambert and Neal were there to welcome them and introduce them around. Lewis had gotten the others settled, then headed immediately back for Washington. In the swiftness of the arrest at the safe house and the escape the next day, he had had no chance to warn his people. All of his networks were now vulnerable. Equally important, documents had to be retrieved or destroyed, hidden arms secured and moved to the mountains of West Virginia. Only a few of the most strategically placed people would remain. The rest would be told to make their way to the camp to join the rest.

Wes Quinn had also left immediately to meet with other AIS operatives somewhere out West near the demilitarized zone for a full briefing and to receive further instructions from their superiors.

Though Bryce was mentally ready to plunge immediately into the massive task at hand, he was not disappointed at the temporary lull. September closed out, and the first days of October dawned crisp and clear. The mountains were turning now, and as far as the eye could see it was a sea of brilliant color—oranges, yellows, reds, crimsons. He and Leslie would hike the hills for hours at a time, talking quietly, laughing, sometimes just holding hands, caught up in the total wonder of each other.

The only thing that marred life at all was when Bryce each night would go to the car, uncover the radio, and call in his report to Elliot Mannington. But he could say truthfully that little was happening at the moment, and so the reports were terse and the unpleasant reminders of the game he was playing were quickly put aside.

Coming to know the others in the camp was pleasant and revealing as well. There were nearly fifty people now, and each day a few more trickled in. Tents and makeshift shelters were scattered through the trees. The few old buildings left from before were given to the families with children. Although the camp had tried to persuade Paul Adams to take one of the nicer cabins, as a mark of their respect and honor for him, he had quietly but adamantly refused. He and Vera and Leslie slept in sleeping bags in a tent beneath some quaking aspen.

The majority of the people in the camp were younger and unmarried, with more men than women. But there were two widows, besides Jessie Lambert, and three people past sixty. There were also ten children under fifteen, and by the third day, Leslie and Vera had a school going for half a day, much to the parents’ delight and the children’s dismay. Often Bryce would sit in the back of the rough classroom just to watch Leslie as she worked with them. He got an equal amount of joy out of watching her with the other single girls in the camp. They would go down to the stream together to get water, or stand around the cook stoves, chattering like high-school girls about the various camp romances and other such things. It thrilled Bryce to see how alive and vibrant Leslie was becoming in this mountain setting.

Though the camp was in a state of waiting, the arrival of Paul Adams had infused everyone with a sense of excitement. Every night after dinner, bundled up in jackets and sweaters against the chill of the night air, they gathered around a huge fire pit to laugh and sing, or sometimes just to sit and talk quietly, sobered by what the future held for them.

The change from a mere state of mental shock to a deep, inner commitment to the cause of freedom had come for Bryce as he saw life in CONAS, life in an America without the Constitution. For Leslie, that change came during these sessions around the fire. For the most part, the people had come because they were fed up with the system—the constant oppression, the stultifying poverty, the incredible waste and inefficiency. But there were also the more dramatic stories of life in the Confederation of North American States. A young couple with three small children had had their food permit revoked for attending church. They had survived for six months by foraging at night and buying what meager supplies they could on the black market. A widower, a grizzled old farmer, had struck a police constable for trying to force sexual advances on his granddaughter, then had fled to the hills with her and her parents, one step ahead of a prison sentence. Three were university students, disillusioned with poor facilities and endless propagandizing. A sensitive young girl with sad brown eyes had watched her parents lose the farm that had been in the family for six generations to a collectivized factory and die within the year in abject poverty.

One night, after the others had gone to bed, Bryce and Leslie sat quietly in front of the glowing coals. He could tell she was pensive and lost in thought. He put his arm around her and pulled her close. With a murmur of contentment, she snuggled into his shoulder.

“Tell me what you are thinking,” he said, putting his face against her hair.

She stared into the coals for a long time before she spoke. “I was thinking,” she said softly, “that there are none so blind as those who will not see.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that I have been teaching history and government for over four years now. I taught those young people the official state dogma. I outlined the glories of our socialist system. I knew it wasn’t true, but I taught it so that I could keep my job, help our family survive since my father could no longer work. Occasionally some of the students, usually those with inquiring minds, those in whom the hunger for truth had not been totally crushed, would ask difficult questions. The contradictions between what they were taught and what they saw at every hand were too obvious. Life in their world—the real world—somehow didn’t quite match up to what the textbooks said. And I would answer their questions as I was supposed to. I would try to gloss problems over, brush them aside, look the other way.”

“You had little choice.”

“My father had a choice!” she retorted.

There was nothing to say to that, and so he just pulled her in more tightly.

“But now…” She paused, then sighed.

“What?”

She sat up, looking into his face. One hand came up and touched his cheek. “This has been a wonderful time, these past few days.” Her eyes softened. “I love you so much.”

He kissed her gently. “And I can’t believe how much I love you.”

She kissed him back, but then turned to gaze deeply into the coals again. “But now, now it’s more than loving you, and wanting to be with you. Now I’m coming to understand my father.”

“Yes,” Bryce agreed. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“I’m beginning to feel that same absolute determination that we cannot—must not!—simply sit back and accept cruelty and injustice. If we do, we become part of it.”

Bryce ran his hand gently across her hair, loving to touch her, loving this woman of grace and beauty and growing determination. “In the early history of this country,” he said quietly, “the history that has been suppressed by the government, there was a man who felt that same fire your father feels. His name was Patrick Henry. People were frightened, afraid that if they took a stand it might mean war. As a matter of fact, he lived in Virginia, at Richmond.”

“What did he do?”

He stopped, remembering. He had first memorized this speech for a high-school debate class. It had gone over so well he had used it again and again in his college debate meets. He had even quoted it once to a jury for dramatic effect. He looked at Leslie and took a quick breath. “One day a crowd had gathered at a church. They were vacillating, fearful to do anything.”

He looked into Leslie’s eyes. And then with emotions he had never before felt, he began to quote the words that he had not thought about for several years. “Henry got up on the steps of the church, and this is what he said: ‘We have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming. An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us! They tell us that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?’”

Suddenly Bryce was no longer thinking of the British and of colonialists standing in front of St. John’s Church in 1775. He was thinking of CONAS and Elliot Mannington and the deformed hands of Paul Adams.

His voice rose in intensity. “ ‘We are not weak, if we make proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. We shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. Gentleman may cry, peace, peace!—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. Why stand we here idle? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!’”

Bryce Sherwood sat back, a little shaken by his own emotions. Finally he looked down again into the eyes of the woman he so loved. “‘I know not what course others may take,’” he finished softly, “‘but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!’”

The silence of the night closed in around them. Leslie’s eyes were glistening as she reached out and took his hand.

Suddenly a little embarrassed at his own passion, he shook his head. “I’m ashamed to say that for a while I used to think that speech was too corny, too passionate, a little too fanatic. Now…”

“When the time is right,” she said in a husky whisper, “you must share that with the others. Write it out so that it can be taught in the schools, preached in the churches, trumpeted from every pulpit and lecture hall in the land.”

He nodded soberly, then with the greatest of gentleness he put his hand over hers. “And you, Leslie Adams. What of you?”

She smiled up at him. “What would you have of me?”

“I would have you to be my wife.”

She leaned her head against him, suddenly crying. “And I would have Bryce Sherwood to be my husband,” she murmured happily.

But within the hour, the idyllic respite came to an end. After he had walked Leslie to her tent, Bryce reluctantly moved down the small dirt road and into the trees where the car was hidden. As he turned on the radio, gave the codes, and started his brief transmission, the gravel-voiced man who always took the call suddenly broke in. “Stand by for a message.” Surprised, Bryce grabbed the small notebook and then for the next two minutes copied the unintelligible set of numbers and letters that spewed forth. Puzzled and with a gnawing sense of dismay, he dug under the back seat of the car and retrieved the code book.

It took him nearly five minutes more to translate it. When he was finished, he sat back, his face grim. Finally he shook his head, stowed the radio, and walked swiftly back to the tent where Paul Adams lay sleeping.

“You must go,” Paul said firmly. “He leaves you no option.”

“No!” Leslie cried. “What if something has gone wrong? What if this is a trap?”

Bryce read the message again by the faint light of the lantern. “Urgent that we meet tonight. Six miles west of Quaid’s Crossing on road to Richwood. Small bridge over Charlie Creek. Two A.M. Create whatever cover required but absolutely imperative that you come. Blue Goose.”

He sighed. Blue Goose was Elliot Mannington’s personal code name. He reached over and took Leslie’s hand. “It will be all right. If it was a trap, he wouldn’t pull me out at night like this. He knows where we are. He can get me anytime.”

“I agree,” Paul said. “And we can’t have him getting suspicious now. You’ve got to go.”

Vera reached over into the corner of the tent to a pile of clothing and retrieved a black sweater that belonged to Paul. “Here,” she said with quiet practicality. “Your jacket is too light colored. This will be better.”

He smiled at her gratefully, took off his jacket quickly, and donned the sweater. He got up into a crouch, reached out and squeezed Leslie’s hand.

She forced a smile, then kissed him hard. “Be careful,” she whispered.

“I will.” He straightened and slipped out the tent flap. Paul followed.

“I think you’ll be okay, but watch him.”

Bryce nodded. They gripped each other’s hands firmly.

“Good luck.”

Bryce swallowed, feeling the queasiness in the pit of his stomach. “Thanks.”

He parked over a mile away from the bridge, cut left through the fields and meadows until he struck Charlie Creek. Then, keeping low, he moved back toward the highway, searching the night for any sign of others besides himself. By 1:30 he was hidden in a patch of wild raspberry bushes underneath the bridge.

Twenty minutes later he heard the sound of an engine and slipped up the bank to look. There was little moonlight but Bryce could still see the gleam of the car about a hundred yards down the road. Three shadowy figures got out, but only one started toward him. By the time the figure reached the bridge, Bryce was satisfied that it was Elliot Mannington. He swung up and over the guardrail and onto the road.

Mannington stopped, peering forward into the darkness, then Bryce heard an audible sigh of relief. “Bryce?”

“Yes.”

“Thank heavens.” He stepped forward and gripped Bryce’s hand, pumping it vigorously. There was a short pause, and Bryce could feel the urgency in Mannington. “Look, I’m sorry to pull you out like this. I know it heightens your risk, but something has come up. I didn’t dare communicate it over the radio.”

“I think I’m okay. The camp was asleep. The car is far enough down the road, and I let it coast out for some distance before I started the engine.”

“Good.” And then he plunged right in.”Bryce, it’s imperative that you get things moving,” he said bluntly.

“Why? What’s up?”

“The prime minister.” Mannington swore. “That stupid idiot!”

Bryce tried not to show his surprise. Coming from one of his loyal cabinet members, that was pretty strong talk.

“He’s been under increasing pressure in the last few months,” Mannington went on. “There are some on the Central Committee who are quietly starting to talk about the need for new leadership. Not in front of him, of course. But he knows.”

Bryce waited. This was hardly what he had come down expecting to hear.

“He’s decided that this operation holds the key for consolidating his position, solidifying his power.”

“We do?”

Mannington gave a scoffing sound, completely disgusted. “Yes. And if we don’t help him save his tail, we—and I mean you and me, Burkhart, all of ISD—could face serious consequences.”

“But what? How?”

“October twenty-first is National People’s Day.”

“Yes.” Whatever the heck that was, Bryce thought. Founders’ Day, perhaps. Or something like May Day in European countries. He’d have to ask Paul.

“The prime minister is scheduled to give a speech on national television.”

Again Bryce just nodded, still totally baffled.

“He wants to use that speech to announce the arrest and capture of the major leaders of the resistance movement. In fact, his plan is to parade them on national television, put them on trial right there for all to see.”

“What!” Bryce’s jaw had dropped open.

“That’s right.” He sighed wearily. “And in one fell swoop he will have silenced the criticism, put down his opposition.”

Bryce leaned over the bridge railing, not hearing the soft murmur of the water below him. His mind was racing.

“There is no option, Bryce. By October nineteenth we have to move in and take whomever we can get.”

“But that’s not even three weeks from now. Lewis and Wes Quinn aren’t even back yet.”

“They should be back today.”

Bryce started. They had received word of that in the camp, but how did Mannington know? To cover his dismay, he said quickly, “But even then, three weeks!”

“I know. That’s what makes me so angry.” He slammed one fist against the railing. “We’ve worked too hard to let it unravel now. But come the twentieth, I’ve got to hand him someone. His power may be weakening, but he can still be a very powerful enemy. He’ll take us down with him.”

He took Bryce’s arm and swung him around. “Push them, Bryce. You’ve got to get those resistance leaders here before the twentieth, or everything you’ve worked for will be lost.”

“I…” Bryce thrust his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know if I can. Three weeks! That’s not much time.”

Mannington grabbed him by both shoulders and shook him gently. “You’ve got to, Bryce. You’ve got to!”

Chapter 29

Bryce was back before dawn. Not too surprisingly, Paul Adams was waiting for him on the dirt road below the camp. They walked slowly, talking softly, their breath leaving frosty clouds in the air as they moved through the trees and out onto a ridge overlooking the valley below. The sun was fully up and comfortably warm by the time they came back down, and Bryce greeted a much-relieved mother and daughter with an enthusiastic hug.

But after breakfast, the two men left again, heading up for the same ridge, talking as quietly and as earnestly as before, as the outline of a daring plan began to take shape in their minds. That was where Leslie found them two hours later.

“What?” Paul said in alarm, standing quickly at the sight of his daughter coming swiftly up the trail toward them.

“They’re back,” Leslie said, a little out of breath. “Lewis and Mr. Quinn are back.”

It turned out to be more than Lewis and Quinn who had arrived. They had brought with them Quinn’s control officer. A control officer not only served as an espionage agent’s immediate superior officer, but he also directed the agent in the field. He was the communications link between the AIS and the field agent, procurer of needed supplies, provider of a safe escape route should the cover be blown. In short, the control officer was supervisor, nursemaid, emergency fallback, and, when necessary, psychiatrist and counselor. Hal Hoffman certainly didn’t look the part of a senior officer of the United States intelligence service. He was thin, balding, and soft spoken, and he wore steel-rimmed bifocals that gave him a bit of an owlish look. And yet, almost instantly, he conveyed a feeling of tremendous competence and confidence, and it quickly became obvious that the position of leadership in the group had shifted to him and to Paul Adams.

Seven people were present—Hoffman, Wes Quinn, Lewis, Paul, Bryce, and Jessie and Neal Lambert. As the introductions were finished and they settled back, Paul spoke up. “I think there is one thing we need to hear from Bryce before we go any further,” he said.

Hoffman nodded. “Okay, shoot.”

And so Bryce proceeded to reveal to them who he was and of his relationship with Elliot Mannington. At first there was stunned surprise, then sharp questions about why he had not revealed this sooner. He talked earnestly and quietly, showing them the advantages of having a double agent who was directly connected to the minister of the interior.

Surprisingly, it was Lewis who reacted most bitterly. Jessie very quickly believed him. Neal followed her lead as well. The others were taken aback, but it was obvious that Hoffman instantly saw the possibilities. But Lewis was furious that Bryce had not told them sooner.

Hoffman listened to it all, let the feelings all come out, then finally spoke. Bryce’s revelation was accepted. They would now use that strategic position to their advantage. Lewis grumbled a little more, but when Hoffman moved right on, he gradually calmed down and seemed to accept it.

“We are here,” Hoffman began, “not to plan a single battle or even a campaign. What we are facing is long, drawn-out, protracted warfare. For the most part, it will be waged here in the Confederation of North American States. But it could erupt and draw the Western Alliance into open conflict with CONAS. We are prepared for that eventuality—in fact, some would welcome it. But because of that, we must do more than outline tactics. We are here to plan strategy—long-range, well-thought-out strategy.”

He turned to Paul. “We have already taken one of the most important first steps in that strategy. Mr. Adams—Paul—I cannot tell you how pleased we are that you have agreed to join us. Word of your coming is already sweeping this country like wildfire. America too.”

Now everyone was nodding. Quinn expressed the feelings of all. “Your name stands high in the minds of the people. Your example is known to us all. To stand with you in this effort is a great honor for me and for us all.”

“The honor is mine,” Paul said softly, his voice tinged with emotion. “I had almost given up the fight. It seemed so pointless, as though all I had done was for nothing.” He turned to Bryce and smiled. “Until this stubborn young firebrand came into my life and reminded me of my duty. And now to be here with you. To hear you speak of strategy and long-range plans. To talk as though we may actually win someday. I don’t know if this old heart can stand the joy I feel at this moment.”

For a moment no one spoke, each touched by the humble commitment of this battered old man. Then Hal Hoffman broke the silence. “We are pleased that your wife and daughter are here too.” He laughed and looked at Bryce. “Though we understand that half the fire in this young firebrand happens to be kindled by your daughter.”

Bryce flushed as the others laughed.

“Your wife has already cornered me and asked if she can be of help,” Hoffman said, turning back to Paul.

“My wife is a woman of great courage.”

“We think she can,” Quinn said quickly.

Jessie was nodding vigorously now.

Paul was a little surprised. “What? What could she do?”

Hoffman leaned forward. “Bryce has told you of our plan to send Jessie to America to start a fund-raising drive?”

“Yes.”

“Let Vera come with me,” Jessie broke in eagerly. “Think what it will mean if the wife of Paul Adams is actually there to speak to them.”

Bryce was nodding now too, the kernel of an idea growing.

“Will she go?” Lewis asked.

Paul slowly looked from one face to the other. “I will ask her. It would be difficult to see her leave, but she is so eager. Last time, when I was arrested, she could do nothing but sit at home and worry.” His face was suddenly determined. “I will ask her.”

“If she agrees,” Hoffman said, “we’ll send them tomorrow. The sooner they begin, the better for us.”

“How will you get them out?” Lewis said.

“We’ve already got the route set,” Quinn answered. “We’ve used it before. It’s safe. There would be little danger.” He stopped, obviously not wanting to give any more than that.

The need to know, Bryce thought with a sudden chill. Information was given only as needed, for one never knew when he or she would be caught and put under interrogation.

“What about sending Leslie too?” Bryce suddenly asked.

Paul turned slowly to stare at him, then understanding came into his eyes. “You would do that?” he asked softly.

Bryce took a quick breath. “What we talked about today, you and I? It will add greatly to the risk here.”

The deep-set eyes were grave as Paul considered that and then sighed. “Yes. Yes, it would. We will ask her too.” He sighed again. “But you know Leslie.”

“Yes, I know Leslie.”

“What do you mean?” Hoffman broke in. “What increased risks are you talking about?”

Bryce and Paul looked at each other, and Bryce nodded his encouragement. “Tell them.”

Paul sighed, then looked around the circle. “We know that Elliot Mannington wants us to lure all of the resistance leaders into a trap.”

They nodded solemnly.

“Suppose,” he said slowly, “suppose we use his trap to set a trap of our own.” He leaned forward now, almost eagerly. “Earlier, Mr. Hoffman, you spoke of war and strategy.”

“Yes.”

“Would you agree that the more dramatic and successful the beginning blow of any war, the more likely it is that you marshal the will of the people behind you?”

Hoffman barely moved his head up and down, but Bryce could see that his mind was racing.

“Well, suppose we let Mannington do just exactly what he plans?”

Wes Quinn and Lewis snapped forward at the same instant. “You mean let him capture the resistance leaders?” Quinn blurted.

Paul and Bryce were both nodding. Bryce picked it up now. “We’ll not bring the actual leaders in, but others from their movements. People who will volunteer to be captured and put on trial.”

“But why?” Neal asked, shaking his head. “What do we gain by that?”

“Well,” Paul continued, “still supposing, suppose that when the prime minister goes on national television on the twentyfirst of October, to have his little show, just suppose that we had a team that took over the station at that point.”

The others were staring at him wide-eyed.

“And,” Bryce finished, “just suppose that at that point Paul Adams were to go before the cameras and give his own speech to the nation?”

The moment Bryce saw Leslie coming, he knew he was in trouble. She came up to the group of men in which he was standing and slipped her arm through Bryce’s. “I’d like to talk with you, if I may,” she said, as she smiled prettily at the others. But he wasn’t fooled. He could hear the sound of battle in her voice, and as they walked away, he tensed.

“Don’t I at least get a hearty meal before the execution?” he finally said soberly, as they moved out of earshot.

She gave him a dirty look but just shook her head and led him into the trees where they could no longer be seen. Then she stopped and turned around to face him.

“All right,” he said glumly, “let me have it.”

She suddenly went up on tiptoes, throwing her arms around his neck. Her kiss caught him completely off guard, and for a moment he didn’t respond to the soft warmth of her lips. But he recovered quickly.

“I love you, Bryce Sherwood,” she whispered.

Thoroughly surprised, he searched her face. “And I love you too,” he said tentatively. He had come expecting an explosion. He liked this much better.

She stepped back, looking at him gravely. “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of sending me off to a safe place to trail after my mother and Jessie Lambert so that you don’t have to worry about me?”

He winced, knowing he had relaxed a moment too soon. “Leslie, I…Did your father tell you about our proposal to the council?”

“Yes, he did.”

“The risks are going to be—”

She put her hand over his mouth. “I understand, and I love you for trying to do what you did. But we’ll hear no more of my leaving. Not if you really know that my heart is now your heart. Agreed?”

She took her hand away, but he grabbed it again, and kissed it gently, searching her face over the top of it.

She cocked her head, giving him a warning look. “Agreed?”

“I can’t stand the thought of something happening to you,” he said softly, pressing her fingers to his lips.

“Then why don’t you come with us too? Jessie and Mom can give the speeches while you and I go up and down the aisles with handkerchiefs and collection plates. That way, we’ll both be safe.”

He pulled a face. “Ouch!”

“Okay, then, we’ll hear no more of my leaving. Agreed?”

He sighed. “Agreed.”

“Good,” she said matter-of-factly. “Now, is it true you’re going to be leaving the camp?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes dropped, then came up again. “When?”

“Tonight. We’ve got to meet the resistance leaders face to face. It’s going to take some hard selling.”

“I understand.”

“I sent another message to Mannington. I’ll meet him again tonight and give him the news. Then Neal and I will leave directly from there. Your father and Hal Hoffman are the second team. Lewis and Quinn are the third. But we’ll all be back by the fifteenth.” He brightened. “And come the twenty-second of October, you and I are going to go into the nearest village, kidnap us a pastor, and give this camp the best darn wedding they’ve ever seen.”

She managed a smile, but there was no heart in it. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and anxious. “Where have they asked you to go?” she asked, faltering for the first time.

“To the New England Confederation. Neal knows the people there.”

“Where they are looking for the murderers of an ISD captain.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Bryce,” she cried softly, “help me to be brave.”

He looked at her incredulously. “Help you to be brave?” he echoed. “My dear lady, you are clearly and unmistakably the direct stock of your father and mother. And it simultaneously thrills me and scares me to death to think you might pass on some of that same fire-tempered steel into the hearts of our children.”

She stepped back. “Our children,” she whispered, in sudden awe.

“Yes.” He laughed. “I only hope they obey me better than their mother does.”

“Will they ever see freedom?” she asked softly.

He sobered immediately. “If they don’t,” he responded with sudden determination, “then I pity the country that tries to hold them.”

As they came out of the trees a few moments later, holding hands, Lewis saw them from across the main clearing and walked swiftly toward them.

“Oh-oh,” Bryce murmured.

But he worried for nothing. Lewis stammered for a moment, then finally raised his head and met Bryce’s gaze. “Look, I just wanted to say I was sorry for what I said in there. It caught me so off guard, I—”

“I understand,” Bryce said quickly. “I wish now I had told you sooner, after all you’ve done for me, but—”

“No, you were quite right. You would be crazy to run around telling just anybody about that. But I didn’t want to leave without telling you that I’m sorry and that there are no more questions in my mind.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m grateful to be working with you.”

“Thank you,” Bryce said. And as he moved away, Bryce looked at Leslie. “Well, that was nice.”

“Yes it was.” She put her arm around him. “You’d better go say good-bye to Mother. She’ll almost certainly be gone before you get back.”

“And tell her to see if she can buy a wedding dress in America. Would you like that?”

Leslie did not look up at him. “We’ll talk about the wedding after the twenty-first,” was all she would say.

By one-thirty the next morning, the sky was overcast, and Bryce had to move more slowly through the thick darkness toward Charlie Creek. Neal stayed back at the car to wait. Bryce had received no acknowledgment of his message and wasn’t sure whether this would be for nothing.

But this time Mannington was waiting for him. “Well?” he demanded, even as Bryce walked onto the bridge.

“They bought it!” Bryce blurted. “They actually bought it.”

“Really?” There was obvious relief.

“Yes. I told them the longer we wait, the greater the chance there is for detection. They agreed. We’re leaving now, all of us, to contact the various factions throughout CONAS. We’ll set the meeting for the nineteenth of October.”

“Wonderful!”

Bryce sighed. “There is one possible hitch, though.”

“What that?”

“There’s a new player on the scene. A man named Hal Hoffman—he’s AIS and Quinn’s control—”

“So,” Mannington cut him off, “that’s where he was going! We knew he had entered CONAS, but we lost him shortly after he came in.”

Bryce kept his face impassive but once again mentally vowed to walk very carefully around this man. If they assumed all of Mannington’s eggs were in the Bryce Sherwood basket, they were grossly mistaken.

“So?”

Bryce gave him a blank look, having lost the train of thought.

“What’s the possible hitch?”

“Oh. Hoffman is really nervous about bringing all the leaders to one place at the same time. He suggested two separate meetings.”

Mannington swore softly. “We can’t allow that. You’ve got to convince them.”

“I tried. And surprisingly, Paul Adams agreed. He admitted that there was a vulnerability factor, but he argued strongly that if we are ever to unify the entire movement, we must have everyone at once.”

“That’s right! Good for Adams.”

“Hoffman finally agreed, but there’s a chance some of the leaders may not see it that way. I don’t know if we’ll get every one.”

“Do you know what I’d give,” Mannington said, speaking half to himself, “just to get Paul Adams, Hal Hoffman, and Wesley Quinn?” He suddenly straightened. “But we’ll do better than that. Much better. This is wonderful news, Bryce. The prime minister will be pleased.”

“I’m headed north into New England to start making the contacts tonight. The others are spreading out in other directions. Tell Burkhart to lay off. If the borders are too tight or any of them suspect they’ve been spotted, we’ll never pull this off on time.”

“Those orders have already been given.”

“Good. I won’t call in again until we get back. I obviously can’t take the radio along with Neal Lambert.”

“That’s fine. The prime minister is moving ahead as though the broadcast on the twenty-first will be just another speech, but he’ll have everything ready for a national trial.”

Bryce just nodded, not answering that.

He straightened. “Watch yourself, Bryce. This will be the most dangerous stage. But if we do it…” He clenched his fist and punched the air. “If we do it, there’ll be no stopping us, no stopping us at all!”

“We’re going to do it,” Bryce said evenly. “I can feel it. We are going to pull this off.”

As Elliot Mannington got back into the car, his driver turned. “Back to Washington, sir?”

Mannington took out the two slips of paper that held the messages that had come the previous night. The first was Bryce’s call. It had surprised him to hear from Bryce so quickly. But the second message had come as a total shock.

He looked at it again. “Extremely urgent we meet tomorrow 05:30 in Charlottesville safe house. Red Fox.”

Mannington leaned forward across the seat. “How long to Charlottesville from here?”

“Maybe three hours,” the driver answered.

“I need to be there before five-thirty.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the car leaped forward, Mannington read the message one more time, then tucked it into his pocket and sat back, deep in thought.

Chapter 30

It was an hour before dawn on the morning of October nineteenth when Bryce slipped out of his tent. The air was crisp, and there was already a white sheen of frost covering the ground. Above him the stars were like crushed diamonds dusting the black velvet of the sky. He looked around quickly, then moved carefully out of the trees and across the main clearing toward the dirt road that led down to where he had hidden the radio.

He stopped suddenly as a figure stepped out from a clump of underbrush, then shook his head. “What are you doing up already?” he whispered as he stepped forward and slipped his arm around Leslie’s waist.

“Did you sleep?” Leslie whispered back.

He shook his head.

“Well, then.”

He gave her a quick kiss.

“If I promise not to make a sound, do you mind if I walk down with you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She looked up sharply, then dug at him when she saw him grinning.

“Well, how I am supposed to keep my wits about me with you sitting close by?” he asked.

“Give it your best shot.”

He laughed softly and pulled her close as they continued down the hill. She sat down on a rock and watched soberly as he moved into a heavy tangle of fallen trees and undergrowth, then backed out with the radio. He turned it on and sat back, waiting for it to warm up.

“He’s not going to love you very much when all of this becomes clear,” she said softly as he blew on his hands and started adjusting the knobs.

“I know.”

Not too surprisingly, as he put on the earphones and gave the call-up codes, it was Mannington’s voice that answered almost instantly. “Have you got the scrambler on?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. What’s your report?”

“Everything’s set. The last man got in last night.”

“So how many?”

“Twelve out of the fifteen possibles. That doesn’t count Lewis or Hoffman—” he looked up at Leslie, “or Paul Adams or Neal Lambert and myself. One bit of bad news. We lost Quinn.”

“What?” Mannington blurted.

“He went into the Washington area to work with Lewis’s people. He called in today, said something urgent has come up. We’ll have to go ahead without him.”

“Too bad,” Mannington said. “But if we get Hoffman we can pull in Quinn later.”

“I wish they were all coming, but this will wipe out seventyfive percent of the leadership in one crack.”

“It’s good enough. Better than I had hoped, actually.”

“Are your people in place?” Bryce asked, watching Leslie’s face.

“Yes.”

“Any signs of alarm?”

“None,” Mannington said flatly. “We’ve been moving our forces in at night for the past three days. We’ve stayed completely clear of any contact with locals. We’re set.”

Bryce took a quick breath. “All right, then. Tell them to be careful where they’re shooting. I’m not excited about coming out of this dead.”

“These are the best men we’ve got,” Mannington responded. “They don’t make mistakes. The prime minister wants his little show on television, not dead bodies to display.” There was a pause. “Are all the others out of the camp now?”

“Yes. Everyone not directly involved in the meetings was sent down to the valley for security reasons. Leslie Adams is still here with her father. Lewis’s wife is also here, and the wife of one other man who does our cooking. There are twenty people in camp, counting myself and the three women. Come in fast and quiet and I think we can keep the casualties to a minimum.”

“Are you sure there are only the six guards posted?” That was a new voice, and for a moment through the distortion of the scrambler Bryce didn’t place it. Then he pulled a face. It was Colonel Burkhart.

“Affirmative, Colonel. There are others down in the valley watching for any newcomers or unusual activity, but the six up here are all we’ve got.”

“Good,” Burkhart said, “We’ve got those six located and will take them with knockout gas capsules. They won’t make a sound.”

Bryce felt the nervousness start to hit his stomach again. “Anything else?”

Colonel Burkhart’s voice responded again. “Yes, let’s synchronize our watches. I show four-oh-seven exactly, on my signal. Ready.” There was a slight pause and Bryce lifted his watch and peered at the dial. “Mark!” Burkhart said. “We’ll hit the camp at exactly five-thirty.”

“Good. The first meeting starts at six-thirty. Five-thirty should catch them just waking up.”

“Great!” Mannington said jubilantly. “Keep your head down and we’ll see you in just about an hour.”

As he put away the earphones and stowed the radio, he looked up at Leslie.

“Well?” she asked in a low voice.

“It’s done. They are in place and waiting.”

Neither of them spoke as they walked back up to the camp to start waking the others.

By 4:45 every one of the seventeen men and three women in the camp were gathered in the darkness of the mess hall. Hal Hoffman cleared his throat, and the soft murmur of voices instantly came to a halt. “Okay,” he said. “You’ve heard Bryce’s report. Everyone knows exactly what to do.”

There were several who nodded, but no one spoke.

“Let’s look as natural as we can. Let them catch you completely by surprise. Those of us who are to run, run like you’re scared.” He paused. “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

There was a quiet ripple of laughter.

“Those who have been assigned to go for your weapons, make it look good, but for crying out loud don’t actually get them. We don’t need any martyrs at this point.”

“These are crack troops,” Bryce added, “and they’ve been instructed to keep the shooting to an absolute minimum. But you get too excited and start blasting away at them, and they’ll blast right back.”

“Lewis and I,” Hoffman said, picking it up again, “are to be the only ones who fire back at them, and that will be only enough to keep it looking authentic.” He looked around at the dim faces in the darkness. “If we all do our part, like we’ve rehearsed, this will go off like clockwork. Any questions?”

There weren’t.

“All right then.” Hoffman turned to where Bryce and Leslie stood next to her father. “Bryce, you’d better get moving. You need to be completely clear before this begins.”

“Yes, sir.” He straightened. “I still feel like my place is here, with the rest of you.”

Hoffman shook his head. “Wes said the same thing when we sent him into Washington. But don’t worry; you’ll get your turn day after tomorrow.”

“All right, ladies,” Paul said briskly. “Get your things and leave with Bryce.”

Lewis’s wife stepped forward and kissed him quickly. The other wife was crying quietly as her husband held her. Leslie threw her arms around her father and hugged him tightly. “This is for Mom, too. You know what she’d say if she were here, so be careful, Daddy. Elliot Mannington will be very happy to get his hands on you.”

“Yes,” he admitted frankly. “But don’t worry. I’m to be the star at that circus they’re calling a trial day after tomorrow. You can bet the prime minister won’t let me miss that.”

She kissed his cheek. “I love you.”

“And I love you, Leslie. Go with care.”

Two days before, Hal Hoffman had carefully gone through Bryce’s car and located the homing device and the microphone that had been planted beneath the dashboard. He had disconnected the microphone and showed Bryce how to remove the little transmitter that would allow radio tracking on the location of the car. Then they had driven around to the next canyon and hidden the car deep in the underbrush.

Now, Bryce and the three women with him climbed steadily up the path that led away from the camp toward that canyon. As they crossed a ridge and started the descent, he suddenly held up his hand. In the quiet of the morning air they all heard the sound clearly—the crackle of rifle fire.

Bryce peered at his watch. It was 5:31. “That’s it,” was all he said.

They stood motionless for the next minute, listening intently. Bryce counted softly to himself as the soft popping sounds floated to them. After ninety seconds the mountains were silent again. “Fourteen or fifteen shots,” he said, trying to sound bright. “That’s good. Better than I had hoped.”

The three women just stared at him in the darkness, grimfaced.

“Let’s go,” he said finally. He took Leslie’s hand and they started downward again. He noticed that she held onto him more tightly than the steepness of the path required.

They had only gone another hundred yards when Bryce spun around. Someone was coming up behind them.

“Shhh!” Bryce whispered urgently. “Into the trees.”

They had talked about this possibility, and the three women quickly obeyed. Bryce stepped behind a large pine tree and raised his rifle. The footsteps were getting louder, running toward them.

“Bryce, it’s me. Lewis. Wait!”

Surprised, Bryce looked back up the path toward the dark shape that was approaching.

The voice called again in an urgent whisper. “Bryce! It’s Lewis.”

He stepped out.

“Thank heavens!” Lewis said, pulling up sharply and leaning over to catch his breath.

“What?” Bryce asked quickly, feeling a sudden fear.

“Something’s gone wrong,” Lewis panted. Bryce felt Leslie clutch at his sleeve.

Lewis straightened, looking back up the way he had come. “Hal’s coming. Needs to talk to you.”

Bryce turned and peered up the path into the darkness. As he did so, Lewis whipped a pistol out from beneath his jacket and put the muzzle against the back of Bryce’s head. “Drop the rifle, Bryce,” he said quietly.

Wesley Quinn drove slowly through the deserted streets of the inner city, circling and doubling constantly to make sure he was not being followed. Finally satisfied, he headed for a district of run-down factories and warehouses along the shores of the Potomac River. He glanced at his watch and grunted in satisfaction. He still had fifteen minutes before his rendezvous with Bryce and the women from the camp.

It had been a busy three days for Quinn. While the others became the bait in Elliot Mannington’s trap, Quinn was putting the final touches on the jaws of their own. There was, of course, no word about the raid in the media. Nor would there be. The prime minister was not going to let anything spoil his dramatic little surprise. But Quinn had posted a watch on the radio until nine that morning, waiting for the call alerting him that something had gone wrong. It hadn’t come, so the clock was running.

The plan was deceptively simple on paper, though the war council, as they had somehow started to call themselves, had gone over every detail meticulously again and again. The hardest part had been persuading the men and women who led the numerous factions of the resistance to send people openly into a trap set by the ISD. A few had refused, calling the whole thing insane. But most had agreed. Paul Adams had argued most persuasively, using again and again the point that if they ever wanted the struggle for freedom to succeed, they must strike one dramatic blow to win the hearts of the people.

The twenty-first of October was known as People’s Day, an ironic euphemism if ever there was one, Quinn thought bitterly. Though he loved his work and was fiercely committed to what he was doing, life in CONAS was a depressing contrast to his life in the mountains of Oregon. When this was over, he was going to request a leave, go back, maybe find a wife. He sighed, knowing he had made that same promise to himself half a dozen times before.

People’s Day commemorated the treaty of 1836 that ended the war between the Confederation of Canadian States, the New England Confederation, and the Atlantic States Alliance and created the Confederation of North American States.

And so, beginning at nine o’clock, day after tomorrow, the People’s Day celebration would begin. There was to be a large military parade at 9:00 A.M. in the heart of Washington. As hundreds of thousands of citizens lined the streets and much of the military might of CONAS was passing the reviewing stand, five small assault teams would move into position around the city. At 10:30 A.M., the prime minister and his party would leave the reviewing stand and move nearby to the state-owned radio and television station. There, at 11:00, with great fanfare, the prime minister would begin his national broadcast. The people were expecting nothing more than the usual patriotic speech and glowing reports of all the state had accomplished. But this time, of course, there would be a surprise.

Quinn gave a short laugh to himself. More surprises than one, he thought in satisfaction. As the prime minister was announcing to the world the greatest triumph of his career, namely the arrest of the leading figures in the rebellion, mortar and rocket attacks would be launched against five targets within the city. The assault teams would strike quickly and move out, maximizing the shock value and drawing the military and police forces in the city away from the television station. The five targets had been chosen specifically with those two purposes in mind. They were the parliament building, the presidential palace, the building housing the offices of the prime minister and the Central Committee, the Ministry of Finance and headquarters of the national bank, and, finally, ISD headquarters. If all went well, in just under ten minutes the entire city would be thrown into panic. The streets would still be jammed with people from the parade, which would hamper the movement of police and military. Command centers would be paralyzed with the simultaneous strikes. And that was critical to what would happen next.

Quinn became very sober as he thought about the next phase. Already smuggled inside and hiding in the attics and storage rooms of the television station were a dozen of Quinn’s best men. Precisely at 11:10 A.M., about the time the prime minister was triumphantly presenting his captives to the television cameras and announcing their public trial, those men would come out of hiding and make their move. Using tear gas, stun grenades, and total surprise, they would move into the studios swiftly, overpower the guards, and take the prime minister hostage. At the same time, Quinn, who would be waiting outside with another hundred heavily armed men, would launch an attack on the forces outside the station.

Quinn turned into a deserted alley, turned off the headlights and let the small truck roll to a stop. He sighed deeply, already starting to feel the churning in his stomach that always accompanied this kind of an operation. If all went well—and there were so many things that could fall apart—then at that point Paul Adams would take center stage, go before the cameras, and provide the millions watching a very different show than what the prime minister had promised. Ten minutes later, assuming Quinn had successfully controlled the outside forces, the “captives” would be gone, leaving the prime minister to pick up the pieces of his disaster as best he could.

There were a lot of ifs in this one, Quinn thought. And if they failed they had deliberately given some of their best people to Mannington and the ISD. As he unlocked the warehouse door and slipped inside, he shook his head. If they succeeded… Oh, man! If they succeeded, it was worth every risk they had taken, for they would have struck a blow that would ignite the fires throughout the entire land, his own as well as CONAS.

Quinn stopped, suddenly alert. No one was waiting for him inside the cavernous area. He reached inside his jacket and pulled the pistol from its holster, moving slowly now, every sense alert. He had left four men there earlier to guard the weapons cache and wait for the rendezvous. Now the warehouse was empty.

There was sudden noise behind him, and he whirled, pistol coming up fast.

“Hey, man,” cried a voice, “don’t shoot, it’s me, Lewis.”

Quinn straightened slowly as the familiar figure stepped out from behind a crate. “Lewis! What are you doing here?”

He lowered the gun as Lewis walked toward him. “Something went wrong, Wes,” he said. “Bryce isn’t coming.”

“What? What happened?”

“This!” Lewis’s arm whipped up, a pistol filling his hand. “Drop your weapon!” Two more men, rifles trained on Quinn, jumped out to join him.

Quinn was no fool. For a split second he debated, then slowly relaxed his fingers to let the pistol drop to the floor. Whether he hesitated a moment too long, or whether the one soldier saw the movement and thought he was going to try for it, would never be clear. There was a shattering blast, a flash from the muzzle. The bullet caught him full in the stomach, slamming him around hard into a pile of cardboard boxes. Quinn’s body toppled to the cement floor with a sickening thud and jerked convulsively for a moment. Then it was still.

Chapter 31

Though Bryce’s guards did not speak to him when they got him out of bed and marched him out of his cell block, he was not surprised when they came for him. As they marched down the corridor, he peered into the other darkened cells, but there was no sign of Leslie or the others.

They drove into the city, circled around the Mall, and started up what should have been Constitution Avenue but was now called Liberation Boulevard. The car slowed as it passed the squat, ugly building. Bryce looked once out of the window of the prison van, then sat back. MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS, proclaimed the granite sign on the lawn in front. He had expected nothing more.

It was the morning of the twentieth of October. A heavy overcast had moved in from the ocean and the day was gray with a misty rain just starting to fall. As they pulled into a stall in the underground parking terrace, his two guards were out instantly, weapons up. As he climbed out stiffly, he saw four others forming a perimeter around him. He smiled fleetingly. No more chances, he thought. As they moved toward the door to the building, it opened and Colonel Anthony Burkhart stepped out.

“Well, good morning, Bryce,” he said cheerfully. “I think the minister is ready to see you.”

Mannington leaned back, in a jovial and expansive mood, and took a long draw on his cigarette. Finally he turned to Bryce, who was still heavily manacled and cuffed to the chair.

“You see,” Mannington said, waving toward Lewis, who sat relaxed and pleased in the chair across from Bryce, “Lewis, as you know him, is what in this profession we call a mole, a deepcover mole. For the past six years he’s been in place, working his way slowly up the resistance hierarchy, building trust, gaining confidence.”

He smiled over at the commander of his Internal Security Division. Burkhart was sitting in the chair next to Lewis. “Even Anthony was not aware of this one. Like you, Lewis was handpicked by me personally.”

Bryce didn’t answer. He was still half in shock, still filled with a burning fury for Lewis and the betrayal, still sick at the thoughts of Leslie and all the others, now with no hope.

“He did well, don’t you think?” Mannington asked, still looking at Burkhart.

The colonel nodded, though he didn’t seem nearly as amused as Mannington.

Mannington actually rubbed his hands together, relishing his moment immensely. “What a catch we have made. Hal Hoffman. Paul Adams and his daughter. Neal Lambert.” He paused, then smiled briefly. “We are disappointed with the little ruse you tried to pull on us. Not that I blame you, of course. It was foolish to even consider putting every major leader of the opposition into our hands. When Lewis told us that for the most part you were going to slip in substitutes, brave volunteers who would stand in the place of their leaders, I was at first very angry. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided it would do. After all, through interrogation, I think we can still get the information we want.”

“This will not only decimate the resistance movement to the point where they may never recover,” Burkhart said with satisfaction, “but with what Hal Hoffman knows, we will hand the United States government and its AIS agents the most severe blow they have ever had.”

Mannington sighed, feigning deep sorrow. “In a way, it’s a pity that Lewis had to surface now. Who knows how high he could have risen?” Then he chuckled and again looked at Bryce. “But I’d say it was worth it, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s not like you to gloat,” Bryce said evenly. “Why am I here? You obviously know everything I know.”

“Ummm,” he murmured, “good question. You always were so perceptive, Bryce. It really is a shame to lose you.”

“So?”

“We have need of your services.”

Bryce laughed right out loud at that, scorn twisting his face.

“Oh, we think we can persuade you,” Lewis said with a sneer.

“We want you to talk to Paul Adams,” Mannington went on. “You know what he planned to say in his speech tomorrow, I’m sure. Something profoundly moving and inspiring, I suppose. Something to fire the minds and hearts of the people. I mean, after all, not only will all of CONAS be listening, but much of the Western Alliance as well. Right?”

Bryce just looked at him, his face expressionless, trying to fathom where this conversation was leading.

“We want you to persuade him otherwise,” Mannington said, leaning forward, and all the banter was now gone from his voice. His eyes were hard and glittering. “He’ll go on television as planned, but I don’t want anything inspiring. He is to be dull, pedantic, boring.”

Bryce was staring, his eyes wide.

“Perhaps,” Burkhart said with a mirthless smile, “perhaps you need to tell Bryce what is going on. I think you have taken him by surprise.”

“Of course,” Mannington laughed. “I forgot. Lewis, would you like to enlighten him.”

The agent known as Red Fox leaned forward, the triumph of the moment lighting his face. “You see, Bryce, your little plan was really quite brilliant. Even more so than you know. While we can’t, of course, let the five assault teams launch their strikes at the five targets here in the city, we feel otherwise about the television station. The five teams have now been neutralized. But the attack on the station will proceed as planned.” He shook his head sadly. “Except, of course, for the unfortunate demise of Mr. Quinn.”

Bryce started.

“Yes, unfortunately, Wes was shot and killed last night at the place where you two were to have rendezvoused. Tragic, but we’ll have to adapt. I guess I, who barely escaped from the raid on the logging camp, will now have to lead that team tomorrow.”

Bryce’s mind was whirling. Quinn dead. The whole plan blown. Then why this talk of attacking the television station?

“You still don’t understand, do you, Bryce?” Mannington laughed right out loud.

“No, I don’t.”

“This public trial the prime minister has planned will be his finest hour. Several of us on the Central Committee have tried to persuade him that bringing all those prisoners into a place that cannot be adequately guarded, simply as a dramatic gesture, is very foolish, even dangerous.” He clucked his tongue. “He just won’t listen.”

And suddenly Bryce understood very clearly. “And so the television broadcast goes on?”

Mannington seemed pleased. “But of course.”

“And when the station is attacked, and Paul Adams takes over the camera and makes his speech, even if he never finishes, the prime minister, foolish man that he is, will topple from the throne.”

“As I said, Bryce, you always were very clever.”

“And you, who have saved the city, will step in at the last moment and turn the tide.”

Mannington sat back, smiling. “Not, of course, in time to save the prime minister from a terribly embarrassing situation from which he may never recover.” He laughed again, and the sound sent chills up and down Bryce’s back. “Oh, Bryce, if only you knew what a wonderful opportunity you have handed us.”

“Paul Adams must at least start his speech,” Burkhart broke in now. “And it will have to go out over the airwaves. But he will say only what we tell him to say.”

Bryce didn’t answer, already knowing what was coming.

“You will talk to him, won’t you?” Lewis said, with a wicked grin of satisfaction.

“Or else Leslie suffers?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

Mannington looked to the others. “Didn’t I tell you he was quick?” he crowed with happiness. “Didn’t I tell you?”

They were in separate cells, but across the corridor from each other. They were the only ones on the block, and the guard made it clear they had only a few minutes and then Paul Adams would be taken back to his own place.

The old man sat on the edge of his cot, his head in his hands as Bryce told him all that had happened. When he was finished, Paul didn’t move for a long time. Then, finally, his head came up. The anguish in his eyes was unmistakable.

“There’s really not much point in doing other than what they say, is there?”

Bryce had thought that through very carefully too. “No. If they were asking you to make a pro-government statement, or something that betrayed others, then it would be a different matter. But we’ve already lost. If you try to do something that will make a difference, they’ll just cut you off the air.”

“And Leslie will suffer for nothing.”

“Yes.”

He sighed, a deep, weary sound of pain. “Then you can tell them I will cooperate. They will have their dull, pedantic speech.”

Bryce sighed and laid back on his own cot. He had been dreadfully afraid that Paul would not, could not, capitulate. And he had no illusions about Mannington’s seeing to it that Leslie paid the price for her father’s stubbornness.

“Do you really believe that?” Paul’s voice floated to him as if from some vast void.

“What?”

“That we’ve lost.”

Bryce sat back up. “Don’t you?”

The old man shook his head back and forth slowly.

“If you know something I don’t,” Bryce said with bitter irony, “please tell me. I could use some good news right now.”

“I know only one thing—that evil will never permanently triumph.”

“Maybe not,” Bryce retorted, “but right now, it’s not doing too badly.”

“To the contrary. What is happening proves just the opposite.”

“Well, you’d better enlighten me then,” Bryce said, “because with Elliot Mannington about to seize power, I’m having trouble finding much cause for hope.”

“Ah, but that is the point,” Adams said. “The thing you must remember is that evil is always self-consuming. Even as Mannington overthrows the prime minister, he must himself begin to fear for his own security.” He gave Bryce a searching look. “Do you know who will be his greatest threat?”

The question surprised Bryce. Finally, he shook his head.

“Those who are at this moment helping him come to power.”

“Burkhart and Lewis!” he breathed, knowing instantly that this man across from him was exactly right.

“Yes. And if they someday succeed in bringing Mannington down, then they will have to watch the hands of those who lift them up, and so on and so on forever. And all the while, they must keep the people at bay.”

“Well,” Bryce said with a soft laugh, “I’ve got to admit, the thought of Mannington fighting his own palace revolution is the first thing I’ve heard that cheers me up.”

Adams stood and came to the bars of his cell. “Mannington’s decision to let us go on the air is brilliant strategy for bringing down the prime minister. But for the people…for the people, Bryce, it is the worst possible thing he can do, for they will know that we nearly won. And that will give them hope to try again.”

Suddenly he glared upward at the ceiling of his cell. “Do you hear that, Mannington,” he asked loudly, “with your microphones and secret police? Do you hear that? You know it’s true. Even as you plot, you sow the seeds of your own destruction.”

“You really don’t believe it, do you?” Bryce asked, starting to feel a new surge of hope in spite of himself. “You really don’t believe they’ve won, do you?”

“In a way we failed, Bryce,” Paul said quietly, “but we penetrated right into the heart of their power structure. Right to the heart of it!” He breathed deeply, the fire of pride clearly ringing in his voice. “The world will know that, and whatever the setbacks, they will not forget. They will not!”

There was a clang of metal, then footsteps.

Paul Adams stood up quickly. “We have not lost, Bryce,” he whispered fiercely. “Not so long as the desire for freedom burns in the heart of one person. We have not lost!”

They had taken everything from Bryce except his socks, pants, and shirt, so he had no idea what time it was or how long he had lain on his bunk staring at the ceiling. The light from the high barred window in the corridor had long ago died, so he knew it was night, but that was the only sense of time he had. Hour after hour he had lain motionless, his eyes open and blank, his mind churning like the sea in a hurricane.

When the answer came, it was so simple, so beautifully simple, that he shot to his feet. “Of course!” he cried, then instantly dropped his voice to a whisper. “Of course!”

He sat back down, his pulse racing, forcing himself to run over it again and again, probing every possible oversight, challenging every assumption. After fifteen minutes he stood slowly, knowing it could work. It could easily backfire and get him killed, but it could work! It wasn’t a difficult choice. Who was it that had said not having any options greatly simplifies the decisionmaking process?

But it all depended on one thing. He looked around the darkness of his cell desperately, not knowing if there was a chance in a hundred that he could do the one thing that everything else hinged on.

He stood again, took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then in a soft whisper called out into the darkness. “Gorham! Gorham, can you hear me?”

He waited. There was nothing. “Oh, Gorham,” he murmured to himself, “don’t fail me now. Wherever you are, I need you. Come now and I’ll forgive you for everything.”

“Would you consider putting that in writing?”

Bryce whirled and nearly shouted for joy. Nathaniel Gorham was standing just outside his cell door, head cocked inquisitively to one side.

Chapter 32

“So why do they call it the Presidential Palace if it’s the prime minister who lives here?”

They were walking down a long, opulently furnished hallway, flanked on both sides by two armed guards. Bryce was dressed in his prison garb, Nathaniel Gorham was in the navyblue uniform of the ISD policeman. A picture ID, showing he was an official courier for the Signals Division, hung from one pocket.

Bryce spoke quietly out of the side of his mouth. “Because the prime minister is the head of state. He also happens to be the president of the Central Committee. How would I know? I’m a relative newcomer here, if you haven’t forgotten.”

Gorham gave him a quick grin. “For a relative newcomer, you sure have stirred up the pot.”

Bryce didn’t respond, for at that moment a man stepped from a doorway into the hallway in front of them.

“Okay, Laddie,” Gorham said quickly. “Here you go, center stage.”

“Yeah.” Bryce’s mouth set grimly. All the marbles in one bag. And if the bag broke…? He shook his head, not wanting to think about it.

The man was dressed in a suit and had a thin, pinched face. He stepped back, inclining his head toward the open door. Let’s hope he always looks that sour, Bryce thought, and that this doesn’t portend our reception inside.

And then he came to attention, for sitting behind the massive desk was the prime minister, the man whose picture Bryce had seen everywhere he had traveled in the Confederation of North American States. It hung on the wall behind Elliot Mannington’s desk. It was in post offices and bus stations, in the state-run stores, in classrooms and government offices. It was not a particularly striking face, with its broad features, but knowing who the man was and what he represented was impressive enough.

The prime minister didn’t rise, just surveyed the five men who had entered his study. The guards had come to rigid attention. The pinch-faced man moved around, took a seat to his right, and took out a pad of paper and a pencil from a small stand.

The prime minister fixed his eyes first upon Nathaniel Gorham. “Sergeant Gorham?”

“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“I understand from Carlson here that you have taken a considerable risk to bring this matter to our attention.”

Gorham somehow managed to shrug that off as though it were nothing, yet without seeming to minimize his role in the matter.

“You have my assurance that no retaliatory measures will be taken against you by your superiors.”

That would take some doing on the prime minister’s part, Bryce thought with an inward smile.

“Thank you, sir. That’s very good of you.” He hesitated. “If there’s nothing else, sir, I’d better get back.”

“No. If we need you, we’ll send for you.”

Gorham turned, shot Bryce one quick glance, and exited.

“You may sit down, Mr. Sherwood.”

Bryce did so, noticing that the guards stepped back but still stayed in a position where they could watch his every move and be on him in a split second if necessary.

There was no humor whatsoever in the prime minister’s face as he leaned forward to peer at Bryce. “Be warned, Mr. Sherwood,
that tomorrow is a very big day for me. I am not used to dealing with traitors, and especially not at this hour of the night. If this turns out to be some kind of a trick, things will not go well with you.”

“I understand, Mr. Prime Minister,” Bryce said evenly, “but if you do not deal with traitors tonight, tomorrow will be a far more significant day than you may wish it to be.”

“Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, “that’s what Sergeant Gorham reported. That’s why you’re here. Now let’s put aside the veiled threats and innuendos and get to what it is you have to say.”

Bryce noted out of the corner of his eye that Carlson had his pencil poised now. Bryce took a deep breath. “There are some conditions.”

“Somehow I figured there would be,” the prime minister said dryly. “But it occurs to me that you are not in a very strong bargaining position. I can have you put under interrogation and find out whatever it is you think you have to offer me.”

“You could.”

There was a soft laugh, and what Bryce thought was a hint of admiration. “But?”

“But it could take most of the night, and if you are to intervene and stop this threat, you must act swiftly. Even now, it may be too late.”

“Even now it may be too late,” he intoned back in soft mockery. Then suddenly he slammed his fist down against the desk, causing both Bryce and Carlson to jump. “Enough of these games, Mr. Sherwood!” he roared. “What is it you have to offer me?”

“I ask nothing for myself,” Bryce continued calmly. “I ask only three things.”

The thick fingers were drumming rapidly on the desk, and Bryce knew the gamble could go either way momentarily.

“I want Paul and Leslie Adams released and allowed to escape to the United States of America, where they can join Vera Adams who is already there. And I also want Hal Hoffman set free.”

Carlson was staring at him with open mouth. The prime minister’s eyes had narrowed dangerously. “Is that all?” he asked softly.

The anger in his eyes sent a tiny chill up Bryce’s back. “Yes.”

“And what do I get for these small concessions?” The sarcasm was heavy.

Bryce proceeded to tell him, quietly and without dramatics. As he talked, Carlson’s head would keep jerking up to stare at him before dropping back down to follow his furious scribbling. The prime minister simply sat back, his face becoming more and more stony, the mouth setting in a tighter and tighter line.

When Bryce finished, there was a long silence. Finally the prime minister stirred. “And you can prove all this?”

Bryce nodded solemnly. “Not only prove it, but I also have a way to solve it.”

There was no answer.

“I could demand the release of every one of the prisoners,” Bryce said slowly. “This information is worth that much to you, but all I ask is for the three.”

The head of state for all of CONAS got to his feet slowly, watching Bryce with unseeing eyes. He walked to the window, parted the curtain, and stared out at the lights of the capital for a long time. The silence in the room became almost oppressive. When he turned, his face looked drawn and tired.

“And now that you have told me this, why shouldn’t I simply take action on my own? Why should I deal with you?”

That was hardly an unexpected question. Bryce leaned forward. “Because Elliot Mannington is very clever. He has others who stand with him in this. He will have protected his back very carefully. I think I have a way to see that he is not allowed to wiggle out of the little situation he has created for himself.”

The prime minister grunted. He knew his minister of internal affairs better than Bryce Sherwood did, and that was the very thing troubling him as well.

“Actually,” he said, half musing, “losing Paul Adams and his daughter may not be all bad.”

Bryce felt his heart leap.

“In fact, I have pondered what to do with them. I do not need martyrs.” He paused, then shook his head. “Especially I do not need Paul Adams as a martyr. They will be an irritation to me in the United States, but not nearly as troublesome as here.” He turned back, his voice hardening. “But I cannot allow Hoffman to leave. He is the key to the AIS networks in CONAS.”

For one moment, Bryce was tempted to cut his losses and accept what he had won, for he knew it was a major victory. But then he shook his head. The United States would play a critical role in what happened next in this country, and Hal Hoffman was in an influential position to see that the role continued. He decided to push for the limits.

“Hal Hoffman is important to you, yes. But as far as being the key to AIS here, you know that won’t be the case. You can bet that the moment word of his capture went out, the whole agency began scrambling to protect themselves.” He shook his head again. “Hal Hoffman can tell you only what was as it relates to the AIS. He will no longer be able to tell you what is.”

As the prime minister’s head came up and he gave Bryce a long appraising look, Bryce tossed in the final chip. “Besides, he’ll play a critical role in what happens if we’re going to stop Mannington.”

“Suppose I agree to these conditions,” the prime minister said thoughtfully. “How will you know that I will carry out my part of the bargain?”

Bryce smiled faintly. “I have thought of that too, Mr. Prime Minister.”

When Colonel Anthony Burkhart stepped into the prime minister’s study and saw Bryce Sherwood sitting in the chair in front of his desk, his face went instantly white.

The prime minister nodded in satisfaction. “That,” he said to Bryce, “is proof enough. I think you and I may have struck a fair bargain this night.”

Then he swung around to Burkhart, whose hands were now visibly trembling. “Colonel?” he said roughly.

“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“This prisoner has been making some allegations.”

“Yes, Mr. Prime Minister.”

“About your leader.”

There was a quick flash of hope as Burkhart realized he had not been included in that statement.

“Would you like to save your career, or would you like to go down with Mr. Mannington?”

Burkhart’s eyes darted nervously to Bryce, then to Carlson, then back to the prime minister. He licked his lips, then his shoulders sagged. “What would you like me to do?” he whispered.

Bryce had moved to the sofa in one corner and was fighting heavy eyes when the phone rang. Carlson snatched it up, listened for a moment, then handed it to the prime minister, who was still at his desk, smoking a cigarette.

“Yes. Mr. Hoffman?”

Bryce straightened, watching this cunning old fox very carefully as he listened into the phone.

There was a soft exclamation of satisfaction. “You’d better tell that to Mr. Sherwood.”

Bryce came over to the desk quickly. “This is Sherwood.”

“Bryce, this is Hal.”

There was no mistaking the voice, but Bryce had demanded something more than the voice. He must give me something that only he and I would know, Bryce had insisted. Something so I know he is who he says he is and that he really is clear.

“Are you free?”

“That’s affirmative, my friend. And we are deeply in your debt. Greatly in your debt.”

“What about the others?”

“The man who calls you his young firebrand, and the woman who kindles that fire in you, are now on their way.”

Bryce felt a surge of relief. Only Hoffman would know the significance of the firebrand wording. He sat down slowly, the relief cascading over him. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. They should be arriving in America within the hour.”

“Thank you.”

“Leslie wanted to stay long enough to talk to you.”

Bryce smiled sadly. “Thank you for not letting her.”

“You know what she wanted to tell you.”

“Yes.”

There was a short pause, then Hoffman’s voice became softer. “We won’t forget you, Bryce.”

He looked up at the prime minister, who was watching him closely. “I hope not.”

“We owe you,” Hoffman said again. “Take care.”

“Take care.”

As he handed the phone back to Carlson, the prime minister grunted. “Satisfied?”

Bryce looked up. “Yes. Thank you.”

It was 4:00 A.M. when the man Bryce Sherwood and many others called Lewis entered the old deserted factory building escorted by two armed men. Men with blackened faces looked up from their weapons, some in surprise. A man standing near the back of one of the trucks, checking the loading of some mortars and shoulder-held rockets, looked up. Then his jaw dropped.

He rushed over. “Lewis,” he blurted. “What are you doing here? I thought you were captured—”

“I got away,” Lewis said bluntly. “Wes Quinn didn’t. He’s been killed. I’m now in command.”

“Killed!” echoed the other, his face shocked.

“Yes. I’ll explain later. Get the other platoon leaders together. We’ll have a briefing in five minutes.”

“Why not right now, Lewis?”

Lewis whirled at the sound of the familiar voice.

Hal Hoffman had stepped out from behind the truck, a rifle held low in his hands but pointing steady as a rock at Lewis’s stomach.

Elliot Mannington and Colonel Anthony Burkhart sat in Mannington’s office in front of the television. It was 11:00 A.M. on the morning of October the twenty-first. Though Mannington was outwardly cheerful, almost jovial, one could sense his inner tension. As the announcer proclaimed the arrival of the prime minister at the television station, Mannington began to tap on his leg with the fingers of one hand.

Then he frowned. The face Elliot Mannington had come to loathe appeared on the screen, smiling and waving to the small but enthusiastic audience privileged to be in the station’s small auditorium. A hush fell as the prime minister set aside his sheaf of papers and proceeded to stun the audience and the nation by announcing in triumph what had happened two days previously in the mountains of West Virginia.

One could almost sense the shock that swept through the watching millions as the camera turned and followed the manacled group of men being led into the studio. As the prime minister grimly began to recount who and what these men were, the camera zoomed in for a closer look, panning their faces one by one as they took their seats.

Mannington suddenly lurched forward. “Where is Paul Adams?” he cried. “And Hoffman?”

Burkhart straightened. “Perhaps the camera missed them.”

But the camera was pulling back now for a wider shot, lingering on the group. Mannington leaped to his feet. “They’re not there!” he shouted. “They’re not there!”

He spun around to stare at Burkhart, who shrugged helplessly.

“Come on!” he shouted, starting for the door. “Something’s wrong.”

Burkhart came to his feet slowly as Mannington reached the door and flung it open. Two guards swung around, rifles coming up to block the doorway.

Mannington stared, stunned at their presence. Angrily he started to push through but was shoved back roughly.

Burkhart joined him then. “I regret to inform the honorable minister of internal affairs that by direct instructions of the prime minister, you are hereby charged with activities subversive to the state. You are under arrest.”

Bryce had been placed in a small room somewhere in the basement of the presidential palace to avoid any chance that Mannington would learn of his absence from the prison and call for an explanation. In the morning, he would go back to his cell. People’s Day had come to an end and the events that had filled it were now history, though most of the people would know nothing of the inner struggles that had shaken the government.

The sweet taste of victory and his joy at knowing that Leslie was now safe had gradually faded away and the reality of his own situation settled upon him. He was left with nothing but a profound sense of depression. Hoffman had said they wouldn’t forget him, but Bryce was realist enough to know that his chances of seeing Leslie again were very slim.

Suddenly he heard a soft rustling behind him. Even before he turned, he knew who it was.

“Good evening, to you, Laddie.”

“Good evening, Nathaniel.”

The old colonialist moved over and sat down on the narrow bed beside him.

“Taking stock of the day?”

Bryce nodded.

“It was a great one, Son. You’ve every reason to be proud.”

“It was a salvage operation.”

“True, but a brilliant one nevertheless.”

Bryce looked away, and Gorham sighed. “I know what you’re thinking, Lad. And you’re right, of course. Had I warned you sooner of who Lewis was, all of this could have been avoided. But again I must tell you. I am not omniscient. I can’t read the future. And I can’t be everywhere at once.”

“I know.”

“I was gone during all that.”

Bryce looked up in surprise. “Gone! Where?”

“With the council.”

“Oh.”

There was a long silence, then finally, “This will be my last visit with you.”

“No!” Bryce cried.

“Yes.” Again the long pause. “I wish I could shake your hand. You’ve come to mean a lot to me, Laddie.”

Bryce blinked, his eyes suddenly burning. “And you have to me, Nathaniel.”

He smiled. “You always used to call me Gorham.”

“I know.”

“Is there anything I can do for you before I leave?”

Bryce looked at him. “You’re not into teletransportation, I guess?”

“Teletransportation? What is that?”

“You point your finger at me, say ‘Presto!’ and instantly I’m transported to wherever it is in the United States that Leslie Adams is right now.”

“I understand.” There was a deep sigh. “Is that really what you would have me do?”

Bryce gave him a sharp look. “Of course. You can’t, can you?”

Sadly he shook his head. After a moment he looked up. “I can do very little.”

“You have done much,” Bryce said earnestly. “For that I will always be grateful.”

The old figure in long coat, breeches, kneesocks, and buckle shoes was suddenly fading. “Wait?” Bryce cried. “Not yet!”

He was barely discernible now. “Good-bye, Bryce Sherwood. Find Leslie.”

“Find her!” he shouted. “How can I find her?”

The room was empty now except for Bryce. “Nathaniel. Help me. Help me get out of here so I can find her.”

“I can do but little,” came the echoing reply. “You must do the rest yourself.”

“The rest of what?” Bryce cried at the nothingness.

But there was no answer, and he knew with sudden finality that there would be no more answers. He sat down on the narrow bed, head in his hands.

Suddenly his nose wrinkled. He sniffed once, then again. Smoke. He could smell smoke. He leaped to his feet. The blanket folded up on the foot of the bed was smoldering, curls of smoke rising slowly. Even as he stared there was a soft puff, and the blanket burst into flames.

He grabbed at it wildly, threw it on the floor, stamping hard on the flames, but suddenly the mattress exploded into a sheet of fire. Instantly the room was filled with a dense, strangling smoke.

Bryce leaped to the door, one arm thrown across his face. “Fire!” he screamed. He pounded against the wood. “Fire! Open the door!”

The lock rattled and the door was jerked open. The guard stared past him as Bryce stumbled out.

“Fire!” the man screamed. “Fire!” He turned and ran down the corridor, shouting for help.

Opening the door on the room fed oxygen to the flames. Bryce fell back, still choking and gasping for breath, as the flames snaked across his floor and caught the carpet in the corridor. There was a loud whoosh, and the whole hallway was blazing.

Two things hit Bryce at the same moment. First, that he was rapidly being cut off by the fire; and second, he stood in the corridor alone. He stared in the direction the guard had run,
then turned and darted up the hall in the other direction. He came around a corner and yanked on the nearest door. It was a room identical to the one he had been in. He leaped to the next door. A storage room, filled only with old furniture. The third and last door was locked.

He spun around and started back. Thick black smoke was rolling toward him now, and he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled blindly, feeling the heat rising sharply with every yard of progress he made.

The corridor in front of him was now a mass of flames, and the roar of the fire was deafening. He heard someone screaming and came up on one knee to peer through the fire. Dimly he could see the figure of his guard through the flames, shouting to him, waving wildly at him with both arms.

Bryce hesitated, feeling the heat searing into his lungs, knowing that he had only moments to save himself. He made a quick decision, dropped down on all fours again, and scuttled back the way he had come. He opened the first door and dove into the room, sucking in the cleaner air in huge gasps. One, two, three—he sucked in the air hungrily, storing as much as possible in his tortured lungs. Then he grabbed the blanket off the bed.

Moving swiftly now, he wrapped the blanket around his head, leaving only a slit for his eyes, wishing that he had even so much as a glass of water to wet it with. Then one more deep breath of air, and he stepped back out into the corridor. This time he did not go down on his knees. He peered for an instant into the thick smoke to get his bearings, then hurtled forward, running hard. As he reached the wall of flames, he threw himself through the air, into the wall of fire. There was the searing sensation of scorching flesh along his arms, the sensation that the inside of his throat was being cauterized, then blackness—instant, allencompassing blackness.

Chapter 33

The first thing Bryce was aware of was the cold wetness along the whole back side of his body. The next was the incredible glitter of stars that filled his vision. Gradually, other things began to impinge upon his consciousness—the rhythmic droning of crickets, the deeper harmony of croaking frogs farther away. He turned his head, felt the wetness hit his face.

He sat bolt upright, the memory of the fire slamming back into his mind like the bolt of a rifle being shot home. He rubbed his hand along his other forearm. There was no pain. He breathed deeply. His throat felt fine.

Suddenly there was a sound behind him, faint, but growing rapidly louder. He stood, still half dazed, groping to pull everything into some kind of meaning. Then the headlights of a car came into view, flickering ghostlike through the trees. The car whipped past him about thirty yards to his right, the hiss of tires on wet pavement rising then falling rapidly in volume.

Bryce stared in shocked disbelief. He was in the meadow. It was night, and he was in the meadow. With a cry of surprise he broke into a stumbling run toward the highway.

The BMW was parked alongside the road. There were deep tire marks in the soft mud of the shoulder where he had slid off the pavement, tires locked in a hard skid. He rubbed his hand softly along the sleek metal of the automobile, unable to believe, not daring to hope.

He opened the door and slid inside, feeling the softness of the velvet upholstery, reaching out to finger the cassettes in the box he kept below the tape deck. It was all so familiar and yet strange, as though he had been away a long, long time. He shook his head in amazement. He had been away a long time!

The keys were in the ignition, and the engine started with a roar, then settled into its familiar low rumble. Was this why Gorham had said he couldn’t see him again? Had he brought him back? Still shaking his head in disbelief, Bryce shut the door, put the car in gear, and spun the wheel. The sports car made a sharp U-turn and headed south.

The town was small, and there was a road sign. Bryce slowed, letting the headlights flash on it, holding his breath. It was not Bollingbroke. Cannondale, said the sign. But the motel was right where he had expected it to be. He smiled inwardly. At least they didn’t call it the Dew Drop Inn, he thought. Cannondale Motel, the flashing neon announced. He pulled into the parking area and let the car come to a stop.

One other car was parked in front, and as he got out, he saw that the cafe was open. There was a woman behind the counter, and two men sitting in front of it drinking coffee. He changed directions and moved past the motel office and into the cafe. Jessie Lambert looked up and smiled at him as he entered. He stopped, unable to make himself quit gaping at her. The two men glanced around at him and then went back to talking in low voices.

“Hello,” Jessie said pleasantly. “May I help you?”

Bryce shook it off, forced a smile in return. “Uh…I’ve had a little car trouble. Do you happen to have a phone?”

She pointed to the far wall.

“Thanks.” He pulled his eyes away from her, noting that she was starting to get uncomfortable with his scrutiny. Déjà vu was one thing, but this was eerie, almost as disconcerting as when he had gone in the other direction.

He moved to the phone, reaching into his pocket without thinking. Then as he withdrew his hand, it hit him. He had coins. American coins! He patted his back pocket, then took out his wallet. He opened it, fingered the driver’s license slowly, feeling the dreamlike aura coming over him again. Bryce Sherwood, 435 Winwood Drive, Apartment 4A, Chevy Chase, Maryland. Was there really such a person? That seemed so long ago now. But there was his Diner’s Club card, American Express, and VISA.

He punched a quarter into the coin slot quickly and hit the 0 button.

“Yes, may I help you?”

He hesitated, holding his breath.

“Operator. May I help you?” the voice said again.

“Yes, uh…I’d like to make a long-distance call to Boston, please.”

“And how would you like that billed, sir?”

He let out his breath in a sigh of relief. “Credit card.”

“Number you are calling and your credit card number?”

He gave her the phone number as he flipped to his credit card, then read her those numbers too.

“Thank you for using AT&T.”

“You are most welcome,” he said, more loudly than he intended. He saw Jessie turn and give him a curious look. He smiled at her, and turned back as the call clicked through and started to ring.

“Hello.” The voice was muffled and very sleepy sounding.

“Mom?”

“Yes? Is this Bryce?”

“Hi, Mom!” He leaned against the wall, suddenly no longer trusting his voice.

“Bryce, is everything all right?”

He laughed. “Everything’s fine, Mom.”

“Bryce, it’s nearly midnight. Are you okay?”

“I’ve never been better.”

“Are you sure?”

There was a sudden audible sigh. “You’re not coming tomorrow.”

That caught him off guard. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes, are you still coming?”

“You mean for Labor Day?”

“Of course.” There was a pause. “Are you sure you’re all right, Bryce?”

He smiled, wishing he could reach out and put his arms around her. “Yes, Mom. I’m fine. Is Dad there?”

“Yes, he’s right here.”

There was a pause, then his father came on. “Son, is that you? Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine, Dad. Did I wake you?”

“Oh, no,” he said, then, “well, not really.”

“I’m sorry. I just wanted to say hi, hear your voices.”

This time the pause was considerable.

“You sound a little bewildered.”

“I…I guess I am. What day is it?”

The silence stretched out for several seconds. “It’s Thursday.”

“What date?”

“August twenty-eighth.”

So he was back to the same night he had left! He leaned back against the wall.

“Bryce, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. Really. I just came from a long meeting. Look, tell Mom I won’t be able to come up tomorrow. Something’s come up, but—”

His mother’s voice cut in from another extension. “Bryce, you promised!”

“Mom, I know. And I’ll come up in the next week or so. You have my word. And for Thanksgiving.”

“You said you weren’t coming for Thanksgiving.”

“I know what I said, but I’ve changed my mind. I’ll be home.”

“Wonderful.” Then almost instantly, “Are you still bringing this Leslie?”

He laughed. “Yes, Mom. I think for Christmas too.”

“Really!”

He really chuckled now. “You and Dad will like her. Very much.”

“Wonderful! No wonder you’re not making sense.”

Suddenly tears welled up in his eyes as he realized how much he would give if he could sit down with these two wonderful people and just talk.

“I’ve got to run, Mom. Sorry I woke you.”

Now she laughed, teasing him. “If you bring a young lady home with you for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, you can call me any time of the night you want to.”

“Good night, Mom. Good night, Dad.” He hung up the phone and sat there for some time, just looking at nothing.

He drove all night, stopping only once for gas and a large soft drink with lots of ice to keep him awake. Dawn was just lighting the sky as he pulled into the carport stall beneath his apartment, unloaded the car, and took his things upstairs. He looked around, still half unable to comprehend that he was back. Then he walked to the phone, picked it up, hesitated. For a long moment he just stood there. Then he set the phone down, went into the bathroom, and started the water running in the shower.

He slept until ten, got up and dressed, then forced himself to jam down some breakfast. Twice the phone rang, but he ignored it. He had two people he wanted to talk to, but in circumstances of his own choosing. Until then, there was no one else he felt like speaking to. Six weeks had been wiped off the slate. He couldn’t go charging back into life as though nothing had changed.

While he started into the city with the intent of going directly to the office of Elliot Mannington, as he came down Sixth Street, on sudden impulse he turned right onto Constitution Avenue and drove slowly west, past the Ellipse, past the Washington Monument and the White House. The haze was thick and the late summer air heavy. Traffic slowed to a crawl, horns honked angrily as tempers flared, but Bryce rolled down his windows, savoring it all like a hungry man savors the smell of hot bread cooking in the oven.

He went all the way around the Mall, circling the Lincoln Memorial twice, then finally pulled in next to the Jefferson Memorial. He got out and walked slowly around the gleaming white columns, letting the sea of tourists and schoolchildren ebb and flow around him. He went inside and stood for a long time, staring up at the statue of the nation’s third president. And then, finally, he let his eyes move upward to the frieze that ran all around the inside of the dome. Taken from a letter written to Benjamin Rush in 1800, it said simply: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

He straightened, looked up again into the bronze face of the man from Monticello, then turned and walked swiftly to the car.

“Well, well,” Mannington said, getting up from his desk to come around and shake Bryce’s hand. “I’ve been trying to call you.”

Bryce inwardly recoiled at the presence of the man, then caught himself. This is not the same man, he repeated to himself. This is not the same time, nor the same circumstances. You cannot react as though it were. He stuck out his hand. “Hello, Elliot.”

Mannington ushered Bryce to a chair, picked up the golden cigarette case, started to offer it to Bryce and then remembered he didn’t smoke. He took one out, lit it, then sat back.

“Senator Hawkes called. He thought you had agreed that you would meet with that delegation from the Iowa legislature this morning.”

There was no mistaking the chiding in the tone as he waited for his star pupil to provide an explanation. Bryce sat back. There was no point in trying to sidle into this one. “Look, Elliot,” he said quietly, “I’m sorry, but I’ll be turning in my resignation this afternoon.”

If he had pulled a pistol out and put it to his head, he couldn’t have stunned him more. Mannington’s hand froze in midair, leaving the cigarette dangling. His mouth dropped. The dark eyes widened perceptibly. “You what?” he cried.

“I know this is totally unexpected, but some things have changed.”

Mannington lowered the cigarette slowly, the eyes narrowing and the line along his jaw hardening. “Say that one more time.”

“I’ve learned some things in the last few days, Elliot. I can no longer support the twenty-seventh amendment to the Constitution. You’ll have my letter of resignation within the hour.”

The dark eyes were suddenly chilling, and Bryce saw in them the same look he had seen in the eyes of the minister of internal affairs. “If this is your idea of a joke, Bryce, I—” He jerked forward. “Did Senator Hawkes put you up to this?”

“No. I’ll not be going back with Senator Hawkes either.”

Mannington got up from his desk slowly, the muscles in one cheek twitching. “Are you telling me that after all I’ve done for you, you’re just going to up and quit on me?”

“I am resigning as national chairman for passage of the twentyseventh amendment. Yes, that is what I am saying.”

Mannington swung around, his hand coming down in a sweeping arc to catch a stack of papers on the corner of his desk and send them hurtling across the room. “Do you know who you’re talking to?” he shouted.

“Yes, I certainly do,” Bryce responded calmly.

“After all we’ve promised you? The senatorship, a shot at the White House? And you walk in here and tell me you’re resigning?”

“I guess that’s about it.”

“You…” He swung around again, livid, swearing as he slammed down his fist on the desk. “I’ll see that you never work in this town again.”

He was up on the balls of his feet, rocking back and forth, fists clenched. “Is that clear, Mr. Bryce Sherwood?” he shouted. “You’re through!”

Bryce stood up and smiled faintly. “No, actually, I think I’m just beginning.”

He stopped in the hallway of Arlington High School outside the door that said “Leslie Adams” on the nameplate. He looked through the small window with the triangular wire mesh embedded in the glass. She was at the blackboard, chalk in hand. He could hear her voice coming softly through the door. He straightened his tie, pulled at his sports jacket, then opened the door and walked in.

Leslie was just turning to write something on the board when she heard the sound behind her. She turned back, a tentative smile just starting to form. This seemed to be Bryce’s day for stopping people in midstride. Like Mannington, she too froze in position, chalk half raised, her body partially turned toward him.

“Bryce?” she blurted.

A quick murmur of interest and surprise rippled through the classroom as he nodded. “Hello, Leslie.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, actually, I came to give you something.”

And with that he stepped forward, swept her up in his arms, and kissed her, long and hard.

Instantly the class erupted. There were oohs and ahs, catcalls, whistles, and applause, and one student near the back punched his fist into the air and shouted “All right!”

Bryce ignored it all, just held her tight, even as she started to struggle. Finally he let her go and stepped back. One hand flew to her mouth, her face turned instantly scarlet, and her eyes looked as his must have on the night he first saw Nathaniel Gorham.

Bryce swung around to the class, bowed slightly to the nowwild applause, then raised his hands. “Class dismissed!” he shouted.

For an instant they just stared at him in disbelief, then bedlam really broke loose.

“Wait!” Leslie cried. Students half out of their chairs or already on their way to the door, stopped.

Bryce turned to face their teacher.

“You…You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“School isn’t out for another half an hour.”

He smiled at her. “It is for these kids.”

“All right!” the same kid hollered again, and this time there was a stampede for the door.

“Hold it!” Bryce hollered. The first one, just opening the door, stopped short. The others bumped up against him like freight cars behind a switch engine.

“What class is this?” Bryce demanded.

“U.S. history and government,” one of the girls shouted back.

He swung around and pointed to the small flag hanging from a holder in one corner. “Do you know the Pledge of Allegiance?” he asked them.

There was a chorus of yesses.

“C’mon back in here. If you can say the Pledge of Allegiance properly, you’re excused.”

Leslie grabbed his arm. “Are you crazy?” she hissed. “You can’t do this!”

“I really can, trust me.” He turned back to the kids. “C’mon, c’mon, do you want to get out of here or not?”

They shuffled back in, not sure if he was serious, and formed a rough semicircle facing the flag. A few hands tentatively came up and over the heart. Most of them had not done this since elementary school.

Leslie was looking up at him strangely now.

“You too, Miss Adams,” he said soberly. “Hand over your heart.”

She turned, her hand coming up slowly, still staring at him.

“If you don’t mind,” Bryce said to the class, “I’d like to say it first, then we’ll all do it together. Okay?”

He turned back and faced the red, white, and blue banner hanging limply in the corner. Then he put his hand over his heart, took a deep breath, and began.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…”

There were a few nervous giggles, some feet shuffling, but Bryce heard none of it. His mind was in another time and and another place.

“…and to the republic for which it stands…”

His breath caught, and he blinked quickly, eyes burning. “And to the republic for which it stands,” he said again, “one nation under God, indivisible—” The image of a red slash marked “demilitarized zone” running down the middle of the map of the North American Continent flashed into his mind, and he had to stop.

Leslie stepped up beside him. “…one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

The class was totally silent now, watching the two adults standing shoulder to shoulder in front of them. Leslie turned her head. “All right, all together now.”

They spoke in unison, these bright-faced, coddled kids, born of the permissive generation, suckled in the land of the free and barely aware of what they had. But at that moment something in the face of the handsome young man who had swept into their classroom and kissed their teacher touched their hearts, just as his heart was touched. And as they went through the words again, they spoke them with feeling and with commitment, many of them in that way for the first time.

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

For fully ten seconds no one moved, then Bryce turned slowly. “Thank you,” he said. Then he smiled. “Now get outta here!”

And in fifteen seconds he and Leslie were left standing in the classroom alone.

About the Author

Gerald N. Lund’s numerous books include The Work and the Glory series; One in Thine Hand; The Alliance; Jesus Christ, Key to the Plan of Salvation; Leverage Point; and The Coming of the Lord. He received his B.A. and M.S. degrees in sociology from Brigham Young University and has been a seminary teacher, an institute of religion teacher and director, and director of college curriculum for the Church Educational System of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He and his wife, Lynn, have seven children; they reside in Bountiful, Utah.