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  'Nothing matters any more, Tina. Nothing except the gentle sleep, in the arms of the Mother.'

  'Charley,' she sobbed, 'maybe there are things we could talk about. Things I could tell you.'

  Joe Katayama stood over her, reached down, and placed his hands on her shoulders. She went quiet on the instant. His thumbs felt like hard sheaths of muscle against the tendons of her neck.

  'We all go in peace, Tina,' Charley said. 'How many can expect that?'

  'Charley?'

  Tina Blackshire's voice was slurred. Joe Katayama's thumbs found the two carotid arteries in her neck, pushed there, insistently, not hurting, just relentlessly, not letting go. Tina Blackshire found that, with the pressure, came something that ran beneath the threshold of pain, a gentle, rhythmic compulsion to close her eyes, relax into the thrumming sound of her own heart beating, trying to keep her alive.

  'In sleep there is peace,' Charley said. 'And this peace comes to us all in the end. There is nothing to fear. Making and unmaking are part of the same process. From our bodies springs a new world.'

  Tina's eyes were dry now. Her mouth had turned cold and tasted metallic. The room was fading, and the shadows were the colour of blood. 'Mother,' she said, her voice the thin rasp of shrivelled autumn leaves on arid ground.

  Joe Katayama bent down, wound his arms around her neck, stiffened his upper body, then, in one single, sweeping movement, twisted hard, snapped the spine. There was a harsh, inhuman breaking noise. The girl died with a grunt, a sudden, animal expulsion of air from her lungs. Katayama relaxed his grip. Her head hung off her shoulders at an awkward, sickening angle. A sudden gush of blood came out of the corner of her mouth, ran thickly down her chin. He let the body slip gently to the floor. A brown stain was spreading down Tina Blackshire's pale shins, underneath the simple floral shift. There was a distinct smell in the room. Katayama walked over and turned off the video.

  'Give it to them to edit, Joe,' she said. 'Then tell them about Tina. You did well.'

  Katayama nodded, his flat face expressionless, although she was sure something was moving there inside him. He took the cassette out of the video camera and headed for the door.

  Charley Pascal looked at the body at her feet, fallen in an odd, unnatural shape, like a rag doll that had been dropped on the carpet. There should have been something to cry for just then, but she couldn't figure out what it was.

  DAY TWO

  June 20

  THE CHILDREN

  CHAPTER 20

  Michael's Call

  La Finca, 0251 UTC

  Michael Lieberman came to, wondering where he was and what was making the noise. He jerked upright, felt his head wallow around as if it were about to fall off his shoulders, and reached for the light. Over on the other side of the bedroom the computer monitor was flashing, and a sound like an old Bell telephone was coming out of the speaker.

  He dragged on a pair of jeans, walked over, and punched the keyboard. 'I think you got the wrong number. It's the middle of the night here.'

  'No,' Helen Wagner answered, in an unemotional East Coast voice. 'You're Michael Lieberman. There's no mistake. I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour. Irwin gave me your address. We have to talk.'

  'We?'

  'My name is Helen Wagner. I'm acting head of S&T — that's Science and Technology — for the CIA in Langley. I don't expect that to mean much to you.'

  Lieberman glanced away from the screen, shook his head as if that might help to clear it. The woman was familiar from somewhere.

  'Professor Lieberman. I have bad news for you. I'm sorry. There has been an incident at Lone Wolf.'

  He wanted to throw up. He wanted to pick up this piece of plastic and glass and hurl it onto the floor. 'An incident?'

  'We had no idea they were capable of inflicting this kind of damage. It looks as if they hacked their way into the internal network somehow and wound up the internal power generator way beyond its limits. We got a minor explosion and a major fire. Sara will be okay. I'll give you the number for the hospital. She was the only one there when they hit it. Maybe they thought it would be unmanned. It was just bad luck.'

  'This isn't true,' he said. 'You people lie all the time.'

  Helen Wagner blinked back at him. The CIA didn't really look like this, he thought. The CIA looked like Ellis Bevan, all coldness and deceit. 'I wish I was lying. A few hours before this they blew up a SWAT team that we hoped was tracking them, and there we are talking real explosives. People are dead. They seem to be able to pick and choose between the technology they use. So far they've killed the President and a couple of hundred people with Sundog, wiped out some agents on the ground with Semtex, and managed to screw up one of only three working control units for Sundog with some kind of computer attack. It makes you wonder what's next.'

  'Washington?' Lieberman asked blankly.

  'We had a major telecom blackout and something like an intense magnetic storm just after noon. It was some kind of directed beam from Sundog. More disruption than real damage. My guess is that they are working to understand what they've got hold of, and conserving it too. It wasn't meant to handle the kind of energy they must have had to throw at it to bring down Air Force One. If they want to save it for the zenith unscathed, and that seems to be their aim, they need to be sparing when they use it'

  Lieberman shook his head. This was all too much. 'What the hell are you talking about? Sara's hurt?'

  She looked at him and said softly, 'I'm sorry. Too much at one time. I'm not good at this. You were still pretty close. I didn't know that.'

  'Yeah. Close.' He looked at her as if to say: What do you expect?

  'Sara was trapped for a while in the debris after the power plant went up. You should call the hospital and find out more. I'll give you the number.'

  Lieberman nodded. People getting sick. People getting hurt. These were things he never handled well. 'Why are you telling me this? Why not Bevan? He's one of your goons, isn't he?'

  She smiled, and it looked genuine. 'Professor Lieberman — '

  'Drop the professor part. It makes me feel uncomfortable.'

  'Michael,' she said tentatively, 'this is a very fluid situation. None of us was prepared for this. And we're not in control, not one little bit. We don't run the timing. They do. It's a little… unusual for us. At least for Operations here. I'm a scientist. Like you. I don't really get mixed up in those things.'

  'What do you really want?' he asked.

  'I wanted to break bad news to you.'

  'Yeah. And nothing more? Please. My head hurts.'

  'And ask for your help,' she said. 'Bevan said you planned to ship out in the morning. I want to talk you out of that. It's important you stay on board. We need to cover every option there is for taking Sundog out of their hands. You could help a lot there.'

  Lieberman wished he could shake from his head this image of Sara lying in a hospital bed. 'I have to go back home. I should be near Sara.'

  'Michael,' the woman said, 'her husband is with her.'

  'Oh. Right.'

  'And she'll be fine. Don't take my word for it. Call her. It's important you stay part of the team.'

  'Important for who?'

  'All of us. This is an international issue now, Michael. It's gone beyond the murder of the President and his staff.'

  'Not my fight, Miss Wagner.'

  'Helen. Please.'

  'You've got all these people. In Washington. All over the world. They can fix it.'

  'I wish you were right,' she said quietly. 'We're doing our best but we still need you. You designed what makes this thing work, Michael.'

  'Thanks. I really appreciate being reminded of that.'

  'It's a fact. I know you would never have done it had you realized what they really wanted it for. But isn't that a little academic now? And we do need your input on the sunspot cycle. They're bound to wait until the absolute zenith until they start to have their fun. And I need to know when that will be because the forc
e they have in their hands is incalculable. When will it peak? When can we expect them to throw the big switch? Will it be midday UTC or what?'

  Lieberman was aware that these thoughts had been running subconsciously through his own head too. The entire game might come to hang upon them. 'These things walk hand in hand, the solstice and the planetary alignment. It's like bringing a camera into focus using a couple of different lenses. Bennett's right about that, I'm sure. Last time I looked, you got the sunspot zenith coming around forty-five minutes after noon UTC

  Helen Wagner sighed. 'Which is about as bad as you could get. The power of the storm will be at its peak.'

  'You're making a lot of assumptions. That Charley really means this thing. That she has the wherewithal to do it. And that we'd all be sitting here with nothing happening even without Sundog, and of that I'm not sure at all.'

  'Not really,' Helen Wagner said, no expression on her face. 'We don't need to make that many assumptions any more. Like I said, things have changed while you were sleeping. She's made that side of things a little clearer.'

  'Don't tell me about it. I don't want to know.'

  She looked at him. Lieberman felt himself being scrutinized. 'Why are you like this? A bright guy. So detached.'

  'Because I'm tired. And sick of being told lies all the time.'

  She shook her head. 'It's not that.'

  'I don't do shrink stuff at two in the morning. Sorry. Is this conversation over? I have to pack.'

  'We need you.'

  'No, you don't. You need people like Bevan. They're trained for this sort of stuff.'

  'We need your expertise. More than that, maybe, we need your insight into Charley Pascal. I have plenty of people here who'll walk around waving guns in the air. Operations has a few of them lying dead in the street in San Francisco right now. But something tells me that's not going to help us here. We need to understand this woman. What she wants. Why she got involved with the Children. And you know her, Michael.'

  'Knew. A very long time ago. And this is crazy. It isn't like her. Not the Charley I knew.'

  Helen Wagner shrugged. 'People change, Michael.'

  'Not that much. Not deep down.' She looked sad, he thought, resigned.

  'I have to show you this,' Helen Wagner said. 'It isn't a pretty sight. But you need to look. You need to help me understand.'

  'I'm out of here.'

  'This is bad, Michael. This could be everyone's worst nightmare. We thought we could keep this under wraps as much as possible, keep a lid on people's fears. But you're right, Charley's smart. After hitting Lone Wolf she put up a site on the Web. It's got her stated aims — sufficiently hazy so that we can't second-guess the detail — and some other stuff too. I believe you when you say she wasn't like this when you knew her. But something shifted inside her. She's sick, physically, and I think in some way she relates what is happening in her head to what is happening in the universe. People no longer matter to her. And she wants to hurt us, all of us, in a way we'll never forget. She thinks that she can somehow send a wake-up call to the human race.'

  Lieberman shook his head. 'That's not the Charley I knew.'

  'Take a look at this. We downloaded our own copy. The real thing is getting so many hits on the Web you'd never get through. There's something else too. We had someone inside. Charley found out. She E-mailed us a little extra, a picture of the body. If you're feeling up to it, click on the image. If you need more proof, that is. I won't nag. But you have to ask yourself this: Can you really stay apart from what's happening? If you do that, will you ever forgive yourself?'

  'I told you,' he said, 'I'm out of here.'

  A Web page came on the monitor. Brightly coloured text and background, the words Children of Gaia in red, and beneath a simple message: Prepare.

  Lieberman shook his head and said, 'You people…' He clicked on the enclosed image she had sent straightaway and thought: She knew that was what would happen all along, she planned it just like that.

  Half an hour later, a vodka in his shaking hand, Lieberman called the hospital in California on the videophone. Sara Wong had a bandage around her forehead, a big livid bruise showing up on her right cheek, and what looked like the makings of a serious black eye above it.

  'Hey. I leave you alone for a little while and see what happens? Hell, Sara. What do I say?'

  'You ask how I am.'

  'I can see that from looking. Does it hurt? Can I do something?'

  'No.' It was the look again, as if this were somehow his fault.

  'I wish I was there.'

  'Why? It's not so bad. Talk a little, Michael. I'm tired. I was about to go to sleep.'

  'Right. So I'm out of this place. This whole job was just some kind of cover for a spook thing and I'm through. I can maybe get a plane to Madrid, be back home in a day or so.'

  'Oh, Michael…' Yeah, he thought, he got the message.

  'They spoke to you, huh? The Wagner woman.' Sara winced (and this was the pain he was giving her, not the physical side of things, he knew that).

  'Of course they spoke to me. Someone attacked the goddamn facility, it looks like it's been firebombed. What do you expect?'

  'Don't believe what they tell you. Don't believe a thing.'

  'Really.' Her face looked tired, a little sour now too.

  'No. You recognize that woman's name? She was in Time the other week. The spook appointments page or something. She's Pieter Wagner's kid, the guy the men in black hounded to death way back when. I just double-checked on the Net. Can you believe that?'

  'I remember that story. Maybe she thought it was a good job. Maybe she thought that, if they got better people in there, mistakes like the one that screwed up her father wouldn't happen.'

  'Yeah.' Always thinking the best of people. Sara all over.

  'Is that so hard to believe, Michael?'

  'For me it is.'

  'Then that's your cross. Christ, it's nearly fifteen years since you walked out of that project like someone had stolen your very life. Don't you ever get over things?'

  'She told you to say that.'

  'So what? There's something bad happening in the world right now. You have to trust someone and it might as well be them because just now I can't think of anyone else. Either that or you just hide in a deep, black hole somewhere and wait for it to go away. Is that what you want?'

  Lieberman drained the vodka glass, poured himself another.

  "That's going to help, Michael. Why don't you just take the whole damn bottle, let it give you some comfort down there in your hole, with all those demons. Just let someone else take the responsibility for getting on with the job.'

  'You don't mean that, Sara. I want to be home. I want to see you.'

  'Christ.' Her voice got louder. It made him sweat in the lonely, airless bedroom, the sound of the Mediterranean washing in from the window.

  'Michael. I don't want you here. Not because they told me to say that. Not because they asked me to persuade you to help them. It's simpler than that. I have a new life now. I have a husband. And I don't want you here.'

  'Right.' The same old ritual, a few thousand miles apart.

  'Believe me,' she said, eyes closing. Dog-tired, he thought, she wasn't faking that, or anything else either if he were to be honest with himself. 'Believe that, Michael, if you believe nothing else at all.'

  CHAPTER 21

  Precautions

  Langley, Virginia, 0311 UTC

  Helen Wagner left the S&T block and headed for the old building and Levine's office. Larry Wolfit, Belinda's deputy, now hers, was by her side, a tall, slender man, dressed in a checked shirt and jeans, brought straight back from a few days' vacation by the crisis. He was a few years older than she, quiet, thoughtful, not given to hasty decisions. When the news of Belinda's death broke, Helen's first thought was that they would make Wolfit acting head until a permanent appointee was found. If he was disappointed by their eventual choice, it didn't show. When she considered it more caref
ully, she guessed it was predictable he didn't get the job. Wolfit was too introspective for the likes of Levine, maybe, and — she didn't enjoy the thought — too smart as well.

  'We haven't had the conversation, Larry.'

  He gave her a wry smile and strode out across the road. Wolfit had been somewhere in Yellowstone when they tracked him down, working on a wildlife renewal project that seemed to occupy most of his spare time. He was still wearing his mountain boots. It gave him an odd, rural air in Langley's neatly manicured environment. The office had nicknamed him Wolfit the Wolf Man, and it seemed so inappropriate. He looked like a college professor on a hike, tall and thin, with wispy fair hair that was falling fast. He could have swept aside what was left to hide the baldness, she guessed, but that was the kind of personal touch that probably never occurred to him.

  'No need,' he said gently. 'I wasn't looking for the job.'

  'All the same-'

  'Really,' and he gave her a fixed stare. 'And besides, to be honest I've been thinking about quitting anyway. Not that now's the time. This work I've been doing, it's getting a sight more interesting than I ever expected.'

  She knew, in a loose fashion, what the work was; everyone in S&T did. Larry Wolfit was involved in some scheme to reintroduce wolves into parts of the Rockies where they'd been chased out by man. It was an unusual hobby for an S&T employee, she thought, and she couldn't help but envy his energy and his commitment.

  'We can talk about this later,' she said. 'Interesting hobbies don't necessarily make interesting careers, Larry.'

  He smiled and, for a moment, she thought Wolfit was humouring her. 'I wouldn't describe it as a hobby. We're starting to learn things there that are pretty amazing. I wouldn't be surprised if it leads to some large-scale wolf reintroduction schemes pretty much everywhere before long.'

  'I guess we need to manage things better.'

  'No,' he answered swiftly. 'We have to unmanage them. That's the big lesson. We just go back to something like the status quo, then get the hell out of there.'