Part 6 (1/2)

”I know it's horrible for you to hear. But it's true.” ”I remind you of Yvette?”

He shook his head. ”Beatrice. My wife's name is Beatrice. She's back at the base and I don't know what kind of danger she's in. If she's smart and feels the way I do, she'll play possum, maybe hope I'm making a run for 60 Minutes or the New York Times. In which case, however, you would be useless as bait, and we would both be utterly expendable.” Elizabeth fell silent, her hands shaking. ”On the other hand,” Peter went on, wanting to get it over with, ”Beatrice may be so angry with me she can't see straight, as angry as you are at this moment. For which I can't blame either of you. She may be of a mind to cooperate with the organization that thinks it owns us both, which makes contacting her potentially suicidal. At least that's how I see it,” he said, a note of uncertainty creeping into his voice again. There's something I'm missing here, he thought, something vastly important to both of them. ”Why would you go to the Times? What is it you've been working on?” ”I'm working on stopping something,” he heard himself say. ”Something I started.” Then he blurted it out. ”A weapon.” He felt her stiffen, but at the same time her gray eyes softened, as though thanking him for his attempt at honesty, no matter how addled she might believe him to be. ”What kind of weapon?” she asked.

”Like any other kind,” he said. ”It kills. It just happens to do it especially well.” ”Like a nuclear device?” she asked, fear creeping into her voice. ”Better than that. Or worse, I should say. It can kill selectively, from a safe distance. Nothing can act as a s.h.i.+eld against it. We were making it small and it will get smaller. There's no radiation. You could exterminate a city and move into it the next day. It's just what the doctor ordered, people will say, to put an end to war in the twenty-first century. But it could also vastly expand war, make it cheaper for the aggressors to destroy anyone they don't want in their way. Now,” he said, feeling the plane start to roll, ”what do you know about air lanes?” ”Not much,” she said. Her voice was small and her skin had paled visibly in the last moments of his confession. ”Just what you tried to teach me. ”What Hans tried to teach you. Go on.

”I know we're supposed to fly a certain direction at a certain alt.i.tude.” ”Like?”

”Like odd-numbered alt.i.tudes for north and south, even-numbered for east and west. Then it's broken down further, like 2,000 feet for east, and 2,200 feet for west.” ”Is that it? Odd for north and south, even for east and west, at those alt.i.tudes?” ”I just made up those alt.i.tudes as an example,” she protested. ”I'm not sure what they really are-” She broke off as a plane shot by about a thousand feet to their left. It went by like a bullet, sobering both of them. ”What's the lowest you're allowed to fly?” Peter asked quickly ”Five hundred feet over water, I think, but the air lanes start higher than that.” ”Okay, then if we fly at five hundred feet more or less, we shouldn't be meeting anybody else, you think?” ”I think so,” she said.

He pushed the control column down and they dropped, lower and lower until they could see the tops of the waves. He leveled off and kept it there. In the back of what he could only think of as his no mind, he knew it would keep them out of radar view as well, but it was nerve-wracking flying at best. Spray from the breakers bounced off the windscreen; he entertained visions of an errant seagull plowing through the Plexiglas like a cannon sh.e.l.l. ”I think it's over there,” Peter said, referring to a glow on the horizon that he hoped was Puerto Rico. He angled the airplane toward it, but when they drew nearer, it turned out to be a cruise s.h.i.+p. They flew over it so low they could see some deckhands looking up in alarm. Then they were on into inky blackness, again. With Elizabeth's help, he found the fuel gauge. It was enough like a car's to read, and it was dangerously close to empty. ”Which direction are we going?” ”I think we're heading out to sea,” she said, with a glance at the instrument panel. ”East is toward Africa. That's five thousand miles away. We want to go west to find Puerto Rico. That's eight miles.” A sense of humor, he thought. That's a hopeful sign. He turned the plane around as best he could-too much cerebration again-and watched the needle on the compa.s.s swing around until it pointed at 270 degrees. Then he heard Elizabeth gasp as he looked up to see the lights of Puerto Rico swing into view, a huge panorama of welcome luminescence. He realized that he must have been flying with the island directly behind him for the last five minutes. ”There!” said Elizabeth, pointing at a sweep of green searchlight. Ahead Peter saw the lights of a major runway. He had to fight much harder this time to still his thoughts: he knew instinctively that landing was the most dangerous part of flying. He imagined his mind to be a jumbleful of sticks that represented thoughts and bulldozed them into oblivion. The plane banked easily toward Puerto Rico's San Juan International Airport, as if he had suddenly learned how to fly. Perhaps it was just that he was too scared to think about it, and Hans, in fact, had taken over. He circled three times, each time closer, until he saw a big jetliner abort its descent and climb back up. He gambled that they had been spotted and that traffic was now being diverted. He headed in, letting his hands and feet do the work, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g rudder, dropping ten degrees flaps, pulling back on the throttle and letting the plane nose down. He felt the flaps braking the plane and relaxed, confident that his body was doing everything required. The plane was coming in for a perfect three-point landing when Peter's racing brain broke through the curtain of competence. He was thinking that they needed to get out of the plane before it came to a stop and was wondering how best to land the plane for the maneuver. His hand faltered, the plane came down hard and Peter instantly reverted to his driver's instincts, trying to steer the aircraft like a car. He turned the control column to the left, which only moved the ailerons, unusable at that speed. Dimly he sensed he should be using his feet on the rudder pedals, but the only foot he was using was his right one, pressing down on the right rudder pedal as though it were a cars brake. The plane banged down hard on the runway and leapt back into the air at a crabbed angle, engine roaring. Now there was no time for thinking or not thinking: the aircraft was out of airspeed and slammed back hard in an ungainly stall. The right landing gear buckled and the plane's nose went to the runway, its propeller splintering in a shower of sparks. The Cessna skidded right, went up on one wing tip, then collapsed into immobility. On wobbly legs, they scrambled out, Sirens and lights were shooting toward them at an alarming speed, perhaps a quarter mile away. They took off in the opposite direction, into the deepest darkness they could find, through sand and gra.s.s, along the cyclone fence surrounding the airport and finally diving behind some brush. Looking back at the runway, they saw emergency vehicles gathering around the wreck of the Cessna. There was also a dark Humvee pulling up, its spotlight sweeping the surrounding darkness, darkness already dissipating in the light of dawn cracking from the east. Ducking lower, they ran again.

And then Peter fell.

It was as though someone had struck him with an iron bar. He hit the dirt clutching his head, fiery pain shooting up the back of his neck and over the crown of his skull, blinding him and driving all thought and reflex from his brain. Terrified, Elizabeth shook his shoulders, urging him up. ”Peter? Hans? Oh, G.o.d, are you shot?” He barely heard her voice. Ml was agony. He tore at his head like a madman. Then, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone, lifting off him like some medieval torture device s.n.a.t.c.hed away by a s.a.d.i.s.tic inquisitor. Breathless and stunned, he sat up.

”Peter?”

”I'm all right.” You deserve everything you get, he thought miserably. ”What happened?” She touched his arm.

He struggled to rise, a.n.a.lyzing his own fall. ”I think the arteries of my brain are too brittle. Seventy-six years old. They can't keep up with the force of this heart.” ”Seventy-six-what on earth are you tailing about?” ”Not my body,” he said, too sick to dissemble any longer. ”My body is a hale and hearty thirty-five.” She stared at him as though he were speaking in tongues. He looked away, her gaze was too intense. Beyond the nearest taxi lane was the terminal, lots of people and what looked like an empty s.h.i.+pping container. The odds were that they would at least hesitate to kill them in public. He grabbed Elizabeth by the hand and they ran for it. They made it. Looking back, he didn't see any headlights swerving around, heading for them. He ducked back under cover and looked at the woman next to him. She looked so young and so frightened: it struck him full-force how innocent of all this she was. ”I'm not Hans,” he said gently. ”I never was. Hans is really dead, Elizabeth. His mind, his brain and all of its memories of you and him-all that's gone. Incinerated on the base at Vieques.” Her hand in his went limp. ”What are you saying?” she asked. ”Hans was a clone. My clone, to be specific.” ”That's not funny,” she said after registering a millisecond of shock. But from the way her lip was trembling, he knew she was beginning to understand the enormity of this insane situation. ”No, you're right, it's not,” Peter said, his heart swelling with a drunken mixture of guilt and love. Elizabeth tried to pull her hand away, but he wouldn't let her. ”Before you walk out of my life for good, there's one more thing I have to say. We have a plane to catch.”

American Flight 99 had been ten minutes away from closing its door and taxiing for takeoff when it was discovered that the crew had been shorted ten meals by the local vendor, Caribbean Food Services. A truck had been sent back to its kitchens, five miles away. Impatient pa.s.sengers were given free drinks and treated to an NBA highlight tape. While they waited for the dinners to be brought in, flight attendant Mary Blanchard stood with colleague Heather Zuckerbrod in the open service hatch, enjoying the balmy tropical air. For the first time in months, Mary was taking pleasure in her job, chiefly because she knew she was about to leave it. She was pregnant. Her boyfriend, a first officer for the airline who flew the L.A.-to-New York route, was now willing to marry her. She was getting out and it felt good. No more drunk conventioneers; no more victims of air rage, sneaking cigarettes in the lavatory; no more celebrity parents letting their brats and dogs run wild in first-cla.s.s. She took a deep, calming breath, trying to picture weekends at home with Charlie instead of being in the air at thirty-five thousand feet. Out on the runway in the humid dawn, she saw movement. A ground patrol broadcast had warned them to be on the watch for unauthorized civilians on the taxi lanes, and she had flashed on Elizabeth and her gorgeous friend. If they were the targets of this alert, she was bound and determined to help. What could American do, fire her? Blackball her from the airline industry? She couldn't have cared less. She looked and she stared, and by G.o.d there they were, slipping between two s.h.i.+pping containers. And now a series of moving lights pierced through the lingering darkness, airport police vehicles and Humvees moving down the line of planes waiting for takeoff, training their searchlights on every inch of tarmac. Mary Blanchard of Waltham, Ma.s.sachusetts, hurried down the jet-way's service stairs, and as swiftly and as inconspicuously as she could, she made her way to the s.h.i.+pping containers. Leaning against one, she took out a cigarette and tried to look like someone catching a quick smoke before departure. ”So” she said casually, s.h.i.+elding her mouth with her cigarette hand, ”what have you kids been up to?” ”Mary?” she heard Elizabeth say from between the containers. ”It's me, all right. Just tell me this. If I help you out, do I end up in jail?” There was a brief pause, not entirely rea.s.suring, and then came the voice of the boyfriend. ”She hasn't broken any laws.” ”But you have?” Mary asked gamely ”None that those Humvee guys haven't broken, too.” ”All right, shut up,” said Mary. She turned as the catering truck drew up beside the plane; its driver hopped out. He saw her and stopped, full of apologies. ”Sorry, we got the meals now.”

Mary gave him her sternest look. ”t.i.to, you owe me one.” The driver looked sheepish. ”You forget ten meals and then delay the flight. Now what you have to do for me is just look out there.” Baffled but dutiful, t.i.to stared where she was pointing, toward the runway and away from the containers. Mary gave a wave and Elizabeth and Peter emerged. ”Keep looking,” she ordered t.i.to, and gesturing for them to follow, she led the two into the back of the meal truck. As soon as they were safely out of sight, Mary stuck her head back out. ”What are you waiting for, t.i.to? Gimme my meals!” He sprang into action, activating the truck's scissor-lift. Hydraulics whined and the entire cargo section of the truck lifted straight up, stopping level with the plane's open service hatch. Mary ducked out first, checking her perimeter, then signaled Elizabeth and Peter out of the truck and into the plane's galley. About that time Heather Zuckerbrod rounded the corner and stopped short, gaping at Mary's two companions. ”Special VIPs,” Mary said.

”Rr. . . right,” Heather said carefully.

Outside the aircraft, a pair of Humvees pulled up. Within seconds, the jetway stairs were clanging with the sound of heavy footsteps. ”Elevator,” said Mary to Heather.

Heather, wide-eyed, pulled open a narrow aluminum door. Mary motioned Elizabeth and Peter inside and both of them squeezed in. It was a s.p.a.ce designed for one, but somehow they made it in and, somehow, Mary managed to get the door closed. She pressed a b.u.t.ton and the elevator started down. Seconds after the stowaways' heads dropped from view, a pair of armed troopers entered the galley from the cabin. ”Did you receive our transmission?” one of them asked. He was young and was looking more than a little annoyed with this exercise. ”Yup, we did,” replied Mary. ”So, who's supposed to be running around out there?” ”Not for you to know.”

”Do you know?”

”No,” he admitted. ”Man and a woman. Hijackers, maybe, I don't know.” He showed her a fax sheet with two photographs, one a driver's license shot of Elizabeth, the other what looked to be a still from a video frame of Peter at a blackboard with an array of numbers and symbols behind him. ”You seen em?” ”Yeah,” Mary said flatly. ”Sure, that's them, all right. We gave them an upgrade. As we speak, they're drinking champagne and eating caviar right now in first cla.s.s.” ”Really?”

”Duh,” Mary said. The soldier gave her a hurt look and headed down the aisle with another armed man. The first officer came out of the c.o.c.kpit, empty plastic cup in his hand. ”What's up?”

”Bulls.h.i.+t,” said Mary.

”Figures. Once they clear us, we're next out.” ”Thank Cod for small favors,” said Mary, filling his cup with fresh coffee. Two minutes later, having checked the faces of the pa.s.sengers against the photographs they were carrying, the two troopers took a last look in the washrooms and c.o.c.kpit, then left the aircraft. Finally shutting the hatches and doors, Mary Blanchard dropped down in her jump seat and grabbed the microphone. ”Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for the delay, but we are now cleared for takeoff. Please make sure your seat belts are fastened and your trays and seats are in the upright position. Our captain a.s.sures us he will make every effort to see that we reach Miami on schedule.”

The DC-1O was halfway down the runway when ground control radioed all outgoing flights to hold their positions. In the c.o.c.kpit, Captain Larry S. Graham knew that if he pulled all power and applied full brakes, he could abort takeoff and perhaps be able to stop by the time he reached the end of the runway. This would cause at least a dozen necks in the cabin to suffer whiplash, trigger half that many lawsuits, ruin $20,000 worth of tires and most certainly screw up his schedule. Specifically, it would keep him two thousand nautical miles away from his weekly poker game in Boston the next night, and he badly needed to make up for last week's losses. ”f.u.c.k those a.s.sholes,” he said to his second officer, keeping his hand on the throttle. The DC-10 lifted off.

”Your transmission is breaking up,” the second officer grinned and radioed back to ground control. ”Please say again. Repeat, please say again.” The plane banked smartly and headed out over open water, heading due north.

The s.p.a.ce Elizabeth and Peter found themselves occupying was a lowceilinged cabin ten feet by six in size. One entire wall was taken up by stowed and locked food carts and a bank of ovens. There were no seats. They sat on the floor, Peter sneaking furtive looks at Elizabeth as he spoke. She sat as far away from him as she could, a s.p.a.ce of perhaps four feet. Her arms were wrapped around her knees and her eyes were shut tight. She was, in fact, wis.h.i.+ng she could fall asleep, half from fatigue, half from not wanting to finally hear what she was hearing. ”It was done almost as a lark,” Peter continued. ”Thirty-five years ago. A group of us were working in the same government laboratory complex and one particular scientist took some skin sc.r.a.pings from the rest of us.” He was talking in a sorrowful whisper, but it was one in which Elizabeth thought she detected an eerie note of pride. It reminded her of something Hans had told her about Robert Oppenheimer and his grand p.r.o.nouncement after the first A-bomb test. I have become s.h.i.+va, destroyer of worlds. Some c.r.a.p like that. Hans had gone on and on about ”Oppy,” and she remembered it was the night he had confessed that he had abandoned a career in physics. Now here was Peter or whoever he was talking about the same sort of thing. She felt sick at heart, but still she listened. What choice did she have? ”He extracted the DNA and put it into some mothers' eggs, just to see if it would work. This was thirty years ahead of what anybody else was doing. Are you with me?” ”Yes, thirty years, I heard you.” Everything is true for thirty years. That was one of Hans's favorite sayings. ”The infertile women thought they were getting help from their doctor so they could have children. They became pregnant, that's for sure, but the DNA in their eggs wasn't theirs anymore. In the case of Mrs. Brinkman, the DNA was entirely my own. ”Did you give your permission?” she asked in a hushed voice. ”No,” he said.

”Did you know it was happening?”

”No. We were all experimenting on a wide variety of phenomena in physics, biology, mathematics. And we all used each other benignly as guinea pigs. But I'm not making excuses. At a certain point-much, much later-I did know. I was told. And I eventually went along with it. I did that.” ”Go on,” she said, sensing that he was faltering. She was at the center of the known universe and it was h.e.l.l after all. ”So what you're saying is that you're Hans. And that you're Peter. You are Peter's brain in Hans's body.” ”That's the simple truth of it, yes. I know you don't think it could be possible, but it is. Now.” ”I said go on,” she snapped.

”It's appalling. I admit it. I agree.

”You're a murdering a.s.shole,” she said, as tears started down her cheeks. ”I told you it was complicated,” he said, wanting to take her into his arms. ”I'm just human after all.” She looked up at him. ”You positive about that?” ”I'm a fool, I know that,” he said and believed it with all his heart. ”That makes me human.” ”And a lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” she added, so loudly he was afraid someone above them might hear. She ignored his alarm. ”How could you agree to such a thing?” He stared at his hands. ”I was dying. I refused to do it at first. But at death's door, I broke. And it was something they wanted, it was something they needed so much from me.” ”They?”

”My wife. And the man behind it all, Frederick Wolfe. We had been friends and colleagues for many years-the three of us. Beatrice was desperate for me to remain alive and for that I can't blame her. As for myself, I accept full blame, I do. It's unthinkable what I've done.” ”They needed you to work on the weapon.” ”That was Wolfe's need,” he admitted. ”I thought it was more out of friends.h.i.+p, but I see now that it was just for his advancement. And for the program's completion. The project, Fountain Society, is every-thing to him, and to those above him, too. The weapon I was working on, for instance. More than likely it would have died with me. Many other incomplete projects will die unless the lives of their visionaries can be extended.” ”And you, you continued to work on this weapon, as before. Never giving it a thought.” ”I had my doubts. As time went on more and more. ”Uh-huh.”

”Especially after I met you. I promise you that's the truth.” He reached out for her. ”Don't.”

He took his hand back. There was nothing more he could say. The crockery on the food carts rattled as the plane hit an air pocket. In miserable silence they sat for a moment, until Elizabeth looked at him. ”And you man aged to keep all this secret?” She was dismayed by her own curiosity. ”Wolfe was funded for secrecy,” he said. ”Then, of course, then the Scots blew everything wide open with that d.a.m.n sheep, Dolly. And so the government's thinking was, well, the d.a.m.n Iraqis are going to be putting out cloned armies of Saddams like buns from a baker's oven, why not clone our best and brightest?” ”Don't want to have a clone gap.

He looked at her and grimaced. ”Something like that.” ”Or have our lids learning Arabic in the first grade.” She was seething. ”That's the general idea,” he said, looking at her. She saw such regret and frankness and even love in his gaze that she looked sharply away. Don't let this man charm you, she thought. He can do it. ”What did you do in Switzerland?” he asked. ”I mean, what do you do?” ”I don't care to discuss it.”

”You're a writer or an artist?”

”Why the h.e.l.l would you think that?”

”You just seem so- ”What?”

”So bright. So intelligent.”'

””For what? A blonde? Or a model?”

””I see. So you are a model”

”You sound disappointed. You're even more of a sn.o.b than Hans was. ”Was Hans a sn.o.b?”

”You know what? I honest to G.o.d don't want to talk about this.” But the next moment she felt her curiosity rise again. She was flas.h.i.+ng on the two of them, together, Peter's brain and Hans's body and herself on the beach of Phosph.o.r.escent Bay. Or did that make three people? Three's a crowd, she thought, with a giddy sense of horror and black humor, remembering the sound of the coquis in the trees. A nameless dread came over her. ”So arc you implying that you're not the only one?” ”I am so far. I guess I was the guinea pig.” ”Emphasis on the pig,” she said. She focused on the engine's whine, trying to drown out the coquis, the sounds of which seemed to be mocking her in some horrible fas.h.i.+on from the depths of her memory. ”You don't know who else is on the A-list? The other geniuses in this-what do you call it?” ”The code for it is the Fountain Society. And no, I don't know who else might be cloned, I swear to you. ””And the party back at the base-the one whose loyalty you were asking about-that would be your wife?” ””That's right,” he said, impressed by her observance and memory. He was gazing at her with admiration and Elizabeth reacted sharply to it.

”I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't look at me like that,” she said. ”As soon as this plane lands, I'm going back to Switzerland.” ”They won't let you,” he said, his warning dull and flat. ”Not Switzerland, no. That's too obvious. We could try for something else.” ”We?” she said in astonishment.

”You might be stuck with me, actually. What you saw back in Vieques was only a fraction of what they're capable of. You haven't even met all the players. You wouldn't know them if they walked up to you in a crowded room. You wouldn't know if they were carrying a knife or a pair of handcuffs or a gun- He seemed to be thinking out loud, as though he, too, were learn- ing as well from this litany. And then she saw that his eves were welling up with tears. ”What did your parents do for a living?” he asked. She gave him one last look of defiance, then shrugged. ”My father was in the Navy, my mother was a housewife.” ”And where was your dad stationed?”

”I don't remember. For G.o.d's sake, why are you crying?” ”Was I? I didn't realize that I was.” His voice was filled with exhaustion. ”Were you thinking of your wife?”

He stared at her in grat.i.tude. ”Yes, actually, I was. ”You should have staved with her,” she shot back, although not with as much venom as she had intended. ”Yes, I know.” He was searching her eyes. No, he was searching her eyebrows. Looking for what? ”And I'm not staying with you, Peter. The minute we land, I'm gone from your life.” His shrug was subtle, which infuriated her. When the elevator motor clanked and whirred sharply. she reflexively reached for Peter's hand. As soon as he squeezed it, she pulled away again, furious again and more confused than ever. The elevator descended and Mary Blanchard stepped out holding two cups of steaming coffee. Peter and Elizabeth eagerly accepted the gift as Mary scrutinized the couple. ”How are you two doing? Behaving yourselves, I hope not?” Elizabeth nodded lamely and Mary, sensing that she had walked in on something serious, began to fuss with the food carts. ”You guys are lucky. The DC-10's the only plane we fly that has a below-decks galley. Most people don't even know it's here.” Peter's eyes were closed. He seemed lost in the steam from his coffee mug. Elizabeth offered a wan smile. Mary sighed. ”Fighting already. Sorry, but maybe all this activity will give you a break. Gotta start breakfast.” She began shoving meals into ovens and twisting dials, ignoring them both. She was right: Her presence helped. Peter's hands unclenched and Elizabeth got up to a.s.sist Mary. All the bustle muted the sound of the coquis still singing in her ears. 15 LEARJET N-94838.

In the aftermath of the Fountain Society's success with Peter's transplant, Oscar Henderson had a.s.signed the Learjet to Wolfe as a congratulatory plum. Wolfe adored the plane, though its pedigree embarra.s.sed him slightly: it had once been Ollie North's shuttle workhorse for his trips to Central America. That aside, the Learjet had sumptuous leather seats, burl walnut tables and a Lavatory with real marble. In his early, underpaid years as a scientist, Wolfe had always expressed disdain for worldly goods. Now he saw his youthful position as just so much posturing. The Learjet had brought out a yearning for the good things in life and it became a symbol of his everexpanding pride in having achieved the summit he had clawed his way towards through so many years of struggle. At the controls of the jet this day was Captain Bob Culpepper, a ten-year veteran of NASA, fresh from a flight delivering a sealed package to an agent in Bogota. Inside that particular package, although Culpepper neither knew nor cared to know, were the head and genitals of a high-level drug operative of the Medellin cartel. The man had killed a Texas DEA agent the day before and a message needed to be sent. For Culpepper, the trip's only significance was that now his digestive tract was disturbed, the result of having eaten two tapas he had bought from a vendor at the Bogota airport. He cursed himself for his stupidity, turned the controls over to his co-pilot, Second Officer David Anspaugh, and made his way toward the rear of the aircraft. ”Everybody comfortable?” he asked nonchalantly. Since everyone said yes, Culpepper proceeded to the toilet at the tail of the plane. As soon as he was gone, Henderson and Wolfe put their heads together again. ”I thought this clone sonofab.i.t.c.h was a banker,” Henderson fumed. ”He was,” said Wolfe quietly; keeping a close eye on Beatrice. She was seated across the cabin, staring out the window at the pink-tinged clouds in apparent absorption but Wolfe still thought she might be listening. ”Well, then,” grunted Henderson, ”why don't you tell me how your boy managed to cold c.o.c.k a Navy Seal, not to mention outwit the best civilian muscle money can buy?” ”I can only imagine what the quality of the local muscle is on Vieques,” Wolfe said dryly. Henderson said nothing, but inward-ly he cursed himself, knowing how pound-foolish he had indeed been. ”As it turns out,” said Wolfe, ”Hans Brinkman was something of an athlete. I rechecked his dossier: he happened to have been a skilled amateur boxer, quite a skier, and he flew his own jet. He was as accomplished physically as he was intellectually. Not surprising, really. if you consider his provenance. Besides, he was fighting for his life and perhaps even for the girl's. The bottom line is,” he concluded in a voice as cold as steel, ”if you weren't such a penny-pincher, the team you sent in would all have been Seals.” ”It wasn't a matter of money,” Henderson shot back. ”It was to keep us clean. If there were fingerprints-as indeed there were-we wanted it to look like a robbery.” ”And what does it look like now?” Wolfe asked, his anger rising. ”I should have locked him up when I had the chance. Along with your precious grandson.” ”Oh, please, both of you just shut up!”

Beatrice was turned around in her seat, staring at them with hostility. Wolfe and Henderson fell silent, quarreling children silenced by their mother. Beatrice moved to the seat directly across from them, surveying them bleakly. ”What else do you know about his clone?” she asked. thing you want to hear,” Wolfe said gently Her lovely gray eyes had a pained look he couldn't bear. ”Any other hobbies besides boxing and fixing?” Her crisp tone encouraged him. ”Skiing, as I said, tennis, bird watching, some martial arts. He was an amateur geologist and paleontologist.” ”Fascinating,” she said.

”Yes, isn't it.” Wolfe decided to take a risk. ”Peter loved paleontology,” he said, a.s.suming a tone of a gentle regret. Henderson ground out his cigar. ”Well, he must have studied tae kwon do with a flicking T. Rex because he certainly kicked serious a.s.s back at the hotel.” Wolfe sighed. ”Oscar,” he said quietly, ”if you made even the feeblest attempt to display human compa.s.sion, this would go much more easily for all of us.” Beatrice waved him off. ”That's all right,” she said, looking at Henderson. ”Actually, the most feeling thing you can do right now is to spare me your bankrupt sympathy.” Wolfe fell silent. The pilot was coming back on his way to the c.o.c.kpit; the smell from the lavatory was faint but unmistakable. ”Jesus, somebody blow up a f.u.c.king dog in here?” Henderson barked. He Looked back toward the rear of the plane. ”Yo, Lance. Do me a favor.” Lance Russell, the Navy Seal, stood up and closed the lavatory door He had been listening to the conversation and the look on his face said he wanted very much to meet Peter Jance, Jr. again. Returning to his seat and flexing his hands, he imagined Peter's trachea beneath his fingers. ”It's not the first time I've seen this,” said Henderson, having to comply with Wolfe's edict. ”A good man brought down by a manipulative girl.” Beatrice's nod was noncommittal. ”I understand she fought bravely, too.” She was staring straight at Wolfe. ”Panicked is what she was,” said Henderson, lighting a cigarette. ”Anyhow, she's not going far without credit cards. Fact is, she doesn't have an ident.i.ty anymore. ”Who was she?” asked Beatrice.

Past tense, noted Wolfe. Yes, she won't take much coaxing. ”Elizabeth Parker,” said Henderson. ”And how do we know her name?” Beatrice asked. Wolfe shot Henderson a warning look and refilled Beatrice's wine gla.s.s. ”That's the name she used when she registered at the hotel.” ”She must be special,” Beatrice said simply. Wolfe's heart ached for Beatrice. He made a decision to tell her just a bit more, hoping to ease her pain. ”I'm not sure,” he said carefully, ”but she might have known him before.” Beatrice looked at him. ”Peter?”

”No. The clone. She's also from Switzerland. It's possible that she slipped through the cracks in our surveillance of Brinkman. Maybe she was a secret.” ”A mistress, you mean?” Beatrice indeed took notice, but Wolfe wasn't sure whether she was rea.s.sured or not. ”Possible. So you see, there might be some sort of attraction there, indigenous, if you will, to the body.” Beatrice sat back, speechless for several moments. Then she straightened, her eyes boring into Wolfe's. ”If that were so, what was she doing here? Surely Peter wouldn't have had any conscious knowledge of her existence, let alone her telephone number.” ”No,” admitted Wolfe uneasily. ”Not possible.” Beatrice continued to stare at him. ”Then how would she know to come here?” Beatrice demanded. Wolfe s.h.i.+fted his weight uneasily. ”Alex,” he said at last. Beatrice blinked. ”Alex sent for her?”

Wolfe looked away. The intensity of her gaze was downright unsettling. ”He was apparently starting to have his doubts.” ”About what?”

”About everything. Fountain Project. The Hammer. And certainly Peter's defection didn't help.” Beatrice thought for a moment, stunned by this revelation. ”How did Alex know about her if you didn't?” she asked. Wolfe shrugged. ”He made it his business to know more about the clones than I did. Perhaps he was monitoring this clone's e-mail-I don't really know.” Beatrice mulled this over with great intensity ”But why call her down here? What did Alex possibly hope to accomplish by that?” ”I suppose,” said Wolfe, ”he wanted to undermine the project. Maybe this was a monkey wrench in the gears sort of thing.” ”Did he meet with her?”