For the first time Stephanie let herself smile. 'You scared the h.e.l.l out of me, you know.'

'I know,' Mulwray chuckled and put his coffee cup down. 'What did you think I was going to do to you?'

'I don't know. Use me as spare parts for the organ bank, maybe. After a phone call to Mr O'Hara.'

Mulwray stopped smiling. When he stopped the little lines disappeared on his face and his eyes went flat and dead.

'That's pretty close,' he said. 'Except I think it would have more of a career impact if I delivered you in person.' He picked up his gun again, and now it was pointing at her.

They had to wait several hours for the first helicopter to the Catskills and by the end of the flight they were moving through dawn skies. She could see the yellow earthmoving machinery below her, parked in rows in the early light, like toys waiting outside the tunnel mouth in the mountain side. Stephanie had kept her coat on in the c.o.c.kpit but she couldn't stop shivering. When Mulwray helped her out of the helicopter she jerked away at his touch. The gra.s.s was wet as they walked from the helicopter pad up through a screen of trees to O'Hara's house. He was waiting for them on the steps.

6.

O'Hara smiled as he refilled Stephanie's gla.s.s. She picked it up with a steady hand and sipped. The bourbon was sweet and warming now. At first it had tasted bad, strong and poisonous with a flavour of rot and vomit. But that had just been her stomach complaining after the helicopter ride. The helicopter ride and all the anxiety.

'I'm sorry if you felt pressured by the way you were brought here, Stephanie.' O'Hara moved away from her to refill Mulwray's gla.s.s then returned to sit beside her on the long black silk couch. Mulwray grinned and saluted Stephanie with his gla.s.s before he drank. Stephanie didn't smile back.

'You see,' said O'Hara, 'I knew almost immediately when Mr Mulwray went into the company computers and began to '

'Snoop,' said Mulwray.

'Let's say, began to study the corporate structure of the Butler Inst.i.tute. Of course the company could have punished him. But he was a promising young employee and I like to think that I am a good man manager.' O'Hara wasn't looking directly at Stephanie as he spoke. He was staring thoughtfully out the wide dark window of his living room. The sun was rising over the treeline and in the gaps between the conifers you could see the distant yellow shapes of the excavation machinery beginning to move back and forth to the tunnel mouth as the working day began.

'I've always favoured the carrot instead of the stick,' said O'Hara. 'Reward instead of punishment. So I not only offered Mr Mulwray a promotion, I also explained about the Inst.i.tute's latest and biggest project.' O'Hara turned and looked into Stephanie's eyes, smiling. 'I let him into the secret.'

Stephanie smiled right back. 'And now you're going to let me in on it, too?'

There was a small noise from the doorway of the living room and Stephanie instantly turned towards it. She saw Mulwray move as well, coming out of his chair and reaching under his jacket, then stopping when O'Hara raised his hand. 'It's all right,' said O'Hara, getting up off the couch and walking through the doorway to the kitchen. He came back carrying a little boy, swinging him through the air and laughing. 'A spy,' said O'Hara. He sat down on the couch again, putting the boy on his lap. 'This is my son Patrick. Patrick, this is Mr Mulwray and Stephanie.'

'We've met,' said Stephanie, solemnly shaking hands with the child and smiling at him. All of them were smiling except the little boy.

'Of course you have. Stephanie looked after you at the office yesterday, Patrick.'

'I remember,' said the little boy.

'Where was I?' said O'Hara. 'The project. Well, it's a big idea and a big challenge. But we live in times that offer big challenges.' The little boy settled comfortably in his father's lap as he spoke. 'Challenges of survival. In this world health is rapidly becoming the most precious commodity. Forget gold or oil or data. Forget about water. None of these things are any good if we don't remain alive to use them.' O'Hara gestured with his hands as he spoke, lifting them up, then letting them settle back on the shoulders of his son. Patrick caught hold of one and gripped it in his own small hand. 'Stephanie, both you and Mr Mulwray are familiar with our use of surgery and transplants to maintain health. But do you know how difficult it is to find good stock? That's because the environment is increasingly compromised. We are poisoning the planet we live on. For decades we've known the dangers and for decades we have insisted on doing nothing. Now our information gatherers bring us the inevitable news. We are reaching the point of no return.'

O'Hara paused and took a sip of orange juice, offering the gla.s.s to his son afterwards. 'But the Butler Inst.i.tute is taking action. We have the solution.' The boy drank the rest of the juice and then stared solemnly up into his father's face. It's quite a simple solution. A bright child can grasp the basic concept.' O'Hara took the empty gla.s.s from his son. 'Go on. Patrick. Explain the project to Stephanie.'

The little boy looked across at Stephanie. He was a solemn, quiet child, taking after his mother in looks and mannerisms. Stephanie had met Mrs O'Hara a few times, at company parties. Anne Marie O'Hara had been trained as a mathematician but abandoned research to study music. She had apparently been some kind of child prodigy.

'Daddy says that we live in our thoughts,' said the little boy, speaking slowly. 'We have arms and legs and bodies. But really it's all up here.' He touched his head, small fingers in his fine pale hair. 'So it doesn't matter if our arms and legs and bodies die, just so long as we can make our thoughts stay alive. And Daddy says that our thoughts are just patterns in our heads. And that we can copy those patterns, just the way I sampled Jack Blood off the television.'

'Giving me quite a shock, too, I can tell you,' said O'Hara, chuckling. Stephanie and Mulwray both laughed immediately. Stephanie opened her mouth but Mulwray was already speaking. 'Clever kid,' he said.

'That's very good, Patrick,' said O'Hara. 'Go on.'

The little boy shifted awkwardly, embarra.s.sed by the attention and the praise. 'Daddy says we'll copy the patterns into computers. The patterns of our thoughts. Then our thoughts will be alive on the computers. And the computers will last forever. And we'll live inside them. It won't matter what the world is like outside. What the polpol'

'Pollution.'

'It won't matter what the pollution is like, or the ohzone layer or anything. Because we'll be safe inside machines.' The boy wrinkled his forehead. 'No,' he said, slowly. 'That's not right exactly. We aren't just going to be inside the machines. We are going to be the machines.'

'What a smart little guy!' said Mulwray, again getting there a fraction of a second before Stephanie.

'But our bodies will be dead, though,' said Patrick. For the first time he looked at his father with something like uncertainty. For a second there was silence. Stephanie could see that Mulwray was trying, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

She made her move.

She slid across the couch, moving her body against O'Hara's, reaching across him and picking up the little boy before anyone could protest.

She swung Patrick up in her arms. The boy was a lot heavier than she'd imagined and she could feel him stiffening in her grasp, reacting to her uncertainty. Stephanie pushed her shoulders back, taking the weight of the little boy on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his head beside her face. As she adjusted her grip the boy relaxed and Stephanie felt a flash of triumph. 'You are a smart little guy. Very, very smart,' she said, holding him tight and carefully resting his small head on her shoulder. She turned around, carrying the little boy with confidence now, and looked at Mulwray sitting in his armchair. He wasn't saying anything. Stephanie squeezed the little boy tight. She'd read that children liked to be hugged and touched a lot.

'Brave, too,' said O'Hara. He'd got up from the couch and now leant over, ruffling the little boy's hair. Stephanie felt a flush of triumph. To touch his son O'Hara had to stand close to her, almost touching. She turned so that the boy was face to face with his father. They were like a media image of a healthy, beautiful family. 'Big and brave,' said O'Hara, tousling Patrick's hair. 'Tell Stephanie the rest of it.'

'There's more?' said Stephanie, looking at the little boy with mock wonder. The boy said nothing and the living room was silent. The distant sound of machinery could be heard through the picture window, beyond the trees, down at the excavation site.

'The next part of our project involves kids. And you'll never guess what,' said O'Hara softly. Now Mulwray's head snapped up and he looked at O'Hara. He made a sound as if he was about to say something but he remained silent.

'Patrick's volunteered for the experiment,' said O'Hara.

'Way to go, little guy!' said Stephanie. She aimed her widest, whitest, most stunning smile at the little boy but he was looking thoughtfully at his father. 'A little guy with lots of guts,' she said.

Mulwray had got out of his armchair and he was standing up now, looking at them. The boy looked at Stephanie, then over at Mulwray. The boy and the man stared across the room at each other for a moment and then Mulwray abruptly turned and walked out. Stephanie watched him go down the stairs towards the kitchen.

O'Hara opened his arms, offering to take the boy from Stephanie. She handed Patrick to his father. 'Excuse me a second,' she said.

'Of course,' said O'Hara, taking the child and kissing him on the forehead.

Stephanie went out of the sitting room and down the pine stairs. In the kitchen Mulwray was standing at the sink, holding a gla.s.s under the big snout of the taps. Water hissed out through the filter. He drank a gla.s.s, refilled it and drank again. When he turned to Stephanie his mouth was wet and his face was an odd colour. Yellowish. Stephanie thought it was an interesting colour. 'We can call Albany from here,' said Mulwray.

'Why would we want to do that?'

'Look, the man's clearly loony tunes. So is his project, for that matter. Fine. I'm happy to go along with it. He's the boss. And I've done some fairly hairy stuff in my time. It's been my job. I'm really happy to provide Third World garbage for biostock. There are people who need that blood and those bodies. They're spare parts for real Americans. Real people. That's my job and I'm good at it.'

Mulwray set the gla.s.s back in the sink and wiped his hands. 'But all that stuff about that little boy volunteering for the experiment. You know what that means? He's talking about killing the kid.'

'Yes?' said Stephanie.

'We can't just let that happen.'

'No?' said Stephanie.

Mulwray was looking at her now. It was as if it was the first time he'd ever really looked at her. Stephanie liked the thought. Mulwray was taking a good look at her now.

Mulwray went back to the sink and picked up the towel again. He wiped his hands again, although they were already dry. He kept looking at Stephanie, rubbing his hands nervously with the towel. In the surgical fluorescent light of the kitchen she could see the lines around Mulwray's eyes, the lines he had when he smiled, although he wasn't smiling now. The lines made him look old and tired.

Stephanie liked those lines.

'Surprise,' she said.

O'Hara was still sitting on the couch with his son when she went back into the living room. The B&O home entertainment system was on and the little boy was watching Sat.u.r.day morning television.

'What's on, Patrick?'

The little boy answered without looking away from the screen. 'Just some kid's stuff. But Jack Blood Jack Blood is going to start in a minute.' is going to start in a minute.'

'That's nice,' said Stephanie, settling herself on the couch beside O'Hara.

'Mulwray is secure,' she said.

'That's good. I had my doubts about him.'

'He'll work out fine, I'll see to that.'

'You've clearly handled it very well, Stephanie. You're going to be exactly the right person for this project.'

Stephanie's face flushed at the praise. It was going red, Stephanie knew it was. She hoped O'Hara wouldn't notice in the television light. Her body felt sweaty with the relief of a job well done, and with the warmth of the praise.

'Time for Jack Blood Jack Blood,' said Patrick. He touched a b.u.t.ton on the remote control and the software in the B&O changed channels for him. Two small lights flashed on the slim dark boxes of the home entertainment centre. One small light indicated that the television receiver was active. The other one showed that the communications system was currently transmitting. A discreet camera and microphone scanned the interior of the living room. It observed every move made by the three people watching television on the couch. It heard every word they said. This information was then routed by optical cables down to the transmission masts by the excavation further down the mountain slope. From there the sounds and images were fired up to a satellite leased by Northern Global and relayed on to the European Community data network. Coded packets of data were pa.s.sed along, read and readdressed, then pa.s.sed along again. Their ultimate destination was in southern England.

There the signal was picked up by a satellite dish lashed on to an ornamental spire on top of a Victorian greenhouse. The big gla.s.s structure stood in overgrown gardens that gave way to broad grounds with long gra.s.s and shrubs that had gone wild. The grounds ran up into a slope thickly wooded with old fruit trees. A broken wall ran around the perimeter of the grounds, paralleling a loop of gravel drive that wound up towards the red brick house and the long low building hidden beyond the greenhouse. It was morning in New York State but afternoon here in England. Rain was falling from a luminous grey sky and the wild garden looked lushly green. Thunder rolled in the distance beyond banked yellow clouds. A small cat broke from shelter near the greenhouse and ran towards the long building that had once housed stables. The cat didn't like getting wet and it darted through the long gra.s.s on the lawn. There was a fresh scar of turned earth running between the greenhouse and the stables and the cat ran along beside this muddy line. Buried here under the lawn was a long bundle of cabling, mixed copper wire and optical fibres, which was connected to the satellite dish at one end and the stables at the other.

The cat hurried through the open door of the long low building, into the shadows, yowling. There was the sound of rain on the wooden roof and the wind found its way through the open door in cold gusts, but it was dry in here and the cat stopped and sat down on the concrete floor. Bare light bulbs hung down from the ceiling at intervals down the whole length of the narrow building, but only the one nearest the door was glowing. The cat licked at its wet fur and got to its feet, wandering further into the building. The stable had been converted into a large garage housing half a dozen cars, two of them under paintspattered sheets, a third one up on ramps with a plastic bowl full of sump oil under it. The cat sniffed at the oily darkness under the car, then turned and walked back towards the door of the garage. It emerged from the shadows into the yellow gleam from the single naked bulb. Directly under the bulb was a big oilstained oak workbench. A small man was sitting on a chrome barstool at the bench, watching television. The cat rubbed against the legs of the stool and purred.

The television set was a 1940s Bakelite design with a small milkygreen screen. It was connected to a bundle of gaffertaped cables that ran out the window and into the ground. The small man was leaning forward, elbows on the bench, watching the screen with concentration. Scattered along the bench between his elbows were vacuum tubes, clipped curves of copper wire, and a large black envelope.

The monochrome image on the small screen was surprisingly sharp and clear. It showed a man, a woman and a young boy sitting on a couch, facing out at the viewer. The sound from the television was tinny but audible. 'You better not have any more of that sour mash, Stephanie,' the man was saying. 'Not on an empty stomach. I'll fix you and Patrick some breakfast in a minute. How do waffles sound, Pat?'

'Great, Dad,' said the little boy, staring out of the TV screen, not looking up.

Stephanie was finding herself wondering if television was actually good for children. It was the fixed, intense way that Patrick was staring. He sat beside her watching the television, never looking away. It was as if there was someone out there on the other side of the screen, sitting and watching, looking back at Patrick.

Stephanie shivered at the notion. She dismissed the thought. It was a beautiful morning with the sun coming up over the mountains, shining through the big picture window, breakfast smells drifting up from the kitchen. O'Hara came up the stairs with a pitcher of orange juice. He was wearing a chunky wool sweater and Stephanie wondered about asking him if he had another one. She suddenly felt cold. 'Waffles are on,' he said.

Stephanie looked up at him. 'No one's going to stop us, are they?'

'Who could stop us?' said O'Hara.

The Doctor leaned forward and switched off the small oldfashioned television. Rain was drumming on the roof of the converted stables. The cat stirred restlessly, wandering among the cars while the Doctor sat staring at the blank screen, elbows on the workbench.

Then he reached down and picked up the black envelope. He turned it over and wrote on it with what looked like a fountain pen. The pale ink had a faint luminous glow.

He wrote in big motions of the hand. Three letters.

Ace.

7.

Even in the final light of the day the carpets had a jewelled brilliance. They were spread across the clean stone floor of the shop and displayed on wooden frames in the cobbled courtyard outside. Most of them were traditional Islamic designs but there were some of the newer carpets from nations to the north and east. Woven among the abstract patterns on these were helicopters, rocket launchers and lovingly rendered automatic weapons, the new icons of the Middle East.

Ace lifted a gla.s.s from the pewter tray sitting beside her on the old wooden bench. The gla.s.s was almost too hot to hold. She blew into it to cool the ada gayi ada gayi, then set it aside. There was a chrome digital clock inset high among the thousandyearold stones of the shop's walls. Miss David had been gone almost ten minutes. She was in the warehouse across the courtyard from the shop, conducting certain negotiations. Ace scratched idly at an insect bite on her knee. Her skin was already a deep brown after a week travelling up and down the coast. She eased off one of her cheap plastic sandals and studied the dirt on her blistered toes. She took the other sandal off and pulled a rucksack from under the bench. In the outer pocket of the pack she had an envelope full of doc.u.ments and a German armysurplus life jacket with a compressedair cylinder attached for rapid inflation. In the big inner pocket there was a plastic litre bottle of the local mineral water, half a dozen computer disks, some communication cables and a hand grenade. Down the rear of the rucksack, in a concealed pouch behind the armstraps, there was a second, slimmer envelope. A black envelope.

Ace eased the sandals in beside the water bottle then splayed her bare feet out on the cool tiled floor.

Outside, in the streets below the shop, there were the sounds of cars and teenagers laughing. Someone walked by with a ghetto blaster and Ace could hear the steady pulsing beat of a familiar song. Then the music was gone, lost under the battering thunder of a UN gunship moving through the sky over the city. The carpets that surrounded Ace gave the ancient room a curiously dead acoustic. The sound of the helicopter thudded dustily all around her for a moment then faded. Ace stirred her tea and the spoon rang with a clear note against the side of the gla.s.s. The note rang in her mind. Ace's hearing and vision had taken on a strange clarity after the sleepless nights travelling. Now she watched the big copter, standing at a window carved out of the stone wall, a box of bright flowers on the sill by her elbows. The gunship was descending in the sky over Antalya, heading out to sea to rendezvous with one of the aircraft carriers. Even at this distance Ace recognized it as an Odin, a robotcontrolled drone. The Odin could strafe enemy positions while its pilot and navigator hung in sensory isolation in harnesses in a control station five hundred kilometres away. As the helicopter faded to a speck in the distance the sea breeze rose again and carried fragments of an old Western pop song up from the street to the open window.

'My eyes are just holograms.'

The music moved on. Ace sat on the bench in the growing twilight of the carpet shop, sipping sage tea and listening to the cadence of the street noise change. Evening was giving way to night. Through the window she could see over the stone walls of the Old Town to Karaali Park and, beyond that, the harbour. White and grey warships floated on the intense, deepening blue of the Mediterranean. Cargo copters and gunships floated down from the sky and settled on them like dragonflies.

Miss David came back into the shop folding a rug she'd taken from one of the frames outside. She set it on a table by the cash register and turned to Ace. 'They'll see you now.'

Ace cinched her rucksack shut and followed the woman, walking barefoot across the rough cobbles of the courtyard.

'Their main concern, not surprisingly, is that they will be paid.'

It was cold in the warehouse and it smelled of spice. Ace's eyes were having trouble adjusting to the dim interior after the brilliant sunlight outside. Miss David stood beside Ace, not bothering trying to conceal her contempt for the men in the room. They stood or sat on the wooden crates that filled the front section of the small building. Their clothes were counterfeits of Western designer jeans and T-shirts. There were six of them, all in their late twenties or thirties. They were mercenaries, Kurds who had been displaced by warfare since their early childhood. The fourwheeldrive vehicle they'd arrived in was parked at the back of the warehouse, just inside the mechanical wings of the folding garage doors. It was a Suzuki with what looked like a modification for mounting twin fiftycalibre machine guns over the front windscreen. The two Kurdish leaders were calling themselves Ma.s.soud and Dfewar. Ace didn't necessarily believe that these were their real names. It wasn't going to be that kind of operation.

'They would like some form of advance, or at least some sign that payment is guaranteed.' Miss David looked like she would spit. 'My advice to you is just tell them to go to h.e.l.l.'

But Ace was already kneeling on the floor, opening her rucksack. One of the grey plastic cables fell on to the dirt floor and the Kurd named Dfewar instantly picked it up for her. He brushed it off and Ace gave him the other cables and the threeandahalfinch floppies. Dfewar was the technical expert. Ace didn't foresee any problems with him. The other leader, the man called Ma.s.soud, remained sitting on a box of carpets and chainsmoked Egyptian cigarettes, picking flakes of tobacco off his lips, occasionally looking at Ace and smiling politely.

Ace got up from the floor, brushing the dust off her knee. Some of the men averted their eyes. Not Ma.s.soud. He watched her closely as she moved and Ace suddenly found herself unpleasantly aware of the bare flesh of her arms and legs, the band of skin exposed by her knotted shirt. Gooseflesh p.r.i.c.kled on her in the warehouse chill.

The att.i.tude of Turks towards women was beginning to change under the reforms of President Erel, but the Kurds were a culture exiled within a culture. They held on to their traditional att.i.tudes; it was about all they had left. Some of these men might not take kindly to accepting commands from a woman. If she was going to work with them effectively as a team she'd have to break the ice. Ma.s.soud was the weapons specialist; he'd be handling the explosives on their errand. It shouldn't be hard to establish some common ground.

Ace reached inside her rucksack again and felt for the plasticized antislip surface of the hand grenade. Designed for use with sweating hands. Ace's hand was dry as it closed over the grenade. She pulled it out. A grey egg shape with Korean script and a barcode on the flattened top. It looked like a designer softdrink can, except for the warning label, a favourite of Ace's. Detonate Near Enemy. Detonate Near Enemy. Ace tested the weight of the grenade in her hand for a moment, then casually lobbed it across to Ma.s.soud, sitting on his crate in the warehouse shadows. Ace knew he would catch the grenade, look at it with approval, then perhaps look up at her and smile. Then she would walk over and join him. They'd inspect the grenade together, perhaps have a technical discussion translated by Miss David. Mutual respect would break the ice. Then everything would be all right. Ace tested the weight of the grenade in her hand for a moment, then casually lobbed it across to Ma.s.soud, sitting on his crate in the warehouse shadows. Ace knew he would catch the grenade, look at it with approval, then perhaps look up at her and smile. Then she would walk over and join him. They'd inspect the grenade together, perhaps have a technical discussion translated by Miss David. Mutual respect would break the ice. Then everything would be all right.