SATELLITE INTERCEPT.

TRANS00INTERCEPTGEOSAT231121554PRIORITY05-32CLASS5EYESONLY.

WEBSQUIRT INTERCEPT AS FOLLOWS:.

(NAMES AND OTHER IDENTIFYING INFORMATION HAVE BEEN DELETED PER NSA REG 1037459324).

1: Nicole.

2: (pause) You. How'd you get access to this line?

1: I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.

2: Did you get the mask I sent you? The dealer assured me it was authentic first century.

1: Nicole.

2: Look, I'm in the middle of something.

1: Was that a scream?

2: Of course not.

1: What are you up to, Nicole?

2: You have full access to my database. An assistant translates our reports into Aramaic. But if you don't think I'm being accommodating enough, you're welcome to come in person and see for yourself.

1: You mock me?

2: (pause) No.

1: Your brother is concerned about you. He says you're avoiding him. Secretive.

2: All our goals are the same.

1: (a chuckle) Please. Your goals have always been your own. But I assume survival is still one of them.

2: Oh, is that a threat, Daddy? Hello?

END END END TRANS00INTERCEPTGEOSAT231DATE END END END.

28.

NICOLE.

Nicole liked to work out her strategies with chess.

She closed her book and rose from the divan. She crossed to the table where the board sat. Its squares were sheesham and ebonized boxwood.

Right now, there was a game in progress. A very important game.

Her set was antique-well, it was more than an antique-it was ancient. An original 12th century collection of Lewis chessmen, given to her by her father. He'd discovered them in Scotland. She smiled inwardly. If the British Museum knew another complete set existed, they'd have a stroke.

She loved the medieval human figures, such a far cry from the abstracted Stanton pieces most of the world now used. No, these were real chessmen-the queen, cradling her face in dismay. The mounted knights with their swords and Templar shields. The bishops clutching their miters and bibles. The rugged castle tower. She wondered whether her father liked them because of their bulging eyes and sad faces-so much like his own.

She enjoyed studying the game's history as well. Its lineage began in 6th century India, before expanding into Persia, China and Japan. When the Moorish conquest of Spain brought a Babylonian version to Europe, medieval Church fathers were scandalized. They quickly converted the pagan icons into proper Catholic figures. Except the serfs, of course. Who gave a shit about cannon fodder?

Most of all, though, she loved the Queen. Before the board's "conversion," there'd been no female figures. How strange that a church so violently patriarchal would replace the King's vizier, originally the weakest member on the board, with a woman-let alone transform her into a superpower. Maybe it was due to the rising importance of the Virgin Mary in church doctrine. But Nicole suspected that, on a deeper level, humanity was finally beginning to sense where the real strength lay between the sexes.

The King was a figurehead, trapped by the burdens of office. He could only move slowly, carefully, one square at a time. The Queen had no such impediments. She could act without regard to opinion, rules of conduct or even the rule of law. She was the real mover and shaker, putting the right words into the King's mouth, kissing his cheek, and acting deferential.

That's how Nicole preferred to operate, in the shadow of the crown. Let her brother play alpha male. Let her deluded father try to control her from afar. Her plans had already been set into motion, in the dark. Her dear, dear family would realize this far too late.

She sat down at the board, examining the positions. She sighed. She'd been forced to sacrifice a pawn without any improvement in her position. Poor Donner.

She felt a quiet rustle inside. She could see why Elise had married him. His unpretentious manner and off-kilter good looks made him infinitely more tantalizing than her regular boy toys. And she'd appreciated how he'd kept her on her toes. He hadn't been lulled by either her beauty or her bullshit. She'd relished the challenge of sparring with someone on her own level. She'd have liked him in her bed.

There'd been something else. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. Maybe it was the weird combination of jaded street smarts and boy scout morality. She didn't know. But it had been the first time in a long while she'd been unhappy about dispatching someone. But, after all, queens didn't mate with pawns. And had Donner figured out what she was really up to-Jesus, it would have been a disaster.

She toyed with the queen figure and wondered how she'd feel once she'd achieved her goals. In the past, her victories had brought brief elation followed by an annoying ennui that required some new challenge to suppress. Like Hannibal, like Alexander, she was only interested in the act of conquest, not governing the conquered. "When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain," she breathed quietly, "he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer."

What challenges could possibly come after this?

And there was another sadness. She had rooks, bishops, knights, serfs... but no king. No one to share the glory with. She was alone, isolated by her unique nature.

She thought again of her father and all the advantages he'd bequeathed her. All but one. And for that one thing denied, she hated him to the core of her being. But she would soon seize what he withheld. And then she would greatly enjoy watching him die by her own hand.

When she was sixteen, she'd looked at her classmates and noticed how different their thoughts were from her own. She'd even wondered whether perhaps she was broken, even insane. Luckily, she'd realized that to be unburdened by empathy was an incredible advantage. It made her thinking clear, her strategies sound. It protected her from entanglements.

She looked across the board again. Besides the queen, the other players-the knights, bishops, even the kings-when you got down to it, they all were pawns.

29.

DONNER / ARMITAGE.

Iawoke in a basement to the sound of chanting.

Wiring and conduits threaded through the beams overhead. The stone walls glistened with sweat, the mortar a mildew green. Crates were stacked in piles everywhere on the cement floor. A rust-eaten staircase ascended to whatever lay above.

The chanting came from there. Upstairs. I couldn't make out the words.

I tried singing along, making up nonsense words, and it made me laugh, and that made me cry a little. My throat was an ash can.

I shifted in my wheelchair. Pain, pulling. An IV in my arm. I traced it back to a bag of saline hanging from a pole on the back of the chair.

What was this place?

Suddenly I was breathless. I closed my eyes, trying to stay calm. Finally I evened out my rasping. My heart fluttered in its cage.

Something was wrong. I was weak. I looked down and lost my breath again. My legs were twigs, swimming in old flannel pajamas. I was a stick figure, desiccated, withered- Somehow I'd become a scarecrow.

I ran fingers over my face. My cheekbones jutted like broken shelves of rock. Dear God, what had happened to me?

More chanting.

"Hey!" I screamed, my voice cracking. "Can't a guy get a little quiet?"

In response, footfalls thumped heavily. A metal supply cabinet in the deepest shadows of the room swung forward on unseen hinges. A hidden entrance. How dramatic. A mannish form stepped half into the light, rendered in cartoon shades of black and white. He saw me, scowled, and vanished again.

Hey, that scowl looked familiar.

Think, damn it. What's the last thing you remember?

No good. My scarecrow's head was stuffed with straw. I needed to get a new brain from the Wizard. I'd go to the Emerald City and spit into the receptacle. They'd let me in.

There! Wait!

A building. A building that couldn't decide what shape it wanted to be. And Maggie. Maggie was a pip. Even if she wasn't real. But I'd held her heart in my hands. How could I hold Maggie's heart?

The supply cabinet opened again. This time it was a nurse. Sandy, that was her name. A walking cliche in her starched uniform and rubber-soled shoes. Her phony pig-smile made me shudder. She was trying to decided whether to be afraid of me or not.

"You're the new record holder," she said finally.

"What... ?"

"Even Jesus only came back once."

She took the handles of my chair and pushed me across the cement floor toward the secret entrance behind the cabinet.

Hey, maybe I'm a spy.

We traveled through a tunnel hewn from black bedrock. I could see the stone, the raw earth, the make-shift support beams. Low-intensity arc lights snapped on before us then went dark once we'd passed, giving me only strobe-like glimpses of the tunnel.

"Part of the Underground Railroad," said Sandy. "Then, in the 1920s, a bootlegger's tunnel. Now we use it."

The chanting faded. Now I could only hear the moisture as it condensed on the ceiling. A drop hit me. It felt cool on my forehead.

We approached another portal, a rusted hatch in a cement casement. From behind it came new sounds. Smooth saxophone gyrations. Jazz? Something by Billie Holiday. Much better than the chanting.

The nurse took us through the hatch, ramming my wheels over the bottom lip and shooting all kinds of pain through me.

Rusted cables crisscrossed the space, banded into slack bundles like atrophied muscles. A control panel sat behind a mesh cage, its gauges dark, its levers frozen by corrosion. Against this background of decay, the cherry desk and oriental rug were startling.

Billie finished and it was Charlie Parker's turn. "Relaxin' At Camarillo," about being committed to an asylum for his drinking and drugging.

The man behind the desk clicked on the bronze clerk's lamp and chuckled as shock scrubbed my face clean. "Hello, buddy boy."

Armitage. The one who'd blackmailed me into... what?

Behind him, Broken Nose and Jelly Legs, in their dark suits and glowing cream ties, were doing their best impression of a wall. I wondered where the third one had gone. The Cheshire Rat. Broken Nose still looked like he wanted to poke me in the teeth, but Jelly Legs' expression was strangely warm. The men wore carnations. Fashion-plate gangsters.

Sandy rolled me to the desk. Armitage looked crisp in his turtleneck and pressed slacks. But there was mustard on his sweater. I still couldn't figure his contradictions.

I realized my brain was working a little better.

Armitage picked up a pipe from the desk blotter and poked at the half-spent tobacco with his pinky. He seemed content to give me time to take everything in.

Then, all of a sudden-boom-a big chunk came back, in a single picture, like a slide dropped into a projector frame. Breaking into the lab. Finding Crandall. Nicole surprising us.

Dying.

The men straightened, seeing what was coming. They were too slow. I surged from the wheelchair at Armitage's face. The blow barely connected, glancing off his jaw. Its momentum spilled us both onto the rug. The muscle boys were ready to do damage, but Armitage raised a hand, chuckling grimly. I was no threat. I struggled onto my elbows, stunned by my weakness.

They dropped me back into the wheelchair. I was a sack of agony. They strap-cuffed my wrists to the arms of the chair.

I'd blown it, like an amateur. There wouldn't be a second chance.

Armitage settled back into his chair. "I see you're feeling better." He explored his tender chin. "Glad you don't have your full strength back."

"You'd be bleeding out on the carpet right now."

"Ooh," said Legs.

"That's gratitude for you," added Nose.

Armitage laughed. "He thinks I set him up. Don't you, Donner?"

I didn't know what to think. But I wasn't going to tell these pricks.