"There can be no carelessness. None. Maximum precautions will be taken to prevent any premature disclosure. There will be no second chance for anyone whose actions could compromise us all. All orders will be obeyed, without question, without argument."

"Chicken s.h.i.t," Nicky said again.

"Come here, Mr. McGraw," Persival said. "Over here. Stop there. Fine. Now turn and face the condemned." I was three feet from Persival, but I noted as I turned that Ahman's gun muzzle followed me like an empty steel eye socket.

Persival's voice deepened. "Dear G.o.d of wrath and mercy, take unto thy bosom this soldier of our faith and grant him eternal peace. We send him to thee now so that he will not further endanger the holy mission with which thou hast entrusted us, thy faithful soldiers in the army of justice. Amen."

His hand appeared in front of me, holding a slender automatic pistol with a long barrel. "Take it and shoot him in the head, please," Persival said. Same tone of voice as he would have said, "Have some more stew, please."

And the scenario was suddenly clear. I would shoot Nicky in the head with a blank, and my obedience would remove Persival's lingering suspicion of me, and Nicky would be frightened into being more careful next time. Two birds with one fake stone.

"It's ready to go," he said. "Just aim and fire." There was no great need to aim. Nicky was perhaps fifteen feet from me. If you aim a handgun with the same motion you use to point your finger at someone, if the barrel becomes your finger, you can hit a six-inch circle on the other side of the room ninety-nine out of a hundred times.

So I pointed and fired. It made an unimportant snapping sound. A dark spot appeared beside Nicky's nose, on his good cheek. It snapped his head back a little. He made a coughing sound and sagged down onto one knee, then rolled over backward and rolled down the slope. I moved forward to keep him in sight. He came to rest in dead branches, against a splintered trunk, his back to us. One leg jumped and quivered and vibrated for a few seconds and then subsided. He seemed to become visibly smaller.

The life had gone out of him, now and forever. Persival reached around and tugged the weapon out of my hand and moved back away from me. "Turn around, slowly." he said. This was not the scenario I had envisioned. I had imagined all of them crowding around me, Nicky included, whacking me on the back, welcoming me to the team.

Instead, Persival was chunking a magazine into the pistol. The slide had remained back after I had fired. So there had been just the one sh.e.l.l in the chamber. This man took no chances. They held weapons on me. Ahman had set his weapon aside and was collapsing an SX-70 Polaroid while Sammy examined the print as it developed. I recalled hearing that tantalizingly familiar sound of the SX-70 a fraction of a second after I had fired and killed Nicky.

They were all curious about me, all waiting for my reaction. I could read a certain righteous satisfaction on their faces. I was fighting nausea and hoping I hadn't turned so gray-green they would suspect how close I was. Nausea, and a tendency of the world around me to fade in and out. Killing is such an ancient taboo. Only freaks ever adjust to killing people they have known and talked to, except when it is to save their own lives. Discipline enables uniformed people to kill unseen strangers. Children can imitate something seen on television, but the aftershock can be deadly. I had killed before, and it has never ceased being a wrenching psychic trauma. As I sought for some reaction which would make me reasonably acceptable to these people, suddenly I lost control of my acquired ident.i.ty.

I stared at Persival. He was trickery. He was death. He was insane devotion to an incomprehensible cause. He was a shooter of little silver pellets into the necks of the lovely and innocent.

"You dirty, murderous, crazy son of a b.i.t.c.h!" I said in a low and shaky voice.

He raised the reloaded weapon and aimed carefully from eight feet away at a spot on my forehead. I knew where the slug would strike. The spot felt round and icy.

I was convinced I was about to join Nicky. He knew he was going to die, and I could find no better last words than his.

"Chicken s.h.i.t," I said.

"Any questions, McGraw?"

"There's nothing I want to know that you can answer." I was watching the trigger finger. As soon as I saw pressure whiten it, I was going to dive for his ankles and try to come up with the weapon before Sammy and Ahman could blow me away.

"Any last statement, fisherman?"

"I will state that if you don't make the first shot good, I'll get my hands on you before you can fire that thing again."

He looked at me for a long time, and then of the weapon until it slowly lifted the barrel pointed at the sky.

"I think my first hunch was correct, Brother Thomas. I think we can train you and find a use for you. I think you can become very valuable."

I could feel the tension go out of all of us. Deep exhalations.

He put the weapon away. He turned to Sammy and reached for the picture. After Persival had examined it, he motioned me closer and handed it to me. I was on the right, in fuzzy focus, enough of the left side of my face showing to make me recognizable. The barrel of the pistol was half raised to the perpendicular, the ineradicable habit pattern of people used to firing pistols and revolvers. Nicky was near the left margin of the print, in sharp focus. He was going down, but his knee had not yet touched. His head was tilted from impact, with the tiny death mark visible next to his nose.

Handing it back, I said, "is this some kind of leverage?"

"It is, Brother Thomas, but not the way you think. Call it a verification of my instinct, useful when I go after permission for what I have in mind."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Ahman, arrange burial. Full roster except, of course, for Barry down on the gate. Have Haris read the service. I am going for a walk with Mr. McGraw."

Eleven.

PERSIVAL DID not walk well. He moved slowly and seemed to have trouble with his balance. The sky was turning gray, and the wind was cooler. We walked to the end of the small plateau. He seated himself on the trunk of a large pine which had fallen at the edge of the slope.

He lowered himself carefully. With a wry Lincolnesque smile he said, "I have what the young call bad wheels. I was the guest for a memorable period of time of an amiable old party named Somoza. He had my legs broken."

I sat astride the log about eight feet from him. "This," he said, "is the ancient definition of the best kind of education, the pupil on one end of a log and the teacher on the other."

"What do I-"

He stopped me with a raised hand. "Just let me ramble a bit. Answer me when I ask you a question. You would seem to know small boats and know the sea. And with your background, no one would question your interest in purchasing a certain sort of small boat."

"I don't want to use my search money for a boat."

"You are talking trivia, and when you do, you bore me."

"I came here to find my kid. Maybe that's boring to you, but it's not to me."

"McGraw, you are going to have to learn how to accept discipline."

"Mr. Persival, you can't run me the same way you run those people of yours. I'll answer you when you ask questions, and I'll answer the questions you don't ask. I talk when I please."

He looked me over. He was patently exasperated.

"Brother Thomas, can you swim?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad to hear that. A lot of commercial fishermen can't. Do you know how to use scuba gear?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what a limpet mine is?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell me? I want to be sure you know."

"It's a mine that sticks to what it is going to blow up. It can be magnetic, or covered with stick.u.m. It can have a timer or be blown up by a transmitter."

"Very good! You've worked around explosive charges?"

"Enough to be careful."

"Suppose I gave you the task of fastening a limpet mine to the hull of one of those new tankers which carry frozen liquefied gas. How would you go about it?"

I recalled what he had said about the boat purchase. It was enough of a clue. "In the area where the tanker is, I'd get hold of a commercial fishing boat, small. One-man operation, with an inboard or outboard. I'd dress right for the climate and the place. I'd fish the area, catch fish, sell the catch. I'd keep track of the winds and tides, and when everything was right, I'd have a breakdown and get carried up against the hull of the ship, maybe forward where the flare would hide me from the weather decks. Maybe if I had a little electric outboard let down through the hull, and concealed somehow, I could count on drifting to exactly where I would have to be. The breakdown should be about dusk. I'd place the mine, arm it, then get my breakdown fixed and get out of there."

"Suppose you were stopped and searched by a harbor patrol?"

"I could explain the electric outboard. The limpet would have to look like something else."

"Such as?"

I shrugged. "Maybe a mushroom anchor, threaded so you could unscrew the shank."

I could see that he liked that. "I believe I was right in deciding we can find a use for you, Brother McGraw."

"Not blowing up a ship. I won't do that."

"Whether or not you will do it or won't do it is not the point at issue right now. It would be a considerable time in the future. Things can be worked out, I'm sure."

And I could certainly guess how they'd be worked out. I had been wrong about Nicky. But this was a certainty. The little limpet mine would have a trigger and a timing device and there would be careful instruction on how to set it. But the act of placing it against metal would activate it. I wasn't one of the true believers. I was expendable.

"I don't hold with killing people that never did anything to me. That's terrorism."

"Terrorism? Beware of tag words. General Sherman was a terrorist. The Continental Con gress was a terrorist society. How about Pancho Villa, air strikes on cities, the torpedoing of ocean liners? Beware of semantics."

I played dumb. "What do you mean? I've got nothing against the Jews."

"Semantics, Brother, not Semitics. The study of words. In World War Two, the Londoners worshiped their heroic young men who risked heavy flak to drop bombs on Germany and despised the degenerate fiends in human form who flew over, risking heavy flak, to drop bombs on English cities. Begin calls Arafat a terrorist. Begin led a squad which blew up a British hotel, killing scores of people, when he was a young so-called terrorist."

A light rain began to fall, steeply slanted by the increasing wind. Persival got up. "We'll go into all this, Brother Thomas, after you have a chance to hear Sister Elena Marie and think about the message she brings us. Incidentally, you will have been moved by now into one of the travel trailers. T-Six. The green-and-white one. You'll be much more comfortable."

"Is it okay to ask if I can have my money back now?"

"No. It isn't acceptable to ask at this time."

"Do you know when I can ask, Mr. Persival?"

"You will be told. Every effort is being made to locate your daughter. I want you to know that. While you are here, records are being searched."

We were walking back in the light rain, at his pace.

"Is it okay to mention I never had breakfast this morning?"

"You have the run of the place, Brother. Stay up on the flats. Do not head down the hill at any point. I am sure you can locate the kitchen."

A small group was straggling ahead of us toward the buildings. Chuck, Nena, Stella, Sammy, Haris, Ahman, and Alvor, all but Alvor in the short white robes which looked like smocks except for the monk's hoods attached to them. The women and Haris wore the hoods pulled up, and Haris carried a book.

"I see the service is over," Persival said. "They dig a fast grave."

"It was all prepared," he said. He smiled at me in a fatherly way. He laid his hand on my shoulder. "Actually, Brother, there were two. Just in case."

"In case I couldn't shoot him?"

He took his hand away. "Let's say it was just in case."

I checked out my green-and-white travel trailer. It was an old Scottie, sitting on cement blocks. It had recently been cleaned. There were some water droplets on the flat surfaces. There were two folded blankets, no sheets. There was a tiny gas heater, a hand-pumped water supply and a Porta Potti. My duffel bag was on the foot of the bed. There was no way to lock it. I had the uneasy feeling that Nicky had lived here in this constricted s.p.a.ce, had curled his long bulk on the bed that was built across the rear end of the trailer. I kept seeing that Polaroid shot. It was curiously more vivid than what I had actually seen.

I went looking for the kitchen. The steel warehouse building was tightly secured. I came upon Alvor and asked him. He did not answer. He merely pointed. It was the only frame building in the group of structures, about twelve feet by twenty, with unfinished open studding on the inside. There was a kerosene stove, an old kerosene refrigerator, two plank tables on sawhorses, and some unmatched chairs and camp stools. The utensils and plates and cups were on open shelves made of planks and bricks. There was a big blackboard at the other end of the room.

I found b.u.t.ter and eggs, scrambled four eggs, and sat at the plank table and ate them. Barry came in, relieved of guard duty, and smiled at me. "Got everything you need, Brother?"

"This is fine, thanks."

"Want some coffee?"

"Thanks, yes."

He brought it over, as well as a cup for himself, and sat across from me. "Everybody gets tested, one way or other," he said.

"Sure."

"We all liked Nicky, but he was a f.u.c.k-off. You can't have your life depending on a f.u.c.k-off."

"I reckon so."

"Sorry it had to happen the way it did. Must of made you feel bad."

Barry hadn't been there when I lost my cool. The tone, the eyes in the dark face were innocently sympathetic. But he could have heard about it by now and could be faking to draw me out.

"I was a mite shook up," I said. "But when you come right down to it, I didn't really know him. Or any of you."

"You know me, Brother Thomas. And you know the other brothers and sisters. We your home, man. We all part of the same thing."

"How do you know I'm not like Nicky?"

"All it needs is Brother Persival saying you are part of it. That's all that matters. We all came up through the Church, but that don't mean everybody has to. You got family in the Church, that daughter, right?"

"Wherever she is."

"They looking for her. Don't worry."

"Is there any rule about taking a bath in the creek?"

"None at all. The best bath hole is upstream from the great big rocks, past the little trees. Take a towel off the line if there isn't one in your trailer."