"We only have the one number."

"That can't be true!"

"We only have the one number!"

"What about her bank? Call her bank, call her lawyer!"

She shook her head, her eyes full of fear. "We only have the one number, I'm sorry. Security here-"

"Is very d.a.m.n tight but very d.a.m.n poor!"

And what were his alternatives now?

That, at least, was one question with a perfectly clear answer: he had no alternatives. He was trapped.

DAVID FORD'S JOURNAL: ONE I have never been so scared in my life, so confused in my life, so apprehensive in my life. I'd take mood regulators but they're out of supply, and anyway, I can't afford to lose whatever pitiful edge I may have.

The clinic is full of guns, and I have been issued a weapon. It's a compact thing, a Beretta. Can I use it? I don't know, I've never shot a gun in my life.

I tell myself that I don't know enough to matter, that I'd never need to use the gun or the cyanide, but then I look into the well of my own mind, and I know that there is amnesia there, and suspect that a skilled interrogator could break it. Psychosomatic amnesia is nothing more than a refusal to access certain memories, which remain intact beneath the surface.

How, without Mrs. Denman, do I repair my broken cla.s.smates, not to mention find them in the first place? There isn't any literature on the induction of psychosis-at least, in the public domain. Probably reams of it in the cla.s.sified world.

I am keeping up as best I can with outside events, but communications are sporadic. For example, the Internet has been intermittent for days and so far cell phone coverage has not returned since this morning. Given that they're so entangled with the Internet, landlines are unreliable. In the past, they survived all but the most extreme catastrophes. No more.

In a world going out of control, an organization like this is highly vulnerable. We are suffering every kind of shortage, including drugs. For example, we have no atypical antipsychotics left. No clozapine, no risperidone, no nothing. Because of the youth of most of our patients, the lack of Risperdal is particularly distressing. We have Xanax, but that's hardly adequate.

Many of the patients I have met display very structured, relentlessly typical symptoms. They're like actors who have been captured by their roles. I suppose that this is induced psychosis.

It's not that they all exhibit the same symptoms or should receive the same diagnosis-but there is a strange by-the-book quality about them, as if they'd stepped right out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

As conditions deteriorate, what do I do with patients who I know to be imprisoned by artificially induced mental illness? What if the death of Mrs. Denman means that we will never get the information we need to draw people out of their psychoses?

It's late, and auroras are appearing, even this far south. The sun must be literally blazing for this to happen. They are a bizarre emerald green and flickering like a broken lightbulb. Across the room, the shadows are deep, and I dread going through them to get to my bedroom.

And why should I? I don't sleep, how can I?

My head is on the block. I await the stroke of the axe.

3.

MACK THE CAT.

Michael Graham-who had called himself Mack the Cat ever since he came to be nicknamed "el Gato" by his colleagues at the Mexico City station-drew on the notepad that the doctors had agreed not to look at-but, of course, did ... as he expected them to. If he was supposed to be crazy, he needed to exhibit symptoms, and doctors loved drawings.

He was encouraged by the ease and success of the Denman operation, which had trapped these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like a maze full of rats. She'd been a fool to be so controlling that their whole operation depended on her.

Buried in this place as he was, it was easy to forget that he had been a.s.signed to the Acton Clinic, not committed to it. He was a specialist in stealth, and this was not only a place of interest for his superior, General Wylie, it was packed with exotic security. So he'd been given a false past that would allow him entry, and sent here to find what the general needed.

He tried to be professional and dispa.s.sionate, doing his work with clarity and efficiency. But he could not help hating these arrogant people. Filthy half-breeds all, chosen by that obscene fool Herbert Acton to represent the common man.

The common man was the G.o.dd.a.m.n problem. Blood is what counts, and this was the time to save the best human blood. Let the common man die; he'd shown himself to be a weak, ignorant fool.

The Acton Clinic had looked easy to deal with, but this was among the most difficult situations he had ever confronted, and despite the success of the Denman operation, he was still having trouble making progress understanding exactly what they were doing here-and therein, of course, lay the key. They had a means of survival, or believed that they did. But what was it?

Every night he got an increasingly urgent demand for that information from General Wylie.

He sat beneath the apple tree that grew near the enormous oak at the edge of the grounds, his back against the sweating bricks of the wall, in the shade of the oak and the scent of apple blossom.

The sky was a shimmering electric yellow, and last night the auroras had been intense. So the sense of urgency around here was right. Time was running out.

He was supposed to be not only crazy but dangerous, so he had a minder, Sam Taylor. He sat under the tree drawing a glyph of a tzitzimitl tzitzimitl, a skeleton demon of the stars that governed the sun at times like this. Death star. Everyone in the world by now was well aware of the fact that this present disaster had begun to unfold during the night of December 21, 2012, and people were obsessed with the Mayan and Aztec religions, and with their calendars and their prophecies. So he was just another stupid patient, chewing the fad.

A lot of people had suspected that Herbert Acton had possessed some sort of secret beyond his uncanny skills as a speculator. He had been approached by occultist J. P. Morgan and by John D. Rockefeller, by representatives of Presidents Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and the Masonic master Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all without any results. Also by leaders of half a dozen of the truly important human organizations-the Thule Society, the Society of the Illuminated, the New Knights Templar, the Vatican-and representatives of the best and truest human bloodlines, especially the Seven Families to whom this world belongs.

He must have been offered astonishing rewards-but he would have none of it. He lived on his estate and did his business and ignored the world around him. When everyone was sending gold to Germany, seeking to save the bloodlines of the best people from the catastrophe, Acton had spent his time a.s.sembling his collection of mongrels and irrelevant, disposable people. After the war, when money had been desperately needed by the Germans to establish colonies in South America to provide shelter for those who had given their loyalty to Hitler, he had funded the ridiculous intelligence service of the Israelis, adding immeasurably to the expense of protecting what remained of the great bloodlines.

Now the children of the collection of mutts Acton had a.s.sembled were believed to possess his secrets, and therefore quite possibly the means to survive the coming catastrophe, while the people who mattered did not.

The intensification of the auroras last night, the increasing deterioration of electronics, even the bizarre color of the sky right now-it all suggested to Mack that the climax was unfolding.

General Wylie, commanding from the Blue Ridge Redoubt seventy miles from here in West Virginia, obviously agreed with him, thus the increasing urgency on the radio.

Ma.s.sive efforts had been made, whole cities built underground in Arizona, in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the Black Forest and the North York Moors, in the Gran Chaco in Uruguay and the Maule Region of Chile. A hundred thousand people had been tagged for access to these refuges. All well and good, but something more had to be done to insure survival, something beyond present knowledge.

Suddenly, Sam was there. "Doing okay?"

"I'm plotting my escape."

"Ah." He looked at the drawing. "Who's that this time?"

"G.o.d of destruction."

"Pretty."

He finished his drawing and then, staring straight up at Sam, ate the paper.

Mack was just getting up to follow Sam inside when he heard a very surprising and very interesting sound, the whine of the main gate sliding back on its hinges.

He noticed that Sam came a couple of steps closer to him. Could this be police, perhaps? If they still existed, that might be inconvenient.

A Mercedes came nosing slowly into the estate. A new victim being brought in? That seemed unlikely at this juncture. To get here through all the chaos in the world took significant resources. Even the rich were more likely to stash their crazies in the attic, he would think.

The car proceeded up the long drive with the grim majesty of a hea.r.s.e. No, this would not be a garden-variety crazy. This might well be a crown jewel, a member of the hidden leadership, someone whose knowledge had not been obscured by artificial psychosis-that is to say, someone who was in possession of their information and therefore useful.

So there were perhaps now two, David Ford and this new one. And, of course, MacNamara, that b.a.s.t.a.r.d. He knew a lot, that one, Mack had always sensed it.

He glanced across at Sam Taylor, who had returned to his bench and his thermos of coffee. Yesterday, Sam had been the victim of a little sleight of hand. He'd never seen Mack trigger the mine with his cell phone. The towers were out of commission, but the radio receiver on the mine was only a few hundred feet away. One of the general's men had buried it two days ago.

So far, there was no suspicion of the CIA officer who'd gone mad in Mexico and started sacrificing drug mules to the old G.o.ds.

He lay back and gazed up into the spray of pale pink flowers that crowded the apple boughs, putting on a show of nonchalance. Above and behind the tree, he could see the top of the wall. The gleam of the new razor wire winked down.

He heard the car's engine stop, and he knew that it was about to disgorge its occupant. And, indeed, one of the rear doors opened a little. The driver got out and came around.

A girl emerged, tall, unfolding herself and shaking her shoulders and her hair as if today's sunlight was her first.

She was auburn-haired, tanned, and-well, was the word "ineffable?" There was a sense of air in the way she moved, and yet something about her said that she was used to being in control of her life and her world.

She did not look insane, or even particularly troubled, which he found most interesting.

She paused for a moment before the great facade of the mansion, put her hands on her hips and gazed at it. Well, it was normal enough for a person to be impressed by the row of columns, the red brick of the facade, the imposing doors ... for a normal person, in any case.

Then, determined and yet hesitant-a complicated human being, he saw that at once-she went inside.

He needed a surname, and right now, but the secrecy of their operation was so extreme this might be hard to obtain. In fact, the secrecy was so deep that these people, who had been together in a childhood cla.s.s run by Charles Light, the son of Bartholomew, were in a state of amnesia more profound even than the CIA could induce.

They were not insane, but they believed that they were, and that that was security at its extraordinary best. was security at its extraordinary best.

He watched the newbie, who had reappeared quickly after her entry into the building. She went off toward the gate, a curving pour of very feminine milk.

She stopped before the enormous iron bars. Nurse Cross strode across the deep green of the lawn and conducted her back to the building. The newbie's sobs tumbled through the air.

Was this just a patient? this just a patient?

As Beverly Cross tried to get her to enter the building, she shook her off and stepped out along the brick terrace that spread so elegantly beneath the front of the structure.

She took out a cigarette. She puffed, he watched. Puff, white smoke, hold the cigarette aside, puff, white smoke, hold the cigarette aside.

And then, quite suddenly, he was surrounded by the color red. All around him, a rose-red haze. Sunset? No, something else. He tried to wave it away, but found that he couldn't move his arms.

That scared him and he cried out, whereupon he felt warmth on his forehead and a voice, young, female, said, "You're fine, Mack, you've just been finishing."

The taste of rubber from the mouth guard caused him to realize that he'd been in shock therapy.

"How do you feel, Mack?" the nurse asked.

As he sucked in breath, the room appeared around him, all tile and dismal machines. Across the way, a hydro tub moaned and splashed. The head of Glenda Futterman bobbed back and forth, as frantic as an agitated waterbird of some sort.

"Mack?"

"I'm coming out of it!" He gazed around at the room. "I'm sorry. I thought I was ... outside."

"Earlier you were."

"Did I dream about a girl? A beautiful girl?"

"She's a new intake. Very real. You saw her come in."

When he tried to get off the table, Dr. Ford said, "Not yet, guy."

It was so d.a.m.nable to have to endure their ridiculous treatments, but what could he do? This was the deepest possible cover he could create for himself, and the danger that he might be discovered was too great. So he endured the stupid indignity of taking electroshock treatment that he did not need.

The treatment made him forget a lot of things, sometimes too many things. He kept careful notes hidden in his room, but they might eventually be found, he knew that. So speed was essential. He needed to complete his mission, which had two parts. First, find out whatever was hidden here so well, so that it could be taken and used by the people who mattered. Then, the pleasant part: destroy this place.

4.

THE LADY OF THE STARRY SKIRT.

External conditions were deteriorating far more rapidly than David had imagined possible, and the problems this was causing forced him to put his effort to unravel the mysteries of this place aside for the moment. The blackened bodies of Aubrey Denman and her failed protector had been given a quick burial at the end of the estate's formal garden.

He went to his windows, gazing out across the green lawn to the two rough mounds of earth. Close to them, an apple tree bloomed. It reminded him of something, but not something pleasant.

"The apple blossom is the color of ..." What? It was blank, so he left it. But it was disquieting.

A little farther along, an oak spread spring leaves, their pale new green at once rea.s.suring and heartbreaking.

If you did not raise your eyes, all appeared normal and settled and safe. Look up to the top of the perimeter wall, though, and you saw that razor wire. By reading the clinic's activity logs, he'd discovered that Aubrey Denman had not been candid with him about much of anything, and certainly not the security situation, which was far worse than she had claimed-or, it would seem, known.

The razor wire was there because there had been an incursion from the town. People had tried to come over the wall. They'd been forced back and additional defensive measures had been taken, including the acquisition of some very powerful new guns, and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Look past the wire, though, and a magnificent view of Raleigh County unfolded, the rolling hills brushed now with palest green. Only if you looked closely would you see a blackened house here or there.

The sky was now always that odd color, no longer the blue it had been. Really, not a color, more of an absence of color, a steely whiteness during the day, flickering auroras at night.

The lawn sprinklers came on, clicking smartly. It was a sound from childhood, which the child in him found rea.s.suring, he supposed. But where did they get the water? he wondered. Hopefully, from a well on the grounds.

Katie Starnes's voice came over the intercom. "The new intake's in prep."

"Bring in her chart, please."

When he saw the name on her chart, he was stunned to frozen stillness. He kept his voice as calm as he could.