After they shook hands once more, Jose and his two guards walked away, turning brave backs on Ari and the biathlon rifle. If Michael and Ari had wanted to take over the BGs, they could have done it right then. Instead, they climbed back through the window, Ari first, then Michael.

Michael turned to face the view through the dirty windowpane. He neither moved nor spoke, but the yellow wallboard began to sprout bunches of printed violets. The cardboard cartons first reappeared, then solidified. Last of all, the white shade replaced the dirty sheet. I could see Uncle Jim's garden through the unblocked strip of window below the edge of the shade. We were back.

"Do you know how you do that?" I said.

"Nah," Michael said. "Except I think about the place I want to go to. I wish I could learn more."

"Well, I'll ask my handler. Maybe we can find someone to teach you. NumbersGrrl only knows the theory behind it."

We trooped out of the room. Michael put the padlock back on the door and clicked it shut.

"By the way," Michael said. "Aunt Eileen knows all about this. She called school and told them I had a dentist appointment."

"You might have mentioned that earlier," I said. "I've been worrying for nothing."

"Sorry." He blushed and looked down at the floor, an ordinary kid at that moment. "Say, do you guys want breakfast? The stores won't be open yet."

"Go ask Aunt Eileen if there's enough."

Yes, it was a silly thing to ask, as I knew d.a.m.n well she'd cooked enough breakfast for all of us and more, but I wanted a moment alone with Ari to get his reaction. When Michael trotted off toward the kitchen, Ari knelt down by his sample case and began to unload the rifle.

"That was interesting," he said. "I've always wondered what it would be like to live in the Dark Ages."

"The young warlord selling one of his concubines, yeah," I said. "It gave me the creeps."

Ari put the bullets away in their box, then disjointed the rifle itself. He was just wrapping the pieces up when Aunt Eileen trotted in, wearing her turquoise capris with a pink blouse and, of course, the fuzzy pink slippers.

"Scrambled eggs and coffee cake," she announced.

"Sounds wonderful." Ari gave me a significant look. "Doesn't it?"

"Yeah," I said. "It sure does."

To keep peace in the family, I managed to get down a gla.s.s of orange juice, what amounted to a scrambled egg, and a chunk of cake with streusel topping along with my usual black coffee. The difficulty of eating so much shocked me. I had to force myself, one forkful at a time, to finish the coffee cake, even though it was delicious.

I could take solace in the amount of exercise we got that day, buying and boxing up the goods that Michael was trading for Lisa-Sophie. Our final stop was an auto supply store. While Ari and Michael went inside to buy a battery, I sat in a nearby coffee shop that offered free wifi and used my Agency laptop-and a double encryption program-to pick up e-mail.

NumbersGrrl had seen the video and read my report. She agreed with my guess that Belial had some sort of field-generating device that transported his consciousness across deviant levels.

"I've got no idea what it is," she wrote. "That's the problem. Let me ask one of my old professors at MIT. He knows I work for the government and won't ask too many awkward questions. BTW, I'm also guessing that if you destroy that field, he'll flip back to wherever he came from. I don't think it'll kill him, but I bet it would give him a h.e.l.luva shock."

Yeah, I thought, but he could just use his fancy device again and come right back-once he recovered. It occurred to me that I'd been throwing wards at his projections and shattering them. He'd probably felt enough of those shocks to be really p.i.s.sed at me. A sudden SAWM confirmed the guess.

By the time we returned to Aunt Eileen's, Brian had gotten home from school. He helped us carry the cartons down to the storage room.

"You know about all this?" I said to Brian.

"Oh, yeah," he said.

"You know the family rules, right?"

"'Course I do." He gave me a look of faint disgust. "Suppose I told someone about it. Think they'd believe me?"

"Not for a minute. Okay, I get it."

"Some secrets you can't help keeping."

This time I decided to revert to the Dark Ages myself and let the male persons handle the transaction without me. I sat at the kitchen table and watched Aunt Eileen, who stood by the counter and trimmed up the last of the season's asparagus.

"Ari knows what he's doing with guns, doesn't he?" Aunt Eileen asked. "I read somewhere that all Israeli men have to serve in the Army, so I suppose he did, too."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "He has marksmanship medals and everything. So you know that he's teaching Michael how to shoot?"

She nodded and continued slicing off the fibrous ends of the asparagus stems.

"I was surprised that Brian didn't want to learn," I said.

"So was I, and I was relieved, to be honest. But I don't mind about Michael. It's not like we're in the Old Country, where he'd go off and get killed by the Black and Tans." She glanced my way with a smile. "Your grandfather used to love to talk about the tribulations of the Old Country. He made it sound awful. Not, of course, that he was ever there himself."

We laughed, but not very loud or long. Aunt Eileen laid down the knife and picked up a vegetable peeler to continue tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the thickest stalks.

"I meant to tell you," Aunt Eileen said. "I had the oddest dream last night about Jack Donovan's father. He was looking at a newspaper headline and shaking like a leaf."

"Could you read the headline?"

"No, though I did try." She laid the peeler down and wiped her hands on her calico print ap.r.o.n. "It was some local paper up in Sonoma County. That's where he's living, you know, at his vinyard."

"A prescient dream or a possibility image only?"

"Only a possibility, I think."

"Then don't worry. Ari's got everything under control."

Although she fixed me with the gimlet eye, I smiled and never answered. I wanted nothing getting back to Kathleen until Jack and Ari had their talk, not even a hint. Eventually, Aunt Eileen gave in.

"Oh, by the way," she said, "I picked up several sacks of vintage clothing at an estate sale. Most of it fits me, but there are a couple of things that are too small. Do you want to try them?"

"This girl Mike's rescuing is even thinner than I am," I said. "How about we clothe her first? She's not going to have much with her."

In a few minutes we learned how truly I'd spoken when we heard footsteps coming down the hall. I got up and went to the doorway in time to see Michael carrying a gray cardboard suitcase held together by wrapped string. Behind him came Lisa, or that is, as I reminded myself, Sophie now, with Brian and Ari bringing up the rear.

Sophie looked even paler and thinner than I remembered her, a waif with her short brown hair and huge dark eyes. She was wearing a faded, patched denim skirt that came to mid-calf and a pink sweater several sizes too large. And she limped, of course, stumping along with her clubfoot in its heavy brown shoe and her normal foot in an ordinary oxford. Aunt Eileen took one look at her, then turned to me.

"You raised Michael right," she said, "after all."

"Thanks," I said. "I tried."

Once they all piled into the kitchen, Sophie stood looking around her at the beige Formica counters, the plain white appliances, the maple table, the cabinets with their oak veneer.

"It's all so beautiful," she said and began to cry.

Michael dropped the suitcase and threw his arms around her. Ari and I exchanged a glance. He jerked his head in the direction of the door, and I nodded. We slithered our way out of the kitchen without anyone particularly noticing.

"We can debrief her tomorrow," I said.

"I hope the information's worth it," Ari said.

"Doesn't matter. Aunt Eileen's never going to let her go back, not now that she's seen her."

Although the sky was clear and sunny over Aunt Eileen's neighborhood, back at our flat the fog had already come in so thickly that we could barely see across the street. The front wall had stayed mercifully free of graffiti in our absence. Cryptic Creep must have been busy elsewhere. Upstairs, I found messages waiting on the answering machine. Y's secretary had called twice and left the code words indicating he wanted a trance conference.

"It's four-thirty," I said. "Seven-thirty in DC. There's not much use in my going into trance now."

I could, of course, see if Y had left me an online message. I fired up my desktop and logged onto TranceWeb. Y had indeed sent me a brief e-mail.

"Papers are a Go. Trance me about courier delivery."

I pumped a clenched fist and murmured, "Yes!" Soon Sophie would be legal. The problem, then, would be what to do with her, though I figured Aunt Eileen would have ideas on that subject. I spent a moment hoping, with deepest sincerity, that Sophie wasn't pregnant. If she were, I doubted that either she or the baby would survive the birth.

I should have known that Aunt Eileen would have the same thought. She called later to announce, triumphantly, that Sophie was not "in the family way."

"I bought one of those drugstore kits," Aunt Eileen said. "They're accurate, aren't they?"

"I think so, yeah, from what I've read. That's a relief."

"Yes, though I wouldn't be surprised to learn that she's barren. It's an odd old word, isn't it, barren? But honestly, considering how she's been starved, it's a very real possibility."

"That's true." I felt further relieved. "As soon as we can, we need to get her to a doctor. She's never seen one in her life, I bet." I was thinking about STDs, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to mention them to my aunt. "What with all the radiation and the poor conditions, something might be really wrong."

"Jim thinks we can get her on our health plan, though that will take forever, knowing them. Well, we'll burn that bridge when we're crossing it. Which reminds me, Rose and Wally will be here soon. You know how vague they are about dates, but probably next week."

"That'll be great! I'm looking forward to seeing them."

After I hung up, I realized that I knew someone who would understand about the STD problem: Jerry. When I called, I found him at home. Monday nights were too slow to bother working, he told me.

"Yeah, I can see that," I said, "especially in this nasty weather. I have a question for you. My aunt's taken in a runaway girl rescue. This kid ended up working the streets, and she's never seen a doctor for a blood test or anything."

"Oh, s.h.i.t!" Jerry sounded sincerely horrified. "You can't talk to the young ones, darling, about AIDS or anything else. They think they'll live forever. Probably none of her johns would have used a rubber even if she'd wanted to."

"Probably not, no. So is there a clinic-"

"There is. No questions asked. Want me to take her?"

"That would be great. You know the-uh-ropes."

Jerry laughed.

"And think about working for the Agency," I said. "You're not going to live forever, either."

"How true that is!" He sighed with great drama. "I'm free Wednesday. Call me around two P.M. The clinic opens late."

I got off the phone to find Ari standing nearby, watching me with a piece of paper in his hand.

"Yeah?" I said.

"From the DMV." He handed me the paper. "That white sedan you saw near the Cliff House? It's registered to Caleb Sumner."

CHAPTER 12.

WE WOKE TUESDAY MORNING TO POURING RAIN. When I looked out of the bay window in the front room, I saw clouds so thick at the horizon that I couldn't tell where they ended and the gray sea began. The unusually wet year was continuing to give us water to burn. Northern California could rejoice. I had a different take on the weather.

"Crud," I said. "Sarge isn't going to be outside today. No Reb Zeke, either, if he's even on our world level."

"True." Ari handed me a mug of coffee.

"Thanks. I'll drink this, and then I've got to contact Y."

Our trance session went fast, because Y was on his way to yet another meeting.

"Okay," I said, "in your e-mail, you said something about a courier."

"Yes. We're sending you the doc.u.ments for your new information source by courier. He'll arrive tomorrow at SFO with the attache case attached." Y grinned at his own joke. "I'm sending the flight information in e-mail, but in a very stripped form. This conversation is the context for the numbers you'll find there."

"An actual courier? Why?"

"We've got funding for special couriers in our budget. If we don't use it, we'll lose it. Can't have that!"

I supposed I saw the point.

"When will you be debriefing the new source?" Y said.

"In a couple of hours," I said. "I'll file a report as soon as we're finished. What's the code for my courier?"

"Waukeegan. Ask him if he comes from there. He'll say, no, I'm from Peoria. His name's Paul."

"Got it. Paul from Peoria. One last thing, any news about those questions I had for Ari Nathan's mother?"

"Not yet. My contact in MI5 is handling the matter, but he's had to bring in the Israelis. I don't know why."

"I do. At one time Reb Ezekiel was suspected of spying for the British government."