he looked at him.

"Yes," he said.

"But-Daddy-it's bad. I know it is. I could kill them."

"Yes," he said. "Maybe now it's kill or be killed. Maybe it's come down to that."

"It's not bad?" Her voice was almost inaudible.

"Yes," Andy said. "It is. Never kid yourself that it isn't. And don't do it if you can't handle it, Charlie. Not even for me." They looked at each other, eye to eye, Andy's eyes tired and bloodshot and frightened, Charlie's eyes wide, nearly hypnotized. She said: "If I do... something... will you still love me?"

The question hung between them, lazily revolving.

"Charlie," he said, "I'll always love you. No matter what."

Irv had been at the window and now he crossed the room to them. "I think I got some tall apologizing to do," he said. "There's a whole line of cars coming up the road. I'll stand with you, if you want. I got my deer gun." But he looked suddenly frightened, almost sick.

Charlie said: "You don't need your gun."

She slipped out from under her father's hands and walked across to the screen door, in Norma Manders's knitted white sweater looking even smaller than she was. She let herself out.

After a moment, Andy found his feet and went after her. His stomach felt frozen, as if he'd just gobbled a huge Dairy Queen cone in three bites. The Manderses stayed behind. Andy caught one last look at the man's baffled, frightened face, and a random thought-that'll teach you to pick up hitchhikers-darted across his consciousness.

Then he and Charlie were on the porch, watching the first of the cars turn up the long driveway. The hens squawked and fluttered. In the barn, Bossy mooed again for someone to come and milk her. And thin October sunshine lay over the wooded ridges and autumn-brown fields of this small upstate-New York town. It had been almost a year of running, and Andy was surprised to find an odd sense of relief mixed in with his sharp terror. He had heard that in its extremity, even a rabbit will sometimes turn and face the dogs, driven back to some earlier, less meek nature at the instant before it must be torn apart.

At any rate, it was good not to be running. He stood with Charlie, the sunshine mellow on her blond hair.

"Oh Daddy," she moaned. "I can't hardly stand up."

He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her more tightly against his side.

The first car stopped at the head of the dooryard and two men got out.

13

"Hi, Andy," A1 Steinowitz said, and smiled. "Hi, Charlie." His hands were empty, but his coat was open. Behind him the other man stood alertly by the car, hands at his sides. The second car stopped behind the first and four more men spilled out. All the cars were stopping, all the men getting out. Andy counted a dozen and then stopped counting.

"Go away," Charlie said. Her voice was thin and high in the cool early afternoon. "You've led us a merry chase," A1 said to Andy. He looked at Charlie. "Honey, you don't have to-""Go away!" she screamed. A1 shrugged and smiled disarmingly. "Fraid I can't do that, honey. I have my orders. No one wants to hurt you or your daddy."

"You liar! You're s'posed to kill him! I know it!"

Andy spoke and was a little surprised to find that his voice was completely steady. "I advise you to do as my daughter says. You've surely been briefed enough to know why she's wanted. You know about the soldier at the airport."

OJ and Norville Bates exchanged a sudden uneasy look.

"If you'll just get in the car, we can discuss all of this," A1 said. "Honest to gosh, there's nothing going on here except-"

"We know what's going on," Andy said.

The men who had been in the last two or three cars were beginning to fan out and stroll, almost casually toward the porch. "Please," Charlie said to the man with the strangely yellow face. "Don't make me do anything." "It's no good, Charlie," Andy said. Irv Manders came out onto the porch. "You men are trespassing," he said. "I want you to get the hell off my property."

Three of the Shop men had come up the front steps of the porch and were now standing less than ten yards away from Andy and Charlie, to their left. Charlie threw them a warning, desperate glance and they stopped-for the moment.

"We're government agents, sir," A1 Steinowitz said to Irv in a low, courteous voice. "These two folks are wanted for questioning. Nothing more." "I don't care if they're wanted for assassinating the President," Irv said. His voice was high, cracking. "Show me your warrant or get the Christ off my property." "We don't need a warrant," Al said. His voice was edged with steel now. "You do unless I woke up in Russia this morning," Irv said. "I'm telling you to get off, and you better get high-steppin, mister. That's my last word on it."

"Irv, come inside!" Norma cried.

Andy could feel something building in the air, building up around Charlie like an electric charge. The hair on his arms suddenly began to stir and move, like kelp in an invisible tide. He looked down at her and saw her face, so small, now so strange. It's coming, he thought helplessly. It's coming, oh my God it really is. "Get out!" he shouted at Al. "Don't you understand what she's going to do? Can't you feel it? Don't be a fool, man!" "Please," Al said. He looked at the three men standing at the far end of the porch and nodded to them imperceptibly. He looked back at Andy. "If we can only discuss this-""Watch it, Frank!" Irv Manders screamed. The three men at the end of the porch suddenly charged at them, pulling their guns as they came. "Hold it, hold it!" one of them yelled. "Just stand still! Hands over your-"Charlie turned toward them. As she did so, half a dozen other men, John Mayo and Ray Knowles among them, broke for the porch's back steps with their guns drawn. Charlie's eyes widened a little, and Andy felt something hot pass by him in a warm puff of air. The three men at the front end of the porch had got halfway toward them when their hair caught on fire.

A gun boomed, deafeningly loud, and a splinter of wood perhaps eight inches long jumped from one of the porch's supporting posts. Norma Manders screamed, and Andy flinched. But Charlie seemed not to notice. Her face was dreamy and thoughtful. A small Mona Lisa smile had touched the corners of her mouth.

She's enjoying this, Andy thought with something like horror. Is that why she's so afraid of it? Because she likes it?

Charlie was turning back toward Al Steinowitz again. The three men he had sent running down toward Andy and Charlie from the front end of the porch had forgotten their duty to God, country, and the Shop. They were beating at the flames on their heads and yelling. The pungent smell of fried hair suddenly filled the afternoon.

Another gun went off. A window shattered.

"Not the girl!" A1 shouted. "Not the girl!"

Andy was seized roughly. The porch swirled with a confusion of men. He was dragged toward the railing through the chaos. Then someone tried to pull him a different way. He felt like a tug-of-war rope.

"Let him go!" Irv Manders shouted, bull throated. "Let him-"Another gun went off and suddenly Norma was screaming again, screaming her husband's name over and over. Charlie was looking down at Al Steinowitz, and suddenly the cold, confident look was gone from Al's face and he was in terror. His yellow complexion grew positively cheesy. "No, don't," he said in an almost conversational tone of voice. "Don't-"

It was impossible to tell where the flames began Suddenly his pants and his sportcoat were blazing. His hair was a burning bush. He backed up, screaming, bounced off the side of his car, and half turned to Norville Bates, his arms stretched out.

Andy felt that soft rush of heat again, a displacement of air, as if a hot slug thrown at rocket speed had just passed his nose.

Al Steinowitz's face caught on fire.

For a moment he was all there, screaming silently under a transparent caul of flame, and then his features were blending, merging, running like tallow. Norville shrank away from him. Al Steinowitz was a flaming scarecrow. He staggered blindly down the driveway, waving his arms, and then collapsed facedown beside the third car. He didn't look like a man at all; he looked like a burning bundle of rags.

The people on the porch had frozen, staring dumbly at this unexpected blazing development. The three men whose hair Charlie had fired had all managed to put themselves out. They were all going to look decidedly strange in the future (however short that might be); their hair, short by regulation, now looked like blackened, tangled clots of ash on top of their heads.

"Get out," Andy said hoarsely. "Get out quickly. She's never done anything like this before and I don't know if she can stop."

"I'm all right, Daddy," Charlie said. Her voice was calm, collected, and strangely indifferent. "Everything's okay."

And that was when the cars began to explode.

They all went up from the rear; later, when Andy replayed the incident at the Manders farm in his mind, he was quite sure of that. They all went up from the rear, where the gas tanks were.

Al's light-green Plymouth went first, exploding with a muffled whrrr-rump! sound. A ball of flame rose from the back of the Plymouth, too bright to look at. The rear window blew in. The Ford John and Ray had come in went next, barely two seconds later. Hooks of metal whickered through the air and pattered on the roof.

"Charlie!" Andy shouted. "Charlie, stop it!"

She said in that same calm voice: "I can't."

The third car went up.

Someone ran. Someone else followed him. The men on the porch began to back away. Andy was tugged again, he resisted, and suddenly no one at all was holding him. And suddenly they were all running, their faces white, eyes stare-blind with panic. One of the men with the charred hair tried to vault over the railing, caught his foot, and fell headfirst into a small side garden where Norma had grown beans earlier in the year. The stakes for the beans to climb on were still there, and one of them rammed through this fellow's throat and came out the other side with a wet punching sound that Andy never forgot. He twitched in the garden like a landed trout, the bean-pole protruding from his neck like the shaft of an arrow, blood gushing down the front of his shirt as he made weak gargling founds.

The rest of the cars went up then like an ear shattering string of firecrackers. Two of the fleeing men were tossed aside like ragdolls by the concussion, one of them on fire from the waist down, the other peppered with bits of safety glass.

Dark, oily smoke rose in the air. Beyond the driveway, the far hills and fields twisted and writhed through the heat-shimmer as if recoiling in horror. Chickens ran madly everywhere, clucking crazily. Suddenly three of them exploded into flame and went rushing off, balls of fire with feet, to collapse on the far side of the dooryard.

"Charlie, stop it right now! Stop it!"

A trench of fire raced across the dooryard on a diagonal, the very dirt blazing in a single straight line, as if a train of gunpowder had been laid. The flame reached the chopping block with Irv's ax buried in it, made a fairy-ring around it, and suddenly collapsed inward. The chopping block whooshed into flame.

"CHARLIE FOR CHRIST's SAKE!"

Some Shop agent's pistol was lying on the verge of grass between the porch and the blazing line of cars in the driveway. Suddenly the cartridges in it began to go off in a series of sharp, clapping explosions. The gun jigged and flipped bizarrely in the grass.

Andy slapped her as hard as he could.

Her head rocked back, her eyes blue and vacant. Then she was looking at him, surprised and hurt and dazed, and he suddenly felt enclosed in a capsule of swiftly building heat. He took in a breath of air that felt like heavy glass. The hairs in his nose felt as if they were crisping.

Spontaneous combustion, he thought. I'm going up in a burst of spontaneous combustion-

Then it was gone.

Charlie staggered on her feet and put her hands up to her face. And then, through her hands, came a shrill, building scream of such horror and dismay that Andy feared her mind had cracked.

"DAAAAADEEEEEEEEE-"

He swept her into his arms, hugged her.

"Shhh," he said. "Oh Charlie, honey, shhhh."

The scream stopped, and she went limp in his arms. Charlie had fainted.

14

Andy picked her up in his arms and her head rolled limply against his chest. The air was hot and rich with the smell of burning gasoline. Flames had already crawled across the lawn to the ivy trellis; fingers of fire began to climb the ivy with the agility of a boy on midnight business. The house was going to go up.

Irv Manders was leaning against the kitchen screen door, his legs splayed. Norma knelt beside him. He had been shot above the elbow, and the sleeve of his blue workshirt was a bright red. Norma had torn a long strip of her dress off" at the hem and was trying to get his shirtsleeve up so she could bind the wound. Irv's eyes were open. His face was an ashy gray, his lips were faintly blue, and he was breathing fast.

Andy took a step toward them and Norma Manders flinched backward, at the same time placing her body over her husband's. She looked up at Andy with shiny, hard eyes.

"Get away," she hissed. "Take your monster and get away."

15

OJ ran.

The Windsucker bounced up and down under his arm as he ran. He ignored the road as he ran. He ran in the field. He fell down and got up and ran on. He twisted his ankle in what might have been a chuckhole and fell down again, a scream jerking out of his mouth as he sprawled. Then he got up and ran on. At times it seemed that he was running alone, and at times it seemed that someone was running with him. It didn't matter. All that mattered was getting away, away from that blazing bundle of rags that had been A1 Steinowitz ten minutes before, away from that burning train of cars, away from Bruce Cook who lay in a small garden patch with a stake in his throat. Away, away, away. The Windsucker fell out of its holster, struck his knee painfully, and fell in a tangle of weeds, forgotten. Then OJ was in a patch of woods. He stumbled over a fallen tree and sprawled full length. He lay there, breathing raggedly, one hand pressed to his side, where a painful stitch had formed. He lay weeping tears of shock and fear. He thought: No more assignments in New York. Never. That's it. Everybody out of the pool. I'm never setting foot in New York again even if I live to be two hundred.

After a little while OJ got up and began to limp toward the road.

16

"Let's get him off the porch," Andy said. He had laid Charlie on the grass beyond the dooryard. The side of the house was burning now, and sparks were drifting down on the porch like big, slow-moving fireflies.

"Get away,'" she said harshly. "Don't touch him."

"The house is burning," Andy said. "Let me help you."

"Get away! You've done enough!"

"Stop it, Norma." Irv looked at her. "None of what happened was this man's fault. So shut your mouth." She looked at him as if she had a great many things to say, and then shut her mouth with a snap. "Get me up," Irv said. "Legs feel all rubber. Think maybe I pissed myself. Shouldn't be surprised. One of those bastards shot me. Don't know which one. Lend a hand, Frank." "It's Andy," he said, and got an arm around Irv's back. Little by little Irv came up. "I don't blame your missus. You should have passed us by this morning."

"If I had it to do over again, I'd do it just the same way," Irv said. "Gosh-damn people coming on my land with guns. Gosh-damn bastards and fucking bunch of government whoremasters and... oooww-oooh, Christ!"

"Irv?" Norma cried. "Hush, woman. I got it nocked now. Come on, Frank, or Andy, or whatever your name is. It's gettin hot."

It was. A puff" of wind blew a coil of sparks onto the porch as Andy half dragged Irv down the steps and into the dooryard. The chopping block was a blackened stump. There was nothing left of the chickens Charlie had set on fire but a few charred bones and a peculiar, dense ash that might have been feathers. They had not been roasted; they had been cremated.

"Set me down by the barn," Irv gasped. "I want to talk to you."

"You need a doctor," Andy said.

"Yeah, I'll get my doctor. What about your girl?"

"Fainted." He set Irv down with his back against the barn door. Irv was looking up at him. A little color had come into his face, and that bluish cast was leaving his lips. He was sweating. Behind them, the big white farmhouse that had stood here on the Baillings Road since 1868 was going up in flames.

"There's no human being should be able to do what she can," Irv said.

"That may well be," Andy said, and then he looked from Irv and directly into Norma Manders's stony, unforgiving face. "But then, no human being should have to have cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy or leukemia. But it happens. And it happens to children."

"She didn't get no say." Irv nodded. "All right." Still looking at Norma, Andy said, "She's no more a monster than a kid in an iron lung or in a home for retarded children."

"I'm sorry I said that," Norma replied, and her glance wavered and fell from Andy's. "I was out feeding the chickens with her. Watching her pet the cow. But mister, my house is burning down, and people are dead."

"I'm sorry."

"The house is insured, Norma," Irv said, taking her hand with his good one.

"That doesn't do anything about my mother's dishes that her mother gave to her," Norma said. "Or my nice secretary, or the pictures we got at the Schenectady art show last July." A tear slipped out of one eye and she wiped it away with her sleeve. "And all the letters you wrote to me when you were in the army."

"Is your button going to be all right?" Irv asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, listen. Here's what you can do if you want to. There's an old Willys Jeep out behind the barn-"

"Irv, no! Don't get into this any deeper!"

He turned to look at her, his face gray and lined and sweaty. Behind them, their home burned. The sound of popping shingles was like that of horse chestnuts in a Christmas fire.

"Those men came with no warrants nor blueback paper of any kind and tried to take them off our land," he said. "People I'd invited in like it's done in a civilized country with decent laws. One of them shot me, and one of them tried to shoot Andy here. Missed his head by no more than a quarter of an inch." Andy remembered the first deafening report and the splinter of wood that had jumped from the porch support post. He shivered. "They came and did those things. What do you want me to do, Norma? Sit here and turn them over to the secret police if they get their peckers up enough to come back! Be a good German?"

"No," she said huskily. "No, I guess not."

"You don't have to-"Andy began.

"I feel I do," Irv said. "And when they come back... they will be back, won't they, Andy?"

"Oh yes. They'll be back. You just bought stock in a growth industry, Irv."

Irv laughed, a whistling, breathless sound. "That's pretty good, all right. Well, when they show up here, all I know is that you took my Willys. I don't know more than that. And to wish you well."

"Thank you," Andy said quietly.

"We got to be quick," Irv said. "It's a long way back to town, but they'll have seen the smoke by now. Fire trucks'll be coming. You said you and the button were going to Vermont. Was that much the truth?"

"Yes," Andy said.

There was a moaning sound to their left. "Daddy-"

Charlie was sitting up. The red pants and green blouse were smeared with dirt. Her face was pale, her eyes were terribly confused. "Daddy, what's burning? I smell something burning. Am I doing it? What's burning?"

Andy went to her and gathered her up. "Everything is all right," he said, and wondered why you had to say that to children even when they knew perfectly well, as you did, that it wasn't true. "Everything's fine. How do you feel, hon?"

Charlie was looking over his shoulder at the burning line of cars, the convulsed body in the garden, and the Manders house, which was crowned with fire. The porch was also wrapped in flames. The wind was carrying the smoke and heat away from them, but the smell of gas and hot shingles was strong.

"I did that," Charlie said, almost too low to hear. Her face began to twist and crumple again.

"Button!" Irv said sternly.

She glanced over at him, through him. "Me," she moaned.

"Set her down," Irv said. "I want to talk to her."

Andy carried Charlie over to where Irv sat propped up against the barn door and set her down. ""You listen to me, button," Irv said. "Those men meant to kill your daddy. You knew it before I did, maybe before he did, although I'll be damned if I know how. Am I right?"

"Yes," Charlie said. Her eyes were still deep and miserable. "But you don't get it. It was like the soldier, but worse. I couldn't... couldn't hold onto it anymore. It was going everyplace. I burned up some of your chickens... and I almost burned up my father." The miserable eyes spilled over and she began to cry helplessly.

"Your daddy's fine," Irv said. Andy said nothing. He remembered that sudden strangling sensation, being enclosed in that heat capsule. "I'm never going to do it again," she said.

"Never."

"All right," Andy said, and put a hand on her shoulder. "All right, Charlie."

"Never," she repeated with quiet emphasis.

"You don't want to say that, button," Irv said, looking up at her. "You don't want to block yourself off" like that. You'll do what you have to do. You'll do the best you can. And that's all you can do. I believe the one thing the God of this world likes best, is to give the business to people who say 'never'. You understand me?"

"No," Charlie whispered.

"But you will, I think," Irv said, and looked at Charlie with such deep compassion that Andy felt his throat fill with sorrow and fear. Then Irv glanced at his wife. "Bring me that there stick by your foot, Norma."

Norma brought the stick and put it into his hand and told him again that he was overdoing it, that he had to rest. And so it was only Andy that heard Charlie say "Never" again, almost inaudibly, under her breath, like a vow taken in secrecy.

17

"Look here, Andy," Irv said, and drew a straight line in the dust. "This is the dirt road we came up. The Baillings Road. If you go a quarter of a mile north, you'll come to a woods road on your right. A car can't make it up that road, but the Willys should do it if you keep her wound up and use an educated foot on the clutch. A couple of times it's gonna look like that road just up and died, but you keep going and you'll pick it up again. It's not on any map, you understand? Not on any map."

Andy nodded, watching the stick draw the woods road.

"It'll take you twelve miles east, and if you don't get stuck or lost, you'll come out on Route One fifty-two near Hoag Corners. You turn left-north-and about a mile up One-fifty-two you'll come to another woods road. It's low ground, swampy, mushy. The Willys might do it, might not. I ain't been on that road in five years, I guess. It's the only one I know that goes east toward Vermont and won't be road-blocked off: That second road is gonna bring you out on Highway Twenty-two, north of Cherry Plain and south of the Vermont border. By then you should be out of the worst of it-although I s'pose they'll have your name and pictures on the wire. But we wish you the best. Don't we, Norma?"

"Yes," Norma said, and the word was almost a sigh. She looked at Charlie. "You saved your dad's life, little girl. That's the thing to remember."

"Is it?" Charlie said, and her voice was so perfectly toneless that Norma Manders looked bewildered and a little afraid. Then Charlie tried a hesitant smile and Norma smiled back, relieved.

"Keys are in the Willys, and-"He cocked his head to one side. "Hark!"

It was the sound of sirens, rising and falling in cycles, still faint but drawing closer.

"It's the FD," Irv said. "You better go, if you're goin."

"Come on, Charlie," Andy said. She came to him, her eyes red from her tears. The small smile had disappeared like hesitant sunlight behind the clouds, but Andy felt greatly encouraged that it had been there at all. The face she wore was a survivor's face, shocked and wounded. In that moment, Andy wished he had her power; he would use it, and he knew whom he would use it on.

He said, "Thank you, Irv." "I'm sorry," Charlie said in a small voice. "About your house and your chickens and... and everything else." "It sure wasn't your fault, button," Irv said. "They brought it on themselves. You watch out for your daddy." "All right," she said. Andy took her hand and led her around the barn to where the Willys was parked under a shakepole leanto.

The fire sirens were very close by the time he had got it started and driven it across the lawn to the road. The house was an inferno now. Charlie would not look at it. The last Andy saw of the Manderses was in the rearview mirror of the canvas-topped jeep: Irv leaning against the barn, the piece of white skirting knotted around his wounded arm stained red, Norma sitting beside him. His good arm was around her. Andy waved, and Irv gestured a bit in return with his bad arm. Norma didn't wave, thinking, perhaps, of her mother's china, her secretary, the love letters-all the things of which insurance money is ignorant and always has been.

18

They found the first woods road just where Irv Manders had said they would. Andy put the Jeep in four-wheel drive and turned onto it.

"Hold on, Charlie," he said. "We're gonna bounce."

Charlie held on. Her face was white and listless, and looking at her made Andy nervous. The cottage, he thought. Granther McGee's cottage on Tashmore Pond. If we can only get there and rest. She'll get herself back together and then we'll think about what we should do.

We'll think about it tomorrow. Like Scarlett said it's another day.

The Willys roared and pitched its way up the road, which was no more than a two-wheel track with bushes and even a few stunted pines growing along the crown. This land had been logged over maybe ten years ago, and Andy doubted if it had been used since then, except by an occasional hunter. Six miles up it did seem to "up and die," and Andy had to stop twice to move trees that had blown down. The second time he looked up from his exertions, heart and head pounding almost sickeningly, and saw a large doe looking at him thoughtfully. She held a moment longer and then was gone into the deeper woods with a flip of her white tail. Andy looked back at Charlie and saw she was watching the deer's progress with something like wonder... and he felt encouraged again. A little farther on they found the wheel-ruts again, and around three o'clock they came out on the stretch of two-lane blacktop that was Route 152.

19

Orville Jamieson, scratched and muddy and barely able to walk on his bad ankle, sat by the side of the Baillings Road about a half a mile from the Manders farm and spoke into his walkie-talkie. His message was relayed back to a temporary command post in a van parked in the main street of Hastings Glen. The van had radio equipment with a built-in scrambler and a powerful transmitter. OJ's report was scrambled, boosted, and sent to New York City, where a relay station caught it and sent it on to Longmont, Virginia, where Cap sat in his office, listening.

Cap's face was no longer bright and jaunty, as it had been when he biked to work that morning. OJ's report was nearly unbelievable: they had known the girl had something, but this story of sudden carnage and reversal was (at least to Cap) like a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky. Four to six men dead, the others driven helter-skelter into the woods, half a dozen cars in flames, a house burning to the ground, a civilian wounded and about to blab to anyone and everyone who cared to listen that a bunch of neo-Nazis had turned up on his doorstep with no warrant and had attempted to kidnap a man and a little girl whom he had invited home to lunch.

When OJ finished his report (and he never really did; he only began to repeat himself in a kind of semihysteria), Cap hung up and sat in his deep swivel chair and tried to think. He did not think a covert operation had gone so spectacularly wrong since the Bay of Pigs-and this was on American soil.

The office was gloomy and filled with thick shadows now that the sun had got around to the other side of the building, but he didn't turn on the lights. Rachel had buzzed him on the intercom and he had told her curtly he didn't want to talk to anyone, anyone at all.

He felt old.

He heard Wanless saying: I am talking about the Potential for destruction. Well, it wasn't just a question of potential any longer, was it? But we're going to have her, he thought, looking blankly across the room. Oh yes, we're going to have her.

He thumbed for Rachel.

"I want to talk to Orville Jamieson as soon as he can be flown here," he said. "And I want to talk to General Brackman in Washington, A-one-A priority. We've got a potentially embarrassing situation in New York State, and I want you to tell him that right out."

"Yes, sir," Rachel said respectfully.

"I want a meeting with all six subdirectors at nineteen hundred hours. Also A-one-A. And I want to talk to the chief of state police up there in New York." They had been part of the search sweep, and Cap wanted to point that out to them. If mud was going to be thrown, he would be sure to save back a good, big bucket of it for them. But he also wanted to point out that behind a united front, they might still all be able to come out of this looking fairly decent.

He hesitated and then said, "And when John Rainbird calls in, tell him I want to talk to him. I have another job for him."

"Yes, sir."

Cap let go of the intercom toggle. He sat back in his chair and studied the shadows.

"Nothing has happened that can't be fixed," he said to the shadows. That had been his motto all his life-not printed in crewel and hung up, not embossed on a copper desk plaque, but it was printed on his heart as truth.

Nothing that can't be fixed. Until tonight, until OJ's report, he had believed that. It was a philosophy that had brought a poor Pennsylvania miner's kid a long way. And he believed it still, although in a momentarily shaken manner. Between Manders and his wife, they probably had relatives scattered from New England to California, and each one was a potential lever. There were enough top-secret files right here in Longmont to ensure that any congressional hearing on Shop methods would be... well, a little hard of hearing. The cars and even the agents were only hardware, although it would be a long time before he would really be able to get used to the idea that Al Steinowitz was gone. Who could there possibly be to replace Al? That little kid and her old man were going to pay for what they had done to Al, if for nothing else. He would see to it.

But the girl. Could the girl be fixed?

There were ways. There were methods of containment.

The McGee files were still on the library cart. He got up, went to them, and began thumbing through them restlessly. He wondered where John Rainbird was at this moment.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

1

At the moment Cap Hollister had his passing thought about him, John Rainbird was sitting in his room at the Mayflower Hotel watching a television game called The Crosswits. He was naked. He sat in the chair with his bare feet neatly together and watched the program. He was waiting for it to get dark. After it got dark, he would begin waiting for it to get late. When it was late, he would begin waiting for it to get early. When it got early and the pulse of the hotel was at its slowest, he would stop waiting and go upstairs to Room 1217 and kill Dr. Wanless. Then he would come down here and think about whatever Wanless would have told him before he died, and sometime after the sun came up, he would sleep briefly.

John Rainbird was a man at peace. He was at peace with almost everything-Cap, the Shop, the United States. He was at peace with God, Satan, and the universe. If he was not yet at complete peace with himself, that was only because his pilgrimage was not yet over. He had many coups, many honorable scars. It did not matter that people turned away from him in fear and loathing. It did not matter that he had lost one eye in Vietnam.

What they paid him did not matter. He took it and most of it went to buy shoes. He had a great love of shoes. He owned a home in Flagstaff, and although he rarely went there himself, he had all his shoes sent there. When he did get a chance to go to his house, he admired the shoes-Gucci, Bally, Bass, Adidas, Van Donen. Shoes. His house was a strange forest; shoe trees grew in every room and he would, go from room to room admiring the shoefruit that grew on them. But when he was alone, he went barefoot. His father, a full-blooded Cherokee, had been buried barefoot. Someone had stolen his burial moccasins.

Other than shoes, John Rainbird was interested in only two things. One of them was death. His own death, of course; he had been preparing for this inevitability for twenty years or more. Dealing death had always been his business and was the only trade he had ever excelled at. He became more and more interested in it as he grew older, as an artist will become more interested in the qualities and levels of light, as writers will feel for character and nuance like blindmen reading braille. What interested him most was the actual leaving... the actual exhalation of the soul... the exit from the body and what human beings knew as life and the passing into something else. What must it be like to feel yourself slipping away? Did you think it was a dream from which you would wake? Was the Christian devil there with his fork, ready to jam it through your shrieking soul and carry it down to hell like a piece of meat on a shish kebab? Was there joy? Did you know you were going? What is it that the eyes of the dying see?

Rainbird hoped he would have the opportunity to find out for himself. In his business, death was often quick and unexpected, something that happened in the flick of an eye. He hoped that when his own death came, he would have time to prepare and feel everything. More and more lately he had watched the faces of the people he killed, trying to see the secret in the eyes.

Death interested him.

What also interested him was the little girl they were all so concerned with. This Charlene McGee. As far as Cap knew, John Rainbird had only the vaguest knowledge of the McGees and none at all of Lot Six. Actually, Rainbird knew almost as much as Cap himself-something that surely would have marked him for extreme sanction if Cap had known. They suspected that the girl had some great or potentially great power-maybe a whole batch of them. He would like to meet this girl and see what her powers were. He also knew that Andy McGee was what Cap called "a potential mental dominant," but that did not concern John Rainbird. He had not yet met a man who could dominate him.

The Crosswits ended. The news came on. None of it was good. John Rainbird sat, not eating, not drinking, not smoking, clean and empty and husked out, and waited for the killing time to come around.

2

Earlier that day Cap had thought uneasily of how silent Rainbird was. Dr. Wanless never heard him. He awoke from a sound sleep. He awoke because a finger was tickling him just below the nose. He awoke and saw what appeared to be a monster from a nightmare hulking over his bed. One eye glinted softly in the light from the bathroom, the light he always left on when he was in a strange place. Where the other eye should have been there was only an empty crater.

Wanless opened his mouth to scream, and John Rainbird pinched his nostrils shut with the fingers of one hand and covered his mouth with the other. Wanless began to thrash.

"Shhh," Rainbird said. He spoke with the pleased indulgence of a mother to her baby at fresh diaper time.

Wanless struggled harder.

"If you want to live, be still and be quiet," Rainbird said.

Wanless looked up at him, heaved once, and then lay still.

"Will you be quiet?" Rainbird asked.

Wanless nodded. His face was growing very red.

Rainbird removed his hands and Wanless began to gasp hoarsely. A small rivulet of blood trickled from one nostril.

"Who... are you... Cap... send you?"

"Rainbird," he said gravely. "Cap sent me, yes."

Wanless's eyes were huge in the dark. His tongue snaked out and licked his lips. Lying in his bed with the sheets kicked down around his knuckly ankles, he looked like the world's oldest child.

"I have money," he whispered very fast. "Swiss bank account. Lots of money. All yours. Never open my mouth again. Swear before God."

"It's not your money that I want, Dr. Wanless," Rainbird said.

Wanless gazed up at him, the left side of his mouth sneering madly, his left eyelid drooping and quivering.

"If you would like to be alive when the sun comes up," Rainbird said, "you will talk to me, Dr. Wanless. You will lecture me. I will be a seminar of one. I will be attentive; a good pupil. And I will reward you with your life, which you will live far away from the view of Cap and the Shop. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Wanless said hoarsely.

"Do you agree?"

"Yes... but what-?"

Rainbird held two fingers to his lips and Dr. Wanless hushed immediately. His scrawny chest rose and fell rapidly.

"I am going to say two words," Rainbird said, "and then your lecture will begin. It will include everything that you know, everything you suspect, everything you theorize. Are you ready for those two words, Dr. Wanless?"

"Yes," Dr. Wanless said.

"Charlene McGee," Rainbird said, and Dr. Wanless began to speak. His words came slowly at first, and then he began to speed up. He talked. He gave Rainbird the complete history of the Lot Six tests and the climactic experiment. Much of what he said Rainbird already knew, but Wanless also filled in a number of blank spots. The professor went through the entire sermon he had given Cap that morning, and here it did not fall on deaf ears. Rainbird listened carefully, frowning sometimes, clapping softly and chuckling at Wanless's toilet training metaphor. This encouraged Wanless to speak even faster, and when he began to repeat himself, as old men will, Rainbird reached down again, pinched Wanless's nose shut with one hand again, and covered his mouth with the other again.

"Sorry," Rainbird said.

Wanless bucked and sunfished under Rainbird's weight. Rainbird applied more pressure, and when Wanless's struggles began to lessen, Rainbird abruptly removed the hand he had been using to pinch Wanless's nose shut. The sound of the good doctor's hissing breath was like air escaping from a tire with a big nail in it. His eyes were rolling wildly in their sockets, rolling like the eyes of a fear maddened horse... but they were still too hard to see.