"We'll get to that in a second," Blanes replied, opening another file. "Marini and Craig had worked with animals and objects, but never humans. That was too risky: who would ever volunteer to be split? And that's when they thought of Ric Valente."
The next image, totally unexpected, made Elisa's stomach lurch. On the screen, surrounded by numbers, sat Ric Valente, in front of a computer. Elisa recognized the setting immediately.
"Ric started filming himself at night, in the control room, and he used those images to study his own splits. He proved that human beings appeared in different time periods; it was an area twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. Ric told Marini that those apparitions really affected him."
She remembered the afternoon she'd come upon him on the beach, utterly engrossed in God knows what. Could he have been watching one of his own splits? When he saw her, was that the cause of their argument, when she thought it was about his not having turned in his results yet?
"One night in September, something else happened. Ric was exhausted, and he fell asleep while the camera was filming. When he woke up, he continued the experiment and opened a time string from ten minutes earlier, when he'd been asleep. A totally different kind of split was produced." Blanes's voice was more anxious now. He showed several slides full of equations. "The first difference was that it appeared almost immediately after the experiment, much faster than Ric was expecting. The area affected was far greater, too: the whole control room lost power. But that wasn't all. It actually sucked Ric into the time string. For that brief period of time, the room became a dark world with strange holes in the walls and floor..."
"Holes?" Jacqueline asked.
"Yes, produced by the electron movement," Elisa answered, "like those supposed cuts on the face." Her chest was tight with anguish. Now she understood the meaning of the hole in her wall during that awful "dream."
"'Lags in the matter' is what Marini called them," Blanes said. "From the perspective of an observer who's actually inside a time string, the world looks incomplete. There are certain 'defects' that get filled when enough time has passed to situate all of the particles in their corresponding places, though other holes will open..."
"So Ric would have seen these holes, these 'lags in the matter,' in his own body," Victor said.
"No, he didn't see himself that way. His split, yes, but not himself. For him, it was just being naked in a world that came to a halt."
Like me, in my dream, Elisa thought.
"Naked?" Jacqueline asked.
"He couldn't perceive his clothes, jewelry, or anything else he wore. Just his body. Everything else was on the outside. The split brought only him into the time string."
Elisa turned to Blanes.
"Ric isn't the only one who's had that experience."
She felt all eyes turn to her. Alarmed, her cheeks burning in the dark, she added, "Nadja and I had it, too. And Rosalyn..."
"I knew about Rosalyn," Blanes confessed. "She told Valente. Her split occurred the same night as his, and she was inside the time string, too. Of course, Rosalyn thought it was just an incredibly vivid dream, but Ric noticed that the lights in her bathroom had burned out and realized what had really happened."
Elisa stared at the equations on the screen without taking anything in. The mysterious jigsaw puzzling her all these years was starting to piece together. That's what the man with no face was, the white eyes. She recalled that she and Nadja had both thought it was Ric. What about everything else? How real was that attack she thought she'd suffered? She decided not to bring it up; it just wasn't something she could talk about. But then Blanes said something else.
"Rosalyn told Ric she'd dreamed that his double attacked her. He wasn't sure whether she was just exaggerating to make him feel guilty since he'd stopped showing any interest in her, but it worried him. What could have caused that difference? Before, the splits had hardly even moved, just floated like ghosts. He told Marini about it, and they put their heads together. They took long walks by the lake to discuss things in private—"
"Sometimes they talked at the garrison," Carter broke in. "They knew none of you would sneak up on them there."
"Finally, Marini thought he found the explanation. The split, in this case, had come from one of the multiple 'personalities' that Ric had while he was asleep. So, in fact his unconscious was what split then. Sleep is a much more violent activity than we tend to think. Reinhard Silberg thought that the idea that we 'rest' while we're asleep might be an illusion produced by the passage of time. If seen isolated at every interval, our sleeping bodies are much more active than our waking ones: we move our eyes, hallucinate, become sexually excited ... Sergio deduced that either sleep or the unconscious produced a split of the most intimate, brutal part of ourselves."
"So ... that's what Zig Zag is," Jacqueline murmured. "A split produced from Ric's unconscious..." Blanes shook his head.
"No. Zig Zag appeared later, not until the night of October 1. That was an even more powerful kind of split. It can't be the same thing that Rosalyn, Elisa, and Nadja saw, because it used such a small amount of energy, and Zig Zag, in contrast, burned out both generators when he appeared. And he's been visiting the present for ten years now, at erratic intervals. That never happened in any of the other cases. We don't even really know if Ric produced him, though all indications would point to that. Valente kept a detailed diary, which Marini got hold of. In it, he wrote that even though Marini had asked him to stop testing with anyone who was asleep, due to the apparent risk, he planned to keep doing it on his own. He was very excited at the prospect. He wanted to find out more about those aggressive splits. They were something that he'd discovered. He said that for the first time in history, there was proof of how closely intertwined particle physics and Freudian psychology were. As much as I'd like to, I can't judge him too harshly on that. His last entry is from September 29, and in it he claims that on the night of Saturday, October 1, when the storm was at its most fierce, he was going to produce another split using a new image."
Jacqueline asked the question on everyone's lips.
"What image?"
Blanes closed down a few files and opened others. "In his last entry, he wrote that he was thinking of using these..."
He projected several blurry enlargements. Elisa and Jacqueline jumped out of their chairs at almost the exact same time.
"Holy fuck," Carter said.
The photos were all very similar. Each one showed a room with a bed and a sleeping figure. Elisa recognized herself immediately, as well as Nadja. The pictures had somehow been taken from the ceiling. It was them, in their bedrooms on New Nelson, ten years ago.
"The lights in our bedrooms had hidden cameras with infrared," Blanes explained. "Ric had live images of all of us at his disposal every night. Even you, Carter."
"Eagle wanted to spy on us," Carter said, nodding. "They were paranoid about the Impact."
It was all falling into place. Elisa now understood that when Ric mentioned her solitary pleasures during their argument, he hadn't just been showing off. He really had seen her. He could see all of them.
"But which one of the damn pictures did he actually use?" Jacqueline almost shouted. More than asking Blanes, she seemed to direct her question at the screen.
"We don't know, Jacqueline. Ric carried out the experiment alone; he didn't even tell Marini about it."
"But... there must be ... some documentation ... a recording..." spluttered Carter, suddenly nervous. "There were hidden cameras in the control room, too...," he added. But Blanes just shook his head.
"All records from that night were deleted when Zig Zag produced the blackout. He used all the energy around him and erased everything in the circuits. Ric might even have used another image of himself, though I doubt it. I think he tried one of these. He could have used anyone. But who knows which one?" He clicked through them again in reverse order.
"It couldn't have been just any of them..." Elisa could hardly speak. "It co
uldn't have been Nadja, Marini, Craig, Ross, Silberg, or any of the soldiers."
"You're right. They're all dead, and you can't produce a split of anything dead. So that only leaves"—in that half-lit room, Blanes looked at them each in turn—"Elisa, Jacqueline, Carter, and me. And Ric, who's disappeared."
"But that means..." Jacqueline had grown pale.
Blanes nodded gravely.
"Zig Zag is one of us."
THE female soldier's name was Previn, or at least that's what the nameplate on her uniform said. She had blond hair and blue eyes and, despite being plump, was attractive. Her most attractive quality, though, was that she kept her mouth shut. Lieutenant Borsello, on the other hand, the man in charge of the Tactics Division at the Imnia base in the Aegean, sat ensconced behind his desk and ran his mouth nonstop. They had one thing in common, though: they both pretended not to see Jurgens. The female soldier did not even glance in his direction, and the lieutenant did even better. He winked furtively at Jurgens and then turned quickly back to Harrison as if to say that he was a man who'd seen it all.
Harrison saw that he was pretending Jurgens's presence didn't unsettle him.
"It's a pleasure to have you here, sir," Borsello said. "I'm at your disposal, although I'm not sure if I understand exactly what it is you want."
"What I want..." Harrison seemed to toy with the word. "What I want is very simple, Lieutenant: four angels, sixteen men, anticontamination suits, and all the necessary equipment."
"To head out when?"
"Tonight. Within eight hours."
Borsello cocked an eyebrow. He still had that See-How-Nice-I-Am-to-Civilians look on his face, but Harrison saw that the knotted brow was in fact a categorical "no."
"I'm very sorry to say that's impossible. There's a typhoon north of the Chagos right now and it's headed straight for New Nelson. Angels are small choppers and there's over a fifty percent chance that..."
"Hydroplanes, then."
Borsello smiled empathetically.
"They wouldn't be able to land, sir. In a couple of hours, the waves around the island will be thirty feet high. It's totally out of the question. We're a modest outfit here on Imnia. Thirty men in my section. We'll have to wait until tomorrow."
Harrison looked at Previn, the woman. He returned Borsello's smiles and courtesies, but he looked at the man's subordinate. One thing he couldn't stand, one thing nothing could make him put up with, was the cratered moon, that pockmarked obstacle that was Borsello's ugly face.
"We can have a team ready first thing. Maybe even by dawn, if..."
"Can I have a word with you privately, Lieutenant?" Harrison interrupted.
Raised eyebrows, a contained effort to be polite, not to seem taken off guard. And not to look at Jurgens. But, finally, Borsello motioned and Previn vanished, closing the door behind her.
"What exactly do you want, Mr. Harrison?"
With that witch gone, Harrison felt more at ease. He closed his eyes and envisioned possible responses. I want to kill the wasp buzzing in my ear. I could say that. When he opened them, Borsello was still there, and, luckily, so was Jurgens. He gave a hint of a smile, like a gracious gentleman.
"I want to go to the island tonight, Lieutenant. And to take some of your men. If I could do this on my own, believe me, I wouldn't be troubling you right now."
"I understand. And I'm fully aware that I am to follow your instructions. Those are my orders, and they come from above. But I'm afraid that doesn't mean I can do something insane. I can't send angels into a typhoon. And,... if you'll allow me to speak freely..." Harrison nodded. "According to our reports, the individuals you're looking for are on their way to Brazil. The Brazilian authorities have already been alerted. So I don't really understand your rush to get to New Nelson."
Harrison nodded again, as if Borsello had just revealed some absolute truth. It was true that all evidence seemed to indicate that Carter and the scientists had gone to Egypt after a stopover in Sanaa. His agents had interrogated a professional forger in Cairo who'd made them passports; Carter had demanded several entry visas for Brazil. That was their only solid clue.
And that exactly was why Harrison wasn't buying it. He knew Paul Carter well, and if he'd left a trail behind, then he wasn't on it.
Plus, he had another, more subtle piece of information: military satellites had detected an unidentified chopper flying over the Indian Ocean the day before. That didn't add up to much, because it hadn't gone to New Nelson, but Harrison had realized that the men in charge of reporting visits to the island were Carter's men.
He was sure that was the right path. He'd told Jurgens that morning, when they were flying to Imnia. "They're on the island. They went back." He even thought he knew why. They've discovered how to kill off Zig Zag.
But he had to act with the same diabolical cunning as his onetime partner. If he showed up on the island in daylight, the watchmen would alert Carter, and the same thing would happen if he ordered the coast guard to be moved or interrogated. It had to be a surprise attack; he had to make use of the fact that there would be no guards on duty during the storm. That was the only way he could catch them. The very idea of it made him tingle with excitement. And yet, what would he gain by telling this idiot his plan?
After all, he already had an unbeatable ally: Jurgens was on his side.
"It's true that we do have a lead about Brazil," he admitted.
"It's a possibility, Lieutenant. But I want to discard the possibility of New Nelson before I follow that lead."
"And I want to help you, sir, but..."
"You have direct orders from Tactics."
"I have orders to follow your instructions, but I repeat, I decide how and when to risk the lives of my men. This is a business, not an army."
"Your men will obey me, Lieutenant. They have direct orders, too."
"As long as I'm here, my men, sir, will obey me." Harrison looked away, as if he'd lost all interest in the conversation. Instead, he glanced out at the calm, blue and yellow day outside, above the ocean, beyond the hermetically sealed window of Borsello's office. He almost wanted to cry, thinking that once, a long time before he'd started on Project Zig Zag, before his eyes and mind had come into such close contact with sheer horror, landscapes like that had moved him.
"Lieutenant," he said after a long pause, still gazing out the window. "Do you know the hierarchy of the angels?" Without waiting for a reply, he began listing them. "Seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions... I'll take charge. I belong to a higher order, a superior hierarchy, infinitely superior to yours. I have seen far greater horrors, and I deserve respect."
"What do you mean by 'I'll take charge'?" Borsello asked, frowning.
Harrison stopped looking out the window and looked at Jurgens. Then Borsello did something surprising: he straightened up in his chair and stiffened, as if a high-ranking officer had just walked into the room. From the orifice between his eyebrows, a claret-colored drop emerged and slid down the bridge of his nose. The gun and silencer slipped back into Jurgens's jacket as quickly as they'd slipped out.
"That's what I mean, Lieutenant," Harrison said.
30
THEY'D moved into the dining room. In the gray morning light, the outlines of people and objects blended together. Carter sipped his coffee.
"Isn't there an easier explanation?" he asked. "Some lunatic, a sadist, a professional assassin, a terrorist organization ... something ... I don't know, something more realistic, for Christ's sake." He must have noticed the looks everyone was giving him, because he raised his hands in submission. "Just a question."
"Carter, this is the most realistic explanation," Blanes replied. "Reality is physics. And you know as well as I do that there's no other explanation." He counted off on his fingers one by one as he spoke, listing the evidence. "First, the speed and the silence: Ross was killed in less than two hours, Nadja in a matter of minutes, and Reinhard in a couple of seconds. Second, the unbelievable variety of places: i
n a pantry, on a barge, an apartment, a plane in midflight... It's obvious that changing spaces is no problem because he doesn't move through space. Third, the mummification of the bodies showed that the amount of time that had passed was different for the victims than it was for all the objects around them. Finally, the degree of shock caused by seeing the scene of the crime, even in people accustomed to dead bodies. And why? Because of the Impact. Both Zig Zag's crimes and the images of the past produce Impact. Marini and Ric suffered from it when they saw the splits. All of that points to one of us being Zig Zag. That was what poor Reinhard realized."
"So what you're saying is, one of us might be him and not even know it?"
"Elisa, Jacqueline, you, or me," Blanes confirmed. "Or Ric. One of the people on the island ten years ago. One of the survivors. Unless it was Reinhard, it which case Zig Zag would now be dead. But I doubt that."
Jacqueline sat doubled over, elbows on her thighs, staring off into space as if she weren't hearing a thing. But suddenly she blinked and spoke up.
"If Ric's split wasn't that violent, then why is Zig Zag so savage?"
Blanes looked at her grimly.
"That's the key question. The only answer I can think of is the one Reinhard came up with: one of us is not what he or she seems."
"What?"
"All of our dreams ... all the things we don't want to do but are impulses that take over..." Blanes was marking his words with emphatic gestures. "Zig Zag is always influencing us, even if we can't see him. He's in our subconscious; he makes us think, dream, and do certain things. That had never happened before with any of the other splits. Reinhard thought it had to come from a sick mind, an abnormal mind. That thought horrified him. Because the split was produced while the person was asleep, Zig Zag has taken on incredible strength. You once used the word 'contamination,' Jacqueline. Do you remember? That's a very apt way to describe it. We're all contaminated by the unconscious of that sleeping mind."
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