The Dark River

by John Twelve Hawks

  The Brethren’s scientists had built a powerful quantum computer, and the subatomic particles at the heart of the machine had enabled communication with the other realms that only Travelers had been able to explore. The new quantum computer was supposed to track a Traveler’s passage across the four barriers to other worlds, but a young Harlequin named Maya had destroyed it when she rescued Gabriel.

  Whenever Michael evaluated his new change in status, he had to admit that Maya’s attack on the Research Center was the crucial step in his personal transformation. He had shown his loyalty—not to his brother—but to the Brethren. Once the wreckage was cleaned up and a new security perimeter was established, Michael had returned to the center. He was still a prisoner, but eventually everyone in the world was going to be part of an enormous prison. The only real distinction was your level of awareness. There was going to be a new alignment of power in the world, and he planned to be on the winning side.

  IT HAD TAKEN only a few sessions in the room for Michael to be seduced by the power of the Vast Machine. There was something about sitting in the chair that made you feel like God looking down from heaven. Right now, the young woman wearing the leather jacket had just stopped at a makeup counter and was chatting with the salesclerk. Michael slipped on the headset and pressed a switch. Immediately, he was talking to the Brethren’s new computer center in Berlin.

  “This is Michael. I want to speak to Lars.”

  “Just a minute, please,” said a woman with a German accent. A few seconds later, Lars came on the line. He was always helpful, and never asked impertinent questions.

  “Okay. I’m at Printemps in Paris,” Michael said. “The target is at the makeup counter. So how do I get her personal information?”

  “Let me take a look,” Lars said.

  A small red light appeared on the lower right corner of the screen. That meant Lars had access to the same image. Often several technicians were watching the same surveillance system or you attached yourself to the activities of a bored security guard sitting in a monitoring room somewhere. The guards—who were supposedly the first line of defense against terrorists and criminals—spent a great deal of their time stalking women through malls and then out into the parking lot. If you switched on the audio, you could hear them chatting to one another and laughing when a woman wearing a tight skirt was about to get into a sports car.

  “We can reduce her face to an algorithm and compare it to the photographs in the French passport database,” Lars explained. “But it’s much easier if we just pick up her credit card number. Look at your personal monitor and click the dedicated telecommunications option. Type in as much information as possible: location of the phone, date, time—which is right now, of course. The Carnivore program will skim her number the moment it’s transmitted.”

  The store clerk slid the young woman’s card through a scanner and numbers flashed onto the screen. “And there it is,” Lars said as if he were a magician who had taught his apprentice a new trick. “Now double-click…”

  “I know what to do.” Michael moved the cursor to the cross-reference button and, almost instantly, additional information began to appear. The woman’s name was Clarisse Marie du Portail. Twenty-three years old. No credit problems. This is her phone number. This is her home address. The program translated from French into English a list of items she had bought with her credit card during the last three months.

  “Watch this,” Lars said. A box on the top right-hand corner of the screen displayed a grainy image from a street surveillance camera. “See that building? That’s where she lives. Third floor.”

  “Thanks, Lars. I can handle the rest.”

  “If you scroll down the credit card bill, you’ll see that she paid for a visit to a women’s health clinic. Do you want to see if she got birth control pills or had an abortion?”

  “Thank you, but that’s not necessary,” Michael said.

  The little red light disappeared from the screen, and once again he was alone with Clarisse. Carrying a little plastic bag with the makeup, the young woman continued through the store and stepped onto the escalator. Michael typed in a few directions and switched over to a new camera. A lock of brown hair rested on Clarisse’s forehead and almost touched her eyes. She brushed it back with one hand, and then gazed around at a new display of merchandise. Michael wondered if she was looking for a dress to wear to a special event. With a little more help from Lars, he could access her e-mail.

  The electronically activated door glided open and Kennard Nash entered the room. Nash was a former army general and national security adviser who was currently the head of the Brethren’s executive board. There was something about his stocky build and brusque manner that reminded Michael of a football coach.

  Michael switched to another surveillance camera—goodbye, Clarisse—but the general had already seen the young woman. He smiled like an uncle who had just found his nephew perusing a men’s magazine.

  “What location?” he asked.

  “Paris.”

  “Is she cute?”

  “Definitely.”

  As Nash approached Michael, his tone became more serious. “I’ve got some news that might interest you. Mr. Boone and his associates just concluded a successful field assessment of the New Harmony community in Arizona. Apparently your brother and the Harlequin visited this place a few months ago.”

  “So where are they now?”

  “We don’t know exactly, but we’re getting closer. An analysis of e-mail messages stored on a laptop computer indicates that Gabriel is probably a few miles away from here—in New York City. We still don’t have the computing power to search the entire world, but now we can focus on this particular location.”

  Becoming a Traveler had given Michael certain abilities that helped him survive. If he relaxed in a certain way—didn’t think, just observed—he could slow his perceptions so that he could see split-second changes in someone’s facial expressions. Michael could tell when someone was lying, could detect the thoughts and emotions that everyone concealed in their day-to-day lives.

  “How long will it take to find my brother?” he asked.

  “I can’t say. But this is a very positive step. Up until now, we’ve been searching for them in Canada and Mexico. I never thought they’d go to New York.” Nash chuckled softly. “This young Harlequin is crazy.”

  And now the world began to slow within Michael’s mind. He could see a hesitation in Nash’s smile. A quick look to the left. And then a split-second twisting of the lips into a sneer. Perhaps the general wasn’t lying, but he was definitely hiding some fact that made him feel superior.

  “Let someone else finish the work in Arizona,” Michael said. “I think Boone should fly to New York immediately.”

  Once again, Nash smiled as if he had the high cards in a poker game. “Mr. Boone will stay there for one more day evaluating some additional information. His team found a letter during a search of the compound.” General Nash paused and let the statement linger in the air.

  Michael watched Nash’s eyes. “And why is that important?”

  “The letter is from your father. He’s been hiding from us for quite a long time, but it appears that he’s still alive.”

  “What? Are you sure?” Michael jumped out of the chair and almost ran across the room. Was Nash telling him the truth, or was this just another test of loyalty? He examined the general’s face and the movements of his eyes. Nash looked superior and proud—as if he enjoyed this demonstration of his authority.

  “So where is he? How can we find him?”

  “I can’t tell you at this time. We don’t know when the letter was written. Boone couldn’t find an envelope with a postmark or a return address.”

  “But what did the letter say?”

  “Your father inspired the formation of New Harmony. He wanted to encourage his friends and warn them about the Brethren.” Nash watched Michael pace around the room. “You don’t look very happy about this news.
”

  “After your men burned down our house, Gabe and I kept this fantasy going. We convinced each other that our father had survived and was looking for us as we drove around the country. When I got older, I realized that my father wasn’t going to help me at all. I was on my own.”

  “So you decided he was dead?”

  “Wherever my father went, he was never coming back. He might as well have been dead.”

  “Who knows? Maybe we can arrange a family reunion.”

  Michael wanted to slam Nash against the wall and slap the smile off his face. But he turned away from the older man and regained his composure. He was still a prisoner, but there were ways around that. He had to assert himself and guide the Brethren in a certain direction.

  “You killed everyone at New Harmony. Correct?”

  Nash seemed annoyed by Michael’s blunt language. “Boone’s team achieved its objectives.”

  “Do the police know what happened? Has it become news?”

  “Why should you be concerned with that?”

  “I’m telling you how to find Gabriel. If the media doesn’t know about this, then Boone should make sure they find out.”

  Nash nodded. “That’s definitely part of the plan.”

  “I know my brother. Gabriel visited New Harmony and met the people who lived there. This event is really going to affect him. He’ll have to react, do something on impulse. We need to be ready.”

  2

  G abriel and his friends were living in New York City. A minister from Vicki’s church named Oscar Hernandez had arranged for them to stay in an empty industrial loft in Chinatown. The grocery store on the ground floor took sports bets, so the store had five phone lines—all registered in different names—plus a fax machine, a scanner, and a high-speed Internet connection. For a small payment, the grocer allowed them to use these electronic resources to substantiate their new identities. Chinatown was a good place for these transactions because all the shopkeepers preferred cash to the credit cards and ATM cards that were monitored by the Vast Machine.

  The rest of the building was occupied by different businesses that used undocumented immigrants as workers. A garment sweatshop was on the first floor, and the man on the second floor manufactured pirated DVDs. Strangers walked in and out of the building during the daytime, but at night everyone was gone.

  The fourth-floor loft was a long, narrow room with a polished wood floor and windows at both ends. It had once been used as a factory for fake designer handbags, and an industrial sewing machine was still bolted to the floor near the bathroom. A few days after they arrived, Vicki hung painter’s tarps on clotheslines, creating a men’s bedroom for Gabriel and Hollis, and a women’s bedroom for herself and Maya.

  Maya had been wounded during the attack on the Evergreen Research Center, and her recovery was a series of small victories. Gabriel could still remember the first night she was able to sit up in a chair to eat dinner, and the first morning she took a shower without Vicki’s help. Two months after they arrived, Maya was able to leave the building with the others, limping up Mosco Street to the Hong Kong Cake Company. She waited outside the street stall—wobbly, but determined to stand on her own—while an elderly Chinese woman made cookies like crepes on a black iron griddle.

  Money wasn’t a problem; they had already received two shipments of hundred-dollar bills sent by Linden, a Harlequin who lived in Paris. Following Maya’s instructions, they created false identities that included birth certificates, passports, driver’s licenses, and credit cards. Hollis and Vicki found a backup apartment in Brooklyn and rented mail drops and postal boxes. When everyone in the group had the necessary documents for two false identities, they would leave New York and travel to a safe house in Canada or Europe.

  Sometimes Hollis would laugh and call their group “the four fugitives,” and Gabriel felt as if they had become friends. On some nights, the four residents of the loft each cooked a dish for one big meal, then sat around the table playing cards and joking about who was going to wash the dishes. Even Maya smiled occasionally and became part of the group. Gabriel could lose his self-consciousness during those moments, forget that he was a Traveler and that Maya was a Harlequin—and that his ordinary life was gone forever.

  ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT, everything changed. The group had spent two hours at a jazz club in the West Village. As they strolled back to Chinatown, a truck driver tossed bound stacks of a tabloid newspaper onto the sidewalk. Gabriel glanced down at the headline and stopped moving.

  THEY KILLED THEIR KIDS!

  67 Die in Arizona Cult Suicide

  The front-page article was about New Harmony, where Gabriel had gone only a few months earlier to visit the Pathfinder Sophia Briggs.

  They bought three different newspapers and hurried back to the loft. According to Arizona police, the killing was motivated by religious mania. Reporters had already interviewed the former neighbors of the dead families. Everyone agreed—the people living at New Harmony had to be crazy. They had left good jobs and beautiful homes to live in the desert.

  Hollis skimmed through the article in the New York Times. “According to this, the guns were registered to the people who lived there.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Maya said.

  “The police found a video made by a British woman,” Hollis said. “Apparently, she gave some kind of speech about destroying evil.”

  “Martin Greenwald sent an e-mail to me a few weeks ago,” Maya said. “He gave no indication of any problems.”

  “I didn’t know you heard from Martin,” Gabriel said with surprise, and he watched Maya’s face change. He knew instantly that she was hiding something important from them.

  “Yes, well, I did.” Trying to avoid Gabriel’s eyes, she walked over to the kitchen area.

  “What did he tell you, Maya?”

  “I made a decision. I thought it was best—”

  Gabriel stood up and took a step toward her. “Tell me what he said!”

  Maya was close to the door that led to the stairway. Gabriel wondered if she was going to run away rather than answer his questions.

  “Martin received a letter from your father,” Maya said. “He asked about the people at New Harmony.”

  For a few seconds, Gabriel felt as if the loft, the building, the city itself had vanished; he was a boy, standing in the snow, watching an owl fly in circles above the smoldering ruins of his family’s home. His father was gone, vanished forever.

  Then he blinked and returned to this moment: Hollis was furious, Vicki looked hurt, and Maya seemed defiant about her decision.

  “My father’s alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what happened? Where is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Maya said. “Martin was careful not to send that information over the Internet.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me—”

  Maya interrupted him, the words spilling out of her mouth. “Because I knew you’d want to go back to New Harmony and that was dangerous. I planned to return to Arizona myself once we left New York and you were at a safe house.”

  “I thought we were in this together,” Hollis said. “No secrets. Everybody on the same team.”

  As usual, Vicki stepped forward in her role as peacemaker. “I’m sure Maya realizes that she made a mistake.”

  “You think Maya is going to apologize?” Hollis asked. “We’re not Harlequins, which means—in her mind—we’re not on her level. She’s been treating us like a bunch of children.”

  “It was not a mistake!” Maya said. “All those people at New Harmony are dead. If Gabriel had been there, he would have been killed, too.”

  “I think I have the right to make my own decisions,” Gabriel said. “Now Martin is gone and we don’t have any information.”

  “You’re still alive, Gabriel. One way or the other, I’ve protected you. That’s my obligation as a Harlequin. My only responsibility.”

  Maya turned, snapped the lock open
, and stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

  3

  T he word zombie lingered in Nathan Boone’s mind like a whisper. It seemed out of place in the hospitality lounge of the private airport terminal near Phoenix, Arizona. The room was decorated with pastel-colored furniture and framed photographs of Hopi dancers. A cheerful young woman named Cheryl had just baked chocolate chip cookies and brewed fresh coffee for the small group of corporate passengers.

  Boone sat down at a workstation and switched on his laptop computer. Outside the terminal it was an overcast, blustery day, and the wind sock on the tarmac kept snapping back and forth. His men had already loaded sealed bins containing weapons and body armor onto the chartered jet. Once the local ground crew finished fueling the plane, Boone and his team would fly east.

  It had been easy to manipulate the police and media perception of what had happened at New Harmony. Technicians working for the Brethren had already hacked into government computers and registered a list of firearms to the names of Martin Greenwald and other members of the community. The ballistics evidence and Janet Wilkins’s video statement about messages from God convinced the authorities that New Harmony was a religious cult that had destroyed itself. The tragedy was tailor-made for the evening news, and none of the reporters were inspired to look any deeper. The story was over.

  There was a report from one of the mercenaries about a child running near the containment perimeter, and Boone wondered if it was the same Asian girl he had seen at the community center. This could have been a problem, but the police hadn’t found anyone alive. If the girl had escaped the initial attack, she had either died of exposure out in the desert or had been hiding in one of the houses that burned to the ground.

  He activated a coding system, went on the Internet, and began to check his e-mail. There was promising news about the search for Gabriel Corrigan in New York City, and Boone answered that immediately. As he scrolled through the other messages he also found three e-mails from Michael asking about the search for his father. Please send a progress report, Michael wrote. The Brethren would like immediate action on this matter.