"Doctor, a message was waiting for you at the airfield in Matamoros. They broke radio silence to relay it when we didn't land."
Wittrock betrayed no surprise, merely nodded. "Go ahead."
"Don't you think that was a little stupid?"
"There was relatively little risk involved, and the situation demanded unequivocal certainty. Go ahead with the message, please."
"The package you sent to Washington was delivered. And well-received."
"Excellent," Wittrock made a dismissive gesture and turned to go back to his seat.
Aranda grabbed him by the loose folds of his billowing jumpsuit. "What the hell is this about? And what was so important about it, that you'd risk pinpointing our flight path?"
"The weapon has been field-tested, and the test was a success. Rejoice, Major Aranda. Your lieutenant did not die in vain. This war will soon be at an end, and you can get back to your forest under glass."
The plane dipped horribly, falling a few hundred feet before leveling off in an uneasy truce with the storm. The plunge yanked Wittrock free of Aranda, but the scientist leaned in closer. "You still doubt me, Major. Do you know who founded the Mission?"
Aranda, who knew more than most the value of not knowing some things, only shook his head.
"I did. He was my friend, and a mentor, both to me and to Darwin, whom you did know. He was the most brilliant scientist at the Manhattan Project, and do you know what they did with him when he'd given them all he could? They murdered him in cold blood, and wiped his name from all the records. Your soldiers don't have a monopoly on sacrifice, Major."
Wittrock sat down with his back to Aranda. The FARC guard perched atop the cargo smiled gold nuggets and made a scat-gesture with his rifle.
Aranda turned and swung from sling to canvas sling along the cabin to where his men sat. He busied himself with helping them suit up in civilian garb and sorting their papers and photo ID's. They huddled to wait for descent when a salvo of gunfire came from the aft end of the plane.
"Buenos noches, Estados Unidos!" the FARC sniper screamed.
Aranda's men got to their feet and started to rush him, but Aranda grabbed and dragged them back. The FARCs on top of the cargo watched them with guns out. It would be mutual slaughter, at best. He put on his headset and hailed the pilot. "Bre'r Bear, what's under us?"
"No-man's land, Bre'r Fox. Ass-end of Texas, on final approach. What's going on back there?"
"Little cokehead air rage, Bre'r Bear. Nobody's hurt. Steer us clear of houses, though, okay?"
"Roger that, out."
And so, despite Major Aranda's best efforts, the Mission re-entered the United States shooting.
~7~
Cundieffe was awakened just before five AM in his room at the Georgetown Suites. He thought it was his regular wake up call a few minutes early, but was startled by a strange voice. "He's coming to get you."
"What?" His heart skipped a beat as he fumbled for his glasses. It was one of those moments when you wake up from a sound sleep, but you're sure you're still dreaming. He couldn't remember what he'd just dreamt, but as he rubbed his eyes and looked again at the clock, he knew that someone had been chasing him. Someone who could not be escaped, because he looked down out of the sky and out of the eyes of every living creature. But that was crazy. Why should he dream of someone chasing him?
"Agent Cundieffe? Are you there?" It was Assistant Director Wyler's secretary, June McNulty.
"Yes, I'm sorry, Ms. McNulty, I just woke up, that's all."
"This isn't a scheduled appointment, Agent Cundieffe. The Assistant Director requires your attendance at an emergency briefing at the Cave Institute."
Good night! "How much time do I have?"
"Five minutes, barring traffic. Do be ready to go by then, Agent Cundieffe. Assistant Director Wyler was emphatic."
He thanked Ms. McNulty and hung up, clambered out of bed and into one of the suits in the closet. He swallowed a handful of vitamins and chased them down with a carton of orange juice from the minibar. He noticed the minibar was short one bottle of Bacardi Silver rum, and made a mental note to challenge its addition to his bill. He slipped on an overcoat and a wool knit scarf, brushed his teeth and rinsed with the special prescription anti-thrush mouthwash from his own personal toiletry kit, no single-serving Scope, thank you very much. His hair was too short and too thin to mount much resistance, and a few seconds' combing tamed the few uncooperative strands into place.
He looked at himself in the mirror then, really looked. It was an exercise he'd perfected as a child at his first year of elementary school, and he credited it with sparing him the daily beatings that were dealt out to far less geeky looking kids. He tried to see himself through the eyes of all the different types of people he'd encounter in the day ahead. He understood local cops, federal officials, solid citizens and criminal minds of all types, just as he'd understood bullies, disaffected teachers and petty-minded administrators. For some, he learned to look like a good citizen, an inept dupe or a trustworthy instrument, but for most he'd been merely invisible. He looked and looked, but he could not imagine what might lie behind the eyes of the group of people who would look at him this morning.
He supposed this was about the Storch assassination, the report for which had dropped into a black hole. It was remarkable writing a report which he knew would never find its way into the ocean of FBI data, that there would be no official investigation, no trial, no ripples of public panic and outrage. For the government, there were visible signs of strain at trying to keep this crime, like the others, a secret. But for him there was an unaccustomed surge of excitement at the prospect of solving it. If all crime could be investigated and prosecuted in secret, out of the meddling circus of the public arena, how much more efficient would the execution of justice be? Indeed, how much healthier would the average American mind be, without the morbid escapism of daily media bloodbaths and sensationalist entertainment trash that glamorized violent crime?
As for the murder itself, there was an almost preternatural lack of facts. According to a preliminary autopsy performed by a Mule physician at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Storch was struck by three shots from a high-powered rifle at a distance of no greater than fifty yards, given the explosive damage done to his body. This meant that the assassin had to be up in a tree in the park, or in the line of cars across the street, all of which had been thoroughly searched by the soldiers who contained the area. Which meant that the assassin probably was one of the soldiers who closed off the area. So far they had found nothing, not even the bullets which struck Storch. There was nothing in the loading dock, nothing in his body. The posterior damage done by the shots was determined to have been caused by explosive gas, suggesting that the bullets detonated within him, but there was no trace of metal or gunpowder, only an unidentified chemical residue which the pathologist speculated had been the bullet itself, and which had triggered the violent chemical reaction that killed the prisoner. Remembering the smoke and bubbling foam pouring out of Storch as he wandered, hollow-headed, out onto the sidewalk, Cundieffe eagerly awaited the tox screens and chemical analysis he'd ordered on his own sample of Storch's blood.
He grabbed his briefcase and got out the door at the first sounding of Wyler's horn, and ten full seconds before his five AM wake up call.
He stopped short just outside his door, and had to grab the railing as a gust of wind laced with beads of icy rain slashed at him. He could almost see the heat streaming off his body and into the ravenous predawn sky.
Down in the lot, a black GMC Suburban idled with its lights off. Behind triple-tinted windows, the interior was as inscrutable as the inside of an egg. Cundieffe looked around, but saw no other cars waiting. Painted in chiaroscuro black and blue and chrome, the lot was packed in silent ranks of sedans and SUV's. To his knowledge, the Assistant Director never traveled in a hulking utility vehicle, just the standard issue Ford LTD, though he had a support staff driver. But then, he had only been the De
puty Assistant Director, then. As the highly visible head of the new counterterrorism division, he would need more security than ever before. And now, with an emergency briefing at the Institute…
Something Wyler himself had told him at his first brush with Mule society: the more powerful they become, the more invisible…
The rear passenger-side door opened and Wyler leaned out. "Get in. The war's back on."
Holding his briefcase over his head to shield it from the stinging rain, Cundieffe got a running start and leapt more or less completely into the back seat, hauling himself the rest of the way in by the seatbelt. The Suburban took off, the door slamming shut under the inertia that pressed Cundieffe face-first into the back of his seat.
As he righted himself, he studied the Assistant Director, and decided that if he were to look at himself through his superior's eyes this morning, he'd have to blur his own vision somewhat. Wyler looked as if he hadn't slept, and he held a drink in one shaky hand. He watched Cundieffe with the same subdued impatience that he'd displayed when he led the junior agent into the restroom at China Lake, and told him what he really was and why he was really there.
"What do we know, sir?"
"Very little, but that's why I wanted you along now. There's been a major break on the location of the Mission command element in South America, and some telecom activity inside Texas that suggests that they have already arrived on U.S. soil."
"That's incredible. I suppose the NSA intercepted communications from their foreign base of operations?"
"They don't use phones, Martin. They're not idiots. They used encrypted postings on a BBS to prepare the faithful who remained behind for the return invasion."
"My, it seems awfully quick, doesn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I thought that decryption of sophisticated encrypted text was somewhat time-consuming, even if you knew where to look…"
"You have objections, yes. But what are you trying to say?"
Cundieffe squirmed. He felt his hair writhing out of place on his skull as he tried to speak. "Isn't it illegal under even the narrowest interpretation of the Telecommunications Privacy Act for a private group to handle such information? I mean—"
"Martin, it is imperative that you understand something. We are fighting terrorism, which is low-intensity warfare, granted, but it is war on the American people, and on the American way of life. We would be shirking our duties to those people if we did not pursue their enemies with all due diligence, and all the resources available. Liberty and privacy are relative luxuries in time of war, but that is why it has been our especial duty to violate them with the least possible harm. Not the FBI, Martin. Us. America has always been at war. And we have always been listening."
"I've just—" Cundieffe faltered, trying to steer the conversation into less prickly territory. "I realize extraordinary means must be used to catch this extraordinary group, but I feel like I'm still not up to speed. What would drive the most brilliant scientists in our weapons programs to wage war on their own nation like this—"
"Cotton Mather," Wyler said. To Cundieffe's quizzical look, he added, "The father of American Puritan philo—"
"Right, right, but what's he got to do with it?" Cundieffe was thoroughly nonplussed.
Wyler quoted effusively with more than a glint of sarcasm in his eyes, "'The more cultured and intelligent you are, the more ready you are to work for Satan.'"
Cundieffe could not meet Wyler's gaze any more, and took up his briefcase. It was still dripping half-melted sleet onto the plush floormats. "I also have the case files you needed, sir, and my summary report on progress on the murder of Sgt. Storch."
"I've already read all there is to know. Forget about him, Martin. He's not FBI business, anymore. Nothing you see or hear this morning can be disclosed or used as evidence in the pursuance of FBI matters until you are given notice, is that clear?"
Cundieffe nodded.
"Good. Now, where we are going, you are going to meet with resistance. You may be ordered to leave, but you are not going to."
"I don't want to cause any friction, sir."
"But you will. We are a subspecies, but the Cave Institute is a society. One must be sponsored to be accepted, but the process is long and arduous. Your background with the FBI and your discretion in the Mission affair in California are barely enough to get your foot in the door."
Cundieffe let his voice get as weak and unconvincing as he could make it. "Sir, if there's any possibility of this reflecting badly on you, I don't want to impose. You could always brief me later…"
"This is a matter of national security. And you are my Agent in Charge on this case."
"But if I'm not to use any of the information we're going to receive this morning, how is my presence going to serve any purpose?"
"Because by the time we've digested the information and formulated a plan, we will also have conceived a legitimate channel for it to come to our attention. We will then be able to act on it decisively and finally. Last time, we let the military play their games, and nearly one hundred innocent civilians were incinerated. This time, we will manage the situation from start to finish, and order will prevail."
Cundieffe withdrew into himself. He didn't bring up the other contents of his briefcase, which he'd hoped to discuss. Instead, he looked at the drink in Wyler's hand, a sign of weakness that he hoped would not further jeopardize the investigation.
He didn't notice Wyler watching him until the glass was swept up under his nose. "Would you like one?" the Assistant Director asked. Cundieffe's nose was stung by a bitter aroma that tweaked the olfactory sweetmeats in the floor of his brain. What could the Assistant Director be hooked on, that could make such a stench? Absinthe?
"No, sir," he fumbled. "It's a little early for me…"
"Imbecile," Wyler snapped. "It's herbal tea."
Martin still found it hard to believe that he (he still thought of himself as a "he," Wyler had explained that to do otherwise could precipitate a psychotic breakdown) was not a man like the others, but something else entirely. A sub-species, a symbiotic worker caste, they called themselves. The future, their eyes said.
The enormity of it was still a long way from coming home, because it was the kind of world-changing revelation that alters the way one sees the sky, the world, his face in the mirror. His reflexes for dealing with such fundamental paradigm shifts had atrophied since their last major challenge, when he discovered that neither the Director nor his Father were immortal. To know of the Mules and what they did in secret to keep the world from falling apart from one day to the next was not so different, he supposed, from learning first hand of the hand of God. For the time being, it was merely curious, that he had never seen it, seen them—seen himself.
He had always been a passionate student of human nature. As a child, he'd had to mimic normal behaviors to avoid being beaten constantly. He found most human behavior utterly ridiculous, until he began to understand the nature of the axes on which they turned. Dominance and self-gratification ruled most, and in many it hollowed them out and made them into machines, destined to harm themselves and others in their blind animal madness. His parents might have had some influence in guiding him towards his career, but it was in his nature to study people, and to seek to protect society from the bad ones. Now, he knew where it came from, and that he was not alone.
In his earlier visits to Washington, AD Wyler had introduced Cundieffe to eight Mules that he knew about, and perhaps three times as many that he couldn't be sure about. It was not something one could immediately pin down. There was no syndrome that Cundieffe had yet identified, and he struggled to isolate one.
Excessive hygiene, perhaps, but that could be put down to the deficiencies in hormones, the elegant efficiency of the immune system, the strict adherence to proper diet, that caused them to have no native odor whatsoever. Those cast as males tended towards academic tweediness or invisible gray flannel, with no power tie posturing or cosme
tic adornment, and a tendency towards premature baldness and a total lack of body or facial hair. The "females" were indistinguishable from all the other frosty power-suited lady politicos in government, but those whom he knew were Mules seemed to represent the asexual ideal towards which all other career women strove: waspish in figure, crisply coiffed and almost stingingly brisk in conversation.
Intelligence, certainly: Cundieffe had yet to meet one who didn't make him feel like a rank idiot. That was par for the course in Washington, he knew, but the Mules he'd met had done so effortlessly and with none of the self-conscious relish that he'd observed in gendered bureaucrats. He'd found he got in trouble the least when he addressed a new acquaintance as "Doctor," and tried to steer conversation away from his own alma mater.
Power, obviously, but never for its own sake, and never in elected positions. Attending a series of odd briefings with a motley assortment of upper-level functionaries of federal agencies, Cundieffe had found that the Mules placed their numbers in bureaucratic positions where they wielded the most possible power over policy with the least visibility. Positions of titular power and ready media access were left to hacks and empty suits, but their briefings and position papers almost invariably came from Mule subordinates. The Mules he'd met so far included one other FBI Assistant Director; an assistant chairman of the Federal Reserve; the executive secretary of the Office of Management and Budget; a senior administrator at the Centers for Disease Control; the assistant director of the Environmental Protection Agency; the deputy director of the Department of Energy; the vice chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; the civilian deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; and the Ambassador to Switzerland. Nearly all of them had remained in their present positions through at least the last three administrations, watching them come and go as they quietly ran the nation. An outside observer, even armed with the understanding of what they were, could only guess at who was what by the absence of attention, the omission of the kind of human errors and excesses that cropped up in nearly every career, sooner or later. It was a chilling field of speculation, that everyone who didn't turn up on the eleven o'clock news could be one, and could only be ruled out when they ruined themselves in a scandal.
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