“I am not interested in old news, Monsieur Pilier,” said Skorzeny coolly. “I am referring to the Clara Vallis. How is she making?”
“On schedule.”
“And our experiments?”
“Ready to launch.”
“Good.” Skorzeny glanced over at the eternal television screen. “Shut that infernal thing off and sit down so we can have a proper talk.”
Pilier clicked the remote and the TV winked off. He took the nearest chair and sat. It wasn’t very comfortable, but that was the way the boss liked it. The only congenial chair in the room was Skorzeny’s; everybody else had to suffer. It was like being at Bayreuth without Wagner’s music. Death without Transfiguration. Skorzeny stared at Pilier for an uncomfortably long time before he spoke.
“There is a mighty wind coming, Monsieur Pilier. Perhaps you have not noticed it, but rest assured that I have. For years, decades, I have felt its approach, smelt its dragon breath. And when it blows through, when it has wrought what it was sent to wreak, who will be left to mourn what it leaves in its wake?”
Pilier had no idea what the old man was talking about. He almost wished he was still on the subject of the lovely Amanda Harrington—a woman, he had to confess to his inner chaplain, who had often figured in his erotic fantasies, some of them quite exotic. She embodied, he supposed, what the late Roman Catholic Church meant by “an occasion of sin.”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”
“I will. I and those closest to me.”
Skorzeny fell silent for a while, contemplating the art on the walls, from time to time humming some small snatch of music to himself. To Pilier, he seemed in the grip of a great agitation, which even his iron will could not quite control.
“I have not been able to reach her by telephone or text.”
So it was back to Amanda again. “Sir, you saw her last night, in London.”
Skorzeny seemed to struggle back to his senses. “Yes,” he said. “London. The last piece of our little puzzle. What of our representative there?”
Pilier checked the time. “He is due to report in to you by teleconference shortly. I am led to believe that you will be very happy with his report, sir.”
Skorzeny folded his hands together. “Then everything is in order. And now it is in the hands of God, if He has any interest in us left…One last thing. Please make ready our holiday home for occupancy.”
That caught Pilier by surprise. Although he had multiple residences in many of the world’s garden spots, Skorzeny only ever used that phrase, “holiday home” to refer to one place in particular. “Yes, sir.”
Skorzeny reached for one of the remotes and switched on some music. Usually, he waited until he had retired for the evening’s concert, but on this night it was as if he wanted to share it with Pilier, with the world.
The music sounded. A soft, mournful, cello line above a contemplative piano accompaniment, slow, very slow, but steady, like the beating of a broken heart. Pilier was about to ask what it was, but Skorzeny anticipated his question and held up his hand peremptorily for silence. Pilier obeyed.
For more than eight and a half eternal minutes, the music continued, unchanging on its infinitely slow, ecstatic course.
“Do you know what that was, Monsieur Pilier?” asked Skorzeny, when the last, dying note could no longer be heard.
“No, sir,” he replied, truthfully.
“And yet you are a graduate of the Sorbonne. Amazing. You might as well have attended Harvard and emerged no less an ignorant, though perhaps more ideologically blinkered, savage.”
Skorzeny signaled for the ablution bowl. “‘I saw a mighty Angel descending from heaven…and the Angel swore by Him who lives forever and ever, saying: there will be no more Time…the mystery of God will be completed.’ The Book of Revelation, written by John the Evangelist on Patmos, as the Christians believe. Now can you tell me what that music was?”
Inwardly, Pilier seethed. Outwardly, he remained as placid as the music had been. “No, sir,” he said.
“‘Praise Eternity.’ The fifth movement of Messiaen’s Quatour pour le fin du temps. ‘The Quartet for the End of Time.’ Written in seven movements and an interlude, and premiered by its composer in a Nazi prison camp at Görlitz during the winter of 1940–41, for the instruments he had on hand: piano, violin, cello, and clarinet. Do you know what Messiaen said about it?”
The shame of ignorance was burning Pilier’s cheeks. He couldn’t compete with Skorzeny’s all-embracing, omniscient Weltanschauung.
“Of course you don’t. He said, ‘Never have I been heard with as much attention and understanding.’ In a concentration camp. Thus focusing the mind and concentration wonderfully. As I know from bitter experience.”
“It’s beautiful, sir,” mustered Pilier.
“It’s not beautiful,” barked Skorzeny. “It’s radiant. ‘Seven is the perfect number.’ But he wrote one extra movement, the interlude, so as not to compete with Creation. Le 7 de ce repos se prolonge dans l’éternité de devient le 8 de la lu-mière indéfectible, de l’inaltérable paix. ‘The seventh of his day of repose prolongs itself into eternity and becomes the eighth, of unfailing light, of immutable peace.’ Do you understand that? Unfailing light. Immutable peace.”
“Yes, sir. No, sir.” Pilier had no idea which the correct answer was, so he tried them both. How he wished the old man would just go to bed one night, and never wake up. All this blather about useless culture gave him a migraine.
“Messiaen believed it was his faith that got him safely through the camps, and made him one of the greatest composers of the benighted twentieth century. Do you agree, Monsieur Pilier?”
That was no way to answer that question, except honestly. “No, sir. I don’t. Religion is superstition, dressed up in vestments and perfumed with incense.”
Skorzeny contemplated him for a long time before he spoke. “We are, all of us, in need of salvation, Monsieur Pilier,” he said at last.
The huge video screen suddenly flickered to life; despite his fashionable atheism, Pilier breathed a silent prayer of relief, for having spared him whatever was to have followed. “That would be our London member, sir,” he said, switching on the private video feed.
The face of Charles Augustus Milverton filled the screen. Skorzeny contemplated it with equanimity; this was no time to give voice to his suspicions, nor let them color the business they needed to transact. There would be plenty of time for that later, after the great event. “Report,” he said.
“Our Washington friend has been most helpful—I got the final confirmation yesterday. Not in so many words, of course, but in actions. Hidden signals. Emanations of penumbras. He’s the one you’ve been looking for. And, sir—
“What’s his name?” Skorzeny could hardly contain his excitement.
“And may I say that he’s the one I’ve been looking for as well. Ever since that night in Paris—”
“What’s his name?”
“He doesn’t have a name, sir.”
“Then how do you know it’s him?”
“I know.”
This was the moment Emanuel Skorzeny had been waiting for nearly a quarter of a century. The one thing, the one man, that could interrupt his plans, the one person who could link him to that unholy triangle, to the days when he learned firsthand how deadly the female of the species could be, how the weakness of men would always be their undoing, how the passions of the moment always trumped reason. As Blake had foretold.
The thing that had first put fear into him.
Love.
He had vowed then that he would not become what he had beheld. He had failed.
But perhaps it was not too late. A moment of vengeance, and t’were best done, especially t’were it done quickly.
“Kill him. Launch the experiment.”
Milverton paused. He was used to impossible missions. But this…
Skorzeny heard, no, make that sensed, his hesitation—“You know who he is?”<
br />
“I only caught a glimpse of him in Edwardsville.”
Skorzeny saw his play. It was perfect. Solved all his problems at one stroke. “And did he see you?”
Milverton’s face betrayed no emotion. There was no right answer. “I don’t know.”
“A profession of ignorance is not an answer.”
“Perhaps. I think so.”
Skorzeny smiled and reached once more for the ablution bowl. If it worked once, it would work twice, even in one night. “Then let him come to you. Make him come to you. Draw him to your home turf and kill him. What could be easier? You have the defender’s advantage.”
For once, there was silence at the other end of the line. Milverton’s face betrayed no emotion, but nothing came out of his mouth.
“It’s perfect, don’t you see?” said Skorzeny, pausing a little longer than necessary for effect. “One last misdirection, while the real work occurs elsewhere.” Milverton wasn’t sure if he liked this idea, but stayed silent. “While you two settle an old score…In the meantime, if by any chance you should see Miss Harrington, please ask her to call me immediately. I require her presence tomorrow at the country house in France.”
Amanda. So that was what this was all about. The old bastard was on to them. Had he wrung a confession out of her when he was in London? Milverton realized that he hadn’t been able to get ahold of Amanda, either, that she hadn’t answered his calls. “The country house?”
“Yes. With the insurance policy.”
The insurance policy. This was getting worse by the second.
“I’m not sure I understand, Mr. Skorzeny.”
Milverton knew that, had they been face to face, Skorzeny would have looked upon him as if he were an idiot child. Or worse, that iron mannequin holding out the begging bowl on Regent Street with the sign saying SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SPASTIC, or whatever politically correct thing it said these days.
Skorzeny chuckled. “Of course you do.”
He was being set up. Even at this distance, Milverton could smell the stench of desperation on Skorzeny, even as he could smell the scent of Amanda Harrington on him. That was what this was all about.
Her. With the biggest, most audacious play of his life right in front of him, Emanuel Skorzeny was losing focus over a woman.
So unimportant to a man of Milverton’s age and experience. So vitally important to a man of Skorzeny’s age and experience. And he never saw it coming. What a fool he had been.
“It’s him, isn’t it? The man whom I seek.”
“Yes, sir, it is.”
Milverton could feel the excitement radiating from the other end of the continental trunk line. Skorzeny had overplayed his hand. He had given something away. His need. He had never seen that before. His lust—for money, power, women—of course. But never need. Never desperation. Skorzeny’s need, if Milverton played his cards right, would be the thing that kept him alive.
“Then make us both happy. Draw him to you and kill him.”
Even though he knew it was a trap, even though he knew that Skorzeny was setting him up, even though he knew that it didn’t matter to the old man which of them killed the other—because in the aftermath it wouldn’t really matter—Milverton could feel his own excitement rising. His own lust for combat. His own need to pay back this man for the indignity he had inflicted on him in Paris, and for the countless other frustrations he had had to endure during their long cold war in the darkest shadows of cyberspace.
Which meant that he would get to face him. The shadow. The man who wasn’t there. This child whom Skorzeny sought. Protected by the NSA. Given up by Hartley. Very well, then. Bring him on.
And bring on Skorzeny too. He had put up with Caligula long enough, with his barely disguised contempt, with the way he had treated Amanda. He had not survived the training camps of the SAS, not run to ground the deadly operatives of the Provos in Spain, not cut the throats of the IRA men on the streets of Belfast and Londonderry, not dealt with the worst Soviet Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Jewish gangsters to kowtow to a man whose only real claim to fame was that he was a victim. He would show Skorzeny what the word victim really meant.
Not a symbolic victim.
Not a possible victim.
Not a putative victim.
Not a potential victim.
A real victim.
A dead victim.
“Yes, sir,” he said, hanging up.
Nobody hung up on Emanuel Skorzeny.
Milverton didn’t care. He called Amanda Harrington again.
DAY SIX
Ask yourself, what is this thing in itself, by its own special constitution? What is it in substance, and in form, and in matter? What is its function in the world? For how long does it subsist?
—MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations, Book VIII
Chapter Fifty
ROSSLYN, VIRGINIA
Senator Robert Hartley strode to the podium at his hastily called press conference. He was clean, shaved, and sober, and was glad that everybody could tell.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, beaming at the cameras, “I have an important announcement.”
A modest hubbub ran through the modest crowd. Hartley’s staffers had done the best they could on short notice, but their IMs were only just beginning to pull in the public. Right now, it was mostly media.
“As you all know,” he continued, “I have spent my career in the Senate, reaching across the aisle, striving for bipartisanship to solve the issues that divide us as Americans. To that end, I have work assiduously with this president, Jeb Tyler, in an effort to protect and serve the American people.” He made what is called a pregnant pause.
“I am sorry to tell you today that that effort—has failed.”
Gasps, especially from what was left of the once-formidable Washington press corps, now reduced through the collapse of most of the major newspapers in the country, to a few pool reporters and a host of cable-TV cameramen and producers. If there was one thing that Americans—at least, Ivy League-educated Americans—believed in more than God, it was bipartisanship. Except when they didn’t.
“After all, President Tyler was elected on just such a platform. And after the toxic partisanship of the past sixteen years, we all could see why. But now, certain documents have come to light—”
A buzz ran through the older members of the crowd. It was like a live baby seal thrown to the sharks. “Certain documents” could mean only one thing. The maleficent corpse of Senator Joe McCarthy was about to be exhumed and resurrected once more.
The newsies leaned forward, hanging on every word. Even though Hartley was a bona fide idiot, renowned as a human gaffe machine, called behind his back—and sometimes to his face—the “Senator from the Bar Association”—this was sure to be the lead national story in about two minutes. And, three minutes from now, bloggers from Indiana to India would be writing about What It All Meant.
Hartley beamed at the audience. It was great to see all the gray hair, the ponytails, the facial hair, the Botox, the hair plugs. One particularly ugly old crone in the front row shouted, “Does this mean somebody’s finally gonna put the son of a bitch in his place?”
Hartley held up his hands for calm. This was getting out of hand. Television, or what was left of it, was a cool medium. Plus, more and more people were streaming onto the shopping-mall plaza.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Hartley, “ours is a democracy.” Cheers. “A representative, republican democracy.” Boos. “Which is why—which is why—although it pains me to my core—I feel I must come before you today and share what I have learned. For it has come to my attention—”
Quiet, leading to silence.
“—that the events of the past few days…” He paused again. In high school, he had always wanted to play Hamlet, and now he was getting his chance, on a bigger stage than he had ever imagined.
“That the horrible, unconscionable events of the past few years—unprecedented as they are in American histor
y, a history that stretches back to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR…” Maybe that was going too far. No matter—he plunged on:
“Have revealed the most monstrous…conspiracy is not too strong a word…against the American people. A conspiracy so vast…”
The cheering of the crowd, especially the reporters, was almost too much for him to continue. But he managed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, let me be the first to tell you—no secret, no e-mail, no conversation, almost no private thought, has been safe from your government. The National Security Agency—the one they used to laughingly call ‘No Such Agency’—has been spying on you, all of you, for decades. Since long before September 11.”
He held up his hands for calm.
“Yes, each and every one of you. Every one of you who owns an iPod. Or a BlackBerry. A cell phone. Maybe even a land line. Every one of your conversations has been grist for their evil mill, everyone one of your conversations—yes, even those with your Tante Emma, Grandma Mary, or Bubbi Sadie in Florida—has been intercepted, decoded, digested, logged, and analyzed by a sinister branch of the NSA called the Central Security Service.”
A ripple of outrage ran through the crowd. No one had ever heard of the Central Security Service, but they sure didn’t like the sound of it.
“So that’s why, today, I’m announcing the formation of an exploratory committee for a possible presidential run for the nomination of my party against my great and good friend, President Tyler. Because, friendship aside, we can’t afford politics as usual. We can’t afford the ‘system.’ We need action—and we need it now!”
The place erupted in cheers. Viewers watching at home were impressed by Hartley’s sheer, brave honesty. Bloggers pounded their keyboards. Internet servers hummed. Half the nation, watching at home, seethed.
“Are you aware?” Hartley shouted. Shouting was too hot for Marshall McLuhan’s cool medium, but luckily nobody knew who Marshall McLuhan was any more. “Are you aware that the entire ‘War on Terror’ has been a sham? A way to divest you of your civil liberties? A way to penetrate your most intimate conversations, your homes, your hearths, yes, even your bedrooms?
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