“No. I guess I haven’t, have I?” He rose, stretched, yawned, pressed his knuckles against his eyeballs. He felt creaky, tired, hungry, empty. “I think I’d like to pee, now, okay? And then maybe somebody could bring me a cup of coffee.”
“Right.” Steve gestured to Frank, who got up immediately and left. As Andy, still yawning, started to amble toward the washroom, Steve said, making no attempt at concealing his eagerness to know, “Well, boy, any luck? What did you find in there?”
“Everything,” Andy said.
So it had worked out after all, their long shot. The unfindable Andy had returned to the ranch and entered the unenterable archive for them, and now they had confirmation of the unconfirmable Prime hypothesis. Looking in wonder and jubilation through the synopsis that Steve had prepared for him from Andy’s early analysis of his preliminary tour of the Borgmann file, Anson felt the burdens dropping away from him, that leaden weight of grief and regret and self-denunciation. All of that had turned him into an old man for the past five years, but now he was miraculously rejuvenated, full of energy and dreams, ready once more to rush forth and rescue the world from its conquerors. Or so it seemed to him just now. He hoped the feeling would last.
He paged through the glossy, neatly printed sheets for three or four minutes, while the others watched without speaking. Then he looked up and said, “How soon can we get moving on this, do you think? Do we have enough information to move against Prime yet?”
With him in the chart room were Steve Gannett, and Steve’s wife Lisa, and Paul’s oldest son Mark and Mark’s sister Julie, and Charlie Carmichael with his wife Eloise. The inner circle, pretty much, of the family now, everyone but Cindy, the ancient and ageless, the matriarch of the clan, who was somewhere else just then. But it was Steve to whom Anson looked for most of his answers now.
And the answer that Steve gave him was not the one he wanted to hear.
“Actually,” Steve said, “we’ve still got quite a bit of work ahead of us first, Anson.”
“Oh?”
“The honcho Entity that Borgmann was dealing with—and we can assume, I think, that that really was the one we call Prime—was based in Prague, in a big castle that they have there up on a hill. As you already know, I think, we believe that the Prague headquarters was de-emphasized quite some time ago, and that Prime was moved to Los Angeles. But we need to confirm that, which I intend to have Andy do for us as soon as he’s worked out the access path. Once we’ve pinned down the location of Prime, we can start thinking of ways to take him out.”
“What if Andy should decide to vanish again?” Anson asked. “Will you be able to come up with the necessary data yourself, Steve?”
“He won’t vanish.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“I think he genuinely wants to be part of this, Anson. He knows how essential he is to the project. He won’t let us down.”
“All the same, I’d like to keep your son under twenty-four-hour-a-day guard. To insure that he sticks around until he’s finished massaging the Borgmann data. Is that very offensive to you, Steve?”
“It’s certainly going to be offensive to Andy.”
“Andy has let us down before. I don’t want to take any further risks of losing him. I suppose I might as well tell you: I’ve asked Frank and a couple of my other boys to take turns guarding him while he’s here at the ranch.”
“Well,” Steve said, letting some displeasure show. “Whatever you want, Anson. Especially since you seem already to have done it. My opinion about the need for treating him like a prisoner is on record.”
“Lisa?” Anson said. “He’s your son. How do you feel about this?”
“I think you should watch him like a hawk until you get what you need from him.”
“There you are,” said Anson triumphantly. “Watch him like a hawk! Which Frank will do. Which he is doing right at this very moment, as a matter of fact. Martin and James are going to take turns with him, eight hours per day each. That much is settled, all right?—Steve, how soon are you likely to have anything hard concerning Prime’s location?”
“I’ll have it when I have it, okay? We’re making it our highest priority.”
“Easy. Easy. I just wanted an estimate.”
“Well,” Steve said, seeming almost to be pouting, “I can’t give you one. And I don’t think putting Andy under round-the-clock guard is going to improve his motivation for helping us, either. But let that pass. Maybe he’ll be willing to cooperate anyway. I certainly want to think so. Once we do get you your information, incidentally, what method do you have in mind for taking Prime out?”
“We’ll do it the way we did before. Only better, this time, I hope.—Hello, Cindy,” Anson said, as she came into the room. She moved serenely across it with the stately grace of the frail old woman that she was, eyes bright as ever, head held alertly forward, and took a seat next to Mark. “We’re talking about the assault on Prime,” Anson told her. “I’ve just explained to Steve that I intend to carry it out pretty much the same way as the first time, sending someone in to plant a bomb right against the side of Prime’s house. Or even inside it, if we can. This time Andy should be able to provide us with the precise location of Prime, and also the right computer passwords to get our man through Entity security.”
Mark said, “Do you have anyone in mind for the job yet, Anson?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. My son Frank.”
That was something Anson hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Frank, until this moment. The uproar was instant and vehement. They all were talking at once right away, yelling, gesticulating. In the midst of the sudden chaos Anson saw Cindy, sitting bolt upright, as rigid and gaunt and grim-faced as the mummy of some ancient Pharaoh, staring at him with a look of such wholehearted truculent violence in her intense and glittering eyes that it struck him with an almost tangible force.
“No,” she said, a deep icy contralto that sliced through the din like a scimitar. “Not Frank. Don’t even think of sending Frank, Anson.”
The room fell silent, and stayed that way until Anson could find his voice.
“You see some problem with that, Cindy?” he asked, finally. “Five years ago you sent your only brother down there to die. Now you want to send your son? Don’t tell me that you have three more in reserve, either. No, Anson, no, we aren’t going to let you risk Frank’s life on this thing.”
Anson pressed his lips into a thin, tight line. “Frank won’t be at risk. We know what mistakes we made the last time. We aren’t going to repeat them.”
“Can you be sure of that?”
“We’re going to take every precaution. Don’t you think I’ll do everything in my power to see to it that Frank gets safely through the mission? But this is a war, Cindy. Risk is inevitable. So is sacrifice.”
But she was inexorable. “Tony was your sacrifice. You aren’t required to make a second one. What kind of crazy demonstration of macho toughness is this, anyway? Do you think we don’t know what you’ve already given, and how much it cost you? Frank’s the hope of the future, Anson. He’s the next generation of leadership here. You know that: everyone does. He mustn’t be wasted. Even if there’s only one chance in ten that he wouldn’t come back, that’s too much of a chance.—Besides, there’s someone else at the ranch who’s far better fitted for the job than Frank is.”
“Who’s that?” Anson demanded harshly. “You? Me? Or do you mean Andy, maybe?”
“Talk to Khalid,” Cindy said. “He’s got someone who can do this job just fine.”
Anson was mystified. “Who? Tell me. Who?”
“Talk to Khalid,” she said.
“I would want certain safeguards for him,” Khalid said. “He is my eldest son. His life is sacred to me.”
He stood before them straight as a soldier on patrol, as cool and self-possessed as though he and not Anson were in charge of this meeting. Only in the moment of entering the chart room had Khalid betrayed a touch of uneasiness, seeing so many family members gathered there, like a court in session with Anson as the high judge; but that had very quickly passed and his normal aura of preternatural calm had reasserted itself.
Khalid was an unfamiliar figure here. He was never present at any of the chart room meetings; he had amply
