guarding their privacy meant bending a few laws now and then, it was a small price to pay, and in a sense even moral when one considered how the gossip pedlars and the scandal sheets twisted everything out of all proportion to sell their newspapers and magazines. The ordinary man in the street could get roaring drunk or have a bloody fight with his wife or his neighbour, even be in a car accident, and no one took grotesque photographs of him to splatter all over the tabloids. Why were the rich singled out to provide lurid reading for people without an iota of their talents? The rich were different. They provided jobs and gave generously to charity and often made life just a little bit easier for those they came in contact with, so why should they be persecuted?
So went the townsfolk's logic. It was a small matter for the local police to keep their blotters cleaner than they might be; it made for harmonious relations. It also made for a number of well-kept secrets in this privileged enclave where the estate on Chesapeake Bay was located.
But secrecy is relative. One man's secret is another's joke; a government file marked 'classified' has more often than not appeared in public print; and a prominent cabinet member's sexual appetites are confidential fundamentally in terms of his wife finding out, as are hers regarding him. 'Cross my heart and hope to die' is a promise made by children of all ages who fail to keep their word, but where extraordinary death is concerned the circle of secrecy must be impenetrable. As it was this night when the five big cars passed through the village of Cynwid Hollow on their way to Chesapeake Bay.
Inside the immense house, in the wing nearest the water, the high-ceilinged library was ornately masculine. Leather and burnished wood predominated, while long windows overlooked the sculptured grounds outside illuminated by floodlights, and seven-foot-high bookshelves formed an imposing wall of knowledge wherever space allowed. Armchairs of soft brown leather, floor lamps at their sides, flanked the windows; a wide cherrywood desk stood at the far right corner of the room, a high-backed swivel chair of black leather behind it. Completing the typical aspects of such a room was a large circular table in the centre, a meeting ground for conferences best held in the security of the countryside.
With these items and this ambience, however, ordinary appearances came to an end and the unusual, if not the strange, became apparent. On the surface of the table, in front of each place, was a brass lamp, its light directed down on a yellow legal pad. It was as if the small, sharp circles of light made it easier for those at the table to rivet their concentration on whatever notes they made without the distraction of fully illuminated faces—and eyes—of those next to or opposite them. For there were no other lights on in the room; faces moved in and out of shadows, expressions discernible but not for lengthy examination. At the west end of the library, attached to the upper wall moulding above the bookshelves, was a long black tube that, when electrically commanded, shot down a silver screen that descended halfway to the parquet floor, as it was now. It was for the benefit of another unusual piece of equipment, unusual because of its permanence.
Built into the east wall beyond and above the table and electronically pushed forward into view, as now, was a console of audio-visual components that included projectors for immediate and taped television, film, photographic slides and voice recordings. Through the technology of a periscoped remote-controlled disk on the roof, the sophisticated unit was capable of picking up satellite and shortwave transmissions from all over the globe. At the moment, a small red light glowed on the fourth lateral; a carousel of slide photographs had been inserted and was ready for operation.
All these accoutrements were certainly unusual for such a library even to the rich, for their inclusion took on another ambience—that of a strategy room far from the White House or the Pentagon or the sterile chambers of the National Security Agency. One pressed button and the world, past and current, was presented for scrutiny, judgments rendered in isolated chiaroscuro.
But at the far right corner of this extraordinary room was a curious anachronism. Standing by itself several feet away from the book-lined wall was an old cast-iron stove, its flue rising to the ceiling. Beside it was a metal pail filled with coal. What was especially odd was that the stove was glowing despite the quiet whirr of the central air conditioning necessitated by the warm, humid night on Chesapeake Bay.
That stove, however, was intrinsic to the conference about to take place on the shores of Cynwid Hollow. Everything written down was to be burned, the notepads as well, for nothing said among these people could be communicated to the world outside. It was a tradition born of international necessity. Governments could collapse, economies rise and fall on their words, wars be precipitated or avoided on their decisions. They were the inheritors of the most powerful silent organization in the free world.
They were five.
