in his hammock, stupid with too much beer, a porno movie playing on the TV, a cigarette burning out between his slack lips. The image was as clear as if Eighty-two was actually looking at the man. Carteret.
Another part of Eighty-two’s brain replayed the image of the female lying in a knot of convulsed agony. And the laughter of the guards as Carteret walked away from her as if she was less than nothing.
The stone was a comfortable weight in Eighty-two’s hand.
He looked up into the sky-a great, vast diamond-littered forever above the trees-and he wondered why the man named Deacon had not come. Did the e-mail ever reach him? Was he coming at all? Would anyone come?
Eighty-two closed his fist around the stone, feeling its ancient solidity and hardness.
He wondered if he could risk reaching out one more time.
If that didn’t work… then what would he do?
There was a high-pitched female scream from the House of Pain. Was it the same female? Had thoughts of her festered in Carteret’s mind all day, the way the thought of the stone had burned in Eighty-two’s?
The boy stared with narrowed eyes at the laboratory complex. The House of Screams. Above him the speakers in the palm trees began to wail. The dog handlers were getting ready to release the dogs for the night.
Time to go.
He smoothed the dirt to hide the spot where he’d removed the stone, waited for the ground camera to move, and then went from stillness into action. He ran across the garden, scaled the palm tree effortlessly, and leaped onto the roof. The stone was in his pocket.
Chapter Forty-Four
The White House
Saturday, August 28, 4:10 P.M.
Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 91 hours, 50 minutes
The Vice President of the United States sat behind his desk, but he felt like he was under a spotlight in the back of a police squad room. Three people stood in front of his desk. Two men and a woman. They’d declined seats or coffee. None of them were smiling. Bill Collins looked from face to face and knew that he had no friends in the room.
The Speaker of the House, Alan Henderson, ran the show. As second in the line of succession, it was his job, if it was anyone’s. He wore an expensive suit with a faint pin stripe and a bow tie that was forty years out of style. Even during the gravest of national emergencies, the Speaker usually wore a smile of mild amusement that was emblematic of his well-known “this, too, shall pass” point of view. Now his face was as lugubrious as a mortician.
“Well, Bill, I’d say you screwed the pooch on this one. Screwed the pooch and then ran the damn thing over with a steamroller. I just came from seeing the President. You gosh-darn near gave him the heart attack his doctors were trying to sidestep with the bypass.”
The Secretary of State cleared her throat. “I find it alarming that you didn’t consult with me before launching this operation.”
“Are you finished?” Collins asked coldly. “First things first, Alan, when I issued those orders I was the Acting President of the United States, so let’s be quite clear about chain of command here. Whereas I appreciate your loyalty and service to the country, I don’t appreciate your taking that tone of voice with me.”
That shut them all up.
“Second, before I acted I consulted with the Attorney General. Nathan…?”
Nathan Smitrovich, the Attorney General, nodded, though he clearly looked uncertain as to how this was going to play out. “That’s right, Alan. He called me and we talked it over. I… um, advised him to bring a few other people into the loop, but he said that there was an issue of trust.”
“Trust?” Alan Henderson suddenly looked anything but mild and homespun. “What the hell… who the hell do you think you-”
“Calm down, Alan,” said Collins. “No one is leveling any accusations. At least not at you. Or at anyone in this room. But you have to understand my position. I received confidential information from a source who is positioned well enough to have insider knowledge. The information not only outlined an ongoing campaign of blackmail against the President but included hints that many other members of Congress might be under similar control. I couldn’t risk making this an open issue. If anyone else was involved, then the blackmail material Mr. Church has might have been made public, and that could have brought down this administration. At the very least it would have crippled it.” He sat back and looked at them, his face calm and open. “You tell me how you would have acted? Tell me how you would have done things differently?”
The Secretary of State, Anne Hartcourt, folded her arms and cocked her head. She didn’t look convinced. “I could buy the confidential informant bit, Bill, and if I stretch my credulity I could accept your rationalization for not including any of us. But are you going to sit there and tell me that this entire operation was cooked up, planned, and set into motion only after the President went under sedation?”
Collins laughed. “Of course not. This information was brought to me a few days ago. After it was announced that the President was to undergo surgery. My informant said that it was the only opportunity he felt would allow for me to make a swift and decisive countermove.”
“Who is this informant?” asked Henderson.
Collins flicked a glance at the AG. “I told Nathan that I wanted to withhold the name of the informant pending the resolution of the situation. And the situation has
“If the threat is even real.”
“I believe it to be real.”
“Why?” asked Anne Hartcourt. “Why are you so convinced?”
Collins hesitated. “Because… the informant had information that could have come from only two sources: the President himself or someone who had somehow gathered very private information about the President.”
“What was that information?” asked the Attorney General. “You wouldn’t tell me earlier, but I damn well want to know now.”
“Not a chance, Nathan. I’m leaving for Walter Reed in five minutes. I’ll discuss this directly with the President. If he chooses to allow anyone else to participate in that conversation then it’ll have to be his choice. I will not break the confidence of the President. Not to you and not under any circumstances, even if you drag me before a subcomittee.”
When the others said nothing, he added, “I argued against forming the DMS from the beginning. I warned that it could become a threat, something we would never be able to control.”
Alan Henderson sighed. “I agreed with you about that, too, Bill, but we were overruled. And I do not believe that Mr. Church blackmailed everyone who voted against us. There are some who think that the DMS is doing a valuable, even
“I didn’t say they didn’t do some good,” Collins said. “I said that they were going beyond their orders and now pose a threat to this administration.”
“If your informant is correct,” said Hartcourt.
“Yes. And once I speak with the President I will cooperate in every way possible to verify this information.”
“Maybe it’s just me,” muttered Henderson, “but this has a bit of the stink of WMDs on it.”
Collins ignored that. “MindReader may be a useful tool in the War on Terror, but it’s also highly dangerous. That computer system can intrude anywhere, learn everything. Even Church isn’t authorized to know
