Veil

valley. I was certain Parker was reporting to someone, and that someone was faking phone calls and feeding phony information to Parker just to make sure Parker would end up letting me die. It had to be Ibber, which means that the U.S. Army has a very fat KGB mole sitting on its collective face.'

'Do tell,' Pilgrim says in a somewhat cryptic tone.

'Then again, there's more than one spook running around over there. Someone arranged to spring me—who, and why, I don't know.'

'Do tell.'

'I must say that you don't sound too surprised.'

'Don't I?' Jonathan says with a smile. 'Go ahead; I want to hear what else you've been up to.'

Veil studies Pilgrim for a few moments, but Pilgrim merely stares back, the same enigmatic smile on his face. Finally Veil shrugs, continues. 'After I'd roamed around over there for a while, I realized that the safest and fastest way out of the compound would still be through a gate that Parker opened for me. I was hoping that turning myself in after having escaped might finally get the man's attention. But by then Ibber had already shot Parker.'

'Parker's dead?'

'Yes.'

'Parker was a fool,' Pilgrim says softly, 'but I'm sorry to hear that he's a dead fool.'

'It meant that Ibber was in a panic, and for good reason. It had to have taken years for the Russians to maneuver Ibber into a position where he was both a DIA operative and your chief researcher.'

'Well, the Army will have to take primary responsibility for Ibber; they had him first. He was strongly recommended to me by some friends in the military. Now I realize that my friends were probably being pushed by the DIA, because the DIA wanted to have their own man in here. Who turns out to be a KGB agent. That's a big ho-ho-ho on them, isn't it?'

'My concern is making sure that Ibber doesn't get the last laugh, Jonathan.'

'Actually, I've been more than a little suspicious of Henry for some time. When that Mamba tried to kill you the morning after you'd arrived here, I decided it was past time to do some serious checking into Henry's background; not easy, since I didn't want to tip off the military that I was suspicious, and then have them tip off Henry.'

Veil nods. 'With Parker dead, I figured that Ibber would come after you—and maybe Sharon—next. If I was caught and killed inside the compound, there was still a chance he could cover his tracks.'

'Where's Ibber now?'

'I don't know. Either on his way to Moscow, if he thinks he's totally blown, or looking for me. I'm sorry I couldn't get back sooner; I'd have saved you some pain.'

'Do I look like I'm in pain?'

'No. As a matter of fact, neither of us has probably ever felt better. I understand things a bit better after coming here the hard way. It's no wonder Lazarus People no longer fear death.'

'Death is love.'

'I understand, Jonathan.'

'Yeah. Anyway, I'm glad Madison got off his ass and told his man to spring you from that cage.'

Veil feels a sudden stiffening of his spine, as if a wire running through him has been tugged. 'How did you know about the cage? And where did you get that name?'

'From you,' Pilgrim says easily.

'No. I never mentioned the cage, and I never mentioned anyone named Madison.'

'Orville Madison,' Pilgrim announces with a certain smugness. 'Once your controller, and now a big—and very hidden—man in the CIA's nasties department, third in the chain of command behind the Director of Operations. You can bet your ass that I started some tongues to wagging when I called Langley's listed number, asked for Madison by name, and outlined his connection to you.'

The wire pulls even tighter. 'Jonathan, how?'

'Still think this is an hallucination, my friend?'

'How?'

'You sent out a cry for help, and I heard you . . . probably something to do with this place and our affinity for each other, although I haven't given it a great deal of thought. Yesterday, the thing you wanted more than anything in the world—except for a drink of water—was for Parker to call Orville Madison and have Madison verify that you couldn't be a KGB agent. Parker wouldn't listen; I did.'

'My God,' Veil whispers as the wire suddenly goes slack.

Pilgrim chuckles. 'A new wrinkle, huh? It seems that in certain situations, with certain people, you don't have to come to the conference room to use the telephone. I'll tell you that it impressed the shit out of me. Incidentally, I also picked up the name, Lester Bean, but I sensed that Madison was more important. He was CIA, and he was the man I went after.'

'Did you actually talk to Madison?'

'After a time, yes. He didn't have much choice. When they tried to put me off, I told them I was going to tell all sorts of old but juicy Veil Kendry stories to The New York Times. Madison came on the line.'

'What'd he say?'

'Not a whole hell of a lot. Mostly, he just listened. I described the situation here, and shared my suspicions about Henry. I told him the Army had you, you were close to dying, and you needed help. After I finished, he said he'd take care of it. He warned me never to mention the call or the conversation, and never to call him again for any reason. Then he hung up.'

Veil pauses, thinking. 'The telepathy works even away from here,' he says at last.

'Yes and no. After all, what we're sharing is one hell of a lot more than telepathy—whatever that means. The message from you was a good deal less. It was like a distress call that only I could hear, something which made me consciously uneasy but which I couldn't grasp consciously. Just as one has to view your paintings out of the corner of the eye, I picked up on what you needed out of the corner of my mind—when I was momentarily distracted by something else. Also, as I mentioned, the fact that you and I have a very special affinity probably had something to do with it. Identical twins often sense what happens to each other; you and I are twins in a different way. For want of a better expression, I'd describe us as astral twins.'

'Still, it means that Lazarus People may have very special potential that nobody, except you and I, is even aware of.'

'Lazarus People, and weirdballs like you and Perry Tompkins—yes. But clues, like the fact that Lazarus People tend to recognize each other without a word being spoken, have always been there. What's new is what's happening between you and me right now, this incredible oneness. We're not only proving that this state of consciousness exists, but that it can be maintained for periods of time far beyond the brief flash that Lazarus People have with the near-death experience. We're also showing that the state can be entered into, and controlled, by scientific means. I'd always suspected it, and I knew it when I saw the paintings you and Perry were independently producing. You were the key, Veil, the one person I needed to prove it.'

'We haven't proved anything, Jonathan. This could still be my hallucination.'

'Your escape from that cage wasn't an illusion; neither is this.'

'I could be making up both ends of this conversation.'

'Do you really believe that?'

'No,' Veil says after a pause. 'I do believe this is happening. But we still haven't made it back.'

'I told you it would be a piece of cake. How much time did you tell Sharon to give you before she pulls you back?'

'Fifteen minutes, but I find I have no way of relating the quaint notion of fifteen minutes to what's going on here.'

'I know what you mean; we're thinking to each other, and thought is one hell of a lot faster than talk.'

'How much does Sharon know?'

'Before you accepted my invitation to come to the Institute, there wasn't much to know that she wasn't an expert on. After all, near-death studies is her field. I'd been here only once before, at the time I crashed in my plane. You came here all the time, in dreams, and Perry . . . well, the images began to come to Perry when he