Cold War

TEN

High above Ross island, the volcano’s fulminating lava lake seethed and bubbled and abruptly shot a dollop of molten rock into the sky with a belch of pressurized gas. Trailing smoke and licks of flame, the red-hot ejecta hurtled toward the rim of the summit cone, and over it, and then smacked into the mountainside a mile away. It was larger than a howitzer round, and its ballistic impact threw a cloud of ash, snow, and ice crystals up from the crater’s rim.

There the plastery magma bomb hardened in the supercooled air to lay among countless other chunks of igneous debris tossed across the slope.

While signs of the eruption traveled across many miles in this frigid and barren land, they drew only a scattering of attention.

It was heard clearly by National Science Foundation vulcanologists working on the mount’s upper elevations, and produced a tremor that rattled the equipment in their mobile apple huts. Its sonic precursors (vibrational pulses that signal an impending eruption) and signature oscillations (harmonic changes that indicate a discrete eruption, or series of eruptions, in progress) were registered by seismometers and broadband microphones that the researchers had installed and maintained with steady diligence throughout the Antarctic summer.

Ten thousand feet below on another corner of the island, the discharge and resultant concussion would be audible as two dull, thudding blurts of sound to McMurdites who took notice. Few did, however. The continuous volcanic output had never inflicted damage on the station, and was for them little more than background noise.

Eastward across the Transantarctic Mountains, the seismic precursors were detected in instantaneous-wave readouts from sensors on Erebus’s flank that had been well camouflaged from the NSF research team. As the sound of the explosive outbursts carried to Bull Pass, bouncing faintly between its craggy walls, hidden men and equipment went into clockwork action.

Three thousand feet underground, a boom-mounted drill came alive with a percussive jolt, its tungsten carbide bit boring into solid rock. Protected from its deafening clatter inside their safety cabin, the drill controller and his assistants breathed filtered air behind the face shields of their high-efficiency, closed-circuit respirator helmets.

Two thousand feet underground, a large jaw crusher began grinding and smashing the contents of its mineral fill chamber, the first stage in the yield’s multistage separation process.

A thousand feet higher, a pair of specialized trolley-assisted haul trucks, slung low for tunnel clearance, started forward on an inclined concrete ramp. On a stone shelf several levels beneath the surface, their semiprocessed loads would be stored in excavated pockets until ready to be moved into the open and rigged for helicopter airlift to the coast.

Soon after Erebus quieted, the trucks ceased to roll.

The deep drilling continued longer, a departure from the original requirement that it start and stop in tight coordination with Erebus’s rumbling expulsions. Once needed to preserve secrecy, the precaution was now followed only when opportune. Methods had changed after a half decade of continuous production. Engineering breakthroughs, advanced sound-baffling techniques, the current depth of excavation, and a shrewd, cavalier willingness to exploit every aspect of the unique environment had all led to terrific progress since the initial investment bore first fruit.

Five years. Expanding markets. Soaring profit margins. Things were going sensationally well. Output had reached an unbridled peak, and further growth was a given provided operations were allowed to keep running smoothly.

Like any other commercial organization, the Consortium was determined to ensure that no obstacles arose to interfere with its success.

The broad subject of the meeting was UpLink International, and those in attendance had come with understandable and fairly similar concerns.

His sky-blue eyes astute behind his reading glasses, Gabriel Morgan smiled from the head of the conference table; a great, expansive, vigorous whopper of a smile. Lots of teeth, his fleshy mastiff cheeks drawn up, his wide brow creased under a deliberately uncombed thatch of silver hair. Every facial muscle enlisted to make it the heartiest smile possible.

This was not to say his attitude was light or blasé. Albedo was his brainchild, and he better than anyone else at the table understood that this session had been called to deal with a matter of pressing importance. But a smile could be spirited and serious at the same time, no contradiction. He’d learned that under the tutelage of his father at a very young age, the same way his father had learned from his grandfather. As chairman of the group, Morgan knew one of his fundamental responsibilities was to exude calm authority, soothe jitters, allay undue fears. Reassure his partners that he had a full awareness of the developments in Antarctica, knew their particulars top to bottom, and would by no means allow them to progress into a crisis situation. That they amounted to minor stumbling blocks, bothersome but easily remediable hassles.

Morgan trusted his ability to manage, and knew one of the keystones of his success was a talent for passing his confidence right on down the line. Business executives and government officials from several different countries, the people around him were behind-the-scenes movers, concealed switches embedded deep within the world’s political machinery. Men and women who could trip the right circuits and — by virtue of their relative obscurity — initiate activities their nominal superiors either would not or could not authorize. But he was the prime mover. The well of encouragement they turned to when their buckets needed replenishing. And his smile was an invaluable, pliable utensil that helped him ladle out the goods.

He shifted his thickset frame in his chair. On his immediate right, Olav Langkafel, a quiet but integral cog in Norway’s Energy and Petroleum Ministry, was voicing an anxious hypothetical about the close reconnaissance capabilities UpLink might have out there on the ice. Morgan decided to address it with an example that would also hopefully resolve some of the issues raised by his six other guests. Give them the overview they seemed to be missing.

“Before you go on with that last what-if, let me ask you a question,” he said, raising a finger in the air. “Are you by any chance acquainted with the term ‘zoo event’?”

Langkafel was momentarily nonplussed. Morgan supposed it wasn’t too often that he got interrupted.

“No,” he replied. “I am not.”

Morgan slid his glasses down the bridge of his nose, regarding the Norwegian over their solid-gold rims. A man of few words, Langkafel. Blond hair and mustache, fair complexion, stern features. In his navy-blue suit, white shirt, and red tie, he gave off an almost regimental air.

Morgan added a dimension of wise understanding to his self-assured smile… with just the merest hint of condescension thrown in to keep Langkafel in line. It was a delicate balance. His goal was to communicate that he was far enough ahead of the game to have expected Langkafel’s response, but that the expectation signified neither dismissiveness nor a lack of respect.

“The phrase is pretty obscure,” he said. “Caught my ear a while back, though, and stuck with me. I like how it’s sort of mysterious, but not so dramatic you’d think a Hollywood screenwriter dreamed it up. It refers to something that happened near Bouvetoya Island, right at the edge of the Antarctic Circle, a frigid hunk of rock I’m betting you have heard about. Your country’s held a territorial claim on it for a while, correct?”

Langkafel nodded rigidly. “Bouvetoya is a designated nature preserve with few natural resources worth mentioning. Its chief value is as a site for satellite weather stations.”

Morgan knew that, of course. And he had known Langkafel would know. But he wanted to spread around the verbiage, engage the group, get his points across without appearing to lecture. It was an approach he’d borrowed from trial lawyers: When the goal was to deliver information through someone else’s his lips, you never asked a question whose answer wasn’t entirely predictable. Whether you were in the courtroom or boardroom, the essential tactic was the same.

Mindful of his digestive problems, Morgan resisted the tray of biscotti in front of him, and instead raised a glass of carbonated mineral water to his lips. He drank slowly, watching buds of filtered sunlight shrivel on the burgundy curtains over the room’s terrace doors. Two floors below, in the main hall of the restored medieval guild house he had occupied since his lamented flight from the States, the art gallery his family had run for nearly a hundred years was silent, its staff having canceled the day’s appointments at his instruction. With dusk, the specialty shops and fashion houses along the right bank of the Limma would be closing as well. Morgan imagined their owners offering courtly good-nights to prosperous clients, the musical tinkle of chimes above their shutting entries, and then their lights blinking out one by one. That was Zurich for him. A city of ritualized decorum and sterile elegance. Of priggish, elitist bankers and financiers.

And, Morgan thought, of ultimately civilized exiles.

He put down his glass, scanning the group around the table, his eyes gliding from person to person. Stored in his mind were two curricula vitae for each of them — the public and private, sanctioned and unsanctioned, licit and illicit details of their personal lives and careers. All were tangled up in invisible strings, pulling some while they themselves got pulled by others.

Take Feodor Nikolin down at the opposite end of the table. On the front of the sheet, Nikolin was an advisor to the elected governor of Russia’s Baltic oil and gas pipeline region. Back of the sheet? The election and his civilian appointment had been fixed by the new ultranationalist boss at the Kremlin, President Arkady Pedachenko, whose Honor and Soil Party had crested a populist wave to power… Nikolin by no coincidence being Pedachenko’s nephew by marriage, and a former colonel from the military’s Raketnye voiska strategicheskogonaznacheniya, or Strategic Rocket Forces, which oversaw Russia’s nuclear arsenals.

Take Azzone Spero, the Italian Treasury and Economic Planning Minister. King of the kickback, he’d violated a slew of legal bidding procedures to award government waste-collection licenses to front companies run by the LaCana crime syndicate, known to earn billions annually from the illegal dumping of hazardous wastes throughout Europe.

Or take Sebastian Alcala, the squat, dark man seated opposite Nikolin. His open résumé showed him to be a mid-level administrator with the Argentinian mining exploration secretariat. But Morgan’s secret file tied him to everything from embezzlement of state funds to facilitation of illegal arms traffic for the black marketeer and narco-terrorist El Tio, who’d recently slipped into limbo like a vanishing ghost.

The book was similar for the rest. There was Jonas Papp from Hungary, an entrepreneur in the transitional market economy with several legitimate upstart software firms and a flourishing underground income stream from his money-laundering enterprises. There was Constance Burns, Morgan’s UKAE inchworm. And there was the South African foreign trade deputy with a perpetually outheld palm, Jak Selebi…

“I’m wondering if you can explain the incident to everyone, Jak?” Morgan said at length. His eyes had come to rest on Selebi. “I realize this Bouvetoya thing was long before your government’s time, but maybe it’d be best that way.”

Selebi looked back at him. “In a sense you’ve answered your own question,” he replied, speaking with a mannered British accent. “When the change came, our predecessors took much of the information about their relinquished nuclear weapons program with them. They did not want it available to us. We may assume they judged that the development of such capabilities was to be exclusively reserved for civilized races.” He paused a moment, his brown face expressionless, devoid of the cutting irony in his voice. “I can tell you this. Throughout the nineteen-sixties, America launched a dozen orbital satellites for the detection of atmospheric nuclear explosions. This program was named Vela. A Spanish word, I believe…”

“Meaning ‘Watchmen,’ ” said Alcala.

“Thank you.” Selebi exchanged glances with him. “The crude optical sensors on the Velas could not fix locations with anything close to the exactitude of modern satellites. Otherwise, their reliability was unchallenged… until one of them, Vela 6911, registered a double flash scientists associated with an atomic blast of between three and four kilotons.”

“These matched other signals the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory picked up here on earth,” Morgan said. “Acoustic waves around the Scotia Ridge, a chain of mountains between Antarctica and Africa that’s mostly underwater. Except where it isn’t underwater and the mountaintops poking out above the ocean’s surface form islands. Bouvetoya’s one of them.” Another smile. “Sorry to break in after asking you to tell the tale, but I felt it was important for everyone to be aware of that little nugget.”

Selebi’s nod showed flat acceptance.

“The consensus of military, intelligence, and government nuclear research scientists responsible for analyzing the Vela evidence was that an atomic detonation had occurred at or below sea level,” he continued. “But when these findings were presented to the Carter Administration, it ordered a second panel of academics from outside the government to conduct a separate review. Their assessment refuted the original determination. It stated the indications were unverifiable and may have been based on false signals caused by sensor malfunction or a meteor collision. The dispute it sparked between the two panels led to animosities that I understand linger to this day.” He looked at Morgan. “That is the extent of what I can say about the affair with confidence.”

“Then let me put in some footnotes,” Morgan said. “One of the scientists in that first group was a top-notch man with the Los Alamos think tank. Knew his stuff inside out, helped develop the Vela program. When their report got the presidential blow-off, he made some testy comments, said they were all zoo animals coming out with idiotic theories to discredit his panel’s conclusions. Talk is that the White House was gun-shy about a confrontation with the South Africans, whom it damn well knew were manufacturing atomics, and maybe doing it with Israeli participation.”

He shrugged. “You got to sympathize with Jimmy’s predicament. With the gas crunch fresh in people’s minds, and Khomeini swift-kicking the Shah out of Iran, the poor guy was deep in the moat. Sharks closing in around him. Another domestic or foreign affairs boondoggle and any chance he had of swimming his way out was finished. The press, political opponents, average citizens, everybody wanted a pound of his flesh. Jimmy, well, the last thing he would’ve wanted was to out two long-standing allies for their complicity in banned nuclear-bomb testing. What was he supposed to do? Impose trade embargoes? Ask the U.N. Security Council to censure them? Neither option would’ve been to America’s advantage. So the sats, Navy, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency people became wrong, and the ivory-tower professors became right. In my opinion, Jimmy managed to convince himself of their rightness, and the nuke turned into an unexplained occurrence. Better for everyone that way.”

Constance Burns was nodding her head.

“A zoo event,” she said.

The affirmative smile Morgan directed at her was as gentle as a pat on the back.

“There you go,” he said. “Now, as our good friend Jak more or less implied, there’s a dash of supposition in what we’ve been talking about. Over the past couple of decades South African officials have admitted to the test, then backed off their admissions, then acknowledged them again, then qualified their acknowledgments, then shut up altogether. Same with the Israelis. Their newspapers printed articles quoting Knesset members about their government’s exchange of nuclear weapons blueprints for uranium from South Africa’s mines, then got those quotes retracted on them. But I believe the story of the zoo event’s been written. A nuclear detonation took place near Bouvetoya Island in September 1977. Low yield, about a third of a Hiroshima. Maybe subsurface, maybe an air-burst. It took place. And the leader of the Western world covered his ears, and closed his eyes, and claimed to be deaf and blind to the incident. Because dealing with it wasn’t advantageous to him. And for one other major reason.”

Langkafel looked at him. “Which would be…?”

“It happened within the Antarctic Circle.” Morgan swiveled around to face the Norwegian and pushed his glasses lower down his nose with his finger, perching them on his nose’s tip. “Where else on earth would it have been so easy to chalk the whole thing up to a quirk of nature? Where else does every country that’s got a flag-pole stuck in the ice want to pretend it’s given up strategic interests for some high-flown scientific principle? They all want to tap the continent’s resources. They all want bases where they can deploy armed forces. But they keep skating around each other, none of them wanting to make the first move. If the time ever comes when one of them does, their loops, spins, and figure-eights will stop, the blades will come off, and they’ll have to use their edges to carve out real territorial borderlines. This is my wedge of the snow pie. This is yours. You say no? Well, we got ourselves a scrap here. Power replaces principles. The coldest spot on the planet becomes its biggest geopolitical hot spot. That’s the reality nobody’s set to confront. For now they’d rather leave it to the polies and penguins.”

“And us,” Constance Burns said.

“That’s right.” Morgan’s eyes swept the table. “Us.”

The group sat quietly for a while. Morgan sipped his water, feeling tiny bubbles bursting on the back of his tongue. There were no remaining traces of sunlight on the curtains. He was eager to adjourn the meeting. Get out alone, walk the dark twisting streets of the city’s old town. Take a shot at scraping some dirt from between its pristine cobblestones.

It disappointed him when Nikolin broke the silence to voice his concerns. “As far as everything you’ve mentioned, Gabriel… the information is enlightening, yes. Fascinating. And I’m sure we all understand the points it exemplifies. Its general bearing upon the UpLink problem. But the issues Olav raised — I still would like them addressed with greater specificity. UpLink is a transcontinental firm, not a national entity. Like our own alliance, it enjoys an independent status that relieves it from certain conventions… and constraints… to which governments must adhere. To what extent in the present context, we cannot be certain. But its resources, should they be marshaled against us, would be a serious threat. That I do know.” He paused. “UpLink’s support of my chief of state’s predecessor, Vladimir Starinov, kept him in office years longer than would have been the case had it not lobbied NATO to give him economic assistance.”

Morgan was careful to screen his impatience behind a polite, attentive expression. He linked his hands across his chest and leaned toward Nikolin.

“Think about it,” he said. “Think practically. It isn’t hard to get a read on UpLink’s limitations out there. The ice station is small. Isolated. Contained. What’s the lid on its sustainable personnel? Let’s estimate two, maybe three hundred. Ninety-eight percent of them would be technical engineers, researchers, and support people. No chance they could run the works when it comes to the security operations we’ve all heard tales about. It would be logistically impossible to carry anything like a full detail. And they wouldn’t feel the pressing imperative anyway. On one hand, the continent’s a fortress. On the other, remember, it’s the big rink. Nobody for us to worry about there but Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts at a skating party. So now we learn they got this ace — you use that same word in Russia, right? — they got this ace out of San Jose investigating their own zoo event. I say, don’t let it faze you. The situation’s manageable. Look at how we did it in Scotland. Now think Antarctica. Last year, midwinter, that party of ten, eleven researchers and staffers got evacuated out of McMurdo. Biggest incident of its kind ever. USAP was a little vague with its explanations, don’t ask me why. Maybe the beakers came down with cabin fever, went a little crazy, got into an old-fashioned punch-out, and were embarrassed to admit it. Or maybe the caginess was just a typical bureaucratic reflex. Next thing you know, though, you got thousands of conspiracy theorists on the Internet posting bulletins that they made first contact with flying saucer people. There’s Antarctica for you. Ace and his skeleton crew want to start grubbing around us? What we do is complicate their lives. Create distractions. Diversions. We know the playing field, and we’re in place to capitalize on its eccentricities. Things can happen. Freak accidents. Unexplained occurrences. Zoo events that will keep them too busy to get close to us. And the long night’s coming on them soon enough. Then they’ve either got to leave for where the skies are blue, or ball up in their hole for the duration.”

There was an extended silence. Morgan watched his company at the table. They were looking at one another, nodding.

“Your words are encouraging,” Langkafel said then. “I believe that I speak for the entire group in that regard.”

More nods around the table.

“But,” Langkafel said, “I do have one further question.”

Morgan looked at him. Waited. His smile gone now.

“Our pursuits in Antarctica require long-term stability,” Langkafel said. “What will we do when those at the UpLink station awake from their hibernation to probe our affairs again?”

Morgan thought a moment before he answered. He took off his reading glasses, folded their stems, and put them carefully beside the thin report binder in front of him. Then he fastened his eyes on the Norwegian’s thin, dour face.

“They won’t awake,” he said. “Trust me, Olav, things are already in motion. UpLink’s about to be touched by us. They’ll think it’s a disaster, but that’s all it’ll be — a touch, a prelude to the real action. Before we’re through, I intend to give them a zoo event to remember. This is going to be their final night. Just trust me. Their final night.”

Gabriel Morgan’s bodyguard slid from the alcove in the hallway as his boss left the office, discreetly trailing as Morgan descended the steps of the Zurich guild house toward his black S55 AMG Mercedes. Another of his men stood at the landing; Morgan was not generally given to such ostentatious shows of protection, but today’s matters called for certain realistic precautions. Not that he expected the Italian to ambush him — it had been made quite clear by all concerned that nothing of value would be brought to the meeting by either side — but being an Italian, the man was likely to be careless, and thus might have provoked the attention of unwanted guests. Interpol already had its hounds out.

As his man opened the door to the street, Morgan felt a wave of paranoia sweep in with the cold air of the street. It did not come, however, from his present mission, but from what had to be considered diversions. Important, certainly, but not of the moment. Nonetheless, they percolated inside his chest, making him hesitate as his bodyguards scanned a street he already knew instinctively would be safe.

The latest update on Uplink International and its Antarctic operations included information that, while in no way directly challenging Morgan’s plans, nonetheless indicated an accelerating and disturbing trend. His own timetable for dealing with them was proceeding as scheduled; he had seen the threat as he saw all threats and taken the necessary steps months ago. But Mr. Gordian and his hired do-gooders would have to be watched very closely.

Some years earlier in his quest to acquire cutting-edge enterprises, Morgan had made certain overtures to the esteemed American entrepreneur; the response he had received still rankled. Their parallel presence in Antarctica now was truly coincidental, an accident of ambition on all sides — but Morgan would not deny that closure at the pole would provide a sense of satisfaction in many ways.

And then there was Constance Burns, his UK associate in the Antarctic venture. In yet another display of stunningly bad judgment, Miss Burns had taken it upon herself this morning to call with news that she was coming to Zurich a few days before their arranged conference with the other members of the Consortium. This was, she hinted during their brief conversation, a ploy to establish the visit as a vacation. She had apparently taken the precaution of calling from a pay phone, and there was in any event no reason to suspect that her calls would be monitored or even observed, but it was the sort of indiscretion that boded poorly, representing a severely flawed judgment that would inevitably lead to great difficulty.

Morgan sensed that the inchworm — she not only thought like one, but had she green hair she would have passed for a human relative of the species — intended to wring an accounting from him of the Scotland matters, which he had handled on her behalf. But at least she’d had the good sense not to bring it up on the telephone. He had graciously promised a driver and car to meet her at the airport and take her to all the important sights. They would also keep her from being a problem until the meeting. After that, further arrangements would have to be made.

The Scotland matter itself remained unresolved, though hopeful. His agent had been instructed to stay at her post indefinitely, but she had not been easily convinced. Like so many excellent killers, she was American, and impatient by nature. Fortunately, being American, her patience could be bought, and a price was finally arranged after considerable haggling. In the meantime, she had decided to go ahead and eliminate the girlfriend gratis — a tidy touch that made Morgan regret that when the time came to eliminate Constance Burns, he would have to give up the agent in the process.

But not a hair of any of these problems had anything to do with today’s business. They were distractions, diversions, needless anxieties. As his men on the street nodded, Morgan stepped out from the door and filled his lungs with the cool air. He embraced it, flinging open his coat, taking another long breath, gliding toward his car. He must live for the moment; everything else would sort itself out in time.

Morgan slid into the rear seat of the sedan, settling in as Hans and Jacques got in on the other side. Wilhelm put the car into gear and they moved gracefully away, heading for Luzern.

Out of habit, Morgan reached for his alpha pager to check for messages. But then he remembered his resolution. There would be time to think of Miss Burns, of Scotland, of the inestimable Mr. Gordian, he reminded himself. For now, his mind must be clear; he must prepare himself for the Italian. He settled back against the thick leather seat, listening as the tenor warmed up to Verdi’s “Brindisi” in the opening act of La Traviata.

On April 26, 1937, aircraft belonging to Nazi Germany destroyed the city of Guernica, Spain. They acted on behalf of General Francisco Franco and the right-wing Nationalists, fighting in a war that would eventually claim the lives of at least one million people, many of them civilians. The target’s status as a holy city for the Basque people was the sole reason for the attack; the length of the raid and the fact that civilians were hunted down by the attacking aircraft gives the lie to any claim that this was anything other that a deliberate massacre designed to both intimidate and desecrate. For three hours, the German Luftwaffe dropped incendiary devices and explosives, strafed women and children who had run into nearby fields, and otherwise worked hard to obliterate every trace of life in the town. In an ugly era, it was a particularly ugly deed.

And yet, strange, dark beauty blossomed from it. In January 1937, Pablo Picasso received a commission from the Spanish Republican government: a painting to occupy one wall of the Spanish pavilion at Paris’s Universal Exposition scheduled for later that year. He had struggled with what to portray. On April 30th, he saw photographs of the German attack at Guernica in the evening newspaper Ce Soir. The photographs provoked one of the twentieth century’s most important works, a monument to man’s inhumanity and at the same time a testimony to the power of art—Guernica.

The construction of the painting was documented by Dora Maar, whose photographs reveal the various permutations and stages it underwent as the master created. These helped it become not only one of the most famous large-scale paintings of the twentieth century, but also one of the most studied.

More obscure, indeed for all practical purposes unknown, were fourteen small works intended—perhaps—as companion pieces in the exhibit. Each elaborated in a different way on elements of the masterwork — the bull, the lantern, the warrior, the dead child. And each related, in ways at times obscure and at other times obvious, to the Catholic Stations of the Cross — of which there are also fourteen.

Morgan’s heart raced as he slowly slid color laser prints of the paintings through his fingers. Guernica had been rendered mostly in shades of black and white, as if it were a newspaper documenting the horror. The accompanying works were color, exquisite pieces with shades like stained glass — somewhat brighter than, say, Weeping Woman, painted in October 1937 and traditionally linked to the time and style of Guernica. Their style echoed the geometry of Guernica, and yet had the feeling, the softness of expression, the depth of such works as The Dream of 1932. Bizarre yet familiar, violent yet loving, they were works without peer in the Western world.

Morgan felt his tongue heavy in his mouth. His enthusiasm was a weapon that could easily be turned against him — how many times had he used such enthusiasm in others as his own tool in negotiations? The beauty of the paintings was nothing. Art was merely a statement of desire; a forger worked the equation backwards, intensifying the latter to provoke the former. A lover was very easily cuckolded.

He was a true lover now. Sitting at the small cafe table across from the blue-green waters of Lake Lucerne, he was as emphatically in love as any fifteen-year-old who had lost his cherry a half hour before. His hands were sweaty. He couldn’t speak. He tried to hide his enthusiasm with a frown, but knew it appeared phony.

And he didn’t care.

“I can deliver within a few days, a week at most,” said the Italian. “Once the financial arrangements are made.”

Morgan folded the photocopies as deliberately as he could manage, then slowly placed them into the pocket of his jacket. He fixed his gaze on a swan in the lake’s cold water about thirty meters away.

The terror of the bull — the sharp line and bold color — the perception of soul…

Before such genius, what was he? What was anyone?

“The possessors realize that there are difficulties involved with pieces of such magnitude,” ventured the Italian, attempting to open negotiations.

“Mmmm, yes,” Morgan said, continuing to gaze at the water. He had spent considerable resources examining the possibility that the paintings were indeed valid. The governing rumor was that they had been given by Picasso to a friend of Dora’s soon after the exhibit closed; the reason was obscure and varied according to the teller, although the favorite was that they were used to buy the freedom of fourteen Jews — a romantic tale that Morgan necessarily discounted. In any event, all agreed the works had been spirited off to Bavaria by an art-loving colonel, then sold in 1945 to a Russian general, who met with an unfortunate accident in Hungary during the 1950’s. At that point, the rumors ceased completely.

Morgan had hired a private detective from Bonn with certain heartfelt beliefs that solidified important connections to the past. After considerable effort, the detective produced two letters mentioning the paintings. A historical consultant had found hints in other documentary evidence, including two unpublished photos that seemed to show portions of them at the sides of Guernica as it was being completed. The consultant had also supplied certain hints that could be used to authenticate them, including the letter found in the Musée Picasso in Paris. But even if this sketchy evidence, taken together, convinced him that the paintings had indeed been done, nothing he had found so far meant that the works in the Italian’s possession were the paintings. Even if the Italian was not known to deal in forgeries, even he could be fooled.

Two art historians had been retained for their opinion. They would examine the works before any deal was consummated. Elata would be the pièce de résistance — the master forger’s eye looking for signs of his craft.

But first, a price had to be settled on. Morgan reached into his pocket and took out his reading glasses, fitting them deliberately around his ears as a sign that he was now negotiating.

“The price,” he told the Italian gently.

“The figure fifty million has been suggested.”

Morgan folded his arms and sat back in his seat. The Swiss waiter, as discreet as any in the breed, caught his eye across the tables and ducked back into the restaurant for another bottle of mineral water.

“But of course, thirty might be more realistic,” said the Italian.

At an open auction, with documentation proving they were real, it was conceivable that bidding on each work alone would begin at ten million and quickly escalate; as a set their worth was simply incalculable. But there would be no open auction, at least not in Morgan’s lifetime.

He almost didn’t want to buy them, for if he did he would inevitably have to part with them; he was a businessman, after all.

He could indulge himself. He might indulge himself. If he sold them off individually, he could keep one or two.

The bull?

Perhaps the infant. The light blue streak underlying the eyes — pure innocence.

Did it exist anywhere in the world outside of art?

The waiter appeared. There was no one else outside on this cold day, and he walked quickly to his customers. As the man poured the water into the glass, Morgan glanced toward his bodyguard at the edge of the railing in front of the lake. He looked a little bored, which Morgan took as a good sign.

“The works will be impossible to sell,” said Morgan after the waiter had gone.

“Not for a man of great reach.”

He must make a bid, and yet he did not wish to. It was sacrilege, an insult.

He had not thought that when he put a number on the Renoir ink. A ridiculously low number — ten thousand American dollars. He had ended buying it from the Russian mafya official for fifteen, then selling it for half a million three months later.

But the child’s innocence could not be bought. The bull’s fear — what price?

A dollar, a billion.

“One million per painting, the usual method, upon verification,” said Morgan.

“An insult,” said the Italian. “Pazzo. Pazzo.”

Pazzo meant “crazy” and was among the mildest epithets available. They were very close.

Morgan resisted the temptation to pull the photocopies from his pocket. Instead, he turned back toward the lake. The white swan had been joined by a black one. He watched for quite a while before the Italian spoke.

“Twenty for all.”

“Fifteen,” said Morgan, deciding on his price. He rose, removing his glasses and placing them back in his breast pocket. “Make the arrangements. A single word in the usual manner when you are ready; use ‘innocent.’ It has a nice ring.”

He rose swiftly, giving his companion no chance to protest.

Nessa studied the carrot stick before biting into it. Since joining Interpol, she had gained nearly five pounds. She couldn’t be called overweight, but if this pace continued her body would soon resemble one of those delightful rum cakes that seemed to lie in wait at every corner. At least the food was contributing to her language skills; “Châteaubriand” fairly rolled off her tongue.

She turned her attention back to the transcript of the interrogation of Mme. Diles, the low-level research assistant at the Musée Picasso who had passed the letter to Elata. The woman claimed she did not know why she had been offered ten thousand dollars for that particular document, nor by whom, nor why only the original would do.

Because his works were so well known, Picasso was not a good candidate for high-level forgery. Stolen pieces of his were somewhat common on the black market, but Elata could probably do far better mimicking other artists.

Jairdain pressed his forefinger to his lips, holding the tip against his nose.

“Most likely he’s still in Paris,” said the French investigator.

“Yes,” she said.

“Perhaps he wants to forge letters now.”

“It’s the daub of paint, I think,” said Nessa, glancing at the photocopy on her desk. “It’s the only thing unique about the letter.”

“The ink.”

“Could have asked for any letter. They wanted this one specifically. June 3, 1937. He wrote it while he was working on Guernica.”

Nessa’s concentration in art history was the Renaissance, but she had taken several courses on modern art, including one that combined the study of Picasso with Matisse. Guernica had taken up about a week’s worth of lectures, thanks largely to the photos that had been taken of its evolution. She remembered an afternoon’s discussion of studies for the painting; there had been six at the very beginning, a rush of ideas the first day. Possibilities had evolved on the canvas itself. One of the students — Karl, long hair, glasses — had suggested Picasso was considering companion pieces or even variations. The professor said there had been rumors of such pieces, but none had surfaced after the war.

Was Elata seeking to create those pieces? It was the sort of grand, bold artistic gesture he was known for — Doigts was unintimidated in the face of genius. He was, after all, a genius himself.

“Why the paint, though?” she asked aloud. “To get the color right? One color?”

And then she realized they had looked at things backwards.

“He has a Picasso,” she told her partner. “From this period. He’s trying to authenticate it.”

“C’e?”

“Who else but a master forger would know all the tricks? It must be.” She jumped up from her desk. “An unknown Picasso, painted around the time of Guernica—perhaps even intended as a companion. It would be worth millions. Many millions.”

“Magnifique,” said Jairdain. “Now all we have to do is find the bastard, and we will both be the most famous Interpol detectives of all time.”

Nessa frowned and picked up another carrot.

She had been alone in the blackness for hours, or what seemed like hours, before she heard the scream.

Her hands cuffed in front of her, she’d sunk down in a corner after they took him, her knees pulled to her chest, welded rivets pressing into her spine. Hunkered in that angle between two walls, she’d listened numbly to the pounding of machinery somewhere outside the cage. The noise and blackness seemed one, merged. A grinding, shapeless thing wrapped around her, confining her as surely as the walls of the cage itself.

After a while she had slipped into a faded, bottomed-out semblance of sleep, only to be awakened by the scream, startling as a rocket flare inside her head. But when she came back to full alertness, she heard nothing. Nothing but the machines grating away out there.

Out there in the black.

She felt her heart bumping in her chest now, felt her temples throbbing, pulled in a breath of stale air. It helped a little, but not much. God, God. That single, piercing scream. Maybe she’d imagined it. She’d been woozy with fatigue before she nodded off. Very possibly she’d imagined it.

She thought about the beatings they’d given him, tears swelling into her eyes. She didn’t want to think about the beatings, hated to think about the beatings, but couldn’t keep her mind from turning back to them. He was a strong man. Physically and mentally. Stronger than she ever could be. But it was hard to see how anyone would be able to withstand much more of their vicious, unforgiving abuse.

She sat there gathered into a ball. The blackness was absolute. She could have held her hand directly in front of her face and not seen the vaguest hint of its outline. Absolute. Only the noises beyond the cage had variation.

She listened to them, trying to take note of the changes.

Time passed.

The drumming rhythms quickened and slowed. There were periods when everything switched off. Beneath the sound of the machines, and in the occasional lulls, she could hear the quiet susurrus of air blowing through unseen ventilation grilles.

She prayed to God the scream had been something she’d imagined, dreamed, whatever.

She listened intently to the machine noises. She wasn’t sure what compelled her. Perhaps it was ingrained habit, a mind used to filing and sorting information. Perhaps it was only to give her moments shape, definition, a sense of onward movement. Or perhaps the reason was simpler, and she just needed to try and focus on something besides what those men had done to him. What they might be doing to him right now.

She hoped she hadn’t actually heard that scream.

The beatings had been awful.

He couldn’t take much more.

Alone, trapped, the cuffs digging into her wrists, she slumped against the walls of the cage. The air hissing in from the shaft was not exactly warm, but it had raised the temperature enough to keep her from freezing, keep her alive down here, keep both of them alive before they took him away.

She wished she knew where he was, how he was.

The beatings.

Her thoughts insisted on doubling back to the beatings.

Like those that came afterward, the first assault had been sudden and brutal. The men who’d burst into the cage wore hard-shell helmets with lamp assemblies, and she’d flinched from their piercing bright beams, blinded for several horrible seconds. But when her eyes recovered from their shock, the part of her that was trained at observation had amazingly kicked in. She’d noticed their coveralls, and their safety vests with luminous yellow stripes, and the card-shaped dosimeter badges on their chests, a type worn in laboratories where ionizing radiation hazards were present. Laboratories in which she herself had worked. She’d noticed that the lights rapidly intensified without manual adjustment, and that each was composed of multiple lenses, like the compound eyes of an insect… state-of-the-art, probably white LEDs controlled by a microcomputer. All six or seven of them were carrying firearms. Submachine guns, she believed, although such weapons were beyond her realm of experience. Or had been. Her training and background were in science, but recent events had dealt her a harshly different kind of education.

It had felt planned out to her, almost staged. The men went silently about their appalling work, a couple of them grabbing her arms, pushing her back against the wall, restraining her. Two others pointed their weapons at him, gestured him toward the middle of the cage. When he refused, scuffled with them, the rest of them closed in around him. They pounded him mercilessly. They used their fists, kicked him with steel-reinforced boots. They made no attempt at interrogation. They did not respond when she begged to know what they wanted. They just kept hitting him, the beams of their helmet lights jostling from the furious motion, leaping about the walls of the cage.

She screamed for them to stop, pleaded with them to stop, but they continued to ignore her. And during it all the man with the strange birthmark on his left cheek — it was melanocytic, a perfect crescent, like the shadow of a sliver moon — had watched from off to the side, looking frequently in her direction. If the whole torturous episode was indeed choreographed, she had no doubt in her head that he’d been the one to arrange its lockstep savagery.

The beating had seemed to go on endlessly before they were finished. And then he was writhing on the floor in agony, gasping for breath, his lips cut and swollen, his nose bleeding, his face a mass of bruises. The man who had been watching from the side turned toward her, strode to where the others held her pinned to the wall, and stood there regarding her with eyes that showed neither hostility nor conscience. They were like camera lenses in their level objectivity. In a way that was his most frightening aspect. He was as lacking in malice as pity. A man doing his job. His quiet dispassion had unbraced her.

She’d shuddered through her entire body as the others held her immobile against the wall.

He waited a moment, leaned close.

“Later,” he had said softly.

Nothing else.

And then he’d turned, and his men had released their grip on her, and followed him out the solid metal door of the cage, passing into the black.

That was the first visit.

They had come back often since. Sometimes it was to measure out more violence against him. Sometimes they left trays of bland, greasy stew and water. When they brought the food, it was always without the man she’d assumed to be their leader. He would just arrive for the beatings. None of them ever asked any questions. None of them spoke. It was always the same.

They ate their tasteless food in the blackness, ate to stay alive for however much longer they could. Two prisoners holed away without explanation, without knowing when their sentence would reach its end, or what would happen to them afterward. It was difficult for him to chew or swallow. She’d had to help him take down the unsavory mush, slip little clots of it past his swollen lips with her fingers. After the third round of severe punishment he’d vomited, been unable to hold the food in his stomach for quite a while. Talk of escape arose between them, but neither had any idea how it might be accomplished. They had wondered aloud why they were being held, could only guess that sooner or later their captors meant to question them about the base. There was no way to be sure what they expected to learn, what motives they might have, it was all so baffling. But he told her he’d promised himself not to give anything up to them. Not unless they began to direct their violence at her would he give anything up.

She wasn’t surprised. He was a brave man. She wished she felt that kind of courage on her own.

The beatings continued to alternate with the crude, bare-sustenance meals.

Time after time it was the same.

Until the last time.

That last time they returned, it was to take him away. By then he’d been in desperate shape and could barely stay up on his legs. She remembered panicking as they dragged him off the floor, into the blackness beyond the cage. She had verged on crying out that she’d tell them whatever they needed to know, anything, if they only let him be. But then she’d thought of his vow to defy interrogation, his resolute, unsubmitting heart, and checked herself. She hadn’t wanted to fail him, to fall short, and had bitten down on the words, watching them take him away, watching the door of the cage slam shut behind him—

Another scream suddenly bayoneted her thoughts now, and she jerked bolt upright as if slapped, the chain of her handcuffs clinking coldly between her trapped, chafed wrists.

The screaming continued to slash the blackness; shrill, tormented. There was no wishing it away anymore. No telling herself it wasn’t real. That wouldn’t work, wouldn’t help, not now…

She heard footsteps outside the cage, several sets of them, approaching with that familiar martial cadence. Then the cage door opened, lights glaring inside, dazzling her. She cowered back, squinting, shielding her eyes with both hands as they adjusted to the brightness.

The marked man entered, the rest of her jailers hanging behind him, positioned to either side of the entrance with their weapons at their hips. He crossed the floor of the cage, stood very still before her, framed in that terrible blaze of light.

Shevaun Bradley waited.

Trembling, cringing against the cage’s metal wall, she waited.

At last the marked man bent low over her.

“Now,” he said, “we talk.”

And outside in the black, Scarborough’s screams strung on and on above the heavy clashing roar of great machines.