Vortex

Chapter One

When Joshua Bane saw the man in the wheelchair, his first thought was to leave the rally because too many memories had already been rekindled. But it had been the hope that the cripple might be in attendance that had drawn him here in the first place, so he swallowed the past down, tucked his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker, and started across the Central Park grass.

It was exceptionally cold for spring, damp and drizzly, and Bane watched his breath misting before him in rhythm with his stride. Perfect atmosphere for a sullen rally of Vietnam veterans the country had done its best to forget. Most came in the uniforms they had worn in the jungles, the pants let out a few inches, the lowermost buttons of the shirts left undone. No one noticed.

Central Park in spring proved a gathering place for just about any group with a cause winter had forced indoors. Some stated theirs better than others, and today’s group was having difficulty stating theirs at all. The moist air was playing hell with the makeshift PA set atop a low stage, and the succession of speakers had to battle feedback just to make themselves heard. Some gave up.

Bane reached the man in the wheelchair and tightened his fingers around the rear handgrips.

“Been a long time, Josh,” the cripple said without turning.

“A year anyway, Harry,” Bane acknowledged lamely.

Harry turned just enough to meet Bane’s eyes. “I saw you over there before. I was hoping you’d come over.” He looked back at the low stage. “What do you put the crowd at?”

“Five hundred maybe.”

“I’d say closer to three. Bad weather shoots the shit out of rallies. In the fall we drew almost two thousand.”

“‘We’?”

“I belong with these guys, Josh. It doesn’t matter that I have to mumble an answer when they ask me what unit I served with.”

Bane released his grip, stiffened. “You served with the best, Harry.”

The cripple swung his chair around. “We made quite a team, Josh, the Winter Man and the Bat — God, how I still hate that damn nickname. Sounds like something out of a fuckin’ comic book.” He paused. “We could have won that damn war.”

“We weren’t supposed to. Politics.”

“Fuck politics.”

“We did … plenty of times.”

The two men looked away from each other, lapsing into silence. Sporadic applause filtered around them as another speaker, this one wearing a green beret, rose to take his chances with the microphone. Bane searched for words to comfort Harry, quick and witty ones, but nothing came, maybe because there was nothing to say and even less to hold them together, just memories going back fifteen years that had dried and warped with time.

In his walking days, Harry “the Bat” Bannister stood a shade over six feet and carried 200 evenly layered pounds of muscle on his frame. The exact derivation of his nickname had been lost long before to myth, though the best information put it in 1969 near the Mekong Delta. His platoon had been ambushed and slaughtered by a troop of Vietcong. Harry rolled free of the initial fire burst and lurched to his feet with rifle blasting. When his clip was exhausted, Harry considered running only long enough to reject it. He had long been an expert on knife throwing, so he used the occasion to rocket six razor-sharp blades into the unsuspecting throats or chests of the enemy. And when his knives were gone, he charged the enemy, swinging his rifle like a Louisville Slugger. Maybe the Vietcong were too shocked to respond. Maybe Harry’s bat was too fast. Either way, he held them off for an additional thirty seconds which proved long enough for help to respond. Harry spent two months in an army hospital, recovering from wounds he’d never felt being inflicted. He came out with a promotion and a nickname: the Bat.

The Bat saw Joshua Bane for the first time when Bane stared down at him as he lay in his hospital bed. Something impressed Harry immediately, something about his eyes.

“The name’s Bane, Captain.”

Harry noted his civilian clothes. “You from the USO or something?”

“Something.”

Harry was going to smile but he thought better of it. He had placed Bane’s eyes, the cold, deep-set stare and the blinks that came with astonishing deliberateness. They were the eyes of a man who walked away from every battle without a scratch, a man you always hesitated to call your friend and feared almost as much as the enemy.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Bane?”

“I’d like you to join my unit.”

“Green Berets?”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?”

“I had you figured for the kind of man who left asking for later.”

“Count me in,” Harry said.

Harry stayed in through Nam and longer, when Clandestine Operations found places for both of them in its network. And now Bane looked down at the Bat’s withered frame and felt his flesh crawl with guilt. It was his fault Harry was in this chair, and that had kept him from making contact after they’d left the Game.

“So how are things with the Winter Man these days?” the Bat asked. “What have you been up to?”

“Lots of travel. It’s different as a tourist, you know. You actually get to see the country. No late night escapades, no frantic border crossings, no dark men with guns lurking behind corners.” Bane stopped, realizing his words had sounded rehearsed because, in fact, they had been. “Things are quiet, Harry,” he said, softer now. “I’ve grown to like it that way.”

“Come off it, Josh, this is the Bat you’re talking to,” Harry snapped, running his hand through his damp hair as if to hold back the emerging gray. “The Winter Man’s no fucking tourist.”

“The Winter Man died a long time ago.”

The Bat regarded Bane knowingly. “You can bullshit the others, Josh, but you can’t bullshit old Harry. Your eyes haven’t changed and neither has the way you move. The best stays on top.”

Bane shook his head. “I was the best because people thought I was the best. Only it was just a matter of time before they realized they were seeing shadows. I got out just in time. The shadows were everywhere.”

“And what about Trench and Scalia? Is that the way they’ve managed their lives too?”

Bane flinched. Trench and Scalia were generally regarded as the greatest killers operating in the East or West, now that the Winter Man had taken himself out of the Game. Their allegiances fluctuated from year to year or month to month depending on who was paying the most. These days that usually meant the Arabs.

“Trench and Scalia are probably dead,” Bane offered softly.

“Not unless the Winter Man killed them.” The Bat glanced down at his useless legs. “Trench put me in this damn chair. I still owe him for that.”

“It should have been my assignment. You went in my place. I fucked up and you covered my ass.”

“It was Trench who blew my spine apart. A debt’s a debt. I’ll get him all right.”

“Give it up, Harry. It’s over. You had your run and it was a damn good one. In the Game you’re only better than the man you’ve got centered in your cross hairs. Everything’s relative. Nobody stays on top for long.”

“You did, Josh.”

“I didn’t let it get to me. I got out in time.”

The Bat looked at him grimly. “Did you? Did either of us? I lost my legs so they put me behind a computer keyboard. You lost your nerve and your family”—Bane squirmed at that—“so you quit, except you’re still held to them by that check you pick up at the Center every other week. We haven’t escaped the Game, not by a longshot. We’re still playing it, but on their terms instead of our own.”

A scuffle broke out just in front of the podium. A leftover sixties radical had gotten too close and said too much. He was being unceremoniously removed. Some of his friends rushed to his rescue. The scuffle grew, closing on Bane and the Bat. Josh watched Harry’s eyes come to life as he drew the zipper of his green fatigue jacket down. Clearly, the possibility of violence had charged him.

“I’ve got four of the goddamn sharpest throwing knives in the world in here,” he whispered to Bane, never taking his eyes off the approaching mayhem. “Lord fuck a duck, I’d like nothing better than to hurl a blade at one of those bastards. You carrying, Josh?”

“No.”

The Bat’s eyes dipped to the fingers Bane held tautly by his sides, coiled springs ready to leap out.

“Then again,” he said, “you’re always carrying — those damn hands of yours. I’ve seen what they can do. If my legs weren’t dead, I’d’ve fucked these knives long ago and taken lessons from that bastard friend Conglon of yours. How is the King these days?”

“Never better,” Bane said, not bothering to add that he worked out at the King’s gym two hours a day on the average. The workouts added discipline to his life, a place to go at a given time, regularly. Without them, Bane often feared one day would swirl unnoticeably into the next. He was pushing forty, just one year down the road now. He had to work the muscles harder and harder just to maintain their present level. The sweat and pain, meanwhile, made the world he had turned his back on seem real and up close again, almost as though it was tapping him on the shoulder.

“Give the King my regards next time you see him. Toughest son of a bitch I’ve ever met. If we’d had him in Nam, they would’ve had to let us win the damn war.”

“He speaks well of you too, Harry. Always had a lot of respect for what you could do with a knife.”

“Yeah, but hands are better. They’re always there and they never let you down. If I had it to do all over again, I’d specialize in hands. Lord fuck a duck, legs sure as hell haven’t done me much good.”

“I came to the rally today because I knew you’d be here,” Bane admitted suddenly.

Harry’s face brightened.

“And there was something else. Jake Del Gennio left a message with my service this morning.”

“The Swan!” Harry beamed. “No shit! You call him back?”

“Not yet.”

“But you’re gonna, right? I mean, he probably just wants to go over old times.”

“Sure,” Bane said, but somehow he knew otherwise. Del Gennio, the Swan, was a helicopter pilot who had spent more time behind enemy lines in Nam than anyone else with wings, always stopping just long enough to pick Bane up or drop him off. As the personal chauffeur of the Winter Man, he had to get out of more scrapes and jams than any dozen of his fellows. They hadn’t spoken in years, and Del Gennio wasn’t the type who liked to sit over a six-pack and rehash the past. He had called because something was up.

“I’m glad I came over, Harry,” Bane added. “I really am.”

“So am I.” A pause. “I didn’t mean to make you a backboard for my miseries but there aren’t many people left I can spill my guts to.”

“What are friends for?”

A smile crossed the Bat’s lips. His eyes scanned the perimeter of men who had become soldiers again for the day.

“It wasn’t really so bad over there, was it, Josh?”

“It was hell, Harry, but it wasn’t so bad.”

“Let’s have a drink soon … for old time’s sake.”

“There is no old time’s sake, but we’ll have a drink anyway.”

Chapter Two

“What took you so long, Josh?” Jake Del Gennio asked nervously. “I’ve been waiting by the phone for hours.”

Bane’s grip tightened around the receiver in the first pay phone he saw after leaving the rally.

“It’s been a busy day.”

“Well, I’ve been sweating bullets. You don’t know what hell I’ve been through, Josh, you don’t!”

“Easy, Jake, easy. You haven’t even said hello to me yet.”

“I’ll save it till we talk in person. I’ve got to see you.”

“What’s up?”

“I can’t discuss it over the phone. The world’s going crazy and no one wants to listen.”

“Okay, but why me? It’s been a long time.”

“Because I’m desperate, Josh. I need someone who can get answers.”

“Jake—”

“How soon can we meet?”

Bane checked his watch, found it was pushing four-thirty. He had planned on going straight to the King’s for a workout but that could be put off till evening. Fewer kids around the gym anyway.

“Six o’clock,” he said. “Dinner at La Maison on East Fifty-eighth.”

“I’ll be there,” promised Del Gennio.

Del Gennio was waiting in La Maison at a corner table in clear view of the entrance. They shook hands, Bane detecting a slight tremble in the Swan’s grip. Then he noticed the half-empty wine carafe.

“I never knew the Swan to be a drinker,” he said, sitting down.

“Well, this is the first time the Swan has been too scared to sleep,” Del Gennio retorted abruptly. “And that includes Nam, Josh. At least then you knew what was going on.”

“And now?”

Del Gennio leaned forward. “You figure it’s safe to talk here?”

“It’s clean,” Bane assured him. “New York branch of the CIA even has a charge here.”

Del Gennio tried to smile and failed. “I need you, Josh. The whole world’s gone whacko and you’re the only one I know who can set it straight again … It’s deep, Josh, real deep.”

“What’s deep?”

Del Gennio ran his hands over his face. “It started two days ago. I … lost a plane.”

“A crash? Oh God … But I haven’t heard anything on the news.”

“Because it didn’t crash. I just … lost it. One second it was there and then …” Del Gennio went on to relate the events of two days before when Flight 22 appeared to vanish into thin air.

“And what do your superiors say?” Bane asked when he had finished.

“That’s just it. They don’t say anything. I go to them with my story and all they do is put me off, a first-rate stall.”

“But you guys make tapes of everything. They should back you up.”

Del Gennio’s lips quivered. “I heard the tape for the first time yesterday morning. My voice is the only one on it. Nothing from the cockpit.”

“Could be equipment malfunction.”

“No way. I checked my terminal inside and out.”

“You tell your superiors that?”

“Sure and they kept insisting that I imagined the whole thing. They said Flight 22 came in ninety minutes late due to equipment malfunction and has been dry-docked for repairs.”

“You check the hangar?”

Del Gennio nodded. “The 727 in question was present and accounted for. But that doesn’t mean shit because I know it disappeared for a while, from visual and from the board. A sophisticated radar board, Josh. But it’s not the machine that’s got me losing sleep, it’s these.” Del Gennio pointed at his eyes. “These never lied to me before. Something happened to that plane and somebody’s covering it up. Somebody wants to keep a tight lid on this. They erased the cockpit side of the tape but they can’t erase me.”

“You call the airline?”

“A dozen times. All unreturned. Nobody wants to talk about it there either.”

“Somebody must, Jake. That plane must’ve been carrying one hundred fifty people….”

“It was undersold. Just sixty-seven passengers.”

“All the same, if something happened to the jet, don’t you think they would have complained? It’d be all over the papers by this time.”

“Now we’re on the same wavelength, Josh. I figured I’d check out the passengers on my own, except no one will give me a copy of the manifest. They’ve stuck me on desk duty and next month I’m up for reevaluation. They’re gonna try to can me, Josh, I just know they are. They think I’ve cracked, gone schizo or something.” Del Gennio’s voice was frantic, panicked. He seemed short of breath. “It happened, Josh, I know it did. You’re the only one I know who can get the real answers, dig them up before somebody buries them altogether.”

Bane looked at the fear in his friend’s eyes and patted his arm. “You flew into muddy hell to pick my ass up more times than anyone should have asked you to and never once with all the bullets and bombs did I ever see your hand waver on the joystick. You aren’t the kind of man to lose your nerve easily or your marbles at all. So when you tell me that something strange happened at Kennedy two days ago, I believe you. Something happened, but let’s face it, Jake, jets don’t disappear.”

“This one did.”

It was eight-thirty by the time Bane dropped Del Gennio off at his apartment and drove off toward the King’s gym in Harlem. He didn’t know exactly what to make of the Swan’s story but neither did he pass it off. Men like Del Gennio didn’t crack under pressure. He agreed to meet the Swan at Kennedy the following morning to obtain more details with which to begin his investigation.

The sky was totally black now, and Bane felt the shadows of the long-gone years creeping up again.

Bane had gone into the army only because he was drafted. He saw no sense in the war and even less in protesting it. He accepted his induction and subsequent assignment to boot camp impassively without enthusiasm or fear, found he enjoyed the rigors of training and excelled in them far above the other recruits. He started noticing men watching him — some in uniforms bearing lines of medals, others in civilian suits. Two weeks later, Bane was transferred to a secret base along with a dozen others from similar boot camps.

They were told simply they had displayed … something … that warranted a more specialized training. This training went on eighteen hours a day every day, both mental and physical — all torturous. The number of recruits fell quickly until Bane alone was left. He learned all aspects of violence, learned to embrace, even cherish it. He learned to love the physical tests his instructors put him through. Survival training. Subversion. Infiltration. Guerrilla fighting. Killing.

Guns were fine but noisy.

Knives adequate but not always reliable.

Hands were always there, quick and silent.

Bane preferred hands.

He learned to kill a hundred different ways with them. Closed fist or opened hand, it mattered not at all. He could snap a neck in a second, crush a throat in under two. The exercises and drills went on and on, offering him new challenges all the time.

One made him take out three men in sight of each other in less than a minute under cover of darkness, then had him repeat the same exercise in daylight.

Another left him weaponless in a forest with a half dozen heavily armed men in pursuit, his task being to neutralize them all in under an hour. Timing was everything. Success counted on it.

A third forced him to live in the wilds for two weeks with no food, no water, no weapons, not even any clothes.

The training continued for six months. Joshua Bane was taught to be a machine whose conceptions of right and wrong never extended beyond his orders. There was work to be done that would take a machine to accomplish. The slightest hesitation would mean failure. Thus, all traces of conscience and morality vanished as the machine’s parts were tightened and honed. The weeks passed … dragged. The games grew tiresome. Bane craved reality. He felt like a spreading pool of gasoline thirsting for a tossed match.

One night his six instructors were playing cards when the lights went out in their cabin. The sounds of a struggle followed briefly before the lights snapped back on to reveal a grinning Bane hovering over the bound, gagged, and defeated frames of his instructors.

He had passed his final test. A machine was never allowed into the field until he was more than ready. He must, first, have reached a point where he could live only in that frame of mind, where that kind of life was the only viable option. And to prove his ascension to that level, he had to go beyond the play book and create his own rules. On the night Bane had raided his instructors’ cabin, he’d proved he was all this and more. The student had become the master. He was ready for the field.

Bane spent a good portion of the next five years behind enemy lines. The subject of his missions changed almost daily but the intent never varied: to disrupt the enemy, break down his chain of command and channels of communication through sabotage, espionage or elimination. Mostly elimination.

The machine that had once been Joshua Bane did not require information, just input; not explanations, just orders. He killed as instructed neatly, precisely, and coldly.

Cold as ice.

They called him the Winter Man.

Buried deep within the machine, though, lay something that still thought, reasoned, even felt. While en route to meet the Swan’s chopper after a typically successful assignment, the Winter Man came across a burning school house in a Vietnamese village. Four times he ventured into the flames to emerge with the last of the trapped children, never hesitating or bothering to consider the risk.

A photographer for one of the wire services snapped a whole series of pictures in the midst of the action, some of them close-ups displaying the strangely calm look on Bane’s face as he ran to and from the burning building. This, the reporter noted in a tag line, was the work of a true hero. These might have been among the most dramatic pictures of the war, if they had been allowed to run. Army Intelligence and the Pentagon could not have the face of their personal killing machine plastered over the front pages of every daily paper in the U.S. Conveniently, the film proved faulty, the pictures developed into formless blurs. The photographer could do nothing but shrug. The processor smiled and set about recounting the wad of bills his unusual assignment had gained him.

The Winter Man remained in the shadows.

And now Joshua Bane drove past a faded, peeling sign resting over an equally faded building: King Cong’s Gym. He swung off 140th Street in search of a space. They were difficult to come by at this time of night in Harlem but Bane knew a place where there were always a few to be found. Cars belonging to the King’s patrons were never vandalized, and Bane had been watched often and long enough by hidden eyes to know that included his.

He pulled his stylish and functional Cressida up in front of a boarded storefront two blocks from the gym. The thought of walking through a not-so-friendly section of Harlem in total darkness caused him not the slightest hesitation or concern. He was out of his car and walking before the open hostility of the area struck him.

Fifteen yards and one burned-out building later, he realized he was being followed. Bane didn’t pick up his pace here but slowed it, feeling the hackles on the back of his neck rise stiffly. Always the unexpected, that was the key, anything to throw the opposition’s timing off. More. Slowing down increased his options while lowering those of his pursuer.

More time passed before he stepped over each dirty sidewalk crack, but Bane felt his tail holding ground, maintaining the gap between them at forty-five feet, maybe forty. Bane swung quickly, in a crouch, found no one behind him, and turned back to the front. His pursuer was good, very good. The advantage belonged to him now. Bane had given himself away, forfeited his element of surprise, and worse, lost track of his pursuer’s position. His ears scanned the perimeter about him. He didn’t trust eyes. By the time you saw something, it was usually too late to do much about it.

Bane slowed his pace to a crawl.

This was no amateur tailing him, no Harlem hotdog or mugger. Bane would have made one of those in an instant and sent him scurrying home to mama. No, this was the real thing, someone in the Game and a damn good player at that. For the first time, Bane regretted he wasn’t carrying a weapon. His confidence in his hands was absolute but there were times when one of the Bat’s throwing knives or a cool Browning would feel very good indeed.

His pursuer was almost on top of him now. Bane sensed him all right but had no idea of the man’s position. Bane’s fingers coiled, ready to spring. He passed into the shadows cast by a streetlight, saw Conglon’s battered gym sign just up ahead, and let himself relax briefly.

Too long.

The huge shape rose before him out of the darkness and air, stayed there just long enough for Bane to realize it was gone. Then a massive arm snaked toward his throat, stopped only when Bane got his forearm up in time to act as a wedge. He sidestepped and ducked but his opponent was equal to the task, more than equal, flowing with the move and pummeling Bane’s kidney with something that felt like steel.

Suddenly two massive arms joined over his solar plexus, and with great surprise Bane felt his 210 pounds being hoisted effortlessly into the air, just enough pressure being applied to squeeze his breath away and keep it from him as his ribs began to give.

Bane had gone into a counter move he doubted very much would work when a raspy voice slipped into his ear and everything made sense.

“Gotcha,” said the King.

Chapter Three

King Cong’s 300 pounds might once have been more solid but his six-foot-eight-inch frame had never been more menacing. If anything, the white patches which decorated his thick black afro made him seem even more chilling and monstrous. He slapped Bane on the back, came up barely short of hugging him, and they walked across the street to the giant’s gym.

“Been a long time since we played a round of the old game, Josh boy.”

“A year at least. You must have been practicing.”

King Cong shook his head, stretched his massive arms. “Uh-uh. I’m too old for that sorta shit. Turned fifty last week, you know.”

“But you didn’t have a party.”

“Don’t want to go pushin’ my luck any now, do I? All those little fuckers runnin’ around the street who’d like nothin’ better than to do in the King just might take a poke at me if they knew I hit half a century.”

“You worried?”

“Hell yeah. I killed enough for one man already. Don’t wanna have to kill no more, ‘less I do the choosin’.”

Bane followed the King into the gym where the air was stale and thick with sweat. There were two boxing rings, a host of heavy and speed bags, and what could easily have been a thousand barbells. No fancy machines or devices, just cold hard steel dominating the floor. Free weights were the only way to go, Bane knew. The modern stuff didn’t even come close. Watchful eyes followed him across the floor. Few acknowledged him, but no one questioned his presence. There was a code in the King’s gym that superseded race. When someone needed a spotter, Bane was quick to respond and the favor was always returned. Nonetheless, no other white man was afforded such courtesy mainly because no other white man trained here.

He followed the King into the surprisingly clean locker room.

“So what you plannin’ tonight, Josh boy?”

“Some time on the heavy bag, maybe two hours on the upper body.”

“You been workin’ those legs enough?”

“The usual.”

“Gotta work ’em more. That’s where quickness comes from. You lose them, just say good-bye.” The King made sure the locker room was deserted before continuing. “Like tonight. I’m a fuckin’ old man, Josh boy. I got more aches in me than you shot loads, and some days it takes a whole team of horses to pull me outta bed. But I caught ya on the street out there. I had ya.” There was no sense of triumph in the King’s voice.

“Just a game, King.”

“So why don’t you fuckin’ tell me what isn’t? That ain’t the point and it don’t mean diddley shit. What matters is that back there on the street you was only ready for someone not as good as you. An equal or better coulda fucked ya sideways.” Bane shrugged, opened his locker.

“Don’t go spacey on me, Josh boy. It’s me that taught ya how to stay alive so some mornin’ if I open the paper and read that you got yourself shot or somethin’ on a dark street, I’d feel awful bad. Kinda like it was my fault for not teachin’ ya good enough. You still got the magic, but that don’t mean you rightly remembers how to make it work for ya.” King Cong sat down on a bench and turned his mouth into a tooth-filled grin. “Maybe I best give ya some more lessons.”

Twenty-three years before as a high school sophomore, Joshua Bane had found himself totally disinterested in traditional sports. Playing basketball and football and all the glory that went with them meant nothing to him. Growing up in the Bronx had taught him to be tough inside but it was time to learn how to be tough outside as well. So Josh threw a fair chunk of his savings into a set of weights and began rising every morning at five A.M. to begin the day with a strenuous one-hour workout. He pushed himself until his muscles throbbed and pounded, and then he pushed himself even harder. He pushed himself unmercifully in a musty cellar scorched by summer heat and unguarded against winter cold, and still looked for more.

Josh knew a number of boys who boxed and a lesser number who had gotten involved with something called Karate. He knew nothing about the latter, other than it was taught mostly by slippery, lithe Japanese men who could move like the wind. He listened almost daily to arguments between boxers and Karate students over which made you a better fighter. These arguments formed the basis of his decision: instead of studying one, he would study both.

He went right from school to a boxing gym for a workout that on alternate days featured calisthenics, running, heavy bag work, speed bag work, shadow boxing, sparring, and always jumping rope. Then he’d rush home for dinner, which on lucky nights he was able to gobble down in time to make the ninety-minute Karate workout at a dojo just down the street from his tenement. His arduous training schedule left him no time for after-school jobs. So instead of paying dues at either the gym or the dojo, he worked an hour at one or the other every day to cover his time.

As his senior year began, Josh was near black belt level and a solid golden gloves contender. What’s more, following his after-dinner Karate workout, he religiously returned home to study for three hours before going to bed. He had taught himself very early in life to exist on small amounts of sleep, an ability which would become a godsend in later years. His parents had both come from the old country, and his father had learned enough about America quickly to know that if you wanted to get somewhere, specifically out of the Bronx, you had to go to college. He had steered Josh in that direction since birth.

George Bane had married late and come to America with modest dreams that became a candy store, one of five in a two-block radius, but the only one that extended credit to kids. George Bane seldom collected on all his monthly debts but the good will that credit generated was enough to assure him of a reasonably comfortable livelihood and to help him come home with a smile every night at six o’clock.

Then one night the smile disappeared.

Josh couldn’t pinpoint exactly when his father’s character had changed, though generally it seemed to start near the end of his junior year in high school. For months he heard his parents whispering late into the night in their native language, a language Bane had never bothered to learn. So he lay awake nights trying to pick out vaguely familiar words and string them into something that made sense, failing always to even come close.

Josh spent Saturday afternoons at the candy store, helping his father out. It was the busiest time of the week, a make-or-break period so far as profits were concerned. Rainy days were the worst and it was while cleaning up after one that George Bane finally told his son what was going on.

“There are men who come here wanting money from me, Joshey.”

Bane’s hands tightened into fists. He had heard enough stories around town to know his father was speaking of a protection racket.

“Did you pay them?”

“At first, no. Then other merchants came to me and said they were approached too, threatened even, and I got to thinking that maybe a little money wasn’t so bad to buy a little piece of mind. So I paid … for a while.”

“You stopped,” Josh said proudly, feeling deep love for the man with thin arms and worn features who was standing up to the biggest thugs in the Bronx.

“Yes, Joshey, I stopped. I got to thinking how could I live with myself if I gave even a dollar of my hard-earned money to these crooks? I met with the other merchants and we agreed we would all stick together and refuse to make any more payments.”

“And?”

The old man shrugged.

At once Bane knew. “You’re the only one holding out.”

His father shrugged, managed a slight nod.

“Dad, you’ve got to go to the police, you’ve—”

“Achhhhh, you know better than me, Joshey, that the police can do nothing. Calling them will only make things worse. But I can’t pay anymore. I came to this country to get away from scoundrels like this. I spent most of my life living in fear and submission. I can’t have that again.”

“You’ve told the collectors?”

“I’ve told them.”

“But they still come by.”

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no.” The old man shifted his weary shoulders. “Maybe someday they’ll give up.”

It was the beginning of a cold fall on another rainy Saturday when two men in overcoats came in at the store’s busiest time and asked to see George Bane outside. Before Josh could object, his father had grabbed his arm, surprising him with a strong grip.

“I can’t run away, Joshey. They’ll ask me for money like always and I’ll refuse and they’ll leave.”

George Bane walked into the rain without his coat. Seconds later two blasts rang out. Josh ran out into the street in time to see a car screeching away from the curb and his father lying dead in the gutter, blood from the two bullet wounds washing away toward a storm drain.

Josh started screaming and didn’t stop until the police arrived.

The thugs knew his father was becoming an example for the other merchants so they made him a different kind of example. The daylight murder in front of dozens of witnesses, virtually all of them children, was a bold stroke undertaken to force the entire neighborhood into utter submission. Instead of fifty dollars a month, the price for protection would now be a hundred. And the neighborhood went along.

The police, meanwhile, were strangely unable to find any trace of George Bane’s murderers despite detailed descriptions, which increased Josh’s rage and frustration all the more. With nothing else to do, he turned all his thoughts toward revenge, glad in a way that the police weren’t trying to catch the killers because now he could deal with them himself. He thirsted for a vengeance only killing the butchers personally could quench. That goal occupied his every waking hour. He planned for it, prepared for it — the knot in his stomach tied tighter each day. He’d get them all right; that certainty was the only way he could live with what had happened.

While Bane was quite aware of his own physical prowess, he was equally aware that even such prowess could not allow him to kill as effectively as he must. And all the bone-crunching workouts in the world couldn’t change that. Killing was something new, foreign. He wanted to do it, but he didn’t know how. The time had come to seek out a new type of training and a new kind of instructor.

Any kid on the street could tell you that the toughest man in New York was a black hulk named Gus Conglon, better known as King Cong. Bane learned the name of the Harlem bar where the King hung out and went there one afternoon after school.

He started through the door, his guts in his throat. But he swallowed them back down reminding himself of why he was here. A dozen pairs of black eyes turned from the bar and followed his progress, mouths agape in astonishment. Bane never hesitated, just kept walking toward the corner booth where the biggest man he had ever seen sat sipping a beer.

“You lookin’ for me, white boy?”

“You the King?”

“That’s what my friends call me.”

Bane caught his breath. “Can I sit down?”

King Cong laughed in amazement. “Sure, white boy. Sorry I can’t offer you a beer but I only got one glass.”

Bane sat there, going numb.

“Well, white boy, my time’s precious and the clock’s runnin’.”

Bane saw no other choice but to get to the point.

“Two men killed my father ten days ago,” he said lamely.

The King looked at him a little closer, nodding.

“The candy man over in the Bronx?”

Bane nodded.

“I heard about that. Clock’s still runnin’, white boy. What you want from me?”

Bane pulled a wad of bills, all his savings, from his pocket and pushed them across the table. “It’s not much but I’ll get more. I’ll pay you whatever you want, everything I have.”

That brought a smile to the King’s face. “Well, white boy, I been offered all sorts of stuff by people before but I never been offered everything. What you want me to do, ice those two dudes for you?”

“No,” Bane said staunchly. “I want you to teach me how to do it myself.”

The smile vanished. “Some things can’t be taught,” the King said and he poured himself another beer, trying hard to look away from the grim, determined boy before him.

Bane’s expression didn’t waver. Wordlessly, he held his ground.

The King chugged his beer, smacked his lips. “Well, white boy, you already know how to fight; I could tell that much by the way you move. Bet you’re damn good too. Trouble is you’re used to rules and regulations. Ain’t none of those on the streets.” The King swept a massive hand across the table and covered Bane’s eyes before he could react. “Take away the light and most fighters are near fuckin’ helpless.” He pulled his hand back. Bane twisted his features. “But the streets are dark and uneven. You got to learn the street way if you want to ice people. Most people get killed after dark. That’s the way it’ll be for those two dudes who iced your father.”

“Then you’ll teach me?”

King Cong cracked another smile and pushed the wad of bills back across the table. “What the hell, right? Just get ready to work harder than you ever worked before.”

“When do we get started?”

Class began the very next afternoon and Bane learned more about fighting and staying alive in one session with the King than he had in two years of boxing and Karate. Conglon set up an obstacle course in his cellar and tied a blindfold around Bane’s eyes.

“Now I don’t want you tryin’ to dance through this like some ballet faggot,” he warned. “Speed’s all that matters, speed and balance. If you trip, don’t fall. If you bang into somethin’, don’t let it slow you down.”

After two weeks on the obstacle course, the King moved class into a nearby alley and then to the streets themselves, at night mostly. He taught Bane how to use darkness instead of avoiding it, showed him how to focus on an outline or shadow instead of a complete shape. Motion was the key; maintaining yours while you followed your opponent’s. Sounds had to be picked up, filtered, analyzed immediately. Attacks came most often from the rear and sounds always preceded them.

In three months Bane was almost able to hold his own against the King. His senses, all of them, had been improved a thousand percent. He became a skilled night fighter which made him all the more formidable during the day.

“That, white boy, is the point,” King Cong told him. “And I’m startin’ to think it’s time we went to work on those two dudes who made you come round here in the first place.”

Bane just nodded. They had spoken barely at all during the months about the motivation behind his coming to the King. He figured the giant had a method and he wasn’t about to disrupt it. Patience had to be exercised. Push too hard and the King would push back harder. So Bane waited, though the thought of avenging his father was never far away.

The next day they went to work on guns, specifically a fat snub-nosed revolver with special tape on the trigger and butt that swallowed fingerprints. They only practiced at close range, no more than ten yards and usually less.

“That’s the way your hit’ll be,” the King explained. “And, believe it or not, they’s the toughest shots to make.”

It took a week before Bane got it down pat.

“Got a line on the hitters who iced your old man,” the King said suddenly one night. Later Bane would learn that he had known all along but had held the information back until he was sure his student was ready. “Free-lance muscle for the local strong arms. Not very popular. Won’t be missed. That’s a break. Anyway, the two of ’em hang out at McGilray’s Bar every night. You gotta be waitin’ outside for them tomorrow. I’ll drive ya. They’ll be drunk so you won’t have to worry much about them catchin’ on but they’re still pros so watch your ass.”

Josh gnashed his teeth. “I want them to know it’s me. I want them to know who’s killing them.”

The King frowned. “Trouble with that, white boy, is that if they got time to see ya, somebody else might too.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

The King just nodded.

It was raining the next night. Fitting, Bane thought as he huddled on a stoop two doors down from McGilray’s. It was one A.M. before the two killers came out of the bar. They were wearing the same overcoats they’d had on that rainy Saturday. He recognized them immediately and realized only one of them was drunk. His heart fluttered but he didn’t let himself hesitate.

He moved from the stoop in regular motion, blending with the night. The killers were still standing in front of the bar, inspecting the weather, struggling to light cigarettes in the wind.

Bane stopped six feet away from them.

“This is for George Bane,” he said simply and started firing.

The drunk one went fast. The bullets slammed him hard against the building and he slumped down already dead.

The sober one was another matter. He charged forward with two slugs in his gut and kept coming when Bane pumped a third one home. The man was on him before he could get a fourth off and his grasp, born of death and desperation, was the strongest Bane had ever felt. Bane lost his gun, tried to sidestep, failed, and felt the man’s fingers rising for his throat. The thumbs got there first, and it wasn’t until the first of his air had been choked off that all of Bane’s night training with the King came back and instinct took over. He shifted his body to the side and broke the choke hold with a wrist lock. When the man tried to regain his grasp, Bane came up and around, grabbing the man’s head with a hand on either side and twisting violently. The snap came as loud as any of the gunshots. The man stiffened, crumbled.

A black car screeched to a halt. The passenger door swung open. Bane jumped in.

“Not bad, white boy,” the King complimented, tearing away. “Not bad at all. You handled yourself real good.”

Bane almost asked the King why he hadn’t intervened when things looked bad but didn’t because he knew why, knew that this had been his battle to win or lose on his own. That was the way he had wanted it, a code the King understood and wasn’t about to break.

Bane sat back in the car and said nothing at all. He felt no guilt, nor did he feel any joy. He felt only an empty sort of relief and a strange certainty from deep within that there would be more killing, much more. Somewhere, someday.

That rainy night, Bane guessed, contained the actual birth of the Winter Man.

And now, more than twenty years later, that memory brought a thin smile to his face as he climbed into his workout gear and looked across at the giant who had started it all.

“What you smilin’ at, Josh boy?”

“The old days, King.”

“Yeah, remember ’em well. They turned me down for Nam, you know. Said I was too damn old. A couple years past thirty wasn’t too old if you ask me, ’specially after the way I laid out those Gooks in Korea. And all I got to show for that is a dishonorable discharge ’cause I knocked out some MP who had no business bein’ where he was. I’ll tell ya, Josh boy, I coulda had the GI Bill, a nice sweet pension, free doctorin’, and a host of other shit. But one punch that broke some shithead’s jaw took it all away and I was lucky to stay out of the stockade.” The King ran his eyes around the locker room, then cocked his head toward the door. “All I got’s this place and only ’cause of you.” The King’s eyes found Bane again, suddenly warm. “I owe ya, Josh boy.”

“Not as much as I owe you.”

“Bullshit! I bought this place with your greens.”

“Which I made in Vietnam where I stayed alive thanks to what you taught me.”

“They paid you well over in that hellhole.”

“Money was never the object.”

“You know, I mighta even made a pretty fair Winter Man myself, ’cept I ain’t exactly got the color for it.” The King paused and held Bane’s stare. “The Winter Man wouldn’ta let me beat him back there on the street.”

“The Winter Man’s not around much anymore.”

“He’s there,” the King said surely. “When you need him he’ll be there.” His hands tightened around his bench. The wood seemed to creak from the pressure. “You and me, Josh boy, we got a lot in common. Both of us in lotsa ways don’t belong in this kinda world, me ‘specially. Wasn’t too long ago a man in these parts could carry himself with his fists. Today twelve-year-old kids are carryin’ heaters and ten weeks allowance’ll get ya a machine gun. You mind explainin’ that to me?”

“Wish I could, King, wish I could.”

Chapter Four

Col. Walter Chilgers sat leisurely in the back seat of his limousine as his driver maneuvered through early evening San Diego traffic. As director of COBRA, Control for Operational Ballistic Research and Activation, it was sometimes necessary for him to play the role of politician by meeting with major civic leaders and kowtowing just enough to provide the impression that he gave a shit about what they thought. Such had been the case today, except it had been more ho-hum than usual. Something about the city wanting COBRA to open its doors for a tour by local businessmen. Chilgers hadn’t paid much attention.

COBRA sat in a wide expanse of fenced-in land just off the San Diego freeway in virtual spitting distance from the Pacific Ocean. The huge complex of interconnected buildings rose five stories above the ground in some places, four in others. And it would be within these where the tour would take place. Beneath them, meanwhile, in five full underground layers, the real work of COBRA would proceed as usual.

Chilgers checked his watch, found it was 6:10. He had a 6:30 meeting with his two top department heads and he dreaded being late. He prided himself on being punctual and precise and expected the same of any man or woman who served under him. Being late for a meeting was clearly a rebellion against authority, and to Chilgers rebellion in a company that demanded allegiance was grounds for dismissal. Accordingly, employees made doubly sure to reset their standard issue digital watches each and every morning, usually setting them five minutes ahead.

Chilgers leaned forward and looked ahead out the limousine’s windshield. An accident up the road had snarled traffic. His flesh started to crawl. He had no tolerance for anyone who couldn’t execute a simple right turn without taking someone else’s fender with him. People didn’t pay attention to anything anymore; that was the problem. But he had weeded them out at COBRA. If the time schedule was strict, the dress code was even stricter. Men were expressly forbidden to work in shirt sleeves even in the confines of their own offices. A woman caught wearing pants to the office would arbitrarily be given two weeks notice if she was fortunate and fired on the spot if she wasn’t. Long ago Chilgers had been an officer in the Air Force, and he believed strongly that effectiveness began with discipline.

For himself, Chilgers maintained a stable of three-piece suits he rotated regularly: green on Monday, blue on Tuesday, gray on Wednesday, black on Thursday, and brown on Friday with white and beige saved for weekend duty. The routine never varied. Chilgers wore his suits as stiffly as he’d worn his Air Force uniforms years back, and often when entering the building housing COBRA’s facilities he had to fight back an urge to raise his hand in salute to those he passed. His silver hair was trimmed every Friday at 11:45 which left him enough time for a hurried lunch before the start of his weekly staff meetings.

The driver had caught up with the traffic jam. Chilgers’ watch told him it was 6:14. No way they could make it at this rate.

“The curb,” he said, tapping his driver on the shoulder. “Drive up on the curb, the sidewalk. Get me the hell out of here.”

The driver started the wheel to the right. The limousine lurched atop the sidewalk, straddling the curb. Horns honked in protest. Terrified pedestrians dived to the pavement. If any of this bothered Chilgers, he didn’t show it. He merely eased his shoulders back and relaxed. He’d make the meeting easily now.

They passed through the front gate of the COBRA complex at 6:26 and moved immediately to Chilgers’ private garage bay. Once the door had closed behind them, the floor of the bay began to descend, heading down five stories beneath the earth’s surface. Another door slid up at 6:29 and Chilgers hurried from the bay, leaving his chauffeur behind as always. At 6:30 on the dot he swung open the door leading to the conference room which bordered his private office.

“Glad to see you’re on time, gentlemen,” he said to the two men seated in armchairs off to the right from the conference table. “Let’s get started.”

The two men rose and waited for the colonel to take his customary black leather chair before being seated again, not noticing him flip on the intercom box resting on the end table next to him. They were a study in contrasts. The larger of the two, Dr. Benjamin Teke, was a composed, confident man whose certainty of his own position on everything bordered on pomposity but never quite crossed over. His head was clean-shaven and round, showcasing his particularly spacious cranial cavity and the — he claimed — particularly large brain contained therein. Though there was no medical evidence to back him up, Teke was undaunted. He had been a COBRA man from the beginning, a damn good researcher who had risen to take over the Confidential Projects section. He was a company man all the way and Chilgers knew he could always count on Teke for support when needed. Teke wasn’t nearly as smart as he wanted people to believe, but he was exceptionally good at fooling them. When he failed to do so, there was always the intimidation route at which he was as adept as Chilgers.

Professor Lewis Metzencroy was something else entirely. Slight, balding, and bespectacled, Metzencroy was a genius in every sense of the word but a modest and humble one. Nothing was ever clear-cut for him. He was a scientist in the truest form, believing the purpose of his field was not to pass judgment or even make decisions but simply to discover and explore. He was meticulous in his work and never expounded on any theory or discovery until he had tested it from every conceivable angle. Like Teke, he was a company man, but unlike Teke his relationship with COBRA seldom extended beyond being told what to do and following through. He left the activation part to men like Chilgers who had the stomach for it, because he certainly didn’t.

Metzencroy took off his glasses and wiped them with the handkerchief he held perpetually in his right hand.

Colonel Chilgers lit his pipe. “I believe the only item on tonight’s agenda is an updated report on the tangent stage of Project Vortex.” He met Metzencroy’s eyes and already knew there was trouble, a hundred sides about to come to a problem that could have only one. Chilgers liked things neat, clean, and sure. Second-guessing and overexplaining were tantamount to lunacy, curses of the weak. He loathed men like Metzencroy and longed for more like Teke. He realized, however, that Metzencroy, for all his faults, was a brilliant scientist, specifically the scientist who had nursed Project Vortex from its inception. And Project Vortex was the biggest thing COBRA had ever taken on.

Chilgers moved his eyes to Teke. “What is the latest on Flight 22?”

Teke smiled slightly. The bright fluorescent lighting of the underground room bounced off his barren dome. “All computer reports and analyses confirm that we successfully degenerated and then regenerated the jet within all accountable limits of margin for error. In fact, I’m inclined to call the tangent phase a smashing success so far as all practical considerations go.”

“I’m inclined to disagree,” argued Metzencroy, dabbing nervously at his brow with the ever-present handkerchief. “I studied the readings in detail last night and did some computer enhancements of them this morning. Something’s wrong.”

Chilgers stroked his pipe. “What?” he asked, trying to sound sincere. Project Vortex was the professor’s baby. He couldn’t risk aggravating him.

“A bubble,” said Metzencroy.

“A bubble?” from Teke.

“In the spacetime continuum,” the professor continued. “Consider first that the gap in dimensions — the discontinuity — we’re talking about isn’t much different from a carpet laid over a floor. Sometimes a bubble appears and usually it can be smoothed over … unless, of course, the rug was too big to begin with in which case the bubble can be moved but not eliminated.”

“I’m not a scientist,” Chilgers reminded him. “You’ll have to speak plainer.”

Metzencroy frowned. “The computer grids taken during the tangent stage show a discontinuity, a lapse, probably only a second in duration in which we lost the plane.”

“Come now, Professor,” the colonel chided. “You know better than I that losing the plane was precisely what we were after.”

“To the naked eye, yes. To even the most advanced radar equipment, yes. But not to the computer relays on board. The implications of that are catastrophic.”

“But we’re only talking about a second, if that,” interjected Teke helplessly.

“In the spacetime continuum, a second might be an eternity for all we know. Besides, you’re missing my point. I’m telling you that for an instant the plane didn’t just disappear from sight, it disappeared altogether. It didn’t exist anymore anywhere.”

“Haven’t we experienced similar results before?” asked Chilgers, puffing his pipe.

“Previous tests prior to the tangent stage were conducted at speeds too high for our computers to register accurately. That doesn’t mean similar lapses didn’t occur.”

“I fail to see the enormity of your discovery,” snapped Teke.

“Very simply put, Doctor, if the plane, for however long, wasn’t where it was supposed to be, then where was it? The computers don’t lie. They’re telling us that the experiment was out of our control long enough for me to question the feasibility of the project.”

Chilgers pulled the pipe from his mouth. “The project?”

“The tangent phase of it at the very least. The new factor might have been more than Project Vortex could endure.”

“People,” muttered Teke.

“Exactly,” echoed Metzencroy. “The whole purpose behind the tangent stage was to test the effects of Vortex on human subjects instead of just machines. I agree with the concept in principle from a scientific standpoint. But from that same standpoint, I must argue in favor of abandoning all tangent phases for the foreseeable future.”

“And the rest of the project?” wondered Chilgers.

“I can’t say until I reevaluate the findings from this latest experiment. But there’s obviously something we haven’t considered about Vortex which might change everything. Frankly, the presence of that bubble frightens the hell out of me. I can see no logical explanation for it.”

“Professor,” interposed Chilgers, “logic had little to do with starting Project Vortex in the first place. Why should it enter in now?” He rested his pipe in an ashtray on a stand by his chair.

Metzencroy was dabbing furiously at his brow. “Because we’ve entered a new realm here, a realm as far removed from atomic weapons as they are from slingshots. We’ve got to tread slowly, slowly and cautiously. We can’t take extra steps until we’re absolutely certain about the ones we’ve made so far. I’m afraid that certainty no longer exists, if it ever really did.”

Chilgers just looked at him.

“I think you’re exaggerating,” insisted Teke. “This bubble of yours, Professor, could easily be the result of a simple slip in magnetization or a false reading due to movement in the jet stream. Hell, the answer may lie in the charts gathered by some simple weather balloon sitting up there in the general area of Flight 22.”

Metzencroy squeezed his handkerchief dry and shook his head. “I’ve considered those possibilities as well.”

“And rejected them out-of-hand?”

“No, but neither am I willing to accept them under the same terms.”

“They certainly make as much sense as the postulate you’ve advanced,” Teke continued.

“If not more,” Metzencroy agreed. “But in Project Vortex we must be sure at all costs. The slightest doubt cannot be allowed to enter in. The stakes are too high.”

“Professor,” began Chilgers, choosing carefully the point at which he reentered the conversation, “let me remind you that we are the Control for Operational Ballistic Research and Activation. Finding new weapons to assure our country of world supremacy, or at the very least the avoidance of all-out war, is what COBRA is all about. And that directive, I’m afraid, entails taking chances while we endeavor of course to minimize the risks. I’ve been around long enough to have heard all the stories out of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. That five hundred scientists signed a petition begging the United States not to set off the first bomb because maybe, just maybe, it would set off a chain reaction that would have led to the end of the world. Some well-respected scientists, in fact, put the odds at no better than fifty-fifty. Fifty-fifty that the world was going to cease to be, Professor, and they still went ahead with the bomb. Perhaps a hundred have been detonated since and the world has remained in one piece.”

“Vortex goes far beyond the atomic bomb,” Metzencroy repeated.

“Which is all the more reason to go on with all experiments as scheduled. Do you think the Russians are sitting around asking themselves these same questions of conscience and morality? Do you think they care about being sure? God, no. They’ll be proceeding full speed ahead with their own research and I’d wager they’d laugh at the points you raised.”

“So where does it end?” Metzencroy asked in frustration, staring vacantly before him. “We build an atomic bomb, they build an atomic bomb. We have our version of Project Vortex, they undoubtedly are working on theirs. Where does it end?”

“In this case,” answered Teke, “with who finishes first.”

“Which means,” picked up Colonel Chilgers, “that we can’t afford to come in second. Your points are well taken, Professor, but not very convincing. I’m a man who believes in the odds and right now the odds you’ve presented don’t require suspension of the project.”

“But I can continue to work on the problem.”

“Certainly,” Chilgers agreed, glad he could placate Metzencroy with something. “But the final stage of Vortex is scheduled for one week from today. I want everything finished up by then.”

Metzencroy rose, apparently thankful for a reason to take his leave. “Then I’d better get to work. Be warned, though, Colonel. You might not like what I find.”

“It’s your project, Professor. My faith in your abilities and judgment is total.”

Chilgers bit his lip as Metzencroy passed by him and left the room.

“He may turn into a problem,” Teke advised.

“He already has. Unfortunately, replacing him would pose an even greater one.”

“All the same, we’d better keep our eyes on him. If he reached the right people in Washington, we’d be finished.”

“If he reached anyone in Washington, we’d be finished, Teke. But they’ll thank us when it’s over.”

“If they don’t hang us, you mean.”

“This is COBRA, Teke. It’s our business to take chances.”

Teke extracted a set of stapled pages from his jacket. “We certainly took one by initiating the tangent stage of Project Vortex. Nothing good’s come out of it at all. I wanted to save my report for when the good professor took his leave.”

Chilgers relit his pipe. “I’m waiting.”

Teke turned his head slightly and his bald dome caught some stray light and shot it against the wall. The pumped-in, filtered air was strangely cool and fresh, containing the scent of pine.

“To begin with,” Teke said, studying his pages, “we picked up the passengers of Flight 22 on schedule, to follow and monitor as outlined in the schema for this stage of Vortex. Trouble is we lost one.”

“Impossible!”

“That’s what I said. But a report came in from one of our field agents assigned to the original airport detail that reads otherwise.”

“Who’d he lose?”

“A fifteen-year-old boy named David Phelps. Claims he was looking right at the boy standing in line at a drinking fountain and then he just wasn’t there anymore.”

“Must have melted into a crowd and run off. Your man must have gotten clumsy, Teke,” Chilgers charged. “Still, we’ve taken steps in the event of such an occurrence. Tracking him down should have been no problem at all.”

“Not exactly. As you know, all passengers on Flight 22 had small tracking nodules placed in their meals….”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell me this boy didn’t eat,” Chilgers interjected.

“The problem is a bit more complicated than that. Tracking the signal the nodules give off has proven virtually impossible thanks to video games.”

“Video games, Teke?”

“They operate on the same wavelength as our nodules. Our trackers have been going crazy trying to pin down the boy. Due to interference they’ve had to limit their search to late nights and even that’s been confusing. We’ve narrowed things down, though. Should have a fix on the boy sometime tomorrow.”

“Fine. Now let me have the rest of your report.”

Teke sighed. “It gets worse. The delay in degeneration caused some problems at Kennedy Tower. An air traffic controller out there is trying like hell to find out what happened. It appears he witnessed the moment of degeneration.”

“You’ve covered our tracks I assume.”

Teke nodded. “All tapes included.”

“Then it would appear this controller can be dealt with rather easily.”

“Maybe not. I pulled his file this afternoon. The computer spit out the name of a former acquaintance of his who might be of interest to us: Joshua Bane.”

“Jesus Christ …”

“We have reason now to believe that the controller’s already made contact with him.”

Chilgers snuffed out his pipe. “What’s his connection with Bane?”

“Vietnam.”

“That’s not good. It implies far more than casual acquaintance which means Bane won’t dismiss the controller as crazy.”

“Potentially, he might even believe him,” added Teke.

“Believe what, that a 727 vanished? Even if he did, he’d have no place to go with it. The trail’s already gone ice-cold. Still, we’d be well advised to observe caution here. We don’t want Bane becoming too active.”

Chilgers started fidgeting in his chair, a clear sign to Teke that it was time for him to leave.

“I’d better see about the professor,” he said, rising. “I’ll keep you informed on our efforts to locate the missing boy.”

Chilgers nodded. Teke walked stiffly from the room.

The colonel leaned back and drew in a heavy breath. “You can come in now,” he said into the intercom he had switched on at the meeting’s start, piping the conversation into a room across the hall.

The door opened and a tall man entered, an overcoat draped around his shoulders leaving his arms free. His hair was mostly gray and neatly styled. He moved slowly, each step measured and sure, his gaze deliberate to the point of being mechanical. His eyes, a medium gray color, digested everything about them like a computer weighing data for evaluation.

“Well Trench,” Chilgers began, “what do you make of Teke’s report?”

Still standing, Trench spoke. “I assume you’re referring specifically to the parts relating to Bane. The Winter Man’s finished. The damage he could do us if left alone is minimal. If we provoke him, his potential rises significantly.”

“And what if I said I wanted him taken out?”

Trench smiled, or almost did. “In my profession a man must know the level of his limitations before those limitations consume him. Bane and I are equals. I don’t like the odds of a direct confrontation.”

“You said he was finished.”

“No, I said the Winter Man was finished. Not dead, mind you, just pushed beneath the surface. But push Bane too far and the Winter Man will return. We must avoid that now at all costs.”

“In other words, you’re not up to the task of eliminating him.”

Trench took one step forward. His eyes grew even colder. “Don’t bait me, Colonel. I’m too old and smart for the ploy to work. Bane burned himself out because everything became personal with him. I have always been able to remain detached. Success and failure are merely relative states of being, as are life and death. Emotions cannot be allowed to enter in because they are the true killers. At my level, you can only be destroyed by yourself.”

“Or the Winter Man …”

“Not if I don’t give him a reason … and you don’t.”

“Accepted,” Chilgers agreed. “But something will still have to be done about that air traffic controller.”

“That might spark Bane into action.”

“Handle it in a way that it doesn’t. A professional way, Trench. I’m sure you’re capable.”