“Deeply regrettable to be sure. You have my apologies. But it was the only way to ensure our getting together for a meeting which is bound to be profitable to both of us.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“It will be. You are a man of the world, so you will understand that sometimes one’s plans are subject to sudden and dramatic reversals. That’s business.
“I welcome you to my house. Not my house, not really. It belonged to the late Max Scourby. As you can see, he spared no expense in arranging the equipment necessary for your — our — transaction. Nothing has changed, except that instead of doing business with Senors Scourby and Lewis, you will be dealing with myself and my brother.”
Zane’s smile was as meaningless as it was polite. “No offense, but Max Scourby and Orne Lewis had a certain credibility and track record in matters of this sort. A certain trust existed, if only on the basis of similar transactions successfully carried out by both parties. If they said they could deliver, they did so. Charming though you most certainly are, you and your brother are an unknown quantity as far as I’m concerned.”
“I understand your misgivings,” Marta said. “Trust is so hard to come by in this unhappy world. You would like some sort of a guarantee. A bond of security. I am prepared to offer that to you.
“You smile. Perhaps you doubt me? Quite all right. I am not offended. Your opinion will change when you are made aware of my principal sponsor in this undertaking. The partner of myself and my brother. I give you a name that will mean much to you:
“Annihilax.”
Adam Zane’s sky-blue eyes narrowed; his jaw muscles flexed involuntarily at the naming of the name.
A name that meant nothing to Dr. Hugh Carlson. He was scared, dazed, and confused by the recent violent reversal of fortune. He took a certain comfort in the fact that he’d been neither manhandled nor abused. He knew this:
He was better off in the hands of his murderous captors than he would have been several hours ago in the custody of the two Los Alamos Sheriff’s Department deputies.
Or in the hands of CTU’s Jack Bauer. The late Jack Bauer.
He was, he knew, still a valuable commodity. The question was: Did his captors know it? For now, by conscious choice and nervous temperament, his way was to walk soft and keep a low profile while events shook themselves out and manifested themselves to give him a clearer picture of where he stood.
Annihilax? No, the name meant nothing to him. But it certainly carried weight with Adam Zane, and that meant something to Carlson.
“Annihilax? Yes, that would change things. If true,” Zane said. “I’ll go so far as to admit that rumors have reached me that Annihilax is alive and operating in this theater — but you’ll have to prove it to me.”
Marta Blanco’s green eyes glittered. Her red lips curved upward at the corners in a kind of secret half smile. “You have met Annihilax. That is not a question, but a fact known to me and you. You two have had dealings in the past. You are one of a very few who has seen the true face of Annihilax and lived.”
“Seeing is believing,” Marta Blanco said. She indicated a door at the opposite end of the room. It was arched and made of ironbound wooden planks. It opened, creaking on its hinges. Framed in the doorway stood a figure.
“Meet your true host. Annihilax welcomes you,” Marta said.
The figure started forward, entering the room, moving out of the shadows into the light. Moving slowly, deliberately, though not without a certain dogged stiffness.
Seeing the newcomer, Hugh Carlson was literally rocked on his heels by the shock of revelation. He cried out:
“My god! Carrie!”
Carrie Carlson advanced into the room, walking with a slight but noticeable limp. Favoring her left leg. She walked stiffly, wielding a cane in her left hand.
She wore a lightweight blue blazer, white blouse, gray skirt, and low-heeled blue-black shoes. Her hazel eyes looked yellow in the light; they glowed. She seemed serene, self-possessed. Her rubber-tipped cane made soft thudding noises against the tiled floor as she advanced.
She crossed to the others, stood facing them. A tight smile curved her lips. Her gaze shifted from Zane to her husband and back again.
Zane stared at her, studying her with a furiously intent frown. “My dear Jane, can it really be you?”
“Have I changed so much, Adam?” Carrie Carlson asked.
“Frankly, yes.”
“Perhaps these names will jog your memory: Chen Li Chang. Principessa Senta Loquasto. Einar Saknessum. Count Bozzo-Corona. General Auric Frobe. Sir Percival Pickering—”
“Enough! No need recite a litany of the roster of the dead.”
“They were all alive before you contracted me to liquidate them, Adam.”
He eyed her like a jeweler appraising a valuable gem of dubious provenance. “You’ve had face work.”
“What woman my age hasn’t?” Carrie Carlson countered.
“I suppose it’s the context more than anything else that throws me — you’re the last person I’d suspect of being incarnated as an American suburban matron.”
“Which is why it works, no? Only here I’m not Jane — it’s Carrie. Though not for long.”
She turned her yellow-eyed gaze on Hugh Carlson. “I don’t know which of us is more surprised, you or I. For three years I’ve moved heaven and earth trying to find the mole in INL, and all the time he was living under the same roof with me.
“Of course you don’t understand. It just goes to show that there are no strangers more mysterious and unknown to each other than a husband and wife who share each other’s bed. Not that we’ve been doing much of that lately. Thank god.
“You really had me guessing. I never suspected that you were the traitor. Never thought you had it in you. In a way I’m impressed. I fool others, I’m not easily fooled. Especially after the others in the cadre started dying off. Your doing — thanks to Lewis and Scourby. They were protecting their investment.
“In the end I thought it would be Nordquist. That’s why I tried to have his wife and daughter kidnapped, to use as a lever over him if we couldn’t get our hands on him. I faked my own kidnapping to muddy the trail, and maybe squeeze some secrets out of you. Never dreaming you were the arch-traitor. I must say, my respect for you has gone up.”
Annihilax was Carrie Voss Carlson. Real name Jane Miller. The sole daughter of a wealthy family in the American Midwest. Parents of good, solid stock, well-established old money. Her father was an international banker; her background, cosmopolitan.
Early in life Jane Miller discovered she was not like the others, children or adults.
She was completely lacking in empathy. There was a curious blankness at the heart of her being. A lack of emotion regarding the pain and suffering of others. A hangnail to her was more real, more painful, than somebody else being crushed to death in an auto wreck.
Her emotional life was rich, intense, and vividly alive where her own wants and desires were concerned. But as for the feelings of others, playfellows, siblings, relatives, suitors — nothing. Other people were no more real to her than a set of paper dolls. If they got in the way, you just cut them out of the picture.
Her mother and father were sane, normal, loving individuals. Young Jane suffered no physical, sexual, or mental abuse. Her childhood and adolescence couldn’t have been more idyllic — for her. For those around her, should they stand between her and something she wanted — a toy, a trinket, a school prize, a boyfriend, an honor, office, or position — a chain of inevitable fatality soon overtook them.
People kept dying all around her: a schoolgirl who was the ringleader of a clique who snubbed her; a teacher who threatened to report her for cheating on a test; a camp counselor who’d caught Jane and a cabin mate sharing a too-intimate encounter; a dowager aunt who’d made Jane the beneficiary of a considerable fortune in her will but then had the bad grace to keep on living.