Solstice

DAY TWO June 20 THE CHILDREN

CHAPTER 20 Michael's Call

La Finca, 0251 UTC

Michael Lieberman came to, wondering where he was and what was making the noise. He jerked upright, felt his head wallow around as if it were about to fall off his shoulders, and reached for the light. Over on the other side of the bedroom the computer monitor was flashing, and a sound like an old Bell telephone was coming out of the speaker.

He dragged on a pair of jeans, walked over, and punched the keyboard. 'I think you got the wrong number. It's the middle of the night here.'

'No,' Helen Wagner answered, in an unemotional East Coast voice. 'You're Michael Lieberman. There's no mistake. I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour. Irwin gave me your address. We have to talk.'

'We?'

'My name is Helen Wagner. I'm acting head of S&T — that's Science and Technology — for the CIA in Langley. I don't expect that to mean much to you.'

Lieberman glanced away from the screen, shook his head as if that might help to clear it. The woman was familiar from somewhere.

'Professor Lieberman. I have bad news for you. I'm sorry. There has been an incident at Lone Wolf.'

He wanted to throw up. He wanted to pick up this piece of plastic and glass and hurl it onto the floor. 'An incident?'

'We had no idea they were capable of inflicting this kind of damage. It looks as if they hacked their way into the internal network somehow and wound up the internal power generator way beyond its limits. We got a minor explosion and a major fire. Sara will be okay. I'll give you the number for the hospital. She was the only one there when they hit it. Maybe they thought it would be unmanned. It was just bad luck.'

'This isn't true,' he said. 'You people lie all the time.'

Helen Wagner blinked back at him. The CIA didn't really look like this, he thought. The CIA looked like Ellis Bevan, all coldness and deceit. 'I wish I was lying. A few hours before this they blew up a SWAT team that we hoped was tracking them, and there we are talking real explosives. People are dead. They seem to be able to pick and choose between the technology they use. So far they've killed the President and a couple of hundred people with Sundog, wiped out some agents on the ground with Semtex, and managed to screw up one of only three working control units for Sundog with some kind of computer attack. It makes you wonder what's next.'

'Washington?' Lieberman asked blankly.

'We had a major telecom blackout and something like an intense magnetic storm just after noon. It was some kind of directed beam from Sundog. More disruption than real damage. My guess is that they are working to understand what they've got hold of, and conserving it too. It wasn't meant to handle the kind of energy they must have had to throw at it to bring down Air Force One. If they want to save it for the zenith unscathed, and that seems to be their aim, they need to be sparing when they use it'

Lieberman shook his head. This was all too much. 'What the hell are you talking about? Sara's hurt?'

She looked at him and said softly, 'I'm sorry. Too much at one time. I'm not good at this. You were still pretty close. I didn't know that.'

'Yeah. Close.' He looked at her as if to say: What do you expect?

'Sara was trapped for a while in the debris after the power plant went up. You should call the hospital and find out more. I'll give you the number.'

Lieberman nodded. People getting sick. People getting hurt. These were things he never handled well. 'Why are you telling me this? Why not Bevan? He's one of your goons, isn't he?'

She smiled, and it looked genuine. 'Professor Lieberman — '

'Drop the professor part. It makes me feel uncomfortable.'

'Michael,' she said tentatively, 'this is a very fluid situation. None of us was prepared for this. And we're not in control, not one little bit. We don't run the timing. They do. It's a little… unusual for us. At least for Operations here. I'm a scientist. Like you. I don't really get mixed up in those things.'

'What do you really want?' he asked.

'I wanted to break bad news to you.'

'Yeah. And nothing more? Please. My head hurts.'

'And ask for your help,' she said. 'Bevan said you planned to ship out in the morning. I want to talk you out of that. It's important you stay on board. We need to cover every option there is for taking Sundog out of their hands. You could help a lot there.'

Lieberman wished he could shake from his head this image of Sara lying in a hospital bed. 'I have to go back home. I should be near Sara.'

'Michael,' the woman said, 'her husband is with her.'

'Oh. Right.'

'And she'll be fine. Don't take my word for it. Call her. It's important you stay part of the team.'

'Important for who?'

'All of us. This is an international issue now, Michael. It's gone beyond the murder of the President and his staff.'

'Not my fight, Miss Wagner.'

'Helen. Please.'

'You've got all these people. In Washington. All over the world. They can fix it.'

'I wish you were right,' she said quietly. 'We're doing our best but we still need you. You designed what makes this thing work, Michael.'

'Thanks. I really appreciate being reminded of that.'

'It's a fact. I know you would never have done it had you realized what they really wanted it for. But isn't that a little academic now? And we do need your input on the sunspot cycle. They're bound to wait until the absolute zenith until they start to have their fun. And I need to know when that will be because the force they have in their hands is incalculable. When will it peak? When can we expect them to throw the big switch? Will it be midday UTC or what?'

Lieberman was aware that these thoughts had been running subconsciously through his own head too. The entire game might come to hang upon them. 'These things walk hand in hand, the solstice and the planetary alignment. It's like bringing a camera into focus using a couple of different lenses. Bennett's right about that, I'm sure. Last time I looked, you got the sunspot zenith coming around forty-five minutes after noon UTC

Helen Wagner sighed. 'Which is about as bad as you could get. The power of the storm will be at its peak.'

'You're making a lot of assumptions. That Charley really means this thing. That she has the wherewithal to do it. And that we'd all be sitting here with nothing happening even without Sundog, and of that I'm not sure at all.'

'Not really,' Helen Wagner said, no expression on her face. 'We don't need to make that many assumptions any more. Like I said, things have changed while you were sleeping. She's made that side of things a little clearer.'

'Don't tell me about it. I don't want to know.'

She looked at him. Lieberman felt himself being scrutinized. 'Why are you like this? A bright guy. So detached.'

'Because I'm tired. And sick of being told lies all the time.'

She shook her head. 'It's not that.'

'I don't do shrink stuff at two in the morning. Sorry. Is this conversation over? I have to pack.'

'We need you.'

'No, you don't. You need people like Bevan. They're trained for this sort of stuff.'

'We need your expertise. More than that, maybe, we need your insight into Charley Pascal. I have plenty of people here who'll walk around waving guns in the air. Operations has a few of them lying dead in the street in San Francisco right now. But something tells me that's not going to help us here. We need to understand this woman. What she wants. Why she got involved with the Children. And you know her, Michael.'