The wheelchair whirred into the apartment over polished slate floors. A soothing array of cool gray walls met the eye, the space Zen-like in its spareness and asceticism. There was virtually no furniture; Glinn was wheelchair-bound and he almost never had visitors to his private space, eliminating the need for sofas or chairs.
Glinn brought the wheelchair to one of the apartment’s few tables, picked up a remote control festooned with dials and various-colored buttons, and turned on the gas fire. Gesturing again with the remote, he aimed it at a pocket door, which slid open with a hiss, leading to his master bedroom. Another click of the remote started the water in the whirlpool bath, and a fourth click caused a row of scented candles to flicker on.
With great economy of movement and the help of two powered platforms and a robotic arm, Glinn undressed and was lowered into the churning, steaming whirlpool. This was not a luxury; it was a necessity in dealing with his broken body, to soothe away the pain that accumulated over the course of the day.
As he lay back in the water, he once again picked up the well-worn collection of W. H. Auden and began to read the famous poem titled “In Praise of Limestone.” After another moment, he put the book aside. It had been recommended to him by a woman: the only woman in his life. Or rather, almost in his life, as their relationship had terminated prematurely with her brutal death in the sinking of the supertanker Rolvaag.
That had ended forever any possibility of romance.
Not that there had been much emotional content before that, either. He had been orphaned at two when his parents were killed in a fiery plane crash, the cause of which was never properly determined. It was the first secret project he had undertaken at EES, the results of which were banal — the plane had suffered a fuel-line rupture — but at least it had afforded him closure.
After his parents’ death, a string of foster families had followed, and Glinn closed himself up as tightly as a bud on a frozen tree.
In the military, he’d had little need for friends, lovers, family, birthdays, Thanksgiving dinners, presents under the Christmas tree, or Friday-night parties. A loyal team that would obey his every command was enough. It satisfied his modest needs. The only thing he needed in life — which he needed absolutely — was the challenge of solving extremely difficult problems. He had a thirst for great challenges, the more demanding the better. As an intelligence operative, he could blow up almost any bridge or structure, he could break into just about any computer, he could design the most complex op and pull it off. Once, in an advanced cryptanalysis class at the academy, the professor assigned them a problem. It was a nasty sort of trick: unbeknownst to the students, the problem, known as the Michelson Conjecture, had never been solved. Glinn worked on the problem for forty-eight hours straight and brought in the solution at the next class.
The challenge of the impossible was the fuel that drove him through the military, the founding of EES, and life itself.
And then came the Lloyd Museum catastrophe, which killed the only woman he could ever imagine loving, and put him in a wheelchair.
With a sigh, Glinn picked up the book again and resumed reading the poem:
I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;
That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
Finishing the poem, he lay back in the bath, his thoughts gravitating to that strange phrase on the ancient map. Respondeo ad quaestionem, ipsa pergamena: “I reply to the question, the very page.”
Was it the key to the nature of the mysterious “physic”? It would do them no good to find Phorkys and then not know what to look for.
I reply to the question, the very page. The answer to the riddle was there, on the page itself — it had to be. Lying in the bath, visualizing the map in his mind’s eye, Glinn searched it, then searched again, roving over the lovely miniatures, the dotted lines, the tiny inscriptions.
The answer was there, and he would find it. Of that he was sure.
16
The sparse cloud cover around them vanished as the Gulfstream approached its destination. Sitting in a gray leather seat, Gideon gazed out the window at the seascape below. Ahead, as they approached the southern end of the Windwards, he could see the distant coastline of Venezuela, with the ABC islands in the distance: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. All around lay the turquoise Caribbean, speckled with islands, hundreds of them: grains of land set in the turquoise blue, many uninhabited. He wondered which of them, if any, would turn out to be Phorkys.
Garza, coming up the aisle, touched his shoulder lightly. “Gideon? We’re ready for Eli’s transmission.”
He rose and followed Garza to a partitioned area in the rear of the aircraft, where a large blank screen dominated one wall, a small array of seats in front.
The EES employee he had briefly seen at headquarters had come along on the flight; apparently, she would be helping conduct the briefing. Amy, Garza had called her. She was small and slight but quite attractive, Asian looking, with exotic green eyes, glossy short black hair, and a pert, athletic body. He noted in passing the wedding band on her finger. He wondered where the pilot of their vessel was; decided he was probably already on board in Aruba.
The woman drew a curtain over the aisle, and a moment later the lights went out and the screen sprang to life. And there was Eli Glinn, looking back at them from the conference room at EES headquarters.
“Greetings, Gideon,” he said, his voice surprisingly clear over the satellite connection. “Hello, Manuel. And hello, Amy. The pilot tells me you’re somewhere over the Caribbean as we speak.”
“An hour out of Aruba,” said Amy.
“Excellent. You have your briefing folders and all the information we can provide you at this time. During the mission, we’ll stay in contact through sat phone and computer. The yacht we’ve engaged for you is fully equipped with a high-speed satellite uplink, email, Wi-Fi, you name it. And it’s fully stocked with comestibles. Once you’re settled, Garza will return here and we’ll continue our analysis of the Phorkys Map. As we uncover more information, we’ll feed it to you.”
“Very good,” said Gideon.
“We’ll have people standing by at EES headquarters at all times, but Manuel will be your point man. And now, just a couple of parting words, if I may.”
“Shoot,” said Gideon.
“While I wouldn’t characterize this as an easy mission, Gideon, it doesn’t present the kind of challenge your earlier assignments did. For one thing, it’s the Caribbean. If things go wrong, we can always abort, extract you, and try again later. There’s no time limit on the mission beyond our client’s eagerness to see it completed. It’s true that we’re moving into the hurricane season. But with forecasting as powerful as it is today, you should have plenty of advance notice about bad weather.”
“I understand,” said Gideon.
“Now: any questions?”
There were none.
“Well then: good luck, you two.”
There was another brief silence. And then Gideon said: “What?”
Glinn paused, the eyebrow of his one good eye rising.
“What did you mean, ‘you two’?”
“You and Amy, of course. You’re partners.”
“Wait a minute,” said Gideon, “who said anything about a partner?”
“I mentioned you’d be traveling with a licensed captain,” Glinn said, his voice neutral. “That’s Amy. You’ll be making this journey together.”
Gideon stared at her and then back at Glinn. “Is this another of your QBA schemes? Introducing us at the last minute like this?”