“Let’s stick to the subject at hand, Patty.”
“Can I have that beer first?”
This time Lynnford used the cane to reach the refrigerator, he came back with a third bottle for himself as well.
“You need a glass?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“I always like a woman who drinks her beer straight up.”
“Men don’t have a monopoly on lips.” She took a hefty gulp of the beer. It was cold and wet and that was all that mattered. “You believe me now, don’t you?”
He sighed. “Everyone here has a story, Patty. When you’ve been with the circus long enough, you learn to tell the ones that are true from the ones that are made up.” He sipped his beer. “The difference is most of the stories I hear come from people who wanna stay here and hole up for a while. Not the case with you.”
“No.”
“So here you are, up the creek with a toothpick for a paddle, and it’s only a matter of time before somebody follows the current.”
“Meaning?…”
“Meaning the hounds chasing you probably won’t be paying customers — and having them nosing around the Orlando Orfei won’t do either of us any good.”
“I really don’t want to endanger anyone. If you want, I’ll—”
“Shut up, Patty. I said I wanted to help you, and I meant it. Lots of people who’ve moved to the midway’ve left skills behind. A few of those skills just might be what you need.”
“Part of their stories?”
“Almost surely.”
“Speaking of which,” Patty said, straightening up, “I haven’t heard yours yet.”
John started to raise the beer toward his lips, then stopped. “Not much to tell,” he said softly. “Not compared to you, anyway.”
“So bore me. I’m not going anywhere for a while.”
Lynnford looked out the window at the work going on outside. “You’re looking at my life, Patty. And it’s been my life for as long as I can remember. Some of the family was into the business end of circuses and carnivals, others like me were performers. Three cousins, my brother, and I formed a trapeze act when all of us were barely out of puberty. Became a big attraction, a lead one even. It lasted six years, until I was twenty-two — ’bout fifteen years ago. My cousin forgot to catch me on a routine swing, and the net did the same. Shattered my leg on impact. Not a bone left whole to this day. More steel than marrow, Pat. Guess I shouldn’t complain, though. I’m alive, right?”
“Alive here.”
“Ever so true. The family bought out the Orlando Orfei chain, and I saw myself as the perfect person to manage it.”
“I understand.”
“Not until you’ve been here awhile, you won’t. Nobody asks any questions. They accept you for what you are and leave it at that. Your life can begin fresh the day you walk in. You’re not the first person to come to us the way you did, and you won’t be the last.”
“Except I’m not staying.”
“But you’re not about to find your friend McCracken without a hint of where to start looking, either.”
“I have to try.”
“And I understand that. What you gotta understand is you’ve got to be ready to move fast if things take a turn for the worst. That’s where we come in.” Patty rolled the beer bottle between her palms. “We? As in the people here who are going to help me?”
Lynnford rose and tapped his cane toward the window. “They’re all working now. We’ll get the ball rolling as soon as they break for lunch.”
“Are you happy now, Benjamin?” asked Pierce, standing in the doorway of the room that would be the tall man’s home for the foreseeable future.
Benjamin stared at him for a time. “I won’t be happy until we’re all together, until all this is finished.”
“Which will be very soon,” said Nathan, who had come up behind Pierce. “He wants to see us.”
“Now?” Benjamin asked fearfully.
“He called us here for a reason,” Nathan answered. “It’s time. Or damn close to it.”
“Let’s go,” Pierce suggested.
“Yes,” Nathan agreed. “Let’s.”
And they waited for Benjamin who, shrugging his shoulders, joined them in the corridor. The bunker was located some ten stories beneath ground level, constructed at a cost of nearly a billion dollars over the course of the past decade. All the work had been overseen by the man who had at last summoned them here. As far as they knew, this bunker was one of several scattered strategically across the United States, safe and insulated from anything that occurs on the surface above.
As a result, the air in the bunker had a sterile, antiseptic scent to it. Overdry, it played hell with the sinuses, but the slightly larger oxygen content kept the men from noticing. The worst feature of all, each would have probably said, was the lack of windows. With no world beyond to relate to, there was nothing to provide life with scale. Nothing, that is, other than the plan that had brought them all down here.
Nathan led Pierce and Benjamin to an elevator, which they rode to the very bottom floor of the complex. It was lit in a dull red haze and was colder than all the others. The lack of light, coupled with the absence of windows, was maddening. Stomachs clenched, they passed through an archway and into an even darker conference hall. The hall’s ceiling lights were encased by drop-off coverings that spread the light sideways instead of down. Everything else in the room was pure, pristine white. Untouched, virginal. Pierce thought it looked a little like snow.
Three places had been set at the huge conference table.
“Sit,” came a command spoken from the darkened slab that was the front of the room. “Please, my children, sit.”
The voice echoed through the hall’s sprawling limits, emerging in a slightly garbled, watery tone. Only the outline of its bearer was visible; a shadow hunched in a chair. What little life there was in his voice came from the echo. Pierce, Nathan, and Benjamin did as they were told.
“My children,” the voice started, “I am happy to report that all is proceeding on schedule.”
With that the hall’s light dimmed even more and a map of the entire continental United States was projected on the wall behind the shadow’s voice. The map’s glow cast his frame in an eerie translucence, outline bathed in a spill of light that might have come from the heavens themselves. Slivers of the light glowed red when the next instant brought twelve red splotches to the map, scattered irregularly over the United States and focused amid the nation’s largest centers of population. Accordingly, by far the heaviest concentration was along the Eastern seaboard. Six red lights dotted New York through Miami, while the West Coast and Midwest showed only three each.
“Everything is going as planned,” the voice explained emotionlessly. “No adjustments have had to be made in our timetable as a result of the complications.”
“Than the matter has been settled?” Pierce asked.
“Not quite,” answered the voice as the intensified glow from the red lights bathed the wall like blood. “I regret that it has now become necessary to alter our strategy to a very minor degree. One of the disciples must be replaced.”
“It was McCracken, wasn’t it?” Benjamin asked the question tentatively.
“Our efforts to eliminate him in Brazil failed, yes.”
“You’re saying you sent one of the disciples in and he failed?” Nathan asked incredulously.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Is McCracken that good?”
“We knew he was from the beginning. In reality, we have learned much from the encounter. The details are sketchy, but they provide a lesson, nonetheless. We won’t make the same mistake again.”