"You say this madness, it possesses us, like a demon?"
Matt answered for him. "Yeah. That's what the book says."
Blossom turned her gaze on him, eyes ablaze. "So when we go mad, it's not just our body that dies. We die forever or go to hell or whatever?"
Matt shrugged. "It looks that way."
"Then we have nothing to lose. Damned either way, yes?"
"But everyone else—" he tried.
"I don't care about everyone else," she snarled, then fell to the floor Indian-style, her arms wrapped around her head. "We need to do this," she mumbled. "I won't let my daughter fall to madness."
"Look," Matt said. "I don't know what she has to do with this, but—"
Blossom disappeared.
He blinked and looked at Dawkins. "Where did she go?"
He shrugged. "I didn't look into this."
A door slammed above them. Matt's heart went cold, and he bolted for the stairs. He met Blossom halfway up, her defiant eyes full of tears. "You give me no option."
He tried to grab her wrist, but she twisted away. He tried again and she hit him, an open-palm strike to the sternum that knocked him backward. He fell, arms pinwheeling as his feet left the stairs. His head rang as it hit the floor at the bottom of the landing, but his hand struck out to grab her ankle as she flashed by.
She fell to the floor and kicked at him, but he dragged himself over her and wrapped her in his arms. Her struggles weakened to human level, and then to that of a scared kitten. She sobbed against his chest, and from the floor he looked up at Dawkins and Janet, unsure of what to do.
"Please check on my wife," he said.
Janet padded past them as Blossom's tears soaked his shirt. A few minutes later she came down stairs and set an autoinjector on the floor. He read the number on the cartridge and recognized second-generation regenerates. His arms tensed as he squeezed Blossom tighter than a comforting hug.
"What did you do?"
Her tear-filled eyes held only anger. "We go now. No waiting."
He crushed her arms to her side and squeezed the breath out of her. "What. Did. You. Do?"
She slammed her forehead into his face. Stars exploded in his head as his nose broke, and she used the advantage to slip from his grip. Dawkins dove for her, but not before Janet cried out and slapped her neck.
The three of them went down in a heap next to Matt. While Janet scrambled out of the way, they pinned Blossom to the floor. She screamed and cried and thrashed, but her speed couldn't compete with their strength. After a while—minutes or hours, Matt had no idea through the stream of anguished wailing—she calmed, sniffled a few moments, and lay still.
"Can we let you up?" Dawkins asked.
She gave a curt nod. "I'm done."
They let go, and as they got to their feet Matt asked her again, "What did you do?"
She raised her chin, as defiant a gesture as he'd ever seen out of her. "Now you're like me. Desperate. Two months ago, my daughter, the doctor says she has glioblastoma multiforme—brain cancer. Inoperable, very fast. Three months to live, maybe less. I smuggled out regenerates to save her, but now she's going to go mad unless we stop this." She turned to Dawkins. "These aren’t angels or devils. Still, you say they can be stopped, so we're going to stop them. Or your sister"—she turned to Matt—"and your wife and child, will pay the same price as my daughter."
Black rage consumed Matt. He stood, and Dawkins forced him back down with a hand on his shoulder. "No, Matt. Vengeance here solves nothing." He looked at Janet, his face a blank mask, then back to Matt. "We have to try."
* * *
Monica lay on the couch, weak but less peaked, and nursed a cup of tea. She smiled a sad smile when she saw him and winced as she stood, but Matt hugged her anyway. "You shouldn't be up." Going by his own experience, she'd feel both giddy and miserable for a day, then never feel ill again.
She squeezed and didn't let up. "I feel a bit better. When I woke up you weren't here."
He held her and didn't apologize; he couldn't be sorry for what had to be done. She swayed on her feet, and giggled, and used his embrace to keep on her feet. He let her down, hand behind her head and the small of her back, and kissed her eyelids to close them. He waited with her until her breathing settled to the deep flow of sleep, then turned his attention to his companions. Janet sat on the loveseat, legs crossed, and Dawkins sat on the couch across from her, a pair of long knives in his lap.
Dawkins tightened his grip on the knives. "Once we're done with Gerstner, you figure out what you have to do, and I'll figure out what I have to do. Meantime, Sakura's an asset, and we use her." He looked everywhere but at Janet, and Matt forced himself to quash the twinge of sympathy in his heart. Whatever else he might be—brother, crusader—Dawkins held his place in history as the most prolific drug dealer in history, with all the murder and treachery that entailed.
"Okay, let's talk to her."
They entered the kitchen and sat on either side of Blossom, who fiddled with her fingernails and didn't look up. Dawkins had left the knives in the other room; Matt presumed he didn't trust himself yet.
"All right," Matt said, "we do this." He looked from Blossom to Dawkins. "So where are they keeping her?"
"Where do you think?" Dawkins asked. Matt's hopes slid as he continued. "Frahm's house."
Matt grunted. "There goes Plan A." Blossom raised an eyebrow, so he added, "Air-fuel bomb."
"Why is this not an option?" she asked.
"Frahm lives in a residential neighborhood. He may be willing to slaughter innocents, but I'm not."
Dawkins shrugged. "This is war. Everyone dies if we lose, so why not do it the most efficient way?"
Matt snarled. "You don't get to dictate the terms of my help. I'm in this because I have to be, because you forced me to be, because she forced me to be." He thrust his chin at Blossom. "But I'm not about to cause another Lake Kivu." The international community had labeled it a natural disaster and gave no credence to Congolese claims of international terrorism. He still couldn't be sure whether Dawkins or ICAP had detonated the island, and he no longer cared. They were all monsters in their own way, and he refused to join the callous slaughter.
"Okay," Dawkins said. "Then what's the plan?"
Matt frowned. "We need more information. Can Janet access the blueprints?"
With a glare at Blossom, Dawkins replied, his words clipped. "Janet isn't able to do anything right now. It'll be days before she's recovered from the augmentation." Matt remembered his regenerates treatment and the odd combination of euphoria, extreme nausea, and headaches that had accompanied it. The side effects hit people differently, and augmentation had laid Janet out with debilitating migraines. "Regardless, Frahm's house isn't ICAP property. There'd be no reason for them to have that information."
"Someone had to have built it. There has to be records."
"Incomplete. They don't show anything below the basement."
"How do you know she's there?"
Dawkins squirmed a little. "Because we're going to go inside, so I can see it."
"Do we come out?" Blossom asked, sneering.
He ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know. My ability to see stops at the door." He looked at Janet, queasy on the floor. "I don't think I survive. I don't know if you do."
"How did you end up so precognitive?" Matt asked.
He shrugged again. "You want some irony with that question? Brian Frahm. He hand-selected eight of us to beta test the first precognition augmentation. We were like test pilots during the Cold War, willing to risk our lives for that next great tactical edge. I'm the only person who didn't bonk out within four days. And then it showed me what ICAP really was."
"So Gerstner allows you to see how to defeat Gerstner?" The question made Matt’s head hurt.
Dawkins shrugged. "Don't ask me how it works. I don't know that there are rules to magic."
Blossom clucked her tongue and changed the subject. "What resources do we
have?"
Dawkins smiled in a manner that promised murder if he could deliver it. "Anything you want, Sakura: AKs, helicopters, boats, explosives. In a couple days I could assemble a small army of mercenaries, including some really augged-out monsters a hair's breadth from bonking out, but anything I do, Frahm will catch wind of it. He knows I'm out, he knows I'm going to try something, and it would be a mistake to assume he doesn't have moles in my organization."
"Do we need an army?" Matt asked.
"I don't think so. Satellite recon shows that Frahm's house doesn't get a lot of traffic. Sometimes he gets late-night boats with their lights off that never reach the house, so there has to be at least one outside entrance—"
"Wait." Matt raised a hand. "Frahm doesn't live on the river."
"Oh," Dawkins said. "Not his home in D.C. I'm talking about his home in La Madrague."
"Where is that?" Blossom asked. Her face betrayed not the slightest emotion.
"Giens Peninsula, Southern France."
Matt logged into the guest account on Janet's computer, pulled up Google Earth and typed in, "Giens Peninsula."
"Show us."
Brian’s home was the quintessential European villa on the water: trees screened it from the street and a picturesque half-wall surrounded the small property. With no yard to speak of, the two-story retreat ended in a rocky bluff that led down to a private dock. Someone had uploaded a picture of a brilliant purple tree growing under Frahm's balcony, giving them a perfect view of the ocean side. Invisible from above, a small cavern led through the bedrock into the darkness.
"All right," Matt said. "It's a big house, but not that big. What's it like underground? Raccoon City?"
"Could be," Dawkins said. "The bedrock could support something that large, though history suggests that there haven't been any ridiculously big construction projects going back as far as World War Two. My guess—and this is a guess—is no more than ten thousand square feet, and probably a lot less than that."
Blossom glared at the picture. "No army, but what about a small group? Are there a few people you trust with this?"
"With this?" Dawkins snarled. "No. There's a reason I had to be forced into this." He ran a hand across the back of the couch. "I could make something up that they'd believe. A revenge hit on a rival drug lord, or something. But Frahm might still find out."
Matt looked out the window. "If we can use your money, I have a better idea."
Dawkins caught his eye. "How much do you need?"
"Let me find out."
Chapter 17
Matt and Blossom got off the plane into a blast of heat. The causeway had to be a hundred degrees and stank of straw and body odor and burnt cumin. The mass of humanity didn't help the heat. Or the noise. Or the smell. The oppressive humidity made for a pleasant change when they stepped outside.
Blossom handed a fistful of pesos to a vendor, picked up an apple, took a bite, and spoke with her mouth full. "I'm not sorry. You'd have done the same."
"Don't," Matt said. "If there's even a chance of saving Monica, I have to take it, but don't mistake that for trust or friendship. You could have told us."
"Dawkins would not go along to save my daughter."
"I would have."
She closed her eyes, nodded once, then opened them. "You really think taking some old woman off a machine will cure addiction? There's no such thing as magic."
Matt grunted at her continued denial of the fantastical truth. "I don't know. Two days ago I didn't believe in angels on Earth, despite what happened in New Mexico. I didn't believe a headless man could chew through my neck. I didn't believe—"
The car pulled up, a lime green 1970s Cadillac with diplomatic plates. They stood on the sidewalk as the driver frisked them. His eyes popped when he opened Matt's briefcase, but he covered his surprise with a polite cough. Blossom responded once he'd gotten back in the driver's seat.
"You believe Dawkins is psychic? Can see the future?"
He exhaled. "Yeah. That I believe all day long. I've done it myself, once or twice. Not like him, but way farther out than a split second. And I've seen too much not to believe that. He knows too much."
"And you think Gerstner is the key to stopping all this, that we won't go mad."
"I . . . maybe. I don't think the people who wrote the book knew about the machine, but if we destroy her or disrupt her somehow, I think maybe."
"You think."
He threw up his hands. "Maybe taking out Gerstner will make us all crazy. Maybe we'll all die. I have no idea. But it's a chance, and even if it doesn't work for us, even if we're all screwed, even if Mo—" He stopped, closed his eyes, swallowed a lump in his throat, and continued through the near-overwhelming desire to tear Blossom limb from limb. "Even if all that's true, if we can stop the flow of Gerstner carbon, the Jade trade will dry up, and nobody else'll get augs . . . that'd be worth doing. That'd be worth dying for." He opened his eyes and stared into hers. "The world won't need folks like us anymore."
She finished her apple in four quick bites and tossed the core into the trash bin, twenty feet away. "Okay. I don't know about angels, but I felt that thing in my brain, and I don't ever want to feel that again. If Gerstner is like that, we have to kill her. And Frahm, for using her. What happens next, happens."
Matt let silence voice his agreement, choked down his seething anger, and opened the door.
Blossom rounded the car and spoke over the top. "And Matt? There's no such thing as angels. That thing was a bonk. A weird bonk, a powerful bonk, but a bonk. Sounds like Gerstner is, too—maybe the first bonk ever, maybe the source of Gerstner augmentation, maybe even thousands of years old, but she is, or was, human. Don't screw up your head with this wishy-wash stuff. We need to be smart if we're going to save our families. Not give in to hocus pocus."
"Okay."
She gave him one last, long look before getting in. Yeah, I don't believe me, either.
* * *
Matt couldn't fight the déjà vu as they hurtled down the one-lane mountain path, between towering oaks and even taller pines. This time Blossom drove, and as they rounded the bend toward the secluded mansion, there wasn't a uniformed soldier in sight. Instead, on the veranda, Onofre and Hernando Garza stood flanked by four bonks, nine-foot monsters in full tactical body armor, one of which held a steel hammer that had to weigh two hundred pounds.
The Garza brothers wore cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts, Onofre's blue, Hernando's green. Hernando, clean shaven with graying brown hair cut in a severe flat-top, spat as they got out of the car, the bright red saliva spattering the whitewashed stairs. Onofre sidestepped it on the way down.
He stepped forward and offered his hand, first to Blossom, then to Matt. Hernando just stared with flat, lifeless eyes. Matt grabbed the suitcase out of the back and followed the Garza brothers up the stairs, between the bonks.
Onofre gestured to the enormous guards. "You will forgive me if I don't keep our previous deal on security."
"Not a problem," Matt said. "Again I apologize for . . . before."
They entered the house, which showed no sign of the damage caused when Matt and Conor had torn it, and each other, to pieces. Even the furniture had been repaired or replaced with identical pieces. As they sat, a small man in a dark brown suit took a seat behind Hernando. He leaned forward and muttered Spanish into Hernando's ear as Onofre continued.
"There is no need to apologize for things that are not your fault. You saved me and my daughter from your companion, and for that I am grateful."
"And . . . the woman? Your maid?"
Onofre shrugged. "She lives, though she left my employ to return to her village."
"I'm glad she survived."
Blossom ignored them all, her eyes on the bonks at the door.
"As are we all." Onofre offered them coffee, which they accepted. The black brew carried a hint of cinnamon and dark chocolate. "Again you have come to me for business, and this time you have even less to offer t
hat I might want. Why are you here?"
Matt set the briefcase on the table and opened it. Twenty million euros, in neat stacks bound with rubber bands, filled it to capacity. "Dawkins escaped ICAP custody last week. They've pulled me off the case, said I'm too close to it, taking it too personally. I know where he's hiding, and I want him."
Hernando barked something in Spanish. The man in the suit spoke, his accent more Mississippi than Mexico. "Where did a government operative get this kind of money?"
Matt ignored him and kept his eyes on Onofre. "Do you want it or not?"
"That depends on what it's for."
"The guys by the door would be a good start, plus a few more like them. Dawkins is holed up in Europe, in a house with a bunch of bonks. I need muscle to deal with them while I stick a knife in his eye. And gunships."
"And if I do this, ICAP backs off of my expansion in the American south."
Matt shook his head. "I can't control that. I'm not here on ICAP's authority. This is a cash-only deal, though we both know what kind of opportunities Dawkins's death will create for you."
Onofre nodded toward the suitcase. "How much?"
"Twenty million."
Hernando barked out a laugh and said something the suit didn't translate.
Onofre shook his head. "Thirty-five."
Matt chuckled. "It's all I've got. This is a take-it-or-leave-it deal."
Silenced stretched for too long. Blossom didn't even twitch, a sure sign of imminent violence, if needed.
Onofre stuck out his hand. Matt shook it.
"Done."
* * *
Dawkins leaned over the tome on Janet's coffee table, head resting on both fists.
Matt traced his hand around an illumination depicting three slaves chained before a giant, antlered king in golden robes. "We should destroy this thing."
Dawkins closed it with deliberate care. "We should, but I'm going to offer to sell it to Frahm for a billion dollars."
"Excuse me?"
"I figure he knows I'm out by now, knows the book is missing, and he's going to want it back. I'm an opportunistic bastard, so I'm going to set up a deal to sell it. In, say, Brussels. In eight days."
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