Artifact

Setting aside his personal fear, Keene raced toward the camp. What he saw pumped him full of adrenaline. Carnage, bloodstains, and a handful of bodies left lying in and around the ruins of the huts. Some of the wet green trees were smoldering, but most of the wood and thatch huts in the encampment had burned themselves out, leaving mounds of white ash and charcoal poles. The dry palm fronds and lashed twig walls must have gone up like tinder.

He stumbled around in a daze, calling out Selene’s name. The compound’s weapons cache was in splinters. A crater sat where the lockers full of explosives had been detonated. He found seven corpses. Two looked like Venezuelans, mercenaries he guessed from their nondescript fatigues, which lacked the insignia of any legal or military organization. The remaining bodies were Green Impact members, five of the twelve robust men and one woman he had left behind.

There was no sign of the others. This was no jungle raid by robbers intent on grabbing supplies for a black-market sale; this was a planned operation, well executed, with no intent other than to wipe out Green Impact.

Desperately he rechecked the dead, searching for the woman to whom he had become so attached. She was not among the recognizable bodies. There was no skeleton in the charred shell of the palafito the two of them had shared.

Praying that she had gotten away, knowing that to be as much a fantasy as hoping Terris McKendry was still alive, Keene vomited on the ground. Trembling, he sat up and spat at the unknown perpetrators of this new crime. There is one place, he thought. One infinitely small possibility.

He jumped back into the small boat and motored it as quickly as it would go. In the ever-narrowing caños, he repeatedly got caught up in mud banks and overhanging bushes. Relentlessly, he pushed on toward the place where he and Selene had made love that day, the little meadow surrounded by tall grass and trees.

This is my retreat,she’d said. If she’d made it out of the camp, it was where she would have gone.

Keene found the sheltered jungle clearing, and in it he found Selene. She was propped against a mound of dry grasses. Scarlet and yellow birds fluttered around, but she didn’t move as he approached.

“Selene!”

He thought he saw her shoulders twitch.

Reaching her side, he knelt down in the damp earth. He took her hand and stroked her cheek. Her skin was gray and clammy, her lips dry. He kissed them, but it did nothing to awaken her. She made small sounds, and he heard a rattle within her chest and throat. Blood was congealing on her shirt and abdomen and on the ground around her. The blood was leaking from beneath her hands, which were clutched under her right breast.

Beside her, he found a blade: Venezuelan military issue, with the initials J.R. scratched into the rubber grip.

Keene had enough experience with battlefield injuries that he didn’t try to think about how to save her; not here, far from even so much as a well-stocked first-aid kit. He felt tears moisten his cheeks.

“Can you hear me, Selene?”

She seemed to know he was there beside her. Without opening her eyes, she roused herself enough to lift her left hand, stretching it toward him. In her fingers, she gripped the artifact.

Keene could not have cared less about the mysterious piece of technology that had been scraped up by Oilstar’s test drill in the Dragon’s Mouth. As far as he was concerned, it was the cause of all of the death around him. McKendry, the members of Green Impact, and now Selene.

She pushed harder. “Take it,” she said, and he did. “Up to you now,” she whispered. “Oilstar’s fault. Stop—”

Then she did stop: breathing and living.

Keene felt the sharp edges of the object in his left hand, felt the temperature of his palm drop as it sucked the heat from his skin. He wanted to fling the damned piece of junk into the steamy jungle, where it would sink into a caño or be overgrown with weeds. But to Selene it had been worth dying for…and Frikkie seemed to believe it was worth the price of murder.

With his right hand, Keene picked up the knife that had killed the woman he had begun to love. “Rest in peace, Selene,” he said, testing its weight in his hand. “I promise I’ll take care of Oilstar.”

34

On her way to The Traffic Light, Peta’s pager buzzed.

She ignored it at first.

The restaurant where she’d been headed was so named because the owners had imported and erected what had, until recently, been the only traffic light on the island. The traffic light didn’t work, nor was it meant to do so. It was a curiosity, intended for no other purpose than to direct people to stop and sample the food. Of course, the truth was that the place was already so popular with the locals that they had all the customers they could handle.

After months of eating only because it was mealtime, finally, tonight, Peta had been looking forward to stopping in at The Traffic Light and eating Maggie’s oildown. She had never been good at making the Grenadian national stew of breadfruit cooked in coconut milk with salted meat and vegetables, mostly callaloo, and lots of seasoning, but she loved to eat it. Especially now, in early August, when lobster season was in full swing and Maggie could be persuaded to throw in the occasional tail.

That was the way Arthur had liked it best too.

The two of them had shared oildown at The Traffic Light once a month. The meal was followed by a monthly evening of poetry. Since Maggie would not accept payment from either of them, they submitted to the poetry in exchange for the meal. Arthur didn’t mind. In fact, he occasionally read some of his own scribbles to an enthusiastic audience. Peta only half listened, dreaming on a full stomach about Captain Bligh enduring a mutiny because he had used essential water for his breadfruit saplings instead of giving it to his crew.

The pager buzzed again insistently.

Peta pulled to the side of the road and checked the number. It was her service. Everyone’s service, really, since it was the only halfway efficient one on the island.

Hoping it was something that could be taken care of over the phone, she grabbed the cell phone from her purse and called in.

“One of your patients called. A girl. Patty Grant. She says a man’s been knifed in her house. Something to do with Carnival. Says the house is in the bushes and hard to find, so she’ll send her brother out to the road to flag you down.”

Though she didn’t recognize the name, Peta made a note of the address, apparently a shanty in the rain forest, on the road to the Grand E´ tang, the island’s dormant volcano.

She sighed heavily. So much for oildown.

The whole island was only twenty by twelve miles. As the crow flies, the house was probably no more than six or eight miles away, but it would take her the better part of an hour to get there. The road through the rain-forested mountain was far and away the best on the island. The problem was getting to it. Most of the secondary roads barely deserved the name. They were often unpaved, and those that were had more potholes than pavement. They wound like coiled vipers through the countryside, almost as if to make up for the fact that there were no poisonous snakes on the island.

Hungry, she reached into her pocket for a protein bar and settled into the driving, marveling as she always did at the spectacular landscape and the variety of fruit there. The rain forest around her contained an astonishing mixture of trees: breadfruit and banana, cinnamon and nutmeg—the island’s most famous spice—clove, coconut palm, mango, cocoa, apple, soursop, cashew, avocado, plum. And more. Papaya. Orange. The list of edibles was endless.

For those whose taste ran to meat, there were all manner of animals, some of them unique to the region. The forest hid the armadillo or tatoo, the manicou or opossum, not to speak of the Mona monkey—an island delicacy.

Through her open window, Peta could feel the increasing humidity and hear the song of exotic night birds. For too long, she had claimed to be too busy to climb the trails. Too busy trying not to think.

She passed a house where several young men and women were partially dressed in brightly colored satins. Carnival dancers preparing for the next day’s parade.

Carnival season in Grenada was joyous for some, anathema to others. There was dancing in the streets and strange business afoot as gangs of young locals, faces painted with tar, created equal parts of music and mayhem. They wore masks and devil costumes soaked in a combination of charcoal and engine oil and jumped out at you, pulling you close to dance with them and leaving you smeared with greasy black residue.

As a child, she had been terrified of them. They represented both the devil and the priesthood, warning in both personas of hell and damnation, yet promising redemption, too, to those who did not thwart them. As an adult, she avoided them where possible and wore old clothes throughout Carnival in case she ran into them anyway.

The Jab Jab Molassi.

Another all-male club, she thought, recalling Arthur’s tales of his years among them.

It took her a minute to remember the last time she had participated in the parade, or any of the revelry of Grenada’s late-summer festival. She had told herself that she didn’t have time for that, either. In truth, neither the activities nor the hedonism held any appeal, but at this time of year, they were hard to avoid. As July became August, the people of Grenada geared up for the days of revelry as if they were readying for war.

Beginning with the Rainbow Festival in St. Andrew’s, during the first weekend in August, big tents mushroomed around the island for the steel-band and calypso competitions. Because the calypsos were, in the main, politically based, the lyrics inevitably spawned more fights than were usual on the island and, under cover of Carnival’s loose attitude, more assaults on tourist.

This year however, there were fewer political songs, and many more that stretched the moral boundaries of the island. Watching the frenzy mount and the competition grow ever fiercer, Peta could not but wonder how many—or how few—Grenadians remembered that Carnival was supposed to be about Lent. It had been easier to remember when it coincided with the Lenten season. Once the influx of summer tourists induced a change to August, none but the most religious among the revelers gave much thought to its origins.

She chuckled somewhat wryly at herself.

For the first time since she could remember, her Catholic roots were showing. As an intelligent being and as a doctor, she had an intense awareness of life’s transience, but she’d never concerned herself with what lay at the end of her tunnel.

Not so these days.

These days she thought a lot about her own mortality.

Doubtless, this was related to Arthur’s death. This would be her first Carnival without him. Wherever he was, that was where she wanted to go. Not right away, of course, but ultimately. When it was her time.

Meanwhile, the annual celebration had to be endured.

In the gloom of dusk among the trees of the mountain, a light flashed ahead of her. Glancing at the odometer, she realized that she was nearing the location of her house call. She had been averaging no more than fifteen miles an hour. Even had she not recalled the location on her own, she was hardly likely to have missed the figure waving a flashlight at the side of the road.

She stopped the car and stuck her head out of the open window.

The messenger directed the flashlight’s beam into her eyes. She covered them with one hand and, with the other, opened the car door.

“How’s the patient?”

“Patient be dead.”

The stranger, a masked male youth judging by the width of his shoulders, stepped into Peta’s line of vision. He was quickly joined by a group, seven or eight strong, of Jab Jab Molassi.

In the distance, she heard drumbeats, punctuated every now and again by the bleating of a goat. At the Grand E

´ tang Lake, Mama Glo, the goddess of the river, was worshiped, especially during Saraka, the period of honoring the dead and appeasing evil spirits. Animals were sacrificed. The days of feasting and singing and dancing attracted Shango worshipers, who believed that the African god of thunder and thunderbolts punished troublemakers and rewarded his worshipers.

Heart pounding, Peta reached for her cell phone—and realized that she had left it inside the car. She felt for her belt and pushed the button on the left of her beeper. It went off with resounding clarity in the night darkness.

A Jab Jab laughed and closed in on her. He removed the pager from her belt and tossed it into the trees.

“We have maldjo,” he said, in a mixture of patois and English. “We have the evil eye.”

“Maldjo,” his buddies chanted. They were close enough that she could hear their breathing. Feel it. The smell of the cheap rum they’d been drinking mixed with the stench of tar and engine oil smeared across their bodies.

One of them tousled her hair from behind.

“You want my money?” Peta reached into her pocket, ready to give them whatever she had on her.

They laughed, quietly, and pressed closer.

One of them smacked his lips, as if anticipating a tasty morsel. “This one’s delicious. I gon’ eather a-w-e-l up.”

Another stuck his head through the open car window. “Hey. Look-a what I found.” He slid his body into the car and emerged with her medical bag. “Must be good stuff in here, me t’ink.”

A hand tugged at her blouse, another at her skirt. She pulled away, into the arms of a third, who kissed her resoundingly on the mouth. What an idiot she was coming out here alone, at night, during Carnival. She was heavily outnumbered. They were young and they were strong and, judging by the alcohol on the breath of the one who had kissed her, they were considerably more than a couple of sheets to the wind. If they decided to rape her, which seemed inevitable, there was nothing she could do. If she shouted, who would hear her?

Still, it couldn’t hurt to scream. Maybe kick a few gonads.

“You want to use your maldjo on me?” She turned to face the one who had kissed her. Immediately she heard what she expected, the sound of one of the Jab Jab coming at her from behind.

Using all of the knowledge Ray had taught her, she kicked backward. Her foot found substance and one of the boys screamed and doubled over.

“You wan’ it rough, bitch?” another youth said as he grabbed her by the hair.

She pummeled him with both fists and screamed at the top of her lungs.

A Moke rounded the corner and came to a screeching halt in front of them. Her would-be molesters froze in the vehicle’s headlights as, crossbow in hand, Frikkie Van Alman jumped out of the driver’s seat of his low four-wheel-drive jeep.

Immediately, the Jab Jab Molassi scattered, shouting, “Sorry, man…mistake, man…sorry, man,” as they vanished into the surrounding forest.

Peta took in a deep breath. “Great white hunter rescues damsel in distress,” she said, trying to slow her rapidly beating heart.

“I am delighted to be of service,” Frik said. “Perhaps you will allow this to make up in some small measure for the recent unpleasantness between us.”

His casual air, combined with the apparent miracle of his timely arrival, told her instinctively that the whole thing had been a setup. Asshole, she thought. Fucking immature asshole.

She feigned more trouble catching her breath while she got her emotions under control. He might be an immature asshole, but he was also dangerous and armed. “Are you talking about Simon, or about your performance at the airport?” Or Blaine, she thought.

“Both.” He lowered the crossbow. “I’ve apologized to you about the incident at San Gabriel. I’m afraid Mr. Blaine got overzealous. He won’t be causing a problem for any women for a while, I assure you. As for my little, um, tantrum at the airport. Blame that on my male ego. Whatever the reason, I’m over it.”

“Am I supposed to say thank you for that, too?”

Frik made a weak attempt at a chortle. Then, never one for subtleties, he offered her the protection of his boat through the rest of Carnival.

Setup or no, Peta remained concerned for her own safety. For the moment, she decided, it was best to pretend friendship. She had little doubt that the same ego that Frik had blamed for the incident on the tarmac would persuade him that she was genuinely fooled by his attempt at charm.

She followed him back through town to the marina, recently renamed Blue Lagoon, where theAssegai was moored. The gate man let them in. They parked near the all-but-deserted bar and made their way down the narrow walkway to the boat.

As always, the dogs, Sheba and Maverick, greeted their master energetically. He settled them down, then ushered Peta on board. She accepted a drink from his ample stock and they exchanged a few pleasantries as they seated themselves at the big wooden table that stood on the afterdeck. The image of Arthur falling asleep on this very table the night they’d saved him from the Communists, seventeen years earlier, entered her mind.

Drink in hand, Frik’s tone went from solicitous to confidential. “I know what you think, Peta. You think that I had something to do with Arthur’s death.”

He waited for her to say something. Keep waiting, you bastard, she thought.

“You couldn’t be further from the truth, you know. Arthur was my dearest friend. I would never have done anything to harm him and I will always miss him. Come, I have something to show you.”

He took her into the ship’s saloon and showed her the pieces he had of the artifact. They were resting in some sort of wire frame. She recognized the oddly shimmering surface of the pieces and marveled at how perfectly the piece she recognized from the undersea cavern, the one Blaine had taken from her, fit into what had to be the one Paul had left Frik. Intuitively, she could see where the little cups and nodules on her piece would fit, and how Arthur’s, stuck in NYPD’s Midtown North evidence lockup, would link neatly to all three.

“It may surprise—even shock you—to find out that I know you have a piece of the artifact,” Frik said. “I saw it around your neck during the newscast, that god-awful night in New York.”

What is your game, Frik? Peta thought. Why are you taking me into your confidence? “What do you want me to say about that?” she asked, mostly to buy herself time.

“I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to give your fragment tome…forthe good of humanity.”

Frik held out his hand. She stared at it. He had delayed this long to make his demand; why make it now? Why not wait until New Year’s Eve?

Clearly, the answer was that he had trusted her then and did not trust her now. She could think of at least two obvious reasons for that, one at the bottom of the sea and one up on the mountain.

“I don’t have it on me,” she said, and fingered her neck as if to demonstrate that the pendant was not there.

“Bring it here tomorrow. I’m having my usual carnival party after the parade. It wouldn’t be complete without your presence anyway.”

The last thing I need, Peta thought, is one of Frik’s drunken parties. Then again, if she didn’t accept, the little mob scene on the Grand E´ tang road was likely to be repeated, sans the arrival of the white knight.

Humoring him, praying that Ralphie had the replica ready for her, she smiled congenially. “I could use a few laughs. I’ll bring it with me tomorrow night.”

35

Feeling for all the world like one of Siegfried and Roy’s caged white tigers, Ray paced around his Las Vegas penthouse. Even after a year of living in the apartment, its triangular shape, like that of the hotel beneath it, made him vaguely uncomfortable.

He stalked through what he thought of as the great room, with its sixty-foot-long wall of tempered, tinted glass, its twelve-foot ceiling and comfortable groupings of chairs and sofas.

Trying to clear his mind, he took in the view.

The windows and sliding door at one end faced west across his private helipad to Palace Station Casino and the mountain ranges beyond it. He could just make out the bloodred rock formations of Red Rock Canyon at the corner. The main wall of windows faced southeast, giving him a perfect view of Circus Circus and the rest of the Strip, with the Sahara across the street at the easternmost corner. If he stepped right up to the glass, he knew, he’d be able to look down at the head of the fifty-foot-tall lizard that appeared to be crashing out of the hotel’s outer wall. The latest battle between his stuntmen-performers and the animatronic beast should just have finished. Inside the casino, the creature’s tail would have stopped its periodic waving just below the ceiling.

He prowled down the back hall past the guest rooms, and ended up on the balcony off his own bedroom. From that vantage point, he could look northeast at Stratosphere Tower and downtown, and he could see the glow of the spinning neon Daredevil Casino sign on the nose of a replica of a space shuttle that jutted at a steep angle out of the side of his hotel’s tenth floor, with the tail and cargo doors angled away from the building. It looked as if the building were the shuttle’s external fuel tank and the craft was separating on its way toward the stars. The sides of the shuttle had dozens of viewing ports; the nose cone was glass, allowing tourists to get a one-of-a-kind picture of themselves suspended against the Las Vegas skyline. In what would have been the cargo bay, Ray’s high rollers could enjoy a five-star meal served in a multitiered restaurant. Each table was set against the cargo doors, which were made of specially tinted glass, creating the perfect setup for patrons to see the Stratosphere and the lights of downtown.

All very impressive, Ray thought, yet nothing in the spectacle of his hotel, or Las Vegas itself, held his attention. The Daredevil Casino was already showing a huge profit, enough for him to seriously contemplate buying land to build the Rig, an idea that had stayed with him since his visit to theValhalla; yet he felt edgy. Restive.

What he really needed to cure his restlessness was a new stunt job.

No, he thought. The way he felt was only partially due to his lack of a film job in the offing. More likely it was a symptom of withdrawal after the jungle battle against Green Impact. He had long since admitted to himself that he was a risk addict, and this sitting around was making him itch for the rush of adrenaline he’d felt as the bullets flew and explosives roared through the Delta Amacuro swamps.

Perhaps, he thought, he should coin a syndrome for what ailed him: danger deprivation syndrome. DDS. Sounded painful and impressive.

He passed through the dining room, where he could see northwest over his hotel’s thrill rides, and reentered the great room from the corner.

Walking through the apartment’s main room, past the recessed security screens that allowed him to watch the action downstairs, he opened the door that led to his private lab, a windowless, environmentally stabilized room in the middle of his penthouse. It always amazed him how cramped the lab felt, though he knew it to be as big as his bedroom, which comfortably fit a California king-sized bed, a separate sitting area for very private conversations, and an anteroom for his morning workout equipment.

His lab, on the other hand, was crammed with storage cabinets along the wall on both sides of the door. In the middle of the room stood a giant table covered with metal frames and cables and bits of equipment he hadn’t put away. To his right, a Peg-Board took up half of the wall, with tools and safety equipment hanging from seemingly random hooks. Below that, more storage cabinets held larger pieces of equipment and supplies. The left-hand side of the room held his desk and file cabinets. Several dry-erase whiteboards hung above them, filled with reminders about appointments and notes about Frikkie’s strange artifact. The left half of the back wall was taken up by a giant screen.

Ray sat down at his desk, tapped a key to wake up his computer, and swiveled around to stare at the computer model on the wall screen. It was a three-dimensional image of what the artifact would look like when put together. After Frikkie had sent him the surface dimensions and other characteristics of the piece Simon had died finding, Ray had updated the model. Now it looked a lot like a strange geode, roughly spherical but with odd bumps and depressions. The figure-eight section from the original assembly Paul Trujold had discovered stuck partway out on one end. He thought irreverently that it looked like Mr. Potato Head with only his nose attached.

The telephone rang, startling him out of deep contemplation. He leaned back in his chair and automatically picked up the receiver, without twisting to look at the caller ID. There were fewer than a dozen people to whom he had given this number anyway, and several of them were dead, so they no longer counted.

On the phone, dogs barked in the background. He recognized them as Sheba and Maverick.

“Yeah, Frik.”

“We have to be subtle. I’m calling from Grenada. I’m here for Carnival.”

“When you’re king of the universe, the first thing you can do is change the Grenadian phone system.” Ray was only half joking.

“Peta just left,” Frik said, apparently unconcerned by Ray’s biting comment. “I told her that I saw the piece of the artifact around her neck during the newscast in New York. She’s bringing it to me tomorrow.”

Ray was silent for a little too long. What on earth could have induced Peta to agree to that? he wondered.

“Are you there?”

“I’m here.”

“You sound surprised. I was sure you knew that she had one.” Frik sounded hugely pleased with himself. “McKendry is still on the job searching for Selene to get the pieces Paul sent to her.”

“That leaves Arthur’s,” Ray said without thinking.

It was Frikkie’s turn to be surprised. “What do you mean, Arthur’s? I didn’t know that he had a piece. How do you know? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Shit, Ray thought. He’d been so surprised by Frikkie’s knowledge of Peta’s piece that he’d assumed the Afrikaner would also know about Arthur’s. He said as much over the phone. “I guess it’s true what they say about assumptions.”

Ray glanced across at his door, as if he’d momentarily forgotten that he was alone in the penthouse. Swiveling all the way around, he unlocked the top drawer of his desk and took out an odd-shaped blue-green object.

“Damn it! I must have that piece, Ray.”

“The NYPD has it, Frik. No way to get it out.”

“I’ll pull strings. You’d be amazed at what a large enough donation to the Policemen’s Fund can buy. They’ll be glad to help me.”

As Ray turned the piece over and over in his hands, it reflected the light from the wall screen. Playing with it as if it were a worry stone, he watched as it seemed to warp the light such that its own image, and not the rest of the model, was visible like an afterimage on the irregular surface.

“I tried that,” he said. “Remember, I have a lot of friends in that precinct. I’ve done more than my share of filming there. They won’t release it to anyone other than Peta. She signed a priori for Arthur’s effects.”

Peta would feel safe as long as Frik thought she was the only one with access to Arthur’s fragment, Ray thought. He needed her to be fearless.

“Peta said something about going to New York on her birthday as a kind of statement. Since she’s being so cooperative, why not ask her to retrieve the piece from the precinct and bring it along to Vegas at New Year’s?”

The Afrikaner’s frustration seemed audible, even before he said, “I can’t wait that long.”

“What’s so almighty urgent?” Ray was aware of the rush he was getting from the conversation and happy to discard his recent ennui. “She’ll bring Arthur’s fragment here on New Year’s Eve. You’ll be lucky to have Selene’s piece by then anyway.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Frik said, though to Ray he didn’t sound entirely convinced. “By the way, have you been able to work anything out with your computer models?”

“Not that I could say over an unsecured line if I had, but no. I know its shape, and I know the reactions from Paul’s notes. Other than that, it’s a complete mystery.”

“Well keep working on it, would you.” If possible, Frikkie’s voice seemed to hold more frustration than before. “As for the other matter, I suppose you’re right. I can wait for New Year’s Eve to get the other pieces. I want the whole Daredevils Club there when we put this together and find out what it really does.”

I bet, Ray thought, but all he said was “Good-bye.” He hung up the phone and held Arthur’s piece between thumb and forefinger. Angling it, he tried to line up the fragment with the image on the wall screen. As the images merged in his vision, he felt his head swim, and a wave of nausea overcame him.

Centering the piece on his desk, he stared at it, shook his head as if to clear it, and closed his eyes. After counting to five, he reopened them and refocused on the object.

Nothing had changed; his nausea and the illusion of the artifact’s curious reflection of itself remained.

36

Not much outside of restaurants and bars stayed open on the island on Carnival Monday. The occasional minibus driver picked up a load of passengers, the police and fire stations stayed on alert, and the clinic opened its doors, which was fine with Peta. She had no urge whatsoever to participate in Carnival, particularly after her experience with the Jab Jab Molassi. She had no interest in watching the parade or in following it to Grenada National Stadium for the calypso finals and the crowning of the king and queen of the Carnival.

It was well into the afternoon before she finished seeing her patients, which was perfect because Ralphie was rarely around before then. His routine was absolute unless he was ill or off-island. He disappeared after his morning sea bath, and appeared again on Morne Rouge Beach in the late afternoon with his knapsack. Settling himself against the fence in front of the house nearest to Gem Holiday Beach Resort, he carved black coral, smoked the occasional joint, and engaged in brief conversations with passers-by. Mostly, he kept to himself.

Always, she knew where to find him.

She had brought her party clothes from home, figuring she would use the bathroom at her clinic to dress. If it weren’t for carnival, she’d have gone home, then down to the Carenage and hailed a water taxi to take her to Ralphie at Morne Rouge Bay and back to Blue Lagoon Marina. Today, however, was not the day to do that—not with all the drunks and tourists jockeying for space on the Carenage.

At about four-thirty, she made her last patient notes and dressed—or more precisely, undressed—to kill, in a miniskirted black T-strap dress.

Praying that Ralphie would have her replica ready, she threw a pair of silver stiletto-heeled sandals onto the front seat of the car and, barefoot, drove her Honda down the hill to Gem. He was not yet at his post, so she stopped in for a brief hello with the hotel manager, a woman whose string of children Peta had delivered, picked up a Coke at the beach bar, and walked onto the sand. She could smell the aroma of fresh seafood cooking in the perpetual pot that was kept going by the beach folk. One of them, still dripping from his dive, cracked open a sea urchin and offered it to her. She could not resist the treat. He wouldn’t take any money, so she tossed him a couple of cigarettes.

Attracted to the sight of the giveaway, a jailbird con artist whom she knew only as Coconut asked for a smoke. She tossed him one.

He grinned and stuck it between his lips before motioning with his hands as if he were striking a match.

“Seen Ralphie?” she asked, pulling a disposable lighter from her purse.

Coconut shook his head. “Not for a few days. Maybe he go off-island.”

Peta pointed at the small pile of green coconuts at his feet. He pulled his machete from the sand, picked up one of the nuts, a little smaller than an American football, and began the ritual he would have to complete before she could ask him any more questions. Twirling the coconut in his left hand, he expertly swung the machete across the end, trimming away the green husk and exposing the soft interior shell. With a final whack he lopped off the end and handed it to her.

She exchanged it for the lighter and drank down the liquid inside the coconut, relishing its cool sweetness. When she’d finished, she handed it back to Coconut, who chopped it open and returned the two halves, along with a shaving from the husk. Using the shaving like a spoon, she scooped out the white, gelatinous insides that off-islanders never saw in the old, dried-out nuts they bought at the supermarket.

“Ralphie has to be around somewhere,” she said, throwing the empty shells into the nearby tin drum that passed as a trash can.

Coconut grinned. “I find him for you—cost you a pack of smokes.”

Peta sat down on one of Gem’s beach chairs. “Sure.” She brushed away a family of no-see-ums that were settling on her arm in anticipation of sundown. “Why not.”

She adjusted the chair, lay back, and fell asleep. The steel-drum sounds of the New Dimensions, a local reggae and soca group, awakened her an hour later. Their music came from theRhum Runner, a tourist-filled catamaran making a stop on its daily sunset round. Two old ladies sat under a palm tree near the cat, trading baskets of T-shirts. A third had thrown a row of brightly colored towels over the fence. She sat in front of them braiding a tourist’s hair with the help of her granddaughter, a pretty girl of no more than nine.

“Ralphie come soon.” Coconut plopped himself down on the sand next to her and held out one hand for payment. “I find him wa-a-y down Grand Anse.”

“I don’t see him,” Peta said.

“He come along slow.”

“Why should I believe you?” Peta asked, amusing herself.

Coconut lifted his machete and grinned. She took a small purse out of her pocket and counted out $1.30 Grenadian, enough for a pack of 555s at the supermarket up the road or a half pack at the bar.

“I’m thirsty for beer,” Coconut said.

Peta shook her head. “Don’t push your luck.”

He shrugged congenially, as if he had expected no different. “You be at Fantazia tonight for Calypso Night?” he asked, pointing at the building attached to the back of Gem’s beachside restaurant, Sur La Mer.

“Maybe,” Peta said, though she had absolutely no intention of partying there or anywhere else, with the exception of her obligatory appearance on theAssegai .

“Good enough.” He took off for the bar just as Ralphie strode into view. “See,” he called out. “I told you.”

“Hey, Ralphie.”

“Hey, Miss Peta.”

“You finished the job I gave you?”

“I finished it.” He moved off toward the fence. She stood up and followed him. He settled himself on the sand, took out a piece of coral and a small knife, and began to carve. She sat down next to him and waited in companionable silence, knowing he would give her what she wanted in his own time and not before.

After half an hour or so, he dug into his bag and pulled out the replica, set in the original gold bezel, and the loose real fragment. She took them from him and examined them closely.

There was no way to tell visually which one was the duplicate and which the real thing.

The only way she knew the difference was by feel. The original fragment seemed to draw the heat from her hand, making it tingle like pins and needles. The other felt like any piece of carved coral.

“Amazing job, Ralphie. I don’t know how to thank you. You just might have saved my life.”

“Then I have all the thanks I need,” he said gravely, and refused all offers of payment.

“I have one more favor to ask.” She held out the original toward him. “I don’t want to have this with me tonight. Will you hold it for me until tomorrow?”

He nodded and took it from her.

“Aren’t you curious about this?” Peta asked.

“I’m curious about how the universe works,” he answered.

Peta smiled at him. He was really something, her friend Ralphie. He could have followed in his family’s political footsteps. He could have lived like a rich man. Instead, he carved coral and sought the secrets of the universe. She thought about Frik, about how his search for the same secrets was motivated by a desire for self-aggrandizement.

She leaned over and kissed Ralphie on the cheek. “If for some reason I don’t come back and get it from you, find Manny Sheppard and give it to him.”

“You go to come back,” he said, as if he knew.

As Peta neared Blue Lagoon, she heard again the sounds of the New Dimensions. They were doing well for themselves, she thought, wondering if Frik had also hired Bosco, as he usually did. She had known Grenada’s one-man band all of her life, and enjoyed seeing him. He was an event unto himself, playing bass and keyboard, percussion and drums, doing his own arrangements, and playing pan and singing. Cute and fun, he was much in demand.

She parked her car outside the marina so that, if necessary, she could leave in a hurry, and footed it the rest of the way. The area was alive with music and people. Rum punch was being poured liberally and everyone was having a high old time, drinking, toking, dancing to the lively steel drums of the local musicians who had apparently forgone their usual gig at the Grenada Grand Beach Resort to oblige Frik.

She waved at the musicians and made her way through the crowd. Hiking up her miniskirt, stilettos dangling from her hand, she climbed onto theAssegai . The wooden table had been removed from the deck to make room for a spotlit dance floor.

As one song ended and another began, a circle of partygoers gathered around Peta. Some of them began to dance. She slipped into her sandals and moved to the irresistible rhythm of her favorite local calypso, Marsha MacDonald’s “Going Under.”

“Go, girl,” someone yelled. Someone else turned the spotlight on her.

Frik.

She had noticed him among those who preferred to watch. Now she saw that his gaze was riveted on the pendant she was wearing around her neck.

At the end of the song, the musicians closed their set.

Frik moved toward her, took her arm, and guided her down into the cabin, where a huge black form lay growling.

“Quiet, Sheba!”

The dog sent out one more test growl, objecting to the invasion of her territory, then stopped.

Peta followed the Afrikaner through the boat’s small galley and forward to his private study. The cozy wood-paneled cabin curved with the prow of theAssegai until it formed a point. Cushioned benches lined both walls, broken only on the starboard side by a locked cabinet which she knew contained an entertainment center and his communications equipment. Where the curving walls brought the benches together, a low trapezoidal wooden cabinet served as a display table. Standing in the middle of it was the small wire frame which held the two pieces of the artifact that Frikkie had so far recovered.

“Thank you, again, for coming,” he said. “And for bringing the piece.” Safely out of sight of the revelers, he reached out toward the pendant.

“Not so fast,” Peta said, enjoying the look on his face as she backed away. Smiling, she asked him to give her the privilege of placing the fragment into the model herself. “Just a whim,” she said. “Humor me.”

A trifle impatiently, Frik agreed.

Heart pounding, praying that Ralphie’s work was as perfect as she thought it was, she removed the pendant from around her neck, pushed the fragment out of its bezel and into the space he indicated.

It slid in and—Thank you, Ralphie—connected perfectly with the real pieces of the artifact.

“That just leaves Selene’s fragment,” Frik said. “And the one that’s in New York with Arthur’s effects.”

“I’m curious,” Peta said, trying to sound casual. “How did you know about that one?”

“Ray told me just recently,” Frik said. “Is that a problem? Itis mine, you know.”

“A problem? N-no. I don’t suppose it is.” She had never been completely sure that Frik knew about the piece in New York or, if he did know, just how he had learned about it. Her suspicions about the Daredevil stuntman returned tenfold.

“Ray says the piece is in New York, with Arthur’s effects. I’d like to go and get it,” Frik went on, his voice carefully benign.

Damn it, Peta thought. How was she going to get out of this one? “It can be released only to me, personally.”

“So I understand. Why don’t you let me fly you there. We can—”

Peta held up her hand. “I have a practice. I have students at the medical school coming in this week to begin the new semester and I need to prepare. There’s no way I can leave Grenada right now.”

“But—”

“Don’t pressure me, Frik. I’m not one of your flunkies.” Her anger finally overrode her caution, adding heat to her words. “I give you my word I’ll retrieve the piece in time for the New Year’s Eve meeting in Vegas. That’ll have to be good enough.”

37

On the night of the August new moon, Terris McKendry stood on theValhalla platform and wondered if he would ever again be able to trust a night of such darkness. To him it seemed that the world was holding its breath, waiting to unleash some hidden terror. His uneasiness had returned each month since the night on theYucatán when he and Joshua had first encountered Green Impact—the night that had cost Keene his life and made him into a cold-blooded murderer who would shoot a woman in the back.

Restless, he walked the metal decks at the wellhead level, high as a skyscraper above the placid water. Level after level, he climbed from one yellow-painted staircase to another, pacing, working off his nervous energy as he stared out into the night.

His heavy boots rang loudly in his ears, even against the hiss and thrum of the ever-working mechanisms of the production platform. The rig was a constant drone of machinery, effluents hissing through pipes, waste-gas flames crackling at the long ends of boom derricks.

McKendry gripped the warm metal railings and peered a hundred feet down to the water.Valhalla produced too much background noise, too much light and sound. It cast a bubble of restless civilization around them, like a campfire driving off predators in the wilderness.

Pacing around to the western corner of the platform, he saw the two exhaust flares extended like spitting dragons into the darkness, bleeding off belches of unwanted gases from the simmering oil well deep under the waters. On the opposite side, the living quarters rested under the helideck. At this time of night most of the workers would be off shift, playing billiards, watching action movies, cheating each other at cards. Separate from the habitation modules, the shack of the radio room was lit; undoubtedly Hercules, the Trinidadian man on duty, was chatting with radio pen pals from across the world.

As his uneasiness built, he strode to one of the phones that allowed communication between the distant parts of the rig and punched in the code for the small coffee room where his security men often took a break. “Gonzales. Get everyone outside. No more breaks this shift. Do your rounds every fifteen minutes tonight, not every half hour. I want all of you to keep an eye out.”

“What’s wrong, sir?” Gonzales said.

“Just do it. There’s nothing wrong with being on your toes.” McKendry made sure his men did their jobs, but never bothered to get cordial with any of them. He couldn’t imagine why the guards would rather sit in a confined room on plastic chairs drinking sour coffee instead of walking around the rig decks in the warm night and stretching their legs. In the Tropics he had found that some men just plain took pride in their laziness.

On the other end of the line, Gonzales grumbled to the others in the coffee shop, “It’s the dark of the moon. Makes him paranoid.”

McKendry scowled and said in a gruff voice, “You can complain to Mr. Van Alman if you don’t like my orders. I’m sure he’ll be happy to let you find another job.” Angrily, he hung up. Maybe he was being overcautious, but it only took one mistake, as the captain of theYucatán had discovered.

He walked to the edge of the platform and again scanned the vast stretch of water between the rig and the invisible mainland of Venezuela.

Why did he really care what happened to theValhalla ? Because he’d promised Frikkie that he’d protect the rig? It wasn’t as if Frik was much of a friend. After the assault on the Green Impact camp, the billionaire had been concerned only with the recovery of his mysterious artifact. The dead mercenaries on his side and the half dozen dead terrorists on the other didn’t matter to the man. All he cared about was that somehow Selene Trujold had gotten away, even though she had been shot.

After what the terrorists did to Joshua, McKendry thought, it matters to me.

Drifting across the water like a black fly on a dark lily pad, Joshua Keene closed the distance to theValhalla platform. He moved without lights, circling his motorized inflatable raft to the Trinidad side of the rig so that he could come in opposite the additional glow of the exhaust flares at the ends of their extended booms.

As he turned the Zodiac toward the rig, he cut the motor. In the ensuing silence he could hear the industrial buzz, even from a distance of more than a mile.

Entering the rich, warm waters around theValhalla, he trailed streamers of potent shark repellent. Though sharks rarely attacked inflatable rafts, he wanted to avoid any commotion at all.

It took a long time for him to paddle the raft up to the elephantine concrete legs that held the huge production rig high above the calm water, but he didn’t dare use the puttering outboard. If all went well, he would be calling enough attention to himself in a little while. He tied up to the emergency ladder built onto the closest concrete strut, the same one he and Terris had used the night his friend died. Before climbing out of the Zodiac, he secured all of his weapons around his legs, chest, and back, fastening packages of compact explosives, his igniters, and grenades. He even had the knife that had killed Selene: the most appropriate weapon to use while destroying Oilstar, he thought.

In his pocket he could feel the weirdly curved edges of the strange but unknowably precious piece of the artifact. He kept it to remind himself that Selene had died for it.

Though it made his own movement more difficult, he wrapped a dull black rain cloak around his shoulders, which would keep him all but invisible in the shadows.

Rung after rung, he began to climb; it was eighty feet from the water to the lowest deck of the production platform. It would have been so much easier to use one of the lift platforms, he thought, but he knew the clanking and ratcheting noise would be sure to draw investigation by one of the rig’s newly inspired security guards. Now that he had heard so much about the draconian new security chief Oilstar had hired, he expected he’d have to be much more cautious than on his first visit.

Keene reached the first deck, opened the small access gate, and pulled himself up onto the platform. Though he’d thought he had recovered from his wounds, he felt exhausted from the climb, especially with the extra weight he was carrying. Not for the first time, he wished that some of the other members of Selene’s team had escaped Oilstar’s assault on the jungle base. He would have liked some help in this operation, commandos willing to sacrifice their lives.

Wishing and hoping, though, weren’t going to change the fact that those who hadn’t died had been captured and turned over to the Venezuelan government, which made them as good as dead, anyway. Joshua knew he was all alone, with only his anger, his need for revenge, and a half-baked plan.

On a rig like this, however, one person could cause a lot of damage.

There were enough explosives strapped to his body to create a substantial disaster. Given good placement and a lucky break, he would be able to rig the explosives and get away from theValhalla before his fireworks display turned the rig into a seaborne version ofThe Towering Inferno . He was determined to accomplish his goal at all costs, but this was no deliberate suicide mission. A lot had happened in the last few months that he needed to mull over. Selene Trujold’s death, the loss of Terris McKendry, Frikkie’s betrayal.

After shucking his dark rain cloak so that it would not hinder his movements, Keene stole across the metal decks. He moved toward the cluster of fractionation pipes. Ahead of him he could see the closeddown electrical and mechanical workshops, the crew change rooms, circuitry lockers, and mudrooms that surrounded the smelly drill floor around the main wellhead. He looked up and saw business offices; they looked like tiny cubicles on a spaceship.

During the two months it had taken him to gather the explosives he needed, Joshua had studied as much as he could about production rigs and their numerous vulnerabilities. He ignored the optimistic and reassuring press releases from Oilstar and other major petroleum companies, instead paying particular attention to the infamousPiper Alpha disaster of July 1988 in the North Sea just off Aberdeen, Scotland.

A smoldering fire in one of the modules had built up until it set off a small explosion in an adjacent chamber, which had then triggered another explosion, tearing apart half of the giant oil platform. Rig workers had been trapped in the habitation module as fire and smoke spread. Emergency sprinkler systems had failed. Radiomen had called “Mayday” repeatedly until finally they had to abandon the communications offices as the fire and smoke advanced.

Some crewmen had been stranded by the advancing flame front while they raced to lifeboat stations; others were trapped high above the turbulent and cold North Sea. Given no choice, some men had leaped sixty-eight feet from one of the decks into the water. A handful of desperate, doomed workers had even jumped from the heliport, faced with either being burned to death in the advancing fire or dying as they plunged from skyscraper height to the sea. Several crewmen had climbed down knotted ropes or hoses to reach sea level as explosion after explosion rockedPiper Alpha .

Rescue crews had raced in boats and helicopters from nearby drilling platforms, but the fire was so bad that few of them could even approach the burning rig to fish survivors out of the water. The debris from one explosion killed half the crew on an approaching rescue craft.

In all, 165 people had died onPiper Alpha, making it one of the worst disasters in oil-drilling history.

Keene tried to imagine seeing the same inferno on theValhalla . In front of the vision in his mind he saw Selene’s face, heard her last words as she died beside him in the clearing near the Green Impact encampment. The fires grew brighter in his imagination.

Yes, he thought, that would just about do it.

38

Oilstar’s security squads grudgingly did what their boss had ordered, but McKendry noticed without surprise that they walked their routes together, sticking to the brightly lit decks, chatting with late-shift crewmen—in other words, going out of their way to avoid anywhere that trouble might occur.

The big man patrolled the darker ways himself, slipping through the claustrophobic and tangled pipe forests and chemical-storage areas, letting a sixth sense prickle his skin.

He felt uneasy.

Looking up into the dark and moonless sky, he was positive this uneasiness wasn’t his imagination.

Of course, he had been just as positive month after month, ever since the night Joshua Keene had died.

His doubts ended when he reached the fourth deck and stopped, feeling electricity go up his spine. Someone—perhaps a survivor from Green Impact—was here on theValhalla platform.

His flashlight beam revealed no movement in the dark corners; not that he expected any. No professional would have waited around. Then he discovered that one of the access hatches leading up from the support legs and the distant water was open. It was near the central wellhead and the shut-down mechanical shops. When he examined it more closely, he saw that one of the naked yellow lightbulbs had been smashed. Crumpled in the shadows, he found a lightweight black cloak—the kind he himself would have chosen for camouflage.

Whoever had been here, or was still here, apparently thought that security on board was as lax as it had been in the past.

He directed the beam of the flashlight all the way down to the water. Though the beam diffused, he saw something dark tied up to the ladder attached to the wide concrete leg. Running to the nearest lift platform, he descended to water level, where he studied the unobtrusive black boat tied to a ladder rung. The single rubber raft could have carried only a few of the terrorists, but even a small group could cause extreme damage to the rig if they knew what they were doing.

McKendry took out a knife and, with a quick motion, slashed the rope holding the Zodiac in place. He shoved with his foot so that the raft drifted into the water.

Whoever had come to his rig wouldn’t get away now. He’d have them cornered on theValhalla platform, where he could deal with them in his own way.

Creeping across the decks and ducking the rig’s still laughable security, Keene found a set of lockers that contained Oilstar work clothes. Diligent practices on the rig had been increased, and he thought he saw more guards on patrol, but they didn’t appear to be doing a better job than before. They talked loudly and walked in packs, making it easy for him to elude them.

From one of the lockers, he pulled on a greasy, thick jumpsuit that had the hand-lettered name Virata written on the left breast in bold strokes with a black Magic Marker. The jumpsuit smelled like grease and piss, but he’d endured worse. He found a hard hat adorned with crudely placed racing decals and snugged it against his hair.

Walking away from the lockers he was less stealthy, and instead walked as if he belonged on the rig. The explosive packs strapped to his chest and legs, as well as the packages he carried in one hand, made him look bulky and cumbersome, but if all went well, he wouldn’t have them for long.

Outside the mechanical rooms and shop offices, he found the central pipes and controls for the fire-suppression systems and alarms. He was relieved to see that the safety valves were split into two systems, one of which went toward the habitation quarters to protect the crew complement. An independent set dealt with the production facility, the pipes and chambers and machinery of the production rig itself.

He shut down, then permanently disabled the alarms, sprinklers, and safety systems in the production portions ofValhalla . Once the explosives went off, the alarms and sprinklers would activate inside the habitation module, getting the snoozing off-duty teams out of bed. That would give the crew members a chance to get away, but nothing would stop the flames in the production area. These sleepy South American crewmen certainly wouldn’t try to save the rig. They’d rush to the lifeboats, which would drop like padded sledgehammers into the water far below.

Keene supposed that kept him from being a cold-blooded murderer; now he qualified as just a warm-blooded one.

He worked for ten minutes setting up his explosives against a thirty-foot-high distillation tank connected to three systems that led to the heavy-gases storage chambers and out to the flame boom. His examination of design blueprints of theValhalla had showed that even his token amount of explosives would ignite this one tank. Once it blew, it would set off the second, which would set off the third, and so on like red-hot dominoes until nothing was left of the oil rig’s production facilities.

Given a huge supply of Oilstar funding, Van Alman might be able to repair and eventually restart production on theValhalla . But the cost to him in damage to public relations would be insurmountable.

Keene twisted the last wire onto the timer. He still had a few small grenades clipped to his belt, just in case he needed a little help getting away. If he got out of here and climbed down to his inflatable boat in time, he could roar off in the Zodiac with the outboard cranked full. With the rig blazing behind him, he could make his way back to the Venezuelan mainland and eventually return to North America.

This year he’d have one hell of a story to tell the remaining members of the Daredevils Club on New Year’s Eve. He would take great pleasure in rubbing Frik’s nose in it. First he had to finish his job and get off the rig alive, though.

He stood up. Before he could turn, there was a click as the hammer of a pistol was drawn back.

“Don’t move.”

Keene froze. Thoughts raced through his mind. He hadn’t even heard footsteps.

The background white noise of the drilling rig showered like snow around him. He rested a hand on one of the small grenades at his waist, cradling it. He could easily yank the pin out, toss it next to the other explosives. The grenade would blow up before the security guard behind him could stop it. The only problem was that he would be gunned down in an instant, or the explosion would take him with it.

He considered trying to bluff his way out, holding on to the grenade as long as possible. If he could redirect the guard’s attention, maybe he could toss the grenade far enough so that he could get away as the explosions rippled through the rig. In the meantime, he would have to dodge bullets, too. It was a near-zero chance of survival.

But near-zero isn’t zero.

“Turn around very slowly and show me your hands,” the security guard said.

Something in the voice tickled the back of Keene’s memory, but he tried to ignore it and stay focused on the mission. He turned, keeping his eyes fixed on the explosives and his hand covering the grenade. Maybe he could fool the guard, act like a regular Joe.

He started to set a smile on his face and looked up to make eye contact with the stranger. When he did, he saw the impossible: Terris McKendry, very much alive, aiming a pistol at his chest.

Keene blinked. McKendry’s face looked like an astonished child’s as his jaw fell open. “What the hell?”

Stupefied, Keene almost dropped the grenade. The motion startled McKendry, who jerked the pistol.

Involuntarily, Keene ducked. “You’re dead,” he muttered.

McKendry looked at his friend as if that were the stupidest thing he had ever heard, but he clamped his lips shut. Keene knew that the same words had been about to come from the other man’s mouth.

“I watched you die,” the bigger man said. “Blown overboard. They never found your body. The sharks got it.”

“I saw the bullets hit. I saw you thrown off the bicycle.”

For a moment the two men held their weapons, facing each other. Keene kept his hand on the grenade; McKendry’s pistol was still targeted at his partner. Finally Joshua laughed out loud, the braying chuckle that had always annoyed his friend.

“What are you doing here?” McKendry lowered his weapon a fraction of an inch.

Keene tucked the grenade in his jumpsuit pocket. “What areyou doing here, Terris? Helping out those bastards at Oilstar?” He raised his hands to indicate the totality of theValhalla platform. “Don’t you know what Frik did?”

“Why are you doing the dirty work of those Green Impact scum, Josh? Selene Trujold has the blood of dozens on her hands. Probably more. You saw yourself what she did to the crew on the tanker.”

“Yes,” Keene said, uneasy. “But I also saw what an Oilstar assassination squad did to her and all the other members of her team; slaughtered most of them and sent the rest off to rot in some Venezuelan jail.”

McKendry turned gray. “You were there?”

“I was off in Pedernales getting supplies. When I came back, I found the camp destroyed. Selene died in my arms.” He gritted his teeth. “Damn it, Terris! I loved her.”

“She would have killed you eventually. Maybe I saved your ass.”

“Maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She was a killer, Joshua. A mad dog, willing to murder innocent people to make her point. I had to shoot her.” McKendry sounded as if he were working as hard to convince himself as he was to convince Keene.

“You’re full of shit, Terris,” Keene said. “She wasn’t shot, she was stabbed.”

“What do you mean she was stabbed?”

“I mean she was stabbed. With this.” He pulled the knife from his waist and held it pommel-out to his partner. The etched initials J.R. caught the light.

“Where did you get that?”

Keene couldn’t figure out his partner’s reaction. “I picked it up from the pool of Selene’s blood that she dropped it in. Terris, what is your problem?”

The big man’s pallor had improved. He shook his head and stood up straight, as if a large weight had been removed from his shoulders.

Keene knew better than to push the subject. He sheathed the knife and said, “Did you ever stop to wonder about the real reason Frik wanted this artifact?” He grabbed Selene’s fragment out of his pocket and held it up. At times, he had wanted to wipe the surfaces clean, to remove the discolorations, but instead he had let the bloodstains dry on it. Selene’s blood.

McKendry stared at the object. Keene dangled it like a carrot in front of his friend’s eyes. “Yes, I got it, Terris. I also found out why Frik really wants it.”

He rapidly summarized what he had learned: Paul Trujold’s discovery of the artifact’s true power, and the real purpose behind Frikkie’s Daredevil scheme—knowledge that had cost Selene’s father his life.

Keene watched McKendry absorb the information, run it through his logic filters. He knew McKendry’s process, knew his partner would come to the same conclusions he himself had reached.

Finally, in a lowered voice, McKendry said, “If it were anybody else telling me this, I wouldn’t even listen.”

“But it is me, Terris. Damn it, it’s the truth.”

McKendry gestured with the pistol, not in a threatening manner, just as the most obvious means to point. “I think you’d better disassemble those explosives. You won’t be needing them now.”

Keene hesitated, feeling his heart turn to lead in his chest. “I promised Selene,” he said. “With her dying breath she asked me to shut down Oilstar, to get even with them. I can’t ignore that.”

“And I gave my word to protect this platform. It may not be worth what I thought it was, but I won’t let you destroy theValhalla .” He paused. “There’s got to be some other way.”

The two men held their ground, each waiting for the other to speak or offer a suggestion. After a minute, Keene said, “Crap. Maybe I don’t have to blow up theValhalla to be true to my promise.”

A short time later, the two men stood side by side at the edge of the heliport deck, high above the water. McKendry’s on-duty security men had encountered them and waved at their chief. They had not bothered to question the identity of the man wearing Virata’s work overalls. McKendry growled under his breath; Keene snickered at their incompetence.

The smaller man held the odd artifact that had been excavated from deep beneath the sea. He stared at it for the last time.

“I sure wish I understood what this is,” he said. “But I know it’s not worth all the grief it’s caused.” He held it high, dangling it more than a hundred feet over the waters of the Gulf of Paria, and thought of his promise to Selene. Frik Van Alman would be more upset about not regaining the artifact than he would ever have been about losing the oil rig.

He smiled at the thought of his revenge, muttered something under his breath, and let go.

As the artifact droped from his fingers, it reflected the lights of the rig oddly, as if the perspective were wrong. The optical illusion made it appear to hang in the air.

McKendry’s big hand reached out in a flash and grabbed the object before it could fall to the water.

“No. That wouldn’t finish it, Joshua.” Keene glared at his friend, feeling betrayed, but McKendry continued. “Frik would find it. Somehow.”

“That’s ridiculous. He couldn’t know—”

“Anything is possible. He could have a camera on us right at this moment.”

Keene didn’t answer. McKendry grinned. “I’ve reduced you to silence. That’s a change. Listen to me, would you? Getting rid of this would not make Frik stop what he’s doing. You said yourself this thing could make internal combustion engines a distant memory. That would destroy Oilstar, destroy Frikkie.”

“What if he comes after it before then?”

“He won’t,” McKendry said.

“Why not?”

“Because he trusts us to be good soldiers and do as we were told. On New Year’s Eve, you and I will go to Las Vegas and make Frik answer for himself. We’ll see to it that this discovery gets put to good use for the whole world, not just for one greedy son of a bitch.”

Keene sighed and stared out at the water and the nearby coast of Trinidad. The sky was lightening, shifting from indigo to blues and grays and pinks as the first rays of the sun refracted through the gathering clouds. Red sky at morning, he thought. A storm was on the way.

“You always did hate loose ends,” he said, turning to face his friend.

McKendry didn’t so much as crack a smile. “And you always did talk too much.”

39

No matter how hard she tried, Peta was unable to find closure on Arthur’s death. Time, purportedly the ultimate healer, passed, but the void he had left in her life kept growing.

After Carnival and the arrival of a new round of students at the medical school, the only distraction she allowed herself was watching news reports of the American elections on television. She found the debates entertaining. The rumpus in Florida kept her laughing, as had the Monica debacle. While morality on the island was purported to be of great significance to its populace, and in particular to those in government, the truth was that Grenadian politicians made Clinton’s high jinks look like a good day at Sunday school.

The difference was that here the personal lives of government officials were conducted behind closed doors. Talk at the Watering Hole never lacked its dose of rumors, whispers, and gossip, but it was laced with rum, not with legal action.

With New Year’s Eve only ten days away, Peta went to see her travel agent, whose office on the Carenage always seemed to be run with less efficiency than its well-decorated interior might have indicated.

Her travel plan was simple—provided she could get the airline schedule to cooperate: fly to San Juan and connect to New York, if need be via Miami. She had no wish to stay over in New York. All she wanted was time to go to the precinct, collect Arthur’s fragment, and be at Danny’s on Forty-sixth Street at five o’clock on New Year’s Eve. Sentiment drove her to be there on her birthday—their birthday—even though she would be there alone. That and the distant hope that by being there, by keeping their date, she could finally find some degree of closure.

The way she figured it, she could have a car pick her up at Danny’s at seven—in time to get her to the airport for a nine o’clock flight to Vegas. Traffic to the airport would be light on New Year’s Eve. The flight would get her to her destination by eleven, Vegas time.

Having taken care of her business at the travel agency, she went next door and upstairs to the Nutmeg for a peanut punch and a roti. Sitting at a table next to the open area overlooking the fishing boats and ferries, she made a few notes, reminders of the things she had to do before leaving: go to the bank for money; collect the real artifact from Ralphie; call Ray to let him know that she was coming to the meeting via New York and give him her arrival time in Vegas; and call the maitre d’ at Danny’s to tell him to reserve a quiet corner table for her for five o’clock. The restaurant wouldn’t be crowded yet at that hour, and even if it was, George would find a way to get her a table.

She thought about what to take along and decided that one small roll-on suitcase, her medical bag, and a handbag would be more than enough to hold the necessities. It wasn’t as if she were planning to do the town—New York or Las Vegas. Besides, as Arthur had so often told her, she could always buy what she needed at the other end.

She wondered irreverently, without the usual accompanying stab of pain, if the same principle held true for the journeys to heaven and hell. Maybe, she thought, she was beginning to heal after all.

That evening, Peta made the necessary arrangements with her associate and put in a call to Danny’s. George was delighted to hear from her.

“Let me look at the reservation book,” he said. “Yes. Here it is. I thought I hadn’t erased it. Five o’clock. Dinner. Dr. Whyte and—”

He stopped abruptly. She thanked him and quickly hung up. Next, she called Ray in Las Vegas.

“I have a dinner reservation at Danny’s at five o’clock. I called George. He said they hadn’t erased the booking Arthur made before…”

“I was there when he made that reservation,” Ray reminded her, as if she could have forgotten. “You’re not even staying over for one night?” He sounded almost irritated with her.

“Is that a problem?”

“I suppose not,” Ray said. “You’re cutting it awfully close. I just hope there are no flight delays.”

“If there are, you can wait to start the meeting.”

“New Year’s Eve waits for no man.”

“Fine. I’m not a man anyway, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Ray chuckled. “One more thing. The Strip is closed on New Year’s Eve. It’ll be shut down by the time you get here. I’ll have one of my limos picks you up. The driver will know how to circumvent the barriers. Better yet, I’ll arrange for a helicopter out of McCarran and a pilot. Easy enough to land on my helipad and that’ll take care of any time crunch.”

“Great idea,” Peta said, “But you should recall that I won’t need a pilot. Just have your driver there to get me to the chopper and make sure all of the authorizations have been cleared.”

For the sake of comfort rather than status, Peta had made reservations in first class; for the sake of a show of authority once she got to the police station, she wore a suit—or more accurately, Liz Claiborne wool crepe separates she’d picked up at Saks during her last visit to Manhattan. The black calf-length wrap skirt and fitted fingertip-length black jacket were very New York. A white crew-neck cashmere sweater, opaque black tights, and a pair of black leather knee-high boots completed the look. Hair up in a bun; the real fragment, back in its bezel and hidden beneath her sweater in case some turn of fate brought Frik to the airport; this year’s white gold button earrings; and she was good to go. Normally, she would have carried a coat, but since she was only going to be there for a matter of hours, and her jacket would do fine for Vegas, she simply threw a shawl and a pair of warm gloves into her suitcase.

She felt hot and overdressed until she boarded the plane, but she was quickly grateful for having worn a jacket. As usual, Grenada’s airport air-conditioning was on slowdown, but the plane was freezing. She hated using the blanket and pillow the airline provided, so she rolled up her jacket as a pillow, snuggled under her shawl, which she pulled out of her bag before throwing it into the overhead compartment, and dozed off.

San Juan’s airport was hotter than Grenada’s and more crowded. With a lot of hours to kill between flights, she hailed a cab and went to the closest beach hotel. Once there, she changed into the swimsuit she’d shoved into her handbag and grabbed a chaise under an umbrella. Even in the middle of winter, it was hot and humid. They were so damn lucky in Grenada, she thought. Eighty-four degrees, day in, day out, and always an ocean breeze coming off the Atlantic side of the island.

Later, she walked along the beach and watched the sunset. She stayed out there for a while in semidarkness, then walked back and ordered herself a drink. Her flight was due to leave at two in the morning. She glanced at her watch. It was one minute past midnight.

“Happy birthday, Peta,” she said. She looked up at the stars. “Happy birthday, my love.”

After switching planes in Miami and catching a restless nap during the last leg of the flight to New York, she swore off red-eyes forever. Thanks to delays in the air over JFK, the plane circled for what seemed to be years before it landed. She occupied herself by applying some makeup, putting her jacket back on, and wrapping the shawl around her shoulders in preparation for a New York December day.

By the time the aircraft taxied up to the arrival gate, Peta was ready to scream. There were a dozen people ahead of her in the cordoned-off taxi line. She waited impatiently for the pompous uniformed airport official to whistle her up a cab. When he did, she waved away the suggestion that she share it with someone else in line.

The traffic into Manhattan seemed endless. The cabbie’s chattiness, in the past a source of amusement, got on her nerves. By the time he pulled up in front of the Midtown North police station, she felt so guilty about her attitude, she overtipped.

Inside the precinct house, she took out her wallet and retrieved the receipt they’d given her. It was dated December 31, 1999, and signed by Sergeant John Lewis.

Trailing her suitcase behind her, she moved up to the counter. “I’d like to see Sergeant Lewis.”

“So would I, lady. We could use him around here.”

“Where is he?”

“Retired.” The policeman sighed heavily and turned away, but not before Peta got a look at the name on his badge. Patrick O’Shaunessy.

“Detective O’Shaunessy.”

He turned back to her. “I’m flattered, ma’am, but it’s sergeant. Sergeant O’Shaunessy.”

As best she could, Peta stemmed her rising unease. “Well, Sergeant,” she said, “I’ve come to collect, um, my friend’s personal effects which were impounded as evidence almost a year ago. I hope you can help me.”

He took the receipt from her and examined it closely. “Excuse me a moment, please. I’ll be right back. Why don’t you take a seat over there.” He indicated a slatted bench against the wall.

Peta watched the hands on the large clock over the desk. When he had been gone for twenty minutes, she began to panic. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

“Miss? Dr. Whyte. I’m Captain Richards. Could I see you in here, please.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Peta stood up and followed the plainclothes officer into a small office. The captain, a man not much beyond middle age, pointed at a chair and she sat down.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Whyte. I’m afraid there’s been some kind of clerical error.” He waved the receipt. “There is absolutely no record of this case.”

40

“What are you saying?” Peta stared at the police detective in disbelief.

“I have no other way of saying it. There is absolutely no record of this case.”

“That’s crazy!” She realized that she was shouting, but made no effort to lower her voice. “I know the case was closed, but you’d thinksomebody around here would remember a bombing and death on New Year’s Eve. Damn it, it was only a year ago—”

“Look, lady, calm down.” He walked to the door, which she had left slightly ajar, and closed it. Returning to his desk, he sat on the edge facing her. “I’m sorry about this. Really I am. But there’s nothing I can do.”

Peta sat back and stared at him. Feeling utterly defeated, she took out the pack of cigarettes she’d bought in Miami, peeled off the cellophane wrapping, and took one out. A thousand disconnected thoughts seemed to be chasing each other around her head.

“You can’t—ah, the hell with it.”

He took a lighter out of his pocket and lit her cigarette. Still leaning forward, he whispered, “I’m going to tell you something, but if you repeat it, I’ll deny I said a word.” She started to interrupt him, but he held up his hand. “Listen carefully, ’cause I’m only going to say this once. Early last August, some NSA suits came in here and took away a bunch of records. They erased everything about them in our computers and told me that as far as I was concerned, that explosion that killed thedoc…it never happened.”

“Why—?”

“Hey, the Feds come in here waving writs around, you don’t ask questions.”

She nodded, though her mind was more confused than before. “So why are you telling me?”

The captain leaned back onto the desk and said, “Doc Marryshow, he saved my life way back when I was a rookie. I was burned real bad, y’know. He lived a couple of blocks from here. Used to pop in to see how I was. He was real interested in police work too. Always asking me questions…”

A few minutes later, Peta stood outside the precinct house. She had never felt more confused and angry. Sheltering herself against the old brick wall of the building, she pulled out her cell phone. Grateful that it was a multisystem unit and that she didn’t have to search for a public phone, she dialed Ray’s private number.

As she listened to it ring, she wondered what exactly it was that she was going to tell him—and why. There wasn’t anything either of them could do at this stage.

She disconnected the phone.

Screw Frik. Screw the Daredevils, all of them. She really didn’t give a damn about any of them.

All she cared about was going to Danny’s to keep her promise to Arthur, and to herself. She pulled her gloves out of her handbag and put them on, wrapped her shawl around her neck and over her head like a hood, and dragged her case the eight city blocks from the Midtown North precinct station to Danny’s.

George spotted her as she entered the small foyer. He ran toward her, put his arms around her, and held her, gently, as if she were fragile and might break.

He took the suitcase from her and led her inside. At the far end of the bar, the piano player recognized Peta. Smiling broadly, he switched gears into “Happy Birthday to You,” played a few bars of “Hot, Hot, Hot,” then segued, as he had done so many times before, into a lively rendition of “Dollar Wine.”

I should have told George to tell him to cut that out, she thought, forcing herself to look across at the piano. Sitting there, his back to her, was a café au lait man about the same size and build as Arthur.

Where are you when I need you, David Copperfield? There is no magic and this was a terrible idea, she thought.

The man turned around to face her.

“You son of a bitch! How could you!” she yelled as adrenaline powered by a mix of untrammeled fury and profound joy propelled her across the room. She rushed at him, punched him full out, and knocked him backward onto the piano. “One whole year, you let me believe you were dead.”

For a few moments, Arthur let her rant. Then she felt his arms around her. He held her so close she could hardly breathe. When the tears came, he kissed them away.

When they stopped, he led her to the corner table markedReserved .

“Would you give me a chance to apologize? To explain,” he said, holding her hand across the white linen tablecloth.

“Do I have a choice?”

“I had to do it,” Arthur said. “Ray helped me. We faked the whole thing.”

Peta’s mind flashed back to the bloody fragments on the men’s-room floor. “If it wasn’t you—”

“I assure you it wasn’t.” Arthur accompanied his weak attempt at humor with a kiss on her hand. “When I went out there, I opened a door near the bathrooms for Ray to bring in a body he’d ‘borrowed’ from the morgue’s John Doe slab. We’d figured any male would do, given that he was about to be blown to bits.”

“So you locked the corpse, with explosive attached, into the bathroom, and slipped out the rear door?”

“Right.”

“But why, Arthur? And where have you been all this time?”

A part of their conversation a year ago struggled into Peta’s consciousness.There’s new trouble brewing in the Middle East, big trouble. After the meeting, I’m going to Israel. I’ll be teaching medics about frontline emergency burn treatment .

There had been trouble all right, and it wasn’t over yet. “It was the Israel thing, wasn’t it?” she said.

He nodded. “That was part of it. But also, there was no other way I could properly investigate Frik. He’s dangerous, Peta. It’s not just the artifact. I still have to find proof, but I can tell you that he has his hands in a lot of other dirty business.”

“Seems to be a proliferation of that around here,” Peta said.

“Of what?”

“Dirty business. My guess is, it’s reached epidemic proportions.” She told him about her experience that afternoon with New York’s finest. “They knew it was a setup, didn’t they? The police.”

“Yes. But not until the people I work for squashed the investigation.”

“How long have you—?”

“Been back? Long enough to have my contacts retrieve my piece of the artifact.”

She pulled her hand away from him. “Why didn’t you get in touch with me? I’ve been through hell—”

“Orders. There’s still too much going on. My silence is part of the deal. I’ve already said too much.”

“Will they ever let you tell me?”

“I’m working on it. That’s all I can say—for now.”

“I can be trusted to keep my mouth shut. You know that.”

“That’s not the point.”

She looked him straight in the eye. In a monotone which held no vestige of emotion she said, “Tell me, Arthur. Whatis the point.”

He leaned forward so far that his face was almost touching hers. “The point, my darling Peta, is that once I tell you…ifI tell you…you’ll be as involved as I am.”

Give it up, girl, she thought. At least for now. Leave the recriminations alone and delight in the gift of his presence. “Have you seen Ray?” she asked, making an enormous effort to appear normal.

“I was with him when you called to tell him you were coming to Danny’s. I booked a seat here right away, and another back to Vegas on the flight with you. The plan now is to test the whole artifact’s capabilities at the meeting, where we can keep Frik under wraps.” He glanced at her neck. “I heard about the stunt he pulled in Grenada. And that you had to give him your pendant.”

“Sadly, yes.”

Saying nothing about the switch she had made with the pendant, Peta raised her glass. You want closemouthed. I’ll give you closemouthed. “Happy birthday, Arthur Marryshow,” she said. “Happy birthday to us.”

41

“Josh.” Ray Arno shook Keene’s hand as he stepped off the private elevator into his penthouse. McKendry followed on Keene’s heels. “Terr. I tell you, I could hardly believe it when I heard the message on my machine, saying that you’d both be here. Good to see you both alive.”

“Good to be seen,” McKendry said.

Ray had to work to maintain his smile. Both men seemed to have aged a decade in the past year. McKendry, especially, must have shed another ten pounds since Ray had last seen him. Both men carried grim, haunted looks, as if they’d been through hell and had not quite made it all the way back.

Ray offered drinks and showed them around the penthouse. When he’d given them the inside tour, he hit a switch that automatically drew all of the curtains, revealing picture windows which overlooked the panorama below.

“Behold. My own private playground,” he said, pointing out the various hotels along the strip. Naming the mountains. Taking what was almost an owner’s pride in Red Rock Canyon and snowcapped Mount Charleston.

The visitors took in all the grandeur without much reaction. Keene’s usual ebullience was conspicuously absent. He had moved to a window and stood gazing out at the glittering panorama.

“Is Van Alman coming?” he said finally.

The tight voice and the use of the last name instead of “Frik” were not lost on Ray.

“He’s due any minute.”

“Lots of good people are dead because of his little treasure hunt.”

“And because of us,” McKendry said. “We’ve been over all this, Josh—”

“I know, I know, but I detest him and his goddamn device. If he’d letitbe…” He took a deep breath and turned from the window. “We got our piece, didn’t we? Like good little errand boys we went and found it, and we’re here to deliver it. But at what cost? If it had been up to me I’d have tossed it into the Cayman Trench and told Frik to go dive for it himself.”

The Cayman Trench…hundreds of miles long, five miles deep. Ray shook his head. No one would ever have found it there.

“Why didn’t you?” he asked.

“Because I needed to know that the past year wasn’t for nothing. And because I promised someone that if this device could be put to good use, I’d see to it that it was. I also promised that if it was going to be used for wrong, I’d prevent it. By any means necessary. Otherwise this is the last place I want to be.”

“I’m glad you came,” Ray said softly, sensing Keene’s pain. He’d never imagined the man could be this bitter. “We’re dwindling in number.”

McKendry shook his head. “Yeah, I keep trying to figure out what’s happening. Arthur last year. Now Simon’s gone. This goes on, there won’t be anyone left.”

“Fine with me,” Keene said.

Ray stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not a bit. I picked up a new perspective on a lot of things in the past year…what’s important, what’s not. And you know what’s last on the list? This idiotic club. How’d I ever get involved with such a bunch of arrested adolescents?” Keene made a disgusted sound. “What could I have been thinking?”

“Let me remind you. You were thinking, Life’s too short to play it safe,” said a new voice.

They all turned. Frikkie stood in the doorway, a shiny titanium briefcase dangling from his good hand.

“Well, well,” Keene muttered. “If it isn’t Mr. Teen America himself.”

Frik either didn’t hear the remark or chose to ignore it. “And you were thinking you didn’t want to miss what could be an historic moment. Truly adefining moment in history. For all we know,A.D. may come to mean ‘anno device’ instead of anno Domini.”

Ray saw Keene set his jaw and knew what he was thinking: no one could mix grandiosity and arrogance like Fredrick Van Alman and, yes, sometimes you wanted to punch out his lights. But Keene only dropped into a chair and swiveled it toward the window; he went back to staring silently at the bedizened desert, effectively removing himself from the room.

“What’s with him?” Frik said.

“Better you don’t ask,” McKendry replied. He fished in his pocket and pulled out a small object. “Here’s our part of the deal,” he told Ray.

He held up the piece as if he were about to toss it across the room, apparently changed his mind, and lowered it. He stepped closer and pressed it into Ray’s hand.

Ray understood. People had shed their blood for this little piece of strangeness. No one should play catch with it. He stared a moment at the object in his palm before he closed his fingers around it. It was larger than Arthur’s. Bluer. With the little figure-eight piece at one end.

Like Arthur’s, the strangely textured surface seemed to suck the warmth and moisture from his skin.

“Where’s Peta?” Frik asked, looking around.

“On her way.” Ray jerked the thumb of his free hand over his shoulder. “Should be landing on the helipad any minute.”And won’t you be surprised to see who’s with her.

“Good. Because we can’t do anything without Arthur’s piece. In the meantime…”

He set his briefcase on the coffee table. Ray noticed for the first time that it was cuffed to his wrist.

Frik unlocked the cuff and the catches. He lifted the lid to reveal a gray, foam-lined interior. Nestled among the egg-crate contours were three oddly shaped objects, similar to the piece in Ray’s hand, yet distinct—distant relatives, but unquestionably members of the same family. A wire-frame stand lay in a rectangular cutout.

“Voilà!” Frik looked around. “Now, where’s this lab you told me you set up to assemble our treasures?”

“Right through that door back there,” Ray said without thinking. He’d been toying with Arthur’s piece on the workbench when the call announcing Keene and McKendry’s arrival had come from downstairs. He’d been trying to run a current through it, but not only was it nonconductive, it absorbed whatever he shot into it without altering its own temperature even a fraction of a degree.

Had he put it away?

“We should wait for Peta,” he said quickly.

“We will,” Frik said. He rose and carried the briefcase like a tray toward the rear of the penthouse’s great room. “We have no choice. But why waste time once she arrives? We can assemble what we have now and be all set to go. When Peta gets here we’ll simply have to plug in the final piece.”

“I don’t know, Frik,” Ray said, trailing after him.

“I do. I’ve waited all year for this moment, and I’m not going to put it off a nanosecond longer than absolutely necessary.”

Ray glanced over his shoulder. McKendry was close behind, but Keene remained slouched in his seat by the window. How was he going to steer this little procession away from the lab—at least until he’d checked it out to make sure that Arthur’s piece wasn’t visible?

He tried to scoot around Frik. “At least wait until I straighten up a little.”

“Nonsense,” Frik said, not even slowing. “We’ve known each other too long to worry about messy desks and overflowing wastebaskets.”

He pulled the door open and stepped through, leaving just enough space for Ray to slip past him.

Ray made it to the workbench first and suppressed a groan—You idiot!—when he spotted Arthur’s piece lying out there dead center for all the world to see. Wouldn’t be the end of the world if Frik spotted it, but he’d promised Arthur and Peta not to assemble the device until they arrived, and he wanted to keep his word.

Pretending to clear a space for the briefcase, he swept a forearm across the scarred surface, effectively moving the piece to the side. Picking it up might be too obvious, so he brushed a sheaf of notes over it.

He turned to see if Frik had spotted it and barely suppressed a sigh of relief. The Afrikaner had stopped inside the door and was gazing at the equipment racked on the walls.

“What do you with all of this stuff?” he said. “Looks like an electronics store.”

McKendry sniffed the air. “A temperature-controlled, electrostaticfiltered electronics store.” He glanced at Ray. “Laminar flow?”

Ray nodded. “Just a hobby. Trying to build a better mousetrap.”

“Forget mousetraps. Before the night is out you’llreally have something to tinker with,” Frik said.

He removed the wire-frame stand from the briefcase, followed by the three pieces, one by one. He handled them gently, as if they were fragile.

Ray knew that if these were related to the piece Arthur had given him, they were anything but fragile. He didn’t know why, but his mouth began to dry as he watched Frik settle the largest of the three pieces into the base of the platform. After he’d snapped another, slightly smaller piece into the first, he held out his hand for Keene and McKendry’s.

“Yours comes next.”

Ray handed it over, reluctantly, but he had to marvel at how perfectly it fit into the other two.

“Which one is Simon’s?” McKendry said. He stood behind Frik, watching over his shoulder. His voice was soft, almost hoarse. “The one he died diving for?”

“This one.” Frik lifted the final, unassembled piece. He rolled it between his thumb and fingers. “Poor Simon. I miss him. He gave his life for this. I propose we name the device after him. The Brousseau Device, so that we never forget him.”

“As if we need that to remember him,” Keene said from the other room.

A grand gesture, Ray thought, but ultimately meaningless. What did Frik care who it was named after, as long as he controlled it?

“What about Paul Trujold? And Arthur?” Ray asked.

Frik glanced up, a sardonic smile twisting his lips. “Paul was my employee. I assume Arthur acquiredhis piece through the mail or via your friend Manny, and he died in a men’s room. I think the device deserves a better pedigree than that.”

He fit Simon’s piece into the assembly, then jerked back his hand.

“What happened?” Ray asked.

“It…” Frik rubbed his fingers. “It felt like a shock, like a—”

“Holy shit!” McKendry rasped.

Ray didn’t have to ask—he knew what the big man was talking about: the incomplete assembly was moving. It spun around so the gap where the last piece would fit faced the pile of papers Ray had just moved. Platform and all, it began sliding, inching its way across the workbench.

“What do we do?” Ray said. He felt his gut coiling into a knot. Objects didn’t move on their own, a force pushed or pulled them, energy was expended…unless it was magnetic and being drawn toward a metallic—

Oh, hell! It was butting up against the papers covering Arthur’s piece. Ray reached out to grab it, but Frik stopped him.

“Wait!” He gripped Ray’s wrist with his good hand. “Let’s see where it’s going.”

Ray had a pretty good idea: it was moving toward the rest of itself.

Sure enough, it kept moving, bulldozing the papers aside, until it straddled Arthur’s piece.

“Where didthat come from?” Frik frowned as he pointed. “That’s…that’s…”

“Arthur’s,” Ray said. No use trying to deny it. By process of elimination, Frik certainly knew what it looked like.

“It was supposed to be in New York!”

“Supposedto be. But it’s been here all along.”

“So Peta lied about—”

“No, she really thought it was there. By now she knows otherwise.”

“I don’t understand,” McKendry said.

“It’s a long story,” Ray muttered, thinking that it was one he didn’t want to tell. Not yet. Not until Peta and Arthur arrived.

He didn’t have to worry about stalling. Frik was off and running. He picked up Arthur’s piece and dragged the assembly and its frame back to the center of the workbench. “Right now it’s show time.”

“We should wait for Peta.”

“What for? Peta is coming in empty-handed. As I said before, I’ve waited too long already.”

He grabbed the pair of insulated gloves lying to his right and slipped a glove over his good hand. Before Ray could stop him, he had snapped the fifth and final piece into place.

A flash of brilliant blue-white light lit the room, knocking Frik backward. He would have fallen if McKendry hadn’t been standing there. Ray too was staggered by the brilliance. He blinked furiously, trying to focus through the floating afterimages, but he could make out only shadows. He heard footsteps pounding in from the great room.

“What the hell was that?” Keene’s voice.

“Look who decided to join the party,” McKendry quipped.

“What are you jerks trying to do?” Keene said. “Wreck the thing?”

Finally Ray could see again. He focused on the workbench and saw the device jittering around as if in an earthquake, only the floor was still. And one of the pieces—Simon’s, no Peta’s, he thought—was smoking. The fumes stung Ray’s nostrils.

“Something’s wrong!” Frik yelled.

“How about telling us something we don’t know,” Keene said.

The smoking piece twisted and took off, hurtling across the room to shatter against the far wall.

Frik and McKendry hurried over to check out the fragments. McKendry, who had been closest to them, got there first.

“Nice work, Van Alman,” Keene said, his tone verging on a snarl. “You must’ve put it together wrong.”

“I couldn’t have,” Frik said. “The way they’re shaped, there’s only one way those pieces can interlock. I—”

“Face it, man,” Keene said, keeping up the pressure. “You blew it. Whatever you did triggered an eject button.”

“More like are ject button,” McKendry said, picking up a handful of fragments. “This piece was bogus, guys. The device spat it out.”

“Peta!” Frik said, doing his best to ball his good fist within the heavy glove and pounding it on the table. “Damn her! She gave me a fake! When she gets here—”

“Watch out!” Ray’s gaze had been fixed on the device. “It’s up to something!”

They all watched as the device began to glow and a blue light enveloped it and its stand. The glow brightened and seemed to thicken—not a term Ray would normally apply to light, but the best he could come up with at the moment—and obscure the device within it.

Suddenly a beam of bright blue shot out, thick as a man’s wrist and laser focused. It barely missed Keene’s head as it lanced toward a spot on the wall just to the left of the door. Keene stared at it a moment before stepping through into the great room. “Get in here, guys. You’vegot to see this.”

Ray led the way but stopped dead in the doorway when he saw what Keene was talking about. McKendry plowed into his back, propelling him into the room.

The beam of light had pierced the wall without damaging it—no hole, no burn marks. As far the beam was concerned, the wall didn’t seem to exist. It traveled with undiminished brightness across the great room, through the outer wall, and into the night.

“Look,” McKendry said, pointing. “It’s moving, almost as if it’s tracking something.”

At that moment Ray became aware of a pulsating thrum.

“Do you hear that?” Frik said.

Ray nodded. He knew the sound. “That,” he said, “would be Peta’s helicopter heading this way.”

42

“There it is,” Peta said, pointing through the helicopter’s bubble window.

Arthur grinned. “You’re sure?” He sat to her left at the helm of the sprightly little Chief-8, his right hand firm on the stick. He winked at her. “It’s so hard to tell Ray’s casino from the others.”

The wink said it all. Even among the gallimaufry of brightly lit, high-concept, high-rise casinos lining the Las Vegas Strip, ferro-concrete behemoths in drag watching the endless parade of tourists, Ray’s wedged-shaped Daredevil Casino stood out. Maybe it was its shape, apex aimed like a spearhead at the sidewalk. Or maybe it was the space shuttle that appeared to be launching from the right side. Or perhaps it was the realistic Godzilla-like creature, with animatronic head and arms, bursting through the left wall.

She noticed a crowd beginning to gather around the monster and glanced at her watch; almost half past eleven. Ray’s stuntmen-cum-actors must be about to begin their assault on the giant fire-breathing lizard.

“Anything wrong?” The flight had been glide smooth until a moment ago, when she’d noticed a little pitch and roll.

“Some strange updrafts around the casino.”

The Daredevil’s rooftop helipad loomed before them. Peta dug into her shoulder bag. She found what she was looking for but didn’t remove it. “I want you to see something before we land,” she said. “I didn’t want to be the only one in on the secret.”

“Maybe it should wait till after we land.” Arthur kept his eyes straight ahead.

“I really think you’ll want to see this now.”

She opened her hand and held the piece up where he wouldn’t have to turn his head too far to see it. After a quick first glance he stiffened and took another look.

“What in the world?”

“It’s my piece, the one you gave me.”

“But I thought—”

“I had Ralphie make a phony—and he did a masterful job. That’s what I gave Frik.”

“So he thinks he’s got three but he’s only got two. I love it! Doesn’t Ray know—?”

“Uh-uh. At the time I wasn’t quite sure about Ray. I mean, whether or not he had something to do with your, um, death, or if he and Frikkie were in cahoots. So I didn’t tell him. I’ve learned the truth, but I haven’t exactly had time to call him.”

“So you and I will be the only ones who know.” He grinned. “How do you want to work it? We can let them assemble it with the fake, and when nothing happens, pull out the real things and say, ‘See if this works better.’ Or we can—”

The interior of the cabin filled with a bright blue light. The helicopter dipped. Arthur fought the stick.

“Oh, God!” Peta cried. The light had centered on the piece in her hand, but it was coming from outside. When she looked through the window, she could follow a tightly focused beam straight back to Ray’s penthouse atop the casino. “What are they trying to do to us?”

She saw four figures rush out onto the helipad. The one she recognized as Ray began waving at her. Was he warning her off or telling her to hurry in?

The chopper was bucking like a wild stallion. Arthur forced it into a stuttering descent toward the helipad. “It’s that thing, that piece you’ve got there. Somehow it’s set off something below that’s affecting the controls.”

“Should I toss it out?” Peta said.

“Hell no! We’re notout of control, just having some difficulty is all.”

“How much difficulty?”

A tight grin. “Oh, I’d say something akin to flying through a Midwest supercell.”

“With or without tornadoes?”

“Without. But that could change any moment.” He glanced at her. “Look. An actual touchdown might be too dicey with these controls the way they are. But I can get low enough so that you can toss the piece onto the pad.”

“And then what?”

“Then we see what happens. If I get the helm back, we’ll land. If not, we’ll fly off and look for a place in the desert to put down. Either way, we’ll know the piece will be safe with Ray until we make it back to the casino.”

“Bring her down as low as you can,” Peta said. “These pieces seem to be indestructible, but let’s not take any chances.”

Arthur fought the Chief-8 downward. When the landing runners wobbled between eight and ten feet above the helipad, Peta pushed her door open. Noise and wind swirled through the cabin. Looking below, she saw Ray, Keene, and McKendry backed against the wall of the penthouse.

Frik stood at the edge of the landing circle, where the tornadic downwash whipped his hair and clothing. Peta saw his face, his tight, angry posture. He knows, she thought. He must have tried to assemble the device with the fake piece.

Was that why the chopper was acting crazy?

She cataloged her options. Fast. The way she did during emergency surgery. She could toss out the real fragment, surrendering it to Frik, or keep it in the chopper and risk a crash. Or—

“Hold her steady!” She unclasped her seat harness.

“What are you doing?”

She tucked her piece of the device into her bra. The beam followed it, making her chest glow with the same eerie blue light. “See you below,” she said.

Swiveling onto her belly, she slipped her legs through the door.

“Peta!” Arthur shouted, panic wild in his face. “Get back in here! You’ll break your neck!”

Feeling nothing except the need to take action, Peta continued her outward slide. The vortex from the whirling blades tore at her skirt, whipping it above her knees. She wished she’d worn jeans—she’d have a better view of her feet. Inching down, she kicked back and forth until her boots found the landing runner. She hooked her heels on the steel tubing, reached down and grabbed it with her left hand, then her right. Finally she kicked her feet free and swung down to hang with her boot soles only three or four feet above the helipad. She was about to release her grip when the chopper suddenly veered up and away from the roof.

The beam of blue light followed her, targeted like a laser on her chest. She repressed a scream as she looked down through hundreds of feet of empty air at the top of the giant lizard monster’s head. On the ground below, people in the gathering crowd began to look up and point. She wanted to shout, I’m not part of the damn Daredevil show! This is the real thing!

She felt her fingers slipping and tightened her grip, envisioning herself splattered on the pavement below while the onlookers applauded the realistic gore effects. The little chopper began to angle back down toward the roof. The parapet hove within reach, the chopper dipped, and Peta saw the upper edge of the wall rushing at her.

She cried out and nearly lost her grip as her right hip and thigh slammed against the concrete.

The chopper wobbled away and back again, ramming the small of her back against the edge of the parapet, twisting her body and tearing her right hand free of the runner. Clinging by one hand, she felt wind catch her skirt and wrench her back and forth.

With her free hand, Peta tore open the skirt’s hook and loop closure, and the skirt dropped away. Arthur must have regained a modicum of control because the chopper lifted and angled back over the helipad, bringing her shoes to within a yard or so of the surface.

That was more than good enough for Peta. She released her grip and dropped onto the hard concrete surface.

The relief of feeling something solid beneath her gave way to a blast of pain as her right ankle buckled. Instinctively she rolled as she fell, and felt the piece slip from her bra and tumble away…

…to land at Frik’s feet…almost as if it wanted to be there.

He snatched it up and raised it above his head. The beam of light focused on the piece, making it look like he held a blue sun against the night sky.

“You gave me a bad moment there, Peta!” Frik said, shouting over the noise of the chopper. “I thought we were going to lose this!”

He ran toward the penthouse, brushing past Ray, McKendry, and Keene, who were hurrying forward to help Peta. She struggled to her feet. Her ankle blazed with gut-wrenching agony. She glanced up and saw that Arthur had full control of the chopper now. Removing the piece had worked. She gave him a thumbs-up. He nodded gravely through the bubble.

She turned back to the other men and pointed toward Frik’s retreating back. “Stop him!”

Her shout was lost in the wind and the engine noise, and she doubted McKendry and Keene would have been much use anyway. They stood frozen on the helipad, eyes fixed on the chopper, gaping at Arthur. She saw Keene grab Ray by his shirt and point to the chopper, shouting something she couldn’t hear, doubtless something about a dead man piloting an aircraft.

No help there. Ignoring the stab of pain each step sent up her leg, she hobbled after Frik on her own. He had all of the pieces now. If she didn’t do something right away, he would assemble the artifact and take possession of it. Too many people had died because of his obsession. She couldn’t let him have control of it.

She stepped through the sliding glass door into the great room and stopped. Frik was nowhere to be seen. He had what he wanted. Could he already have gone?

A bright blue glow from the rear doorway answered her. She reached the lab and found Frik hovering over the four assembled pieces, guiding hers—the fifth and last—toward its position.

Her piece clicked into place. Immediately, the glow disappeared. The device sat cold and dark and apparently inert on the workbench, looking for all the world like nothing more than an oddly mottled Easter egg with an extra nodule on one side.

It was as if Frik had turned off a light.

He turned to face her. “What is this, Peta? Another goddamn fake?” He pulled over a metallic briefcase that sat open on the lab table. “I’ll just have to take this back to my own labs and figure it out.” He extended his scarred left hand toward the object.

She lunged, reaching for it with both hands. Though she did not yet fully understand why she felt so passionately about it, every instinct told her to stop Frik from removing the device. He grabbed her arms. She struggled to release herself from his grasp.

Suddenly, time seemed to slow down. She watched as if through a heat mirage as a ripple ran over the surface of the spheroid, followed by another and another, blurring the edges of the separate pieces. Fusing them into a single object.

At its center, a tiny spot of bright white began to glow, and then light was everywhere, blasting through Peta like a storm wind through a screen door, engulfing her in heat like the heart of the sun. Consuming her and everything around her.

43

When the white light faded and she began to recover her senses, Peta thought for a moment that the world had been turned on end. But the problem wasn’t the world. She was the one who was upside down, lying on the floor of Ray’s penthouse lab, staring up at the underside of the main table and the solid gray line of the ceiling beyond it.

Reoriented, she jumped to her feet. Her body responded at once, but she felt weightless, as if she had floated to a standing position in a flying dream.

On the table, the artifact had returned to a state she could only think of as dormant. It looked like nothing more than a chunk of rutilated quartz from somewhere in Arizona, or a pretty colored rock that some collector had picked up on Montserrat to remind himself that a sleeping volcano could look like any other mountain until it erupted.

“What the fuck?”

Frikkie’s left hand appeared on the far side of the table as he pulled himself up off the floor. Staring at it, Peta flashed on what it had looked like minutes ago as he’d reached for the artifact: severely scarred from the fire that had killed Paul Trujold. Now, it wasn’t scarred at all. The skin looked smooth and healthy.

No amount of plastic surgery or expert grafting could have achieved that result in so short a time, she thought, as Frik’s head came into view.

Immediately, she noticed that the scarring on his face was gone too, as was the damage to his eyelid, which had given him the permanent sleepy-eyed look of a myasthenic in the throes of crisis.

That was when it occurred to her that she was standing with her full weight on her twisted ankle, but there was no pain. Her side and back, which should have been covered with cuts, bruises, and abrasions from her ride on the runner of the helicopter, felt fine. If anything, she felt as if she had just come from an hour with a masseur. She reminded herself that she was a physician, a scientist. Perfect cures didn’t happen this way, in a split second. Miracles, as they said, took a little longer.

Reluctantly, she acknowledged the certainty that had been taking shape in her mind. It had to be the artifact. There simply was no other answer. They had both touched it; they were both made whole.

She shook her head at herself and her ridiculous willingness to believe in magic. Fact: Antibiotics and aspirin were miracles. Fact: People couldn’t walk on water without webbed feet.

Fact: That thing over there was not God any more than Frik was the devil.

In the throes of intellectualizing, Peta almost missed seeing Frik reach out to grab the device. Using a reserve of strength she didn’t know she had, she shoved him away from it. Taken by surprise, he staggered backward. His carotid pumped.

“Out of my way, bitch!”

Frik’s rage at Peta’s continued attempts to thwart him was palpable. She braced herself for his assault.

“I suggest you move away from the artifact, Frikkie.” Arthur stood framed in the doorway into the lab.

Frik stopped in his tracks. Very slowly, like someone in an Abbott and Costello movie, he swiveled around. It occurred to Peta that the Afrikaner had been so busy grabbing for the piece of the artifact she had dropped that he hadn’t taken the time to notice who was piloting the helicopter.

“I wish everyone would stop looking at me as if I were a ghost.” Arthur stepped into the lab. “If you want to find out how alive I am, why don’t you try to touch that device.”

“Why don’t you try to stop me.”

Frik took a step toward the table. Arthur moved to intercept him. The Afrikaner spun on his heel and charged at his old friend.

Caught off-guard by Frik’s change in direction, Arthur didn’t have time to brace himself. The two men tumbled, ass over elbows, through the door and back into the great room.

Recovering his feet, Frik grabbed Arthur by the jacket and lifted him into the air. As he rose, Arthur thrust out his leg, catching Frik in the groin just as Ray and McKendry and Keene charged in from the helipad.

Arthur bounced lightly to his feet. “Stay out of this. He’s mine.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Frikkie said in a stage whisper.

It had become obvious to Peta that an all-out physical battle between Arthur and Frik was inevitable. Arthur was taller, Frik broader. They weighed about the same, and since the miraculous actions of the artifact, both were fit and hugely strong. Without intervention, it would be anybody’s victory.

As if to prove her right, Frik rushed toward Arthur, who prepared to block the Afrikaner’s charge. Too late, Peta noticed that Frik had grabbed a vase filled with roses and baby’s breath and flung it ahead of himself. Arthur’s blocking punch shattered the crystal, sending water and flowers and splinters of glass flying everywhere. And blood. Arthur’s blood. Spurting from his knuckles.

That was enough for Peta. She wasn’t about to let Arthur be annihilated. The others could stand by out of respect for his wish to deal with Frik on his own terms; she couldn’t. There was no way that she could endure it—or live with herself—if he died again. This time for real. She dashed forward, ready to attack Frik.

And stopped.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She felt as if something had hit her at the base of her neck and a jolting shiver ran down her spine and up again.

Disoriented, she turned around.

The lab was bathed in an eerie glow, the way light looks from twenty feet underwater. She tried to call out to the men. No sound emerged. She faced them and tried again. This time her voice rang out loud and clear, but the fight claimed their full attention.

Pressing his advantage, Frik grabbed Arthur by the shoulders and spun, hurling his former friend over a plush leather chair and into an antique coffee table. He threw the chair out of the way and dove. Arthur was ready. Catching Frik with his feet, he propelled him through the air, to land with a thud by the sliding glass doors to the helipad.

With a handspring, Arthur was back on his feet, running toward his opponent. As Frik struggled to stand, Arthur kicked him in the chest, sending him crashing through the closed half of the glass door.

“That one’s for Simon,” Arthur yelled.

Cheering, Keene and Ray and McKendry moved toward the helipad. Spurred on by their support, Arthur started forward. Through the commotion and the shattered glass, Peta could see Frikkie roll to his knees and come up throwing something. The Grenadian shielded himself from a shower of pebble-sized chunks of glass.

Frik, backing up onto the wide roof, motioned for Arthur to come and get him.

Hoping that the other three men would have the sense to make sure the right man won, Peta started after them. Their attention was focused on Arthur and Frikkie, rolling near the low parapet at the edge of the roof, first one on top, then the other.

She looked back into the lab.

The artifact had transformed into a single brilliant, shapeless white mass. She saw what might be the outline of a face in the glow as the object left the table and began to float, infinitely slowly, toward the tall ceiling. The image of the strange mural in the undersea cave rose in her mind. Was this what the painter had been drawing?

Midway between the table and the ceiling, the device ceased its motion and hovered.

The lights in the suite flickered and went out, leaving only the green glow of emergency fluorescents. In the moment before their screens popped like balloons pricked by a dozen pins, she saw on the security monitors that downstairs in the casino, machines were wildly spewing out money.

Glancing to the side through Ray’s wall of glass, Peta watched the city lights of Las Vegas blink out. A wave of black washed over the neon city, leaving Las Vegas Boulevard in darkness. An instant later, almost as if it had been timed, fountains of sparkling red and orange and yellow shot from the roofs of the other casinos, starting from the southern end of the strip at Mandalay Bay, rushing toward the Daredevil Casino and beyond.

In homage to the midnight hour and the start of 2001—the true millennium—the nine minutes of planned fireworks crackled and flashed and boomed from the Strip’s megahotels.

Firework mines thundered in quick white bursts that deafened her and drowned out the sound of her shouts. Rockets rose into the sky, bursting into sparkling blue and red and gold and white star-flowers.

She looked up at the artifact.

As if it had waited for her attention, the glowing orb started to move again, this time toward her. Like a living thing, it floated inches from her face and, impossibly, passed right through the vast wall of windows. She turned to follow its progress and spotted it, one small, unblinking light against the backdrop of flaming, sparkling fireworks that showered Las Vegas. Traveling southeast, slowly at first but gaining speed, it left a trail like a miniature comet drifting through the desert sky.

Peta stood transfixed until she could no longer differentiate between the orb and the stars. When it was out of sight, she turned toward the door that led to the helipad. The Daredevils, their battle abandoned, stood in awed contemplation of what they had witnessed.

Characteristically, Keene was the first to break the silence. “I wish Selene could have seen that.”

And Simon, Peta thought.

“Maybe she did see it, Josh,” McKendry said. “Anybody want to take a guess at what it was?”

“It was mine, that’s what it was,” Frik said.

“By all means go and get it.” Arthur’s voice held no antagonism. His body language indicated that his desire to fight had left with the vanishing object.

“Do you think, maybe, this proves we aren’t alone in the universe?” Ray asked, a surprising note of longing in his voice.

We had it in our hands—the cure for the ills of the world—and we let go of it, Peta thought as the lights came back on in the suite. She knew without looking that the monitors were back in operation, and that downstairs in the casino and out on the Strip, it was business as usual. “And so the world goes on,” she said.

“Time for our meeting?” Frik was apparently trying to resume command of the situation.

“We’ll meet, all right, but without you.” Arthur took a step toward him. “You’re out of here.”

The others chorused their agreement.

Frik didn’t move. Almost in pantomime, Ray walked over to Arthur’s side. Frik backed up to the exit. “You’ll be sorry, you bastards.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Arthur said. “What do you think, guys?” His glance included Peta.

Reserving judgment on the issue of whether or not she wanted to be one of the boys, she joined the Daredevils as they walked Frikkie out of the penthouse.

Epilogue

GULF OFPARIA, JANUARY1, 2001

At the base of the abandoned oil rig in the Dragon’s Mouth, off the coast of Trinidad, Manny Sheppard cut his engine. In the absolute quiet of the Caribbean night, he watched a strange glow hovering over the water.

Beneath it, a rippling began, like waves from a dropped stone. Once, twice, and again, as if in a three-gun salute to Obeah, and to the dead and finally buried, the glow faded and returned. Then it began a slow ascent into the heavens.

About the Authors

Kevin J. Anderson has written twenty-six national bestsellers and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and theScience Fiction Chronicle Readers’ Choice Award. He lives in Monument, Colorado. Janet Berliner, author of many novels, including the Bram Stoker Award–winningChildren of the Dusk (with George Guthridge), lives in Las Vegas. She has also edited many anthologies, includingPeter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn . Matthew J. Costello lives north of New York City. He is the author of numerous novels, includingUnidentified , a recent Literary Guild Selection, and has teamed up with F. Paul Wilson on two previous novels. F. Paul Wilson has written more than twenty novels, including the bestsellerThe Keep and the Repairman Jack novels. Twice winner of the Prometheus Award for best libertarian fiction, he lives in Wall, New Jersey.