“What?”
“I will not not be left alone. And I will not allow anyone to bother Dr. Solow. Tell that to your superiors at Langley. The director of Ops will know just how serious I am.”
“Yes, sir.”
Veil returned to his arsenal on the third floor. He selected a .45 automatic, which he placed in a small duffel bag along with lock-picking tools and a length of light but strong nylon rope. Then he went out and took a cab to the CIA’s safe house on the Upper West Side. He disarmed the security system from a circuit box on the side of the brownstone, then picked the lock on the back door and went in. He found the field operative, a bald, burly man dressed in matching green slacks, shirt, and sport jacket, in a room on the ground floor watching television and drinking beer. The man leaped to his feet and grabbed for the gun in his shoulder holster when Veil entered, and Veil whipped the barrel of his .45 against the side of the man’s head, knocking him unconscious. Veil tied up the operative with the nylon cord, then left the room and bounded almost soundlessly up the stairs to the second floor. At the opposite end of a corridor an older man with a withered left arm, dressed in a brown tweed suit and smoking a pipe, was sitting in a chair outside a closed door. When the man looked up, he saw Veil stalking down the corridor toward him, gun raised and aimed at his head. The pipe dropped from the man’s clenched teeth and the color drained from his face as he leaped to his feet and thrust his hands in the air.
“Open it,” Veil said quietly, nodding toward the door.
“It’s not locked,” the man with the withered arm replied in a choked whisper.
Veil turned the knob and opened the door. Then he grabbed the front of the man’s shirt and shoved him hard into the room. The man in tweed stumbled, spun around, landed on the bed, bounced, and fell on the floor on the other side. Dr. Sharon Solow, her long, wheat-colored hair tied back in a ponytail, was sitting under a bright light in an easy chair across the room. She looked up from the book she was reading, and her eyes, almost as blue as his own, went wide when she saw him. She dropped her book, leaped to her feet, and rushed into his arms.
Veil held the woman he loved tightly in his arms, caressing her hair, brushing his lips against her forehead and cheek.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Sharon kissed him hard on the mouth, then stepped back and frowned. “Veil, somehow they found out about the Lazarus Project. They came to me, wanted me to fill them in on the details. I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about. There wasn’t anything I could tell them that wouldn’t involve you. I don’t understand how—”
“They already knew about my involvement. They got hold of some old KGB files that presumably mention the two of us and what you were trying to do in that little mountaintop hospice at Pilgrim’s Institute.”
“Oh God. They must know just enough to get somebody killed.”
“It appears that way. I wonder how many people the Russians killed trying to get somebody through the Lazarus Gate and back again.”
“How did you find me?”
“They decided to use some Lazarus Person they’d found to run a little experiment on me before calling me to tell me they had you. The experiment didn’t quite turn out the way they’d expected.”
“Veil, we have to talk to them!”
“Talk to them?” Veil paused, glanced at the man in the tweed suit, who had gotten to his knees and was peering at Veil over the top of the bed. “I’ve been giving some thought to killing everybody in this house.”
“No, my love! You mustn’t do that! They’re just scientists, and they’re terribly curious.”
“These terribly curious scientists work for a particularly ugly little department in the CIA that was supposed to have been shut down last year.”
“But these people mean no harm — except for the man in green.”
“He’s sleeping this one out.”
“It’s what they’re trying to do that’s so dangerous, my love. We have to talk to them, tell them what will happen if they try to repeat those experiments.”
“I’ll talk to them. You go home.”
“No. I want to be with you.”
Veil turned to the man in the tweed suit, who had finally risen to his feet and was holding tightly to his withered arm, as if it were a frail captive that might slip away. “It looks like you’re finally going to find out what you want to know. Take us to your leader.”
The man cleared his throat, drew himself up straighter. “I... uh, I’m the leader. I’m Dr. Schaefer. What have you done with Dr. Whalen?”
“He’s taking some time out to rethink his approach to this whole matter, and maybe consider other career options. Who else is in the house, besides the Jolly Green Giant?”
“Just Dr. Leeds. She’s downstairs.”
“Is she armed?”
“Of course not. What do you think we—?”
“Let’s go.”
Veil and Sharon followed the man in the tweed suit down two flights of stairs to the basement, which was spacious and had been cleared to make room for a wooden table, a desk, chairs, two hospital gurneys, and an array of medical equipment that was now pushed back against the wall at the opposite end of the room. Half of the wall to their left was covered with a large mural comprised of dozens of separate, framed panels and illuminated by spotlights recessed in the ceiling. A big-boned, white-haired woman who was standing at the table and making notes on a pad looked up and started with alarm as they entered the room.
“Just stay calm, Gail,” the man in the tweed suit said quickly, walking across the room and touching the woman’s hand. “Dr. Solow and Mr. Kendry have agreed to cooperate with us.”
“Veil,” Sharon said in a voice just above a whisper as she turned to look at the multi-paneled mural. “That’s—”
“It certainly is,” Veil replied drily as he stepped closer to the wall to examine his work.
The predominant color of the painting was a brilliant, electric blue surrounded on all sides by clouds of gold-specked black and gray. Brush techniques and alternating patches of thin and thick layers of pigment projected the illusion of movement, of flight toward a gray figure with outstretched arms silhouetted against a pool of brilliant, pure white light. In the space where the figure’s heart would be was an open rectangle where the brick wall behind the mural showed through. “I painted ‘The Lazarus Gate’ a long time ago,” Veil continued quietly, turning back to the two scientists. “The Company must have gone to considerable trouble and expense to find and put all these panels together. My work doesn’t come cheap.”
It was the white-haired woman who answered. “It took years. The individual panels were in museums, galleries, and private collections all over the world. But we never could find the last panel. Would you tell us what’s there?”
Veil’s response was to point to the strips of paper that were EKG printouts taped to the wall next to the mural. Each clearly showed the signature Lazarus Spike of someone who had been clinically dead and then brought back to life after having seen the Lazarus Gate. “Have you tried to send anybody there yet?”
“No,” the woman replied evenly. “We needed more information before we tried to conduct the experiment. That’s why we were so anxious to speak to you and Dr. Solow. Is it true that humans who approach the Lazarus Gate as they are dying become telepathic?”
“Where did you get these EKG printouts?”
“From the hospital records of Lazarus People, men and women who had a near-death experience naturally.”
“I assume you questioned all of them. What did they say when you asked them if they’d become telepathic when they were dying?”