“All natural resources …”
“As if an impending collapse of the dollar-based economy was imminent.”
“Inevitable because the Committee made it so. But how?”
“That I don’t know,” the Dwarf replied. “All I have is a word one of my people stumbled upon in the course of work: Tantalus.”
Locke’s eyebrows flickered. “Greek mythology …”
“Then the term is familiar to you.”
Locke nodded. “The Gods punished Tantalus for his crimes by placing him chin-deep in water he couldn’t drink. Over his head were fruit-filled branches he couldn’t reach. It’s where the word tantalize comes from.”
“Yes,” added the Dwarf, “and as I recall the punishment was to last for eternity.”
“With no chance for a reprieve. But what does that tell us about the Committee’s plan?”
“Their recent financial resettlements indicate a plot to render the United States as helpless as Tantalus was in determining its own fate.”
“Food,” Locke muttered. “The allusions all come back to food. Food that can’t be eaten, lying out of reach for …”
“Eternity,” the Dwarf completed.
Locke returned to Rome some hours later on a private plane arranged for by the Dwarf. The shape of what he was facing was clear now, and he found himself more frightened than ever.
Tantalus….
The Dwarf’s portrait of the Committee painted them as invulnerable. This was the ultimate criminal organization, for its crimes lay less in action than in the ways in which forces around them were manipulated. Those ways were always subtle, the shadowy sub-layer behind them hiding their true intentions behind screen after screen.
In the cab from the airport to the Rome Hilton, Locke determined Dogan was probably in San Sebastian by then and his family was God knows where. It was afternoon in Washington. If all was well, Greg would be dragging through the last hours of school thinking about baseball practice, Whitney would be passing notes in math, Bobby would be pounding out guitar riffs, and Beth would be showing a house in Bethesda. Locke prayed that was the way things were because it would mean the Committee hadn’t touched them.
He’d know for sure soon enough, because he was heading home. As soon as Dogan reached Rome, Chris would advise him of his plans and refuse to be talked out of them. Charney had told him to trust no one. The arguments had seemed valid when the enemy had been merely a shadowy outline. But now that enemy had taken a shape that held terrifying implications. Someone in Washington would listen. Information relayed by the Dwarf and Felderberg could be confirmed. The Committee would not be allowed to condemn the world to the fate of Tantalus.
Locke checked into the Hilton exhausted, craving a shower and a long sleep with the air conditioning turned on high. He had only the one bag from the Vaduz Station locker that Dogan had returned to him, so he told the desk clerk a bellhop would be unnecessary; the fewer people who saw him, the better.
His room was on the sixth floor, and in his fatigue he neglected to press the proper button in the elevator until it stopped on two. Four floors later he moved thoughtlessly for his room. The key slid in easily, the door just clearing the carpet as he swung it open.
A light was on in the far corner. A shape was seated not far from it.
“Good evening, Mr. Locke,” greeted the shape.
Panic seized Chris and blood rushed to his head. He swung quickly back toward the door and found himself facing the biggest man he had ever seen.
The giant stepped forward. Locke moved backward. The giant, a grinning Chinese wearing a white suit, closed the door and threw the bolt.
“We have some business to transact, Mr. Locke” came the voice of the shape, and Locke turned back toward it. The speaker was on his feet now. He was a tall, striking man with perfectly styled jet-black hair and dark eyes. A cigarette in a gold holder danced in his right hand. The man pressed the cigarette out in an ashtray. His features were not American, European, or Oriental but somehow a combination of all three.
“Who are you?”
“Ah.” The dark man smiled and Locke felt the giant draw up close to his rear. “The standard question. Who I am doesn’t matter,” the man continued. “I suspect you know who I represent.”
Locke said nothing.
“The Committee is most unhappy with this crusade you’ve been waging. We thought we’d give you the opportunity to agree to a business arrangement between us. You possess some information we wish to purchase.”
Locke held his ground, coiling his fingers into fists to still their trembling. Escape was clearly impossible. His greatest weapon was his calm, if he could keep it.
“A purchase implies you have something to offer in return,” he said coolly.
“An accurate analysis.” The dark man’s eyes moved toward the giant. “Show him, Shang.”
Locke turned in time to see the Chinese giant pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He unraveled the layers and held it forward for Locke to see its contents.
Chris saw the blood first, dried and purple, and then the object.
Bile bubbled in his throat. The object was a small finger with a—
“Oh, my God!”
— ring still wedged past the middle joint. Greg’s Little League championship ring.
“We offer the life of your son,” Mandala said flatly.
But Locke had already sank to his knees, opening his mouth for a scream that was choked off by the giant’s hand.
The jeep crept down the last of the desolate stretch toward what remained of San Sebastian. Dogan could still smell the residue from the fire in the air, could feel the death it had brought in the hot wind. The closer the jeep drew to the site of the massacre, the more uncomfortable he became.
At the wheel was Marna Colby, a CIA operative who had spent the last four years at substations throughout South America and the six before that working under Dogan at Division Six. There were few women he had ever allowed himself to become attracted to; Marna was one of them because she tempered tenderness with strength. Dogan responded best to strength and a woman who showed it. Marna was as brave and skillful an operative as he’d ever worked with, and he had genuinely lamented her reassignment, both for her talents in the field and in bed. For Dogan, sex had seldom proved fulfilling. Marna provided an exception. But sex was the furthest thing from their minds now.
The jeep had behaved like a loyal animal, pushing past or climbing over debris tossed into the road by the fire. One mile before they reached the remains of the town, the vehicle met its match in a series of huge branches charred black as charcoal. They climbed out and started walking.
“Why so much interest from Division over a dead town?” Marna prodded Dogan. “I know we’re the last to hear things down here but if San Sebastian’s important, I should have been informed.”
“The interest isn’t Division’s, it’s mine. And the interest comes from the hope that the dead might be able to tell me what the living can’t.”
“It’s good you’re not expecting to find anyone alive. The fire got them all.”
“Something else got them all. The fire was just a cover.”
Dogan’s grim tone silenced her as much as his words. They continued walking, and with each step Dogan felt his heart thudding harder. Death was something you never got used to, and he could feel the agony of those butchered in the hail of bullets Lubeck had described. Maybe their ghosts walked the charred land. Maybe they could tell him what the hell it all meant.