I heard a ghostly voice in the room. It took a moment to realize that it was I myself who was rattling off the names, like a medieval incantation: “Incirlik, Araxos, Aviano, Ghedi Torre, Ramstein, Büchel, Volkel, Kleine Brogel, Lakenheath, Kings Bay, Whiteman, Barksdale, Minot, Warren, Malmstrom, Kitsap. And then Niscemi… Niscemi… Niscemi.” The key to the entire system. The secret of secrets.
Only when Ingrid grabbed my right hand in her left, with surprising roughness—like a strict piano teacher trying to help an obtuse pupil with fingering, once more teacher and pupil, mentor and novice—did my body recall the rest of the code.
Every time Ingrid pressed my right index finger against the keyboard, at exactly the same time as she typed out the same sequences with her own right index finger, an ever larger part of the code appeared in my mind. We sped through the sequences together: 111 319 172 015 151 65K 101 117 10C O31 018 412 P10 R24 151 2O1 24, Ingrid driven in pursuit of her goal, focused on not just me but also on her own keyboard and the control console monitor.
“EXTINCTION MODE ACTIVATED”. The briefcase flashing, the command terminal flashing. The consoles around flashing in bright red.
She gripped my hand tight, pulled it away from the keyboard. The light from the screens flooding dark shadows across her face then blanketing her features in white—her eyes wild, glistening—close to my own. I tasted the sourness of her breath, the fumes of napalm from her crown.
“Erasmus, my treasure. We have control. Our lonely little moment,” she said. And moved closer. “Yet maybe not so lonely.”
Ingrid pulled my hand to her own terminal using my index finger to sequence an unfamiliar code. A new map flooded all the screens: Russia, China, Iran, a field of yellow triangles tangled by red lines in a web across the giant land mass of Eurasia.
“I have had a little help over the years, Erasmus. In small corners. Do you understand me, Erasmus? Are you ready?”
Then I could not take any more. I remember violent retching—my body writhing from within to escape from itself—eyes bursting from my skull. I fell into the black beneath the table. Ingrid bent with me, soothing, stroking my hair with her free hand, the thin bones of her left still entwined around my own.
And that explained why not even she noticed the two other costumed figures in the command center. Maybe the figures had already been standing in here when we arrived, biding their time behind us while our concentration was so focused to the front, getting hold of our code sequences. Maybe they had followed the threads all the way in. I myself, however, only became aware of them when the grip on my wrist tightened to such an extent that it could no longer be Ingrid who was holding it. Then I recognized Zafirah’s spiced scent, for the first time since the Ice Hotel. Her concentrated power applied to the arteries in both of my wrists.
I had hardly enough strength even to turn. Just caught a glimpse of Zafirah’s furious, made-up presence behind me, modeled on Death: the image from Blu’s mighty mural in Niscemi.
When in the next instant she cut the hidden main fuse, the whole control console went dead. Then Sixten cut the power to both my briefcase and Ingrid’s computer, including the reserve batteries, not hesitating, knowing exactly how to do it. Needing nothing more than a free hand and the light from Ingrid’s Lucia crown.
Not pausing, he opened the protective doors—smoothly keying the code: LISA 1969—and led Ingrid toward the spiral staircase. They seemed to me like an abstract sculpture. The tall woman and the even taller man. The two lovers with the projects they had once had together: Doomsday and the child.
He had his weapon against her throat, in a stranglehold she was unable to break, he as trained as she. Both in their masquerade costumes. Mahatma Gandhi and St Lucia, entwined, joined for one last time. She so decisively betrayed in her cut-off Lucia nightgown and theatrical crown of lights.
Not one of us said anything. We simply went up the stairs together, all four figures, in two pairs. When we came out through the sliding door by the upper command center, the special forces stepped in: six fully armed soldiers around each one of us. Sixten—Mahatma Gandhi, the pacifist—halted and waved his pistol at Ingrid.
“This woman will face a military tribunal for grave breaches of security.”
Then Sixten turned to me with his steel-blue eyes, for the first time since our meeting again here. I saw clearly that he was crying, his voice cracking.
“But this man is an altogether different case. He killed my life companion up there, a few minutes ago. She had been my heart and soul for forty-five enchanted years. And he did it in the most savage way imaginable.”
7
Final Quarter
February–March 2014
Niscemi, Italy
7.01
It was not an interrogation in the conventional sense. But in Edelweiss’ sense. Began only after endless waiting.
“Well, here we all are. Together again!”
Edelweiss seemed to be overlooking the fact that while there were indeed as many of us in the lecture hall as had been in NUCLEUS, six including Alpha, two were new. Kurt and John’s replacements were dramatically different from each other—one tall and dark, the other short and ruddy—but functionally they were the same. Animals with no great evolutionary finesse. Muscles and reflexes, the most rudimentary wiring, trained to react to the slightest stimuli.
They were two out of the ten special security agents who had taken us under guard from the depths of the M.U.O.S. base and off-site to a secure location. The bodyguards were standing behind me and Ingrid on our stainless-steel revolving stools fixed to the podium floor. To avoid any repetition of the incidents at Dulles airport, no guard was secured to us. We were chained instead to the stools, with our hands cuffed behind our backs: an arrangement as good as escape proof.
While waiting for the interrogation to begin, the guards at regular intervals spun us around on our stools. Not for any reason I could make out—just because they could. In this particular moment in time, they had the power and the possibility.
These people probably had names too, some sort of designation, real or invented. But since none of them had as yet been used, I had no means of knowing what they were. I just said “Kurt-or-John,” if for example I needed to go to the bathroom to throw up after some particularly rapid revolutions on my stool. A meaningless bit of fuss, which probably did not even register with them. But it was the only thing I could do in this situation. Thrash around a little under the gallows.
Edelweiss had moved himself here from our headquarters in anticipation of events, pulling his strings. Was sitting in his special chair, in the center of the first row of the audience seating. In the armchair to his left was the briefcase in its original guise: black and anonymous. The security strap was attached to his left wrist, in accordance with regulations. Ingrid’s black backpack containing the portable command terminal was propped up against the briefcase.
So everything remained under cover, hidden. Machines and men, brooding over their secrets.
Zafirah, the other surviving member of our original Team, was one seat beyond the briefcase and the backpack. To the left and right of her and Edelweiss were framed photographs. On the low podium in front of them, a candle was burning. The portrait to the left, as I looked at it, showed a dark young man with a pronounced dimple in his chin. The one to the right was similar but with sharper features and blond hair that was crew-cut in those days. Both Kurt and John—whichever was which—looked so expectant in those old portraits. Ravenously curious about the future.