“A terrorist threat,” Nash said.
“Or something of that sort. At this point, the Evergreen Foundation will offer the Shadow Program to our friends in the German government. The moment it becomes established, our political allies will make sure that it becomes a worldwide system. This is not just a tool against crime and terrorism. Companies will like the idea of a system that can exactly determine an employee’s location and actions. Is the employee drinking during lunch? Is he going to the library at night and taking inappropriate books from the shelves? The Shadow Program will allow a certain number of controversial books and films to exist in the marketplace. The public reaction to these commodities gives us more information to create our duplicate reality.”
There was a brief silence, and Michael seized the opportunity. “I would like to say something.”
General Nash looked surprised. “This is not the time or place, Michael. You can give me your notes after the meeting.”
“I disagree,” Mrs. Brewster said. “I would like to hear the views of our Traveler.”
Jensen nodded rapidly. He was eager to move on to any topic of conversation that didn’t involve the duplicate professor on the television screen. “Sometimes it’s good to get a different perspective.”
Michael stood up and faced the Brethren. Each person sitting in front of him was wearing a mask created by a lifetime of deceit, the adult face concealing the emotions once expressed as a child. As the Traveler watched, these masks dissolved into little fragments of reality.
“The Shadow Program is a brilliant achievement,” Michael said. “Once it’s successful in Berlin, it can easily be extended to other countries. But there is one threat that could destroy the whole system.” He paused and looked around the room. “You have an active Traveler out in the world. A person who can cause resistance to your plans.”
“Your brother is not a significant problem,” Nash said. “He’s a fugitive without any support.”
“I’m not talking about Gabriel. I’m talking about my father.”
Michael saw surprise in their faces and then Kennard Nash’s anger. The general hadn’t told them about Matthew Corrigan. Perhaps he didn’t want to look weak and unprepared.
“I beg your pardon.” Mrs. Brewster sounded as if she had just found an error in a restaurant bill. “Didn’t your father disappear years ago?”
“He’s still alive. Right now, he could be anywhere in the world, organizing resistance to the Panopticon.”
“We’re investigating,” Nash sputtered. “Mr. Boone is dealing with the problem and he assures me that-”
Michael interrupted. “The Shadow Program will fail-all of your programs will fail-unless you find my father. You know that he started the New Harmony community in Arizona. Who knows what other centers of resistance he has started-or is organizing right now?”
A tense silence engulfed the room. Looking at the faces of the Brethren, Michael knew that he had managed to manipulate their fear.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Jensen asked. “Do you have any ideas?”
Michael bowed his head like a humble servant. “Only a Traveler can find another Traveler. Let me help you.”
12
On Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, Gabriel found a storefront travel agency with a dusty collection of beach toys displayed in the front window. The agency was run by Mrs. Garcia, an older Dominican woman who weighed at least three hundred pounds. Chattering in a mixture of English and Spanish, she pushed at the floor with her feet and scooted around the room in an office chair with squeaky wheels. When Gabriel said that he wanted to buy a one-way ticket to London-paying in cash-Mrs. Garcia stopped moving and studied her new customer.
“You have a passport?”
Gabriel placed his new passport on the desk. Mrs. Garcia inspected it like a customs official and decided that it was acceptable. “A one-way ticket makes questions with inmigración y la policía. Maybe questions no good. Sí?”
Gabriel remembered Maya’s explanation of air travel. The people who got searched were grandmothers carrying fingernail scissors and other passengers who violated simple rules. While Mrs. Garcia rolled over to her desk, he checked the money in his wallet. Buying a round-trip ticket would leave him about a hundred and twenty dollars. “All right,” he told her. “Sell me a round-trip ticket. On the first flight out.”
Mrs. Garcia used her personal credit card to buy the ticket, and she gave Gabriel information about a hotel in London. “You don’t stay there,” she explained. “But you must give el oficial del pasaporte an address and phone number.” When Gabriel admitted that he didn’t have any luggage other than his shoulder bag, the travel agent sold him a canvas suitcase for twenty dollars and stuffed it with some old clothes. “Now you are a tourist. So what do you want to see in England? They might ask you that question.”
Tyburn Convent, Gabriel thought. That’s where my father is. But he shrugged his shoulders and looked down at the scuffed linoleum. “London Bridge, I guess. Buckingham Palace…”
“Bueno, Mr. Bentley. Say hello to the queen.”
Gabriel had never flown overseas before, but he had seen the experience in movies and television commercials. Well-dressed people were shown lounging in comfortable seats, where they had conversations with other attractive passengers. The actual experience reminded him of the summer he and Michael had spent working at a cattle feed lot outside of Dallas, Texas. The cattle had bar-coded tags stapled to their ears, and a great deal of time was spent picking out the steers that had been there too long, inspecting them, weighing them, sorting them into pens, driving them down narrow chutes, and forcing them into trucks.
Eleven hours later, he stood in the customs line at Heathrow Airport. When it was his turn, he approached the passport officer, a Sikh with a full beard. The officer took Gabriel’s passport and studied him for a moment.
“Have you ever visited the United Kingdom?”
Gabriel offered the man his most relaxed smile. “No. This is my first time.”
The officer ran the passport through a scanner and studied the screen before him. The biometric information on the RFID chip matched the photograph and the information already placed within the system. Like most citizens in a dull job, the officer trusted the machine more than his own instincts. “Welcome to Britain,” he said, and suddenly Gabriel was in a new country.
It was almost eleven o’clock at night when he changed his money, left the terminal, and took the Tube into London. Gabriel got off at King’s Cross station and wandered around the area until he found a hotel. The single room was as big as a closet and frost crystals were on the inside of the window, but he kept his clothes on, wrapped himself in the thin coverlet, and tried to sleep.
Gabriel had turned twenty-seven a few months before he left Los Angeles. It had been fifteen years since he had seen his father. His strongest memories came from the period in which his family lived without electricity or telephones on a farm in South Dakota. He could still recall his father teaching him how to change the oil in the pickup truck, and the night that his parents danced with each other beside the firelight in the parlor. He remembered sneaking downstairs at night when he was supposed to be in bed, peering through the doorway, and seeing his father sitting alone at the kitchen table. Matthew Corrigan looked thoughtful and sad at those moments-as if an immense weight had been placed on his shoulders.