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“And rejected them out-of-hand?”

“No, but neither am I willing to accept them under the same terms.”

“They certainly make as much sense as the postulate you’ve advanced,” Teke continued.

“If not more,” Metzencroy agreed. “But in Project Vortex we must be sure at all costs. The slightest doubt cannot be allowed to enter in. The stakes are too high.”

“Professor,” began Chilgers, choosing carefully the point at which he reentered the conversation, “let me remind you that we are the Control for Operational Ballistic Research and Activation. Finding new weapons to assure our country of world supremacy, or at the very least the avoidance of all-out war, is what COBRA is all about. And that directive, I’m afraid, entails taking chances while we endeavor of course to minimize the risks. I’ve been around long enough to have heard all the stories out of Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project. That five hundred scientists signed a petition begging the United States not to set off the first bomb because maybe, just maybe, it would set off a chain reaction that would have led to the end of the world. Some well-respected scientists, in fact, put the odds at no better than fifty-fifty. Fifty-fifty that the world was going to cease to be, Professor, and they still went ahead with the bomb. Perhaps a hundred have been detonated since and the world has remained in one piece.”

“Vortex goes far beyond the atomic bomb,” Metzencroy repeated.

“Which is all the more reason to go on with all experiments as scheduled. Do you think the Russians are sitting around asking themselves these same questions of conscience and morality? Do you think they care about being sure? God, no. They’ll be proceeding full speed ahead with their own research and I’d wager they’d laugh at the points you raised.”

“So where does it end?” Metzencroy asked in frustration, staring vacantly before him. “We build an atomic bomb, they build an atomic bomb. We have our version of Project Vortex, they undoubtedly are working on theirs. Where does it end?”

“In this case,” answered Teke, “with who finishes first.”

“Which means,” picked up Colonel Chilgers, “that we can’t afford to come in second. Your points are well taken, Professor, but not very convincing. I’m a man who believes in the odds and right now the odds you’ve presented don’t require suspension of the project.”

“But I can continue to work on the problem.”

“Certainly,” Chilgers agreed, glad he could placate Metzencroy with something. “But the final stage of Vortex is scheduled for one week from today. I want everything finished up by then.”

Metzencroy rose, apparently thankful for a reason to take his leave. “Then I’d better get to work. Be warned, though, Colonel. You might not like what I find.”

“It’s your project, Professor. My faith in your abilities and judgment is total.”

Chilgers bit his lip as Metzencroy passed by him and left the room.

“He may turn into a problem,” Teke advised.

“He already has. Unfortunately, replacing him would pose an even greater one.”

“All the same, we’d better keep our eyes on him. If he reached the right people in Washington, we’d be finished.”

“If he reached anyone in Washington, we’d be finished, Teke. But they’ll thank us when it’s over.”

“If they don’t hang us, you mean.”

“This is COBRA, Teke. It’s our business to take chances.”

Teke extracted a set of stapled pages from his jacket. “We certainly took one by initiating the tangent stage of Project Vortex. Nothing good’s come out of it at all. I wanted to save my report for when the good professor took his leave.”

Chilgers relit his pipe. “I’m waiting.”

Teke turned his head slightly and his bald dome caught some stray light and shot it against the wall. The pumped-in, filtered air was strangely cool and fresh, containing the scent of pine.

“To begin with,” Teke said, studying his pages, “we picked up the passengers of Flight 22 on schedule, to follow and monitor as outlined in the schema for this stage of Vortex. Trouble is we lost one.”

“Impossible!”

“That’s what I said. But a report came in from one of our field agents assigned to the original airport detail that reads otherwise.”

“Who’d he lose?”

“A fifteen-year-old boy named David Phelps. Claims he was looking right at the boy standing in line at a drinking fountain and then he just wasn’t there anymore.”

“Must have melted into a crowd and run off. Your man must have gotten clumsy, Teke,” Chilgers charged. “Still, we’ve taken steps in the event of such an occurrence. Tracking him down should have been no problem at all.”

“Not exactly. As you know, all passengers on Flight 22 had small tracking nodules placed in their meals….”

“And I suppose you’re going to tell me this boy didn’t eat,” Chilgers interjected.

“The problem is a bit more complicated than that. Tracking the signal the nodules give off has proven virtually impossible thanks to video games.”

“Video games, Teke?”

“They operate on the same wavelength as our nodules. Our trackers have been going crazy trying to pin down the boy. Due to interference they’ve had to limit their search to late nights and even that’s been confusing. We’ve narrowed things down, though. Should have a fix on the boy sometime tomorrow.”

“Fine. Now let me have the rest of your report.”

Teke sighed. “It gets worse. The delay in degeneration caused some problems at Kennedy Tower. An air traffic controller out there is trying like hell to find out what happened. It appears he witnessed the moment of degeneration.”

“You’ve covered our tracks I assume.”

Teke nodded. “All tapes included.”

“Then it would appear this controller can be dealt with rather easily.”

“Maybe not. I pulled his file this afternoon. The computer spit out the name of a former acquaintance of his who might be of interest to us: Joshua Bane.”

“Jesus Christ …”

“We have reason now to believe that the controller’s already made contact with him.”

Chilgers snuffed out his pipe. “What’s his connection with Bane?”

“Vietnam.”

“That’s not good. It implies far more than casual acquaintance which means Bane won’t dismiss the controller as crazy.”

“Potentially, he might even believe him,” added Teke.

“Believe what, that a 727 vanished? Even if he did, he’d have no place to go with it. The trail’s already gone ice-cold. Still, we’d be well advised to observe caution here. We don’t want Bane becoming too active.”

Chilgers started fidgeting in his chair, a clear sign to Teke that it was time for him to leave.

“I’d better see about the professor,” he said, rising. “I’ll keep you informed on our efforts to locate the missing boy.”

Chilgers nodded. Teke walked stiffly from the room.

The colonel leaned back and drew in a heavy breath. “You can come in now,” he said into the intercom he had switched on at the meeting’s start, piping the conversation into a room across the hall.

The door opened and a tall man entered, an overcoat draped around his shoulders leaving his arms free. His hair was mostly gray and neatly styled. He moved slowly, each step measured and sure, his gaze deliberate to the point of being mechanical. His eyes, a medium gray color, digested everything about them like a computer weighing data for evaluation.

“Well Trench,” Chilgers began, “what do you make of Teke’s report?”

Still standing, Trench spoke. “I assume you’re referring specifically to the parts relating to Bane. The Winter Man’s finished. The damage he could do us if left alone is minimal. If we provoke him, his potential rises significantly.”