“We thought that you’d be walking in with a few mercenaries. What’s the problem, Boone? Is the Evergreen Foundation cutting back on staff?”

“Three of my men are dead,” Boone said. “This is an emergency. I need to speak to Gabriel Corrigan. Can you contact him?”

The two Harlequins glanced at each other as Gabriel stepped through the bedroom doorway.

“That can be arranged.”

40

As a child, Maya had been taught to plan, but never anticipate. There was an important distinction between these two ways of thinking. When fighting with a kendo sword, she tried to be ready for anything and never assume that her opponent would behave in a certain way.

That might be possible in combat, but it was hard to extend the lesson to the rest of her life. Ever since her father’s death, she had wondered what would happen when she finally tracked down Nathan Boone. In these fantasies, Boone was usually weak or wounded. He would admit his various crimes and beg for mercy.

Now the real Nathan Boone was standing in the middle of a hotel suite next to a glass coffee table and a flower arrangement. The Head of Security for the Evergreen Foundation didn’t appear weak or frightened. Ignoring the two Harlequins, he answered Gabriel’s questions.

“So you found this man, Doyle, in Thailand, and brought him back to America?”

“That’s correct.”

“And he murdered fourteen children?”

“No – the children are still alive. I ordered two members of my team to take them out to the Mojave Desert. We leased an abandoned gold mine near the town of Rosamond.”

“But you were going to kill them eventually,” Priest said.

“I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. This is an unusual situation for me.”

“You sure as hell weren’t going to let them go.” Priest glanced at Gabriel as if to say-let me kill this bastard-but the Traveler concentrated on Boone’s eyes.

“I understand why you couldn’t do it,” Gabriel said. “You didn’t want those children to die like your daughter.”

“Who told you about that?”

“The story was in all the newspapers. The estranged husband of your daughter’s teacher came to the school and shot his wife. Then he murdered several of the children standing beside her.”

Boone was breathing hard. “He hated his wife, but why did he kill the children? My daughter was innocent.”

“A year after the incident, you joined the Evergreen Foundation,” Gabriel said. “You either found them or they found you.”

“I got a call from Kennard Nash, and they flew me to New York. They had my file from the army and they knew about my intelligence background. Nash showed me this model of the Panopticon and explained the system. He said that my daughter would still be alive if everything was controlled and monitored. The General told me what to do and I started working. You need to understand something, I’ve always obeyed orders.” Boone spoke as this last statement was the catechism of his faith.

“Your daughter was killed,” Maya said, “so you hired this man, Martin Doyle, to kill more children?”

“That’s why you have to let me go. I think Doyle is driving out to the desert to finish the job.”

Gabriel turned to Maya. “Go out to Rosamond with Boone. See if you can save the children.”

“Maybe he’s lying, Gabriel. We don’t even know if Martin Doyle exists.”

“We’ll go over to the Culver Hotel. If the story checks out, I’ll call you on your mobile phone. You’ll know in the next twenty minutes if Boone is telling the truth.” Gabriel turned to Priest. “You’re going to help me find my brother and deal with his bodyguards.”

Maya went into the bedroom, pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her shotgun. For a moment, she thought about calling Gabriel into the room and telling him her secret, but she quickly discarded the idea. She was going on a journey with the man who killed her father.

***

Boone and Maya walked out to the hotel parking lot and stood beside the rental car. “I’ll drive,” he said. “You can sit behind me so you can shoot me whenever you wish. The best moment will be when we reach the entrance to the mining site.”

Maya waited until Boone got behind the steering wheel, then slid into the back and placed her shotgun on the seat. She drew Boone’s automatic and clicked off the safety. It annoyed her that he was right-the best time to kill him was when the car stopped at the mine. But she could also make up an excuse and tell him pull to turn off the road when they were close to their destination. She would have to make her decision in an hour or so.

By now, she was used to the Los Angeles landscape-so unlike London or Rome. Its freeways were massive rivers that flowed though parks and neighborhoods. Signs for car washes and smog testing centers were everywhere. In the Vast Machine, both cars and humans were moveable objects that could be tracked.

Her mobile phone rang and she heard Priest’s voice. “Where are you?”

“On the freeway, heading east.”

“The man you’re traveling with told us the truth. We just found three dead rats.”