Fourteen

John looked at the rest of the letters written on the piece of paper and began to play them. They came easily, now that he had a pattern to work from. The first wave of notes were indeed the droning bridge from "L.A. Woman": "Mr. Mojo risin' . . ." The next transcribed lines (A-A-A-A-G-A-G-C-G-A-A) were the chorus of the song: "L.A. woman, Sunday afternoon." As John plucked the strings, Father Thomas sang that, too. Funny. The priest hadn't struck John as a Lizard King fan.

John was getting into the rhythm of the song when the last line threw him. Only three letters in the last line of the transcript—C, C, and E—were notes. The rest of them . . . who knew?

"This last bit isn't music," John said. "Take a look."

The clones gathered round the table and gazed at raw Morse code Jay had scribbled onto the paper, then to Michael's translation below it:

-.-.-.-.-..- -.-. . . . -.. .. . .. .. ..

CCXCVIIEIII

"Those are Roman numerals," Father Thomas said quickly. "At least almost all of them are."

Jay picked up the slip of paper. "He's right." The UN specialist frowned, then tapped at the last letter of the writing. "But E isn't a Roman numeral; at least, I don't think so."

"It's not," Father Thomas said. "Does that mean that none of these letters are supposed to be Roman numerals?"

"One step at a time, hoss," Michael said. "Let's test the theory before we throw it out. Aside from the E, what's this thing say? Kilroy, can you deliver?"

"Yes," Kilroy2.0 said, and typed on his keyboards. A new window popped onto the computer screen; just one of at least a dozen. "With the exception of the E—which doesn't translate into a Roman numeral—the number reads 297 and then 3."

Sighing, Jack plopped down on the couch beside John, who had to quickly move the Martin so it wouldn't be bumped. "Christ. This guy doesn't give us a break, does he?"

"You gotta sing for your supper around here," Michael said. "No pun intended, John."

John smiled slightly, placing the guitar back in the case.

"Okay. Let's think about this," Dr. Mike said. The profiler began to pace. "The song is 'L.A. Woman.' It's written by the Doors. Mr. Mojo's risin' and all that. And now, 297, the letter E and 3. So. What do they all have in common? What's the link?"

"The words L.A. Woman have seven letters," Father Thomas said. "Seven letters, seven clones, 7th Son." Then, as if he needed to explain: "Just a thought. I'm a crossword junkie."

"Not bad," Jay said. "Sevens. We should write that down."

He then looked over at Kleinman, who, along with General Hill, was standing away from the group, silently watching them work. Kleinman winked and tossed Jay his pocket notebook. Jay caught it with one hand, then knelt by the table and began writing.

John spoke up. "Well, we could take the anagram approach. I mention it because there's some lore out there about the lyric 'Mr. Mojo risin'.' They say it's an anagram for 'Jim Morrison.' It's true, by the way."

"No shit," Michael said.

"Not a pebble."

" 'L.A. Woman' anagrams into 'AWOL Man,' " Kilroy2.0 said.

"That's sounds appropriate," Michael said. "Alpha ran like hell from this place."

The hacker raised a finger. "It also anagrams into 'anal mow.' "

John laughed.

"Okay. So maybe it anagrams into a clue," Dr. Mike said, waving his hand distractedly, "and maybe it doesn't. Big picture first. The title. 'L.A. Woman' is significant. My gut's telling me whatever Alpha is saying has something to do with Los Angeles. Here's a happy coincidence: L.A. is my stomping ground. It's where I live."

They considered this for a moment, as Jay scribbled his notes onto the notepad.

"You know, that might be important in itself," Father Thomas said. "I mean, Alpha deliberately left the Morse-code file for us, even labeled it for us. He knew it'd take someone who understood Morse code to spell out the letters—and a musician to play those letters, right? And the Roman numerals. It's like he's baiting us. It's as if he knows—"

"—that what we know will unlock the clue," Michael said. "Sonuvabitch. No wonder Durbin's boys couldn't get this far. It's written solely for us. The general said we've been tailed our whole lives, and that intel came back to 7th Son. Alpha saw that data while he was still here. He knows us. Knows where we live. Knows our strengths."

"But we don't know what any of this means," Jay said, putting down his pen. "These last numbers: 297, E, 3. Are we supposed to multiply them? Divide them? Are they map coordinates, like Michael said? Pages in a book? A zip code? We'll be here for days trying to figure out what they're supposed to mean."

"You're missing the point," Dr. Mike said, shaking his head. "The priest is right."

"The priest has a name."

"Sorry, Thomas. But you're right: the knowledge we've all used to get to this point has come pretty naturally to us. And Michael's right, too: he's playing on our talents. We couldn't decipher the message separately, sure, but together, we've been able to piece it together with minimal brainpower."

"You call this minimal?" Jack said.

Dr. Mike chuckled. "You should see me on a tough profiling case. I get the worst fucking migraines; shit keeps me up at night. The point is, these clues—all of them, including the Roman numerals—have certainly not been Advil-worthy. The answers have come naturally. This bit with the numbers is the same way. Don't misunderstand. Alpha's smart, probably smarter than us. That's bad for the long run. But right now, it's good. He's guiding us; baiting us, just like Thomas said. I'm sure of it. We just have to make the connections."

John looked back down at the sheet of paper. It's just like the music notes. It's all right there, if you look for it:

-.-. -.-. -..- -.-. . . . - .. .. . .. .. ..

CCXCVIIEIII

297, then E, then 3. What does the E mean? Where in the hell is the E in this thing, anyway?

"Hey, Michael," John said. "Which one of these doohickeys in the Morse code is the E?"

"Our myster-E," Kilroy2.0 said.

The marine plucked the pen from the table and circled a single character, near the end of the code. "There it is, hoss."

John looked at the paper. "It looks like a period. You're telling me that a single dot is an E in Morse code?"

"Yeah," Jay and Michael said simultaneously. They looked at each other and smiled slightly; their mouths crooked up at the right, their dimples appearing in their cheeks at the same time. John shook his head. "Uncanny" doesn't even begin to describe it, he thought.

He was about to say as much when Dr. Mike scooped up the paper and looked at it. His eyes were wide, wild. "What if it were a period?"

"What do you mean?" Father Thomas said.

"The E, damn it. What if the E were just a dot, like John said? A period? What if it weren't supposed to be translated into Morse code?" Dr. Mike crunched the paper in his fist as he paced. He dropped the wad onto the table. "What if it were a decimal point?"

"Then it'd read 297.3," Jack said. "Does that mean anything to you?"

Dr. Mike nodded. "Yeah. I think it does. Kilroy, find me an online copy of the DSM. You know what that is?"

The hacker flinched. A look of horror slipped over his face for an instant. Then he blinked and nodded.

"I bet you do," Dr. Mike said. "I don't care if you have to hack, slash, or burn your way through the whole Net to find it. Just find it, Kilroy."

The lunatic began typing.

John leaned forward. "What's this all about, Doc?"

Mike looked up at John. "We were right. About Alpha. About the clues playing to our strengths. This one's right up my alley."

* * *

It didn't take long for Kilroy2.0 to access an online version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, probably because he did indeed hack, slash, and burn his way through the Internet. He hijacked the identity of at least one psychiatrist (using the doctor's so-called secure information including Social Security number, address, and credit-card numbers) to get the information. For shits and giggles, Kilroy2.0 also ordered a two-year subscription of Penthouse Letters for their unwitting benefactor, one Dr. Robert Riehl of Toledo, Ohio. It was apparently the least Kilroy2.0 could do to thank Dr. Riehl for the kind and selfless loan of his identity.

General Hill and Dr. Kleinman had discovered an uncontrollable urge to discuss something at the far end of the room during these transactions. Their backs were turned through the whole thing. John grinned at that. There it was again. Don't ask, don't tell. Out of sight, out of mind.

Kilroy2.0 loaded and launched something called a trackscrambler before he logged on to the American Psychiatric Association's secure DSM subsite with the stolen ID and password. Kilroy2.0 typed "297.3" in the search field and retrieved one hit.

Dr. Mike was right. It was a psychiatric diagnosis.

"Shared psychotic disorder," Michael read aloud, from over Kilroy2.0's shoulder. The marine didn't seem to register the lunatic's ripe aroma or was charitably ignoring it. "It's a delusion shared between two or more people, usually created by an 'inducer' who's already suffering from a psychotic disorder." He turned to Dr. Mike. "I need a little dose of English over here. The shrinkspeak ain't cutting it."

Dr. Mike stood up from his seat on the couch. "I know this disorder. I studied it in grad school."

"I wonder if Alpha knew that," Jack said.

Jay and Thomas looked at each other, their faces grim.

"I think we know the answer to that," Dr. Mike said. "Shared psychotic disorder is a kind of small-scale 'cult of personality.' "

"Living Colour," John murmured. "Killer song."

"Yeah," Father Thomas said, from beside him. "Whatever happened to them?"

John nearly laughed out loud. "You're full of surprises, Father."

"We're basically talking about a close relationship between two people," Dr. Mike continued, "in which one of them is full shit-bird crazy and the other is highly suggestible but relatively healthy, from a mental perspective. The suggestible person begins believing whatever delusions the psychotic is spouting and also becomes shit-bird crazy in the process. I read about one case in which these two lovers believed, with every shred of their psyches, that the FBI was watching them through their home computer screen.

"Often the delusions are filled with persecution," Dr. Mike continued. "But there are cases in which the couple—or groups of people, this is how cults get started, you know—embrace a more, ah, liberated lifestyle due to the delusions."

"Kinky sex? That what we're talking 'bout here, Doc?" Michael asked.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Thomas said.

"Sometimes," Dr. Mike said. "Think of it more in terms of people doing things they normally wouldn't do, society be damned. Bonnie and Clyde are classic examples. Back in the day, people in my field used to call this condition all kinds of different things: psychic infection, double insanity, contagious insanity. The French had a term for it."

"Yeah, it's here," Michael said, staring at the screen. "Folie á deux."

" 'Madness between two,' " Jay whispered.

"That's right," Dr. Mike said. "Folie á d—"

He stopped in midsentence . . . then literally slapped his hand against his forehead. Kilroy2.0 shrieked a laugh.

"Motherfucker!" Dr. Mike cried. "You wily motherfucker!"

"What is it, Doc?" Michael said.

"It's a place." Dr. Mike waved his arms like a tent revival preacher. "A nightclub in Los Angeles. That's what it was called. Folie á Deux."

Michael clapped Kilroy2.0 on the shoulder. "Kilroy, pull up the L.A.-area business listings, yellow pages, newspapers, maps, whatever you can."

Kilroy2.0 nodded, grinning like the mad genius he undoubtedly was, and began typing furiously on the keyboards.

The marine turned to Dr. Mike and smiled. "We're going club-hopping."

Fifteen

It was a good thing Douglas Devlin could read Cyrillic. Da. A very good thing indeed . . . if only to appreciate the irony stenciled on the tin sign before him.

He stood outside in the Russian darkness, watching his breath condense in the air, his exhale made visible by the few outdoor lights here at the Tatishchevo garrison. The Volga River was about sixty miles away, but the frigid wind hailing from the water made the snowy air brittle even here. And for those who hadn't grown up in such an environment as Devlin had, almost unbearable.

He looked at the sign again—the rusted thing mounted on the exterior of one of the nine 120-foot-long rectangular garages out here in the steppes of Russia—and chuckled. His gloved hands fished into his combat-jacket pockets, searching for those goddamned cigarettes. The sign was barely legible from the rust, and from the thick layer of small, black, circular smudges covering most of the letters. It read, in Russian:

ABSOLUTELY NO

Unauthorized Personnel Allowed On Premises!

ABSOLUTELY NO

Smoking!

Devlin found the crumpled pack of Primas in his breast pocket (the Primas in the camouflage-patterned box, no less—Kovalenko had apparently been a proud SMF man) and shook out one of the filterless cigs. He lit it with Kovalenko's very American silver Zippo. His hands were shaking slightly. Devlin knew it wasn't the cold. After two and a half weeks, this body was finally beginning to betray him.

The cigarette tasted wonderful and awful. He took another deep drag and mashed the glowing cigarette out on the sign, just like the hundreds of soldiers who had come before him. Governments can never regulate some things for long. Smokers, for instance. And unauthorized personnel. Devlin was both.

He grinned cynically; at least he thought it was cynically. Devlin had learned from his brethren that Kovalenko had the face of a child.

Like many things in his life, Devlin owed his fluency in Russian to the Farm . . . Camp Swampy . . . spook school . . . Langley . . . whatever the hell the fresh-faced trainees were calling CIA headquarters these days. But Langley was where he'd learned to speak and read the stuff back in '83, and right now Doug Devlin was glad he had worked there and been educated in All Things Soviet. And All Things Murder. And All Things Bang and Burn. And intel. And weapons.

Devlin coughed and listened to the sound echo throughout the garrison. Those goddamned Primas.

He hated this body. Hated its sagging flesh, the addictions to smokes and booze, the dulled reactions, the rattling cough. Most of his brethren here at Tatishchevo hated their bodies, too. "Russians don't take care of themselves," one of them had said, just hours after Colonel Bogdanov had briefed the entire military compound on its new mission. "Well, if your world sucked as bad as theirs does," Devlin had replied, "you'd drink and smoke yourself to death, too."

That was two weeks ago, a literal lifetime ago. But Devlin's path to this moment, this cigarette, had begun long before that.

* * *

By 1992, the CIA had realized it didn't need such a large army of agents who were trained in All Things Soviet. The world was changing. Almost all of the Company's intel gurus and satellite spy experts—the people who had, in the past decade, managed to point-and-click their way up the food chain of agency importance—were allowed to stay in the family, keep their assignments, and remain watchful over the Russians and their newfound democracy. But most of the field agents—the ones trained for stealth, demolition, and wetwork in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries—found themselves holding pink slips.

Some of them blamed the new doves in the White House. Others blamed the fallout from the early-nineties recession. Doug Devlin didn't blame those things. Devlin had suddenly found himself reassigned from his realm of expertise (All Things Soviet) to "babysitting" jobs in the Middle East (pulling glorified bodyguard duty for rising stars in the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti governments). He blamed this on something that was overpowering, yet elusive.

The way governments conducted business was shifting. Evolving. It seemed that most of the world simply didn't have a place for folks like Doug Devlin anymore: folks who lived to kill. The democracies seemed to grow out of it, as if they were adolescents finally deciding to put away their dolls once and for all. Shutting them away from the world, only pulling them up occasionally to reminisce about years past.

Devlin didn't enjoy being a relic, and he certainly didn't enjoy babysitting a bunch of fucking towelheads who, in a twist of divine irony, had been destined to hold America by the balls ever since Henry Ford built the Model T. So Devlin got out of the business. He worked in the revered private sector as a consultant for about six months. The desks and meetings drove him crazy.

In 1993, Doug Devlin vanished and became a contract killer. It was what he lived to do, after all.

Devlin didn't care who, what company, or which government requested his services. His loyalty to Langley and the great You-Ess-of-Ay had become null when they gave him his reassignment. He was hired by Russian gangsters to kill the leaders of rival mobs. He worked for tongs, the Yakuza, the Taliban. Once, he completed two contracts—one on an Israeli military commander and the other on a Palestinian mullah—in the same day.

By '97, he was killing or kidnapping Americans exclusively. Vacationing CEOs, mostly. Some of the best rogue hunters from Camp Swampy chased him around the globe. Devlin was careful. There were a few close calls, messy ones. But Devlin always managed to slip away, like a passing nightmare, like a shadow that moves with its own mind.

The assassination of the American ambassador to Turkey several years ago had finally done him in. Devlin thought he'd successfully disabled the embassy's closed-circuit surveillance system. He was nabbed on the way out, after he'd done the job. Goddamn Kurds and their unreliable information. He'd never work for them again. Literally.

Since he had been captured by U.S. marine embassy security, and not the spooks who were assigned to liquidate him, he was arrested. The capture, extradition to America, and trial were spectacles that Devlin appreciated. He spilled his guts to a shrink for shits and giggles, just to watch the soft-palmed bookworm squirm. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Devlin didn't play the plea-bargain game, didn't fight the inevitable with appeal after appeal. He was sure the U.S. government was thrilled by that. He was incarcerated in the Ormerod Maximum Security Federal Penitentiary in Texas, due to be stuck by the needle in three months. Devlin didn't really feel like dying, but he wasn't going to fight it either.

All in all, it had been a good ride. Devlin had worked hard, become damned good at what he did. And he had been caught fair and square.

But something shifted during his days on the Row. As the time ticked by, he was no longer resigned to his future. If he could get out of this miserable fucking shithole, he'd show them just how damned good he was. In fact, Devlin realized he'd sell his soul to get out and show them, to show them all.

That was the day when the prison guard with the black box showed up at his cell.

* * *

Devlin blinked away the memories. He gazed down and watched the cigarette tremble, out here in the chill of the Tatishchevo November night. It had been less than fifteen minutes since he'd lit the last one and mooshed it against the rusted no smoking sign.

Kovalenko's habit. It nagged at Devlin's mind like a hungry rat, made his tongue feel thick and itchy in his head. This inherited addiction aggravated him. He intellectually understood that the craving was just as much a part of Kovalenko as the silver wedding band on his right hand. But that knowledge didn't change that Devlin felt imprisoned by it.

Is this what a cocaine baby feels when it emerges from the womb? Devlin had wondered, not long after his "awakening" two and a half weeks ago. This inhuman, irrational need for just a taste of that golden thing, just a little to beat off the monkey on his back? Just a little? Just one more smoke? I bet it is.

The cigarette quivered in his hand, and Devlin took another drag. His time was almost up. The tremors were getting worse. It made him think about the last moments he could remember before he woke up here, in Tatishchevo, in a stranger's body.

Two thousand four. The Row. The guard. The week before he was destined to die.

* * *

Devlin had sized up the prison guard standing just beyond those steel bars back then, knew he could kill the man in less than a second if he wished. He asked the CO just what the fuck he was looking at. Devlin noted the black box in the man's hand; it was about the size of a fat laptop computer.

The guard had said nothing. Instead he passed a slip of folded yellow paper through the bars and held it between his right index and middle fingers, as if it were a $100 bill being passed between john and whore. Devlin thought about breaking the correction officer's wrist—Goddamn, did they realize just how soft they were? All of them? All the sheep, so close to the wolf?—but took the slip of paper instead.

He read the note. It was as if the devil himself had answered those midnight whispers. The words "death of the body, but not of the mind" were used in the letter. So were "recording the totality of your memories" and "kill and kill and kill." A deal was in the letter, of course—"under my employment for the rest of your life"—and the three words that made Devlin immediately consent to the terms.

Free. Immortal. Revenge.

He'd taken the black box from the guard—who had, he would learn much later, been paid handsomely to present this "gift"—and connected the electrodes to his head, as instructed. He closed his eyes, pressed the red upload button . . .

. . . and awoke here, in Tatishchevo, looking at the world through another man's eyes. Only hours later at the briefing in the mess hall, after the entire forty-odd complement of the garrison had been switched, had the truth been explained to the newly formed army of Devlins. They received this information from the Russian colonel named Bogdanov. Colonel Bogdanov stood at the head of the steel tables, a sea of Slavic NEPTH-charged faces staring back at him, and filled in the blanks.

On that death-row day years back, the memories of Doug Devlin had been recorded into an extremely sophisticated piece of machinery. Devlin had opened his eyes after the transfer, removed the electrodes from his head, and passed the computer back to the prison guard. Every memory he had ever had—up to the point when he'd pressed the red upload button—had been copied into the guts inside the black machine. Doug Devlin still breathed, still lived, and still thought after the transfer. He was still on the Row in Texas. But now, thanks to the contents of that note, he also lived on in stasis, locked away in that little black box.

Later that day, the prison guard returned the computer to its owner and received the other half of his $2 million payoff. And a week after that, Douglas Devlin was strapped onto a prison medical bed. The needle that would carry the sodium Pentothal, Pavulon, and hellfire potassium chloride was inserted into a vein in his left arm.

The warden asked Devlin if he had any last words. Devlin replied that he did. He gazed at the journalists, corrections officers, and other witnesses who were staring back through the one-way mirror glass and smiled at them.

"Go fuck your mother," Doug Devlin had said. All of the Devlins assembled in the Russian mess hall had laughed at that. He had died at 5:01, just in time for the television reporters to file their stories for the six-o'clock news.

Then two and a half weeks ago, Devlin's mysterious savior—a man who called himself Alpha—had come to the Tatishchevo garrison, where the nine MAZ vehicles with their nine payloads had been parked in their nine garages. Alpha was disguised as Defense Minister Boris Savin. The narrating colonel didn't explain the bizarre circumstances of the disguise, and none of the soldiers asked. Alpha had brought that familiar black device with him. According to Pravda, Defense Minister Savin was checking up on the weapons mounted on the MAZes. Unofficially, he was there to revive Douglas Devlin many times over.

During his one-day stay, Defense Minister Savin, or Savin-Alpha, if you wanted to get technical about it, launched a plague that would eventually erase the memories of every Tatishchevo-garrison soldier and replace those memories with something much worse. It started with Colonel Bogdanov. Savin-Alpha met privately with the man, beat him, connected him to the black computer, and blasted the memories right out of Bogdanov's hippocampus. Savin-Alpha then completed the NEPTH-charge process by downloading the data contents of the black box—Douglas Devlin's Memory Totality—into the colonel's brain.

When Colonel Bogdanov opened his eyes, Doug Devlin's soul stared from them. Then, after Savin-Alpha left the military base, Bogdanov, now piloted by Doug Devlin's mind, announced immediate one-on-one performance reviews with every soldier stationed at the Tatishchevo garrison. Of course, Bogdanov-Devlin NEPTH-charged each of them. And he downloaded the contents of the special computer into the soldiers' vacant brains, as well.

Three hours later, the neural contents of the entire garrison had been rebuilt in the image of one man. Doug Devlin. And for the past two and a half weeks, forty-odd Devlins had inhabited this military post in mind, if not body.

He and the others here at the Tatishchevo garrison had since been gazing into the base's radar screens and computer monitors, pinging the Russian Terminator satellite system circling miles above them, taking note of American spy satellite telemetries and reprogramming missile coordinates. They also took turns test-driving the fleet of MAZ transports on the roads (and across the hilly off-roads) of Saratov province. The eighty-five-foot-long, sixteen-wheeled MAZes, which required four crew members to operate in combat, were surprisingly easy to drive. Each pair of wheels turned independently of each other, making the MAZes' turns tighter than Devlin had expected.

Those first few days were eerie, but the Devlin soldiers soon got along just fine. They shared identical war stories and reminisced in their newly borrowed bodies.

It brought splendid new meaning to the phrase soul mates.

* * *

In the case of the Devlin standing outside here in the Russian night, smoking a Prima and watching his hand tremble, his consciousness had been downloaded into a MAZ driver/engineer once named Pytor Kovalenko.

The experience was troubling; Devlin had immediately thought of shamans who enter a trance and become possessed by an entity from another where, a spirit, a geist, an erosi, demon, angel, invader. This is the view from the other side of the television. This is what the invader sees. In Devlin's case, it was through a pair of spectacles (the lack of peripheral vision was unnerving; how could people wear these things?), staring down at a flabby body pressing against Russian SMF-issued fatigues.

At first, Kovalenko's hands had unsettled Devlin the most. Devlin didn't realize just how accustomed he'd become to the sight of his own hands, if only on a subconscious level. Yet here he was, flexing a strange set of calloused digits, perusing alien road maps on the palms. And the ring, on the right hand. For the first minutes after his awakening, Devlin had wanted to scream. After all, the last thing he could remember was placing electrodes to his head in a cell at the Ormerod Penitentiary.

It wasn't long after Colonel Bogdanov's explanation in the mess hall and briefing on their new mission that the peculiarities of living in Kovalenko's body began to truly reveal themselves. There was the inherited cigarette addiction, which Devlin—a nonsmoker in his previous life—despised. Kovalenko was out of shape, pudgy, soft. This body wheezed like an old fume-farting Plymouth. And Kovalenko was a big eater, bigger than Devlin had been, at least. Devlin had to feed this body more than he was mentally accustomed to, lest Kovalenko's rumbling stomach keep him up at night.

For the first few days, Devlin had revisited his adolescence, peering at himself in bathroom mirrors, taking note of the strange new body. The constellation of moles and freckles on his chest. The strange wrinkles, the pronounced nose, the round, boyish face.

But these weren't the only things Devlin had inherited. Kovalenko had a wife and a child; their photographs were placed on the small chest at the foot of Kovalenko's bunk. Mysteries lived inside that chest: a rusted pocketknife, photographs taken in Moscow of Kovalenko with friends, a bottle of sand, a dried wildflower.

Devlin wondered about these people, these objects.

But Devlin had made a deal with the devil, so he never wondered for long. None of the Devlins here at the Russian Missile Forces' Tatishchevo Mobile Nuclear Missile Garrison did.

Besides, as Colonel Bogdanov explained, Kovalenko-Devlin and everyone else at the Tatishchevo garrison were just leasing these shells for a short time. Three weeks is as long as a human brain can live after it's been NEPTH-charged, Bogdanov explained. The body goes tits up after that; cataclysmic brain failure.

Three weeks to live. Beggars couldn't be choosers. And when you're born to kill—and you've become a glorified assassin-in-the-box—three weeks is all you need. There's no time for responsibilities, remorse. Only time for the job. So wreak as much havoc as you can until then. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

So Doug Devlin did. And Doug Devlin would. They all would. The Topol-M long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles resting on the backs of the nine MAZ transport/launchers would see to that.

Revenge, Devlin thought as he took one last puff on his second Prima and mashed it out on the tin Cyrillic sign. He walked back to the garrison's main base, exhaling and grinning, blissfully ignoring the tremors in his hands.

Sixteen

The stelth, krak, and hack programs running under the hoods of Kilroy2.0's computers had done their jobs. Within thirty minutes of solving John Alpha's Morse-coded "clue," the clones had the information they needed about the now-defunct Folie á Deux nightclub: architectural blueprints, electrical-wiring schematics, police reports and newspaper articles associated with the club, bios on the owner . . . even the price list for drinks.

"This was one freak show of a club," Michael said, staring at one of the computer monitors. "Talk about sharing a mass delusion and saying 'screw it' to society. It really does live up to the name."

The marine wasn't wrong about that, John thought. Folie á Deux was one of those nightclubs you might hear about, but could never find on a map—much less find your way inside. According to one archived L.A. Weekly Scene feature article, it didn't have an exterior sign advertising its existence. Above the front doors, a simple stuttering neon sign in the shape of a downward arrow read you are here.

Reserved for the hypercool and hyperrich, Folie á Deux had apparently been the top dog in L.A.'s club scene. Thanks to payoffs to cops and councilmen, debauchery is mostly overlooked in places like this, John knew. And according to the news archives Kilroy2.0 had accessed, debauchery of the drug-dealing variety had apparently been big at Folie á Deux.

"Take a look at this statue," Michael said, pressing his finger against Kilroy2.0's computer monitor. The lunatic grunted his disapproval at the smudge. On the screen was a Times photograph, shot from a low angle, of Andrew P. Spencer, the club's flamboyantly vain owner, standing before Folie á Deux's centerpiece: a thirty-foot-tall, gleaming aluminum sculpture. The photo was shot at a low angle, but the form was unmistakable: a man and a woman in an orgiastic embrace. In the photo, sunlight glinted off its stylized curves from a skylight above.

John took a good look at the metal sculpture. It was as if the two abstract bodies were rising from a churning waterspout of mercury, twin folds of liquid gushing upward, forming the upper torsos of human shapes. The statue had cost a half million dollars to design and build, Spencer had said in the article.

Not that Andrew P. Spencer was saying much of anything these days. Folie á Deux had closed shop for good last year, after the LAPD and FBI kicked down the doors and scored the largest ecstasy bust in U.S. history. Spencer blew his brains out with a .22 before he went to trial, and two months later the city auctioned off the club and its contents to the highest bidder.

According to Los Angeles County property records, it had all gone to one buyer. Kilroy2.0 cheerfully pointed out that the buyer's name—Hess Venton—was an anagram for Seventh Son.

"Where did Alpha get the money to buy this place?" Jack asked, as he stared at the photo of the sculpture.

"That's an excellent question," Father Thomas said. "Maybe it's the same people who set him up with the ability to clone, NEPTH-charge, and then kill the president."

Dr. Mike sat on the circular couch, gazing at the club floor plans that Kilroy2.0 had printed from the supposedly secure Los Angeles County architectural database. He chewed absently on a Bic ballpoint. His fingers traced over the expertly drawn electrical lines, air ducts, and stairwells.

"Michael's right," Dr. Mike said, spitting out the pen. He tapped the papers. "This is one freak show of a club. This used to be a movie theater. High ceiling. We're talking fifty feet. It has a second level, a series of wide catwalks, accessible from three stairways." He pointed at the blueprint. "The second level's also where the ubercool did their thing in VIP. Looks like the old movie-house balcony was renovated into one giant glass-encased room. The whole catwalk system sprouts out from the balcony and goes around the perimeter of the club. It's like an observation deck."

Michael turned from the computer screens and stepped over to the circular table. He gazed down at the blueprints, then looked up at Dr. Kleinman and General Hill, who were still standing away from the group watching intently, and then back to the clones.

"If we go in there, a second floor ain't gonna be good," Michael said. "That's where Alpha'll put the shooters. The catwalks provide plenty of coverage for snipers. If we come in from the front, the shooters can get us from their positions in the rear. We come in from one of the side doors, snipers on the front-end catwalks can get us."

"Whoa, whoa. What do you mean snipers?" Jack asked.

Jay, who was standing next to Jack, piped up. "And what do you mean if we go in there?"

"Well, someone's got to go in the club," Michael said. "This is the X on the treasure map—where we'll find either Mom or Alpha, or both."

"Wait a minute," Jack said as he nervously scratched his beard. "You're honestly thinking of going there?"

Dr. Mike looked up at the geneticist. "Michael's right. We can't not go. The riddle was written for us and the riddle says to go to L.A. This is a rescue mission. It's all about finding Mom. We're saving her . . . if she's still alive, that is . . . and hopefully taking out Alpha in the process. If the place is empty, then we look for more clues. Either way, we'll know more there than we will sitting here."

"But isn't that just the slightest bit cavalier?" Jay asked. "The message, the code, the song, the club. It looks like a big worm on a hook to me. You said it yourself: Alpha knew we would solve the puzzle. That means he knows we're on our way. It's a trap. We should get Hill here to send someone else."

The room fell silent. Even Kilroy2.0 had turned from his screens to listen in.

John glanced over to Kleinman and Hill and saw them eyeing each other.

Dr. Mike broke the silence. "Then don't go. But I am. I know that town. I've worked with the LAPD. I can handle a gun. And I don't want that psycho to kill my mother. This might be our only chance."

"I can understand if you all don't want to go; you got no training," the marine added. "Most of us here don't, so most of us shouldn't go. But someone has to. Dr. Mike wants to—it's his town. I have to. I've been trained for this. And if the 7th Son folks want to keep this as quiet as they've kept the rest of their operation, some of the troops stationed here will have to go, too."

Michael turned to General Hill. "Am I right?"

"If there's going to be an operation, I'd want our security team to handle as much as they can," Hill replied. "They've signed their Code Phantom NDAs. They won't talk, Michael."

"Everyone talks," a voice muttered.

"Those are UN press-leaking delegates you're talking about, Jay. Not these men." Hill looked Michael in the eyes. "They're rock solid, marine. I'd bet my life on it."

And here we go, John thought, and felt gravity loosen its grip on his stomach. He was feeling sick again, as if he'd just stepped out of that damnable elevator. This is where it truly begins. It's rotten. The whole thing's rotten. There's got to be a better way.

But as he watched Michael and Hill speaking to each other in that arcane militaryspeak he'd only heard in Schwarzenegger movies, John realized there wasn't a better way—at least, not for them. Michael and Dr. Mike were going to L.A. to fight what they thought was the good fight. And with Mom's life hanging in the balance, who could blame them?

But still. There's got to be a better way. John looked over at Kilroy2.0, the resident madman. John stared at the floor and thought of the secrets beneath them, buried under six decades and two thousand feet. The technology down there. The people down there. An idea began to flourish in John's mind. He nodded to himself and filed it away. He'd share it when Kleinman and Hill were gone.

Minutes later, Michael and Hill wrapped up their plans for the 7th Son soldiers who would go on the cross-country trek.

"Fair enough," Hill said. "I'll assemble some of my best and make calls to get the equipment you need." He stepped past John and strode out the door.

Kleinman still stood near the doorway. "We're evacuating nonessential 7th Son personnel in the next few hours," the old man announced. "DeFalco and the other scientists, they're going. As is our support staff: tech, administrative. Only the security team, Hill, and I will remain."

"I volunteer for nonessential personnel duty," Dr. Mike said.

"I wish it were that simple." Kleinman's voice was cordial enough, but his face was covered with worry. No. More than that, John thought. He looks like a heartsick parent.

Kleinman walked out of the room, leaving them alone.

Dr. Mike turned back to the floor plans of Folie á Deux. "Now that we've secured the supporting cast, does anybody have any ideas on how we're gonna get in? Michael says if we show our faces anywhere near the dance floor on the ground level, we'll get 'em shot off by catwalk snipers. I believe it. But these blueprints say there aren't any outside doors leading to the second floor. Just interior stairwells leading to the catwalk level. Not even a second-level fire escape."

John leaned forward and looked at the blueprints. "Well, the building did used to be a movie house. Except for the balcony—which has been renovated into a VIP room—there was no second floor. So why would there be a fire escape?"

"Astute," Kilroy2.0 said.

Dr. Mike picked up the Bic and drew three large circles on the floor plans. "There are more entrances than the front and rear doors, of course. At the base of all three catwalk stairwells are emergency exits. Naturally, they're on the ground floor . . . and they lead out into the parking lot, alley, wherever. Problem is, we go in through one of those doors, and those second-floor shooters can nail us from the top of the stairs."

"So you're saying we can't get in," Jay said.

"And the naysayer chimes in," Dr. Mike snapped, rolling his eyes. "It's clear you're not going. Since when is we a part of your vocabulary?"

Jay opened his mouth to snap a reply, but Michael cut him off. "Can it, both of you. There's no safe way in."

"What about the sewers?" John asked. "Is there some way to get into the basement from the sewers?"

"Well, there's the rub." Dr. Mike drummed his fingers on the round table. "There is a basement level, and there is a floor grate in the storage room—probably to deal with any basement flooding. But it's nowhere near the size of a person, not even a kid. Which brings us back to the doors."

" 'Mr. Mojo risin' . . .' " Kilroy2.0 sang.

Dr. Mike glared at the lunatic for a moment, then turned back to the blueprints. "All the entrances are on level one. Level two has no entry points that I can see. And since this was once a movie theater, it has no original windows, either. Brilliant place for a club, really. So we're stuck with going in on the ground floor, and taking our chances."

"Unacceptable. People are going to get killed that way," Michael said. "Maybe not me, or you—but someone on the rescue team is coming back here in a body bag if we do it that way."

Dr. Mike threw his pen on the table, disgusted.

"It can't be our only option," Michael said coolly.

"Wait a minute," a voice called. "I know how to go in."

It was Thomas. He was staring at Kilroy2.0's computer monitors.

"How's that?" Jack asked.

The priest raised an index finger and pressed it against the screen, at the same digital image that Michael had noticed just minutes ago: the photograph of Folie á Deux's statue. The thirty-foot aluminum sculpture towered upward, glinting . . . and there, at the top of the frame, was the answer. The skylight.

"Be the archangel," Father Thomas said. "Come in from above."

"I'll be damned," Michael said, grinning.

"Aren't we all," the priest whispered.

* * *

It was settled quickly after that, thanks to Michael's Force Recon training and his easier-said-than-done delivery of the attack plan. The rescue team would leave in a few hours, fly cross-country, and take the Folie á Deux nightclub just after sunset. The team, comprising about a dozen men, would be divided into three groups. One would stake out the skylight, drawing the fire of snipers that were likely to be stationed on the second level. With the snipers focused on the diversion, the other teams would simultaneously enter through the front and side entrances. The objective was straightforward: rescue Dania Sheridan, if she was there. If the team could kill or capture John Alpha in the process . . . well, that was fine, too.

"I understand why you're anticipating conflict," Jack said, after Michael recited his plan. "You're being realistic, looking at the evidence, and are planning for the worst-case scenario. But what makes you think that John Alpha is going to have gunmen there in the first place, much less Mom? I mean, is it ridiculous to assume that he might just want to talk?"

"Right," Jay said from beside him, his voice eager. "Talk."

Michael smiled slightly; he had a look on his face that said, This is amateur hour, but they don't know any better.

"Scientists talk," the marine said. "UN field agents talk. Presidential assassins don't talk, fellas. This guy kidnapped our mother and literally left a neon arrow pointing at his lair. What do you think he wants? A little teatime with the carbon copies? He's the enemy and he wants us dead, Jack. Deader than disco."

Despite the tension, John smiled to himself. Deader than disco. I say that.

"But how do you know that?" Jay asked. "Don't look at me that way. I'm not trying to be a jerk, and I'm not trying to gum up your plan. I'm just trying to figure out why you think he can't be reasoned with."

Dr. Mike stood and stepped over to the two doubters. In this little family, that's what Jack and Jay were, John reckoned. The Doubters.

"I know John Alpha is a part of you, Jay . . . and he's a part of me," Dr. Mike said. "Hell, we wouldn't be standing here having this conversation if it weren't for his blood and his memories. I haven't had time to wrap my brain around that yet, and frankly, I don't want to. But you probably think he reasons the same way you do because the way you reason is based on the way he once reasoned. Does that make sense? You, me—all of us—used to think the same way. Back when we—I'm sorry—he was a child. But something went wrong with John Alpha. Something went bad. What he's done so far . . . and I'm willing to bet we don't know the half of it . . . tells us that."

"He NEPTH-charged a kid to kill the president," Father Thomas said quietly. "And took the time to tattoo a little A in the kid's ear in the name of the chase. What kind of a man does that?"

Jack and Jay stood in place, saying nothing.

Michael clapped his hands. "So we've got to settle on who's going on this trip and who isn't. Now you all know that I'm going, and you know that I'm going to be calling the shots. It's that simple. But this is strictly voluntary for the rest of you. As far as I'm concerned, if you don't want to get shot at, don't go. Can't say I blame you. There's no obligation, understand?"

The six clones nodded.

"You know I'm in," Dr. Mike said. Michael nodded. Dr. Mike looked at Jay.

Jay shook his head. "I've ducked my fair share of guerrilla gunfire, but I'm not a soldier. I just can't."

"No shame in it," Michael said.

"You have to understand something." Jack squirmed in his seat. "Until yesterday, I thought I was, heh, normal. Plugging away at the white-collar gig. I've got a wife. More important, two kids. Sorry."

"Padre, what about you?"

The priest held his breath for a moment, percolating. Finally, he said, "Mom's been dead for sixteen years. To be the first one of us to see her again . . . well, that would be incredible, wouldn't it?" Thomas crossed his arms, frowning. "But how has John Alpha been able to do these things? Who's he working for, or with? Why did he want the president dead, and why has he gone to all the trouble of baiting us?"

"Conspiracy," Kilroy2.0 whispered.

"My thoughts exactly," the priest said. "I have no faith in our keepers, or anything else about this—Alpha, NEPTH-charges, 7th Son. It's all so murky. Alpha's plan is bigger than a reunion at an abandoned nightclub, it must be. And I think the history of this place"—Thomas jabbed an index finger at the floor—"is much bigger than we've been told. I want to see Mom, but I want to find the answers to those questions even more."

He nodded to Kilroy2.0. "And we've got the mad hacker here who can help us do that."

The lunatic giggled.

Michael looked over at Kilroy2.0. "So how 'bout it, Mad Hacker? You staying, or going?"

"Mad Hacker's staying here."

"Fine," Dr. Mike said. "And you, John?"

Father Thomas had practically read John's mind; that had been his plan. But with Thomas staying here . . .

"I'm going," John said.

Jay bolted from his seat. "What?"

"No. No. Don't be stupid," Jack said, shaking his head. "You heard what Michael said to the general. People are going to get killed, John. Michael, Dr. Mike, and the rest: They're not going to a nightclub. They're heading into hell."

John raised his chin. "I've gotta see her, man. I've gotta know."

"Then it's settled," Michael said. "Those who are staying should take Thomas's lead and find out everything they can about Alpha's operation, what he's up to. Let's see if the fucker's accidentally left a trail along the line. Meanwhile, the marine, the cop, and the bartender are heading to a nightclub."

"That sounds like the beginning of a bad joke," John said.

"Let's hope not," Dr. Mike said. "Come on. Let's find Hill and Kleinman and tell 'em what's up."

Seventeen

The seven clones walked through the institutional halls of the 7th Son complex, following the double-helix mosaic on the hallway walls, walking at first, then trotting, then finally running, as if the momentum of their decisions was pushing them along. The group found the door with the retina scanner. Dr. Mike did the honors, and by God it worked, just as Kleinman had said it would. They stepped inside the express elevator, and Michael uttered the destination word: "Ops" . . . then the elevator was screaming downward again, down to where the revelations had begun mere hours ago.

They stepped out of the elevator cabin, turned the hallway corner to go into the Operations Command room, and were stopped by two young soldiers. Their sidearms weren't drawn, but both had hands near the holsters. They eyed Michael, who led the team.

"I'm sorry, sir, but you're not authorized to go in there without permission from the general," one of the soldiers said. The tag on his BDUs read morris. The other solider was a private apparently named ballantine.

"There's no time for this," Michael said, his eyes flitting to the soldier's shoulder, "Sergeant Morris, and you know it. If it weren't for us, and the machinery downstairs that made us, you wouldn't be here parroting orders. Things've changed. Clones take precedence over standing orders. You should know that."

Sergeant Morris shook his head. John saw Private Ballantine's hand jerk closer to his pistol. "Sorry, sir," Morris said. "No one gets by without permission."

Michael nodded, turned to leave, then, in an eyeblink, he reached out, snatched Private Ballantine's gun from its holster, grabbed the befuddled kid by his shirt, yanked him past Morris, and twisted his arm behind his back. Michael passed the .45 to Father Thomas, who was standing next to him. Amazingly, Thomas found himself bringing the sights of the gun up toward Sergeant Morris's chest.

The fuck is he doing? John thought. Does he even know how to use one of those things?

"I think Private Ballantine here is going to give us our permission," Michael said. He pulled the private's arm upward, and the young man fought back a shriek. His face was turning red. "You're willing to let us walk through those doors, aren't you, Ballantine?"

The private nodded furiously.

Sergeant Morris's Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he stared at the pistol in Thomas's hand. His eyes were wide, and his hands were shaking.

"Let us pass," Michael said. "Don't be any more stupid than you've already been. I know we're being watched right now. Hill told us all about the surveillance system. So if I were you, I'd be wondering why no one has come to your rescue. Think about it, hoss: they're not busting through that door because we're not doing anything wrong. Just let us pass so we can talk to the big man, and you can get on with watch duty."

Morris stepped aside. The clones entered, with Michael yanking Private Ballantine along in the lead.

General Hill, Dr. Kleinman, and Intelligence Officer Robert Durbin were sitting at the large mahogany table, dozens of manila folders laid out before them. Behind them, one of the wall-mounted television screens revealed that Michael had been right—Sergeant Morris's flustered face stared back at them. He was shrugging as if to say, What could I do? Other screens revealed hallways, the interior of the express elevator—and the layout of the clones' hastily abandoned Common Room. Staring at these screens were two soldiers, sitting in the back of the Ops room in the raised control area.

Michael released Private Ballantine. The young man offered an apologetic look to his superiors, rubbing his aching arm.

"Gentlemen," Durbin said coolly. "We've been expecting you."

"No shit," Dr. Mike said, nodding to the screens behind them. "So our room is bugged, too?"

"Of course it is," General Hill replied. "Not that we were listening. We've been pretty engrossed here."

Kilroy2.0 snorted.

"Whatever happened to a man's right to privacy?" Jack asked.

"Don't be theatrical," Hill snapped. "You've come home to roost, and you think we wouldn't monitor your conversations? It's nothing personal. Private, you're dismissed."

The young man brushed past the clones as he left. His face sported a combination of petulance and humiliation.

"Let me congratulate you, Mr. Durbin, and your whip-smart staff, on cracking John Alpha's riddle," Dr. Mike said as the private departed. "We've been doing your job since we got here. What's next, pretty boy? Are we gonna polish your Eagle Scout badge?"

The ballpoint pen in Durbin's hand nearly snapped in half.

"Stop it," Hill said. He turned to the clones. "We're presently going over the 7th Son security staff files, selecting the men who'll accompany Michael, Dr. Mike, John—and Durbin here."

"Him? You gotta be fucking kidding," Dr. Mike said. "They haven't cut his umbilical cord yet."

"Keep talking, civvy," Durbin seethed. "That mouth's gonna get you in trouble. I can think of a great way to wire it shut."

"I said stop it!" Hill screamed, slamming his hand on a nearby folder. "When this is all over, you two can go out to the playground and kick the shit out of each other, for all I care." Hill glared at Dr. Mike. "So he's younger than you and knew your life story before you did. Big fucking deal. Right now, you both—and the rest of you—will listen to me. We're picking your support team for the mission. These will be the best men our facility has. Some of them were the agents who brought you here, so if you recognize them, don't hold a grudge. We'll have the team members selected in a few hours."

"Estimated time of departure?" Michael asked.

"Sixteen hundred. Four p.m." Hill consulted his gold Baume & Mercier. "That's two hours from now. It'll give those of you who are going enough time to fine-tune your plan and brief the team traveling with you. That'll also give us enough time to bring an Osprey x-mod here to pick you up and to prep some Black Hawks and ground vehicles for use while you're in California. You'll get there fast—the x-mod is jet-powered. Brand new, no props."

"So how exactly are you going to keep this off the books?" Dr. Mike asked. "And once the bullets start flying, how are you going to keep it out of the papers?"

"Leave the fallout to me," General Hill said. "And to Code Phantom clearance."

"What is Code Phantom, anyway?" the profiler asked.

From beside General Hill, Durbin smirked. "Officially, Code Phantom does not exist."

Kilroy2.0 gave him a wet raspberry.

General Hill waved away the exchange. "Boys, Code Phantom is a blank check. The nearly limitless resources of the military and government are at our disposal—without any oversight whatsoever."

The clones stared at him, stunned.

"So that's how you got those spooks to watch us over the years," John finally said. "They're the dogs. You're Pavlov's bell."

Hill smirked. "That's one way to put it. For most people in the military and intel community, Code Phantom is an urban legend. When you get the call, you drop your shit, you pull rank, you fall off the face of the earth. It supersedes any standing orders. Code Phantom orders are untraceable, written in invisible ink. It was very useful in the early days of this project, when we needed resources and manpower. Now it'll come in handy to get you where you need to be. You might consider this an improper use of the authority—and you'd be right."

"But it's for a good cause," Jack said. "To cover your ass."

"The world isn't ready for you," Kleinman said, glaring over his trifocals. "Or for 7th Son."

"I think the world is less ready for John Alpha," Jack replied.

"The only 7th Son team members who have Code Phantom access these days are Kleinman and myself," General Hill said. "It'll get to you to California. It'll cover up any incident you may encounter. The president himself doesn't have such privilege."

"My God," Father Thomas said.

Hill raised his eyebrows. "Precisely."

"So when do we arrive in L.A.?" Michael asked.

"If the Osprey pilots redline it, seven p.m., local time," Hill said. "It'll already be dark."

Kleinman cleared his throat. "For now, gentlemen, it's a case of hurry up and wait. I suggest you all make some time to relax. Maybe call your families, or friends."

"Uh . . . you're serious?" Jack said.

"Of course," Kleinman said. "Considering what you've been through—and how we brought you here—there are some worried family members and lovers out there." The old man glanced at Dr. Mike. "And probably some irked publicists, too."

"Larry fucking King," Dr. Mike moaned. He closed his eyes. "Rochelle's going to kill me."

Father Thomas stepped forward. "What do we tell them?" He looked at Hill, then Kleinman. "What can we tell them?"

"I want to say, 'Use your best judgment,' but I'm afraid it's not that simple," Kleinman said. "I've discussed this with General Hill. He feels this is a security risk, but I've convinced him to let each of you make one phone call. There are conditions. You get fifteen minutes each. No exceptions. Of course, you cannot tell who you're calling where you are or why you're here. Anything resembling details about Project 7th Son are strictly forbidden. If you fail to adhere to these rules, the line goes dead."

"Let me guess," Jay said, his eyes flitting to the wall-mounted monitors. "You'll be listening."

"Affirmative," Hill said.

"We should get going," Michael said, turning to the doors.

"Be careful what you say in your phone calls," Kleinman called to them. "And be careful in California."