Zig Zag (57 page)

"No.
I
'm
a forensic examiner, Victor,
I
do
this all the time. But when
I
went
down to that pantry and saw Cheryl's remains,
I
was
totally traumatized."

They
were speaking Spanish. Harrison could have hooked up the automatic
translator incorporated into the surveillance program, but he didn't
want to. It was clear they were recounting their tales of woe and
bringing Lopera up to date with what had happened.

He
stroked his chin. The fact that the scientists had learned so much
puzzled him, despite the fact that Carter had proof that Marini had
helped them out quite a bit before he died. Could Marini have been
responsible for supplying copies of the autopsy reports? Considering
the fact that Marini himself knew almost nothing about it, where
could he have gotten them? Who had leaked the information? Harrison
was worried.

A
leak. A
crack.
Something that lets things in and out. A defect in the armor. His
armor.

Now
Blanes was talking. He couldn't stand that man's condescending
superiority.

He
contemplated Elisa Robledo at length. Lately, he looked at a lot of
things the same way, without blinking, without even breathing,
holding his breath. He was familiar with the basic anatomy of the eye
and knew that the pupil was actually a tiny hole. A fissure,
actually.

Leaks.

Undesirable
images could slip out through that hole, like the ones he'd seen four
years ago at Colin Craig's house. The ones he'd seen at Nadja
Petrova's house. Or the ones he'd seen yesterday in Milan, on the
coroner's slab. Images as foul and impure as the stench from a dying
man's mouth. He used them to get off to sleep every night, and then
he dreamed of them.

He'd
already decided what to do, and the higher-ups had given their
blessings. He was going to decontaminate, cut off the gangrene. He'd
make sure he was fully protected and then eliminate all the rotting
flesh he was staring at right now. And he'd take special, personal
pleasure in eliminating the flesh that had been responsible for those
cracks, those leaks.

He'd
take extra special care of Elisa Robledo. He hadn't told anyone, not
even himself.

But
he knew what he was going to do.

Suddenly,
the screen filled with jagged saw teeth. For a second, Harrison
thought that the Almighty was punishing him for his evil thoughts.

"Interference,"
the man on the left of him said, gripping the chocolate bar. "We
might not have a clear signal here."

Harrison
didn't care about not being able to see or hear them. The
scientists—even Elisa—were nothing more than a dim light
in his private sky. He had plans, and he'd carry them out when the
time came. For now, he needed his full attention on the last task of
the night.

BLANES
was
about to continue when something stopped him.

"Professor
Silberg's plane should be landing in ten minutes," Carter said,
striding in and closing the door behind him.

Elisa
was indignant at the interruption and jumped up out of her seat.

"Would
you get out of here?" she spat. "Aren't the hidden mikes
enough for you? We'd like to be alone. Get the hell out!"

She
heard chairs scraping back and Victor and Blanes asking her to calm
down. But she'd passed the point of no return. Carter's stare and his
rock-hard body, planted squarely in front of her, seemed symbolic:
the perfect metaphor for her impotence in the face of all that was
going on around her. She stood just a few inches from him. She was
taller than Carter, but when she pushed him it was like pushing a
brick wall.

"Are
you deaf? Don't you speak English? Get the fuck out! You
and
your
boss!"

Ignoring
her, Carter glanced over at Blanes and nodded.

"I
activated the signal blockers. Harrison already left for the airport,
so he can't see or hear us now."

"Perfect,"
Blanes replied.

Elisa's
eyes flew back and forth, from one to the other, disconcerted, not
understanding a thing. Until Blanes spoke up.

"Elisa,
Carter has been secretly helping us for years. He's our source at
Eagle. He gave us the autopsy reports and all the test results we've
got. He and I are the ones who organized this meeting together."

26

"ALL
of
my men were killed. The ones who were with me on New Nelson. There
were five of them. Remember? Sickening deaths, things that make your
blood run cold, just like what happened to your friends, except my
men weren't so popular, were they, Professor? They weren't 'brilliant
scientists.'"

Carter
paused. For a second it was as though a veil had descended over his
light eyes, but then his steely expression returned and it was gone.
He continued in a neutral tone.

"Mendez
and Lee were killed in the warehouse explosion, but the autopsy
showed that someone had had a little fun with Mendez before he died.
York was murdered three years ago, the same day as Professor Craig,
on a military base in Croatia. And whoever or whatever is doing this
ripped Bergetti and Stevenson to shreds on Monday, hours before
Marini. Bergetti was on medical leave with stress-related
psychological trauma; he was murdered at home. His wife threw herself
off the balcony when she found his body. Ten minutes later, during a
routine mission on a barge in the Red Sea, Stevenson was ripped
apart. No one saw how it happened. They blinked and he was dead. I
got suspicious when
I
found
out about York's death. No one said anything to me at Eagle. I found
out on my own. That was when I decided to start collaborating with
Professor Blanes."

"So,
Elisa, now you see. No one betrayed anyone. We arranged it this way,"
Blanes remarked. "If Carter hadn't informed Eagle of our
meeting, we'd all be back on Imnia, drugged out of our minds. But he
convinced them it was preferable to snoop on us and find out what we
had to say before they made any more moves. In fact, Carter's been
helping us for years. He organized our last meeting, too. Do you
remember the musical message?" Elisa nodded. Now it made more
sense. She'd wondered about that message; it had seemed so
inappropriate coming from Blanes.

"Let
me make one thing clear, though," Carter quipped. "I'm as
happy about working with you as you are with me: not at all. But if I
have to pick between you and Eagle, I'll take you ... and if I have
to choose between you and
him,
I'll
still take you." Then he added, "I don't know who or
what
he
is, but he took out my men, and I suppose he's coming for me now."

"He's
taking out everyone who was on the island ten years ago,"
Jacqueline said. "All of us."

"Do
you
see
him,
too?" Elisa asked Carter, trembling.

"Of
course I do. Just like you, he comes to me in my dreams." He
paused and then corrected himself. "I guess I don't actually see
him, because I close my eyes whenever he comes."

He
stepped back and loosened the knot on his tie as he spoke.

"Eagle
is lying to you. They're not trying to help you at all. In fact,
they're just waiting for someone else to die. I think they want to
study us, to see what happens when he chooses his next victim. They
did all sorts of tests on me in Imnia, too, but they trust me. And
that's obviously a big advantage. So, like it or not, counting
Silberg, there aren't four of you in on this, there are five. You'll
have to count me in on all your plans."

"Six."

Everyone
turned to stare at Victor, who seemed as surprised as anyone at what
he'd just said.

"I..."
He hesitated, swallowed, took a deep breath, and then managed to
speak confidently. "You'll have to include me, too."

"Does
he know everything?" asked Carter, as if doubting this new
addition.

"Almost,"
Blanes replied. Carter's jaw slackened.

"Well,
take your time deciding, Professor. We've got time. We still have to
wait for Silberg."

"I
wish he were here already," Blanes admitted. "Those
documents he's got are the key."

"What
are you talking about?" Elisa asked.

"He's
holding the explanation to what's happening to us."

Jacqueline
stepped forward. Her voice betrayed new anxiety.

"David,
just tell me this: does
he
exist?
Is he real, or just a collective vision, a hallucination?"

"We
still don't know what he is, Jacqueline, but he's real. Eagle knows
that. He's definitely real." He looked at each of them as if
inspecting the sole survivors of a catastrophe. Elisa picked up on
the fear in his eyes. "At Eagle, they call him Zig Zag, like the
project."

FOR
almost
the first time ever, Reinhard Silberg thought about himself.

Everyone
who knew him was perfectly aware that he tended to be altruistic and
selfless. When his brother Otto, who was five years older and an
executive at a Berlin optical components company, called one day to
tell him he'd been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer whose name he
couldn't pronounce, Silberg spoke to his wife, asked for a leave of
absence at the university, and went to stay with Otto. He cared for
him until his death, a year later. Two months after that, he packed
his bags and went to New Nelson. Times were tough, and he'd gone
through some huge emotional ups and downs: back then, he thought Zig
Zag was God's way of trying to show his infinite kindness and helping
him recover from his brother's tragic death.

He
no longer thought anything of the sort.

At
any rate, until everything changed definitively, Silberg had never
feared for himself. Not because he was especially brave, but because
of what his wife called a "unique glandular function." He
actually felt more pain at
others'
suffering
than his own; that's just the way he was. "If someone in this
house has to get sick, let it be Reinhard," his wife used to
say, "because if it's me, then we both suffer, and he'll have it
worse."