Shadow Knight's Mate (5 page)

Jack laughed.
I never felt less important than when I was with the other members. That's what was so lovely about it.
His eyes were moist, and his voice had grown nostalgic.

The interviewer seemed to take no notice. Her voice remained clipped.
Sort of like Mensa, I suppose. Get together once a month and bolster each other's sense of superiority.

No one ever mentioned what they were doing, unless someone else needed to know. We found out, of course. That was the one skill everyone in the group shared, gathering information.

Still sounding bored, the interviewer said,
And they were extraordinary people, certainly. What was the highest rank in government any of them had achieved?

She sat poised with pen, mud-colored eyes focused on him. Silence reigned for a minute. Then Jack suddenly leaned across, grabbed her notebook, and tore a blank page from it. He held out his hand and after a long moment the interviewer passed him
a pen. Jack wrote three figures near the top of the blank sheet:
“PQ3.”

The interviewer barely appeared to glance at what he'd written. But as the silence continued she began doodling on the paper that lay between them. Her doodles formed the characters “PB4.”

Jack kept his eyes down as if contemplating. Then he looked up and said,
The highest political rank any of us had achieved? None.

None?

No appointed positions and certainly no elected ones. None of our members has held elected office in more than two hundred years. Not even a local school board. Actually, two of our members were First Ladies of the United States, but not the two you would think. Very few of us were CEOs, either. More commonly we were the assistant to the Human Resources Director. These were the people to whom presidents and CEOs turn in times of crisis. Mycroft Holmes, not Sherlock.

And once in a while you got together to share information, such as at the meeting shortly before this crisis began.

Yes.
Now a tear trickled down Jack's cheek. God, he would miss the gatherings.

So these amazing people would get together—

And you didn't have to keep up an appearance. You didn't have to dumb down or smarten up. It was such a relief. You could be yourself, even if you'd forgotten who your self was. You didn't have to put up any kind of front. It would have been useless. Everyone there had been the valedictorian of her class—or the rebel so bored he dropped out and invented a new computer language. What I mean is, you gave up that advantage here. Everyone could see eight moves ahead. Forget it. You could talk to each other like normal people. No one could impress anyone else.

She was the exception.

Jack glanced up sharply at the interviewer. She had no gleam in her eye. Her pasty white skin didn't glow with the excitement of giving away secret information. She was just doing her job.

She?
Jack said. He began doodling on the blank sheet again.

The woman whose name you've been muttering in your sleep. Arden.”
The interviewer pronounced the name very precisely.
She was the exception.

After another long pause Jack nodded.
She was the exception. She was a step beyond. Maybe several steps beyond. Half a dozen people I know sincerely believed she was the product of genetic manipulation. Or possibly an alien being. “Imagine being her parents,” someone once said, and we all shuddered.

Was she so frightening?

She was perfectly charming. That was part of it. We all lived by manipulating other people, to one degree or another, so that wasn't what was scary about her. Her ability to insinuate herself into a group was extraordinary, but not unprecedented. That wasn't why she scared people. It was because she did things that had nothing to do with intelligence. After talking to you casually for one minute, she could tell you that you hated your older brother, and she would always be right. She wasn't just smart, she was a mind-reader. But somehow you knew it wasn't ESP, it was her picking up signals you didn't know you were giving. Desperately you would try to stop, but be helpless. If you were having an affair, God forbid she should see you and come across the room. Within thirty seconds she would be giving you that slow smile, and you would know she knew.

Maybe she wasn't so smart, maybe she just had a very good network.

She would have had to have satellite coverage. And x-ray vision.

As Arden came across the room in Denver Jack tried to keep his thoughts absolutely blank, and succeeded. He'd gotten good at this since knowing her. Arden stopped and chatted with two or three people, but he knew she was coming his way. And his lone remaining conversational partner, a young woman named Elizabeth Rayona, was hurting his concentration.

“Who is she? When did you first meet her?”

“Last year. Her grandmother introduced us. I said how do you do and she just looked at me for a long few seconds, then said, ‘I'm sorry.'”

Elizabeth turned to him. “What was she sorry for?”

After a long pause, Jack said, “For me. I was sad. I hadn't told anyone, but an old friend of mine had just gone missing. Not one of us. No one anyone in the circle would know.”

Elizabeth's voice was growing more concerned. She was facing Jack so she was in profile to Arden, and Jack could tell that Elizabeth was trying to stand straight and not glance aside, but she couldn't help herself. Neither could he. “And she knew about your missing friend?”

“No one knew!” Jack burst out. “I hadn't talked about her and I wasn't giving anything away. But she read me. How I was feeling. And I didn't want to be read! You know? I didn't want to be—comforted.”

“So did she—?”

“Hello, Jack,” said a low, luminous voice. Yes, luminous: her voice gave off a soft glow, illuminating the features of her listeners so they seemed to stand apart from the others in the room, in a subtle spotlight. Or possibly that was only in Jack's imagination.

“Hello, Arden. Do you know Elizabeth Rayona?”

That was a cruel thing to do, after the build-up he'd given Arden, to unleash her immediately on the new girl. But Elizabeth had annoyed him a little by making him talk about Arden.

Arden did not turn her attention immediately to the introduction. Her blue eyes stayed on Jack. He stood perfectly still, neither smiling nor frowning, but looking back at her as if curious about
her.
“It's all right,” Arden said to him, then turned to his companion. “Hello, Ms. Rayona. What school did you go to in Phoenix? Private, right? Let me think, was it—?”

“Briarcliff,” the two women said together. Arden laughed. Elizabeth did not. “Do you know anyone who went there?” she asked. It didn't take mystical powers to hear the anxiety in her voice.

“Let me think, do I?” Arden said, and kept the young woman on the hook as she turned back to Jack. “I waited for you at Heathrow. By the time I got here people knew about your work with the ambassador. Of course, some people around here are a little peeved about your independence—”

“Meaning your grandmother?”

Arden nodded. “—but I've told her I thought it was a great idea.”

Arden had a gentle smile, a professional sort of smile, that seemed to have nothing to do with what she'd been saying. Surely enough, she then changed the subject completely. “Did it help?”

Jack stiffened. “Help what?”

“Jack, Jack, there's no need to be hostile. The day you were in France was an anniversary for you. Did what you did there help?”

Jack turned and walked quickly away. He passed friends, some of whom spoke to him, and several raised their eyebrows, but he didn't stop walking until a hand grabbed his arm. “Jack!” a hearty voice said, while the meaty hand insistently turned him toward the speaker.

“Hello, Mr. Mortenson.”

“Since you look near death I think you're old enough now to call me Craig.”

“Take it easy on him, dear,” Alicia Mortenson said. “He's just had a session with our resident psychic.”

“Someone's giving her information!” Jack said. “She cannot just read these things from my posture and my face. Someone's feeding her.”

“God, I hope so,” Alicia said. “Otherwise she's a mind-reader, and I don't like that idea.”

She and her husband glanced at each other and chuckled, without an exchange of words. Craig Mortenson was in his late fifties and looked older, with a fringe of white hair around a large bald head. Often he looked sleepy and bored, often irritable, but when he was at his genial best, as he seemed to be now, there was no more convivial host.

Alicia, to whom he'd been married for many years, was probably his age but looked much younger. Thin, elegant, with a firm chin and lively eyes, she looked perfectly at ease in her dark blue evening gown, while Craig looked as if he'd been forced into his tuxedo with a shoehorn.

“The trouble is,” Jack said in a more thoughtful voice, “I don't know who would know the things she knows to give them to her in the first place. It's as if—”

As if someone were keeping a file on him, and had been for a long time. Jack didn't say the words aloud, but Craig Mortenson shook his head gravely. “We don't do that, Jack.” He was speaking of the Circle.

“By the way,” he added, changing back to his hearty tone, “great work in France. Just what the summit needs. A little precipitous, perhaps—”

“You know very well you'd been saying something exactly like that needed to be done,” Alicia said. Craig shrugged agreement.

“So then I can say I had your approval?”

“Of course, dear,” Alicia said, laying her hand on Jack's, while Craig only grunted thoughtfully, staring into Jack's eyes.

But Jack had had enough of having his eyes stared into meaningfully. Abruptly he excused himself. As he walked he saw Elizabeth Rayona crying, shoulders slumped, while Arden hugged her and spoke soft words of comfort. At the bar Jack made it a double.

Exit Interview

I'm sure this circle was quite extraordinary, wielded more than their share of influence over key political figures, made significant contributions that won them favors. Some were even in the diplomatic service, correct? Or had ties there? But now they're gone, Mr. Driscoll, and I'm quite sure history will proceed without noticing.

Jack closed his eyes boredly. But the landscape behind his
eyes was so barren, stretching over the horizon without relief, as his future stretched friendlessly. Only he held the Circle's legacy now. Over two hundred years of the Real History, never written, never recorded, and over now.

He knew the interviewer was challenging him so he would try to impress her, but he wanted to say something anyway. The reason for secrecy was gone now, since there would be no more secret intrusions into American history.

We brought down Communism,
he said quietly.

The interviewer chuckled.
Your group, by itself, ended Communism?

You're right, I'm exaggerating. One of us put an end to the Evil Empire. Well, two. Craig Mortenson woke up grumpy one morning, read his morning
Times,
and said, “This is draining valuable resources that could be used elsewhere.”

His wife, knowing exactly what he was talking about, said, “It provides a good training ground for some of our people.”

“That's not reason enough any more. Plus they're annoying me.”

So he set about bringing down the Soviet Union. As he sat musing on how to begin, his wife said, “I'd start by getting a list of the College of Cardinals.” “Hmm,” he replied.

That was the first step, rigging the election of John Paul II. I mean, a Polish Pope? Didn't anybody get the joke? How many Poles does it take to bring down Communism?

It took him more than a decade, and he did recruit a few of us to help, but it was primarily Mortenson's doing when Mikhail Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Evil Empire. Mortenson was toasted quietly at the next meeting.

Jack shrugged.
Well, that's Craig Mortenson. And the amazing Alicia Mortenson, of course. One of these days the trade imbalance is going to piss him off, and then China better watch its ass.

The interviewer's voice showed its first trace of humanity as she cleared her throat and said,
Well, China can proceed without alarm for now. Mr. Mortenson—

I know,
Jack said. Craig Mortenson had been one of the first to die, even before the final cataclysm.

The interrogation continued quietly, the interviewer politely ignoring Jack's tears. He doodled more on the paper.