I
love you so much, Bertha ...
Thinking
of his wife brought her image fo his mind. Anyone could see that she
was no longer the slim yet curvy young woman he'd met at college
almost half a century ago, but to Silberg she was still the most
attractive woman on the planet. Though they hadn't been able to have
children, thirty years of marital bliss had convinced him that the
only real heaven on earth, the only thing that actually deserved that
moniker, was living with the one you love.
For
a time, though, that harmony had been threatened. Years ago,
horrified by his dreams, Silberg had made a decision very similar to
the one that had taken him to his brother's house. He decided to
leave in order to help someone else. He packed his bags and moved
into a little bachelor pad near the university that was often rented
out to students. He couldn't live with his wife, scared every night
that he'd wake up to find he'd actually done the horrible things he
did to her in his dreams, those grotesque visions. He'd given Bertha
assorted excuses: that he needed distance to get some perspective,
that his nerves were shot. But then she got sick and moved heaven and
earth trying to get him to come home, and he'd finally given in
despite the fact that his fears were worse than ever.
He'd
said good-bye to Bertha that afternoon. He didn't want anything that
might happen from that moment on— regardless of what it might
be—to catch him by her side. He hadn't hugged her too tight,
but he'd circled his arms around her and stroked her back (lately,
her back gave her so much trouble) and told her there was a new
project that required his collaboration. He'd have to be away for a
few days. He didn't mind telling her he was going to Madrid to meet
David Blanes: he knew Eagle would have found out by now anyway, and
lying to his wife would have risked the possibility of them
interrogating her.
Of
course, he hadn't told her
everything,
especially
since he, Blanes, and the others would have to make some drastic
decisions in Madrid. He knew it would be a long time before he saw
his wife again (
if
he saw her again), and that was why their brief good-bye meant so
much to him.
But
right then he wasn't even thinking about Bertha. He was terrified—of
him,
Zig Zag.
He
feared for himself, for his life, for his future. He felt like a
little boy who'd fallen into a deep, dark well.
The
cause of his terror was in the briefcase resting on his luggage
carrier.
He
was flying in a private seven-seater Northwind jet with a
thirty-five-foot cabin at a cruising speed of 320 miles per hour. The
seats smelled of metal and new leather. The only other passengers,
seated across from him, were the two men Eagle had sent to come pick
him up at his small office in the Physics Department of the
Technischen Universitat, in Charlottenburg. For years now, Silberg
had been head of a department that gave the printmakers headaches
trying to find ways to fit its name on business cards:
Philosophic
Wissenschafts-theorie, Wissenschafts- und Technikgeschichte.
It
was part of the Humanities Division since they studied the
philosophy
of
science, but as a theoretical physicist himself (in addition to being
a historian and philosopher), he also had a home in the Physics
Department. That was where he'd spent the day reading, concluding,
and writing up his findings, and right now they were digitally locked
in his briefcase.
Silberg
expected the men from Eagle, but he feigned surprise anyway. They
explained that they were under orders to escort him to Madrid. He
wouldn't be needing the plane ticket he had: they'd take him on a
private jet. He was perfectly aware of why they wanted him on that
"gilded cage." Carter had already informed him that
Harrison was going to stop him at the airport and confiscate his
briefcase. He trusted that Carter would be able to get it back, but
even if he couldn't, he'd taken measures to ensure that his findings
ended up in the right hands.
"We're
starting our initial descent," the pilot announced over the
loudspeaker.
He
checked his seat belt and sank back into his thoughts.
He
wondered—not for the first time—why they were being
punished this way. Maybe because they had so flagrantly disobeyed
God's wishes. After expelling Adam from Paradise, God sent an angel
with a flaming sword to guard the way to the Tree of Life.
You
can never return. The past is a paradise not open to you.
And
yet, they had tried to return. In a way, that's what they had done,
even if they'd only watched it. Wasn't that a perversion? The images
of the Lake of the Sun and the Jerusalem Woman (images he'd dreamed
of almost every night for ten years) were the most palpable proof of
their dark sin. Weren't they? Didn't they, the damned, the voyeurs of
history, deserve an exemplary punishment?
Perhaps,
but he still thought Zig Zag was excessive. It seemed terribly
unfair.
The
angel with the flaming sword, Zig Zag.
He
couldn't reconcile a world created by Supreme Goodness with the
suspicions he harbored. If he was right, if Zig Zag was what he
thought it was, then it was all far worse than anything they'd ever
imagined. If his hurried conclusions, laid out in the documents he
carried, were correct, then nothing could save them. He and the rest
of the "damned" were speeding straight down the road to
perdition.
As
the plane glided over the Madrid night like a huge white bird,
Reinhard Silberg prayed to the God he still believed in that he was
wrong.
LIFE
had
smiled on Victor Lopera.
He
had a fabulous upbringing. Two siblings who loved him and two
healthy, adoring parents. Moderation was the key to his existence.
There was nothing particularly remarkable about his life; he'd had a
few relationships, but not too many; he didn't talk much, but he
didn't want to, either; and although he wasn't a rabble-rouser,
neither did he let people walk all over him. If he'd lived in a
dictatorship, he still would have been pretty much the same. Victor
was highly adaptable, like his aeroponic plants.
The
only outrageous thing he'd ever done was befriend Ric Valente. And
even that had been a formative experience; it helped make him who he
was today—or at least that's what he liked to think.
He'd
ended up realizing that, as Elisa once said, Ric wasn't as diabolical
as he thought; he was just a kid who'd been abandoned by his parents
and scorned by his uncle. A smart, ambitious boy, in need of love and
friendship. Ric was a pile of contradictions: he was an egocentric
soul, yet capable of affection, as he proved after the famous fight
by the river over Kelly Graham; a pleasure seeker who, when it came
right down to it, was still a complete loner who liked getting off on
his magazines, photos, and movies. Although seen by adults as a
marginal character, he was attractive—and even instructive—to
children. His friendship with Valente, he concluded, had taught him
more about life than many teachers and physics books, because having
befriended the Devil was actually very appropriate for someone like
him, who was doing everything he could to avoid temptation.
Proof
of that was the fact that when he matured enough to untangle himself
from that lonely, resentful, yet brilliant boy's sphere of influence,
he did it immediately. The adventures they'd shared, when he thought
about them, seemed like nothing more than stages of his own growth.
The bottom line was that he'd set off on his own path while Valente
had simply carried on along the same one, complete with
not-so-discreet perversions.
At
any rate, if he viewed his life as a math equation, even with Valente
thrown into it, he still came out with positive numbers.
Until
that night.
If
he thought about everything he'd gone through in that one
unbelievable night, he had to laugh. The woman he most admired (and
loved) had told him a mind-boggling tale; some random heavies had
dragged him from his car, taken him to a house in the middle of
nowhere and interrogated him, complete with menacing looks; and now
an obviously exhausted, probably insane, bearded David Blanes wanted
him to believe the impossible. These numbers were too big for mental
arithmetic. Even for him.
The
only thing he was sure of was that he was there to help
them—especially Elisa—and that he'd do everything he
could.
Despite
his growing fear.
"You
said there were even stranger things...," he said. Blanes
nodded.
"The
mummifications. Can you explain it, Jacqueline?"
"A
cadaver can be mummified by natural or artificial means,"
Jacqueline said. "They used artificial means in Egypt, and we
know all about those. But Mother Nature can do the same thing. For
example, in extremely dry places with good air circulation, like
deserts, water in organisms evaporates very quickly, and that
prevents bacteria from doing their job. But Cheryl, Colin, and Nadja
were mummified, too, and there was no reasonable cause: it bore no
relation to any known method. There was no desiccation, none of the
typical atmospheric alteration, and not enough time had passed to
produce it anyway. There were other inconsistencies, too. Like the
chemical autolysis caused when cells die—they exhibited signs
of that, but the bacterial processes that come later never occurred.
The total lack of bacterial putrefaction was very unusual... as if...
as if they'd been locked up for a long time someplace with no contact
with the atmosphere. That's totally unexplainable, given postmortem
dating. They called it 'idiopathic aseptic mummification."
"I
know what they called it," Carter said, interrupting in clumsy
yet comprehensible Spanish (Elisa had no idea he even spoke it). He
leaned against the wall, arms crossed as though waiting for someone
to challenge him to a brawl. "They called it, 'If anyone knows
what the fuck this is, speak up.'"
"That's
what 'idiopathic' means," Jacqueline said.
"But
what does that point to?" Victor wondered aloud.
Blanes
took over.
"First,
that the time in which the crimes were supposed to have been
committed bears no relation to how long the victims were dead. Craig
and Nadja were killed in less than an hour, but according to the
tests, their bodies had already been dead for months. I repeat, their
bodies.
Neither
their clothing nor any of the objects around them had decomposed at
all, and that includes the bacteria on their skin—which
explains the absence of putrefaction that Jacqueline mentioned."
No
one spoke. All heads turned toward Victor, who raised his eyebrows.
"That's
impossible," he said.
"Correct.
But there's more," Blanes replied. "Another thing that
every case had in common was a power cut. Not only the lights, but
all of the energy sources stopped functioning. Battery-operated
lamps, motors ... That's why the secondary generator at the station
on New Nelson, for example, never kicked in. And the same thing
happened to the helicopter that plunged to the ground midflight and
produced the explosion. Its motor suddenly stopped working right when
the garrison floodlights went out. That was when Mendez died. And
something similar happened in the pantry, with Ross's death, and at
Craig's and Nadja's houses. Sometimes the power cuts are more
extensive, covering a larger area, but the epicenter is always the
scene of the crime."