"I'm
not sure this is the best time..."
"Yes,
now," Victor insisted. "While they were taking me to the
barracks, I saw that there were only two soldiers in Silberg's lab
and they were both asleep, and then one more on guard duty outside
the room where they're holding Carter." He turned to Elisa. "If
you go in through the first barracks, you could get to the control
room without being seen."
"I'll
try," Elisa said. "The image must be clean by now."
"I'll
go with you," Victor offered.
They
looked at Blanes, who nodded.
"OK,
I'll keep watch from the kitchen in case Harrison and his men come
back. We have to act fast. As soon as we know who Zig Zag is, we'll
destroy everything so Eagle never finds out what happened."
She
knew what he meant.
We'll
destroy everything, including whichever one of us is Zig Zag.
They
said good-bye right there, and Blanes gave her an impulsive hug. Then
he pulled back to look at her as he spoke.
"Zig
Zag is just a simple error, Elisa. I'm sure of it. An erroneous
equation, not some malignant being." Suddenly, she smiled. His
voice reminded her of the professor she'd so admired.
Now
go and correct that damn error once and for all.
STOPPING
Zig
Zag is our top priority.
Harrison
couldn't agree more with Blanes about that. But he was wrong when he
said Zig Zag wasn't some malignant being.
Of
course he was. Harrison just knew. The most evil being ever to set
foot on the earth. The Devil himself. The only real, true Devil.
He
struggled to get up—the years were starting to take their
toll—slipped the earpiece back into his jacket, and told
Jurgens to collapse the antenna on the directional mike they'd been
using to listen in on the conversation from over by the palm trees,
three hundred feet away. His idea—sending the soldiers out to
comb the island and sticking close by with the mike himself—had
paid off.
"We're
at a disadvantage in the sense that they're the ones who have all the
information," he said, gazing at the lovely shape off in the
distance that was Elisa. Her clothes were so scant that, from where
he stood, she almost looked naked. "But that also works to our
advantage. They're all geniuses, and that means they're ignorant. I
knew Blanes was lying so he could meet up with the others alone. But
his little lie is quite useful to us. Better to have the army looking
the other way, I think. We don't want any witnesses, now, do we?
After all, we have no orders to terminate them yet. But we're going
to do it anyway. That will be our little secret, Jurgens. We're going
to expurgate, to purify ... All right?"
Jurgens
seemed to agree. Harrison turned to look at him. When they landed on
New Nelson, he'd ordered him to hide on the beach and await the right
moment, the moment when he could use his extraordinary abilities.
And
that moment had arrived.
"You're
going to go into the barracks. Take the long way around so Blanes
doesn't see you, and kill Carter and Blanes. Then we'll wait for the
others to get what they're looking for, and when they do, kill Lopera
while Robledo looks on. Make sure she's watching; I want her to see
it. Then lock her into one of the rooms and we'll interrogate her. We
need that report. We have all day to make her talk, until the
delegation arrives. This could get very interesting. First thing
tomorrow, there won't be a single scientist left."
As
Jurgens headed off, leisurely, to carry out his orders, Harrison
sighed deeply and stared out to sea, watching the clouds break up and
the sun make a feeble attempt at shining. For the first time in a
while, he felt happy.
With
Jurgens by his side, he had no fears. Not even Zig Zag scared him.
PART
NINE
Zig
Zag
My
God, what have we done?
ROBERT
A. LEWIS, COPILOT OF THE
ENOLA
GAY.
AFTER
DROPPING THE ATOMIC BOMB ON HIROSHIMA
33
ONE
hundred
and sixty seconds.
He
was lying down, his face up. Every once in a while he opened his eyes
to see more light filtering in through the filthy window; the rain
was finally letting up. He estimated that it was about ten in the
morning, though he couldn't be sure since his computer watch had no
battery. He'd taken it out the night before, trusting the damn
scientist who'd assured him that they'd avoid an attack that way.
Idiot.
They'd
locked him into a room in the third barracks, under the watchful eye
of one soldier. He could just see the edge of his helmet through the
peephole in the door. He felt as good as possible, given the
circumstances: he'd been "greeted" on arrest (his nose and
mouth were still bleeding). He was detained in the screening room by
two young soldiers even more surprised than he was; all the
scientists had done was scream their heads off. He'd surrendered
immediately, of course.
And
now Paul Carter wondered about his future.
He
wasn't feeling overly hopeful: he knew Harrison would kill him sooner
or later. At least he had that to be grateful for. Otherwise, Zig Zag
would do it. The question wasn't
if,
but
how and when.
He
thought he should devise a plan, because although he thought he could
withstand whatever it was Harrison had in line for him, he wasn't so
sure he could say the same about Zig Zag.
Over
the course of his life, Carter thought he'd seen just about
everything one human being could do to another, and he knew people
did more evil things than most people could even imagine. But Zig Zag
surpassed all limits, all experience, everything.
He
hadn't lied to Harrison. It was true that he really knew almost
nothing about Zig Zag. No matter how much he'd heard Blanes talk
about splits and energy levels, it was all Greek to him; only the
scientists understood what they, after all, had created. He was even
telling the truth when he said that he'd betrayed Eagle out of fear:
anyone who thought guys like him never felt fear—even
terror—was just wrong.
And
since he'd walked into the screening room no more than
five
minutes
after
he'd left it (in search of that idiot priest) and seen what had
happened in that short space of time, his fear had become
uncontrollable panic.
Call
it what you like: panic, the Impact, or scared-fucking-shitless.
He'd
seen it all in the dim glow of the matches that the stupid priest had
pinched: the chairs and screen destroyed; blood all over the walls
and floor as if there'd been an explosion; the woman's face—or
half of her head, or whatever it was—lying there on the floor
at his feet; chunks of her body all over the place. He knew that
wasn't the work of a lunatic, a crime that had taken place in five
minutes. It was the methodical, deliberate work of a creature with no
ability to reason. He was tempted to believe in the forces of evil
and demons.
And
as if that weren't enough, the scientists were sure— they'd
"proved" it with their convoluted theories—that the
damn thing might even have come from
him.
That
made him fear not only for his own life, but for Kamaria and Saida,
his wife and daughter, too. Who knew what might happen to them if he
survived?
No,
the only solution would be to die—soon. Or try to get away.
Escape Zig Zag and Harrison, if it was possible to escape both of
them, if—and this thought made his blood run cold—they
were in fact two different threats.
Because
the fact of the matter was, he was increasingly convinced that
Harrison had lost his mind.
And
Zig Zag was the one who'd made him lose it.
104
seconds.
He
felt uneasy, but he wasn't sure why.
It
had stopped raining and the sun came out, painting the day, peeking
through the clouds and casting its first rays, as always, on the sea.
Light loved the sea. Blanes loved both of them. That phenomenal
spectacle, the world of waves and particles that was both sound and
color, beings and objects, was suddenly before him, teasing, "Look
at me, David Blanes. Look how simple my secret is."
No,
it wasn't simple, and he knew it. It was a complex, profound enigma,
maybe even too intricate for the human brain to comprehend. That
secret spanned everything, from the most grandiose to the tiniest
details: Orion, black holes, and quasars, but also the intimacy of
atoms, subatomic strings, and (why not?) the reason his little
brother, his mentor Albert Grossmann, and his friends Silberg, Craig,
Jacqueline, Sergio, and so many others had died. The answer took it
all on: if the aim of physics were to discover everything there was
to know about reality (and that's what
he
thought
the aim was), then things like Zig Zag, his brother's death, and the
dying breaths of Grossmann, Reinhard, and Jacqueline had to figure
into the equation, too. It was all part of the Great Riddle that
human beings from Democritus to Einstein had been desperate to solve.
The
wise old man stands pondering at the window.
That
misleading image made him smile bitterly, recalling that in the
solitude of his home in Zurich, he used to mull things over while
gazing out a closed window. Marini had once told him that it was
indicative of the fact that he lived inside his own brain. Maybe he
was right, but now things were different. Now he was doing it solely
to keep an eye on the entrance outside and make sure that Elisa and
Victor were unhindered in their attempt to decode the computer image.
For
now, things seemed to be going well, but his uneasiness didn't
diminish.
That
sense of apprehension was unlike any he'd ever experienced. Maybe it
was due to the possibility that Elisa would come back and tell him
that he was Zig Zag. No, he'd already decided that if that were the
case, he'd remove himself from the picture. He was sure it was due to
something else, some detail he'd overlooked, some tiny variable he
hadn't taken into consideration...
Tiny,
and yet vital.
He
searched his memory, trying desperately to figure out what it was.
Grossmann used to call their goals "pieces of cheese."
Memory, he claimed, was like a laboratory rat stuck in a maze, and
sometimes you could only find forgotten information by using
faculties other than intelligence and knowledge. "Sniff it out,
the way a rat finds the piece of cheese."
Sniff
it out.
The
kitchen was a small room, and the smell of burned wires was still
thick in the air. When Zig Zag had attacked poor Jacqueline, he'd
scorched all the plugs. He'd seen it himself while he was writing
that message to Elisa and Victor on the napkin.