“Dr. Goncourt?”
“Golokhov.”
She shook her head. “He no longer uses that name. It brings back bad memories.”
“He put up quite a fight . . . didn’t he?”
“You should know,” she said.
“Who won?”
“You did, of course,” Betty Shun said.
“Of course. Who are the Siamese twins?”
“They are Listeners. They were Dr. Goncourt’s main concern in the negotiations.”
“Negotiations? You call all of that negotiations?”
“Now they will stay and continue their work. The circus will go on, too.”
“What are they listening for?”
“The voice of the Little Mothers, so we’ve been told. But the Little Mothers speak slowly. Dr. Goncourt investigated life extension so he could live long enough to understand what they were saying.” She looked at me with a sad expression, as if to add, and look at all the trouble.
“They’re listening to bacteria?”
Betty Shun lifted one eyebrow. “Don’t we all, in our way? Isn’t that what you were telling Owen?”
Out on the black ocean, rescue boats, fishing smacks, yachts, Coast Guard cutters, tugboats, even a big container ship, all converged on Lemuria with floodlights waving, outlining the huge hulk in the early dawn.
Betty Shun left me in a flight lounge on the top deck of Aristos Tower, in the charge of two strong, tall young men in sweaters. They were polite but said little. When she returned, she took me aside, and whispered, “You are leaving now.”
“What about the others?”
“I don’t know anything about them.”
“What about Ben Bridger?”
She shook her head. “Maybe the boats will take them all away. You will use the helicopter.”
“Where am I going?”
“To meet with Dr. Goncourt,” Betty said. “It’s an honor, don’t you think?”
I watched from the side window of the small business helicopter as it lifted off the pad. The two young men in gray accompanied me. I was leaving behind Delbarco, Breaker, Ben, Carson, Candle, and all the others, alive or dead, probably dead.
I was sure I was being taken somewhere to die. The only consolation I had was that I would meet the greatest man of the twentieth century. My brother’s real murderer.
I would be able to ask a few questions, and maybe, if he was kind, and if I was lucky, I would get a few answers.
Part of me said it was a betrayal of all my past principles not to scream and shout and claw and hang on to every second of life, but a larger self had control now, and it was calm.
And curious. Not even flying scared me. Do lambs count the butterflies as they’re tugged to the knife?
No one noticed our departure. Everyone was too busy trying to figure out what in hell had happened aboard the world’s most sophisticated and expensive cruise ship. Why so many had died. I doubted anyone would ever get to see the hospital, the clinic, the labs, and the Listeners. Somehow the investigators would all be distracted, faked out, sent elsewhere. Or mysteriously killed.
Silk would live on.
The helicopter flew east. I asked the pilot where we were going.
“Exuma Cays. Lee Stocking Island,” he said with a Russian accent. “A resort. Nice. You’ll like it.”
“I’m sure I will.”
“Pity you can’t stay for too long,” he added. “There’s a tropical depression brewing. Might even get a name soon.”
38
AUGUST 21 • LEE STOCKING ISLAND, THE BAHAMAS
I walked in late-morning brilliance toward the white-sand beach. A cool, moist breeze luffed at my hair and my fresh white shirt. A mass of towering gray clouds walled off the eastern ocean, and it was from the east that the wind blew.
I had eaten a light breakfast of oatmeal in the resort restaurant, lubricating it with hot coffee, then had asked where the estate of Dr. Goncourt was located. The staff all knew of it. It was a mile away, a bellhop said, down a paved road toward the Atlantic side of Lee Stocking Island and through a private gate that was always open.
