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  And if she were honest with herself, wasn’t their marriage becoming that way too?

  The early days, when they’d been training for the assignment, and later, when they’d received Ethan and been inserted into Olathe with their new names and identities, had been full of adventure, excitement, and romance. It had been like living out a movie, and Lisa had felt her faith in God’s plan deepening every day, along with her love for Gordon, even as her love for Ethan took root and grew into the strong and vibrant thing it was today. Yet, had her love for Gordon kept pace? She hadn’t stopped loving him. She was certain of that. But it had changed somehow. Become another comfortable thing in her life, something else to take for granted. She felt this was dangerous, but she wasn’t sure how to talk to Gordon about it. She didn’t know if he felt the same way. She was afraid of hurting him.

  And on top of it all, she wanted to have a child of her own. Even though she was only twenty-eight, Lisa felt her biological clock ticking. The urge to bring a new life into the world was so strong that it was almost painful sometimes. Nothing had prepared her for such feelings. But this, too, was something she was afraid to share with Gordon. Because even if he did feel the same way, there was nothing they could do about it.

  Conversatio agents who accepted assignment as surrogate parents of high potentials were forbidden to have children of their own. It was thought that, in an emergency, when every second counted, a parent might place the life of their biological offspring above that of a potential second son. Not necessarily on purpose, but instinctively. That could not be allowed to happen. Only later, once a determination had been made that a high potential was not the second son, or, for that matter, the Antichrist, was the proscription lifted. That point was still years away with Ethan.

  It occurred to her suddenly that she hadn’t heard Ethan for a while.

  Not really concerned, for Ethan was the kind of boy who would fall into silent reveries as he played intensely with his toys, creating elaborate scenarios in his mind that she could only guess at, Lisa rose from her desk and went into the living room.

  Her son glanced up at her from the carpet, where he sat surrounded by a jumble of colored wooden blocks. It looked as though he had been building a castle, only to have the structure come tumbling down around him.

  Tears were streaming down his face.

  His brown, gold-flecked eyes gazed at her with a sadness she had never seen there before: a sadness so deep it seemed to have no bottom. Surely more was at work here than the simple collapse of a tower of blocks.

  Yet not a single sound escaped him. Not a sob or a whimper.

  Lisa dropped to her knees so that she could look straight into his eyes. “What is it, honey?” she asked softly. “What’s wrong?”

  “Fall down,” he said, and sniffled, then swiped his hand across his nose.

  Lisa gave him an encouraging smile. “Well, that’s not so bad, is it? Here, let’s just build it again, okay?”

  But when she picked up a block, he shocked her by knocking it out of her hand.

  “Ethan, what’s gotten into you?”

  “Fall down!” he said loudly, plaintively. “Fall down!”

  Just then, her cell phone rang in her pocket. She recognized Gordon’s ring tone: “Hanging on the Telephone,” the old Blondie hit. It wasn’t like Gordon to call this early. She fished out the phone and answered. “Hi, hon. I—”

  “Turn on the TV,” he interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Turn it on,” he said. “Do it!”

  “What’s happened?”

  “A plane just hit the World Trade Center in New York.”

  “Oh my God! Was it . . .”

  “They don’t know yet. It just happened.”

  Lisa was already moving toward the TV. Now she switched it on.

  She didn’t have to change the channel. There was a helicopter shot of the New York skyline, dominated by the iconic twin towers. The sky was almost achingly blue, smudged only by a dark trail of smoke rising from one of the towers. She could see gaping holes where windows had been. In the windows she saw licking flames and stick-figure people.

  “Are you there?” came Gordon’s voice.

  “Oh my God,” she repeated. “Those poor people!”

  And then, incredibly, from the right side of the television screen, Lisa saw a plane approaching the second tower. It came in fast and straight, like a missile. “Oh God,” she said, unable to believe her eyes. “No . . .”

  The TV announcer was scarcely more articulate as the plane crashed head-on into the side of the tower, seeming to disintegrate in a cloud of sparkling debris.

  Lisa felt her legs turn to jelly. She sank to the carpet. Somehow, she was still holding the cell phone.

  “Oh God,” she sobbed into it. “Oh God!”

  It seemed all she could say.

  “I’ll be right home,” came Gordon’s voice.

  Lisa nodded mutely, transfixed by the destruction on the screen. The announcer was talking about terrorism and mentioning a name she had never heard before. Osama something.

  In her shock, she had forgotten about Ethan. But suddenly a wave of concern for him, a physical need to hold him and protect him, swept over her, and she turned away from the television.

  He was right beside her. Staring at the screen. His face wet with tears.

  “Oh Ethan,” she said. Gathering him into her arms, she rocked him there on the floor as sounds and images that seemed impossibly, horribly surreal, like glimpses of the apocalypse, came flooding into her living room, which no longer felt like the safe haven it had a moment ago. She didn’t think it would ever feel that way again.

  Lisa knew that this was something Ethan shouldn’t see, yet she couldn’t bring herself to turn off the television or even mute the sound. In the face of such an atrocity, such evident suffering, she felt a need to bear witness. It was a duty.

  “Fall down, Mommy,” came Ethan’s small voice in her ear.

  She looked at him. Only now did it occur to her that this was what had prompted his tears. Prompted them before she had turned on the television set.

  “Fall down,” he said again, in a tone of infinite sorrow that seemed eerily incongruous coming from a five-year-old boy.

  The hairs at the back of her neck prickled.

  “What are you saying, Ethan?”

  “All fall down,” he said, gesturing grandly at the screen with one hand.

  At his words, the nursery rhyme came into Lisa’s head:

  Ring a round the rosie,

  A pocket full of posies,

  Ashes, ashes,

  We all fall down!

  “The towers won’t fall,” she tried to reassure him . . . and herself. “The men on TV said so.”

  This time he didn’t respond, just looked at her. And even more disquieting than the sadness she had glimpsed in his eyes earlier was the pity she saw there now. She felt as if she were in the presence of something uncanny. Something ancient and wise and, despite all appearances, more than human.

  More than her son.

  At that instant, Lisa knew absolutely, without a shred of doubt, that Ethan was the second son. Knew it in her blood and bones. Her heart of hearts. But the knowledge didn’t fill her with joy as she’d always imagined it would. Instead, she felt frightened and small, out of her depth.

  “Come on, Ethan,” she said, unable to keep a tremor from her voice. “Let’s go into the kitchen and wait for Daddy.”

  Ethan nodded silently.

  Ten minutes later, the first tower fell.

  CHAPTER 8

  The insipid muzak clicked off as a voice came on the line. “Hello?”

  “Bill?”

  “Sorry, sir. The congressman is on another call right now.”

  Papa Jim sighed in exasperation. “Does he know it’s me?”

  “Yes, sir. But he’s talking to the White House. Do you want to keep holding?”

  “No. Have him call me as soon as he
’s free.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Papa Jim hung up without replying. His secretary had been trying without success to reach his son-in-law all morning; finally, fed up, he’d placed the call himself, with no better luck. He had a bad feeling that Bill was forgetting who had put him in office . . . and he didn’t mean the voters.

  Choosing a Cuban cigar from the humidor beside his desk, Papa Jim lit up, savoring the taste and reflecting on the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a season.

  A time to mourn and a time to plan. A time for grief and a time for vengeance. A time of war and a time of peace. A time to kill and a time to heal.

  Papa Jim knew what season it was now, even if the rest of the country, still reeling in shock, did not. But it had always been that way. He had always seen more clearly than others, farther ahead: It was a gift that God had given him. He had built his business from just such a vision, of a lawless future in which the United States was threatened by enemies from without and within, a future in which a strong hand would be required to save the country from a rising tide of criminals and terrorists and lead it back to God. People had laughed, called him paranoid, even bigoted, but with the smoke still rising from Ground Zero, no one was laughing now. It was there on his television screen, the twisted wreckage that resembled nothing so much as a gigantic cross. A cross that the country must take up now and rally behind . . . or perish.

  He had prepared for this day, or one like it. He had known that it would inevitably come. The separation of church and state was the tiny flaw in the Constitution that, over the years, had deepened into a chasm that had left the country weak, infected. Was it any wonder America’s enemies had struck?

  But it wasn’t too late. He was convinced of that. The United States could still avoid destruction and damnation . . . with the right man in charge.

  It was in anticipation of this moment that he had built his empire of faith-based, boot-camp-style prisons across America, combining punishment and evangelism to produce men and women who would one day become willing foot soldiers in a homegrown army dedicated to taking back the country for God. It was for this moment that he had engineered the successful congressional campaign of his son-in-law on a platform of law, order, and morality. And it was for this moment that he had invested heavily in the National Rifle Association, the Republican Party, and, most of all, the conservative Catholic movement calling itself The Way. His money had opened the doors of influence with the NRA and the GOP, but with The Way it had opened an even greater door: the door of knowledge. Initiated into the secret history of Conversatio and its centuries-long struggle with the Congregation, Papa Jim had seen at once how it could be an indispensable tool in the dark days that lay ahead. From that moment, Papa Jim had bent all his considerable energies to gaining a seat on Conversatio’s governing council, a goal he had achieved five years ago, after the birth of his great-grandson.

  Congregation, Conversatio: he didn’t really care which was right and which was wrong. If Papa Jim could have made use of the Congregation he would have done so, but not even his wealth and influence could breach the ancient walls of custom, privilege, and secrecy surrounding the Congregation, that dark jewel nestled at the very heart of the Vatican. Conversatio was another matter. It was easy enough to feign belief in the idea of the second son, although privately he considered it to be a false and pernicious doctrine, little better than rank superstition. Which, indeed, was his opinion of the whole concept of high potentials. The search for such unfortunates by Conversatio and the Congregation was simply a modern-day witch hunt as far as he was concerned. But the business world had taught Papa Jim to be pragmatic. It had also taught him how to use the beliefs of others to achieve his own ends. And regardless of its merits theologically, as a marketing concept the idea of the second son was a winner. It was a living archetype, like the story of Superman come to Earth and raised as a common mortal, or Luke Skywalker raised in ignorance of his birthright. It was the story of Moses, of Jesus Christ Himself. If he could plug into that story, turn it to his own benefit, the country would respond. He was sure of it.

  Ethan was the key. When Papa Jim’s Conversatio contacts had told him that his granddaughter was going to give birth to a high potential, he had scarcely been able to believe his luck. Surely God had placed this tool into his hands for a purpose, and when the time was right, Papa Jim was going to use it.

  As far as his granddaughter knew, her son had died shortly after birth. Shattered with guilt and grief, Kate had entered the convent of Santa Marta as a novitiate, and there she had remained ever since, bound by vows of silence and obedience, watched over by Father Rinaldi and the other nuns, all of whom were loyal to Conversatio. But the tiny body she had held in her arms and grieved over had been that of another woman’s child, a boy who had died of natural causes hours after his birth in a hospital in Rome that was run by Conversatio; the switch of a dead child for a living one was a ploy the organization had used countless times over the years to spirit away high potentials without leaving a trail for the Congregation to follow. Papa Jim regretted the deception, and the pain inflicted thereby on Kate, Glory, and Bill, but it had been necessary. Once the Congregation had marked Kate and her son as high potentials, their lives were in danger; this was the only way he could be sure of saving them both. That his cooperation had led to his elevation to the governing council was just an extra benefit.

  Papa Jim didn’t know when or even how he would make use of the boy, whom Kate had named Ethan. But he was sure that when the time was right, he would know what to do.

  God would tell him.

  For now, though, he followed the boy’s progress from afar through the weekly status reports sent by “Gordon Brown,” the Conversatio agent assigned to be the boy’s surrogate father.

  Papa Jim had personally approved the Browns for the position shortly before Ethan’s birth, and he’d had no cause to regret it . . . until recently. Gordon and his wife, Lisa, were well trained, smart, and devoted to the cause. But since the 9/11 attacks, Gordon’s reports had begun to worry Papa Jim. In the first of them, Gordon had written that Lisa had become convinced that Ethan was, in fact, the second son. She claimed that he had predicted the terrorist strikes and the fall of the twin towers. Gordon had expressed his own reservations on this point, believing it more likely that, in all the confusion, Lisa had simply gotten mixed up, imagining that Ethan’s tears and distress, which Gordon had witnessed for himself, had preceded rather than followed the upsetting images he had seen on TV. This seemed likely enough to Papa Jim, who’d been thrown badly off balance by the attacks himself, though he’d soon recovered his equilibrium. He’d expected that Lisa would come to her senses too . . . but instead, she seemed to have infected Gordon, who in his subsequent reports all but declared his own belief that Ethan was the second son. Not that Papa Jim cared what they believed; he’d known all along that he was dealing with fanatics of a sort, people whose faith in the doctrine of the second son was absolute and unquestioned. But he was afraid that, in their fervor, they might unwittingly break cover and reveal Ethan’s existence prematurely . . . thus drawing the attention of the Congregation.

  Papa Jim was monitoring things in Kansas closely, debating whether or not to pay the Browns a personal visit. But the Ethan situation was only one of the irons that Papa Jim had in the fire, which was why it was so infuriating to him now that he couldn’t get in touch with Bill. He needed his congressman son-in-law to represent his interests in the legislation being drafted in response to the attacks. There was going to be a need for new prisons, both at home and abroad. Papa Jim was sure of it. But his company, large as it was, wasn’t the only game in town. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. The contracts would be worth hundreds of millions, maybe even billions. Yet just when he needed him most, just when the investment he’d made in getting Bill elected was about to pay off, his son-in-law had gone AWOL.

  Like Papa Jim, Bill had been badly thrown by the events of 9
/11. Unlike Papa Jim, he had yet to recover.

  Papa Jim had tried to be patient with the man. After all, he had suffered a terrible loss. Glory had been visiting New York on that day and had gone for breakfast to the Windows on the World restaurant high atop the Trade Center. She had not survived.

  But if Bill had lost a wife, Papa Jim had lost a daughter. Bill was not the only one to grieve. Yet the time for grieving was past. This was the season of vengeance, and Papa Jim needed Bill to be his strong right hand in the halls of government.

  Sighing in exasperation, Papa Jim put down his cigar and reached for the telephone just as the intercom buzzed.

  “Who is it?” he growled.

  The voice of his long-time secretary answered. “It’s the congressman.”

  “About damn time. Put him through, Joyce.” He picked up the phone, waited for the click as the line was connected, then fired off the first salvo in what he planned to be a severe dressing-down. The freshman congressman needed to be reminded of just who was boss. “Where the hell have you been? We’ve got work to do!”

  “Sorry, Jim. I’ve been talking to the White House.”

  “So I heard. About what?”

  “My future.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I’m quitting.”

  The words didn’t make sense. “Quitting what?”

  “Congress. I’m gonna go fight the bastards that killed Glory.”

  “You ain’t gonna do no such thing. Listen here—”

  “No, you listen for once.”

  This had the effect of rendering Papa Jim temporarily speechless.

  “I never wanted this job,” came Bill’s voice, trembling with passion, or maybe just the effort of standing up to Papa Jim for the first time in his life. “With Glory gone, there’s nothing to keep me here. I’ve still got my commission in the National Guard. I want to put it to use, do something tangible while I’m still young enough to make a difference.”

  “You can make a difference there in Washington. We had plans, remember?”