"Look. This is an order and it"s serious. You want to strip, or be stripped?"

I did as I was told. They backed me into a corner and inspected the room to see if there was anything of mine hidden in it. That search didn"t take long. They went off with everything.

It could have been an hour later before anybody came near me. Then it was Mr. Persival himself. A tall stooped figure, s.h.a.ggy tousled dark hair flecked with gray. Long face and a lantern jaw. Eyes set deep in the bony sockets. The sports clothes looked unlikely on him, as did the big gla.s.ses with the slight amber tint, the boldface watch, water resistant to three hundred feet. He was an actor playing a contemporary Lincoln, or a Vermont storekeeper who"d built one store into a chain. He walked with care, the way the ill walk. The girl called Nena slid into the room with her weapon aimed at my chest and moved over to the side to keep Persival out of the line of fire. She was lithe and quick.

"My name is Persival, Mr. McGraw." A deep voice, soft and gentle. An air of total command, total a.s.surance. "My young a.s.sociates and I would be grateful for some explanation of this."

He held out a big slow hand, and resting on the palm was the cartridge case I had picked up. I spoke without hesitation, blessing the Susan I had known long ago for teaching me how to live a part. "Explanation? I picked that up out there. I never saw one just like it. I put it in my pocket. I mean, if that"s the same one."

"I think we will go outside and you will show me where you found it."

"Can I have some clothes?"

"It isn"t that chilly yet."

When I hesitated, I saw Nena lower the aiming point from chest to belly. I couldn"t read anything in her eyes. She walked behind us. Persival walked just out of arm"s reach, off to my left. "And what were you doing over here?"

"I was looking for somebody so I could ask them about the Church of the Apocrypha, Mr. Persival. I wondered if the road I came up went down this side to more buildings, maybe. Then I saw all those trees down there, the way they were busted off at the same height. I went down and looked at them. I saw trees looking like that after we cleared some people out who were trying to ambush us, but the man on point stopped them in time. It was done some time ago. Weeks ago, probably, from the dead leaves and the dry wood. I saw slug marks on the trunk and I could kind of figure where the weapon must have been. Or weapons. Right over here. So I saw a glint in a crack in the rocks. Here, I think. No, it was this one. Because here is the twig I hooked it out with. It was a kind I never saw before, so I put it in my pocket. And now you"ve got it."

He nodded at me and smiled in a kindly way. "You were just wandering around here, Mr. McGraw?"

"Looking for somebody to talk to."

He sighed and said, "Yes. Looking for somebody to talk to."

"Then I was walking toward the buildings when the patrol came up onto the flat right over there."

"Why do you call it a patrol?"

"I don"t know. People in uniform carrying weapons and ammo, wearing light packs. Not enough for a squad, and they were coming back out of the country. What would you call them?"

"Followers of the true faith."

"Well, I wouldn"t know that. I would like to know something about my little girl and how I can find her."

"Let"s walk back. It"s getting chilly."

"I"d appreciate that," I said. If there is any way to feel more naked than standing out in 60-degree weather as the day is ending, with a girl aiming an automatic weapon at the small of your back, I would not care to hear of it.

On the way back I noticed that he did not walk quite as far out to my left. I could have reached him, if I felt suicidal.

"You were carrying a considerable amount of cash in the double lining of that duffel bag, Mr. McGraw."

"I was hoping you wouldn"t look that close."

"We"re very careful people. Is it stolen?"

"h.e.l.l, no, it"s not stolen! Or maybe it is now, hah?"

"Don"t become agitated, please. Just tell me where you got it." I told him. He thought it over and nodded. "So you decided to make your funds last as long as possible, so your search would not be hampered by the need to seek employment."

"That"s exactly correct."

We went inside. He sat on the straight chair and told the girl to go get my clothes. She hesitated, and he looked stonily at her and said, "Sister?" She scuttled away. She brought the clothing. Persival sent her away. He watched me dress. He said, "You seem to have suffered an extraordinary number of wounds, Mr. McGraw. Are they all service-connected?"

"No, sir, not all. Two are. High on my back on the right side and the shoulder. And here on the left hip."

"How about that huge wound on your right thigh?"

"That was a hunting accident long ago. I went a long time before they found me. It got infected, and I was out of my head and nearly died. Some of this other stuff, I"m in kind of an active line of work. And the guys I work with, when we play we play rough. Beside that, sir, I have a bad temper sometimes. I go out of my head, sort of. I haven"t kilt anybody, but I"ve tried hard."

"You don"t seem to have the hands of a commercial fisherman."

I held my hands out and looked at them, backs and fronts. "What do you mean? Oh, you mean like those old boys that go out in the freezing water off of Maine or someplace? They get those big paws like catcher"s mitts, and those busted twisted fingers. My daddy had hands like that from working the big nets. It"s all nylon now, and you have to wear tough gloves or cut yourself to ribbons. Besides, I haven"t been out working the nets for a long time now."

"You seem to be in excellent shape, Mr. McGraw."

"I"m not as good as I"d like to be. You know, the old wind. And the legs give out first. But I"ve always stayed in pretty good shape. Never had a beer belly."

"And you have had combat experience?"

"As a grunt. I can do the BAR, mortars, flame, mines, whatever. I was in it fourteen months. Got to be a utility infielder."

"Then you must have watched our little... patrol with a practiced eye. Would you have any comment?"

"I haven"t seen much. They"re trained down fine, physically. They move quick and they move well. They carry the weapons at the ready. But all the rest of it? I don"t know what they can do. They look good. What are they training up to do anyway?"

"Please sit down there, on the mattress, Mr. McGraw. Make yourself comfortable." He hitched the straight chair closer and leaned over, forearms resting on his knees, long fingers dangling. "I will do you the courtesy of speaking to you with absolute frankness."

"Something happened to my little girl?"

"Please. I wouldn"t know about that, nor even how I could find out. I am trying to tell you that if I were to follow my own rules, I would have my young a.s.sociates take you out into the tall trees and blow your head off."

"Why? Why the h.e.l.l would you do that?"

"You came stumbling and b.u.mbling in here through an entrance that should have been guarded. The young man responsible will be punished. But I am not taking pity on your innocence and your naive quest. I am thinking of sparing you only because I believe there is some specific use I can make of you."

"Such as what?"

"Are you in any position to ask me that, right now?"

"I reckon not, if you don"t want me to, Mr. Persival."

It was getting so dark I could hardly see his face. I could see a pale reflection of the after-dusk sky in his tinted gla.s.ses. He had a strange weight and force about him. Total confidence and a total impartiality.

The distant engine started. The overhead bulb flickered, glowed, brightened. He stood up and stared down at me, then turned on his heel and left, leaving the door open. I walked out and stood with my thumbs hooked in my belt, looking at the faint glow in the western sky, above the sharp tips of the big pines far down the slope. I had thre feeling I was being watched, and that it had been set up before Persival paid his call. I yawned and stretched, scratched myself, and slouched back into C Building, wondering if I should have pushed the money question a little harder. Would Tom McGraw have pushed it? Not when faced with the possibility of getting shot in the head.

I wondered when they were going to bring me something to eat, and if it would be the stew again.

Then I heard them all coming. They had flashlights and lanterns. I tightened up, and then heard laughter.

The sallow blonde arrived first, carrying a camp stool and a cooking pot and a flashlight. "We"re having a party, Brother Thomas! At your house!"

"So come right in, Sister Stella. Come right in," I said.

Ten.

THEY FILLED the room. They brought stools and cushions, a gasoline lantern, food, and wine. Nine of them and one of me. Plastic paper plates and genuine forks. Paper cups and a big container of coffee. Jolly and smiling. I knew Chuck, the patrol leader, and three of his six soldiers-Nena and Stella and the Oriental. I learned that the Oriental was Sammy. The other three were Haris, a slender blond Englishman-the name p.r.o.nounced to rhyme with police-and Barry, a young black with a shaved head and dusty tan coloring, and Ahman, who looked like a young Turkish pirate. Persival was there, and also Alvor, one I had not seen before. He was chunky, with a broad gray heavy face, colorless eyes and lips, mouse hair, and huge shoulders. I made certain I got all the names right. Alvor had to have been in the van with Persival. Nicky was missing, and I overheard a comment that indicated he was down at the gate as a lookout.

I was sitting on the narrow mattress, leaning back against a cushion, with Nena and Stella on either side of me. I was the center of all attention. When I remarked that it had certainly seemed like a very strange Christmas day, they reacted as if I had said something profound and witty. We had Christmas toasts in a sharp California red. I was being touched by the young women beside me, not in any sensuous way, but with little pats of affection, of liking. And when the men would squat in front of me to talk directly to me, they would slap me on the side of the leg, give my ankle a squeeze. Wherever I looked there was someone maintaining direct eye contact with me, projecting warm approval. I tucked McGee"s suspicions into the back of my mind. Brother Tom McGraw was a lonely man, of lonely habits. So I responded to warmth. And to flattery.

"I knew at once you are a highly intelligent and sensitive man, Mr. McGraw," Persival said. "I could sense that about you. But you seem to feel the need to conceal the real you from the outside world. We are not like that here. We"re together."

"In school I never got past-"

"Public education in this country means less than nothing," Sammy said. "From the earliest grades, the children are taught to conform, to be good consumers, to have no interest in their government or the structure of their society. The rebels drop out. The rich get cla.s.sified as exceptional students and go on to the schools which teach them how to run the world, their world. Never apologize for dropping out, Brother."

The stew was beef this time. I said it was great. Haris, the Englishman, had cooked it. "Whatever there is, we share. Always," he said.

"You"re a worker," Nena told me. "You have a skill. You use your skill to feed the people. Even though you are exploited, it"s still something to be proud of."

Mr. Persival said, with poetry and force, "We can guess that there have been Christmas nights like this in mountain country all over the world, little groups of determined people, meeting together, all of them willing to give their lives for their beliefs. In the Cuban mountains. In the mountains of Honduras. Mexico, Yugoslavia, Chile, Peru, Rhodesia. Together, sharing, living the great dream."

"What"s the dream?" I asked.

"The same as yours, of course," said Persival. "Freedom for all people of all colors. An end to imperialist exploitation. To each according to his needs. You are the kind of man who, once committed, would give his life for what he believes."

"I"ve been known as stubborn. I don"t give up easy. But what you were saying there, sir, isn"t that kind of Commie?"

He shook his head sadly. "Communist, Socialist, humanist, Christian Democrat, Liberation Army. The tags mean less than nothing, Brother Thomas. We do G.o.d"s work. We are the militant arm of the Church of the Apocrypha. We are the ones who have been tested: We work for mankind against the exploiters, deceivers, the criminal warmongers. We will win if we have to tear down the entire structure of society. Your daughter believed in the cause or she wouldn"t have joined us."

"She wasn"t much for destroying things."

"Most of the people in the Church are gentle people. We are the elite. We"re pleased with you, Brother Thomas. We may have a mission for you."

It was at that point I began to feel very strange. At first I thought it was because the room was airless, even with the door standing wide open. Colors got brighter. People"s faces began to bulge and shrink, bulge and shrink. My tongue thickened. They had popped me with something. It turned the world into fun-house mirrors. And I knew it could give me a better chance of getting my head blown apart. I made my tongue sound thicker than it was. I began to do as much inconspicuous hyperventilation as I could manage. More oxygen never hurt anything. I crawled across to the water jug, sat and upended it and drank heavily, and crawled back. I tipped over my wine by accident and held my gla.s.s out for more.

By then we were into recitations of training, with the freedom fighters standing up and declaiming their background.

Nena stood very straight and said in a paradeground voice, "Basic training at Kochovskaya. Guerrilla training at Simferopol. Selected by World Federation of Democratic Youth in Budapest. Transport arranged by World Federal Trade Unions in Prague."

When she sat down everyone applauded. Ahman stood up and said, "Basic and guerrilla training PLO Camp Three in Jordan and Camp Nine in Lebanon. Graduate, University of Maryland." Applause.

Barry had been trained in Cuba by the DGI and had been a weapons instructor at Baninah near Benghazi in Libya. Chuck had trained at a camp near Al-Ghaidha in South Yemen, along with people from the IRA. Sammy had trained in the U.S. Marine Corps and later in the Cuban training center near Baghdad, where the famous Carlos was an adviser. Persival interrupted to give Carlos"s correct name, Ilyich Rameirez Sanchez. Stella had been in the Weather Underground and had trained in their mountain camp in Oregon, and later in Bulgaria.

"How," I said heavily, "how these great people get to go so many crazy places inna worl" anyhow?"

"We selected them, Brother Thomas. We tested them, and we selected them, and we sent them away to be trained and come back to us. We sent them as delegates, most of them, to the World Peace Council meetings in Helsinki, or the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Budapest. You see only a few here. There are scores of them, Brother Thomas. Travel is easily arranged for them. The Church provides the funds, of course. They are pledged to make this a better world. They are saviors of mankind."

I mumbled something unintelligible and slowly toppled over to my left to land with my head in Stella"s lap, eyes closed, breathing slowly and heavily. I hoped the show would continue. I wanted to hear more. But my collapse broke it up. They picked up all their gear and the dishes and left, after covering me up and turning out the light. I heard the locking of my door. My head was still thick with whatever it was they had given me. I did some fast pushups in the darkness, and a series of knee bends. My knees creaked and breath came fast. But it helped a little. I slept heavily.

I awakened once before daylight and did not know where I was. It alarmed me. Then I remembered. And I remembered the way Gretel and I had talked about what to do on our first Christmas together. We had decided to take the Flush down to the lower end of Biscayne Bay and find a protected anchorage with maximum privacy and swim, and eat, and drink, and exchange Christmas greetings all day long.

No breakfast arrived. I pounded on the door and did some yelling. At about ten o"clock they unlocked the door and shoved Nicky in, with such force that he ran across the room and smacked the cement wall with his palms. He had a purple cheek, with the right eye swollen almost shut.

He sat in the chair and slumped over, staring at the floor.

"What"s going on?" I asked him.

"d.a.m.n b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are all uptight. Do it by the book. No variations permitted. According to them, I"ve f.u.c.ked up twice in a row, which is twice too many times, but they won"t even listen. One lousy weapon. One lousy Czech machine pistol, and I forgot to clean it after it was in the creek. For Chrissake, they"ve got a whole d.a.m.n building full of weapons, grenades, plastique, nitro; napalm, and G.o.d only knows what else. One rotten pistol." He peered up at me with his good eye. "You f.u.c.ked up too, eh? Or you wouldn"t be locked in."

"I did? I don"t know how. I got a little drunk."

"Persival doesn"t think you"re who you say you are, so they were going to give you some lovebuzzing and. open you up some, and then try some kind of Pentothal stuff he uses. You must have slipped up. Who the h.e.l.l are you anyway?"

"Thomas McGraw, dammit! Looking for my girl, dammit! Are you crazy or something? I like all your friends. I don"t know why they locked me up again. It don"t make sense."

"You must have slipped up, or you wouldn"t be here. That"s all I know. Except I know I slipped up once too often. The way I am, when there"s no action, I relax. I can"t stay wound up all the time. These characters are gung-ho every minute. Like a bunch of cheerleaders. You like them, huh? Because they spent the evening liking you. That"s the way it works. Barry Sammy and Aliman have had some action. Not much. Chicken-s.h.i.t operations. Car bombs and burn-downs. In and out, like thieves. I had time in Nam, and then Zambia. We were in the hills near Refunsa. The way it worked, the Zambians would cross into Rhodesia and hit and run, and then suck the Rhodesian army units into Zambia, and we"d ambush them. Very tough people. Very tough country. I just can"t stand waiting around so long with no action. I get sloppy. Persival says we don"t move until maybe summer. Coordinated. You never get to know much. You hear there are fifteen groups and then you hear forty. Who knows? When it comes time, we"ll get the word from Sister Elena Marie."

"Who?"

"I forgot you don"t know. The boss lady. They send out ca.s.settes. I don"t believe in a lot of this stuff, but I believe in her. I believe in her all the way." His voice and face were solemn.

There were questions I wanted to ask, but they were not questions Tom McGraw would have asked.

"Do you think this Sister Elena Marie would know where my little girl is?"

"I don"t know. I don"t even know,if they"ve got any central records. I don"t know where she is, even, where she makes the tapes. They say there were like three hundred of them here at one time, and this was a small retreat compared to the others. They moved them out to where they could help raise the money. Everybody has to do that. Your daughter had to do it too. Teams go up and down the streets, hitting every house. Sometimes you say it"s for children, and sometimes for foreign missions. You sell stuff. Handicraft stuff. Also candy and artificial flowers and maybe fresh-baked bread. Once you catch on, it isn"t hard. Four on our team, we"d raise two hundred, three hundred a day, every day. Ride around in the black vans with the crosses. Twenty cents" worth of junk candy for two dollars, to help the starving Christian children in Lebanon. You can claim one quarter of what your team raised when you have to stand up in the meeting and shout out what you turned in. They switch the teams around a lot. I"m so big people were always glad I was on their team. It"s harder to say no to big people."

The door opened again. Four of them were there. Ahman and Sammy were in their coveralls, carrying the automatic weapons, left hands clamped on the forestock, right hands around the trigger a.s.sembly, long curved clips in place. Persival looked unlikely in an orange-yellow leisure suit and white turtleneck. Stone-faced, nocolor, big-shouldered Alvor wore a wrinkled dark business suit, a white shirt with a frayed collar, and a narrow striped tie.

"Come along," Persival ordered. The four of them walked a dozen feet behind us. Persival told us where to go. We went to the place where the flats sloped down to the splintered trees, near the spot where I had found the cartridge case.

"Stop there," he said. "Move to your right two steps, McGraw. Now both of you turn slowly around and face me."

My heart gave an extra thump. Ahman and Sammy were aiming the weapons at us. Sammy was holding on Nicky, and Ahman on me. Ahman"s swarthy face and shiny black eyes revealed nothing. So maybe, when Persival had told somebody to check me out, they had checked more carefully than I had a.s.sumed they would, and found that Thomas McGraw had been dead for some time, and never had a daughter.

"What the h.e.l.l is the matter with you people now?" I asked. I did not have to fake a definite quaver in my voice.

"You know, each of you, why you are dying today."

"Chicken s.h.i.t," Nicky said in a husky voice.