the Matarese-maniacal pawns, and that's the scary thing. The longer they're fed the bigger they grow, and the bigger they grow the more damage they do." He reached for her hand, aware that he had done so only after they had touched.
"You are convinced, aren't you? That it's happening." "Now more than ever. You just showed me how one small part of the whole is manipulated. I knew-or thought I knew-it was being manipulated but I didn't know how. Now I do and it doesn't take much imagination to think of variations. It's a guerrilla war with a thousand battlegrounds, none of them defined." Antonia lifted his hand, as though reassuring herself it was there, freely given; and then her dark brown eyes shifted to his, suddenly questioning. "You talk as if it were new to you, this war. Surely that's not so. You're an intelligence officer...." "I was," corrected Bray. "Not anymore." "That doesn't change what you know. You said to me only a moment ago that certain things must be accepted, that courts and avvocati had no place, that one killed in order not to be killed oneself. Is this war so different now?" "More than I can explain," answered Scofield, glancing up at the white wall. "We were professionals and there were rules-most of them our own, most harsh, but there were rules and we abided by them. We knew what we were doing, nothing was pointless. I guess you could say we knew when to stop." He turned back to her. "These are wild animals, let loose in the streets. They have no rules. They don't know when to stop, and those who are financing them never want them to learn. Don't fool yourself, they're capable of paralyzing governments...." Bray caught himself, his voice trailing off. He heard his own words and they astonished him. He had said it. In a single phrase he had said it!
It was there all the time and neither he nor Taleniekov had seen it! They had approached it, circled it, used words that came close to defining it, but they had never clearly faced it.
... they're capable of paralyzing governments.
When paralysis spreads, control is lost, all functions stop. A vacuum is created for a force not paralyzed to move into the host and assume control.
You will inherit the earth. You will have your own again. Other words, spoken by a madman seventy years ago. Yet those words were not political; they were, in fact, apolitical. Nor did they apply to given borders, no single nation rising to ascendency. Instead, they were directed to a council, a group of men bound together by a common bond.
But those men were dead; who were they now? And what bound them together?
Now. Today.
"What is it?" asked Antonia, seeing the strained expression on his face.
"There is a timetable," said Bray, his voice barely above a whisper.
"It's being orchestrated. The terrorism escalates every month, as if on schedule. Blackburn, Yurievich... they were tests, probes for reaction at the highest levels. Winthrop raised alarms in those circles; he had to be silenced. It all fits." "And you're talking to yourself. You hold my hand, but you're talking to yourself." Scofield looked at her, struck by another thought. He had heard two remarkable stories from two remarkable women, both tales rooted in violence as both women were tied to the violent world of Guillaume de Matarese. The dying Istrebiteli had said in Moscow that the answer might lie in Corsica. The answer did not, but the first clues to that answer did.
Without Sophia Pastorine and Antonia Gravet, mistress and descendant, there was nothing; each in her own way had provided startling revelations. The enigma that was the Matarese remained still an enigma, but it was no longer inexplicable. It had form; it had purpose. Men bound together by some common cause, whose objective was to paralyze governments and assume control...
to inherit the earth.
Therein lay the possibility of catastrophe: that same earth could be blown up in the process of being inherited.
"I'm talking to myself," agreed Bray, "because I've changed my mind. I said I wanted you to help me, but you've gone through enough. There are others, I'll find them.,, "I see." Antonia pressed her elbows into the bed, raising herself. "Just like that, I'm no longer needed?" "No.
"Why was I considered at all?" Scofield paused before replying; he wondered how she would accept the truth. "You were right before; it was one or the other. Enlisting you