Taleniekov, the enemy I can't bring myself to hate anymore. If you're dead there's nothing I can do but turn away, knowing that I'm alone. If you're alive, keep breathing. I promise nothing, there is no hope, not really. But we have something we never had before. We have him. We know who the shepherd boy is. The web is defined now and it circles the world.
Scozzi-Paravacini, Verachten, TransCommunications... and a hundred diflerent companies between each one. All put together by the shepherd boy, all run from an alabaster tower that looks over the city with a thousand eyes.... And yet there's something else. I know it, I feel it!
Something else that's in the middle of the web. We who've 'abused this world so well for so long' develop instincts, don't we? Mine is strong.
It's out there. I just need time. Keep breathing... my friend.
I can't think about them any longer. I've got to put them out of my mind; they intrude, they interfere, they are barriers. They do not exist; she does not exist and I have lost her. We will not grow old together; there is no hope.... Now, move. For Christ's sake, move!
He had left the Goldmans quickly, thanking them, bewildering them by his abrupt departure. He had asked only a few more questions-about the Appleton family--questions any knowledgeable person in Boston could answer. Having the information was all he needed; there was no point in staying longer. He walked now in the rain, smoking a cigarette, his thoughts on the missing fragment his instinct told him was a greater weapon than the shepherd boy, yet somehow part of the shepherd boy, intrinsic to the deceits of Nicholas Guiderone. What was it? Where was the false note he heard so clearly?
He knew one thing, however, and it was more than instinct. He had enough to panic Senator Joshua Appleton, IV. He would telephone the Senator in Washington and quietly recite a bill-of-particulars that began seventy years ago, on the date of April 4, 1911, in the hills of Porto Vecchio. Did the Senator have anything to say? Could he shed any light on an organization known as the Matarese which began its activities in the second decade of the century-at Sarajevo, perhaps-by selling political murder? An organization the Appleton family had never left, for it could be traced to a white skyscraper in Boston, a company honored by the Senator's presence on its board of directors. The age of Aquarius had turned into the age of conspiracy. A man on his march to the White House would have to panic, and in panic mistakes were made.
But panic could be controlled. The Matarese would mount the Senator's defenses swiftly, the presidency was too great a prize to lose. And charges leveled by a traitor were no charges at all; they were merely words spoken by a man who had betrayed his country.
Instinct. Look at the man-the man-more closely.
Joshua Appleton was not as he was perceived to be by the nation. The paternal figure whose appeal ran across the spectrum. Then what about the day-to-day individual? Was it possible that the everyday man had weaknesses he'd find infinitely more difficult to deny than a grand conspiracy leveled by a traitor? Was it conceivable and the more Bray thought about it, the more logical it seemed-that the entire Korean experience had been a hoax? Had commanders been bought and medals paid for, a hundred men convinced by money to keep a vigil none gave a da= about? It would not have been the first time war had been used as a springboard for a celebrated civilian life. It was a natural, the perfect ploy, if the scenario could be executed with precision-and what scenario could not be with the resources controlled by the Matarese?
Look at the man. The man.
Goldman had brought the Appleton family up to date for Bray. The Senator's official residence was a house in Concord where he and his family stayed only during the summer months. His father had died several years ago; Nicholas Guiderone had paid his last respects to the son of his mentor by purchasing the outsized Appleton Hall from the widow at a price far above the market, promising to keep the name in perpetuity. Old Mrs. Appleton currently lived on Beacon Hill, in a brownstone on Louisburg Square.
The mother. What kind of woman was she? In her middle seventies, Goldman had estimated. Could she tell him anything? Involuntarily perhaps a great