Strangers

allowed to deteriorate so far? He should've been grabbed, put into a new memory-repression program days ago, like we've done with the Salcoes here."
        "Wasn't my screwup," Leland said. "Your Bureau is in charge of monitoring the witnesses. I only come in and mop up after you."
        Henderson sighed. "I wasn't trying to shift the blame to your men, Colonel. And hell, you can't blame us, either. The trouble is, even though we're only doing visual surveillance of each witness four days a month and listening to only about half the tapes of their phone calls, we need twenty-five agents. But we only have twenty. Besides, the damn case is so highly classified that only three of the twenty know why the witnesses have to be watched. A good agent doesn't like being kept in the dark like that. Makes him feel he's not trusted. Makes him sloppy. So you get a situation like this Sharkle: The witness starts breaking through his memory block, and nobody notices until it's at crisis stage. Why'd we ever think we could maintain such an elaborate deception for an unlimited length of time? Nuts. I'll tell you what our problem was: We believed the CIA's brain-scrubbers. We believed those motherfuckers could do what they said they could do. That was our mistake, Colonel."
        "I always said there was a simpler solution," Leland reminded him.
        "Kill them all? Kill thirty-one of our own citizens just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time?"
        "I wasn't proposing it seriously. My point was that, short of barbarism, we couldn't contain the secret and shouldn't have tried."
        Henderson's silence made it clear he did not believe Leland's disclaimer. Finally: "You will move on the motel tonight?"
        "If the Chicago situation clears up, if I can figure what's going on there, we'll move tonight. But there're questions need answers. These strange… psychic phenomena. What's it mean? We both have ideas, don't we? And we're scared pukesick. No, sir, I'm not moving against the motel and jeopardizing my men until I understand the situation."
        Leland hung up.
        Thunder Hill. He wanted to believe that what was happening up in the mountains would lead to a better future than mankind deserved. But in his heart he was afraid it was, instead, the end of the world.
        

        
        When Jack stepped into the living room - which they had converted to a dining room - and spoke to the group, some gasped in surprise and started to rise, bumping the table in their eagerness to turn around, sending up a clatter of dishes and flatware. Others flinched in their chairs as if they thought he had been sent to kill them. He'd left the Uzi downstairs to avoid causing just such a panic, but his unexpected arrival still scared them. Good. They needed a nasty shock to make them more cautious. Only the little girl, playing in her gravy-smeared plate with a spoon, did not react to his arrival.
        "All right, okay, be calm. Sit down, sit," Jack said, gesturing impatiently. "I'm one of you. That night, I registered at the motel as Thornton Wainwright. Which is how you've probably been looking for me. But that's not my real name. We'll get into that later. For now-"
        Suddenly, everyone was excitedly pitching questions at him.
        "Where did you-"
        - scared the bejesus-"
        "How did you-"
        "-tell us if-"
        Raising his voice enough to silence them, Jack said, "This isn't the place to discuss these things. You can be heard here, for God's sake. I've been eavesdropping for nearly an hour. And if I can listen in on everything you say, then so can the people you're pitted against."
        They stared dumbly at him, startled by his assertion that their privacy was an illusion. Then a big, blocky man with gray brush-cut hair said, "Are you telling us these rooms are bugged? 'Cause I find that hard to believe. I mean, I've searched, you know; I've checked, found nothing. And I've had some experience in these matters."
        "You must be Ernie," Jack said, speaking in a sharp cold tone of voice meant to keep them on edge and get his message through to them. They had to understand, right away, that their conversations must be far better guarded, and the lesson had to be driven into them so hard and deep that they would not forget it. "I heard you mention your years in Marine Intelligence, Ernie. Christ, how long ago was that? Better part of a decade,