Until tonight.

"How did it feel to see him?" she asked.

"Strange. I wanted to hide and embrace him at the same time."

While he had stonewalled Wally, the encounter had touched the old Chris Bacon, setting off eddies of bad feelings. Wally had been a good friend, a funny guy he had shared laughs and good times with. Denying him tonight had killed a chance to connect to a past that had nothing to do with Roger Glover. Yes, he and Laura had acquaintances and business associates; but there was a permanent divide that left them alone in an uneasy claustrophobia. It would be nice to connect with Wally again. But that was impossible.

The divide that was closing was Brett. They had told him nothing about Elixir or their past. Yet they were reaching the point of explanation. He was a bright, perceptive kid who believed his parents were in their late thirties. And they looked it. But he would eventually wonder why his father didn't age in family photos, and why he was younger than his friends' fathers. For the time being, it was still cool to have a dad who could sprint around the track and wrestle and who still got carded in restaurants. But the day would come when it would change: When Brett would close in on him. When they would appear like siblings. When Roger would be younger than his son.

It was a day that thus far had lain out there-in the general blur of tomorrow. A day they dreaded, because it meant sharing a secret not possessed by any other human being in the history of the species-or any species.

A federal warrant had estranged Roger from outsiders; Elixir had estranged him from his own blood.

But how do you tell your child that you will not age or die? It would be like announcing you were an alien: When the laughter died, you braced for the screams.

22

The eyes.

Wally shook himself awake. Like a Polaroid photo developing, it all came back in vivid color-and with it, the thing that had nibbled at his mind all night: Roger Glover had the same weird two-tone eyes as Chris Bacon.

And that was no coincidence.

Chris had been born with two different-colored eyes-one brown, the other green. It was a feature one does not forget. As he once said, looking at Chris Bacon was like looking at two faces superimposed. And he had joked how Chris had been born to see the world from an either/or perspective.

(Hey, Chris, are you ambivalent?

Yes and no.)

But why the denial? They were once close friends. He was an usher at Chris and Wendy's wedding and had given them a fancy piece of calligraphy as a gift.

Wally got up and went to the cellar and tore through boxes of memorabilia-stuff he hadn't looked at in years, stuff his ex-wife had been after him to dump. Stuff that always made him a little sad-old letters, concert ticket stubs, baseball cards, Woodstock photos, school newspaper pieces he had authored, record albums of the Mamas and Papas, Joan Baez, the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, even 45s of Buddy Holly, Elvis, and the Dell Vikings. Stuff that he just couldn't throw out.

It must have been an hour before he located the old album of photos taken at Cape Cod-of him and an old flame, Jane Potter, and Chris Bacon and Wendy Whitehead. Most were shot at a distance. Except for two-the group of them sitting on rocks with the water in the background.

The same facial structure and sinewy physique. Except for the lighter hair and sunglasses, it looked like Glover.

Back upstairs he poured himself some port and watched the short segment of video he had shot of the man who called himself Roger Glover. The resemblance was remarkable. Beyond coincidence. Maybe it was a younger brother of Chris. But identical twins weren't born twenty years apart. Even if it were a younger sibling of striking resemblance, why deny the name?

And if it were Chris, why deny an old friend?

What sent a chill through him was that Glover looked exactly like Chris Bacon in the photographs from 1970. It did not make sense. None of it.

For a minute he sipped his drink and let his mind run down some possibilities. Then he turned on his computer, got onto the Internet, and accessed a search engine. He typed the name CHRISTOPHER BACON.

Instantly he got a long list of old newspaper abstracts of articles from the winter of 1988, beginning January 30 with an obituary:

SCIENTIST MURDER SUSPECT KILLED IN PLANE CRASH

EASTERN FLIGHT 219 CLAIMS DARBY

MURDER SUSPECT

Four days later a Boston Globe headline read:

"FBI: BIOLOGIST BACON NOT ON PLANE"

Then the next day from papers around the nation:

MAN CHARGED IN MURDER MAY BE AIRLINE BOMBER

SCIENTIST TURNS MASS MURDERER

ALL-OUT HUNT FOR SABOTEUR BACON

POLICE AND FBI INTENSIFY SEARCH FOR BACON & WIFE

BOMB SUSPECT, WIFE, INFANT DISAPPEAR

Wally was trembling with disbelief as he clicked on one of the articles. Christopher Bacon had been accused of killing a coworker in his lab, then planting explosives aboard a commercial airliner heading for Puerto Rico. He didn't remember the incident because he and his family had been living in Japan at the time.

Wally scrolled down the articles. Following the sabotage, Chris had dropped off the face of the earth with his wife and infant son. As the years went on, the articles thinned out, occasionally producing pieces such as "Is Mass Murder Suspect Among Us?" and theories that Bacon and family had moved to Mexico or Canada. By 1991, the articles had stopped coming, the latest listing Christopher Bacon as the FBI's Number One most wanted fugitive.

Whatever the claims, these were crimes Wally could never imagine his old pal committing. Accompanying the articles was a color photograph of Chris and Wendy. It was grainy and had lost something in transcription, but recognition passed through Wally like a brick. Take away the black beard and it was the same man.

But it didn't make sense, since the Chris Bacon in the 1988 Internet photos looked older than he did in person. Older by a decade or more!

Wally didn't get it. He didn't get any of it.

Either Roger Glover was some astounding lookalike, or Roger Glover was Chris Bacon who had undergone a stunning makeover.

Confused and baffled, Wally downed the rest of his wine. Then he went back upstairs and went to bed, wondering what the statute of limitation was on the million-dollar reward.

"He's so big for his age," Jenny said.

"He's only a year younger than Abigail," Laura said.

In the photo, Brett was in his wrestling outfit, standing tall and straight, square-shouldered, his young body firm and rippled with muscles. The image filled Laura with love.

"He looks like Roger, except for the eyes." Brett had Laura's brown eyes. Both of them.

It was at these secret hotel trysts where she and Jenny shared family news. Today it was the Milwaukee Marriott just up the street from the annual flower show-Laura's cover for the rendezvous. Although Jenny was no longer under FBI surveillance, Laura still insisted on meeting surreptitiously-never in public, and never at each other's homes. This was their first meeting in four years.

Laura wished the rooms came with VCRs so she could show Jenny the tape of Brett's winning match from yesterday. Ironically, he had wanted to go out for basketball, but felt he was too short and signed up for wrestling reluctantly.

"How they change. I would never have recognized him."

Jenny had not seen Brett since he was baby Adam. Sadder still, Brett knew nothing of Jenny. Laura had told him that she was an only child of two parents who themselves were only children-like Roger. That he had no other family. Laura hated deceiving him, but if they announced he had other relatives, he'd want to visit them, and that could put the authorities on their trail. Plus it would open that awful can of worms. Not until he was older. Not until he could handle the entire, lunatic truth.