“The sorcels are coming to fruition.”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Oh yes.”

“And you’re certain you can recover the third generation—the male child?”

“He’s the one you want,” Walker said. “I can bring him back.”

Cardinal Palestrina looked up from his notes. “One other thing… something you said at our last session, something I didn’t understand. You mentioned that you had help. What did you mean by that?”

Walker—his face old and lined but still disturbingly childlike—beamed at Cardinal Palestrina. “His name,” the Gray Man said, “is Tim.”

Cardinal Palestrina stood to leave the room, hesitated a moment, and finally turned back. An unscheduled question had occurred to him; he wasn’t sure how to ask it.

Or whether he should. An Antiochene bishop from Malabar, visiting Rome for some ecumenical event, had once confided in Palestrina his belief that the profoundest of the venial sins was longing. As pride is the sin of the angels, longing is the sin of the clergy. Then, Cardinal Palestrina thought, I must be guilty.

He said, “What you call the plenum … is it infinite in extent?”

“There are worlds upon worlds,” Walker said. “An infinity. That’s what they tell me.”

“But surely you can’t see it, or feel it, or whatever you do—not all of it?”

“No. Not all of it. And I can only travel where they go. But sometimes I dream of other places.”

Palestrina whispered, “Is everything out there— everything we could imagine?”

“Maybe,” Walker said.

“Is—” But the Cardinal was embarrassed by his own question. “Is God out there?”

The Gray Man smiled faintly. “God is everywhere… isn’t he?”

“And Paradise?” Palestrina said. “A world where mankind never fell from grace? The Garden, Mr. Walker? Is that out there too?”

Walker laughed.

“If it is,” he said, “I’ve never found it.”

Cardinal Palestrina turned away before Walker could see him blushing; the door clattered shut with a shocking finality.

2

Walker watched in bewilderment as the Papist emissary left the room.

He was inclined to like Cardinal Palestrina, who seemed like a well-meaning person. But he was disturbed by the Cardinal’s nervous tics, his expression of barely restrained queasiness. And now this business about Paradise. It was not something Walker had encountered before, least of all in the corridors of the DRI.

Lacking other instruction, Walker returned to his own room deep in a subcellar of the Institute, down a corridor where sweating pipes ran overhead.

Walker’s room contained a carpet and a framed photograph of the Rocky Mountains; a spring-mattress bed with a thin cotton blanket; and a television set with a round, bulky tube on a gooseneck swivel. He used the television sparingly. There was never anything to watch but the government channel, news and public affairs and a few shabby variety shows. Of these, Walker preferred the news. He liked the maps, the animated arrows darting across the Mediterranean toward Sicily. He liked the aerial photos of Turkish cities as European aircraft flew over them, props whirling, bombs tumbling like confetti.

He understood the political stakes that had brought Cardinal Palestrina across the Atlantic; he understood the war in the Middle East. Walker wasn’t stupid. But—although he understood— Walker simply didn’t care very much. There had always been wars and there would always be wars; there were wars everywhere. War had nothing to do with it. It was the search itself that obsessed him: the nagging sense of presence across those unfathomable distances. The complex, luminous web of magical obligation. A longing for the completion that this effort would bring him: a fulfillment.

Walker believed—although he seldom allowed the thought to become explicit—that he had lost something long ago, and that bringing Karen White’s son Michael back to the DRI would return it to him. What was this lost thing? Well, he didn’t know. Maybe something as ethereal as a scent, a memory, a feeling; or maybe something tangible, a reward. Something he had owned once; something which had slipped away. Walker often had dreams in which he lost his wallet or his hat, and he would wake up groping the bedsheets frantically—it was here, I know it was here somewhere.

But he never permitted himself to dwell on this. If he thought about it too much when he was alone—and he was almost always alone—his eyes would tear, his fists would clench. The DRI surgeons had cauterized most of his capacity for emotion, but the emotions he did feel were capricious and sometimes scalding. He tried diligently to suppress them.

But he wanted that lost thing back.

After dinner in the commissary Walker went to see Tim.

Neumann had given Tim a luxurious room on the third floor, high enough to afford him a view of the city, which was dark now, dark clouds rivering above it. Tim was at the window peering out. Walker, who was not stupid, and who understood the nature of the spells that had been cast over the years, was careful to stand erect, to fix a smile on his face, to assume an air of authority.

Doing so, he caught sight of his own reflection in the window and thought, How old I seem! Of course, he was old. He had lost track of his precise age but he was certainly old enough to be Tim’s father—that was in the nature of things. And Tim was a grown-up man. Not a middle-aged man but not a young man, either. Walker was vigorous but he knew that age and time were pressing him and he hoped he would not die before he recovered the precious thing he had lost.

He said, “You like the city?”

Tim turned to face him.

Timothy Fauve had changed a great deal over the last six months. Now his eyes were clear, his clothes and countenance were clean, he looked healthy. His dark hair was down to his shoulders but it was not matted. He had shaved. His hands were steady.

Tim said, “Hello, Walker.” Added, “I don’t think it’s the kind of place you really like. Let’s say I appreciate it.”

Walker broadened his smile slightly. “You’ve come a long way.”

“About as far as you can go. All kinds of ways.” “We won’t be here much longer. Are you ready?” “I think so.”

This was more tentative than Walker liked. He frowned and saw Tim react with a wince. “You understand how hard we’ve worked to get to this stage.”

Tim nodded vigorously.

“You know what we’ve done for you.”

“Sure I do. Of course.”

“And what’s at stake.”

“Yes.”

“You’re certain you’re ready to finish it?” “Absolutely,” Tim said.

“Good.” Walker relaxed. “How about a game of chess?”

He gave away odds of a vizier and a rook. Walker was a good chess player. Swift, methodical, and clean —he wielded the chess pieces like a surgeon wielding a knife.

Part Three

HOMELAND

Chapter Fifteen

1

They made it back to the California border three days out of Pennsylvania. Laura translated them in and out of a dry, hot world in which the roads were broad, traffic was light, and the horizon seemed always a little nearer. They stopped once at a roadside diner, but the menu posted over the counter was in a cursive script that looked more Persian than English—which implied, among other things, that their money wouldn’t be any good. So Laura took them back onto an interstate and they pulled over at a Stuckey’s outside Kingman, Arizona.

Karen said, “I didn’t know you could do all this.” Her sister shrugged. “Neither did I.” “I was thinking,” Karen said, “it might attract attention.”

“I don’t guess that matters now. There’s attention on us already.”

“It’s a question of time,” Karen said. “Do you get that feeling?”