It seems a dream now; a dream to which I would gladly return, if only I could forget the horror that woke me from it.
That horror was not without its warnings, though in those early days I was far too swept up by emotional and intellectual excitement to recognize them. The first stands out the most clearly: one evening, with the sun bouncing off the cove outside the leaded bay window in my room (at that time of the year it became truly dark on St. Kilda for only about three hours each night), I happened to be going through the jacket I'd been wearing during the jailbreak HOW LONG AGO, and found the original computer disc that Mrs. Price had given me. Staring at it, my first thoughts were of Max: not as I'd last seen him, with much of his head removed by a cia sniper's bullet, but alive, and as full of banter and laughter as he'd always been. And then, slowly, I recalled the information that was on the disc‹all the information. I'd been so focused on matters surrounding the Forrester assassination that I'd completely forgotten that Max had managed to crack the encryption of a second set of images: the old footage of a Nazi death camp, through which wandered the digitally inserted silhouette of an unidentifiable figure.
Popping the disc into a computer terminal that sat at a rustic desk by the bay window, I called those images up and reviewed them once again.
"Anything good?"
I started a little at the sound of Larissa's voice and turned to see her striding through my open door quickly. I let out a small, pleased groan as she threw herself into my lap, kissed me quickly and then turned her dark eyes to the monitor. "What in the world is that? Been bitten by the revisionist bug, have you?"
"You mean you don't recognize it?" I said, surprised.
Larissa shook her head. "Doesn't quite look finished, whatever it is."
"No," I said, replaying the images. "Max found it on the disc that Price's wife gave us. I'd forgotten about it—and when I saw it again I assumed it must have been another job Price did for your brother."
"If it is I've never heard anything about it." Larissa leaped up and went to a glowing keypad panel by my bed. "Maybe Leon knows something." She touched a few of the keypads. "Leon, come over to Gideon's room, will you? He's found something odd."
In a few minutes Leon Tarbell came shooting in, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. "Well, what is your mystery, Gideon?" he said. "I was rather busy when you—" He stopped suddenly when he saw the images on the screen. "What the devil is that?" As I explained the origins of the disc once again Tarbell's gaze focused ever more intently on the gray figure on the monitor.
"I know who that figure is, but I can't seem to‹there, you see? When he turns in profile. I know I've seen that silhouette somewhere before."
"That's exactly how I felt the first time I watched it," I answered with a nod. "But I couldn't place—"
"Wait!" A look of sudden recognition came into Tarbell's satanic features, and then he rushed around to the computer's keyboard. "I believe I may be able to—" His words trailed off as he went to work on the keyboard. Then a new succession of images began to rapidly appear and disappear on the screen.
"What is it, Leon?" Larissa asked. "Was Price doing something other than the Forrester job for Malcolm?"
Tarbell shrugged. "If he didn't tell you, Larissa darling, he certainly wouldn't tell the rest of us. But as for this mysterious fellow—" He pointed to the screen, where the footage of the concentration camp reappeared, frozen on one frame. Tarbell tapped at the keyboard a few more times with a bit of a flourish. "Here ... he ... is!"
The mysterious silhouette was suddenly filled in perfectly by a photograph of a man whose name we all knew well:
"Stalin," I said, more confused than ever.
"Yes, it's him, all right," Larissa agreed, looking as perplexed as I felt. "But what interest could Price have had in placing the Soviet dictator at a Nazi death camp?"
Tarbell only shrugged again, while I wondered, "Do you think it's important? I mean, maybe we should ask Malcolm—"
"No, Gideon," Larissa said definitively. "Not now. I've just come from him—he worked all night and drove himself straight into another attack."
My attention diverted to Malcolm's condition, I wondered aloud, "What does he do in that lab, anyway?"
Larissa shook her head. "It's some pet project, he never will say what. But I wish he'd drop it, he needs rest desperately. As for this business—" She reached over to shut off the terminal screen, then removed the disc and tossed it to Tarbell. "I'd say it was just some movie that Price was working on. Forget it, Dr. Wolfe." She turned my face toward hers and moved in to kiss me. "Right now I require your full attention ..."
Tarbell cleared his throat. "My cue," he said, pocketing the disc and leaving as quickly as he'd come. "I told you once, Gideon—you're a lucky man ..."
Gideon Wolfe's luck was about to change, however: for another, more complete copy of the images on the computer disc existed, and would soon spark a terrorist act of unprecedented scale and savagery. The catastrophe would cause Gideon to first flee Malcolm and Larissa Tressalian's ship, then journey to the remote highlands of central Africa, where he vainly hoped to find refuge from the many and varied perils of the information age.
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