She tried too hard, One-Up. Occam’s razor: find the simplest solution.
“I am Lord Elfangor,” Burnofsky said. “Thank you for coming.”
“I …” The man laughed, sudden, surprised. “I don’t even know why I’m here, really. I just knew …”
“You knew you had to be here,” Burnofsky said, doing his best not to glance at the pipe, willing himself to play out the role. “As though a force greater than yourself, a mind much deeper than your own—”
“Yes! That’s it!”
“Mr. Bailey, very rare are those who can hear the summons. Rarer still those with the wisdom to heed the words of the Masters.”
He was making it up as he went along. He’d seen One-Up’s report, skimmed it, but hadn’t memorized all the details.
“What you do here today will save the human race,” Burnofsky said solemnly. “You have something for me.”
Bailey nodded. He was believing. But he was troubled that he was believing. He sensed something wrong. A part of him knew. A part of him was fighting it, even as his hand went slowly to the inner pocket of his jacket.
“You are feeling enturbulated. You are concerned that you do not have your ethics in,” Burnofsky said, and held his breath. Had he said it right? He had a near-perfect memory, and he’d read about Scientology—
“Yes,” Bailey said, and laughed with relief.
Burnofsky winked. “When we are done, you will feel clear.” He watched the man closely. It was dangerous to be playing with unfamiliar cult terminology. It was too easy to make a revealing misstep.
Bailey drew his hand from his pocket and placed a flash drive in Burnofsky’s palm.
“Thank you,” Burnofsky said. “You have done well.”
Bailey breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“You can go,” Burnofsky said. “And, oh, um, if you happen to meet a young woman with the unusual name of One-Up, give her a message for me.”
Burnofsky looked him in the eye. He was sure that One-Up’s nanobots were tapping the optic nerve, or perhaps even listening. He scribbled a few words on the pad of paper, tore off a sheet, and held it up so Bailey could see it.
“Make it clean, and far from here,” Bailey read the words aloud. “I don’t understand.”
Burnofsky waved a hand to shoo the doomed man away. The last thing they could afford was this fool talking to his Scientology auditor and sending those loons into a frenzy.
So at a safe distance from the China Bone, an artery in Bailey’s head would burst.
Burnofsky wondered why he had given the kill order to One-Up. She didn’t need it. She knew a wire job this rough and ready, this tenuous, needed to be terminated.
It occurred to him that he wanted to take the burden of guilt on himself. That he often did that. Maybe if One-Up were older … But a seventeen-year-old girl should have some deniability for murder.
How in hell had it come to this?
Burnofsky remembered—how many years ago had it been—when he and young Grey McLure had worked together. Back in the day. Now Grey was dead. And Burnofsky had made it happen, even if it was Bug Man who had done the actual deed.
He slipped the flash drive containing security codes—CCTV access, computer access, door passes for the United Nations Building—into his pocket.
He raised the pipe and lit a match.
Twenty-seven twitchers to take over the world. Half of them nothing but messed-up children.
Yeah. Well. What …
Oh! Oh, yes.
Oh, yeah …
Burnofsky lay back, forgetting the pipe still dangling from his hand, and laughed softly, happily to himself.
ELEVEN
“Who are you?” Sadie asked.
Noah shrugged. “They said not to tell anyone my name.”
They looked at each other across the shabby room. The walls were a water-stained green. The ceiling was pressed tin with a repeating wreath pattern that wrapped around the place where a light fixture must once have hung. The couch was cracked brown leather, and there was a rectangular glass coffee table decorated with rings left by cups and mugs. A disappointingly empty bag of hot-and-spicy Doritos sat next to an equally empty soda can.
There was a TV. CNN was on, but muted.
There was a computer. Someone had left it on a game site.
There were cameras, but neither Sadie nor Noah saw those because they were no more than nail holes in the crown molding.
Sadie was seated in a deep, badly upholstered Morris chair. Noah had just walked in and looked a bit lost. She had a mug of green tea. He had a camouflage backpack that he pushed against the wall so as not to trip anyone.
Sadie was sharply alert, despite not having slept at all, and Noah was blinking too much and breathing too hard as a result of not having slept enough.
Morning had cast a gray shadow behind the pulled-down blinds in the tall windows.
Sadie saw the inexpensive luggage, the jacket that had definitely not come from any of the shops on Fifth Avenue, the sneakers, the arguably cute and definitely authentic bed head, the tentative mouth, the alarmingly blue eyes.
She had noted the English accent. She knew—from her mother, from her mother’s British friends, from several visits to London—that English accents came in a wide range of types, from “My ancestors cleaned out stables” all the way up to “Your ancestors cleaned my ancestors’ stables.” Noah was definitely on the stable-cleaning end of the spectrum.
That made her inclined to like him. Or at least to think that it might be possible to like him.