Chapter 39

Against a foe I can myself defend,

But heaven protect me from a blundering friend!

I left my old friend and mentor sitting in his rocking chair with a dazed look on his face, a blistering ring of freshly implanted emotions tucked away in his neural net and a brand new lease on life. The dazed look would pass, in time; which was more than could be said for the other two.

I drove myself back to the airport, climbed into the Agency helicopter and returned home.

There was plenty of time to think, and lots to think about, on the way back; which I assiduously avoided. My mind was still far too focused and clear right then, and the last thing either I or the pilot needed was a blizzard inside the helicopter.

I tried to get angry, just a little bit, to counter the frigid chill that remained within the confines of my mind. I mean honestly, it's not like there weren't plenty of nasty feelings floating around Baltimore and, a few miles later, Washington. I must have inhaled half a million of the ephemeral fuckers during the first two minutes of the flight alone. I was stoked to the eyeballs but, for some unknown reason, the best I could manage, heating up-wise, were a few erratically sized bright blue/white flashes that looked like itty-bitty, teeny-tiny little bursts of lightning. I watched them dance across the backs of my hands, from wrists to fingertips, for six or seven minutes then grew bored and gave up. The small electrical discharges flickered briefly, sputtered and then faded away like last week's celebrity gossip.

I wasn't really in the mood for anger anyway. There was a mountain of sadness occupying my heart right then; along with hillocks of disappointment, regret, disenchantment, disillusionment, sorrow...

They say that to have a friend, you have to be a friend. They also say that to love another you must first love yourself.

They say a lot of things; most of which are, in point of fact, pure bullshit.

However, they might actually be on to something, friend thing-wise. I wouldn't know.

No; I take that back. I knew quite a lot, intellectually; not nearly so much in practical terms. After all, most everyone's got acquaintances and associates that they call their friends; but are they? Are they really? I suppose it all depends on how you define friend. I asked David Jones about that once. He said a friend was someone he trusted behind his back with a loaded weapon.

I've always had a sneaking admiration for that definition.

I'm not sure I've one of my own that's as well reasoned. I thought I did—once. But of course, as with so many of the things we think we know and/or understand, life and experience have the most vivid inclination to demonstrate just how comprehensively clueless we truly are.

Friends are supposed to be people whose company you enjoy, and who enjoy your company in return. People you can confide in and relate to; who you're fond of. People you trust.

I'd begun to recognize in myself a pattern that had developed in the way I dealt with other people; by which I mean I'd become far too dismissive of those I didn't trust and far too eager to go along with those I did.

There'd been damn few of that second brand of individual in my life, and, as always seemed to be the case in these matters, I'd just up and tossed another one out the window.

Wasn't there anyone left in the world I could trust who wasn't carrying one of my rings?

Recent history kind of hinted that the answer was a resounding No!

Was I lonely?

I'd be lying if I claimed I hadn't been a lonely child. But that was then—and, as with most things, given sufficient time, we can become accustomed and inured to almost any set of conditions or circumstances. Doesn't mean we like or enjoy them, but we do adapt.

In all honesty, I did get lonely, from time to time; mostly when separated from the girls and children for an extended length of time. Say, more than five hours.

I can't remember a single moment though, after my three girls had met for the first time, when I felt the need for either companionship or closeness with anyone other than them, and eventually our children.

Years of study and research into the human psyche have led me to agree with the generally accepted conclusion that people are communal creatures who require multiple levels of personal contact and interaction. In other words, people are herd animals who need company to be happy and well adjusted. The vaunted support system of pop-psych mythology. It probably won't come as much of a surprise to learn that I vehemently despise the phrase. Knowing that about myself, it was one hell of a shock discovering how desperately I needed one of my own. The shock was even worse once I learned just how fragile my support system truly was.

Losing Dr. Wills as a friend though hadn't even phased me, and when, during the course of the flight back to the ranch, I came to that realization, it saddened me greatly. For about twenty seconds.

Losing one of my few remaining friends should have bothered me more, but it didn't. Come to think of it, cutting Evan DeBerg loose from my life hadn't bothered me a whole lot either.

Peggy was right ... I was drifting away; isolating and insulating myself more and more.

Was it intentional, or incidental?

I thought about that for a minute or two, decided that I wasn't particularly interested in the answer—so I just stopped thinking about it.

I leaned my head against the high impact plexi-window in the door and watched the landscape below rush by.

Rush, rush—rush! I took another deep breath, and inhaled thousands of additional feelings along with the air. Another breath followed; shallower than the one before, but carrying even more emotional content.

I was weary. Not in a physical sense—mentally and emotionally weary. Physically I felt just about the same as I had since returning from California.

My mental and emotional condition ... well, that was an altogether different story.

Never an admirer of people to begin with, I'd been losing what little respect I did have for them at one hell of a rapid pace.

Trust, as always, was a major issue.

I knew people. I mean—I really knew people. The only way I could have known them better, more completely, was if I'd been a mind reader.

Thank God that wasn't the case!

Bad as it was to have their feelings paddling about in the kiddy pool of my veins, free-falling thru ravines of my lungs and roosting in tree house of my brain, I shuddered to think how bad things might have been had I'd been saddled with Charlie's ability.

No wonder the poor girl had gone mad. No wonder she'd started thinking she was a god.

There is a point where an abundance of information or understanding ceases to be useful, ceases to be power, and merely becomes a burden; a mind diddling, soul numbing, hernia building mountain perched between your shoulder blades like an enormous lead gargoyle, threatening to grind everything that's good and decent in you to dust.

And like it or not, almost no one is up to carrying that kind of weight. Charlie hadn't been. Tim neither, for that matter. Their fantasies, and the pair had suffered from a surfeit of similarly misguided delusions of grandeur, had fucked 'em up but good. Both fervently believed that their abilities made them bigger, badder, more significant and invulnerable than they really were.

Was I any different?

"Just barely." I muttered softly, my words drowned and diluted by the synchronized thrashing of the rotor blades above my head.

Squeak—squeak—squeak—squeak...

" ... wrong with this damn thing?"

"Must've bent one 'a the wheels when we dropped the iceman."

" ... weighs a fuckin' ton!"

"Was I blamin' you? No I wasn't..."

" ... even alive?"

"Beats me. Sure ain't a healthy color."

... squeak—squeak—squeak—squeak...

"Can the chatter and keep moving!"

" ... colder than a witch's tit."

" ... think this guy's dead Paolo?"

"Not yet he isn't. Now keep moving!"

... squeak—squeak—squeak—squeak...

I wanted a little time alone, so I had the pilot set down in a clearing a couple of miles from the ranch's eastern property line. I got out, sent him back to Langley with my thanks, and began walking.

Trees to the right, trees to the left; occasional open areas broken by animal paths or small streams, dips or inclines in the landscape. Hard to tell for certain what direction I was walking in, compounded by the grey overcast sky that blocked the sun from view. Didn't matter to me. I knew where I was going. I could feel them ahead of me, their specific emotional flavors acting like a beacon.

Should I tell them?

Would knowing that we were all related make any real difference?

It might.

It didn't to me.

But it might to them.

Yeah, it might. But if I didn't tell them, they'd never know. Wills sure as hell wasn't going to tell them.

So don't tell them.

I only had his word for it anyway.

You know he's right.

I suspected he was, but...

You know damn well he's right!

Okay, so I knew it. He'd supplied enough information to fill the gaps. I could, in my mind, see the complex and extensive family tree that had the four of us at its root. I could see the branches flaring out and away, spreading back into a dim and dusty past that I could almost taste.

But that vision only extended back a hundred years or so. There was more ... a lot more ... I was fairly confident, but I couldn't be certain. I needed more information. And the way things stood, there was only one source left to me I could trust.

Who'd a thunk it?

The one and only person left in all the world I trusted, and who didn't carry one of my rings.

My father.

Time to pick up the pace. Time to get home.

I could feel them in front of me. All of them; the girls, the kids, Harmon, Sly and their men ... Peggy's horses. I felt each and every one, knew where they were in relation to the others; could almost tell what they were doing.

Harmon, Sly and their men were patrolling. The horses weren't doing much of anything. The kids were playing ... I couldn't tell what, but AJ was losing and wasn't happy about it. Their mothers were together in another room talking.

Everything was calm and satisfyingly normal. Except...

I sensed some unfamiliar bundles of emotion as well. Some were small animals. Deer, squirrels, birds, a cat ... and two unknown, unfamiliar people working their way cautiously towards the house on a parallel track to the one I was on.

I started running.

They had a head start on me—not much of one, but enough to be worrying.

I couldn't tell what was on their minds. I never can. They were feeling cautious, but not overly so. They were also intent and determined.

Their presence on our property could have been explained in a myriad of ways. Maybe they were lost. Maybe they'd been on a hike and simply wandered unawares onto our land. Maybe it was pure coincidence that they were on a direct path to the house.

Maybe.

It would have taken a small army to secure the boundary; we simply had too much acreage. Harmon and his men were there to secure and defend the main access road and the house itself, and they'd done a good job in the months they'd been with us. We didn't get many sales types or Jehovah's Witnesses looking for converts.

Having a large amount of land kept the neighbors at a distance and visitors to a minimum, but it also meant that we were vulnerable to the occasional trespasser. There's no security system, short of mine fields, known to man capable of adequately covering that much area.

But I could. It was one of the reasons I'd always favored the ranch. I've always liked the idea of being able to see my enemies coming; of being able to pick them off before they got too close. It just wasn't very often that I'd had the opportunity to indulge that preference.

The house we'd later moved to in Alexandria had been the girl's idea. I understood their reasons for wanting to be closer to the city; closer to Izzy's work, and mine, closer to Peggy's college. But to say I'd been in favor of the move would be stretching the truth more than a little, and to be honest I ultimately agreed only to make them happy. Peggy was the only one, besides me, who hadn't been completely happy with the relocation, and she'd only been bothered at having to leave her precious horses in the hands of a caretaker.

I loped along, dodging trees, jumping bushes and hedges, keeping a constant lock on the two intruders' position. Twelve minutes passed before I felt that I was far enough ahead of them; far enough ahead to scout out a spot for the interview. A little over a mile away from the house.

Harmon and his men were splitting up. Four headed of towards the main gate, four in the direction of the horse paddock and the rest fanned out to patrol the tree line. Inside the house, the girls had left the room where they'd been and joined the children.

I sat down on a dead-fall tree, one that provided a clear view forward, a heavy thicket behind, and waited.

The pair advanced steadily towards me.

I reached into my jacket pocket, retrieved my little secure cell phone and quickly punched in a number. A clear tenor answered.

"Mr. Harmon, we have a couple of trespassers on the north east side of the property, roughly one mile from the main house."

" ... no, keep those men you've already sent to the main gate where they are. Pull the remainder in close to the house and keep watch on the tree line."

" ... there's no need to cause them any undue worry. I'll get back to you once I'm done here. This shouldn't take long." I disconnected and returned the phone to its pocket.

I sat and waited patiently; eyes straight ahead, senses open and probing. The pair emerged from the trees talking to one another in subdued tones and stopped dead in their tracks the moment they became aware of my presence.

"Hi." I said pleasantly.

"Hey." the smaller of the pair replied after a prolonged hesitation. She was rather plain looking, about average in height and build, and wore rather non-descript clothing. Her partner was more distinct; taller, swarthy, very good looking and more stylishly dressed, but with distinctly feral facial features.

"Mind telling me what you're doing on my property?" I asked.

"Yours?" the shorter woman parroted blankly.

I shrugged expansively. "It's not really mine. I kinda serve as grounds keeper and head of security, so..."

The second woman eyed me warily, inching one hand very slowly inside her unzipped coat.

"We were just walking and taking pictures." the smaller woman replied after a moment's consideration, lifting the 35mm camera that hung from her neck on a thick leather strap. "Sorry, we didn't know this was private property."

"Sure you did. Question is, who sent you?" I asked.

"No one sent us." she said quickly.

I shook my head slightly. "That's lie number one. Two more and I stop being friendly." I smiled broadly. "And if your friend doesn't quit reaching for whatever she's got hidden away under that coat besides her tits, I'm liable to get downright nasty."

I stood up slowly. Their eyes grew wide with fear, which was completely understandable as I'd linked with both, and was feeding them enormous doses of that very same emotion.

"Now, let's try it again ... who sent you?"

" ... just me or is it getting hot in here?"

"You're going thru menopause, now shut the hell up and keep moving."

"No, really ... shit, I'm sweating like a pig!"

"You'll be squealing like one if I have to tell you again. Push the goddamn gurney and shut the fuck up! I'm sick to death of hearing your voice."

... squeak—squeak—squeak—squeak...

The two women turned out to be a couple of university students who'd been hired thru a series of cut-outs to do reconnaissance. All they knew was that they'd been given five hundred dollars up front to scout the property and take photos of the house, with a promise of an additional five hundred upon delivery of the film.

Poor girls. They'd begged me to let them finish their job, pleading that they really needed the money for tuition, suggesting in not very subtle ways that sex with one or both would be my reward for turning a blind eye.

Poor stupid girls.

I kept the camera and all the film they'd brought with them. In return I gave each of them a ring filled with love, paranoia and apprehensive terror and sent them running back in the direction of their car. The emotions locked within those two rings would eventually drive them insane. They'd be of no use, informationaly speaking, to anyone.

I was never able to prove it, but I was convinced that Alex Chorney was behind, far behind, their little scouting trip. And it bugged the hell out of me that I wasn't able to pin it on him.

I didn't let that slight detail stop me from returning home, going into my den, turning on my computer, activating the special program Laurie/Lucy had installed, and killing half of Alex's cousins.

The girls took the news that we were all related far better than I'd anticipated. Far better. In fact, they were thrilled. Lilly in particular seemed to take a rather perverse delight in our new familial connection, and spent the remainder of that evening slipping in close when the children weren't looking and groping me. Her wickedly sensual grin kept me from complaining too loudly.

I got even later that night as we lay in bed, dropping my mirror and allowing the three of them to experience the full extent of my expanded power up close and personal. Lilly and Izzy handled it well enough, eventually.

Peggy was a whole other story. She insisted on linking with me the moment the mirror stopped reflecting, and while Lilly and Izzy shivered and moaned uncontrollably from the secondary emotional overload, my little half-pint screamed like a banshee, clawed at my chest with her fingernails until she drew blood and then she collapsed on my bloody chest and wept like a baby for close to an hour. Then she passed out and remained unconscious for the rest of the night. I made no effort to break her link, leaving it intact. She'd just have to learn the hard way.

After a few hours of lying sandwiched between two life sized vibrators, Izzy and Lilly finally acclimated to the emotional runoff and came to their senses. I carried Peggy into the bathroom and cleaned the blood off the both of us while the other girls changed the bed sheets. Returning to bed I spent the remainder of the night being dry humped, groped, fondled and caressed from either side by two semi-sleeping women while Peggy lay unmoving on top of my torn chest like a dead weight.

Not the best night of my life, but things could have been worse. The important thing was that they'd survived. They'd survived and I hadn't burst into flames, turned into a block of ice, or blown up the house.

" ... together now, lift!"

... thwump...

" ... guy weighs a fucking ton!"

"Cold as a witches' tit and stiff as a board too."

"Get the gurney out of here, you assholes. Put it out in the hall and don't let anyone take it. We're gonna need it afterwards."

"What are they plannin' to do with the iceman Paolo?"

"Whaddayou care?"

"I don't. Just curious."

"Take your fuckin' curiosity out into the hall and stay there till I call you."

" ... grouchy cocksucker..."

I went to the White House the next day and politely refused the President's semi-magnanimous offer. He was, shall we say, less than pleased which made me inordinately happy.

However, out of a sense of patriotism and enlightened self-interest, I offered the services of my new (but yet to be established) think-tank to the government, at a generous discount.

I left the White House feeling better about myself than I had in some time. Then I went to my personal lawyer (the AG) and we set the creation of my, actually Laurie and Nigel's, think-tank into motion. When asked what we'd decided to call it, I spaced out mentally for nearly thirty five seconds before telling the AG to call it the Delphi Foundation. I'd have preferred to stay clear of the Foundation altogether, but eventually gave in to external (female) pressure and let them add my name to the board of directors, with the strict understanding that I would serve only in an advisory role, with a nominal salary of one dollar a year.

Time passed quickly, as it seems determined to do the older you get, and before I knew it, we had a new President.

He didn't like me one little bit, and the fact that the previous office holder had attempted to foist me off on his administration as a watch-dog didn't help our relationship. But there was damn little he could do about me as long as I confined my activities to the CIA.

Little did he know...

The girls found a private school not too far from the ranch (relatively speaking) to send the children to, and I agreed after spending a day there screening the faculty and staff. Tink and Rosie liked their new school and the new friends they made, while AJ was simply content with being allowed to attend with his sisters; Belle, on the other hand, couldn't have cared less. School for her was nothing more than something to do when she wasn't studying with her Sifu.

Peggy reestablished her veterinary practice; working from an office we built on the same property where our security people had their homes.

Lilly and Izzy had more free time on their hands, with the children away at school, so they became involved with the Foundation at Laurie's request, interviewing and recruiting talent from across the country and soliciting funds to keep it running. Without meaning to, they became Washington society doyennes.

And I kept myself occupied creating admirers within the new administration, including for the first time, the upper echelons of the FBI.

" ... we ready?"

"Almost there sir."

"What's the hold up?"

"We're having trouble keeping the electrodes on him. His skin is cold and wet. The adhesive won't stick."

"Then nail them on! But get it done quickly."

"Yes sir."

... Belle's first tournament was nerve wracking. Sifu Nigel had been against her competing, for two reasons: first, he'd been teaching her, at my request, to fight not score points and second, because the majority of children in Belle's age group were considerably smaller. He spent the two weeks prior to that first tournament drilling her on the rules, reminding her that winning at that level was less important that insuring no one got hurt.

Izzy was convinced that her baby was going to get hurt.

The entire family and Laurie were there in the stands to cheer our girl on. Nigel knelt next to Belle, whispering final instructions into her ear. Belle had, early on, been wide eyed and excited. She'd even done a fair imitation of Tink and Peggy's little toe bouncing routine, grinning from ear to ear. And then, when it was her turn to take the mat, she shut it off like a light switch. I sat in the stands and marveled when I felt her damp down every last one of her emotions. I could barely tell she was there at all. Her expression dulled and in seconds went from excitement to stone faced determination.

Belle finished third in her age group, accepted her trophy with studied calm but cried in the van all the way home. She felt as though she'd failed.

It took two long days to get her back to her normally exuberant self, at which point she returned to training with a ferocity that would have impressed any of my old Army instructors...

... the children's school hosted a student art festival in late May. One of the other student's parents, a noted Art critic from the Smithsonian, discovered Rosie. Lilly had allowed her to display the pencil drawing she'd done of her mother and I, which I'd had framed and hung prominently in the living room. The critic had a hard time, at first, accepting that a little girl had created that particular drawing, until Rosie sat down with her sketch pad and, in a matter of a few minutes, produced one of the woman that was nearly as good. Lilly told us that when Rosie showed the critic some of her more risqué drawings, she nearly had a stroke.

The woman offered to act as Rosie's agent if she ever decided to sell any of her work.

Lilly made her daughter promise not to sell any of the nudes until she was at least eighteen. Rosie smiled tolerantly and agreed...

... AJ grew bored with playing the keyboard we got him, even though he'd gotten pretty good at it, and announced one morning at breakfast that he wanted to take up the saxophone. When Lilly asked him why that particular instrument, he replied that it was sexier. His mother choked on her coffee while Izzy and Peggy hid their smiles behind their hands and AJ's sisters giggled brightly.

I just sat at the table, sipped my orange juice and frowned...

... Laurie/Lucy, came all the way out to Langley from Fort Meade in August to inform me that my daughter Tink, Laurie's protégé in the fine art of computer programming, had just successfully hacked her first database.

It was a toss-up. I couldn't make up my mind whether I should be pissed or proud. In the end I decided to share the wealth, and told Peggy. She got pissed and grounded Tink for twenty years to life while I got to revel vicariously in my baby's achievement...

" ... got it! Okay, we're ready."

"About time."

"Settings?"

"Five thousand volts for five seconds."

"Five-kay for five... CLEAR!"

... zzzztttzztttzzttttt...

... September 11^th.

Even though I'd had access to all the classified message traffic that came in or left the CIA since 1991, I can honestly say I never saw 9-11 coming. The only excuse I can offer is that I tended to focus exclusively on classified information and where it went. I never made reading the un-classified traffic a part of my daily routine. If I had, it's possible I might have put the pieces together in time.

It wasn't my job, and I know it wasn't my fault; I even realize that it's not actually possible for one man to read all the messages and memos generated by an organization that size on a daily basis, but even so...

" ... no significant change in either heart rate or blood pressure."

"Ten thousand volts for ten seconds."

"CLEAR!"

... zzzztttzztttzzttttt...

... another war. There's always another war. Just wait long enough and one is bound to come along.

The Army wasn't going to call me back; that much I knew. Not with the kind of notation I had on my DD 214.

Even so, I suggested to the big brass at the Pentagon that it might be a good idea for me to go to Afghanistan. I could find out for them where Bin Laden was hiding.

They turned me down flat.

Then the girls discovered what I'd done (I think Laurie told them, although she's always flatly denied any involvement) and all hell broke loose. The shouting, screaming and crying went on for several hours. Once their tirade ended I found myself banished from my bedroom for nearly a week.

I had to swear on my children's lives that I'd never do anything like that ever again before they'd allow me back.

I fumed silently over that episode for a long, long time. Couldn't catch Bin Laden, couldn't catch Alex Chorney. What good was I?

That's when I truly began obsessing...

" ... don't think this freak's got a central nervous system."

"Twenty thousand ... and why don't we shift our focus to the good Doctor's more sensitive areas."

"CLEAR..."

... months and years passed...

... AJ gave up on the saxophone—he said he wanted an instrument he could sing along with while he played—so we bought him a guitar...

... Belle never again failed to win first place in any competition she entered and by the age of ten she had gotten so much bigger and stronger than other children her age she was forced to compete in weight groups, fighting kids who were sometimes three or four years older than she was. Sifu Nigel suggested it was time for Belle to begin learning weapon forms. Belle was ecstatic and Izzy worried more than ever...

... Rosie made several thousand dollars selling her drawings to various collectors around the country, and Lilly insisted she put the money into a savings account, calling it her Art School fund. Our little artist was on her way to becoming famous...