Michael Walsh: Early Warning

He went into the bathroom. He could still see the bloodstains on the floor, where Evalina Anderson had died at his hand. He started to scrub them, but they were old and dried, and after a while he gave up. Then he threw up.

There were too many ghosts now, piling up, even right here in his own home. At some point, one of them would reach out of the past and claim him and then that would be that.

He switched on his systems in the panic room. He’d have to update them all, of course, and run endless security checks, but for now all he wanted to do was see if there were any urgent messages sent via the private T-3 line to The Building in Maryland.

There were.

URGENT-that would be from Seelye. The man never slept.

SPEAK

MESSAGE FOR YOU, FROM YOU

That could mean only one thing-a message Maryam had sent from the secure laptop had been received.

RELAY

I DON’T THINK YOU REALLY WANT TO SEE IT

DON’T FUCK WITH ME DAD.

WE CHECKED THE IP ADDRESS.

HUNGARY, SO WHAT?

NOT HUNGARY.

WHERE THEN?

YOU’RE NOT GOING TO LIKE THIS

WHERE??

There was a short pause before the answer came: IRAN. TEHRAN, TO BE PRECISE

Devlin tried to control his panic. MEANING WHAT?

WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHE’S DEFECTED

IMPOSSIBLE

ENTIRELY LIKELY. WE GOT A DOSSIER, COURTESY OF SENDER. IT’S ALL ABOUT HER. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IT? SEEMS SHE’S BEEN A DOUBLE AGENT THE WHOLE TIME

FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

WHY, BOY, FOR YOU. WHAT OTHER PURPOSE?

BUT SHE-He stopped. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. REQUIRE PROOF. COULD BE SKORZENY DOUBLE, FALSE FLAG, ANYTHING

THERE WAS ONE OTHER THING

WHAT?

SIGNED BY HER

WHAT??

YOU SHOULD SEE FOR YOURSELF

SEND IT

I WILL. BUT YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT THIS NEGATES OUR PREVIOUS AGREEMENT. MY JOB IS NOW SECURE SO LONG AS TYLER STAYS PRESIDENT. WHICH YOU AND I WILL NOW ENSURE. DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR?

SEND IT AND WE’LL TALK LATER

SUIT YOURSELF.

Even before it came, he knew what was coming. A taunt, a jest? Or the truth?

It came across the screen:

It was the “Dorabella” Variation, written out in Elgar’s hand. The code Atwater had cracked. The substitution for the substitution. The most visible layer of the endless palimpsest that was his world, and hers as well.

And underneath, in her hand, the words: “I’m so sorry.”

He was not sure how long it was before he noticed a new sensation. It was a pain in his chest, a throbbing, searing pain-no, not pain, more like a new emotion, one that he had never experienced before, but one that brought on shortness of breath, sweats, shivers.

Then he became aware of a sound rushing in his ears, like the waters of a river, or the waves of a great ocean. There was the smell of salt in his nose, as of brine and felt himself toppling backwards into a tidal pool that splashed the world with ocean spray as the waves met the rocks on the shore.

He thrust his arms and let gravity take him, plunging down toward the sea, the primal sea, not Mother Earth but Mother Ocean, the place where blood and seed were the same, the place where life began and where death could take you any time it wanted. And all accompanied by the beating of a great drum, the tactus of the universe, the thing that set our rhythms, from the seconds to the minutes to the hours to the days to the weeks to the months to the-

The beating of the human heart.

The ghosts reached out, but he shook them off. Not yet. Too soon.

The beating grew louder, stronger, more urgent. Across the oceans of time he had heard her and could hear her now. Across oceans of distance, he would find her. The only thing he could not do, ever, was to doubt her.

Of one other thing, finally, there could be no doubt: at last he knew he had a heart.