Cold Silence by James Abel Page A

dogs.”
    â€œIntruder could look like a neighbor. Lost tourist.”
    â€œLike the two who claimed to be hikers last month. But after a while,” Orrin said, showing something different in his eyes, “they told the truth.”
    â€œOrrin, we’re on the cusp here, so incredibly close. Days maybe. And once it takes off, well . . .”
    Tears of emotion appeared in Orrin’s eyes.
    â€œSeems like a dream, Harlan.”
    â€œI’ll need you to go out again. To Washington.”
    â€œAn honor, sir.”
    â€œDidn’t I ask you not to call me that?”
    â€œYou saved my life, Harlan.”
    â€œThank yourself, Orrin, not me.”
    â€”
    Harlan Maas walked down the center aisle in the old Quaker meeting house, past the gauntlet of smiling faces—living ones atop people sitting on benches—and less happy visages frozen in the hodgepodge of real paintings and framed magazine cutouts on the walls, some original work as old as five hundred years, other art a month old. The paint cracked and thick. Why, that top-left piece, the full-face visage of the sick man from the Greek island of Calidon, had to be worth half a million. The art magazine shot of Rembrandt’s man in a turban was worth a penny, it was just a page, but it made the point all the same.
    An art thief would clean up here, if he ever got in, and managed to get out.
    â€œAny word from Africa, Harlan?”
    â€œWe’re good to go, folks!”
    Many faces in the illustrations seemed modern and recognizable, yet the bodies were clad in medieval clothes. No zippers. No buttons. The visages might be the same ones you’d see in the vegetable aisle at Walmart. Same DNA. Others were twisted and tortured. Men with beaks. Women with the heads of chickens. A walled village, burning. Lurid stuff, especially in the plain setting of a Quaker meeting house.
    But they went to the heart of the project, as did the red phone by the window, the red phones in every building on campus, the damn need to get news from Africa tonight.
    In this very room, Quaker settlers had gathered before the American Revolution to talk and share and pray, and now, Maas realized, the old spirit would infuse new work. All around him as he stepped down the aisle, he felt adoration and hope, welling love, trust, and warm delight.
    â€œOh, my friends! My family!” he cried, passing the silver plate, offering the syringes, watching eager fingers pluck and choose and hold up amber fluid to the light.
    â€”“You will go to Paramount Pictures, Annie and Eddy!”
    â€”“Washington, D.C. The little brown house! Fritz and Bettina. Make those dollars count!”
    â€”“For you, Christopher and Eloise, air tickets to Disneyworld! Bring sweaters for the air-conditioning!”
    But inside, he fought down fear, his mind going again to the communications shack and the screens there, and his watchers, who would be riveted to CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC. WAITING FOR NEWS FROM AFRICA TO START!
    He was in agony that the red phone would ring again. It had happened before when he failed.
    Everyone, even kings, are afraid of someone, Harlan Maas knew. And he was terrified of the voice on that phone.
    But outwardly he smiled so the group would think that nothing was wrong. He stood tall. He was the embodiment of worldly confidence and gentle command. He rolled his left sleeve up to expose blue veins on his pale, thin arm.
    Harlan announced, “Now, all of you! Let’s line up and give each other the final round ofshots.”

FIVE

    Chris Vekey walked into the Wilson High School gym, and the sheer normalcy of it—after the horrors she’d seen last night—almost knocked her off her feet. For the next thirty minutes, for her daughter’s sake and the sake of sanity, she’d try to block out the situation in Nevada and the photos from Somalia sent in by Joe Rush. Her experience told her she needed this short