Inside the test chamber, the air took on a sizzly, electric quality, like the atmosphere before a storm. Sarah saw the hairs on her arm standing up. Her clothing was sticking to her body, flattened by the electric charge.
"Got a belt?" Kenner said.
"No amp;"
"Hairclip?"
"No."
"Anything metal?"
"No! Damn it, no!"
Kenner flung himself against the glass wall, but just bounced off. He kicked it with his heel; nothing happened. He slammed his weight against the door, but the lock was strong.
"Ten seconds to test," the computer voice said.
"What are we going to do?" Sarah said, panicked.
"Take your clothes off."
"What?"
"Now. Do it." He was stripping off his shirt, ripping it off, buttons flying. "Come on, Sarah. Especially the sweater."
She had a fluffy angora sweater, and bizarrely, she recalled it had been a present from her boyfriend, one of the first things he ever bought her. She tore it off, and the T-shirt beneath.
"Skirt," Kenner said. He was down to his shorts, pulling off his shoes.
"What is this"
"It's got a zipper!"
She fumbled, getting the skirt off. She was down to her sports bra and panties. She shivered. The computer voice was counting backward. "Ten amp;nine amp;eight amp;"
Kenner was draping the clothes over the engine. He took her skirt, draped it over, too. He arranged the angora sweater to lie on the top.
"What are you doing?"
"Lie down," he said. "Lie flat on the floormake yourself as flat as you canand don't move."
She pressed her body against the cold concrete. Her heart was pounding. The air was bristling. She felt a shiver down the back of her neck.
"Three amp;two amp;one amp;"
Kenner threw himself on the ground next to her and the first lightning bolt crashed through the room. She was shocked by the violence of it, the blast of air rushing over her body. Her hair was rising into the air, she could feel the weight of it lift off her neck. There were more boltsthe crashing sound was terrifyingblasting blue light, so bright she saw it even though she squeezed her eyes shut. She pressed herself against the ground, willing herself to be even flatter, exhaling, thinking Now is a time for prayer.
But suddenly there was another kind of light in the room, yellower, flickering, and a sharp acrid smell.
Fire.
A piece of her flaming sweater fell on her bare shoulder. She felt searing pain.
"It's a fire"
"Don't move!" Kenner snarled.
The bolts were still blasting, coming faster and faster, crackling over the room, but she could see out of the corner of her eye that the clothes heaped on the engine were aflame, the room was filling with smoke.
She thought, My hair is burning. And she could feel it suddenly hot at the base of her neck, along her scalp amp; And suddenly the room was filled with blasting water, and the lightning had stopped, and the sprinkler nozzles hissed overhead. She felt cold; the fires went out; the concrete was wet.
"Can I get up now?"
"Yes," Kenner said. "You can get up now."
He spent several more minutes trying to break the glass without success. Finally he stopped and stared, his hair matted by the sizzling water. "I don't get it," he said. "You can't have a room like this without a safety mechanism to enable someone to get out."
"They locked the door, you saw it yourself."
"Right. Locking it from the outside with a padlock. That padlock must be there to make sure nobody can enter the room from the outside while the facility is closed. But there still has to be some way to get out from the inside."
"If there is, I don't see it." She was shivering. Her shoulder hurt where she was burned. Her underwear was soaked through. She wasn't modest, but she was cold, and he was nattering on amp; "There just has to be a way," he said, turning slowly, looking.
"You can't break the glass amp;"
"No," he said. "You can't." But that seemed to suggest something to him. He bent and carefully examined the glass frame, looking at the seam where the glass met the wall. Running his finger along it.
She shivered while she watched him. The sprinklers were still on, still spraying. She was standing in three inches of water. She could not understand how he could be so focused, so intent on "I'll be damned," he said. His fingers had closed on a small latch, flush with the mounting. He found another on the opposite side of the window, flicked it open. And then he pushed the window, which was hinged in the center, and rotated it open.
He stepped through into the outer room.
"Nothing to it," he said. He extended his hand. "Can I offer you some dry clothes?"
"Thank you," she said, and took his hand.
The LTSI washrooms weren't anything to write home about, but Sarah and Kenner dried off with paper towels and found some warm coveralls, and Sarah began to feel better. Staring in the mirror, she saw that she'd lost two inches of hair around her left side. The ends were ragged, black, twisted.
"Could have been worse," she said, thinking Ponytails for a while.
Kenner tended to her shoulder, which he said was just a first-degree burn with a few blisters. He put ice on it, telling her that burns were not a thermal injury but were actually a nerve response within the body, and that ice in the first ten minutes reduced the severity of the burn by numbing the nerve, and preventing the response. So, if you were going to blister, ice prevented it from happening.
She tuned out his voice. She couldn't actually see the burned area, so she had to take his word for it. It was starting to hurt. He found a first-aid kit, brought back aspirin.
"Aspirin?" Sarah said.
"Better than nothing." He dropped two tablets in her hand. "Actually, most people don't know it, but aspirin's a true wonder drug, it has more pain-killing power than morphine, and it is anti-inflammatory, anti-fever"
"Not right now," she said. "Please." She just couldn't take another of his lectures.
He said nothing. He just put on the bandage. He seemed to be good at that, too.
"Is there anything you're not good at?" she said.
"Oh sure."
"Like what? Dancing?"
"No, I can dance. But I'm terrible at languages."
"That's a relief." She herself was good at languages. She'd spent her junior year in Italy, and was reasonably fluent in Italian and French. And she'd studied Chinese.
"And what about you?" he said. "What are you bad at?"
"Relationships," she said. Staring in the mirror and pulling at the blackened strands of her hair.
As Evans climbed the steps to his apartment, he could hear the television blaring. It seemed louder than before. He heard cheers and laughter. Some sort of show with a live studio audience.
He opened the door, and went into the living room. The private investigator from the courtyard was sitting on the couch, his back to Evans while he watched television. His jacket was off and flung over a nearby chair. He had his arm draped across the back of the sofa. His fingers drummed impatiently.
"I see you've made yourself at home," Evans said. "Pretty loud, don't you think? Would you mind turning it down?"
The man didn't answer, he just continued to stare at the TV.
"Did you hear me?" Evans said. "Turn it down, would you?"
The man did not move. Just his fingers, moving restlessly on the back of the couch.
Evans walked around to face the man. "I'm sorry, I don't know your name but"
He broke off. The investigator hadn't turned to look at him but continued to stare fixedly at the TV. In fact, no part of his body moved. He was immobile, rigid. His eyes didn't move. They didn't even blink. The only part of his body that moved was his fingers, on the top of the couch. They almost seemed to be twitching. In spasm.
Evans stepped directly in front of the man. "Are you all right?"
The man's face was expressionless. His eyes stared forward, seeming to look straight through Evans.
"Sir?"
The investigator was breathing shallowly, his chest hardly moving. His skin was tinged with gray.
"Can you move at all? What happened to you?"
Nothing. The man was rigid.
Just like the way they described Margo, Evans thought. The same rigidity, the same blankness. Evans picked up the phone and dialed 911, called for an ambulance to his address.
"Okay, help is coming," he said to the man. The private detective gave no visible response, but even so, Evans had the impression that the man could hear, that he was fully aware inside his frozen body. But there was no way to be sure.
Evans looked around the room, hoping to find clues as to what had happened to this man. But the apartment seemed undisturbed. One chair in the corner seemed to have been moved. The guy's smelly cigar was on the floor in the corner, as if it had rolled there. It had burned the edge of the rug slightly.
Evans picked up the cigar.
He brought it back to the kitchen, ran it under the faucet, and tossed it in the wastebasket. Then he had an idea. He went back to the man. "You were going to bring me something amp;"
There was no movement. Just the fingers on the couch.
"Is it here?"
The fingers stopped. Or almost stopped. They still moved slightly. But there was clearly an effort being made.
"Can you control your fingers?" Evans said.
They started, then stopped again.
"So you can. Okay. Now: is the thing you wanted me to see here?"
Fingers moved.
Then stopped.
"I take that as a yes. Okay." Evans stepped back. In the distance, he heard an approaching siren. The ambulance would be here in a few minutes. He said, "I am going to move in one direction, and if it is the right direction, move your fingers."
The fingers started, then stopped, as if to signal "yes."
"Okay," Evans said. He turned and took several steps to his right, heading toward the kitchen. He looked back.
The fingers did not move.
"So it's not that way." He now moved toward the television, directly in front of the man.
The fingers did not move.
"All right, then." Evans turned left, walking toward the picture windows. Still the fingers did not move. There was only one direction remaining: he moved behind the investigator, heading toward the door. Since the man could not see him, Evans said, "Now I am walking away from you, toward the front door amp;"
The fingers did not move.
"Maybe you didn't understand," Evans said. "I wanted you to move your fingers if I was heading in the right direction amp;"
Fingers moved. Scratching the couch.
"Yeah, okay, but which direction? I went in all four directions and"
The doorbell rang. Evans opened it, and two paramedics rushed in, bringing a stretcher. And now there was pandemonium, they were asking him rapid-fire questions, and loading the guy onto the stretcher. The police arrived a few moments later, with still more questions. They were the Beverly Hills police, so they were polite, but they were insistent. This man was paralyzed in Evans's apartment, and Evans did not seem to know anything about it.
Finally, a detective came through the door. He wore a brown suit and introduced himself as Ron Perry. He gave Evans his card. Evans gave him his own card. Perry looked at it, then looked at Evans and said, "Haven't I seen this card before? It looks familiar. Oh yeah, I remember. It was at that apartment on Wilshire where the lady was paralyzed."
"She was my client."
"And now it's happened again, the same paralysis," Perry said. "Is that a coincidence or what?"
"I don't know," Evans said, "because I wasn't here. I don't know what happened."
"Somehow people just become paralyzed wherever you go?"
"No," Evans said. "I told you, I don't know what happened."
"Is this guy a client, too?"
"No."
"Then who is he?"
"I have no idea who he is."
"No? How'd he get in here?"
Evans was about to say he had left the door open for him, but he realized that was going to be a long explanation, and a difficult one.
"I don't know. I, uh amp;Sometimes I don't lock my door."
"You should always lock your door, Mr. Evans. That's just common sense."
"Of course, you're right."
"Doesn't your door lock automatically, when you leave?"
"I told you, I don't know how he got in my apartment," Evans said, looking directly into the detective's eyes.
The detective returned the stare. "How'd you get those stitches in your head?"
"I fell."
"Looks like quite a fall."
"It was."
The detective nodded slowly. "You could save us a lot of trouble if you'd just tell me who this guy is, Mr. Evans. You've got a man in your apartment, you don't know who he is, you don't know how he got here. Forgive me if I feel you're maybe leaving something out."
"I am."
"Okay." Perry took out his notebook. "Go ahead."
"The guy's a private detective."
"I know that."
"You do?" Evans said.
"The paramedics checked his pockets, found a license in his wallet. Go on."
"He told me he had been hired by a client of mine."
"Uh-huh. Which client is that?" Perry was writing.
"I can't tell you that," Evans said.
He looked up from his pad. "Mr. Evans"
"I'm sorry. That's privileged."
The detective gave a long sigh. "Okay, so this guy is a private investigator hired by a client of yours."
"Right," Evans said. "The investigator contacted me and said he wanted to see me, to give me something."
"To give you something?"
"Right."
"He didn't want to give it to the client?"
"He couldn't."
"Because?"
"The client is, uh, unavailable."
"I see. So he came to you instead?"
"Yes. And he was a bit paranoid, and wanted to meet me in my apartment."
"So you left the door to your apartment open for him."
"Yes."
"Some guy you'd never seen before?"
"Yes, well, I knew he was working for my client."
"How did you know that?"
Evans shook his head. "Privileged."
"Okay. So this guy comes into your apartment. Where are you?"
"I was at my office."
Evans quickly recounted his movements during the intervening two hours.
"People saw you at the office?"
"Yes."
"Conversations?"
"Yes."
"More than one person?"
"Yes."
"You see anybody else besides people in the law firm?"
"I stopped to get gas."
"Attendant will recognize you?"
"Yes. I had to go in to use my credit card."
"Which station?"
"Shell on Pico."
"Okay. So you were gone two hours, you come back here, and the guy is amp;"
"As you saw him. Paralyzed."
"And what was he going to give you?"
"I have no idea."
"You didn't find anything in the apartment?"
"No."
"Anything else you want to tell me?"
"No."
Another long sigh. "Look, Mr. Evans. If two people I knew were mysteriously paralyzed, I'd be a little worried. But you don't seem worried."
"Believe me, I'm worried," Evans said.
The detective frowned at him. "Okay," he said finally. "You have a client privilege you're invoking. I have to tell you that I've gotten calls from UCLA and from the CDC on this paralysis thing. Now that there's a second case, there are going to be more calls." He flipped his notebook shut. "I'm going to need you to come by the station and give us a signed statement. Can you do that later today?"
"I think so."
"Four o'clock?"
"Yes. Fine."
"The address is on the card. Just ask for me at the desk. Parking is under the building."
"Okay," Evans said.
"See you then," the detective said, and turned to leave.
Evans shut the door behind him and leaned against it. He was glad to finally be alone. He walked around the apartment slowly, trying to focus his thoughts. The television was still on, but the sound was turned off. He looked at the couch where the private investigator had been sitting. The indentation of his body was still visible.
He still had half an hour before he was supposed to meet with Drake. But he wanted to know what the PI had brought to him. Where was it? Evans had moved in every direction of the compass, and each time the man had indicated with his fingertips that it was the wrong direction.
Which meant what? He hadn't brought the thing? It was somewhere else? Or that whoever paralyzed him had taken it, so it was no longer there?
Evans sighed. The critical questionis it here?was one he hadn't asked the detective. Evans just assumed it was there.
And suppose it was? Where would it be?
North, south, east, west. All wrong.
Which meant amp;
What?
He shook his head. He was having trouble concentrating. The truth was, the private investigator's paralysis had unnerved him more than he wanted to admit. He looked at the couch, and the indentation. The guy couldn't move. It must have been terrifying. And the paramedics had lifted him up bodily, like a sack of potatoes, and put him on the stretcher. The cushions on the couch were in disarray, a reminder of their efforts.
Idly, Evans straightened up the couch, putting the cushions in place, fluffing them amp; He felt something. Inside a slit in one cushion. He stuck his hand deeper into the padding.
"Damn," he said.
Of course it was obvious in retrospect. Moving away in every direction was wrong, because the investigator wanted Evans to move toward him. The guy was sitting on the thing, which he had slipped inside the couch cushion.
It turned out to be a shiny DVD.
Evans dropped it in the DVD player, and watched as a menu came up, a list of dates. They were all in the last few weeks.
Evans clicked on the first date.
He saw a view of the NERF conference room. It was a side angle, from the corner of the room, waist high. It must have been from a camera hidden in the speaker's podium or something, Evans thought. Undoubtedly the investigator had installed the camera the day Evans had seen him in the NERF conference room.
At the bottom of the screen was a running time code, numbers flickering. But Evans stared at the image itself, which showed Nicholas Drake talking to John Henley, the PR guy. Drake was upset, throwing up his hands.
"I hate global warming," Drake said, almost shouting. "I fucking hate it. It's a goddamn disaster."
"It's been established," Henley said calmly. "Over many years. It's what we have to work with."
"To work with? But it doesn't work," Drake said. "That's my point. You can't raise a dime with it, especially in winter. Every time it snows people forget all about global warming. Or else they decide some warming might be a good thing after all. They're trudging through the snow, hoping for a little global warming. It's not like pollution, John. Pollution worked. It still works. Pollution scares the shit out of people. You tell 'em they'll get cancer, and the money rolls in. But nobody is scared of a little warming. Especially if it won't happen for a hundred years."
"You have ways to play it," Henley said.
"Not anymore," Drake said. "We've tried them all. Species extinction from global warmingnobody gives a shit. They've heard that most of the species that will become extinct are insects. You can't raise money on insect extinctions, John. Exotic diseases from global warmingnobody cares. Hasn't happened. We ran that huge campaign last year connecting global warming to the Ebola and Hanta viruses. Nobody went for it. Sea-level rise from global warmingwe all know where that'll end up. The Vanutu lawsuit is a fucking disaster. Everybody'll assume the sea level isn't rising anywhere. And that Scandinavian guy, that sea level expert. He's becoming a pest. He's even attacking the IPCC for incompetence."
"Yes," Henley said patiently. "That's all true amp;"
"So you tell me," Drake said, "how the hell I'm supposed to play global warming. Because you know what I have to raise to keep this organization going, John. I need forty-two million dollars a year. The foundations will only give me a quarter of that this year. The celebrities show up at the fund-raisers, but they don't give us shit. They're so egotistical they think showing up should be payment enough. Of course we sue the EPA every year, and they may cough up three, four million. With EPA grants, maybe five total. That still leaves a big gap, John. Global warming isn't going to cut it. I need a fucking cause. A cause that works!"
"I understand," Henley said, still very calm. "But you are forgetting the conference."
"Oh, Christ, the conference," Drake said. "These assholes can't even get the posters right. Bendix is our best speaker; he's got a family problem. Wife is having chemo. Gordon was scheduled, but he's got some lawsuit about his research amp;Seems his notebooks were faked amp;"
"Those are details, Nicholas," Henley said. "I'm asking you to stay with the big picture"
At that moment, the phone rang. Drake answered it, listened briefly. Then he put his hand over the phone and turned to Henley.
"We have to continue this later, John. I've got an emergency here."
Henley got up, and left the room.
The clip ended.
The screen went black.
Evans stared at the blank screen. He felt as if he were going to be ill. A wave of dizziness passed over him. His stomach churned. He held the remote in his hand, but he did not press the buttons.
The moment passed. He took a breath. On reflection, he realized that what he had seen wasn't really surprising. Perhaps Drake was more explicit in privateeveryone wasand obviously he felt under pressure to raise money. But the frustration he expressed was perfectly understandable. From the beginning, the movement had had to fight apathy in the broader society. Human beings didn't think in the long term. They didn't see the slow degradation of the environment. It had always been an uphill battle to rouse the public to do what was really in its own best interest.
That fight was far from over. In fact, it was just beginning.
And it was probably true that it wasn't easy to raise money for global warming. So Nicholas Drake had his work cut out for him.
And environmental organizations were really working with very small funds. Forty-four million for NERF, the same for the NRDC, maybe fifty for the Sierra Club. The big one was the Nature Conservancy, they had three quarters of a billion. But what was that compared with the zillions of dollars that could be mobilized by corporations? It was David and Goliath. And Drake was David. As he had said himself, on every occasion.
Evans glanced at his watch. In any case, it was time to go see Drake.
He took the DVD out of the player, slipped it into his pocket, and left the apartment. On his way, he reviewed what he was going to say. He went over it, again and again, trying to make it perfect. He had to do it carefully, because everything Kenner had told him to say was a lie.
"Peter, Peter," Nicholas Drake said, shaking his hand warmly. "I am very pleased to see you. You've been away."
"Yes."
"But you haven't forgotten my request."
"No, Nick."
"Have a seat."
Evans sat down and Drake sat behind the desk. "Go ahead."
"I traced the origin of that clause."
"Yes?"
"Yes. You were right. George did get the idea from a lawyer."
"I knew it! Who?"
"An outside attorney, not in our firm." Evans spoke carefully, saying just what Kenner had instructed him to say.
"Who?"
"Unfortunately, Nick, there's documentation. Red-lined drafts with George's handwritten comments."
"Ah, shit. From when?"
"Six months ago."
"Six months!"
"Apparently George has been concerned for some time about amp;things. The groups he supports."
"He never told me."
"Nor me," Evans said. "He chose an outside attorney."
"I want to see this correspondence," Drake said.
Evans shook his head. "The attorney will never permit it."
"George is dead."
"Privilege continues after death. Swidler and Berlin v. United States."
"This is bullshit, Peter, and you know it."
Evans shrugged. "But this attorney plays by the book. And I have arguably overstepped proper bounds by saying as much as I have."
Drake drummed his fingers on the desk top. "Peter, the Vanutu lawsuit is desperately in need of that money."
"I keep hearing," Evans said, "that that lawsuit may be dropped."
"Nonsense."
"Because the data sets don't show any rise in Pacific sea level."
"I'd be careful about saying things like that," Drake said. "Where did you hear that? Because that has to be disinformation from industry, Peter. There is no question sea levels are rising around the world. It's been scientifically demonstrated time and again. Why, just the other day I was looking at the satellite measurements of sea level, which are a relatively new way to make those measurements. The satellites show a rise of several millimeters, just in the last year."
"Was that published data?" Evans said.
"I don't remember offhand," Drake said, giving him an odd look. "It was in one of the briefing summaries I get."
Evans hadn't planned to ask questions like these. They had just somehow come out of his mouth, unbidden. And he was uncomfortably aware that his tone was skeptical. No wonder Drake was giving him an odd look.
"I don't mean anything," Evans said quickly. "It's just that I heard these rumors amp;"
"And you wanted to get to the bottom of it," Drake said, nodding. "As is only natural. I'm glad you brought this to my attention, Peter. I'll get on the horn with Henley and find out what's being disseminated. Of course it's an endless battle. You know we have those Neanderthals at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Hoover Foundation, and the Marshall Institute to deal with. Groups financed by right-wing radicals and brain-dead fundamentalists. But, unfortunately, they have a tremendous amount of money at their disposal."
"Yes, I understand," Evans said. He turned to go. "Do you need me for anything else?"
"I'll be frank," Drake said, "I'm not happy. Are we back to fifty thousand a week?"
"Under the circumstances, I think we have no option."
"Then we will have to manage," Drake said. "The lawsuit's going fine, by the way. But I have to focus my energies on the conference."
"Oh, right. When does that start?"
"Wednesday," Drake said. "Four days from now. Now, if you'll excuse me amp;"
"Of course," Evans said. He walked out of the office, leaving his cell phone on the side table across from the desk.
Evans had gone all the way down the stairs to the ground floor before he realized Drake hadn't asked him about his stitches. Everyone else he had seen that day had made some comment about them, but not Drake.
Of course, Drake had a lot on his mind, with the preparations for the conference. Directly ahead, Evans saw the ground-floor conference room bustling with activity. The banner on the wall read, ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGETHE CATASTROPHE AHEAD. Twenty young people clustered around a large table, on which stood a scale model of the interior of an auditorium, and the surrounding parking lot. Evans paused to watch for a moment.
One of the young people was putting wooden blocks in the parking lot, to simulate cars.
"He won't like that," another one said. "He wants the slots nearest the building reserved for news vans, not buses."
"I left three spaces over here for news," the first kid said. "Isn't that enough?"
"He wants ten."
"Ten spaces? How many news crews does he think are going to show up for this thing?"
"I don't know, but he wants ten spaces and he's told us to arrange extra power and phone lines."
"For an academic conference on abrupt climate change? I don't get it. How much can you say about hurricanes and droughts? He'll be lucky to have three crews."
"Hey, he's the boss. Mark off the ten slots and be done with it."
"That means the buses have to go way in the back."
"Ten slots, Jake."
"Okay, okay."
"Next to the building, because the line feeds are very expensive. The auditorium's charging us an arm and a leg for the extra utilities."
At the other end of the table, a girl was saying, "How dark will it be in the exhibition spaces? Will it be dark enough to project video?"
"No, they're limited to flat panels."
"Some of the exhibitors have all-in-one projectors."
"Oh, that should be all right."
A young woman came up to Evans as he was standing looking into the room. "Can I help you, sir?" She looked like a receptionist. She had that bland prettiness.
"Yes," he said, nodding toward the conference room. "I was wondering how I arrange to attend this conference."
"It's by invitation only, I'm afraid," she said. "It's an academic conference, not really open to the public."
"I've just left Nick Drake's office," Evans said, "and I forgot to ask him"
"Oh. Well, actually, I have some comp tickets at the reception desk. Do you know which day you'll be attending?"
"All of them," Evans said.
"That's quite a commitment," she said, smiling. "If you'll come this way, sir amp;"
It was only a short drive from NERF to the conference headquarters, in downtown Santa Monica. Workmen on a cherry picker were placing letters on the large sign: so far it said, ABRUPT CLIMATE CHA, and beneath, THE CATASTR.
His car was hot in the midday sun. Evans called Sarah on the car phone. "It's done. I left my phone in his office."
"Okay. I was hoping you'd call earlier. I don't think that matters anymore."
"No? Why?"
"I think Kenner already found out what he needed."
"He did?"
"Here, talk to him."
Evans thought, she's with him?
"Kenner speaking."
"It's Peter," he said.
"Where are you?"
"In Santa Monica."
"Go back to your apartment and pack some hiking clothes. Then wait there."
"For what?"
"Change all the clothes you are wearing now. Take nothing with you that you are wearing right now."
"Why?"
"Later."
Click. The phone was dead.
Back in his apartment, he hastily packed a bag. Then he went back to the living room. While he waited, he put the DVD back into the player and waited for the menu of dates.
He chose the second date on the list.
On the screen, he once again saw Drake and Henley. It must have been the same day, because they were dressed in the same clothes. But now it was later. Drake had his jacket off, hung over a chair.
"I've listened to you before," Drake was saying. He sounded resentful. "And your advice didn't work."
"Think structurally," Henley said, leaning back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling, fingertips tented.
"What the hell does that mean?" Drake said.
"Think structurally, Nicholas. In terms of how information functions. What it holds up, what holds it up."
"This is just PR bullshit."
"Nicholas," Henley said, sharply. "I am trying to help you."
"Sorry." Drake looked chastened. He hung his head a little.
Watching the video, Evans thought: Is Henley in charge here? For a moment, it certainly appeared that way.
"Now then," Henley said. "Let me explain how you are going to solve your problem. The solution is simple. You have already told me"
There was a loud pounding on Evans's door. Evans stopped the DVD, and just to be safe, removed it from the player and slipped it into his pocket. The pounding continued, impatient, as he went to the door.
It was Sanjong Thapa. He looked grim.
"We have to leave," he said. "Right now."