Flix, monitoring the ether in the compound’s near courtyard, felt as if his brain was about to explode. There was a pulsing behind his eyes that turned brown to black, green to blue, red to gray. His breath came in hot spurts, as if being ejected from the end of a pistol. His pulse fluttered like a terrified bird, and a nerve twitched in his upper eyelid.

As he listened to a bandwidth of static, he watched a tremor start up in his hands, as if he were looking at an image on a movie screen: it was both larger than life and removed from himself. For a terrifying moment, he thought he was screening Zero Dark Thirty, then he pulled himself back from the brink and knew who he was and what he was supposed to be doing.

But in almost the same moment, the pain behind his eyes began again. Who was he, what had he become? It was as if someone—something—else had taken up residence in his brain and body, some malevolent force that was out to bury him, incinerate him, obliterate whatever it was that made him Felix Orteño. It had no use for Felix Orteño. He had to stop it before it finished him.

His hands went to his face, fingers curled, turning into claws. He felt his own nails digging into the flesh of his temples, and experienced a sudden flash of insight: the only way to stop it was to tear off his face.

Chapter 25

25

“… person of interest who works there. Pole dancer, occasional lap dancer. She goes by the name of Sydny.” That was Hemingway’s voice. “Real name—” The sound of paper shuffling “—Louise Kapok.… She’s working tonight. Starts at ten, but I want you to be there earlier to get the lay of the land, as it were.”

St. Vincent cringed at the sound of Omar Hemingway’s fatuous chuckle. After his unpleasant dinner with the bigot Monroe, he had returned to the office. He’d been so preoccupied with the disappearance and probable murder of Bluto that he’d fallen behind in listening to the daily tapes of conversation in Hemingway’s office.

“Let me get this straight.” St. Vincent identified Julie Regan’s voice. “You want me to stake out The Doll House?”

“That’s right.”

He’d had Omar’s office bugged for months, which was how he had found out that Hemingway had targeted Seiran el-Habib. Lucky for St. Vincent; he’d spiked that Universal Security brief and then had mustered all his political force into getting the NSA to move on to other targets.

“… but I don’t want a field man,” Omar the Idiot was saying now. “I want you to talk to Sydny woman to woman.”