Preach was watching them from the lawn. He seemed disinclined to join them on the porch, which White took to be an ominous sign. He felt his heart rate skyrocket.

“Seems you’d best prepare yourselves,” Preach said.

“Don’t worry,” Hartwell told him. “We’ve an extensive array of bleeding-edge deterrents at every point around the perimeter. Whitman won’t have a chance of getting near us.”

Preach grinned up at him. “I can’t help but be fascinated by your stupidity.”

“He’s right,” White said. “Whitman’s been here before, don’t forget. He got to el-Habib and neutralized his protection detail. He escaped an entire gunship and made off with our latest shipment. That means he has Dante and the jet. The entire trade route is compromised.” He headed inside, beckoning Hartwell to follow him. “But I know how to handle him, in the event he gets inside our perimeter.”

“That’s the spirit!” Preach called after them, snickering. “Gird your loins for battle! It’s Ragnarök, boys! Twilight of the Alchemists!”

*   *   *

For Charlie, the past ceased to exist, or, rather, it was stowed away behind a thick sheet of glass, to be looked at now and again, perhaps as a curiosity, but never again to be touched. The hurt was gone, as was the anguish it had engendered. Sometimes the end—or was it the future?—had a cauterizing effect on what had come before. This, come what may—even if she should die—was such a time.

“You see it?” Whitman said softly in her ear.

“I do.”

“Just to the left of the gate. It looks like a farmer’s wooden stile along the stone wall.”

“But it’s not,” Charlie said.

“It houses an infrared beam that runs just above the top of the wall. There’s a separate beam that crosses the gate, should anyone try to crash through it. Dante gave me the code to open the gate, but he thought he was clever in not telling me about the infrared beam. Break the beam—”

“And an alarm sounds.”

“Break the beam,” Whitman said, “and a hail of bullets shreds you. Nasty.”

“Not a bit of it,” Charlie said opening her backpack, “because I’m gonna take it out.”

They were sitting in the jeep. The sky was low with sullen clouds. The late afternoon smelled of rain, but the clammy air was as still as the skin of a summer pond. Inside the jeep, the cloying scent of the poppies had become overpowering.

“Open the gate,” she said.

Whitman leaned out the open window, punched in the code Dante had given him. The high iron gates yawned soundlessly open. Charlie removed from her backpack a weapon that looked like nothing more than a lightweight plastic toy, the barrel blunt and wide. She attached an oval container to its underside, using a pair of thick gloves.