I awoke to see Sill waking Eigen with a gentle kiss on the forehead. I looked out the window and saw a small airport with no discernible marker. “Where are we?” I asked.

“Still on the plane?” Eigen said.

It was a mathematician’s response. Of course she was correct, but the answer was useless. “And where is the plane?” I asked.

“We’re in Corsica,” Sill said. “Bastia.”

We exited the plane and squeezed into a tiny Fiat sedan, drove away from the airport without even a glance from customs officers.

The coastal city was not terribly attractive. It appeared dingy and a bit run-down from the main highway early in the morning, but we were soon off that big road and driving east into the mountains. The hills were webbed with fog. The road was steep and twisty. I had exhausted my supply of sleep on the plane and so I stared at the back of Sill’s head as we careened through one hairpin curve after another.

“Why are we here?” I asked.

“Preparations.”

“That’s cryptic,” I said.

“We need rehearsals, practice. We need to operate as a single machine, a well-oiled machine, an organism.”

“What is Fort Knox?” Eigen asked.

“Actually we have our sights set on the United States Bullion Depository.” Sill turned the car off the curvy road onto an even narrower one.

A couple of miles up into a dense forest we came to a guard station manned by men in uniforms that I didn’t recognize. Red blouses and red trousers tucked into shiny black boots. The two men wore no hats but sported similar bowl haircuts. They raised the barrier to let us in without having to slow down. We came to a tall wall, perhaps twelve feet high and made of steel. Sill stopped the car and the massive gates slowly opened.

“Wow,” Eigen said.

I thought it.

The gates opened and we rolled in. The world on the other side of the wall was not the same as that outside. It was a futuristic campus consisting of several sleek buildings of two or three levels, carved up by well-groomed pea-gravel paths for vehicles and pedestrians. Many crimson-uniformed men and women rode around in gold-colored golf carts or walked. Sill parked the Fiat.

We stood outside the car. Sill took a deep breath. “Welcome to the Complex.”

2

In contrast to the opulent, lavish accommodations in Miami these were austere, spartan, but oddly no less comfortable, perhaps more a statement about me. Sill led me through white corridors and delivered me to the room that was all white, furniture, walls, tile floor, and there was conspicuously no art on any wall or surface. White clothes had been laid on the white bed covering for me with a note that said wearing them was not mandatory. Black ink on white paper, in a script that was almost childlike for its precision, but was certainly not the writing of a child, for its precision. The washroom as well was all white, down to the white unbranded tube of toothpaste and bottles of shampoos and lotions. My clothes felt dirty and uncomfortable after the long flight and so I showered and did change into the loose-fitting white linen trousers and short-sleeved white polo shirt. After slipping into the white boat shoes, I found the door to be locked. I sat on the bed and waited. I passed the time thinking about nothing.