“Didn’t get along?” He laughed softly, ruefully. “That would be an understatement.” He closed his eyes for a moment, shaking his head, as though overwhelmed by the thoughts this subject raised. When he spoke again his tone was sharper. “Do you know where I am right now?”

“I have no idea.”

“No one does. That’s the point.”

“What point?”

“Carl and I never did get along. When we were younger it didn’t matter that much. He had his friends and I had mine. We went our own ways. Then, as you may know—it’s no secret—our father yoked us together in the monstrosity known as Spalter Realty. That’s when ‘not getting along’ turned into something poisonous. When I was forced to work with Carl on a daily basis … I realized I was dealing with something more than a difficult brother. I was dealing with a monster.” Jonah paused, as if to give that term room to expand in Gurney’s imagination.

It sounded to Gurney like a speech Jonah might have delivered before—an oft-repeated explanation of a terrible relationship.

“I watched Carl evolve from a selfish, aggressive businessman into a complete sociopath. As his political ambition grew, on the outside he became more charming, more magnetic, more charismatic. On the inside, he was rotting away to nothing—a black hole of greed and ambition. In biblical terms, he was the ultimate ‘whitewashed sepulchre.’ He got in bed with like-minded people. Ruthless people. Major criminals. Mob figures like Donny Angel. Murderers. Carl wanted to pull enormous amounts of money out of Spalter Realty to finance his megalomaniac schemes with those people, as well as his supremely hypocritical gubernatorial candidacy. He kept pressuring me to agree to unethical transactions that I wouldn’t—couldn’t—agree to. ‘Ethics,’ ‘morality,’ ‘legality’—none of those words meant anything to him. He began to frighten me. Actually, that’s not a strong enough word. The truth is, he terrified me. I came to believe there was nothing—nothing—he wouldn’t do to get what he wanted. Sometimes … the look in his eyes … it was positively satanic. As though all the evil in the world were concentrated in that gaze.”

“How did you deal with it?”

“Deal with it?” Again, the small smile and rueful laugh, followed by a lowered voice, almost confessional. “I ran away.”

“How?”

“I kept moving. Literally moving. One of the blessings of current technology is that you can do just about anything from anywhere. I bought a motor home, outfitted it with the appropriate communications equipment, and made it the rolling headquarters of the Cyberspace Cathedral. A process in which I have come to see the hand of Providence. Good can come out of evil, if good is our objective.”

“The good in this case being …?”