The chauffeur did not hesitate. "In bed," he said. "Screwing my brains out, sir."

They had talked a great deal during the drive from Long Beach. Tony had been married only six months. Gilmonn thought of Madeline, his wife for twenty-three years, and while he wanted to be with her, he did not think they would be screwing their brains out. They would have their kids together, and their two grandchildren, perhaps in the ranch house in Arizona. A huge family gathering. The whole clan hadn't been together in five or six years.

"All that, and we didn't accomplish a Goddamned thing, Tony," he said with a sudden deep flood of bitterness. For the first time since the death of his son, he felt like cursing God.

"We don't know that for sure, Senator."

"I do," Gilmonn said. "If any man has a right to know he's failed, I do."

HOSTIAS ET PRECES TIBI, LAODIS OFFERIMUS

HOSTIAS ET PRECES TIBI, LAODIS OFFERIMUS

62

March 27

During his last hours, Trevor Hicks sat at his computer skimming and organizing genetic records sent from Mormon sources in Salt Lake City. He was staying at the home of an aerospace contractor named Jenkins, working in a broad living room with uncurtained windows overlooking Seattle and the bay. The work was not exciting but it was useful, and he felt at peace, whatever might happen. Despite his reputation for equanimity, Trevor Hicks had never been a particularly peaceful, self-possessed fellow. Bearing and presentation, by English tradition, masked his true self, which he had always visualized as frozen—with extra memory and peripheral accomplishments—somewhere around twenty-two years of age, enthusiastic, impressionable, quick-hearted.

He rolled his chair back from the table and greeted Mrs. Jenkins—Abigail—as she came through the front door, carrying two plastic bags full of groceries. Abigail was not possessed. All she knew was that her husband and Trevor were involved in something important, and secret. They had been working straight through the day and night, with very little sleep, and she brought in supplies to keep them reasonably comfortable and well fed.

She was not a bad cook.

They ate dinner at seven—steaks, salad, and a fine bottle of chianti. At seven-thirty, Jenkins and Hicks were back at work.

Being at peace, Hicks thought, worried him somewhat ... He did not trust such flat, smooth emotions. He preferred a little undercurrent of turbulence; it kept him sharp.

The alarm went through Trevor Hicks's brain like a hot steel lance. He glanced at his watch—the battery had run down without his noticing, but it was late—and dropped the disk he had been examining. He pushed the chair back and stood before the living room window. Behind him, Jenkins looked up from a stack of requisition forms for medical supplies, surprised at Hicks's behavior. "What's up?"

"You don't feel it?" Hicks asked, pulling on a rope to open the curtains.

"Feel what?"