He gently placed the knife on his plate. “And who would that someone be?”

I might have hesitated to answer his question directly, but he didn’t know my source of information. He would never know my source of information.

I leaned back in my chair. “Like Damien Cleary, Mr. Hardin, you’ve always pressed for rapid expansion of the brain transplant procedure. You dreamed that humanity would be transhuman within twenty years.”

“That isn’t an unusual vision for members of the foundation, Professor, as I’m sure you know.”

“But Nichols’s way was too cautious for you,” I continued. “Too dependent on the vagaries of independent decision making.”

“The problem with any new technology.”

I took a sip of my cappuccino. “You knew, however, that Damien Cleary would take matters into his own hands under the right circumstances. Ray Caldwell provided that circumstance. He threatened to expose the transplants for what they were.”

“Which is what, exactly, Dr. Daniels?”

“The permanent separation of humanity from God.”

He laughed. “Surely you don’t believe in that sort of thing.”

“And when Ray Caldwell sent his messages, and Lauren Caldwell showed you hers, you knew what Cleary would do.”

“That was Cleary’s business.”

“Yes. It was. You were merely a spectator. Just as you were when Abby Caldwell came to the States. Your political instinct was to chase her out. But you reconsidered. If you could get her to stay long enough, she would eventually discover the truth about Ray. So you convinced the attorney general to give her time. And when she got too close to the truth, you knew what would happen: Nichols’s plan for government funding would collapse. And Cleary would implement his own plan. Genocide.”

He leaned back in his chair, glancing at a yacht before looking back at me. “Professor, wherever you obtained this story, it has no legal ramifications concerning me.”

I sipped my drink. “No. It doesn’t. You’ve done nothing illegal—unless we consider your chat with the attorney general. But that’s just politics, isn’t it?”

He put his cup on the table. “So tell me, Dr. Daniels, what is the point of this little meeting?”

“I told you. I simply wanted to make your acquaintance.”

“And so you have.”

I finished my drink and placed my spoon on the saucer. “You won’t be able to stamp out God, you know.”

He smirked. “They will restart the transplants. The public will demand it. Eventually I’ll have billions on my side, Dr. Daniels. God will have that ragtag little band that meets at Sabin’s house.”

I smiled at him, rose from my seat, and looked out over the Adriatic. “Yes.” I watched a yacht disappear behind a monolith rising out of the sea. “God will have that little band.”

I looked back and met Hardin’s eyes. His smile faded ever so slightly.