Richardson tried not to smile. “You’re talking about the human soul.”

“We call it the Light. It seems to follow the laws of quantum theory.”

“Call it whatever you want, Mr. Takawa. I don’t particularly care. Let’s assume, for a moment, that we do have a soul. It’s in us when we’re alive. It departs when we die. Even if we accept a soul, it has no relevance to our lives. I mean, we can’t do anything with the soul. Measure it. Verify it. Take it out and place it in a jar.”

“A group of people called the Travelers are able to control their Light and send it out of their body.”

“I don’t believe in any of that spiritual nonsense. That can’t be proven in an experiment.”

“Read this and see what you think.” Lawrence placed the green binder on the table. “I’ll be back in a while.”

Takawa walked out and, once again, Richardson was alone. The conversation was so strange and unexpected that the neurologist didn’t know how to react. Travelers. The Light. Why was the employee of a scientific organization using such mystical terms? Dr. Richardson lightly touched the cover of the green binder with the tips of his fingers as if the contents could burn him. He took a deep breath, turned to the first page, and began to read.

THE BOOK WAS divided into five sections, each numbered separately. The first section summarized the experiences of different people who believed that their spirit had left their body, passed through four barriers, and crossed over into another world. These “Travelers” believed that all humans carried energy within their body like a tiger trapped in a cage. Suddenly, the cage door swung open and the Light was free.

Section two described the lives of several Travelers who had appeared during the last thousand years. A few of these people became hermits and went off to live in the desert, but many of the Travelers started movements and challenged the authorities. Because they had stepped outside the world, Travelers saw everything from a different perspective. The author of section two suggested that Saint Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, and Isaac Newton had been Travelers. Newton’s famous “Dark Journal,” kept hidden in a library vault at Cambridge University, revealed that the British mathematician dreamed he had crossed barriers of water, earth, air, and fire.

In the 1930s, Joseph Stalin decided that Travelers were a threat to his dictatorship. Section three described how the Russian secret police arrested more than a hundred mystics and spiritual leaders. A physician named Boris Orlov examined the Travelers held at a special prison camp outside Moscow. When the prisoners crossed over into other realms, their hearts beat once every thirty seconds and they stopped breathing. “They are like dead men,” Orlov wrote. “The energy of life has left their bodies.”

Heinrich Himmler, head of the German SS, read a translation of Orlov’s report and decided that the Travelers would be the source of a secret new weapon that could win the war. Section four of the report described how Travelers captured in occupied countries were sent to a concentration camp research facility under the supervision of the notorious “Death Doctor,” Kurt Blauner. The prisoners had sections of their brains removed and they were subjected to electroshock and ice baths. After the experiments failed to come up with a new weapon, Himmler decided that the Travelers were “a degenerate cosmopolitan element” and they became targets of the SS death squads.

Richardson felt no connection to the crude research performed in the past. People who thought they traveled to alternative worlds were suffering from abnormal activity in certain sections of their brains. Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, and all the other visionaries were probably epileptics with temporal-lobe seizures. The Nazis were wrong, of course. These people weren’t saints or enemies of the state; they simply needed modern tranquilizers and therapy to deal with the emotional stress of their illness.

When Richardson turned to the fifth section of the book, he was glad to see the experimental data was obtained using modern neurological tools like CAT scans and magnetic resonance imaging machines. He wanted to know the names of the scientists, but all that information had been crossed out with a black pen. The first two reports were detailed neurological evaluations of the people who had become Travelers. When these individuals went into a trance, their bodies went into a dormant state. CAT scans during this period showed virtually no neurological activity except for a heartbeat response controlled by the brain stem.

The third report described an experiment at a Beijing medical facility where a Chinese research group had invented something called a neural energy monitor. The NEM measured the biochemical energy produced by the human body. It showed that Travelers had the ability to create short bursts of what Lawrence Takawa had called the Light. This neural power was incredible, up to three hundred times stronger than the weak force that ran through a typical nervous system. The unnamed researchers suggested that the energy was connected with the ability to travel to other worlds.

Still doesn’t prove anything, Richardson thought. The energy overwhelms the brain and these people think they’ve seen angels.

He turned the page to another report and read quickly. In this experiment, the Chinese scientists had placed each Traveler in a plastic box-almost like a coffin-with special devices to monitor energy activity. Every time a Traveler went into a trance, an intense burst of energy was released from his body. The Light triggered the monitors, passed through the box, and escaped. Richardson searched through the footnotes, trying to find the names of the scientists and the Travelers. In each research report, a few words appeared like a casual comment at the end of a long conversation. “Subject returned to protective custody.” “Subject no longer cooperative.” “Subject deceased.”

Dr. Richardson was sweating. It was stuffy in the room; the ventilation didn’t seem to be working. Open the window, he thought. Breathe some cold night air. But when he pulled back the heavy curtains, he discovered a blank wall. There were no windows in the suite and the door was locked.

A Bengali wedding store was at the south end of Brick Lane. If you walked past the gold saris and pink party decorations, you entered a back room where you could connect to the Internet without being traced. Maya sent coded messages to Linden and Mother Blessing. Using the shop owner’s credit card, she placed online obituary notices in Le Monde and The Irish Times.

Died in Prague from a sudden illness: H. Lee Quinn, founder of Thorn Security Ltd. Survived by his daughter, Maya. In lieu of flowers, a contribution should be sent to the Traveler’s Fund.

Later that afternoon she got a response on a Harlequin blackboard: a brick wall near the Holborn station where a message could be scrawled like graffiti. Using a piece of orange chalk, someone had left a Harlequin lute, a line of numbers, and the words: Five/ Six/Bush/Green. That was easy to decipher. The numbers gave the time and date. The meeting location was 56 Shepherd’s Bush Green.

MAYA SLIPPED A handgun into her raincoat pocket and slung the sword carrying case over her left shoulder. Number 56 Shepherd’s Bush Green turned out to be a discount movie house in an alleyway next to the Empire Theatre. That afternoon, the theater was showing a Chinese kung fu movie and a travel documentary called Provence: Land of Enchantment.