Cynthia winked. "You just curl your finger around the trigger and pull, honey. You know how to pull, don't you?"

Later she heard the woman describing her to a group of friends as a psychopath. By that point, Cynthia was seriously drunk. Even coming up in the elevator, she had sagged against Long-street.

"How do you keep this up night after night?" she had asked them.

"You probably haven't noticed, but I don't drink that much."

Cynthia lost all sense of time. The penthouse was starting to spin. Running on automatic, she headed for the bathroom, which turned out to be bigger than her apartment and decorated in black glass. Two women were leaning against one of the walls, caressing each other. One of them was Webster. She was half out of her clothes. She turned and looked blearily at Cynthia. "Your Longstreet's protegee, aren't you? What was your name again?"

"Cynthia."

"Hi, Cynthia."

Webster's companion also peered at her. Her bared breasts looked as if they had had the benefit of surgical implants.

"Hi, Cynthia."

Cynthia swayed and raised an ineffectual arm in greeting. "Hi."

Webster held out a small fold of blue paper and a rolled hundred-dollar bill. "You ever do cocaine, Cynthia?"

Cynthia's eyes widened. She had not seen cocaine since the '90s.

"Don't look so shocked. Although it is terribly illegal."

Webster's friend giggled. "They'll come and take us all away one of these days." She waved a fluttering butterfly hand. "All away."

Webster disengaged from her friend and moved unsteadily toward Cynthia. "You want some?"

It seemed to be a drunken dare. Or maybe it was a trap. Paranoia floated up through the haze.

"I don't know."

"Come on. You only live once."

"We're all witches and we're all going to burn. Might as well burn for something good."

Cynthia took the packet. Drunken bravado had swamped fear. She opened it and what she saw stopped her dead. Sure there was a small amount of white powder in the blue paper, but that wasn't it. There was a single symbol drawn on the inside of the pack. A simple right angle like an inverted L. It was the symbol of the Lefthand Path.

1346408 Stone

The hiss and staccato crack of the whip were immediately followed by the scream of the inmate. The sequence of sounds echoed around the concrete wails of the blockhouses that surrounded the main yard. There was nothing else. The whole camp, assembled there in the yard, seemed to have stopped breathing.

"Twenty!"

Voorhiss, the huge guard who acted as camp executioner, was bringing back his arm once again. He stretched to his full six five, leaning back slightly. The inmate was making soft whimpering noises. The scaffold on which the punishment was taking place had been fully miked. Every audio detail was being relayed over the PA. Voorhiss struck again. Again there was the hiss, the crack, and the scream. The inmate struggled and twisted against the heavy plastic restraints that secured her to the tall wooden triangle.

"Twenty-one!"

Armed bosses walked slowly up and down the overhead catwalks, ready to open fire at the first sign of any kind of protest. Punishments always raised the level of resentment among the inmates. Trusties paroled on ground levels, slapping their electric clubs into their gloved hands and scanning the eyes of the inmates. The prisoners had to watch every moment of the punishment. Closing one's eyes or looking away was an offense equal to three days in the bunker. The whip struck again. This time the scream strangled off into a series of racking sobs. The inmate's back was bleeding.

"Twenty-two!"

Mansard

The interior of madison square garden was an empty, echoing cavern that dwarfed the men working inside it. Their shouts, the hammering, the sharp bursts of noise from their belt radios, the hum of the cranes and servos, and the bump and scrape of heavy equipment being manhandled into position all reverberated around the girders of the roof and blended into a dull cacophony that signified a show was being set up. Mansard both loved and feared those sights and sounds, probably in much the same way that gladiators had loved and feared the smell of blood and sand, or that clowns loved and feared the sawdust and animal stench of the circus. The setup was the immediate prelude to Mansard's personal moment of truth. He could test and plan and check, but the time always came when there was nothing else to do except throw the switches and hope for the best. The start of the setup was the point where the tension began to build to its final peak.

He watched a rigger ride a lighting truss with professional nonchalance as it was hoisted up into the roof. The four massive scaffolds that, with their interlocking gantries, would carry the lights, the optic screens, and the image projectors were rapidly taking shape. Outside on the roof, a second crew was installing the equipment that would create the grand finale, the big Sony DL-70s, fresh off a chartered cargo plane from Chile, that would bring the Four Horsemen to life. The show was going to cost Arlen Proverb a fortune.

Mansard would soon have to go out onto the roof and check on how things were coming. The DL-70s were straight out of their packing grease and completely untested. If one of them had been damaged in transit, he would be totally screwed. Jimmy Gadd was working feverishly to get them ready for a trial run. Mansard was putting off going up there, however. It was not just that he did not want to hear the bad news, if any. Charlie Mansard, even though his life was dedicated to producing huge images in vast areas of empty space, had no particular love of heights. He could no more ride a lighting truss with the riggers' total lack of concern than he could fly in the air. He would ride the truss if he had to, but he would always be nervously looking down.

Rita was hurrying across the floor of the Garden, heading in his direction. She looked unusually agitated. "We just got a call. Proverb's on his way over."

"Damn. What the hell does he want to do that for? There's nothing for him to see yet. They should have told him that."

"Maybe he gets nervous, just like you."

"Why should he? He's got God on his side. All I've got is Jimmy."

"Which would you rather have?"

Mansard grinned despite himself. "You've got a point there."

Mansard's first impulse was to rush around and yell at people, to try to get something ready for the client. He knew that was ridiculous. Proverb was a professional: he knew that there were still two days to go and there was no way that Mansard would be ready to stage an effects run-through for at least eighteen hours. If he wanted to walk around and nod and watch the men putting up the scaffolds, that was up to him. It was nothing more than a waste of time.

"What the hell does he want to come bothering me for? Can't he stand in front of a mirror and rehearse his lines? I've got quite enough to do without conducting guided tours."

Rita shrugged. "You know what clients are like. They want to feel they're on top of things."

Aden Proverb arrived with a small army at his back and the air of an occupying general. For someone who was so famous for his stage presence, he was of surprisingly small stature. He compensated for his lack of height by extreme flamboyance of dress. He was wearing a double-breasted white suit and a purple silk shirt; a black fur coat was thrown over his shoulders. The gold crucifix that bounced against his chest must have weighed close to a pound. The stitching on his white, high-heeled cowboy boots was also gold. As with so many of those who capitalized on their charisma, the first clue to Aden Proverb's power was in his eyes. At rest, they were heavy-lidded and languid, almost lazy, but when he focused on something they came alive, knowing ami penetrating, going right to the soul. He was flanked by his two huge bodyguards. According to the media, they went everywhere with him and even slept in the room next to his. On his right was Rashid Murjeen. The huge black man, who had been a heavyweight contender back in the old days, was quite probably the only Muslim in the employ of an American evangelist. Proverb had come in for a good deal of criticism on account of Rashid, but he had consistently ignored it. On his left was Joe Don Cutler, who had played for the '96 Steelers. He was the all-around cowboy. His black country singer's suit was decorated with white beadwork, and his Stetson had the feathers of an entire parakeet mounted on its front. It was very clear from the way the two of them carried themselves that anyone who interfered with Proverb could expect to be torn limb from limb. In addition to the two bodyguards, there was a six-man squad of private security guards in brown quasipolice uniforms, three aides in business suits, and a young, very well-developed blonde who was wearing a coat that matched Proverb's.