“No. I’m going to give you a line about a worldwide conspiracy. It’s not exactly behind the government of the United States, but it has its claws in governments all around the world.”

Mark set his beer down. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Belew. But I’ve been having kind of a busy life lately, so I hope you’ll don’t mind if I just cut this short”

“I thought hippies were naturally drawn to conspiracy theories.”

“So I’m an unorthodox hippie. All the conspirators I ever knew, they, like, had a hard time figuring out what to eat for lunch by six o’clock at night.”

Belew laughed again. “Look, Doctor, I’ve taken substantial risks in order to come here and talk to you as you yourself were at pains to point out. Why not listen to what I have to say before you dismiss me as a random lunatic?”

“I never thought you were a random lunatic. You seem like a pretty single-minded lunatic to me. But, okay. I’ll listen.” The only thing this was keeping him from, after all, was Moonchild’s evening exercise, and Mark was none too eager to let her out to agonize over Eric. Besides, the sky was clear, and that meant stars. Mark was still not sorry to miss them.

“Very well. You’re certainly aware that anti-wild card sentiment is very prevalent today. It takes the form of anything from verbal abuse to legal strictures to mob violence and assassination. But doesn’t it sometimes strike you that the hate campaign is fairly well orchestrated?”

“You mean, like Leo Barnett and the fundamentalists?”

Belew smiled and shook his head. “Barnett’s a well-meaning fool – all right, you don’t have to agree with his goals, and obviously you don’t, but he sincerely believes he’s doing the right thing. Of course, as that malignant but astute dwarf Alexander Pope informed us, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. But Barnett is an outsider, a hillbilly barbarian at the gates. I’m talking about entrenched men, powerful men. Insiders.”

“How’d you find out about this conspiracy?”

“I don’t suppose it would surprise you if I told you I used to work for the CIA?”

“No,” Mark said. “Are they in on it?”

Belew gestured with his good hand. “Yes and no. The CIA is not monolithic, any more than most governments or even governmental agencies throughout the world are. Group dynamics are more complicated than that; that’s where most conspiracy buffs make their mistake.

“But yes. There is a sizable faction within the CIA that is connected with the conspiracy. As there is such a faction within the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

Mark gave him a narrow eye. “How did you find out about all this?”

“Do you remember the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran in 1980 with an all-ace strike team?” Mark nodded. “I commanded it. That’s when I first became aware of an anti-wild cards conspiracy.”

“I thought you military types blamed Carter for that.”

“No. Carter was spineless and a fool, though he showed a certain grace when he accepted responsibility for the mission’s failure. Of course that was wrong, too; I was the commander on the ground, I lost almost half my people, so the fault was legitimately mine.”

“I can’t tell you how confident this makes me feel.”

“I’m being straight with you, Doctor. I need you to believe the unbelievable. What better way to establish my bona fides than being honest about my own failures?”

Mark waved a noncommittal gesture.

“I’ll spare you the details. I will say that I found reason to believe that the mission was intended to fail from the inception, in order to embarrass not just aces in general but Carter, who was felt by certain parties to be soft on wild cards.”

“Why didn’t you, like, report it?”

“To whom?” A small smile. “One of the men I suspected – suspect – was a National Security adviser, who’s very well connected. I’m a cowboy, a shadow operative – contract man. Who’d believe me?”

“You expect me to.”

Belew laughed. “You have firsthand experience of the conspiracy.”

Mark rubbed his chin. Bristles scraped his palm. He had stayed mostly clean-shaven since going on the run after the trial. He was going back and forth now about whether to grow a beard or not.

“So that’s why they were after me so hard.”

“On the operational level, yes. The reason these particular boys pushed so hard is that one of them conceived himself as having a personal grudge against you. His partner was killed in that shootout in your upstairs lab, back in New York.”

Mark slammed his open hand down on the floor so hard, the beer bottles and earthenware bowls danced. “I wasn’t even there.”

“Western linear thought was not this boy’s strong suit. You’re a bad guy; in his mind you were responsible.”

“I’m a bad guy? How many crowds of bystanders did I hose down with machine guns in Amsterdam and Athens? Jesus!”

“DEA has a simplistic worldview, even by cop standards. To get back to the point, Agent Saxon was set on your trail because the conspirators within DEA were morally sure he’d have no qualms about killing you.”

“Why?”

“You are one of the most potent aces in the world. Killing you would be a triple coup: it would bring you back onto CNN Headline News as a major ace crime-lord – no, save the indignant denials; I know it’s not true – which would boost public perception of aces as a serious threat. It would neutralize a potentially dangerous opponent. And it would be a welcome victory in a War on Drugs whose poll ratings are beginning to grow just a trifle threadbare.”

Mark sat staring down the neck of his mostly empty bottle as if he’d find an oracle in there. It made sense to him. He never had figured out why the DEA had pursued him across the entire Eurasian landmass with such vindictiveness. Even if they really believed he was a major drug supplier – which he never had been, except occasionally to Croyd – it seemed entirely out of proportion.

Belew’s seeds were beginning to germinate in his mind. As a matter of fact, he secretly was inclined toward conspiracy theory. Even if his rational mind knew better.

And Belew read him like a road sign. “The real conspirators are smart men, shrewd men, used to playing power games for blood. These aren’t a bunch of your standard fanatics huddled in some cellar making bombs from The Anarchist’s Cookbook by candlelight, like the Symbionese Liberation Army nut cases your wife used to run with.”

Mark looked up at him, eyes big and round as a frightened cat’s. “How’d you know about that, man?” He would have sworn not another soul in the world knew of it.

“I’ve been studying you for a long time, Doctor,” Belew said, his mellifluous voice almost a whisper. “I’m very good at what I do. ’Military intelligence’ isn’t always an oxymoron. That’s why I was able to keep credibility with the DEA while steering them into a series of near-misses with you. I had a clear, accurate mental image of you and could make a fair guess what moves you’d make. They were working from their profile, which was ab initio all wet.”

In the stretching silence a rhinoceros beetle crawled across the woven mats. Mark stared at it, wishing Croyd were here instead of doing his personal version of the Big Sleep; he’d be happy for the snack. But then, that was probably all behind him now, unless he still hadn’t exhausted his bug-eating karma.

He raised his eyes to Belew. ’All right. Say I buy this conspiracy for a minute. What’s your role in it? Why were they letting you come along for the ride?”

“Since I finished my twenty in 1979, I’ve never been an actual employee of the U.S. government. I’m a contract man, as I mentioned. A mercenary, if you like.”

Mark grunted.

“My usual employer has been the CIA, As I said, I have also done piecework for Drug Enforcement.”

“So how -?”

Belew grinned. It took forty years off him. “I allowed the DEA to think I was working for the CIA, and Central Intelligence to believe I was -”