“Basically, you can use a wave pulse to increase the destructive power of the one-minus-one. If you did that with sufficient energy in an enemy’s country it would cause all kinds of terrible things to occur. And the thing is, they wouldn’t even know you were doing it. If they didn’t know about the technology it would probably just look like they were having a series of unrelated problems and natural disasters.”

“Could it be as dangerous as atomics?” the rabbi insisted, eyes piercing.

“I have no idea what the technology could do at really high levels,” Nate admitted. “But we’re talking about doubling or tripling or quadrupling the destructive tendency in all matter.”

The rabbi’s mouth tightened into a grimace. Anatoli’s eyes were lost in La La Land. Denton himself was intrigued by the concept. It had great scare potential, journalistically speaking. But he wasn’t particularly frightened himself. Who would make a weapon like that? How stupid would that be?

“We don’t know that it could do anything of the sort,” Jill protested, yanking her hand from Nate’s with fire in her eyes. “We’ve only begun to examine the potential of the wave.”

Everyone ignored her.

“Unfortunately, it might be too late,” Nate said. “The Department of Defense knows about the technology, though we’re not sure they have the actual equation. And as Rabbi Handalman just mentioned, the Mossad has a few pages of the manuscript, too. All they need are the basic principles, and they could build machines to manipulate the one-minus-one quite easily.”

“Um… wouldn’t the U.S. and Mossad share information?” Denton said, rubbing a bruise on his face. “They’re allies, aren’t they?”

Aharon snorted. “Ha! The Americans want to remain the big guns on the block. How can they do that if their allies know all their secrets? No, the Americans, if they find this, won’t share it in a hurry, and the Mossad, if I know the Mossad, will do whatever they have to do to get a piece of the pie. Especially since Kobinski was a Polish Jew. If this technology belongs to anyone, it belongs to Israel.”

“Now just one minute,” Dr. Talcott said, her face getting very stern. “Let’s all give the paranoia a rest for a moment, shall we? Just because—”

From outside came the unmistakable sound of cars pulling into the driveway. They were going fast, with brakes squealing and the sputtering of gravel. Before the rest of them could move, Anatoli was on his feet.

“This way!” he hissed, “Hurry! Schnell! Schnell!”

His panic was infectious. He shoved and pushed, and before Denton could even get his head around the danger, they were out the back door. A flight of steps led down to a bare yard and the yard opened onto a forest. Anatoli picked up a broom from the side of the house and whacked at the porch light, putting it out with a crunch of glass. “Kommen sie!”

He raced away. The rest of them glanced around at one another in confusion.

“Nate, this is silly,” Dr. Talcott said. Her eyes darted toward the front of the house.

Nate grabbed her hand. “We don’t know who it is. It might be the guys who tried to kidnap you, and there’s no time to hang around and find out!”

Denton agreed wholeheartedly but found he was frozen solid. Rabbi Handalman, his face drawn and white as a sheet, ran after Anatoli without a word. There was the sound of car doors slamming, and Denton got a visceral flash of fists pounding into him.

That got him moving. He lurched from the porch in a shuddering start. Once he was in motion he recovered some semblance of grace and found himself running hell-for-high-leather—directly into the woods.

He heard Nate and Dr. Talcott coming behind him.

13.4. Aharon Handalman

It was freezing, absolutely freezing. None of them had coats. The ground was crunchy with frost and ice, but there was, thank god, a moon to light the way.

Aharon was not doing well. His heart was thumping dangerously—not so much from the exercise of sprinting through the woods but from terror. And he was still clutching Kobinski’s manuscript—a smoking gun if ever there was one. What could he do with it? He couldn’t throw it away—Anatoli had been clear that “they” must never find it.

He passed a chain-link fence. The wire had been cut through and was slightly bent. Aharon reeled backward, shaking his head. He knew what it was—it was the camp. That’s why Anatoli lived out here, so he could be close to the grounds. And this, this must be where he went through at night for his digging. There was no way; nothing on earth, was going to get Aharon through that fence. Lord God!

But Anatoli hadn’t gone through the fence; he was continuing along the perimeter and now he was out of sight. Aharon heaved himself forward. If anything could be worse than being chased through the dark woods in Auschwitz by armed men, it would be being chased alone! How had a devout, quiet-loving man like himself ended up in this situation?

He sprinted, his breath rasping in his ears. Anatoli had stopped to wait and Aharon soon caught up with him. Wyle, too. The woman and Nate jogged up last.

“What’s the point of this?” Dr. Talcott asked no one in particular. Her breathing was labored.

“Let’s keep moving, for god’s sake,” Aharon urged, through clenched teeth.

Anatoli said nothing, just slipped away with the stealth of a shadow. The rest of them followed.

Calder Farris was livid. Talcott and her little boy toy had made him chase them all the way to Poland. What the hell was she doing here? If she thought she could get away from him by the mere act of leaving the country, she had no idea who she was dealing with. Even Rickman had agreed they should follow her—discreetly, of course, which meant him and three other guys with bogus ID. The United States was not here “officially.” But he’d still insisted it was an XL3 and so… they were here.

But Calder’s superiors were not happy. They were running out of patience. And neither was Calder happy to be running through the woods in fucking Auschwitz!

He felt a surge of hate and it kept him warm, kept his legs sprinting despite the thick bandage on his thigh and the uncomfortable pull of his stitches. Around him his agents fell behind, unable to match his muscles or his rage.

Jill spotted the others up ahead. Nate was pulling her on, relentlessly, and she wasn’t arguing. She didn’t have the breath. She couldn’t run like this, was too out of shape and had been too ill too recently. Nate was clinging to her as mindlessly as a man clinging to a suitcase as he runs for a train, and she was getting fed up with it. Was he going to let her think for herself or what? What if the people chasing them were not the Mossad? What if they were DoD? Could she take that chance?

No. Not really. Up until this moment, she hadn’t given her alleged abduction in Seattle much thought. But suddenly the idea that the men chasing them might not be American was pretty damn terrifying. For all she knew, men like that might well torture and kill her to get the information. That kind of thing went on all the time in some parts of the world.

Up ahead was a small clearing where lights flickered in the trees. And there, in the glow of the moon, she could see Anatoli, Wyle, and Handalman waiting. She tried to let go of Nate’s hand, but he gripped harder.

“What is this?” she asked, her words huffing between breaths. “Why have we stopped?”

Aharon wanted to know himself. He was itching to keep running, terrified of getting caught. Maybe it was the fear, but time had taken on a strange quality. The night felt dreamlike. As he had in Jerusalem, walking the streets, Aharon was more than capable of putting himself here in his ancestors’ shoes. Only those shoes were not so old and they smelled of the ovens. Looking at Anatoli, Aharon could almost see the old man’s face morph into his younger self, emaciated still, with a shaved head, prisoner’s stripes, staring eyes. He could sense the presence of Kobinski.