Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Delta-One took his cue and banked hard to the right, putting the craft on a direct course with the Goya. This maneuver would be invisible to the ship's radar.\\n\\n\\\"Sure beats bales of tinfoil!\\\" Delta-Two called out.\\n\\nDelta-One agreed. Radar jamming had been invented in WWII when a savvy British airman began throwing bales of hay wrapped in tinfoil out of his plane while on bombing runs. The Germans' radar spotted so many reflective contacts they had no idea what to shoot. The techniques had been improved on substantially since then.\\n\\nThe Kiowa's onboard'umbrella\\\" radar-jamming system was one of the military's most deadly electronic combat weapons. By broadcasting an umbrella of background noise into the atmosphere above a given set of surface coordinates, the Kiowa could erase the eyes, ears, and voice of their target. Moments ago, all radar screens aboard the Goya had most certainly gone blank. By the time the crew realized they needed to call for help, they would be unable to transmit. On a ship, all communications were radio-or microwave-based-no solid phone lines. If the Kiowa got close enough, all of the Goya's communications systems would stop functioning, their carrier signals blotted out by the invisible cloud of thermal noise broadcast in front of the Kiowa like a blinding headlight. Perfect isolation, Delta-One thought. They have no defenses. Their targets had made a fortunate and cunning escape from the Milne Ice Shelf, but it would not be repeated. In choosing to leave shore, Rachel Sexton and Michael Tolland had chosen poorly. It would be the last bad decision they ever made.\\n\\nInside the White House, Zach Herney felt dazed as he sat up in bed holding the telephone receiver. \\\"Now? Ekstrom wants to speak tome now?\\\" Herney squinted again at the bedside clock. 3:17A. M.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yes, Mr. President,\\\" the communications officer said. \\\"He says it's an emergency.\\\"\\n\\nWhile Corky and Xavia huddled over the electron microprobe measuring the zirconium content in the chondrules, Rachel followed Tolland across the lab into an adjoining room. Here Tolland turned on another computer. Apparently the oceanographer had one more thing he wanted to check.\\n\\nAs the computer powered up, Tolland turned to Rachel, his mouth poised as if he wanted to say something. He paused.\\n\\n\\\"What is it?\\\" Rachel asked, surprised how physically drawn to him she felt, even in the midst of all this chaos. She wished she could block it all out and be with him-just fora minute.\\n\\n\\\"I owe you an apology,\\\" Tolland said, looking remorseful.\\n\\n\\\"For what?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"On the deck? The hammerheads? I was excited. Sometimes I forget how frightening the ocean can be to a lot of people.\\\"\\n\\nFace-to-face with him, Rachel felt like a teenager standing on the doorstep with anew boyfriend. \\\"Thanks. No problem at all. Really.\\\" Something inside her sensed Tolland wanted to kiss her.\\n\\nAfter a beat, he turned shyly away. \\\"I know. You want to get to shore. We should get to work.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"For now.\\\" Rachel smiled softly.\\n\\n\\\"For now,\\\" Tolland repeated, taking a seat at the computer. Rachel exhaled, standing close behind now, savoring the privacy of the small lab. She watched Tolland navigate a series of files. \\\"What are we doing?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Checking the database for big ocean lice. I want to see if we can find any prehistoric marine fossils that resemble what we saw in the NASA meteorite.\\\" He pulled up a search page with bold letters across the top: PROJECT DIVERSITAS. Scrolling through the menus, Tolland explained, \\\"Diversitas is essentially a continuously updated index of oceanic biodata. When a marine biologist discovers anew ocean species or fossil, he can toot his horn and share his find by uploading data and photos to a central databank. Because there's so much new data discovered on a weekly basis, this is really the only way to keep research up-todate.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Rachel watched Tolland navigating the menus. \\\"So you're accessing the Web now?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No. Internet access is tricky at sea. We store all this data onboard on an enormous array of optical drives in the other room. Every time we're in port, we tie into Project Diversitas and update our databank with the newest finds. This way, we can access data at sea without a Web connection, and the data is nevermore than a month or two out of date.\\\" Tolland chuckled as he began typing search keywords into the computer. \\\"You've probably heard of the controversial music file-sharing program called Napster?\\\"\\n\\nRachel nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Diversitas is considered the marine biologist's version of Napster. We call it LOBSTER-Lonely Oceanic Biologists Sharing Totally Eccentric Research.\\\"\\n\\nRachel laughed. Even in this tense situation, Michael Tolland exuded awry humor that eased her fears. She was beginning to realize she'd had entirely too little laughter in her life lately.\\n\\n\\\"Our database is enormous,\\\" Tolland said, completing the entry of his descriptive keywords. \\\"Over ten tera-bytes of descriptions and photos. There's information inhere nobody has ever seen-and nobody ever will. Ocean species are simply too numerous.\\\" He clicked the'search\\\" button. \\\"Okay, let's see if anyone has ever seen an oceanic fossil similar to our little space bug.\\\"\\n\\nAfter a few seconds, the screen refreshed, revealing four listings of fossilized animals. Tolland clicked on each listing one by one and examined the photos. None looked remotely like the fossils in the Milne meteorite. Tolland frowned. \\\"Let's try something else.\\\" He removed the word'fossil\\\" from his search string and hit'search.\\\" \\\"We'll search all living species. Maybe we can find a living descendant that has some of the physiological characteristics of the Milne fossil.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The screen refreshed.\\n\\nAgain Tolland frowned. The computer had returned hundreds of entries. He sat a moment, stroking his now stubble-darkened chin. \\\"Okay, this is too much. Let's refine the search.\\\"\\n\\nRachel watched as he accessed a drop-down menu marked'habitat.\\\" The list of options looked endless: tide pool, marsh, lagoon, reef, mid-oceanic ridge, sulfur vents. Tolland scrolled down the list and chose an option that read: DESTRUCTIVE\\n\\nMARGINS/OCEANIC TRENCHES.\\n\\nSmart, Rachel realized. Tolland was limiting his search only to species that lived near the environment where these chondrulelike features were hypothesized to form.\\n\\nThe page refreshed. This time Tolland smiled. \\\"Great. Only three entries.\\\"\\n\\nRachel squinted at the first name on the list. Limulus poly... something. Tolland clicked the entry. A photo appeared; the creature looked like an oversized horseshoe crab without a tail.\\n\\n\\\"Nope,\\\" Tolland said, returning to the previous page.\\n\\nRachel eyed the second item on the list. Shrimpus Uglius From Hellus. She was confused. \\\"Is that name for real?\\\"\\n\\nTolland chuckled. \\\"No. It's anew species not yet classified. The guy who discovered it has a sense of humor. He's suggesting Shrimpus Uglius as the official taxonomical classification.\\\" Tolland clicked open the photo, revealing an exceptionally ugly shrimplike creature with whiskers and fluorescent pink antennae.\\n\\n\\\"Aptly named,\\\" Tolland said. \\\"But not our space bug.\\\" He returned to the index.\\n\\n\\\"The final offering is...\\\" He clicked on the third entry, and the page came up.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Bathynomous giganteus...\\\" Tolland read aloud as the text appeared. The photograph loaded. A full-color close-up.\\n\\nRachel jumped. \\\"My God!\\\" The creature staring back at her gave her chills. Tolland drew a low breath. \\\"Oh boy. This guy looks kind of familiar.\\\"\\n\\nRachel nodded, speechless. Bathynomous giganteus. The creature resembled a giant swimming louse. It looked very similar to the fossil species in the NASA rock.\\n\\n\\\"There are some subtle differences,\\\" Tolland said, scrolling down to some anatomical diagrams and sketches. \\\"But it's damn close. Especially considering it has had 190 million years to evolve.\\\"\\n\\nClose is right, Rachel thought. Too close.\\n\\nTolland read the description on the screen: \\\"'Thought to be one of the oldest species in the ocean, the rare and recently classified species Bathynomous giganteus is a deepwater scavenging isopod resembling a large pill bug. Up to two feet in length, this species exhibits a chitinous exoskeleton segmented into head, thorax, abdomen. It possesses paired appendages, antennae, and compound eyes like those of land-dwelling insects. This bottom-dwelling forager has no known predators and lives in barren pelagic environments previously thought to be uninhabitable.\\\" Tolland glanced up. \\\"Which could explain the lack of other fossils in the sample!\\\"\\n\\nRachel stared at the creature on-screen, excited and yet uncertain she completely understood what all of this meant.\\n\\n\\\"Imagine,\\\" Tolland said excitedly, \\\"that 190 million years ago, a brood of these Bathynomous creatures got buried in a deep ocean mudslide. As the mud turns into rock, the bugs get fossilized in stone. Simultaneously, the ocean floor, which is continuously moving like a slow conveyer belt toward the oceanic trenches, carries the fossils into a high-pressure zone where the rock forms chondrules!\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Tolland was talking faster now.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"And if part of the fossilized, chondrulized crust broke off and ended upon the trench's accretionary wedge, which is not at all uncommon, it would be in a perfect position to be discovered!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But if NASA...,\\\" Rachel stammered. \\\"I mean, if this is all a lie, NASA must have known that sooner or later someone would find out this fossil resembles a sea creature, right? I mean we just found out!\\\"\\n\\nTolland began printing the Bathynomous photos on a laser printer. \\\"I don't know. Even if someone stepped forward and pointed out the similarities between the fossils and a living sea louse, their physiologies are not identical. It almost proves NASA's case more strongly.\\\"\\n\\nRachel suddenly understood. \\\"Panspermia.\\\" Life on earth was seeded from space.\\n\\n\\\"Exactly. Similarities between space organisms and earth organisms make excellent scientific sense. This sea louse actually strengthens NASA's case.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Except if the meteorite's authenticity is in question.\\\"\\n\\nTolland nodded. \\\"Once the meteorite comes into question, then everything collapses. Our sea louse turns from NASA friend to NASA linchpin.\\\"\\n\\nRachel stood in silence as the Bathynomous pages rolled out of the printer. She tried to tell herself this was all an honest NASA mistake, but she knew it was not. People who made honest mistakes didn't try to kill people. The nasal voice of Corky echoed suddenly across the lab. \\\"Impossible!\\\"\\n\\nBoth Tolland and Rachel turned.\\n\\n\\\"Measure the damn ratio again! It makes no sense!\\\"\\n\\nXavia came hurrying in with a computer printout clutched in her hand. Her face was ashen. \\\"Mike, I don't know how to say this...\\\" Her voice cracked. \\\"The titanium/zirconium ratios we're seeing in this sample?\\\" She cleared her throat.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"It's pretty obvious that NASA made a huge mistake. Their meteorite is an ocean rock.\\\"\\n\\nTolland and Rachel looked at each other but neither spoke a word. They knew. Just like that, all the suspicions and doubts had swelled up like the crest of a wave, reaching the breaking point.\\n\\nTolland nodded, a sadness in his eyes. \\\"Yeah. Thanks, Xavia.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But I don't understand,\\\" Xavia said. \\\"The fusion crust... the location in the ice-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We'll explain on the way to shore,\\\" Tolland said. \\\"We're leaving.\\\"\\n\\nQuickly, Rachel collected all the papers and evidence they now had. The evidence was shockingly conclusive: the GPR printout showing the insertion shaft in the Milne Ice Shelf; photos of a living sea louse resembling NASA's fossil; Dr. Pollock's article on ocean chondrules; and microprobe data showing ultradepleted zirconium in the meteorite.\\n\\nThe conclusion was undeniable. Fraud.\\n\\nTolland looked at the stack of papers in Rachel's hands and heaved a melancholy sigh. \\\"Well, I'd say William Pickering has his proof.\\\"\\n\\nRachel nodded, again wondering why Pickering had not answered his phone. Tolland lifted the receiver of a nearby phone, holding it out for her. \\\"You want to try him again from here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, let's get moving. I'll try to contact him from the chopper.\\\" Rachel had already decided if she could not make contact with Pickering, she'd have the Coast Guard fly them directly to the NRO, only about 180 miles. Tolland began to hangup the phone, but he paused. Looking confused, he listened to the receiver, frowning. \\\"Bizarre. No dial tone.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What do you mean?\\\" Rachel said, wary now.\\n\\n\\\"Weird,\\\" Tolland said. \\\"Direct COMSAT lines never lose carrier-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Tolland?\\\" The Coast Guard pilot came rushing into the lab, his face white.\\n\\n\\\"What is it?\\\" Rachel demanded. \\\"Is someone coming?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's the problem,\\\" the pilot said. \\\"I don't know. All onboard radar and communications have just gone dead.\\\"\\n\\nRachel stuffed the papers deep inside her shirt. \\\"Get in the helicopter. We're leaving. NOW!\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle's heart was racing as she crossed the darkened office of Senator Sexton. The room was as expansive as it was elegant-ornate wood-paneled walls, oil paintings, Persian carpets, leather rivet chairs, and a gargantuan mahogany desk. The room was lit only by the eerie neon glow of Sexton's computer screen. Gabrielle moved toward his desk.\\n\\nSenator Sexton had embraced the'digital office\\\" to maniacal proportions, eschewing the overflow of file cabinets for the compact, searchable simplicity of his personal computer, into which he fed enormous amounts of information-digitized meeting notes, scanned articles, speeches, brainstorms. Sexton's computer was his sacred ground, and he kept his office locked at all times to protect it. He even refused to connect to the Internet for fear of hackers infiltrating his sacred digital vault.\\n\\nA year ago Gabrielle would never have believed any politician would be stupid enough to store copies of self-incriminating documents, but Washington had taught her a lot. Information is power. Gabrielle had been amazed to learn that a common practice among politicians who accepted questionable campaign contributions was to keep actual proof of those donations-letters, bank records, receipts, logs-all hidden away in a safe place. This counterblackmail tactic, euphemistically known in Washington as'Siamese insurance,\\\" protected candidates from donors who felt their generosity somehow authorized them to assert undue political pressure on a candidate. If a contributor got too demanding, the candidate could simply produce evidence of the illegal donation and remind the donor that both parties had broken the law. The evidence ensured that candidates and donors were joined at the hip forever-like Siamese twins. Gabrielle slipped behind the senator's desk and sat down. She took a deep breath, looking at his computer. If the senator is accepting SFF bribes, any evidence would be inhere.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Sexton's computer screensaver was an ongoing slideshow of the White House and its grounds created for him by one of his gung-ho staffers who was big into visualization and positive thinking. Around the images crawled a ticker-tape banner that read: President of the United States Sedgewick Sexton... President of the United States Sedgewick Sexton... President of the...\\n\\nGabrielle jostled the mouse, and a security dialogue box came up. ENTER PASSWORD:\\n\\nShe expected this. It would not be a problem. Last week, Gabrielle had entered Sexton's office just as the senator was sitting down and logging onto his computer. She saw him type three short keystrokes in rapid succession.\\n\\n\\\"That's a password?\\\" she challenged from the doorway as she walked in. Sexton glanced up. \\\"What?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And here I thought you were concerned about security,\\\" Gabrielle scolded goodnaturedly. \\\"Your password's only three keys? I thought the tech guys told us all to use at least six.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The tech guys are teenagers. They should try remembering six random letters when they're over forty. Besides, the door has an alarm. Nobody can get in.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle walked toward him, smiling. \\\"What if someone slipped in while you're in the loo?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And tried every combination of passwords?\\\" He gave a skeptical laugh. \\\"I'm slow in the bathroom, but not that slow.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dinner at Davide says I can guess your password in ten seconds.\\\"\\n\\nSexton looked intrigued and amused. \\\"You can't afford Davide, Gabrielle.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So you're saying you're chicken?\\\"\\n\\nSexton appeared almost sorry for her as he accepted the challenge. \\\"Ten seconds?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He logged off and motioned for Gabrielle to sit down and give it a try. \\\"You know I only order the saltimbocca at Davide. And that ain't cheap.\\\"\\n\\nShe shrugged as she sat down. \\\"It's your money.\\\"\\n\\nENTER PASSWORD:\\n\\n\\\"Ten seconds,\\\" Sexton reminded.\\n\\nGabrielle had to laugh. She would need only two. Even from the doorway she could see that Sexton had entered his three-key password in very rapid succession using only his index finger. Obviously all the same key. Not wise. She could also see that his hand had been positioned over the far left side of his keyboard-cutting the possible alphabet down to only about nine letters. Choosing the letter was simple; Sexton had always loved the triple alliteration of his title. Senator Sedgewick Sexton.\\n\\nNever underestimate the ego of a politician.\\n\\nShe typed SSS, and the screensaver evaporated.\\n\\nSexton's jaw hit the floor.\\n\\nThat had been last week. Now, as Gabrielle faced his computer again, she was certain Sexton would not have taken time yet to figure out how to setup a different password. Why would he? He trusts me implicitly. She typed in SSS.\\n\\nINVALID PASSWORD-ACCESS DENIED\\n\\nGabrielle stared in shock.\\n\\nApparently she had overestimated her senator's level of trust.\\n\\nThe attack came without warning. Low out of the southwest sky above the Goya, the lethal silhouette of a gunship helicopter bore down like a giant wasp. Rachel had no doubt what it was, or why it was here.\\n\\nThrough the darkness, a staccato burst from the nose of the chopper sent a torrent of bullets chewing across the Goya's fiberglass deck, slashing a line across the stern. Rachel dove for cover too late and felt the searing slash of a bullet graze her arm. She hit the ground hard, then rolled, scrambling to get behind the bulbous transparent dome of the Triton submersible.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"A thundering of rotors exploded overhead as the chopper swooped past the ship. The noise evaporated with an eerie hiss as the chopper rocketed out over the ocean and began a wide bank fora second pass.\\n\\nLying trembling on the deck, Rachel held her arm and looked back at Tolland and Corky. Apparently having lunged to cover behind a storage structure, the two men were now staggering to their feet, their eyes scanning the skies in terror. Rachel pulled herself to her knees. The entire world suddenly seemed to be moving in slow motion.\\n\\nCrouched behind the transparent curvature of the Triton sub, Rachel looked in panic toward their only means of escape-the Coast Guard helicopter. Xavia was already climbing into the chopper's cabin, frantically waving for everyone to get aboard. Rachel could seethe pilot lunging into the cockpit, wildly throwing switches and levers. The blades began to turn... ever so slowly. Too slowly.\\n\\nHurry!\\n\\nRachel felt herself standing now, preparing to run, wondering if she could make it across the deck before the attackers made another pass. Behind her, she heard Corky and Tolland dashing toward her and the waiting helicopter. Yes! Hurry!\\n\\nThen she saw it.\\n\\nA hundred yards out, up in the sky, materializing out of empty darkness, a pencilthin beam of red light slanted across the night, searching the Goya's deck. Then, finding its mark, the beam came to a stop on the side of the waiting Coast Guard chopper.\\n\\nThe image took only an instant to register. In that horrific moment, Rachel felt all the action on the deck of the Goya blur into a collage of shapes and sounds. Tolland and Corky dashing toward her-Xavia motioning wildly in the helicopter-the stark red laser slicing across the night sky. It was too late.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Rachel spun back toward Corky and Tolland, who were running full speed now toward the helicopter.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She lunged outward into their path, arms outstretched trying to stop them. The collision felt like a train wreck as the three of them crashed to the deck in a tangle of arms and legs.\\n\\nIn the distance, a flash of white light appeared. Rachel watched in disbelief and horror as a perfectly straight line of exhaust fire followed the path of the laser beam directly toward the helicopter.\\n\\nWhen the Hellfire missile slammed into the fuselage, the helicopter exploded apart like a toy. The concussion wave of heat and noise thundered across the deck as flaming shrapnel rained down. The helicopter's flaming skeleton lurched backward on its shattered tail, teetered a moment, and then fell off the back of the ship, crashing into the ocean in a hissing cloud of steam. Rachel closed her eyes, unable to breathe. She could hear the flaming wreckage gurgling and sputtering as it sank, being dragged away from the Goya by the heavy currents. In the chaos, Michael Tolland's voice was yelling. Rachel felt his powerful hands trying to pull her to her feet. But she could not move. The Coast Guard pilot and Xavia are dead.\\n\\nWe're next.\\n\\nThe weather on the Milne Ice Shelf had settled, and the habisphere was quiet. Even so, NASA administrator Lawrence Ekstrom had not even tried to sleep. He had spent the hours alone, pacing the dome, staring into the extraction pit, running his hands over the grooves in the giant charred rock.\\n\\nFinally, he'd made up his mind.\\n\\nNow he sat at the videophone in the habisphere's PSC tank and looked into the weary eyes of the President of the United States. Zach Herney was wearing a bathrobe and did not look at all amused. Ekstrom knew he would be significantly less amused when he learned what Ekstrom had to tell him. When Ekstrom finished talking, Herney had an uncomfortable look on his face-as if he thought he must still be too asleep to have understood correctly.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Hold on,\\\" Herney said. \\\"We must have a bad connection. Did you just tell me that NASA intercepted this meteorite's coordinates from an emergency radio transmission-and then pretended that PODS found the meteorite?\\\"\\n\\nEkstrom was silent, alone in the dark, willing his body to awake from this nightmare.\\n\\nThe silence clearly did not sit well with the President. \\\"For Christ's sake, Larry, tell me this isn't true!\\\"\\n\\nEkstrom's mouth went dry. \\\"The meteorite was found, Mr. President. That is all that's relevant here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I said tell me this is not true!\\\"\\n\\nThe hush swelled to a dull roar in Ekstrom's ears. I had to tell him, Ekstrom told himself. It's going to get worse before it gets better. \\\" Mr. President, the PODS\\n\\nfailure was killing you in the polls, sir. When we intercepted a radio transmission that mentioned a large meteorite lodged in the ice, we saw a chance to get back in the fight.\\\"\\n\\nHerney sounded stunned. \\\"By faking a PODS discovery?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"PODS was going to be up and running soon, but not soon enough for the election. The polls were slipping, and Sexton was slamming NASA, so...\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Are you insane! You lied tome, Larry!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The opportunity was staring us in the face, sir. I decided to take it. We intercepted the radio transmission of the Canadian who made the meteorite discovery. He died in a storm. Nobody else knew the meteorite was there. PODS\\n\\nwas orbiting in the area. NASA needed a victory. We had the coordinates.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why are you telling me this now?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I thought you should know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Do you know what Sexton would do with this information if he found out?\\\"\\n\\nEkstrom preferred not to think about it.\\n\\n\\\"He'd tell the world that NASA and the White House lied to the American people!\\n\\nAnd you know what, he'd be right!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You did not lie, sir, I did. And I will step down if-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Larry, you're missing the point. I've tried to run this presidency on truth and decency! Goddamn it! Tonight was clean. Dignified. Now I find out I lied to the world?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Only a small lie, sir.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There's no such thing, Larry,\\\" Herney said, steaming.\\n\\nEkstrom felt the tiny room closing in around him. There was so much more to tell the President, but Ekstrom could see it should wait until morning. \\\"I'm sorry to have woken you, sir. I just thought you should know.\\\"\\n\\nAcross town, Sedgewick Sexton took another hit of cognac and paced his apartment with rising irritation.\\n\\nWhere the hell is Gabrielle?\\n\\nGabrielle Ashe satin the darkness at Senator Sexton's desk and gave his computer a despondent scowl.\\n\\nINVALID PASSWORD-ACCESS DENIED\\n\\nShe had tried several other passwords that seemed likely possibilities, but none had worked. After searching the office for any unlocked drawers or stray clues, Gabrielle had all but given up. She was about to leave when she spotted something odd, shimmering on Sexton's desk calendar. Someone had outlined the date of the election in a red, white, and blue glitter pen. Certainly not the senator. Gabrielle pulled the calendar closer. Emblazoned across the date was a frilly, glittering exclamation: POTUS!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Sexton's ebullient secretary had apparently glitterpainted some more positive thinking for him for election day. The acronym POTUS was the U. S. Secret Service's code name for President of the United States. On election day, if all went well, Sexton would become the new POTUS.\\n\\nPreparing to leave, Gabrielle realigned the calendar on his desk and stood up. She paused suddenly, glancing back at the computer screen.\\n\\nENTER PASSWORD:\\n\\nShe looked again at the calendar.\\n\\nPOTUS.\\n\\nShe felt a sudden surge of hope. Something about POTUS struck Gabrielle as being a perfect Sexton password. Simple, positive, self-referential. She quickly typed in the letters.\\n\\nHolding her breath, she hit'return.\\\" The computer beeped. INVALID PASSWORD-ACCESS DENIED\\n\\nSlumping, Gabrielle gave up. She headed back toward the bathroom door to exit the way she had come. She was halfway across the room, when her cellphone rang. She was already on edge, and the sound startled her. Stopping short, she pulled out her phone and glanced up to check the time on Sexton's prized Jourdain grandfather clock. Almost 4:00A. M. At this hour, Gabrielle knew the caller could only be Sexton. He was obviously wondering where the hell she was. Do I pickup or let it ring? If she answered, Gabrielle would have to lie. But if she didn't, Sexton would get suspicious.\\n\\nShe took the call. \\\"Hello?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Gabrielle?\\\" Sexton sounded impatient. \\\"What's keeping you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The FDR Memorial,\\\" Gabrielle said. \\\"The taxi got hemmed in, and now we're-\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You don't sound like you're in a taxi.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" she said, her blood pumping now. \\\"I'm not. I decided to stop by my office and pickup some NASA documents that might be relevant to PODS. I'm having some trouble finding them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, hurry up. I want to schedule a press conference for the morning, and we need to talk specifics.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm coming soon,\\\" she said.\\n\\nThere was a pause on the line. \\\"You're in your office?\\\" He sounded suddenly confused.\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. Another ten minutes and I'll be on my way over.\\\"\\n\\nAnother pause. \\\"Okay. I'll see you soon.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle hung up, too preoccupied to notice the loud and distinctive triple-tick of Sexton's prized Jourdain grandfather clock only a few feet away.\\n\\nMichael Tolland did not realize Rachel was hurt until he saw the blood on her arm as he pulled her to cover behind the Triton. He sensed from the catatonic look on her face that she was not aware of any pain. Steadying her, Tolland wheeled to find Corky. The astrophysicist scrambled across the deck to join them, his eyes blank with terror.\\n\\nWe've got to find cover, Tolland thought, the horror of what had just happened not yet fully registering. Instinctively, his eyes raced up the tiers of decks above them. The stairs leading up to the bridge were all in the open, and the bridge itself was a glass box-a transparent bull's-eye from the air. Going up was suicide, which left only one other direction to go.\\n\\nFora fleeting instant, Tolland turned a hopeful gaze to the Triton submersible, wondering perhaps if he could get everyone underwater, away from the bullets. Absurd. The Triton had room for one person, and the deployment winch took a good ten minutes to lower the sub through the trapdoor in the deck to the ocean thirty feet below. Besides, without properly charged batteries and compressors, the Triton would be dead in the water.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":277,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Keep the narrative going for the author.\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\nAuthor: Dan Brown\nTitle: Deception Point\nChapter: 5"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You don't sound like you're in a taxi.\"\n\n\"No,\" she said, her blood pumping now. \"I'm not. I decided to stop by my office and pickup some NASA documents that might be relevant to PODS. I'm having some trouble finding them.\"\n\n\"Well, hurry up. I want to schedule a press conference for the morning, and we need to talk specifics.\"\n\n\"I'm coming soon,\" she said.\n\nThere was a pause on the line. \"You're in your office?\" He sounded suddenly confused.\n\n\"Yeah. Another ten minutes and I'll be on my way over.\"\n\nAnother pause. \"Okay. I'll see you soon.\"\n\nGabrielle hung up, too preoccupied to notice the loud and distinctive triple-tick of Sexton's prized Jourdain grandfather clock only a few feet away.\n\nMichael Tolland did not realize Rachel was hurt until he saw the blood on her arm as he pulled her to cover behind the Triton. He sensed from the catatonic look on her face that she was not aware of any pain. Steadying her, Tolland wheeled to find Corky. The astrophysicist scrambled across the deck to join them, his eyes blank with terror.\n\nWe've got to find cover, Tolland thought, the horror of what had just happened not yet fully registering. Instinctively, his eyes raced up the tiers of decks above them. The stairs leading up to the bridge were all in the open, and the bridge itself was a glass box-a transparent bull's-eye from the air. Going up was suicide, which left only one other direction to go.\n\nFora fleeting instant, Tolland turned a hopeful gaze to the Triton submersible, wondering perhaps if he could get everyone underwater, away from the bullets. Absurd. The Triton had room for one person, and the deployment winch took a good ten minutes to lower the sub through the trapdoor in the deck to the ocean thirty feet below. Besides, without properly charged batteries and compressors, the Triton would be dead in the water."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Here they come!\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"Corky shouted, his voice shrill with fear as he pointed into the sky.\n\nTolland didn't even lookup. He pointed to a nearby bulkhead, where an aluminum ramp descended belowdecks. Corky apparently needed no encouragement. Keeping his head low, Corky scurried toward the opening and disappeared down the incline. Tolland put a firm arm around Rachel's waist and followed. The two of them disappeared belowdecks just as the helicopter returned, spraying bullets overhead.\n\nTolland helped Rachel down the grated ramp to the suspended platform at the bottom. As they arrived, Tolland could feel Rachel's body go suddenly rigid. He wheeled, fearing maybe she'd been hit by a ricocheting bullet. When he saw her face, he knew it was something else. Tolland followed her petrified gaze downward and immediately understood.\n\nRachel stood motionless, her legs refusing to move. She was staring down at the bizarre world beneath her.\n\nBecause of its SWATH design, the Goya had no hull but rather struts like a giant catamaran. They had just descended through the deck onto a grated catwalk that hung above an open chasm, thirty feet straight down to the raging sea. The noise was deafening here, reverberating off the underside of the deck. Adding to Rachel's terror was the fact that the ship's underwater spotlights were still illuminated, casting a greenish effulgence deep into the ocean directly beneath her. She found herself gazing down at six or seven ghostly silhouettes in the water. Enormous hammerhead sharks, their long shadows swimming in place against the current-rubbery bodies flexing back and forth.\n\nTolland's voice was in her ear. \"Rachel, you're okay. Eyes straight ahead. I'm right behind you.\" His hands were reaching around from behind, gently trying to coax her clenched fists off the banister. It was then that Rachel saw the crimson droplet of blood roll off her arm and fall through the grating. Her eyes followed the drip as it plummeted toward the sea. Although she never saw it hit the water, she knew the instant it happened because all at once the hammerheads spun in unison, thrusting with their powerful tails, crashing together in a roiling frenzy of teeth and fins."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Enhanced telencephalon olfactory lobes...\n\nThey smell blood a mile away.\n\n\"Eyes straight ahead,\" Tolland repeated, his voice strong and reassuring. \"I'm right behind you.\"\n\nRachel felt his hands on her hips now, urging her forward. Blocking out the void beneath her, Rachel started down the catwalk. Somewhere above she could hear the rotors of the chopper again. Corky was already well out in front of them, reeling across the catwalk in a kind of drunken panic.\n\nTolland called out to him. \"All the way to the far strut, Corky! Down the stairs!\"\n\nRachel could now see where they were headed. Up ahead, a series of switchback ramps descended. At water level, a narrow, shelflike deck extended the length of the Goya. Jutting off this deck were several small, suspended docks, creating a kind of miniature marina stationed beneath the ship. A large sign read:"},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Swimmers May Surface without Warning\n\n-Boats Proceed with Caution-\n\nRachel could only assume Michael did not intend for them to do any swimming. Her trepidation intensified when Tolland stopped at a bank of wire-mesh storage lockers flanking the catwalk. He pulled open the doors to reveal hanging wetsuits, snorkels, flippers, life jackets, and spearguns. Before she could protest, he reached in and grabbed a flare gun. \"Let's go.\"\n\nThey were moving again.\n\nUp ahead, Corky had reached the switchback ramps and was already halfway down. \"I see it!\" he shouted, his voice sounding almost joyous over the raging water.\n\nSee what? Rachel wondered as Corky ran along the narrow walkway. All she could see was a shark-infested ocean lapping dangerously close. Tolland urged her forward, and suddenly Rachel could see what Corky was so excited about. At the far end of the decking below, a small powerboat was moored. Corky ran toward it. Rachel stared. Outrun a helicopter in a motorboat?\n\n\"It has a radio,\" Tolland said. \"And if we can get far enough away from the helicopter's jamming...\"\n\nRachel did not hear another word he said. She had just spied something that made her blood run cold. \"Too late,\" she croaked, extending a trembling finger. We're finished...\n\nWhen Tolland turned, he knew in an instant it was over.\n\nAt the far end of the ship, like a dragon peering into the opening of a cave, the black helicopter had dropped down low and was facing them. For an instant, Tolland thought it was going to fly directly at them through the center of the boat. But the helicopter began to turn at an angle, taking aim. Tolland followed the direction of the gun barrels. No!"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Crouched beside the powerboat untying the moorings, Corky glanced up just as the machine guns beneath the chopper erupted in ablaze of thunder. Corky lurched as if hit. Wildly, he scrambled over the gunwale and dove into the boat, sprawled himself on the floor for cover. The guns stopped. Tolland could see Corky crawling deeper into the powerboat. The lower part of his right leg was covered with blood. Crouched below the dash, Corky reached up and fumbled across the controls until his fingers found the key. The boat's 250 hp Mercury engine roared to life.\n\nAn instant later, a red laser beam appeared, emanating from the nose of the hovering chopper, targeting the powerboat with a missile. Tolland reacted on instinct, aiming the only weapon he had. The flare gun in his hand hissed when he pulled the trigger, and a blinding streak tore away on a horizontal trajectory beneath the ship, heading directly toward the chopper. Even so, Tolland sensed he had acted too late. As the streaking flare bore down on the helicopter's windshield, the rocket launcher beneath the chopper emitted its own flash of light. At the same exact instant that the missile launched, the aircraft veered sharply and pulled up out of sight to avoid the incoming flare.\n\n\"Lookout!\" Tolland yelled, yanking Rachel down onto the catwalk. The missile sailed off course, just missing Corky, coming the length of the Goya and slamming into the base of the strut thirty feet beneath Rachel and Tolland. The sound was apocalyptic. Water and flames erupted beneath them. Bits of twisted metal flew in the air and scattered the catwalk beneath them. Metal on metal ground together as the ship shifted, finding anew balance, slightly askew. As the smoke cleared, Tolland could see that one of the Goya's four main struts had been severely damaged. Powerful currents tore past the pontoon, threatening to break it off. The spiral stairway descending to the lower deck looked to be hanging by a thread."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Come on!\" Tolland yelled, urging Rachel toward it. We've got to get down!\n\nBut they were too late. With a surrendering crack, the stairs peeled away from the damaged strut and crashed into the sea.\n\nOver the ship, Delta-One grappled with the controls of the Kiowa helicopter and got it back under control. Momentarily blinded by the incoming flare, he had reflexively pulled up, causing the Hellfire missile to miss its mark. Cursing, he hovered now over the bow of the ship and prepared to drop back down and finish the job.\n\nEliminate all passengers. The controller's demands had been clear.\n\n\"Shit! Look!\" Delta-Two yelled from the rear seat, pointing out the window.\n\n\"Speedboat!\"\n\nDelta-One spun and saw a bullet-riddled Crestliner speedboat skimming away from the Goya into the darkness.\n\nHe had a decision to make.\n\nCorky's bloody hands gripped the wheel of the Crestliner Phantom 2100 as it pounded out across the sea. He rammed the throttle all the way forward, trying to eke out maximum speed. It was not until this moment that he felt the searing pain. He looked down and saw his right leg spurting blood. He instantly felt dizzy. Propping himself against the wheel, he turned and looked back at the Goya, willing the helicopter to follow him. With Tolland and Rachel trapped upon the catwalk, Corky had not been able to reach them. He'd been forced to make a snap decision.\n\nDivide and conquer.\n\nCorky knew if he could lure the chopper far enough away from the Goya, maybe Tolland and Rachel could radio for help. Unfortunately, as he looked over his shoulder at the illuminated ship, Corky could seethe chopper still hovering there, as if undecided."},{"from":"human","value":"Come on, you bastards!"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Follow me!\n\nBut the helicopter did not follow. Instead it banked over the stern of the Goya, aligned itself, and dropped down, landing on the deck. No! Corky watched in horror, now realizing he'd left Tolland and Rachel behind to be killed. Knowing it was now up to him to radio for help, Corky groped the dashboard and found the radio. He flicked the power switch. Nothing happened. No lights. No static. He turned the volume knob all the way up. Nothing. Come on! Letting goof the wheel, he knelt down fora look. His leg screamed in pain as he bent down. His eyes focused on the radio. He could not believe what he was looking at. The dashboard had been strafed by bullets, and the radio dial was shattered. Loose wires hung out the front. He stared, incredulous.\n\nOf all the goddamned luck...\n\nWeak-kneed, Corky stood backup, wondering how things could get any worse. Ashe looked back at the Goya, he got his answer. Two armed soldiers jumped out of the chopper onto the deck. Then the chopper lifted off again, turning in Corky's direction and coming after him at full speed.\n\nCorky slumped. Divide and conquer. Apparently he was not the only one with that bright idea tonight.\n\nAs Delta-Three made his way across the deck and approached the grated ramp leading belowdecks, he heard a woman shouting somewhere beneath him. He turned and motioned to Delta-Two that he was going belowdecks to check it out. His partner nodded, remaining behind to cover the upper level. The two men could stay in contact via CrypTalk; the Kiowa's jamming system ingeniously left an obscure bandwidth open for their own communications."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Clutching his snub-nose machine gun, Delta-Three moved quietly toward the ramp that led belowdecks. With the vigilance of a trained killer, he began inching downward, gun leveled.\n\nThe incline provided limited visibility, and Delta-Three crouched low fora better view. He could hear the shouting more clearly now. He kept descending. Halfway down the stairs he could now make out the twisted maze of walkways attached to the underside of the Goya. The shouting grew louder.\n\nThen he saw her. Midway across the traversing catwalk, Rachel Sexton was peering over a railing and calling desperately toward the water for Michael Tolland.\n\nDid Tolland fall in? Perhaps in the blast?\n\nIf so, Delta-Three's job would be even easier than expected. He only needed to descend another couple of feet to have an open shot. Shooting fish in a barrel. His only vague concern was Rachel standing near an open equipment locker, which meant she might have a weapon-a speargun or a shark rifle-although neither would be any match for his machine gun. Confident he was in control of the situation, Delta-Three leveled his weapon and took another step down. Rachel Sexton was almost in perfect view now. He raised the gun. One more step.\n\nThe flurry of movement came from beneath him, under the stairs. Delta-Three was more confused than frightened as he looked down and saw Michael Tolland thrusting an aluminum pole out toward his feet. Although Delta-Three had been tricked, he almost laughed at this lame attempt to trip him up. Then he felt the tip of the stick connect with his heel. A blast of white-hot pain shot through his body as his right foot exploded out from under him from a blistering impact. His balance gone, Delta-Three flailed, tumbling down the stairs. His machine gun clattered down the ramp and went overboard as he collapsed on the catwalk. In anguish, he curled up to grip his right foot, but it was no longer there."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Tolland was standing over his attacker immediately with his hands still clenching the smoking bang-stick-a five-foot Powerhead Shark-Control Device. The aluminum pole had been tipped with a pressure-sensitive, twelve-gauge shotgun shell and was intended for self-defense in the event of shark attack. Tolland had reloaded the bang-stick with another shell, and now held the jagged, smoldering point to his attacker's Adam's apple. The man lay on his back as if paralyzed, staring up at Tolland with an expression of astonished rage and agony. Rachel came running up the catwalk. The plan was for her to take the man's machine gun, but unfortunately the weapon had gone over the edge of the catwalk into the ocean.\n\nThe communications device on the man's belt crackled. The voice coming out was robotic. \"Delta-Three? Come in. I heard a shot.\"\n\nThe man made no move to answer.\n\nThe device crackled again. \"Delta-Three? Confirm. Do you need backup?\"\n\nAlmost immediately, anew voice crackled over the line. It was also robotic but distinguishable by the sound of a helicopter noise in the background. \"This is Delta-One,\" the pilot said. \"I'm in pursuit of the departing vessel. Delta-Three, confirm. Are you down? Do you need backup?\"\n\nTolland pressed the bang-stick into the man's throat. \"Tell the helicopter to back off that speedboat. If they kill my friend, you die.\"\n\nThe soldier winced in pain as he lifted his communication device to his lips. He looked directly at Tolland as he pressed the button and spoke. \"Delta-Three, here. I'm fine. Destroy the departing vessel.\"\n\nGabrielle Ashe returned to Sexton's private bathroom, preparing to climb back out of his office. Sexton'sphone call had left her feeling anxious. He had definitely hesitated when she told him she was in her office-as if he knew somehow she was lying. Either way, she'd failed to get into Sexton's computer and now was unsure of her next move."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Sexton is waiting.\n\nAs she climbed up onto the sink, getting ready to pull herself up, she heard something clatter to the tile floor. She looked down, irritated to see that she'd knocked off a pair of Sexton's cuff links that had apparently been sitting on the edge of the sink.\n\nLeave things exactly as you found them.\n\nClimbing back down Gabrielle picked up the cuff links and put them back on the sink. As she began to climb backup, she paused, glancing again at the cuff links. On any other night, Gabrielle would have ignored them, but tonight their monogram caught her attention. Like most of Sexton's monogrammed items, they had two intertwining letters. SS. Gabrielle flashed on Sexton's initial computer password-SSS. She pictured his calendar... POTUS... and the White House screensaver with its optimistic ticker tape crawling around the screen ad infinitum. President of the United States Sedgewick Sexton... President of the United States Sedgewick Sexton... President of the...\n\nGabrielle stood a moment and wondered. Could he be that confident?\n\nKnowing it would take only an instant to find out, she hurried back into Sexton's office, went to his computer, and typed in a seven-letter password.\n\nThe screensaver evaporated instantly.\n\nShe stared, incredulous.\n\nNever underestimate the ego of a politician.\n\nCorky Marlinson was no longer at the helm of the Crestliner Phantom as it raced into the night. He knew the boat would travel in a straight line with or without him at the wheel. The path of least resistance...\n\nCorky was in the back of the bouncing boat, trying to assess the damage to his leg. A bullet had entered the front part of his calf, just missing his shinbone. There was no exit wound on the back of his calf, so he knew the bullet must still be lodged in his leg. Foraging around for something to stem the bleeding, he found nothing-some fins, a snorkel, and a couple of life jackets. No first-aid kit. Frantically, Corky opened a small utility chest and found some tools, rags, duct tape, oil, and other maintenance items. He looked at his bloody leg and wondered how far he had to go to be out of shark territory."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"A hell of a lot farther than this.\n\nDelta-One kept the Kiowa chopper low over the ocean as he scanned the darkness for the departing Crestliner. Assuming the fleeing boat would head for shore and attempt to put as much distance as possible between itself and the Goya, DeltaOne had followed the Crestliner's original trajectory away from the Goya. I should have overtaken him by now.\n\nNormally, tracking the fleeing boat would be a simple matter of using radar, but with the Kiowa's jamming systems transmitting an umbrella of thermal noise for several miles, his radar was worthless. Turning off the jamming system was not an option until he got word that everyone onboard the Goya was dead. No emergency phone calls would be leaving the Goya this evening.\n\nThis meteorite secret dies. Right here. Right now.\n\nFortunately, Delta-One had other means of tracking. Even against this bizarre backdrop of heated ocean, pinpointing a powerboat's thermal imprint was simple. He turned on his thermal scanner. The ocean around him registered a warm ninetyfive degrees. Fortunately, the emissions of a racing 250 hp outboard engine were hundreds of degrees hotter.\n\nCorky Marlinson's leg and foot felt numb.\n\nNot knowing what else to do, he had wiped down his injured calf with the rag and wrapped the wound in layer after layer of duct tape. By the time the tape was gone, his entire calf, from ankle to knee, was enveloped in a tight silver sheath. The bleeding had stopped, although his clothing and hands were still covered with blood.\n\nSitting on the floor of the runaway Crestliner, Corky felt confused about why the chopper hadn't found him yet. He looked out now, scanning the horizon behind him, expecting to seethe distant Goya and incoming helicopter. Oddly, he saw neither. The lights of the Goya had disappeared. Certainly he hadn't come that far, had he?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Corky suddenly felt hopeful he might escape. Maybe they had lost him in the dark. Maybe he could get to shore!\n\nIt was then he noticed that the wake behind his boat was not straight. It seemed to curve gradually away from the back of his boat, as if he were traveling in an arc rather than a straight line. Confused by this, he turned his head to follow the wake's arc, extrapolating a giant curve across the ocean. An instant later, he saw it.\n\nThe Goya was directly off his port side, less than a half mile away. In horror, Corky realized his mistake too late. With no one at the wheel, the Crestliner's bow had continuously realigned itself with the direction of the powerful current-the megaplume's circular water flow. I'm driving in a big friggin\" circle!\n\nHe had doubled back on himself.\n\nKnowing he was still inside the shark-filled megaplume, Corky recalled Tolland's grim words. Enhanced telencephalon olfactory lobes... hammerheads can smell a droplet of blood a mile away. Corky looked at his bloody duct-taped leg and hands.\n\nThe chopper would be on him soon.\n\nRipping off his bloody clothing, Corky scrambled naked toward the stern. Knowing no sharks could possibly keep pace with the boat, he rinsed himself as best as he could in the powerful blast of the wake.\n\nA single droplet of blood...\n\nAs Corky stood up, fully exposed to the night, he knew there was only one thing left to do. He had learned once that animals marked their territory with urine because uric acid was the most potent-smelling fluid the human body made. More potent than blood, he hoped. Wishing he'd had a few more beers tonight, Corky heaved his injured leg up onto the gunwale and tried to urinate on the duct tape. Come on! He waited. Nothing like the pressure of having to piss allover yourself with a helicopter chasing you."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Finally it came. Corky urinated allover the duct tape, soaking it fully. He used what little was left in his bladder to soak a rag, which he then swathed across his entire body. Very pleasant.\n\nIn the dark sky overhead, a red laser beam appeared, slanting toward him like the shimmering blade of an enormous guillotine. The chopper appeared from an oblique angle, the pilot apparently confused that Corky had looped back toward the Goya.\n\nQuickly donning a high-float life vest, Corky moved to the rear of the speeding craft. On the boat's bloodstained floor, only five feet from where Corky was standing, a glowing red dot appeared.\n\nIt was time.\n\nOnboard the Goya, Michael Tolland did not see his Crestliner Phantom 2100 erupt inflames and tumble through the air in a cartwheel of fire and smoke. But he heard the explosion.\n\nThe West Wing was usually quiet at this hour, but the President's unexpected emergence in his bathrobe and slippers had rustled the aides and on-site staff out of their'day-timer beds\" and on-site sleeping quarters.\n\n\"I can't find her, Mr. President,\" a young aide said, hurrying after him into the Oval Office. He had looked everywhere. \"Ms. Tench is not answering her pager or cellphone.\"\n\nThe President looked exasperated. \"Have you looked in the-\"\n\n\"She left the building, sir,\" another aide announced, hurrying in. \"She signed out about an hour ago. We think she may have gone to the NRO. One of the operators says she and Pickering were talking tonight.\"\n\n\"William Pickering?\" The President sounded baffled. Tench and Pickering were anything but social. \"Have you called him?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"He's not answering either, sir. NRO switchboard can't reach him. They say Pickering's cellphone isn't even ringing. It's like he's dropped off the face of the earth.\"\n\nHerney stared at his aides fora moment and then walked to the bar and poured himself a bourbon. Ashe raised the glass to his lips, a Secret Serviceman hurried in.\n\n\"Mr. President? I wasn't going to wake you, but you should be aware that there was a car bombing at the FDR Memorial tonight.\"\n\n\"What!\" Herney almost dropped his drink. \"When?\"\n\n\"An hour ago.\" His face was grim. \"And the FBI just identified the victim...\"\n\nDelta-Three's foot screamed in pain. He felt himself floating through a muddled consciousness. Is this death? He tried to move but felt paralyzed, barely able to breathe. He saw only blurred shapes. His mind reeled back, recalling the explosion of the Crestliner out at sea, seeing the rage in Michael Tolland's eyes as the oceanographer stood over him, holding the explosive pole to his throat. Certainly Tolland killed me...\n\nAnd yet the searing pain in Delta-Three's right foot told him he was very much alive. Slowly it came back. On hearing the explosion of the Crestliner, Tolland had let out a cry of anguished rage for his lost friend. Then, turning his ravaged eyes to Delta-Three, Tolland had arched as if preparing to ram the rod through Delta-Three's throat. But as he did, he seemed to hesitate, as if his own morality were holding him back. With brutal frustration and fury, Tolland yanked the rod away and drove his boot down on Delta-Three's tattered foot. The last thing Delta-Three remembered was vomiting in agony as his whole world drifted into a black delirium. Now he was coming to, with no idea how long he had been unconscious. He could feel his arms tied behind his back in a knot so tight it could only have been tied by a sailor. His legs were also bound, bent behind him and tied to his wrists, leaving him in an immobilized backward arch. He tried to call out, but no sound came. His mouth was stuffed with something. Delta-Three could not imagine what was going on. It was then he felt the cool breeze and saw the bright lights. He realized he was upon the Goya's main deck. He twisted to look for help and was met by a frightful sight, his own reflection-bulbous and misshapen in the reflective Plexiglas bubble of the Goya's deepwater submersible. The sub hung right in front of him, and Delta-Three realized he was lying on a giant trapdoor in the deck. This was not nearly as unsettling as the most obvious question."},{"from":"human","value":"If I'm on deck..."},{"from":"gpt","value":"then where is Delta-Two?\n\nDelta-Two had grown uneasy.\n\nDespite his partner's CrypTalk transmission claiming he was fine, the single gunshot had not been that of a machine gun. Obviously, Tolland or Rachel Sexton had fired a weapon. Delta-Two moved over to peer down the ramp where his partner had descended, and he saw blood.\n\nWeapon raised, he had descended belowdecks, where he followed the trail of blood along a catwalk to the bow of the ship. Here, the trail of blood had led him backup another ramp to the main deck. It was deserted. With growing wariness, Delta-Two had followed the long crimson smear along the sideboard deck back toward the rear of the ship, where it passed the opening to the original ramp he had descended.\n\nWhat the hell is going on? The smear seemed to travel in a giant circle. Moving cautiously, his gun trained ahead of him, Delta-Two passed the entrance to the laboratory section of the ship. The smear continued toward the stern deck. Carefully he swung wide, rounding the corner. His eye traced the trail. Then he saw it.\n\nJesus Christ!\n\nDelta-Three was lying there-bound and gagged-dumped unceremoniously directly in front of the Goya's small submersible. Even from a distance, DeltaTwo could see that his partner was missing a good portion of his right foot. Wary of a trap, Delta-Two raised his gun and moved forward. Delta-Three was writhing now, trying to speak. Ironically, the way the man had been bound-with his knees sharply bent behind him-was probably saving his life; the bleeding in his foot appeared to have slowed.\n\nAs Delta-Two approached the submersible, he appreciated the rare luxury of being able to watch his own back; the entire deck of the ship was reflected in the sub's rounded cockpit dome. Delta-Two arrived at his struggling partner. He saw the warning in his eyes too late."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The flash of silver came out of nowhere.\n\nOne of the Triton's manipulator claws suddenly leaped forward and clamped down on Delta-Two's left thigh with crushing force. He tried to pull away, but the claw bore down. He screamed in pain, feeling a bone break. His eyes shot to the sub's cockpit. Peering through the reflection of the deck, Delta-Two could now see him, ensconced in the shadows of the Triton's interior. Michael Tolland was inside the sub, at the controls.\n\nBad idea, Delta-Two seethed, blocking out his pain and shouldering his machine gun. He aimed up and to the left at Tolland's chest, only three feet away on the other side of the sub's Plexiglas dome. He pulled the trigger, and the gun roared. Wild with rage at having been tricked, Delta-Two held the trigger back until the last of his shells clattered to the deck and his gun clicked empty. Breathless, he dropped the weapon and glared at the shredded dome in front of him.\n\n\"Dead!\" the soldier hissed, straining to pull his leg from the clamp. Ashe twisted, the metal clamp severed his skin, opening a large gash. \"Fuck!\" He reached now for the CrypTalk on his belt. But as he raised it to his lips, a second robotic arm snapped open in front of him and lunged forward, clamping around his right arm. The CrypTalk fell to the deck.\n\nIt was then that Delta-Two saw the ghost in the window before him. A pale visage leaning sideways and peering out through an unscathed edge of glass. Stunned, Delta-Two looked at the center of the dome and realized the bullets had not even come close to penetrating the thick shell. The dome was cratered with pockmarks. An instant later, the topside portal on the sub opened, and Michael Tolland emerged. He looked shaky but unscathed. Climbing down the aluminum gangway, Tolland stepped onto the deck and eyed his sub's destroyed dome window."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Ten thousand pounds per square inch,\" Tolland said. \"Looks like you need a bigger gun.\"\n\nInside the hydrolab, Rachel knew time was running out. She had heard the gunshots out on the deck and was praying that everything had happened exactly as Tolland had planned. She no longer cared who was behind the meteorite deception-the NASA administrator, Marjorie Tench, or the President himself-none of it mattered anymore.\n\nThey will not getaway with this. Whoever it is, the truth will be told. The wound on Rachel's arm had stopped bleeding, and the adrenaline coursing through her body had muted the pain and sharpened her focus. Finding a pen and paper, she scrawled a two-line message. The words were blunt and awkward, but eloquence was not a luxury she had time for at the moment. She added the note to the incriminating stack of papers in her hand-the GPR printout, images of Bathynomous giganteus, photos and articles regarding oceanic chondrules, an electron microscan printout. The meteorite was a fake, and this was the proof. Rachel inserted the entire stack into the hydrolab's fax machine. Knowing only a few fax numbers by heart, she had limited choices, but she had already made up her mind who would be receiving these pages and her note. Holding her breath, she carefully typed in the person's fax number.\n\nShe pressed'send,\" praying she had chosen the recipient wisely. The fax machine beeped.\n\nERROR: NO DIAL TONE\n\nRachel had expected this. The Goya's communications were still being jammed. She stood waiting and watching the machine, hoping it functioned like hers at home.\n\nCome on!\n\nAfter five seconds, the machine beeped again."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"REDIALING...\n\nYes! Rachel watched the machine lock into an endless loop. ERROR: NO DIAL TONE\n\nREDIALING...\n\nERROR: NO DIAL TONE\n\nREDIALING...\n\nLeaving the fax machine in search of a dial tone, Rachel dashed out of the hydrolab just as helicopter blades thundered overhead.\n\nOne hundred and sixty miles away from the Goya, Gabrielle Ashe was staring at Senator Sexton's computer screen in mute astonishment. Her suspicions had been right.\n\nBut she had never imagined how right.\n\nShe was looking at digital scans of dozens of bank checks written to Sexton from private space companies and deposited in numbered accounts in the Cayman Islands. The smallest check Gabrielle saw was for fifteen thousand dollars. Several were upward of half a million dollars.\n\nSmall potatoes, Sexton had told her. All the donations are under the two-thousanddollar cap. Obviously Sexton had been lying all along. Gabrielle was looking at illegal campaign financing on an enormous scale. The pangs of betrayal and disillusionment settled hard now in her heart. He lied.\n\nShe felt stupid. She felt dirty. But most of all she felt mad. Gabrielle sat alone in the darkness, realizing she had no idea what to do next.\n\nAbove the Goya, as the Kiowa banked over the stern deck, Delta-One gazed down, his eyes fixating on an utterly unexpected vision.\n\nMichael Tolland was standing on deck beside a small submersible. Dangling in the sub's robotic arms, as if in the clutches of a giant insect, hung Delta-Two, struggling in vain to free himself from two enormous claws. What in the name of God!?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Equally as shocking an image, Rachel Sexton had just arrived on deck, taking up a position over abound and bleeding man at the foot of the submersible. The man could only be Delta-Three. Rachel held one of the Delta Force's machine guns on him and stared up at the chopper as if daring them to attack. Delta-One felt momentarily disoriented, unable to fathom how this possibly could have happened. The Delta Force's errors on the ice shelf earlier had been a rare but explainable occurrence. This, however, was unimaginable. Delta-One's humiliation would have been excruciating enough under normal circumstances. But tonight his shame was magnified by the presence of another individual riding with him inside the chopper, a person whose presence here was highly unconventional.\n\nThe controller.\n\nFollowing the Delta's kill at the FDR Memorial, the controller had ordered DeltaOne to fly to a deserted public park not far from the White House. On the controller's command, Delta-One had set down on a grassy knoll among some trees just as the controller, having parked nearby, strode out of the darkness and boarded the Kiowa. They were all en route again in a matter of seconds. Although a controller's direct involvement in mission operations was rare, DeltaOne could hardly complain. The controller, distressed by the way the Delta Force had handled the kills on the Milne Ice Shelf and fearing increasing suspicions and scrutiny from a number of parties, had informed Delta-One that the final phase of the operation would be overseen in person.\n\nNow the controller was riding shotgun, witnessing in persona failure the likes of which Delta-One had never endured.\n\nThis must end. Now.\n\nThe controller gazed down from the Kiowa at the deck of the Goya and wondered how this could possibly have happened. Nothing had gone properly-the suspicions about the meteorite, the failed Delta kills on the ice shelf, the necessity of the high-profile kill at the FDR."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Controller,\" Delta-One stammered, his tone one of stunned disgrace as he looked at the situation on the deck of the Goya."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I cannot imagine...\"\n\nNor can I, the controller thought. Their quarry had obviously been grossly underestimated.\n\nThe controller looked down at Rachel Sexton, who stared up blankly at the chopper's reflective windshield and raised a CrypTalk device to her mouth. When her synthesized voice crackled inside the Kiowa, the controller expected her to demand that the chopper back off or extinguish the jamming system so Tolland could call for help. But the words Rachel Sexton spoke were far more chilling.\n\n\"You're too late,\" she said. \"We're not the only ones who know.\"\n\nThe words echoed fora moment inside the chopper. Although the claim seemed far-fetched, the faintest possibility of truth gave the controller pause. The success of the entire project required the elimination of all those who knew the truth, and as bloody as the containment had turned out to be, the controller had to be certain this was the conclusion.\n\nSomeone else knows...\n\nConsidering Rachel Sexton's reputation for following strict protocol of classified data, the controller found it very hard to believe that she would have decided to share this with an outside source.\n\nRachel was on the CrypTalk again. \"Back off and we'll spare your men. Come any closer and they die. Either way, the truth comes out. Cut your losses. Back off.\"\n\n\"You're bluffing,\" the controller said, knowing the voice Rachel Sexton was hearing was an androgynous robotic tone. \"You have told no one.\"\n\n\"Are you ready to take that chance?\" Rachel fired back. \"I couldn't get through to William Pickering earlier, so I got spooked and took out some insurance.\"\n\nThe controller frowned. It was plausible.\n\n\"They're not buying it,\" Rachel said, glancing at Tolland. The soldier in the claws gave a pained smirk. \"Your gun is empty, and the chopper's going to blow you to hell. You're both going to die. Your only hope is to let us go.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Like hell, Rachel thought, trying to assess their next move. She looked at the bound and gagged man who lay at her feet directly in front of the sub. He looked delirious from loss of blood. She crouched beside him, looking into the man's hard eyes. \"I'm going to takeoff your gag and hold the CrypTalk; you're going to convince the helicopter to back off. Is that clear?\"\n\nThe man nodded earnestly.\n\nRachel pulled out the man's gag. The soldier spat a wad of bloody saliva up into Rachel's face.\n\n\"Bitch,\" he hissed, coughing. \"I'm going to watch you die. They're going to kill you like a pig, and I'm going to enjoy every minute.\"\n\nRachel wiped the hot saliva from her face as she felt Tolland's hands lifting her away, pulling her back, steadying her as he took her machine gun. She could feel in his trembling touch that something inside him had just snapped. Tolland walked to a control panel a few yards away, put his hand on a lever, and locked eyes with the man lying on the deck.\n\n\"Strike two,\" Tolland said. \"And on my ship, that's all you get.\"\n\nWith a resolute rage, Tolland yanked down on the lever. A huge trapdoor in the deck beneath the Triton fell open like the floor of a gallows. The bound soldier gave a short howl of fear and then disappeared, plummeting through the hole. He fell thirty feet to the ocean below. The splash was crimson. The sharks were on him instantly.\n\nThe controller shook with rage, looking down from the Kiowa at what was left of Delta-Three's body drifting out from under the boat on the strong current. The illuminated water was pink. Several fish fought over something that looked like an arm."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Jesus Christ.\n\nThe controller looked back at the deck. Delta-Two still hung in the Triton's claws, but now the sub was suspended over a gaping hole in the deck. His feet dangled over the void. All Tolland had to do was release the claws, and Delta-Two would be next.\n\n\"Okay,\" the controller barked into the CrypTalk. \"Hold on. Just hold on!\"\n\nRachel stood below on the deck and stared up at the Kiowa. Even from this height the controller sensed the resolve in her eyes. Rachel raised the CrypTalk to her mouth. \"You still think we're bluffing?\" she said. \"Call the main switchboard at the NRO. Ask for Jim Samiljan. He's in P& A on the nightshift. I told him everything about the meteorite. He will confirm.\"\n\nShe's giving me a specific name? This did not bode well. Rachel Sexton was no fool, and this was a bluff the controller could check in a matter of seconds. Although the controller knew of no one at the NRO named Jim Samiljan, the organization was enormous. Rachel could quite possibly be telling the truth. Before ordering the final kill, the controller had to confirm if this was a bluff-or not.\n\nDelta-One looked over his shoulder. \"You want me to deactivate the jammer so you can call and check it out?\"\n\nThe controller peered down at Rachel and Tolland, both in plain view. If either of them made a move fora cellphone or radio, the controller knew Delta-One could always reactivate and cut them off. The risk was minimal.\n\n\"Kill the jammer,\" the controller said, pulling out a cellphone. \"I'll confirm Rachel's lying. Then we'll find away to get Delta-Two and end this.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"In Fairfax, the operator at the NRO's central switchboard was getting impatient.\n\n\"As I just told you, I see no Jim Samiljan in the Plans and Analysis Division.\"\n\nThe caller was insistent. \"Have you tried multiple spellings? Have you tried other departments?\"\n\nThe operator had already checked, but she checked again. After several seconds, she said, \"Nowhere on staff do we have a Jim Samiljan. Under any spelling.\"\n\nThe caller sounded oddly pleased by this. \"So you are certain the NRO employs no Jim Samil-\"\n\nA sudden flurry of activity erupted on the line. Someone yelled. The caller cursed aloud and promptly hung up.\n\nOnboard the Kiowa, Delta-One was screaming with rage as he scrambled to reactivate the jamming system. He had made the realization too late. In the huge array of lighted controls in the cockpit, a tiny LED meter indicated that a SATCOM data signal was being transmitted from the Goya. But how? Nobody left the deck! Before Delta-One could engage the jammer, the connection from the Goya terminated on its own accord.\n\nInside the hydrolab, the fax machine beeped contentedly. CARRIER FOUND... FAX SENT\n\nKill or be killed. Rachel had discovered apart of herself she never knew existed. Survival mode-a savage fortitude fueled by fear.\n\n\"What was in that outbound fax?\" the voice on the CrypTalk demanded. Rachel was relieved to hear confirmation that the fax had gone out as planned.\n\n\"Leave the area,\" she demanded, speaking into the CrypTalk and glaring up at the hovering chopper. \"It's over. Your secret is out.\" Rachel informed their attackers of all the information she had just sent. A half dozen pages of images and text. Incontrovertible evidence that the meteorite was a fake. \"Harming us will only make your situation worse.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"There was a heavy pause. \"Who did you send the fax to?\"\n\nRachel had no intention of answering that question. She and Tolland needed to buy as much time as possible. They had positioned themselves near the opening in the deck, on a direct line with the Triton, making it impossible for the chopper to shoot without hitting the soldier dangling in the sub's claws.\n\n\"William Pickering,\" the voice guessed, sounding oddly hopeful. \"You faxed Pickering.\"\n\nWrong, Rachel thought. Pickering would have been her first choice, but she had been forced to choose someone else for fear her attackers had already eliminated Pickering-a move whose boldness would be a chilling testimony to her enemy's resolve. Ina moment of desperate decision, Rachel had faxed the data to the only other fax number she knew by heart.\n\nHer father's office.\n\nSenator Sexton's office fax number had been painfully engraved into Rachel's memory after her mother's death when her father chose to workout many of the particulars of the estate without having to deal with Rachel in person. Rachel never imagined she would turn to her father in a time of need, but tonight the man possessed two critical qualities-all the correct political motivations to release the meteorite data without hesitation, and enough clout to call the White House and blackmail them into calling off this kill squad.\n\nAlthough her father was most certainly not in the office at this hour, Rachel knew he kept his office locked like a vault. Rachel had, in effect, faxed the data into a time-lock safe. Even if the attackers knew where she had sent it, chances were slim they could get through the tight federal security at the Philip A. Hart Senate Office Building and break into a senator's office without anyone noticing.\n\n\"Wherever you sent the fax,\" the voice from above said. \"You've put that person in danger.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Rachel knew she had to speak from a position of power regardless of the fear she was feeling. She motioned to the soldier trapped in the Triton's claws. His legs dangled over the abyss, dripping blood thirty feet to the ocean. \"The only person in danger here is your agent,\" she said into the CrypTalk. \"It's over. Back off. The data is gone. You've lost. Leave the area, or this man dies.\"\n\nThe voice on the CrypTalk fired back, \"Ms. Sexton, you do not understand the importance-\"\n\n\"Understand?\" Rachel exploded. \"I understand that you killed innocent people! I understand that you lied about the meteorite! And I understand that you won't getaway with this! Even if you kill us all, it's over!\"\n\nThere was along pause. Finally the voice said, \"I'm coming down.\"\n\nRachel felt her muscles tighten. Coming down?\n\n\"I am unarmed,\" the voice said. \"Do not do anything rash. You and I need to talk face-to-face.\"\n\nBefore Rachel could react, the chopper dropped onto the Goya's deck. The passenger door on the fuselage opened and a figure stepped out. He was a plainlooking man in a black coat and tie. For an instant, Rachel's thoughts went totally blank.\n\nShe was staring at William Pickering.\n\nWilliam Pickering stood on the deck of the Goya and gazed with regret at Rachel Sexton. He had never imagined today would come to this. Ashe moved toward her, he could seethe dangerous combination of emotions in his employee's eyes. Shock, betrayal, confusion, rage.\n\nAll understandable, he thought. There is so much she does not understand. Fora moment, Pickering flashed on his daughter, Diana, wondering what emotions she had felt before she died. Both Diana and Rachel were casualties of the same war, a war Pickering had vowed to fight forever. Sometimes the casualties could be so cruel."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Rachel,\" Pickering said. \"We can still work this out. There's a lot I need to explain.\"\n\nRachel Sexton looked aghast, nauseated almost. Tolland had the machine gun now and was aiming at Pickering's chest. He too looked bewildered.\n\n\"Stay back!\" Tolland yelled.\n\nPickering stopped five yards away, focusing on Rachel. \"Your father is taking bribes, Rachel. Payoffs from private space companies. He plans to dismantle NASA and open space to the private sector. He had to be stopped, as a matter of national security.\"\n\nRachel's expression was blank.\n\nPickering sighed. \"NASA, for all its flaws, must remain a government entity.\"\n\nCertainly she can understand the dangers. Privatization would send NASA's best minds and ideas flooding into the private sector. The brain trust would dissolve. The military would lose access. Private space companies looking to raise capital would start selling NASA patents and ideas to the highest bidders worldwide!\n\nRachel's voice was tremulous. \"You faked the meteorite and killed innocent people... in the name of national security?\"\n\n\"It was never supposed to happen like this,\" Pickering said. \"The plan was to save an important government agency. Killing was not part of it.\"\n\nThe meteorite deception, Pickering knew, like most intelligence proposals, had been the product of fear. Three years ago, in an effort to extend the NRO\n\nhydrophones into deeper water where they could not be touched by enemy saboteurs, Pickering spearheaded a program that utilized a newly developed NASA building material to secretly design an astonishingly durable submarine capable of carrying humans to the deepest regions of the ocean-including the bottom of the Mariana Trench."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Forged from a revolutionary ceramic, this two-man submarine was designed from blueprints hacked from the computer of a California engineer named Graham Hawkes, a genius sub designer whose life dream was to build an ultra-deepwater submersible he called Deep Flight II. Hawkes was having trouble finding funding to build a prototype. Pickering, on the other hand, had an unlimited budget. Using the classified ceramic submersible, Pickering sent a covert team underwater to affix new hydrophones to the walls of the Mariana Trench, deeper than any enemy could possibly look. In the process of drilling, however, they uncovered geologic structures unlike any that scientists had ever seen. The discoveries included chondrules and fossils of several unknown species. Of course, because the NRO's ability to dive this deep was classified, none of the information could ever be shared.\n\nIt was not until recently, driven yet again by fear, that Pickering and his quiet team of NRO science advisers had decided to put their knowledge of the Mariana's unique geology to work to help save NASA. Turning a Mariana rock into a meteorite had proven to be a deceptively simple task. Using an ECE slushhydrogen engine, the NRO team charred the rock with a convincing fusion crust. Then, using a small payload sub, they had descended beneath the Milne Ice Shelf and inserted the charred rock up into the ice from beneath. Once the insertion shaft refroze, the rock looked like it had been therefor over three hundred years. Unfortunately, as was often the casein the world of covert operations, the grandest of plans could be undone by the smallest of snags. Yesterday, the entire illusion had been shattered by a few bioluminescent plankton...\n\nFrom the cockpit of the idling Kiowa, Delta-One watched the drama unfold before him. Rachel and Tolland appeared to be in clear control, although Delta-One almost had to laugh at the hollowness of the illusion. The machine gun in Tolland's hands was worthless; even from here Delta-One could seethe cocking bar assembly had kicked back, indicating the clip was empty. As Delta-One gazed out at his partner struggling in the Triton's claws, he knew he had to hurry. The focus on deck had turned completely to Pickering, and now Delta-One could make his move. Leaving the rotors idling, he slipped out of the rear of the fuselage and, using the chopper for cover, made his way unseen onto the starboard gangway. With his own machine gun in hand, he headed for the bow. Pickering had given him specific orders before they landed on deck, and DeltaOne had no intention of failing at this simple task. Ina matter of minutes, he knew, this will all be over."},{"from":"human","value":"Still wearing his bathrobe, Zach Herney sat at his desk in the Oval Office, his head throbbing."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The newest piece of the puzzle had just been revealed. Marjorie Tench is dead.\n\nHerney's aides said they had information suggesting Tench had driven to the FDR\n\nMemorial fora private meeting with William Pickering. Now that Pickering was missing, the staff feared Pickering too might be dead.\n\nThe President and Pickering had endured their battles lately. Months ago Herney learned that Pickering had engaged in illegal activity on Herney's behalf in an attempt to save Herney's floundering campaign.\n\nEmploying NRO assets, Pickering had discreetly obtained enough dirt on Senator Sexton to sink his campaign-scandalous sexual photos of the senator with his aide Gabrielle Ashe, incriminating financial records proving Sexton was taking bribes from private space companies. Pickering anonymously sent all the evidence to Marjorie Tench, assuming the White House would use it wisely. But Herney, upon seeing the data, had forbidden Tench to use it. Sex scandals and bribery were cancers in Washington, and waving another one in front of the public only added to their distrust of government.\n\nCynicism is killing this country.\n\nAlthough Herney knew he could destroy Sexton with scandal, the cost would be besmirching the dignity of the U. S. Senate, something Herney refused to do. No more negatives. Herney would beat Senator Sexton on the issues. Pickering, angered by the White House's refusal to use the evidence he had provided, tried to jump-start the scandal by leaking a rumor that Sexton had slept with Gabrielle Ashe. Unfortunately, Sexton declared his innocence with such convincing indignation that the President ended up having to apologize for the leak personally. In the end William Pickering had done more damage than good. Herney told Pickering that if he ever interfered in the campaign again, he would be indicted. The grand irony, of course, was that Pickering did not even like President Herney. The NRO director's attempts to help Herney's campaign were simply fears over the fate of NASA. Zach Herney was the lesser of two evils. Now has someone killed Pickering?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Herney could not imagine.\n\n\"Mr. President?\" an aide said. \"As you requested, I called Lawrence Ekstrom and told him about Marjorie Tench.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"He would like to speak to you, sir.\"\n\nHerney was still furious with Ekstrom for lying about PODS. \"Tell him I'll talk to him in the morning.\"\n\n\"Mr. Ekstrom wants to talk to you right away, sir.\" The aide looked uneasy. \"He's very upset.\"\n\nHE'S upset? Herney could feel his temper fraying around the edges. Ashe stalked off to take Ekstrom's call, the President wondered what the hell else could possibly go wrong tonight.\n\nOnboard the Goya, Rachel felt lightheaded. The mystification that had settled around her like a heavy fog was lifting now. The stark reality that came into focus left her feeling naked and disgusted. She looked at the stranger before her and could barely hear his voice.\n\n\"We needed to rebuild NASA's image,\" Pickering was saying. \"Their declining popularity and funding had become dangerous on so many levels.\" Pickering paused, his gray eyes locking on hers. \"Rachel, NASA was desperate fora triumph. Someone had to make it happen.\"\n\n---\n\nSomething had to be done, Pickering thought.\n\nThe meteorite had been a final act of desperation. Pickering and others had tried to save NASA by lobby-ing to incorporate the space agency into the intelligence community where it would enjoy increased funding and better security, but the White House continuously rebuffed the idea as an assault on pure science. Shortsighted idealism. With the rising popularity of Sexton's anti-NASA rhetoric, Pickering and his band of military powerbrokers knew time was running short. They decided that capturing the imagination of taxpayers and Congress was the only remaining way to salvage NASA's image and save it from the auction block. If the space agency was to survive, it would need an infusion of grandeur-something to remind the taxpayers of NASA's Apollo glory days. And if Zach Herney was going to defeat Senator Sexton, he was going to need help. I tried to help him, Pickering told himself, recalling all the damaging evidence he had sent Marjorie Tench. Unfortunately, Herney had forbidden its use, leaving Pickering no choice but to take drastic measures."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Rachel,\" Pickering said, \"the information you just faxed off this ship is dangerous."},{"from":"gpt","value":"You must understand that. If it gets out, the White House and NASA will look complicit. The backlash against the President and NASA will be enormous. The President and NASA know nothing, Rachel. They are innocent. They believe the meteorite is authentic.\"\n\nPickering had not even tried to bring Herney or Ekstrom into the fold because both were far too idealistic to have agreed to any deceit, regardless of its potential to save the presidency or space agency. Administrator Ekstrom's only crime had been persuading the PODS mission supervisor to lie about the anomaly software, a move Ekstrom no doubt regretted the moment he realized how scrutinized this particular meteorite would become.\n\nMarjorie Tench, frustrated by Herney's insistence on fighting a clean campaign, conspired with Ekstrom on the PODS lie, hoping a small PODS success might help the President fend off the rising Sexton tide.\n\nIf Tench had used the photos and bribery data I gave her, none of this would have happened!\n\nTench's murder, though deeply regrettable, had been destined as soon as Rachel called Tench and made accusations of fraud. Pickering knew Tench would investigate ruthlessly until she got to the bottom of Rachel's motives for the outrageous claims, and this was one investigation Pickering obviously could never let happen. Ironically, Tench would serve her president best in death, her violent end helping cement a sympathy vote for the White House as well as cast vague suspicions of foul play on a desperate Sexton campaign which had been so publicly humiliated by Marjorie Tench on CNN.\n\nRachel stood her ground, glaring at her boss.\n\n\"Understand,\" Pickering said, \"if news of this meteorite fraud gets out, you will destroy an innocent president and an innocent space agency. You will also put a very dangerous man in the Oval Office. I need to know where you faxed the data.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Ashe spoke those words, a strange look came across Rachel's face. It was the pained expression of horror of someone who had just realized they may have made a grave mistake.\n\nHaving circled the bow and comeback down the port side, Delta-One now stood in the hydrolab from which he had seen Rachel emerge as the chopper had flown in. A computer in the lab displayed an unsettling image-a polychromatic rendering of the pulsating, deepwater vortex that was apparently hovering over the ocean floor somewhere beneath the Goya.\n\nAnother reason to get the hell out of here, he thought, moving now toward his target.\n\nThe fax machine was on a counter on the far side of the wall. The tray was filled with a stack of papers, exactly as Pickering had guessed it would be. Delta-One picked up the stack. A note from Rachel was on top. Only two lines. He read it. To the point, he thought.\n\nAshe flipped through the pages, he was both amazed and dismayed by the extent to which Tolland and Rachel had uncovered the meteorite deception. Whoever saw these printouts would have no doubt what they meant. Fortunately, Delta-One would not even need to hit'redial\" to find out where the printouts had gone. The last fax number was still displayed in the LCD window.\n\nA Washington, D. C., prefix.\n\nHe carefully copied the fax number down, grabbed all the papers, and exited the lab.\n\nTolland's hands felt sweaty on the machine gun as he gripped it, aiming the muzzle at William Pickering's chest. The NRO director was still pressuring Rachel to tell him where the data had been sent, and Tolland was starting to get the uneasy feeling that Pickering was simply trying to buy time. For what?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"The White House and NASA are innocent,\" Pickering repeated. \"Work with me. Don't let my mistakes destroy what little credibility NASA has left. NASA will look guilty if this gets out. You and I can come to an arrangement. The country needs this meteorite. Tell me where you faxed the data before it's too late.\"\n\n\"So you can kill someone else?\" Rachel said. \"You make me sick.\"\n\nTolland was amazed with Rachel's fortitude. She despised her father, but she clearly had no intention of putting the senator in any danger whatsoever. Unfortunately, Rachel's plan to fax her father for help had backfired. Even if the senator came into his office, saw the fax, and called the President with news of the meteorite fraud and told him to call off the attack, nobody at the White House would have any idea what Sexton was talking about, or even where they were.\n\n\"I will only say this one more time,\" Pickering said, fixing Rachel with a menacing glare. \"This situation is too complex for you to fully understand. You've made an enormous mistake by sending that data off this ship. You've put your country at risk.\"\n\nWilliam Pickering was indeed buying time, Tolland now realized. And the reason was striding calmly toward them up the starboard side of the boat. Tolland felt a flash of fear when he saw the soldier sauntering toward them carrying a stack of papers and a machine gun.\n\nTolland reacted with a decisiveness that shocked even himself. Gripping the machine gun, he wheeled, aimed at the soldier, and pulled the trigger. The gun made an innocuous click.\n\n\"I found the fax number,\" the soldier said, handing Pickering a slip of paper. \"And Mr. Tolland is out of ammunition.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Sedgewick Sexton stormed up the hallway of the PhilipA. Hart Senate Office Building. He had no idea how Gabrielle had done it, but she had obviously gotten into his office. While they were speaking on the phone, Sexton had clearly heard the distinctive triple-click of his Jourdain clock in the background. All he could imagine was that Gabrielle's eavesdropping on the SFF meeting had undermined her trust in him and she had gone digging for evidence.\n\nHow the hell did she get into my office!\n\nSexton was glad he'd changed his computer password.\n\nWhen he arrived at his private office, Sexton typed in his code to deactivate the alarm. Then he fumbled for his keys, unlocked the heavy doors, threw them open, and burst in, intent on catching Gabrielle in the act.\n\nBut the office was empty and dark, lit only by the glow of his computer screensaver. He turned on the lights, his eyes scanning. Everything looked in place. Dead silence except for the triple-tick of his clock. Where the hell is she?\n\nHe heard something rustle in his private bathroom and raced over, turning on the light. The bathroom was empty. He looked behind the door. Nothing. Puzzled, Sexton eyed himself in the mirror, wondering if he'd had too much to drink tonight. I heard something. Feeling disoriented and confused, he walked back into his office.\n\n\"Gabrielle?\" he called out. He went down the hall to her office. She wasn't there. Her office was dark.\n\nA toilet flushed in the ladies' room, and Sexton spun, striding now back in the direction of the restrooms. He arrived just as Gabrielle was exiting, drying her hands. She jumped when she saw him."},{"from":"human","value":"\"My God!"},{"from":"gpt","value":"You scared me!\" she said, looking genuinely frightened. \"What are you doing here?\"\n\n\"You said you were getting NASA documents from your office,\" he declared, eyeing her empty hands. \"Where are they?\"\n\n\"I couldn't find them. I looked everywhere. That's what took so long.\"\n\nHe stared directly into her eyes. \"Were you in my office?\"\n\nI owe my life to his fax machine, Gabrielle thought.\n\nOnly minutes ago she'd been sitting at Sexton's computer, trying to make printouts of the images of illegal checks on his computer. The files were protected somehow, and she was going to need more time to figure out how to print them. She would probably still be trying right now if Sexton's fax machine had not rung, startling her and snapping her back to reality. Gabrielle took it as her cue to get out. Without taking time to see what the incoming fax was, she logged off Sexton's computer, tidied up, and headed out the way she had come. She was just climbing out of Sexton's bathroom when she heard him coming in. Now, with Sexton standing before her, staring down, she sensed him searching her eyes fora lie. Sedgewick Sexton could smell untruths like nobody Gabrielle had ever met. If she lied to him, Sexton would know.\n\n\"You've been drinking,\" Gabrielle said, turning away. How does he know I was in his office?\n\nSexton put his hands on her shoulders and spun her back around. \"Were you in my office?\"\n\nGabrielle felt arising fear. Sexton had indeed been drinking. His touch was rough.\n\n\"In your office?\" she demanded, forcing a confused laugh. \"How? Why?\"\n\n\"I heard my Jourdain in the background when I called you.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Gabrielle cringed inwardly. His clock? It had not even occurred to her. \"Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?\"\n\n\"I spend all day in that office. I know what my clock sounds like.\"\n\nGabrielle sensed she had to end this immediately. The best defense is a good offense. At least that's what Yolanda Cole always said. Placing her hands on her hips, Gabrielle went for him with all she had. She stepped toward him, getting in his face, glaring. \"Let me get this straight, senator. It's four o'clock in the morning, you've been drinking, you heard a ticking on your phone, and that's why you're here?\" She pointed her finger indignantly down the hall at his door. \"Just for the record, are you accusing me of disarming a federal alarm system, picking two sets of locks, breaking into your office, being stupid enough to answer my cellphone while in the process of committing a felony, rearming the alarm system on my way out, and then calmly using the ladies' room before I runoff with nothing to show for it? Is that the story here?\"\n\nSexton blinked, wide-eyed.\n\n\"There's a reason people shouldn't drink alone,\" Gabrielle said. \"Now do you want to talk about NASA, or not?\"\n\nSexton felt befuddled as he walked back into his office. He went straight to his wet bar and poured himself a Pepsi. He sure as hell didn't feel drunk. Could he really have been wrong about this? Across the room, his Jourdain ticked mockingly. Sexton drained his Pepsi and poured himself another, and one for Gabrielle.\n\n\"Drink, Gabrielle?\" he asked, turning back into the room. Gabrielle had not followed him in. She was still standing in the doorway, rubbing his nose in it. \"Oh, for God's sake! Come in. Tell me what you found out at NASA.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I think I've had enough for tonight,\" she said, sounding distant. \"Let's talk tomorrow.\"\n\nSexton was in no mood for games. He needed this information now, and he had no intention of begging for it. He heaved a tired sigh. Extend the bond of trust. It's all about trust. \"I screwed up,\" he said. \"I'm sorry. It's been a hell of a day. I don't know what I was thinking.\"\n\nGabrielle remained in the doorway.\n\nSexton walked to his desk and set Gabrielle's Pepsi down on his blotter. He motioned to his leather chair-the position of power. \"Have a seat. Enjoy a soda. I'm going to go stick my head in the sink.\" He headed for the bathroom. Gabrielle still wasn't moving.\n\n\"I think I saw a fax in the machine,\" Sexton called over his shoulder as he entered the bathroom. Show her you trust her. \"Have a look at it for me, will you?\"\n\nSexton closed the door and filled the sink with cold water. He splashed it on his face and felt no clearer. This had never happened to him before-being so sure, and being so wrong. Sexton was a man who trusted his instincts, and his instincts told him Gabrielle Ashe had been in his office.\n\nBut how? It was impossible.\n\nSexton told himself to forget about it and focus on the matter at hand. NASA. He needed Gabrielle right now. This was no time to alienate her. He needed to know what she knew. Forget your instincts. You were wrong.\n\nAs Sexton dried his face, he threw his head back and took a deep breath. Relax, he told himself. Don't get punchy. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply again, feeling better."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Keep the narrative going for the author.\\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\\nAuthor: Dan Brown\\nTitle: Deception Point\\nChapter: 5\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You don't sound like you're in a taxi.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" she said, her blood pumping now. \\\"I'm not. I decided to stop by my office and pickup some NASA documents that might be relevant to PODS. I'm having some trouble finding them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, hurry up. I want to schedule a press conference for the morning, and we need to talk specifics.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm coming soon,\\\" she said.\\n\\nThere was a pause on the line. \\\"You're in your office?\\\" He sounded suddenly confused.\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. Another ten minutes and I'll be on my way over.\\\"\\n\\nAnother pause. \\\"Okay. I'll see you soon.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle hung up, too preoccupied to notice the loud and distinctive triple-tick of Sexton's prized Jourdain grandfather clock only a few feet away.\\n\\nMichael Tolland did not realize Rachel was hurt until he saw the blood on her arm as he pulled her to cover behind the Triton. He sensed from the catatonic look on her face that she was not aware of any pain. Steadying her, Tolland wheeled to find Corky. The astrophysicist scrambled across the deck to join them, his eyes blank with terror.\\n\\nWe've got to find cover, Tolland thought, the horror of what had just happened not yet fully registering. Instinctively, his eyes raced up the tiers of decks above them. The stairs leading up to the bridge were all in the open, and the bridge itself was a glass box-a transparent bull's-eye from the air. Going up was suicide, which left only one other direction to go.\\n\\nFora fleeting instant, Tolland turned a hopeful gaze to the Triton submersible, wondering perhaps if he could get everyone underwater, away from the bullets. Absurd. The Triton had room for one person, and the deployment winch took a good ten minutes to lower the sub through the trapdoor in the deck to the ocean thirty feet below. Besides, without properly charged batteries and compressors, the Triton would be dead in the water.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Here they come!\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Corky shouted, his voice shrill with fear as he pointed into the sky.\\n\\nTolland didn't even lookup. He pointed to a nearby bulkhead, where an aluminum ramp descended belowdecks. Corky apparently needed no encouragement. Keeping his head low, Corky scurried toward the opening and disappeared down the incline. Tolland put a firm arm around Rachel's waist and followed. The two of them disappeared belowdecks just as the helicopter returned, spraying bullets overhead.\\n\\nTolland helped Rachel down the grated ramp to the suspended platform at the bottom. As they arrived, Tolland could feel Rachel's body go suddenly rigid. He wheeled, fearing maybe she'd been hit by a ricocheting bullet. When he saw her face, he knew it was something else. Tolland followed her petrified gaze downward and immediately understood.\\n\\nRachel stood motionless, her legs refusing to move. She was staring down at the bizarre world beneath her.\\n\\nBecause of its SWATH design, the Goya had no hull but rather struts like a giant catamaran. They had just descended through the deck onto a grated catwalk that hung above an open chasm, thirty feet straight down to the raging sea. The noise was deafening here, reverberating off the underside of the deck. Adding to Rachel's terror was the fact that the ship's underwater spotlights were still illuminated, casting a greenish effulgence deep into the ocean directly beneath her. She found herself gazing down at six or seven ghostly silhouettes in the water. Enormous hammerhead sharks, their long shadows swimming in place against the current-rubbery bodies flexing back and forth.\\n\\nTolland's voice was in her ear. \\\"Rachel, you're okay. Eyes straight ahead. I'm right behind you.\\\" His hands were reaching around from behind, gently trying to coax her clenched fists off the banister. It was then that Rachel saw the crimson droplet of blood roll off her arm and fall through the grating. Her eyes followed the drip as it plummeted toward the sea. Although she never saw it hit the water, she knew the instant it happened because all at once the hammerheads spun in unison, thrusting with their powerful tails, crashing together in a roiling frenzy of teeth and fins.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Enhanced telencephalon olfactory lobes...\\n\\nThey smell blood a mile away.\\n\\n\\\"Eyes straight ahead,\\\" Tolland repeated, his voice strong and reassuring. \\\"I'm right behind you.\\\"\\n\\nRachel felt his hands on her hips now, urging her forward. Blocking out the void beneath her, Rachel started down the catwalk. Somewhere above she could hear the rotors of the chopper again. Corky was already well out in front of them, reeling across the catwalk in a kind of drunken panic.\\n\\nTolland called out to him. \\\"All the way to the far strut, Corky! Down the stairs!\\\"\\n\\nRachel could now see where they were headed. Up ahead, a series of switchback ramps descended. At water level, a narrow, shelflike deck extended the length of the Goya. Jutting off this deck were several small, suspended docks, creating a kind of miniature marina stationed beneath the ship. A large sign read:\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Swimmers May Surface without Warning\\n\\n-Boats Proceed with Caution-\\n\\nRachel could only assume Michael did not intend for them to do any swimming. Her trepidation intensified when Tolland stopped at a bank of wire-mesh storage lockers flanking the catwalk. He pulled open the doors to reveal hanging wetsuits, snorkels, flippers, life jackets, and spearguns. Before she could protest, he reached in and grabbed a flare gun. \\\"Let's go.\\\"\\n\\nThey were moving again.\\n\\nUp ahead, Corky had reached the switchback ramps and was already halfway down. \\\"I see it!\\\" he shouted, his voice sounding almost joyous over the raging water.\\n\\nSee what? Rachel wondered as Corky ran along the narrow walkway. All she could see was a shark-infested ocean lapping dangerously close. Tolland urged her forward, and suddenly Rachel could see what Corky was so excited about. At the far end of the decking below, a small powerboat was moored. Corky ran toward it. Rachel stared. Outrun a helicopter in a motorboat?\\n\\n\\\"It has a radio,\\\" Tolland said. \\\"And if we can get far enough away from the helicopter's jamming...\\\"\\n\\nRachel did not hear another word he said. She had just spied something that made her blood run cold. \\\"Too late,\\\" she croaked, extending a trembling finger. We're finished...\\n\\nWhen Tolland turned, he knew in an instant it was over.\\n\\nAt the far end of the ship, like a dragon peering into the opening of a cave, the black helicopter had dropped down low and was facing them. For an instant, Tolland thought it was going to fly directly at them through the center of the boat. But the helicopter began to turn at an angle, taking aim. Tolland followed the direction of the gun barrels. No!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Crouched beside the powerboat untying the moorings, Corky glanced up just as the machine guns beneath the chopper erupted in ablaze of thunder. Corky lurched as if hit. Wildly, he scrambled over the gunwale and dove into the boat, sprawled himself on the floor for cover. The guns stopped. Tolland could see Corky crawling deeper into the powerboat. The lower part of his right leg was covered with blood. Crouched below the dash, Corky reached up and fumbled across the controls until his fingers found the key. The boat's 250 hp Mercury engine roared to life.\\n\\nAn instant later, a red laser beam appeared, emanating from the nose of the hovering chopper, targeting the powerboat with a missile. Tolland reacted on instinct, aiming the only weapon he had. The flare gun in his hand hissed when he pulled the trigger, and a blinding streak tore away on a horizontal trajectory beneath the ship, heading directly toward the chopper. Even so, Tolland sensed he had acted too late. As the streaking flare bore down on the helicopter's windshield, the rocket launcher beneath the chopper emitted its own flash of light. At the same exact instant that the missile launched, the aircraft veered sharply and pulled up out of sight to avoid the incoming flare.\\n\\n\\\"Lookout!\\\" Tolland yelled, yanking Rachel down onto the catwalk. The missile sailed off course, just missing Corky, coming the length of the Goya and slamming into the base of the strut thirty feet beneath Rachel and Tolland. The sound was apocalyptic. Water and flames erupted beneath them. Bits of twisted metal flew in the air and scattered the catwalk beneath them. Metal on metal ground together as the ship shifted, finding anew balance, slightly askew. As the smoke cleared, Tolland could see that one of the Goya's four main struts had been severely damaged. Powerful currents tore past the pontoon, threatening to break it off. The spiral stairway descending to the lower deck looked to be hanging by a thread.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Come on!\\\" Tolland yelled, urging Rachel toward it. We've got to get down!\\n\\nBut they were too late. With a surrendering crack, the stairs peeled away from the damaged strut and crashed into the sea.\\n\\nOver the ship, Delta-One grappled with the controls of the Kiowa helicopter and got it back under control. Momentarily blinded by the incoming flare, he had reflexively pulled up, causing the Hellfire missile to miss its mark. Cursing, he hovered now over the bow of the ship and prepared to drop back down and finish the job.\\n\\nEliminate all passengers. The controller's demands had been clear.\\n\\n\\\"Shit! Look!\\\" Delta-Two yelled from the rear seat, pointing out the window.\\n\\n\\\"Speedboat!\\\"\\n\\nDelta-One spun and saw a bullet-riddled Crestliner speedboat skimming away from the Goya into the darkness.\\n\\nHe had a decision to make.\\n\\nCorky's bloody hands gripped the wheel of the Crestliner Phantom 2100 as it pounded out across the sea. He rammed the throttle all the way forward, trying to eke out maximum speed. It was not until this moment that he felt the searing pain. He looked down and saw his right leg spurting blood. He instantly felt dizzy. Propping himself against the wheel, he turned and looked back at the Goya, willing the helicopter to follow him. With Tolland and Rachel trapped upon the catwalk, Corky had not been able to reach them. He'd been forced to make a snap decision.\\n\\nDivide and conquer.\\n\\nCorky knew if he could lure the chopper far enough away from the Goya, maybe Tolland and Rachel could radio for help. Unfortunately, as he looked over his shoulder at the illuminated ship, Corky could seethe chopper still hovering there, as if undecided.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Come on, you bastards!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Follow me!\\n\\nBut the helicopter did not follow. Instead it banked over the stern of the Goya, aligned itself, and dropped down, landing on the deck. No! Corky watched in horror, now realizing he'd left Tolland and Rachel behind to be killed. Knowing it was now up to him to radio for help, Corky groped the dashboard and found the radio. He flicked the power switch. Nothing happened. No lights. No static. He turned the volume knob all the way up. Nothing. Come on! Letting goof the wheel, he knelt down fora look. His leg screamed in pain as he bent down. His eyes focused on the radio. He could not believe what he was looking at. The dashboard had been strafed by bullets, and the radio dial was shattered. Loose wires hung out the front. He stared, incredulous.\\n\\nOf all the goddamned luck...\\n\\nWeak-kneed, Corky stood backup, wondering how things could get any worse. Ashe looked back at the Goya, he got his answer. Two armed soldiers jumped out of the chopper onto the deck. Then the chopper lifted off again, turning in Corky's direction and coming after him at full speed.\\n\\nCorky slumped. Divide and conquer. Apparently he was not the only one with that bright idea tonight.\\n\\nAs Delta-Three made his way across the deck and approached the grated ramp leading belowdecks, he heard a woman shouting somewhere beneath him. He turned and motioned to Delta-Two that he was going belowdecks to check it out. His partner nodded, remaining behind to cover the upper level. The two men could stay in contact via CrypTalk; the Kiowa's jamming system ingeniously left an obscure bandwidth open for their own communications.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Clutching his snub-nose machine gun, Delta-Three moved quietly toward the ramp that led belowdecks. With the vigilance of a trained killer, he began inching downward, gun leveled.\\n\\nThe incline provided limited visibility, and Delta-Three crouched low fora better view. He could hear the shouting more clearly now. He kept descending. Halfway down the stairs he could now make out the twisted maze of walkways attached to the underside of the Goya. The shouting grew louder.\\n\\nThen he saw her. Midway across the traversing catwalk, Rachel Sexton was peering over a railing and calling desperately toward the water for Michael Tolland.\\n\\nDid Tolland fall in? Perhaps in the blast?\\n\\nIf so, Delta-Three's job would be even easier than expected. He only needed to descend another couple of feet to have an open shot. Shooting fish in a barrel. His only vague concern was Rachel standing near an open equipment locker, which meant she might have a weapon-a speargun or a shark rifle-although neither would be any match for his machine gun. Confident he was in control of the situation, Delta-Three leveled his weapon and took another step down. Rachel Sexton was almost in perfect view now. He raised the gun. One more step.\\n\\nThe flurry of movement came from beneath him, under the stairs. Delta-Three was more confused than frightened as he looked down and saw Michael Tolland thrusting an aluminum pole out toward his feet. Although Delta-Three had been tricked, he almost laughed at this lame attempt to trip him up. Then he felt the tip of the stick connect with his heel. A blast of white-hot pain shot through his body as his right foot exploded out from under him from a blistering impact. His balance gone, Delta-Three flailed, tumbling down the stairs. His machine gun clattered down the ramp and went overboard as he collapsed on the catwalk. In anguish, he curled up to grip his right foot, but it was no longer there.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Tolland was standing over his attacker immediately with his hands still clenching the smoking bang-stick-a five-foot Powerhead Shark-Control Device. The aluminum pole had been tipped with a pressure-sensitive, twelve-gauge shotgun shell and was intended for self-defense in the event of shark attack. Tolland had reloaded the bang-stick with another shell, and now held the jagged, smoldering point to his attacker's Adam's apple. The man lay on his back as if paralyzed, staring up at Tolland with an expression of astonished rage and agony. Rachel came running up the catwalk. The plan was for her to take the man's machine gun, but unfortunately the weapon had gone over the edge of the catwalk into the ocean.\\n\\nThe communications device on the man's belt crackled. The voice coming out was robotic. \\\"Delta-Three? Come in. I heard a shot.\\\"\\n\\nThe man made no move to answer.\\n\\nThe device crackled again. \\\"Delta-Three? Confirm. Do you need backup?\\\"\\n\\nAlmost immediately, anew voice crackled over the line. It was also robotic but distinguishable by the sound of a helicopter noise in the background. \\\"This is Delta-One,\\\" the pilot said. \\\"I'm in pursuit of the departing vessel. Delta-Three, confirm. Are you down? Do you need backup?\\\"\\n\\nTolland pressed the bang-stick into the man's throat. \\\"Tell the helicopter to back off that speedboat. If they kill my friend, you die.\\\"\\n\\nThe soldier winced in pain as he lifted his communication device to his lips. He looked directly at Tolland as he pressed the button and spoke. \\\"Delta-Three, here. I'm fine. Destroy the departing vessel.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle Ashe returned to Sexton's private bathroom, preparing to climb back out of his office. Sexton'sphone call had left her feeling anxious. He had definitely hesitated when she told him she was in her office-as if he knew somehow she was lying. Either way, she'd failed to get into Sexton's computer and now was unsure of her next move.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Sexton is waiting.\\n\\nAs she climbed up onto the sink, getting ready to pull herself up, she heard something clatter to the tile floor. She looked down, irritated to see that she'd knocked off a pair of Sexton's cuff links that had apparently been sitting on the edge of the sink.\\n\\nLeave things exactly as you found them.\\n\\nClimbing back down Gabrielle picked up the cuff links and put them back on the sink. As she began to climb backup, she paused, glancing again at the cuff links. On any other night, Gabrielle would have ignored them, but tonight their monogram caught her attention. Like most of Sexton's monogrammed items, they had two intertwining letters. SS. Gabrielle flashed on Sexton's initial computer password-SSS. She pictured his calendar... POTUS... and the White House screensaver with its optimistic ticker tape crawling around the screen ad infinitum. President of the United States Sedgewick Sexton... President of the United States Sedgewick Sexton... President of the...\\n\\nGabrielle stood a moment and wondered. Could he be that confident?\\n\\nKnowing it would take only an instant to find out, she hurried back into Sexton's office, went to his computer, and typed in a seven-letter password.\\n\\nThe screensaver evaporated instantly.\\n\\nShe stared, incredulous.\\n\\nNever underestimate the ego of a politician.\\n\\nCorky Marlinson was no longer at the helm of the Crestliner Phantom as it raced into the night. He knew the boat would travel in a straight line with or without him at the wheel. The path of least resistance...\\n\\nCorky was in the back of the bouncing boat, trying to assess the damage to his leg. A bullet had entered the front part of his calf, just missing his shinbone. There was no exit wound on the back of his calf, so he knew the bullet must still be lodged in his leg. Foraging around for something to stem the bleeding, he found nothing-some fins, a snorkel, and a couple of life jackets. No first-aid kit. Frantically, Corky opened a small utility chest and found some tools, rags, duct tape, oil, and other maintenance items. He looked at his bloody leg and wondered how far he had to go to be out of shark territory.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"A hell of a lot farther than this.\\n\\nDelta-One kept the Kiowa chopper low over the ocean as he scanned the darkness for the departing Crestliner. Assuming the fleeing boat would head for shore and attempt to put as much distance as possible between itself and the Goya, DeltaOne had followed the Crestliner's original trajectory away from the Goya. I should have overtaken him by now.\\n\\nNormally, tracking the fleeing boat would be a simple matter of using radar, but with the Kiowa's jamming systems transmitting an umbrella of thermal noise for several miles, his radar was worthless. Turning off the jamming system was not an option until he got word that everyone onboard the Goya was dead. No emergency phone calls would be leaving the Goya this evening.\\n\\nThis meteorite secret dies. Right here. Right now.\\n\\nFortunately, Delta-One had other means of tracking. Even against this bizarre backdrop of heated ocean, pinpointing a powerboat's thermal imprint was simple. He turned on his thermal scanner. The ocean around him registered a warm ninetyfive degrees. Fortunately, the emissions of a racing 250 hp outboard engine were hundreds of degrees hotter.\\n\\nCorky Marlinson's leg and foot felt numb.\\n\\nNot knowing what else to do, he had wiped down his injured calf with the rag and wrapped the wound in layer after layer of duct tape. By the time the tape was gone, his entire calf, from ankle to knee, was enveloped in a tight silver sheath. The bleeding had stopped, although his clothing and hands were still covered with blood.\\n\\nSitting on the floor of the runaway Crestliner, Corky felt confused about why the chopper hadn't found him yet. He looked out now, scanning the horizon behind him, expecting to seethe distant Goya and incoming helicopter. Oddly, he saw neither. The lights of the Goya had disappeared. Certainly he hadn't come that far, had he?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Corky suddenly felt hopeful he might escape. Maybe they had lost him in the dark. Maybe he could get to shore!\\n\\nIt was then he noticed that the wake behind his boat was not straight. It seemed to curve gradually away from the back of his boat, as if he were traveling in an arc rather than a straight line. Confused by this, he turned his head to follow the wake's arc, extrapolating a giant curve across the ocean. An instant later, he saw it.\\n\\nThe Goya was directly off his port side, less than a half mile away. In horror, Corky realized his mistake too late. With no one at the wheel, the Crestliner's bow had continuously realigned itself with the direction of the powerful current-the megaplume's circular water flow. I'm driving in a big friggin\\\" circle!\\n\\nHe had doubled back on himself.\\n\\nKnowing he was still inside the shark-filled megaplume, Corky recalled Tolland's grim words. Enhanced telencephalon olfactory lobes... hammerheads can smell a droplet of blood a mile away. Corky looked at his bloody duct-taped leg and hands.\\n\\nThe chopper would be on him soon.\\n\\nRipping off his bloody clothing, Corky scrambled naked toward the stern. Knowing no sharks could possibly keep pace with the boat, he rinsed himself as best as he could in the powerful blast of the wake.\\n\\nA single droplet of blood...\\n\\nAs Corky stood up, fully exposed to the night, he knew there was only one thing left to do. He had learned once that animals marked their territory with urine because uric acid was the most potent-smelling fluid the human body made. More potent than blood, he hoped. Wishing he'd had a few more beers tonight, Corky heaved his injured leg up onto the gunwale and tried to urinate on the duct tape. Come on! He waited. Nothing like the pressure of having to piss allover yourself with a helicopter chasing you.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Finally it came. Corky urinated allover the duct tape, soaking it fully. He used what little was left in his bladder to soak a rag, which he then swathed across his entire body. Very pleasant.\\n\\nIn the dark sky overhead, a red laser beam appeared, slanting toward him like the shimmering blade of an enormous guillotine. The chopper appeared from an oblique angle, the pilot apparently confused that Corky had looped back toward the Goya.\\n\\nQuickly donning a high-float life vest, Corky moved to the rear of the speeding craft. On the boat's bloodstained floor, only five feet from where Corky was standing, a glowing red dot appeared.\\n\\nIt was time.\\n\\nOnboard the Goya, Michael Tolland did not see his Crestliner Phantom 2100 erupt inflames and tumble through the air in a cartwheel of fire and smoke. But he heard the explosion.\\n\\nThe West Wing was usually quiet at this hour, but the President's unexpected emergence in his bathrobe and slippers had rustled the aides and on-site staff out of their'day-timer beds\\\" and on-site sleeping quarters.\\n\\n\\\"I can't find her, Mr. President,\\\" a young aide said, hurrying after him into the Oval Office. He had looked everywhere. \\\"Ms. Tench is not answering her pager or cellphone.\\\"\\n\\nThe President looked exasperated. \\\"Have you looked in the-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"She left the building, sir,\\\" another aide announced, hurrying in. \\\"She signed out about an hour ago. We think she may have gone to the NRO. One of the operators says she and Pickering were talking tonight.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"William Pickering?\\\" The President sounded baffled. Tench and Pickering were anything but social. \\\"Have you called him?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"He's not answering either, sir. NRO switchboard can't reach him. They say Pickering's cellphone isn't even ringing. It's like he's dropped off the face of the earth.\\\"\\n\\nHerney stared at his aides fora moment and then walked to the bar and poured himself a bourbon. Ashe raised the glass to his lips, a Secret Serviceman hurried in.\\n\\n\\\"Mr. President? I wasn't going to wake you, but you should be aware that there was a car bombing at the FDR Memorial tonight.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What!\\\" Herney almost dropped his drink. \\\"When?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"An hour ago.\\\" His face was grim. \\\"And the FBI just identified the victim...\\\"\\n\\nDelta-Three's foot screamed in pain. He felt himself floating through a muddled consciousness. Is this death? He tried to move but felt paralyzed, barely able to breathe. He saw only blurred shapes. His mind reeled back, recalling the explosion of the Crestliner out at sea, seeing the rage in Michael Tolland's eyes as the oceanographer stood over him, holding the explosive pole to his throat. Certainly Tolland killed me...\\n\\nAnd yet the searing pain in Delta-Three's right foot told him he was very much alive. Slowly it came back. On hearing the explosion of the Crestliner, Tolland had let out a cry of anguished rage for his lost friend. Then, turning his ravaged eyes to Delta-Three, Tolland had arched as if preparing to ram the rod through Delta-Three's throat. But as he did, he seemed to hesitate, as if his own morality were holding him back. With brutal frustration and fury, Tolland yanked the rod away and drove his boot down on Delta-Three's tattered foot. The last thing Delta-Three remembered was vomiting in agony as his whole world drifted into a black delirium. Now he was coming to, with no idea how long he had been unconscious. He could feel his arms tied behind his back in a knot so tight it could only have been tied by a sailor. His legs were also bound, bent behind him and tied to his wrists, leaving him in an immobilized backward arch. He tried to call out, but no sound came. His mouth was stuffed with something. Delta-Three could not imagine what was going on. It was then he felt the cool breeze and saw the bright lights. He realized he was upon the Goya's main deck. He twisted to look for help and was met by a frightful sight, his own reflection-bulbous and misshapen in the reflective Plexiglas bubble of the Goya's deepwater submersible. The sub hung right in front of him, and Delta-Three realized he was lying on a giant trapdoor in the deck. This was not nearly as unsettling as the most obvious question.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"If I'm on deck...\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"then where is Delta-Two?\\n\\nDelta-Two had grown uneasy.\\n\\nDespite his partner's CrypTalk transmission claiming he was fine, the single gunshot had not been that of a machine gun. Obviously, Tolland or Rachel Sexton had fired a weapon. Delta-Two moved over to peer down the ramp where his partner had descended, and he saw blood.\\n\\nWeapon raised, he had descended belowdecks, where he followed the trail of blood along a catwalk to the bow of the ship. Here, the trail of blood had led him backup another ramp to the main deck. It was deserted. With growing wariness, Delta-Two had followed the long crimson smear along the sideboard deck back toward the rear of the ship, where it passed the opening to the original ramp he had descended.\\n\\nWhat the hell is going on? The smear seemed to travel in a giant circle. Moving cautiously, his gun trained ahead of him, Delta-Two passed the entrance to the laboratory section of the ship. The smear continued toward the stern deck. Carefully he swung wide, rounding the corner. His eye traced the trail. Then he saw it.\\n\\nJesus Christ!\\n\\nDelta-Three was lying there-bound and gagged-dumped unceremoniously directly in front of the Goya's small submersible. Even from a distance, DeltaTwo could see that his partner was missing a good portion of his right foot. Wary of a trap, Delta-Two raised his gun and moved forward. Delta-Three was writhing now, trying to speak. Ironically, the way the man had been bound-with his knees sharply bent behind him-was probably saving his life; the bleeding in his foot appeared to have slowed.\\n\\nAs Delta-Two approached the submersible, he appreciated the rare luxury of being able to watch his own back; the entire deck of the ship was reflected in the sub's rounded cockpit dome. Delta-Two arrived at his struggling partner. He saw the warning in his eyes too late.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The flash of silver came out of nowhere.\\n\\nOne of the Triton's manipulator claws suddenly leaped forward and clamped down on Delta-Two's left thigh with crushing force. He tried to pull away, but the claw bore down. He screamed in pain, feeling a bone break. His eyes shot to the sub's cockpit. Peering through the reflection of the deck, Delta-Two could now see him, ensconced in the shadows of the Triton's interior. Michael Tolland was inside the sub, at the controls.\\n\\nBad idea, Delta-Two seethed, blocking out his pain and shouldering his machine gun. He aimed up and to the left at Tolland's chest, only three feet away on the other side of the sub's Plexiglas dome. He pulled the trigger, and the gun roared. Wild with rage at having been tricked, Delta-Two held the trigger back until the last of his shells clattered to the deck and his gun clicked empty. Breathless, he dropped the weapon and glared at the shredded dome in front of him.\\n\\n\\\"Dead!\\\" the soldier hissed, straining to pull his leg from the clamp. Ashe twisted, the metal clamp severed his skin, opening a large gash. \\\"Fuck!\\\" He reached now for the CrypTalk on his belt. But as he raised it to his lips, a second robotic arm snapped open in front of him and lunged forward, clamping around his right arm. The CrypTalk fell to the deck.\\n\\nIt was then that Delta-Two saw the ghost in the window before him. A pale visage leaning sideways and peering out through an unscathed edge of glass. Stunned, Delta-Two looked at the center of the dome and realized the bullets had not even come close to penetrating the thick shell. The dome was cratered with pockmarks. An instant later, the topside portal on the sub opened, and Michael Tolland emerged. He looked shaky but unscathed. Climbing down the aluminum gangway, Tolland stepped onto the deck and eyed his sub's destroyed dome window.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Ten thousand pounds per square inch,\\\" Tolland said. \\\"Looks like you need a bigger gun.\\\"\\n\\nInside the hydrolab, Rachel knew time was running out. She had heard the gunshots out on the deck and was praying that everything had happened exactly as Tolland had planned. She no longer cared who was behind the meteorite deception-the NASA administrator, Marjorie Tench, or the President himself-none of it mattered anymore.\\n\\nThey will not getaway with this. Whoever it is, the truth will be told. The wound on Rachel's arm had stopped bleeding, and the adrenaline coursing through her body had muted the pain and sharpened her focus. Finding a pen and paper, she scrawled a two-line message. The words were blunt and awkward, but eloquence was not a luxury she had time for at the moment. She added the note to the incriminating stack of papers in her hand-the GPR printout, images of Bathynomous giganteus, photos and articles regarding oceanic chondrules, an electron microscan printout. The meteorite was a fake, and this was the proof. Rachel inserted the entire stack into the hydrolab's fax machine. Knowing only a few fax numbers by heart, she had limited choices, but she had already made up her mind who would be receiving these pages and her note. Holding her breath, she carefully typed in the person's fax number.\\n\\nShe pressed'send,\\\" praying she had chosen the recipient wisely. The fax machine beeped.\\n\\nERROR: NO DIAL TONE\\n\\nRachel had expected this. The Goya's communications were still being jammed. She stood waiting and watching the machine, hoping it functioned like hers at home.\\n\\nCome on!\\n\\nAfter five seconds, the machine beeped again.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"REDIALING...\\n\\nYes! Rachel watched the machine lock into an endless loop. ERROR: NO DIAL TONE\\n\\nREDIALING...\\n\\nERROR: NO DIAL TONE\\n\\nREDIALING...\\n\\nLeaving the fax machine in search of a dial tone, Rachel dashed out of the hydrolab just as helicopter blades thundered overhead.\\n\\nOne hundred and sixty miles away from the Goya, Gabrielle Ashe was staring at Senator Sexton's computer screen in mute astonishment. Her suspicions had been right.\\n\\nBut she had never imagined how right.\\n\\nShe was looking at digital scans of dozens of bank checks written to Sexton from private space companies and deposited in numbered accounts in the Cayman Islands. The smallest check Gabrielle saw was for fifteen thousand dollars. Several were upward of half a million dollars.\\n\\nSmall potatoes, Sexton had told her. All the donations are under the two-thousanddollar cap. Obviously Sexton had been lying all along. Gabrielle was looking at illegal campaign financing on an enormous scale. The pangs of betrayal and disillusionment settled hard now in her heart. He lied.\\n\\nShe felt stupid. She felt dirty. But most of all she felt mad. Gabrielle sat alone in the darkness, realizing she had no idea what to do next.\\n\\nAbove the Goya, as the Kiowa banked over the stern deck, Delta-One gazed down, his eyes fixating on an utterly unexpected vision.\\n\\nMichael Tolland was standing on deck beside a small submersible. Dangling in the sub's robotic arms, as if in the clutches of a giant insect, hung Delta-Two, struggling in vain to free himself from two enormous claws. What in the name of God!?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Equally as shocking an image, Rachel Sexton had just arrived on deck, taking up a position over abound and bleeding man at the foot of the submersible. The man could only be Delta-Three. Rachel held one of the Delta Force's machine guns on him and stared up at the chopper as if daring them to attack. Delta-One felt momentarily disoriented, unable to fathom how this possibly could have happened. The Delta Force's errors on the ice shelf earlier had been a rare but explainable occurrence. This, however, was unimaginable. Delta-One's humiliation would have been excruciating enough under normal circumstances. But tonight his shame was magnified by the presence of another individual riding with him inside the chopper, a person whose presence here was highly unconventional.\\n\\nThe controller.\\n\\nFollowing the Delta's kill at the FDR Memorial, the controller had ordered DeltaOne to fly to a deserted public park not far from the White House. On the controller's command, Delta-One had set down on a grassy knoll among some trees just as the controller, having parked nearby, strode out of the darkness and boarded the Kiowa. They were all en route again in a matter of seconds. Although a controller's direct involvement in mission operations was rare, DeltaOne could hardly complain. The controller, distressed by the way the Delta Force had handled the kills on the Milne Ice Shelf and fearing increasing suspicions and scrutiny from a number of parties, had informed Delta-One that the final phase of the operation would be overseen in person.\\n\\nNow the controller was riding shotgun, witnessing in persona failure the likes of which Delta-One had never endured.\\n\\nThis must end. Now.\\n\\nThe controller gazed down from the Kiowa at the deck of the Goya and wondered how this could possibly have happened. Nothing had gone properly-the suspicions about the meteorite, the failed Delta kills on the ice shelf, the necessity of the high-profile kill at the FDR.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Controller,\\\" Delta-One stammered, his tone one of stunned disgrace as he looked at the situation on the deck of the Goya.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I cannot imagine...\\\"\\n\\nNor can I, the controller thought. Their quarry had obviously been grossly underestimated.\\n\\nThe controller looked down at Rachel Sexton, who stared up blankly at the chopper's reflective windshield and raised a CrypTalk device to her mouth. When her synthesized voice crackled inside the Kiowa, the controller expected her to demand that the chopper back off or extinguish the jamming system so Tolland could call for help. But the words Rachel Sexton spoke were far more chilling.\\n\\n\\\"You're too late,\\\" she said. \\\"We're not the only ones who know.\\\"\\n\\nThe words echoed fora moment inside the chopper. Although the claim seemed far-fetched, the faintest possibility of truth gave the controller pause. The success of the entire project required the elimination of all those who knew the truth, and as bloody as the containment had turned out to be, the controller had to be certain this was the conclusion.\\n\\nSomeone else knows...\\n\\nConsidering Rachel Sexton's reputation for following strict protocol of classified data, the controller found it very hard to believe that she would have decided to share this with an outside source.\\n\\nRachel was on the CrypTalk again. \\\"Back off and we'll spare your men. Come any closer and they die. Either way, the truth comes out. Cut your losses. Back off.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're bluffing,\\\" the controller said, knowing the voice Rachel Sexton was hearing was an androgynous robotic tone. \\\"You have told no one.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Are you ready to take that chance?\\\" Rachel fired back. \\\"I couldn't get through to William Pickering earlier, so I got spooked and took out some insurance.\\\"\\n\\nThe controller frowned. It was plausible.\\n\\n\\\"They're not buying it,\\\" Rachel said, glancing at Tolland. The soldier in the claws gave a pained smirk. \\\"Your gun is empty, and the chopper's going to blow you to hell. You're both going to die. Your only hope is to let us go.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Like hell, Rachel thought, trying to assess their next move. She looked at the bound and gagged man who lay at her feet directly in front of the sub. He looked delirious from loss of blood. She crouched beside him, looking into the man's hard eyes. \\\"I'm going to takeoff your gag and hold the CrypTalk; you're going to convince the helicopter to back off. Is that clear?\\\"\\n\\nThe man nodded earnestly.\\n\\nRachel pulled out the man's gag. The soldier spat a wad of bloody saliva up into Rachel's face.\\n\\n\\\"Bitch,\\\" he hissed, coughing. \\\"I'm going to watch you die. They're going to kill you like a pig, and I'm going to enjoy every minute.\\\"\\n\\nRachel wiped the hot saliva from her face as she felt Tolland's hands lifting her away, pulling her back, steadying her as he took her machine gun. She could feel in his trembling touch that something inside him had just snapped. Tolland walked to a control panel a few yards away, put his hand on a lever, and locked eyes with the man lying on the deck.\\n\\n\\\"Strike two,\\\" Tolland said. \\\"And on my ship, that's all you get.\\\"\\n\\nWith a resolute rage, Tolland yanked down on the lever. A huge trapdoor in the deck beneath the Triton fell open like the floor of a gallows. The bound soldier gave a short howl of fear and then disappeared, plummeting through the hole. He fell thirty feet to the ocean below. The splash was crimson. The sharks were on him instantly.\\n\\nThe controller shook with rage, looking down from the Kiowa at what was left of Delta-Three's body drifting out from under the boat on the strong current. The illuminated water was pink. Several fish fought over something that looked like an arm.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Jesus Christ.\\n\\nThe controller looked back at the deck. Delta-Two still hung in the Triton's claws, but now the sub was suspended over a gaping hole in the deck. His feet dangled over the void. All Tolland had to do was release the claws, and Delta-Two would be next.\\n\\n\\\"Okay,\\\" the controller barked into the CrypTalk. \\\"Hold on. Just hold on!\\\"\\n\\nRachel stood below on the deck and stared up at the Kiowa. Even from this height the controller sensed the resolve in her eyes. Rachel raised the CrypTalk to her mouth. \\\"You still think we're bluffing?\\\" she said. \\\"Call the main switchboard at the NRO. Ask for Jim Samiljan. He's in P& A on the nightshift. I told him everything about the meteorite. He will confirm.\\\"\\n\\nShe's giving me a specific name? This did not bode well. Rachel Sexton was no fool, and this was a bluff the controller could check in a matter of seconds. Although the controller knew of no one at the NRO named Jim Samiljan, the organization was enormous. Rachel could quite possibly be telling the truth. Before ordering the final kill, the controller had to confirm if this was a bluff-or not.\\n\\nDelta-One looked over his shoulder. \\\"You want me to deactivate the jammer so you can call and check it out?\\\"\\n\\nThe controller peered down at Rachel and Tolland, both in plain view. If either of them made a move fora cellphone or radio, the controller knew Delta-One could always reactivate and cut them off. The risk was minimal.\\n\\n\\\"Kill the jammer,\\\" the controller said, pulling out a cellphone. \\\"I'll confirm Rachel's lying. Then we'll find away to get Delta-Two and end this.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"In Fairfax, the operator at the NRO's central switchboard was getting impatient.\\n\\n\\\"As I just told you, I see no Jim Samiljan in the Plans and Analysis Division.\\\"\\n\\nThe caller was insistent. \\\"Have you tried multiple spellings? Have you tried other departments?\\\"\\n\\nThe operator had already checked, but she checked again. After several seconds, she said, \\\"Nowhere on staff do we have a Jim Samiljan. Under any spelling.\\\"\\n\\nThe caller sounded oddly pleased by this. \\\"So you are certain the NRO employs no Jim Samil-\\\"\\n\\nA sudden flurry of activity erupted on the line. Someone yelled. The caller cursed aloud and promptly hung up.\\n\\nOnboard the Kiowa, Delta-One was screaming with rage as he scrambled to reactivate the jamming system. He had made the realization too late. In the huge array of lighted controls in the cockpit, a tiny LED meter indicated that a SATCOM data signal was being transmitted from the Goya. But how? Nobody left the deck! Before Delta-One could engage the jammer, the connection from the Goya terminated on its own accord.\\n\\nInside the hydrolab, the fax machine beeped contentedly. CARRIER FOUND... FAX SENT\\n\\nKill or be killed. Rachel had discovered apart of herself she never knew existed. Survival mode-a savage fortitude fueled by fear.\\n\\n\\\"What was in that outbound fax?\\\" the voice on the CrypTalk demanded. Rachel was relieved to hear confirmation that the fax had gone out as planned.\\n\\n\\\"Leave the area,\\\" she demanded, speaking into the CrypTalk and glaring up at the hovering chopper. \\\"It's over. Your secret is out.\\\" Rachel informed their attackers of all the information she had just sent. A half dozen pages of images and text. Incontrovertible evidence that the meteorite was a fake. \\\"Harming us will only make your situation worse.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There was a heavy pause. \\\"Who did you send the fax to?\\\"\\n\\nRachel had no intention of answering that question. She and Tolland needed to buy as much time as possible. They had positioned themselves near the opening in the deck, on a direct line with the Triton, making it impossible for the chopper to shoot without hitting the soldier dangling in the sub's claws.\\n\\n\\\"William Pickering,\\\" the voice guessed, sounding oddly hopeful. \\\"You faxed Pickering.\\\"\\n\\nWrong, Rachel thought. Pickering would have been her first choice, but she had been forced to choose someone else for fear her attackers had already eliminated Pickering-a move whose boldness would be a chilling testimony to her enemy's resolve. Ina moment of desperate decision, Rachel had faxed the data to the only other fax number she knew by heart.\\n\\nHer father's office.\\n\\nSenator Sexton's office fax number had been painfully engraved into Rachel's memory after her mother's death when her father chose to workout many of the particulars of the estate without having to deal with Rachel in person. Rachel never imagined she would turn to her father in a time of need, but tonight the man possessed two critical qualities-all the correct political motivations to release the meteorite data without hesitation, and enough clout to call the White House and blackmail them into calling off this kill squad.\\n\\nAlthough her father was most certainly not in the office at this hour, Rachel knew he kept his office locked like a vault. Rachel had, in effect, faxed the data into a time-lock safe. Even if the attackers knew where she had sent it, chances were slim they could get through the tight federal security at the Philip A. Hart Senate Office Building and break into a senator's office without anyone noticing.\\n\\n\\\"Wherever you sent the fax,\\\" the voice from above said. \\\"You've put that person in danger.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Rachel knew she had to speak from a position of power regardless of the fear she was feeling. She motioned to the soldier trapped in the Triton's claws. His legs dangled over the abyss, dripping blood thirty feet to the ocean. \\\"The only person in danger here is your agent,\\\" she said into the CrypTalk. \\\"It's over. Back off. The data is gone. You've lost. Leave the area, or this man dies.\\\"\\n\\nThe voice on the CrypTalk fired back, \\\"Ms. Sexton, you do not understand the importance-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Understand?\\\" Rachel exploded. \\\"I understand that you killed innocent people! I understand that you lied about the meteorite! And I understand that you won't getaway with this! Even if you kill us all, it's over!\\\"\\n\\nThere was along pause. Finally the voice said, \\\"I'm coming down.\\\"\\n\\nRachel felt her muscles tighten. Coming down?\\n\\n\\\"I am unarmed,\\\" the voice said. \\\"Do not do anything rash. You and I need to talk face-to-face.\\\"\\n\\nBefore Rachel could react, the chopper dropped onto the Goya's deck. The passenger door on the fuselage opened and a figure stepped out. He was a plainlooking man in a black coat and tie. For an instant, Rachel's thoughts went totally blank.\\n\\nShe was staring at William Pickering.\\n\\nWilliam Pickering stood on the deck of the Goya and gazed with regret at Rachel Sexton. He had never imagined today would come to this. Ashe moved toward her, he could seethe dangerous combination of emotions in his employee's eyes. Shock, betrayal, confusion, rage.\\n\\nAll understandable, he thought. There is so much she does not understand. Fora moment, Pickering flashed on his daughter, Diana, wondering what emotions she had felt before she died. Both Diana and Rachel were casualties of the same war, a war Pickering had vowed to fight forever. Sometimes the casualties could be so cruel.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Rachel,\\\" Pickering said. \\\"We can still work this out. There's a lot I need to explain.\\\"\\n\\nRachel Sexton looked aghast, nauseated almost. Tolland had the machine gun now and was aiming at Pickering's chest. He too looked bewildered.\\n\\n\\\"Stay back!\\\" Tolland yelled.\\n\\nPickering stopped five yards away, focusing on Rachel. \\\"Your father is taking bribes, Rachel. Payoffs from private space companies. He plans to dismantle NASA and open space to the private sector. He had to be stopped, as a matter of national security.\\\"\\n\\nRachel's expression was blank.\\n\\nPickering sighed. \\\"NASA, for all its flaws, must remain a government entity.\\\"\\n\\nCertainly she can understand the dangers. Privatization would send NASA's best minds and ideas flooding into the private sector. The brain trust would dissolve. The military would lose access. Private space companies looking to raise capital would start selling NASA patents and ideas to the highest bidders worldwide!\\n\\nRachel's voice was tremulous. \\\"You faked the meteorite and killed innocent people... in the name of national security?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It was never supposed to happen like this,\\\" Pickering said. \\\"The plan was to save an important government agency. Killing was not part of it.\\\"\\n\\nThe meteorite deception, Pickering knew, like most intelligence proposals, had been the product of fear. Three years ago, in an effort to extend the NRO\\n\\nhydrophones into deeper water where they could not be touched by enemy saboteurs, Pickering spearheaded a program that utilized a newly developed NASA building material to secretly design an astonishingly durable submarine capable of carrying humans to the deepest regions of the ocean-including the bottom of the Mariana Trench.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Forged from a revolutionary ceramic, this two-man submarine was designed from blueprints hacked from the computer of a California engineer named Graham Hawkes, a genius sub designer whose life dream was to build an ultra-deepwater submersible he called Deep Flight II. Hawkes was having trouble finding funding to build a prototype. Pickering, on the other hand, had an unlimited budget. Using the classified ceramic submersible, Pickering sent a covert team underwater to affix new hydrophones to the walls of the Mariana Trench, deeper than any enemy could possibly look. In the process of drilling, however, they uncovered geologic structures unlike any that scientists had ever seen. The discoveries included chondrules and fossils of several unknown species. Of course, because the NRO's ability to dive this deep was classified, none of the information could ever be shared.\\n\\nIt was not until recently, driven yet again by fear, that Pickering and his quiet team of NRO science advisers had decided to put their knowledge of the Mariana's unique geology to work to help save NASA. Turning a Mariana rock into a meteorite had proven to be a deceptively simple task. Using an ECE slushhydrogen engine, the NRO team charred the rock with a convincing fusion crust. Then, using a small payload sub, they had descended beneath the Milne Ice Shelf and inserted the charred rock up into the ice from beneath. Once the insertion shaft refroze, the rock looked like it had been therefor over three hundred years. Unfortunately, as was often the casein the world of covert operations, the grandest of plans could be undone by the smallest of snags. Yesterday, the entire illusion had been shattered by a few bioluminescent plankton...\\n\\nFrom the cockpit of the idling Kiowa, Delta-One watched the drama unfold before him. Rachel and Tolland appeared to be in clear control, although Delta-One almost had to laugh at the hollowness of the illusion. The machine gun in Tolland's hands was worthless; even from here Delta-One could seethe cocking bar assembly had kicked back, indicating the clip was empty. As Delta-One gazed out at his partner struggling in the Triton's claws, he knew he had to hurry. The focus on deck had turned completely to Pickering, and now Delta-One could make his move. Leaving the rotors idling, he slipped out of the rear of the fuselage and, using the chopper for cover, made his way unseen onto the starboard gangway. With his own machine gun in hand, he headed for the bow. Pickering had given him specific orders before they landed on deck, and DeltaOne had no intention of failing at this simple task. Ina matter of minutes, he knew, this will all be over.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Still wearing his bathrobe, Zach Herney sat at his desk in the Oval Office, his head throbbing.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The newest piece of the puzzle had just been revealed. Marjorie Tench is dead.\\n\\nHerney's aides said they had information suggesting Tench had driven to the FDR\\n\\nMemorial fora private meeting with William Pickering. Now that Pickering was missing, the staff feared Pickering too might be dead.\\n\\nThe President and Pickering had endured their battles lately. Months ago Herney learned that Pickering had engaged in illegal activity on Herney's behalf in an attempt to save Herney's floundering campaign.\\n\\nEmploying NRO assets, Pickering had discreetly obtained enough dirt on Senator Sexton to sink his campaign-scandalous sexual photos of the senator with his aide Gabrielle Ashe, incriminating financial records proving Sexton was taking bribes from private space companies. Pickering anonymously sent all the evidence to Marjorie Tench, assuming the White House would use it wisely. But Herney, upon seeing the data, had forbidden Tench to use it. Sex scandals and bribery were cancers in Washington, and waving another one in front of the public only added to their distrust of government.\\n\\nCynicism is killing this country.\\n\\nAlthough Herney knew he could destroy Sexton with scandal, the cost would be besmirching the dignity of the U. S. Senate, something Herney refused to do. No more negatives. Herney would beat Senator Sexton on the issues. Pickering, angered by the White House's refusal to use the evidence he had provided, tried to jump-start the scandal by leaking a rumor that Sexton had slept with Gabrielle Ashe. Unfortunately, Sexton declared his innocence with such convincing indignation that the President ended up having to apologize for the leak personally. In the end William Pickering had done more damage than good. Herney told Pickering that if he ever interfered in the campaign again, he would be indicted. The grand irony, of course, was that Pickering did not even like President Herney. The NRO director's attempts to help Herney's campaign were simply fears over the fate of NASA. Zach Herney was the lesser of two evils. Now has someone killed Pickering?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Herney could not imagine.\\n\\n\\\"Mr. President?\\\" an aide said. \\\"As you requested, I called Lawrence Ekstrom and told him about Marjorie Tench.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thank you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He would like to speak to you, sir.\\\"\\n\\nHerney was still furious with Ekstrom for lying about PODS. \\\"Tell him I'll talk to him in the morning.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Ekstrom wants to talk to you right away, sir.\\\" The aide looked uneasy. \\\"He's very upset.\\\"\\n\\nHE'S upset? Herney could feel his temper fraying around the edges. Ashe stalked off to take Ekstrom's call, the President wondered what the hell else could possibly go wrong tonight.\\n\\nOnboard the Goya, Rachel felt lightheaded. The mystification that had settled around her like a heavy fog was lifting now. The stark reality that came into focus left her feeling naked and disgusted. She looked at the stranger before her and could barely hear his voice.\\n\\n\\\"We needed to rebuild NASA's image,\\\" Pickering was saying. \\\"Their declining popularity and funding had become dangerous on so many levels.\\\" Pickering paused, his gray eyes locking on hers. \\\"Rachel, NASA was desperate fora triumph. Someone had to make it happen.\\\"\\n\\n---\\n\\nSomething had to be done, Pickering thought.\\n\\nThe meteorite had been a final act of desperation. Pickering and others had tried to save NASA by lobby-ing to incorporate the space agency into the intelligence community where it would enjoy increased funding and better security, but the White House continuously rebuffed the idea as an assault on pure science. Shortsighted idealism. With the rising popularity of Sexton's anti-NASA rhetoric, Pickering and his band of military powerbrokers knew time was running short. They decided that capturing the imagination of taxpayers and Congress was the only remaining way to salvage NASA's image and save it from the auction block. If the space agency was to survive, it would need an infusion of grandeur-something to remind the taxpayers of NASA's Apollo glory days. And if Zach Herney was going to defeat Senator Sexton, he was going to need help. I tried to help him, Pickering told himself, recalling all the damaging evidence he had sent Marjorie Tench. Unfortunately, Herney had forbidden its use, leaving Pickering no choice but to take drastic measures.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Rachel,\\\" Pickering said, \\\"the information you just faxed off this ship is dangerous.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"You must understand that. If it gets out, the White House and NASA will look complicit. The backlash against the President and NASA will be enormous. The President and NASA know nothing, Rachel. They are innocent. They believe the meteorite is authentic.\\\"\\n\\nPickering had not even tried to bring Herney or Ekstrom into the fold because both were far too idealistic to have agreed to any deceit, regardless of its potential to save the presidency or space agency. Administrator Ekstrom's only crime had been persuading the PODS mission supervisor to lie about the anomaly software, a move Ekstrom no doubt regretted the moment he realized how scrutinized this particular meteorite would become.\\n\\nMarjorie Tench, frustrated by Herney's insistence on fighting a clean campaign, conspired with Ekstrom on the PODS lie, hoping a small PODS success might help the President fend off the rising Sexton tide.\\n\\nIf Tench had used the photos and bribery data I gave her, none of this would have happened!\\n\\nTench's murder, though deeply regrettable, had been destined as soon as Rachel called Tench and made accusations of fraud. Pickering knew Tench would investigate ruthlessly until she got to the bottom of Rachel's motives for the outrageous claims, and this was one investigation Pickering obviously could never let happen. Ironically, Tench would serve her president best in death, her violent end helping cement a sympathy vote for the White House as well as cast vague suspicions of foul play on a desperate Sexton campaign which had been so publicly humiliated by Marjorie Tench on CNN.\\n\\nRachel stood her ground, glaring at her boss.\\n\\n\\\"Understand,\\\" Pickering said, \\\"if news of this meteorite fraud gets out, you will destroy an innocent president and an innocent space agency. You will also put a very dangerous man in the Oval Office. I need to know where you faxed the data.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Ashe spoke those words, a strange look came across Rachel's face. It was the pained expression of horror of someone who had just realized they may have made a grave mistake.\\n\\nHaving circled the bow and comeback down the port side, Delta-One now stood in the hydrolab from which he had seen Rachel emerge as the chopper had flown in. A computer in the lab displayed an unsettling image-a polychromatic rendering of the pulsating, deepwater vortex that was apparently hovering over the ocean floor somewhere beneath the Goya.\\n\\nAnother reason to get the hell out of here, he thought, moving now toward his target.\\n\\nThe fax machine was on a counter on the far side of the wall. The tray was filled with a stack of papers, exactly as Pickering had guessed it would be. Delta-One picked up the stack. A note from Rachel was on top. Only two lines. He read it. To the point, he thought.\\n\\nAshe flipped through the pages, he was both amazed and dismayed by the extent to which Tolland and Rachel had uncovered the meteorite deception. Whoever saw these printouts would have no doubt what they meant. Fortunately, Delta-One would not even need to hit'redial\\\" to find out where the printouts had gone. The last fax number was still displayed in the LCD window.\\n\\nA Washington, D. C., prefix.\\n\\nHe carefully copied the fax number down, grabbed all the papers, and exited the lab.\\n\\nTolland's hands felt sweaty on the machine gun as he gripped it, aiming the muzzle at William Pickering's chest. The NRO director was still pressuring Rachel to tell him where the data had been sent, and Tolland was starting to get the uneasy feeling that Pickering was simply trying to buy time. For what?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"The White House and NASA are innocent,\\\" Pickering repeated. \\\"Work with me. Don't let my mistakes destroy what little credibility NASA has left. NASA will look guilty if this gets out. You and I can come to an arrangement. The country needs this meteorite. Tell me where you faxed the data before it's too late.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So you can kill someone else?\\\" Rachel said. \\\"You make me sick.\\\"\\n\\nTolland was amazed with Rachel's fortitude. She despised her father, but she clearly had no intention of putting the senator in any danger whatsoever. Unfortunately, Rachel's plan to fax her father for help had backfired. Even if the senator came into his office, saw the fax, and called the President with news of the meteorite fraud and told him to call off the attack, nobody at the White House would have any idea what Sexton was talking about, or even where they were.\\n\\n\\\"I will only say this one more time,\\\" Pickering said, fixing Rachel with a menacing glare. \\\"This situation is too complex for you to fully understand. You've made an enormous mistake by sending that data off this ship. You've put your country at risk.\\\"\\n\\nWilliam Pickering was indeed buying time, Tolland now realized. And the reason was striding calmly toward them up the starboard side of the boat. Tolland felt a flash of fear when he saw the soldier sauntering toward them carrying a stack of papers and a machine gun.\\n\\nTolland reacted with a decisiveness that shocked even himself. Gripping the machine gun, he wheeled, aimed at the soldier, and pulled the trigger. The gun made an innocuous click.\\n\\n\\\"I found the fax number,\\\" the soldier said, handing Pickering a slip of paper. \\\"And Mr. Tolland is out of ammunition.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Sedgewick Sexton stormed up the hallway of the PhilipA. Hart Senate Office Building. He had no idea how Gabrielle had done it, but she had obviously gotten into his office. While they were speaking on the phone, Sexton had clearly heard the distinctive triple-click of his Jourdain clock in the background. All he could imagine was that Gabrielle's eavesdropping on the SFF meeting had undermined her trust in him and she had gone digging for evidence.\\n\\nHow the hell did she get into my office!\\n\\nSexton was glad he'd changed his computer password.\\n\\nWhen he arrived at his private office, Sexton typed in his code to deactivate the alarm. Then he fumbled for his keys, unlocked the heavy doors, threw them open, and burst in, intent on catching Gabrielle in the act.\\n\\nBut the office was empty and dark, lit only by the glow of his computer screensaver. He turned on the lights, his eyes scanning. Everything looked in place. Dead silence except for the triple-tick of his clock. Where the hell is she?\\n\\nHe heard something rustle in his private bathroom and raced over, turning on the light. The bathroom was empty. He looked behind the door. Nothing. Puzzled, Sexton eyed himself in the mirror, wondering if he'd had too much to drink tonight. I heard something. Feeling disoriented and confused, he walked back into his office.\\n\\n\\\"Gabrielle?\\\" he called out. He went down the hall to her office. She wasn't there. Her office was dark.\\n\\nA toilet flushed in the ladies' room, and Sexton spun, striding now back in the direction of the restrooms. He arrived just as Gabrielle was exiting, drying her hands. She jumped when she saw him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"My God!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"You scared me!\\\" she said, looking genuinely frightened. \\\"What are you doing here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You said you were getting NASA documents from your office,\\\" he declared, eyeing her empty hands. \\\"Where are they?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I couldn't find them. I looked everywhere. That's what took so long.\\\"\\n\\nHe stared directly into her eyes. \\\"Were you in my office?\\\"\\n\\nI owe my life to his fax machine, Gabrielle thought.\\n\\nOnly minutes ago she'd been sitting at Sexton's computer, trying to make printouts of the images of illegal checks on his computer. The files were protected somehow, and she was going to need more time to figure out how to print them. She would probably still be trying right now if Sexton's fax machine had not rung, startling her and snapping her back to reality. Gabrielle took it as her cue to get out. Without taking time to see what the incoming fax was, she logged off Sexton's computer, tidied up, and headed out the way she had come. She was just climbing out of Sexton's bathroom when she heard him coming in. Now, with Sexton standing before her, staring down, she sensed him searching her eyes fora lie. Sedgewick Sexton could smell untruths like nobody Gabrielle had ever met. If she lied to him, Sexton would know.\\n\\n\\\"You've been drinking,\\\" Gabrielle said, turning away. How does he know I was in his office?\\n\\nSexton put his hands on her shoulders and spun her back around. \\\"Were you in my office?\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle felt arising fear. Sexton had indeed been drinking. His touch was rough.\\n\\n\\\"In your office?\\\" she demanded, forcing a confused laugh. \\\"How? Why?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I heard my Jourdain in the background when I called you.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Gabrielle cringed inwardly. His clock? It had not even occurred to her. \\\"Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I spend all day in that office. I know what my clock sounds like.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle sensed she had to end this immediately. The best defense is a good offense. At least that's what Yolanda Cole always said. Placing her hands on her hips, Gabrielle went for him with all she had. She stepped toward him, getting in his face, glaring. \\\"Let me get this straight, senator. It's four o'clock in the morning, you've been drinking, you heard a ticking on your phone, and that's why you're here?\\\" She pointed her finger indignantly down the hall at his door. \\\"Just for the record, are you accusing me of disarming a federal alarm system, picking two sets of locks, breaking into your office, being stupid enough to answer my cellphone while in the process of committing a felony, rearming the alarm system on my way out, and then calmly using the ladies' room before I runoff with nothing to show for it? Is that the story here?\\\"\\n\\nSexton blinked, wide-eyed.\\n\\n\\\"There's a reason people shouldn't drink alone,\\\" Gabrielle said. \\\"Now do you want to talk about NASA, or not?\\\"\\n\\nSexton felt befuddled as he walked back into his office. He went straight to his wet bar and poured himself a Pepsi. He sure as hell didn't feel drunk. Could he really have been wrong about this? Across the room, his Jourdain ticked mockingly. Sexton drained his Pepsi and poured himself another, and one for Gabrielle.\\n\\n\\\"Drink, Gabrielle?\\\" he asked, turning back into the room. Gabrielle had not followed him in. She was still standing in the doorway, rubbing his nose in it. \\\"Oh, for God's sake! Come in. Tell me what you found out at NASA.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I think I've had enough for tonight,\\\" she said, sounding distant. \\\"Let's talk tomorrow.\\\"\\n\\nSexton was in no mood for games. He needed this information now, and he had no intention of begging for it. He heaved a tired sigh. Extend the bond of trust. It's all about trust. \\\"I screwed up,\\\" he said. \\\"I'm sorry. It's been a hell of a day. I don't know what I was thinking.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle remained in the doorway.\\n\\nSexton walked to his desk and set Gabrielle's Pepsi down on his blotter. He motioned to his leather chair-the position of power. \\\"Have a seat. Enjoy a soda. I'm going to go stick my head in the sink.\\\" He headed for the bathroom. Gabrielle still wasn't moving.\\n\\n\\\"I think I saw a fax in the machine,\\\" Sexton called over his shoulder as he entered the bathroom. Show her you trust her. \\\"Have a look at it for me, will you?\\\"\\n\\nSexton closed the door and filled the sink with cold water. He splashed it on his face and felt no clearer. This had never happened to him before-being so sure, and being so wrong. Sexton was a man who trusted his instincts, and his instincts told him Gabrielle Ashe had been in his office.\\n\\nBut how? It was impossible.\\n\\nSexton told himself to forget about it and focus on the matter at hand. NASA. He needed Gabrielle right now. This was no time to alienate her. He needed to know what she knew. Forget your instincts. You were wrong.\\n\\nAs Sexton dried his face, he threw his head back and took a deep breath. Relax, he told himself. Don't get punchy. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply again, feeling better.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":278,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Keep the narrative going for the author.\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\nAuthor: Dan Brown\nTitle: Deception Point\nChapter: 6"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Stupid bitch, Sexton thought. \"I'll take those,\" he snapped, holding out his hand for the envelopes.\n\nThe woman scraped up the last of the envelopes and handed them up to Sexton without looking up. \"Sorry...,\" she muttered, obviously embarrassed. Hunkering low in shame, she scurried off into the crowd.\n\nSexton quickly counted the envelopes. Ten. Good. Nobody was going to steal his thunder today. Regrouping, he adjusted the microphones and gave a joking smile to the crowd. \"I guess I'd better hand these out before someone gets hurt!\"\n\nThe crowd laughed, looking eager.\n\nSexton sensed his daughter nearby, standing just off-stage behind the partition.\n\n\"Don't do this,\" Rachel said to him. \"You'll regret it.\"\n\nSexton ignored her.\n\n\"I'm asking you to trust me,\" Rachel said, her voice growing louder. \"It's a mistake.\"\n\nSexton picked up his envelopes, straightening the edges.\n\n\"Dad,\" Rachel said, intense and pleading now. \"This is your last chance to do what's right.\"\n\nDo what's right? Sexton covered the microphone and turned as if clearing his throat. He glanced discreetly over at his daughter. \"You're just like your mother-idealistic and small. Women simply do not understand the true nature of power.\"\n\nSedgewick Sexton had already forgotten his daughter by the time he turned back toward the jostling media. Head held high, he walked around the podium and handed the stack of envelopes into the hands of the waiting press. He watched the envelopes disseminate rapidly through the crowd. He could hear the seals being broken, the envelopes being torn apart like Christmas presents. A sudden hush came over the crowd."},{"from":"human","value":"In the silence, Sexton could hear the defining moment of his career."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The meteorite is a fraud. And I am the man who revealed it. Sexton knew it would take the press a moment to understand the true implications of what they were looking at: GPR images of an insertion shaft in the ice; a living ocean species almost identical to the NASA fossils; evidence of chondrules that formed on earth. It all led to one shocking conclusion.\n\n\"Sir?\" one reporter stammered, sounding stunned as he looked in his envelope. \"Is this for real?\"\n\nSexton gave a somber sigh. \"Yes, I'm afraid it's very real indeed.\"\n\nMurmurs of confusion now spread through the crowd.\n\n\"I'll give everyone a moment to look through these pages,\" Sexton said, \"and then I'll take questions and attempt to shed some light on what you're looking at.\"\n\n\"Senator?\" another reporter asked, sounding utterly bewildered. \"Are these images authentic?... Unretouched?\"\n\n\"One hundred percent,\" Sexton said, speaking more firmly now. \"I would not present the evidence to you otherwise.\"\n\nThe confusion in the crowd seemed to deepen, and Sexton thought he even heard some laughter-not at all the reaction he had expected. He was starting to fear he had overestimated the media's ability to connect the obvious dots.\n\n\"Um, senator?\" someone said, sounding oddly amused. \"For the record, you stand behind the authenticity of these images?\"\n\nSexton was getting frustrated. \"My friends, I will say this one last time, the evidence in your hands is one-hundred-percent accurate. And if anyone can prove otherwise, I'll eat my hat!\"\n\nSexton waited for the laugh, but it never came.\n\nDead silence. Blank stares."},{"from":"human","value":"The reporter who had just spoken walked toward Sexton, shuffling through his photocopies as he came forward."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You're right, senator. This is scandalous data.\"\n\nThe reporter paused, scratching his head. \"So I guess we're puzzled as to why you've decided to share it with us like this, especially after denying it so vehemently earlier.\"\n\nSexton had no idea what the man was talking about. The reporter handed him the photocopies. Sexton looked at the pages-and fora moment, his mind went totally blank.\n\nNo words came.\n\nHe was staring at unfamiliar photographs. Black-and-white images. Two people. Naked. Arms and legs intertwined. For an instant, Sexton had no idea what he was looking at. Then it registered. A cannonball to the gut. In horror, Sexton's head snapped up to the crowd. They were laughing now. Half of them were already phoning in the story to their news desks. Sexton felt a tap on his shoulder.\n\nIna daze, he wheeled.\n\nRachel was standing there. \"We tried to stop you,\" she said. \"We gave you every chance.\" A woman stood beside her.\n\nSexton was trembling as his eyes moved to the woman at Rachel's side. She was the reporter in the cashmere coat and mohair beret-the woman who had knocked over his envelopes. Sexton saw her face, and his blood turned to ice. Gabrielle's dark eyes seemed to bore right through him as she reached down and opened her coat to reveal a stack of white envelopes tucked neatly beneath her arm.\n\nThe Oval Office was dark, lit only by the soft glow of the brass lamp on President Herney's desk. Gabrielle Ashe held her chin high as she stood before the President. Outside the window behind him, dusk was gathering on the west lawn."},{"from":"human","value":"\"I hear you're leaving us,\" Herney said, sounding disappointed."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Gabrielle nodded. Although the President had graciously offered her indefinite sanctuary inside the White House away from the press, Gabrielle preferred not to ride out this particular storm by hiding out in the eye. She wanted to be as faraway as possible. At least fora while.\n\nHerney gazed across his desk at her, looking impressed. \"The choice you made this morning, Gabrielle...\" He paused, as if at a loss for words. His eyes were simple and clear-nothing compared to the deep, enigmatic pools that had once drawn Gabrielle to Sedgewick Sexton. And yet, even in the backdrop of this powerful place, Gabrielle saw true kindness in his gaze, an honor and dignity she would not soon forget.\n\n\"I did it for me, too,\" Gabrielle finally said.\n\nHerney nodded. \"I owe you my thanks all the same.\" He stood, motioning for her to follow him into the hall. \"I was actually hoping you'd stick around long enough that I could offer you a post on my budgeting staff.\"\n\nGabrielle gave him a dubious look. \"Stop spending and start mending?\"\n\nHe chuckled. \"Something like that.\"\n\n\"I think we both know, sir, that I'm more of a liability to you at the moment than an asset.\"\n\nHerney shrugged. \"Give it a few months. It will all blow over. Plenty of great men and women have endured similar situations and gone onto greatness.\" He winked.\n\n\"A few of them were even U. S. presidents.\"\n\nGabrielle knew he was right. Unemployed for only hours, Gabrielle had already turned down two other job offers today-one from Yolanda Cole at ABC, and the other from St. Martin's Press, who had offered her an obscene advance if she would publish a tell-all biography. No thanks."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"As Gabrielle and the President moved down the hallway, Gabrielle thought of the pictures of herself that were now being splashed across televisions. The damage to the country could have been worse, she told herself. Much worse. Gabrielle, after going to ABC to retrieve the photos and borrow Yolanda Cole's press pass, had snuck back to Sexton's office to assemble the duplicate envelopes. While inside, she had also printed copies of the donation checks in Sexton's computer. After the confrontation at the Washington Monument, Gabrielle had handed copies of the checks to the dumbstruck Senator Sexton and made her demands. Give the President a chance to announce his meteorite mistake, or the rest of this data goes public too. Senator Sexton took one look at the stack of financial evidence, locked himself in his limousine, and drove off. He had not been heard from since.\n\nNow, as the President and Gabrielle arrived at the backstage door of the Briefing Room, Gabrielle could hear the waiting throngs beyond. For the second time in twenty-four hours, the world was assembled to hear a special presidential broadcast.\n\n\"What are you going to tell them?\" Gabrielle asked.\n\nHerney sighed, his expression remarkably calm. \"Over the years, I've learned one thing over and over...\" He put a hand on her shoulder and smiled. \"There's just no substitute for the truth.\"\n\nGabrielle was filled with an unexpected pride as she watched him stride toward the stage. Zach Herney was on his way to admit the biggest mistake of his life, and oddly, he had never looked more presidential.\n\nWhen Rachel awoke, the room was dark.\n\nA clock glowed 10:14 P. M. The bed was not her own. For several moments, she lay motionless, wondering where she was. Slowly, it all started coming back... the megaplume... this morning at the Washington Monument... the President's invitation to stay at the White House."},{"from":"human","value":"I'm at the White House, Rachel realized."},{"from":"gpt","value":"I slept here all day. The Coast Guard chopper, at the President's command, had transported an exhausted Michael Tolland, Corky Marlinson, and Rachel Sexton from the Washington Monument to the White House, where they had been fed a sumptuous breakfast, been seen to by doctors, and been offered any of the building's fourteen bedrooms in which to recuperate.\n\nAll of them had accepted.\n\nRachel could not believe she had slept this long. Turning on the television, she was stunned to see that President Herney had already completed his press conference. Rachel and the others had offered to stand beside him when he announced the meteorite disappointment to the world. We all made the mistake together. But Herney had insisted on shouldering the burden alone.\n\n\"Sadly,\" one political analyst on TV was saying, \"it seems NASA has discovered no signs of life from space after all. This marks the second time this decade that NASA has incorrectly classified a meteorite as showing signs of extraterrestrial life. This time, however, a number of highly respected civilians were also among those fooled.\"\n\n\"Normally,\" a second analyst chimed in, \"I would have to say that a deception of the magnitude the President described this evening would be devastating for his career... and yet, considering the developments this morning at the Washington Monument, I would have to say Zach Herney's chances of taking the presidency look better than ever.\"\n\nThe first analyst nodded. \"So, no life in space, but no life in Senator Sexton's campaign either. And now, as new information surfaces suggesting deep financial troubles plaguing the senator-\"\n\nA knock on the door drew Rachel's attention.\n\nMichael, she hoped, quickly turning off the television. She hadn't seen him since breakfast. On their arrival at the White House, Rachel had wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in his arms. Although she could tell Michael felt the same, Corky had intervened, parking himself on Tolland's bed and exuberantly telling and retelling his story about urinating on himself and saving the day. Finally, utterly exhausted, Rachel and Tolland had given up, heading for separate bedrooms to sleep."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Now, walking toward the door, Rachel checked herself in the mirror, amused to see how ridiculously she was dressed. All she had found to wear to bed was an old Penn State football jersey in the dresser. It draped down to her knees like a nightshirt.\n\nThe knocking continued.\n\nRachel opened the door, disappointed to see a female U. S. Secret Service agent. She was fit and cute, wearing a blue blazer. \"Ms. Sexton, the gentleman in the Lincoln Bedroom heard your television. He asked me to tell you that as long as you're already awake...\" She paused, arching her eyebrows, clearly no stranger tonight games on the upper floors of the White House.\n\nRachel blushed, her skin tingling. \"Thanks.\"\n\nThe agent led Rachel down the impeccably appointed hallway to a plain-looking doorway nearby.\n\n\"The Lincoln Bedroom,\" the agent said. \"And as I am always supposed to say outside this door, \"Sleep well, and beware of ghosts.\"\"\n\nRachel nodded. The legends of ghosts in the Lincoln Bedroom were as old as the White House itself. It was said that Winston Churchill had seen Lincoln's ghost here, as had countless others, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Amy Carter, actor Richard Dreyfuss, and decades of maids and butlers. President Reagan's dog was said to bark outside this door for hours at a time.\n\nThe thoughts of historical spirits suddenly made Rachel realize what a sacred place this room was. She felt suddenly embarrassed, standing therein her long football jersey, bare-legged, like some college coed sneaking into a boy's room.\n\n\"Is this kosher?\" she whispered to the agent. \"I mean this is the Lincoln Bedroom.\"\n\nThe agent winked. \"Our policy on this floor is \"Don't ask, don't tell.\"\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Rachel smiled. \"Thanks.\" She reached for the door-knob, already feeling the anticipation of what lay beyond.\n\n\"Rachel!\" The nasal voice carried down the hallway like abuzz saw. Rachel and the agent turned. Corky Marlinson was hobbling toward them on crutches, his leg now professionally bandaged. \"I couldn't sleep either!\"\n\nRachel slumped, sensing her romantic tryst about to disintegrate. Corky's eyes inspected the cute Secret Service agent. He flashed her abroad smile. \"I love women in uniform.\"\n\nThe agent pulled aside her blazer to reveal a lethal-looking sidearm. Corky backed off. \"Point taken.\" He turned to Rachel. \"Is Mike awake, too? You going in?\" Corky looked eager to join the party.\n\nRachel groaned. \"Actually, Corky...\"\n\n\"Dr. Marlinson,\" the Secret Service agent intervened, pulling a note from her blazer. \"According to this note, which was given tome by Mr. Tolland, I have explicit orders to escort you down to the kitchen, have our chef make you anything you want, and ask you to explain tome in vivid detail how you saved yourself from certain death by...\" the agent hesitated, grimacing as she read the note again.\n\n\"... by urinating on yourself?\"\n\nApparently, the agent had said the magic words. Corky dropped his crutches on the spot and put an arm around the woman's shoulders for support, and said, \"To the kitchen, love!\"\n\nAs the indisposed agent helped Corky hobble off down the hall, Rachel had no doubt Corky Marlinson was in heaven. \"The urine is the key,\" she heard him saying, \"because those damned telencephalon olfactory lobes can smell everything!\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The Lincoln Bedroom was dark when Rachel entered. She was surprised to seethe bed empty and untouched. Michael Tolland was nowhere to be seen. An antique oil lamp burned near the bed, and in the soft radiance, she could barely make out the Brussels carpet... the famous carved rosewood bed... the portrait of Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd... even the desk where Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.\n\nAs Rachel closed the door behind her, she felt a clammy draft on her bare legs. Where is he? Across the room, a window was open, the white organza curtains billowing. She walked over to close the window, and an eerie whisper murmured from the closet.\n\n\"Maaaarrrrrrrry...\"\n\nRachel wheeled.\n\n\"Maaaaaarrrrrrrry?\" the voice whispered again. \"Is that you?... Mary Todd Liiiiiincoln?\"\n\nRachel quickly closed the window and turned back toward the closet. Her heart was racing, although she knew it was foolish. \"Mike, I know that's you.\"\n\n\"Noooooo...\" the voice continued. \"I am not Mike... I am... Aaaaabe.\"\n\nRachel put her hands on her hips. \"Oh, really? Honest Abe?\"\n\nA muffled laugh. \"Moderately honest Abe... yes.\"\n\nRachel was laughing now too.\n\n\"Be afraaaaaaid,\" the voice from the closet moaned. \"Be veeeeeery afraid.\"\n\n\"I'm not afraid.\"\n\n\"Please be afraid...\" the voice moaned. \"In the human species, the emotions of fear and sexual arousal are closely linked.\"\n\nRachel burst out laughing. \"Is this your idea of a turn-on?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Forgiiiive me...\" the voice moaned. \"It's been yeeeeeeears since I've been with a woman.\"\n\n\"Evidently,\" Rachel said, yanking the door open.\n\nMichael Tolland stood before her with his roguish, lopsided grin. He looked irresistible wearing a pair of navy blue satin pajamas. Rachel did a double take when she saw the presidential seal emblazoned on his chest.\n\n\"Presidential pajamas?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"They were in the drawer.\"\n\n\"And all I had was this football jersey?\"\n\n\"You should have chosen the Lincoln Bedroom.\"\n\n\"You should have offered!\"\n\n\"I heard the mattress was bad. Antique horsehair.\" Tolland winked, motioning to a gift-wrapped package on a marble-topped table. \"This'll make it up to you.\"\n\nRachel was touched. \"For me?\"\n\n\"I had one of the presidential aides go out and find this for you. Just arrived. Don't shake it.\"\n\nShe carefully opened the package, extracting the heavy contents. Inside was a large crystal bowl in which were swimming two ugly orange goldfish. Rachel stared in confused disappointment. \"You're joking, right?\"\n\n\"Helostoma temmincki,\" Tolland said proudly.\n\n\"You bought me fish?\"\n\n\"Rare Chinese kissing fish. Very romantic.\"\n\n\"Fish are not romantic, Mike.\"\n\n\"Tell that to these guys. They'll kiss for hours.\"\n\n\"Is this supposed to be another turn-on?\"\n\n\"I'm rusty on the romance. Can you grade me on effort?\"\n\n\"For future reference, Mike, fish are definitely not a turn-on. Try flowers.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Tolland pulled a bouquet of white lilies from behind his back. \"I tried for red roses,\" he said, \"but I almost got shot sneaking into the Rose Garden.\"\n\nAs Tolland pulled Rachel's body against his and inhaled the soft fragrance of her hair, he felt years of quiet isolation dissolving inside him. He kissed her deeply, feeling her body rise against him. The white lilies fell to their feet, and barriers Tolland had never known he'd built were suddenly melting away. The ghosts are gone.\n\nHe felt Rachel inching him toward the bed now, her whisper soft in his ear. \"You don't really think fish are romantic, do you?\"\n\n\"I do,\" he said, kissing her again. \"You should seethe jellyfish mating ritual. Incredibly erotic.\"\n\nRachel maneuvered him onto his back on the horsehair mattress, easing her slender body down on top of his.\n\n\"And seahorses...,\" Tolland said, breathless as he savored her touch through the thin satin of his pajamas. \"Seahorses perform... an unbelievably sensual dance of love.\"\n\n\"Enough fish talk,\" she whispered, unbuttoning his pajamas. \"What can you tell me about the mating rituals of advanced primates?\"\n\nTolland sighed. \"I'm afraid I don't really do primates.\"\n\nRachel shed her football jersey. \"Well, nature boy, I suggest you learn fast.\"\n\nThe NASA transport jet banked high over the Atlantic.\n\nOnboard, Administrator Lawrence Ekstrom took a last look at the huge charred rock in the cargo hold. Back to the sea, he thought. Where they found you. On Ekstrom's command, the pilot opened the cargo doors and released the rock. They watched as the mammoth stone plummeted downward behind the plane, arcing across the sunlit ocean sky and disappearing beneath the waves in a pillar of silver spray."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The giant stone sank fast.\n\nUnderwater, at three hundred feet, barely enough light remained to reveal its tumbling silhouette. Passing five hundred feet, the rock plunged into total darkness.\n\nRacing down.\n\nDeeper.\n\nIt fell for almost twelve minutes.\n\nThen, like a meteorite striking the dark side of the moon, the rock crashed into avast plain of mud on the ocean floor, kicking up a cloud of silt. As the dust settled, one of the ocean's thousands of unknown species swam over to inspect the odd newcomer.\n\nUnimpressed, the creature moved on."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Keep the narrative going for the author.\\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\\nAuthor: Dan Brown\\nTitle: Deception Point\\nChapter: 6\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Stupid bitch, Sexton thought. \\\"I'll take those,\\\" he snapped, holding out his hand for the envelopes.\\n\\nThe woman scraped up the last of the envelopes and handed them up to Sexton without looking up. \\\"Sorry...,\\\" she muttered, obviously embarrassed. Hunkering low in shame, she scurried off into the crowd.\\n\\nSexton quickly counted the envelopes. Ten. Good. Nobody was going to steal his thunder today. Regrouping, he adjusted the microphones and gave a joking smile to the crowd. \\\"I guess I'd better hand these out before someone gets hurt!\\\"\\n\\nThe crowd laughed, looking eager.\\n\\nSexton sensed his daughter nearby, standing just off-stage behind the partition.\\n\\n\\\"Don't do this,\\\" Rachel said to him. \\\"You'll regret it.\\\"\\n\\nSexton ignored her.\\n\\n\\\"I'm asking you to trust me,\\\" Rachel said, her voice growing louder. \\\"It's a mistake.\\\"\\n\\nSexton picked up his envelopes, straightening the edges.\\n\\n\\\"Dad,\\\" Rachel said, intense and pleading now. \\\"This is your last chance to do what's right.\\\"\\n\\nDo what's right? Sexton covered the microphone and turned as if clearing his throat. He glanced discreetly over at his daughter. \\\"You're just like your mother-idealistic and small. Women simply do not understand the true nature of power.\\\"\\n\\nSedgewick Sexton had already forgotten his daughter by the time he turned back toward the jostling media. Head held high, he walked around the podium and handed the stack of envelopes into the hands of the waiting press. He watched the envelopes disseminate rapidly through the crowd. He could hear the seals being broken, the envelopes being torn apart like Christmas presents. A sudden hush came over the crowd.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"In the silence, Sexton could hear the defining moment of his career.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The meteorite is a fraud. And I am the man who revealed it. Sexton knew it would take the press a moment to understand the true implications of what they were looking at: GPR images of an insertion shaft in the ice; a living ocean species almost identical to the NASA fossils; evidence of chondrules that formed on earth. It all led to one shocking conclusion.\\n\\n\\\"Sir?\\\" one reporter stammered, sounding stunned as he looked in his envelope. \\\"Is this for real?\\\"\\n\\nSexton gave a somber sigh. \\\"Yes, I'm afraid it's very real indeed.\\\"\\n\\nMurmurs of confusion now spread through the crowd.\\n\\n\\\"I'll give everyone a moment to look through these pages,\\\" Sexton said, \\\"and then I'll take questions and attempt to shed some light on what you're looking at.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Senator?\\\" another reporter asked, sounding utterly bewildered. \\\"Are these images authentic?... Unretouched?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"One hundred percent,\\\" Sexton said, speaking more firmly now. \\\"I would not present the evidence to you otherwise.\\\"\\n\\nThe confusion in the crowd seemed to deepen, and Sexton thought he even heard some laughter-not at all the reaction he had expected. He was starting to fear he had overestimated the media's ability to connect the obvious dots.\\n\\n\\\"Um, senator?\\\" someone said, sounding oddly amused. \\\"For the record, you stand behind the authenticity of these images?\\\"\\n\\nSexton was getting frustrated. \\\"My friends, I will say this one last time, the evidence in your hands is one-hundred-percent accurate. And if anyone can prove otherwise, I'll eat my hat!\\\"\\n\\nSexton waited for the laugh, but it never came.\\n\\nDead silence. Blank stares.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The reporter who had just spoken walked toward Sexton, shuffling through his photocopies as he came forward.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You're right, senator. This is scandalous data.\\\"\\n\\nThe reporter paused, scratching his head. \\\"So I guess we're puzzled as to why you've decided to share it with us like this, especially after denying it so vehemently earlier.\\\"\\n\\nSexton had no idea what the man was talking about. The reporter handed him the photocopies. Sexton looked at the pages-and fora moment, his mind went totally blank.\\n\\nNo words came.\\n\\nHe was staring at unfamiliar photographs. Black-and-white images. Two people. Naked. Arms and legs intertwined. For an instant, Sexton had no idea what he was looking at. Then it registered. A cannonball to the gut. In horror, Sexton's head snapped up to the crowd. They were laughing now. Half of them were already phoning in the story to their news desks. Sexton felt a tap on his shoulder.\\n\\nIna daze, he wheeled.\\n\\nRachel was standing there. \\\"We tried to stop you,\\\" she said. \\\"We gave you every chance.\\\" A woman stood beside her.\\n\\nSexton was trembling as his eyes moved to the woman at Rachel's side. She was the reporter in the cashmere coat and mohair beret-the woman who had knocked over his envelopes. Sexton saw her face, and his blood turned to ice. Gabrielle's dark eyes seemed to bore right through him as she reached down and opened her coat to reveal a stack of white envelopes tucked neatly beneath her arm.\\n\\nThe Oval Office was dark, lit only by the soft glow of the brass lamp on President Herney's desk. Gabrielle Ashe held her chin high as she stood before the President. Outside the window behind him, dusk was gathering on the west lawn.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I hear you're leaving us,\\\" Herney said, sounding disappointed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Gabrielle nodded. Although the President had graciously offered her indefinite sanctuary inside the White House away from the press, Gabrielle preferred not to ride out this particular storm by hiding out in the eye. She wanted to be as faraway as possible. At least fora while.\\n\\nHerney gazed across his desk at her, looking impressed. \\\"The choice you made this morning, Gabrielle...\\\" He paused, as if at a loss for words. His eyes were simple and clear-nothing compared to the deep, enigmatic pools that had once drawn Gabrielle to Sedgewick Sexton. And yet, even in the backdrop of this powerful place, Gabrielle saw true kindness in his gaze, an honor and dignity she would not soon forget.\\n\\n\\\"I did it for me, too,\\\" Gabrielle finally said.\\n\\nHerney nodded. \\\"I owe you my thanks all the same.\\\" He stood, motioning for her to follow him into the hall. \\\"I was actually hoping you'd stick around long enough that I could offer you a post on my budgeting staff.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle gave him a dubious look. \\\"Stop spending and start mending?\\\"\\n\\nHe chuckled. \\\"Something like that.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think we both know, sir, that I'm more of a liability to you at the moment than an asset.\\\"\\n\\nHerney shrugged. \\\"Give it a few months. It will all blow over. Plenty of great men and women have endured similar situations and gone onto greatness.\\\" He winked.\\n\\n\\\"A few of them were even U. S. presidents.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle knew he was right. Unemployed for only hours, Gabrielle had already turned down two other job offers today-one from Yolanda Cole at ABC, and the other from St. Martin's Press, who had offered her an obscene advance if she would publish a tell-all biography. No thanks.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"As Gabrielle and the President moved down the hallway, Gabrielle thought of the pictures of herself that were now being splashed across televisions. The damage to the country could have been worse, she told herself. Much worse. Gabrielle, after going to ABC to retrieve the photos and borrow Yolanda Cole's press pass, had snuck back to Sexton's office to assemble the duplicate envelopes. While inside, she had also printed copies of the donation checks in Sexton's computer. After the confrontation at the Washington Monument, Gabrielle had handed copies of the checks to the dumbstruck Senator Sexton and made her demands. Give the President a chance to announce his meteorite mistake, or the rest of this data goes public too. Senator Sexton took one look at the stack of financial evidence, locked himself in his limousine, and drove off. He had not been heard from since.\\n\\nNow, as the President and Gabrielle arrived at the backstage door of the Briefing Room, Gabrielle could hear the waiting throngs beyond. For the second time in twenty-four hours, the world was assembled to hear a special presidential broadcast.\\n\\n\\\"What are you going to tell them?\\\" Gabrielle asked.\\n\\nHerney sighed, his expression remarkably calm. \\\"Over the years, I've learned one thing over and over...\\\" He put a hand on her shoulder and smiled. \\\"There's just no substitute for the truth.\\\"\\n\\nGabrielle was filled with an unexpected pride as she watched him stride toward the stage. Zach Herney was on his way to admit the biggest mistake of his life, and oddly, he had never looked more presidential.\\n\\nWhen Rachel awoke, the room was dark.\\n\\nA clock glowed 10:14 P. M. The bed was not her own. For several moments, she lay motionless, wondering where she was. Slowly, it all started coming back... the megaplume... this morning at the Washington Monument... the President's invitation to stay at the White House.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"I'm at the White House, Rachel realized.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"I slept here all day. The Coast Guard chopper, at the President's command, had transported an exhausted Michael Tolland, Corky Marlinson, and Rachel Sexton from the Washington Monument to the White House, where they had been fed a sumptuous breakfast, been seen to by doctors, and been offered any of the building's fourteen bedrooms in which to recuperate.\\n\\nAll of them had accepted.\\n\\nRachel could not believe she had slept this long. Turning on the television, she was stunned to see that President Herney had already completed his press conference. Rachel and the others had offered to stand beside him when he announced the meteorite disappointment to the world. We all made the mistake together. But Herney had insisted on shouldering the burden alone.\\n\\n\\\"Sadly,\\\" one political analyst on TV was saying, \\\"it seems NASA has discovered no signs of life from space after all. This marks the second time this decade that NASA has incorrectly classified a meteorite as showing signs of extraterrestrial life. This time, however, a number of highly respected civilians were also among those fooled.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Normally,\\\" a second analyst chimed in, \\\"I would have to say that a deception of the magnitude the President described this evening would be devastating for his career... and yet, considering the developments this morning at the Washington Monument, I would have to say Zach Herney's chances of taking the presidency look better than ever.\\\"\\n\\nThe first analyst nodded. \\\"So, no life in space, but no life in Senator Sexton's campaign either. And now, as new information surfaces suggesting deep financial troubles plaguing the senator-\\\"\\n\\nA knock on the door drew Rachel's attention.\\n\\nMichael, she hoped, quickly turning off the television. She hadn't seen him since breakfast. On their arrival at the White House, Rachel had wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in his arms. Although she could tell Michael felt the same, Corky had intervened, parking himself on Tolland's bed and exuberantly telling and retelling his story about urinating on himself and saving the day. Finally, utterly exhausted, Rachel and Tolland had given up, heading for separate bedrooms to sleep.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Now, walking toward the door, Rachel checked herself in the mirror, amused to see how ridiculously she was dressed. All she had found to wear to bed was an old Penn State football jersey in the dresser. It draped down to her knees like a nightshirt.\\n\\nThe knocking continued.\\n\\nRachel opened the door, disappointed to see a female U. S. Secret Service agent. She was fit and cute, wearing a blue blazer. \\\"Ms. Sexton, the gentleman in the Lincoln Bedroom heard your television. He asked me to tell you that as long as you're already awake...\\\" She paused, arching her eyebrows, clearly no stranger tonight games on the upper floors of the White House.\\n\\nRachel blushed, her skin tingling. \\\"Thanks.\\\"\\n\\nThe agent led Rachel down the impeccably appointed hallway to a plain-looking doorway nearby.\\n\\n\\\"The Lincoln Bedroom,\\\" the agent said. \\\"And as I am always supposed to say outside this door, \\\"Sleep well, and beware of ghosts.\\\"\\\"\\n\\nRachel nodded. The legends of ghosts in the Lincoln Bedroom were as old as the White House itself. It was said that Winston Churchill had seen Lincoln's ghost here, as had countless others, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Amy Carter, actor Richard Dreyfuss, and decades of maids and butlers. President Reagan's dog was said to bark outside this door for hours at a time.\\n\\nThe thoughts of historical spirits suddenly made Rachel realize what a sacred place this room was. She felt suddenly embarrassed, standing therein her long football jersey, bare-legged, like some college coed sneaking into a boy's room.\\n\\n\\\"Is this kosher?\\\" she whispered to the agent. \\\"I mean this is the Lincoln Bedroom.\\\"\\n\\nThe agent winked. \\\"Our policy on this floor is \\\"Don't ask, don't tell.\\\"\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Rachel smiled. \\\"Thanks.\\\" She reached for the door-knob, already feeling the anticipation of what lay beyond.\\n\\n\\\"Rachel!\\\" The nasal voice carried down the hallway like abuzz saw. Rachel and the agent turned. Corky Marlinson was hobbling toward them on crutches, his leg now professionally bandaged. \\\"I couldn't sleep either!\\\"\\n\\nRachel slumped, sensing her romantic tryst about to disintegrate. Corky's eyes inspected the cute Secret Service agent. He flashed her abroad smile. \\\"I love women in uniform.\\\"\\n\\nThe agent pulled aside her blazer to reveal a lethal-looking sidearm. Corky backed off. \\\"Point taken.\\\" He turned to Rachel. \\\"Is Mike awake, too? You going in?\\\" Corky looked eager to join the party.\\n\\nRachel groaned. \\\"Actually, Corky...\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dr. Marlinson,\\\" the Secret Service agent intervened, pulling a note from her blazer. \\\"According to this note, which was given tome by Mr. Tolland, I have explicit orders to escort you down to the kitchen, have our chef make you anything you want, and ask you to explain tome in vivid detail how you saved yourself from certain death by...\\\" the agent hesitated, grimacing as she read the note again.\\n\\n\\\"... by urinating on yourself?\\\"\\n\\nApparently, the agent had said the magic words. Corky dropped his crutches on the spot and put an arm around the woman's shoulders for support, and said, \\\"To the kitchen, love!\\\"\\n\\nAs the indisposed agent helped Corky hobble off down the hall, Rachel had no doubt Corky Marlinson was in heaven. \\\"The urine is the key,\\\" she heard him saying, \\\"because those damned telencephalon olfactory lobes can smell everything!\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The Lincoln Bedroom was dark when Rachel entered. She was surprised to seethe bed empty and untouched. Michael Tolland was nowhere to be seen. An antique oil lamp burned near the bed, and in the soft radiance, she could barely make out the Brussels carpet... the famous carved rosewood bed... the portrait of Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd... even the desk where Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.\\n\\nAs Rachel closed the door behind her, she felt a clammy draft on her bare legs. Where is he? Across the room, a window was open, the white organza curtains billowing. She walked over to close the window, and an eerie whisper murmured from the closet.\\n\\n\\\"Maaaarrrrrrrry...\\\"\\n\\nRachel wheeled.\\n\\n\\\"Maaaaaarrrrrrrry?\\\" the voice whispered again. \\\"Is that you?... Mary Todd Liiiiiincoln?\\\"\\n\\nRachel quickly closed the window and turned back toward the closet. Her heart was racing, although she knew it was foolish. \\\"Mike, I know that's you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Noooooo...\\\" the voice continued. \\\"I am not Mike... I am... Aaaaabe.\\\"\\n\\nRachel put her hands on her hips. \\\"Oh, really? Honest Abe?\\\"\\n\\nA muffled laugh. \\\"Moderately honest Abe... yes.\\\"\\n\\nRachel was laughing now too.\\n\\n\\\"Be afraaaaaaid,\\\" the voice from the closet moaned. \\\"Be veeeeeery afraid.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm not afraid.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Please be afraid...\\\" the voice moaned. \\\"In the human species, the emotions of fear and sexual arousal are closely linked.\\\"\\n\\nRachel burst out laughing. \\\"Is this your idea of a turn-on?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Forgiiiive me...\\\" the voice moaned. \\\"It's been yeeeeeeears since I've been with a woman.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Evidently,\\\" Rachel said, yanking the door open.\\n\\nMichael Tolland stood before her with his roguish, lopsided grin. He looked irresistible wearing a pair of navy blue satin pajamas. Rachel did a double take when she saw the presidential seal emblazoned on his chest.\\n\\n\\\"Presidential pajamas?\\\"\\n\\nHe shrugged. \\\"They were in the drawer.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And all I had was this football jersey?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You should have chosen the Lincoln Bedroom.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You should have offered!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I heard the mattress was bad. Antique horsehair.\\\" Tolland winked, motioning to a gift-wrapped package on a marble-topped table. \\\"This'll make it up to you.\\\"\\n\\nRachel was touched. \\\"For me?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I had one of the presidential aides go out and find this for you. Just arrived. Don't shake it.\\\"\\n\\nShe carefully opened the package, extracting the heavy contents. Inside was a large crystal bowl in which were swimming two ugly orange goldfish. Rachel stared in confused disappointment. \\\"You're joking, right?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Helostoma temmincki,\\\" Tolland said proudly.\\n\\n\\\"You bought me fish?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Rare Chinese kissing fish. Very romantic.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Fish are not romantic, Mike.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Tell that to these guys. They'll kiss for hours.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Is this supposed to be another turn-on?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm rusty on the romance. Can you grade me on effort?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"For future reference, Mike, fish are definitely not a turn-on. Try flowers.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Tolland pulled a bouquet of white lilies from behind his back. \\\"I tried for red roses,\\\" he said, \\\"but I almost got shot sneaking into the Rose Garden.\\\"\\n\\nAs Tolland pulled Rachel's body against his and inhaled the soft fragrance of her hair, he felt years of quiet isolation dissolving inside him. He kissed her deeply, feeling her body rise against him. The white lilies fell to their feet, and barriers Tolland had never known he'd built were suddenly melting away. The ghosts are gone.\\n\\nHe felt Rachel inching him toward the bed now, her whisper soft in his ear. \\\"You don't really think fish are romantic, do you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do,\\\" he said, kissing her again. \\\"You should seethe jellyfish mating ritual. Incredibly erotic.\\\"\\n\\nRachel maneuvered him onto his back on the horsehair mattress, easing her slender body down on top of his.\\n\\n\\\"And seahorses...,\\\" Tolland said, breathless as he savored her touch through the thin satin of his pajamas. \\\"Seahorses perform... an unbelievably sensual dance of love.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Enough fish talk,\\\" she whispered, unbuttoning his pajamas. \\\"What can you tell me about the mating rituals of advanced primates?\\\"\\n\\nTolland sighed. \\\"I'm afraid I don't really do primates.\\\"\\n\\nRachel shed her football jersey. \\\"Well, nature boy, I suggest you learn fast.\\\"\\n\\nThe NASA transport jet banked high over the Atlantic.\\n\\nOnboard, Administrator Lawrence Ekstrom took a last look at the huge charred rock in the cargo hold. Back to the sea, he thought. Where they found you. On Ekstrom's command, the pilot opened the cargo doors and released the rock. They watched as the mammoth stone plummeted downward behind the plane, arcing across the sunlit ocean sky and disappearing beneath the waves in a pillar of silver spray.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The giant stone sank fast.\\n\\nUnderwater, at three hundred feet, barely enough light remained to reveal its tumbling silhouette. Passing five hundred feet, the rock plunged into total darkness.\\n\\nRacing down.\\n\\nDeeper.\\n\\nIt fell for almost twelve minutes.\\n\\nThen, like a meteorite striking the dark side of the moon, the rock crashed into avast plain of mud on the ocean floor, kicking up a cloud of silt. As the dust settled, one of the ocean's thousands of unknown species swam over to inspect the odd newcomer.\\n\\nUnimpressed, the creature moved on.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":279,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"As the author's co-writer, advance the plot.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 11"},{"from":"human","value":"Silence."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mercifully.\n\n\"All righty then. Let's load up and get back to the office. That should get you on the road and headed home before rush hour traffic gets crazy. Don't want to holdup any of your vacations,\" said Shea, to around of grunts and groans. \"Quit your bitching. It's a paid vacation.\"\n\nDevin checked his watch on the way out: 5:35. Unless they were closer to DC than he'd guessed, that put him in heavy Beltway traffic on the ride from the office in Alexandria to his apartment in Hyattsville.\n\nHis estimate about the distance turned out to be pretty accurate. After a seventy-minute, light-traffic drive, and about a half hour inside the MINERVA headquarters building, he slumped into the leather driver's seat of his SUV and took a few moments to think about how he'd go about skipping town. His dad would not be keen on the idea of packing a suitcase and heading straight to the airport this morning, later today, or even tomorrow, for no other reason than he'required more notice than that.\" He could hear the words right now. His dad never rushed into things, or out of them.\n\nHe'd show up in a few days, which actually worked out better. Kari was a little more like herself when he wasn't around. A lot more. Mom's downward spiral had really done a number on her. Five years younger than Devin, she had been around for the worst of it, while he'd been away at college. He still felt guilty about that. He'd gone to school thirty minutes away, unaffected and mostly oblivious to their mother's unraveling. Kari had spent her high school years struggling with their mother's rapidly worsening psychosis and a just as swiftly dwindling collection of friends."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Falls Church, Virginia, was a small, densely packed community a few miles west of the National Mall, which put it just south of McClean, Virginia, home of the Central Intelligence Agency. Growing up, all Devin's friends\" parents had either worked on Capitol Hill in high-visibility jobs or'for the government.\" Most of the kids had known to stop asking questions when you got the generic answer. Even the new kids caught on, because word got around-even when it wasn't supposed to. As it had with their mother.\n\nKari had pulled a Houdini after graduation and never looked back-more like she never came back. She had applied to schools on the West Coast and had gotten accepted to UCLA, spending nearly all her vacation time with friends and her summer quarters loading upon prerequisites. She had graduated in five years with a master of social welfare degree and had immediately been hired at a major nonprofit organization, where she'd worked nonstop for the past five years. She'd been home twice since leaving for college almost fifteen years ago. Dad had visited her at least once a year, usually with Devin. She wouldn't let Mom visit and had seen her only once during the two times she made it back east. Mom had seemed to understand, or she hadn't cared. It had gotten harder to tell overtime, until he'd pretty much stopped seeing her, too. Devin didn't want to think about it anymore.\n\nHe opened the compact nylon satchel he'd thrown on the passenger seat and removed his phone. MINERVA required them to leave all personal items behind during operations, especially electronics devices. At the start of each operation, they were given a slim wallet preloaded with a basic identification card and enough cash to fulfill their mission, an encrypted and presumably untraceable smartphone, and any additional personal gear deemed necessary by the operation leader. They handed in their phones and wallets before departing for the mission staging area and retrieved them upon return."},{"from":"human","value":"Devin pressed the power button and set the phone on the seat before starting the SUV."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He shifted into reverse and checked the backup camera. All clear. The last thing he needed, while his fortune somewhat shined at MINERVA, was to back over one of his colleagues. Shea would undoubtedly interpret that as the unceremonious end to his good luck streak.\n\nThe phone caught his eye before he let his foot off the brake. The home screen was filled with missed-call notifications and text messages. He put the vehicle in park and grabbed the phone. Jesus. His dad had called and left voicemails seven times in the past two hours. He found text messages buried between the call notifications.\n\nPLEASE CALL MEAS SOON AS YOU GET THIS. VERY IMPORTANT.\n\nSERIOUSLY. NEED YOU TO CALL ME RIGHT AWAY.\n\nDEVIN. CALL ME NOW!\n\nDEVIN. I'M AT YOUR APARTMENT! WHERE ARE YOU!\n\nJUST CALL ME. SOMETHING HAPPENED. I'M PARKED AT YOUR PLACE.\n\nHEADING HOME. CALL ME OR COME BY ASAP!\n\nIT'S ABOUT HELEN. PLEASE CALL.\n\nOf course it was. It was always about her-though this sounded entirely different. His dad rarely overreacted to her antics, or anything for that matter. Devin had seen him frazzled once, maybe twice, since as far back as he could remember. And Mom had given him plenty of opportunities to lose his shit. He must have been one hell of an analyst at the CIA. A voice of reason in a troubled world, even as his own world fell apart. Respected enough that they kept him on for three years after dismissing Helen, which got him to thirty years of service and a full pension annuity."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He called his dad and braced for impact.\n\n\"Devin! I've been trying to get ahold of you for-\"\n\n\"Dad. Dad. I was working all night. I just got my phone back,\" interrupted Devin.\n\n\"Okay. Okay. Jeez. I'm sorry,\" said Mason Gray. \"I didn't even think of that. I just uh... I, uh. I don't know how to say this.\"\n\n\"Did Mom do something crazy?\" asked Devin, regretting his choice of words.\n\nHis dad had made it abundantly clear over the years that he disapproved of the crude characterization. Apart of him still cared for her very deeply, despite everything she had put him through.\n\n\"Sorry. I didn't mean to say that,\" said Devin.\n\n\"No. It's all right,\" said Mason. \"Maybe she really was crazy. Maybe that's the only way to describe it.\"\n\nDevin didn't like where this was going.\n\n\"Dad?\" said Devin. \"Is Mom okay?\"\n\n\"No. She's not. She's dead,\" said Mason. \"She killed herself-but that's not the worst of it.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nHow could that not be the worst of it?\n\n\"Not on the phone. Can you come by the house?\" asked his dad. \"I'll make some breakfast. You must be hungry. What can I make you?\"\n\n\"Dad. I'll be therein thirty to forty minutes,\" said Devin. \"I'll grab bagel sandwiches on the way.\"\n\n\"Okay. I'll see you then.\"\n\nHe really didn't sound like himself at all.\n\n\"Dad?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Yeah?\"\n\n\"How bad is the rest of it?\"\n\n\"It doesn't make sense,\" said Mason. \"They say she killed a Tennessee sheriff's deputy. Shot him right in the face.\"\n\n\"Jesus. Let's talk about this at home,\" said Devin, but his dad kept going.\n\n\"That was after she kidnapped a seventy-six-year-old man from an assisted living facility in Branson, Missouri,\" he said, with no hint of emotion.\n\n\"Dad. I'm on my way home,\" said Devin, shifting the SUV into reverse.\n\n\"I don't even know when or if they'll release her body. They wouldn't say much,\" said Mason.\n\n\"When did they call?\"\n\n\"They didn't. A Falls Church officer came by the house a little after five. Tennessee police found an old registration in the glove box with my address. Everyone at the department here knew she had issues.\"\n\n\"All right, Dad. Just sit down. Do some of that meditation you do everyday. And I'll be over before you know it. We'll figure this all out.\"\n\n\"I'll make us some scrambled eggs with cheese and toast,\" said his dad, as though he hadn't heard a word Devin had just said.\n\n\"Sounds delicious. Do you want me to stay on the line? Are you okay?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"I can't talk on the phone and make scrambled eggs at the same time,\" he said. \"I'll see you in a bit. Sorry I left all of those messages. Dome a favor and don't listen to them.\"\n\n\"I'll delete them,\" said Devin, taking a deep breath before continuing. \"Did you call Kari?\"\n\n\"No. I'll call her in a little bit,\" said his dad. \"It was too early in LA.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"I'll call her with you."},{"from":"gpt","value":"We can do it after breakfast or wait until later,\" said Devin. \"There's no hurry.\"\n\nAlong pause ensued.\n\n\"She would never have killed a police officer,\" said Mason. \"Something doesn't add up.\"\n\n\"I'll be right home, Dad,\" said Devin. \"We can talk about it then.\"\n\n\"All right. I'll get breakfast ready,\" said Mason before disconnecting the call.\n\nDevin stared at the phone for several moments, perplexed by his dad's statement about the police officer. None of what he had just learned about his mom's final hours added up. Not a single word of it. But his dad almost sounded as though he hadn't been surprised by the kidnapping. Or maybe he was reading too much into the conversation. Devin hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours, and his dad didn't sound like himself.\n\nHe filed the thought away for later and backed out of the parking space without checking the backup camera. His time at MINERVA would be short lived, no matter whom he ran down in the parking lot. He'd have to call Brendan Shea sooner than later and explain why he couldn't leave the greater DC area. When the circumstances surrounding his mother's death surfaced... they'd be forced to let him go. His mother was the gift that kept on giving."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin checked his watch. Two minutes later than the last time he'd looked. Ten minutes until the viewing ended. The hushed sound of feet brushing across carpet somewhere behind them turned his head. His sister didn't budge, her eyes locked on a point somewhere above their mother's closed coffin. Same expression for the last hour and fifty minutes. Indifferent. Dad pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sighed, turning to Devin for any sign it maybe a guest paying their last respects. He didn't have it in him to look for himself and be disappointed. They'd had one visitor, an old friend and almost girlfriend of Devin's, who'd sat behind them for ten minutes before heading out.\n\nThe funeral home director, a tall, long-faced elderly gentleman whom Devin remembered from every wake and funeral he'd attended here, going back decades, paused by the guestbook located on a small table just inside the room and gave it a quick look. He glanced in Devin's direction and nodded almost imperceptibly before stepping out of the room.\n\nKari had been right. The whole thing should have been a quick graveside memorial service. Fifteen minutes at the cemetery-just the three of them and a minister. They hadn't expected anyone to show up, not after the grisly details of Helen's rampage made the news. But attendance hadn't been the point.\n\nTheir dad had insisted Helen get a full memorial, regardless of the circumstances. Awake, funeral service, and interment. At first Devin had resisted, firmly in his sister's camp, but he eventually relented. Mom deserved to be recognized for her entire life's accomplishments, not the tragic consequences of the treacherous illness that had so unfairly twisted her mind. He still remembered the good times. They were pretty vague as an adult, but the picture books at the house had brought it all back. Honoring the Helen Gray they had all once known was the point."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She'd been a wonderful, loving mother for more than half of his life. She had traveled frequently for the CIA, but she had always been vibrant and entirely present for them when she was home. Then something had changed. In 2004, Devin had spent fall break at home, during his freshman year at Maryland, and things had been different. Mom had been unusually distant. Dad had tiptoed around her. Kari wouldn't talk to either of them.\n\nHer situation had worsened every year after that, Mom managing to pull it together for big occasions, like his college graduation. Sometimes she'd go a few months seeming entirely better-but she wasn't. She'd fall even deeper into the hole that had swallowed her, vanishing for weeks or longer. After his parents had separated, she'd disappeared for months. There was no point to dwelling on this any longer. She was gone. It was time to let it go.\n\nHis dad cracked his knuckles and stood up. \"I think that's it. I'm going to pay my last respects. I'll talk to the funeral director on the way out. We'll skip right to the graveside memorial and be done with it. Sorry to put you through this.\"\n\nKari took his hand and hugged him. \"It was the right thing to do. Sorry for being a pain about it.\"\n\nSomething caught his dad's eye, and he craned his head above her shoulder to get a better view. Devin followed his gaze to the viewing room's entrance. An older man in a black suit, with an unkempt beard, stood in the doorway-appearing hesitant to enter. Minus the deep tan, he looked like a Hasidic Jew who had misplaced his hat. His dad patted Kari's back.\n\n\"Looks like we have a visitor,\" he said, letting goof Kari. \"Karl?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The man stepped inside and smiled somberly. \"I didn't think you'd recognize me after all the years. And the beard.\"\n\n\"I might not have been able to pick you out of a crowd,\" said his dad, glancing around the room. \"But as you can see.\"\n\nThey met halfway across the room and shook hands, while Devin and Kari stayed behind.\n\n\"Do you recognize him?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Not at all,\" said Kari. \"Are you gonna see Marnie later?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Marnie Young. The hot fighter pilot friend of yours that stopped in,\" said Kari. \"The only other person that stopped by tonight? She gave you her number.\"\n\n\"I know who you're talking about,\" said Devin. \"Now isn't the time.\"\n\n\"Well. Whenever it's time, you should look her up,\" said Kari.\n\n\"I'll take that under advisement,\" said Devin before nodding toward his dad. \"Here they come.\"\n\nMason Gray accompanied the mystery visitor to the front of the room, stopping to introduce him.\n\n\"This is Karl Berg. He knew your mother from Langley,\" said Mason. \"I don't think you've ever met?\"\n\nBerg shook his head. \"No. But I've seen the two of you in pictures on her desk. Kind of watched you grow up. Ina noncreepy way. Though I'm sure it sounded creepy.\"\n\n\"It didn't,\" said Devin, shaking his hand. \"Thank you for coming.\"\n\n\"I had to come,\" said Berg. \"She earned it.\"\n\nKari took his hand reluctantly, maintaining a neutral expression.\n\n\"Good instincts. I wouldn't trust me, either,\" said Berg. \"Hey. If you don't mind, I'd like to take a few moments to pay my respects.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Their dad stepped out of the way and motioned toward the casket. \"Sorry. Of course.\"\n\nKarl Berg, who Devin assumed had worked in the same line of business as their mother at the CIA-Directorate of Operations, a. k. a. the Clandestine Service-spent a few quiet moments next to her coffin before returning.\n\n\"I'm genuinely sorry for your loss,\" said Berg, looking torn about something. \"I know things haven't been easy.\"\n\nNone of them responded right away, presumably because they didn't know what to say to a near-complete stranger who had just summarized the past decade and a half of their experience with Helen Gray in one sentence.\n\n\"It's been along haul, but it's all behind us now,\" said their dad, offering his hand to Berg. \"Thank you for coming. Seriously. It means a lotto me, and as funny as this might sound, I know it would have meant a lotto Helen. If you don't mind, I need to speak with the funeral director about tomorrow. We're going to cancel the memorial service. I hope that doesn't inconvenience you.\"\n\nThey shook hands. \"No. I just wanted to pass along my condolences and respect in person.\"\n\nHis dad looked as though he was about to cry. He nodded at Devin and Kari.\n\n\"I'll catch up with the two of you at Provinces. Have them pour me a Guinness?\"\n\n\"Got it. See you in a few,\" said Kari, turning to Devin. \"I'm going to freshen up. Meet you in the lobby.\"\n\n\"Kari. It was good to meet you,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Likewise,\" said Kari, barely feigning a smile."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Berg took a business card out of his suit coat pocket and handed it to Devin.\n\n\"Never know,\" said Berg. \"And please accept my sincerest condolences.\"\n\nDevin examined the card while Berg walked away. Just a name, email address, and phone number. No salutations, degrees, or career headings listed. Exactly what you'd expect from a former CIA intelligence operative. Kari broke the silence after he left the room.\n\n\"That was a little weird, huh? Barely says a word and leaves? Dad looked uncomfortable. Do you think there was something going on between this guy and Mom?\"\n\n\"I didn't get that vibe,\" said Devin.\n\n\"You're a dude,\" said Kari. \"And you didn't get the vibe from fighter pilot girl, either.\"\n\n\"Helicopter pilot,\" said Devin. \"And there was no vibe.\"\n\n\"I think your vibe reader is broken.\"\n\n\"I think we can find something else to talk about in front of our mother's casket,\" said Devin.\n\nShe started to backup. \"Whatever. See you in the lobby.\"\n\n\"Aren't you going to say goodbye or something?\" he asked, glancing at the casket.\n\n\"I've already made my peace with Mom,\" she said.\n\n\"Lucky you,\" said Devin. \"I'll be out in a few minutes.\"\n\n\"It's not going to happen in the next few minutes. Trust me,\" said Kari. \"Took me a few hundred hours of therapy.\"\n\n\"I'll give it a shot, anyway,\" he said, fairly certain his sister was kidding herself-and that none of them would ever truly come to peace with what their mother had done to them."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The significance of meeting in Harvey Rudd's basement wasn't lost on anyone-particularly Harvey Rudd. The thought of bringing another operative to his house, for any reason, had never crossed his mind. It didn't even enter into the realm of possibilities, because it was strictly forbidden by CONTROL. In fact, no contact between operatives outside of a CONTROL-assigned mission was permitted for any reason.\n\nDigital briefing packets outlining each operative's responsibilities on a mission were sent individually, so there was rarely a need to gather in advance to discuss anything, even for more complex operations. They'd either drive to mission areas individually or consolidate into one vehicle at a park and ride a few hours away, as they'd done for the Gray ambush. And the Gray arrangement had been a rare one, entirely dictated by the fact that she was a time-critical, moving target.\n\nCONTROL did everything possible to keep them apart. Long, boring drives loosened tongues, and the less they knew about each other the better, which was why he had a hard time coming to terms with the scene in front of him. The same crew he'd commanded a week ago, minus the two Helen Gray had shot, lounged quite comfortably on the leather sectional sofa in his basement'man cave.\" Jolene relaxed in his recliner, mostly to keep anyone else from sitting in it.\n\nHe'd discussed the situation with Jolene before everyone arrived. Either CONTROL planned on retiring and relocating them after this operation, or they intended to extract them. Given Jolene's involvement in a high-profile mission last week, the Helen Gray fiasco, and now this, they were certain that their usefulness here had come to an end. At the very least, they'd have to change states. Most likely regions. Definitely identities.\n\nIf any of the six operatives sitting in his basement were grabbed by the FBI, they could lead the authorities here, where it wouldn't be very difficult to piece together the rest of the puzzle. He'd be surprised if CONTROL kept them here. He just hoped they would be able to live off their retirement savings after they were recalled. A silly concern in the grand scheme of things, but a worry, nonetheless. One of a thousand worries that surfaced when they had been notified of the meeting-at their house."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He took a seat on a folding chair he'd brought into the basement from the garage and placed in front of the group.\n\n\"Everyone good with the drinks and snacks?\" asked Rudd.\n\nNobody had touched the assortment of sodas, chips, and candies he'd set out on the coffee table in front of them. Probably thinking the same thing: One of them had orders to eliminate everyone else. Jolene reached out and grabbed a handful of potato chips.\n\n\"The chips aren't poisoned,\" she said. \"Only the M& M's.\"\n\nA few thin smiles, but nothing beyond that-and nobody made a move for the snacks.\n\n\"Fine,\" said Rudd. \"I know this is highly irregular. How do you think we feel? They picked our fucking house. This is obviously the end for us here.\"\n\n\"Or the end of us,\" said Logan Walsh. \"And you get to live happily ever after-right herein this lovely house.\"\n\n\"Come on. How the hell would that even work? We have six cars, three without-of-state plates, parked in front of our house,\" said Rudd. \"We never have people over. It's probably big news on Nextdoor right now. How are we supposed to move all of your cars without someone noticing?\"\n\n\"What's Nextdoor?\" asked Leo Ward.\n\n\"It's a neighborhood-based social media platform that none of us are supposed to use,\" said Walsh.\n\n\"We're not members,\" said Rudd. \"We joined fora few minutes just to see how active our neighbors were on the site. Trust me, someone has noticed that we have guests for the first time ever. I'm pretty sure we were all supposed to create an account for that purpose, and then delete it.\"\n\n\"We are,\" said Walsh, glaring at Ward."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What? I live out in the sticks,\" said Ward. \"My nearest neighbor is a mile away.\"\n\n\"This wasn't some kind of trick to get us all in one place,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"No offense, but I'll still pass on the snacks,\" said Walsh, a slim grin on his face.\n\nRudd honestly couldn't tell if he was serious about the poisoning stuff or not.\n\n\"Can we get on with the business at hand?\" said Nathan Clark, a regular member of Rudd's team. \"CONTROL didn't send us here so Harvey and Jolene could take a crack at us. They'd send in professionals if they wanted us gone. Us and our families.\"\n\nEveryone mumbled their agreement.\n\n\"So why are we here? The mission briefing looked detailed enough,\" said Clark.\n\n\"A few things have changed since you got on the road. We're now staying in five different hotels, instead of just the Marriott.\"\n\n\"Sounds like an upgraded countersurveillance threat related to our target,\" said Walsh. \"Something that very recently developed.\"\n\n\"All we know is that they don't want us bunching up. Maybe they took a second look at the original mission packet and decided to play it extra safe,\" said Rudd. \"Or this could also just bean upgraded threat level issued by the Department of Homeland Security for the entire DC area-entirely unrelated to Helen or Devin Gray-and CONTROL isn't taking any chances onus somehow getting swept up into it.\"\n\n\"The timing suggests otherwise,\" said Clark. \"CONTROL doesn't take unnecessary chances. If they split us up at the last minute-something changed.\"\n\n\"It's a fair assumption,\" said Rudd. \"Which is why I assume we're meeting hereto go over the changes, instead of there.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What are the other changes?\" said Clark, checking his watch.\n\n\"You in a hurry?\" said Walsh.\n\nClark didn't respond. He didn't have to. The permanent dour look on his face answered the question. He was all business, all the time.\n\n\"CONTROL is looking fora second location used by Helen Gray. Her apartment yielded nothing,\" said Rudd. \"They think the son might lead us to it, if such a place even exists.\"\n\n\"Was that in our briefing?\" asked Ward.\n\n\"No. That was sent tome less than an hour ago, presumably while you were all in transit.\"\n\n\"Do we have any idea what CONTROL is looking for at the location?\" asked Walsh.\n\n\"Or what kind of a location?\" said Clark. \"A house, apartment, locker?\"\n\n\"No. We're in the dark as usual,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"And this Karl Berg? Any theories on how he fits into all of this?\" asked Walsh.\n\n\"Ex-CIA, like Helen Gray. Directorate of Operations. The two of them worked off and on together in the mid-to late nineties. But their paths didn't cross much at the CIA after that,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"Doesn't sound like much,\" said Ward.\n\n\"He was the only person from the CIA to show up at her wake,\" said Jolene. \"That's something.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" said Rudd. \"And the information I received this morning classified Berg as high-damage potential.\"\n\n\"He's retired, right?\" asked Walsh. \"Not working for any private entities of interest?\"\n\n\"As far as CONTROL knows, or is willing to tell us,\" said Rudd."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Interesting. That classification bears a lot of weight,\" said Walsh. \"Normally we'd be sent to get rid of someone in that category.\"\n\n\"Which must be why we're having this meeting,\" said Rudd. \"The mission sounded straightforward enough until I received the update.\"\n\n\"No doubt timed to arrive while we were on the way,\" said Walsh. \"What else did they send?\"\n\n\"And why aren't they using people closer to the area? Operatives that know the area like the back of their hand?\" said Rick Gentry, a Kentucky-based operative whom Rudd had worked with a half dozen times before. \"Or are they? I really hope this isn't a double-up situation.\"\n\nA double-up or duplicate team operation involved two separate teams pursuing the same goal-most often unaware of each other. It was a recipe for disaster, particularly fora complex surveillance operation like they had been assigned. Double the chance of detection. The duplicate team worked best for assassinations or thefts. Single, compressed events requiring a fail-safe.\n\nHe doubted CONTROL had put two teams on this, for that very reason-and another that he couldn't share. Jolene had surmised from her recent assignment that the pool of operatives working the Washington, DC, area had been decimated. She knew this because she had been woken by CONTROL about an hour and a half after Harvey had been dispatched to deal with Helen Gray, and sent to DC, where she had slipped onto one of the recovery floors at Howard University Hospital and injected two fiftysomething-year-old men with syringes that had been provided to her along with doctor's scrubs, a stethoscope, and a hospital staff identification card.\n\nBoth men had sustained head injuries, which suggested she was involved in more of a cleanup job than some kind of strategic assassination. The information about her mission had not been included in the current operation file, and they had no intention of sharing their theory with the team-for obvious reasons. He fought the urge to look at Jolene."},{"from":"human","value":"\"They wouldn't double up a surveillance,\" said Walsh."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"And it doesn't make a difference if they do. Orders are orders.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" said Gentry. \"Just thinking aloud.\"\n\n\"Should we all login to our computers and read the update before we start to analyze the plan?\" asked Walsh.\n\n\"I don't think it's necessary. Outside of what I told you about Berg's new status and the focus on finding a second location used by Helen Gray, the only other update relates to fixed surveillance locations. CONTROL has secured an apartment on the third floor of a complex across the street from Devin Gray's building, with a view of his balcony and bedroom window. From that apartment, we'll be able to give the trail cars enough notice to get into place and for the ground teams to move into position in case he opts fora walk or run.\"\n\n\"That's you, Sandy,\" said Walsh, nodding at the blonde woman across the coffee table from him.\n\nShe grabbed one of the diet sodas. \"Running or walking?\"\n\n\"Does anyone else look like they run regularly?\" said Walsh, getting a laugh from everyone.\n\n\"I should get paid more for staying in shape,\" she said. \"They have to bethinking about retiring us after this one. I mean, look at us. How did we get this old?\"\n\n\"Back to the plan. The apartment will be occupied primarily by Sandy, with one of us joining her when Gray is home. We'll workout a rotation for that. Since Sandy will be our primary ground surveillance point around Gray's apartment complex, we have to assume he'll take notice of her. So Sandy will not rotate into the trail cars or any surveillance duty outside of the restaurants or coffee shops within walking distance or reasonable driving distance from the apartment,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"I hate being stuck in place,\" she said."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Sorry."},{"from":"gpt","value":"There's a trail system adjacent to his apartment, and he's a runner, according to initial surveillance. He'll use it, and we can't afford to ignore the possibility he might make contact with Berg or whoever on familiar ground,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"What if he drives to a different trail or park to run?\" said Walsh. \"Places like that make ideal handoff or dead-drop points.\"\n\n\"We can put her in a logical place for runners. We just have to be judicious about it,\" said Rudd. \"We can't have her show up everywhere he runs in the city. Hopefully, he runs near his apartment most of the time. He'll get used to seeing her.\"\n\nSandy Jones had a skeptical look on her face, which Rudd suddenly realized was shared by everyone.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"We can't cover him all the time,\" said Walsh. \"At best, we're looking at what, fifty percent coverage?\"\n\n\"Maybe less,\" said Gentry. \"Someone could slip into his apartment during the day and leave something. We'd never know. If he runs a solid surveillance-detection route, we don't have enough assets to track him.\"\n\n\"If he runs a remotely competent SDR, we'll lose him, and don't even get me started on his apartment. No listening devices or cameras authorized?\" said Ward. \"This almost feels like pointless busywork.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about? We'll be using tracking devices,\" said Rudd. \"CONTROL made it clear that aside from Sandy, they want us to keep our distance. He's a trained countersurveillance expert. Former FBI intelligence investigator. This guy spies on spies fora living.\"\n\n\"We all read that in the data packet,\" said Walsh. \"But his SDR might involve the Metro, an Uber, a public bus, changing vehicles. If he's as good as his file suggests, we don't stand a chance of following him without making it really obvious.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"And he probably sweeps his vehicle for bugs,\" said Gentry. \"I agree with Leo. CONTROL can't seriously think we'll be able to keep good enough track of him. I bet they're prepositioning us fora hit. They probably have an entirely different team-a specialist group-looking for Berg or other contacts of interest. If Berg or someone else shows up, they'll callus off our pointless surveillance and ready us for action. Why else would they change Berg's status?\"\n\nRudd considered Rick's theory fora moment. It didn't actually sound that far-fetched, given the reality of their next-to-impossible assignment. Jolene had said as much before everyone had showed up, and he'd agreed. CONTROL was asking the B-team, more like the C-team, to do a job meant for the A-team. Looking at it from Rick's perspective made a lot of sense.\n\n\"We'd already be familiar with his daily routine. His favorite restaurants, coffee shops, shopping stops. His habits,\" said Rudd. \"Taking him out would be a simple job for this over-the-hill crew.\"\n\n\"Why not just tell us all of that upfront?\" asked Sandy. \"If it's even true.\"\n\n\"Probably because they see some value in our surveillance and want us focusing on one job at a time,\" said Rudd. \"It won't be a perfect surveillance job-\"\n\n\"Not even close,\" said Gentry.\n\n\"They know that. They have to know that,\" said Rudd. \"By putting us on the job, no matter how futile it turns out to be, they gain more surveillance coverage than they had before-without eating into their limited pool of specialists. This job would be near impossible for even the best in the business, especially given Gray's background. I think they're parking us on Gray in case they decide to eliminate him. If we happen to stumble on a clue to the whereabouts of his mother's suspected hideaway or catch him meeting up with Karl Berg, all the better.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We're just pulling stuff out of our asses right now,\" said Clark.\n\n\"This is brainstorming,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"This is pointless,\" said Clark. \"We execute CONTROL's orders to the best of our ability. Just like we've always done. If they decide to kill him, we kill him. Until then, we watch him. That's it. I don't understand why we're yakking about this. We do what CONTROL tells us to do. Period. Any questions?\"\n\n\"Okay then,\" said Walsh, rolling his eyes. \"I guess that's it.\"\n\n\"Always a pleasure,\" added Sandy, nodding at Clark.\n\nRudd still didn't understand why they had been brought together like this. The one thing CONTROL had most definitely accomplished with this awkward, impromptu social gathering was to drive home the fact that he wouldn't miss any of them when this was over. Maybe that had been apart of their intention. If so-mission accomplished. He hoped to never see any of them again after this trip.\n\nRudd had the same thought again, ten minutes later, after he'd backed their loaded SUV out of the garage and stopped at the bottom of the driveway. He pressed the garage remote and took Jolene's hand, watching the bay door slowly close on the home they had shared for close to three decades. If his instinct about this upcoming mission proved correct, this would be the last time he looked at their house. Oddly, he wasn't sad. He felt more relieved than anything. A little excited, even.\n\n\"I'm ready to move on from this place,\" he said. \"All of it, if that's what they intend.\"\n\nShe squeezed his hand. \"Me too. Just promise me one thing.\"\n\n\"Anything.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I get to kill Gray.\"\n\n\"Only if CONTROL orders it,\" said Rudd, kissing her cheek.\n\n\"Of course,\" she said. \"I'm not a psychopath.\"\n\nThey both chuckled a little. That was one of the many things he loved about Jolene. Her sense of humor. Of course, she was a psychopath. They all were. How could they not be-and still do this cold-blooded work for all these years?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin dropped his toothbrush in the stainless-steel cup next to the bathroom sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like shit, to put it mildly. The past ten days had taken an unexpected physical toll on him. He'd expected the emotional wipeout, which he understood would knock him down a few notches physically. But this was something entirely different. He felt as he had when he'd woken up the morning after his first marathon. Every marathon, for that matter. Utterly spent and fatigued to the bone.\n\nThe sleeplessness had to be a big part of why he felt as though he could take a twenty-four-hour nap. It hadn't been the stare-at-the-ceiling-all-night variety. That would have been too easy. He'd drifted in and out all night, thinking he'd never fallen asleep, his brain racing to make sense of the facts one moment and wrapping itself around some vaguely connected reality the next. Nine straight nights of this, with no end insight.\n\nHe'd dropped his sister at the airport a few hours ago and grabbed some takeout from a nearby Mexican restaurant, hoping to eat himself into a coma. Maybe just the act of sending Kari home would breakup whatever dynamic his mind had established over the past several days. Same with taking a short hiatus from his dad. Devin had told Mason that he'd swing by over the weekend, lying to him about needing to put in some face time at work. He'd never brought up the fourteen-day forced vacation triggered by the hotel job. As far as his dad knew, he was on bereavement leave.\n\nHe just needed a few days away from Falls Church. A little space from ground zero to recalibrate. The dark circles under his eyes told him a big part of his recalibration would involve sleep-or trying. A burrito the size of his forearm and the cheese quesadilla sitting in his stomach wagered he'd be out as soon as he went horizontal. Devin wasn't so sure."},{"from":"human","value":"He turned the light off and shuffled out of the bathroom to his unmade bed."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Hadn't some famous Navy SEAL said something about making your bed if you wanted to change the world? Looked like the world would have to wait a few days. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and let his house sandals fall to the carpet before grabbing his phone off the nightstand. More out of habit than anything else, he activated the home screen to see if he had any messages.\n\nHe'd been texting back and forthwith Marnie Young over the past few days, throwing around the idea of grabbing a drink or coffee when everything with his mom settled down. She'd just recently left the Marine Corps after fifteen years and was temporarily living at home in Falls Church with her parents-until she landed a job in DC.\n\nShe was looking for something on Capitol Hill, which could springboard her into politics or a policy position. Her backup plan was to join the fairly large pool of the recently departed or retired officers working senior positions in the civilian side of the Department of Defense-in or as close to the Beltway as possible. She didn't want to shut the door on Capitol Hill.\n\nThe screen showed one text message, from a number he didn't recognize. Actually, it was three numbers and a dash, followed by two numbers. Spam or some kind of automatic message update from something he'd mistakenly opted into previously. Nothing from Marnie. He was about to activate the Do Not Disturb feature and put the phone back on the nightstand when he caught a line of the text.\n\nRespond with first movie you saw in the theaters and the first and last name of your first prom date. No spaces. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.\n\nWhat the hell? The last line was something his mom had said a lot throughout his childhood. They'd watched Star Wars as a family at least a hundred times when he was little, and she'd teased him with that line whenever it was time to do chores or she'd needed him to do something."},{"from":"human","value":"Intrigued, he typed HomeAloneEricaCohen and pressed send, surprised by how easily the information from his past had come to him."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Now what? The phone buzzed in his hand, startling him. The number calling read Unknown. Seriously? Telemarketing shenanigans had just graduated to the next level. Somehow, they had linked him to one of his mom's old sayings. Probably something she'd submitted as a challenge question online and was subsequently sold to some data-collection outfit.\n\nBut what if this was something else?\n\nDevin accepted the call. Why not? He could always hangup if it was indeed anew telemarketer.\n\n\"Hello?\" he said.\n\nHis mother's voice answered.\n\n\"Devin. If you're hearing this, something has gone seriously wrong. You've either already attended my funeral or I've been missing for several days. I triggered this messaging protocol ten days ago, in response to what I either perceived as an imminent, nonsurvivable threat against my life or an attempted kidnapping. Funeral or missing, I'm gone. These people don't leave witnesses.\"\n\nA short pause ensued, followed by: \"I need to verify your voice now. After the beep, please tell me the make and model of the car we bought you in high school and then say, \"I'm really not interested in anew car. Please take me off your list. '\"\n\nWhat the hell? \"Honda Civic. I'm not interested in anew car. Please take me off your list.\"\n\nThe call disconnected. No. No. No. Wait. Did he say something wrong? Shit. He'd forgotten to say'really interested.\" Did he really just mess up? A text message appeared a moment later.\n\nUse headphones and click this link. https:// dfe740-22GW3."},{"from":"human","value":"Interesting."},{"from":"gpt","value":"She thought someone might be listening. He got up from the bed and made his way to the kitchen island, where he kept his running headphones in one of the drawers. With the headphones ready, he poured a glass of water to make his trip to the kitchen appear more natural to an outside observer. If they had cameras in his house, it wouldn't matter. He'd have to sweep for surveillance devices later. On his way back to the bedroom, he clicked the link, which connected him to a voice message.\n\n\"Dial or say two at anytime if you're under duress.\" Along pause ensued before his mother's voice continued. \"Devin. Sorry to keep this abrupt. I need you to see what I've been working on for the past twenty years. I'm not trying to makeup for what I put all of you through. I can never do that. Take a look and decide for yourself what should be done with it. To continue this message, input the numeric digits corresponding to the year we took you to see your first Orioles game.\"\n\nHe didn't have to think about it, which was probably why his mother had picked it as a security question. They'd taken him the same year their new stadium, Camden Yards, had opened. But the answer contained the number two, which would trigger the duress protocol. She would have thought of that, right? Of course. He tapped'1993,\" praying he'd hear her voice again. Mostly because he wanted to hear her voice again. He hadn't made a decision one way or the other about her proposal.\n\n\"Smart kid. Here's what I need you to do. First: Assume you're currently under professional surveillance. Trust me on that. If I was even remotely close with my theory, they'll be watching you closely. Second: Please keep your father and sister out of this. Entirely. Press two to continue.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He sat down on the bed and pressed one, guessing she wouldn't follow the same pattern.\n\n\"Sorry about that. Can't be too careful. Here's what I need you to do, and don't write any of this down. Tomorrow morning, at a normal hour for you, place your phone in your safe and run a three-hour SDR. Check your vehicle for trackers before leaving. Physically disable any systems like OnStar. Leave your E-ZPass behind. You must go dark to and from this destination. No credit cards or anything traceable. I know what you're thinking-Mom can't even let goof this shit after she's dead.\"\n\nHe stifled a laugh. Mom's sense of humor could be wicked, particularly when things were tough going. Dad had called it gallows humor. Devin had never really understood it until he'd started working for the Special Surveillance Group. The long, thankless days and nights on stakeout that yielded nothing. Exhaustively choreographed, hours-long street-surveillance gigs to track a target to an adult video store. They became the stand-up comedians of gallows humor.\n\n\"I hope that made you laugh a little. Here's where you're headed tomorrow. It's a win-win situation no matter what. Head to the first place we took you for hard-shell crabs. At the marina, look fora boat named after our first dog. You'll find a waterproof pouch in the bottom galley drawer. In addition to a file with the information I need you to examine, you'll find a one-hundred-dollar bill to pay for lunch. A hundred bucks buys a lot of fresh crabs-and a few ice-cold beers to wash them down. Press three to repeat that message or one to continue.\"\n\nDevin tapped one."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I love you, Kari, and your father so much, Devin. I can't tell you how sorry I am that I put the three of you through all of this. Be very careful, and don't trust anyone-except the one I send your way.\"\n\nThe call ended, and he stared at the phone for several seconds. Did that really just happen? His mom had somehow put together an automated phone and text-message-alert system in case someone tried to murder or kidnap her? This either took her craziness to the next level or-he didn't know. It had to be more of the madness. Right?\n\nHe lay down with the phone still in his hand and stared at the ceiling. Mayas well get used to the view. The prospect of a food-induced sleep had just been revoked. His heart raced at twice its resting rate, his feet and hands tingling. It would take him a few hours to comedown from this adrenaline rush. Whether he could fall asleep after that was anyone's guess.\n\nDevin looked at the initial text message again. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. Of all the things she could have picked to say, this hit him pretty hard. He could picture them stuffed into the corner of the sectional, snuggled up under a blanket watching Star Wars. Mom and Dad in the middle. Kari on one side. Devin on the other. He wiped the tears from his eyes. What the hell happened at that intersection in Tennessee, Mom?\n\nMaybe the answer waited for him in Annapolis, on a boat named Sadie. There was only one way to find out. Worst-case scenario? The information turned out to be nothing. Devin enjoying a lazy afternoon cracking open perfectly seasoned hard-shell crabs and downing a few cold beers while overlooking the water. Best-case scenario? It all depended on what was in the file. Either way, he'd enjoy cold beers and steaming-hot crabs for lunch. Like his mom said: win-win."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harvey Rudd braced one hand against the dashboard, his eyes fixed on the phone screen held firmly in the other. As the SUV lurched to a stop, his torso pressed against the lap and shoulder belts.\n\n\"Take it easy,\" said Rudd. \"We're not in a race.\"\n\n\"That was the shortest yellow light I've ever seen,\" said Jolene.\n\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\n\"Don't uh-huh me,\" she said.\n\n\"Yep.\"\n\n\"That's even worse.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" he said, getting a sharp elbow to the ribs under his raised arm.\n\n\"Dammit. That hurt,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"Then knock it off,\" she said. \"Unless you'd like to do the driving.\"\n\n\"I wish.\"\n\nThe truth was that Jolene drove like this all the time-and she knew it better than he did. Her driving fell somewhere on the scale between extremely impatient and overly aggressive, trending toward the latter. Because of this, she rarely drove during operations. They'd both agreed on that. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to put her in the driver's seat today.\n\nJolene could use electronic devices just fine, but she couldn't troubleshoot them to save her life. Their communications-and-control gear wasn't overly complicated, but they couldn't afford a critical technology slipup on this mission. The job itself would prove difficult enough, and their performance over the next several days would likely determine their future living conditions.\n\n\"Looks like he's pulling into a strip mall up ahead, on the left side just after Hartwick Road,\" said Rudd. \"The map is showing a Starbucks. This is the southeast edge of the University of Maryland's campus. Gray's alma mater.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"The perfect place to discreetly meet someone. Lots of open space and publicly accessible buildings on campus,\" said Jolene.\n\n\"Ora nearby running trail. I bet there are several close to campus.\"\n\nHe relayed the situation to the two other teams over the push-to-talk satellite radio handset, sending Clark, their lone wolf operative, to the College Park– University of Maryland Metro station a half mile to the east, and Walsh to cover the bus stop a few hundred feet north of the Starbucks on Baltimore Avenue. He had Leo with him, just in case Gray decided to take a bus ride. Harvey and his wife would circle back and watch the bus station several blocks south.\n\nIf Gray got back into his car and headed to campus fora run, there wasn't much they could do. Sandy was back at Gray's apartment complex, installing discreet cameras on each level of the parking garage so they could get a sense of where he was headed each time he left. They'd only had time to install two trackers on his vehicle overnight. If the university proved to be one of Gray's regular running spots, they'd bring Sandy into keep an eye on him. Given the close proximity to his apartment, he could start her tomorrow if Gray returned. No need to spend more time establishing a longer pattern.\n\nThey always worked moving surveillance like this. Basic surveillance cameras at the target's residence or work to make bigger-picture assessments about his movement. For the actual surveillance work, they employed a minimum of three cars: a control car to coordinate the overall effort and rotate into the active surveillance as needed; a car with two operatives so they could immediately follow their target on foot until the other cars could find parking and join the effort; and a car with alone operative. If they had additional personnel, they'd add more lone operatives. This stretched their surveillance capability while provoking the least suspicion. Most cars on the road at any given time had a single occupant."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"If he had unlimited resources, he'd put a few male-female teams together. Couples-real or fake-were often overlooked entirely by countersurveillance teams when forced to analyze more complex, dynamic settings like a crowded park or packed highway. By necessity, countersurveillance efforts became a probabilities game in those scenarios. A basic risk-assessment calculation, with couples at the very bottom of the list, due to the real and perceived complexities of two people working together seamlessly without giving themselves away. Real indeed, he thought, squeezing Jolene's hand.\n\nLess than a block past the stoplight, Jolene parked them in front of a 7-Eleven, parallel with Baltimore Avenue and pointed north, where they could spot Gray if he decided to use the bus stop south of the Starbucks. A pair of binoculars ensured that. The only matter still in question was who would get to ride the bus with Gray. Marital instinct told him he'd pulled the short straw. Thirty minutes later, Gray's car still hadn't moved from the strip mall parking lot.\n\n\"He's been therefor awhile,\" said Jolene.\n\nA half hour wasn't unusual fora single person at a coffee shop. You sit and relax with your drink. Read a book. Scroll through your phone. The Starbucks was close to campus, so maybe he was checking out the ladies. All within the range of possibility, but the longer it went past thirty minutes, the more it piqued his suspicion.\n\n\"Couldn't hurt to drive past once,\" said Rudd. \"Just to make sure.\"\n\nJolene shifted the SUV into drive and had them in the Starbucks parking lot a minute later, well exceeding the posted speed limit the entire time. He'd started to guide her toward the location of Gray's vehicle, which sat one row over, directly in front of Starbucks, when one of the trackers started moving. The second tracker remained in place, which was entirely possible. The GPS trackers were motion activated to conserve batteries and reported their position every fifteen seconds."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"If the initial vehicle motion didn't activate them at the same time, a lag occurred. The lag actually worked in the surveillance team's favor if it was long enough. A seven-second lag gave them what appeared to be real-time coverage. A skilled countersurveillance expert like Gray couldn't use the fifteen-second'dark\" period to disappear in a covered parking garage or other preplanned evasion route.\n\n\"Gray might be on the move,\" he said.\n\nRudd scanned the parking area in front of Starbucks, expecting to see a black SUV backing out or driving in the opposite direction. Instead, a silver sedan drove by on the other side of the double row, its movement matching one of the trackers. The other still hadn't moved.\n\n\"Shit,\" he muttered.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" asked his wife.\n\n\"Stop behind that white SUV. I think he gave us the slip.\"\n\n\"How? The tracker is moving, right?\" she said.\n\n\"One of the trackers is moving, and it just passed us,\" said Rudd.\n\nHe hopped out the moment she stopped and followed the tracker to a parked minivan. The tracking app put the transmitter inside the vehicle. Or under it. He lowered himself to the pavement and searched underneath, spotting the garage remote– size, black rectangular box lying in the middle of the parking space. He pressed his body into the gap between the asphalt and metal chassis, stretching his arm until his fingertips grazed the tracker. After a few more tries, one of them nearly dislocating his shoulder, he retrieved the tracker. He stood up a little too quickly, a sense of light-headedness and vertigo overtaking him.\n\n\"You okay?\" asked Jolene.\n\nHe nodded, leaning against the car parked next to the minivan to keep his balance. An SUV pulled into the empty space on the opposite side of the van, which he surmised had moments before been occupied by the silver sedan. Gray had placed one tracker on the sedan and tossed the other under his own SUV before backing out-carefully so he didn't run it over. He could have put them both on the silver sedan and let the owner of the car lead them around fora while, but that diversion could have ended at an office just down the street."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Instead, he'd split the trackers, keeping one in place in an attempt to convince them he'd found only one. Ten minutes after the silver sedan took off, he could have slapped the other one on any car leaving the strip mall and sent them on a second pursuit. Rudd looked around, wondering if Gray was watching him.\n\nHe could have removed the trackers and parked his SUV around the block. For all Rudd knew, he could be sitting in the Starbucks right now, taking pictures of him. Shit. He should never have gotten out of the SUV. What had he been thinking? He hadn't, because he was fifty-six years old and getting rusty. While he stood there feeling like an idiot, a woman burst out of Starbucks-headed directly for him. She wore hospital scrubs and carried a purse in one hand and a large to-go cup in the other.\n\n\"Excuse me, sir?\" she said, slowing as she approached.\n\n\"Yes?\" he said, feeling stable enough to stand on his own.\n\n\"Are you all right? It looked like you took a knee. I work in the ER at Doctors Community Hospital,\" she said.\n\n\"No. I'm fine. Thank you,\" he said, holding up the tracker-partially concealed. \"My garage door opener fell out of our car somehow. We'd parked hereabout an hour ago, so I figured I'd take a look. Bingo. Except I stood up a little too fast. Got a little woozy.\"\n\n\"Does that happen to you often?\" she asked.\n\n\"No. Not really,\" he said.\n\n\"Honey. We have to get going!\" yelled Jolene. \"We're already late.\"\n\n\"Sorry. I have to go,\" he said. \"The boss is calling.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The woman laughed. \"Smart man. If that happens again, you should schedule a checkup with your doctor. Could be the start of something more serious. Or maybe nothing at all. Better safe than sorry.\"\n\n\"Absolutely. I appreciate the advice,\" he said. \"Oh. I do have a crazy question if you don't mind. Not medical related.\"\n\n\"Sure,\" she said.\n\n\"How long have you been in this parking space?\" asked Rudd.\n\nThe woman looked understandably perplexed by his out-of-left-field question, but answered anyway.\n\n\"I'd say almost twenty-five minutes,\" she said, looking at him a little less trustingly than before. \"Are you sure you're okay?\"\n\n\"I'm fine. Thank you,\" he said before hurrying back to the SUV.\n\nAs soon as he shut the car door, Jolene sped away.\n\n\"Slowdown. We're in no hurry. He's either long gone or he's watching us from somewhere nearby,\" he said. \"Either way, we're done until he resurfaces at his apartment, or CONTROL gets a hit on a credit card.\"\n\n\"He won't use a credit card,\" said Jolene. \"Not this guy.\"\n\n\"Yeah. We may have underestimated him,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"I'm thinking it might be in CONTROL's best interest to take him out sooner than later,\" said Rudd, checking the time. \"Our mobile surveillance lasted a grand total of forty-two minutes, at least twenty-five of them spent sitting in the car watching tracker signals that had already been spoofed. Two of them smiling for countersurveillance photos.\"\n\n\"There's nothing we could have done about that,\" said Jolene. \"Protocol dictated that we check on the target.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Exactly. And Gray clearly knows this game better than any of us,\" said Rudd. \"If CONTROL considers this guy to be a serious threat, they'd be better off getting rid of him immediately. My gut tells me this guy could disappear without a trace if he wanted to-and still operate right in front of everyone's noses.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin guided his SUV around a tight turn on the narrow tree-lined road, hints of water shimmering through the lush branches. He hadn't been out herein a number of years, but knew he was close. A few more ninety-degree twists and he'd catch a glimpse of the marina beyond one of the gravel drives lining the road. A sailboat mast or maybe the blue hull of a boat hauled out for repairs and now living on stands. That was where he should turn. On the unmarked road leading directly to the marina. But Devin decided to take a different approach.\n\nHe took the turns slowly, stopping a few times to let oncoming traffic squeeze by. After passing the marina's unmarked gravel entrance, the towering trees opened to reveal a stark blue sky-and a sizable parking lot that marked the end of the road. Cantler's Riverside Inn, a favorite with locals, sat on the far side of the jam-packed lot, nestled right up against Mill Creek. It was the last thing you might expect to find if you had been out fora casual drive through Maryland's back roads.\n\nHe cruised around the lot for several minutes until a young couple, holding hands and pecking each other's lips, jumped into an open-top BMW and left him a space. Devin parked the SUV and gave it sometime. Ninety minutes, to be precise, sweating through his shirt behind a stand of trees near the entrance to the lot. He had to be absolutely certain that nobody had tracked him here.\n\nWhoever had tagged his vehicle with the two trackers had known what they were doing. He would never have found the transmitters without the aid of an RF detector. The placement was skilled enough to leave him wondering if they had installed a fail-safe. Something that transmitted far less frequently and would likely be missed on atypical electronic sweep. He'd spent an hour and a half at a little speck of a town on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, testing that theory. Waiting for anything that resembled a surveillance team to drive down Main Street. Nothing suspicious turned up, which didn't entirely surprise him."},{"from":"human","value":"The couple that showed outside of Starbucks had looked genuinely concerned about the tracker stunt."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The guy almost looked scared. Devin had snapped a few hundred photos of the couple and their vehicle from the third floor of the parking garage on the other side of Baltimore Avenue. A digital camera with telephoto lens was part of his standard countersurveillance kit, among other things, like a handheld RF detector.\n\nHe couldn't help but notice that the couple was older. Takeaway maybe thirty pounds from the red-faced guy who went fishing under the minivan for the tracker, and he'd look no different than either of the guys Devin had faced in the hotel stairwell a week or so ago. He'd revisit that thought later, when he asked Brendan Shea to run the couple's Tennessee license plates. The connection between the Tennessee plates and his mother's death couldn't be a coincidence, but he sensed something else. He just couldn't put his finger on it.\n\nWith the hour and a half expired and no bad guys insight, Devin returned to his SUV and retrieved a small nylon day pack to carry whatever he found on the boat. He took another long look around the lot before making his way to the weathered stockade fence that separated the parking lot from the marina. After slipping through a rickety gate held open by a faded orange traffic cone, he emerged on a stretch of grass intended for marina members. The gate he'd just used appeared to be a convenience that facilitated dinner and drinks after a day on the water.\n\nHe spotted a sailboat on stands closer to the water and decided to head in that direction. His assumption was that he'd find Sadie on land, unless his mother had taken up boating-a possibility, given how little he appeared to truly know about her. The sailboat turned out to be Screamin\" Mimi, so he turned his attention to a tightly packed row of three boats tucked away in the farthest corner of the expansive gravel lot. Two sailboats, one without a mast, and a very neglected-looking powerboat with a flying bridge. They were parked bow out, so he couldn't read their names."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He got halfway across the lot before he was accosted. A stringy-haired man dressed in grease-stained khaki pants and an equally grubby white T-shirt emerged from the trees along the waterfront, directly in his path. His weather-beaten face made it impossible to guess his age, but Devin would go with somewhere between forty-five and seventy if he had to estimate. He stood with his hands on his hips as Devin approached, appraising him the whole way.\n\n\"Looking for someone?\" he said, cordially enough.\n\n\"Actually, I'm looking fora boat,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Well. All the boats are over there,\" he said, canting his head toward the water.\n\n\"Thanks. I'm looking for my mother's boat, which I assumed was not in the water,\" said Devin. \"The boat is named Sadie?\"\n\n\"Is that a question or a fact?\" said the man.\n\n\"The boat name is a fact. I'm asking if it's here,\" said Devin, starting to get a little annoyed.\n\n\"Can I see some identification?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" he said, glad he hadn't left his wallet back in the car.\n\nThe man, who he assumed to be more than a dockhand at the marina, scrutinized his driver's license, glancing back and forth between the card and his face several times, like an East German border guard. He handed it back with a nod.\n\n\"Sorry about all that,\" he said. \"Your mother gave me some specific instructions, and a fair sum to back them up. Her boat is the one without the mast. It's been at the marina awhile.\"\n\n\"When did she buy it?\"\n\n\"Last year, toward the end of the summer,\" he said. \"She's only been upon it twice.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Do you remember the last time she came by?\"\n\n\"Yep. Saw her about three weeks ago. She spent about ten minutes on the boat. Paid for the next three years of storage,\" he said. \"I kinda got the feeling she didn't buy it for sailing.\"\n\n\"I just learned about the boat yesterday,\" said Devin. \"She passed away a couple weeks ago.\"\n\n\"Oh. Damn. I'm very sorry to hear that. She seemed like a nice lady.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Devin. \"How do I getup on the boat? They seem so high when they're on those stands.\"\n\n\"I'll get you a ladder and meet you over there.\"\n\nPaying for three additional years of storage didn't make a ton of sense, but her visiting the boat a few weeks ago appeared to be tied to whatever had happened ten days ago. The man returned a few minutes later with a tall wooden ladder that looked as though it had been constructed during the Revolutionary War. Devin glanced at it skeptically.\n\n\"I know. It looks like a relic, but I guarantee this'll be around longer than one of those aluminum contraptions,\" he said, placing it against the hull. \"Just so you know, the boat needs a lot of work to make her seaworthy. Given what your mom paid me in advance for storage, I could get her in the water in time for you to enjoy the tail end of the season. If you're interested.\"\n\n\"I don't know the first thing about boats,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Plenty of folks around here that do,\" he said. \"I have the slip space for her-included in the price.\"\n\n\"How much did my mom pay for storage?\"\n\nThe guy laughed. \"She paid for storage-and discretion. Let me know what you want to do with the boat. No rush. Storage is all paid up fora while. My name's Frank, by the way. I own this fine establishment.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Thank you, Frank. For your continued discretion,\" said Devin. \"And I'll keep your offer in mind. I never thought of myself as the boating type, but... I'll think about it.\"\n\n\"You ever been out on the water?\" asked Frank. \"On something other than a cruise ship or ferry?\"\n\nDevin shook his head. \"Nope.\"\n\n\"Then you be sure to comeback when you're not busy, and I'll get you out there,\" said Frank. \"You'll know right away if you're the boating type or not-and god help you if you are.\"\n\n\"Why's that?\" said Devin.\n\n\"Because you'll be mortgaging your house in a few years to buy a bigger boat!\"\n\nDevin laughed. He liked this guy. If the file hidden inside the boat turned out to be a bust, he might take him upon the offer. Why the hell not?\n\n\"I'll let you know.\"\n\n\"And I'll leave you to your business,\" said Frank, saluting him before walking away.\n\nDevin wiped the sweat off his forehead and grabbed the ladder with both hands, immediately gaining a sense of what Frank had conveyed about it. The thing felt solid, as though it had been carved from a single piece of wood. Still, he tentatively stepped on the first rung, testing it with a few bounces before pushing up with his full body weight. It was a wooden ladder, after all.\n\nAt the top of the ladder, he grabbed the nearest stanchion poles and gave them a tug to make sure they were secure before using them as leverage to climb into the boat. He stood perfectly still in the cockpit, unsure how stable the boat would be with him onboard. The metal stands pressed up against the hull looked like a rickety arrangement to holdup an object that easily weighed several thousand pounds."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"As the author's co-writer, advance the plot.\\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\\nTitle: Deep Sleep\\nChapter: 11\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Silence.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mercifully.\\n\\n\\\"All righty then. Let's load up and get back to the office. That should get you on the road and headed home before rush hour traffic gets crazy. Don't want to holdup any of your vacations,\\\" said Shea, to around of grunts and groans. \\\"Quit your bitching. It's a paid vacation.\\\"\\n\\nDevin checked his watch on the way out: 5:35. Unless they were closer to DC than he'd guessed, that put him in heavy Beltway traffic on the ride from the office in Alexandria to his apartment in Hyattsville.\\n\\nHis estimate about the distance turned out to be pretty accurate. After a seventy-minute, light-traffic drive, and about a half hour inside the MINERVA headquarters building, he slumped into the leather driver's seat of his SUV and took a few moments to think about how he'd go about skipping town. His dad would not be keen on the idea of packing a suitcase and heading straight to the airport this morning, later today, or even tomorrow, for no other reason than he'required more notice than that.\\\" He could hear the words right now. His dad never rushed into things, or out of them.\\n\\nHe'd show up in a few days, which actually worked out better. Kari was a little more like herself when he wasn't around. A lot more. Mom's downward spiral had really done a number on her. Five years younger than Devin, she had been around for the worst of it, while he'd been away at college. He still felt guilty about that. He'd gone to school thirty minutes away, unaffected and mostly oblivious to their mother's unraveling. Kari had spent her high school years struggling with their mother's rapidly worsening psychosis and a just as swiftly dwindling collection of friends.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Falls Church, Virginia, was a small, densely packed community a few miles west of the National Mall, which put it just south of McClean, Virginia, home of the Central Intelligence Agency. Growing up, all Devin's friends\\\" parents had either worked on Capitol Hill in high-visibility jobs or'for the government.\\\" Most of the kids had known to stop asking questions when you got the generic answer. Even the new kids caught on, because word got around-even when it wasn't supposed to. As it had with their mother.\\n\\nKari had pulled a Houdini after graduation and never looked back-more like she never came back. She had applied to schools on the West Coast and had gotten accepted to UCLA, spending nearly all her vacation time with friends and her summer quarters loading upon prerequisites. She had graduated in five years with a master of social welfare degree and had immediately been hired at a major nonprofit organization, where she'd worked nonstop for the past five years. She'd been home twice since leaving for college almost fifteen years ago. Dad had visited her at least once a year, usually with Devin. She wouldn't let Mom visit and had seen her only once during the two times she made it back east. Mom had seemed to understand, or she hadn't cared. It had gotten harder to tell overtime, until he'd pretty much stopped seeing her, too. Devin didn't want to think about it anymore.\\n\\nHe opened the compact nylon satchel he'd thrown on the passenger seat and removed his phone. MINERVA required them to leave all personal items behind during operations, especially electronics devices. At the start of each operation, they were given a slim wallet preloaded with a basic identification card and enough cash to fulfill their mission, an encrypted and presumably untraceable smartphone, and any additional personal gear deemed necessary by the operation leader. They handed in their phones and wallets before departing for the mission staging area and retrieved them upon return.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Devin pressed the power button and set the phone on the seat before starting the SUV.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He shifted into reverse and checked the backup camera. All clear. The last thing he needed, while his fortune somewhat shined at MINERVA, was to back over one of his colleagues. Shea would undoubtedly interpret that as the unceremonious end to his good luck streak.\\n\\nThe phone caught his eye before he let his foot off the brake. The home screen was filled with missed-call notifications and text messages. He put the vehicle in park and grabbed the phone. Jesus. His dad had called and left voicemails seven times in the past two hours. He found text messages buried between the call notifications.\\n\\nPLEASE CALL MEAS SOON AS YOU GET THIS. VERY IMPORTANT.\\n\\nSERIOUSLY. NEED YOU TO CALL ME RIGHT AWAY.\\n\\nDEVIN. CALL ME NOW!\\n\\nDEVIN. I'M AT YOUR APARTMENT! WHERE ARE YOU!\\n\\nJUST CALL ME. SOMETHING HAPPENED. I'M PARKED AT YOUR PLACE.\\n\\nHEADING HOME. CALL ME OR COME BY ASAP!\\n\\nIT'S ABOUT HELEN. PLEASE CALL.\\n\\nOf course it was. It was always about her-though this sounded entirely different. His dad rarely overreacted to her antics, or anything for that matter. Devin had seen him frazzled once, maybe twice, since as far back as he could remember. And Mom had given him plenty of opportunities to lose his shit. He must have been one hell of an analyst at the CIA. A voice of reason in a troubled world, even as his own world fell apart. Respected enough that they kept him on for three years after dismissing Helen, which got him to thirty years of service and a full pension annuity.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He called his dad and braced for impact.\\n\\n\\\"Devin! I've been trying to get ahold of you for-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dad. Dad. I was working all night. I just got my phone back,\\\" interrupted Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Okay. Okay. Jeez. I'm sorry,\\\" said Mason Gray. \\\"I didn't even think of that. I just uh... I, uh. I don't know how to say this.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Did Mom do something crazy?\\\" asked Devin, regretting his choice of words.\\n\\nHis dad had made it abundantly clear over the years that he disapproved of the crude characterization. Apart of him still cared for her very deeply, despite everything she had put him through.\\n\\n\\\"Sorry. I didn't mean to say that,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"No. It's all right,\\\" said Mason. \\\"Maybe she really was crazy. Maybe that's the only way to describe it.\\\"\\n\\nDevin didn't like where this was going.\\n\\n\\\"Dad?\\\" said Devin. \\\"Is Mom okay?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No. She's not. She's dead,\\\" said Mason. \\\"She killed herself-but that's not the worst of it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\"\\n\\nHow could that not be the worst of it?\\n\\n\\\"Not on the phone. Can you come by the house?\\\" asked his dad. \\\"I'll make some breakfast. You must be hungry. What can I make you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dad. I'll be therein thirty to forty minutes,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I'll grab bagel sandwiches on the way.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Okay. I'll see you then.\\\"\\n\\nHe really didn't sound like himself at all.\\n\\n\\\"Dad?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yeah?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How bad is the rest of it?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It doesn't make sense,\\\" said Mason. \\\"They say she killed a Tennessee sheriff's deputy. Shot him right in the face.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Jesus. Let's talk about this at home,\\\" said Devin, but his dad kept going.\\n\\n\\\"That was after she kidnapped a seventy-six-year-old man from an assisted living facility in Branson, Missouri,\\\" he said, with no hint of emotion.\\n\\n\\\"Dad. I'm on my way home,\\\" said Devin, shifting the SUV into reverse.\\n\\n\\\"I don't even know when or if they'll release her body. They wouldn't say much,\\\" said Mason.\\n\\n\\\"When did they call?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They didn't. A Falls Church officer came by the house a little after five. Tennessee police found an old registration in the glove box with my address. Everyone at the department here knew she had issues.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"All right, Dad. Just sit down. Do some of that meditation you do everyday. And I'll be over before you know it. We'll figure this all out.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll make us some scrambled eggs with cheese and toast,\\\" said his dad, as though he hadn't heard a word Devin had just said.\\n\\n\\\"Sounds delicious. Do you want me to stay on the line? Are you okay?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I can't talk on the phone and make scrambled eggs at the same time,\\\" he said. \\\"I'll see you in a bit. Sorry I left all of those messages. Dome a favor and don't listen to them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll delete them,\\\" said Devin, taking a deep breath before continuing. \\\"Did you call Kari?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No. I'll call her in a little bit,\\\" said his dad. \\\"It was too early in LA.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'll call her with you.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"We can do it after breakfast or wait until later,\\\" said Devin. \\\"There's no hurry.\\\"\\n\\nAlong pause ensued.\\n\\n\\\"She would never have killed a police officer,\\\" said Mason. \\\"Something doesn't add up.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll be right home, Dad,\\\" said Devin. \\\"We can talk about it then.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"All right. I'll get breakfast ready,\\\" said Mason before disconnecting the call.\\n\\nDevin stared at the phone for several moments, perplexed by his dad's statement about the police officer. None of what he had just learned about his mom's final hours added up. Not a single word of it. But his dad almost sounded as though he hadn't been surprised by the kidnapping. Or maybe he was reading too much into the conversation. Devin hadn't slept in over twenty-four hours, and his dad didn't sound like himself.\\n\\nHe filed the thought away for later and backed out of the parking space without checking the backup camera. His time at MINERVA would be short lived, no matter whom he ran down in the parking lot. He'd have to call Brendan Shea sooner than later and explain why he couldn't leave the greater DC area. When the circumstances surrounding his mother's death surfaced... they'd be forced to let him go. His mother was the gift that kept on giving.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin checked his watch. Two minutes later than the last time he'd looked. Ten minutes until the viewing ended. The hushed sound of feet brushing across carpet somewhere behind them turned his head. His sister didn't budge, her eyes locked on a point somewhere above their mother's closed coffin. Same expression for the last hour and fifty minutes. Indifferent. Dad pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and sighed, turning to Devin for any sign it maybe a guest paying their last respects. He didn't have it in him to look for himself and be disappointed. They'd had one visitor, an old friend and almost girlfriend of Devin's, who'd sat behind them for ten minutes before heading out.\\n\\nThe funeral home director, a tall, long-faced elderly gentleman whom Devin remembered from every wake and funeral he'd attended here, going back decades, paused by the guestbook located on a small table just inside the room and gave it a quick look. He glanced in Devin's direction and nodded almost imperceptibly before stepping out of the room.\\n\\nKari had been right. The whole thing should have been a quick graveside memorial service. Fifteen minutes at the cemetery-just the three of them and a minister. They hadn't expected anyone to show up, not after the grisly details of Helen's rampage made the news. But attendance hadn't been the point.\\n\\nTheir dad had insisted Helen get a full memorial, regardless of the circumstances. Awake, funeral service, and interment. At first Devin had resisted, firmly in his sister's camp, but he eventually relented. Mom deserved to be recognized for her entire life's accomplishments, not the tragic consequences of the treacherous illness that had so unfairly twisted her mind. He still remembered the good times. They were pretty vague as an adult, but the picture books at the house had brought it all back. Honoring the Helen Gray they had all once known was the point.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She'd been a wonderful, loving mother for more than half of his life. She had traveled frequently for the CIA, but she had always been vibrant and entirely present for them when she was home. Then something had changed. In 2004, Devin had spent fall break at home, during his freshman year at Maryland, and things had been different. Mom had been unusually distant. Dad had tiptoed around her. Kari wouldn't talk to either of them.\\n\\nHer situation had worsened every year after that, Mom managing to pull it together for big occasions, like his college graduation. Sometimes she'd go a few months seeming entirely better-but she wasn't. She'd fall even deeper into the hole that had swallowed her, vanishing for weeks or longer. After his parents had separated, she'd disappeared for months. There was no point to dwelling on this any longer. She was gone. It was time to let it go.\\n\\nHis dad cracked his knuckles and stood up. \\\"I think that's it. I'm going to pay my last respects. I'll talk to the funeral director on the way out. We'll skip right to the graveside memorial and be done with it. Sorry to put you through this.\\\"\\n\\nKari took his hand and hugged him. \\\"It was the right thing to do. Sorry for being a pain about it.\\\"\\n\\nSomething caught his dad's eye, and he craned his head above her shoulder to get a better view. Devin followed his gaze to the viewing room's entrance. An older man in a black suit, with an unkempt beard, stood in the doorway-appearing hesitant to enter. Minus the deep tan, he looked like a Hasidic Jew who had misplaced his hat. His dad patted Kari's back.\\n\\n\\\"Looks like we have a visitor,\\\" he said, letting goof Kari. \\\"Karl?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The man stepped inside and smiled somberly. \\\"I didn't think you'd recognize me after all the years. And the beard.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I might not have been able to pick you out of a crowd,\\\" said his dad, glancing around the room. \\\"But as you can see.\\\"\\n\\nThey met halfway across the room and shook hands, while Devin and Kari stayed behind.\\n\\n\\\"Do you recognize him?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Not at all,\\\" said Kari. \\\"Are you gonna see Marnie later?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Marnie Young. The hot fighter pilot friend of yours that stopped in,\\\" said Kari. \\\"The only other person that stopped by tonight? She gave you her number.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I know who you're talking about,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Now isn't the time.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well. Whenever it's time, you should look her up,\\\" said Kari.\\n\\n\\\"I'll take that under advisement,\\\" said Devin before nodding toward his dad. \\\"Here they come.\\\"\\n\\nMason Gray accompanied the mystery visitor to the front of the room, stopping to introduce him.\\n\\n\\\"This is Karl Berg. He knew your mother from Langley,\\\" said Mason. \\\"I don't think you've ever met?\\\"\\n\\nBerg shook his head. \\\"No. But I've seen the two of you in pictures on her desk. Kind of watched you grow up. Ina noncreepy way. Though I'm sure it sounded creepy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It didn't,\\\" said Devin, shaking his hand. \\\"Thank you for coming.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I had to come,\\\" said Berg. \\\"She earned it.\\\"\\n\\nKari took his hand reluctantly, maintaining a neutral expression.\\n\\n\\\"Good instincts. I wouldn't trust me, either,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Hey. If you don't mind, I'd like to take a few moments to pay my respects.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Their dad stepped out of the way and motioned toward the casket. \\\"Sorry. Of course.\\\"\\n\\nKarl Berg, who Devin assumed had worked in the same line of business as their mother at the CIA-Directorate of Operations, a. k. a. the Clandestine Service-spent a few quiet moments next to her coffin before returning.\\n\\n\\\"I'm genuinely sorry for your loss,\\\" said Berg, looking torn about something. \\\"I know things haven't been easy.\\\"\\n\\nNone of them responded right away, presumably because they didn't know what to say to a near-complete stranger who had just summarized the past decade and a half of their experience with Helen Gray in one sentence.\\n\\n\\\"It's been along haul, but it's all behind us now,\\\" said their dad, offering his hand to Berg. \\\"Thank you for coming. Seriously. It means a lotto me, and as funny as this might sound, I know it would have meant a lotto Helen. If you don't mind, I need to speak with the funeral director about tomorrow. We're going to cancel the memorial service. I hope that doesn't inconvenience you.\\\"\\n\\nThey shook hands. \\\"No. I just wanted to pass along my condolences and respect in person.\\\"\\n\\nHis dad looked as though he was about to cry. He nodded at Devin and Kari.\\n\\n\\\"I'll catch up with the two of you at Provinces. Have them pour me a Guinness?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Got it. See you in a few,\\\" said Kari, turning to Devin. \\\"I'm going to freshen up. Meet you in the lobby.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Kari. It was good to meet you,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Likewise,\\\" said Kari, barely feigning a smile.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Berg took a business card out of his suit coat pocket and handed it to Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Never know,\\\" said Berg. \\\"And please accept my sincerest condolences.\\\"\\n\\nDevin examined the card while Berg walked away. Just a name, email address, and phone number. No salutations, degrees, or career headings listed. Exactly what you'd expect from a former CIA intelligence operative. Kari broke the silence after he left the room.\\n\\n\\\"That was a little weird, huh? Barely says a word and leaves? Dad looked uncomfortable. Do you think there was something going on between this guy and Mom?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I didn't get that vibe,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"You're a dude,\\\" said Kari. \\\"And you didn't get the vibe from fighter pilot girl, either.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Helicopter pilot,\\\" said Devin. \\\"And there was no vibe.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think your vibe reader is broken.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think we can find something else to talk about in front of our mother's casket,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nShe started to backup. \\\"Whatever. See you in the lobby.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Aren't you going to say goodbye or something?\\\" he asked, glancing at the casket.\\n\\n\\\"I've already made my peace with Mom,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Lucky you,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I'll be out in a few minutes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's not going to happen in the next few minutes. Trust me,\\\" said Kari. \\\"Took me a few hundred hours of therapy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll give it a shot, anyway,\\\" he said, fairly certain his sister was kidding herself-and that none of them would ever truly come to peace with what their mother had done to them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The significance of meeting in Harvey Rudd's basement wasn't lost on anyone-particularly Harvey Rudd. The thought of bringing another operative to his house, for any reason, had never crossed his mind. It didn't even enter into the realm of possibilities, because it was strictly forbidden by CONTROL. In fact, no contact between operatives outside of a CONTROL-assigned mission was permitted for any reason.\\n\\nDigital briefing packets outlining each operative's responsibilities on a mission were sent individually, so there was rarely a need to gather in advance to discuss anything, even for more complex operations. They'd either drive to mission areas individually or consolidate into one vehicle at a park and ride a few hours away, as they'd done for the Gray ambush. And the Gray arrangement had been a rare one, entirely dictated by the fact that she was a time-critical, moving target.\\n\\nCONTROL did everything possible to keep them apart. Long, boring drives loosened tongues, and the less they knew about each other the better, which was why he had a hard time coming to terms with the scene in front of him. The same crew he'd commanded a week ago, minus the two Helen Gray had shot, lounged quite comfortably on the leather sectional sofa in his basement'man cave.\\\" Jolene relaxed in his recliner, mostly to keep anyone else from sitting in it.\\n\\nHe'd discussed the situation with Jolene before everyone arrived. Either CONTROL planned on retiring and relocating them after this operation, or they intended to extract them. Given Jolene's involvement in a high-profile mission last week, the Helen Gray fiasco, and now this, they were certain that their usefulness here had come to an end. At the very least, they'd have to change states. Most likely regions. Definitely identities.\\n\\nIf any of the six operatives sitting in his basement were grabbed by the FBI, they could lead the authorities here, where it wouldn't be very difficult to piece together the rest of the puzzle. He'd be surprised if CONTROL kept them here. He just hoped they would be able to live off their retirement savings after they were recalled. A silly concern in the grand scheme of things, but a worry, nonetheless. One of a thousand worries that surfaced when they had been notified of the meeting-at their house.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He took a seat on a folding chair he'd brought into the basement from the garage and placed in front of the group.\\n\\n\\\"Everyone good with the drinks and snacks?\\\" asked Rudd.\\n\\nNobody had touched the assortment of sodas, chips, and candies he'd set out on the coffee table in front of them. Probably thinking the same thing: One of them had orders to eliminate everyone else. Jolene reached out and grabbed a handful of potato chips.\\n\\n\\\"The chips aren't poisoned,\\\" she said. \\\"Only the M& M's.\\\"\\n\\nA few thin smiles, but nothing beyond that-and nobody made a move for the snacks.\\n\\n\\\"Fine,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"I know this is highly irregular. How do you think we feel? They picked our fucking house. This is obviously the end for us here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Or the end of us,\\\" said Logan Walsh. \\\"And you get to live happily ever after-right herein this lovely house.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Come on. How the hell would that even work? We have six cars, three without-of-state plates, parked in front of our house,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"We never have people over. It's probably big news on Nextdoor right now. How are we supposed to move all of your cars without someone noticing?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What's Nextdoor?\\\" asked Leo Ward.\\n\\n\\\"It's a neighborhood-based social media platform that none of us are supposed to use,\\\" said Walsh.\\n\\n\\\"We're not members,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"We joined fora few minutes just to see how active our neighbors were on the site. Trust me, someone has noticed that we have guests for the first time ever. I'm pretty sure we were all supposed to create an account for that purpose, and then delete it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We are,\\\" said Walsh, glaring at Ward.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What? I live out in the sticks,\\\" said Ward. \\\"My nearest neighbor is a mile away.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"This wasn't some kind of trick to get us all in one place,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"No offense, but I'll still pass on the snacks,\\\" said Walsh, a slim grin on his face.\\n\\nRudd honestly couldn't tell if he was serious about the poisoning stuff or not.\\n\\n\\\"Can we get on with the business at hand?\\\" said Nathan Clark, a regular member of Rudd's team. \\\"CONTROL didn't send us here so Harvey and Jolene could take a crack at us. They'd send in professionals if they wanted us gone. Us and our families.\\\"\\n\\nEveryone mumbled their agreement.\\n\\n\\\"So why are we here? The mission briefing looked detailed enough,\\\" said Clark.\\n\\n\\\"A few things have changed since you got on the road. We're now staying in five different hotels, instead of just the Marriott.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sounds like an upgraded countersurveillance threat related to our target,\\\" said Walsh. \\\"Something that very recently developed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"All we know is that they don't want us bunching up. Maybe they took a second look at the original mission packet and decided to play it extra safe,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"Or this could also just bean upgraded threat level issued by the Department of Homeland Security for the entire DC area-entirely unrelated to Helen or Devin Gray-and CONTROL isn't taking any chances onus somehow getting swept up into it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The timing suggests otherwise,\\\" said Clark. \\\"CONTROL doesn't take unnecessary chances. If they split us up at the last minute-something changed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's a fair assumption,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"Which is why I assume we're meeting hereto go over the changes, instead of there.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What are the other changes?\\\" said Clark, checking his watch.\\n\\n\\\"You in a hurry?\\\" said Walsh.\\n\\nClark didn't respond. He didn't have to. The permanent dour look on his face answered the question. He was all business, all the time.\\n\\n\\\"CONTROL is looking fora second location used by Helen Gray. Her apartment yielded nothing,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"They think the son might lead us to it, if such a place even exists.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Was that in our briefing?\\\" asked Ward.\\n\\n\\\"No. That was sent tome less than an hour ago, presumably while you were all in transit.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Do we have any idea what CONTROL is looking for at the location?\\\" asked Walsh.\\n\\n\\\"Or what kind of a location?\\\" said Clark. \\\"A house, apartment, locker?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No. We're in the dark as usual,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"And this Karl Berg? Any theories on how he fits into all of this?\\\" asked Walsh.\\n\\n\\\"Ex-CIA, like Helen Gray. Directorate of Operations. The two of them worked off and on together in the mid-to late nineties. But their paths didn't cross much at the CIA after that,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"Doesn't sound like much,\\\" said Ward.\\n\\n\\\"He was the only person from the CIA to show up at her wake,\\\" said Jolene. \\\"That's something.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Exactly,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"And the information I received this morning classified Berg as high-damage potential.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He's retired, right?\\\" asked Walsh. \\\"Not working for any private entities of interest?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"As far as CONTROL knows, or is willing to tell us,\\\" said Rudd.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Interesting. That classification bears a lot of weight,\\\" said Walsh. \\\"Normally we'd be sent to get rid of someone in that category.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Which must be why we're having this meeting,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"The mission sounded straightforward enough until I received the update.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No doubt timed to arrive while we were on the way,\\\" said Walsh. \\\"What else did they send?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And why aren't they using people closer to the area? Operatives that know the area like the back of their hand?\\\" said Rick Gentry, a Kentucky-based operative whom Rudd had worked with a half dozen times before. \\\"Or are they? I really hope this isn't a double-up situation.\\\"\\n\\nA double-up or duplicate team operation involved two separate teams pursuing the same goal-most often unaware of each other. It was a recipe for disaster, particularly fora complex surveillance operation like they had been assigned. Double the chance of detection. The duplicate team worked best for assassinations or thefts. Single, compressed events requiring a fail-safe.\\n\\nHe doubted CONTROL had put two teams on this, for that very reason-and another that he couldn't share. Jolene had surmised from her recent assignment that the pool of operatives working the Washington, DC, area had been decimated. She knew this because she had been woken by CONTROL about an hour and a half after Harvey had been dispatched to deal with Helen Gray, and sent to DC, where she had slipped onto one of the recovery floors at Howard University Hospital and injected two fiftysomething-year-old men with syringes that had been provided to her along with doctor's scrubs, a stethoscope, and a hospital staff identification card.\\n\\nBoth men had sustained head injuries, which suggested she was involved in more of a cleanup job than some kind of strategic assassination. The information about her mission had not been included in the current operation file, and they had no intention of sharing their theory with the team-for obvious reasons. He fought the urge to look at Jolene.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"They wouldn't double up a surveillance,\\\" said Walsh.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"And it doesn't make a difference if they do. Orders are orders.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yeah,\\\" said Gentry. \\\"Just thinking aloud.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Should we all login to our computers and read the update before we start to analyze the plan?\\\" asked Walsh.\\n\\n\\\"I don't think it's necessary. Outside of what I told you about Berg's new status and the focus on finding a second location used by Helen Gray, the only other update relates to fixed surveillance locations. CONTROL has secured an apartment on the third floor of a complex across the street from Devin Gray's building, with a view of his balcony and bedroom window. From that apartment, we'll be able to give the trail cars enough notice to get into place and for the ground teams to move into position in case he opts fora walk or run.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's you, Sandy,\\\" said Walsh, nodding at the blonde woman across the coffee table from him.\\n\\nShe grabbed one of the diet sodas. \\\"Running or walking?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Does anyone else look like they run regularly?\\\" said Walsh, getting a laugh from everyone.\\n\\n\\\"I should get paid more for staying in shape,\\\" she said. \\\"They have to bethinking about retiring us after this one. I mean, look at us. How did we get this old?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Back to the plan. The apartment will be occupied primarily by Sandy, with one of us joining her when Gray is home. We'll workout a rotation for that. Since Sandy will be our primary ground surveillance point around Gray's apartment complex, we have to assume he'll take notice of her. So Sandy will not rotate into the trail cars or any surveillance duty outside of the restaurants or coffee shops within walking distance or reasonable driving distance from the apartment,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"I hate being stuck in place,\\\" she said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Sorry.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There's a trail system adjacent to his apartment, and he's a runner, according to initial surveillance. He'll use it, and we can't afford to ignore the possibility he might make contact with Berg or whoever on familiar ground,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"What if he drives to a different trail or park to run?\\\" said Walsh. \\\"Places like that make ideal handoff or dead-drop points.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We can put her in a logical place for runners. We just have to be judicious about it,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"We can't have her show up everywhere he runs in the city. Hopefully, he runs near his apartment most of the time. He'll get used to seeing her.\\\"\\n\\nSandy Jones had a skeptical look on her face, which Rudd suddenly realized was shared by everyone.\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We can't cover him all the time,\\\" said Walsh. \\\"At best, we're looking at what, fifty percent coverage?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Maybe less,\\\" said Gentry. \\\"Someone could slip into his apartment during the day and leave something. We'd never know. If he runs a solid surveillance-detection route, we don't have enough assets to track him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"If he runs a remotely competent SDR, we'll lose him, and don't even get me started on his apartment. No listening devices or cameras authorized?\\\" said Ward. \\\"This almost feels like pointless busywork.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What are you talking about? We'll be using tracking devices,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"CONTROL made it clear that aside from Sandy, they want us to keep our distance. He's a trained countersurveillance expert. Former FBI intelligence investigator. This guy spies on spies fora living.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We all read that in the data packet,\\\" said Walsh. \\\"But his SDR might involve the Metro, an Uber, a public bus, changing vehicles. If he's as good as his file suggests, we don't stand a chance of following him without making it really obvious.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"And he probably sweeps his vehicle for bugs,\\\" said Gentry. \\\"I agree with Leo. CONTROL can't seriously think we'll be able to keep good enough track of him. I bet they're prepositioning us fora hit. They probably have an entirely different team-a specialist group-looking for Berg or other contacts of interest. If Berg or someone else shows up, they'll callus off our pointless surveillance and ready us for action. Why else would they change Berg's status?\\\"\\n\\nRudd considered Rick's theory fora moment. It didn't actually sound that far-fetched, given the reality of their next-to-impossible assignment. Jolene had said as much before everyone had showed up, and he'd agreed. CONTROL was asking the B-team, more like the C-team, to do a job meant for the A-team. Looking at it from Rick's perspective made a lot of sense.\\n\\n\\\"We'd already be familiar with his daily routine. His favorite restaurants, coffee shops, shopping stops. His habits,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"Taking him out would be a simple job for this over-the-hill crew.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why not just tell us all of that upfront?\\\" asked Sandy. \\\"If it's even true.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Probably because they see some value in our surveillance and want us focusing on one job at a time,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"It won't be a perfect surveillance job-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not even close,\\\" said Gentry.\\n\\n\\\"They know that. They have to know that,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"By putting us on the job, no matter how futile it turns out to be, they gain more surveillance coverage than they had before-without eating into their limited pool of specialists. This job would be near impossible for even the best in the business, especially given Gray's background. I think they're parking us on Gray in case they decide to eliminate him. If we happen to stumble on a clue to the whereabouts of his mother's suspected hideaway or catch him meeting up with Karl Berg, all the better.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We're just pulling stuff out of our asses right now,\\\" said Clark.\\n\\n\\\"This is brainstorming,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"This is pointless,\\\" said Clark. \\\"We execute CONTROL's orders to the best of our ability. Just like we've always done. If they decide to kill him, we kill him. Until then, we watch him. That's it. I don't understand why we're yakking about this. We do what CONTROL tells us to do. Period. Any questions?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Okay then,\\\" said Walsh, rolling his eyes. \\\"I guess that's it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Always a pleasure,\\\" added Sandy, nodding at Clark.\\n\\nRudd still didn't understand why they had been brought together like this. The one thing CONTROL had most definitely accomplished with this awkward, impromptu social gathering was to drive home the fact that he wouldn't miss any of them when this was over. Maybe that had been apart of their intention. If so-mission accomplished. He hoped to never see any of them again after this trip.\\n\\nRudd had the same thought again, ten minutes later, after he'd backed their loaded SUV out of the garage and stopped at the bottom of the driveway. He pressed the garage remote and took Jolene's hand, watching the bay door slowly close on the home they had shared for close to three decades. If his instinct about this upcoming mission proved correct, this would be the last time he looked at their house. Oddly, he wasn't sad. He felt more relieved than anything. A little excited, even.\\n\\n\\\"I'm ready to move on from this place,\\\" he said. \\\"All of it, if that's what they intend.\\\"\\n\\nShe squeezed his hand. \\\"Me too. Just promise me one thing.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Anything.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I get to kill Gray.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Only if CONTROL orders it,\\\" said Rudd, kissing her cheek.\\n\\n\\\"Of course,\\\" she said. \\\"I'm not a psychopath.\\\"\\n\\nThey both chuckled a little. That was one of the many things he loved about Jolene. Her sense of humor. Of course, she was a psychopath. They all were. How could they not be-and still do this cold-blooded work for all these years?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin dropped his toothbrush in the stainless-steel cup next to the bathroom sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like shit, to put it mildly. The past ten days had taken an unexpected physical toll on him. He'd expected the emotional wipeout, which he understood would knock him down a few notches physically. But this was something entirely different. He felt as he had when he'd woken up the morning after his first marathon. Every marathon, for that matter. Utterly spent and fatigued to the bone.\\n\\nThe sleeplessness had to be a big part of why he felt as though he could take a twenty-four-hour nap. It hadn't been the stare-at-the-ceiling-all-night variety. That would have been too easy. He'd drifted in and out all night, thinking he'd never fallen asleep, his brain racing to make sense of the facts one moment and wrapping itself around some vaguely connected reality the next. Nine straight nights of this, with no end insight.\\n\\nHe'd dropped his sister at the airport a few hours ago and grabbed some takeout from a nearby Mexican restaurant, hoping to eat himself into a coma. Maybe just the act of sending Kari home would breakup whatever dynamic his mind had established over the past several days. Same with taking a short hiatus from his dad. Devin had told Mason that he'd swing by over the weekend, lying to him about needing to put in some face time at work. He'd never brought up the fourteen-day forced vacation triggered by the hotel job. As far as his dad knew, he was on bereavement leave.\\n\\nHe just needed a few days away from Falls Church. A little space from ground zero to recalibrate. The dark circles under his eyes told him a big part of his recalibration would involve sleep-or trying. A burrito the size of his forearm and the cheese quesadilla sitting in his stomach wagered he'd be out as soon as he went horizontal. Devin wasn't so sure.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"He turned the light off and shuffled out of the bathroom to his unmade bed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Hadn't some famous Navy SEAL said something about making your bed if you wanted to change the world? Looked like the world would have to wait a few days. He sat down on the edge of the mattress and let his house sandals fall to the carpet before grabbing his phone off the nightstand. More out of habit than anything else, he activated the home screen to see if he had any messages.\\n\\nHe'd been texting back and forthwith Marnie Young over the past few days, throwing around the idea of grabbing a drink or coffee when everything with his mom settled down. She'd just recently left the Marine Corps after fifteen years and was temporarily living at home in Falls Church with her parents-until she landed a job in DC.\\n\\nShe was looking for something on Capitol Hill, which could springboard her into politics or a policy position. Her backup plan was to join the fairly large pool of the recently departed or retired officers working senior positions in the civilian side of the Department of Defense-in or as close to the Beltway as possible. She didn't want to shut the door on Capitol Hill.\\n\\nThe screen showed one text message, from a number he didn't recognize. Actually, it was three numbers and a dash, followed by two numbers. Spam or some kind of automatic message update from something he'd mistakenly opted into previously. Nothing from Marnie. He was about to activate the Do Not Disturb feature and put the phone back on the nightstand when he caught a line of the text.\\n\\nRespond with first movie you saw in the theaters and the first and last name of your first prom date. No spaces. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.\\n\\nWhat the hell? The last line was something his mom had said a lot throughout his childhood. They'd watched Star Wars as a family at least a hundred times when he was little, and she'd teased him with that line whenever it was time to do chores or she'd needed him to do something.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Intrigued, he typed HomeAloneEricaCohen and pressed send, surprised by how easily the information from his past had come to him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Now what? The phone buzzed in his hand, startling him. The number calling read Unknown. Seriously? Telemarketing shenanigans had just graduated to the next level. Somehow, they had linked him to one of his mom's old sayings. Probably something she'd submitted as a challenge question online and was subsequently sold to some data-collection outfit.\\n\\nBut what if this was something else?\\n\\nDevin accepted the call. Why not? He could always hangup if it was indeed anew telemarketer.\\n\\n\\\"Hello?\\\" he said.\\n\\nHis mother's voice answered.\\n\\n\\\"Devin. If you're hearing this, something has gone seriously wrong. You've either already attended my funeral or I've been missing for several days. I triggered this messaging protocol ten days ago, in response to what I either perceived as an imminent, nonsurvivable threat against my life or an attempted kidnapping. Funeral or missing, I'm gone. These people don't leave witnesses.\\\"\\n\\nA short pause ensued, followed by: \\\"I need to verify your voice now. After the beep, please tell me the make and model of the car we bought you in high school and then say, \\\"I'm really not interested in anew car. Please take me off your list. '\\\"\\n\\nWhat the hell? \\\"Honda Civic. I'm not interested in anew car. Please take me off your list.\\\"\\n\\nThe call disconnected. No. No. No. Wait. Did he say something wrong? Shit. He'd forgotten to say'really interested.\\\" Did he really just mess up? A text message appeared a moment later.\\n\\nUse headphones and click this link. https:// dfe740-22GW3.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Interesting.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She thought someone might be listening. He got up from the bed and made his way to the kitchen island, where he kept his running headphones in one of the drawers. With the headphones ready, he poured a glass of water to make his trip to the kitchen appear more natural to an outside observer. If they had cameras in his house, it wouldn't matter. He'd have to sweep for surveillance devices later. On his way back to the bedroom, he clicked the link, which connected him to a voice message.\\n\\n\\\"Dial or say two at anytime if you're under duress.\\\" Along pause ensued before his mother's voice continued. \\\"Devin. Sorry to keep this abrupt. I need you to see what I've been working on for the past twenty years. I'm not trying to makeup for what I put all of you through. I can never do that. Take a look and decide for yourself what should be done with it. To continue this message, input the numeric digits corresponding to the year we took you to see your first Orioles game.\\\"\\n\\nHe didn't have to think about it, which was probably why his mother had picked it as a security question. They'd taken him the same year their new stadium, Camden Yards, had opened. But the answer contained the number two, which would trigger the duress protocol. She would have thought of that, right? Of course. He tapped'1993,\\\" praying he'd hear her voice again. Mostly because he wanted to hear her voice again. He hadn't made a decision one way or the other about her proposal.\\n\\n\\\"Smart kid. Here's what I need you to do. First: Assume you're currently under professional surveillance. Trust me on that. If I was even remotely close with my theory, they'll be watching you closely. Second: Please keep your father and sister out of this. Entirely. Press two to continue.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He sat down on the bed and pressed one, guessing she wouldn't follow the same pattern.\\n\\n\\\"Sorry about that. Can't be too careful. Here's what I need you to do, and don't write any of this down. Tomorrow morning, at a normal hour for you, place your phone in your safe and run a three-hour SDR. Check your vehicle for trackers before leaving. Physically disable any systems like OnStar. Leave your E-ZPass behind. You must go dark to and from this destination. No credit cards or anything traceable. I know what you're thinking-Mom can't even let goof this shit after she's dead.\\\"\\n\\nHe stifled a laugh. Mom's sense of humor could be wicked, particularly when things were tough going. Dad had called it gallows humor. Devin had never really understood it until he'd started working for the Special Surveillance Group. The long, thankless days and nights on stakeout that yielded nothing. Exhaustively choreographed, hours-long street-surveillance gigs to track a target to an adult video store. They became the stand-up comedians of gallows humor.\\n\\n\\\"I hope that made you laugh a little. Here's where you're headed tomorrow. It's a win-win situation no matter what. Head to the first place we took you for hard-shell crabs. At the marina, look fora boat named after our first dog. You'll find a waterproof pouch in the bottom galley drawer. In addition to a file with the information I need you to examine, you'll find a one-hundred-dollar bill to pay for lunch. A hundred bucks buys a lot of fresh crabs-and a few ice-cold beers to wash them down. Press three to repeat that message or one to continue.\\\"\\n\\nDevin tapped one.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I love you, Kari, and your father so much, Devin. I can't tell you how sorry I am that I put the three of you through all of this. Be very careful, and don't trust anyone-except the one I send your way.\\\"\\n\\nThe call ended, and he stared at the phone for several seconds. Did that really just happen? His mom had somehow put together an automated phone and text-message-alert system in case someone tried to murder or kidnap her? This either took her craziness to the next level or-he didn't know. It had to be more of the madness. Right?\\n\\nHe lay down with the phone still in his hand and stared at the ceiling. Mayas well get used to the view. The prospect of a food-induced sleep had just been revoked. His heart raced at twice its resting rate, his feet and hands tingling. It would take him a few hours to comedown from this adrenaline rush. Whether he could fall asleep after that was anyone's guess.\\n\\nDevin looked at the initial text message again. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. Of all the things she could have picked to say, this hit him pretty hard. He could picture them stuffed into the corner of the sectional, snuggled up under a blanket watching Star Wars. Mom and Dad in the middle. Kari on one side. Devin on the other. He wiped the tears from his eyes. What the hell happened at that intersection in Tennessee, Mom?\\n\\nMaybe the answer waited for him in Annapolis, on a boat named Sadie. There was only one way to find out. Worst-case scenario? The information turned out to be nothing. Devin enjoying a lazy afternoon cracking open perfectly seasoned hard-shell crabs and downing a few cold beers while overlooking the water. Best-case scenario? It all depended on what was in the file. Either way, he'd enjoy cold beers and steaming-hot crabs for lunch. Like his mom said: win-win.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harvey Rudd braced one hand against the dashboard, his eyes fixed on the phone screen held firmly in the other. As the SUV lurched to a stop, his torso pressed against the lap and shoulder belts.\\n\\n\\\"Take it easy,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"We're not in a race.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That was the shortest yellow light I've ever seen,\\\" said Jolene.\\n\\n\\\"Uh-huh.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Don't uh-huh me,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Yep.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's even worse.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Uh-huh,\\\" he said, getting a sharp elbow to the ribs under his raised arm.\\n\\n\\\"Dammit. That hurt,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"Then knock it off,\\\" she said. \\\"Unless you'd like to do the driving.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I wish.\\\"\\n\\nThe truth was that Jolene drove like this all the time-and she knew it better than he did. Her driving fell somewhere on the scale between extremely impatient and overly aggressive, trending toward the latter. Because of this, she rarely drove during operations. They'd both agreed on that. Unfortunately, he had no choice but to put her in the driver's seat today.\\n\\nJolene could use electronic devices just fine, but she couldn't troubleshoot them to save her life. Their communications-and-control gear wasn't overly complicated, but they couldn't afford a critical technology slipup on this mission. The job itself would prove difficult enough, and their performance over the next several days would likely determine their future living conditions.\\n\\n\\\"Looks like he's pulling into a strip mall up ahead, on the left side just after Hartwick Road,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"The map is showing a Starbucks. This is the southeast edge of the University of Maryland's campus. Gray's alma mater.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"The perfect place to discreetly meet someone. Lots of open space and publicly accessible buildings on campus,\\\" said Jolene.\\n\\n\\\"Ora nearby running trail. I bet there are several close to campus.\\\"\\n\\nHe relayed the situation to the two other teams over the push-to-talk satellite radio handset, sending Clark, their lone wolf operative, to the College Park– University of Maryland Metro station a half mile to the east, and Walsh to cover the bus stop a few hundred feet north of the Starbucks on Baltimore Avenue. He had Leo with him, just in case Gray decided to take a bus ride. Harvey and his wife would circle back and watch the bus station several blocks south.\\n\\nIf Gray got back into his car and headed to campus fora run, there wasn't much they could do. Sandy was back at Gray's apartment complex, installing discreet cameras on each level of the parking garage so they could get a sense of where he was headed each time he left. They'd only had time to install two trackers on his vehicle overnight. If the university proved to be one of Gray's regular running spots, they'd bring Sandy into keep an eye on him. Given the close proximity to his apartment, he could start her tomorrow if Gray returned. No need to spend more time establishing a longer pattern.\\n\\nThey always worked moving surveillance like this. Basic surveillance cameras at the target's residence or work to make bigger-picture assessments about his movement. For the actual surveillance work, they employed a minimum of three cars: a control car to coordinate the overall effort and rotate into the active surveillance as needed; a car with two operatives so they could immediately follow their target on foot until the other cars could find parking and join the effort; and a car with alone operative. If they had additional personnel, they'd add more lone operatives. This stretched their surveillance capability while provoking the least suspicion. Most cars on the road at any given time had a single occupant.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"If he had unlimited resources, he'd put a few male-female teams together. Couples-real or fake-were often overlooked entirely by countersurveillance teams when forced to analyze more complex, dynamic settings like a crowded park or packed highway. By necessity, countersurveillance efforts became a probabilities game in those scenarios. A basic risk-assessment calculation, with couples at the very bottom of the list, due to the real and perceived complexities of two people working together seamlessly without giving themselves away. Real indeed, he thought, squeezing Jolene's hand.\\n\\nLess than a block past the stoplight, Jolene parked them in front of a 7-Eleven, parallel with Baltimore Avenue and pointed north, where they could spot Gray if he decided to use the bus stop south of the Starbucks. A pair of binoculars ensured that. The only matter still in question was who would get to ride the bus with Gray. Marital instinct told him he'd pulled the short straw. Thirty minutes later, Gray's car still hadn't moved from the strip mall parking lot.\\n\\n\\\"He's been therefor awhile,\\\" said Jolene.\\n\\nA half hour wasn't unusual fora single person at a coffee shop. You sit and relax with your drink. Read a book. Scroll through your phone. The Starbucks was close to campus, so maybe he was checking out the ladies. All within the range of possibility, but the longer it went past thirty minutes, the more it piqued his suspicion.\\n\\n\\\"Couldn't hurt to drive past once,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"Just to make sure.\\\"\\n\\nJolene shifted the SUV into drive and had them in the Starbucks parking lot a minute later, well exceeding the posted speed limit the entire time. He'd started to guide her toward the location of Gray's vehicle, which sat one row over, directly in front of Starbucks, when one of the trackers started moving. The second tracker remained in place, which was entirely possible. The GPS trackers were motion activated to conserve batteries and reported their position every fifteen seconds.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"If the initial vehicle motion didn't activate them at the same time, a lag occurred. The lag actually worked in the surveillance team's favor if it was long enough. A seven-second lag gave them what appeared to be real-time coverage. A skilled countersurveillance expert like Gray couldn't use the fifteen-second'dark\\\" period to disappear in a covered parking garage or other preplanned evasion route.\\n\\n\\\"Gray might be on the move,\\\" he said.\\n\\nRudd scanned the parking area in front of Starbucks, expecting to see a black SUV backing out or driving in the opposite direction. Instead, a silver sedan drove by on the other side of the double row, its movement matching one of the trackers. The other still hadn't moved.\\n\\n\\\"Shit,\\\" he muttered.\\n\\n\\\"What's wrong?\\\" asked his wife.\\n\\n\\\"Stop behind that white SUV. I think he gave us the slip.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How? The tracker is moving, right?\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"One of the trackers is moving, and it just passed us,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\nHe hopped out the moment she stopped and followed the tracker to a parked minivan. The tracking app put the transmitter inside the vehicle. Or under it. He lowered himself to the pavement and searched underneath, spotting the garage remote– size, black rectangular box lying in the middle of the parking space. He pressed his body into the gap between the asphalt and metal chassis, stretching his arm until his fingertips grazed the tracker. After a few more tries, one of them nearly dislocating his shoulder, he retrieved the tracker. He stood up a little too quickly, a sense of light-headedness and vertigo overtaking him.\\n\\n\\\"You okay?\\\" asked Jolene.\\n\\nHe nodded, leaning against the car parked next to the minivan to keep his balance. An SUV pulled into the empty space on the opposite side of the van, which he surmised had moments before been occupied by the silver sedan. Gray had placed one tracker on the sedan and tossed the other under his own SUV before backing out-carefully so he didn't run it over. He could have put them both on the silver sedan and let the owner of the car lead them around fora while, but that diversion could have ended at an office just down the street.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Instead, he'd split the trackers, keeping one in place in an attempt to convince them he'd found only one. Ten minutes after the silver sedan took off, he could have slapped the other one on any car leaving the strip mall and sent them on a second pursuit. Rudd looked around, wondering if Gray was watching him.\\n\\nHe could have removed the trackers and parked his SUV around the block. For all Rudd knew, he could be sitting in the Starbucks right now, taking pictures of him. Shit. He should never have gotten out of the SUV. What had he been thinking? He hadn't, because he was fifty-six years old and getting rusty. While he stood there feeling like an idiot, a woman burst out of Starbucks-headed directly for him. She wore hospital scrubs and carried a purse in one hand and a large to-go cup in the other.\\n\\n\\\"Excuse me, sir?\\\" she said, slowing as she approached.\\n\\n\\\"Yes?\\\" he said, feeling stable enough to stand on his own.\\n\\n\\\"Are you all right? It looked like you took a knee. I work in the ER at Doctors Community Hospital,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"No. I'm fine. Thank you,\\\" he said, holding up the tracker-partially concealed. \\\"My garage door opener fell out of our car somehow. We'd parked hereabout an hour ago, so I figured I'd take a look. Bingo. Except I stood up a little too fast. Got a little woozy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Does that happen to you often?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"No. Not really,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Honey. We have to get going!\\\" yelled Jolene. \\\"We're already late.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sorry. I have to go,\\\" he said. \\\"The boss is calling.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The woman laughed. \\\"Smart man. If that happens again, you should schedule a checkup with your doctor. Could be the start of something more serious. Or maybe nothing at all. Better safe than sorry.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Absolutely. I appreciate the advice,\\\" he said. \\\"Oh. I do have a crazy question if you don't mind. Not medical related.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sure,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"How long have you been in this parking space?\\\" asked Rudd.\\n\\nThe woman looked understandably perplexed by his out-of-left-field question, but answered anyway.\\n\\n\\\"I'd say almost twenty-five minutes,\\\" she said, looking at him a little less trustingly than before. \\\"Are you sure you're okay?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm fine. Thank you,\\\" he said before hurrying back to the SUV.\\n\\nAs soon as he shut the car door, Jolene sped away.\\n\\n\\\"Slowdown. We're in no hurry. He's either long gone or he's watching us from somewhere nearby,\\\" he said. \\\"Either way, we're done until he resurfaces at his apartment, or CONTROL gets a hit on a credit card.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He won't use a credit card,\\\" said Jolene. \\\"Not this guy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. We may have underestimated him,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"I'm thinking it might be in CONTROL's best interest to take him out sooner than later,\\\" said Rudd, checking the time. \\\"Our mobile surveillance lasted a grand total of forty-two minutes, at least twenty-five of them spent sitting in the car watching tracker signals that had already been spoofed. Two of them smiling for countersurveillance photos.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There's nothing we could have done about that,\\\" said Jolene. \\\"Protocol dictated that we check on the target.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Exactly. And Gray clearly knows this game better than any of us,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"If CONTROL considers this guy to be a serious threat, they'd be better off getting rid of him immediately. My gut tells me this guy could disappear without a trace if he wanted to-and still operate right in front of everyone's noses.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin guided his SUV around a tight turn on the narrow tree-lined road, hints of water shimmering through the lush branches. He hadn't been out herein a number of years, but knew he was close. A few more ninety-degree twists and he'd catch a glimpse of the marina beyond one of the gravel drives lining the road. A sailboat mast or maybe the blue hull of a boat hauled out for repairs and now living on stands. That was where he should turn. On the unmarked road leading directly to the marina. But Devin decided to take a different approach.\\n\\nHe took the turns slowly, stopping a few times to let oncoming traffic squeeze by. After passing the marina's unmarked gravel entrance, the towering trees opened to reveal a stark blue sky-and a sizable parking lot that marked the end of the road. Cantler's Riverside Inn, a favorite with locals, sat on the far side of the jam-packed lot, nestled right up against Mill Creek. It was the last thing you might expect to find if you had been out fora casual drive through Maryland's back roads.\\n\\nHe cruised around the lot for several minutes until a young couple, holding hands and pecking each other's lips, jumped into an open-top BMW and left him a space. Devin parked the SUV and gave it sometime. Ninety minutes, to be precise, sweating through his shirt behind a stand of trees near the entrance to the lot. He had to be absolutely certain that nobody had tracked him here.\\n\\nWhoever had tagged his vehicle with the two trackers had known what they were doing. He would never have found the transmitters without the aid of an RF detector. The placement was skilled enough to leave him wondering if they had installed a fail-safe. Something that transmitted far less frequently and would likely be missed on atypical electronic sweep. He'd spent an hour and a half at a little speck of a town on the Maryland-Pennsylvania border, testing that theory. Waiting for anything that resembled a surveillance team to drive down Main Street. Nothing suspicious turned up, which didn't entirely surprise him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The couple that showed outside of Starbucks had looked genuinely concerned about the tracker stunt.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The guy almost looked scared. Devin had snapped a few hundred photos of the couple and their vehicle from the third floor of the parking garage on the other side of Baltimore Avenue. A digital camera with telephoto lens was part of his standard countersurveillance kit, among other things, like a handheld RF detector.\\n\\nHe couldn't help but notice that the couple was older. Takeaway maybe thirty pounds from the red-faced guy who went fishing under the minivan for the tracker, and he'd look no different than either of the guys Devin had faced in the hotel stairwell a week or so ago. He'd revisit that thought later, when he asked Brendan Shea to run the couple's Tennessee license plates. The connection between the Tennessee plates and his mother's death couldn't be a coincidence, but he sensed something else. He just couldn't put his finger on it.\\n\\nWith the hour and a half expired and no bad guys insight, Devin returned to his SUV and retrieved a small nylon day pack to carry whatever he found on the boat. He took another long look around the lot before making his way to the weathered stockade fence that separated the parking lot from the marina. After slipping through a rickety gate held open by a faded orange traffic cone, he emerged on a stretch of grass intended for marina members. The gate he'd just used appeared to be a convenience that facilitated dinner and drinks after a day on the water.\\n\\nHe spotted a sailboat on stands closer to the water and decided to head in that direction. His assumption was that he'd find Sadie on land, unless his mother had taken up boating-a possibility, given how little he appeared to truly know about her. The sailboat turned out to be Screamin\\\" Mimi, so he turned his attention to a tightly packed row of three boats tucked away in the farthest corner of the expansive gravel lot. Two sailboats, one without a mast, and a very neglected-looking powerboat with a flying bridge. They were parked bow out, so he couldn't read their names.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He got halfway across the lot before he was accosted. A stringy-haired man dressed in grease-stained khaki pants and an equally grubby white T-shirt emerged from the trees along the waterfront, directly in his path. His weather-beaten face made it impossible to guess his age, but Devin would go with somewhere between forty-five and seventy if he had to estimate. He stood with his hands on his hips as Devin approached, appraising him the whole way.\\n\\n\\\"Looking for someone?\\\" he said, cordially enough.\\n\\n\\\"Actually, I'm looking fora boat,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Well. All the boats are over there,\\\" he said, canting his head toward the water.\\n\\n\\\"Thanks. I'm looking for my mother's boat, which I assumed was not in the water,\\\" said Devin. \\\"The boat is named Sadie?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Is that a question or a fact?\\\" said the man.\\n\\n\\\"The boat name is a fact. I'm asking if it's here,\\\" said Devin, starting to get a little annoyed.\\n\\n\\\"Can I see some identification?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sure,\\\" he said, glad he hadn't left his wallet back in the car.\\n\\nThe man, who he assumed to be more than a dockhand at the marina, scrutinized his driver's license, glancing back and forth between the card and his face several times, like an East German border guard. He handed it back with a nod.\\n\\n\\\"Sorry about all that,\\\" he said. \\\"Your mother gave me some specific instructions, and a fair sum to back them up. Her boat is the one without the mast. It's been at the marina awhile.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"When did she buy it?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Last year, toward the end of the summer,\\\" he said. \\\"She's only been upon it twice.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Do you remember the last time she came by?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yep. Saw her about three weeks ago. She spent about ten minutes on the boat. Paid for the next three years of storage,\\\" he said. \\\"I kinda got the feeling she didn't buy it for sailing.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I just learned about the boat yesterday,\\\" said Devin. \\\"She passed away a couple weeks ago.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh. Damn. I'm very sorry to hear that. She seemed like a nice lady.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thank you,\\\" said Devin. \\\"How do I getup on the boat? They seem so high when they're on those stands.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll get you a ladder and meet you over there.\\\"\\n\\nPaying for three additional years of storage didn't make a ton of sense, but her visiting the boat a few weeks ago appeared to be tied to whatever had happened ten days ago. The man returned a few minutes later with a tall wooden ladder that looked as though it had been constructed during the Revolutionary War. Devin glanced at it skeptically.\\n\\n\\\"I know. It looks like a relic, but I guarantee this'll be around longer than one of those aluminum contraptions,\\\" he said, placing it against the hull. \\\"Just so you know, the boat needs a lot of work to make her seaworthy. Given what your mom paid me in advance for storage, I could get her in the water in time for you to enjoy the tail end of the season. If you're interested.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't know the first thing about boats,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Plenty of folks around here that do,\\\" he said. \\\"I have the slip space for her-included in the price.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How much did my mom pay for storage?\\\"\\n\\nThe guy laughed. \\\"She paid for storage-and discretion. Let me know what you want to do with the boat. No rush. Storage is all paid up fora while. My name's Frank, by the way. I own this fine establishment.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Thank you, Frank. For your continued discretion,\\\" said Devin. \\\"And I'll keep your offer in mind. I never thought of myself as the boating type, but... I'll think about it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You ever been out on the water?\\\" asked Frank. \\\"On something other than a cruise ship or ferry?\\\"\\n\\nDevin shook his head. \\\"Nope.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Then you be sure to comeback when you're not busy, and I'll get you out there,\\\" said Frank. \\\"You'll know right away if you're the boating type or not-and god help you if you are.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why's that?\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Because you'll be mortgaging your house in a few years to buy a bigger boat!\\\"\\n\\nDevin laughed. He liked this guy. If the file hidden inside the boat turned out to be a bust, he might take him upon the offer. Why the hell not?\\n\\n\\\"I'll let you know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And I'll leave you to your business,\\\" said Frank, saluting him before walking away.\\n\\nDevin wiped the sweat off his forehead and grabbed the ladder with both hands, immediately gaining a sense of what Frank had conveyed about it. The thing felt solid, as though it had been carved from a single piece of wood. Still, he tentatively stepped on the first rung, testing it with a few bounces before pushing up with his full body weight. It was a wooden ladder, after all.\\n\\nAt the top of the ladder, he grabbed the nearest stanchion poles and gave them a tug to make sure they were secure before using them as leverage to climb into the boat. He stood perfectly still in the cockpit, unsure how stable the boat would be with him onboard. The metal stands pressed up against the hull looked like a rickety arrangement to holdup an object that easily weighed several thousand pounds.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":280,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Move the story forward in your role as narrative aide.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 16"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Thank you, Frank. For your continued discretion,\" said Devin. \"And I'll keep your offer in mind. I never thought of myself as the boating type, but... I'll think about it.\"\n\n\"You ever been out on the water?\" asked Frank. \"On something other than a cruise ship or ferry?\"\n\nDevin shook his head. \"Nope.\"\n\n\"Then you be sure to comeback when you're not busy, and I'll get you out there,\" said Frank. \"You'll know right away if you're the boating type or not-and god help you if you are.\"\n\n\"Why's that?\" said Devin.\n\n\"Because you'll be mortgaging your house in a few years to buy a bigger boat!\"\n\nDevin laughed. He liked this guy. If the file hidden inside the boat turned out to be a bust, he might take him upon the offer. Why the hell not?\n\n\"I'll let you know.\"\n\n\"And I'll leave you to your business,\" said Frank, saluting him before walking away.\n\nDevin wiped the sweat off his forehead and grabbed the ladder with both hands, immediately gaining a sense of what Frank had conveyed about it. The thing felt solid, as though it had been carved from a single piece of wood. Still, he tentatively stepped on the first rung, testing it with a few bounces before pushing up with his full body weight. It was a wooden ladder, after all.\n\nAt the top of the ladder, he grabbed the nearest stanchion poles and gave them a tug to make sure they were secure before using them as leverage to climb into the boat. He stood perfectly still in the cockpit, unsure how stable the boat would be with him onboard. The metal stands pressed up against the hull looked like a rickety arrangement to holdup an object that easily weighed several thousand pounds."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Sensing no movement, he moved to the salon door and stopped. Nothing. He quickly stepped to the left and right. No movement at all. He could probably jump up and down and nothing would happen, but he had no intention of doing anything but move slowly and steadily through the boat. There was nothing normal or natural about a sailboat suspended in the air.\n\nDevin found the salon door unlocked and slid it open. He was greeted by a stale, mildewy odor that he assumed to be normal for compact space that gets aired out a couple of times a year at most. The interior, a combination of deep-stained wood, light-blue cushions, and white vinyl flooring, was well lit from the sunlight pouring through the long, narrow windows on each side of the salon. The galley was directly below the door, a few steps down a short wooden ladder. Easy enough.\n\nHe lowered himself into the galley and opened the lowest of three drawers next to the sink, removing a hefty gray waterproof pouch that took upmost of the space in the drawer. Devin sat gently on the edge of the starboard-side couch and unzipped the pouch, placing its contents on the cushion next to him.\n\nA handwritten note signed by his mother. A key chain with three brass house keys. Avery high-end touchscreen satellite phone. A manila file folder with metal fasteners holding together several typed pages. A little lighter than he expected. Two rubber-banded bundles of cash. Twenties and hundreds. Easily ten thousand dollars, if he had to guess. Much more than he expected. He wasn't encouraged by the fact that the money piled up higher than the file.\n\nHe started with the note.\n\nDevin, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that there's more than a hundred dollars in the pouch. You can walkaway right now and take a really nice vacation, which might sound like an attractive option after you hear the bad news. Before I get to that, please deliver the mailer to your father. It's a copy of my will, life insurance policy, and assets. Along with my estate attorney's contact information."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"What's the bad news? I'm dead. Sorry. I couldn't resist. Ye olde gallows humor. Had to get one last joke in. The bad news is that the file in your hands is just the 30,000-foot view. You've probably guessed that much by the size of the file. There's simply noway to adequately explain or represent what I've assembled over the past two decades. I apologize for misrepresenting the size of Sadie's treasure, but I couldn't take the chance that you might not take the SDR seriously-and lead them to the source. Go ahead. Roll your eyes. But read the file and consider taking one more step in this journey, assuming you took the SDR seriously. Please don't execute the next paragraph if you're not entirely sure they didn't follow you. Did they try?\n\nThe next step, if you choose: Power the satellite phone. I inserted a fully charged battery a few weeks ago. Find'Mom\" in contacts and give me a call. I'll reveal the location of the Bat Cave. I actually have one, if you consider a dingy apartment in a sketchy neighborhood a proper secret lair. There's beer in the fridge and harder stuff if you need it... you might after you see what I've been working on. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.\n\nLove you, Mom\n\n\"Love you, too,\" he said, his eyes watering.\n\nPS: Ask Frank about my car. I highly suggest you swap vehicles.\n\nPPS: Don't skip out on lunch at Cantler's. A friend of mine may join you. You can trust him.\n\nSo... now what? Continue the quest? An untraceable car would definitely make things a little easier, but he wasn't sure about meeting with anybody until he got a better handle on what his mother suspected she had uncovered. Then again, what did he have to lose? He could always walkaway from whoever showed up."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Why the hell not?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"he muttered, stuffing the file and the pouch into his backpack.\n\nOn his way back to the Cantler's parking lot, he spotted Frank near the marina's boat ramp, where he'd just hauled what looked like a mini sailboat out of the water. Two middle school– age kids wearing orange life jackets helped him drag it onto a small trailer. Devin headed in their direction. When Frank saw him, he patted one of the kids on the shoulder and told them he'd finish securing the boat. They headed for the dock, where he assumed a much larger boat and eager-to-please parents awaited them.\n\n\"Now that looks more my speed,\" said Devin.\n\nFrank laughed. \"We'll have to start you with something a little bigger if you plan on fixing up your boat. How did it look?\"\n\n\"You really think you could fix her up by the end of the summer?\"\n\nFrank's smile widened. \"Definitely before Labor Day weekend, which gives you a good month on the water and plenty of time to learn how to sail-or find a girlfriend that knows.\"\n\n\"And those are easy to find?\" said Devin. \"The girlfriend. Not the sailing lessons.\"\n\n\"A lot easier when you have a boat,\" said Frank. \"What do you say? Want me to fix her up?\"\n\nHe wasn't paying for it, so he responded with his new motto.\n\n\"Why the hell not?\"\n\n\"You won't regret it. She's a thirty-foot Catalina. A reliable cruising boat,\" said Frank. \"Not that easy to find, either, so you could always sell her if it doesn't workout for you.\"\n\n\"Easy enough,\" said Devin. \"There's one more thing. My mom said I should ask you about her car, but she didn't leave any keys, and I forgot to look on the boat.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Your mom keeps an old Honda Accord up by the main road entrance."},{"from":"gpt","value":"She's never used it as far as I know,\" said Frank. \"She left me a key to start it up every month or so to keep the battery charged. I can run up to the house and grab the key.\"\n\n\"That would be great. Also, would you mind if I left my SUV in its place fora little while?\"\n\n\"Not at all. All I ask is that you come and go during marina business hours. Seven in the morning to ten at night.\"\n\n\"Works for me,\" said Devin.\n\nHe returned to the packed parking lot and studied the cars before approaching the waterfront side of the restaurant. Devin was mostly looking for anyone hiding in their vehicles-the obvious giveaways on this sunny, hot day being rolled-down windows or running engines. By the time he reached the restaurant entrance, Devin felt confident that the parking lot was clear. A blast of air-conditioned air washed over him when he opened the door to the bar and main dining area, where a young woman greeted him from the adjacent hostess stand.\n\n\"How many in your party?\"\n\n\"One,\" said Devin. \"Possibly two?\"\n\n\"It's about an hour wait fora table,\" she said. \"Or you can try and squeeze into the bar.\"\n\nHe glanced toward the packed bar area, not thrilled with the idea of reading his mother's file seated shoulder to shoulder among a boisterous crowd. Nor did he relish the thought of cracking open a dozen freshly steamed crabs under cramped conditions. He studied the faces fora moment, neither seeing anyone he recognized nor receiving a knowing glance that might indicate his mother's friend was here. Devin could study the file outside while he waited fora table, then enjoy the leisurely meal his mother had promised. Maybe by then her friend would have arrived."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I'll put my name down fora table,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Sure. What's the name?\"\n\n\"Devin.\"\n\n\"You don't happen to be Devin Gray, do you?\" she asked.\n\n\"That's me,\" he said.\n\n\"Perfect. I have a table waiting for you,\" she said. \"Your friend's been hereabout an hour and a half. I seated him ten minutes ago.\"\n\nHe followed her into the bar area to a bank of three pub tables, tucked away next to the windows facing the parking lot. The tables hadn't been visible from the hostess stand. Karl Berg sat at the farthest table, shaking his head and smiling. Devin wasn't surprised to see Berg here.\n\n\"I'll send someone over with menus,\" she said.\n\n\"That would be great. Thank you,\" said Devin.\n\nBerg offered a hand, which Devin reluctantly shook before removing his backpack and sitting down. The man looked exhausted, his eyes red and watery behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses.\n\n\"You look like you drove through the night to get here,\" said Devin.\n\n\"I did. I received the oddest message last night around nine thirty,\" said Berg. \"Thirty minutes later, I was headed to Annapolis. I assume you received a similar message?\"\n\n\"Odd doesn't even begin to describe having your dead mother send you on a treasure hunt,\" said Devin. \"How did she convince you to drive all night to be here?\"\n\n\"She told me-well, her voice told me-that if I showed up at Cantler's atone in the afternoon, you would explain everything,\" said Berg. \"She didn't specify what everything meant.\"\n\nDevin suddenly felt guarded about the file and the phone in his backpack. He'd never met Karl Berg before his mother's wake. For all he knew, Berg could be connected to the people who had tried to follow him this morning. But that would mean he'd somehow managed to track Devin to the marina, arrive unobserved, and preemptively grab a table in the hopes of Devin stopping for lunch. No. Berg was brought hereby his mother fora reason."},{"from":"human","value":"\"By everything, I think she meant her conspiracy theory,\" said Devin."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"And its connection to her death.\"\n\n\"I'm all ears,\" said Berg.\n\n\"I don't know anymore than I did when we last spoke,\" said Devin, testing the waters.\n\nBerg pushed his glasses back and squinted. \"Seriously? She just put us together in a crab shack to see what might happen? Helen had to have told you something.\"\n\n\"I think she intended for us to take a trip together,\" said Devin. \"She apparently has a Bat Cave. A secret apartment or something. My guess is it contains whatever research she'd conducted over the years.\"\n\n\"And you know how to find it?\" said Berg.\n\n\"I can access the location,\" said Devin, leaving out the part about the file for now.\n\n\"I don't know what to say, Devin. Your mom became obsessed with her idea,\" said Berg. \"I guess it really doesn't surprise me to hear that she had acquired a safe house to work on this. She would have been paranoid about secrecy, convinced they were following her so they could finally erase the evidence and eliminate her.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter,\" said Berg, dismissively. \"It's all a fantasy. She probably conducted long SDRs prior to arriving at her secret lair, re-creating the most intense parts of the work she'd done for the agency-years ago. Let me guess: She led you on some kind of decode-the-next-step journey to find the apartment?\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter how I ended up here,\" said Devin.\n\n\"She did, didn't she?\"\n\n\"For good reason. I removed two GPS trackers from my car this morning before starting the first SDR.\"\n\n\"Interesting,\" said Berg, finally sounding genuinely intrigued."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I also took pictures of the team that placed the trackers.\"\n\n\"You made the surveillance team that quickly?\" asked Berg. \"Were they wearing black trench coats and pointing telephoto cameras at you?\"\n\n\"Funny. No. The tracker placement was professional, and they had good reason to break cover. I more or less forced their hand,\" said Devin. \"I do this fora living, remember?\"\n\n\"Yes. I remember,\" said Berg. \"Could it have been the FBI, local police, or some other federal agency?\"\n\n\"I don't think so. The trackers were high end, but still the kind of stuff you can buy off the shelf. Definitely not the kind of gear we used in the FBI.\"\n\n\"How did you locate the trackers?\" asked Berg.\n\n\"Radio frequency detector,\" said Devin.\n\n\"How long did you spend on the tracker sweep?\"\n\n\"Not long enough to detect something that transmits infrequently, but I eliminated that possibility later,\" said Devin. \"Helen's decode-the-next-step journey included a vehicle swap, a high-end, untraceable satellite phone, and about ten thousand dollars in cash. She'd obviously put a lot of thought into how to get me here undetected, and she took a number of these steps as recently as three weeks ago.\"\n\n\"She must have gotten mixed up with some bad people while chasing down this thing,\" said Berg. \"Maybe she pissed off the Russian mob? I could see her getting desperate enough to go after them for information. Possibly staking them out. Now that I think about it, this whole thing kind of makes sense. If she'd put herself on Solntsevskaya Bratva's radar by pissing them off, it wouldn't take much for them to pull the trigger on her. Sorry to be blunt.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin shook his head. His mother's death wasn't a Russian mob hit. The people following him this morning didn't fit that profile.\n\n\"How much did Helen tell you about her theory?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Hold on,\" said Berg, nodding in the direction of an approaching waitress.\n\nThey ordered beers and a dozen crabs each, Berg continuing when the waitress was out of earshot.\n\n\"Helen was pretty guarded about what she'd tell me. I got the impression through some of the things she'd said that she was trying to protect me from ruining my career,\" said Berg. \"She gave me just enough to test the waters. Enough to keep the channel of communication open.\"\n\n\"What did my mother think she'd uncovered?\" said Devin. \"I won't repeat any of this. I promise.\"\n\nBerg looked torn.\n\n\"You didn't hear this from me. Understood? This is all still classified, as far as I know.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" said Devin.\n\n\"An operation she'd conducted had revealed the names of five sleepers.\"\n\n\"Russians?\"\n\n\"Apparently. Two couples and-Donald Wilson,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Jesus,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Here's the thing. Technically the agency only knew about the two couples. Helen had only shared Donald Wilson's name with me, and I've never repeated it at Langley.\"\n\n\"Why would she do that?\" said Devin.\n\n\"The FBI and CIA investigated the couples thoroughly. They turned out to be retired and living on pensions. Dead ends. None of them even remotely linked by work or social circle to the government or companies that contracted with the government. They were classified as low to no risk to national security and put on a travel watch list. Don't get me wrong. They were'illegals, ' as far as we could tell. Cold War relics based on their ages. Sleepers in the truest sense of the word. But everyone agreed that hauling them in for interrogation or deportation would alert the Russians and possibly create some kind of ripple effect that would undermine ongoing espionage investigations. The FBI was working Operation Ghost Stories at the time. Did you ever work on that one?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I had just finished training and reported to the Special Surveillance Group when they made the arrests,\" said Devin.\n\n\"The FBI's decision to back off the identified sleepers made more sense in light of those arrests. They took down ten active spies with Operation Ghost Stories, some who were making dangerous inroads within the Beltway-instead of busting a few retired schoolteachers and steelworkers,\" said Berg. \"Helen had guessed as much and withheld Wilson's name. She never said why, but she felt there was more to Wilson than the others. One name consumed her for two decades.\"\n\nDevin opened his backpack and removed the file his mother had put together.\n\n\"My mother says this is an executive summary of her conspiracy,\" said Devin, placing it on the table.\n\nBerg looked extremely uncomfortable in the file's presence. As though its contents might be radioactive.\n\n\"Have you looked at it?\" asked Berg.\n\n\"No,\" said Devin, pushing it toward Berg. \"You first. I want your opinion before I read it.\"\n\nBerg took the file and opened it, just before two sweating bottles of ice-cold beer arrived. Less than a minute later, he closed it and pushed it back across the table-his face impassive.\n\n\"You didn't finish it,\" said Devin.\n\nBerg took along swig from his bottle before answering. \"I've seen enough to warrant a visit to the Bat Cave.\"\n\n\"That's it?\" said Devin. \"What did it say?\"\n\nBerg shook his head. \"You need to read it yourself. Then we need to take our lunch to go. We may not be safe here.\"\n\nDevin opened the file and started reading. By the time he finished skimming his mother's summary, he wondered if he shouldn't go back and tell Frank to hold off on refurbishing the boat. If any of what his mother had written turned out to be true, he didn't foresee a lot of time in his immediate future for sailing lessons. For the first time ever, he actually hoped his mom had been crazy, because if she had been sane all along, the United States of America had one hell of a problem on its hands. The kind of problem that could dramatically and permanently alter the course of the nation's trajectory-in the wrong direction."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin's mother hadn't been kidding when she'd written'sketchy neighborhood.\" After conducting an abbreviated surveillance-detection route, which took them over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and up through the back roads of eastern Maryland, he'd approached Baltimore from the northeast along US Route 40. He knew they were in fora treat when they got off the Route 40 bypass at Federal Street. The area started out fine but got progressively worse as he navigated the mile and a half west to the provided address.\n\nBoarded-up windows and doors. Knee-high weeds growing through the cracked sidewalks. Corner convenience stores with faded signs-no real indication whether they were open or closed for business. Men huddled on stubby concrete stoops, eyeing him warily as he drove. The words NOS HOOT ZONE spray-painted on the sides of buildings or larger pieces of plyboard.\n\nThe number of abandoned buildings and commercial structures increased the farther west he drove, until he reached a one-block section that looked as though it had been scheduled for demolition. The block ended at a tall stonewall topped with cyclone fencing and barbed wire. A sturdy barrier designed to keep troublemakers out of the Green Mount Cemetery, which lay on the other side. He turned left on the street next to the wall and followed it south until he could bypass the cemetery.\n\nGreenmount West, a neighborhood on the other side of the cemetery, looked like a different world than what he could only assume had been Greenmount East. Still sketchy as hell in his opinion, but not a quasi-demilitarized zone. If he had to guess, he'd say this part of town was in the throes of gentrification. A chic coffee shop and a massive, newish-looking four-story apartment complex gave it away, even if every street-level apartment window was covered with tasteful stainless-steel grating."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin drove north along the western cemetery wall, the three-story row house– style apartment buildings to his left looking either well maintained or upgraded. Gentrification defined. He passed a second modern apartment complex before taking a left onto East Lafayette Avenue, where his mother had kept a secret residence since 2010. Upon turning, he immediately spied several brightly colored, full-building-facade street art mosaics. Devin presumed the neighborhood had looked significantly different twelve years ago. A lot more like the neighborhood due east of the cemetery.\n\nHe pulled up to the address and stopped to scan the street. East Lafayette Avenue was a one-way with cars tightly lining both sides. No boarded-up windows. Nobody milling around porches. About a quarter of the street-level windows were protected by some variation of steel burglar bars. A lot of new or restored three-story redbrick facades-his mother's building not included. She must have missed the restoration memo or decided to ignore it. His money was on the latter.\n\nThe bricks had been painted alight gray, which was chipped or faded in several spots. The look hovered between intentionally weathered or recently neglected. Three mailboxes, squeezed together vertically, adorned the wall to the left of the white door. A rust streak stretched several bricks below the lowest mailbox. Not the darkest of stains, but on its way to being an eyesore. His mom also didn't share the same gentrified optimism about crime. The street-level windows featured decorative, but very sturdy-looking, black wrought iron gates.\n\nDevin drove halfway down the block before finding a parking space, barely managing to squeeze the older-model sedan between two oversize luxury SUVs. He wondered what one of these apartments was worth now. His mother had probably bought here because it was cheap, and nobody would think to look for her in this neighborhood. She was most likely sitting on a tidy profit at this point. Or someone was sitting on it. Hopefully his sister."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Kari shared a place with two other social workers from her office-the only way any of them could afford housing within semireasonable commuting distance to work. It was only fair. He got the boat. She got to sell the apartment. Devin was getting ahead of himself. For all he knew, all this was going to his father, the most logical destination.\n\nDevin and Berg got out of the car, both of them taking along lookup and down the street.\n\n\"What do you think?\" asked Berg.\n\n\"Looks clear,\" said Devin, and Berg nodded. Nothing.\n\nDevin hadn't expected anything. Even if his pursuers had managed to track either him or Berg to the Cantler's parking lot, they most certainly didn't follow him here. He'd made sure of that with his trip through the countryside. The SDR had been solid, and the car was untraceable to Helen, as far as Devin could tell. He couldn't find the registration anywhere in the car and assumed she'd bought it in a private transaction, keeping it off the books.\n\nThe license plate renewal sticker reflected the current year, which led him to believe his mother had a junker in storage somewhere and kept its registration current for the express purpose of getting an updated renewal sticker. As long as he didn't give the police a reason to run these plates, they should be fine.\n\nHe removed a black nylon duffel bag, containing the countersurveillance kit and his mother's waterproof pouch, from the trunk and locked the car before heading to the apartment. Devin caught some movement through the ground-floor apartment windows as they approached the stoop. Berg must have noticed it, too.\n\n\"My name's Fred,\" said Berg. \"For their safety and ours.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Fred doesn't sound suspicious at all.\"\n\nWhen he got to the door, he started trying the keys, while Berg watched the street for signs of trouble. The keys hadn't been marked, so he had no idea which one went to which door. The first one didn't fit. Neither did the second. The door opened before he tried the third, startling him enough that he dropped the key chain. An elderly Black woman with white hair appeared in the open doorway. She looked around eighty years old, but stood like she was in her early fifties.\n\n\"Oh my god. I didn't mean to scare you,\" she said.\n\nDevin scooped up the keys. \"Just caught me off guard, ma'am.\"\n\n\"You must be Helen's boy, Devin,\" she said, glancing between him and Berg.\n\n\"I am,\" said Devin, giving her a puzzled look. \"This is Fred. A friend of the family.\"\n\n\"I'm Henrietta Silver. I live on the first floor with my son and daughter-in-law. My granddaughter lives on the second floor with my great-grandson, who's at Johns Hopkins on a full scholarship. Pre-med,\" she said.\n\n\"Must be a sharp young man,\" he said. \"I didn't even bother applying to Hopkins. I considered myself lucky to get into Maryland.\"\n\n\"He is a very sharp young man,\" said Henrietta, smiling warmly. \"You look just like your mother. Sound like her, too.\"\n\nHe swallowed hard and nodded, worried that his voice would crack if he answered. He wasn't able to hide the tears.\n\nHenrietta's smile faded into a mournful, sympathetic look. \"I assume something happened to your Helen?\"\n\n\"She passed away about a week ago,\" said Devin. \"Unexpectedly.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I'm so sorry, honey,\" she said, giving him a hug and holding onto him. \"She was a kind woman. A bit of a mystery, but warmhearted. I could tell. And she talked about you and Kari all the time. Helen loved the two of you. She never explained her situation or what she was doing here, but I got the feeling over the years that she'd want me to tell you that.\"\n\n\"Thank you. That means a lotto me,\" said Devin. \"Things kind of got away from all of us.\"\n\n\"It happens,\" she said. \"Sometimes there's nothing we can do about it. Trust me, I know.\"\n\n\"Are you headed out?\" he asked.\n\n\"No. No. I saw you stop in your car and recognized you immediately. Got my old bones up to say hello,\" she said.\n\n\"I'm glad you did,\" said Devin. \"It was a pleasure meeting you.\"\n\n\"Likewise,\" she said before moving out of his way.\n\nThey stepped inside, and Devin shut the door behind them, checking fora deadbolt or someway to make sure it was locked.\n\n\"Itself-locks. You need to use the key every time when entering,\" she said. \"But if you lock yourself out, just wave through the window. One of us is almost always in the living room.\"\n\n\"I will. Thank you,\" he said before heading for the staircase.\n\n\"Oh, uh... Devin?\"\n\nHe stopped at the foot of the stairs. \"Yes?\"\n\n\"Will we, uh... see you around much?\" she asked.\n\n\"I can't say,\" he said, which was the truth.\n\nHe had no idea what he'd find up there."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Well. I hope we see you around,\" she said, opening her apartment door.\n\nDevin nodded. \"Okay. See you later.\"\n\n\"It was a pleasure meeting you,\" said Berg.\n\nHenrietta smiled as she went back inside her apartment and gently closed the door.\n\nDevin reached the third floor, with Berg following closely behind, and made his way to the only door in the hallway, which had no doorknob. Just a deadbolt. Henrietta and her family must have thought that was more than a little bit odd. He glanced around the hallway, unable to locate the camera he assumed was recording him. Security seemed a little light for something supposedly this important. Then again, looks could be deceiving.\n\nIt took him two tries to select the right key to turn what felt like a heavy-duty deadbolt. Without a doorknob, he wasn't entirely sure what to do next, other than push his way in-which turned out to be the right answer. When the heavy metal slab swung inward, he quickly entered and located the framed print of Van Gogh's Starry Night in the empty family room, tilting its left corner upward to reveal a basic alarm pad set into the wall.\n\nHis mother wasn't kidding about the tight timeline. The display read six seconds-and counting. He pressed the pound sign, followed by the four-digit code she had provided in the phone message he had accessed by speed-dialing'Mom\" on the satellite phone. She'd briefly walked him through the entire apartment process in that message. With the alarm system deactivated and Berg inside, Devin shut the door and threw the deadbolt. The door was solid enough, but not what he had expected from a security standpoint.\n\nA quick look around explained why. The space contained nothing but a small wooden table and two mismatched kitchen chairs. This meant one thing. Whatever lay behind the next door would be epic. The question was, In what way? Epically critical to national security as she claimed or epically fucking crazy-and there was only one way to find out."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I'm guessing she didn't spend much time in this room,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Probably a safe bet,\" said Devin before wandering into the kitchen. \"Take a look at this.\"\n\nBerg followed him to a hallway off the kitchen, which turned out to be more of a vestibule. A sturdy-looking door stood at the end of the stunted corridor, featuring a deadbolt, a regular keyless doorknob, and a touch pad embedded in the wall next to the doorframe.\n\n\"That looks promising,\" said Berg.\n\nDevin pulled the satellite phone from one of the duffel bag's outer pockets and checked the last number he'd dialed. Exhausted from ten sleepless nights, he didn't trust his memory at this point. He'd inputted the eight-digit code and pressed send so it would appear in his recent calls for easy retrieval.\n\nDevin tapped the screen, activating the digital touch pad. He entered the code and pressed the green SUBMIT icon. A mechanical whirring in the wall behind the touch pad started a moment later, followed by a solid thunk closer to the door. Some kind of power-driven locking mechanism. No wonder she hadn't invested much in the front door. The screen read OPEN DEADBOLT, so he took the next step toward the big reveal and dug the keys out of his pocket.\n\nA full minute later-the door wide open-Devin remained in the doorway, still trying to process what he was seeing. Mostly, he was afraid to step inside and get sucked into whatever had so entirely consumed his mother. Helen Gray had renovated the place, spending her available funds on her obsession, instead of the public-facing neighborhood gentrification effort.\n\nAll the interior walls had been removed and replaced by a dispersed pattern of cylindrical metal supports, initially giving the space an open feel. The complete absence of windows closed it right backup. If he'd blacked out and woken up in this room, he'd guess it was abasement."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The left wall, extending about twenty-five feet from front to back, consisted of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. From what he could tell, the shelves housed numbered binders. Several hundred if he had to guess. The rear wall, about twelve feet wide, featured a sizable wall-mounted flat-screen television. A recliner and an end table with a lamp satin front of the television. A short length of string hung down from a square attic door directly above the recliner.\n\nThe only other pieces of furniture were a simple black writing desk and chair in the center of the space, facing right-toward the room's pièce de résistance. A floor-to-ceiling, front-to-back'conspiracy wall,\" complete with red strings going in every direction, photographs, headshots, maps, Post-it notes, and newspaper clippings.\n\nThe difference between this wall and every wall he'd seen at the FBI or in the movies was that Helen's wall was meticulously organized. She hadn't continually tacked items to the wall as they developed, building a shantytown of information. She'd obviously rebuilt this wall dozens, if not hundreds, of times.\n\n\"Are you going in?\" said Berg.\n\n\"I don't know,\" whispered Devin.\n\nThe effort that had gone into this project was mind-boggling. The very least he could do was give this a chance. Still, he couldn't bring himself to enter the room.\n\n\"Do you mind if I take a look?\"\n\nDevin shook his head and made space for him to squeeze by. Berg walked the length of the conspiracy wall, pausing a few times to stare at the displayed information. When he'd reached the end, he turned and crossed the room, taking in the wall of binders.\n\n\"What are we looking at?\" asked Devin."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"On the surface, it appears that your mother uncovered an extensive network of Russian sleeper agents,\" said Berg. \"Far more extensive than anything we've ever suspected-assuming this isn't some kind of elaborate delusion sprinkled with magical conspiracy theory dust. It's going to take sometime to sort this out and draw our own conclusions.\"\n\n\"Where do we even start?\" asked Devin. \"How do we begin to make sense of this?\"\n\nBerg walked over to the desk and examined a yellow legal pad that sat next to a closed laptop. Tight handwriting covered the top sheet.\n\n\"True to form, your mother left instructions,\" said Berg, tapping the notepad.\n\nShe'd apparently thought of everything, which meant she clearly had understood that she might not comeback from whatever she had set out to accomplish by kidnapping Donald Wilson. In other words, Helen Gray had convinced herself that what she had discovered was worth dying for. He stepped inside the room-well aware that the wall could swallow him just the same."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harvey Rudd moved the curtain a few inches away from the wall and studied Gray's apartment through a night vision scope. Darkness. Same as the past several hours-confirmed by a continuous recording made by the tripod-mounted camera in the bedroom. He checked his watch: 3:34 a. m. It was pretty obvious that he wasn't coming back tonight. Either the discovery of the trackers had spooked him enough to keep him away fora little while or he'd met with someone, after tossing the trackers, who convinced him to go dark. Neither scenario boded well for the Rudds\" retirement plans.\n\nThe next step was to contact CONTROL and let them know that Devin Gray had significantly deviated from the pattern. He'd already made them aware of the tracking device incident, which they'd thankfully dismissed as expected. An encouraging sign that Rudd and the team had been right about CONTROL having low expectations about the surveillance effort. It was time to take the gloves off.\n\nHis phone rang, its screen softly illuminating the darkened room, his face, and the ridiculously thin curtain next to him. If Gray was watching from somewhere, it would have drawn his attention. Maybe he really was getting too old for this shit. Turning off your phone or at least flipping it facedown at night on a stakeout was basic procedure. He swiped the phone off the coffee table in front of him and answered the call.\n\n\"Yes, my love?\"\n\n\"Anything?\" asked Jolene.\n\n\"No. I was about to send an update up the chain,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"Maybe give it a few more hours?\" she said. \"Even if he's up to no good, which is pretty much guaranteed, there's a good chance he'll show up in the morning to grab some personal items. We've seen that before.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"That's why I want to update CONTROL,\" said Rudd. \"If he very unwisely shows up tomorrow, which is unlikely given the circumstances, it could very well be the last time anyone sees him. CONTROL might want us to pop him if we get the chance, and I don't feel like jumping through hoops at the last second. I'd like the green light now, if that's where this is headed. We can get setup and do it right in the parking lot-or inside his apartment.\"\n\n\"Don't tease me,\" she said. \"I can picture it now.\"\n\n\"Well. Like I said, he'd be crazy to show up, unless he just got spooked and decided to stay away fora night or two. We don't have anyone watching his father's place, or his work. He could be crashed out in his office or on a couch in Falls Church.\"\n\n\"I doubt he's anywhere obvious,\" said Jolene.\n\n\"I agree. It's wishful thinking,\" said Rudd, taking another peek at Gray's dark apartment. \"I'm going to put together a message. See what they say.\"\n\n\"All right. Let me know their response. I won't be able to sleep until I know,\" she said. \"I hate loose ends.\"\n\n\"Hopefully CONTROL will let us tie this one up,\" he said. \"Love you.\"\n\n\"Love you, too.\"\n\nHe ended the call and took his laptop to the dining room table, away from the sliding glass door and its virtually transparent curtain. After negotiating the security protocols to access the dark web website designed exclusively for communicating with CONTROL, he typed CHATBOX followed by his username in the single text field on the homepage. His cellphone buzzed a moment later, a text appearing with a twenty-digit alphanumeric code, which he typed in the now-empty text field. A rudimentary chat box opened, and he typed a quick update."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Despite his eagerness to speedup what he thought to be the inevitable with Devin Gray, he never made any assumptions or recommendations when communicating directly with CONTROL. He reported the facts and answered with facts. The group running the show on the other end of this gave the orders based on Rudd's reporting and information available from dozens of other sources that he'd likely never be made aware of.\n\nHR (Harvey Rudd): Subject hasn't returned.\n\nSeveral seconds elapsed before a response appeared.\n\nCL (CONTROL): Sending mission addendum by 7 AM your time. Synopsis follows. Discontinuing mobile surveillance of DG. Focusing on likely personal contacts in area. Priority remains discovering possible secondary HG location.\n\nHR: Copy. Will adjust and execute.\n\nThe chat box disappeared, leaving him with the generic homepage and text box. He shut the computer down and called his wife with the update. She answered before he heard the first ring.\n\n\"That was fast,\" she said.\n\n\"I think they had already decided,\" said Rudd. \"Sounds like we'll be following the father and a few other people they picked out as possible personal contacts. And we're still looking for this supposed hideout.\"\n\n\"Sounds exciting,\" she said.\n\n\"Areal barn burner,\" said Rudd. \"Go to bed. We'll get the details in the morning and figure out what that means for us in terms of splitting everyone up.\"\n\n\"Did they say how many folks we'd be watching?\"\n\n\"No. But they did say no more mobile surveillance of this guy, so it sounds like we'll still keep someone hereto watch over the apartment,\" he said. \"Let's hope it's no more than four, or you and I will have to go our separate ways fora while.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"This is turning into areal turkey of a job,\" she said.\n\n\"If by turkey you mean low key and low risk, I'm not complaining,\" said Rudd. \"I don't need to go all Mission: Impossible on my last job to feel fulfilled. Sitting in a car and staring through a pair of binoculars sounds like a perfect send-off.\"\n\n\"I guess,\" she said, clearly disappointed.\n\n\"Keep your chin up,\" said Rudd. \"They didn't take popping him off the table.\"\n\n\"Well. There's that. See you in a few hours.\"\n\n\"Love you.\"\n\n\"Love you, too,\" she said.\n\nRudd had meant what he'd said about not complaining. Something gave him the sense that this whole mission could escalate at the drop of a hat. Like the situation with Helen Gray. Dave Bender probably never knew what hit him. She'd lit him up before any of them could react.\n\nDevin Gray didn't strike him as the instantly lethal type, but as the old saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree-and he'd like to stay as faraway from that family tree as possible this close to retirement."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin massaged his chin, his fingers pushing through the thick stubble. Morning had finally arrived, the first vestiges of light appearing through the gaps in the living room curtains visible from his seat at the desk. They'd been up all night studying'the wall,\" both of them feeling like they had barely scratched the surface. Helen's binders were extensive, representing hundreds of hours of reading and study. Working continuously from the moment they stepped up to the wall until now, they'd only pulled about a tenth of the folders from'the library,\" mostly skimming each folder's contents for the context necessary to track his mother's logic chain.\n\nDevin had followed her story from start to finish, admittedly skimming the files instead of scrutinizing them, and it all made perfect sense.\n\nBased on the service background file she'd left behind, she had worked as a specialized skills officer, serving in anon-demand capacity as an NOC (nonofficial cover) throughout Europe, Russia, and Russia's former satellite nations. She spoke fluent Russian and German, and had earned a master's degree in international relations at Boston University. The CIA apparently hadn't wanted to potentially burn her identity by formally sending her abroad under official cover at an embassy. She'd been productive over the years as an NOC, often traveling behind the Iron Curtain to support intelligence operations that required an outside touch.\n\nHelen Gray's skill and success in this specialized role put her in Saint Petersburg during the spring of 2003. A fateful assignment that would end two decades later with the kidnapping and murder of Donald Wilson, the point-blank killing of an off-duty sheriff's deputy, and her own suicide.\n\nWilson's name had been the third name provided to her by Sergei Kozlov, the retired GRU general she had been sent to meet in Saint Petersburg, during the spring of 2003. Brian Kelley had been the first. A'puzzling hors d'oeuvre\" meant to whet the CIA's appetite-his mom had away with words. The FBI hadn't been able to find a trace of him or his wife, Kathleen, in the United States prior to 1974."},{"from":"human","value":"The Kelleys had materialized in northwest Indiana during the spring of that year, when Brian took a job atone of the sprawling steel mills in the region-a job he held until his retirement in the late nineties."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Kathleen had split her time between substitute teaching and staying home with their two children.\n\nIf the Kelleys were sleeper agents, as Sergei Kozlov had implied, they hadn't done any obvious damage to United States national security from their blue-collar enclave in northwest Indiana. From what the FBI could initially determine, the family rarely traveled outside the state. The Kelleys appeared to have spent most of their leisure time and money on a no-frills pontoon boat they'd kept at a nearby marina on Lake Michigan.\n\nNot exactly asocial circle that implied a productive espionage career for the couple. That said, intelligence gathered from defectors during the Cold War heydays strongly suggested that some Soviet sleepers served purposes beyond espionage. Targeted sabotage and discreet assassination topping their list of potential assignments. Even more troubling, these'deep sleepers\" typically remained completely inactive until called onto execute their grim tasks.\n\nPossible confirmation of along-dormant network of saboteurs and killers in the US scared the hell out of CIA leadership. Unfortunately, the results of a more thorough investigation into the Kelleys would take months. Time the CIA didn't feel they'd had with Kozlov. The agency had dispatched Helen to meet him again, with instructions to demand a more compelling sample of what he hoped to trade for an exceptionally comfortable and secure life in the United States.\n\nHer recall of the meeting was uncanny. She'd apparently sensed something was wrong the moment Kozlov arrived at the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden. He had appeared agitated and nervous upon arrival, glancing over his shoulder a number of times and snapping at the clerk while he'd purchased a ticket fora guided tour of the garden's greenhouses. A stark difference from the stoic, unreadable GRU general she'd meta few weeks earlier."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He'd seemed to settle down once the tour started, the two of them keeping their distance and pretending to care about exotic plants for the hour or so it took the agency support team to give their meeting the green light. Deep inside the sprawling, densely wooded grounds south of the greenhouse complex, the two of them had sat for several minutes in the shade of a towering oak tree, on a small wrought iron bench facing a lily pad– covered pond.\n\nHe'd given her the name and address of Denise Holman, suggesting they study the similarities between Holman and Kelley. When she'd pressed him to explain the connection, he'd just stared at the pond for an uncomfortably long period of time-ultimately rejecting her demand. Kozlov had said the CIA needed to identify the pattern and draw the right conclusion on their own.\n\nNo more than thirty minutes after Kozlov had given her the second name and walked away, he'd been crushed under a trolleybus on Bolshoy Prospekt, less than a quarter mile from the entrance to the gardens. Helen had been scooped off the street moments later by one of the CIA countersurveillance teams watching over her, and driven straight to Pulkovo Airport, where she had been rushed onboard awaiting Gulfstream jet. Barely an hour and a half later, a small convoy of armored SUVs had driven her onto the US embassy compound in Stockholm.\n\nKozlov's words had haunted Helen. The pattern she'd ultimately deciphered was chilling, but it had taken her a number of years to figure it out.\n\nThe agency had kept her at the embassy for close to a week. The Langley team flew in the day of her arrival and dissected the time she had spent with Kozlov. Second by second. Word byword. Memory by memory. By day three, the team's questioning had started to feel more like an interrogation than a debriefing to her. By the time they had wrapped up, she'd wished the Saint Petersburg fiasco had never happened. From what she'd gathered, so had the rest of the CIA officers involved in the operation. Preliminary investigative reporting on the Holmans hadn't looked promising."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Denise Holman and her husband had fit the same profile as the Kelleys. Another possible sleeper team-collecting public pensions and living nowhere close to an obvious espionage target. Retired teachers who had spent the better part of the past three decades working, raising kids, and putting them through college, all while carving out a nice life for themselves in a middle-class suburb of Minneapolis. The once-frightening specter of a potentially devastating sleeper network on US soil was starting to look more and more like an unconnected collection of unused, retired agents.\n\nIt hadn't taken long for the skeptics at Langley to start suggesting Kozlov had played the agency. That the GRU general had tried to pass off retired or deactivated sleepers in exchange fora cushy retirement in the United States. Unlike many of his high-ranking GRU colleagues, Kozlov hadn't leveraged his position within the still-feared and influential intelligence agency to amass a personal fortune during the rush to privatize the Russian economy.\n\nHe'd kept plugging along in the role of the loyal general until his retirement, long after the new oligarch class had risen from the dust and stolen the last of the privatized shares from the people. From what the CIA could gather, Kozlov had little to show for his devoted service beyond a modest government pension, a two-bedroom apartment in a drab low-rise beyond the Third Ring Road, and a tiny, run-down dacha on the outskirts of Moscow. They'd speculated that bitterness and jealousy had pushed Kozlov into an inconsequential betrayal of his country.\n\nHelen Gray hadn't entirely agreed with the agency's assessment of the retired general's motivations, but it hadn't made a difference what she thought. Kozlov had been a dead end, along with the names he had provided. Despite the puzzling Cold War enigma surrounding the Kelleys'and Holmans\" seemingly unexciting three-decades-long stint in the United States, nobody had wanted to put anymore serious time or resources into the matter-including Helen."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Until she'd discovered a folded index card in the front pocket of the bomber jacket she had worn to the botanical garden in Saint Petersburg, accompanied by a note.\n\nFairly sure I won't be around fora third meeting. Consider this a parting gift. Don't let them waste it. Donald Wilson. Springdale, AR. The glue that holds the others together. Sergei Kozlov.\n\nKozlov couldn't have put the card into her pocket. The two of them had never come within three feet of each other at any moment during that afternoon. He must have directed someone else to do it after she'd left the garden. Areal street pro, because neither Helen nor the surveillance team watching her had detected it. Kozlov must have suspected that the GRU was onto him. There was no other way to explain the card and the note.\n\nBut had he triggered its delivery after leaving the garden, or had it been his plan to give it to her all along? Had he committed suicide to keep the revealed names a secret from the GRU, or had he been murdered? Questions that would never be answered. Answers that didn't really matter. The only meaningful question that remained to be asked was, What should she do with the third name?\n\nThe obvious answer was to hand it over to her superiors at the agency, but Kozlov had covertly given it to her fora reason-along with a warning. Don't let them waste it. She'd understood what he had meant, which was why she hadn't turned over the name immediately upon her return to Langley. The agency had effectively closed the Kozlov file. They'd either deep-six the name with the rest of the file or hand it off to the FBI with a nonurgent request fora background investigation, where it would meet a similar fate.\n\nGeneral Kozlov had given her the third name, knowing his time had run out. He had ultimately decided that passing her the note card had been more important than taking Donald Wilson's name to the grave. She'd looked into Wilson on her own, ultimately ending up in the same place as Kozlov. Dead by her own hand instead of revealing what she'd discovered: a widespread, multitiered sleeper network-unlike anything the FBI or CIA had ever caught wind of."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"His mother had identified seventy additional sleeper couples that fit the same profile as the Kelleys, Holmans, and Wilsons. Materialized out of thin air in the early seventies. Regular jobs. Nothing that would require a background check beyond running a basic police report. More than half of them had made their grand entrance in college. One moment they didn't exist. The next-they were college freshmen.\n\nLike the Kelleys and Holmans, none of them had appeared to have ever held a position that might pose an espionage threat to the country. Sabotage or assassination was a different story. The traditional assumption had always been that the Soviet Union would activate sleeper agents if the two countries went to war, to create chaos in the United States. But according to Helen's theory, it had never really been about the parents. It had always been about the children. That was what his mother had figured out, and why she had become so obsessed with unraveling the sleeper network.\n\nHelen's wall listed three members of the House of Representatives. An assistant secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. A principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. A one-star Air Force general working in the Pentagon. A one-star Navy admiral serving as commander, US Forces, Japan. Several other high-ranking officers spread throughout the four branches. Two FBI special agents in charge. A few other high-ranking FBI agents. State Department personnel, including our Ukrainian ambassador. And at least two suspected CIA officers working at Langley, both of them in counterintelligence.\n\nKarl Berg visibly reeled when they came across those two names. The Soviets had successfully launched an extensive second-generation network of sleepers who could breeze through the most rigorous security clearance investigations. The parents checked out. They checked out.\n\nThe only flaw in Helen's conspiracy theory was that she had absolutely no proof that the identified individuals were indeed Russian sleeper agents."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin's stomach growled, mercifully distracting him from the grim thought. He'd been running on Red Bull all night. There was no point in continuing this without eating. He could barely concentrate at this point. He searched online fora nearby breakfast spot, finding something within fairly easy walking distance. He got up from the desk, the sound of the chair scraping the floor and jolting Berg awake. The retired CIA officer lifted his head off the kitchen table, which they'd dragged into the room last night, and yawned.\n\nHe still didn't know what to think of Berg, but his mother had trusted him implicitly, according to a note he'd found on the first page of Helen's executive summary file.\n\n\"How long was I out?\" asked Berg.\n\n\"Maybe an hour,\" said Devin. \"I was thinking we could use some breakfast-and a lot of coffee. There's a bagel and breakfast sandwich shop about a fifteen-minute walk from here. The food ranges from moderately healthy fare to a guaranteed heart attack.\"\n\n\"Heart attack food sounds about right,\" said Berg. \"I just need to use the bathroom.\"\n\n\"Watch your head,\" said Devin.\n\nThe bathroom had clearly been an afterthought. About the size of a modest walk-in closet, it featured a toilet, wall-mounted sink that you had to lean your head away from when sitting on the toilet, and the smallest shower stall Devin had ever seen.\n\nWhen Berg emerged from the bathroom, he pointed a thumb over his shoulder.\n\n\"We're down to a single roll of toilet paper,\" said Berg. \"Unless she has a hidden stash somewhere.\"\n\nDevin shook his head. \"I already looked. I'll make a run for some basics later.\"\n\n\"We're not moving in, so don't go overboard,\" said Berg. \"Speaking of which, where do you think she slept?\""},{"from":"human","value":"Devin shrugged."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I think she slept in the recliner. I found a few blankets folded on the floor under the TV.\"\n\n\"Clothes?\"\n\n\"French wardrobe in the armoire in the living room,\" said Devin.\n\n\"What does that mean?\"\n\n\"About ten pieces she could mix and match to go from casual to dressy. A few pairs of shoes. It's a minimalist trick.\"\n\n\"Jesus,\" said Berg, shaking his head. \"But she had another apartment?\"\n\n\"The FBI said it didn't look like she'd spent any significant time there over the past two months,\" said Devin. \"They were light on the details.\"\n\n\"So they're looking for this apartment, too.\"\n\n\"That's what I assumed,\" said Devin.\n\n\"And there's noway the apartment can be traced back to your mother?\" said Berg, looking slightly concerned.\n\n\"The building was purchased by a Nevada LLC, which Helen formed anonymously. One of the benefits of a Nevada corporation filing. I got a look at how she set it up when I reviewed the documents transferring the title deed to Henrietta Silver.\"\n\n\"That was very generous of her,\" said Berg. \"What are your plans for Ms. Silver while we camp out here?\"\n\n\"The effective date of the title transfer is forty-five days after her recorded death, so that gives us thirty-four days to workout of this apartment. I'm going to put Henrietta and her family in an Airbnb within the city, but far enough away from here,\" said Devin. \"I'm hoping that will be enough time for us.\"\n\n\"It should be,\" said Berg. \"How do you plan to pay for the Airbnb?\"\n\n\"I'll give them ten thousand in gift cards and five thousand in cash. That should be enough for them to arrange a nice Airbnb or two and pay for incidentals for up to a month.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Helen had fifty thousand dollars in five-hundred-dollar Visa gift cards locked away in her safe, along with what looked like fifty thousand in cash. And that wasn't all.\n\n\"That'll be more than enough,\" said Berg. \"Make sure they understand the stakes.\"\n\n\"I think they do,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Not good enough,\" said Berg. \"Make sure they do.\"\n\n\"I will. I'll make it clear when I drop everything off with Henrietta later,\" said Devin.\n\nThe five-foot-tall-by-three-foot-wide safe, which had been built into the wall and hidden behind the bookshelf to the left of the hallway door, also contained a small arsenal, and an assortment of expensive, hard-to-acquire items when you wanted to remain off the grid.\n\nA few semiautomatic pistols. A decked-out, short-barrel AR-15 that he suspected hadn't been properly licensed. One of those new Scorpion EVO nine-millimeter carbines. Plenty of ammunition. Two sets of body armor and night vision gear. A nice array of person-to-person communications equipment, along with dozens of burner phones and a few more touchscreen satellite phones. GPS tracking devices. Knives. Flash-bang grenades. Ketamine vials. Syringes. The usual stuff you'd find in your mom's hidden safe.\n\n\"Sounds good. Let's get out of here fora few hours,\" said Berg."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harvey Rudd drove down the shaded, tree-congested street, keeping a closer eye on his phone than the road. He had no choice but to rely on the digital map to tell him when he'd reached the target house. There was noway to read the addresses without driving five miles per hour and gawking at the houses, which wasn't an option in this neighborhood. CONTROL had warned him that a significant percentage of the Falls Church population either worked for or had retired from the government. Many of them from the very agencies his own country had fought against for several decades.\n\nAnd even if he drove slowly, the address numbers weren't always clear from the street. Bushes and trees often blocked the view, or the numbers were located in the oddest places. Not right next to the door as you'd expect. By the time he'd finally spotted a number on one of the houses, it was gone-leaving him unable to read the digits. On top of that, some of the houses were too far from the street for the naked eye. He'd need binoculars or some kind of scope to read the numbers. The FBI would probably intercept him before he got out of the neighborhood if he started studying houses with binoculars.\n\nRudd needed to be particularly careful during this quick reconnaissance. He'd even swapped cars with Rick Gentry on the off chance that Devin Gray had warned Marnie Young to watch out fora gray SUV-or that he'd surreptitiously installed a camera to watch the street. They couldn't be too cautious with this guy. CONTROL clearly didn't have much to work with if they were putting most of their surveillance eggs in this basket.\n\nWhen the phone's map indicated he was about to pass the Youngs\" address, he glanced to the right and took in the scene. Marnie Young's childhood home was an unassuming redbrick Cape Cod– style house with a stepped, brick walkway leading up the gentle slope of their well-kept front lawn from the foot of a well-worn asphalt driveway. A black four-door Jeep Wrangler with a United States Marine Corps spare tire cover and a gold naval aviator bumper sticker sat on the driveway about midway between the street and the garage. Easy peasy."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Credit card data put her in one of two area coffee shops almost everyday fora few hours, and now they knew what to look for. According to CONTROL, Marnie Young, a combat-decorated Marine Corps helicopter pilot, had recently left active duty to pursue a civilian career, presumably in the DC area. She'd been one of only two people to attend Helen Gray's wake herein Falls Church-Karl Berg had been the other-which put her at the top of the likely Devin Gray contacts list. CONTROL assumed they had some kind of ongoing connection.\n\nThey'd slap a few trackers on her Jeep and hope for the best. Same with the car belonging to Devin's father, who lived in a very similar Falls Church neighborhood. Hope for the best pretty much described the overall surveillance strategy at this point, since it was in noway feasible for his team to physically stakeout either of the houses.\n\nHarvey and his wife, whom he'd just dropped at a nearby Enterprise Rent-A-Car office to acquire anew surveillance vehicle, would work with Rick Gentry to follow Marnie Young. They'd most likely take rooms at the Hampton Inn less than a half mile away and wait for her tracker to start moving. That way they wouldn't run the risk of unknowingly parking in front of an FBI agent's house and land them all in an interrogation room at the J. Edgar Hoover Building on the other side of the Potomac River.\n\nLogan Walsh and Nathan Clark would take up residence in the Hilton Garden Inn a few miles north of here and follow the same procedure. Mason Gray lived a quarter of a mile from that hotel, on the other side of Falls Church. It was the best they could do with the limited resources and personnel available. The biggest flaw in the plan was the inability to watch either of these target locations. Devin Gray could drive right into Falls Church and hangout with Marnie or his dad at their houses, and there was nothing Rudd could do about it. It was a huge flaw, mitigated by the assumption that Devin Gray wouldn't risk visiting either location now that he knew he was the target of an active surveillance effort. He wouldn't know how thinly they were spread. In fact, he'd likely assume that the effort had been expanded since he'd so easily spoofed their first attempt to follow him."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Rudd felt so sure about this that he'd almost pushed back against CONTROL's insistence that he keep Sandy Jones and Leo Ward at the stakeout across the street from Devin's apartment. He was glad he hadn't, because after thinking about it fora while, Rudd realized he would have made a fool out of himself. The decision to keep Sandy and Ward in place was a hedged bet by CONTROL against the assumption that Devin Gray would stay away from any obvious surveillance traps.\n\nWhat if the discovery of the trackers hadn't triggered some kind of deep conspiracy fears? What if he'd concluded that he was being ridiculous after a day or two of hiding from the deep state and returned to his apartment? Or that it had been the FBI that had tagged his vehicle? It wasn't unreasonable to assume that the FBI might want to track his movements fora while. His mother had recently kidnapped an elderly man for no apparent reason and shot a sheriff's deputy in cold blood.\n\nPinning the cop's murder on Helen Gray had been a stroke of genius, even if he hadn't been given a choice in the matter. The deputy had rolled upon them too damn quickly. He'd barely gotten to the intersection in time to keep the officer from spotting the van and the pickup truck, and possibly calling it in. Rudd's fake FBI credentials had gotten him to stop before he'd driven far enough into the intersection to seethe other vehicles. He'd been especially thankful that Helen Gray had left a few rounds in her pistol's magazine.\n\nIf he'd been forced to use his own pistol, an astute forensics team might have cast some doubt on the initial conclusion drawn by the Tennessee State Police investigators, which might have prolonged or even deepened the FBI's involvement. Never a good thing when you were nearing retirement.\n\nRudd stayed just below the speed limit as he left the neighborhood, giving nobody a reason to look twice in his direction. When he reached Broad Street, he took aright and made his way toward the rental car office. Before they dispersed to stakeout the coffee shops, he'd send his wife through with the rental car to make her own assessment."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She was at least twice as observant and would undoubtedly notice something important that he had missed. Like a sticker on the other side of the Jeep's bumper that read, PROUD PARENTS OF AU NITED STATES MARINE. Wouldn't that be embarrassing? Awkwardly, it wouldn't be the first time he'd glossed over something that had completely changed the game. He just hoped it was the last, and that CONTROL sent them home to Tennessee after this job to pack up for another part of the country or Moscow. He'd be fine either way-as long as he was still with Jolene. Or would she want to be called Ludmilla again? He was getting ahead of himself."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin left Berg alone fora few hours while he headed out to grab some essentials at a nearby Walmart and dinner from a Thai restaurant about a mile north on Greenmount Avenue. Paper goods, a case of bottled water, two full-size air mattresses, two cheap sleeping bags, and an assortment of toiletries-mostly for himself. Berg had brought an overnight bag, an idea that hadn't crossed Devin's mind when he'd set off on Helen's treasure hunt yesterday morning.\n\nBerg had already started arranging the take-out containers when he dropped the last of the Walmart bags inside the apartment. Devin shut and locked the door, breathing heavily from the back-to-backstair climbs. He wiped the thin film of sweat off his face on his shirtsleeve, suddenly remembering that he'd forgotten to buy a few changes of clothes. Tomorrow. He wouldn't have any trouble sleeping at this point, no matter how grimy he felt.\n\n\"Looks like enough food to last us several days,\" said Berg.\n\n\"I figured we'd be locked inhere fora while,\" said Devin, heading for the refrigerator. \"Drink?\"\n\n\"A beer and a couple of those waters if you don't mind,\" said Berg. \"I wasn't sure about drinking from the tap.\"\n\n\"I was more concerned about the grimy glasses in the cabinet,\" said Devin. \"I bought some paper cups.\"\n\nBerg laughed and shook his head. \"Your mom has a hundred thousand dollars sitting in a five-thousand-dollar safe, and we're afraid to drink the water from her apartment. The world is a strange place, my friend.\"\n\nDevin took a seat at the table without washing his hands. He was too tired for basic hygiene at this point. Berg set a can of Joint Resolution Hazy IPA in front of him and sat down across the table from him before cracking open his own beer. Devin followed suit and toasted Helen."},{"from":"human","value":"\"So."},{"from":"gpt","value":"After spending nearly a day in Helen's mind-what do you think now?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"I think we have a nightmare on our hands. I kept searching and searching for that one piece of evidence or link that brought the whole wall down. A fatal flaw that I could point to and say, \"Dammit, Helen! This is where you went off the rails!\" But I couldn't find it. On top of that, this is even worse than she thought.\"\n\nWith Berg's last comment, Devin finished the can and got up. \"Can I grab you another?\"\n\n\"Mayas well,\" said Berg. \"This one will begone soon.\"\n\nDevin returned with the rest of the six-pack, placing it on the table before pulling a can free from the plastic binding.\n\n\"How does it get worse than a sleeper network penetrating nearly every level of government, the military, law enforcement, and industry?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Try tanking our economy, kneecapping our military, and eroding our allies'trust in us to the point of hostility,\" said Berg. \"Israel almost broke off diplomatic relations with us over the Iron Dome failure. Antheon's stock dropped by half overnight, and now their SM-3 antiballistic missile program is under scrutiny. That puts several of our allies in an awkward position, since they rely on those missiles for protection from ballistic missile threats. Not to mention what they did to Boeing, Lockram Industries, and Ampere, if we're to assume that the Russian sleeper network penetrated those companies and sabotaged their flagship projects.\"\n\nIt all made sense to Devin. This wasn't just about espionage. The Russians had a much broader strategic goal in mind. They planned to use the network to reshape the geopolitical world in their favor, by flatlining US global influence."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Move the story forward in your role as narrative aide.\\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\\nTitle: Deep Sleep\\nChapter: 16\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Thank you, Frank. For your continued discretion,\\\" said Devin. \\\"And I'll keep your offer in mind. I never thought of myself as the boating type, but... I'll think about it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You ever been out on the water?\\\" asked Frank. \\\"On something other than a cruise ship or ferry?\\\"\\n\\nDevin shook his head. \\\"Nope.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Then you be sure to comeback when you're not busy, and I'll get you out there,\\\" said Frank. \\\"You'll know right away if you're the boating type or not-and god help you if you are.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why's that?\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Because you'll be mortgaging your house in a few years to buy a bigger boat!\\\"\\n\\nDevin laughed. He liked this guy. If the file hidden inside the boat turned out to be a bust, he might take him upon the offer. Why the hell not?\\n\\n\\\"I'll let you know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And I'll leave you to your business,\\\" said Frank, saluting him before walking away.\\n\\nDevin wiped the sweat off his forehead and grabbed the ladder with both hands, immediately gaining a sense of what Frank had conveyed about it. The thing felt solid, as though it had been carved from a single piece of wood. Still, he tentatively stepped on the first rung, testing it with a few bounces before pushing up with his full body weight. It was a wooden ladder, after all.\\n\\nAt the top of the ladder, he grabbed the nearest stanchion poles and gave them a tug to make sure they were secure before using them as leverage to climb into the boat. He stood perfectly still in the cockpit, unsure how stable the boat would be with him onboard. The metal stands pressed up against the hull looked like a rickety arrangement to holdup an object that easily weighed several thousand pounds.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Sensing no movement, he moved to the salon door and stopped. Nothing. He quickly stepped to the left and right. No movement at all. He could probably jump up and down and nothing would happen, but he had no intention of doing anything but move slowly and steadily through the boat. There was nothing normal or natural about a sailboat suspended in the air.\\n\\nDevin found the salon door unlocked and slid it open. He was greeted by a stale, mildewy odor that he assumed to be normal for compact space that gets aired out a couple of times a year at most. The interior, a combination of deep-stained wood, light-blue cushions, and white vinyl flooring, was well lit from the sunlight pouring through the long, narrow windows on each side of the salon. The galley was directly below the door, a few steps down a short wooden ladder. Easy enough.\\n\\nHe lowered himself into the galley and opened the lowest of three drawers next to the sink, removing a hefty gray waterproof pouch that took upmost of the space in the drawer. Devin sat gently on the edge of the starboard-side couch and unzipped the pouch, placing its contents on the cushion next to him.\\n\\nA handwritten note signed by his mother. A key chain with three brass house keys. Avery high-end touchscreen satellite phone. A manila file folder with metal fasteners holding together several typed pages. A little lighter than he expected. Two rubber-banded bundles of cash. Twenties and hundreds. Easily ten thousand dollars, if he had to guess. Much more than he expected. He wasn't encouraged by the fact that the money piled up higher than the file.\\n\\nHe started with the note.\\n\\nDevin, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that there's more than a hundred dollars in the pouch. You can walkaway right now and take a really nice vacation, which might sound like an attractive option after you hear the bad news. Before I get to that, please deliver the mailer to your father. It's a copy of my will, life insurance policy, and assets. Along with my estate attorney's contact information.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"What's the bad news? I'm dead. Sorry. I couldn't resist. Ye olde gallows humor. Had to get one last joke in. The bad news is that the file in your hands is just the 30,000-foot view. You've probably guessed that much by the size of the file. There's simply noway to adequately explain or represent what I've assembled over the past two decades. I apologize for misrepresenting the size of Sadie's treasure, but I couldn't take the chance that you might not take the SDR seriously-and lead them to the source. Go ahead. Roll your eyes. But read the file and consider taking one more step in this journey, assuming you took the SDR seriously. Please don't execute the next paragraph if you're not entirely sure they didn't follow you. Did they try?\\n\\nThe next step, if you choose: Power the satellite phone. I inserted a fully charged battery a few weeks ago. Find'Mom\\\" in contacts and give me a call. I'll reveal the location of the Bat Cave. I actually have one, if you consider a dingy apartment in a sketchy neighborhood a proper secret lair. There's beer in the fridge and harder stuff if you need it... you might after you see what I've been working on. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.\\n\\nLove you, Mom\\n\\n\\\"Love you, too,\\\" he said, his eyes watering.\\n\\nPS: Ask Frank about my car. I highly suggest you swap vehicles.\\n\\nPPS: Don't skip out on lunch at Cantler's. A friend of mine may join you. You can trust him.\\n\\nSo... now what? Continue the quest? An untraceable car would definitely make things a little easier, but he wasn't sure about meeting with anybody until he got a better handle on what his mother suspected she had uncovered. Then again, what did he have to lose? He could always walkaway from whoever showed up.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Why the hell not?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"he muttered, stuffing the file and the pouch into his backpack.\\n\\nOn his way back to the Cantler's parking lot, he spotted Frank near the marina's boat ramp, where he'd just hauled what looked like a mini sailboat out of the water. Two middle school– age kids wearing orange life jackets helped him drag it onto a small trailer. Devin headed in their direction. When Frank saw him, he patted one of the kids on the shoulder and told them he'd finish securing the boat. They headed for the dock, where he assumed a much larger boat and eager-to-please parents awaited them.\\n\\n\\\"Now that looks more my speed,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nFrank laughed. \\\"We'll have to start you with something a little bigger if you plan on fixing up your boat. How did it look?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You really think you could fix her up by the end of the summer?\\\"\\n\\nFrank's smile widened. \\\"Definitely before Labor Day weekend, which gives you a good month on the water and plenty of time to learn how to sail-or find a girlfriend that knows.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And those are easy to find?\\\" said Devin. \\\"The girlfriend. Not the sailing lessons.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"A lot easier when you have a boat,\\\" said Frank. \\\"What do you say? Want me to fix her up?\\\"\\n\\nHe wasn't paying for it, so he responded with his new motto.\\n\\n\\\"Why the hell not?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You won't regret it. She's a thirty-foot Catalina. A reliable cruising boat,\\\" said Frank. \\\"Not that easy to find, either, so you could always sell her if it doesn't workout for you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Easy enough,\\\" said Devin. \\\"There's one more thing. My mom said I should ask you about her car, but she didn't leave any keys, and I forgot to look on the boat.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Your mom keeps an old Honda Accord up by the main road entrance.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She's never used it as far as I know,\\\" said Frank. \\\"She left me a key to start it up every month or so to keep the battery charged. I can run up to the house and grab the key.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That would be great. Also, would you mind if I left my SUV in its place fora little while?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not at all. All I ask is that you come and go during marina business hours. Seven in the morning to ten at night.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Works for me,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nHe returned to the packed parking lot and studied the cars before approaching the waterfront side of the restaurant. Devin was mostly looking for anyone hiding in their vehicles-the obvious giveaways on this sunny, hot day being rolled-down windows or running engines. By the time he reached the restaurant entrance, Devin felt confident that the parking lot was clear. A blast of air-conditioned air washed over him when he opened the door to the bar and main dining area, where a young woman greeted him from the adjacent hostess stand.\\n\\n\\\"How many in your party?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"One,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Possibly two?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's about an hour wait fora table,\\\" she said. \\\"Or you can try and squeeze into the bar.\\\"\\n\\nHe glanced toward the packed bar area, not thrilled with the idea of reading his mother's file seated shoulder to shoulder among a boisterous crowd. Nor did he relish the thought of cracking open a dozen freshly steamed crabs under cramped conditions. He studied the faces fora moment, neither seeing anyone he recognized nor receiving a knowing glance that might indicate his mother's friend was here. Devin could study the file outside while he waited fora table, then enjoy the leisurely meal his mother had promised. Maybe by then her friend would have arrived.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'll put my name down fora table,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Sure. What's the name?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Devin.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You don't happen to be Devin Gray, do you?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"That's me,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Perfect. I have a table waiting for you,\\\" she said. \\\"Your friend's been hereabout an hour and a half. I seated him ten minutes ago.\\\"\\n\\nHe followed her into the bar area to a bank of three pub tables, tucked away next to the windows facing the parking lot. The tables hadn't been visible from the hostess stand. Karl Berg sat at the farthest table, shaking his head and smiling. Devin wasn't surprised to see Berg here.\\n\\n\\\"I'll send someone over with menus,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"That would be great. Thank you,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nBerg offered a hand, which Devin reluctantly shook before removing his backpack and sitting down. The man looked exhausted, his eyes red and watery behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses.\\n\\n\\\"You look like you drove through the night to get here,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I did. I received the oddest message last night around nine thirty,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Thirty minutes later, I was headed to Annapolis. I assume you received a similar message?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Odd doesn't even begin to describe having your dead mother send you on a treasure hunt,\\\" said Devin. \\\"How did she convince you to drive all night to be here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"She told me-well, her voice told me-that if I showed up at Cantler's atone in the afternoon, you would explain everything,\\\" said Berg. \\\"She didn't specify what everything meant.\\\"\\n\\nDevin suddenly felt guarded about the file and the phone in his backpack. He'd never met Karl Berg before his mother's wake. For all he knew, Berg could be connected to the people who had tried to follow him this morning. But that would mean he'd somehow managed to track Devin to the marina, arrive unobserved, and preemptively grab a table in the hopes of Devin stopping for lunch. No. Berg was brought hereby his mother fora reason.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"By everything, I think she meant her conspiracy theory,\\\" said Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"And its connection to her death.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm all ears,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I don't know anymore than I did when we last spoke,\\\" said Devin, testing the waters.\\n\\nBerg pushed his glasses back and squinted. \\\"Seriously? She just put us together in a crab shack to see what might happen? Helen had to have told you something.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think she intended for us to take a trip together,\\\" said Devin. \\\"She apparently has a Bat Cave. A secret apartment or something. My guess is it contains whatever research she'd conducted over the years.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And you know how to find it?\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I can access the location,\\\" said Devin, leaving out the part about the file for now.\\n\\n\\\"I don't know what to say, Devin. Your mom became obsessed with her idea,\\\" said Berg. \\\"I guess it really doesn't surprise me to hear that she had acquired a safe house to work on this. She would have been paranoid about secrecy, convinced they were following her so they could finally erase the evidence and eliminate her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Who?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It doesn't matter,\\\" said Berg, dismissively. \\\"It's all a fantasy. She probably conducted long SDRs prior to arriving at her secret lair, re-creating the most intense parts of the work she'd done for the agency-years ago. Let me guess: She led you on some kind of decode-the-next-step journey to find the apartment?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It doesn't matter how I ended up here,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"She did, didn't she?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"For good reason. I removed two GPS trackers from my car this morning before starting the first SDR.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Interesting,\\\" said Berg, finally sounding genuinely intrigued.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I also took pictures of the team that placed the trackers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You made the surveillance team that quickly?\\\" asked Berg. \\\"Were they wearing black trench coats and pointing telephoto cameras at you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Funny. No. The tracker placement was professional, and they had good reason to break cover. I more or less forced their hand,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I do this fora living, remember?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes. I remember,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Could it have been the FBI, local police, or some other federal agency?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't think so. The trackers were high end, but still the kind of stuff you can buy off the shelf. Definitely not the kind of gear we used in the FBI.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How did you locate the trackers?\\\" asked Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Radio frequency detector,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"How long did you spend on the tracker sweep?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not long enough to detect something that transmits infrequently, but I eliminated that possibility later,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Helen's decode-the-next-step journey included a vehicle swap, a high-end, untraceable satellite phone, and about ten thousand dollars in cash. She'd obviously put a lot of thought into how to get me here undetected, and she took a number of these steps as recently as three weeks ago.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"She must have gotten mixed up with some bad people while chasing down this thing,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Maybe she pissed off the Russian mob? I could see her getting desperate enough to go after them for information. Possibly staking them out. Now that I think about it, this whole thing kind of makes sense. If she'd put herself on Solntsevskaya Bratva's radar by pissing them off, it wouldn't take much for them to pull the trigger on her. Sorry to be blunt.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin shook his head. His mother's death wasn't a Russian mob hit. The people following him this morning didn't fit that profile.\\n\\n\\\"How much did Helen tell you about her theory?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Hold on,\\\" said Berg, nodding in the direction of an approaching waitress.\\n\\nThey ordered beers and a dozen crabs each, Berg continuing when the waitress was out of earshot.\\n\\n\\\"Helen was pretty guarded about what she'd tell me. I got the impression through some of the things she'd said that she was trying to protect me from ruining my career,\\\" said Berg. \\\"She gave me just enough to test the waters. Enough to keep the channel of communication open.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What did my mother think she'd uncovered?\\\" said Devin. \\\"I won't repeat any of this. I promise.\\\"\\n\\nBerg looked torn.\\n\\n\\\"You didn't hear this from me. Understood? This is all still classified, as far as I know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Understood,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"An operation she'd conducted had revealed the names of five sleepers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Russians?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Apparently. Two couples and-Donald Wilson,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Jesus,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Here's the thing. Technically the agency only knew about the two couples. Helen had only shared Donald Wilson's name with me, and I've never repeated it at Langley.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why would she do that?\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"The FBI and CIA investigated the couples thoroughly. They turned out to be retired and living on pensions. Dead ends. None of them even remotely linked by work or social circle to the government or companies that contracted with the government. They were classified as low to no risk to national security and put on a travel watch list. Don't get me wrong. They were'illegals, ' as far as we could tell. Cold War relics based on their ages. Sleepers in the truest sense of the word. But everyone agreed that hauling them in for interrogation or deportation would alert the Russians and possibly create some kind of ripple effect that would undermine ongoing espionage investigations. The FBI was working Operation Ghost Stories at the time. Did you ever work on that one?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I had just finished training and reported to the Special Surveillance Group when they made the arrests,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"The FBI's decision to back off the identified sleepers made more sense in light of those arrests. They took down ten active spies with Operation Ghost Stories, some who were making dangerous inroads within the Beltway-instead of busting a few retired schoolteachers and steelworkers,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Helen had guessed as much and withheld Wilson's name. She never said why, but she felt there was more to Wilson than the others. One name consumed her for two decades.\\\"\\n\\nDevin opened his backpack and removed the file his mother had put together.\\n\\n\\\"My mother says this is an executive summary of her conspiracy,\\\" said Devin, placing it on the table.\\n\\nBerg looked extremely uncomfortable in the file's presence. As though its contents might be radioactive.\\n\\n\\\"Have you looked at it?\\\" asked Berg.\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" said Devin, pushing it toward Berg. \\\"You first. I want your opinion before I read it.\\\"\\n\\nBerg took the file and opened it, just before two sweating bottles of ice-cold beer arrived. Less than a minute later, he closed it and pushed it back across the table-his face impassive.\\n\\n\\\"You didn't finish it,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nBerg took along swig from his bottle before answering. \\\"I've seen enough to warrant a visit to the Bat Cave.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's it?\\\" said Devin. \\\"What did it say?\\\"\\n\\nBerg shook his head. \\\"You need to read it yourself. Then we need to take our lunch to go. We may not be safe here.\\\"\\n\\nDevin opened the file and started reading. By the time he finished skimming his mother's summary, he wondered if he shouldn't go back and tell Frank to hold off on refurbishing the boat. If any of what his mother had written turned out to be true, he didn't foresee a lot of time in his immediate future for sailing lessons. For the first time ever, he actually hoped his mom had been crazy, because if she had been sane all along, the United States of America had one hell of a problem on its hands. The kind of problem that could dramatically and permanently alter the course of the nation's trajectory-in the wrong direction.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin's mother hadn't been kidding when she'd written'sketchy neighborhood.\\\" After conducting an abbreviated surveillance-detection route, which took them over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and up through the back roads of eastern Maryland, he'd approached Baltimore from the northeast along US Route 40. He knew they were in fora treat when they got off the Route 40 bypass at Federal Street. The area started out fine but got progressively worse as he navigated the mile and a half west to the provided address.\\n\\nBoarded-up windows and doors. Knee-high weeds growing through the cracked sidewalks. Corner convenience stores with faded signs-no real indication whether they were open or closed for business. Men huddled on stubby concrete stoops, eyeing him warily as he drove. The words NOS HOOT ZONE spray-painted on the sides of buildings or larger pieces of plyboard.\\n\\nThe number of abandoned buildings and commercial structures increased the farther west he drove, until he reached a one-block section that looked as though it had been scheduled for demolition. The block ended at a tall stonewall topped with cyclone fencing and barbed wire. A sturdy barrier designed to keep troublemakers out of the Green Mount Cemetery, which lay on the other side. He turned left on the street next to the wall and followed it south until he could bypass the cemetery.\\n\\nGreenmount West, a neighborhood on the other side of the cemetery, looked like a different world than what he could only assume had been Greenmount East. Still sketchy as hell in his opinion, but not a quasi-demilitarized zone. If he had to guess, he'd say this part of town was in the throes of gentrification. A chic coffee shop and a massive, newish-looking four-story apartment complex gave it away, even if every street-level apartment window was covered with tasteful stainless-steel grating.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin drove north along the western cemetery wall, the three-story row house– style apartment buildings to his left looking either well maintained or upgraded. Gentrification defined. He passed a second modern apartment complex before taking a left onto East Lafayette Avenue, where his mother had kept a secret residence since 2010. Upon turning, he immediately spied several brightly colored, full-building-facade street art mosaics. Devin presumed the neighborhood had looked significantly different twelve years ago. A lot more like the neighborhood due east of the cemetery.\\n\\nHe pulled up to the address and stopped to scan the street. East Lafayette Avenue was a one-way with cars tightly lining both sides. No boarded-up windows. Nobody milling around porches. About a quarter of the street-level windows were protected by some variation of steel burglar bars. A lot of new or restored three-story redbrick facades-his mother's building not included. She must have missed the restoration memo or decided to ignore it. His money was on the latter.\\n\\nThe bricks had been painted alight gray, which was chipped or faded in several spots. The look hovered between intentionally weathered or recently neglected. Three mailboxes, squeezed together vertically, adorned the wall to the left of the white door. A rust streak stretched several bricks below the lowest mailbox. Not the darkest of stains, but on its way to being an eyesore. His mom also didn't share the same gentrified optimism about crime. The street-level windows featured decorative, but very sturdy-looking, black wrought iron gates.\\n\\nDevin drove halfway down the block before finding a parking space, barely managing to squeeze the older-model sedan between two oversize luxury SUVs. He wondered what one of these apartments was worth now. His mother had probably bought here because it was cheap, and nobody would think to look for her in this neighborhood. She was most likely sitting on a tidy profit at this point. Or someone was sitting on it. Hopefully his sister.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Kari shared a place with two other social workers from her office-the only way any of them could afford housing within semireasonable commuting distance to work. It was only fair. He got the boat. She got to sell the apartment. Devin was getting ahead of himself. For all he knew, all this was going to his father, the most logical destination.\\n\\nDevin and Berg got out of the car, both of them taking along lookup and down the street.\\n\\n\\\"What do you think?\\\" asked Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Looks clear,\\\" said Devin, and Berg nodded. Nothing.\\n\\nDevin hadn't expected anything. Even if his pursuers had managed to track either him or Berg to the Cantler's parking lot, they most certainly didn't follow him here. He'd made sure of that with his trip through the countryside. The SDR had been solid, and the car was untraceable to Helen, as far as Devin could tell. He couldn't find the registration anywhere in the car and assumed she'd bought it in a private transaction, keeping it off the books.\\n\\nThe license plate renewal sticker reflected the current year, which led him to believe his mother had a junker in storage somewhere and kept its registration current for the express purpose of getting an updated renewal sticker. As long as he didn't give the police a reason to run these plates, they should be fine.\\n\\nHe removed a black nylon duffel bag, containing the countersurveillance kit and his mother's waterproof pouch, from the trunk and locked the car before heading to the apartment. Devin caught some movement through the ground-floor apartment windows as they approached the stoop. Berg must have noticed it, too.\\n\\n\\\"My name's Fred,\\\" said Berg. \\\"For their safety and ours.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Fred doesn't sound suspicious at all.\\\"\\n\\nWhen he got to the door, he started trying the keys, while Berg watched the street for signs of trouble. The keys hadn't been marked, so he had no idea which one went to which door. The first one didn't fit. Neither did the second. The door opened before he tried the third, startling him enough that he dropped the key chain. An elderly Black woman with white hair appeared in the open doorway. She looked around eighty years old, but stood like she was in her early fifties.\\n\\n\\\"Oh my god. I didn't mean to scare you,\\\" she said.\\n\\nDevin scooped up the keys. \\\"Just caught me off guard, ma'am.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You must be Helen's boy, Devin,\\\" she said, glancing between him and Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I am,\\\" said Devin, giving her a puzzled look. \\\"This is Fred. A friend of the family.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm Henrietta Silver. I live on the first floor with my son and daughter-in-law. My granddaughter lives on the second floor with my great-grandson, who's at Johns Hopkins on a full scholarship. Pre-med,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Must be a sharp young man,\\\" he said. \\\"I didn't even bother applying to Hopkins. I considered myself lucky to get into Maryland.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He is a very sharp young man,\\\" said Henrietta, smiling warmly. \\\"You look just like your mother. Sound like her, too.\\\"\\n\\nHe swallowed hard and nodded, worried that his voice would crack if he answered. He wasn't able to hide the tears.\\n\\nHenrietta's smile faded into a mournful, sympathetic look. \\\"I assume something happened to your Helen?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"She passed away about a week ago,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Unexpectedly.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'm so sorry, honey,\\\" she said, giving him a hug and holding onto him. \\\"She was a kind woman. A bit of a mystery, but warmhearted. I could tell. And she talked about you and Kari all the time. Helen loved the two of you. She never explained her situation or what she was doing here, but I got the feeling over the years that she'd want me to tell you that.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thank you. That means a lotto me,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Things kind of got away from all of us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It happens,\\\" she said. \\\"Sometimes there's nothing we can do about it. Trust me, I know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Are you headed out?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"No. No. I saw you stop in your car and recognized you immediately. Got my old bones up to say hello,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"I'm glad you did,\\\" said Devin. \\\"It was a pleasure meeting you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Likewise,\\\" she said before moving out of his way.\\n\\nThey stepped inside, and Devin shut the door behind them, checking fora deadbolt or someway to make sure it was locked.\\n\\n\\\"Itself-locks. You need to use the key every time when entering,\\\" she said. \\\"But if you lock yourself out, just wave through the window. One of us is almost always in the living room.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I will. Thank you,\\\" he said before heading for the staircase.\\n\\n\\\"Oh, uh... Devin?\\\"\\n\\nHe stopped at the foot of the stairs. \\\"Yes?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Will we, uh... see you around much?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"I can't say,\\\" he said, which was the truth.\\n\\nHe had no idea what he'd find up there.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Well. I hope we see you around,\\\" she said, opening her apartment door.\\n\\nDevin nodded. \\\"Okay. See you later.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It was a pleasure meeting you,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\nHenrietta smiled as she went back inside her apartment and gently closed the door.\\n\\nDevin reached the third floor, with Berg following closely behind, and made his way to the only door in the hallway, which had no doorknob. Just a deadbolt. Henrietta and her family must have thought that was more than a little bit odd. He glanced around the hallway, unable to locate the camera he assumed was recording him. Security seemed a little light for something supposedly this important. Then again, looks could be deceiving.\\n\\nIt took him two tries to select the right key to turn what felt like a heavy-duty deadbolt. Without a doorknob, he wasn't entirely sure what to do next, other than push his way in-which turned out to be the right answer. When the heavy metal slab swung inward, he quickly entered and located the framed print of Van Gogh's Starry Night in the empty family room, tilting its left corner upward to reveal a basic alarm pad set into the wall.\\n\\nHis mother wasn't kidding about the tight timeline. The display read six seconds-and counting. He pressed the pound sign, followed by the four-digit code she had provided in the phone message he had accessed by speed-dialing'Mom\\\" on the satellite phone. She'd briefly walked him through the entire apartment process in that message. With the alarm system deactivated and Berg inside, Devin shut the door and threw the deadbolt. The door was solid enough, but not what he had expected from a security standpoint.\\n\\nA quick look around explained why. The space contained nothing but a small wooden table and two mismatched kitchen chairs. This meant one thing. Whatever lay behind the next door would be epic. The question was, In what way? Epically critical to national security as she claimed or epically fucking crazy-and there was only one way to find out.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'm guessing she didn't spend much time in this room,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Probably a safe bet,\\\" said Devin before wandering into the kitchen. \\\"Take a look at this.\\\"\\n\\nBerg followed him to a hallway off the kitchen, which turned out to be more of a vestibule. A sturdy-looking door stood at the end of the stunted corridor, featuring a deadbolt, a regular keyless doorknob, and a touch pad embedded in the wall next to the doorframe.\\n\\n\\\"That looks promising,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\nDevin pulled the satellite phone from one of the duffel bag's outer pockets and checked the last number he'd dialed. Exhausted from ten sleepless nights, he didn't trust his memory at this point. He'd inputted the eight-digit code and pressed send so it would appear in his recent calls for easy retrieval.\\n\\nDevin tapped the screen, activating the digital touch pad. He entered the code and pressed the green SUBMIT icon. A mechanical whirring in the wall behind the touch pad started a moment later, followed by a solid thunk closer to the door. Some kind of power-driven locking mechanism. No wonder she hadn't invested much in the front door. The screen read OPEN DEADBOLT, so he took the next step toward the big reveal and dug the keys out of his pocket.\\n\\nA full minute later-the door wide open-Devin remained in the doorway, still trying to process what he was seeing. Mostly, he was afraid to step inside and get sucked into whatever had so entirely consumed his mother. Helen Gray had renovated the place, spending her available funds on her obsession, instead of the public-facing neighborhood gentrification effort.\\n\\nAll the interior walls had been removed and replaced by a dispersed pattern of cylindrical metal supports, initially giving the space an open feel. The complete absence of windows closed it right backup. If he'd blacked out and woken up in this room, he'd guess it was abasement.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The left wall, extending about twenty-five feet from front to back, consisted of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. From what he could tell, the shelves housed numbered binders. Several hundred if he had to guess. The rear wall, about twelve feet wide, featured a sizable wall-mounted flat-screen television. A recliner and an end table with a lamp satin front of the television. A short length of string hung down from a square attic door directly above the recliner.\\n\\nThe only other pieces of furniture were a simple black writing desk and chair in the center of the space, facing right-toward the room's pièce de résistance. A floor-to-ceiling, front-to-back'conspiracy wall,\\\" complete with red strings going in every direction, photographs, headshots, maps, Post-it notes, and newspaper clippings.\\n\\nThe difference between this wall and every wall he'd seen at the FBI or in the movies was that Helen's wall was meticulously organized. She hadn't continually tacked items to the wall as they developed, building a shantytown of information. She'd obviously rebuilt this wall dozens, if not hundreds, of times.\\n\\n\\\"Are you going in?\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I don't know,\\\" whispered Devin.\\n\\nThe effort that had gone into this project was mind-boggling. The very least he could do was give this a chance. Still, he couldn't bring himself to enter the room.\\n\\n\\\"Do you mind if I take a look?\\\"\\n\\nDevin shook his head and made space for him to squeeze by. Berg walked the length of the conspiracy wall, pausing a few times to stare at the displayed information. When he'd reached the end, he turned and crossed the room, taking in the wall of binders.\\n\\n\\\"What are we looking at?\\\" asked Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"On the surface, it appears that your mother uncovered an extensive network of Russian sleeper agents,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Far more extensive than anything we've ever suspected-assuming this isn't some kind of elaborate delusion sprinkled with magical conspiracy theory dust. It's going to take sometime to sort this out and draw our own conclusions.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Where do we even start?\\\" asked Devin. \\\"How do we begin to make sense of this?\\\"\\n\\nBerg walked over to the desk and examined a yellow legal pad that sat next to a closed laptop. Tight handwriting covered the top sheet.\\n\\n\\\"True to form, your mother left instructions,\\\" said Berg, tapping the notepad.\\n\\nShe'd apparently thought of everything, which meant she clearly had understood that she might not comeback from whatever she had set out to accomplish by kidnapping Donald Wilson. In other words, Helen Gray had convinced herself that what she had discovered was worth dying for. He stepped inside the room-well aware that the wall could swallow him just the same.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harvey Rudd moved the curtain a few inches away from the wall and studied Gray's apartment through a night vision scope. Darkness. Same as the past several hours-confirmed by a continuous recording made by the tripod-mounted camera in the bedroom. He checked his watch: 3:34 a. m. It was pretty obvious that he wasn't coming back tonight. Either the discovery of the trackers had spooked him enough to keep him away fora little while or he'd met with someone, after tossing the trackers, who convinced him to go dark. Neither scenario boded well for the Rudds\\\" retirement plans.\\n\\nThe next step was to contact CONTROL and let them know that Devin Gray had significantly deviated from the pattern. He'd already made them aware of the tracking device incident, which they'd thankfully dismissed as expected. An encouraging sign that Rudd and the team had been right about CONTROL having low expectations about the surveillance effort. It was time to take the gloves off.\\n\\nHis phone rang, its screen softly illuminating the darkened room, his face, and the ridiculously thin curtain next to him. If Gray was watching from somewhere, it would have drawn his attention. Maybe he really was getting too old for this shit. Turning off your phone or at least flipping it facedown at night on a stakeout was basic procedure. He swiped the phone off the coffee table in front of him and answered the call.\\n\\n\\\"Yes, my love?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Anything?\\\" asked Jolene.\\n\\n\\\"No. I was about to send an update up the chain,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"Maybe give it a few more hours?\\\" she said. \\\"Even if he's up to no good, which is pretty much guaranteed, there's a good chance he'll show up in the morning to grab some personal items. We've seen that before.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"That's why I want to update CONTROL,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"If he very unwisely shows up tomorrow, which is unlikely given the circumstances, it could very well be the last time anyone sees him. CONTROL might want us to pop him if we get the chance, and I don't feel like jumping through hoops at the last second. I'd like the green light now, if that's where this is headed. We can get setup and do it right in the parking lot-or inside his apartment.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Don't tease me,\\\" she said. \\\"I can picture it now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well. Like I said, he'd be crazy to show up, unless he just got spooked and decided to stay away fora night or two. We don't have anyone watching his father's place, or his work. He could be crashed out in his office or on a couch in Falls Church.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I doubt he's anywhere obvious,\\\" said Jolene.\\n\\n\\\"I agree. It's wishful thinking,\\\" said Rudd, taking another peek at Gray's dark apartment. \\\"I'm going to put together a message. See what they say.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"All right. Let me know their response. I won't be able to sleep until I know,\\\" she said. \\\"I hate loose ends.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Hopefully CONTROL will let us tie this one up,\\\" he said. \\\"Love you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Love you, too.\\\"\\n\\nHe ended the call and took his laptop to the dining room table, away from the sliding glass door and its virtually transparent curtain. After negotiating the security protocols to access the dark web website designed exclusively for communicating with CONTROL, he typed CHATBOX followed by his username in the single text field on the homepage. His cellphone buzzed a moment later, a text appearing with a twenty-digit alphanumeric code, which he typed in the now-empty text field. A rudimentary chat box opened, and he typed a quick update.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Despite his eagerness to speedup what he thought to be the inevitable with Devin Gray, he never made any assumptions or recommendations when communicating directly with CONTROL. He reported the facts and answered with facts. The group running the show on the other end of this gave the orders based on Rudd's reporting and information available from dozens of other sources that he'd likely never be made aware of.\\n\\nHR (Harvey Rudd): Subject hasn't returned.\\n\\nSeveral seconds elapsed before a response appeared.\\n\\nCL (CONTROL): Sending mission addendum by 7 AM your time. Synopsis follows. Discontinuing mobile surveillance of DG. Focusing on likely personal contacts in area. Priority remains discovering possible secondary HG location.\\n\\nHR: Copy. Will adjust and execute.\\n\\nThe chat box disappeared, leaving him with the generic homepage and text box. He shut the computer down and called his wife with the update. She answered before he heard the first ring.\\n\\n\\\"That was fast,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"I think they had already decided,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"Sounds like we'll be following the father and a few other people they picked out as possible personal contacts. And we're still looking for this supposed hideout.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sounds exciting,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Areal barn burner,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"Go to bed. We'll get the details in the morning and figure out what that means for us in terms of splitting everyone up.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Did they say how many folks we'd be watching?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No. But they did say no more mobile surveillance of this guy, so it sounds like we'll still keep someone hereto watch over the apartment,\\\" he said. \\\"Let's hope it's no more than four, or you and I will have to go our separate ways fora while.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"This is turning into areal turkey of a job,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"If by turkey you mean low key and low risk, I'm not complaining,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"I don't need to go all Mission: Impossible on my last job to feel fulfilled. Sitting in a car and staring through a pair of binoculars sounds like a perfect send-off.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I guess,\\\" she said, clearly disappointed.\\n\\n\\\"Keep your chin up,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"They didn't take popping him off the table.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well. There's that. See you in a few hours.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Love you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Love you, too,\\\" she said.\\n\\nRudd had meant what he'd said about not complaining. Something gave him the sense that this whole mission could escalate at the drop of a hat. Like the situation with Helen Gray. Dave Bender probably never knew what hit him. She'd lit him up before any of them could react.\\n\\nDevin Gray didn't strike him as the instantly lethal type, but as the old saying goes, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree-and he'd like to stay as faraway from that family tree as possible this close to retirement.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin massaged his chin, his fingers pushing through the thick stubble. Morning had finally arrived, the first vestiges of light appearing through the gaps in the living room curtains visible from his seat at the desk. They'd been up all night studying'the wall,\\\" both of them feeling like they had barely scratched the surface. Helen's binders were extensive, representing hundreds of hours of reading and study. Working continuously from the moment they stepped up to the wall until now, they'd only pulled about a tenth of the folders from'the library,\\\" mostly skimming each folder's contents for the context necessary to track his mother's logic chain.\\n\\nDevin had followed her story from start to finish, admittedly skimming the files instead of scrutinizing them, and it all made perfect sense.\\n\\nBased on the service background file she'd left behind, she had worked as a specialized skills officer, serving in anon-demand capacity as an NOC (nonofficial cover) throughout Europe, Russia, and Russia's former satellite nations. She spoke fluent Russian and German, and had earned a master's degree in international relations at Boston University. The CIA apparently hadn't wanted to potentially burn her identity by formally sending her abroad under official cover at an embassy. She'd been productive over the years as an NOC, often traveling behind the Iron Curtain to support intelligence operations that required an outside touch.\\n\\nHelen Gray's skill and success in this specialized role put her in Saint Petersburg during the spring of 2003. A fateful assignment that would end two decades later with the kidnapping and murder of Donald Wilson, the point-blank killing of an off-duty sheriff's deputy, and her own suicide.\\n\\nWilson's name had been the third name provided to her by Sergei Kozlov, the retired GRU general she had been sent to meet in Saint Petersburg, during the spring of 2003. Brian Kelley had been the first. A'puzzling hors d'oeuvre\\\" meant to whet the CIA's appetite-his mom had away with words. The FBI hadn't been able to find a trace of him or his wife, Kathleen, in the United States prior to 1974.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The Kelleys had materialized in northwest Indiana during the spring of that year, when Brian took a job atone of the sprawling steel mills in the region-a job he held until his retirement in the late nineties.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Kathleen had split her time between substitute teaching and staying home with their two children.\\n\\nIf the Kelleys were sleeper agents, as Sergei Kozlov had implied, they hadn't done any obvious damage to United States national security from their blue-collar enclave in northwest Indiana. From what the FBI could initially determine, the family rarely traveled outside the state. The Kelleys appeared to have spent most of their leisure time and money on a no-frills pontoon boat they'd kept at a nearby marina on Lake Michigan.\\n\\nNot exactly asocial circle that implied a productive espionage career for the couple. That said, intelligence gathered from defectors during the Cold War heydays strongly suggested that some Soviet sleepers served purposes beyond espionage. Targeted sabotage and discreet assassination topping their list of potential assignments. Even more troubling, these'deep sleepers\\\" typically remained completely inactive until called onto execute their grim tasks.\\n\\nPossible confirmation of along-dormant network of saboteurs and killers in the US scared the hell out of CIA leadership. Unfortunately, the results of a more thorough investigation into the Kelleys would take months. Time the CIA didn't feel they'd had with Kozlov. The agency had dispatched Helen to meet him again, with instructions to demand a more compelling sample of what he hoped to trade for an exceptionally comfortable and secure life in the United States.\\n\\nHer recall of the meeting was uncanny. She'd apparently sensed something was wrong the moment Kozlov arrived at the Saint Petersburg Botanical Garden. He had appeared agitated and nervous upon arrival, glancing over his shoulder a number of times and snapping at the clerk while he'd purchased a ticket fora guided tour of the garden's greenhouses. A stark difference from the stoic, unreadable GRU general she'd meta few weeks earlier.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He'd seemed to settle down once the tour started, the two of them keeping their distance and pretending to care about exotic plants for the hour or so it took the agency support team to give their meeting the green light. Deep inside the sprawling, densely wooded grounds south of the greenhouse complex, the two of them had sat for several minutes in the shade of a towering oak tree, on a small wrought iron bench facing a lily pad– covered pond.\\n\\nHe'd given her the name and address of Denise Holman, suggesting they study the similarities between Holman and Kelley. When she'd pressed him to explain the connection, he'd just stared at the pond for an uncomfortably long period of time-ultimately rejecting her demand. Kozlov had said the CIA needed to identify the pattern and draw the right conclusion on their own.\\n\\nNo more than thirty minutes after Kozlov had given her the second name and walked away, he'd been crushed under a trolleybus on Bolshoy Prospekt, less than a quarter mile from the entrance to the gardens. Helen had been scooped off the street moments later by one of the CIA countersurveillance teams watching over her, and driven straight to Pulkovo Airport, where she had been rushed onboard awaiting Gulfstream jet. Barely an hour and a half later, a small convoy of armored SUVs had driven her onto the US embassy compound in Stockholm.\\n\\nKozlov's words had haunted Helen. The pattern she'd ultimately deciphered was chilling, but it had taken her a number of years to figure it out.\\n\\nThe agency had kept her at the embassy for close to a week. The Langley team flew in the day of her arrival and dissected the time she had spent with Kozlov. Second by second. Word byword. Memory by memory. By day three, the team's questioning had started to feel more like an interrogation than a debriefing to her. By the time they had wrapped up, she'd wished the Saint Petersburg fiasco had never happened. From what she'd gathered, so had the rest of the CIA officers involved in the operation. Preliminary investigative reporting on the Holmans hadn't looked promising.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Denise Holman and her husband had fit the same profile as the Kelleys. Another possible sleeper team-collecting public pensions and living nowhere close to an obvious espionage target. Retired teachers who had spent the better part of the past three decades working, raising kids, and putting them through college, all while carving out a nice life for themselves in a middle-class suburb of Minneapolis. The once-frightening specter of a potentially devastating sleeper network on US soil was starting to look more and more like an unconnected collection of unused, retired agents.\\n\\nIt hadn't taken long for the skeptics at Langley to start suggesting Kozlov had played the agency. That the GRU general had tried to pass off retired or deactivated sleepers in exchange fora cushy retirement in the United States. Unlike many of his high-ranking GRU colleagues, Kozlov hadn't leveraged his position within the still-feared and influential intelligence agency to amass a personal fortune during the rush to privatize the Russian economy.\\n\\nHe'd kept plugging along in the role of the loyal general until his retirement, long after the new oligarch class had risen from the dust and stolen the last of the privatized shares from the people. From what the CIA could gather, Kozlov had little to show for his devoted service beyond a modest government pension, a two-bedroom apartment in a drab low-rise beyond the Third Ring Road, and a tiny, run-down dacha on the outskirts of Moscow. They'd speculated that bitterness and jealousy had pushed Kozlov into an inconsequential betrayal of his country.\\n\\nHelen Gray hadn't entirely agreed with the agency's assessment of the retired general's motivations, but it hadn't made a difference what she thought. Kozlov had been a dead end, along with the names he had provided. Despite the puzzling Cold War enigma surrounding the Kelleys'and Holmans\\\" seemingly unexciting three-decades-long stint in the United States, nobody had wanted to put anymore serious time or resources into the matter-including Helen.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Until she'd discovered a folded index card in the front pocket of the bomber jacket she had worn to the botanical garden in Saint Petersburg, accompanied by a note.\\n\\nFairly sure I won't be around fora third meeting. Consider this a parting gift. Don't let them waste it. Donald Wilson. Springdale, AR. The glue that holds the others together. Sergei Kozlov.\\n\\nKozlov couldn't have put the card into her pocket. The two of them had never come within three feet of each other at any moment during that afternoon. He must have directed someone else to do it after she'd left the garden. Areal street pro, because neither Helen nor the surveillance team watching her had detected it. Kozlov must have suspected that the GRU was onto him. There was no other way to explain the card and the note.\\n\\nBut had he triggered its delivery after leaving the garden, or had it been his plan to give it to her all along? Had he committed suicide to keep the revealed names a secret from the GRU, or had he been murdered? Questions that would never be answered. Answers that didn't really matter. The only meaningful question that remained to be asked was, What should she do with the third name?\\n\\nThe obvious answer was to hand it over to her superiors at the agency, but Kozlov had covertly given it to her fora reason-along with a warning. Don't let them waste it. She'd understood what he had meant, which was why she hadn't turned over the name immediately upon her return to Langley. The agency had effectively closed the Kozlov file. They'd either deep-six the name with the rest of the file or hand it off to the FBI with a nonurgent request fora background investigation, where it would meet a similar fate.\\n\\nGeneral Kozlov had given her the third name, knowing his time had run out. He had ultimately decided that passing her the note card had been more important than taking Donald Wilson's name to the grave. She'd looked into Wilson on her own, ultimately ending up in the same place as Kozlov. Dead by her own hand instead of revealing what she'd discovered: a widespread, multitiered sleeper network-unlike anything the FBI or CIA had ever caught wind of.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"His mother had identified seventy additional sleeper couples that fit the same profile as the Kelleys, Holmans, and Wilsons. Materialized out of thin air in the early seventies. Regular jobs. Nothing that would require a background check beyond running a basic police report. More than half of them had made their grand entrance in college. One moment they didn't exist. The next-they were college freshmen.\\n\\nLike the Kelleys and Holmans, none of them had appeared to have ever held a position that might pose an espionage threat to the country. Sabotage or assassination was a different story. The traditional assumption had always been that the Soviet Union would activate sleeper agents if the two countries went to war, to create chaos in the United States. But according to Helen's theory, it had never really been about the parents. It had always been about the children. That was what his mother had figured out, and why she had become so obsessed with unraveling the sleeper network.\\n\\nHelen's wall listed three members of the House of Representatives. An assistant secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment. A principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. A one-star Air Force general working in the Pentagon. A one-star Navy admiral serving as commander, US Forces, Japan. Several other high-ranking officers spread throughout the four branches. Two FBI special agents in charge. A few other high-ranking FBI agents. State Department personnel, including our Ukrainian ambassador. And at least two suspected CIA officers working at Langley, both of them in counterintelligence.\\n\\nKarl Berg visibly reeled when they came across those two names. The Soviets had successfully launched an extensive second-generation network of sleepers who could breeze through the most rigorous security clearance investigations. The parents checked out. They checked out.\\n\\nThe only flaw in Helen's conspiracy theory was that she had absolutely no proof that the identified individuals were indeed Russian sleeper agents.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin's stomach growled, mercifully distracting him from the grim thought. He'd been running on Red Bull all night. There was no point in continuing this without eating. He could barely concentrate at this point. He searched online fora nearby breakfast spot, finding something within fairly easy walking distance. He got up from the desk, the sound of the chair scraping the floor and jolting Berg awake. The retired CIA officer lifted his head off the kitchen table, which they'd dragged into the room last night, and yawned.\\n\\nHe still didn't know what to think of Berg, but his mother had trusted him implicitly, according to a note he'd found on the first page of Helen's executive summary file.\\n\\n\\\"How long was I out?\\\" asked Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Maybe an hour,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I was thinking we could use some breakfast-and a lot of coffee. There's a bagel and breakfast sandwich shop about a fifteen-minute walk from here. The food ranges from moderately healthy fare to a guaranteed heart attack.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Heart attack food sounds about right,\\\" said Berg. \\\"I just need to use the bathroom.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Watch your head,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nThe bathroom had clearly been an afterthought. About the size of a modest walk-in closet, it featured a toilet, wall-mounted sink that you had to lean your head away from when sitting on the toilet, and the smallest shower stall Devin had ever seen.\\n\\nWhen Berg emerged from the bathroom, he pointed a thumb over his shoulder.\\n\\n\\\"We're down to a single roll of toilet paper,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Unless she has a hidden stash somewhere.\\\"\\n\\nDevin shook his head. \\\"I already looked. I'll make a run for some basics later.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're not moving in, so don't go overboard,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Speaking of which, where do you think she slept?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Devin shrugged.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I think she slept in the recliner. I found a few blankets folded on the floor under the TV.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Clothes?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"French wardrobe in the armoire in the living room,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"What does that mean?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"About ten pieces she could mix and match to go from casual to dressy. A few pairs of shoes. It's a minimalist trick.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Jesus,\\\" said Berg, shaking his head. \\\"But she had another apartment?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The FBI said it didn't look like she'd spent any significant time there over the past two months,\\\" said Devin. \\\"They were light on the details.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So they're looking for this apartment, too.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's what I assumed,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"And there's noway the apartment can be traced back to your mother?\\\" said Berg, looking slightly concerned.\\n\\n\\\"The building was purchased by a Nevada LLC, which Helen formed anonymously. One of the benefits of a Nevada corporation filing. I got a look at how she set it up when I reviewed the documents transferring the title deed to Henrietta Silver.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That was very generous of her,\\\" said Berg. \\\"What are your plans for Ms. Silver while we camp out here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The effective date of the title transfer is forty-five days after her recorded death, so that gives us thirty-four days to workout of this apartment. I'm going to put Henrietta and her family in an Airbnb within the city, but far enough away from here,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I'm hoping that will be enough time for us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It should be,\\\" said Berg. \\\"How do you plan to pay for the Airbnb?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll give them ten thousand in gift cards and five thousand in cash. That should be enough for them to arrange a nice Airbnb or two and pay for incidentals for up to a month.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Helen had fifty thousand dollars in five-hundred-dollar Visa gift cards locked away in her safe, along with what looked like fifty thousand in cash. And that wasn't all.\\n\\n\\\"That'll be more than enough,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Make sure they understand the stakes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think they do,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Not good enough,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Make sure they do.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I will. I'll make it clear when I drop everything off with Henrietta later,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nThe five-foot-tall-by-three-foot-wide safe, which had been built into the wall and hidden behind the bookshelf to the left of the hallway door, also contained a small arsenal, and an assortment of expensive, hard-to-acquire items when you wanted to remain off the grid.\\n\\nA few semiautomatic pistols. A decked-out, short-barrel AR-15 that he suspected hadn't been properly licensed. One of those new Scorpion EVO nine-millimeter carbines. Plenty of ammunition. Two sets of body armor and night vision gear. A nice array of person-to-person communications equipment, along with dozens of burner phones and a few more touchscreen satellite phones. GPS tracking devices. Knives. Flash-bang grenades. Ketamine vials. Syringes. The usual stuff you'd find in your mom's hidden safe.\\n\\n\\\"Sounds good. Let's get out of here fora few hours,\\\" said Berg.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harvey Rudd drove down the shaded, tree-congested street, keeping a closer eye on his phone than the road. He had no choice but to rely on the digital map to tell him when he'd reached the target house. There was noway to read the addresses without driving five miles per hour and gawking at the houses, which wasn't an option in this neighborhood. CONTROL had warned him that a significant percentage of the Falls Church population either worked for or had retired from the government. Many of them from the very agencies his own country had fought against for several decades.\\n\\nAnd even if he drove slowly, the address numbers weren't always clear from the street. Bushes and trees often blocked the view, or the numbers were located in the oddest places. Not right next to the door as you'd expect. By the time he'd finally spotted a number on one of the houses, it was gone-leaving him unable to read the digits. On top of that, some of the houses were too far from the street for the naked eye. He'd need binoculars or some kind of scope to read the numbers. The FBI would probably intercept him before he got out of the neighborhood if he started studying houses with binoculars.\\n\\nRudd needed to be particularly careful during this quick reconnaissance. He'd even swapped cars with Rick Gentry on the off chance that Devin Gray had warned Marnie Young to watch out fora gray SUV-or that he'd surreptitiously installed a camera to watch the street. They couldn't be too cautious with this guy. CONTROL clearly didn't have much to work with if they were putting most of their surveillance eggs in this basket.\\n\\nWhen the phone's map indicated he was about to pass the Youngs\\\" address, he glanced to the right and took in the scene. Marnie Young's childhood home was an unassuming redbrick Cape Cod– style house with a stepped, brick walkway leading up the gentle slope of their well-kept front lawn from the foot of a well-worn asphalt driveway. A black four-door Jeep Wrangler with a United States Marine Corps spare tire cover and a gold naval aviator bumper sticker sat on the driveway about midway between the street and the garage. Easy peasy.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Credit card data put her in one of two area coffee shops almost everyday fora few hours, and now they knew what to look for. According to CONTROL, Marnie Young, a combat-decorated Marine Corps helicopter pilot, had recently left active duty to pursue a civilian career, presumably in the DC area. She'd been one of only two people to attend Helen Gray's wake herein Falls Church-Karl Berg had been the other-which put her at the top of the likely Devin Gray contacts list. CONTROL assumed they had some kind of ongoing connection.\\n\\nThey'd slap a few trackers on her Jeep and hope for the best. Same with the car belonging to Devin's father, who lived in a very similar Falls Church neighborhood. Hope for the best pretty much described the overall surveillance strategy at this point, since it was in noway feasible for his team to physically stakeout either of the houses.\\n\\nHarvey and his wife, whom he'd just dropped at a nearby Enterprise Rent-A-Car office to acquire anew surveillance vehicle, would work with Rick Gentry to follow Marnie Young. They'd most likely take rooms at the Hampton Inn less than a half mile away and wait for her tracker to start moving. That way they wouldn't run the risk of unknowingly parking in front of an FBI agent's house and land them all in an interrogation room at the J. Edgar Hoover Building on the other side of the Potomac River.\\n\\nLogan Walsh and Nathan Clark would take up residence in the Hilton Garden Inn a few miles north of here and follow the same procedure. Mason Gray lived a quarter of a mile from that hotel, on the other side of Falls Church. It was the best they could do with the limited resources and personnel available. The biggest flaw in the plan was the inability to watch either of these target locations. Devin Gray could drive right into Falls Church and hangout with Marnie or his dad at their houses, and there was nothing Rudd could do about it. It was a huge flaw, mitigated by the assumption that Devin Gray wouldn't risk visiting either location now that he knew he was the target of an active surveillance effort. He wouldn't know how thinly they were spread. In fact, he'd likely assume that the effort had been expanded since he'd so easily spoofed their first attempt to follow him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Rudd felt so sure about this that he'd almost pushed back against CONTROL's insistence that he keep Sandy Jones and Leo Ward at the stakeout across the street from Devin's apartment. He was glad he hadn't, because after thinking about it fora while, Rudd realized he would have made a fool out of himself. The decision to keep Sandy and Ward in place was a hedged bet by CONTROL against the assumption that Devin Gray would stay away from any obvious surveillance traps.\\n\\nWhat if the discovery of the trackers hadn't triggered some kind of deep conspiracy fears? What if he'd concluded that he was being ridiculous after a day or two of hiding from the deep state and returned to his apartment? Or that it had been the FBI that had tagged his vehicle? It wasn't unreasonable to assume that the FBI might want to track his movements fora while. His mother had recently kidnapped an elderly man for no apparent reason and shot a sheriff's deputy in cold blood.\\n\\nPinning the cop's murder on Helen Gray had been a stroke of genius, even if he hadn't been given a choice in the matter. The deputy had rolled upon them too damn quickly. He'd barely gotten to the intersection in time to keep the officer from spotting the van and the pickup truck, and possibly calling it in. Rudd's fake FBI credentials had gotten him to stop before he'd driven far enough into the intersection to seethe other vehicles. He'd been especially thankful that Helen Gray had left a few rounds in her pistol's magazine.\\n\\nIf he'd been forced to use his own pistol, an astute forensics team might have cast some doubt on the initial conclusion drawn by the Tennessee State Police investigators, which might have prolonged or even deepened the FBI's involvement. Never a good thing when you were nearing retirement.\\n\\nRudd stayed just below the speed limit as he left the neighborhood, giving nobody a reason to look twice in his direction. When he reached Broad Street, he took aright and made his way toward the rental car office. Before they dispersed to stakeout the coffee shops, he'd send his wife through with the rental car to make her own assessment.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She was at least twice as observant and would undoubtedly notice something important that he had missed. Like a sticker on the other side of the Jeep's bumper that read, PROUD PARENTS OF AU NITED STATES MARINE. Wouldn't that be embarrassing? Awkwardly, it wouldn't be the first time he'd glossed over something that had completely changed the game. He just hoped it was the last, and that CONTROL sent them home to Tennessee after this job to pack up for another part of the country or Moscow. He'd be fine either way-as long as he was still with Jolene. Or would she want to be called Ludmilla again? He was getting ahead of himself.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin left Berg alone fora few hours while he headed out to grab some essentials at a nearby Walmart and dinner from a Thai restaurant about a mile north on Greenmount Avenue. Paper goods, a case of bottled water, two full-size air mattresses, two cheap sleeping bags, and an assortment of toiletries-mostly for himself. Berg had brought an overnight bag, an idea that hadn't crossed Devin's mind when he'd set off on Helen's treasure hunt yesterday morning.\\n\\nBerg had already started arranging the take-out containers when he dropped the last of the Walmart bags inside the apartment. Devin shut and locked the door, breathing heavily from the back-to-backstair climbs. He wiped the thin film of sweat off his face on his shirtsleeve, suddenly remembering that he'd forgotten to buy a few changes of clothes. Tomorrow. He wouldn't have any trouble sleeping at this point, no matter how grimy he felt.\\n\\n\\\"Looks like enough food to last us several days,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I figured we'd be locked inhere fora while,\\\" said Devin, heading for the refrigerator. \\\"Drink?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"A beer and a couple of those waters if you don't mind,\\\" said Berg. \\\"I wasn't sure about drinking from the tap.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I was more concerned about the grimy glasses in the cabinet,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I bought some paper cups.\\\"\\n\\nBerg laughed and shook his head. \\\"Your mom has a hundred thousand dollars sitting in a five-thousand-dollar safe, and we're afraid to drink the water from her apartment. The world is a strange place, my friend.\\\"\\n\\nDevin took a seat at the table without washing his hands. He was too tired for basic hygiene at this point. Berg set a can of Joint Resolution Hazy IPA in front of him and sat down across the table from him before cracking open his own beer. Devin followed suit and toasted Helen.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"So.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"After spending nearly a day in Helen's mind-what do you think now?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I think we have a nightmare on our hands. I kept searching and searching for that one piece of evidence or link that brought the whole wall down. A fatal flaw that I could point to and say, \\\"Dammit, Helen! This is where you went off the rails!\\\" But I couldn't find it. On top of that, this is even worse than she thought.\\\"\\n\\nWith Berg's last comment, Devin finished the can and got up. \\\"Can I grab you another?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mayas well,\\\" said Berg. \\\"This one will begone soon.\\\"\\n\\nDevin returned with the rest of the six-pack, placing it on the table before pulling a can free from the plastic binding.\\n\\n\\\"How does it get worse than a sleeper network penetrating nearly every level of government, the military, law enforcement, and industry?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Try tanking our economy, kneecapping our military, and eroding our allies'trust in us to the point of hostility,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Israel almost broke off diplomatic relations with us over the Iron Dome failure. Antheon's stock dropped by half overnight, and now their SM-3 antiballistic missile program is under scrutiny. That puts several of our allies in an awkward position, since they rely on those missiles for protection from ballistic missile threats. Not to mention what they did to Boeing, Lockram Industries, and Ampere, if we're to assume that the Russian sleeper network penetrated those companies and sabotaged their flagship projects.\\\"\\n\\nIt all made sense to Devin. This wasn't just about espionage. The Russians had a much broader strategic goal in mind. They planned to use the network to reshape the geopolitical world in their favor, by flatlining US global influence.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":281,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Assist the writer, move the story forward.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 26"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What happened, if you don't mind my asking?\"\n\n\"True America happened,\" said Berg. \"Right around the time your mother was ousted, come to think of it. You know, she was still doing really good work for Langley at that point-pet sleeper project aside, which ironically turned out to be her best work. I wonder if her removal wasn't somehow related, given the fact that one of President Crane's top advisers was one of those sleepers. True America cleaned house in 2009. It wouldn't surprise me if whispers of her theory reached the wrong ears, and Sean Walker made sure she was swept up in the political purge.\"\n\n\"Why did they push you so far out of the fold?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"True America had some serious skeletons in their closet, and I had one of the keys to that closet,\" said Berg. \"Anyone with one of those keys was runoff the road into a ditch and left there.\"\n\n\"Did you have anything to do with their downfall?\"\n\n\"What do you know about that?\" asked Berg, raising an eyebrow.\n\n\"I heard rumors at SSG that there was more to it than an election fraud scandal,\" said Devin. \"Something related to the 2007 True America incident.\"\n\n\"Rumors,\" said Berg, shrugging.\n\nHe got the hint. Time to change the subject.\n\n\"I assume Marnie is clear to book the Airbnb?\" asked Devin.\n\nBerg looked as though the question had caught him off guard.\n\n\"Yes. They ran a passive radio frequency sweep of her vehicle and actively pinged fora possible long-haul device. Her Jeep is clean. They watched the coffee shop, followed her to Whole Foods, and one of the operatives ghosted her inside the store. Nothing. She can proceed with the booking. Let her know they need the address as soon as she has it. They'll likely get there ahead of her to watch for any suspicious activity while she's checking the place outwith the owner and immediately afterward.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"They're extremely thorough,\" said Devin. \"That's for sure.\"\n\n\"They're extremely paranoid and thorough. That's how they stay alive in this business,\" said Berg. \"Which brings us to the most important condition of my continued participation and theirs.\"\n\nDevin cocked his head a bit. He wasn't going to like what Berg had to say. That much was obvious from his tone and the fact that he'd waited this long to give an ultimatum he probably could have led with last night at dinner.\n\n\"What's the condition?\"\n\n\"We do this my way,\" said Berg. \"I don't say that because I'm a control freak. I say that because I've learned a thing or two about the Russians over the years. One of them being that they don't play by the rules or respect any conventions. You leave the rule books and the referee manuals behind when you're dealing with the Russians.\"\n\n\"Fine,\" said Devin.\n\n\"It's not that simple,\" said Berg. \"Some of the time, my way will not resemble your way-at all. In fact, I can guarantee you we will reach a point, at least once or twice, where you find my way to be the antithesis of everything you thought you stood for. You'll be repulsed by it, but it will be the only way to effectively deal with the Russians.\"\n\n\"I think I understand,\" said Devin.\n\n\"You can't, yet,\" said Berg. \"I just need you to trust me when your instincts are screaming otherwise. Once we reach a certain point in this little venture, we can't turn back without catastrophic results for everyone.\"\n\nDevin didn't need to ask what that meant. It certainly didn't mean standing in the unemployment line with a black mark on your résumé. It meant ending up facedown in the Chesapeake Bay with your throat slashed or buried in afield somewhere off the beaten path with a bullet hole in your forehead. He asked the next logical question."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"When do we reach that point?\"\n\n\"That's the tricky part, Devin, and it's never a clear path,\" said Berg. \"It's why I need you to trust me enough to do this my way no matter what your gut is telling you.\"\n\n\"My mom trusted you-so I trust you,\" said Devin.\n\nBerg nodded. \"Then I better not let her down.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie Young left her parents' house a little after 6:15 to meet with the owner of the townhouse she had rented in the Canton District of Baltimore. The owner agreed to meet her at 8:00 p. m. to walk her through the place and give her the keys.\n\nDevin said he'd arrive around nine with an'associate\" to check the place out and pay her for the two weeks she'd fronted. Finding a thirty-day rental in the city for twelve occupants, in a good neighborhood, hadn't left her with any bargain-basement options-especially at the start of the summer. Four hundred and fifty a night, with a two-week deposit, had been the best she could manage, which didn't seem to faze him in the least.\n\nThe rest of his new associates would supposedly arrive later that night. She still had no idea what he meant by'associates,\" or what he was up to, but she was determined to find out. They had concluded that she wasn't under surveillance, which had been a huge relief. She'd packed an overnight bag and had every intention of sticking around until she could fully assess Devin's mental state and determine how she could help. He'd probably argue with her, but she didn't care. That was what friends did for each other, and unless her status as a friend had lapsed in his mind, which she highly doubted fora number of reasons, she wouldn't take no for an answer.\n\nShe also wanted to take a good look at these so-called associates, to make sure Devin was acting in his own best interest-or his own interest at all. She'd stuffed her pistol and a few spare magazines in the overnight bag, just in case. Devin simply didn't sound like himself. He'd looked shaken and dazed at his mother's funeral, which was to be expected, but something was really off with him right now. He sounded rushed and unfocused. Or maybe unfocused wasn't the right word. Scripted? There was no real way to tell over the phone, which was why she'd insisted on handing over the keys in person and sticking around fora while."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie merged onto Interstate 495 several minutes later, coming to a complete stop just a few seconds later. Eight thirty p. m. might be a more realistic estimate. Traffic was heavier than she'd anticipated. If it didn't breakup after the George Washington Memorial Parkway interchange, about five miles north of here, she'd call the townhouse owner and let her know that she was behind schedule. Hopefully that wouldn't be a problem and push things back until the morning. The last thing she wanted to do was add more stress to Devin's situation right now. He sounded as though he was at a breaking point."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harvey Rudd scraped the last of the marinara sauce out of the tiny bowl before shoving the final mozzarella stick into his mouth. They never gave you enough sauce for the whole basket. He licked his fingers clean, a Chattanooga barbecue-joint habit that Jolene loathed. She shook her head and looked away as he went from finger to finger. Long gone were the days when she would complain.\n\nThey'd gotten along like that for as long as he could remember. From the beginning, actually, which was why they'd eventually been put together as a team. He remembered the first time he'd laid eyes on her like it was yesterday. They had been flirting fora few months between classes during their first semester at Moscow State University, not quite dating, when Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) agents abruptly plucked them out of school and sent them to an intensive American studies institute on the outskirts of Novosibirsk. GRU authorities told them the academy was a temporary extension of their studies at the School of International Relations, but both of them knew better.\n\nThe institute, which reminded him of a Komsomol academy he had attended a few summers ago fora young communist leadership camp, was run more like a military program than an academic extension. They lived in well-worn but solid barracks buildings, and participated in rigorous physical training twice a day, once in the early morning and again after classes ended in the late afternoon. The instructors had been conditioning them for something big. That much was obvious.\n\nDespite the harsh, scarcely academic conditions, he had never considered leaving. On most weekends, the hundred or so students were bused in groups to downtown Novosibirsk fora few hours of leisure time, where they spent most of their university stipend on restaurant meals they could never afford back in Moscow. He'd spent most of that time with Ludmilla, a. k. a. Jolene, building the relationship that would lead to their marriage and get them posted together in the United States. She had gotten him through the darkest of days with little more than a smile, and the prospect of her companionship on the weekend."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Five years and three military bases later, the GRU smuggled Vadim Krukov and Ludmilla Alyev into the US with perfectly forged identities, a generously padded bank account that was refilled regularly, and a paid-off house in the Chattanooga suburbs, where they'd posed as Harvey and Jolene Rudd for nearly thirty years.\n\nHis phone chirped and buzzed at the same time. A quick look at the screen told him Marnie Young was on the move. Crap.\n\n\"Looks like we'll be needin\" a to-go bag,\" he said, passing the phone to Jolene.\n\n\"I'll take care of it,\" said Jolene, waving down one of the servers. \"You get the car.\"\n\n\"See you out front,\" he said, getting up.\n\nOn his way out, he stopped at the host stand and notified the young man managing the wait list that they had to leave immediately due to a family emergency-just to double upon Jolene's efforts to get them out of here quickly. He jogged through the parking lotto their SUV and put his phone in the holder attached to the dashboard. After backing out of the space, he took the satellite phone out of the glove box and gave Rick Gentry a call.\n\n\"I see it,\" said Gentry. \"On my way out of the room. She just turned north on Broad Street, so maybe she's headed back to the coffee shop?\"\n\n\"CONTROL indicated little to no evening activity since she moved back to DC,\" said Rudd, headed for the restaurant's entrance.\n\n\"She's thirty-seven, single, and has been living with her parents fora few weeks,\" said Gentry. \"This night could go in any of a dozen directions.\"\n\n\"I hope they go in Devin Gray's direction,\" said Rudd."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"It doesn't sound like it if he hasn't answered her texts,\" said Gentry.\n\n\"He went dark on that phone,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"Same result,\" said Gentry. \"Who knows. Maybe we'll get lucky. I'm in the lobby. I'll be on the road shortly.\"\n\nJolene barreled through the door several seconds after he'd stopped and put on the SUV's hazard lights. She carried a take-out bag and two large to-go drink cups as she hustled to the car. He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door for her.\n\n\"I can't tell you how happy I am to see those bags!\" he said. \"And you, of course.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" she said, handing him the cups. \"I didn't want to have to fight you over the last granola bar in my purse.\"\n\nHe set the cups in the cup holders, and she dropped her purse into the footwell, keeping the take-out bag balanced on her knees while she buckled her seat belt.\n\n\"We'll deal with this later,\" she said, placing the bag on the rear passenger seat row.\n\n\"Hopefully sooner than later,\" he said, driving them to the exit onto Broad Street.\n\nYoung had passed the restaurant about a minute ago, still headed north. He squeezed into traffic and managed to cut the distance between them in half by the time they reached the Whole Foods from this morning. When she kept going, he started to suspect they were in fora long night. At the Capitol Beltway, any lingering doubt was removed. She took the on-ramp headed north, which was the last thing he'd expect anyone to do with rush hour still in progress. If Young were driving anywhere nearby, she would have been better off staying on local roads."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"About an hour and a half later, Young exited the Beltway at the I-95 interchange that took them north toward Baltimore. Twenty-two miles in ninety-three minutes translated into Rudd being ready to eat the rib eye steak he'd ordered at the restaurant with his bare hands. A single hand. One would have to remain on the steering wheel. He was about to suggest that Jolene crack open their dinner when the satellite phone rang. \"Rick,\" she said before answering the call.\n\n\"Hope you had dinner. Looks like we're headed to Baltimore,\" she said.\n\nRudd couldn't hear the other side of their conversation, but his wife hadn't rolled her eyes yet, which usually meant she agreed with whatever was being passed along. She lowered the phone.\n\n\"Rick is thinking we should get Logan and Nathan moving in this direction,\" she said. \"In case this pans out. Possibly Sandy.\"\n\nHe was right. If Gray surfaced, CONTROL might order them to make an immediate move against him, capture or kill being the only two options. Killing Gray on the spot wouldn't require more than the three of them. Kidnapping was a different story. They should be able to make it work with three, but the more the merrier.\n\n\"Let's get them on the road,\" said Rudd. \"But Sandy stays in place, on the outside chance that Gray shows his face at the apartment.\"\n\nShe passed that along to Gentry and called the rest of the team. When that was done, she reached between the seats, and fora brief moment he thought she might be going for their dinner. Instead, her hand reemerged with their laptop. She shook her head, smiling.\n\n\"I'll work on dinner in a minute,\" she said. \"We need to contact CONTROL with an update and transfer primary communications to the encrypted chat app on one of our mobile phones. Things will move fast if Gray materializes.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Agreed,\" said Rudd.\n\nShe retrieved the Iridium SatSleeve from the glove box and inserted her smartphone, enabling satellite call capability. A few minutes later, after accessing the dark web chat box through the laptop and explaining the situation to CONTROL, she opened an app on her phone and entered along code provided in the chat session. Shortly after that, Jolene shut her laptop and returned it to the backseat.\n\n\"We're good,\" she said.\n\nThey'd now established a direct communications channel to CONTROL through the satellite-converted cellphone, which could get tricky. The specifically designed application replicated the dark web chat box but required them to enter a memorized'start word\" every time they typed into the text field. The application randomly prompted them with a number between one and one hundred by displaying it at the top of the screen-each number corresponding to a unique password. They both knew these words by heart. Only one mistake was tolerated. Two incorrect attempts shutdown everything, including their laptop's access. He had no idea what happened after that and didn't want to find out.\n\nAt 8:34 p. m., Harvey Rudd dropped his wife at the corner of Fait Avenue and South Glover Street in what looked like an upscale part of Baltimore, even though it was hard to tell with the flat redbrick facades. The map said they were in Canton, which was within walking distance of the northwest harbor, just to the east of Fells Point-a high-rent district. They'd have to be somewhat cautious here. People paying a premium fora one-bedroom loft with a view tended to keep an eye on the neighborhood. He wanted to keep his drive-bys to a minimum, if not eliminate them altogether. Young had parked her Jeep about halfway between Fait and Foster Avenues on South Glover Street."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They'd turned off Foster Avenue onto South Glover just in time to see her disappear into a townhouse on the east side of the street with another woman. Young carried a backpack that looked large enough to bean overnight bag. The other woman was dressed in a business suit. The Rudds drew no conclusions from the little they witnessed, which was why he dropped Jolene off to keep an eye on things while he looked fora parking space with a view of the townhouse.\n\nThe problem was that South Glover, like almost all the north-south streets in this neighborhood, was a one-way street. In this case directed south. It took him several passes to finally score a parking space, which was ill suited for any of their possible follow-on missions. Located south of the townhouse, on the other side of Fait Avenue, he'd have to throw the SUV into reverse and blindly cross Fait Avenue, a marginally busy two-way street, to reach the townhouse-if CONTROL gave them the order to hit the house.\n\nAs much as he'd like to be positioned upstreet from the target house, pointing him in the right direction, he didn't dare give up what might end up being the only parking opportunity on the street. From here, he'd guide the rest of the team into place on nearby streets, where they'd be in quick striking distance if Devin Gray made an appearance. Rick Gentry had found a space two blocks over, facing Foster Avenue. He could arrive in front of the target house within thirty seconds.\n\nJolene joined him moments after he backed into the space, insisting that they prepare for possible breaching orders. They moved a duffel bag packed with flash-bang grenades in case they suspected armed opposition inside; bolt cutters for simple but persistent chain locks; a handheld, solid-steel battering ram for bypassing deadbolts or standard doorknob locks; and a pistol-gripped, short-barreled shotgun loaded with breacher slugs in case the locks proved to be resistant to brute physical force. Along with the compact pistols hidden in concealed holsters along their waistbands, they were ready for pretty much anything."},{"from":"human","value":"\"You hungry?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"asked Rudd.\n\n\"Hold on,\" said Jolene, focusing a pair of binoculars on the townhouse.\n\nShe passed them to him a few moments later. \"Take a look.\"\n\nMarnie Young stood in the open doorway of the townhouse, nodding and laughing with the woman, who handed her a set of keys and a folder. The two of them shook hands after another minute or so of conversation, and the smartly dressed woman departed-walking to her car, which had been parked at the end of the street, on the corner of Foster Avenue. A near-perfect position for their purposes! He was about to suggest relocating to that spot when another vehicle slowed to turn onto the street as the other car departed, sliding into its place. It wasn't meant to be. He shifted the view back to Marnie Young, who glanced up and down the street before shutting the door behind her.\n\n\"She's up to something,\" said Rudd.\n\n\"Yep. Let's eat before this goes down,\" she said. \"I give it fifteen minutes tops.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Timothy Graves parked the rental sedan on the corner of South Glover Street and Foster Avenue and passed the keys between the seats to the woman lying on the back row under a blanket. She didn't say a word, which was fine by him. He wanted to get as far from here as possible. Just minutes ago, he'd driven out of a parking space down the road to make room for one of their targets before slowly circling the block to take the Airbnb owner's space-moving the final chess pieces into place.\n\nIf the couple in the Durango noticed that the cars were the same, a remote but existent possibility under the circumstances, trouble could escalate quicker than any of them had planned. And unchoreographed trouble was the last thing he was looking for tonight. Graves much preferred the kind the team could control, since they typically directed it away from him.\n\nHe wasn't a combat type. Far from it. And he was here only as a favor. He'd emerged from his mostly permanent retirement because Anish needed his help on a short-fused job, and Graves was within easy striking distance.\n\nHe'd settled into a nice living on the southern Outer Banks, near Emerald Isle, where he'd vacationed as a kid. Hauling himself to Jacksonville to get on a flight to Baltimore hadn't been any trouble at all.\n\n\"Good luck,\" he said.\n\n\"Yep,\" she said.\n\nHe got out and shut the door, the vehicle's locking system immediately chirping behind him. A little early on the locks, Emily. The average system took a little longer than that to arm itself. Hopefully, nobody would notice. He'd never worked with Emily Miralles before today. She'd joined Farrington's crew a year and a half ago, replacing Cassiopeia, a. k. a. Caz, who'd accepted a lucrative head security position for one of Capitol Hill's more influential senators. Miralles didn't say much, which, once again, suited him fine. The less he knew about any of these people the better, and the less they knew about him? Priceless."},{"from":"human","value":"It wasn't that he disliked any of them."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He'd enjoyed his years working for Sanderson's program and subsequently with Farrington's spin-off operation. They'd taken on some giants in that time and come out on top, making the world a better place-he hoped. It was just that he could count on one hand the number of people who had been around from the beginning. Some of them had split and gone their own way, like him, but most of them had been killed on missions or assassinated in retribution for some of their more notorious jobs.\n\nThe fact that this job involved the Russians had almost kept him from showing up. The Russians had long memories, and Farrington had done a number on them in the past. More than once.\n\nHe walked a block east on Foster Avenue and crossed the street at South Lakewood, heading for the tricked-out silver Suburban Anish called home these days. Graves had to admit that his former partner in crime had made some aesthetic and functional improvements to the original concept of their undercover communications hub.\n\nBack in the day, they'd just bolt a folding desk and some industrial metal bookshelves to the floor of a cargo van, relying on a combination of Velcro, zip ties, and bungee cords to keep everything in place. Gupta had even completely hidden the antennae array, which had always posed a detection risk to them in the past. The only issue with the new arrangement was interior space. He'd traded the expansiveness of the somewhat conspicuous Mercedes cargo van for the assured cover of the oversize SUV-ubiquitous in the suburbs and city these days.\n\nThe Suburban was parked in a row of diagonal spaces on the left side of the street, facing out for quick egress. The rear passenger door opened the moment he stepped off the curb, Richard'Rich\" Farrington hopping down with a wide grin on his face. A rarity in Graves's experience."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Timothy. Sorry I missed you earlier. I was putting the final magic touches on a few things,\" said Rich. \"Good to see you. Sounds like life on the Outer Banks is treating you well.\"\n\n\"I can't complain too much,\" said Graves. \"It wasn't the easiest adjustment to make after spending close to two decades in this line of business, but I'm making it work. Everyday my shoulders relax about a quarter of a millimeter.\"\n\nRich laughed. \"Well, I apologize for setting your shoulders back a few months, but I do appreciate you coming out of retirement temporarily. My guess is we're going to need all the help we can get on this one. Did Miralles bring you up to speed on the mechanics of the operation?\"\n\n\"She did. Is this really the Russians?\" asked Graves.\n\nRich nodded. \"Long-dormant sleeper network. Second generation-if it checks out.\"\n\n\"Second generation? Holy shit,\" said Graves. \"Wait. You haven't vetted this yet?\"\n\n\"Tonight's operation has been vetted,\" said Rich. \"But Karl Berg says it's connected to a much-bigger conspiracy. We'll all get a chance to scour the evidence and try to poke holes in the theory.\"\n\n\"This is Berg's theory? I thought he was retired.\"\n\n\"He is. Or was. Kind of like someone else I know,\" said Rich, patting him on the shoulder. \"A former colleague of his at Langley apparently spent close to the past two decades investigating this theory. She was killed under suspicious circumstances about two weeks ago. Killed herself, but too many aspects of her case don't add up. She handed over the reins to her son, Devin Gray. He reached out to Berg at his mother's recommendation-and here we are.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"And Berg is convinced?\" asked Graves.\n\n\"He sounds convinced,\" said Rich. \"But he's open to criticism. Same with Devin Gray. They both want to be wrong about this.\"\n\n\"I knew I should have left my phone behind when I took the boat out this morning.\"\n\n\"What kind of boat?\"\n\n\"Nothing too fancy,\" said Graves. \"Just a fishing boat.\"\n\n\"Does it have a flying bridge?\" asked Rich.\n\n\"It might.\"\n\n\"Sounds kind of fancy,\" said Rich. \"Don't worry. We'll get you back to your yacht in one piece.\"\n\n\"I'll hold you to that,\" said Graves. \"And take you fishing if you make good on it.\"\n\n\"Deal,\" said Rich, shaking his hand. \"Keep your friend out of trouble. He hasn't matured since you left.\"\n\n\"I heard that,\" said Gupta.\n\n\"Be good, guys,\" said Rich before crossing the street and getting into the passenger seat of a black SUV that hadn't drawn Graves's attention until now.\n\nIn the fading light of the evening, he recognized Scott Daly, former Navy SEAL, behind the wheel of the SUV. Daly waved at him, and he nodded back. They were in good hands. Graves climbed inside and gave Gupta a high five before shutting the door.\n\n\"Thanks for answering the call of the wild, bro!\" said Gupta. \"The band is back together, baby!\"\n\n\"Is it too late to go home?\" asked Graves.\n\n\"You know you missed me,\" said Gupta.\n\n\"Not really,\" said Graves. \"What are we looking at here? They shoved me behind the wheel of a car a few minutes after I showed up and parked me on Glover Street with the least talkative operative I've ever met.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Miralles? Yeah. She's all business, and good at it, too,\" said Gupta. \"All right. So here's what we've got for coverage. Two low-light-capable, high-def block cameras placed on the townhouse adjacent to the target house, giving us a good enough view up and down Glover Street. The trees kind of mess with the view at certain distances, but we have a good overall picture of the street. I have that on a split screen here. I'm running the feeds through motion-detection software, so it'll draw our attention to anything larger than a dog.\"\n\nGupta leaned forward and tapped the space baron the laptop sitting on the Suburban's wide front-seat armrest, activating the screen. Graves saw what he meant about the trees. Not ideal but not bad. The motion-detection software would overcome that issue.\n\n\"We also have a basic fish-eye dome camera setup on the fence behind the townhouse, off the alley. One-hundred-and-eighty-degree coverage. Motion activated. It'll popup as a window in the bottom-right corner of the screen if it's triggered, or you can click on the rightmost tab to open the feed at anytime. We both have the same access on our laptops, in case we need to split our attention between the front and back of the townhouse. I anticipate doing that during the pickup.\"\n\nGraves clicked the tab and liked what he saw. The concrete alley was well lit.\n\n\"Other than that, I have a multiband antenna on one of our vehicles on Glover Street, plus one on each adjacent street-attached as high up in the trees as we could manage. They have a very limited power supply. Our Russian friends have mainly used encrypted push-to-talk satellite communications. We should be able to map them out as they move into position.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He handed Graves one of the laptops on the seat between them and took the other for himself.\n\n\"There's no difference between either of these laptops, for redundancy reasons,\" he said, flipping the screen up. \"I figured I'd analyze the frequencies and sensors, while you maintained the bigger picture and communicated with the teams?\"\n\n\"Sounds like a plan. Same comms arrangement?\" asked Graves.\n\nGupta reached behind the seat and retrieved a headphone set attached to a heavy-duty-looking coiled cord. He handed them over to Graves.\n\n\"Same. Same,\" said Gupta. \"Right ear is the primary communications channel. We're using one channel. Left ear is whatever you want. I currently have it tuned to the local police frequency. You can change it through the computer interface. If for some reason we need to leave the vehicle, there's a handheld radio preset with the same frequencies and an earbud headset in the seat pocket directly in front of you.\"\n\nGraves didn't like the sound of that at all, but it came with the job, along with a wide variety of other possible unpleasantries-like getting shot in the leg and walking with a slight limp for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, things like that didn't go away like tensed shoulders. He knew that from experience, which led to his next question.\n\n\"What's our security situation?\"\n\n\"Rich and Scott will be across the street until the extraction,\" said Gupta. \"Other than that, there's a loaded Sig Sauer compact pistol with two spare magazines in each door pocket.\"\n\n\"Wonderful,\" said Graves.\n\n\"Back into the frying pan, man,\" said Gupta. \"Just like old times.\"\n\n\"It wasn't that long ago,\" said Graves, suddenly remembering just how much he didn't miss this."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin Gray drove up and down the streets east of the townhouse for close to twenty minutes before a parking space opened on South Belmore Avenue. He spent the next few minutes trying to squeeze his car into the opening left by a Prius. The end result wasn't pretty-the back end of his car protruded about afoot into the street-but it would have to do. Berg's people were anxious to offload their gear and get started. From what he had gathered, most of them would remain at the townhouse overnight, while the team leaders joined Devin and Berg at Helen's apartment to examine the evidence.\n\nBefore they set off down the street, Berg grabbed his arm. \"Are you sure there's noway to convince Marnie to leave the keys in the mailbox and get out of there? Right now. Her insistence on staying at the townhouse isn't sitting well with the crew. I don't want to give them any reason to back out of this.\"\n\n\"She's a good friend and a combat-decorated Marine. Completely trustworthy,\" said Devin. \"All she wants to do is make sure I'm not being put up to something or being forced to do something against my will. I know how that sounds, given the fact that I came to you with this, but she's not going to let this go. She's doing what a good friend would do. The harder I try to get her to leave, the less likely she will. She made that clear. You heard the phone call.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Well, she's getting in the way,\" said Berg, sliding his satchel's strap over a shoulder.\n\n\"She won't stick around for long. She'll see everything's fine with me, and that'll be it.\"\n\nBerg shook his head and started walking, almost mumbling to himself. They got to the corner of Foster Avenue, where Berg stopped. \"I need you to remember what we discussed earlier today,\" he said. \"About doing this my way.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"I remember,\" said Devin."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I simply can't force Marnie to leave without making her even more suspicious than she already is. She'll just hang around in her car all night. I know her.\"\n\n\"That would be even worse,\" said Berg, looking somewhat exasperated.\n\n\"What?\" asked Devin, thinking he might have misspoken.\n\n\"Nothing. Let's go,\" he said.\n\nThey walked the two blocks to South Glover Avenue, Berg checking his phone every minute or so for texts and immediately assuring Devin that everything was on schedule. They didn't encounter much foot traffic on the way. A college-age student with a backpack bopping along to whatever music was pumping through his headphones. A thirtysomething-looking couple headed in the opposite direction, probably on their way to a cozy dinner in one of a number of Canton neighborhood restaurants. He'd pictured the streets hereto be a little busier, due to the proximity to the waterfront, but it was still early by city standards. Just a little past ten.\n\nSouth Glover was packed with cars, like every street in the area. He imagined having a dedicated garage or parking space behind your townhouse in the alley was important if you owned a place here. The parking situation around his mother's apartment was bad enough, but nothing like this. While they walked down the street, he scanned the vehicles without being obvious.\n\n\"Karl. Would it be fair to assume that your friends are already watching the townhouse?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"It's possible,\" said Berg. \"Why do you ask?\"\n\n\"We either passed by two friends or two hostiles a few cars back,\" said Devin. \"One close to the intersection. The second on the other side of the street. Both sedans. The car windows are cracked open for air, which means they've probably been therefor awhile. I also saw some movement in the backseat of one of the cars. Very subtle, but definitely movement.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"They've been here fora few hours,\" said Berg. \"To make sure Marnie hadn't been followed.\"\n\n\"They need to work on their surveillance fieldcraft,\" said Devin.\n\n\"I'll pass that along,\" said Berg.\n\nDevin watched the numbers on the front of the brick townhomes, stopping about two-thirds of the way to the next cross street, in front of a brightly lit redbrick stoop with a single black handrail, which pretty much looked like every other stoop in the neighborhood. He imagined this hadn't been exactly the best part of town a decade or so ago. Fully rehabilitated now, but not much you could do with the squat row house facades.\n\n\"Seven-twenty-seven,\" said Devin, raising his hand to knock on the door.\n\nHe'd belying if he said he wasn't more nervous about seeing Marnie than Berg's mercenaries. A different kind of nervous. More like butterflies in the stomach.\n\n\"Holdup,\" said Berg, checking his phone.\n\n\"I have a third surveillance vehicle down the road, before the next intersection,\" said Devin. \"Make sure that's ours.\"\n\n\"It is,\" said Berg, typing a response on the phone before looking up at Devin. \"They're being extra cautious. Ready?\"\n\nDevin knocked on the door.\n\n\"Just remember. I need you to trust me. No matter what happens,\" said Berg. \"When Marnie opens the door, we get inside fast. Okay?\"\n\n\"Are you sure everything is all right?\"\n\n\"Couldn't be better,\" said Berg.\n\nMarnie opened the door a moment later, smiling warmly.\n\n\"I thought you might have stood me up,\" she said, glancing at her watch."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Definitely not,\" said Devin. \"We just ran a little behind-\"\n\n\"Why don't we talk about this inside,\" said Berg, basically shoving him into the townhouse.\n\nMarnie's smile evaporated as she backed out of the doorway, her lips pursing and eyes squinting.\n\n\"Devin. What the hell is going on?\" she said, pulling him out of Berg's way. \"Who is this asshole?\"\n\nBerg shut and locked the door.\n\n\"My name is Karl. I was a friend of Devin's mother at the CIA. Devin trusts me, and I need you to trust me. At least fora few minutes. Our lives depend on it.\"\n\n\"What is he talking about?\" asked Marnie.\n\n\"Karl. I think you're being a little overdramatic,\" said Devin before turning to Marnie. \"I don't know what his deal is right now.\"\n\n\"Whatever it is, I don't like it,\" she said.\n\n\"Yes. I'm an asshole. Agreed. Let's move to the back of the townhouse, please,\" said Berg. \"It's safer.\"\n\nMarnie didn't budge, shaking her head instead. \"I'm not going anywhere.\"\n\n\"Please. We're about to have company at the front door. Russian houseguests with no manners. If we move now, we'll belong gone before they arrive.\"\n\n\"Devin?\" she said, giving him a puzzled look.\n\n\"Karl. How does that make any-\" started Devin.\n\nJesus. He'd used them as bait!\n\n\"You son of a bitch. You let them follow her here, didn't you?\" said Devin. \"This whole townhouse is nothing but a setup. I knew it didn't sound right.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Yeah."},{"from":"gpt","value":"And I'm half of the bait,\" said Berg, starting to walkaway. \"So please. Can we get the fuck out of here? We really don't have time for this. Our ride will be outback any second.\"\n\n\"Don't take another step,\" said Marnie, pointing a compact pistol at Berg. \"We're going to make sometime.\"\n\nBerg's shoulders slumped and he exhaled deeply.\n\n\"Did you give her your gun?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Devin.\n\nThe pistol he'd taken from his mother's safe had been a Smith& Wesson M& P9 Compact. She was holding some kind of modular Sig Sauer.\n\n\"Jesus. Please talk to her. Quickly,\" said Berg. \"We're out of time.\"\n\n\"Marnie. I need you to trust me,\" said Devin. \"If he says we need to go, we need to go. I'll explain everything at my mother's apartment.\"\n\n\"Your mother's apartment is still an active crime scene,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"My mother's other apartment,\" said Devin. \"She wasn't crazy. She discovered a Russian sleeper network, and nobody believed her-but it's all true. She kept a second apartment with all of the evidence.\"\n\n\"Devin. I want to believe you, but I'm really having a hard time with this.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harvey Rudd nudged Jolene's arm. She'd been turned in her seat, staring through the binoculars for too long without saying anything.\n\n\"Knock it off,\" she said.\n\n\"What are you seeing?\" asked Rudd.\n\n\"Let me seethe pictures again,\" she said.\n\nRudd held the pictures of Karl Berg and Devin Gray in the subdued light cast by the open glove box. Jolene glanced down at the pictures fora few seconds before returning to the binoculars.\n\n\"It's Karl Berg and Devin Gray,\" said Jolene.\n\n\"How sure are you?\"\n\n\"One hundred percent. They just entered the townhouse,\" said Jolene. \"Call it in.\"\n\nRudd could barely believe their luck. Two of CONTROL's high-priority targets in one place. He'd been expecting only Gray, and even that had been along shot. He opened the chat app on Jolene's phone and typed the code word corresponding with the number at the top of the screen, followed by a dash and then his message.\n\nDANDELION-Berg and Gray just entered townhouse. 100% positive ID. Have 6 members of team standing by with breaching kit and weapons. Advise how to proceed.\n\nThe number at the top of the screen changed several seconds later, followed by a reply.\n\nIs Young in townhouse?\n\nUNICORN-Yes. Young, Berg and Gray.\n\nKill Young. Abduct Berg and Gray. If only feasible to abduct ONE, take Berg and kill Gray. Advise of results when complete. Will pass directions to safe house for delivery. Acknowledge receipt of this order.\n\nThe number changed again. They weren't taking any chances."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"STARWARS-Order received.\n\nExecute orders immediately. Authorization code CARWASH.\n\nCARWASH was the code the other members of the team would receive via text. He'd have to recite the code to prove that he'd received authorization to deviate from their previous order to locate and follow Devin Gray and/or Karl Berg. It was a crude method that still left a lot of room for abuse. He could essentially tell the team anything he wanted, and they wouldn't have anyway to verify the actual orders.\n\n\"Read this,\" said Rudd, handing the phone to his wife.\n\nShe gave it a quick look. \"Call Logan. We need to move quick, while they're standing around making introductions. I assume Young has never met Berg before.\"\n\n\"Yep,\" said Rudd, grabbing his satellite phone and pressing the push-to-talk button. \"Put me on speakerphone,\" he said to Logan, doing the same.\n\n\"You're on speakerphone,\" said Walsh. \"We all just received text messages.\"\n\n\"CARWASH. CARWASH. Berg and Gray just entered the townhouse. CONTROL gave me the green light to hit the townhouse,\" said Rudd. \"We're going to try and take both Berg and Gray, but if grabbing both of them starts to go sideways, we kill Gray and take Berg.\"\n\n\"What about Young?\" asked Walsh.\n\n\"We kill her right away,\" said Rudd. \"We don't need any Marine heroics.\"\n\n\"We're ready to roll,\" said Walsh.\n\n\"Get everyone set and move up to the corner,\" said Rudd. \"You'll have to be my eyes when I back across Fait Avenue. I won't be able to seethe cross traffic.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I'm already on the move,\" said Walsh. \"No traffic right now. I'll keep you posted.\"\n\n\"Let's do this,\" said Rudd, starting the Durango. \"Breach kit is in the backseat.\"\n\n\"We're at the corner,\" said Walsh.\n\nHe glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Walsh's Pathfinder pull into place at the intersection.\n\n\"You ready?\" he said.\n\nJolene had already drawn her compact stainless-steel revolver. \"Quit talking and start driving.\"\n\nRudd maneuvered the Durango out of the tight space and lined up with the intersection using the backup camera screen on the center console. His phone chirped, followed by Walsh's voice.\n\n\"You're all clear.\"\n\nHe pressed the accelerator, starting slow and picking up speed. Eyes glued to the screen, he raced across Fait Avenue, immediately slowing when he'd crossed to the other side safely.\n\n\"Tell me when to stop,\" said Rudd.\n\nHe proceeded at a manageable speed until Jolene squeezed his knee. \"A few more seconds.\"\n\nRudd counted to three and slowed to a crawl, turning his head to check the street addresses. Seven thirty-one. Seven twenty-nine. He tapped the brakes, bringing them to a stop directly in front of the target address.\n\n\"Jesus, Logan!\" yelled Jolene, as Walsh's SUV screeched to a halt just inches from Rudd's front bumper.\n\nSo much for the element of surprise."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Car tires screeched outside, turning all their heads.\n\n\"We have to go-right fucking now,\" said Berg, taking off for the back of the townhouse.\n\nDevin put his hand on Marnie's wrist and lowered the gun. \"I'll explain everything later. Right now, we need to do what Karl says.\"\n\nMarnie fumed fora moment before bolting through the townhouse, with Devin in close pursuit. Once out the backdoor, he spotted a black SUV parked in the alley just beyond a low concrete wall. A man he'd never seen before whisper-yelled obscenities at them through the front passenger window as they raced across the brick patio toward a black wrought iron gate.\n\n\"Hurry the fuck up!\" he hissed as they piled through the gate and into the back row of the SUV.\n\nThe vehicle took off the moment Devin jumped inside, the door still wide open. He reached out to pull it shut, a plastic garbage bin clipping the end of the door and slamming it against his hand. Devin pulled the door shut with his other hand, groaning in pain.\n\nThe man in the passenger seat glanced over his shoulder. \"What was the damn holdup? Half the Red Army is in front of the townhouse.\"\n\n\"Just a little disagreement,\" said Berg. \"It wasn't my best moment.\"\n\n\"No worries. We're still good to go,\" he said before fully turning in his seat. \"Devin. Marnie. I'm Rich, the de facto team leader. And this is Scott. I apologize for this sudden stunt, but we needed to get a handle on who's been following both of you.\"\n\nScott turned left out of the alley at Fait Avenue and picked up speed."},{"from":"human","value":"\"I thought my Jeep was clean,\" said Marnie."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"And that nobody was following me.\"\n\n\"That's what I was told,\" said Devin. \"I would never have put you in any danger.\"\n\nRich glanced down at the pistol in Marnie's lap. \"My guess is she can take care of herself.\"\n\n\"You lied tome, Karl. For an entire day. How am I supposed to trust any of you?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Devin. There was no other way to pull this off. We needed all of the Russians in one place, which meant you and me showing up at the townhouse to offer an irresistible target,\" said Berg. \"Ms. Young insisted on staying at the townhouse. I begged you to get her out of there.\"\n\n\"I wasn't going anywhere,\" said Marnie. \"I needed to see for myself who was pulling the strings. Now I know.\"\n\nScott took a hard left on South Belnord Street, tires screeching.\n\n\"Take it easy,\" said Rich.\n\nScott slowed the vehicle down significantly.\n\n\"We'll explain everything later,\" said Rich. \"Right now, I'm going to drop the two of you off at Devin's car, and you're going to run a short SDR to the northeast. Thirty minutes tops. Just get out of the city and into the suburbs. Work your magic in a nice, quiet neighborhood, then back to your mother's apartment. Stick north of the city on your return. The police will be allover this part of town.\"\n\n\"What's happening back at the townhouse?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Bad shit,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Point-of-no-return shit, to be precise,\" said Berg."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harvey Rudd had pulled the nylon duffel bag containing their breacher kit onto the sidewalk by the time the entire team had assembled in front of the door. They wasted no time rifling through its contents, removing the battering ram first. Leo Ward took possession of the forty-pound, two-handed chunk of metal, and headed for the townhouse stoop. Logan Walsh grabbed the shotgun, which they'd preloaded with twelve-gauge slug shots, and followed closely behind Ward. Rick Gentry stuffed a few of the flash-bang grenades into his cargo pant pockets, keeping one out for immediate use.\n\nThey stacked upon the door like a SWAT team: Ward with the battering ram first, lining it up with the door handle; Walsh racking the shotgun to chamber one of the lock-shattering slugs and positioning himself on the hinge side of the door-in case the battering ram didn't do the trick. Gentry stood at the bottom of the stoop, flash-bang grenade in hand, ready to toss it inside if they met with any immediate gunfire. Clark stacked up behind Walsh, ready to rush in and shoot Young. Everything was in place.\n\nRudd threw the duffel bag in the backseat of the Durango and drew a compact Glock from the concealed holster on his hip.\n\n\"Do it! Breach!\" he said, heading straight for the townhouse stoop.\n\nWard retracted the battering ram, ready to smash it against the handle, when his head snapped sideways, a watermelon-size scarlet blotch exploding against the yellow door. Walsh's neck erupted a fraction of a second later, painting Ward's expressionless face deep red. Both of them crumpled to the stoop as bullets tore through the rest of the team.\n\nGentry pitched forward, striking the brick stairs with his head, the grenade rolling down the sidewalk-pin and safety lever still intact. Clark whirled to his right, snapping off two shots into the darkness, before along burst of bullets thumped into his head and chest, knocking him backward like he'd been hit by a bus. He slammed into Jolene, who lost her balance and stumbled sideways until she tripped over her own feet."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Rudd launched forward and broke her fall with one arm, keeping her head from bouncing off the sidewalk. He kept his pistol hand extended, for no real reason other than to feel as though he were doing something to protect his wife. He hadn't seen a single muzzle flash, and the sidewalks were empty. Whoever had positioned these snipers had orchestrated this moment perfectly. They'd probably been behind everything that had gone down today. All leading to this stoop, and the annihilation of his team.\n\nHe managed to say'sorry\" to Jolene before a bullet hit the crown of her head and switched her off forever. Rudd pressed the Glock's trigger repeatedly, aiming at nothing in particular, before he joined her."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Jared Hoffman searched through the night vision scope attached to his suppressed rifle for any movement, finding the stoop and sidewalk completely still aside from the occasional postmortem twitch. He took his eye out of the scope and observed the entire street. Nothing. The three sweltering hours he'd spent hidden in the backseat of this car had comedown to a five-second, very-one-sided gun battle. Well worth the price. He pressed the transmit button hidden inside his shirt collar.\n\n\"Melendez. You see any unfinished business?\" he asked.\n\nHis earpiece crackled. \"Negative. Six targets down. The couple and the four that arrived in the second SUV. Down hard.\"\n\nHe agreed with that assessment. Hoffman had fired nothing but head and neck shots, connecting with each burst.\n\n\"Graves. You got any funky chatter out there?\" asked Hoffman.\n\n\"No. Satellite push-to-talk traffic went quiet right before the vehicles moved in,\" he said. \"I'm monitoring the police frequencies closely. We heard the shots from here.\"\n\nHoffman was mad at himself for that. He should have plugged the husband first, especially when he didn't drop the pistol to catch her. Those five shots would guarantee a dozen or more 911 calls. The first two, fired by the other guy, might have kept people inside the townhomes guessing fora while before they finally decided to play it safe and call the police.\n\n\"Copy that,\" said Hoffman. \"Miralles. It's all you. We'll keep you covered.\"\n\nA car started on the other side of the street, down toward Foster Avenue. He caught a brief glimpse of Miralles's ski-masked face and a gloved middle finger when her vehicle raced by.\n\n\"I saw that,\" said Hoffman over the net."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You were supposed to,\" she said.\n\nMiralles squeezed her car past the two idling SUVs and parked in the middle of the street. She worked the scene fast, first emptying the loose contents inside each SUV into a heavy-duty black rectangular gym bag. She'd search under the seats. Inside the glove box. The seat pockets. Everywhere.\n\nNext, she searched the bodies, emptying pockets and tossing everything but the weapons into the bag. When she'd finished with that, Miralles removed a digital camera from one of the outer pockets of the gym bag and took close-up pictures of the Russians\" faces-what was left of them. A few dozen flashes later, she pocketed the camera and started on the fingerprints with a handheld scanning device. Thumbs and index fingers only.\n\n\"I'm getting a lot of police scanner traffic,\" said Graves.\n\n\"How long do we have?\" asked Hoffman.\n\n\"Software just picked up a unit responding with \"one minute ETA.\" Get out of there now,\" said Graves.\n\n\"Pack it up, Miralles,\" said Hoffman, pulling down his ski mask. \"Melendez. Blaze a trail for us.\"\n\n\"I'm already Oscar Mike,\" said Miralles, headed for her car with the gym bag.\n\nAn SUV parked about five spaces beyond Miralles's sedan pulled into the street and stopped.\n\n\"Ready to roll,\" said Melendez. \"I can hear sirens. No lights yet.\"\n\nHoffman could hear them, too. He climbed over the reclined driver's seat and slid into place behind the steering wheel, then straightened his seat before starting the car. The keys had been in the ignition the entire time. He'd left them there when he'd rolled the windows down all the way to keep from slow cooking himself to death. The last thing he needed was to be fumbling for keys at a critical moment-like his escape. A quick scan of his mirrors caught some faint red and blue flashes on the buildings at the intersection behind him."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I have lights coming down Foster Avenue,\" said Hoffman. \"Can't tell the direction. Get out of here. I'll catch up.\"\n\nHe yanked the wheel all the way to the left and pulled out of the parking space at full speed, somehow avoiding the vehicle parked in front of him. A once-in-a-lifetime stunt, he graciously accepted. Every second would count here. He sped down the street toward the Russians'SUVs, centering his car on the narrow gap between their vehicles and the cars parked along the right side of the road. He shot through the opening, once again emerging unscathed. Things were going entirely too smoothly for him so far. He'd probably broadside a police cruiser at the next intersection.\n\nWith that thought in mind, he slowed as he approached Fait Avenue, looking in both directions as he crept through the empty intersection. A few blocks west, two police cars turned onto Fait Avenue, headed in his direction. He floored the accelerator.\n\n\"I have two police cruisers coming up Fait Avenue from the west,\" said Hoffman. \"Not sure if they saw me.\"\n\n\"I haven't picked up any pursuit calls,\" said Graves. \"All townhouse units. Take the first left off Glover. We need to get you out of sight.\"\n\nUp ahead, Melendez and Miralles turned off the road, their taillights racing left and vanishing. He hoped to get to that turn before the police cars reached the intersection behind him. Red and blue lights flashed in his mirrors, momentarily disappearing-then reappearing. They looked a lot farther away than he'd expected. Mirror tricks? Another glance in his rearview mirror left him believing they'd turned onto Glover Street beyond the Russian SUVs. He ripped off his ski mask and tossed it on the passenger seat."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I think I have police units approaching the townhouse from Foster Avenue. Nothing off Fait Avenue yet,\" said Hoffman. \"Almost at the turn.\"\n\n\"Confirming the units turning off Foster,\" said Graves. \"Fait is still clear.\"\n\nHe glanced in the side mirror, confirming that the police units approaching from the west on Fait Avenue had not reached a point where they could see him. He had a few more seconds at most before they raced into sight. No time for stop signs. His four-door sedan skidded into the intersection ahead of him, tires screeching the entire time-as he cut directly in front of a minivan. The woman honked her horn, and kept it blaring as he drove away.\n\n\"I'm clear,\" said Hoffman. \"But I nearly hit a minivan when I was turning off Glover. Fifty-fifty she calls nine-one-one, especially given all the police activity she's about to encounter. That and the fact that I'm still wearing a ski mask.\"\n\n\"You're kidding, right?\" asked Melendez.\n\nThe masks were meant to prevent one of the neighbors from getting lucky with their smartphone camera. Same with the opaque license plate covers, which they'd have to remove sooner than later.\n\n\"Yeah. But I'm not kidding about the minivan. I think she's still laying on the horn,\" said Hoffman.\n\n\"This is Rich. Even if she calls nine-one-one, we'll belong gone before they piece any of this together. Good job, everyone. Let's run Hoffman, Miralles, and Melendez directly to Gray's apartment. The police will get makes and models from the neighbors, or the minivan lady. We don't need you reentering the city later tonight after along SDR. The chances of getting pulled over are too high. The rest of us will-\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Rich. This is Graves. Are we sure that was the only Russian team working the townhouse? A shitload of push-to-talk satellite traffic just lit up my screen. We're trying to pinpoint, but all I can give you is a general direction at the moment.\"\n\n\"Where?\" asked Farrington.\n\n\"Somewhere east of our current location on Linwood Avenue. A few blocks away, I'd guess, based on signal strength.\"\n\n\"Where's Gray and Young?\"\n\n\"Turning onto Eastern Avenue off Robinson Street,\" said Graves. \"A few blocks east of here.\"\n\nHoffman hit the accelerator and blew through his second stop sign of the night. Definitely not his last."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin Gray turned his mother's car onto Eastern Avenue, which ran parallel to the southern edge of Patterson Park for several city blocks. His plan was to take Eastern to Interstate 95 and drive north fora good twenty to thirty minutes, exiting in one of the city's suburbs, where he'd run a few countersurveillance drills through some of the quiet neighborhoods. Anyone following them would stick out immediately once he got off the interstate.\n\n\"How am I supposed to get my Jeep?\" asked Marnie.\n\nIt was the first thing she'd said since they'd been dropped off at his car. To say that Marnie looked angry would bean understatement. Seething might be a more accurate description.\n\n\"I honestly don't know,\" said Devin. \"I wasn't aware that the townhouse was a setup. I swear.\"\n\n\"I heard gunshots, Devin,\" said Marnie. \"Gunshots. My name is on the Airbnb agreement.\"\n\n\"Tell them you ran out the backdoor when you heard the gunshots,\" said Devin, instantly realizing the many flaws in that plan.\n\n\"But I didn't call nine-one-one or hide in the alley until the police arrived,\" said Marnie. \"I suppose if we turned around right now and you dropped me off a few blocks over, I could approach the nearest police station and ask a few questions. Maybe try to figure out if anyone reported you and Karl showing up minutes before the gunshots, so I don't totally get caught in a lie when I say that Iran away in fear. You know, get my alibi straightened out and all that.\"\n\n\"Marnie. You didn't do anything wrong,\" he said, now utterly convinced he'd be better off just shutting up.\n\n\"True. I could probably just lawyer up and tell the police that it's none of their business why I rented an Airbnb for twelve people in Baltimore for five hundred dollars a night and that same townhouse got attacked a few hours later. And that the two guys who showed up a few minutes before it got attacked was just a random coincidence. Spend sometime trying to explain you and Karl. All while the Russians, or whoever is really after you, decides to up the ante and stop by my parents\" place. Speaking of which, I need to call them.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin hadn't thought of her parents, or even his dad, for that matter-because he'd had no idea any of this would happen. He'd come to terms with the possibility that he might have to hide his dad and sister at some point but figured that was weeks away. Plus, Berg had said he could help with that, especially if Devin could convince his dad to fly out to Los Angeles. Apparently, Berg knew a crew out there that specialized in hiding people. But tonight's events had come as a complete surprise. He should do the same as Marnie and call his dad. Get him on a red-eye flight to Los Angeles. Same with Marnie's parents.\n\n\"You might not want to hear this, but Karl knows some people in LA that can disappear our parents fora while,\" said Devin. \"I'm going to make my dad take that option. Karl said it would bean entirely comfortable experience. Not some desert bunker somewhere.\"\n\nDevin's attention shifted from Marnie to a dark SUV speeding into the intersection. Shit. His satellite phone rang a moment later, the name KARL appearing on the screen.\n\n\"Sounds wonderful,\" said Marnie. \"I'll let you explain to them. I'm sure they'll-\"\n\nDevin slammed on the brakes, the car skidding to a halt well short of the black SUV.\n\n\"What the hell, Devin!\" said Marnie, bracing her arms against the dashboard.\n\nHe detected movement in his peripheral vision, his eyes shifting to the driver's-side mirror. A sedan parked itself diagonally across the two-lane street behind him, blocking most of it. He briefly considered turning left and driving into the park, but the doors flew open on both vehicles as a second SUV screeched into the intersection in front of him. If he turned the vehicle, he'd expose the sides of his car to gunfire."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Russians. Get down!\" said Devin, ducking below the dashboard and opening his car door. \"Takeout the guys behind us first. We'll use the car as cover until help arrives.\"\n\n\"How do we even know-\" she started, the windshield instantly spider-cracking from several bullet holes.\n\n\"That's how!\" said Devin, sliding out of the car and staying low. \"Get behind the car!\"\n\nHe drew the M& P9 from the concealed holster on his right hip and sighted in on the masked attacker who had just jumped down from the rear driver's-side seat. He fired as he moved toward the back of his car, pressing the trigger five times in rapid succession and knocking his target against the back of the sedan. He shifted the pistol's sights to the driver, who had dropped to both knees-arms by his side, pistol clattering to the street. The man's head snapped back before Devin pressed the trigger, Marnie finishing him off.\n\nBullets from the intersection snapped inches overhead and to his side as he emptied the rest of his magazine at the shooter who had crouched next to the sedan's rear bumper. The man pitched forward and caught his fall with both hands, his pistol still clutched in one of them. Devin ejected the spent pistol magazine and grabbed one of the spares concealed on his left hip, his brain doing the math. Time was not on his side.\n\nHis reload was quick and flawless, but the man had his gun up and pointed in his direction before he'd thumbed the slide release and chambered around. Devin should have reserved a few bullets and assessed his first volley. He'd made a fatal error. Gunfire exploded in his ear, the heat from repeated muzzle blasts warming the side of his face. The shooter next to the car's bumper slammed against the street, his arms giving out beneath him as several bullets peppered his body. The business end of Marnie's Sig Sauer suddenly appeared in Devin's peripheral vision, its barrel smoking."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He released his pistol's slide and scooted behind the car, bullets fired from the intersection chasing him around the bumper. Devin searched the sedan for movement, finding none at the moment.\n\n\"Any left back here?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"No. I took out the driver, front passenger, and the guy that was about to shoot you,\" said Marnie, reloading her pistol. \"This is my last mag.\"\n\n\"I thought you were a helicopter pilot,\" he said.\n\n\"Marine first. Helicopter pilot second,\" she said.\n\nA burst of automatic gunfire raked the sedan. Glass blasted across the top of the trunk and rained down on their heads, the car's metal chassis thumping from multiple bullet hits along its side. Devin risked a look around the corner of the car, drawing more automatic fire, a few bullets punching through the trunk near his head. He counted at least three attackers moving in on his side.\n\nMarnie's gun barked twice before she was driven back by gunfire, sparks flying off the pavement next to her. She moved toward the center of the trunk moments before the taillight exploded, spraying her with plastic shards. Devin peeked around the taillight next to him with his pistol, firing at a man who had reached a point even with the hood of the car. His bullets caught the attacker high on the left side of his torso, spinning him to face the hood. Before Devin could drill the man again, a hail of bullets pushed him back-to-back against Marnie. They were out of room and nearly out of time. He saw only one way out of this now-for one of them.\n\n\"Get ready to make a run for the back of the sedan. Stay low and focus your shots on targets to the left side of this car. You should be screened from any gunfire on the other side. Empty your gun and pickup one of theirs,\" said Devin, nodding at the dead guy lying behind the SUV. \"They probably have something that packs a bigger punch in the vehicle. I'll buy you sometime.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"What does that mean?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"she said, before popping up to squeeze off three quick shots.\n\nA furious maelstrom of bullets answered her gunfire, a few skipping off the pavement underneath the car-miraculously missing their feet. The car dropped several inches, its tires flattened by the latest fusillade of supersonic projectiles.\n\n\"They're right up next to the car,\" she said. \"We won't make it.\"\n\n\"I'll draw their fire down the left side,\" said Devin. \"You empty your pistol at anyone you see. You'll make it.\"\n\n\"But you won't. We stick together,\" said Marnie, winking at him. \"That's the plan.\"\n\nA bullet creased his left shin, dropping his knee to the pavement. Marnie grabbed his shirt and kept him from falling forward. He raised his pistol over the trunk and fired a few blind shots, hoping to dissuade anyone creeping along the side of the car.\n\n\"I got you into this,\" he said. \"I'll get you out. Get ready to run.\"\n\n\"I don't think either of us is getting out of this, but I'd rather go down trying,\" she said before extending her pistol around the shattered taillight next to her and blindly emptying her magazine.\n\nScreams erupted from her side of the car, once again answered by more gunfire than they could hope to repel with one pistol remaining between them.\n\n\"Let's go,\" she said, taking off.\n\nDevin grabbed her wrist and yanked her back, having heard the screech of tires somewhere nearby.\n\n\"What the hell are you doing?\" she said.\n\nThe volume of gunfire passing over and next to them doubled instantly, muzzle flashes appearing from the corner of the nearest building at the intersection one street behind them. More tires screeched, this time clearly coming from the intersection ahead."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Our backup arrived,\" said Devin.\n\nHe quick-peeked around the side of the car with his pistol, seeing two masked figures. Both of them fired their submachine guns over the hood at Berg's newly arrived associates. One of them noticed him and started to swing his weapon back in Devin's direction, but it was too late. Devin pressed the trigger twice, punching two holes in his face, before shifting aim and firing the remaining six bullets center mass-knocking the second shooter flat. A short burst of bullets fired from one of Berg's people stitched across the guy's torso just moments after he hit the street.\n\nThe mix of gunfire changed over the course of the next several seconds. More and more suppressed gunfire, which sounded more like hands clapping than regular gunfire-until everything went quiet. Devin started to getup.\n\n\"Stay down!\" yelled a voice from the intersection. \"We'll tell you when it's clear!\"\n\nDevin crouched beside Marnie and reloaded his pistol while a brief symphony of suppressed gunshots played out in the intersection against a background of police sirens.\n\n\"I can't believe this just happened,\" she said, a single suppressed shot punctuating her sentence. \"That it's still happening. They're just walking around intersections popping people in the head, aren't they?\"\n\n\"I can't see exactly what they're doing, but-\"\n\n\"It was more of a rhetorical question,\" she said, a nearby shot startling both of them. \"Of course they're executing people. How is any of this even possible-in the middle of fucking Baltimore? What did your mom stumble on?\"\n\n\"You'll see soon enough,\" said Devin. \"It's big.\"\n\n\"It must be,\" she said."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Assist the writer, move the story forward.\\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\\nTitle: Deep Sleep\\nChapter: 26\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What happened, if you don't mind my asking?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"True America happened,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Right around the time your mother was ousted, come to think of it. You know, she was still doing really good work for Langley at that point-pet sleeper project aside, which ironically turned out to be her best work. I wonder if her removal wasn't somehow related, given the fact that one of President Crane's top advisers was one of those sleepers. True America cleaned house in 2009. It wouldn't surprise me if whispers of her theory reached the wrong ears, and Sean Walker made sure she was swept up in the political purge.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why did they push you so far out of the fold?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"True America had some serious skeletons in their closet, and I had one of the keys to that closet,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Anyone with one of those keys was runoff the road into a ditch and left there.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Did you have anything to do with their downfall?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What do you know about that?\\\" asked Berg, raising an eyebrow.\\n\\n\\\"I heard rumors at SSG that there was more to it than an election fraud scandal,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Something related to the 2007 True America incident.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Rumors,\\\" said Berg, shrugging.\\n\\nHe got the hint. Time to change the subject.\\n\\n\\\"I assume Marnie is clear to book the Airbnb?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\nBerg looked as though the question had caught him off guard.\\n\\n\\\"Yes. They ran a passive radio frequency sweep of her vehicle and actively pinged fora possible long-haul device. Her Jeep is clean. They watched the coffee shop, followed her to Whole Foods, and one of the operatives ghosted her inside the store. Nothing. She can proceed with the booking. Let her know they need the address as soon as she has it. They'll likely get there ahead of her to watch for any suspicious activity while she's checking the place outwith the owner and immediately afterward.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"They're extremely thorough,\\\" said Devin. \\\"That's for sure.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They're extremely paranoid and thorough. That's how they stay alive in this business,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Which brings us to the most important condition of my continued participation and theirs.\\\"\\n\\nDevin cocked his head a bit. He wasn't going to like what Berg had to say. That much was obvious from his tone and the fact that he'd waited this long to give an ultimatum he probably could have led with last night at dinner.\\n\\n\\\"What's the condition?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We do this my way,\\\" said Berg. \\\"I don't say that because I'm a control freak. I say that because I've learned a thing or two about the Russians over the years. One of them being that they don't play by the rules or respect any conventions. You leave the rule books and the referee manuals behind when you're dealing with the Russians.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Fine,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"It's not that simple,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Some of the time, my way will not resemble your way-at all. In fact, I can guarantee you we will reach a point, at least once or twice, where you find my way to be the antithesis of everything you thought you stood for. You'll be repulsed by it, but it will be the only way to effectively deal with the Russians.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think I understand,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"You can't, yet,\\\" said Berg. \\\"I just need you to trust me when your instincts are screaming otherwise. Once we reach a certain point in this little venture, we can't turn back without catastrophic results for everyone.\\\"\\n\\nDevin didn't need to ask what that meant. It certainly didn't mean standing in the unemployment line with a black mark on your résumé. It meant ending up facedown in the Chesapeake Bay with your throat slashed or buried in afield somewhere off the beaten path with a bullet hole in your forehead. He asked the next logical question.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"When do we reach that point?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's the tricky part, Devin, and it's never a clear path,\\\" said Berg. \\\"It's why I need you to trust me enough to do this my way no matter what your gut is telling you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My mom trusted you-so I trust you,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nBerg nodded. \\\"Then I better not let her down.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie Young left her parents' house a little after 6:15 to meet with the owner of the townhouse she had rented in the Canton District of Baltimore. The owner agreed to meet her at 8:00 p. m. to walk her through the place and give her the keys.\\n\\nDevin said he'd arrive around nine with an'associate\\\" to check the place out and pay her for the two weeks she'd fronted. Finding a thirty-day rental in the city for twelve occupants, in a good neighborhood, hadn't left her with any bargain-basement options-especially at the start of the summer. Four hundred and fifty a night, with a two-week deposit, had been the best she could manage, which didn't seem to faze him in the least.\\n\\nThe rest of his new associates would supposedly arrive later that night. She still had no idea what he meant by'associates,\\\" or what he was up to, but she was determined to find out. They had concluded that she wasn't under surveillance, which had been a huge relief. She'd packed an overnight bag and had every intention of sticking around until she could fully assess Devin's mental state and determine how she could help. He'd probably argue with her, but she didn't care. That was what friends did for each other, and unless her status as a friend had lapsed in his mind, which she highly doubted fora number of reasons, she wouldn't take no for an answer.\\n\\nShe also wanted to take a good look at these so-called associates, to make sure Devin was acting in his own best interest-or his own interest at all. She'd stuffed her pistol and a few spare magazines in the overnight bag, just in case. Devin simply didn't sound like himself. He'd looked shaken and dazed at his mother's funeral, which was to be expected, but something was really off with him right now. He sounded rushed and unfocused. Or maybe unfocused wasn't the right word. Scripted? There was no real way to tell over the phone, which was why she'd insisted on handing over the keys in person and sticking around fora while.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie merged onto Interstate 495 several minutes later, coming to a complete stop just a few seconds later. Eight thirty p. m. might be a more realistic estimate. Traffic was heavier than she'd anticipated. If it didn't breakup after the George Washington Memorial Parkway interchange, about five miles north of here, she'd call the townhouse owner and let her know that she was behind schedule. Hopefully that wouldn't be a problem and push things back until the morning. The last thing she wanted to do was add more stress to Devin's situation right now. He sounded as though he was at a breaking point.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harvey Rudd scraped the last of the marinara sauce out of the tiny bowl before shoving the final mozzarella stick into his mouth. They never gave you enough sauce for the whole basket. He licked his fingers clean, a Chattanooga barbecue-joint habit that Jolene loathed. She shook her head and looked away as he went from finger to finger. Long gone were the days when she would complain.\\n\\nThey'd gotten along like that for as long as he could remember. From the beginning, actually, which was why they'd eventually been put together as a team. He remembered the first time he'd laid eyes on her like it was yesterday. They had been flirting fora few months between classes during their first semester at Moscow State University, not quite dating, when Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) agents abruptly plucked them out of school and sent them to an intensive American studies institute on the outskirts of Novosibirsk. GRU authorities told them the academy was a temporary extension of their studies at the School of International Relations, but both of them knew better.\\n\\nThe institute, which reminded him of a Komsomol academy he had attended a few summers ago fora young communist leadership camp, was run more like a military program than an academic extension. They lived in well-worn but solid barracks buildings, and participated in rigorous physical training twice a day, once in the early morning and again after classes ended in the late afternoon. The instructors had been conditioning them for something big. That much was obvious.\\n\\nDespite the harsh, scarcely academic conditions, he had never considered leaving. On most weekends, the hundred or so students were bused in groups to downtown Novosibirsk fora few hours of leisure time, where they spent most of their university stipend on restaurant meals they could never afford back in Moscow. He'd spent most of that time with Ludmilla, a. k. a. Jolene, building the relationship that would lead to their marriage and get them posted together in the United States. She had gotten him through the darkest of days with little more than a smile, and the prospect of her companionship on the weekend.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Five years and three military bases later, the GRU smuggled Vadim Krukov and Ludmilla Alyev into the US with perfectly forged identities, a generously padded bank account that was refilled regularly, and a paid-off house in the Chattanooga suburbs, where they'd posed as Harvey and Jolene Rudd for nearly thirty years.\\n\\nHis phone chirped and buzzed at the same time. A quick look at the screen told him Marnie Young was on the move. Crap.\\n\\n\\\"Looks like we'll be needin\\\" a to-go bag,\\\" he said, passing the phone to Jolene.\\n\\n\\\"I'll take care of it,\\\" said Jolene, waving down one of the servers. \\\"You get the car.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"See you out front,\\\" he said, getting up.\\n\\nOn his way out, he stopped at the host stand and notified the young man managing the wait list that they had to leave immediately due to a family emergency-just to double upon Jolene's efforts to get them out of here quickly. He jogged through the parking lotto their SUV and put his phone in the holder attached to the dashboard. After backing out of the space, he took the satellite phone out of the glove box and gave Rick Gentry a call.\\n\\n\\\"I see it,\\\" said Gentry. \\\"On my way out of the room. She just turned north on Broad Street, so maybe she's headed back to the coffee shop?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"CONTROL indicated little to no evening activity since she moved back to DC,\\\" said Rudd, headed for the restaurant's entrance.\\n\\n\\\"She's thirty-seven, single, and has been living with her parents fora few weeks,\\\" said Gentry. \\\"This night could go in any of a dozen directions.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I hope they go in Devin Gray's direction,\\\" said Rudd.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"It doesn't sound like it if he hasn't answered her texts,\\\" said Gentry.\\n\\n\\\"He went dark on that phone,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"Same result,\\\" said Gentry. \\\"Who knows. Maybe we'll get lucky. I'm in the lobby. I'll be on the road shortly.\\\"\\n\\nJolene barreled through the door several seconds after he'd stopped and put on the SUV's hazard lights. She carried a take-out bag and two large to-go drink cups as she hustled to the car. He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the door for her.\\n\\n\\\"I can't tell you how happy I am to see those bags!\\\" he said. \\\"And you, of course.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Uh-huh,\\\" she said, handing him the cups. \\\"I didn't want to have to fight you over the last granola bar in my purse.\\\"\\n\\nHe set the cups in the cup holders, and she dropped her purse into the footwell, keeping the take-out bag balanced on her knees while she buckled her seat belt.\\n\\n\\\"We'll deal with this later,\\\" she said, placing the bag on the rear passenger seat row.\\n\\n\\\"Hopefully sooner than later,\\\" he said, driving them to the exit onto Broad Street.\\n\\nYoung had passed the restaurant about a minute ago, still headed north. He squeezed into traffic and managed to cut the distance between them in half by the time they reached the Whole Foods from this morning. When she kept going, he started to suspect they were in fora long night. At the Capitol Beltway, any lingering doubt was removed. She took the on-ramp headed north, which was the last thing he'd expect anyone to do with rush hour still in progress. If Young were driving anywhere nearby, she would have been better off staying on local roads.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"About an hour and a half later, Young exited the Beltway at the I-95 interchange that took them north toward Baltimore. Twenty-two miles in ninety-three minutes translated into Rudd being ready to eat the rib eye steak he'd ordered at the restaurant with his bare hands. A single hand. One would have to remain on the steering wheel. He was about to suggest that Jolene crack open their dinner when the satellite phone rang. \\\"Rick,\\\" she said before answering the call.\\n\\n\\\"Hope you had dinner. Looks like we're headed to Baltimore,\\\" she said.\\n\\nRudd couldn't hear the other side of their conversation, but his wife hadn't rolled her eyes yet, which usually meant she agreed with whatever was being passed along. She lowered the phone.\\n\\n\\\"Rick is thinking we should get Logan and Nathan moving in this direction,\\\" she said. \\\"In case this pans out. Possibly Sandy.\\\"\\n\\nHe was right. If Gray surfaced, CONTROL might order them to make an immediate move against him, capture or kill being the only two options. Killing Gray on the spot wouldn't require more than the three of them. Kidnapping was a different story. They should be able to make it work with three, but the more the merrier.\\n\\n\\\"Let's get them on the road,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"But Sandy stays in place, on the outside chance that Gray shows his face at the apartment.\\\"\\n\\nShe passed that along to Gentry and called the rest of the team. When that was done, she reached between the seats, and fora brief moment he thought she might be going for their dinner. Instead, her hand reemerged with their laptop. She shook her head, smiling.\\n\\n\\\"I'll work on dinner in a minute,\\\" she said. \\\"We need to contact CONTROL with an update and transfer primary communications to the encrypted chat app on one of our mobile phones. Things will move fast if Gray materializes.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Agreed,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\nShe retrieved the Iridium SatSleeve from the glove box and inserted her smartphone, enabling satellite call capability. A few minutes later, after accessing the dark web chat box through the laptop and explaining the situation to CONTROL, she opened an app on her phone and entered along code provided in the chat session. Shortly after that, Jolene shut her laptop and returned it to the backseat.\\n\\n\\\"We're good,\\\" she said.\\n\\nThey'd now established a direct communications channel to CONTROL through the satellite-converted cellphone, which could get tricky. The specifically designed application replicated the dark web chat box but required them to enter a memorized'start word\\\" every time they typed into the text field. The application randomly prompted them with a number between one and one hundred by displaying it at the top of the screen-each number corresponding to a unique password. They both knew these words by heart. Only one mistake was tolerated. Two incorrect attempts shutdown everything, including their laptop's access. He had no idea what happened after that and didn't want to find out.\\n\\nAt 8:34 p. m., Harvey Rudd dropped his wife at the corner of Fait Avenue and South Glover Street in what looked like an upscale part of Baltimore, even though it was hard to tell with the flat redbrick facades. The map said they were in Canton, which was within walking distance of the northwest harbor, just to the east of Fells Point-a high-rent district. They'd have to be somewhat cautious here. People paying a premium fora one-bedroom loft with a view tended to keep an eye on the neighborhood. He wanted to keep his drive-bys to a minimum, if not eliminate them altogether. Young had parked her Jeep about halfway between Fait and Foster Avenues on South Glover Street.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They'd turned off Foster Avenue onto South Glover just in time to see her disappear into a townhouse on the east side of the street with another woman. Young carried a backpack that looked large enough to bean overnight bag. The other woman was dressed in a business suit. The Rudds drew no conclusions from the little they witnessed, which was why he dropped Jolene off to keep an eye on things while he looked fora parking space with a view of the townhouse.\\n\\nThe problem was that South Glover, like almost all the north-south streets in this neighborhood, was a one-way street. In this case directed south. It took him several passes to finally score a parking space, which was ill suited for any of their possible follow-on missions. Located south of the townhouse, on the other side of Fait Avenue, he'd have to throw the SUV into reverse and blindly cross Fait Avenue, a marginally busy two-way street, to reach the townhouse-if CONTROL gave them the order to hit the house.\\n\\nAs much as he'd like to be positioned upstreet from the target house, pointing him in the right direction, he didn't dare give up what might end up being the only parking opportunity on the street. From here, he'd guide the rest of the team into place on nearby streets, where they'd be in quick striking distance if Devin Gray made an appearance. Rick Gentry had found a space two blocks over, facing Foster Avenue. He could arrive in front of the target house within thirty seconds.\\n\\nJolene joined him moments after he backed into the space, insisting that they prepare for possible breaching orders. They moved a duffel bag packed with flash-bang grenades in case they suspected armed opposition inside; bolt cutters for simple but persistent chain locks; a handheld, solid-steel battering ram for bypassing deadbolts or standard doorknob locks; and a pistol-gripped, short-barreled shotgun loaded with breacher slugs in case the locks proved to be resistant to brute physical force. Along with the compact pistols hidden in concealed holsters along their waistbands, they were ready for pretty much anything.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You hungry?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"asked Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"Hold on,\\\" said Jolene, focusing a pair of binoculars on the townhouse.\\n\\nShe passed them to him a few moments later. \\\"Take a look.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie Young stood in the open doorway of the townhouse, nodding and laughing with the woman, who handed her a set of keys and a folder. The two of them shook hands after another minute or so of conversation, and the smartly dressed woman departed-walking to her car, which had been parked at the end of the street, on the corner of Foster Avenue. A near-perfect position for their purposes! He was about to suggest relocating to that spot when another vehicle slowed to turn onto the street as the other car departed, sliding into its place. It wasn't meant to be. He shifted the view back to Marnie Young, who glanced up and down the street before shutting the door behind her.\\n\\n\\\"She's up to something,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"Yep. Let's eat before this goes down,\\\" she said. \\\"I give it fifteen minutes tops.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Timothy Graves parked the rental sedan on the corner of South Glover Street and Foster Avenue and passed the keys between the seats to the woman lying on the back row under a blanket. She didn't say a word, which was fine by him. He wanted to get as far from here as possible. Just minutes ago, he'd driven out of a parking space down the road to make room for one of their targets before slowly circling the block to take the Airbnb owner's space-moving the final chess pieces into place.\\n\\nIf the couple in the Durango noticed that the cars were the same, a remote but existent possibility under the circumstances, trouble could escalate quicker than any of them had planned. And unchoreographed trouble was the last thing he was looking for tonight. Graves much preferred the kind the team could control, since they typically directed it away from him.\\n\\nHe wasn't a combat type. Far from it. And he was here only as a favor. He'd emerged from his mostly permanent retirement because Anish needed his help on a short-fused job, and Graves was within easy striking distance.\\n\\nHe'd settled into a nice living on the southern Outer Banks, near Emerald Isle, where he'd vacationed as a kid. Hauling himself to Jacksonville to get on a flight to Baltimore hadn't been any trouble at all.\\n\\n\\\"Good luck,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Yep,\\\" she said.\\n\\nHe got out and shut the door, the vehicle's locking system immediately chirping behind him. A little early on the locks, Emily. The average system took a little longer than that to arm itself. Hopefully, nobody would notice. He'd never worked with Emily Miralles before today. She'd joined Farrington's crew a year and a half ago, replacing Cassiopeia, a. k. a. Caz, who'd accepted a lucrative head security position for one of Capitol Hill's more influential senators. Miralles didn't say much, which, once again, suited him fine. The less he knew about any of these people the better, and the less they knew about him? Priceless.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"It wasn't that he disliked any of them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He'd enjoyed his years working for Sanderson's program and subsequently with Farrington's spin-off operation. They'd taken on some giants in that time and come out on top, making the world a better place-he hoped. It was just that he could count on one hand the number of people who had been around from the beginning. Some of them had split and gone their own way, like him, but most of them had been killed on missions or assassinated in retribution for some of their more notorious jobs.\\n\\nThe fact that this job involved the Russians had almost kept him from showing up. The Russians had long memories, and Farrington had done a number on them in the past. More than once.\\n\\nHe walked a block east on Foster Avenue and crossed the street at South Lakewood, heading for the tricked-out silver Suburban Anish called home these days. Graves had to admit that his former partner in crime had made some aesthetic and functional improvements to the original concept of their undercover communications hub.\\n\\nBack in the day, they'd just bolt a folding desk and some industrial metal bookshelves to the floor of a cargo van, relying on a combination of Velcro, zip ties, and bungee cords to keep everything in place. Gupta had even completely hidden the antennae array, which had always posed a detection risk to them in the past. The only issue with the new arrangement was interior space. He'd traded the expansiveness of the somewhat conspicuous Mercedes cargo van for the assured cover of the oversize SUV-ubiquitous in the suburbs and city these days.\\n\\nThe Suburban was parked in a row of diagonal spaces on the left side of the street, facing out for quick egress. The rear passenger door opened the moment he stepped off the curb, Richard'Rich\\\" Farrington hopping down with a wide grin on his face. A rarity in Graves's experience.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Timothy. Sorry I missed you earlier. I was putting the final magic touches on a few things,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Good to see you. Sounds like life on the Outer Banks is treating you well.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I can't complain too much,\\\" said Graves. \\\"It wasn't the easiest adjustment to make after spending close to two decades in this line of business, but I'm making it work. Everyday my shoulders relax about a quarter of a millimeter.\\\"\\n\\nRich laughed. \\\"Well, I apologize for setting your shoulders back a few months, but I do appreciate you coming out of retirement temporarily. My guess is we're going to need all the help we can get on this one. Did Miralles bring you up to speed on the mechanics of the operation?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"She did. Is this really the Russians?\\\" asked Graves.\\n\\nRich nodded. \\\"Long-dormant sleeper network. Second generation-if it checks out.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Second generation? Holy shit,\\\" said Graves. \\\"Wait. You haven't vetted this yet?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Tonight's operation has been vetted,\\\" said Rich. \\\"But Karl Berg says it's connected to a much-bigger conspiracy. We'll all get a chance to scour the evidence and try to poke holes in the theory.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"This is Berg's theory? I thought he was retired.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He is. Or was. Kind of like someone else I know,\\\" said Rich, patting him on the shoulder. \\\"A former colleague of his at Langley apparently spent close to the past two decades investigating this theory. She was killed under suspicious circumstances about two weeks ago. Killed herself, but too many aspects of her case don't add up. She handed over the reins to her son, Devin Gray. He reached out to Berg at his mother's recommendation-and here we are.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"And Berg is convinced?\\\" asked Graves.\\n\\n\\\"He sounds convinced,\\\" said Rich. \\\"But he's open to criticism. Same with Devin Gray. They both want to be wrong about this.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I knew I should have left my phone behind when I took the boat out this morning.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What kind of boat?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nothing too fancy,\\\" said Graves. \\\"Just a fishing boat.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Does it have a flying bridge?\\\" asked Rich.\\n\\n\\\"It might.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sounds kind of fancy,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Don't worry. We'll get you back to your yacht in one piece.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll hold you to that,\\\" said Graves. \\\"And take you fishing if you make good on it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Deal,\\\" said Rich, shaking his hand. \\\"Keep your friend out of trouble. He hasn't matured since you left.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I heard that,\\\" said Gupta.\\n\\n\\\"Be good, guys,\\\" said Rich before crossing the street and getting into the passenger seat of a black SUV that hadn't drawn Graves's attention until now.\\n\\nIn the fading light of the evening, he recognized Scott Daly, former Navy SEAL, behind the wheel of the SUV. Daly waved at him, and he nodded back. They were in good hands. Graves climbed inside and gave Gupta a high five before shutting the door.\\n\\n\\\"Thanks for answering the call of the wild, bro!\\\" said Gupta. \\\"The band is back together, baby!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Is it too late to go home?\\\" asked Graves.\\n\\n\\\"You know you missed me,\\\" said Gupta.\\n\\n\\\"Not really,\\\" said Graves. \\\"What are we looking at here? They shoved me behind the wheel of a car a few minutes after I showed up and parked me on Glover Street with the least talkative operative I've ever met.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Miralles? Yeah. She's all business, and good at it, too,\\\" said Gupta. \\\"All right. So here's what we've got for coverage. Two low-light-capable, high-def block cameras placed on the townhouse adjacent to the target house, giving us a good enough view up and down Glover Street. The trees kind of mess with the view at certain distances, but we have a good overall picture of the street. I have that on a split screen here. I'm running the feeds through motion-detection software, so it'll draw our attention to anything larger than a dog.\\\"\\n\\nGupta leaned forward and tapped the space baron the laptop sitting on the Suburban's wide front-seat armrest, activating the screen. Graves saw what he meant about the trees. Not ideal but not bad. The motion-detection software would overcome that issue.\\n\\n\\\"We also have a basic fish-eye dome camera setup on the fence behind the townhouse, off the alley. One-hundred-and-eighty-degree coverage. Motion activated. It'll popup as a window in the bottom-right corner of the screen if it's triggered, or you can click on the rightmost tab to open the feed at anytime. We both have the same access on our laptops, in case we need to split our attention between the front and back of the townhouse. I anticipate doing that during the pickup.\\\"\\n\\nGraves clicked the tab and liked what he saw. The concrete alley was well lit.\\n\\n\\\"Other than that, I have a multiband antenna on one of our vehicles on Glover Street, plus one on each adjacent street-attached as high up in the trees as we could manage. They have a very limited power supply. Our Russian friends have mainly used encrypted push-to-talk satellite communications. We should be able to map them out as they move into position.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He handed Graves one of the laptops on the seat between them and took the other for himself.\\n\\n\\\"There's no difference between either of these laptops, for redundancy reasons,\\\" he said, flipping the screen up. \\\"I figured I'd analyze the frequencies and sensors, while you maintained the bigger picture and communicated with the teams?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sounds like a plan. Same comms arrangement?\\\" asked Graves.\\n\\nGupta reached behind the seat and retrieved a headphone set attached to a heavy-duty-looking coiled cord. He handed them over to Graves.\\n\\n\\\"Same. Same,\\\" said Gupta. \\\"Right ear is the primary communications channel. We're using one channel. Left ear is whatever you want. I currently have it tuned to the local police frequency. You can change it through the computer interface. If for some reason we need to leave the vehicle, there's a handheld radio preset with the same frequencies and an earbud headset in the seat pocket directly in front of you.\\\"\\n\\nGraves didn't like the sound of that at all, but it came with the job, along with a wide variety of other possible unpleasantries-like getting shot in the leg and walking with a slight limp for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, things like that didn't go away like tensed shoulders. He knew that from experience, which led to his next question.\\n\\n\\\"What's our security situation?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Rich and Scott will be across the street until the extraction,\\\" said Gupta. \\\"Other than that, there's a loaded Sig Sauer compact pistol with two spare magazines in each door pocket.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Wonderful,\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"Back into the frying pan, man,\\\" said Gupta. \\\"Just like old times.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It wasn't that long ago,\\\" said Graves, suddenly remembering just how much he didn't miss this.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin Gray drove up and down the streets east of the townhouse for close to twenty minutes before a parking space opened on South Belmore Avenue. He spent the next few minutes trying to squeeze his car into the opening left by a Prius. The end result wasn't pretty-the back end of his car protruded about afoot into the street-but it would have to do. Berg's people were anxious to offload their gear and get started. From what he had gathered, most of them would remain at the townhouse overnight, while the team leaders joined Devin and Berg at Helen's apartment to examine the evidence.\\n\\nBefore they set off down the street, Berg grabbed his arm. \\\"Are you sure there's noway to convince Marnie to leave the keys in the mailbox and get out of there? Right now. Her insistence on staying at the townhouse isn't sitting well with the crew. I don't want to give them any reason to back out of this.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"She's a good friend and a combat-decorated Marine. Completely trustworthy,\\\" said Devin. \\\"All she wants to do is make sure I'm not being put up to something or being forced to do something against my will. I know how that sounds, given the fact that I came to you with this, but she's not going to let this go. She's doing what a good friend would do. The harder I try to get her to leave, the less likely she will. She made that clear. You heard the phone call.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. Well, she's getting in the way,\\\" said Berg, sliding his satchel's strap over a shoulder.\\n\\n\\\"She won't stick around for long. She'll see everything's fine with me, and that'll be it.\\\"\\n\\nBerg shook his head and started walking, almost mumbling to himself. They got to the corner of Foster Avenue, where Berg stopped. \\\"I need you to remember what we discussed earlier today,\\\" he said. \\\"About doing this my way.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I remember,\\\" said Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I simply can't force Marnie to leave without making her even more suspicious than she already is. She'll just hang around in her car all night. I know her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That would be even worse,\\\" said Berg, looking somewhat exasperated.\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" asked Devin, thinking he might have misspoken.\\n\\n\\\"Nothing. Let's go,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThey walked the two blocks to South Glover Avenue, Berg checking his phone every minute or so for texts and immediately assuring Devin that everything was on schedule. They didn't encounter much foot traffic on the way. A college-age student with a backpack bopping along to whatever music was pumping through his headphones. A thirtysomething-looking couple headed in the opposite direction, probably on their way to a cozy dinner in one of a number of Canton neighborhood restaurants. He'd pictured the streets hereto be a little busier, due to the proximity to the waterfront, but it was still early by city standards. Just a little past ten.\\n\\nSouth Glover was packed with cars, like every street in the area. He imagined having a dedicated garage or parking space behind your townhouse in the alley was important if you owned a place here. The parking situation around his mother's apartment was bad enough, but nothing like this. While they walked down the street, he scanned the vehicles without being obvious.\\n\\n\\\"Karl. Would it be fair to assume that your friends are already watching the townhouse?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"It's possible,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Why do you ask?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We either passed by two friends or two hostiles a few cars back,\\\" said Devin. \\\"One close to the intersection. The second on the other side of the street. Both sedans. The car windows are cracked open for air, which means they've probably been therefor awhile. I also saw some movement in the backseat of one of the cars. Very subtle, but definitely movement.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"They've been here fora few hours,\\\" said Berg. \\\"To make sure Marnie hadn't been followed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They need to work on their surveillance fieldcraft,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I'll pass that along,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\nDevin watched the numbers on the front of the brick townhomes, stopping about two-thirds of the way to the next cross street, in front of a brightly lit redbrick stoop with a single black handrail, which pretty much looked like every other stoop in the neighborhood. He imagined this hadn't been exactly the best part of town a decade or so ago. Fully rehabilitated now, but not much you could do with the squat row house facades.\\n\\n\\\"Seven-twenty-seven,\\\" said Devin, raising his hand to knock on the door.\\n\\nHe'd belying if he said he wasn't more nervous about seeing Marnie than Berg's mercenaries. A different kind of nervous. More like butterflies in the stomach.\\n\\n\\\"Holdup,\\\" said Berg, checking his phone.\\n\\n\\\"I have a third surveillance vehicle down the road, before the next intersection,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Make sure that's ours.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is,\\\" said Berg, typing a response on the phone before looking up at Devin. \\\"They're being extra cautious. Ready?\\\"\\n\\nDevin knocked on the door.\\n\\n\\\"Just remember. I need you to trust me. No matter what happens,\\\" said Berg. \\\"When Marnie opens the door, we get inside fast. Okay?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Are you sure everything is all right?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Couldn't be better,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\nMarnie opened the door a moment later, smiling warmly.\\n\\n\\\"I thought you might have stood me up,\\\" she said, glancing at her watch.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Definitely not,\\\" said Devin. \\\"We just ran a little behind-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why don't we talk about this inside,\\\" said Berg, basically shoving him into the townhouse.\\n\\nMarnie's smile evaporated as she backed out of the doorway, her lips pursing and eyes squinting.\\n\\n\\\"Devin. What the hell is going on?\\\" she said, pulling him out of Berg's way. \\\"Who is this asshole?\\\"\\n\\nBerg shut and locked the door.\\n\\n\\\"My name is Karl. I was a friend of Devin's mother at the CIA. Devin trusts me, and I need you to trust me. At least fora few minutes. Our lives depend on it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What is he talking about?\\\" asked Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Karl. I think you're being a little overdramatic,\\\" said Devin before turning to Marnie. \\\"I don't know what his deal is right now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Whatever it is, I don't like it,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Yes. I'm an asshole. Agreed. Let's move to the back of the townhouse, please,\\\" said Berg. \\\"It's safer.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie didn't budge, shaking her head instead. \\\"I'm not going anywhere.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Please. We're about to have company at the front door. Russian houseguests with no manners. If we move now, we'll belong gone before they arrive.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Devin?\\\" she said, giving him a puzzled look.\\n\\n\\\"Karl. How does that make any-\\\" started Devin.\\n\\nJesus. He'd used them as bait!\\n\\n\\\"You son of a bitch. You let them follow her here, didn't you?\\\" said Devin. \\\"This whole townhouse is nothing but a setup. I knew it didn't sound right.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yeah.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"And I'm half of the bait,\\\" said Berg, starting to walkaway. \\\"So please. Can we get the fuck out of here? We really don't have time for this. Our ride will be outback any second.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Don't take another step,\\\" said Marnie, pointing a compact pistol at Berg. \\\"We're going to make sometime.\\\"\\n\\nBerg's shoulders slumped and he exhaled deeply.\\n\\n\\\"Did you give her your gun?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nThe pistol he'd taken from his mother's safe had been a Smith& Wesson M& P9 Compact. She was holding some kind of modular Sig Sauer.\\n\\n\\\"Jesus. Please talk to her. Quickly,\\\" said Berg. \\\"We're out of time.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Marnie. I need you to trust me,\\\" said Devin. \\\"If he says we need to go, we need to go. I'll explain everything at my mother's apartment.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Your mother's apartment is still an active crime scene,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"My mother's other apartment,\\\" said Devin. \\\"She wasn't crazy. She discovered a Russian sleeper network, and nobody believed her-but it's all true. She kept a second apartment with all of the evidence.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Devin. I want to believe you, but I'm really having a hard time with this.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harvey Rudd nudged Jolene's arm. She'd been turned in her seat, staring through the binoculars for too long without saying anything.\\n\\n\\\"Knock it off,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"What are you seeing?\\\" asked Rudd.\\n\\n\\\"Let me seethe pictures again,\\\" she said.\\n\\nRudd held the pictures of Karl Berg and Devin Gray in the subdued light cast by the open glove box. Jolene glanced down at the pictures fora few seconds before returning to the binoculars.\\n\\n\\\"It's Karl Berg and Devin Gray,\\\" said Jolene.\\n\\n\\\"How sure are you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"One hundred percent. They just entered the townhouse,\\\" said Jolene. \\\"Call it in.\\\"\\n\\nRudd could barely believe their luck. Two of CONTROL's high-priority targets in one place. He'd been expecting only Gray, and even that had been along shot. He opened the chat app on Jolene's phone and typed the code word corresponding with the number at the top of the screen, followed by a dash and then his message.\\n\\nDANDELION-Berg and Gray just entered townhouse. 100% positive ID. Have 6 members of team standing by with breaching kit and weapons. Advise how to proceed.\\n\\nThe number at the top of the screen changed several seconds later, followed by a reply.\\n\\nIs Young in townhouse?\\n\\nUNICORN-Yes. Young, Berg and Gray.\\n\\nKill Young. Abduct Berg and Gray. If only feasible to abduct ONE, take Berg and kill Gray. Advise of results when complete. Will pass directions to safe house for delivery. Acknowledge receipt of this order.\\n\\nThe number changed again. They weren't taking any chances.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"STARWARS-Order received.\\n\\nExecute orders immediately. Authorization code CARWASH.\\n\\nCARWASH was the code the other members of the team would receive via text. He'd have to recite the code to prove that he'd received authorization to deviate from their previous order to locate and follow Devin Gray and/or Karl Berg. It was a crude method that still left a lot of room for abuse. He could essentially tell the team anything he wanted, and they wouldn't have anyway to verify the actual orders.\\n\\n\\\"Read this,\\\" said Rudd, handing the phone to his wife.\\n\\nShe gave it a quick look. \\\"Call Logan. We need to move quick, while they're standing around making introductions. I assume Young has never met Berg before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yep,\\\" said Rudd, grabbing his satellite phone and pressing the push-to-talk button. \\\"Put me on speakerphone,\\\" he said to Logan, doing the same.\\n\\n\\\"You're on speakerphone,\\\" said Walsh. \\\"We all just received text messages.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"CARWASH. CARWASH. Berg and Gray just entered the townhouse. CONTROL gave me the green light to hit the townhouse,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"We're going to try and take both Berg and Gray, but if grabbing both of them starts to go sideways, we kill Gray and take Berg.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What about Young?\\\" asked Walsh.\\n\\n\\\"We kill her right away,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"We don't need any Marine heroics.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're ready to roll,\\\" said Walsh.\\n\\n\\\"Get everyone set and move up to the corner,\\\" said Rudd. \\\"You'll have to be my eyes when I back across Fait Avenue. I won't be able to seethe cross traffic.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'm already on the move,\\\" said Walsh. \\\"No traffic right now. I'll keep you posted.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Let's do this,\\\" said Rudd, starting the Durango. \\\"Breach kit is in the backseat.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're at the corner,\\\" said Walsh.\\n\\nHe glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Walsh's Pathfinder pull into place at the intersection.\\n\\n\\\"You ready?\\\" he said.\\n\\nJolene had already drawn her compact stainless-steel revolver. \\\"Quit talking and start driving.\\\"\\n\\nRudd maneuvered the Durango out of the tight space and lined up with the intersection using the backup camera screen on the center console. His phone chirped, followed by Walsh's voice.\\n\\n\\\"You're all clear.\\\"\\n\\nHe pressed the accelerator, starting slow and picking up speed. Eyes glued to the screen, he raced across Fait Avenue, immediately slowing when he'd crossed to the other side safely.\\n\\n\\\"Tell me when to stop,\\\" said Rudd.\\n\\nHe proceeded at a manageable speed until Jolene squeezed his knee. \\\"A few more seconds.\\\"\\n\\nRudd counted to three and slowed to a crawl, turning his head to check the street addresses. Seven thirty-one. Seven twenty-nine. He tapped the brakes, bringing them to a stop directly in front of the target address.\\n\\n\\\"Jesus, Logan!\\\" yelled Jolene, as Walsh's SUV screeched to a halt just inches from Rudd's front bumper.\\n\\nSo much for the element of surprise.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Car tires screeched outside, turning all their heads.\\n\\n\\\"We have to go-right fucking now,\\\" said Berg, taking off for the back of the townhouse.\\n\\nDevin put his hand on Marnie's wrist and lowered the gun. \\\"I'll explain everything later. Right now, we need to do what Karl says.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie fumed fora moment before bolting through the townhouse, with Devin in close pursuit. Once out the backdoor, he spotted a black SUV parked in the alley just beyond a low concrete wall. A man he'd never seen before whisper-yelled obscenities at them through the front passenger window as they raced across the brick patio toward a black wrought iron gate.\\n\\n\\\"Hurry the fuck up!\\\" he hissed as they piled through the gate and into the back row of the SUV.\\n\\nThe vehicle took off the moment Devin jumped inside, the door still wide open. He reached out to pull it shut, a plastic garbage bin clipping the end of the door and slamming it against his hand. Devin pulled the door shut with his other hand, groaning in pain.\\n\\nThe man in the passenger seat glanced over his shoulder. \\\"What was the damn holdup? Half the Red Army is in front of the townhouse.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Just a little disagreement,\\\" said Berg. \\\"It wasn't my best moment.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No worries. We're still good to go,\\\" he said before fully turning in his seat. \\\"Devin. Marnie. I'm Rich, the de facto team leader. And this is Scott. I apologize for this sudden stunt, but we needed to get a handle on who's been following both of you.\\\"\\n\\nScott turned left out of the alley at Fait Avenue and picked up speed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I thought my Jeep was clean,\\\" said Marnie.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"And that nobody was following me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's what I was told,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I would never have put you in any danger.\\\"\\n\\nRich glanced down at the pistol in Marnie's lap. \\\"My guess is she can take care of herself.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You lied tome, Karl. For an entire day. How am I supposed to trust any of you?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Devin. There was no other way to pull this off. We needed all of the Russians in one place, which meant you and me showing up at the townhouse to offer an irresistible target,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Ms. Young insisted on staying at the townhouse. I begged you to get her out of there.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I wasn't going anywhere,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"I needed to see for myself who was pulling the strings. Now I know.\\\"\\n\\nScott took a hard left on South Belnord Street, tires screeching.\\n\\n\\\"Take it easy,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nScott slowed the vehicle down significantly.\\n\\n\\\"We'll explain everything later,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Right now, I'm going to drop the two of you off at Devin's car, and you're going to run a short SDR to the northeast. Thirty minutes tops. Just get out of the city and into the suburbs. Work your magic in a nice, quiet neighborhood, then back to your mother's apartment. Stick north of the city on your return. The police will be allover this part of town.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What's happening back at the townhouse?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Bad shit,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Point-of-no-return shit, to be precise,\\\" said Berg.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harvey Rudd had pulled the nylon duffel bag containing their breacher kit onto the sidewalk by the time the entire team had assembled in front of the door. They wasted no time rifling through its contents, removing the battering ram first. Leo Ward took possession of the forty-pound, two-handed chunk of metal, and headed for the townhouse stoop. Logan Walsh grabbed the shotgun, which they'd preloaded with twelve-gauge slug shots, and followed closely behind Ward. Rick Gentry stuffed a few of the flash-bang grenades into his cargo pant pockets, keeping one out for immediate use.\\n\\nThey stacked upon the door like a SWAT team: Ward with the battering ram first, lining it up with the door handle; Walsh racking the shotgun to chamber one of the lock-shattering slugs and positioning himself on the hinge side of the door-in case the battering ram didn't do the trick. Gentry stood at the bottom of the stoop, flash-bang grenade in hand, ready to toss it inside if they met with any immediate gunfire. Clark stacked up behind Walsh, ready to rush in and shoot Young. Everything was in place.\\n\\nRudd threw the duffel bag in the backseat of the Durango and drew a compact Glock from the concealed holster on his hip.\\n\\n\\\"Do it! Breach!\\\" he said, heading straight for the townhouse stoop.\\n\\nWard retracted the battering ram, ready to smash it against the handle, when his head snapped sideways, a watermelon-size scarlet blotch exploding against the yellow door. Walsh's neck erupted a fraction of a second later, painting Ward's expressionless face deep red. Both of them crumpled to the stoop as bullets tore through the rest of the team.\\n\\nGentry pitched forward, striking the brick stairs with his head, the grenade rolling down the sidewalk-pin and safety lever still intact. Clark whirled to his right, snapping off two shots into the darkness, before along burst of bullets thumped into his head and chest, knocking him backward like he'd been hit by a bus. He slammed into Jolene, who lost her balance and stumbled sideways until she tripped over her own feet.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Rudd launched forward and broke her fall with one arm, keeping her head from bouncing off the sidewalk. He kept his pistol hand extended, for no real reason other than to feel as though he were doing something to protect his wife. He hadn't seen a single muzzle flash, and the sidewalks were empty. Whoever had positioned these snipers had orchestrated this moment perfectly. They'd probably been behind everything that had gone down today. All leading to this stoop, and the annihilation of his team.\\n\\nHe managed to say'sorry\\\" to Jolene before a bullet hit the crown of her head and switched her off forever. Rudd pressed the Glock's trigger repeatedly, aiming at nothing in particular, before he joined her.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Jared Hoffman searched through the night vision scope attached to his suppressed rifle for any movement, finding the stoop and sidewalk completely still aside from the occasional postmortem twitch. He took his eye out of the scope and observed the entire street. Nothing. The three sweltering hours he'd spent hidden in the backseat of this car had comedown to a five-second, very-one-sided gun battle. Well worth the price. He pressed the transmit button hidden inside his shirt collar.\\n\\n\\\"Melendez. You see any unfinished business?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nHis earpiece crackled. \\\"Negative. Six targets down. The couple and the four that arrived in the second SUV. Down hard.\\\"\\n\\nHe agreed with that assessment. Hoffman had fired nothing but head and neck shots, connecting with each burst.\\n\\n\\\"Graves. You got any funky chatter out there?\\\" asked Hoffman.\\n\\n\\\"No. Satellite push-to-talk traffic went quiet right before the vehicles moved in,\\\" he said. \\\"I'm monitoring the police frequencies closely. We heard the shots from here.\\\"\\n\\nHoffman was mad at himself for that. He should have plugged the husband first, especially when he didn't drop the pistol to catch her. Those five shots would guarantee a dozen or more 911 calls. The first two, fired by the other guy, might have kept people inside the townhomes guessing fora while before they finally decided to play it safe and call the police.\\n\\n\\\"Copy that,\\\" said Hoffman. \\\"Miralles. It's all you. We'll keep you covered.\\\"\\n\\nA car started on the other side of the street, down toward Foster Avenue. He caught a brief glimpse of Miralles's ski-masked face and a gloved middle finger when her vehicle raced by.\\n\\n\\\"I saw that,\\\" said Hoffman over the net.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You were supposed to,\\\" she said.\\n\\nMiralles squeezed her car past the two idling SUVs and parked in the middle of the street. She worked the scene fast, first emptying the loose contents inside each SUV into a heavy-duty black rectangular gym bag. She'd search under the seats. Inside the glove box. The seat pockets. Everywhere.\\n\\nNext, she searched the bodies, emptying pockets and tossing everything but the weapons into the bag. When she'd finished with that, Miralles removed a digital camera from one of the outer pockets of the gym bag and took close-up pictures of the Russians\\\" faces-what was left of them. A few dozen flashes later, she pocketed the camera and started on the fingerprints with a handheld scanning device. Thumbs and index fingers only.\\n\\n\\\"I'm getting a lot of police scanner traffic,\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"How long do we have?\\\" asked Hoffman.\\n\\n\\\"Software just picked up a unit responding with \\\"one minute ETA.\\\" Get out of there now,\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"Pack it up, Miralles,\\\" said Hoffman, pulling down his ski mask. \\\"Melendez. Blaze a trail for us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm already Oscar Mike,\\\" said Miralles, headed for her car with the gym bag.\\n\\nAn SUV parked about five spaces beyond Miralles's sedan pulled into the street and stopped.\\n\\n\\\"Ready to roll,\\\" said Melendez. \\\"I can hear sirens. No lights yet.\\\"\\n\\nHoffman could hear them, too. He climbed over the reclined driver's seat and slid into place behind the steering wheel, then straightened his seat before starting the car. The keys had been in the ignition the entire time. He'd left them there when he'd rolled the windows down all the way to keep from slow cooking himself to death. The last thing he needed was to be fumbling for keys at a critical moment-like his escape. A quick scan of his mirrors caught some faint red and blue flashes on the buildings at the intersection behind him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I have lights coming down Foster Avenue,\\\" said Hoffman. \\\"Can't tell the direction. Get out of here. I'll catch up.\\\"\\n\\nHe yanked the wheel all the way to the left and pulled out of the parking space at full speed, somehow avoiding the vehicle parked in front of him. A once-in-a-lifetime stunt, he graciously accepted. Every second would count here. He sped down the street toward the Russians'SUVs, centering his car on the narrow gap between their vehicles and the cars parked along the right side of the road. He shot through the opening, once again emerging unscathed. Things were going entirely too smoothly for him so far. He'd probably broadside a police cruiser at the next intersection.\\n\\nWith that thought in mind, he slowed as he approached Fait Avenue, looking in both directions as he crept through the empty intersection. A few blocks west, two police cars turned onto Fait Avenue, headed in his direction. He floored the accelerator.\\n\\n\\\"I have two police cruisers coming up Fait Avenue from the west,\\\" said Hoffman. \\\"Not sure if they saw me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I haven't picked up any pursuit calls,\\\" said Graves. \\\"All townhouse units. Take the first left off Glover. We need to get you out of sight.\\\"\\n\\nUp ahead, Melendez and Miralles turned off the road, their taillights racing left and vanishing. He hoped to get to that turn before the police cars reached the intersection behind him. Red and blue lights flashed in his mirrors, momentarily disappearing-then reappearing. They looked a lot farther away than he'd expected. Mirror tricks? Another glance in his rearview mirror left him believing they'd turned onto Glover Street beyond the Russian SUVs. He ripped off his ski mask and tossed it on the passenger seat.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I think I have police units approaching the townhouse from Foster Avenue. Nothing off Fait Avenue yet,\\\" said Hoffman. \\\"Almost at the turn.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Confirming the units turning off Foster,\\\" said Graves. \\\"Fait is still clear.\\\"\\n\\nHe glanced in the side mirror, confirming that the police units approaching from the west on Fait Avenue had not reached a point where they could see him. He had a few more seconds at most before they raced into sight. No time for stop signs. His four-door sedan skidded into the intersection ahead of him, tires screeching the entire time-as he cut directly in front of a minivan. The woman honked her horn, and kept it blaring as he drove away.\\n\\n\\\"I'm clear,\\\" said Hoffman. \\\"But I nearly hit a minivan when I was turning off Glover. Fifty-fifty she calls nine-one-one, especially given all the police activity she's about to encounter. That and the fact that I'm still wearing a ski mask.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're kidding, right?\\\" asked Melendez.\\n\\nThe masks were meant to prevent one of the neighbors from getting lucky with their smartphone camera. Same with the opaque license plate covers, which they'd have to remove sooner than later.\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. But I'm not kidding about the minivan. I think she's still laying on the horn,\\\" said Hoffman.\\n\\n\\\"This is Rich. Even if she calls nine-one-one, we'll belong gone before they piece any of this together. Good job, everyone. Let's run Hoffman, Miralles, and Melendez directly to Gray's apartment. The police will get makes and models from the neighbors, or the minivan lady. We don't need you reentering the city later tonight after along SDR. The chances of getting pulled over are too high. The rest of us will-\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Rich. This is Graves. Are we sure that was the only Russian team working the townhouse? A shitload of push-to-talk satellite traffic just lit up my screen. We're trying to pinpoint, but all I can give you is a general direction at the moment.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Where?\\\" asked Farrington.\\n\\n\\\"Somewhere east of our current location on Linwood Avenue. A few blocks away, I'd guess, based on signal strength.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Where's Gray and Young?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Turning onto Eastern Avenue off Robinson Street,\\\" said Graves. \\\"A few blocks east of here.\\\"\\n\\nHoffman hit the accelerator and blew through his second stop sign of the night. Definitely not his last.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin Gray turned his mother's car onto Eastern Avenue, which ran parallel to the southern edge of Patterson Park for several city blocks. His plan was to take Eastern to Interstate 95 and drive north fora good twenty to thirty minutes, exiting in one of the city's suburbs, where he'd run a few countersurveillance drills through some of the quiet neighborhoods. Anyone following them would stick out immediately once he got off the interstate.\\n\\n\\\"How am I supposed to get my Jeep?\\\" asked Marnie.\\n\\nIt was the first thing she'd said since they'd been dropped off at his car. To say that Marnie looked angry would bean understatement. Seething might be a more accurate description.\\n\\n\\\"I honestly don't know,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I wasn't aware that the townhouse was a setup. I swear.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I heard gunshots, Devin,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"Gunshots. My name is on the Airbnb agreement.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Tell them you ran out the backdoor when you heard the gunshots,\\\" said Devin, instantly realizing the many flaws in that plan.\\n\\n\\\"But I didn't call nine-one-one or hide in the alley until the police arrived,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"I suppose if we turned around right now and you dropped me off a few blocks over, I could approach the nearest police station and ask a few questions. Maybe try to figure out if anyone reported you and Karl showing up minutes before the gunshots, so I don't totally get caught in a lie when I say that Iran away in fear. You know, get my alibi straightened out and all that.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Marnie. You didn't do anything wrong,\\\" he said, now utterly convinced he'd be better off just shutting up.\\n\\n\\\"True. I could probably just lawyer up and tell the police that it's none of their business why I rented an Airbnb for twelve people in Baltimore for five hundred dollars a night and that same townhouse got attacked a few hours later. And that the two guys who showed up a few minutes before it got attacked was just a random coincidence. Spend sometime trying to explain you and Karl. All while the Russians, or whoever is really after you, decides to up the ante and stop by my parents\\\" place. Speaking of which, I need to call them.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin hadn't thought of her parents, or even his dad, for that matter-because he'd had no idea any of this would happen. He'd come to terms with the possibility that he might have to hide his dad and sister at some point but figured that was weeks away. Plus, Berg had said he could help with that, especially if Devin could convince his dad to fly out to Los Angeles. Apparently, Berg knew a crew out there that specialized in hiding people. But tonight's events had come as a complete surprise. He should do the same as Marnie and call his dad. Get him on a red-eye flight to Los Angeles. Same with Marnie's parents.\\n\\n\\\"You might not want to hear this, but Karl knows some people in LA that can disappear our parents fora while,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I'm going to make my dad take that option. Karl said it would bean entirely comfortable experience. Not some desert bunker somewhere.\\\"\\n\\nDevin's attention shifted from Marnie to a dark SUV speeding into the intersection. Shit. His satellite phone rang a moment later, the name KARL appearing on the screen.\\n\\n\\\"Sounds wonderful,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"I'll let you explain to them. I'm sure they'll-\\\"\\n\\nDevin slammed on the brakes, the car skidding to a halt well short of the black SUV.\\n\\n\\\"What the hell, Devin!\\\" said Marnie, bracing her arms against the dashboard.\\n\\nHe detected movement in his peripheral vision, his eyes shifting to the driver's-side mirror. A sedan parked itself diagonally across the two-lane street behind him, blocking most of it. He briefly considered turning left and driving into the park, but the doors flew open on both vehicles as a second SUV screeched into the intersection in front of him. If he turned the vehicle, he'd expose the sides of his car to gunfire.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Russians. Get down!\\\" said Devin, ducking below the dashboard and opening his car door. \\\"Takeout the guys behind us first. We'll use the car as cover until help arrives.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How do we even know-\\\" she started, the windshield instantly spider-cracking from several bullet holes.\\n\\n\\\"That's how!\\\" said Devin, sliding out of the car and staying low. \\\"Get behind the car!\\\"\\n\\nHe drew the M& P9 from the concealed holster on his right hip and sighted in on the masked attacker who had just jumped down from the rear driver's-side seat. He fired as he moved toward the back of his car, pressing the trigger five times in rapid succession and knocking his target against the back of the sedan. He shifted the pistol's sights to the driver, who had dropped to both knees-arms by his side, pistol clattering to the street. The man's head snapped back before Devin pressed the trigger, Marnie finishing him off.\\n\\nBullets from the intersection snapped inches overhead and to his side as he emptied the rest of his magazine at the shooter who had crouched next to the sedan's rear bumper. The man pitched forward and caught his fall with both hands, his pistol still clutched in one of them. Devin ejected the spent pistol magazine and grabbed one of the spares concealed on his left hip, his brain doing the math. Time was not on his side.\\n\\nHis reload was quick and flawless, but the man had his gun up and pointed in his direction before he'd thumbed the slide release and chambered around. Devin should have reserved a few bullets and assessed his first volley. He'd made a fatal error. Gunfire exploded in his ear, the heat from repeated muzzle blasts warming the side of his face. The shooter next to the car's bumper slammed against the street, his arms giving out beneath him as several bullets peppered his body. The business end of Marnie's Sig Sauer suddenly appeared in Devin's peripheral vision, its barrel smoking.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He released his pistol's slide and scooted behind the car, bullets fired from the intersection chasing him around the bumper. Devin searched the sedan for movement, finding none at the moment.\\n\\n\\\"Any left back here?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"No. I took out the driver, front passenger, and the guy that was about to shoot you,\\\" said Marnie, reloading her pistol. \\\"This is my last mag.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I thought you were a helicopter pilot,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Marine first. Helicopter pilot second,\\\" she said.\\n\\nA burst of automatic gunfire raked the sedan. Glass blasted across the top of the trunk and rained down on their heads, the car's metal chassis thumping from multiple bullet hits along its side. Devin risked a look around the corner of the car, drawing more automatic fire, a few bullets punching through the trunk near his head. He counted at least three attackers moving in on his side.\\n\\nMarnie's gun barked twice before she was driven back by gunfire, sparks flying off the pavement next to her. She moved toward the center of the trunk moments before the taillight exploded, spraying her with plastic shards. Devin peeked around the taillight next to him with his pistol, firing at a man who had reached a point even with the hood of the car. His bullets caught the attacker high on the left side of his torso, spinning him to face the hood. Before Devin could drill the man again, a hail of bullets pushed him back-to-back against Marnie. They were out of room and nearly out of time. He saw only one way out of this now-for one of them.\\n\\n\\\"Get ready to make a run for the back of the sedan. Stay low and focus your shots on targets to the left side of this car. You should be screened from any gunfire on the other side. Empty your gun and pickup one of theirs,\\\" said Devin, nodding at the dead guy lying behind the SUV. \\\"They probably have something that packs a bigger punch in the vehicle. I'll buy you sometime.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What does that mean?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"she said, before popping up to squeeze off three quick shots.\\n\\nA furious maelstrom of bullets answered her gunfire, a few skipping off the pavement underneath the car-miraculously missing their feet. The car dropped several inches, its tires flattened by the latest fusillade of supersonic projectiles.\\n\\n\\\"They're right up next to the car,\\\" she said. \\\"We won't make it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll draw their fire down the left side,\\\" said Devin. \\\"You empty your pistol at anyone you see. You'll make it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But you won't. We stick together,\\\" said Marnie, winking at him. \\\"That's the plan.\\\"\\n\\nA bullet creased his left shin, dropping his knee to the pavement. Marnie grabbed his shirt and kept him from falling forward. He raised his pistol over the trunk and fired a few blind shots, hoping to dissuade anyone creeping along the side of the car.\\n\\n\\\"I got you into this,\\\" he said. \\\"I'll get you out. Get ready to run.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't think either of us is getting out of this, but I'd rather go down trying,\\\" she said before extending her pistol around the shattered taillight next to her and blindly emptying her magazine.\\n\\nScreams erupted from her side of the car, once again answered by more gunfire than they could hope to repel with one pistol remaining between them.\\n\\n\\\"Let's go,\\\" she said, taking off.\\n\\nDevin grabbed her wrist and yanked her back, having heard the screech of tires somewhere nearby.\\n\\n\\\"What the hell are you doing?\\\" she said.\\n\\nThe volume of gunfire passing over and next to them doubled instantly, muzzle flashes appearing from the corner of the nearest building at the intersection one street behind them. More tires screeched, this time clearly coming from the intersection ahead.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Our backup arrived,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nHe quick-peeked around the side of the car with his pistol, seeing two masked figures. Both of them fired their submachine guns over the hood at Berg's newly arrived associates. One of them noticed him and started to swing his weapon back in Devin's direction, but it was too late. Devin pressed the trigger twice, punching two holes in his face, before shifting aim and firing the remaining six bullets center mass-knocking the second shooter flat. A short burst of bullets fired from one of Berg's people stitched across the guy's torso just moments after he hit the street.\\n\\nThe mix of gunfire changed over the course of the next several seconds. More and more suppressed gunfire, which sounded more like hands clapping than regular gunfire-until everything went quiet. Devin started to getup.\\n\\n\\\"Stay down!\\\" yelled a voice from the intersection. \\\"We'll tell you when it's clear!\\\"\\n\\nDevin crouched beside Marnie and reloaded his pistol while a brief symphony of suppressed gunshots played out in the intersection against a background of police sirens.\\n\\n\\\"I can't believe this just happened,\\\" she said, a single suppressed shot punctuating her sentence. \\\"That it's still happening. They're just walking around intersections popping people in the head, aren't they?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I can't see exactly what they're doing, but-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It was more of a rhetorical question,\\\" she said, a nearby shot startling both of them. \\\"Of course they're executing people. How is any of this even possible-in the middle of fucking Baltimore? What did your mom stumble on?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You'll see soon enough,\\\" said Devin. \\\"It's big.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It must be,\\\" she said.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":282,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Keep the narrative going for the author.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 35"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Our backup arrived,\" said Devin.\n\nHe quick-peeked around the side of the car with his pistol, seeing two masked figures. Both of them fired their submachine guns over the hood at Berg's newly arrived associates. One of them noticed him and started to swing his weapon back in Devin's direction, but it was too late. Devin pressed the trigger twice, punching two holes in his face, before shifting aim and firing the remaining six bullets center mass-knocking the second shooter flat. A short burst of bullets fired from one of Berg's people stitched across the guy's torso just moments after he hit the street.\n\nThe mix of gunfire changed over the course of the next several seconds. More and more suppressed gunfire, which sounded more like hands clapping than regular gunfire-until everything went quiet. Devin started to getup.\n\n\"Stay down!\" yelled a voice from the intersection. \"We'll tell you when it's clear!\"\n\nDevin crouched beside Marnie and reloaded his pistol while a brief symphony of suppressed gunshots played out in the intersection against a background of police sirens.\n\n\"I can't believe this just happened,\" she said, a single suppressed shot punctuating her sentence. \"That it's still happening. They're just walking around intersections popping people in the head, aren't they?\"\n\n\"I can't see exactly what they're doing, but-\"\n\n\"It was more of a rhetorical question,\" she said, a nearby shot startling both of them. \"Of course they're executing people. How is any of this even possible-in the middle of fucking Baltimore? What did your mom stumble on?\"\n\n\"You'll see soon enough,\" said Devin. \"It's big.\"\n\n\"It must be,\" she said."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Devin."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie. It's Rich. I'm standing directly in front of your car,\" he yelled. \"We're clear, and we need to get out of here immediately.\"\n\n\"You okay?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"I didn't get shot, if that's what you mean,\" said Marnie. \"You?\"\n\n\"I'm good,\" he said before slowly rising from a crouch to a standing position.\n\nHis shin burned from the bullet that had grazed him, but that was about it. He'd been extremely lucky. An inch back, and the bullet would have torn muscle and possibly fragmented bone. They were both lucky, when he thought about it. Several bullets had zipped under the car during the gun battle, anyone of them with the potential to have altered the night's outcome.\n\nRich met them along the side of the car, next to three dead operatives. Suppressed assault rifle slung across a black-plate carrier vest, he pointed at a black SUV parked at the edge of the intersection.\n\n\"Get in the back with Karl,\" said Farrington. \"We're out of herein fifteen seconds. Go!\"\n\nThey took off for the SUV, Devin surveying the carnage as they ran. Rich and three of his associates quickly spread out among the vehicles, yanking the masks off several of the shooters and taking pictures. The moment Devin and Marnie reached the SUV, Rich spoke into his microphone and the crew bolted in their direction. Marnie opened the door and got inside, while Devin watched a precision machine inaction.\n\nRich stopped next to Devin's car and took something that looked like a phone from one of the dead shooters\" hands. After pocketing the device, he tossed two cylindrical devices in the car, one in the backseat and one in the front. He took off for the SUV as soon as the second device left his hand. Down the street, beyond the sedan that had boxed them in from behind, a massive billow of smoke exploded in the middle of the intersection, followed by a second, rapidly expanding cloud of smoke about twenty yards past the first."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Scott sprinted by him and continued past the two cars parked tightly behind the SUV. He pulled the pinon a smoke grenade and overhand threw it at least fifty feet down the street. On his way back, he prepped another grenade and tossed it about half as far as the one before. The distant grenade detonated, instantly obscuring the street with a pure white smoke. The second popped a few seconds later, thickening the smokescreen. They did the same at all points leading into the intersection, as the sound of sirens approached, and police lights started reflecting off the trees in the adjacent park.\n\nA blinding flash lit the entire intersection, followed almost immediately by a hollow-sounding explosion. Devin turned in time to seethe second incendiary grenade detonate in his mother's car, ejecting a shower of brightly burning pellets out of every window in a hissing fireworks-grade pyrotechnic display. The interior of the car burst into flames instantly. Rich raced up to the SUV and handed him a satellite phone, which he recognized as his own. One of the Russians must have taken it.\n\nDevin slid inside and shut the door. The SUV lurched forward and pinned him against the seat. Visibility beyond the windshield dropped to zero as soon as they turned onto Eastern Avenue. They drove blind for several seconds before emerging from the smoke. The traffic light a block ahead was green. Flashing red and blue lights reflected off the intersection's buildings. Scott slowed the SUV as two police Ford Interceptor SUVs raced into view and turned in their direction.\n\nRich raised his rifle a few inches, adjusting his grip. Devin glanced at Marnie, who had apparently noticed the same thing. Berg leaned forward.\n\n\"Rich. We had an agreement,\" he said.\n\nThe rifle lowered. \"Sorry. Just a little wired.\""},{"from":"human","value":"The Interceptors sped past them, and Devin turned to watch them through the cargo compartment windshield."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The two police vehicles stopped at the edge of the expanding street-wide cloud and immediately backed up, their white reverse lights already hazy from the smoke. The two sedans carrying other members of Rich's team peeled left at the intersection they'd just crossed, headed north on South Ellwood Avenue. The Interceptors stopped backing up about halfway to the intersection, but none of the officers got out. Alone police car swerved into the intersection from the north, where Rich's associates had just turned, and parked next to the SUVs. It appeared that the police hadn't taken notice of them. Yet.\n\n\"Looks like we're clear for now,\" said Devin.\n\nRich glanced between the seats. \"Clear is a relative term at the moment. This changes things.\"\n\n\"Changes everything,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Definitely changes our escape and evasion plan. I think we'll head to BWI and abandon these in long-term parking. Pickup some rentals in the terminal. I'll have Gupta make the arrangements through a business account,\" said Rich. \"We have to assume all four of the vehicles involved with the townhouse have been made. This one and the three sedans.\"\n\n\"Scrap the airport rental car idea,\" said Devin. \"They'll have people watching the rental agencies inside and outside of the terminal. That's what I would do. We need to find a twenty-four-hour parking garage just north of DC, near a Metro station. A number of the parking garages offer monthly parking, payable on the spot. Silver Spring has a few. Ride the Metro fora little while, then grab a taxi back to the general vicinity of my mother's apartment. Cash only. Nobody will find the vehicles.\"\n\n\"Devin's right. We can rendezvous with the Suburban along the way and transfer all of our weapons and gear,\" said Rich."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We need to be careful with the Suburban,\" said Berg. \"They must have had someone watching the front of the townhouse and possibly the back. The timing of this attack suggests they knew when to start looking for vehicles leaving the area.\"\n\n\"I'll tell Graves and Gupta to be careful and take their time. It's going to be along night,\" said Rich.\n\n\"There's noway they could have known the townhouse address before we setup our surveillance,\" hissed Scott. \"We should have detected them.\"\n\n\"Not if they started off assuming the whole thing was a setup,\" said Devin. \"They would have kept their distance and used text messages to communicate. They probably had four teams out there like the one that hit us. Each team spread out to cover the most likely routes away from the townhouse in each direction.\"\n\n\"Who the hell are we dealing with?\" asked Marnie. \"That's a lot of personnel to throw at a problem on US soil. Russians or not.\"\n\n\"I have a sneaking suspicion we're dealing with two groups tonight. Pulled by the same strings,\" said Berg.\n\n\"When we run the photos taken of the group that boxed you in by the intersection, my money is on matching a few of the faces to Russian embassy or consulate employees from DC and New York City. The rest are probably nonofficial cover types. Tourists flown in for this job or Russian nationals that work or study in the US. That's the new thing. No need to buildup an alias to run missions in the US. All you need is a nonimmigrant visa, which isn't hard to come by.\"\n\n\"This felt like more of an assassination team,\" said Devin. \"And not a subtle one.\"\n\n\"Not a good one, either,\" said Rich. \"Neither of you should have made it out of the car. You certainly shouldn't have been able to takeout the entire team that pulled up behind you.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We managed just fine,\" said Marnie. \"Fora while, at least.\"\n\n\"My friend has a point,\" said Berg. \"They threw a junior varsity team at you. Probably all they could put together at the moment. They thought it would be enough, but you surprised them. Unlike Rich, I give credit where credit is due.\"\n\n\"Some consolation,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"So if they saw the two of us walk into the townhouse together, why didn't they try to take us both out?\" said Devin. \"What good am I dead, when someone else obviously knows about their secret plot?\"\n\n\"They just wanted your phone,\" said Rich. \"They could have hacked your location data and figured out where your mother's apartment is located. That's why one of them grabbed it in the middle of a gun battle.\"\n\n\"Makes sense,\" said Devin. \"Then what about the other team?\"\n\n\"I've been trying to put my finger on this,\" said Berg. \"The team that has been following you-\"\n\n\"And me,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"And you,\" said Berg, pausing as though he might say he was sorry. \"That team looked and acted old school. I mean, all in their mid-to late fifties? They've been around fora while, probably doing low-level stuff to stay off the radar. SVR or GRU illegals planted right after the Soviet Union collapsed, probably in the early nineties-when our guard was down.\"\n\n\"Still is down,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Good point,\" said Berg.\n\n\"This is kind of odd,\" said Devin, remembering the crew he put in the hospital a couple of weeks ago. \"I think I've run into this crew before.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"The group following you?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"asked Berg.\n\n\"No. I worked a sting at MINERVA, the same night everything went down with my mom. It was a counter-honey-trap operation, except that everyone but the honey trap was in their fifties. I put three of them in the hospital that night; the rest flew out of Dulles the next morning. One of our surveillance teams followed them to the KLM ticket counter.\"\n\n\"That's very interesting,\" said Berg. \"Did MINERVA identify any of them? I know they can be pretty thorough.\"\n\n\"I don't know. Everything blew up with my mother right after the operation,\" said Devin. \"They were reaching out to law enforcement contacts to get some help with fingerprints. None of them carried ID. I can reach out to my boss to see if they found anything.\"\n\n\"We'll have to vet him first,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Yeah,\" said Devin. \"He fits the profile.\"\n\nMarnie ran her fingers through her shoulder-length hair, back and forth, before making two fists in her lap, hands shaking.\n\n\"You okay?\" asked Devin, wondering if once again he should keep his mouth shut.\n\n\"I feel like you guys are talking in code,\" said Marnie. \"On purpose.\"\n\n\"We're not,\" said Berg. \"It's too much to explain without showing you. Trust me. This is complicated in an epically bad way.\"\n\n\"I can't wait,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Neither can I,\" said Rich.\n\n\"You haven't seen it yet?\" she asked.\n\n\"I got Helen's executive summary,\" said Rich. \"What she prepared for Devin or whoever took over the fight for her. That was enough to get me out here. Seeing the first Russian team move in was enough to convince me this was real. The last attack? That sealed the deal.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I don't suppose there's anyway I could get my hands on that right now?\" she said.\n\n\"I have a copy in the glove box,\" he said.\n\n\"You don't really have a copy in the glove box,\" said Berg.\n\n\"I do,\" said Rich. \"I hate reading on my phone.\"\n\n\"Marnie. You don't have to get involved in this any further than I've involved you,\" said Devin. \"We need to get your parents to a safe house or something until Karl can reach out to that group in LA that's good at hiding people. I'm really sorry about all of this.\"\n\nRich turned in his seat. \"I've already taken the liberty of making those arrangements. I prepositioned two of my people in Falls Church in case something went wrong tonight. I figured this qualified, so I activated the plan. My team will escort them to a private terminal at Reagan National Airport, where they'll board a private jet and fly to Los Angeles. Same with your dad, Devin. Unless they refuse. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.\"\n\n\"I need to call them and let them know it's okay,\" said Marnie, pulling out her cellphone.\n\n\"One call and then we have to toss that phone,\" said Rich.\n\n\"We could drop her off at Reagan instead of BWI and grab a few rentals there,\" said Scott.\n\nMarnie stopped dialing. \"I am not going to LA.\"\n\n\"You don't have to stick around,\" said Devin. \"Seriously. This will more than likely get way uglier.\"\n\n\"I can guarantee it,\" said Rich.\n\n\"You're not getting rid of me that easily,\" said Marnie. \"I want to see exactly what your mother was up to. To see why the Russians would go this far to bury it.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Careful what you wish for,\" said Berg. \"If you gaze long enough into this abyss-\"\n\n\"Russians try to kill you?\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Sounds about right,\" said Rich, handing her the document that had started all this."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Yuri Pichugin nodded at the squat mercenary standing next to the mahogany door set into the thirty-foot-high white marble wall of the five-thousand-square-foot indoor arboretum, his favorite place to relax in his palace-size mansion on Lake Ladoga. Especially in the winter, when Saint Petersburg became quite dark and dreary. On five-degree, blustery overcast days, the exquisite tropical paradise provided a welcome refuge when he was in town. In fact, he so preferred this space to any other that he'd replicated a small section of his office overlooking the lake in one of the corners of the arboretum, adjacent to the main house.\n\nThe ex-GRU Spetsnaz soldier opened the door for his surprise guest. Unexpected in that he'd anticipated receiving a simple phone call confirming that the threat to FIREBIRD had been extinguished. Not a personal visit. General Kuznetzov's trip obviously heralded bad news. The kind that required a one hundred percent secure method of communication. A face-to-face discussion. The value of which could never be understated, or more importantly-intercepted.\n\nYuri stood up from his desk and walked over to greet him. A carafe of vodka and two shot glasses sat on a sprawling coffee table between two oversize blue velvet couches, along with a three-tiered silver stand loaded with finger sandwiches and toasted crostini. Two silver caviar servers flanked the sandwiches. Normally he wouldn't roll out anything but the vodka for Kuznetzov, but his visit coincided with lunch.\n\n\"Grigory! Please come!\" said Pichugin, expending all the fake enthusiasm he could muster for the man.\n\nHe personally couldn't stand Kuznetzov, but their fates had been inexorably tied together for two decades. The man had been in the right place at the right time-at the right price. If Yuri had thought he could have run FIREBIRD after the last Directorate's purge without the general's help, he would have encased the rotund man in cement after taking over the program and dropped him in the Baltic Sea years ago. The man had proved instrumental during those early years, systematically migrating all control and evidence of the highly compartmentalized secret program out of the GRU's hands and into Pichugin's."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He'd belying if he said he didn't think of disappearing Kuznetzov in the years immediately following the handover, but FIREBIRD had proved more difficult to manage than Pichugin had assumed-and the general had led him to believe. They needed the GRU's long-established and expiring network of illegals to pave the way for FIREBIRD's second generation. To remove any obstacles from their assigned paths.\n\nPichugin could have attempted to outsource this work, but the GRU operatives had proved their loyalty and effectiveness for decades. He didn't see any reason to risk the use of men and women whose sole allegiance rested in a bank deposit when he had an army of well-paid idealogues at his disposal.\n\nKuznetzov emerged indispensable. Even more so when Pichugin brought FIREBIRD and his revised plans for its use to Putin, a mutual confidant and partner in several enterprises at that point. Putin endorsed FIREBIRD's repurposing without hesitation, ensuring them access to whatever resources they required to make it succeed. Once Putin linked Kuznetzov's name and face so intimately to FIREBIRD's success-the general became untouchable.\n\n\"Yuri!\" said the general, eyeballing the spread. \"You shouldn't have gone to any trouble.\"\n\n\"I figured I might need to settle my stomach during our chat,\" said Pichugin. \"This can't be good.\"\n\nThe door shut behind Kuznetzov, the security operative leaving them alone.\n\n\"Nothing we can't handle,\" he said, taking a seat opposite him across the table.\n\nPichugin poured two shots of vodka and handed one to the general.\n\n\"Za vstrechu,\" he said, and they downed a premier version of Russian Standard. \"So. Tell me about this problem we can handle but requires you to fly out from Moscow.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Devin Gray made some new friends over the past couple of days,\" said the general. \"Some very deadly and resourceful friends. Do you remember the name Karl Berg?\"\n\n\"Vaguely,\" he said. \"CIA?\"\n\n\"Ex-CIA,\" said Kuznetzov. \"Pegged to General Terrence Sanderson's troublemakers.\"\n\n\"Now that's a name I'm more familiar with,\" said Pichugin. \"Never crossed paths with his people, but the name has come up at the highest level before. I thought there was some kind of understanding in place.\"\n\n\"There is. But this would fall well outside of that back channel deal,\" said the general. \"For obvious reasons.\"\n\n\"I suppose it would,\" said Pichugin.\n\n\"And Sanderson is supposedly retired these days. Richard Farrington reportedly took over what was left of Sanderson's black ops program. He has apparently rebuilt it to some degree.\"\n\n\"What happened?\"\n\n\"The illegals sent to the townhouse to grab Berg and Gray were killed at the doorstep. All of them dead within seconds. The only survivor was the illegal left to watch Gray's apartment.\"\n\n\"I want her dead as soon as possible,\" said Pichugin.\n\n\"Already taken care of. She's melting in a barrel of lye as we speak,\" said the general. \"The real problem is that the GRU team comprised of consulate and NOC operatives was wiped out several blocks away, attempting to intercept Gray. There's going to be a little bit of a shitstorm at GRU headquarters. Frankly, I'm glad to be out of town right now.\"\n\n\"There's going to be a considerable shitstorm,\" said Pichugin. \"I hope you have your story straight.\""},{"from":"human","value":"Kuznetzov shrugged."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"The illegals team was expendable. I had used them as bait-just in case Gray was onto them. Apparently he was, probably with Berg's help. The other group's mission will pass scrutiny, because there will be no scrutiny. I gave it the \"from the top\" label. I hope it won't be a problem.\"\n\n\"I'll make sure he's aware of that situation,\" said Pichugin, slyly referring to Putin. \"I don't see a problem. But we can't use anymore Russian Federation assets moving forward.\"\n\n\"Including the old illegals?\" asked the general.\n\n\"For now. Especially in the DC area,\" he said. \"I'll assemble atop-drawer mercenary crew and move them into position to strike when we locate Gray and Berg.\"\n\n\"Shall I leverage a few of our more well-placed FIREBIRD assets to help expedite the process of finding them? Gray and his new friends obviously know better than to use their credit cards or cellphones.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Pichugin. \"Devin Gray's mother has obviously been working on this for sometime. The fact that she uncovered Donald Wilson leaves more questions than answers. Like how many more did she discover?\"\n\n\"I see three scenarios. None of them is good. Unfortunately, we'll never know which one has materialized, so we have to assume the worst. Best-case scenario is that Kozlov only passed one more name to the Gray woman: Donald Wilson. We know she received at least two names from General Kozlov,\" said Kuznetzov. \"We deactivated both families six years ago after one of the FIREBIRD assets discovered that both families had been investigated by the FBI in 2003.\"\n\n\"Remember how close we came to shutting everything down after Kozlov?\" asked Pichugin."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"How could I forget?\" said the general. \"I don't think I slept for the next two years, waiting for the whole thing to fall apart.\"\n\nThe general poured more vodka, which they tossed back immediately. Followed by another round.\n\n\"Back to the Wilson scenario. If Kozlov indeed passed his name, he would have done it for the express purpose of exposing SITE ZERO. Wilson oversaw the program for most of its years,\" said the general.\n\n\"But she never found it,\" said Pichugin.\n\n\"Exactly. She nosed around the lakes for several years, but never located it,\" said the general.\n\n\"Remind me again why we didn't kill her years ago?\"\n\n\"Because she was kicked out of the CIA for obsessing over a possible Russian sleeper conspiracy. We were afraid that her untimely death might trigger a serious look into her theory,\" said the general. \"And we never got any real indication that she'd uncovered any of the FIREBIRD families outside of the two names she had been given. She'd vanish for weeks at a time, but nobody reported anything unusual. Not even Wilson.\"\n\n\"I think we might have underestimated her,\" said Pichugin.\n\n\"On some level, yes. Which brings me to the worst-case scenario, which I don't believe is in play-but we have to consider,\" said the general. \"Kozlov gave her the whole list.\"\n\n\"I don't think so,\" said Pichugin. \"The CIA would have taken a list like that seriously. They would have investigated the families, like the other two, and determined they had a serious Russian sleeper agent problem on their hands. There's no indication that this occurred. Helen Gray was working alone when she kidnapped Wilson.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Agreed. I think we need to assume that Helen Gray discovered Wilson on her own years ago, based on some publicly available connection to one of the two names Kozlov provided,\" said the general. \"And that she eventually figured out the greater pattern that the CIA overlooked-the kids. She could start a list of politicians or government types that fit the age group and work backward.\"\n\n\"No evidence of grandparents,\" said Pichugin.\n\n\"A dead giveaway. Not conclusive, but a start,\" said the general. \"My guess is that she'd put together a list and wanted to run some names by Donald Wilson.\"\n\n\"The timing couldn't be worse. We're too close to the endgame to have this unravel onus,\" said Pichugin. \"I want you to alert the entire FIREBIRD network. Basic surveillance and security precautions for now. We have to assume that other FIREBIRD assets have been identified by Devin Gray and his new friends.\"\n\n\"I'll instruct Gusev to send the alert when I get back to Moscow,\" said the general. \"We'll also bring US National Security Agency and law enforcement support onboard to locate Gray for your mercenary team.\"\n\nGusev ran one of the most tightly guarded secrets in Russia from a nameless, ultrasecure compound on a sprawling estate west of Moscow-known only as CONTROL to the agents it directed in the United States.\n\n\"Contact Gusev from my secure line, after we finish lunch,\" said Pichugin. \"We need to get the ball rolling on this.\"\n\nEverything was at stake if Gray and his new friends fully unraveled their secret."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie Young sat cross-legged in one of the far corners of Helen Gray's vault, sifting through the last of the Branson file papers. She'd been upmost of the night absorbing as much of the information Helen had assembled as possible, in the order Karl Berg had recommended-which ended with the accordion file in front of her.\n\nRich sat next to her in the corner, his legs extended along the evidence wall. She handed him the packet she'd just finished, which he started reading without comment. Marnie had made her peace with Rich and Karl last night during their lengthy drive around Baltimore. Cleared the air might be a better description. She still intended to keep a close eye on the two of them, until they fully earned her trust. Marnie got the impression it wouldn't take long. They seemed just as vested in getting to the bottom of what Devin's mother had uncovered as Devin-and now Marnie.\n\nAfter spending close to six hours digesting Helen Gray's documentation, there was no doubt in her mind that the conspiracy was real, and possibly worse than Devin's mother had believed. The double-layered attack on Devin last night demonstrated that the Russians were desperate to erase this evidence and anyone who had seen it. Now they were all targets. Something Berg said last night had stuck with her. She hadn't known what it meant at the time, but it made perfect sense now. They'd crossed the point of no return.\n\nShe skimmed the last few packets, having seen enough. Berg's overview last night painted a clear enough picture. They needed to find this suspected camp in the Ozarks, if it even still existed, to lend credibility to the entire conspiracy. This second generation of sleepers couldn't have been radicalized at home. She had no doubt that their home lives were strictly regulated to ensure that they remained loyal to Mother Russia, but Helen Gray was right. The Russians would need away to test and reinforce this loyalty."},{"from":"human","value":"One break in allegiance could burn the entire conspiracy down, and it was clear from the research that thirty-seven children pressed into service to the Russian Federation from birth had been murdered to maintain the program's secrecy."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The thought of it was spine-tingling. Parents had delivered their children to their executions, or at the very least looked the other way when the grim reaper came knocking.\n\nShe passed the rest of the packets to Rich.\n\n\"Seen enough?\" he asked.\n\n\"Yep,\" she said.\n\nHe dropped them on the pile he'd built on his lap. \"Me too. The whole thing is mind-boggling, but the Branson file is just sick. They ran a brainwashing camp right in the heartland of the country, complete with firing squads and everything. Unbelievable.\"\n\n\"I feel terrible for Devin's mother. And for Devin. They thought she was slowly going crazy for close to two decades,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Sometimes a conspiracy, or any big idea, I suppose, is simply too big or hard to believe for its time.\"\n\n\"Or both,\" she said.\n\n\"Right,\" said Rich. \"Conversely, if you don't give people enough, they can't even begin to seethe bigger picture and take it seriously. The downfall of the United States-an economic, political, and military superpower-is a hard pill to swallow. From her notes, it appears that she started with the big picture, instantly alienating everyone she approached. That poisoned her later attempts to trickle information to her remaining allies, who started avoiding her entirely. She could never seem to strike the right balance, and maybe there wasn't a balance to be struck at the time. On top of that, the CIA had its hands full right around the time she'd started to strike gold with some of her investigative work. Full of Russians and domestic terrorists. Bad timing all around for Helen Gray.\"\n\n\"It was awful for her family,\" she said."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"How long have you known Devin?\" said Rich. \"Seems like a solid guy.\"\n\n\"We've been friends since middle school. Better friends in high school,\" she said. \"We've kept in touch since then. Mostly off and on, but anytime our paths cross, we grab dinner or a drink. We've both been pretty busy since college.\"\n\n\"Just friends?\" asked Rich.\n\n\"More or less,\" she said.\n\n\"I see,\" he said, slightly raising an eyebrow.\n\n\"What do you mean by \"I see\"\"?\n\n\"Nothing,\" said Rich, nodding toward the vault door. \"Here comes Mr. More-or-Less right now with our breakfast.\"\n\n\"Funny,\" she said.\n\nDevin and the operative named Jared walked through the doorway carrying brown oil-stained bags and two carryout cartons of Dunkin'coffee. The rest of Rich's team came to life as they started to move files to make room on the table that had been dragged into the vault from the kitchen.\n\nAs much as she wanted to use the term'motley crew\" to describe Rich's team, they didn't fit that description. Everyone looked ragged after sleeping on the floor in the same clothes they'd worn yesterday, but this wasn't the kind of rogues' gallery you might connect to the words mercenary or soldier of fortune.\n\nThe two operatives who had escorted her parents and Devin's dad to the airport looked as though they'd just returned from a business conference, dressed in pressed khaki pants, oxford shirts, and windbreakers-to conceal their holstered pistols. Alex and Michael. Just two regular guys who could probably draw those pistols and drill every person in this room through the head in the span of a few seconds."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Then you had Scott, who she'd really only seen drive an SUV at this point and throw a smoke grenade farther than she'd ever seen someone throw a grenade before. Berg said he was an ex– Navy SEAL, which would have been her first guess. Tall with a muscular swimmer's build, totally contrasting with the rest of the team members, who looked like career ground-pounders. Muscular and stocky.\n\nShe assumed Rico and Jared were the team's designated snipers, based on the assignments they'd been given at the townhouse. Emily could be anything. A taut, unsmilingly serious woman of few words, with catlike reflexes, who looked just as at ease with a knife as a firearm. Earlier she'd balanced a daggerlike blade on her fingertip while studying the wall, flipping to the handle and then back again repeatedly. Of all the mercenaries in the room, Emily scared her the most.\n\nThe two surveillance gurus had expressed similar sentiments earlier. Graves and Gupta had nodded toward heron a few occasions, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at something Emily had said. Those two intrigued her the most. Gupta might be in his early forties, but he acted like he was twenty-two, and stuck in a late-nineties rap video. Graves, who spent most of his time calming Gupta down, was clearly pushing fifty and walked with a limp. The two couldn't be more different, but between the occasional sibling-like bickering, they worked together seamlessly. All in all, she could see why Karl had placed so much faith in this crew.\n\nDevin opened the bags and started tossing aluminum foil– wrapped breakfast burritos around the room. Everyone snatched them out of the air as though their lives depended on it. Devin hand delivered her burrito, along with Rich's."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"They're all the same. Chorizo and eggs, with cheese and a bunch of other stuff,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Sounds heavenly,\" said Marnie, thinking she sounded like an idiot.\n\n\"Two thousand calories of heaven,\" said Rich. \"How's your leg?\"\n\nDevin lifted his pant leg to expose a napkin-size compress taped in place over the front of his shin. A few specks of red poked through the sterile white dressing.\n\n\"It's not bad at all. Normally this would take a few stitches, but it'll heal up fine,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Emily can stitch you up if you want. She's a former combat medic,\" said Rich. \"Her kit includes a serious local anesthetic. You won't feel a thing.\"\n\nMarnie nodded. \"I'd take them upon the offer. God knows what we'll be up to over the next several days.\"\n\n\"We'll be up to no good. That's for certain,\" said Rich, getting up. \"What kind of coffee do you have in the kitchen?\"\n\n\"Nespresso machine. No idea about the coffee itself,\" said Devin. \"Berg seemed happy.\"\n\n\"Berg knows his coffee. I think I'll grab one of those,\" said Rich. \"Be right back.\"\n\nDevin took Rich's place next to Marnie, unceremoniously tearing open one end of his breakfast burrito and taking a bite large enough to have possibly included some aluminum foil. He glanced at her and covered his mouth.\n\n\"Sorry,\" he mumbled.\n\n\"I'm right therewith you,\" she said before hungrily attacking her own breakfast.\n\nThey'd finished half of their burritos before Devin broke the silence."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What do you think's next?\"\n\nAn odd question, she thought.\n\n\"The consensus seems to be that we need to find this summer camp in the Ozarks.\"\n\n\"Yeah. But how?\" said Devin. \"I'm a little worried about what I'm hearing.\"\n\nMarnie hadn't heard any talk beyond locating the camp, but she'd given it some thought and probably came to the same conclusion reached by Rich and Karl. She wasn't sure how she felt about it, but what choice did they have? And as long as they could keep things under control, which they seemed more than capable of doing, nobody innocent would get hurt. At least that was what she kept telling herself.\n\n\"What are you hearing?\" she asked.\n\nHe leaned over and whispered, \"I'm hearing the words kidnap and interrogation.\"\n\n\"It's in their hands,\" said Marnie. \"They know what they're doing.\"\n\nDevin lowered his breakfast and considered her fora moment. \"You're okay with that?\"\n\n\"What are the other options?\" she said. \"From what I've read, your mother spent weeks down at the Missouri-Arkansas border, with nothing to show for it. Given the stakes here, I can't say I disagree with them.\"\n\nDevin looked conflicted, but he nodded. \"I know. I'm just worried about how far they'll go to secure the information. This group doesn't fuck around-at all.\"\n\n\"We'll have to be the voice of reason,\" she said. \"Draw the line at innocent family members. Especially kids.\"\n\n\"I don't think we'll have to worry about Rich and his crew hurting kids,\" said Devin. \"I don't see them as the types to go that far, and there maybe no point trying to leverage the kids against the parents. This second generation of sleepers lived through a modern-day pogrom. Thirty-seven of their summer camp friends executed. Nearly a third of their numbers. I don't expect anything different from this generation of sleepers. They'll more than likely sacrifice their children before betraying the cause.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She squeezed his hand. \"Promise me the children are off limits.\"\n\nDevin took her hand firmly. \"No kids. No innocent victims. That's the line. That's also the reason we can't let them sideline us.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" she asked.\n\nHe let goof her hand. \"Berg made it very clear that he didn't think I was, uh... up to the task-for lack of a better phrase. That's why he kept me in the dark about the townhouse ambush. He knew I would have freaked out and blown the whole operation.\"\n\n\"Why would you freak out?\" she asked.\n\n\"Because of you,\" he said abruptly before pausing for an uncomfortable amount of time. \"The thought of causing you or your parents any harm would have driven me to-look, it's not like you would have left the townhouse if I had asked you, right?\"\n\n\"Right. I had no intention of leaving until I was satisfied that you were mentally sound and not under duress,\" she said before scanning the room. \"From Karl and his associates.\"\n\n\"Which is why I would have done something rash to warn you off. Something that could have blown the whole operation. I would not have sat on my hands and let you get sucked into this. Or worse,\" said Devin. \"He knew that.\"\n\n\"What's worse?\"\n\n\"Worse is what almost happened at the intersection,\" said Devin. \"Berg was smart not to say anything. My concern is that he's already warned everyone on the team about my reservations, and they won't level with us during the planning phase. Then they'll bench us at the last minute to keep us out of it altogether.\"\n\nMarnie took his hand, for no other reason than she needed to hold someone's hand right now. At least that was what she told herself."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"There's nothing we can do about that, ultimately,\" she said. \"But we can't stay silent. We need to make our position clear on this. Trust me, it'll make a difference.\"\n\nShe let goof his hand when Rich returned with one of the coffee mugs Devin had previously advised her not to use for sanitary reasons. He glanced in her direction and vaguely nodded, presumably acknowledging what he'd just seen transpire. She nodded back, still unsure what to make of the undeniably special connection she shared with Devin."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They wolfed down their breakfast burritos in silence, Devin wanting to expand on his earlier sentiment about keeping her out of danger. Put a more personal spin on it. He'd already reviewed his words several times and decided it sounded a little too perfunctory, like an obligation. It was more than that for him, but this wasn't the time or the place to risk making her feel even more uncomfortable. The moment was awkward enough.\n\nThey had a job to do and couldn't afford any distractions moving forward. As last night had clearly demonstrated, the difference between life and death in Karl and Rich's world could be defined by fractions of a second. Devin had managed to respond quickly enough to salvage the initial situation, but he couldn't help thinking that if he'd been paying better attention, he could have bypassed the roadblock altogether by turning into the park.\n\nInstead, his only real option had been to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision, which had forced them into a lopsided gun battle. If Rich's team hadn't arrived when they had, neither of them would be sitting here munching on breakfast. He finished the last few bites and started to put the Branson file back together. Rich was making the rounds, and it sounded as though they were about to kickoff their first planning session as a group. Devin guessed the file would be a key part of any discussion regarding their next move.\n\n\"Need anything before we get started?\" asked Devin before standing up.\n\n\"Coffee? Maybe one of those Nespressos?\" she said, accepting a liftoff the floor.\n\n\"Coming right up,\" he said.\n\nDevin dropped the file off next to his mother's desk, which had been converted into Graves and Gupta's workstation. Their fingers had been clacking on three laptops all night, their screens mirrored on a fifty-inch curved screen that spanned the desk to make it easier to highlight their findings. On the floor next to the desk, they had setup a proxy server to filter all data traffic sent and received through the satellite dish they had mounted outside the kitchen window. Devin got the distinct impression that they'd done this hundreds of times in support of Rich's operations, in much tighter and less accommodating spaces."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"When he returned with the coffees, everyone had gathered in a stretched semicircle behind the desk. A few sitting cross-legged, Graves and Gupta in chairs off to the side with laptops. The rest standing. Everyone nurturing a cup of coffee like it might be their last. He squeezed behind the group and stood on the edge, next to Marnie. She took the paper cup and gave it a try.\n\n\"Lives up to the hype,\" she said, giving him an approving look.\n\n\"My mom always loved her coffee,\" said Devin. \"I feel like we're dishonoring her memory by serving that other stuff.\"\n\nShe nudged his arm with her elbow, as she'd done countless times before, but it now felt infinitely more distracting. He was going to get them killed if he didn't focus better.\n\nRich nodded at him. \"Ready?\" he asked.\n\n\"It's your show,\" said Devin before turning his head to acknowledge Karl Berg. \"And Karl's.\"\n\n\"With all due respect,\" said Karl, who occupied the only other chair set off to the other side of the semicircle, \"this is your mother's show. I wish she were hereto be apart of this. For those of you who don't know-or only caught a whiff of the story-everything you see here is the work of a single person: Helen Gray. Devin's mother. Helen took her life under what can only be described as inexplicable circumstances, though I have a theory, for another time. She put this together after trying to warn authorities for years. She even warned me back in 2007, but as most of you know, I was a bit preoccupied with another conspiracy. I just wanted everyone to know that one woman, a true American patriot in every sense of the word, easily spent several thousand hours of her time, at great cost, to assemble this. A truly remarkable accomplishment.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Berg looked teary eyed, which made this difficult for Devin. He simply nodded at Berg, focusing all his remaining energy on not crying. This didn't strike him as an emotional crowd, and the last thing he wanted to do was give them the final nudge toward shelving him during the upcoming operation. Marnie squeezed his hand briefly as Rich raised his coffee mug.\n\n\"To Helen Gray. To your mother,\" he said.\n\nRich got down to business the moment the toast ended.\n\n\"Everyone has been briefed on the overall concept of operations moving forward. Find the Ozarks camp, if it exists. Still a big if. The camp should shed some more light on the size and scope of the sleeper network. If we can directly link it to these sleepers, jackpot. At the very least, finding the camp could put some federal eyes on the situation. If we can get that ball rolling, I'm fairly certain it will grow wings and fly. Backup to that is to target the seventy-three sleepers identified by Helen Gray and look fora crack in their armor. Someone willing to spill the beans. Given the program's history of sacrificing their young, I don't know if that will yield anything short of a tortured confession, if that. Not exactly what we want to package up and deliver to the FBI. G and G. What do you have for us?\"\n\nGraves nodded at Gupta, who tapped a few keys to bring up an array of faces on the widescreen monitor. Eight faces split into four pairs. Pictures taken at the intersection last night compared to what looked like candid surveillance photographs.\n\n\"To start, last night's festivities were undoubtedly sponsored by the Russian Federation. We cross-referenced all of the photos taken last night to our database and came up with four hits. Three with suspected ties to the DC consulate and one confirmed to be a consulate employee in New York City. This is going to cause a bit of an international-relations stink.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I'm sure Putin will get over it,\" said Berg. \"But this raises an important issue. Ms. Young will most definitely have to remain off the grid-the entire grid. I know we discussed this earlier, because Baltimore PD will be looking to question her as a possible witness to last night's festivities, but the Russians have a nasty habit of throwing names into the mix out of spite-and in hopes of getting the feds involved. They do this allover the world. The FBI will be keeping an eye out for Ms. Young by the afternoon at the latest. Same for myself and Devin. The entire team, essentially. It won't take them long to figure out who lent me a hand with this. We should also strongly consider taking precautions to thwart facial-recognition software.\"\n\nAnew set of faces emerged. He recognized one of the faces from the photos he'd taken in front of the Starbucks near the University of Maryland. Gupta nodded at him.\n\n\"I thought you might find this particularly interesting,\" said Gupta. \"We did a deep dive through the bowels of the internet and found three deaths directly linked to patients transferred from the W Hotel to area hospitals on the night of your honey-trap sting. Two men, in their early to midfifties, succumbed to the angel of death the morning after they were stabilized. The angel of death being Jolene Rudd, who you photographed following you a few days ago and who we photographed dead in front of the townhouse. She was caught on security camera entering and exiting both of their rooms posing as a member of the Howard University Hospital.\"\n\n\"Busy lady,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Even more interesting? Her husband was photographed right next to her outside of the townhouse. Harvey Rudd. Both from Chattanooga, Tennessee,\" said Gupta."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Driver's licenses collected at the townhouse put the whole group within easy driving distance around central Tennessee and Kentucky. One from northern Georgia,\" said Graves.\n\n\"Odd that they would be working this faraway,\" said Rich.\n\nDevin had a theory. \"Not if they were involved with my mother's situation. The Russians would have wanted some continuity for compartmentalization reasons. Right? If they had something to do with intercepting my mother in Tennessee, it makes sense to use them again on a related operation.\"\n\n\"Very good point,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Who the fuck are these people? They look like people you'd trust to watch your house when you went on vacation,\" said Alex, one of the most nondescript people Devin had ever met, by design, no doubt.\n\n\"Based on their ages,\" said Berg, \"I'd say they were planted herein the early nineties, right after the Soviet Union collapsed. Possibly for the express purpose of supporting the sleeper network Helen discovered. I think the connection to DEVTEK needs to be considered. What role does Brian Chase fill at the company? The Russians clearly wanted something from him.\"\n\n\"We weren't given those details,\" said Devin.\n\n\"DEVTEK is primarily an information security company,\" said Graves. \"Deep ties to the Department of Defense and pretty much every government agency that requires secure mobile communications. Rumor has it that the CIA accepted their recent bid on a classified CIA request for proposal-which my research suggests is a groundbreaking, modular communications encryption system. A one-size-fits-all, easy-to-implement encryption solution for computers, office phones, mobile phones, radios. It would basically create an interoperable, secure communications platform usable across agencies and across the spectrum of assets within an agency or group. A CIA officer on the India-Pakistani border could contact an available air-support asset with their satellite phone and direct an airstrike on a high-value target of opportunity. Normally that would require a UHF radio with encryption compatible with the aircraft's system. A logistical nightmare. This would streamline everything. It's a game changer.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"That sounds like the kind of system the Russians would love to corrupt or steal,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Or both,\" added Marnie.\n\n\"If they were running a honey trap, sounds like they needed away into the company,\" said Rich.\n\nBerg shook his head. \"I don't know. Why use a team on the verge of retirement for that? I know that springing a honey trap isn't complicated, but following through with the blackmail side of an operation is tricky. Especially if you're asking someone to commit a crime. Not something you'd put in Harvey and Jolene Rudd's hands. I think this was more of a one-and-done situation. My guess is they were trying to get him to quit the company, so someone could take his place. Whoever filled his shoes is most likely another one of these second-generation sleepers.\"\n\n\"So there's more of these things out there,\" said Emily Miralles.\n\nDevin liked her use of the word things to describe the sleepers. Like manufactured goods.\n\n\"We have to assume there are more,\" said Berg. \"In total, possibly twice the number Helen discovered. The rest of them hidden in tech companies like DEVTEK, where they can remain mostly anonymous-and do untold damage. That's why it's so important to get a look at this camp. If it exists. There's always the possibility that it doesn't. She spent a significant amount of time looking for it and came up empty handed.\"\n\n\"Locating the camp appears to be the tricky part,\" said Rich. \"But Gray has been right about everything else up to now, so this is where we start. Graves?\"\n\nGraves started typing, and a list of names filled the left third of the screen. A map of the United States filled the remaining two-thirds-red dots appearing across the country. Devin guessed immediately that they were looking at a list of the 109 sleepers and a map corresponding to their locations. Frighteningly, but not surprisingly, a majority of them resided around Washington, DC. The rest were scattered across the country, corresponding with a major military base, state capital, or larger city."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"For obvious reasons, we'll remove anyone connected to law enforcement or the military from the list,\" said Graves.\n\nAbout thirty names disappeared from the left side of the screen, their red dots vanishing with them.\n\n\"We went through the rest of the names and disqualified anyone with a sensitive or anon-call position instate or federal government, along with anyone at a high-enough level in that we might be running an outsize risk by grabbing them. Anyone protected for sure.\"\n\nThe list dropped to less than twenty names.\n\n\"That doesn't leave us a lotto work with,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Even less if we want to avoid five-day car rides,\" said Graves, clicking his mouse and eliminating everyone west of the Rockies.\n\nTwelve names remained.\n\n\"We may as well focus on opportunities within easy or easier driving distance of the Ozarks,\" said Rich.\n\n\"That leaves us with Susan Belker. Secretary of state for Missouri,\" said Graves.\n\n\"Too high profile,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Harrison Jeffries. Deputy chief of staff to the attorney general in Illinois?\" said Graves.\n\n\"That's a possibility.\"\n\n\"Or William Barber, the supervising deputy attorney general for the litigation division in Indiana?\" said Graves.\n\n\"Let's look at Barber's profile,\" said Rich.\n\n\"These seem like low-profile jobs for Russian sleeper agents,\" said Scott.\n\n\"State-level secretary of state is a stepping-stone toward governor, which can launch a national political career,\" said Berg. \"Deputy chief of staff to the AG puts you in a position to run for AG, and failing that, an appointment to the state supreme court or US district court. The sky's the limit from there. Politics. Higher courts. Same with a supervising deputy attorney general position. Governor. AG. Courts. Politics. These are solid roles.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Barber's face appeared on the screen.\n\n\"William Barber. Forty-four years of age. Married to Stacy Barber. Same age. She works as an IT specialist at Defenders in Indianapolis. That's an ADT subsidiary.\"\n\n\"As in the home security company?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Yes. ADT bought them out a few years ago,\" said Gupta. \"That's actually good news. We have some regularly updated, custom hack kits for ADT systems. We can shut it down so it'll look like it's still working.\"\n\n\"That's a disturbing thought,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Just a little,\" said Devin.\n\nGraves continued. \"They have two children, David and Melissa. Sixteen and fifteen years old, respectively. All-American family.\"\n\n\"That's how it's supposed to look,\" said Berg. \"What do you think, Rich?\"\n\n\"Can you bring up an image of their neighborhood?\" asked Rich.\n\nGupta brought up a Google Earth satellite image of a wooded lot on a golf course. An expansive patio featuring a pool and hot tub. The level of detail they could glean about the property from this publicly available tool was disturbing.\n\n\"Nice and private. Easy access to the backyard from the golf course. We won't even have to drive up to the house, until we're ready to leave. And it doesn't look like a gated community,\" said Rich. \"Can you confirm that?\"\n\nThe image shifted a few times, zooming into street level on a few of the roads leading into the neighborhoods surrounding the golf course. No gates.\n\n\"I say we start with William Barber,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Looks about as good as it gets,\" said Berg. \"Not too far of a drive from the Ozarks, if we manage to strike gold.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Seven hours and thirty-seven minutes,\" said Gupta.\n\n\"Harrison Jeffries will be our backup plan,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Rich?\" said Marnie. \"Or Karl?\"\n\nRich took a sip of his coffee before answering. \"Yeah?\"\n\n\"Why don't we just digitally package this entire room and send it to every media outlet in the country? Put it in their hands and let the chips fall where they may. Post it online if they won't take it seriously,\" said Marnie. \"I'm not doubting this team's abilities, but we are talking about along shot strategy here. Exposing the entire network, or at least what Helen uncovered, would effectively shut it down, right?\"\n\nRich glanced at Berg, who addressed what Devin considered to bean excellent suggestion.\n\n\"It's tempting, but here's why I fear it won't work,\" said Berg. \"One: The Russians will deny everything and feign outrage. Two: We have things like due process, courts, evidentiary standards, and a whole list of other safeguards designed to protect our own citizens, and everyone on Helen's list is entitled to them, particularly the second-generation sleepers who were born in the US. The names would be public, so the government couldn't pull any of their secret shenanigans. And all of the first generation is deceased, so they can't confess. Wilson was the last alleged sleeper, and Helen shot him to death after stuffing him in the back of her trunk. This is sounding crazier by the minute to the public and the ACLU-and the Department of Justice task force assembled to investigate this bombshell conspiracy theory.\"\n\n\"But it would draw an unhealthy amount of attention to the conspiracy-and the network,\" said Devin. \"Stopping it.\"\n\n\"Maybe. Maybe not. The alleged sleepers would leave their jobs, because that's what a normal person assumed by colleagues to be a spy would do, so we would have accomplished that much. But then what? The most dangerous sleepers maybe the ones your mother didn't find.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"This would make national headlines. Defense and technology companies would start to dig into their employees' backgrounds,\" said Marnie. \"Especially employees that fit the profile.\"\n\n\"Would it make national headlines?\" asked Berg. \"Because of the lack of any verifiable evidence, even the National Enquirer would pass on the story. The libel danger would be very real. Anyone losing their job anywhere to the McCarthy-esque purge that followed would have a strong case against whichever media outlet ran the story. This would have to be published online, anonymously, and my guess is that a few billion dollars'worth of Russian-backed Bitcoin would quickly push the story into online obscurity. I'm not saying we won't end up taking this public at some point. But we need tangible evidence before we consider putting this out there, because we'll only get one shot at bringing this into the public sphere-and it'll need to be our best shot.\"\n\n\"Then we do it the hard way,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"In my experience,\" said Rich, \"there is no other way.\"\n\n\"I knew he was going to say that,\" said Devin."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The Jeep Wrangler crept along the rutted, gravel-dirt road, Felix Orlov rapidly alternating his attention between the map on his satellite phone screen and the seemingly impenetrable, untamed forest passing down the right side of their vehicle. He couldn't imagine trying to reach this place in the dead of winter. The 6.2-mile trip up Bear Creek Mountain Road on a clear June day had been sketchy enough.\n\nHe could see why this had been chosen as a cache point, even if it was a little extreme. Nobody was likely to stumble onto it. Since turning off the paved road that forked into this one, they hadn't seen a soul. Only a few closed gates clearly marked with NOT RESPASSING signs. Isolated from prying eyes, but less than an hour from Interstate 80. Once on the interstate, they could be in any major city on the East Coast within six to seven hours or most Midwest cities within eight to nine hours.\n\nThat said, he didn't anticipate them staying here for long. This was more of an equipment run than anything.\n\nThey'd grab all the gear they might need and wait until night to shuttle it back to the two RVs parked at a campground closer to the interstate. None of the sites available at the campground had been entirely private. Transferring a dozen or so overstuffed nylon duffel bags from the Jeeps to the RVs was a sight he'd rather keep concealed from the public. From there, they'd wait for further instructions, possibly relocating to a more private site.\n\nHe hadn't been provided with their next destination, which either meant Pichugin was releasing the information in stages for security reasons or that they didn't have a location on the team's target. He got the impression from Pichugin's proxy that it was the latter."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I see something,\" said Oleg, slowing the Jeep to a crawl.\n\nHe'd worked with Oleg fora number of years now, mostly in Europe and Asia, where Pichugin needed them the most. Like Felix, he spoke fluent English, with no hint of an accent, which had made him a shoo-in for this trip. Similarly, he was former Russian Federation Spetsnaz. Along with Valerie and Oksana, who drove the Jeep behind them, they made up the core direct-action element of his team.\n\nKsenia, their electronic surveillance specialist, and Lashev, a police-trained sniper, had remained behind with the RVs. Maybe not the best decision, given that they spoke only broken, heavily Russian-accented English, but he needed his best people on the cache mission-just in case the location had been compromised.\n\n\"We should be right on top of the entrance,\" said Felix, putting down the phone.\n\n\"Looks like a break in the trees... and agate,\" said Oleg, pulling as far over to the left side of the road as possible to make room for the tight turn.\n\nHe cut the wheel sharply to the right and pointed them directly at a rickety wood gate partially overgrown with thin, new growth from the adjacent bushes. Felix hopped out of the Jeep and approached the gate, which turned out to be significantly more solid and secure than it appeared. The dilapidated-looking wood had been affixed to a thick steel barrier, which was latched to a metal post. The latch was secured in place by a fist-size, heavy-duty combination lock. He reached over the gate and lifted the lock so he could align the four numbers to match the code he'd received.\n\nWith the lock open, he pushed the gate inward, surprised that it moved almost effortlessly. He waved the Jeeps through and locked the gate behind them before getting back into his seat for the rest of the journey, which he had been told spanned about seven hundred yards on a hardened 4× 4 trail. The trip from the gate to the cabin turned out to be smoother than the ride up Bear Creek Mountain Road. At several points along the gently twisting dirt road, he saw evidence of recently chainsawed trees, which had likely fallen during a recent storm and blocked the approach. The cache location was obviously well maintained."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The road opened into a football field– size, slightly overgrown clearing, a modest two-story log cabin with a green metal roof standing in its center. Solar panels lined the south side of the roof. A sizable metal shed sat about ten yards from the house. It looked large enough to house a pair of ATVs, possibly more. An exhaust vent poking through its sloped roofline suggested it might contain a generator.\n\n\"Pull up to the front porch,\" he said, rolling his window down and motioning for the other Jeep to do the same.\n\nHe got out and approached the long porch, stopping short of the stairs and putting his hands on his hips. The rest of the team gathered around him.\n\n\"Looks self-contained,\" said Valerie. \"Kind of elaborate for some kind of Soviet-era weapons cache.\"\n\n\"It was probably just a concrete cellar atone point,\" said Felix. \"More like an underground shelter than anything else.\"\n\n\"A Pichugin upgrade,\" said Oleg. \"In the middle of Pennsylvania.\"\n\n\"Yeah. And his proxy said we had access to more of these around the country, if needed, along with an unlimited travel budget. Whatever he's up to here must be serious,\" said Felix. \"We need to keep that in mind moving forward. I'd like to be around to spend the money he's paying us.\"\n\nHe stepped onto the porch and unlatched the weather-sealed faux mailbox next to the door, revealing a touch pad and biometric scanner. Referencing the message sent to him less than an hour ago on his satellite phone, he entered a ten-digit code and waited for instructions. The screen asked him to press his index finger on his right hand against the scanner, followed by the thumb of his left hand. Anew instruction appeared on the screen."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Oksana. I need your thumb immediately,\" he said.\n\nThe dark-haired operative smirked and flipped him the middle finger.\n\n\"The digital counter on the screen says you have seven seconds to press your right thumb against the scanner,\" said Felix. \"Six. Five.\"\n\nShe scrambled up the porch and pressed her thumb against the glass, stopping the countdown at two seconds. A series of heavy-duty mechanical clicks came from the door, the screen now indicating they could proceed.\n\nHe patted heron the shoulder. \"Thank you, Oksana. You can go back to making jokes now that we're not going to be vaporized in an explosion.\"\n\n\"Don't bean asshole,\" she said.\n\n\"That's my job,\" he said, grabbing the door handle and nudging the hefty door inward.\n\n\"Is it stuck?\" she asked.\n\n\"No. It's heavy like a vault door,\" said Felix, reaching his hand inside. \"And it must be five inches thick.\"\n\nThey pushed it open together, a motion-triggered bank of fluorescent lights above revealing exactly why the designers had installed a vault-level door. Racks of military-grade weapons lined three of the walls, suspended a few feet above drawers labeled with different bullet calibers. Pistols. Assault rifles. Light machine guns. Submachine guns. Sniper rifles. He stepped inside, noting that the windows had been for show only. Not a crack of light peeped in where the windows should be. The wall facing the porch was stacked with night vision goggles, binoculars, weapons scopes of all varieties, tactical radio rigs, helmets, and several types of body armor carriers. And this was just the outer room. A keypad-guarded door satin the middle of the interior wall, leading to the'heavy stuff,\" as Pichugin's proxy had stated. Stuff they were to'show restraint when selecting,\" whatever that meant."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Welcome, Kmart shoppers,\" said Oksana.\n\nWhile the team walked around, inspecting the weapons cache, Felix entered the code to open the second door, which proved to be equally as substantial as the first-fora good reason. After shoving it several inches inward, he caught a glimpse of a military-grade revolver-style grenade launcher inside. A few more inches took his breath away. Pichugin could start a small war with the weapons in this cabin. And there were more of these across the United States?\n\n\"If this room is Kmart,\" grunted Felix, pushing the door all the way open, \"then this one is Harrods.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie took the motel stairs in a hurry, eager to return with a bag full of soft drinks she'd acquired from the vending machine room next to the lobby. She'd announced her intention to run out and grab a Mountain Dew a few minutes before their scheduled briefing, unintentionally inviting close to a dozen requests from the rest of the team. She'd gotten to the midpoint landing of the U-shaped stairs when she heard an argument above her. Karl Berg and Rich in a heated debate-about Devin. She slowly made her way up the rest of the stairs, taking in the whispered dispute as she approached the second-floor walkway.\n\n\"You have to trust me on this,\" said Berg. \"Devin has a sixth sense when it comes to surveillance. The FBI's Special Surveillance Group is about as elite as it gets. He spent twelve years learning the tricks of the trade, then landed a position with MINERVA-against all odds. His mother poisoned that well, so to speak, and they still hired him, because he's that good at what he does. He's an asset to the team.\"\n\n\"I'm not disputing his surveillance or countersurveillance skills,\" said Rich. \"But my team is pretty well versed in the same game, and we've been doing it for decades with our very lives on the line, which trumps Devin's experience, in my opinion.\"\n\n\"I don't agree,\" said Berg. \"He's been one step ahead of everyone from day one. He busted the team following him from his apartment. He detected all three of the operatives you placed outside of the Airbnb townhouse. And he anticipated the ambush a few blocks away from the townhouse.\"\n\n\"Not soon enough,\" said Rich. \"They survived because we rescued them.\"\n\nMarnie stepped onto the walkway, immediately drawing their attention. \"We survived because of Devin's quick thinking. He was able to assess threats from multiple directions and make a split-second decision about what to do next. The right decision. It bought us enough time for your team to respond.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"My concern is with the direct-action side of future operations,\" said Rich. \"We don't always have the luxury of separating combat from the surveillance.\"\n\n\"Devin can hold his own in a gunfight,\" said Marnie. \"I saw that firsthand.\"\n\n\"And I'm absolutely useless in any kind of fight,\" said Berg. \"But nobody is trying to sideline me.\"\n\n\"That's because you've always understood your role,\" said Rich. \"I'm worried about Devin getting in over his head if he starts swimming outside of his area of expertise.\"\n\n\"What about me?\" said Marnie. \"I'm just a former Marine helicopter pilot.\"\n\nRich shook his head. \"The same goes for you. I can't have two nonoperators in the middle of a covert raid. It puts my people at risk. You know how this works, Marnie. Imagine flying into a heavily contested landing zone while you're taking fire from multiple directions-\"\n\n\"I don't need to imagine. I've been there,\" said Marnie. \"And we didn't sideline new pilots. They flew the same missions as the rest of us.\"\n\n\"Sure. But in a dual-control helicopter, an experienced pilot could takeover at anytime,\" said Rich.\n\n\"How is this any different?\" asked Berg. \"In this case, the ratio of experienced operators to inexperienced is more like four to one.\"\n\n\"It's different,\" said Rich.\n\nBerg shrugged. \"Some circumstances and missions maybe different, requiring the sole use of your veteran operators, but tonight's job doesn't meet that threshold.\"\n\n\"And when it does?\" asked Rich, nodding at Marnie.\n\n\"Neither of us is suicidal, and we're well aware of our limitations,\" said Marnie. \"I know I'm speaking for Devin when I say that he won't be sidelined without a damn good reason. Same for me.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Keep the narrative going for the author.\\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\\nTitle: Deep Sleep\\nChapter: 35\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Our backup arrived,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nHe quick-peeked around the side of the car with his pistol, seeing two masked figures. Both of them fired their submachine guns over the hood at Berg's newly arrived associates. One of them noticed him and started to swing his weapon back in Devin's direction, but it was too late. Devin pressed the trigger twice, punching two holes in his face, before shifting aim and firing the remaining six bullets center mass-knocking the second shooter flat. A short burst of bullets fired from one of Berg's people stitched across the guy's torso just moments after he hit the street.\\n\\nThe mix of gunfire changed over the course of the next several seconds. More and more suppressed gunfire, which sounded more like hands clapping than regular gunfire-until everything went quiet. Devin started to getup.\\n\\n\\\"Stay down!\\\" yelled a voice from the intersection. \\\"We'll tell you when it's clear!\\\"\\n\\nDevin crouched beside Marnie and reloaded his pistol while a brief symphony of suppressed gunshots played out in the intersection against a background of police sirens.\\n\\n\\\"I can't believe this just happened,\\\" she said, a single suppressed shot punctuating her sentence. \\\"That it's still happening. They're just walking around intersections popping people in the head, aren't they?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I can't see exactly what they're doing, but-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It was more of a rhetorical question,\\\" she said, a nearby shot startling both of them. \\\"Of course they're executing people. How is any of this even possible-in the middle of fucking Baltimore? What did your mom stumble on?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You'll see soon enough,\\\" said Devin. \\\"It's big.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It must be,\\\" she said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie. It's Rich. I'm standing directly in front of your car,\\\" he yelled. \\\"We're clear, and we need to get out of here immediately.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You okay?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I didn't get shot, if that's what you mean,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"You?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm good,\\\" he said before slowly rising from a crouch to a standing position.\\n\\nHis shin burned from the bullet that had grazed him, but that was about it. He'd been extremely lucky. An inch back, and the bullet would have torn muscle and possibly fragmented bone. They were both lucky, when he thought about it. Several bullets had zipped under the car during the gun battle, anyone of them with the potential to have altered the night's outcome.\\n\\nRich met them along the side of the car, next to three dead operatives. Suppressed assault rifle slung across a black-plate carrier vest, he pointed at a black SUV parked at the edge of the intersection.\\n\\n\\\"Get in the back with Karl,\\\" said Farrington. \\\"We're out of herein fifteen seconds. Go!\\\"\\n\\nThey took off for the SUV, Devin surveying the carnage as they ran. Rich and three of his associates quickly spread out among the vehicles, yanking the masks off several of the shooters and taking pictures. The moment Devin and Marnie reached the SUV, Rich spoke into his microphone and the crew bolted in their direction. Marnie opened the door and got inside, while Devin watched a precision machine inaction.\\n\\nRich stopped next to Devin's car and took something that looked like a phone from one of the dead shooters\\\" hands. After pocketing the device, he tossed two cylindrical devices in the car, one in the backseat and one in the front. He took off for the SUV as soon as the second device left his hand. Down the street, beyond the sedan that had boxed them in from behind, a massive billow of smoke exploded in the middle of the intersection, followed by a second, rapidly expanding cloud of smoke about twenty yards past the first.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Scott sprinted by him and continued past the two cars parked tightly behind the SUV. He pulled the pinon a smoke grenade and overhand threw it at least fifty feet down the street. On his way back, he prepped another grenade and tossed it about half as far as the one before. The distant grenade detonated, instantly obscuring the street with a pure white smoke. The second popped a few seconds later, thickening the smokescreen. They did the same at all points leading into the intersection, as the sound of sirens approached, and police lights started reflecting off the trees in the adjacent park.\\n\\nA blinding flash lit the entire intersection, followed almost immediately by a hollow-sounding explosion. Devin turned in time to seethe second incendiary grenade detonate in his mother's car, ejecting a shower of brightly burning pellets out of every window in a hissing fireworks-grade pyrotechnic display. The interior of the car burst into flames instantly. Rich raced up to the SUV and handed him a satellite phone, which he recognized as his own. One of the Russians must have taken it.\\n\\nDevin slid inside and shut the door. The SUV lurched forward and pinned him against the seat. Visibility beyond the windshield dropped to zero as soon as they turned onto Eastern Avenue. They drove blind for several seconds before emerging from the smoke. The traffic light a block ahead was green. Flashing red and blue lights reflected off the intersection's buildings. Scott slowed the SUV as two police Ford Interceptor SUVs raced into view and turned in their direction.\\n\\nRich raised his rifle a few inches, adjusting his grip. Devin glanced at Marnie, who had apparently noticed the same thing. Berg leaned forward.\\n\\n\\\"Rich. We had an agreement,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThe rifle lowered. \\\"Sorry. Just a little wired.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The Interceptors sped past them, and Devin turned to watch them through the cargo compartment windshield.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The two police vehicles stopped at the edge of the expanding street-wide cloud and immediately backed up, their white reverse lights already hazy from the smoke. The two sedans carrying other members of Rich's team peeled left at the intersection they'd just crossed, headed north on South Ellwood Avenue. The Interceptors stopped backing up about halfway to the intersection, but none of the officers got out. Alone police car swerved into the intersection from the north, where Rich's associates had just turned, and parked next to the SUVs. It appeared that the police hadn't taken notice of them. Yet.\\n\\n\\\"Looks like we're clear for now,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nRich glanced between the seats. \\\"Clear is a relative term at the moment. This changes things.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Changes everything,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Definitely changes our escape and evasion plan. I think we'll head to BWI and abandon these in long-term parking. Pickup some rentals in the terminal. I'll have Gupta make the arrangements through a business account,\\\" said Rich. \\\"We have to assume all four of the vehicles involved with the townhouse have been made. This one and the three sedans.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Scrap the airport rental car idea,\\\" said Devin. \\\"They'll have people watching the rental agencies inside and outside of the terminal. That's what I would do. We need to find a twenty-four-hour parking garage just north of DC, near a Metro station. A number of the parking garages offer monthly parking, payable on the spot. Silver Spring has a few. Ride the Metro fora little while, then grab a taxi back to the general vicinity of my mother's apartment. Cash only. Nobody will find the vehicles.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Devin's right. We can rendezvous with the Suburban along the way and transfer all of our weapons and gear,\\\" said Rich.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We need to be careful with the Suburban,\\\" said Berg. \\\"They must have had someone watching the front of the townhouse and possibly the back. The timing of this attack suggests they knew when to start looking for vehicles leaving the area.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll tell Graves and Gupta to be careful and take their time. It's going to be along night,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"There's noway they could have known the townhouse address before we setup our surveillance,\\\" hissed Scott. \\\"We should have detected them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not if they started off assuming the whole thing was a setup,\\\" said Devin. \\\"They would have kept their distance and used text messages to communicate. They probably had four teams out there like the one that hit us. Each team spread out to cover the most likely routes away from the townhouse in each direction.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Who the hell are we dealing with?\\\" asked Marnie. \\\"That's a lot of personnel to throw at a problem on US soil. Russians or not.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have a sneaking suspicion we're dealing with two groups tonight. Pulled by the same strings,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"When we run the photos taken of the group that boxed you in by the intersection, my money is on matching a few of the faces to Russian embassy or consulate employees from DC and New York City. The rest are probably nonofficial cover types. Tourists flown in for this job or Russian nationals that work or study in the US. That's the new thing. No need to buildup an alias to run missions in the US. All you need is a nonimmigrant visa, which isn't hard to come by.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"This felt like more of an assassination team,\\\" said Devin. \\\"And not a subtle one.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not a good one, either,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Neither of you should have made it out of the car. You certainly shouldn't have been able to takeout the entire team that pulled up behind you.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We managed just fine,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"Fora while, at least.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My friend has a point,\\\" said Berg. \\\"They threw a junior varsity team at you. Probably all they could put together at the moment. They thought it would be enough, but you surprised them. Unlike Rich, I give credit where credit is due.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Some consolation,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"So if they saw the two of us walk into the townhouse together, why didn't they try to take us both out?\\\" said Devin. \\\"What good am I dead, when someone else obviously knows about their secret plot?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They just wanted your phone,\\\" said Rich. \\\"They could have hacked your location data and figured out where your mother's apartment is located. That's why one of them grabbed it in the middle of a gun battle.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Makes sense,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Then what about the other team?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I've been trying to put my finger on this,\\\" said Berg. \\\"The team that has been following you-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And me,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"And you,\\\" said Berg, pausing as though he might say he was sorry. \\\"That team looked and acted old school. I mean, all in their mid-to late fifties? They've been around fora while, probably doing low-level stuff to stay off the radar. SVR or GRU illegals planted right after the Soviet Union collapsed, probably in the early nineties-when our guard was down.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Still is down,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Good point,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"This is kind of odd,\\\" said Devin, remembering the crew he put in the hospital a couple of weeks ago. \\\"I think I've run into this crew before.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"The group following you?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"asked Berg.\\n\\n\\\"No. I worked a sting at MINERVA, the same night everything went down with my mom. It was a counter-honey-trap operation, except that everyone but the honey trap was in their fifties. I put three of them in the hospital that night; the rest flew out of Dulles the next morning. One of our surveillance teams followed them to the KLM ticket counter.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's very interesting,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Did MINERVA identify any of them? I know they can be pretty thorough.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't know. Everything blew up with my mother right after the operation,\\\" said Devin. \\\"They were reaching out to law enforcement contacts to get some help with fingerprints. None of them carried ID. I can reach out to my boss to see if they found anything.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We'll have to vet him first,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Yeah,\\\" said Devin. \\\"He fits the profile.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie ran her fingers through her shoulder-length hair, back and forth, before making two fists in her lap, hands shaking.\\n\\n\\\"You okay?\\\" asked Devin, wondering if once again he should keep his mouth shut.\\n\\n\\\"I feel like you guys are talking in code,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"On purpose.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're not,\\\" said Berg. \\\"It's too much to explain without showing you. Trust me. This is complicated in an epically bad way.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I can't wait,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Neither can I,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"You haven't seen it yet?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"I got Helen's executive summary,\\\" said Rich. \\\"What she prepared for Devin or whoever took over the fight for her. That was enough to get me out here. Seeing the first Russian team move in was enough to convince me this was real. The last attack? That sealed the deal.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I don't suppose there's anyway I could get my hands on that right now?\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"I have a copy in the glove box,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"You don't really have a copy in the glove box,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I do,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I hate reading on my phone.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Marnie. You don't have to get involved in this any further than I've involved you,\\\" said Devin. \\\"We need to get your parents to a safe house or something until Karl can reach out to that group in LA that's good at hiding people. I'm really sorry about all of this.\\\"\\n\\nRich turned in his seat. \\\"I've already taken the liberty of making those arrangements. I prepositioned two of my people in Falls Church in case something went wrong tonight. I figured this qualified, so I activated the plan. My team will escort them to a private terminal at Reagan National Airport, where they'll board a private jet and fly to Los Angeles. Same with your dad, Devin. Unless they refuse. Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I need to call them and let them know it's okay,\\\" said Marnie, pulling out her cellphone.\\n\\n\\\"One call and then we have to toss that phone,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"We could drop her off at Reagan instead of BWI and grab a few rentals there,\\\" said Scott.\\n\\nMarnie stopped dialing. \\\"I am not going to LA.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You don't have to stick around,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Seriously. This will more than likely get way uglier.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I can guarantee it,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"You're not getting rid of me that easily,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"I want to see exactly what your mother was up to. To see why the Russians would go this far to bury it.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Careful what you wish for,\\\" said Berg. \\\"If you gaze long enough into this abyss-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Russians try to kill you?\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Sounds about right,\\\" said Rich, handing her the document that had started all this.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Yuri Pichugin nodded at the squat mercenary standing next to the mahogany door set into the thirty-foot-high white marble wall of the five-thousand-square-foot indoor arboretum, his favorite place to relax in his palace-size mansion on Lake Ladoga. Especially in the winter, when Saint Petersburg became quite dark and dreary. On five-degree, blustery overcast days, the exquisite tropical paradise provided a welcome refuge when he was in town. In fact, he so preferred this space to any other that he'd replicated a small section of his office overlooking the lake in one of the corners of the arboretum, adjacent to the main house.\\n\\nThe ex-GRU Spetsnaz soldier opened the door for his surprise guest. Unexpected in that he'd anticipated receiving a simple phone call confirming that the threat to FIREBIRD had been extinguished. Not a personal visit. General Kuznetzov's trip obviously heralded bad news. The kind that required a one hundred percent secure method of communication. A face-to-face discussion. The value of which could never be understated, or more importantly-intercepted.\\n\\nYuri stood up from his desk and walked over to greet him. A carafe of vodka and two shot glasses sat on a sprawling coffee table between two oversize blue velvet couches, along with a three-tiered silver stand loaded with finger sandwiches and toasted crostini. Two silver caviar servers flanked the sandwiches. Normally he wouldn't roll out anything but the vodka for Kuznetzov, but his visit coincided with lunch.\\n\\n\\\"Grigory! Please come!\\\" said Pichugin, expending all the fake enthusiasm he could muster for the man.\\n\\nHe personally couldn't stand Kuznetzov, but their fates had been inexorably tied together for two decades. The man had been in the right place at the right time-at the right price. If Yuri had thought he could have run FIREBIRD after the last Directorate's purge without the general's help, he would have encased the rotund man in cement after taking over the program and dropped him in the Baltic Sea years ago. The man had proved instrumental during those early years, systematically migrating all control and evidence of the highly compartmentalized secret program out of the GRU's hands and into Pichugin's.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He'd belying if he said he didn't think of disappearing Kuznetzov in the years immediately following the handover, but FIREBIRD had proved more difficult to manage than Pichugin had assumed-and the general had led him to believe. They needed the GRU's long-established and expiring network of illegals to pave the way for FIREBIRD's second generation. To remove any obstacles from their assigned paths.\\n\\nPichugin could have attempted to outsource this work, but the GRU operatives had proved their loyalty and effectiveness for decades. He didn't see any reason to risk the use of men and women whose sole allegiance rested in a bank deposit when he had an army of well-paid idealogues at his disposal.\\n\\nKuznetzov emerged indispensable. Even more so when Pichugin brought FIREBIRD and his revised plans for its use to Putin, a mutual confidant and partner in several enterprises at that point. Putin endorsed FIREBIRD's repurposing without hesitation, ensuring them access to whatever resources they required to make it succeed. Once Putin linked Kuznetzov's name and face so intimately to FIREBIRD's success-the general became untouchable.\\n\\n\\\"Yuri!\\\" said the general, eyeballing the spread. \\\"You shouldn't have gone to any trouble.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I figured I might need to settle my stomach during our chat,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"This can't be good.\\\"\\n\\nThe door shut behind Kuznetzov, the security operative leaving them alone.\\n\\n\\\"Nothing we can't handle,\\\" he said, taking a seat opposite him across the table.\\n\\nPichugin poured two shots of vodka and handed one to the general.\\n\\n\\\"Za vstrechu,\\\" he said, and they downed a premier version of Russian Standard. \\\"So. Tell me about this problem we can handle but requires you to fly out from Moscow.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Devin Gray made some new friends over the past couple of days,\\\" said the general. \\\"Some very deadly and resourceful friends. Do you remember the name Karl Berg?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Vaguely,\\\" he said. \\\"CIA?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ex-CIA,\\\" said Kuznetzov. \\\"Pegged to General Terrence Sanderson's troublemakers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Now that's a name I'm more familiar with,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"Never crossed paths with his people, but the name has come up at the highest level before. I thought there was some kind of understanding in place.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There is. But this would fall well outside of that back channel deal,\\\" said the general. \\\"For obvious reasons.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I suppose it would,\\\" said Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"And Sanderson is supposedly retired these days. Richard Farrington reportedly took over what was left of Sanderson's black ops program. He has apparently rebuilt it to some degree.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What happened?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The illegals sent to the townhouse to grab Berg and Gray were killed at the doorstep. All of them dead within seconds. The only survivor was the illegal left to watch Gray's apartment.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I want her dead as soon as possible,\\\" said Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"Already taken care of. She's melting in a barrel of lye as we speak,\\\" said the general. \\\"The real problem is that the GRU team comprised of consulate and NOC operatives was wiped out several blocks away, attempting to intercept Gray. There's going to be a little bit of a shitstorm at GRU headquarters. Frankly, I'm glad to be out of town right now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There's going to be a considerable shitstorm,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"I hope you have your story straight.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Kuznetzov shrugged.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"The illegals team was expendable. I had used them as bait-just in case Gray was onto them. Apparently he was, probably with Berg's help. The other group's mission will pass scrutiny, because there will be no scrutiny. I gave it the \\\"from the top\\\" label. I hope it won't be a problem.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll make sure he's aware of that situation,\\\" said Pichugin, slyly referring to Putin. \\\"I don't see a problem. But we can't use anymore Russian Federation assets moving forward.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Including the old illegals?\\\" asked the general.\\n\\n\\\"For now. Especially in the DC area,\\\" he said. \\\"I'll assemble atop-drawer mercenary crew and move them into position to strike when we locate Gray and Berg.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Shall I leverage a few of our more well-placed FIREBIRD assets to help expedite the process of finding them? Gray and his new friends obviously know better than to use their credit cards or cellphones.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"Devin Gray's mother has obviously been working on this for sometime. The fact that she uncovered Donald Wilson leaves more questions than answers. Like how many more did she discover?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I see three scenarios. None of them is good. Unfortunately, we'll never know which one has materialized, so we have to assume the worst. Best-case scenario is that Kozlov only passed one more name to the Gray woman: Donald Wilson. We know she received at least two names from General Kozlov,\\\" said Kuznetzov. \\\"We deactivated both families six years ago after one of the FIREBIRD assets discovered that both families had been investigated by the FBI in 2003.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Remember how close we came to shutting everything down after Kozlov?\\\" asked Pichugin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"How could I forget?\\\" said the general. \\\"I don't think I slept for the next two years, waiting for the whole thing to fall apart.\\\"\\n\\nThe general poured more vodka, which they tossed back immediately. Followed by another round.\\n\\n\\\"Back to the Wilson scenario. If Kozlov indeed passed his name, he would have done it for the express purpose of exposing SITE ZERO. Wilson oversaw the program for most of its years,\\\" said the general.\\n\\n\\\"But she never found it,\\\" said Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"Exactly. She nosed around the lakes for several years, but never located it,\\\" said the general.\\n\\n\\\"Remind me again why we didn't kill her years ago?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Because she was kicked out of the CIA for obsessing over a possible Russian sleeper conspiracy. We were afraid that her untimely death might trigger a serious look into her theory,\\\" said the general. \\\"And we never got any real indication that she'd uncovered any of the FIREBIRD families outside of the two names she had been given. She'd vanish for weeks at a time, but nobody reported anything unusual. Not even Wilson.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think we might have underestimated her,\\\" said Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"On some level, yes. Which brings me to the worst-case scenario, which I don't believe is in play-but we have to consider,\\\" said the general. \\\"Kozlov gave her the whole list.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't think so,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"The CIA would have taken a list like that seriously. They would have investigated the families, like the other two, and determined they had a serious Russian sleeper agent problem on their hands. There's no indication that this occurred. Helen Gray was working alone when she kidnapped Wilson.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Agreed. I think we need to assume that Helen Gray discovered Wilson on her own years ago, based on some publicly available connection to one of the two names Kozlov provided,\\\" said the general. \\\"And that she eventually figured out the greater pattern that the CIA overlooked-the kids. She could start a list of politicians or government types that fit the age group and work backward.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No evidence of grandparents,\\\" said Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"A dead giveaway. Not conclusive, but a start,\\\" said the general. \\\"My guess is that she'd put together a list and wanted to run some names by Donald Wilson.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The timing couldn't be worse. We're too close to the endgame to have this unravel onus,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"I want you to alert the entire FIREBIRD network. Basic surveillance and security precautions for now. We have to assume that other FIREBIRD assets have been identified by Devin Gray and his new friends.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll instruct Gusev to send the alert when I get back to Moscow,\\\" said the general. \\\"We'll also bring US National Security Agency and law enforcement support onboard to locate Gray for your mercenary team.\\\"\\n\\nGusev ran one of the most tightly guarded secrets in Russia from a nameless, ultrasecure compound on a sprawling estate west of Moscow-known only as CONTROL to the agents it directed in the United States.\\n\\n\\\"Contact Gusev from my secure line, after we finish lunch,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"We need to get the ball rolling on this.\\\"\\n\\nEverything was at stake if Gray and his new friends fully unraveled their secret.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie Young sat cross-legged in one of the far corners of Helen Gray's vault, sifting through the last of the Branson file papers. She'd been upmost of the night absorbing as much of the information Helen had assembled as possible, in the order Karl Berg had recommended-which ended with the accordion file in front of her.\\n\\nRich sat next to her in the corner, his legs extended along the evidence wall. She handed him the packet she'd just finished, which he started reading without comment. Marnie had made her peace with Rich and Karl last night during their lengthy drive around Baltimore. Cleared the air might be a better description. She still intended to keep a close eye on the two of them, until they fully earned her trust. Marnie got the impression it wouldn't take long. They seemed just as vested in getting to the bottom of what Devin's mother had uncovered as Devin-and now Marnie.\\n\\nAfter spending close to six hours digesting Helen Gray's documentation, there was no doubt in her mind that the conspiracy was real, and possibly worse than Devin's mother had believed. The double-layered attack on Devin last night demonstrated that the Russians were desperate to erase this evidence and anyone who had seen it. Now they were all targets. Something Berg said last night had stuck with her. She hadn't known what it meant at the time, but it made perfect sense now. They'd crossed the point of no return.\\n\\nShe skimmed the last few packets, having seen enough. Berg's overview last night painted a clear enough picture. They needed to find this suspected camp in the Ozarks, if it even still existed, to lend credibility to the entire conspiracy. This second generation of sleepers couldn't have been radicalized at home. She had no doubt that their home lives were strictly regulated to ensure that they remained loyal to Mother Russia, but Helen Gray was right. The Russians would need away to test and reinforce this loyalty.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"One break in allegiance could burn the entire conspiracy down, and it was clear from the research that thirty-seven children pressed into service to the Russian Federation from birth had been murdered to maintain the program's secrecy.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The thought of it was spine-tingling. Parents had delivered their children to their executions, or at the very least looked the other way when the grim reaper came knocking.\\n\\nShe passed the rest of the packets to Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Seen enough?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"Yep,\\\" she said.\\n\\nHe dropped them on the pile he'd built on his lap. \\\"Me too. The whole thing is mind-boggling, but the Branson file is just sick. They ran a brainwashing camp right in the heartland of the country, complete with firing squads and everything. Unbelievable.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I feel terrible for Devin's mother. And for Devin. They thought she was slowly going crazy for close to two decades,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Sometimes a conspiracy, or any big idea, I suppose, is simply too big or hard to believe for its time.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Or both,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Right,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Conversely, if you don't give people enough, they can't even begin to seethe bigger picture and take it seriously. The downfall of the United States-an economic, political, and military superpower-is a hard pill to swallow. From her notes, it appears that she started with the big picture, instantly alienating everyone she approached. That poisoned her later attempts to trickle information to her remaining allies, who started avoiding her entirely. She could never seem to strike the right balance, and maybe there wasn't a balance to be struck at the time. On top of that, the CIA had its hands full right around the time she'd started to strike gold with some of her investigative work. Full of Russians and domestic terrorists. Bad timing all around for Helen Gray.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It was awful for her family,\\\" she said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"How long have you known Devin?\\\" said Rich. \\\"Seems like a solid guy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We've been friends since middle school. Better friends in high school,\\\" she said. \\\"We've kept in touch since then. Mostly off and on, but anytime our paths cross, we grab dinner or a drink. We've both been pretty busy since college.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Just friends?\\\" asked Rich.\\n\\n\\\"More or less,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"I see,\\\" he said, slightly raising an eyebrow.\\n\\n\\\"What do you mean by \\\"I see\\\"\\\"?\\n\\n\\\"Nothing,\\\" said Rich, nodding toward the vault door. \\\"Here comes Mr. More-or-Less right now with our breakfast.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Funny,\\\" she said.\\n\\nDevin and the operative named Jared walked through the doorway carrying brown oil-stained bags and two carryout cartons of Dunkin'coffee. The rest of Rich's team came to life as they started to move files to make room on the table that had been dragged into the vault from the kitchen.\\n\\nAs much as she wanted to use the term'motley crew\\\" to describe Rich's team, they didn't fit that description. Everyone looked ragged after sleeping on the floor in the same clothes they'd worn yesterday, but this wasn't the kind of rogues' gallery you might connect to the words mercenary or soldier of fortune.\\n\\nThe two operatives who had escorted her parents and Devin's dad to the airport looked as though they'd just returned from a business conference, dressed in pressed khaki pants, oxford shirts, and windbreakers-to conceal their holstered pistols. Alex and Michael. Just two regular guys who could probably draw those pistols and drill every person in this room through the head in the span of a few seconds.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Then you had Scott, who she'd really only seen drive an SUV at this point and throw a smoke grenade farther than she'd ever seen someone throw a grenade before. Berg said he was an ex– Navy SEAL, which would have been her first guess. Tall with a muscular swimmer's build, totally contrasting with the rest of the team members, who looked like career ground-pounders. Muscular and stocky.\\n\\nShe assumed Rico and Jared were the team's designated snipers, based on the assignments they'd been given at the townhouse. Emily could be anything. A taut, unsmilingly serious woman of few words, with catlike reflexes, who looked just as at ease with a knife as a firearm. Earlier she'd balanced a daggerlike blade on her fingertip while studying the wall, flipping to the handle and then back again repeatedly. Of all the mercenaries in the room, Emily scared her the most.\\n\\nThe two surveillance gurus had expressed similar sentiments earlier. Graves and Gupta had nodded toward heron a few occasions, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at something Emily had said. Those two intrigued her the most. Gupta might be in his early forties, but he acted like he was twenty-two, and stuck in a late-nineties rap video. Graves, who spent most of his time calming Gupta down, was clearly pushing fifty and walked with a limp. The two couldn't be more different, but between the occasional sibling-like bickering, they worked together seamlessly. All in all, she could see why Karl had placed so much faith in this crew.\\n\\nDevin opened the bags and started tossing aluminum foil– wrapped breakfast burritos around the room. Everyone snatched them out of the air as though their lives depended on it. Devin hand delivered her burrito, along with Rich's.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"They're all the same. Chorizo and eggs, with cheese and a bunch of other stuff,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Sounds heavenly,\\\" said Marnie, thinking she sounded like an idiot.\\n\\n\\\"Two thousand calories of heaven,\\\" said Rich. \\\"How's your leg?\\\"\\n\\nDevin lifted his pant leg to expose a napkin-size compress taped in place over the front of his shin. A few specks of red poked through the sterile white dressing.\\n\\n\\\"It's not bad at all. Normally this would take a few stitches, but it'll heal up fine,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Emily can stitch you up if you want. She's a former combat medic,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Her kit includes a serious local anesthetic. You won't feel a thing.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie nodded. \\\"I'd take them upon the offer. God knows what we'll be up to over the next several days.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We'll be up to no good. That's for certain,\\\" said Rich, getting up. \\\"What kind of coffee do you have in the kitchen?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nespresso machine. No idea about the coffee itself,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Berg seemed happy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Berg knows his coffee. I think I'll grab one of those,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Be right back.\\\"\\n\\nDevin took Rich's place next to Marnie, unceremoniously tearing open one end of his breakfast burrito and taking a bite large enough to have possibly included some aluminum foil. He glanced at her and covered his mouth.\\n\\n\\\"Sorry,\\\" he mumbled.\\n\\n\\\"I'm right therewith you,\\\" she said before hungrily attacking her own breakfast.\\n\\nThey'd finished half of their burritos before Devin broke the silence.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What do you think's next?\\\"\\n\\nAn odd question, she thought.\\n\\n\\\"The consensus seems to be that we need to find this summer camp in the Ozarks.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. But how?\\\" said Devin. \\\"I'm a little worried about what I'm hearing.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie hadn't heard any talk beyond locating the camp, but she'd given it some thought and probably came to the same conclusion reached by Rich and Karl. She wasn't sure how she felt about it, but what choice did they have? And as long as they could keep things under control, which they seemed more than capable of doing, nobody innocent would get hurt. At least that was what she kept telling herself.\\n\\n\\\"What are you hearing?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nHe leaned over and whispered, \\\"I'm hearing the words kidnap and interrogation.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's in their hands,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"They know what they're doing.\\\"\\n\\nDevin lowered his breakfast and considered her fora moment. \\\"You're okay with that?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What are the other options?\\\" she said. \\\"From what I've read, your mother spent weeks down at the Missouri-Arkansas border, with nothing to show for it. Given the stakes here, I can't say I disagree with them.\\\"\\n\\nDevin looked conflicted, but he nodded. \\\"I know. I'm just worried about how far they'll go to secure the information. This group doesn't fuck around-at all.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We'll have to be the voice of reason,\\\" she said. \\\"Draw the line at innocent family members. Especially kids.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't think we'll have to worry about Rich and his crew hurting kids,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I don't see them as the types to go that far, and there maybe no point trying to leverage the kids against the parents. This second generation of sleepers lived through a modern-day pogrom. Thirty-seven of their summer camp friends executed. Nearly a third of their numbers. I don't expect anything different from this generation of sleepers. They'll more than likely sacrifice their children before betraying the cause.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She squeezed his hand. \\\"Promise me the children are off limits.\\\"\\n\\nDevin took her hand firmly. \\\"No kids. No innocent victims. That's the line. That's also the reason we can't let them sideline us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What do you mean?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nHe let goof her hand. \\\"Berg made it very clear that he didn't think I was, uh... up to the task-for lack of a better phrase. That's why he kept me in the dark about the townhouse ambush. He knew I would have freaked out and blown the whole operation.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why would you freak out?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"Because of you,\\\" he said abruptly before pausing for an uncomfortable amount of time. \\\"The thought of causing you or your parents any harm would have driven me to-look, it's not like you would have left the townhouse if I had asked you, right?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Right. I had no intention of leaving until I was satisfied that you were mentally sound and not under duress,\\\" she said before scanning the room. \\\"From Karl and his associates.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Which is why I would have done something rash to warn you off. Something that could have blown the whole operation. I would not have sat on my hands and let you get sucked into this. Or worse,\\\" said Devin. \\\"He knew that.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What's worse?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Worse is what almost happened at the intersection,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Berg was smart not to say anything. My concern is that he's already warned everyone on the team about my reservations, and they won't level with us during the planning phase. Then they'll bench us at the last minute to keep us out of it altogether.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie took his hand, for no other reason than she needed to hold someone's hand right now. At least that was what she told herself.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"There's nothing we can do about that, ultimately,\\\" she said. \\\"But we can't stay silent. We need to make our position clear on this. Trust me, it'll make a difference.\\\"\\n\\nShe let goof his hand when Rich returned with one of the coffee mugs Devin had previously advised her not to use for sanitary reasons. He glanced in her direction and vaguely nodded, presumably acknowledging what he'd just seen transpire. She nodded back, still unsure what to make of the undeniably special connection she shared with Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They wolfed down their breakfast burritos in silence, Devin wanting to expand on his earlier sentiment about keeping her out of danger. Put a more personal spin on it. He'd already reviewed his words several times and decided it sounded a little too perfunctory, like an obligation. It was more than that for him, but this wasn't the time or the place to risk making her feel even more uncomfortable. The moment was awkward enough.\\n\\nThey had a job to do and couldn't afford any distractions moving forward. As last night had clearly demonstrated, the difference between life and death in Karl and Rich's world could be defined by fractions of a second. Devin had managed to respond quickly enough to salvage the initial situation, but he couldn't help thinking that if he'd been paying better attention, he could have bypassed the roadblock altogether by turning into the park.\\n\\nInstead, his only real option had been to slam on the brakes to avoid a collision, which had forced them into a lopsided gun battle. If Rich's team hadn't arrived when they had, neither of them would be sitting here munching on breakfast. He finished the last few bites and started to put the Branson file back together. Rich was making the rounds, and it sounded as though they were about to kickoff their first planning session as a group. Devin guessed the file would be a key part of any discussion regarding their next move.\\n\\n\\\"Need anything before we get started?\\\" asked Devin before standing up.\\n\\n\\\"Coffee? Maybe one of those Nespressos?\\\" she said, accepting a liftoff the floor.\\n\\n\\\"Coming right up,\\\" he said.\\n\\nDevin dropped the file off next to his mother's desk, which had been converted into Graves and Gupta's workstation. Their fingers had been clacking on three laptops all night, their screens mirrored on a fifty-inch curved screen that spanned the desk to make it easier to highlight their findings. On the floor next to the desk, they had setup a proxy server to filter all data traffic sent and received through the satellite dish they had mounted outside the kitchen window. Devin got the distinct impression that they'd done this hundreds of times in support of Rich's operations, in much tighter and less accommodating spaces.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"When he returned with the coffees, everyone had gathered in a stretched semicircle behind the desk. A few sitting cross-legged, Graves and Gupta in chairs off to the side with laptops. The rest standing. Everyone nurturing a cup of coffee like it might be their last. He squeezed behind the group and stood on the edge, next to Marnie. She took the paper cup and gave it a try.\\n\\n\\\"Lives up to the hype,\\\" she said, giving him an approving look.\\n\\n\\\"My mom always loved her coffee,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I feel like we're dishonoring her memory by serving that other stuff.\\\"\\n\\nShe nudged his arm with her elbow, as she'd done countless times before, but it now felt infinitely more distracting. He was going to get them killed if he didn't focus better.\\n\\nRich nodded at him. \\\"Ready?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"It's your show,\\\" said Devin before turning his head to acknowledge Karl Berg. \\\"And Karl's.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"With all due respect,\\\" said Karl, who occupied the only other chair set off to the other side of the semicircle, \\\"this is your mother's show. I wish she were hereto be apart of this. For those of you who don't know-or only caught a whiff of the story-everything you see here is the work of a single person: Helen Gray. Devin's mother. Helen took her life under what can only be described as inexplicable circumstances, though I have a theory, for another time. She put this together after trying to warn authorities for years. She even warned me back in 2007, but as most of you know, I was a bit preoccupied with another conspiracy. I just wanted everyone to know that one woman, a true American patriot in every sense of the word, easily spent several thousand hours of her time, at great cost, to assemble this. A truly remarkable accomplishment.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Berg looked teary eyed, which made this difficult for Devin. He simply nodded at Berg, focusing all his remaining energy on not crying. This didn't strike him as an emotional crowd, and the last thing he wanted to do was give them the final nudge toward shelving him during the upcoming operation. Marnie squeezed his hand briefly as Rich raised his coffee mug.\\n\\n\\\"To Helen Gray. To your mother,\\\" he said.\\n\\nRich got down to business the moment the toast ended.\\n\\n\\\"Everyone has been briefed on the overall concept of operations moving forward. Find the Ozarks camp, if it exists. Still a big if. The camp should shed some more light on the size and scope of the sleeper network. If we can directly link it to these sleepers, jackpot. At the very least, finding the camp could put some federal eyes on the situation. If we can get that ball rolling, I'm fairly certain it will grow wings and fly. Backup to that is to target the seventy-three sleepers identified by Helen Gray and look fora crack in their armor. Someone willing to spill the beans. Given the program's history of sacrificing their young, I don't know if that will yield anything short of a tortured confession, if that. Not exactly what we want to package up and deliver to the FBI. G and G. What do you have for us?\\\"\\n\\nGraves nodded at Gupta, who tapped a few keys to bring up an array of faces on the widescreen monitor. Eight faces split into four pairs. Pictures taken at the intersection last night compared to what looked like candid surveillance photographs.\\n\\n\\\"To start, last night's festivities were undoubtedly sponsored by the Russian Federation. We cross-referenced all of the photos taken last night to our database and came up with four hits. Three with suspected ties to the DC consulate and one confirmed to be a consulate employee in New York City. This is going to cause a bit of an international-relations stink.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'm sure Putin will get over it,\\\" said Berg. \\\"But this raises an important issue. Ms. Young will most definitely have to remain off the grid-the entire grid. I know we discussed this earlier, because Baltimore PD will be looking to question her as a possible witness to last night's festivities, but the Russians have a nasty habit of throwing names into the mix out of spite-and in hopes of getting the feds involved. They do this allover the world. The FBI will be keeping an eye out for Ms. Young by the afternoon at the latest. Same for myself and Devin. The entire team, essentially. It won't take them long to figure out who lent me a hand with this. We should also strongly consider taking precautions to thwart facial-recognition software.\\\"\\n\\nAnew set of faces emerged. He recognized one of the faces from the photos he'd taken in front of the Starbucks near the University of Maryland. Gupta nodded at him.\\n\\n\\\"I thought you might find this particularly interesting,\\\" said Gupta. \\\"We did a deep dive through the bowels of the internet and found three deaths directly linked to patients transferred from the W Hotel to area hospitals on the night of your honey-trap sting. Two men, in their early to midfifties, succumbed to the angel of death the morning after they were stabilized. The angel of death being Jolene Rudd, who you photographed following you a few days ago and who we photographed dead in front of the townhouse. She was caught on security camera entering and exiting both of their rooms posing as a member of the Howard University Hospital.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Busy lady,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Even more interesting? Her husband was photographed right next to her outside of the townhouse. Harvey Rudd. Both from Chattanooga, Tennessee,\\\" said Gupta.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Driver's licenses collected at the townhouse put the whole group within easy driving distance around central Tennessee and Kentucky. One from northern Georgia,\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"Odd that they would be working this faraway,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nDevin had a theory. \\\"Not if they were involved with my mother's situation. The Russians would have wanted some continuity for compartmentalization reasons. Right? If they had something to do with intercepting my mother in Tennessee, it makes sense to use them again on a related operation.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very good point,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Who the fuck are these people? They look like people you'd trust to watch your house when you went on vacation,\\\" said Alex, one of the most nondescript people Devin had ever met, by design, no doubt.\\n\\n\\\"Based on their ages,\\\" said Berg, \\\"I'd say they were planted herein the early nineties, right after the Soviet Union collapsed. Possibly for the express purpose of supporting the sleeper network Helen discovered. I think the connection to DEVTEK needs to be considered. What role does Brian Chase fill at the company? The Russians clearly wanted something from him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We weren't given those details,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"DEVTEK is primarily an information security company,\\\" said Graves. \\\"Deep ties to the Department of Defense and pretty much every government agency that requires secure mobile communications. Rumor has it that the CIA accepted their recent bid on a classified CIA request for proposal-which my research suggests is a groundbreaking, modular communications encryption system. A one-size-fits-all, easy-to-implement encryption solution for computers, office phones, mobile phones, radios. It would basically create an interoperable, secure communications platform usable across agencies and across the spectrum of assets within an agency or group. A CIA officer on the India-Pakistani border could contact an available air-support asset with their satellite phone and direct an airstrike on a high-value target of opportunity. Normally that would require a UHF radio with encryption compatible with the aircraft's system. A logistical nightmare. This would streamline everything. It's a game changer.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"That sounds like the kind of system the Russians would love to corrupt or steal,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Or both,\\\" added Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"If they were running a honey trap, sounds like they needed away into the company,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nBerg shook his head. \\\"I don't know. Why use a team on the verge of retirement for that? I know that springing a honey trap isn't complicated, but following through with the blackmail side of an operation is tricky. Especially if you're asking someone to commit a crime. Not something you'd put in Harvey and Jolene Rudd's hands. I think this was more of a one-and-done situation. My guess is they were trying to get him to quit the company, so someone could take his place. Whoever filled his shoes is most likely another one of these second-generation sleepers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So there's more of these things out there,\\\" said Emily Miralles.\\n\\nDevin liked her use of the word things to describe the sleepers. Like manufactured goods.\\n\\n\\\"We have to assume there are more,\\\" said Berg. \\\"In total, possibly twice the number Helen discovered. The rest of them hidden in tech companies like DEVTEK, where they can remain mostly anonymous-and do untold damage. That's why it's so important to get a look at this camp. If it exists. There's always the possibility that it doesn't. She spent a significant amount of time looking for it and came up empty handed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Locating the camp appears to be the tricky part,\\\" said Rich. \\\"But Gray has been right about everything else up to now, so this is where we start. Graves?\\\"\\n\\nGraves started typing, and a list of names filled the left third of the screen. A map of the United States filled the remaining two-thirds-red dots appearing across the country. Devin guessed immediately that they were looking at a list of the 109 sleepers and a map corresponding to their locations. Frighteningly, but not surprisingly, a majority of them resided around Washington, DC. The rest were scattered across the country, corresponding with a major military base, state capital, or larger city.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"For obvious reasons, we'll remove anyone connected to law enforcement or the military from the list,\\\" said Graves.\\n\\nAbout thirty names disappeared from the left side of the screen, their red dots vanishing with them.\\n\\n\\\"We went through the rest of the names and disqualified anyone with a sensitive or anon-call position instate or federal government, along with anyone at a high-enough level in that we might be running an outsize risk by grabbing them. Anyone protected for sure.\\\"\\n\\nThe list dropped to less than twenty names.\\n\\n\\\"That doesn't leave us a lotto work with,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Even less if we want to avoid five-day car rides,\\\" said Graves, clicking his mouse and eliminating everyone west of the Rockies.\\n\\nTwelve names remained.\\n\\n\\\"We may as well focus on opportunities within easy or easier driving distance of the Ozarks,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"That leaves us with Susan Belker. Secretary of state for Missouri,\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"Too high profile,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Harrison Jeffries. Deputy chief of staff to the attorney general in Illinois?\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"That's a possibility.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Or William Barber, the supervising deputy attorney general for the litigation division in Indiana?\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"Let's look at Barber's profile,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"These seem like low-profile jobs for Russian sleeper agents,\\\" said Scott.\\n\\n\\\"State-level secretary of state is a stepping-stone toward governor, which can launch a national political career,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Deputy chief of staff to the AG puts you in a position to run for AG, and failing that, an appointment to the state supreme court or US district court. The sky's the limit from there. Politics. Higher courts. Same with a supervising deputy attorney general position. Governor. AG. Courts. Politics. These are solid roles.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Barber's face appeared on the screen.\\n\\n\\\"William Barber. Forty-four years of age. Married to Stacy Barber. Same age. She works as an IT specialist at Defenders in Indianapolis. That's an ADT subsidiary.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"As in the home security company?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Yes. ADT bought them out a few years ago,\\\" said Gupta. \\\"That's actually good news. We have some regularly updated, custom hack kits for ADT systems. We can shut it down so it'll look like it's still working.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's a disturbing thought,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Just a little,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nGraves continued. \\\"They have two children, David and Melissa. Sixteen and fifteen years old, respectively. All-American family.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's how it's supposed to look,\\\" said Berg. \\\"What do you think, Rich?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Can you bring up an image of their neighborhood?\\\" asked Rich.\\n\\nGupta brought up a Google Earth satellite image of a wooded lot on a golf course. An expansive patio featuring a pool and hot tub. The level of detail they could glean about the property from this publicly available tool was disturbing.\\n\\n\\\"Nice and private. Easy access to the backyard from the golf course. We won't even have to drive up to the house, until we're ready to leave. And it doesn't look like a gated community,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Can you confirm that?\\\"\\n\\nThe image shifted a few times, zooming into street level on a few of the roads leading into the neighborhoods surrounding the golf course. No gates.\\n\\n\\\"I say we start with William Barber,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Looks about as good as it gets,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Not too far of a drive from the Ozarks, if we manage to strike gold.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Seven hours and thirty-seven minutes,\\\" said Gupta.\\n\\n\\\"Harrison Jeffries will be our backup plan,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Rich?\\\" said Marnie. \\\"Or Karl?\\\"\\n\\nRich took a sip of his coffee before answering. \\\"Yeah?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why don't we just digitally package this entire room and send it to every media outlet in the country? Put it in their hands and let the chips fall where they may. Post it online if they won't take it seriously,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"I'm not doubting this team's abilities, but we are talking about along shot strategy here. Exposing the entire network, or at least what Helen uncovered, would effectively shut it down, right?\\\"\\n\\nRich glanced at Berg, who addressed what Devin considered to bean excellent suggestion.\\n\\n\\\"It's tempting, but here's why I fear it won't work,\\\" said Berg. \\\"One: The Russians will deny everything and feign outrage. Two: We have things like due process, courts, evidentiary standards, and a whole list of other safeguards designed to protect our own citizens, and everyone on Helen's list is entitled to them, particularly the second-generation sleepers who were born in the US. The names would be public, so the government couldn't pull any of their secret shenanigans. And all of the first generation is deceased, so they can't confess. Wilson was the last alleged sleeper, and Helen shot him to death after stuffing him in the back of her trunk. This is sounding crazier by the minute to the public and the ACLU-and the Department of Justice task force assembled to investigate this bombshell conspiracy theory.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But it would draw an unhealthy amount of attention to the conspiracy-and the network,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Stopping it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Maybe. Maybe not. The alleged sleepers would leave their jobs, because that's what a normal person assumed by colleagues to be a spy would do, so we would have accomplished that much. But then what? The most dangerous sleepers maybe the ones your mother didn't find.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"This would make national headlines. Defense and technology companies would start to dig into their employees' backgrounds,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"Especially employees that fit the profile.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Would it make national headlines?\\\" asked Berg. \\\"Because of the lack of any verifiable evidence, even the National Enquirer would pass on the story. The libel danger would be very real. Anyone losing their job anywhere to the McCarthy-esque purge that followed would have a strong case against whichever media outlet ran the story. This would have to be published online, anonymously, and my guess is that a few billion dollars'worth of Russian-backed Bitcoin would quickly push the story into online obscurity. I'm not saying we won't end up taking this public at some point. But we need tangible evidence before we consider putting this out there, because we'll only get one shot at bringing this into the public sphere-and it'll need to be our best shot.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Then we do it the hard way,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"In my experience,\\\" said Rich, \\\"there is no other way.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I knew he was going to say that,\\\" said Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The Jeep Wrangler crept along the rutted, gravel-dirt road, Felix Orlov rapidly alternating his attention between the map on his satellite phone screen and the seemingly impenetrable, untamed forest passing down the right side of their vehicle. He couldn't imagine trying to reach this place in the dead of winter. The 6.2-mile trip up Bear Creek Mountain Road on a clear June day had been sketchy enough.\\n\\nHe could see why this had been chosen as a cache point, even if it was a little extreme. Nobody was likely to stumble onto it. Since turning off the paved road that forked into this one, they hadn't seen a soul. Only a few closed gates clearly marked with NOT RESPASSING signs. Isolated from prying eyes, but less than an hour from Interstate 80. Once on the interstate, they could be in any major city on the East Coast within six to seven hours or most Midwest cities within eight to nine hours.\\n\\nThat said, he didn't anticipate them staying here for long. This was more of an equipment run than anything.\\n\\nThey'd grab all the gear they might need and wait until night to shuttle it back to the two RVs parked at a campground closer to the interstate. None of the sites available at the campground had been entirely private. Transferring a dozen or so overstuffed nylon duffel bags from the Jeeps to the RVs was a sight he'd rather keep concealed from the public. From there, they'd wait for further instructions, possibly relocating to a more private site.\\n\\nHe hadn't been provided with their next destination, which either meant Pichugin was releasing the information in stages for security reasons or that they didn't have a location on the team's target. He got the impression from Pichugin's proxy that it was the latter.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I see something,\\\" said Oleg, slowing the Jeep to a crawl.\\n\\nHe'd worked with Oleg fora number of years now, mostly in Europe and Asia, where Pichugin needed them the most. Like Felix, he spoke fluent English, with no hint of an accent, which had made him a shoo-in for this trip. Similarly, he was former Russian Federation Spetsnaz. Along with Valerie and Oksana, who drove the Jeep behind them, they made up the core direct-action element of his team.\\n\\nKsenia, their electronic surveillance specialist, and Lashev, a police-trained sniper, had remained behind with the RVs. Maybe not the best decision, given that they spoke only broken, heavily Russian-accented English, but he needed his best people on the cache mission-just in case the location had been compromised.\\n\\n\\\"We should be right on top of the entrance,\\\" said Felix, putting down the phone.\\n\\n\\\"Looks like a break in the trees... and agate,\\\" said Oleg, pulling as far over to the left side of the road as possible to make room for the tight turn.\\n\\nHe cut the wheel sharply to the right and pointed them directly at a rickety wood gate partially overgrown with thin, new growth from the adjacent bushes. Felix hopped out of the Jeep and approached the gate, which turned out to be significantly more solid and secure than it appeared. The dilapidated-looking wood had been affixed to a thick steel barrier, which was latched to a metal post. The latch was secured in place by a fist-size, heavy-duty combination lock. He reached over the gate and lifted the lock so he could align the four numbers to match the code he'd received.\\n\\nWith the lock open, he pushed the gate inward, surprised that it moved almost effortlessly. He waved the Jeeps through and locked the gate behind them before getting back into his seat for the rest of the journey, which he had been told spanned about seven hundred yards on a hardened 4× 4 trail. The trip from the gate to the cabin turned out to be smoother than the ride up Bear Creek Mountain Road. At several points along the gently twisting dirt road, he saw evidence of recently chainsawed trees, which had likely fallen during a recent storm and blocked the approach. The cache location was obviously well maintained.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The road opened into a football field– size, slightly overgrown clearing, a modest two-story log cabin with a green metal roof standing in its center. Solar panels lined the south side of the roof. A sizable metal shed sat about ten yards from the house. It looked large enough to house a pair of ATVs, possibly more. An exhaust vent poking through its sloped roofline suggested it might contain a generator.\\n\\n\\\"Pull up to the front porch,\\\" he said, rolling his window down and motioning for the other Jeep to do the same.\\n\\nHe got out and approached the long porch, stopping short of the stairs and putting his hands on his hips. The rest of the team gathered around him.\\n\\n\\\"Looks self-contained,\\\" said Valerie. \\\"Kind of elaborate for some kind of Soviet-era weapons cache.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It was probably just a concrete cellar atone point,\\\" said Felix. \\\"More like an underground shelter than anything else.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"A Pichugin upgrade,\\\" said Oleg. \\\"In the middle of Pennsylvania.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. And his proxy said we had access to more of these around the country, if needed, along with an unlimited travel budget. Whatever he's up to here must be serious,\\\" said Felix. \\\"We need to keep that in mind moving forward. I'd like to be around to spend the money he's paying us.\\\"\\n\\nHe stepped onto the porch and unlatched the weather-sealed faux mailbox next to the door, revealing a touch pad and biometric scanner. Referencing the message sent to him less than an hour ago on his satellite phone, he entered a ten-digit code and waited for instructions. The screen asked him to press his index finger on his right hand against the scanner, followed by the thumb of his left hand. Anew instruction appeared on the screen.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Oksana. I need your thumb immediately,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThe dark-haired operative smirked and flipped him the middle finger.\\n\\n\\\"The digital counter on the screen says you have seven seconds to press your right thumb against the scanner,\\\" said Felix. \\\"Six. Five.\\\"\\n\\nShe scrambled up the porch and pressed her thumb against the glass, stopping the countdown at two seconds. A series of heavy-duty mechanical clicks came from the door, the screen now indicating they could proceed.\\n\\nHe patted heron the shoulder. \\\"Thank you, Oksana. You can go back to making jokes now that we're not going to be vaporized in an explosion.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Don't bean asshole,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"That's my job,\\\" he said, grabbing the door handle and nudging the hefty door inward.\\n\\n\\\"Is it stuck?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"No. It's heavy like a vault door,\\\" said Felix, reaching his hand inside. \\\"And it must be five inches thick.\\\"\\n\\nThey pushed it open together, a motion-triggered bank of fluorescent lights above revealing exactly why the designers had installed a vault-level door. Racks of military-grade weapons lined three of the walls, suspended a few feet above drawers labeled with different bullet calibers. Pistols. Assault rifles. Light machine guns. Submachine guns. Sniper rifles. He stepped inside, noting that the windows had been for show only. Not a crack of light peeped in where the windows should be. The wall facing the porch was stacked with night vision goggles, binoculars, weapons scopes of all varieties, tactical radio rigs, helmets, and several types of body armor carriers. And this was just the outer room. A keypad-guarded door satin the middle of the interior wall, leading to the'heavy stuff,\\\" as Pichugin's proxy had stated. Stuff they were to'show restraint when selecting,\\\" whatever that meant.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Welcome, Kmart shoppers,\\\" said Oksana.\\n\\nWhile the team walked around, inspecting the weapons cache, Felix entered the code to open the second door, which proved to be equally as substantial as the first-fora good reason. After shoving it several inches inward, he caught a glimpse of a military-grade revolver-style grenade launcher inside. A few more inches took his breath away. Pichugin could start a small war with the weapons in this cabin. And there were more of these across the United States?\\n\\n\\\"If this room is Kmart,\\\" grunted Felix, pushing the door all the way open, \\\"then this one is Harrods.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie took the motel stairs in a hurry, eager to return with a bag full of soft drinks she'd acquired from the vending machine room next to the lobby. She'd announced her intention to run out and grab a Mountain Dew a few minutes before their scheduled briefing, unintentionally inviting close to a dozen requests from the rest of the team. She'd gotten to the midpoint landing of the U-shaped stairs when she heard an argument above her. Karl Berg and Rich in a heated debate-about Devin. She slowly made her way up the rest of the stairs, taking in the whispered dispute as she approached the second-floor walkway.\\n\\n\\\"You have to trust me on this,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Devin has a sixth sense when it comes to surveillance. The FBI's Special Surveillance Group is about as elite as it gets. He spent twelve years learning the tricks of the trade, then landed a position with MINERVA-against all odds. His mother poisoned that well, so to speak, and they still hired him, because he's that good at what he does. He's an asset to the team.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm not disputing his surveillance or countersurveillance skills,\\\" said Rich. \\\"But my team is pretty well versed in the same game, and we've been doing it for decades with our very lives on the line, which trumps Devin's experience, in my opinion.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't agree,\\\" said Berg. \\\"He's been one step ahead of everyone from day one. He busted the team following him from his apartment. He detected all three of the operatives you placed outside of the Airbnb townhouse. And he anticipated the ambush a few blocks away from the townhouse.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not soon enough,\\\" said Rich. \\\"They survived because we rescued them.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie stepped onto the walkway, immediately drawing their attention. \\\"We survived because of Devin's quick thinking. He was able to assess threats from multiple directions and make a split-second decision about what to do next. The right decision. It bought us enough time for your team to respond.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"My concern is with the direct-action side of future operations,\\\" said Rich. \\\"We don't always have the luxury of separating combat from the surveillance.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Devin can hold his own in a gunfight,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"I saw that firsthand.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And I'm absolutely useless in any kind of fight,\\\" said Berg. \\\"But nobody is trying to sideline me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's because you've always understood your role,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I'm worried about Devin getting in over his head if he starts swimming outside of his area of expertise.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What about me?\\\" said Marnie. \\\"I'm just a former Marine helicopter pilot.\\\"\\n\\nRich shook his head. \\\"The same goes for you. I can't have two nonoperators in the middle of a covert raid. It puts my people at risk. You know how this works, Marnie. Imagine flying into a heavily contested landing zone while you're taking fire from multiple directions-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't need to imagine. I've been there,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"And we didn't sideline new pilots. They flew the same missions as the rest of us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sure. But in a dual-control helicopter, an experienced pilot could takeover at anytime,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"How is this any different?\\\" asked Berg. \\\"In this case, the ratio of experienced operators to inexperienced is more like four to one.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's different,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nBerg shrugged. \\\"Some circumstances and missions maybe different, requiring the sole use of your veteran operators, but tonight's job doesn't meet that threshold.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And when it does?\\\" asked Rich, nodding at Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Neither of us is suicidal, and we're well aware of our limitations,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"I know I'm speaking for Devin when I say that he won't be sidelined without a damn good reason. Same for me.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":283,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Advance the plot as the writer's tale assistant.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 48"},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie Young moved deliberately, frequently scanning the forest along her right flank and constantly recalculating a few variables. The first was cover. As the team crept closer to the cabins, she became more aware of the threat axis to the southwest, which forced a running evaluation of the best tree to use to block incoming gunfire-in the event of an ambush. The second variable was Devin.\n\nShe had no doubt he was invisible when tailing an espionage suspect through the urban jungle of DC, blending seamlessly into Metro station crowds and drawing no suspicion on the streets. But none of those skills seemed to transfer over to sneaking through a pitch-dark forest-even with night vision. The little mental energy Marnie had to spare beyond herself had been focused on the slew of noises Devin made, and whether that might require her to seek cover immediately.\n\nThe team clearly felt the same strain. Rich had halted the group at least eight times after Devin stumbled, scraped a tree, ran into a low-hanging branch, or tripped over a root. She was relieved they had almost reached the bottom edge of the northeast cabin wing, even though that meant the start of an infinitely more dangerous phase of the mission. Part of her wanted to suggest that Devin stay at the first set of cabins, to provide rear security. Any excuse to keep him from giving up the team's position as they infiltrated deeper into the camp.\n\nShe glanced in his direction, catching him stopped in front of a branch, trying to find it with his hand. Once his hand brushed across it, he ducked and continued forward. At least he was learning. The night vision goggles played havoc with a person's depth perception, particularly at short distances. It took some getting used to. Marnie probably knew this better than anyone here, since she had flown entire missions at night, relying on night vision goggles. With little margin for error when landing in tight spots, she had mastered the complexities of night vision rather quickly. The lives of her crew and the Marines she transported had depended on it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The forward element of the team reached the first set of three cabins a few minutes later, Rich halting the rest of the group in the forest. They waited while Emily, Alex, and Scott each took positions behind one of the cabins and used binoculars to peer into the camp.\n\n\"This is Scott. Overall, we're looking at three fairly even rows of very evenly spaced cabins. I see what looks like a longer cabin in the middle row, about five cabins down. Probably a bathhouse. A straight, ten-foot-wide dirt trail runs from here all the way to the center of the X. I can vaguely see a few of the buildings in the center of the camp from here. The third row of cabins, next to Emily, is connected to the main trail by a dirt path. The cabins look abandoned and neglected, but not completely ignored. I see evidence of weed whacking along the perimeter of the cabins. Alex?\"\n\n\"Hold on,\" said Rich. \"Can you count the number of cabins in each row?\"\n\n\"Standby,\" said Scott.\n\nRich turned and signaled for the rear team to move forward. He gathered them in a loose huddle when they arrived.\n\n\"Definitely bigger than your mother's numbers suggested,\" said Rich. \"I'm conflicted about how to proceed. Part of me says we go back the way we came and try to pitch this to the FBI using some of Karl's contacts and mine. I have the ear of a US senator that should be able to help. But that approach is like along, slow-moving train. Once it gets going, it'll be hard to stop, but getting it moving at all is the big trick. And getting it up to speed will give this circus all the time it needs to pull up its tent stakes and flee town. By the time the FBI finally checks this place out, Stalin's traveling sleeper carnival will belong gone.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What's the faster-moving option?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"I don't know if there is one,\" said Rich, \"other than document the shit out of this place and try to identify some of the campers.\"\n\n\"We could grab a few,\" said Jared.\n\n\"I don't think that'll strengthen our case with the FBI,\" said Rich. \"I think our best play is to get as close as possible and take photographs of the campers, the buildings-everything. I'm starting to think we might spend more time here than I had originally planned. I'd really like to get into a few of those buildings and steal some of their training material. Take pictures while some of the campers are still awake. Attempt a break-in around two or three in the morning?\"\n\n\"Whatever it takes,\" said Devin, everyone else mumbling agreement.\n\n\"How long do we have drone coverage?\" asked Marnie.\n\n\"The drone's enhanced surveillance package puts it at the higher end of the model's takeoff weight range, which taxes the battery,\" said Rich. \"Normally I'd say we had two hours, but the gliding might buy us more time.\"\n\nRich activated his radio. \"OVERWATCH. How long can you keep the drone up? We're thinking about extending our stay.\"\n\n\"I need to take the drone off station around twelve forty-five to land it safely. If we ditch the drone, and I time its last pass right, you'll have coverage until a little after one.\"\n\n\"The gliding didn't help the battery situation?\" said Rich.\n\n\"Negative. It came out as awash. Actually, we may have lost battery time. The altitude hikes eat up power.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" said Rich, ending the chat with Gupta. \"There's your answer. If we stick around fora little breaking and entering, we'll have to do it partially blind, unless everyone up there goes to bed within the next twenty minutes. It's eleven thirty-five right now, and I wouldn't risk cracking open one of those doors until everyone has been down fora good hour or so.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"I think it's worth it,\" said Devin."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We need to leave herewith more than pictures.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" said Marnie. \"If we can do it without waking them up. Don't forget that we're dealing with brainwashed zealots here, and this is sacred ground to them. All bets are off if someone raises the alarm.\"\n\n\"You bring up a really good point. I hadn't thought of it that way,\" said Rich. \"Come to think of it, they probably have some kind of emergency procedure for trespassers that get too close, whether they stumble inhere on purpose or unintentionally. I'd be willing to bet there's a history of unexplained disappearances in this county. That said, I still think we should stick around and try.\"\n\n\"WWKD,\" said Jared.\n\n\"Huh?\" said Marnie.\n\n\"What would Karl do?\" said Jared. \"When in doubt. WWKD.\"\n\n\"I like it,\" said Marnie, stifling a laugh. \"So. What would Karl do?\"\n\n\"Something a lot more drastic than a late-night break-in,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Like what?\" asked Devin.\n\nDon't encourage him, she wanted to say. Marnie had a good idea what Karl would do.\n\n\"He'd position most of us in a line at the edge of the camp center, facing the active community branch. Anyone that jumped out of their cabin to investigate our noise would experience a steel-jacketed aneurysm.\"\n\n\"What if they all came out?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"A massacre,\" said Marnie, not entirely believing this idea hadn't already crossed Rich's mind.\n\n\"We'd be acting in self-defense,\" said Rich. \"And in the interest of the United States.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He had thought of it. Had she just stumbled on some kind of soft coup, unintentionally exposed by Jared's careless joke?\n\n\"We're not going that route,\" said Devin. \"I'm not saying we don't setup security when we start poking around the buildings, but we won't beholding the line if we stir up a hornet's nest. We defend ourselves according to the ROE, as we retreat to the boats.\"\n\n\"That's the plan,\" said Rich.\n\n\"It better be,\" said Marnie.\n\nRich looked as though he wanted to get the last word in but thought better of it. Her earpiece crackled.\n\n\"This is Scott. We've compared notes. The outer rows have thirty to thirty-five cabins. It's impossible to get an exact count from here. The middle is harder to determine because of the bathhouses, but I'd say around twenty-five.\"\n\n\"Anyone good with math?\" said Rich.\n\nDevin was ready with an answer. \"Three hundred and forty cabins. Assuming each cabin houses one family, which looks to be the case, but needs to be confirmed-we're looking at close to seven hundred second-generation sleepers instead of the one hundred and forty-six she identified. Assuming a twenty-five percent attrition rate, which is roughly what she calculated, we're looking at around six hundred sleepers embedded in US society instead of one hundred and nine.\"\n\nRich and Devin were right. They had to do more than take pictures. The stakes were too high.\n\n\"What would Karl do?\" she said, turning a few heads. \"Without killing every man, woman, and child in the camp?\"\n\n\"That's the trick here,\" said Rich. \"In this business, sometimes you pull a tiger out of the hat instead of a bunny.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Then we'll have to feel around inside the hat fora while before the big show,\" said Marnie. \"Sit on the place until we're certain we can investigate the buildings without pulling out a tiger.\"\n\n\"WWMD,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Exactly,\" she said.\n\nWhat would Marnie do?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Felix Orlov woke from alight nap, the phone on his chest buzzing. He gripped the phone and sat upon the shiny concrete hangar floor, taking a few moments to regain his bearings. When the phone kept buzzing, his stomach sank. Felix assumed he'd just received a text message with a code to access a mission update on the dark website. He stared at the unfamiliar number for another second, surprised they had called him directly. Pichugin's proxy never arranged direct call protocol.\n\n\"Hello?\" he said, accepting the call.\n\n\"Give the order to start the helicopters. I'll wait.\"\n\nThe voice was modulated to disguise the speaker. Felix yelled at Oleg, who stood in the open pedestrian doorway adjacent to the closed hangar bay door. \"Get the helicopters ready for takeoff! Everyone else up and checking their gear.\"\n\nOleg bolted out of the hangar, while the rest of the team shook off their naps and got to their feet.\n\n\"The order has been given,\" said Felix.\n\n\"The pilots will fly you to the two athletic fields north of SITE ZERO. One helicopter in each field. You'll lead the team to the coordinates I will text to your phone the moment I hangup. The coordinates correspond with a hostile team's boat infiltration point. Friendly forces at SITE ZERO will engage the hostile team and force them to retreat. Our assumption is that they will immediately return to the boats at their original infiltration point, where you will ambush the hostile team.\"\n\nThe high-pitched whine of the helicopters' engines resonated inside the hangar. The blades would reach their full rotor speed in just under a minute.\n\n\"We'll pay everyone on your team fifty thousand US dollars per prisoner taken, but there is no penalty for killing the entire team. The hostile force is comprised of nine mercenaries. Nongovernment affiliated. Seven of them to be considered top-tier special operators. The other two have a high level of military firearms proficiency. Do not take any catastrophic risks with your team to capture any of them. You're up against a highly skilled crew. Handle them as your equals.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Understood."},{"from":"gpt","value":"What if they don't retreat from SITE ZERO?\" asked Felix.\n\n\"I'll be indirect contact with the group at the site. If they can't force a retreat, I'll call you directly and redirect your team.\"\n\nOleg reappeared in the doorway and gave him a thumbs-up before assembling the team around the door.\n\n\"The helicopters are ready,\" said Felix.\n\n\"Don't let me hold you up.\" The call disconnected.\n\nHe jogged over to the team and repeated their orders, leaving out the part about prisoner bounties. Handle them as equals told Felix everything he needed to know about the hostile force. He had to kill all of them quickly and efficiently, or they would extract a heavy price from his team. Fifty thousand dollars was tempting, but not that tempting-to him. He couldn't speak for the rest of the team's financial situations. His life was worth far more than a measly fifty grand, and he wasn't about to put it in the hands of someone who needed a quick money fix to payoff a gambling debt.\n\nSatisfied that everyone understood the parameters of the mission, he turned them loose. They split up into two groups and boarded their assigned helicopters. Felix followed Oksana and Lashev, their sniper, to the leftmost Bell 429 helicopter, where they climbed inside, slid the wide side door into place, and immediately went to work donning their equipment.\n\nThe helicopter lifted off a moment later, a feeling of heaviness overtaking him until the helicopter's flight leveled off, headed toward SITE ZERO. The pilot told him it would take no more than four minutes to reach the landing zone, which put them all under a bit of a time crunch to slip into their full combat kit. They worked methodically, starting with their plate carrier vests and moving onto their drop holsters. Rifles attached to one-point carry slings next, followed by helmets and night vision."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"One minute!\" yelled the pilot.\n\nHe was glad Pichugin had arranged for two helicopters. This particular Bell model was rated for seven passengers, enough to ferry the team to the site, but the cabin felt cramped enough with the three of them unloading and swinging gear around. He couldn't imagine trying to pull this off with the seven operatives in the same space. Not in four minutes. He patted himself down again to make sure he hadn't missed something. All good.\n\nWith his personal gear squared away, he went to work on the last duffel bag with Oksana. Together, they wrestled the M249 LMG (light machine gun) out of the bag and onto the rear passenger bench seat. He retrieved one of the seventy-five-round-drum magazines from the bag and inserted it into the magazine well. All a gunner had to do at this point was release the safety and pull the charging handle back. Four additional drums satin each bag.\n\n\"Should we bring one of these along?\" asked Oksana. \"The firepower might come in handy.\"\n\nHe thought about it fora moment. The light machine gun's high rate of fire would certainly pack a punch, but nobody on the team had much experience on the M249. Nearly all their operational time had been spent behind the gunsights of Russian-made weapons or similar knockoffs, which was most likely why the arsenal in Pennsylvania contained several AK variants. Everyone on the team, except for their sniper, had chosen a compact version of the AK-12 assault rifle.\n\n\"How many times have you fired one of these?\" asked Felix.\n\n\"A few times. It's not the easiest weapon to handle. The rate of fire is extremely high.\"\n\nHe shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was throw a wrench in the works at the last minute. Especially if their opponents were as skilled as Pichugin's proxy had suggested. If their mission changed and they needed the firepower to dislodge the hostiles from the camp, he could send a team back to grab them."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Let's stick with what we know,\" said Felix.\n\n\"Thirty seconds!\" said the pilot.\n\nThirty seconds until they hit the ground running-literally. The landing zone and SITE ZERO were nearly equidistant from the ambush site-a race he had no intention of losing if the hostile team retreated faster than Pichugin's planners had anticipated. Second place was an unceremonious death in the Ozark Mountains."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin checked the cabin door, surprised to discover that the doorknob turned. They'd moved through twelve sets of cabins while working their way toward the center of camp, finding all of them securely locked. He'd taken a step closer to the door to push it inward when a hand clamped down on his arm. Mike shook his head and motioned for him to stand back, which suddenly struck Devin as a more sensible course of action. Was he really moments from pushing in the only open door they'd found out of the thirty-odd they'd checked? Marnie must have been shaking her head.\n\nMike crouched and pointed his rifle at the door. \"Rich. We found an unlocked door.\"\n\n\"Be right there.\"\n\nDevin backed up next to Marnie, who knelt in the recently cut weeds several feet behind Mike, her rifle pointed down the long, empty gap between rows that extended all the way to the center of the camp. Unlike the dirt path, several trees grew right up in the middle of the gap, mostly obscuring their view of the buildings. Devin raised his rifle and covered their flank, not that they expected any trouble from the forest.\n\nRich patted his shoulder as he passed by, quickly joining Mike near the door. The two of them conversed fora moment before Rich very gently turned the knob and opened the door far enough for Mike to take a quick peek inside. He nodded at Rick before disappearing into the cabin, his head poking out a few seconds later.\n\n\"It's clear,\" he said.\n\nRich turned to Devin and Marnie. \"The moment of truth. If this is a two-family cabin, we're defaulting to WWKD.\"\n\nA two-family cabin meant they were potentially looking at twelve hundred sleepers instead of six hundred. If that turned out to be the case, Devin might have to reconsider his position regarding the building break-in scenario, consequences be damned, whether they pulled the rabbit or the tiger. He got the feeling Marnie would agree."},{"from":"human","value":"They followed Rich inside, Devin instantly relieved to see a full bed frame on one side and a bunk bed on the other."},{"from":"gpt","value":"A single-family arrangement. Aside from the beds, the dank-smelling cabin contained a nightstand between the beds, wooden chests at the foot of the beds, and a small table and chair set for four near the window. He didn't see any electrical outlets or overhead lights.\n\n\"Pretty sparse,\" whispered Rich.\n\n\"That's what I was thinking,\" said Devin. \"Camp Stalin looks more like a gulag than a future training ground for sleepers.\"\n\n\"My guess is that the main buildings area little more luxurious,\" said Rich. \"The gulags didn't have swimming pools.\"\n\n\"They probably use the pool exclusively for swim training,\" said Marnie. \"This place has a very deprived, utilitarian feel.\"\n\n\"On purpose,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Like a cult,\" she said. \"I wouldn't be surprised if the entire camp looked like this.\"\n\n\"We'll find out later tonight,\" said Rich. \"I'm thinking we work our way up the rows, until we're five or so cabins away from the center, then hunker down until the camp goes night night. Move up to the cabins closest to the center and give it another hour before we send a few people out to scout the buildings.\"\n\n\"Works for me,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Sounds like a plan,\" said Devin.\n\n\"We won't have drone coverage, but I don't think we'll need it at that point. If the sentries at the dock haven't turned in for the night by the time the drone goes off station, I'll position one of the snipers to cover that approach. We'll probably find a trail leading to the dock from the center of the camp. It doesn't make sense for the campers to trudge through the woods after they're dropped off. Hopefully, they'll go straight to their cabins.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Getting a good look inside those buildings takes priority,\" said Marnie. \"They probably have fairly extensive files on every kid here. Right? They'd have to in order to monitor the kids\" progress, chronicle their loyalty-whatever they do here. That could be the big ticket that wins an FBI raid or at the very least shines a bright light on every family named in the files.\"\n\n\"I like the way you think,\" said Rich, turning to Devin before leaving the cabin. \"She's a keeper.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" he said, not sure that was an appropriate response.\n\nMarnie left without saying a word, so he decided not to pursue it. Devin followed and crouched next to her in the gap between cabins, rifles pointed toward the center of camp, as Rich rejoined his team on the dirt path. Mike softly shut the cabin door and paused at the top of the wooden stoop. Marnie scooted behind Devin in a hurry, stopping at the foot of the stairs.\n\n\"Did you hear it, too?\" she asked.\n\nMike remained almost perfectly still, his head slowly canting to the side as though he was listening intently for something.\n\n\"What did you-\"\n\nThen Devin heard it. Just fora few seconds. A distant, deep rhythmic thumping sound that faded in and out. Mike turned to them.\n\n\"Take cover behind the cabin,\" he said before hopping down from the stoop. \"There's an airport nearby. Probably the last flight out of-\"\n\nMuzzle flashes erupted from the center of camp, bullets snapping overhead and thunking into the cabins-along with the sharp crackle of automatic gunfire. Marnie yanked Devin behind the cabin, moments before gunfire sliced through the space he'd just occupied. Mike slammed to the ground next to him, a few feet beyond the corner of the cabin. Devin leaned out and grabbed one of his shoulder straps with both hands, hauling him out of the line of fire."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mike was in bad shape, clutching his throat and cycling his legs wildly. Devin raised his night vision goggles and went in fora closer look, warm blood spraying his face. Mike's hands were soaked, blood pumping through his fingers. Devin triggered his radio.\n\n\"Mike's down. Hit in the neck,\" he said. \"It looks really bad.\"\n\n\"Copy that. Emily will be therein a second,\" said Rich.\n\n\"You got this?\" asked Marnie, moving to the corner of the cabin.\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said, trying to move Mike's hands to get a better look.\n\nHe couldn't budge them. Marnie crouched low and fired a few sustained bursts toward the center of camp. She ducked back as bullets splintered the corner above her head and slapped into the cabin behind them. A dark figure appeared behind the middle cabin, racing in their direction.\n\n\"Emily's inbound! Give her some cover fire!\" said Devin.\n\nMarnie emptied the rifle magazine as Emily sprinted across the gap. The operative stumbled halfway, losing control of her forward momentum and crashing next to Mike.\n\n\"Shit!\" Emily said, pounding the ground several times with a fist and groaning.\n\n\"You okay?\" said Devin.\n\n\"I'm fine,\" she said, immediately going to work on Mike. \"Bullet zipped my leg.\"\n\nIf anyone on the team could help him, it would be her. She'd stitched up Devin's shin wound like a practiced surgeon.\n\n\"Help me move his hands,\" she said, straddling Mike.\n\nHe planted his knees behind Mike's head, and together they forced his hands apart. Devin kept them pinned against the ground while she assessed the wound. Mike resisted every step of the way, but his strength had clearly diminished since the first time Devin had tried to remove his hands. After a few more seconds of poking and prodding around the profusely bleeding bullet hole, Emily shook her head."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Mike is gone."},{"from":"gpt","value":"There's nothing I can do for him. Bullet went straight through his neck and ripped open one of his carotid arteries.\" Emily spoke over the net. \"Rich. Mike is KIA. He bled out.\"\n\n\"Copy. You're responsible for Devin and Marnie now. I'm sending Jared in your direction. Start laying down suppressing fire so we can give our snipers some breathing room to do their magic. We'll have this under control in no time.\"\n\nRich transmitted over the radio. \"OVERWATCH, this is RIFFRAFF. We've been engaged by automatic fire originating near the center of camp. Mike is KIA. Need a SITREP.\"\n\n\"Copy. I'll have a SITREP for you in a few seconds.\"\n\nAnother long burst of bullets kicked up dirt in the gap and tore into the cabin behind them, leaving Devin with the distinct impression that Rich's pep talk with Emily was more wishful thinking than reality. The drumbeat of nearby helicopter rotors reinforced that feeling."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Graves watched in horror as the team's situation shifted within a matter of seconds. Several automatic weapons had opened fire on the team, all located near the center of the camp. The hostile muzzle flashes did not correspond with human heat signatures, suggesting that they were firing from inside the cabins or well-concealed positions he had been unable to identify with the drone's sensors.\n\nThe dozen or so people gathered around the firepits had rushed into action, sprinting to the nearest building, where they disappeared fora few moments-before reappearing with rifles. And now they had two helicopters landing in the fields north of the camp. The team's arrival had obviously been detected, most likely at the shoreline infiltration point, given what he was seeing at the landing fields.\n\n\"I'm taking positive control of the drone,\" said Gupta. \"We only have another minute on this glide path. They're going to need uninterrupted coverage.\"\n\n\"Yep,\" said Graves, taking a few moments to assess the scene before contacting the team. \"RIFFRAFF, this is OVERWATCH. We're taking active control of the drone to pass you continuous information. SITREP follows. A dozen or more armed hostiles are headed toward the concealed gun positions near the center of the camp. From what I can see, they're bringing rifles to the fight. I also have some activity inside the southwest wing of the camp. Small groups forming. No weapons present. How copy?\"\n\n\"Copy all. Are you seeing helicopters nearby?\"\n\nGunfire on Rich's end of the radio call made it hard to decipher what he had said, but Graves caught the gist of it.\n\n\"Affirmative. Two Bell 400-series helicopters landed in the rectangular clearings north of the camp. One in each clearing. Seven hostiles in total exited the helicopters. They're headed east, away from RIFFRAFF, at a rapid pace. My guess is they're going to setup an ambush along your exfiltration route.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Anymore good news?\"\n\n\"The team dropped off by the helicopters looked like serious types. Helmets. Night vision. Body armor. Rifles with suppressors. Moving like professionals. I do not recommend returning to the boats.\"\n\n\"Copy. We're still weighing our options here. Looks like we might be swimming out. Keep the information flowing.\"\n\n\"We can meet you somewhere along the eastern shoreline. We'll squeeze everyone onboard. I'm sending Berg to the marina just south of the conservation area. The boat pickup is looking more and more like the only way out of there.\"\n\n\"We're not out of the fight yet. But I concur. Out.\"\n\nA quick look at the IR camera view suggested otherwise. They couldn't possibly advance toward the center of the camp without sustaining more casualties, and making a run for the boats would prove catastrophic. He tapped Anish's elbow.\n\n\"Prepare an autonomous drone pattern over the camp,\" said Graves. \"My guess is we'll be on a full-speed run to pick them up within minutes.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie sighted in on a muzzle flash through the 4X ACOG scope and pressed her trigger twice, the suppressed rifle biting into her shoulder. Like the other nonsnipers on the team, her rifle scope was not compatible with night vision goggles, so she'd switched from NVGs to the naked eye, which limited her to targeting muzzle flashes or the occasional silhouette. The gunfire at the receiving end of her bullets stopped, but it was impossible to tell if she'd hit the shooter or momentarily discouraged them.\n\nEither outcome accomplished her goal, which was to reduce the level of incoming gunfire to a point where the team's snipers could focus more on shooting and lesson hiding behind cover. The two snipers had higher magnification and thermal scopes, which made targeting unfair against opponents at night. The more time they could spend behind those scopes, the better chance the team had of getting out of this intact.\n\nReturn fire from the camp continued to snap past the corner of the cabin at different heights off the ground, many of them passing well over her head. She got the impression that the hostile gunfire wasn't well aimed. More of a quantity-over-quality situation-though equally deadly if you got caught out in the open at the wrong moment. They'd managed to advance only one set of cabins since the shooting started, the team miraculously suffering nothing more than a few grazing hits like Emily's. Only sheer luck had prevented another casualty, a reality not lost on Rich. He halted them to reassess the situation.\n\nShe fired another series of shots toward a different muzzle blast, pulling back from the corner as along string of bullets stitched through the gap and slapped into the thick wood cabins around her. Devin remained exposed on the other side of the gap, firing several two-shot bursts until his magazine ran dry-seemingly oblivious to the string of bullets that splintered the wood right below his rifle barrel."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He glanced in her direction and shook his head before reloading. She peeked around the corner with the rifle and rapidly pressed her trigger, emptying the few rounds left in her magazine. Emily lay behind the wooden stoop several feet in front of Marnie, her body pressed against the bottom of the cabin, only her rifle and part of her head exposed. Emily fired relentlessly, seemingly changing magazines every third time Marnie leaned out to shoot.\n\n\"Do you need ammo?\" asked Marnie.\n\nEmily had turned to reply when a bullet ricocheted off her helmet, driving her head down. She rolled tight against the cabin and checked her night vision, which looked to be intact. Emily looked up at her.\n\n\"I'm down to three mags!\"\n\nMarnie patted the magazine pouches attached to her plate carrier, finding that she'd expended only two of her eight spares. She removed two and tossed them next to Emily, who snatched one and reloaded her rifle before stuffing the other in an empty pouch on her vest. She gave Marnie a quick thumbs-up and went back to firing. Marnie reloaded and got ready to stick her head and rifle out again.\n\n\"This isn't going anywhere!\" yelled Devin.\n\n\"I know!\"\n\n\"Rich is assessing the situation,\" yelled Emily.\n\nHow long did it take to assess the fact that the mission was scrubbed? If they didn't start making their way to the eastern shoreline very soon, they ran the risk of getting squeezed by the mercenary team dropped off by the helicopters. Devin leaned out to fire and was driven back by a torrent of gunfire. Enough was enough. She triggered her radio.\n\n\"Rich. This is Marnie. We need to start moving east before we get pinched. We're not breaking through to the camp.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Jared and Melendez are starting to make a difference. If we can hold on here for another minute, I think we'll have a shot at breaking through and mopping up this rabble,\" said Rich.\n\n\"I'm more concerned with the hostile team dropped off by the helicopters,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"If we breakthrough to the center,\" said Rich, \"the hostile team will be forced to respond. We can run a counter-ambush.\"\n\n\"We got pictures of the camp. Video evidence of a heavily armed force. The whole enchilada isn't an option anymore,\" she said. \"We need to get out of here now.\"\n\n\"We'll still have to deal with the mercenary team,\" said Rich. \"If they figure out that we've slipped away, they'll hunt us down with the helicopters. Our extremely overcrowded boat won't last very long on the lake. And the Suburban will stick out like a sore thumb from the air on thermal imaging.\"\n\n\"Maybe we just cross the lake and melt into the forest on the other side,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"We'd just be delaying the inevitable,\" said Rich. \"Maybe we could evade the helicopters on foot. It all depends on the helicopters\" surveillance capability.\"\n\n\"Marnie?\" said Devin over the net. \"Can you fly one of those helicopters?\"\n\nHoly shit. With everything going on, they had overlooked the obvious. She could fly them out of here.\n\n\"Yes. I can definitely fly one of those helicopters. No doubt about it.\"\n\nRich cut into the conversation immediately.\n\n\"OVERWATCH, this is RIFFRAFF. Do we have a clear path to the helicopters?\"\n\n\"This is OVERWATCH. The path is clear. The nearest hostiles are at the center of camp roughly five hundred feet away. If you head directly to the nearest helicopter, you'll continue to open that distance. With the thick tree cover, you'll get there fine. The mercenary team is setup about a hundred feet in front of the boats, close to a thousand yards away. Even if they hauled ass, they couldn't beat you there. You're about three hundred and fifty yards from the easternmost clearing. I'll send you a waypoint. Designating the helicopter team RIFFRAFF ONE. Cover team is RIFFRAFF TWO.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Copy. No security on the helicopters?\" asked Rich.\n\n\"No security. I'm seeing a single pilot in each cockpit, buckled up and waiting to takeoff. Could be someone hiding in back. The helicopters are shutdown, so keep that in mind.\"\n\n\"It'll take about a minute to spool up the rotors,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"That'll be along minute,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Not a problem,\" said Rich. \"We'll post security at the edge of the clearing until the helo is ready for takeoff. The trick will be keeping the armed campers from bum-rushing the helicopter. If they see us bolt north, they'll put two and two together pretty fast. We can't afford a running gun battle. It'll slow us down enough for the mercenaries to possibly beat us to the helicopter or arrive at the same time. Or the helicopter will takeoff once everyone figures out what we're up to.\"\n\n\"Rich. This is Jared. Rico and I can stay here and keep firing. Give you guys ahead start before they figure out what's happening. We'll melt away when the jig is up and rendezvous with the speedboat.\"\n\n\"That could work,\" said Rich.\n\n\"This is Emily. They'll know something's wrong the moment we drop down to two guns. I'll stay behind, too. I can move from one side of the middle cabin to the other, firing long bursts. We should probably leave four behind to buy as much time as possible. The whole point of this is to steal one of those helicopters, right? You could shoot the shit out of the other helicopter and eliminate any risk to the boat extraction.\"\n\n\"Scott. You've been volunteered,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Sounds good.\"\n\n\"Good thing I insisted on bringing a helicopter pilot along,\" said Rich."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Yeah. Good thing you didn't try to convince Devin and me to stay behind every step of the way.\"\n\n\"Your next drink is on me,\" said Rich.\n\n\"The next three are on you,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Fair enough,\" said Rich. \"We should probably shift some ammunition around before we takeoff. Everyone flying out of herewith Marnie, cough up some magazines.\"\n\nShe took three of her remaining five rifle magazines and tossed them one by one next to Emily, who glanced back when one of them bounced and hither leg. A quick turn of the head and nod acknowledged the transfer, the shooter's trigger finger never letting up. Devin tossed her one magazine, which skipped across her back and hit the side of the cabin. She grabbed it without looking and reloaded, barely skipping a beat.\n\n\"Devin. Standby to cross the gap,\" Marnie said. \"Emily and I will cover you.\"\n\n\"Ready,\" said Devin.\n\nShe centered her scope's illuminated crosshairs on a muzzle flash and took some slack off the trigger.\n\n\"Now,\" she said, her rifle barking along with Emily's until Devin slammed into the side of the cabin next to her.\n\nHe put a hand on her shoulder and panted from the sprint.\n\n\"You can thank me later,\" said Devin.\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"I bet you never thought you'd fly a helicopter again until a few minutes ago,\" said Devin.\n\nShe chuckled. Devin always had a knack for telling the truth, no matter how ridiculous the circumstances. Marnie just hoped she could pull this off so they could laugh about it later."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin waited behind the cabin, keeping his eye on Rich, who had ventured about fifteen yards into the forest. A fierce gun battle raged behind Devin, the four members of the team who'd volunteered to stay behind increasing the volume of fire to draw attention away from their escape.\n\n\"Devin. You're up. Leapfrog about ten yards past me,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Don't fuck this up,\" he muttered to himself and stepped into the forest.\n\nHe scurried toward Rich, his feet hitting a few roots on the way. Branches weren't a problem anymore-he'd learned to gauge the distances to closer objects better-and it really didn't matter if he snapped a few twigs. Nobody would hear it over the gunfire. He scooted past Rich and settled in behind a thick tree trunk-just glad not to have fallen on his face.\n\n\"Nice job,\" said Rich. \"I don't detect any reaction to our movement so far. Marnie and Alex, same drill. Head past Devin and take cover. If your movement goes unnoticed, we'll linkup at your position and move out from thereat a faster pace.\"\n\n\"Heading out now,\" said Alex.\n\nDevin watched the two of them duck and weave through the trees, moving at a fast clip. They passed in front of him and halted behind a dense stand of brush about twenty yards away, rifles pointed toward the center of camp. He caught some movement in his peripheral vision. Rich was heading his way, moving significantly faster than before. Rich tapped his shoulder on the way by, and Devin followed in his footsteps, the two of them reaching Marnie and Alex without Devin stumbling or running into anything. He felt as though he was getting the hang of this."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"OVERWATCH, this is RIFFRAFF ONE. Any sign we've been detected?\" said Rich.\n\n\"Negative. I don't see any unusual movement.\"\n\nRich removed a satellite phone from a pouch on his vest and checked the digital navigation screen, which he'd programmed with the waypoint passed to him by Graves. He compared the screen to his wrist compass, aiming the two in the presumed direction of the helicopter, before turning to address the group.\n\n\"We have about three hundred yards to go. I say we jog the rest of the way. Space ourselves about twenty feet apart.\"\n\n\"This may sound like a dumb question, but what do we do if we start taking fire?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Not a dumb question. Given the range and density of the forest, I say skip the return-fire part and just haul ass. It'll take one hell of a shot to hit a running target at this range through all of these trees. The farther we run, the harder it will be for them,\" said Rich. \"Alex and I will take the lead. We'll have to deal with the pilot when we reach the clearing. Marnie. Can you still fly the helicopter if we pop a few holes in the windshield?\"\n\n\"Yeah. Just keep your shots as high as possible to avoid hitting the instruments,\" she said. \"I'd say no more than two shots, tightly spaced to avoid compromising the windshield's integrity. I can fly it with busted glass, but I'd have to fly a lot slower.\"\n\n\"Easy enough. If we fuck it up too badly, we can try and grab the other helicopter,\" said Rich. \"Let's get moving.\"\n\nThey took off in a column-Rich followed shortly by Alex. Devin tapped Marnie's shoulder."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You're next,\" he said.\n\nShe nodded and chased after them. Devin waited until she looked to be about the right distance away and followed her path through the trees. He didn't get far before a bullet cracked overhead, followed by another-both of them striking trees somewhere past him.\n\n\"Taking fire,\" said Devin over the radio net.\n\n\"Haul ass and follow me,\" said Rich.\n\nThe surrounding forest came alive with zips and thunks as imprecise gunfire raked their formation, ricocheting off tree trunks and snapping branches. The gunfire intensified for several seconds-pushing Rich's\"it'll take a hell of a shot\" theory to the limit with a few near misses-before it tapered off to a few scattered bullets.\n\n\"Everyone still with us?\" asked Rich.\n\n\"All good,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Bringing up the rear,\" said Devin, glancing over his left shoulder in the direction of the few remaining muzzle flashes. \"We must be out of range.\"\n\n\"RIFFRAFF ONE, this is OVERWATCH. You have about a dozen hostiles from the center of the camp headed in your direction. They're moving fast, but as long as you keep up your pace, they won't be a problem.\"\n\n\"Understood. Have the mercenaries moved?\" asked Rich.\n\n\"Negative. And the helicopter rotors remain stationary. Looking good so far.\"\n\nDevin focused his attention on Marnie, who had gained some distance on him while he was looking over his shoulder. His only job right now was to keep her insight so he didn't get lost, and to not fall down. A simple set of tasks if you weren't running for your life through an unfamiliar forest-with no depth perception."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Felix Orlov listened intently to the distant gunfire, detecting a shift beyond the significant drop in intensity. Or maybe his judgment had been impaired by his impatience. This whole thing was taking entirely too long. It was obvious that the team he'd been sent to ambush had hunkered down among the cabins, content to exchange fire with the group that had been assigned to scare them into a hasty retreat.\n\nIf the target team was as good as Pichugin's proxy alleged, they would be able to assess what stood in their way, quickly determining the odds of pushing through-and what it would cost them. This team had clearly made the decision to slug it out at the camp, which meant there would be no ambush. Not here, at least.\n\nMore gunfire, this time definitely coming from a slightly different direction. He hit his radio button.\n\n\"Oleg. Is the direction of the gunfire moving, or am I imagining things?\" asked Felix.\n\n\"It's shifting to the right,\" replied Oleg.\n\n\"Sounds like a one-sided battle,\" said Lashev, the team's sniper. \"I don't hear anymore suppressed shots.\"\n\nSomething was off. He removed his satellite phone and hit redial on the number that had called him at the hangar. After several ringtones, he ended the call. Ridiculous. Why wasn't anyone passing him information?\n\n\"Moving fast, too,\" added Lashev.\n\nFelix scanned the forest ahead of them with a handheld infrared scope, finding nothing. He pointed it in the new direction of gunfire, still coming up empty. The action was too faraway to detect with a portable thermal imaging device. He checked the Garmin Foretrex strapped to his wrist to get an idea of the direction of the gunfire. Almost due west, when it should becoming from the southwest. Shit."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"They're headed for the helicopters,\" he said over the radio net. \"One of them must be a pilot.\"\n\n\"Why would they bring a pilot on a direct-action mission?\" asked Oksana.\n\n\"I don't know, but why the fuck else would they beheaded for the helicopters?\" said Felix. \"Valerie. Oksana. We're headed to the helicopters. All-out sprint.\"\n\n\"Our orders haven't changed,\" said Oksana.\n\n\"Our orders are to kill that team,\" said Felix. \"And that's what I intend to do. Oleg. If they show up along the planned ambush route for some bizarre reason, take down as many as you can and radio me immediately. We'll flank the survivors.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" said Oleg, not sounding too enthusiastic about the decision.\n\nFelix pressed a few buttons on his wrist-mounted GPS unit to select the waypoint he'd inputted when they first landed-and took off at a full sprint. At this point, he'd be lucky if they arrived in time to stop the team from stealing one of the helicopters, but he had to try. Ashe ducked under branches and dodged trees, another thought hit him like a hammer. The machine guns.\n\nIt didn't matter if they could fly the helicopters out or not. If that team took possession of the M249s, or even just one of them, they could flip the odds definitively in their favor. He hoped he hadn't waited too long to prevent a disaster."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The helicopter engine started somewhere ahead of them and slowly began to power up. Devin still had no idea how far they had to go to reach the clearing. He'd caught up with Marnie after she tripped and tumbled to the forest floor-quickly getting her back on her feet and moving again. By the time they'd resumed sprinting, presumably in the right direction, Alex and Rich had vanished into the sea of green ahead of them.\n\n\"We don't have much time,\" said Marnie, picking up what felt like an impossible pace.\n\nTwo suppressed shots echoed off the trees, giving him no indication of a direction. He barreled through the forest a few steps behind her, thinking they couldn't possibly miss a one-hundred-yard-wide clearing. Or could they? His earpiece crackled.\n\n\"Where the hell are you two?\" asked Rich.\n\n\"We should be there any-\" he started, the two of them breaking through a jumble of bushes into the clearing.\n\nThe helicopter stood in the center of what looked like a mowed field, its rotors slowly picking up speed. Alex stood next to the helicopter, pointing his rifle inside.\n\n\"There you are,\" said Rich, waving to them from the eastern edge of the clearing before vanishing into the forest.\n\n\"Cabin is clear,\" said Alex. \"I found an M249-ready to rock and roll. Do you want it on the treeline?\"\n\n\"Negative. We'll be wheels up in forty seconds or less. I don't see anything moving out here,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Copy. On my way over,\" said Alex, already scrambling across the field toward Rich.\n\n\"Marnie. Do whatever you need to do to get us out of here,\" said Rich. \"Remember. There's another helicopter in the clearing west of here, maybe fifty yards away. My guess is they're pretty desperate to stop us, so watch your three o'clock on the way out.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Got it.\"\n\nThe two side-by-side bullet holes in the windshield came into focus when they passed under the rotor blade arc. Marnie reached the helicopter first, immediately opening the pilot-side door and going to work on the dead pilot's seat harness. She'd pulled him free of the helicopter just as Devin hopped into the cabin. Marnie poked her head between the front seats, nodding at the machine gun.\n\n\"Do you know how to work that?\" she asked.\n\n\"I've held one, but never fired one,\" said Devin, lifting the machine gun off the bench seat to examine it. \"But I can't imagine it's that complicated.\"\n\n\"It's not. Press the trigger fora second or two at most. It has a very high rate of fire. Very hard to control if you don't brace it against something. And don't forget about the safety. It's a button right about where your thumb rests. You have to push it from the other side with your index finger to take it off safe. And make sure to fire very short bursts.\"\n\n\"Shouldn't you be worried about taking off?\" asked Devin, taking a seat with the machine gun pointed toward the forest.\n\n\"The Bell 429 kind of flies itself,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"I'm willing to bet it doesn't,\" said Devin.\n\nHis radio squawked. \"Marnie. How long until takeoff? We have company coming in from the east.\"\n\nShe plopped down in the pilot's seat. \"Rotor speed is still building, but it's starting to level off. Fifteen to twenty seconds max.\"\n\n\"Copy. We're on our way back. It's going to be a close call,\" said Rich. \"Devin. I need you on that 249. The moment we jump onboard, start hosing down the treeline where we pop out. You should be able to see us-right about now.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin looked up and caught the two of them emerging from the forest and sprinting toward the helicopter. Jesus. Here we go. He quickly located the safety button on the right side of the trigger grip and pressed it. Rich and Alex piled into the helicopter moments later, nearly knocking him over.\n\n\"Hit the treeline!\" said Rich, slapping him on the shoulder. \"Marnie. Get us the fuck out of here!\"\n\nDevin braced the M249 against the doorframe and aimed at the point where they had emerged, pressing the trigger briefly. The machine gun pounded his shoulder, rattling off a short burst. Marnie hadn't been kidding. The gun was a beast. He pressed the trigger again, holding it fora full second. The machine gun wasn't as hard to control now that he knew what to expect. Devin repeated the process six more times before the magazine drum emptied-methodically shifting his aim along a twenty-yard stretch of treeline. The helicopter lurched skyward as he fired the last burst."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Felix Orlov knew they were running out of time when he heard the two suppressed gunshots. His only hope of preventing a catastrophic mission failure lay in reaching the landing zone and surprising the hostile force before they could either takeoff or put the machine gun to use against the group that had chased them to the helicopters. The race would be extremely close. The helicopter sounded as though it was ready for takeoff.\n\nHe weaved around trees, ducked under branches, and brute-forced his way through the brush, single-mindedly focused on catching a glimpse of the helicopter through the thick forest. Once Felix spotted the helicopter, he would halt the team and unleash a storm of gunfire. Two full magazines before moving forward to assess the situation. The rotor pitch suddenly deepened, meaning one thing. Someone on the team knew how to fly a helicopter!\n\nHe was about to give the order to fire blindly ahead of them when his satellite phone buzzed.\n\nAbout fucking time!\n\nHe slowed to remove the phone from his vest, the other two operatives burning past him.\n\n\"Holdup!\" he yelled before stopping to accept the phone call.\n\nAutomatic gunfire ripped through the trees, a single short burst at first, passing well overhead. He darted to the right and dived behind a thick tree trunk, barely escaping the longer bursts that followed-which struck at waist height. When the shooting stopped fora few seconds, he peeked around the tree with his rifle and fired on full automatic until the magazine ran dry. None of his bullets hit their mark. A stiff gust of dusty air washed through the foliage, indicating that the helicopter had already taken off.\n\nFelix searched the ground next to him for the satellite phone. He'd dropped it when he slammed into the tree. His hand bumped into it next to his foot. He snatched it up and put it to his ear. \"This is Felix!\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"It doesn't sound like you're at the ambush site.\"\n\n\"They got away,\" said Felix.\n\n\"Not for long. We managed to get a few of our friendlies on the second helicopter. Head back to the ambush site and wait for instructions.\"\n\nThe call disconnected, and he threw the phone to the ground.\n\n\"Valerie. Oksana. What's your status?\" he said over the net.\n\nNo response-and he had no intention of breaking cover to check on them visually. He was still well in range of the M249 LMG. A few seconds later, he risked a look, seeing one of them on the ground, arms and legs splayed in a manner that strongly suggested they wouldn't begetting backup. Ever.\n\nScrew it. Felix launched to his feet and sprinted for the tree next to Oksana, making it halfway before tripping on a pair of legs hidden by the brush. He landed face-to-face with Valerie, the young operative's lifeless eyes competing for Felix's attention with the small bullet hole an inch to the side of the man's nose.\n\nTwo KIA in the blink of an eye. He'd known this would be a shit show the moment he saw the mission packet-but you didn't turn down work when Yuri Pichugin offered it. Once you started working for his organization, you were either on his payroll or you were dead."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Timothy Graves eased the Sea Ray into a wide starboard turn, with the full intention of opening the throttle once they had cleared the cove. RIFFRAFF TWO was on the move, estimated to arrive at the eastern shoreline in roughly ten minutes. Plenty of time for Graves to get the boat in position fora quick extraction.\n\n\"Stop the boat!\" screamed Anish, near scaring him out of his skin.\n\nHe yanked the throttle back, putting the engine into idle, before shifting into reverse and bringing the boat to a quick stop. They lurched forward from the sudden deceleration, Gupta uttering a few choice words as he straightened himself out in the seat.\n\n\"What's happening?\" said Graves, leaning across the seat to get a better view of the laptop screen.\n\n\"The second helo took off with armed passengers from the camp,\" said Gupta. \"I'm going to crash the drone into the helicopter.\"\n\n\"What?\" said Graves.\n\n\"No time to explain,\" said Gupta, taking positive control of the drone. \"Warn the team.\"\n\n\"Marnie, this is OVERWATCH. The second helicopter took on armed passengers. Gupta is going to take it outwith the drone.\"\n\n\"Say again?\"\n\n\"We're going to ram the second helicopter with the drone,\" said Graves. \"Bank hard left.\"\n\nThe laptop's screen switched from the navigation map to the drone's night vision– enhanced nose view. Two helicopters rose from the forest a few hundred yards away, the closest one turning left as soon as it had cleared the treetops. The first helicopter zipped out of view, the drone passing it at eighty miles per hour. Gupta centered the nose-view reticle on the starboard-side windshield of the pursuing helicopter and kept it locked in place until the screen went blank."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I guess that worked?\" said Gupta.\n\n\"You just slammed a twenty-pound drone traveling at eighty miles per hour into a windshield designed to deflect a bird,\" said Graves. \"I suspect it worked.\"\n\nA bright orange fireball rose above the northwest horizon, reflecting off the glassy-smooth lake.\n\n\"There's your proof. Hang on,\" said Graves, giving Gupta a few moments before pushing the throttle forward.\n\nA deep boom echoed across the lake several seconds later as they raced down the middle of the lake toward RIFFRAFF TWO's primary extraction point."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"An ear-crunching detonation rattled the helicopter, Marnie's view through the night vision goggles flaring bright white and blinding her at the worst possible time fora helicopter pilot-in the middle of a hard turn at treetop level. She flipped the goggles up, instantly determining why her night vision had unexpectedly whited out.\n\nA fireball rose skyward from the trees to their left, rapidly dissipating in the starry night sky. She maneuvered the helicopter out of the turn and picked up some altitude to give herself a little more space above the trees. When the fuel explosion burned out, the forest instantly darkened, once again rendering her blind. She swung her goggles back into place over her face and readjusted to the green-scale view.\n\n\"Thanks for the assist, OVERWATCH,\" said Marnie. \"Scratch one hostile helicopter.\"\n\n\"For the record, that was all Gupta. I'm just kicking back driving a boat.\"\n\n\"Hat tip to Anish,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"What happened to the whole drinks-are-on-me thing?\"\n\n\"You don't even drink, Anish,\" said Rich.\n\n\"I know. Just want to feel like part of the team.\"\n\n\"You are part of-\" started Rich.\n\n\"Drinks are on me, Anish,\" she said before glancing over her shoulder. \"Did we lose anyone?\"\n\nShe was only half kidding. Marnie had given them a few seconds of warning before banking hard left, but a sudden, unannounced turn like that could throw someone out of the helicopter, if the maneuver caught them off guard and off balance.\n\n\"I still count three of us,\" said Rich. \"Good try, though.\"\n\n\"Don't tempt me,\" said Marnie."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Her night vision goggles flared again, and she knocked them away from her face. \"Dammit!\"\n\n\"Jesus. Look at that,\" said Devin.\n\nMarnie peered through her door's window, catching a glimpse of a broken, burning helicopter fuselage through the dense tree cover. The ground around the helicopter flickered from hundreds of little fires created by the explosions.\n\n\"I guess that solves our second helicopter problem,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Bummer. I was looking forward to machine-gunning it out of the sky. Mike would have approved of that,\" said Alex.\n\n\"He would have, but I have something else in mind,\" said Rich. \"Marnie. I need you to fly us over the center of camp.\"\n\n\"Shouldn't we get the hell out of here?\" she asked. \"We're almost over the lake to the north of the conservation area.\"\n\n\"We need to do more than just take pictures and give them a helicopter to cleanup,\" said Rich.\n\n\"If this is about avenging Mike, forget it,\" said Marnie. \"We've pushed our luck far enough tonight. They might have a heavy-caliber machine gun setup on one of those roofs.\"\n\n\"Drone surveillance didn't show anything like that,\" said Rich. \"Trust me on this, Marnie. We need to draw some serious attention to this place. Get people asking questions.\"\n\n\"They heard that explosion all the way in Branson,\" said Marnie. \"Not to mention the gun battle that probably woke everyone for miles.\"\n\n\"It won't be enough,\" said Rich. \"The maps might say Mincy Conservation Area, but I guarantee you the camp is on a large tract of private property. Probably a few thousand acres. Shooting up your own land isn't a crime. The explosion might draw some attention; my guess is that the crash will be covered with netting by the morning. We're left with some compelling video that we could have created in a studio.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie put the helicopter into a gentle right turn. \"What's the plan?\"\n\n\"I'd like to burn their buildings down. Leave something the authorities can see in the morning,\" said Rich. \"At the very least, I'd like to put Camp Stalin out of business.\"\n\nShe laughed. \"Mayas well add arsonist to my rapidly expanding résumé. You guys don't happen to be hiring, do you?\"\n\n\"No. But I'm pretty sure I speak for everyone when I say that we'd make room fora combat-decorated Marine helicopter pilot. Same offer applies to any former FBI SSG investigative specialists.\"\n\n\"Is that your first job offer?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Nice. As a matter of fact, it is,\" she said. \"Have to sleep on it, though. Hey. We're about fifteen seconds out from the camp center. I can slow us down if you're not ready.\"\n\nShe heard the M249 charging bolt slide home.\n\n\"They're ready,\" said Devin.\n\nMarnie took a longer look behind her, disturbed by what she saw. Alex had scooted to the edge of the bench seat next to the portside door, machine gun in his lap and three additional drum magazines on the seat next to him. Rich sat on the opposite side of the bench seat, having opened the starboard-side door at some point in all the excitement. He held a cylindrical grenade in both hands. Devin sat directly behind her. For all she knew, he had a stick of dynamite and a lighter in his hand. Rich had away of coaxing bad behavior out of everyone.\n\n\"Rich, is that a white phosphorus grenade?\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Maybe,\" he said. \"And maybe I have three more in my drop pouch.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Her pilot instincts flashed red. Pyrotechnic devices ranked right up therewith explosives on a pilot's'fuck no\" list.\n\n\"Rich. If you drop that in the helicopter, I will bank this thing ninety degrees and empty you and your grenades right over the side,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"I would expect nothing less,\" said Rich. \"Pick four buildings. Your choice. We'll be out of herein thirty seconds.\"\n\nShe slowed down for the approach, the buildings in the camp's center suddenly appearing in the square-shaped opening. Five one-story structures, all flat roofed. The rooftop adjacent to the northeast branch of cabins, where the team had been ambushed, held three armed figures. She turned the helicopter so its port side faced the rooftop and let the helicopter drift slowly in the building's direction.\n\n\"Three targets on the nearest rooftop,\" said Marnie.\n\nAlex didn't respond. The M249 buzzed fora few seconds, and all three shooters dropped to the roof in contorted positions. Marnie made no adjustments to the helicopter's flight, sliding directly over the building fora few seconds. She put them in a hover, glancing downward at the chin window below her feet.\n\n\"Perfect alignment,\" said Rich. \"Grenade away.\"\n\nMarnie spun the helicopter in place until the rest of the compound came into view. A bullet thunked inside, somewhere near the cockpit. She slid leftover the adjacent building.\n\n\"Grenade away! Next!\" said Rich.\n\nSeveral bullets peppered the fuselage, one puncturing the copilot's door window and putting a hole in the top of the cockpit. Her night vision flared from the first grenade but didn't whiteout for more than a fraction of a second. The grenade had exploded fifty feet below on the other side of the helicopter, scattering white-hot chunks across the rooftop."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I have no targets,\" said Alex. \"We're facing the wrong way.\"\n\n\"I'm aware of that,\" she said, flying forward fora few seconds before going into a hover again.\n\nShe spun the helicopter 180 degrees, pointing Alex and Devin in the direction of the incoming ground fire. A torrent of gunfire erupted from the cabin the moment she stopped the spin. The second grenade detonated, momentarily blinding her. She popped her night vision goggles, determining that she had enough light from the fires below to pull this off with the naked eye.\n\n\"Give me about twenty feet directly to the right,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Tell me when,\" said Marnie, putting the helicopter into a slow drift in the direction Rich had requested.\n\n\"Grenade out!\" he said. \"One more! Let's go for the big one on the western side.\"\n\nDevin yelled as a string of bullets hit the pilot's side of the helicopter. The door window next to her shattered, a sharp pain creasing her forearm. Alex's machine gun responded with burst after burst. The third grenade exploded, illuminating the trees around them.\n\n\"Devin?\" she said, getting no answer.\n\nShe looked over her shoulder in time to see Rich sidearm his last grenade out the starboard-side door. Fuck this. We're out of here. She pulled upon the collective lever and took them higher, until they'd risen about three hundred feet above the buildings, where she pushed the cyclic forward. The helicopter angled down several degrees and sped away from the camp.\n\n\"Is Devin okay?\" she asked.\n\n\"I'm fine. Just got a little preoccupied therefor a moment,\" said Devin. \"Nice flying, by the way.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Thank you. It's been a little while.\"\n\n\"Just like riding a bike,\" said Rich. \"But about a thousand times more complicated.\"\n\n\"Something like that,\" she said.\n\nThe treetops below lit up fora moment, the last grenade hopefully spreading its flammable contents over the roof of the biggest building in the camp.\n\n\"Did you land it on the roof?\" she asked, peeking over her shoulder.\n\nRich pulled his head back inside the helicopter. \"Looks like it. Can I ask you for one more favor?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I'd like to have Alex disable our pontoon boats,\" he said. \"I don't want any of those fuckers getting a free ride out of there tonight.\"\n\n\"We certainly can't allow that,\" said Marnie.\n\nShe lowered her night vision goggles over her face before putting them into a wide left turn and taking them back over the northeastern tip of the Mincy Conservation Area."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin somehow fell asleep on the short trip down the lake to Diamond City. He woke to Rich shaking his arm, the helicopter rapidly descending.\n\n\"Rise and shine. We're almost at the motel,\" he said.\n\nHe squinted and looked around, noticing that the M249 was gone. \"Where did the machine gun go?\"\n\n\"We dumped it in the lake about a minute back,\" said Rich. \"I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing the serial number on that weapon can be traced to a batch of M249 Squad Automatic Weapons that either never made it to their final destination or were reported stolen from a US military armory. We do not want to get caught with a stolen military firearm. Particularly a machine gun.\"\n\n\"And the rest of this gear is clean?\" asked Devin.\n\nRich shrugged. \"We could explain the rest of this away, if we had to. I'd rather not, since it would tie us up fora while.\"\n\n\"You mean we'd be sitting in jail while a team of expensive lawyers worked on getting us releases so we could flee the country and have to travel on forged IDs for the rest of our lives.\"\n\n\"Something like that,\" said Rich.\n\nAlex laughed, which was a welcome shift away from the dark mood that had enveloped him since Mike's death. The two of them had obviously been close. Devin had overheard Scott talking with Emily about how they had been plank owners in the original program-whatever that meant. The story behind Rich's team was still unclear.\n\n\"Alex. I'm very sorry about Mike,\" said Devin, not sure if he had stepped over the line.\n\n\"We've all lived far longer than we should have,\" said Alex."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"That's for sure,\" said Rich.\n\n\"We're almost there,\" said Marnie over the radio. \"I'm going to set us down toward the southern end of the campground. I don't want to get us caught up in any power lines. Looks like a short jog to the motel.\"\n\n\"Works for me,\" replied Rich before turning to Alex. \"It's kind of late to ask this, but do you have the keys to the SUV?\"\n\nAlex lifted a set of keys by his index finger. \"They were in Mike's pocket. I thought about them right before we headed for the helicopter.\"\n\n\"I'm glad one of us was thinking,\" said Rich.\n\nAn old-fashioned white streetlight rose slowly in the distance as the helicopter gently bounced on its wheels before settling into the landing. The high-pitched whine of the turboshaft engines shifted to a slightly lower tone as Marnie shutdown the helicopter. Rich pointed toward the streetlight.\n\n\"Let's head to the road and take aright instead of trying to cut through someone's backyard,\" said Rich. \"I don't want to get shot and killed by a local after running Stalin's gauntlet back at the camp. The whole town is probably on alert from the combination of the explosion and a helicopter suddenly landing. This is tinfoil-hat country.\"\n\n\"Hard to argue with not getting shot,\" said Devin, and they set off for the road.\n\nA short jog later, they arrived safely at the motel parking lot, where they immediately removed their tactical gear and stowed it in the back of the SUV, along with their rifles. Rich handed one of the rifles to Devin, along with a few spare magazines.\n\n\"Keep this out of sight, but accessible if I need it.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Advance the plot as the writer's tale assistant.\\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\\nTitle: Deep Sleep\\nChapter: 48\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie Young moved deliberately, frequently scanning the forest along her right flank and constantly recalculating a few variables. The first was cover. As the team crept closer to the cabins, she became more aware of the threat axis to the southwest, which forced a running evaluation of the best tree to use to block incoming gunfire-in the event of an ambush. The second variable was Devin.\\n\\nShe had no doubt he was invisible when tailing an espionage suspect through the urban jungle of DC, blending seamlessly into Metro station crowds and drawing no suspicion on the streets. But none of those skills seemed to transfer over to sneaking through a pitch-dark forest-even with night vision. The little mental energy Marnie had to spare beyond herself had been focused on the slew of noises Devin made, and whether that might require her to seek cover immediately.\\n\\nThe team clearly felt the same strain. Rich had halted the group at least eight times after Devin stumbled, scraped a tree, ran into a low-hanging branch, or tripped over a root. She was relieved they had almost reached the bottom edge of the northeast cabin wing, even though that meant the start of an infinitely more dangerous phase of the mission. Part of her wanted to suggest that Devin stay at the first set of cabins, to provide rear security. Any excuse to keep him from giving up the team's position as they infiltrated deeper into the camp.\\n\\nShe glanced in his direction, catching him stopped in front of a branch, trying to find it with his hand. Once his hand brushed across it, he ducked and continued forward. At least he was learning. The night vision goggles played havoc with a person's depth perception, particularly at short distances. It took some getting used to. Marnie probably knew this better than anyone here, since she had flown entire missions at night, relying on night vision goggles. With little margin for error when landing in tight spots, she had mastered the complexities of night vision rather quickly. The lives of her crew and the Marines she transported had depended on it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The forward element of the team reached the first set of three cabins a few minutes later, Rich halting the rest of the group in the forest. They waited while Emily, Alex, and Scott each took positions behind one of the cabins and used binoculars to peer into the camp.\\n\\n\\\"This is Scott. Overall, we're looking at three fairly even rows of very evenly spaced cabins. I see what looks like a longer cabin in the middle row, about five cabins down. Probably a bathhouse. A straight, ten-foot-wide dirt trail runs from here all the way to the center of the X. I can vaguely see a few of the buildings in the center of the camp from here. The third row of cabins, next to Emily, is connected to the main trail by a dirt path. The cabins look abandoned and neglected, but not completely ignored. I see evidence of weed whacking along the perimeter of the cabins. Alex?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Hold on,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Can you count the number of cabins in each row?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Standby,\\\" said Scott.\\n\\nRich turned and signaled for the rear team to move forward. He gathered them in a loose huddle when they arrived.\\n\\n\\\"Definitely bigger than your mother's numbers suggested,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I'm conflicted about how to proceed. Part of me says we go back the way we came and try to pitch this to the FBI using some of Karl's contacts and mine. I have the ear of a US senator that should be able to help. But that approach is like along, slow-moving train. Once it gets going, it'll be hard to stop, but getting it moving at all is the big trick. And getting it up to speed will give this circus all the time it needs to pull up its tent stakes and flee town. By the time the FBI finally checks this place out, Stalin's traveling sleeper carnival will belong gone.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What's the faster-moving option?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I don't know if there is one,\\\" said Rich, \\\"other than document the shit out of this place and try to identify some of the campers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We could grab a few,\\\" said Jared.\\n\\n\\\"I don't think that'll strengthen our case with the FBI,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I think our best play is to get as close as possible and take photographs of the campers, the buildings-everything. I'm starting to think we might spend more time here than I had originally planned. I'd really like to get into a few of those buildings and steal some of their training material. Take pictures while some of the campers are still awake. Attempt a break-in around two or three in the morning?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Whatever it takes,\\\" said Devin, everyone else mumbling agreement.\\n\\n\\\"How long do we have drone coverage?\\\" asked Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"The drone's enhanced surveillance package puts it at the higher end of the model's takeoff weight range, which taxes the battery,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Normally I'd say we had two hours, but the gliding might buy us more time.\\\"\\n\\nRich activated his radio. \\\"OVERWATCH. How long can you keep the drone up? We're thinking about extending our stay.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I need to take the drone off station around twelve forty-five to land it safely. If we ditch the drone, and I time its last pass right, you'll have coverage until a little after one.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The gliding didn't help the battery situation?\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Negative. It came out as awash. Actually, we may have lost battery time. The altitude hikes eat up power.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Understood,\\\" said Rich, ending the chat with Gupta. \\\"There's your answer. If we stick around fora little breaking and entering, we'll have to do it partially blind, unless everyone up there goes to bed within the next twenty minutes. It's eleven thirty-five right now, and I wouldn't risk cracking open one of those doors until everyone has been down fora good hour or so.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I think it's worth it,\\\" said Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We need to leave herewith more than pictures.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I agree,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"If we can do it without waking them up. Don't forget that we're dealing with brainwashed zealots here, and this is sacred ground to them. All bets are off if someone raises the alarm.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You bring up a really good point. I hadn't thought of it that way,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Come to think of it, they probably have some kind of emergency procedure for trespassers that get too close, whether they stumble inhere on purpose or unintentionally. I'd be willing to bet there's a history of unexplained disappearances in this county. That said, I still think we should stick around and try.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"WWKD,\\\" said Jared.\\n\\n\\\"Huh?\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"What would Karl do?\\\" said Jared. \\\"When in doubt. WWKD.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I like it,\\\" said Marnie, stifling a laugh. \\\"So. What would Karl do?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Something a lot more drastic than a late-night break-in,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Like what?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\nDon't encourage him, she wanted to say. Marnie had a good idea what Karl would do.\\n\\n\\\"He'd position most of us in a line at the edge of the camp center, facing the active community branch. Anyone that jumped out of their cabin to investigate our noise would experience a steel-jacketed aneurysm.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What if they all came out?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"A massacre,\\\" said Marnie, not entirely believing this idea hadn't already crossed Rich's mind.\\n\\n\\\"We'd be acting in self-defense,\\\" said Rich. \\\"And in the interest of the United States.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He had thought of it. Had she just stumbled on some kind of soft coup, unintentionally exposed by Jared's careless joke?\\n\\n\\\"We're not going that route,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I'm not saying we don't setup security when we start poking around the buildings, but we won't beholding the line if we stir up a hornet's nest. We defend ourselves according to the ROE, as we retreat to the boats.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's the plan,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"It better be,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\nRich looked as though he wanted to get the last word in but thought better of it. Her earpiece crackled.\\n\\n\\\"This is Scott. We've compared notes. The outer rows have thirty to thirty-five cabins. It's impossible to get an exact count from here. The middle is harder to determine because of the bathhouses, but I'd say around twenty-five.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Anyone good with math?\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nDevin was ready with an answer. \\\"Three hundred and forty cabins. Assuming each cabin houses one family, which looks to be the case, but needs to be confirmed-we're looking at close to seven hundred second-generation sleepers instead of the one hundred and forty-six she identified. Assuming a twenty-five percent attrition rate, which is roughly what she calculated, we're looking at around six hundred sleepers embedded in US society instead of one hundred and nine.\\\"\\n\\nRich and Devin were right. They had to do more than take pictures. The stakes were too high.\\n\\n\\\"What would Karl do?\\\" she said, turning a few heads. \\\"Without killing every man, woman, and child in the camp?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's the trick here,\\\" said Rich. \\\"In this business, sometimes you pull a tiger out of the hat instead of a bunny.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Then we'll have to feel around inside the hat fora while before the big show,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"Sit on the place until we're certain we can investigate the buildings without pulling out a tiger.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"WWMD,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Exactly,\\\" she said.\\n\\nWhat would Marnie do?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Felix Orlov woke from alight nap, the phone on his chest buzzing. He gripped the phone and sat upon the shiny concrete hangar floor, taking a few moments to regain his bearings. When the phone kept buzzing, his stomach sank. Felix assumed he'd just received a text message with a code to access a mission update on the dark website. He stared at the unfamiliar number for another second, surprised they had called him directly. Pichugin's proxy never arranged direct call protocol.\\n\\n\\\"Hello?\\\" he said, accepting the call.\\n\\n\\\"Give the order to start the helicopters. I'll wait.\\\"\\n\\nThe voice was modulated to disguise the speaker. Felix yelled at Oleg, who stood in the open pedestrian doorway adjacent to the closed hangar bay door. \\\"Get the helicopters ready for takeoff! Everyone else up and checking their gear.\\\"\\n\\nOleg bolted out of the hangar, while the rest of the team shook off their naps and got to their feet.\\n\\n\\\"The order has been given,\\\" said Felix.\\n\\n\\\"The pilots will fly you to the two athletic fields north of SITE ZERO. One helicopter in each field. You'll lead the team to the coordinates I will text to your phone the moment I hangup. The coordinates correspond with a hostile team's boat infiltration point. Friendly forces at SITE ZERO will engage the hostile team and force them to retreat. Our assumption is that they will immediately return to the boats at their original infiltration point, where you will ambush the hostile team.\\\"\\n\\nThe high-pitched whine of the helicopters' engines resonated inside the hangar. The blades would reach their full rotor speed in just under a minute.\\n\\n\\\"We'll pay everyone on your team fifty thousand US dollars per prisoner taken, but there is no penalty for killing the entire team. The hostile force is comprised of nine mercenaries. Nongovernment affiliated. Seven of them to be considered top-tier special operators. The other two have a high level of military firearms proficiency. Do not take any catastrophic risks with your team to capture any of them. You're up against a highly skilled crew. Handle them as your equals.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Understood.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"What if they don't retreat from SITE ZERO?\\\" asked Felix.\\n\\n\\\"I'll be indirect contact with the group at the site. If they can't force a retreat, I'll call you directly and redirect your team.\\\"\\n\\nOleg reappeared in the doorway and gave him a thumbs-up before assembling the team around the door.\\n\\n\\\"The helicopters are ready,\\\" said Felix.\\n\\n\\\"Don't let me hold you up.\\\" The call disconnected.\\n\\nHe jogged over to the team and repeated their orders, leaving out the part about prisoner bounties. Handle them as equals told Felix everything he needed to know about the hostile force. He had to kill all of them quickly and efficiently, or they would extract a heavy price from his team. Fifty thousand dollars was tempting, but not that tempting-to him. He couldn't speak for the rest of the team's financial situations. His life was worth far more than a measly fifty grand, and he wasn't about to put it in the hands of someone who needed a quick money fix to payoff a gambling debt.\\n\\nSatisfied that everyone understood the parameters of the mission, he turned them loose. They split up into two groups and boarded their assigned helicopters. Felix followed Oksana and Lashev, their sniper, to the leftmost Bell 429 helicopter, where they climbed inside, slid the wide side door into place, and immediately went to work donning their equipment.\\n\\nThe helicopter lifted off a moment later, a feeling of heaviness overtaking him until the helicopter's flight leveled off, headed toward SITE ZERO. The pilot told him it would take no more than four minutes to reach the landing zone, which put them all under a bit of a time crunch to slip into their full combat kit. They worked methodically, starting with their plate carrier vests and moving onto their drop holsters. Rifles attached to one-point carry slings next, followed by helmets and night vision.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"One minute!\\\" yelled the pilot.\\n\\nHe was glad Pichugin had arranged for two helicopters. This particular Bell model was rated for seven passengers, enough to ferry the team to the site, but the cabin felt cramped enough with the three of them unloading and swinging gear around. He couldn't imagine trying to pull this off with the seven operatives in the same space. Not in four minutes. He patted himself down again to make sure he hadn't missed something. All good.\\n\\nWith his personal gear squared away, he went to work on the last duffel bag with Oksana. Together, they wrestled the M249 LMG (light machine gun) out of the bag and onto the rear passenger bench seat. He retrieved one of the seventy-five-round-drum magazines from the bag and inserted it into the magazine well. All a gunner had to do at this point was release the safety and pull the charging handle back. Four additional drums satin each bag.\\n\\n\\\"Should we bring one of these along?\\\" asked Oksana. \\\"The firepower might come in handy.\\\"\\n\\nHe thought about it fora moment. The light machine gun's high rate of fire would certainly pack a punch, but nobody on the team had much experience on the M249. Nearly all their operational time had been spent behind the gunsights of Russian-made weapons or similar knockoffs, which was most likely why the arsenal in Pennsylvania contained several AK variants. Everyone on the team, except for their sniper, had chosen a compact version of the AK-12 assault rifle.\\n\\n\\\"How many times have you fired one of these?\\\" asked Felix.\\n\\n\\\"A few times. It's not the easiest weapon to handle. The rate of fire is extremely high.\\\"\\n\\nHe shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was throw a wrench in the works at the last minute. Especially if their opponents were as skilled as Pichugin's proxy had suggested. If their mission changed and they needed the firepower to dislodge the hostiles from the camp, he could send a team back to grab them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Let's stick with what we know,\\\" said Felix.\\n\\n\\\"Thirty seconds!\\\" said the pilot.\\n\\nThirty seconds until they hit the ground running-literally. The landing zone and SITE ZERO were nearly equidistant from the ambush site-a race he had no intention of losing if the hostile team retreated faster than Pichugin's planners had anticipated. Second place was an unceremonious death in the Ozark Mountains.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin checked the cabin door, surprised to discover that the doorknob turned. They'd moved through twelve sets of cabins while working their way toward the center of camp, finding all of them securely locked. He'd taken a step closer to the door to push it inward when a hand clamped down on his arm. Mike shook his head and motioned for him to stand back, which suddenly struck Devin as a more sensible course of action. Was he really moments from pushing in the only open door they'd found out of the thirty-odd they'd checked? Marnie must have been shaking her head.\\n\\nMike crouched and pointed his rifle at the door. \\\"Rich. We found an unlocked door.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Be right there.\\\"\\n\\nDevin backed up next to Marnie, who knelt in the recently cut weeds several feet behind Mike, her rifle pointed down the long, empty gap between rows that extended all the way to the center of the camp. Unlike the dirt path, several trees grew right up in the middle of the gap, mostly obscuring their view of the buildings. Devin raised his rifle and covered their flank, not that they expected any trouble from the forest.\\n\\nRich patted his shoulder as he passed by, quickly joining Mike near the door. The two of them conversed fora moment before Rich very gently turned the knob and opened the door far enough for Mike to take a quick peek inside. He nodded at Rick before disappearing into the cabin, his head poking out a few seconds later.\\n\\n\\\"It's clear,\\\" he said.\\n\\nRich turned to Devin and Marnie. \\\"The moment of truth. If this is a two-family cabin, we're defaulting to WWKD.\\\"\\n\\nA two-family cabin meant they were potentially looking at twelve hundred sleepers instead of six hundred. If that turned out to be the case, Devin might have to reconsider his position regarding the building break-in scenario, consequences be damned, whether they pulled the rabbit or the tiger. He got the feeling Marnie would agree.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"They followed Rich inside, Devin instantly relieved to see a full bed frame on one side and a bunk bed on the other.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"A single-family arrangement. Aside from the beds, the dank-smelling cabin contained a nightstand between the beds, wooden chests at the foot of the beds, and a small table and chair set for four near the window. He didn't see any electrical outlets or overhead lights.\\n\\n\\\"Pretty sparse,\\\" whispered Rich.\\n\\n\\\"That's what I was thinking,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Camp Stalin looks more like a gulag than a future training ground for sleepers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My guess is that the main buildings area little more luxurious,\\\" said Rich. \\\"The gulags didn't have swimming pools.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They probably use the pool exclusively for swim training,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"This place has a very deprived, utilitarian feel.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"On purpose,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Like a cult,\\\" she said. \\\"I wouldn't be surprised if the entire camp looked like this.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We'll find out later tonight,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I'm thinking we work our way up the rows, until we're five or so cabins away from the center, then hunker down until the camp goes night night. Move up to the cabins closest to the center and give it another hour before we send a few people out to scout the buildings.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Works for me,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Sounds like a plan,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"We won't have drone coverage, but I don't think we'll need it at that point. If the sentries at the dock haven't turned in for the night by the time the drone goes off station, I'll position one of the snipers to cover that approach. We'll probably find a trail leading to the dock from the center of the camp. It doesn't make sense for the campers to trudge through the woods after they're dropped off. Hopefully, they'll go straight to their cabins.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Getting a good look inside those buildings takes priority,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"They probably have fairly extensive files on every kid here. Right? They'd have to in order to monitor the kids\\\" progress, chronicle their loyalty-whatever they do here. That could be the big ticket that wins an FBI raid or at the very least shines a bright light on every family named in the files.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I like the way you think,\\\" said Rich, turning to Devin before leaving the cabin. \\\"She's a keeper.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thanks,\\\" he said, not sure that was an appropriate response.\\n\\nMarnie left without saying a word, so he decided not to pursue it. Devin followed and crouched next to her in the gap between cabins, rifles pointed toward the center of camp, as Rich rejoined his team on the dirt path. Mike softly shut the cabin door and paused at the top of the wooden stoop. Marnie scooted behind Devin in a hurry, stopping at the foot of the stairs.\\n\\n\\\"Did you hear it, too?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nMike remained almost perfectly still, his head slowly canting to the side as though he was listening intently for something.\\n\\n\\\"What did you-\\\"\\n\\nThen Devin heard it. Just fora few seconds. A distant, deep rhythmic thumping sound that faded in and out. Mike turned to them.\\n\\n\\\"Take cover behind the cabin,\\\" he said before hopping down from the stoop. \\\"There's an airport nearby. Probably the last flight out of-\\\"\\n\\nMuzzle flashes erupted from the center of camp, bullets snapping overhead and thunking into the cabins-along with the sharp crackle of automatic gunfire. Marnie yanked Devin behind the cabin, moments before gunfire sliced through the space he'd just occupied. Mike slammed to the ground next to him, a few feet beyond the corner of the cabin. Devin leaned out and grabbed one of his shoulder straps with both hands, hauling him out of the line of fire.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mike was in bad shape, clutching his throat and cycling his legs wildly. Devin raised his night vision goggles and went in fora closer look, warm blood spraying his face. Mike's hands were soaked, blood pumping through his fingers. Devin triggered his radio.\\n\\n\\\"Mike's down. Hit in the neck,\\\" he said. \\\"It looks really bad.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Copy that. Emily will be therein a second,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"You got this?\\\" asked Marnie, moving to the corner of the cabin.\\n\\n\\\"Yeah,\\\" he said, trying to move Mike's hands to get a better look.\\n\\nHe couldn't budge them. Marnie crouched low and fired a few sustained bursts toward the center of camp. She ducked back as bullets splintered the corner above her head and slapped into the cabin behind them. A dark figure appeared behind the middle cabin, racing in their direction.\\n\\n\\\"Emily's inbound! Give her some cover fire!\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nMarnie emptied the rifle magazine as Emily sprinted across the gap. The operative stumbled halfway, losing control of her forward momentum and crashing next to Mike.\\n\\n\\\"Shit!\\\" Emily said, pounding the ground several times with a fist and groaning.\\n\\n\\\"You okay?\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I'm fine,\\\" she said, immediately going to work on Mike. \\\"Bullet zipped my leg.\\\"\\n\\nIf anyone on the team could help him, it would be her. She'd stitched up Devin's shin wound like a practiced surgeon.\\n\\n\\\"Help me move his hands,\\\" she said, straddling Mike.\\n\\nHe planted his knees behind Mike's head, and together they forced his hands apart. Devin kept them pinned against the ground while she assessed the wound. Mike resisted every step of the way, but his strength had clearly diminished since the first time Devin had tried to remove his hands. After a few more seconds of poking and prodding around the profusely bleeding bullet hole, Emily shook her head.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Mike is gone.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There's nothing I can do for him. Bullet went straight through his neck and ripped open one of his carotid arteries.\\\" Emily spoke over the net. \\\"Rich. Mike is KIA. He bled out.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Copy. You're responsible for Devin and Marnie now. I'm sending Jared in your direction. Start laying down suppressing fire so we can give our snipers some breathing room to do their magic. We'll have this under control in no time.\\\"\\n\\nRich transmitted over the radio. \\\"OVERWATCH, this is RIFFRAFF. We've been engaged by automatic fire originating near the center of camp. Mike is KIA. Need a SITREP.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Copy. I'll have a SITREP for you in a few seconds.\\\"\\n\\nAnother long burst of bullets kicked up dirt in the gap and tore into the cabin behind them, leaving Devin with the distinct impression that Rich's pep talk with Emily was more wishful thinking than reality. The drumbeat of nearby helicopter rotors reinforced that feeling.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Graves watched in horror as the team's situation shifted within a matter of seconds. Several automatic weapons had opened fire on the team, all located near the center of the camp. The hostile muzzle flashes did not correspond with human heat signatures, suggesting that they were firing from inside the cabins or well-concealed positions he had been unable to identify with the drone's sensors.\\n\\nThe dozen or so people gathered around the firepits had rushed into action, sprinting to the nearest building, where they disappeared fora few moments-before reappearing with rifles. And now they had two helicopters landing in the fields north of the camp. The team's arrival had obviously been detected, most likely at the shoreline infiltration point, given what he was seeing at the landing fields.\\n\\n\\\"I'm taking positive control of the drone,\\\" said Gupta. \\\"We only have another minute on this glide path. They're going to need uninterrupted coverage.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yep,\\\" said Graves, taking a few moments to assess the scene before contacting the team. \\\"RIFFRAFF, this is OVERWATCH. We're taking active control of the drone to pass you continuous information. SITREP follows. A dozen or more armed hostiles are headed toward the concealed gun positions near the center of the camp. From what I can see, they're bringing rifles to the fight. I also have some activity inside the southwest wing of the camp. Small groups forming. No weapons present. How copy?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Copy all. Are you seeing helicopters nearby?\\\"\\n\\nGunfire on Rich's end of the radio call made it hard to decipher what he had said, but Graves caught the gist of it.\\n\\n\\\"Affirmative. Two Bell 400-series helicopters landed in the rectangular clearings north of the camp. One in each clearing. Seven hostiles in total exited the helicopters. They're headed east, away from RIFFRAFF, at a rapid pace. My guess is they're going to setup an ambush along your exfiltration route.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Anymore good news?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The team dropped off by the helicopters looked like serious types. Helmets. Night vision. Body armor. Rifles with suppressors. Moving like professionals. I do not recommend returning to the boats.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Copy. We're still weighing our options here. Looks like we might be swimming out. Keep the information flowing.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We can meet you somewhere along the eastern shoreline. We'll squeeze everyone onboard. I'm sending Berg to the marina just south of the conservation area. The boat pickup is looking more and more like the only way out of there.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're not out of the fight yet. But I concur. Out.\\\"\\n\\nA quick look at the IR camera view suggested otherwise. They couldn't possibly advance toward the center of the camp without sustaining more casualties, and making a run for the boats would prove catastrophic. He tapped Anish's elbow.\\n\\n\\\"Prepare an autonomous drone pattern over the camp,\\\" said Graves. \\\"My guess is we'll be on a full-speed run to pick them up within minutes.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie sighted in on a muzzle flash through the 4X ACOG scope and pressed her trigger twice, the suppressed rifle biting into her shoulder. Like the other nonsnipers on the team, her rifle scope was not compatible with night vision goggles, so she'd switched from NVGs to the naked eye, which limited her to targeting muzzle flashes or the occasional silhouette. The gunfire at the receiving end of her bullets stopped, but it was impossible to tell if she'd hit the shooter or momentarily discouraged them.\\n\\nEither outcome accomplished her goal, which was to reduce the level of incoming gunfire to a point where the team's snipers could focus more on shooting and lesson hiding behind cover. The two snipers had higher magnification and thermal scopes, which made targeting unfair against opponents at night. The more time they could spend behind those scopes, the better chance the team had of getting out of this intact.\\n\\nReturn fire from the camp continued to snap past the corner of the cabin at different heights off the ground, many of them passing well over her head. She got the impression that the hostile gunfire wasn't well aimed. More of a quantity-over-quality situation-though equally deadly if you got caught out in the open at the wrong moment. They'd managed to advance only one set of cabins since the shooting started, the team miraculously suffering nothing more than a few grazing hits like Emily's. Only sheer luck had prevented another casualty, a reality not lost on Rich. He halted them to reassess the situation.\\n\\nShe fired another series of shots toward a different muzzle blast, pulling back from the corner as along string of bullets stitched through the gap and slapped into the thick wood cabins around her. Devin remained exposed on the other side of the gap, firing several two-shot bursts until his magazine ran dry-seemingly oblivious to the string of bullets that splintered the wood right below his rifle barrel.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He glanced in her direction and shook his head before reloading. She peeked around the corner with the rifle and rapidly pressed her trigger, emptying the few rounds left in her magazine. Emily lay behind the wooden stoop several feet in front of Marnie, her body pressed against the bottom of the cabin, only her rifle and part of her head exposed. Emily fired relentlessly, seemingly changing magazines every third time Marnie leaned out to shoot.\\n\\n\\\"Do you need ammo?\\\" asked Marnie.\\n\\nEmily had turned to reply when a bullet ricocheted off her helmet, driving her head down. She rolled tight against the cabin and checked her night vision, which looked to be intact. Emily looked up at her.\\n\\n\\\"I'm down to three mags!\\\"\\n\\nMarnie patted the magazine pouches attached to her plate carrier, finding that she'd expended only two of her eight spares. She removed two and tossed them next to Emily, who snatched one and reloaded her rifle before stuffing the other in an empty pouch on her vest. She gave Marnie a quick thumbs-up and went back to firing. Marnie reloaded and got ready to stick her head and rifle out again.\\n\\n\\\"This isn't going anywhere!\\\" yelled Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I know!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Rich is assessing the situation,\\\" yelled Emily.\\n\\nHow long did it take to assess the fact that the mission was scrubbed? If they didn't start making their way to the eastern shoreline very soon, they ran the risk of getting squeezed by the mercenary team dropped off by the helicopters. Devin leaned out to fire and was driven back by a torrent of gunfire. Enough was enough. She triggered her radio.\\n\\n\\\"Rich. This is Marnie. We need to start moving east before we get pinched. We're not breaking through to the camp.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Jared and Melendez are starting to make a difference. If we can hold on here for another minute, I think we'll have a shot at breaking through and mopping up this rabble,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"I'm more concerned with the hostile team dropped off by the helicopters,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"If we breakthrough to the center,\\\" said Rich, \\\"the hostile team will be forced to respond. We can run a counter-ambush.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We got pictures of the camp. Video evidence of a heavily armed force. The whole enchilada isn't an option anymore,\\\" she said. \\\"We need to get out of here now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We'll still have to deal with the mercenary team,\\\" said Rich. \\\"If they figure out that we've slipped away, they'll hunt us down with the helicopters. Our extremely overcrowded boat won't last very long on the lake. And the Suburban will stick out like a sore thumb from the air on thermal imaging.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Maybe we just cross the lake and melt into the forest on the other side,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"We'd just be delaying the inevitable,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Maybe we could evade the helicopters on foot. It all depends on the helicopters\\\" surveillance capability.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Marnie?\\\" said Devin over the net. \\\"Can you fly one of those helicopters?\\\"\\n\\nHoly shit. With everything going on, they had overlooked the obvious. She could fly them out of here.\\n\\n\\\"Yes. I can definitely fly one of those helicopters. No doubt about it.\\\"\\n\\nRich cut into the conversation immediately.\\n\\n\\\"OVERWATCH, this is RIFFRAFF. Do we have a clear path to the helicopters?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"This is OVERWATCH. The path is clear. The nearest hostiles are at the center of camp roughly five hundred feet away. If you head directly to the nearest helicopter, you'll continue to open that distance. With the thick tree cover, you'll get there fine. The mercenary team is setup about a hundred feet in front of the boats, close to a thousand yards away. Even if they hauled ass, they couldn't beat you there. You're about three hundred and fifty yards from the easternmost clearing. I'll send you a waypoint. Designating the helicopter team RIFFRAFF ONE. Cover team is RIFFRAFF TWO.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Copy. No security on the helicopters?\\\" asked Rich.\\n\\n\\\"No security. I'm seeing a single pilot in each cockpit, buckled up and waiting to takeoff. Could be someone hiding in back. The helicopters are shutdown, so keep that in mind.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It'll take about a minute to spool up the rotors,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"That'll be along minute,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Not a problem,\\\" said Rich. \\\"We'll post security at the edge of the clearing until the helo is ready for takeoff. The trick will be keeping the armed campers from bum-rushing the helicopter. If they see us bolt north, they'll put two and two together pretty fast. We can't afford a running gun battle. It'll slow us down enough for the mercenaries to possibly beat us to the helicopter or arrive at the same time. Or the helicopter will takeoff once everyone figures out what we're up to.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Rich. This is Jared. Rico and I can stay here and keep firing. Give you guys ahead start before they figure out what's happening. We'll melt away when the jig is up and rendezvous with the speedboat.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That could work,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"This is Emily. They'll know something's wrong the moment we drop down to two guns. I'll stay behind, too. I can move from one side of the middle cabin to the other, firing long bursts. We should probably leave four behind to buy as much time as possible. The whole point of this is to steal one of those helicopters, right? You could shoot the shit out of the other helicopter and eliminate any risk to the boat extraction.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Scott. You've been volunteered,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Sounds good.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Good thing I insisted on bringing a helicopter pilot along,\\\" said Rich.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yeah. Good thing you didn't try to convince Devin and me to stay behind every step of the way.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Your next drink is on me,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"The next three are on you,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Fair enough,\\\" said Rich. \\\"We should probably shift some ammunition around before we takeoff. Everyone flying out of herewith Marnie, cough up some magazines.\\\"\\n\\nShe took three of her remaining five rifle magazines and tossed them one by one next to Emily, who glanced back when one of them bounced and hither leg. A quick turn of the head and nod acknowledged the transfer, the shooter's trigger finger never letting up. Devin tossed her one magazine, which skipped across her back and hit the side of the cabin. She grabbed it without looking and reloaded, barely skipping a beat.\\n\\n\\\"Devin. Standby to cross the gap,\\\" Marnie said. \\\"Emily and I will cover you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ready,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nShe centered her scope's illuminated crosshairs on a muzzle flash and took some slack off the trigger.\\n\\n\\\"Now,\\\" she said, her rifle barking along with Emily's until Devin slammed into the side of the cabin next to her.\\n\\nHe put a hand on her shoulder and panted from the sprint.\\n\\n\\\"You can thank me later,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"For what?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I bet you never thought you'd fly a helicopter again until a few minutes ago,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nShe chuckled. Devin always had a knack for telling the truth, no matter how ridiculous the circumstances. Marnie just hoped she could pull this off so they could laugh about it later.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin waited behind the cabin, keeping his eye on Rich, who had ventured about fifteen yards into the forest. A fierce gun battle raged behind Devin, the four members of the team who'd volunteered to stay behind increasing the volume of fire to draw attention away from their escape.\\n\\n\\\"Devin. You're up. Leapfrog about ten yards past me,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Don't fuck this up,\\\" he muttered to himself and stepped into the forest.\\n\\nHe scurried toward Rich, his feet hitting a few roots on the way. Branches weren't a problem anymore-he'd learned to gauge the distances to closer objects better-and it really didn't matter if he snapped a few twigs. Nobody would hear it over the gunfire. He scooted past Rich and settled in behind a thick tree trunk-just glad not to have fallen on his face.\\n\\n\\\"Nice job,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I don't detect any reaction to our movement so far. Marnie and Alex, same drill. Head past Devin and take cover. If your movement goes unnoticed, we'll linkup at your position and move out from thereat a faster pace.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Heading out now,\\\" said Alex.\\n\\nDevin watched the two of them duck and weave through the trees, moving at a fast clip. They passed in front of him and halted behind a dense stand of brush about twenty yards away, rifles pointed toward the center of camp. He caught some movement in his peripheral vision. Rich was heading his way, moving significantly faster than before. Rich tapped his shoulder on the way by, and Devin followed in his footsteps, the two of them reaching Marnie and Alex without Devin stumbling or running into anything. He felt as though he was getting the hang of this.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"OVERWATCH, this is RIFFRAFF ONE. Any sign we've been detected?\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Negative. I don't see any unusual movement.\\\"\\n\\nRich removed a satellite phone from a pouch on his vest and checked the digital navigation screen, which he'd programmed with the waypoint passed to him by Graves. He compared the screen to his wrist compass, aiming the two in the presumed direction of the helicopter, before turning to address the group.\\n\\n\\\"We have about three hundred yards to go. I say we jog the rest of the way. Space ourselves about twenty feet apart.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"This may sound like a dumb question, but what do we do if we start taking fire?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Not a dumb question. Given the range and density of the forest, I say skip the return-fire part and just haul ass. It'll take one hell of a shot to hit a running target at this range through all of these trees. The farther we run, the harder it will be for them,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Alex and I will take the lead. We'll have to deal with the pilot when we reach the clearing. Marnie. Can you still fly the helicopter if we pop a few holes in the windshield?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. Just keep your shots as high as possible to avoid hitting the instruments,\\\" she said. \\\"I'd say no more than two shots, tightly spaced to avoid compromising the windshield's integrity. I can fly it with busted glass, but I'd have to fly a lot slower.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Easy enough. If we fuck it up too badly, we can try and grab the other helicopter,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Let's get moving.\\\"\\n\\nThey took off in a column-Rich followed shortly by Alex. Devin tapped Marnie's shoulder.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You're next,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe nodded and chased after them. Devin waited until she looked to be about the right distance away and followed her path through the trees. He didn't get far before a bullet cracked overhead, followed by another-both of them striking trees somewhere past him.\\n\\n\\\"Taking fire,\\\" said Devin over the radio net.\\n\\n\\\"Haul ass and follow me,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nThe surrounding forest came alive with zips and thunks as imprecise gunfire raked their formation, ricocheting off tree trunks and snapping branches. The gunfire intensified for several seconds-pushing Rich's\\\"it'll take a hell of a shot\\\" theory to the limit with a few near misses-before it tapered off to a few scattered bullets.\\n\\n\\\"Everyone still with us?\\\" asked Rich.\\n\\n\\\"All good,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Bringing up the rear,\\\" said Devin, glancing over his left shoulder in the direction of the few remaining muzzle flashes. \\\"We must be out of range.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"RIFFRAFF ONE, this is OVERWATCH. You have about a dozen hostiles from the center of the camp headed in your direction. They're moving fast, but as long as you keep up your pace, they won't be a problem.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Understood. Have the mercenaries moved?\\\" asked Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Negative. And the helicopter rotors remain stationary. Looking good so far.\\\"\\n\\nDevin focused his attention on Marnie, who had gained some distance on him while he was looking over his shoulder. His only job right now was to keep her insight so he didn't get lost, and to not fall down. A simple set of tasks if you weren't running for your life through an unfamiliar forest-with no depth perception.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Felix Orlov listened intently to the distant gunfire, detecting a shift beyond the significant drop in intensity. Or maybe his judgment had been impaired by his impatience. This whole thing was taking entirely too long. It was obvious that the team he'd been sent to ambush had hunkered down among the cabins, content to exchange fire with the group that had been assigned to scare them into a hasty retreat.\\n\\nIf the target team was as good as Pichugin's proxy alleged, they would be able to assess what stood in their way, quickly determining the odds of pushing through-and what it would cost them. This team had clearly made the decision to slug it out at the camp, which meant there would be no ambush. Not here, at least.\\n\\nMore gunfire, this time definitely coming from a slightly different direction. He hit his radio button.\\n\\n\\\"Oleg. Is the direction of the gunfire moving, or am I imagining things?\\\" asked Felix.\\n\\n\\\"It's shifting to the right,\\\" replied Oleg.\\n\\n\\\"Sounds like a one-sided battle,\\\" said Lashev, the team's sniper. \\\"I don't hear anymore suppressed shots.\\\"\\n\\nSomething was off. He removed his satellite phone and hit redial on the number that had called him at the hangar. After several ringtones, he ended the call. Ridiculous. Why wasn't anyone passing him information?\\n\\n\\\"Moving fast, too,\\\" added Lashev.\\n\\nFelix scanned the forest ahead of them with a handheld infrared scope, finding nothing. He pointed it in the new direction of gunfire, still coming up empty. The action was too faraway to detect with a portable thermal imaging device. He checked the Garmin Foretrex strapped to his wrist to get an idea of the direction of the gunfire. Almost due west, when it should becoming from the southwest. Shit.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"They're headed for the helicopters,\\\" he said over the radio net. \\\"One of them must be a pilot.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why would they bring a pilot on a direct-action mission?\\\" asked Oksana.\\n\\n\\\"I don't know, but why the fuck else would they beheaded for the helicopters?\\\" said Felix. \\\"Valerie. Oksana. We're headed to the helicopters. All-out sprint.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Our orders haven't changed,\\\" said Oksana.\\n\\n\\\"Our orders are to kill that team,\\\" said Felix. \\\"And that's what I intend to do. Oleg. If they show up along the planned ambush route for some bizarre reason, take down as many as you can and radio me immediately. We'll flank the survivors.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Understood,\\\" said Oleg, not sounding too enthusiastic about the decision.\\n\\nFelix pressed a few buttons on his wrist-mounted GPS unit to select the waypoint he'd inputted when they first landed-and took off at a full sprint. At this point, he'd be lucky if they arrived in time to stop the team from stealing one of the helicopters, but he had to try. Ashe ducked under branches and dodged trees, another thought hit him like a hammer. The machine guns.\\n\\nIt didn't matter if they could fly the helicopters out or not. If that team took possession of the M249s, or even just one of them, they could flip the odds definitively in their favor. He hoped he hadn't waited too long to prevent a disaster.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The helicopter engine started somewhere ahead of them and slowly began to power up. Devin still had no idea how far they had to go to reach the clearing. He'd caught up with Marnie after she tripped and tumbled to the forest floor-quickly getting her back on her feet and moving again. By the time they'd resumed sprinting, presumably in the right direction, Alex and Rich had vanished into the sea of green ahead of them.\\n\\n\\\"We don't have much time,\\\" said Marnie, picking up what felt like an impossible pace.\\n\\nTwo suppressed shots echoed off the trees, giving him no indication of a direction. He barreled through the forest a few steps behind her, thinking they couldn't possibly miss a one-hundred-yard-wide clearing. Or could they? His earpiece crackled.\\n\\n\\\"Where the hell are you two?\\\" asked Rich.\\n\\n\\\"We should be there any-\\\" he started, the two of them breaking through a jumble of bushes into the clearing.\\n\\nThe helicopter stood in the center of what looked like a mowed field, its rotors slowly picking up speed. Alex stood next to the helicopter, pointing his rifle inside.\\n\\n\\\"There you are,\\\" said Rich, waving to them from the eastern edge of the clearing before vanishing into the forest.\\n\\n\\\"Cabin is clear,\\\" said Alex. \\\"I found an M249-ready to rock and roll. Do you want it on the treeline?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Negative. We'll be wheels up in forty seconds or less. I don't see anything moving out here,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Copy. On my way over,\\\" said Alex, already scrambling across the field toward Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Marnie. Do whatever you need to do to get us out of here,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Remember. There's another helicopter in the clearing west of here, maybe fifty yards away. My guess is they're pretty desperate to stop us, so watch your three o'clock on the way out.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Got it.\\\"\\n\\nThe two side-by-side bullet holes in the windshield came into focus when they passed under the rotor blade arc. Marnie reached the helicopter first, immediately opening the pilot-side door and going to work on the dead pilot's seat harness. She'd pulled him free of the helicopter just as Devin hopped into the cabin. Marnie poked her head between the front seats, nodding at the machine gun.\\n\\n\\\"Do you know how to work that?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"I've held one, but never fired one,\\\" said Devin, lifting the machine gun off the bench seat to examine it. \\\"But I can't imagine it's that complicated.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's not. Press the trigger fora second or two at most. It has a very high rate of fire. Very hard to control if you don't brace it against something. And don't forget about the safety. It's a button right about where your thumb rests. You have to push it from the other side with your index finger to take it off safe. And make sure to fire very short bursts.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Shouldn't you be worried about taking off?\\\" asked Devin, taking a seat with the machine gun pointed toward the forest.\\n\\n\\\"The Bell 429 kind of flies itself,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"I'm willing to bet it doesn't,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nHis radio squawked. \\\"Marnie. How long until takeoff? We have company coming in from the east.\\\"\\n\\nShe plopped down in the pilot's seat. \\\"Rotor speed is still building, but it's starting to level off. Fifteen to twenty seconds max.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Copy. We're on our way back. It's going to be a close call,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Devin. I need you on that 249. The moment we jump onboard, start hosing down the treeline where we pop out. You should be able to see us-right about now.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin looked up and caught the two of them emerging from the forest and sprinting toward the helicopter. Jesus. Here we go. He quickly located the safety button on the right side of the trigger grip and pressed it. Rich and Alex piled into the helicopter moments later, nearly knocking him over.\\n\\n\\\"Hit the treeline!\\\" said Rich, slapping him on the shoulder. \\\"Marnie. Get us the fuck out of here!\\\"\\n\\nDevin braced the M249 against the doorframe and aimed at the point where they had emerged, pressing the trigger briefly. The machine gun pounded his shoulder, rattling off a short burst. Marnie hadn't been kidding. The gun was a beast. He pressed the trigger again, holding it fora full second. The machine gun wasn't as hard to control now that he knew what to expect. Devin repeated the process six more times before the magazine drum emptied-methodically shifting his aim along a twenty-yard stretch of treeline. The helicopter lurched skyward as he fired the last burst.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Felix Orlov knew they were running out of time when he heard the two suppressed gunshots. His only hope of preventing a catastrophic mission failure lay in reaching the landing zone and surprising the hostile force before they could either takeoff or put the machine gun to use against the group that had chased them to the helicopters. The race would be extremely close. The helicopter sounded as though it was ready for takeoff.\\n\\nHe weaved around trees, ducked under branches, and brute-forced his way through the brush, single-mindedly focused on catching a glimpse of the helicopter through the thick forest. Once Felix spotted the helicopter, he would halt the team and unleash a storm of gunfire. Two full magazines before moving forward to assess the situation. The rotor pitch suddenly deepened, meaning one thing. Someone on the team knew how to fly a helicopter!\\n\\nHe was about to give the order to fire blindly ahead of them when his satellite phone buzzed.\\n\\nAbout fucking time!\\n\\nHe slowed to remove the phone from his vest, the other two operatives burning past him.\\n\\n\\\"Holdup!\\\" he yelled before stopping to accept the phone call.\\n\\nAutomatic gunfire ripped through the trees, a single short burst at first, passing well overhead. He darted to the right and dived behind a thick tree trunk, barely escaping the longer bursts that followed-which struck at waist height. When the shooting stopped fora few seconds, he peeked around the tree with his rifle and fired on full automatic until the magazine ran dry. None of his bullets hit their mark. A stiff gust of dusty air washed through the foliage, indicating that the helicopter had already taken off.\\n\\nFelix searched the ground next to him for the satellite phone. He'd dropped it when he slammed into the tree. His hand bumped into it next to his foot. He snatched it up and put it to his ear. \\\"This is Felix!\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"It doesn't sound like you're at the ambush site.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They got away,\\\" said Felix.\\n\\n\\\"Not for long. We managed to get a few of our friendlies on the second helicopter. Head back to the ambush site and wait for instructions.\\\"\\n\\nThe call disconnected, and he threw the phone to the ground.\\n\\n\\\"Valerie. Oksana. What's your status?\\\" he said over the net.\\n\\nNo response-and he had no intention of breaking cover to check on them visually. He was still well in range of the M249 LMG. A few seconds later, he risked a look, seeing one of them on the ground, arms and legs splayed in a manner that strongly suggested they wouldn't begetting backup. Ever.\\n\\nScrew it. Felix launched to his feet and sprinted for the tree next to Oksana, making it halfway before tripping on a pair of legs hidden by the brush. He landed face-to-face with Valerie, the young operative's lifeless eyes competing for Felix's attention with the small bullet hole an inch to the side of the man's nose.\\n\\nTwo KIA in the blink of an eye. He'd known this would be a shit show the moment he saw the mission packet-but you didn't turn down work when Yuri Pichugin offered it. Once you started working for his organization, you were either on his payroll or you were dead.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Timothy Graves eased the Sea Ray into a wide starboard turn, with the full intention of opening the throttle once they had cleared the cove. RIFFRAFF TWO was on the move, estimated to arrive at the eastern shoreline in roughly ten minutes. Plenty of time for Graves to get the boat in position fora quick extraction.\\n\\n\\\"Stop the boat!\\\" screamed Anish, near scaring him out of his skin.\\n\\nHe yanked the throttle back, putting the engine into idle, before shifting into reverse and bringing the boat to a quick stop. They lurched forward from the sudden deceleration, Gupta uttering a few choice words as he straightened himself out in the seat.\\n\\n\\\"What's happening?\\\" said Graves, leaning across the seat to get a better view of the laptop screen.\\n\\n\\\"The second helo took off with armed passengers from the camp,\\\" said Gupta. \\\"I'm going to crash the drone into the helicopter.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"No time to explain,\\\" said Gupta, taking positive control of the drone. \\\"Warn the team.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Marnie, this is OVERWATCH. The second helicopter took on armed passengers. Gupta is going to take it outwith the drone.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Say again?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're going to ram the second helicopter with the drone,\\\" said Graves. \\\"Bank hard left.\\\"\\n\\nThe laptop's screen switched from the navigation map to the drone's night vision– enhanced nose view. Two helicopters rose from the forest a few hundred yards away, the closest one turning left as soon as it had cleared the treetops. The first helicopter zipped out of view, the drone passing it at eighty miles per hour. Gupta centered the nose-view reticle on the starboard-side windshield of the pursuing helicopter and kept it locked in place until the screen went blank.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I guess that worked?\\\" said Gupta.\\n\\n\\\"You just slammed a twenty-pound drone traveling at eighty miles per hour into a windshield designed to deflect a bird,\\\" said Graves. \\\"I suspect it worked.\\\"\\n\\nA bright orange fireball rose above the northwest horizon, reflecting off the glassy-smooth lake.\\n\\n\\\"There's your proof. Hang on,\\\" said Graves, giving Gupta a few moments before pushing the throttle forward.\\n\\nA deep boom echoed across the lake several seconds later as they raced down the middle of the lake toward RIFFRAFF TWO's primary extraction point.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"An ear-crunching detonation rattled the helicopter, Marnie's view through the night vision goggles flaring bright white and blinding her at the worst possible time fora helicopter pilot-in the middle of a hard turn at treetop level. She flipped the goggles up, instantly determining why her night vision had unexpectedly whited out.\\n\\nA fireball rose skyward from the trees to their left, rapidly dissipating in the starry night sky. She maneuvered the helicopter out of the turn and picked up some altitude to give herself a little more space above the trees. When the fuel explosion burned out, the forest instantly darkened, once again rendering her blind. She swung her goggles back into place over her face and readjusted to the green-scale view.\\n\\n\\\"Thanks for the assist, OVERWATCH,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"Scratch one hostile helicopter.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"For the record, that was all Gupta. I'm just kicking back driving a boat.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Hat tip to Anish,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"What happened to the whole drinks-are-on-me thing?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You don't even drink, Anish,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"I know. Just want to feel like part of the team.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You are part of-\\\" started Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Drinks are on me, Anish,\\\" she said before glancing over her shoulder. \\\"Did we lose anyone?\\\"\\n\\nShe was only half kidding. Marnie had given them a few seconds of warning before banking hard left, but a sudden, unannounced turn like that could throw someone out of the helicopter, if the maneuver caught them off guard and off balance.\\n\\n\\\"I still count three of us,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Good try, though.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Don't tempt me,\\\" said Marnie.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Her night vision goggles flared again, and she knocked them away from her face. \\\"Dammit!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Jesus. Look at that,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nMarnie peered through her door's window, catching a glimpse of a broken, burning helicopter fuselage through the dense tree cover. The ground around the helicopter flickered from hundreds of little fires created by the explosions.\\n\\n\\\"I guess that solves our second helicopter problem,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Bummer. I was looking forward to machine-gunning it out of the sky. Mike would have approved of that,\\\" said Alex.\\n\\n\\\"He would have, but I have something else in mind,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Marnie. I need you to fly us over the center of camp.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Shouldn't we get the hell out of here?\\\" she asked. \\\"We're almost over the lake to the north of the conservation area.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We need to do more than just take pictures and give them a helicopter to cleanup,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"If this is about avenging Mike, forget it,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"We've pushed our luck far enough tonight. They might have a heavy-caliber machine gun setup on one of those roofs.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Drone surveillance didn't show anything like that,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Trust me on this, Marnie. We need to draw some serious attention to this place. Get people asking questions.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They heard that explosion all the way in Branson,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"Not to mention the gun battle that probably woke everyone for miles.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It won't be enough,\\\" said Rich. \\\"The maps might say Mincy Conservation Area, but I guarantee you the camp is on a large tract of private property. Probably a few thousand acres. Shooting up your own land isn't a crime. The explosion might draw some attention; my guess is that the crash will be covered with netting by the morning. We're left with some compelling video that we could have created in a studio.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie put the helicopter into a gentle right turn. \\\"What's the plan?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'd like to burn their buildings down. Leave something the authorities can see in the morning,\\\" said Rich. \\\"At the very least, I'd like to put Camp Stalin out of business.\\\"\\n\\nShe laughed. \\\"Mayas well add arsonist to my rapidly expanding résumé. You guys don't happen to be hiring, do you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No. But I'm pretty sure I speak for everyone when I say that we'd make room fora combat-decorated Marine helicopter pilot. Same offer applies to any former FBI SSG investigative specialists.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Is that your first job offer?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Nice. As a matter of fact, it is,\\\" she said. \\\"Have to sleep on it, though. Hey. We're about fifteen seconds out from the camp center. I can slow us down if you're not ready.\\\"\\n\\nShe heard the M249 charging bolt slide home.\\n\\n\\\"They're ready,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\nMarnie took a longer look behind her, disturbed by what she saw. Alex had scooted to the edge of the bench seat next to the portside door, machine gun in his lap and three additional drum magazines on the seat next to him. Rich sat on the opposite side of the bench seat, having opened the starboard-side door at some point in all the excitement. He held a cylindrical grenade in both hands. Devin sat directly behind her. For all she knew, he had a stick of dynamite and a lighter in his hand. Rich had away of coaxing bad behavior out of everyone.\\n\\n\\\"Rich, is that a white phosphorus grenade?\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Maybe,\\\" he said. \\\"And maybe I have three more in my drop pouch.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Her pilot instincts flashed red. Pyrotechnic devices ranked right up therewith explosives on a pilot's'fuck no\\\" list.\\n\\n\\\"Rich. If you drop that in the helicopter, I will bank this thing ninety degrees and empty you and your grenades right over the side,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"I would expect nothing less,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Pick four buildings. Your choice. We'll be out of herein thirty seconds.\\\"\\n\\nShe slowed down for the approach, the buildings in the camp's center suddenly appearing in the square-shaped opening. Five one-story structures, all flat roofed. The rooftop adjacent to the northeast branch of cabins, where the team had been ambushed, held three armed figures. She turned the helicopter so its port side faced the rooftop and let the helicopter drift slowly in the building's direction.\\n\\n\\\"Three targets on the nearest rooftop,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\nAlex didn't respond. The M249 buzzed fora few seconds, and all three shooters dropped to the roof in contorted positions. Marnie made no adjustments to the helicopter's flight, sliding directly over the building fora few seconds. She put them in a hover, glancing downward at the chin window below her feet.\\n\\n\\\"Perfect alignment,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Grenade away.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie spun the helicopter in place until the rest of the compound came into view. A bullet thunked inside, somewhere near the cockpit. She slid leftover the adjacent building.\\n\\n\\\"Grenade away! Next!\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nSeveral bullets peppered the fuselage, one puncturing the copilot's door window and putting a hole in the top of the cockpit. Her night vision flared from the first grenade but didn't whiteout for more than a fraction of a second. The grenade had exploded fifty feet below on the other side of the helicopter, scattering white-hot chunks across the rooftop.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I have no targets,\\\" said Alex. \\\"We're facing the wrong way.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm aware of that,\\\" she said, flying forward fora few seconds before going into a hover again.\\n\\nShe spun the helicopter 180 degrees, pointing Alex and Devin in the direction of the incoming ground fire. A torrent of gunfire erupted from the cabin the moment she stopped the spin. The second grenade detonated, momentarily blinding her. She popped her night vision goggles, determining that she had enough light from the fires below to pull this off with the naked eye.\\n\\n\\\"Give me about twenty feet directly to the right,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Tell me when,\\\" said Marnie, putting the helicopter into a slow drift in the direction Rich had requested.\\n\\n\\\"Grenade out!\\\" he said. \\\"One more! Let's go for the big one on the western side.\\\"\\n\\nDevin yelled as a string of bullets hit the pilot's side of the helicopter. The door window next to her shattered, a sharp pain creasing her forearm. Alex's machine gun responded with burst after burst. The third grenade exploded, illuminating the trees around them.\\n\\n\\\"Devin?\\\" she said, getting no answer.\\n\\nShe looked over her shoulder in time to see Rich sidearm his last grenade out the starboard-side door. Fuck this. We're out of here. She pulled upon the collective lever and took them higher, until they'd risen about three hundred feet above the buildings, where she pushed the cyclic forward. The helicopter angled down several degrees and sped away from the camp.\\n\\n\\\"Is Devin okay?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"I'm fine. Just got a little preoccupied therefor a moment,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Nice flying, by the way.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Thank you. It's been a little while.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Just like riding a bike,\\\" said Rich. \\\"But about a thousand times more complicated.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Something like that,\\\" she said.\\n\\nThe treetops below lit up fora moment, the last grenade hopefully spreading its flammable contents over the roof of the biggest building in the camp.\\n\\n\\\"Did you land it on the roof?\\\" she asked, peeking over her shoulder.\\n\\nRich pulled his head back inside the helicopter. \\\"Looks like it. Can I ask you for one more favor?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'd like to have Alex disable our pontoon boats,\\\" he said. \\\"I don't want any of those fuckers getting a free ride out of there tonight.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We certainly can't allow that,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\nShe lowered her night vision goggles over her face before putting them into a wide left turn and taking them back over the northeastern tip of the Mincy Conservation Area.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin somehow fell asleep on the short trip down the lake to Diamond City. He woke to Rich shaking his arm, the helicopter rapidly descending.\\n\\n\\\"Rise and shine. We're almost at the motel,\\\" he said.\\n\\nHe squinted and looked around, noticing that the M249 was gone. \\\"Where did the machine gun go?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We dumped it in the lake about a minute back,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing the serial number on that weapon can be traced to a batch of M249 Squad Automatic Weapons that either never made it to their final destination or were reported stolen from a US military armory. We do not want to get caught with a stolen military firearm. Particularly a machine gun.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And the rest of this gear is clean?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\nRich shrugged. \\\"We could explain the rest of this away, if we had to. I'd rather not, since it would tie us up fora while.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You mean we'd be sitting in jail while a team of expensive lawyers worked on getting us releases so we could flee the country and have to travel on forged IDs for the rest of our lives.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Something like that,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nAlex laughed, which was a welcome shift away from the dark mood that had enveloped him since Mike's death. The two of them had obviously been close. Devin had overheard Scott talking with Emily about how they had been plank owners in the original program-whatever that meant. The story behind Rich's team was still unclear.\\n\\n\\\"Alex. I'm very sorry about Mike,\\\" said Devin, not sure if he had stepped over the line.\\n\\n\\\"We've all lived far longer than we should have,\\\" said Alex.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"That's for sure,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"We're almost there,\\\" said Marnie over the radio. \\\"I'm going to set us down toward the southern end of the campground. I don't want to get us caught up in any power lines. Looks like a short jog to the motel.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Works for me,\\\" replied Rich before turning to Alex. \\\"It's kind of late to ask this, but do you have the keys to the SUV?\\\"\\n\\nAlex lifted a set of keys by his index finger. \\\"They were in Mike's pocket. I thought about them right before we headed for the helicopter.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm glad one of us was thinking,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nAn old-fashioned white streetlight rose slowly in the distance as the helicopter gently bounced on its wheels before settling into the landing. The high-pitched whine of the turboshaft engines shifted to a slightly lower tone as Marnie shutdown the helicopter. Rich pointed toward the streetlight.\\n\\n\\\"Let's head to the road and take aright instead of trying to cut through someone's backyard,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I don't want to get shot and killed by a local after running Stalin's gauntlet back at the camp. The whole town is probably on alert from the combination of the explosion and a helicopter suddenly landing. This is tinfoil-hat country.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Hard to argue with not getting shot,\\\" said Devin, and they set off for the road.\\n\\nA short jog later, they arrived safely at the motel parking lot, where they immediately removed their tactical gear and stowed it in the back of the SUV, along with their rifles. Rich handed one of the rifles to Devin, along with a few spare magazines.\\n\\n\\\"Keep this out of sight, but accessible if I need it.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":284,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Assist in storytelling and proceed with the tale.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 59"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"That's for sure,\" said Rich.\n\n\"We're almost there,\" said Marnie over the radio. \"I'm going to set us down toward the southern end of the campground. I don't want to get us caught up in any power lines. Looks like a short jog to the motel.\"\n\n\"Works for me,\" replied Rich before turning to Alex. \"It's kind of late to ask this, but do you have the keys to the SUV?\"\n\nAlex lifted a set of keys by his index finger. \"They were in Mike's pocket. I thought about them right before we headed for the helicopter.\"\n\n\"I'm glad one of us was thinking,\" said Rich.\n\nAn old-fashioned white streetlight rose slowly in the distance as the helicopter gently bounced on its wheels before settling into the landing. The high-pitched whine of the turboshaft engines shifted to a slightly lower tone as Marnie shutdown the helicopter. Rich pointed toward the streetlight.\n\n\"Let's head to the road and take aright instead of trying to cut through someone's backyard,\" said Rich. \"I don't want to get shot and killed by a local after running Stalin's gauntlet back at the camp. The whole town is probably on alert from the combination of the explosion and a helicopter suddenly landing. This is tinfoil-hat country.\"\n\n\"Hard to argue with not getting shot,\" said Devin, and they set off for the road.\n\nA short jog later, they arrived safely at the motel parking lot, where they immediately removed their tactical gear and stowed it in the back of the SUV, along with their rifles. Rich handed one of the rifles to Devin, along with a few spare magazines.\n\n\"Keep this out of sight, but accessible if I need it.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Still not out of the woods, so to speak?\" said Marnie.\n\n\"I hate to break this to you, but we just stepped deeper in the woods with tonight's stunt,\" said Rich, shutting the rear liftgate. \"Out of the woods means busting up this sleeper conspiracy.\"\n\n\"Wonderful,\" she said.\n\nDevin opened the door to the backseat for Marnie, who hopped in and took the rifle. As soon as Devin shut the door behind him, Alex tore out of the parking lot, throwing him against the seat. He'd noticed that Rich's people weren't big on wasting time, even under the most mundane circumstances. Every second counted with these people, which was probably one of dozens of reasons why they were still alive. Most of them, anyway.\n\n\"We still need to pickup the third vehicle at Highway Marina,\" said Rich, checking his satellite phone. \"Berg will meet us there so we can balance out the vehicles. He's still waiting for the speedboat. Should be there any minute.\"\n\n\"Then what?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Then we get off these rural roads onto some kind of interstate highway. Get as far from here as possible by sunrise. The Ozarks will be crawling with law enforcement sooner than later,\" said Rich.\n\n\"At some point I'm going to need some sleep,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Why? You slept on the helicopter,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Really?\" said Marnie.\n\n\"He was out like alight once the shooting stopped.\"\n\n\"I apologize if that's a faux pas when your best friend is flying the helicopter. Something about the rhythm of the rotors or something just pulled me under,\" said Devin.\n\n\"It's actually pretty normal,\" she said. \"We'd takeoff with a platoon of Marines, headed fora hot LZ, and half of them would be out within the first five minutes-like they were in the backseat of a car on a road trip. Then again, they were always exhausted when we were flying them around.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"That's me right now,\" said Devin."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Five minutes from passing out again.\"\n\n\"We're all right therewith you,\" said Rich. \"We'll pick a decent-size city we can reach by dawn and find a motel with a few sets of adjoining rooms. Rest up and go through what we collected on video. Scan the news out of Branson. Figure out our next move. Based on what we saw at the camp, we'll have to up our game somehow. Convince some people at a much higher level to take a serious look at what we've assembled. We're looking at somewhere around six hundred sleepers, most in positions we might not be able to figure out-until they've done their damage.\"\n\n\"I don't see how we're going to crack this,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Your mother did,\" said Rich. \"She put you and Karl Berg together fora reason. If anyone can figure out away to pull this off, it'll be him. Karl's cracked a few major conspiracies before.\"\n\n\"True America?\"\n\nRich didn't answer right away, which confirmed what Devin had suspected. Either Karl or Rich had had a hand in whatever had happened to True America. Possibly both of them.\n\n\"What did Karl tell you about True America?\"\n\n\"He said it was a story for another time,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Well. I'll let him decide when that time arrives,\" said Rich.\n\nDevin let it go for now. He was too tired to pursue a dead-end conversation. Marnie put her head on his shoulder and held his hand, the two of them drifting asleep in the company of two shadowy mercenaries they'd barely known for forty-eight hours. Not coincidentally the same amount of time he'd been awake. Devin didn't resist the sandman. He had a feeling Rich's idea of rest would amount to an hour-long nap while they waited for him to wake up. He'd have to take whatever sleep he could get, whenever he could take it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Felix Orlov crawled up the muddy shore and shrugged off his rucksack, exhausted from the long swim. He rolled onto his back and rested in the fetid sludge, staring at the clear night sky. The fire raging across the lake flickered at the bottom of his field of vision. After he'd caught his breath, he turned his head to see who else had washed upon shore with him. One lay in the muck about forty feet away, where the lake broke off into a cove. He couldn't tell if they were facedown or on their back. Another clambered out of the water between them and dropped flat. Ksenia, judging by the longer hair. Just two?\n\nHe propped himself upon his elbows to scan the lake. The third slogged through the water about fifty feet out, kicking and splashing hard enough to suggest panic. That had to be Lashev. The sniper had spent more time trying to convince them to somehow paddle one of the half-sunken pontoon boats across the lake rather than fessing up that he could barely swim. None of them had wanted to abandon most of their gear and swim several hundred yards to an unfamiliar shore, but the M249 machine gun Felix had chosen to leave in the helicopter had made the decision for them.\n\nAnd staying on the other side of the lake, trusting their fate to whoever called that camp home, wasn't a viable option. Not after the small war that had been waged out therefor close to fifteen minutes, not to mention the helicopter explosion that had probably rattled windows and set off car alarms for miles. The police would be allover this place soon, the several-story-high bonfire rising above the treetops serving as their beacon. The team was better off on their own, which meant along swim.\n\nFelix got upon wobbly legs and reentered the water, wading halfway to his struggling colleague, before he could no longer feel the bottom of the lake. He sidestroked the rest of the way and made the mistake of approaching Lashev directly. Like all terrified swimmers in a near-drowning situation, his teammate instinctively grabbed onto Felix the moment he arrived, intent on dragging him to the bottom, too. He pounded Lashev's face a few times, stunning him long enough to implement a forced-rescue hold-and start swimming."},{"from":"human","value":"He dragged Lashev to waist-high water and let go."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The operative thrashed fora few seconds before realizing he could stand. He immediately waded to shore and sat next to Ksenia. Oleg got up from his spot near the break in the shoreline and plopped down beside Lashev.\n\n\"No rest for the wicked,\" said Felix, trudging out of the water. \"We need to steal a boat or a car and get the hell out of here. I'm leaning toward one of the covered docks we spotted inside the cove. Less chance of getting shot trespassing. Most Americans are more heavily armed than the police.\"\n\n\"I saw tire tracks near the cove entrance,\" said Oleg. \"Looks like they lead in the direction of the docks.\"\n\n\"Can't they just drive our Jeeps over from the airport?\" asked Ksenia.\n\n\"The people watching over our gear and Jeeps back at the hangar have been diverted to evacuate the camp burning across the lake,\" said Felix. \"They moved everything away from the hangar, because the helicopters will eventually be traced back to the airport-but that's all I know. They'll contact us when they can spare the personnel to reunite us with our vehicles. Until then, I want to get as far from here as possible.\"\n\nFelix grabbed his backpack and tossed it in front of the group. He'd volunteered to carry the fifteen-to twenty-pound bag because he was a strong swimmer-and didn't think anyone else would make it across with the equivalent of an anchor strapped to their back. Boots, socks, pistols, and ammunition. The essentials. He'd sealed his satellite phone and wallet in a waterproof bag and stuffed it in one of his cargo pockets.\n\nThey'd thrown everything else-the rifles, body armor, helmets, and night vision gear-into the water, as far off the shoreline on the other side of the lake as possible. Why give investigators a sense of their true numbers? Whoever combed through the property would eventually find Oksana and Valerie, unless the camp's residents cleaned up their bodies. He'd provided their general location to Pichugin's contact after the helicopter exploded. Let them deal with it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Five minutes. Don't forget to drain your pistols and work the action a few times. Hold your magazines upside down until they stop dripping. We might not be done using them tonight.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Devin opened his eyes to a dark, unfamiliar room. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly where he'd woken up and why. They'd driven through the night to Nashville, passing through the city and checking into the most nondescript motel he'd ever seen-basically, a two-story rectangle with evenly spaced doors and windows. About as inconspicuous as he could imagine, which was almost as big a selling point as the Cracker Barrel restaurant next door.\n\nThey settled into three sets of adjoining rooms, clearly a big coup for the mostly unoccupied motel, since an'exception\" was made regarding the usual check-in time. Everyone got their own bed to rest, Rich insisting the team needed to take a time-out before going any further. All Devin really remembered after that was ordering three times the amount of Cracker Barrel he could possibly eat and putting himself into a food coma.\n\nHe glanced over at the other bed, finding the blankets rumpled but empty. A quick look at the open, dark bathroom doorway told him Marnie had slipped out at some point to join the team. They'd probably taken a few hours off and gone back to work. How long had he been out? The light peeking through the shade told him he hadn't slept into the night. His watch said he'd given it his best effort: 6:48 p. m. He'd been out for more than ten hours. Rich and Karl probably had the next operation planned by now.\n\nDevin rolled off the cheap mattress and reached for the ceiling to give his stiff body a quick stretch. He noticed afresh pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, socks, and underwear on the dresser. Someone had been busy. He grabbed the jeans and checked the inside of the waist, finding them a few sizes too large-but not big enough to slide off. The shirt was a large, which would hang off him but otherwise work just fine for now."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He took everything into the bathroom and changed out of the swampy outfit he'd been wearing, before indulging in a quick shower to wash away the grime of last evening's mission. Feeling deceptively refreshed, he tucked his wallet and satellite phone into his pockets and stepped into the crusty boots next to his bed. The sort-of-human feeling the shower and new clothes had loaned him took a hit when his feet sank into the damp boots. More than just damp. He stood up, and they squished-not that he was complaining.\n\nHe swiped the old-school metal key from his nightstand and headed out to find the team. His search didn't last long. A pizza-delivery car idled in the parking lot below, where a teenager was unloading about a dozen pizza boxes between Scott and Alex.\n\nThe past week didn't feel real. From setting off to follow his mother's clues to the apartment to the forty-eight-hour whirlwind tour of violence across three states, none of it seemed possible. But here he was-watching a mercenary who had easily killed a half dozen or more people over the past three nights dig into his pocket to pay a pizza-delivery kid. An entirely unremarkable transaction to an outside observer. It made him wonder how many times he'd witnessed something this extraordinary before without even knowing it. Devin met them a few rooms down.\n\n\"Welcome back to the land of the living,\" said Scott.\n\n\"You didn't have to let me sleep that long,\" said Devin, opening the door for them.\n\n\"Marnie said you were snoring like a sawmill,\" said Alex, pausing in the doorway. \"You didn't miss much. Most of us crashed well into the afternoon. Except for Rich and Karl. I have no idea how those two are still upright and talking incomplete sentences.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Seriously,\" said Devin, following him into the crowded room and closing the door.\n\nEveryone was dressed in jeans and plain gray T-shirts. The only way it could look more comical was if all the T-shirts had the same pattern.\n\n\"There he is,\" said Berg, standing in the doorway between the adjoining rooms. \"Did they tell you that the Russians surrendered while you were asleep? It's allover.\"\n\n\"Pizza coming through,\" said Alex, making his way past Berg into the other room.\n\nRich appeared in the doorway. \"Pizza, soda, water, and beer. One-beer limit.\"\n\n\"Seriously?\" said Gupta, seated next to Graves at the foot of one of the beds. \"I think I can be trusted-\"\n\n\"You don't drink, knucklehead,\" said Graves.\n\n\"It's the principle that matters,\" said Gupta.\n\n\"Can I have his beer?\" asked Marnie.\n\n\"Yes. And Devin is welcome to mine,\" said Rich.\n\n\"That still leaves two. It's a twelve-pack,\" said Gupta.\n\n\"There's no rule requiring that they be consumed,\" said Graves. \"Do I have to share a room with him? I'm retired. Doesn't that get me my own room?\"\n\n\"Nobody pulling security tonight goes past the limit. We have no idea what kind of law enforcement or government tracking muscle they're capable of harnessing through the people we haven't identified in the network,\" said Rich. \"We may have to shoot our way out of herein an hour.\"\n\n\"I'll pass on the second,\" said Marnie, who sat cross-legged with her back against the dresser. \"Consider me part of the watch rotation.\"\n\n\"Count me in, too,\" said Devin."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Marnie motioned for him to join her.\n\n\"Good. I'll put the two of you on the four to sunrise, since you slept most of the day,\" said Rich as he crossed the room. \"Grab some slices and fuel up. Karl has a few things to go over with the team.\"\n\nDevin dropped next to Marnie as the room emptied.\n\n\"I'm not really hungry,\" she said. \"But I'll take that beer.\"\n\nHe started to getup, his leg muscles screaming from last night's operation.\n\n\"Sorry,\" she said. \"I can get it.\"\n\n\"Don't even think about it,\" said Devin. \"Drinks are on me, even if I'm not buying.\"\n\nRich leaned through the doorway with two cans of Budweiser. \"Heads up. Pure Americana coming through.\"\n\nDevin slid back down to the threadbare carpet as the beers floated through the air. Marnie snatched them both out of the air, her hands at least two feet apart when she grabbed them. She handed one off to Devin faster than a blackjack dealer spitting out cards.\n\n\"Nice trick,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Hand-eye coordination,\" said Marnie. \"It's a helicopter pilot quirk.\"\n\nDevin popped his can, followed by Marnie. \"So... we actually have a next move?\"\n\nRich scooted into the room with a Coke and sat on the bed in front of them, a cryptic smile on his face.\n\n\"Karl's been busy. He spent part of yesterday and all of today researching a lead that sounds promising. Something that could crack the wider sleeper list open. There's that and the big news that came later this afternoon while examining the gun-camera footage. Nice shooting to both of you, by the way. Saw some likely hits when we were slugging it out at the cabins. Impossible to say one hundred percent at night with those cameras, but I'd score them as confirmed.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"This is bizarre,\" said Marnie, taking along sip of her beer.\n\n\"Yeah. There's absolutely nothing normal about this,\" said Devin. \"Anyway. What's the big news?\"\n\n\"Scott's team took out the sentries from the boat dock, on their way east to linkup with Graves and Gupta. The two never knew what hit them, and the team certainly didn't know who they hit-until we reviewed Emily's gun-camera footage. She put alight on them while they were down, to give us a better shot at identifying them,\" said Rich. \"Berg recognized one of them immediately. Senator Robert Filmore's wife, Emma. The other KIA was their son, Thomas.\"\n\n\"This is going to be front-page news,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"It's definitely going to test the sleeper network's spin doctors.\"\n\n\"How the hell did my mother miss them?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"I thought the same thing, but Gupta and Graves did some digging, and neither of their family backgrounds would have raised alarms. It has to be some kind of digital historical-archive manipulation. I'm thinking they only do this for high-profile sleepers.\"\n\n\"This kind of calls into question everything,\" said Marnie. \"If we can't identify them even when we're looking right at them. And if we can't trust Helen's vetting process, how can we trust anyone that fits the age profile?\"\n\n\"We can't,\" said Rich. \"Right now, we have to assume the worst. Our circle of trust just shrank considerably.\"\n\n\"The Russians will have to assume that we discovered their identities,\" said Devin. \"What if they go to work digitally altering all of the family histories? Make it impossible to root out the rest.\"\n\n\"That's why we have to approach this from multiple angles,\" said Rich. \"Senator Filmore represents an opportunity. We just don't know what it is yet. We're waiting to see how the Russians handle it. For all we know, they'll arrange some kind of accident that eliminates the entire Filmore family. It wouldn't surprise me. He represents a loose end.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"That's gruesome,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"But not out of the realm of possibilities,\" said Devin. \"Nothing is out of the realm at this point. Not with the Russians. They'll do anything to protect their sleeper network. Speaking of protecting networks-I need to check on my dad and sister.\"\n\n\"I'll put you indirect touch with them when we finish up here,\" said Rich. \"I spoke with the contact who arranged their protection, and everything is going well. Your sister wasn't exactly pleased with the work interruption, but I'm told she's making the adjustment. Same with your father. I trust the group watching over them. They'll keep your family safe for as long as this takes.\"\n\n\"Do we have any idea how long that might be?\" asked Devin. \"I understand this isn't exactly a timeline-driven operation, but what's your gut feeling?\"\n\n\"It's impossible to say,\" said Rich. \"Graves and Gupta are putting together a video of the drone footage, gun-camera evidence, and proof-of-death stills. We could upload that to the internet and promote it as evidence of some kind of cult that committed amass homicide-suicide at the camp. Draw conspiracy crazies from allover the country to the Ozarks to see for themselves and to bug the shit out of Senator Filmore. Put some pressure on the system. Force an error, maybe. I don't know. It's a work in progress. We could go your route and expose and disrupt the current network. Get the whole country working on finding the sleepers. Whatever they're up to, they seem to be picking up speed.\"\n\n\"That could give them the cover they need to continue operating right in the open, until it's too late. If everyone is a potential sleeper agent, the whole thing devolves into a perverse, hyper-McCarthyism tornado,\" said Devin."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Rich shrugged. \"Karl is reaching out to some trusted allies to try and get them onboard. One of them could get the CIA involved. The other might get us to the source.\"\n\n\"In Russia?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"Most likely,\" said Rich. \"Based on what Karl discovered.\"\n\n\"What did he discover?\" said Marnie.\n\n\"I did some research into who owns the land used for the camp,\" said Berg, suddenly looming in the doorway.\n\nMarnie flinched, nearly dropping her beer.\n\n\"Jesus. You scared me,\" she said.\n\n\"A little jumpy, are we?\" said Berg. \"Welcome to the club. It never goes away if you do this kind of work long enough.\"\n\n\"I don't feel edgy,\" said Rich.\n\n\"You don't count, and I mean that in the friendliest possible way,\" said Berg, getting a laugh out of all of them. \" Anyway. The Dreery family bought the land encompassing the Mincy Conservation Area in the early eighteen hundreds. I think. The history is unclear. What we do know is that they leased much of the land to the Missouri Conservation Department in the nineteen thirties, withholding a few large parcels for their own use, to include the fifteen hundred or so acres now encompassing the camp. That parcel was sold to a corporation named Firebird Development, owned by the Belsky family, in 1971.\n\n\"Long story short, the original Belskys emigrated to the US from Russia in the late eighteen hundreds and accumulated a tidy fortune by American standards. Today's Belskys renounced their US citizenship in 2001, after selling the company to Concordia Management and Consulting for an undisclosed sum, and emerged as well-connected oligarchs on the Moscow scene. Concordia Management and Consulting is owned by mega-oligarch Yuri Pichugin, one of Vladimir Putin's closest confidants. Pichugin rose to prominence between 2001 and 2003, after running a very successful Saint Petersburg catering company. He reportedly met Putin, who is a Saint Petersburg native, through catered events.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"He must have served a mean pierogi,\" said Devin, the joke falling flat.\n\n\"Piroshki, maybe,\" said Berg. \"Every eastern European country has aversion of pierogi.\"\n\n\"Sounds the same,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Not even close. It's a sweet or savory stuffed bun, panfried right before serving. To die for,\" said Berg. \"But I doubt that's how Pichugin rose so quickly into the highest stratosphere of Russian power and wealth. I think the Belsky family originally bought the land, on behalf of the Soviets, for the original summer camp. Maybe they were secret Communists. Maybe they got paid. Who knows?\"\n\n\"They sound like opportunists,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Communists. Opportunists. All the same in the end,\" said Berg. \"Whatever the deal is-the Belskys turn the land over to the GRU, or whoever is running the sleeper network, and everything runs smoothly. The second generation is indoctrinated and trained at the camp before being launched into the world. Then things go dormant fora while, waiting for the third generation. Somewhere along the line, the Belskys figure out away to cash out of this valuable possession.\"\n\n\"Opportunism at its finest,\" said Rich.\n\n\"It has to be Pichugin. I just don't know how he got his mitts on the program. That's the missing link here. How did the sleeper program come into his possession? Unless the Russian Federation outsourced it to him, and he's just a proxy. My gut tells me it's the other way around.\"\n\n\"Why don't we just go after Pichugin?\" asked Devin.\n\nRich took over from there.\n\n\"First. His entire network of businesses is located in Russia or former Soviet satellite countries. We've operated in Russia before, but not in awhile-and it's far easier said than done. Second. The guy owns the largest private military contracting agency in the world. He supplies entire mercenary paramilitary units to the highest bidders around the world. Putin allegedly uses Pichugin's forces when he's looking for plausible deniability about Russia's involvement in a conflict, like the eastern Ukraine front, Crimean Peninsula, or Syria. We'd need a small army of our own to go after him.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"They all have their weaknesses,\" said Berg. \"We've hit harder targets than Pichugin.\"\n\n\"Only as a last resort,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Fair enough,\" said Berg.\n\n\"How did you piece together the link between Belsky's company and Pichugin's?\"\n\n\"A hunch,\" said Berg. \"Firebird Development was kind of a dead end. An anonymous Delaware corporation, with its listing agent registered as another anonymous Delaware corporation. Classic hide-the-owner shell game. With Russia on my mind, Iran a search through the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control public database to see if Firebird Development was on their sanctions list. Stab in the dark.\"\n\n\"Bingo?\" said Devin.\n\n\"Big time,\" said Berg. \"Firebird Development popped upon Yuri Pichugin's asset list. Pichugin had been sanctioned through the Magnitsky Act in early 2013, which bans him from entering the United States and freezes all of his US-based assets, including Firebird Development. I found Andrei and Viktor Belsky listed in the sanction filing as the previous owners. Apparently, the US Treasury Department cut through the corporate shell game and surfaced their names. A quick Google search confirmed that the Belskys had indeed moved up in the world.\"\n\n\"This is ahead-scratcher,\" said Devin. \"I mean... how do we use that information? Try to get the Treasury Department interested?\"\n\n\"We don't have anything to offer them. They did their job. Firebird Development's assets, if any still exist, are frozen in accordance with the Magnitsky Act ruling,\" said Berg.\n\n\"It didn't look like they'd skipped a beat, other than reduced attendance,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Kids these days. Addicted to their phones and social media,\" said Rich. \"In the seventies and eighties you still had a shot at brainwashing people.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I'd laugh if it weren't so true,\" said Berg. \"I'm going to reach out to someone in Russia who might be able to help. It's along shot, but I'm convinced it's an opportunity to unravel the entire sleeper network. Sergei Kozlov, the GRU general who passed information to your mother in Saint Petersburg, knew more than three names. He likely had access to the entire roster. That's what I suspect he was going to offer the CIA-but he never got past the second meeting. Kozlov may not have been the only senior-level officer at the GRU with access to that information. I'm hoping my contact can point us in the right direction-so we can arrange a chat with one of those officers.\"\n\n\"That sounds like something my team could pull off,\" said Rich. \"With a little inside help. We don't have any assets in Russia right now.\"\n\n\"I might be able to help with that, but it'll be along shot,\" said Berg. \"We have to approach this from as many angles as possible. Your mother got the sense that the sleeper network was building up to something. That it had accelerated its pace. That's what convinced her to kidnap Wilson. I get the same sense that we're up against a deadline. Maybe not an endgame, but something pivotal.\"\n\n\"And we may have accelerated their timeline with our actions over the past few days,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Correct,\" said Berg. \"Every time we hit them without delivering a crippling or mortal blow, they make an adjustment, though they may not have much flexibility with a major deadline. It's something to consider when we're planning how to proceed.\"\n\n\"If we're looking for more angles of attack, I think we should approach MINERVA-whether I'm still employed or not,\" said Devin. \"Given Jolene Rudd's connection to the DEVTEK honey-trap ploy, I think it's fair to assume that MINERVA has not been compromised. Not by anyone involved in the planning or execution of MINERVA's operation.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What would be in it for MINERVA?\" asked Rich. \"Aside from doing their patriotic duty to the United States.\"\n\nDevin couldn't tell if Rich was being sarcastic.\n\n\"I see two ways to draw them in. The first would be to give them the opportunity to best serve their client. MINERVA is all about client satisfaction. With our information, they could inform DEVTEK that the risks to the company extend well beyond industrial espionage-to possible product sabotage and ruin. I could see them setting up another sting and integrating us into that operation. The other approach is to pay them as a client to boost our surveillance and counterespionage capability,\" said Devin.\n\n\"Or offer them the DEVTEK information as payment for their services,\" said Marnie.\n\n\"Right. Or both,\" said Devin. \"Karl. You mentioned some kind of financial backing behind this team? Would it be enough to pay them on top of handing them the DEVTEK lead?\"\n\n\"That's another angle altogether,\" said Rich.\n\n\"One we can't rule out,\" said Berg.\n\n\"First we have to vet the hell out of MINERVA,\" said Rich. \"I'm not even clear how we'd go about that. My guess is that their employee roster is a well-kept secret.\"\n\n\"That's why I think paying them makes more sense, if that's feasible. As clients, we could insist on a custom vetting process. Maybe even dangle the DEVTEK information over their heads. Make the information contingent on vetting,\" said Devin.\n\n\"That's going to put you in an uncomfortable position,\" said Rich. \"Going this route will most likely terminate your employment with them.\"\n\n\"What choice do I have?\" asked Devin. \"It's along shot, but like Rich said, the more angles we explore, the better.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Hard to argue with that,\" said Berg, shrugging. \"I just wish we had something up our sleeves that wasn't such along shot.\"\n\n\"One of them has to work,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Not necessarily,\" said Berg. \"But it is what it is.\"\n\n\"How long will it take to hear back from your contacts?\" asked Devin.\n\n\"The bigger question is, How long will it take them to make a difference?\" said Berg.\n\n\"That's assuming they agree to help,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Fair point. This will put them in awkward positions at best. Dangerous at worst,\" said Berg. \"It could take a few weeks. Until things start shaping up, we'll need to lie low. A small group of us should head back to Helen's apartment in Baltimore and keep digging through the files. We're bound to find an opportunity we missed on the first few passes through the information. We barely scratched the surface, to be honest.\"\n\n\"I'll scatter the rest of the team nearby,\" said Rich. \"We can move fast if we find anything in the files, or one of your contacts comes through.\"\n\n\"We'll need to invest in some basic disguises,\" said Berg. \"Nothing dramatic, but enough to throw off facial-recognition software. There's no telling what the Russians can access through their sleeper network. The DC area has a lot of public-facing cameras.\"\n\n\"Noted,\" said Rich. \"We'll put together some basics before we set off for Baltimore.\"\n\n\"When will we takeoff?\" said Devin.\n\n\"After I get a good night's sleep,\" said Berg. \"We'll head straight to your mother's apartment and wait for one or more of our long shots to payoff.\"\n\nMarnie raised her beer. \"To long shots.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"To not getting shot,\" said Rich.\n\n\"Cheers to both,\" said Berg, raising his can. \"Though if I had to choose between the two, I'm going with not getting shot.\"\n\nWas it possible to have it both ways if they took the fight against the Russians to the next level? Devin clinked all their cans, a heavy sense of dread hanging over the toast. He couldn't shake the distinct feeling that they wouldn't all be alive for the next one."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Yuri Pichugin took General Kuznetzov's call on a secure line in the state-of-the-art, surveillance-proof room deep inside his Lake Ladoga mansion complex. Modeled after the sensitive compartmented information facility concept used by major world intelligence agencies, Pichugin had consulted with the world's top information security consultants to ensure it met or exceeded industry standards.\n\nIn truth, it was more for show than anything else. A luxuriously appointed, soundproofed, and electromagnetically sealed space that he mostly used to impress new clients and reassure long-standing allies. He could arrange to have the secure phone line run to either of his offices inside the mansion, and not risk acoustic or digital eavesdropping.\n\n\"It's late,\" said Pichugin. \"More bad news, I assume?\"\n\n\"More of the same, unfortunately,\" said the general. \"I have the final casualty count. We lost twenty-six of the parents and fifteen of the children. Plus eight of the ten GRU sleepers brought in for the cabin side of the ambush. Farrington's sharpshooters took a hefty toll.\"\n\n\"Have we confirmed it was Farrington?\"\n\n\"No. But this has his team's fingerprints allover it,\" said the general. \"From Baltimore to the torture job on the two morons in Indianapolis-and now this mess. Given Berg's involvement, it has to be Farrington.\"\n\n\"And they brought the helicopter pilot along, obviously.\"\n\n\"Nobody anticipated that. Sanderson and Farrington have never operated in the field with outsiders,\" said the general.\n\nHe supposed it could have been worse, though he wasn't sure how. The camp had been operating at its new full capacity when it was attacked. Thirty-nine sets of siblings representing the third generation, along with one of their parents, had been onsite. Not only did this represent a sizable blow to the currently active network, but it also potentially endangered the network by further exposing it to Devin Gray and Karl Berg, who would undoubtedly be combing the news and law enforcement bulletins for missing person reports or deadly accidents involving teens and adults, or, in some cases, child and parent. You couldn't just hide the fact that someone was missing in the United States."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Where are the survivors?\"\n\n\"The team that had been watching over Orlov's gear at the airport scrambled to arrange transportation out of there. Everyone has been evacuated to a friendly site just off the lake, about a mile south of the Missouri-Arkansas border. That includes the bodies. We're going to keep them there until things settle down, then start smuggling people out in small groups. They managed to retrieve all of the files from the buildings before the fires got out of control, so that's one less thing to worry about.\"\n\n\"Big consolation,\" said Pichugin, sensing that Kuznetzov was building up to something.\n\n\"There's one thing that's going to be a significant problem,\" said the general.\n\n\"Just one? What is it?\"\n\n\"Senator Filmore's wife and son were killed during the attack. They were found along the trail between the boat landing and the camp. Both of them shot twice in the chest.\"\n\nThat was how it could be worse. They'd just lost one of the highest-placed sleepers in the entire network.\n\n\"We have to assume that Farrington's people have identified them. They probably documented the entire raid with video cameras. They'll go after the senator at some point, if only to fuck with us,\" said Pichugin. \"Has Senator Filmore been notified?\"\n\n\"None of the families have been notified,\" said the general. \"And strict communications protocols have been activated at the evacuation site.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Pichugin. \"Hold off on any notifications, and under no circumstances are any of the sleepers to make contact with anyone. I need to think about how we're going to deal with this, particularly the senator's situation.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" said the general. \"May I make a suggestion?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Of course.\"\n\n\"I think we need to strongly consider eliminating Senator Filmore and his daughter,\" said the general. \"Put all of their bodies on a private jet and crash it.\"\n\n\"Was the daughter at the camp?\" asked Pichugin.\n\n\"Yes. She survived.\"\n\nHe didn't see anyway to salvage the situation with Senator Filmore at this point. If Farrington's people started circulating pictures of the wife and son, the media and federal law enforcement would start asking questions that nobody could adequately answer. They needed to get ahead of that. A tidy plane crash with all four of them onboard would snuff out the fire generated by the pictures.\n\n\"Make it happen. Quickly,\" said Pichugin. \"And have Alexei prepare a list of the entire network. I want the sleepers broken down into three categories: critical, essential, and nonessential to FIREBIRD. Then break each of those categories down into public sector or private sector. Any operative that can be easily identified represents a risk to FIREBIRD and an opportunity for Farrington and Berg. I expect them to sharpen their sleeper-hunting skills in the upcoming days. The fewer liabilities we have out there-the better.\"\n\n\"As in permanently retire?\" said the general.\n\n\"I mean recall them. Give them twenty-four hours to get on a plane and leave the United States behind,\" said Pichugin. \"Why? What did you think I meant?\"\n\n\"I was just making sure,\" said the general.\n\n\"Don't get me wrong, Grigory,\" said Pichugin. \"If we activate a recall of noncritical sleepers, anyone that doesn't comply with the order will experience the other type of recall.\"\n\n\"Understood,\" said the general."},{"from":"human","value":"\"I'll need to speak with the big man regarding a recall."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He may not want to dismantle that much of FIREBIRD yet,\" said Pichugin.\n\n\"Will you becoming to Moscow, then?\" asked the general.\n\n\"No. He's in Saint Petersburg. I'll arrange a meeting this afternoon,\" said Pichugin. \"And Grigory? A few more things.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"First. Have we made any progress toward finding Gray, Berg, or any of their suspected associates?\" asked Pichugin.\n\n\"Kazakhstan filed a Red Notice for Karl Berg and Richard Farrington yesterday. Russia will file one today, citing the same charges related to their alleged involvement in terrorist attacks against state facilities. Both of them are actually suspected to have been involved with the attack on the Vector Institute in Novosibirsk and the downing of two Russian helicopters in Kazakhstan,\" said the general.\n\n\"They like blowing up helicopters,\" grumbled Pichugin.\n\n\"Apparently so. The Red Notices will give our people in US law enforcement an excuse to put some more robust surveillance and detection measures into action. We're still looking at a few days before that gets rolling. We can expand the list of names to other known associates of General Terrence Sanderson-Farrington's mentor-and Farrington himself. Once we get a bunch of names in there, our people inside US law enforcement can start looking at Devin Gray and Marnie Young.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" said Pichugin. \"And what about DEVTEK? Are we making any progress on that front? Without aback door to their infrastructure-security software, we'll have to do things the hard way-which represents a significant delay. Not to mention the risk.\"\n\n\"We're working on it. As you can imagine, a company that provides state-of-the-art cybersecurity solutions isn't easy to hack,\" said the general. \"We're exploring more direct options, but their guard is up after the honey-trap debacle. Kind of ironic that Gray may have been involved in the DEVTEK operation.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"More like annoying,\" said Pichugin. \"Keep a close eye on MINERVA. If Gray makes the same connection, he could complicate our efforts to breach DEVTEK.\"\n\n\"We're doing what we canto monitor MINERVA without alerting them to our presence. Not the easiest task, given their specialty,\" said the general. \"Was there anything else?\"\n\n\"Yes. Give Felix Orlov whatever he needs to make sure the job gets done next time,\" said Pichugin.\n\n\"It wasn't his fault.\"\n\n\"I know it wasn't his fault,\" said Pichugin, on the verge of screaming at Kuznetzov for underutilizing Orlov. \"Which is why I don't want him restrained in anyway. We're licking our wounds this time. Next time we'll be mopping our blood off the floor. We can't afford another setback. Not this close to the finish line. The final dominoes should fall within the next few weeks, driving a permanent wedge between the Americans and their European allies-reopening doors long shut to Russia.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Alexei Kaparov sat alone on a concrete bench a few blocks from his apartment, the dingy gray of Soviet-era block-style high-rises peeking through the trees. Old men crowded around chessboards on the stone tables lining one side of the park's wide brick promenade, pigeons navigating their feet to peck at the lunch crumbs as they fell.\n\nKaparov had never taken to chess. He'd taken to vodka instead during his spare time, which had been scarce before he'd retired from the FSB a few years ago. Now, he had all the time in the world on his hands, and there was only so much time he could spend drinking-a challenge he rose to everyday. Maybe he should take up smoking again to fill the void.\n\nHe took a short pull from the stainless-steel flask he had brought on his daily walk and relished in the comfortably warm glow that followed. His buzz was cut short by the phone in his pocket. Kaparov debated whether to check the phone or take another swig of vodka. He didn't get many calls these days, so he set the flask on the bench next to him and pulled the phone from his pocket, noticing that he'd received a text message a minute earlier that had somehow gone unnoticed.\n\nThe message came from a different number, containing a code word established long ago by an old friend. Kaparov was coming upon the second anniversary of his retirement, a benchmark the two of them had agreed would be the earliest they could finally meet in personas allies and not adversaries. He answered the call.\n\n\"Karl. So good of you to call,\" said Kaparov. \"I'm very much looking forward to next year's trip, though it's difficult to determine if this all-inclusive idea of yours is legitimate or some kind of scam to get you out of paying full price. I saw something on Tripadvisor about top-shelf liquors not being served, so-\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Alexei. Sorry to interrupt, but I'm afraid this is a business call, and a very serious one at that,\" said Karl Berg.\n\n\"You know what I'm doing right now?\" asked Kaparov.\n\n\"Drinking vodka.\"\n\n\"Besides that.\"\n\n\"I haven't a clue,\" said Berg.\n\n\"I'm sitting on a park bench watching people older than me play chess,\" said Kaparov. \"Thinking about learning chess. Because I'm bored out of my fucking mind after retiring. I'm retired, Karl, which means I'm no longer in a position to help you.\"\n\n\"I think you might be able to help,\" said Berg. \"What do you know about Yuri Pichugin? Specifically, his ties to the GRU.\"\n\n\"Please tell me you haven't somehow made enemies with Yuri Pichugin,\" said Kaparov. \"He's one of the wealthiest and connected oligarchs in Russia. Connected right to the top, if you know what I mean.\"\n\n\"I do. I've stumbled across something that might be connected to him,\" said Berg. \"It's definitely connected to Viktor Belsky. Does that name sound familiar?\"\n\n\"I know the name, but not much more than that,\" said Kaparov. \"Midlevel oligarch with decent connections. Returned to Russia from the US in the mid– two thousands, if my memory serves me correctly.\"\n\n\"It serves you well. Viktor Belsky and his father sold a company based in the United States to Yuri Pichugin around that time,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Must have been a very successful company,\" said Kaparov.\n\n\"That's the thing,\" said Berg. \"The Belskys had money, but not that kind of money, and the company they sold to Pichugin didn't appear to have any assets beyond a sizable chunk of land in the middle of the United States. Valuable, but not that valuable.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Karl. Maybe my brain is a little mushy these days,\" said Kaparov. \"But what are we talking about here?\"\n\n\"The bottom line is that I believe Yuri Pichugin is bankrolling a Soviet-era GRU-run sleeper network in the United States through this company and is pulling the strings on behalf of your beloved leaders.\"\n\n\"And you have evidence of this?\"\n\n\"We're piecing it together, but the network is real. I've seen it firsthand. The network's training camp was located on the land the Belskys sold to Pichugin. I've seen that, too,\" said Karl. \"The problem is that we're unable to identify close to eighty percent of the network. We're talking upwards of six hundred sleepers.\"\n\n\"Six hundred! Come on. That's a ludicrous number,\" said Kaparov. \"But assuming it was true, they'd all be in their seventies by now.\"\n\n\"I'm talking about their children,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Second generation?\" said Kaparov. \"That's the stuff of legends.\"\n\n\"Not anymore,\" said Berg. \"They've penetrated everything here. One of them is a senator. And they're working on a third generation.\"\n\n\"Maybe this would be a better conversation to have in person,\" said Kaparov.\n\n\"I would gladly discuss this with you in person, in private, but Russia and Kazakhstan have just put me on Interpol's Red Notice list. We've stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest over here.\"\n\n\"We?\"\n\n\"Some of the same off-the-books associates I've used before in the course of our dealings,\" said Berg.\n\n\"I still don't see what I can do to help,\" said Kaparov."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Without going into too much detail, the decades-long process of discovering this network started with a GRU general who threw himself under a tram in Saint Petersburg in 2003, immediately after passing some very specific information about the network to one of our officers,\" said Berg. \"The general was one of a handful of Soviet-era hard-liners still active in the GRU at the time, which is why we were surprised he wanted to defect to the United States. We were in the process of verifying what he had to offer when everything went sideways. He couldn't have been the only GRU general with knowledge of this program. If we can identify another, perhaps we could take the next step toward unearthing the rest of the network.\"\n\n\"Two thousand three was a very unlucky year for GRU generals and high-ranking officers,\" said Berg. \"A few dozen committed suicide, died in car accidents, or drowned in puddles near their dachas. Everyone in the GRU feared some kind of purge, but nobody could figure out if they were next. The only discernible pattern was that there was no pattern. Nobody could figure out where they worked within the GRU. People started calling it the Lost Directorate; then word came down from the top to stop talking about it-and that was it. Reinforced by firings and a few more suspicious deaths.\"\n\n\"The Lost Directorate. Sounds like they were running something off the books,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Nothing was off the books in the Soviet Union. We documented and accounted for everything, and we still do. It's in our DNA,\" said Kaparov.\n\n\"Then what I'm asking you to do is lean on some of your Soviet-era comrades in arms to see if any of the possible members of this Lost Directorate survived the purge,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Then you'll send people hereto have a friendly chat with them?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Something like that.\"\n\n\"Let me see what I can dig up without getting myself killed,\" said Kaparov. \"This reminds me of something. Have you ever heard the term Khrushchev's Ghost?\"\n\n\"I've obviously heard of Khrushchev, but I'm unfamiliar with his ghost.\"\n\n\"It's a term that floated around in the late sixties, in the aftermath of Khrushchev's reign. Rumors about a group of hard-liners unhappy with the direction Brezhnev was taking the country. Just whispers here and thereabout Khrushchev's Ghost watching over the country. Nothing ever came of it. I only brought it up because it somehow rings the same.\"\n\n\"It does, and it sounds creepy as hell, if you ask me,\" said Berg.\n\n\"I thought you'd like it,\" said Kaparov. \"A word of warning, my friend. If this sleeper network is as extensive as you've suggested and has any connection to Khrushchev's Ghost, or any Cold War– era hard-liner faction, it will be positioned to inflict maximum damage on the United States. Meaning-it represents the ultimate under-the-table leverage. Whoever controls it will not go gently into the night. Be very careful with this one.\"\n\n\"That's the plan,\" said Berg.\n\n\"And if Pichugin's pulling the strings,\" said Kaparov, \"keep a close eye on Ukraine. Rumor has it that nearly three-quarters of the separatist ground forces massed near the Donbass region are mercenaries. Battalion-size units in some cases. This represents a significant increase over last year. Something is brewing over there.\"\n\n\"Sounds like the Wegner Group?\"\n\n\"Nobody will confirm it,\" said Kaparov. \"But who else could it be? The Wegner Group has been Pichugin's private army for close to a decade.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"More like Putin's private army,\" said Berg.\n\n\"Once again, nobody will confirm either connection. At least nobody that wants to live to a ripe old age,\" said Kaparov.\n\n\"Thank you for helping outwith this, Alexei. As always, watch your back,\" said Berg. \"And I owe you again. For the record, all-inclusive is the way to go when you're drinking from nine in the morning into the late hours of the night on a Caribbean vacation. And it's not like you're drinking the high-end stuff anyway.\"\n\n\"Ha! I just don't want you to think my services come cheap!\"\n\n\"I'm well aware they don't,\" said Berg.\n\n\"I'll callas soon as I know something,\" said Kaparov. \"Or be on the next flight out of Moscow, headed to the Caribbean, if I somehow kick the same hornet's nest here.\"\n\nHe ended the call convinced that Karl Berg would be the end of him and determined to soak every ruble possible out of him when they finally met up. If he survived the latest mess Karl had stepped in."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"To start, a big thank-you to my family for supporting this book during the pandemic. Deep Sleep is the second manuscript I produced in'lockdown,\" and I'm not going to lie: it took every bit of focus I could muster. Everyone here at home played a significant role in keeping me on my deadline.\n\nTo Kosia, my better half, for locking me in the office when necessary and banning me from social media when my attention strayed. More importantly, for taking the conspiracy I created for this story to the next level. The wider geopolitical scope and deeper penetration of the conspiracy were a direct result of a series of brainstorming sessions conducted months before I put words on the pages.\n\nAs always, to the editorial team at Thomas& Mercer for enthusiastically giving Deep Sleep the green light and throwing their full support behind it. And to Megha for believing in this project!\n\nTo Kevin, who put the final developmental touches on the story. Four books together, and I don't bother to argue with him anymore. I know he's right. I can't wait to get the next book into your hands.\n\nTo the Mountainside crew for listening to the earliest iteration of the Deep Sleep concept and passing along invaluable feedback. I had no idea at the time that the vague idea I presented over drinks would be my next series, but the notes I took stuck with me long after our visit.\n\nTo my advance reader team. I've enjoyed sharing sneak peeks, cover reveals, and advance copies with you. Thank you forgetting the word out!\n\nFinally, to the readers. I know I say this every time, but without you, none of this would be possible."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Assist in storytelling and proceed with the tale.\\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\\nTitle: Deep Sleep\\nChapter: 59\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"That's for sure,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"We're almost there,\\\" said Marnie over the radio. \\\"I'm going to set us down toward the southern end of the campground. I don't want to get us caught up in any power lines. Looks like a short jog to the motel.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Works for me,\\\" replied Rich before turning to Alex. \\\"It's kind of late to ask this, but do you have the keys to the SUV?\\\"\\n\\nAlex lifted a set of keys by his index finger. \\\"They were in Mike's pocket. I thought about them right before we headed for the helicopter.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm glad one of us was thinking,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nAn old-fashioned white streetlight rose slowly in the distance as the helicopter gently bounced on its wheels before settling into the landing. The high-pitched whine of the turboshaft engines shifted to a slightly lower tone as Marnie shutdown the helicopter. Rich pointed toward the streetlight.\\n\\n\\\"Let's head to the road and take aright instead of trying to cut through someone's backyard,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I don't want to get shot and killed by a local after running Stalin's gauntlet back at the camp. The whole town is probably on alert from the combination of the explosion and a helicopter suddenly landing. This is tinfoil-hat country.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Hard to argue with not getting shot,\\\" said Devin, and they set off for the road.\\n\\nA short jog later, they arrived safely at the motel parking lot, where they immediately removed their tactical gear and stowed it in the back of the SUV, along with their rifles. Rich handed one of the rifles to Devin, along with a few spare magazines.\\n\\n\\\"Keep this out of sight, but accessible if I need it.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Still not out of the woods, so to speak?\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"I hate to break this to you, but we just stepped deeper in the woods with tonight's stunt,\\\" said Rich, shutting the rear liftgate. \\\"Out of the woods means busting up this sleeper conspiracy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Wonderful,\\\" she said.\\n\\nDevin opened the door to the backseat for Marnie, who hopped in and took the rifle. As soon as Devin shut the door behind him, Alex tore out of the parking lot, throwing him against the seat. He'd noticed that Rich's people weren't big on wasting time, even under the most mundane circumstances. Every second counted with these people, which was probably one of dozens of reasons why they were still alive. Most of them, anyway.\\n\\n\\\"We still need to pickup the third vehicle at Highway Marina,\\\" said Rich, checking his satellite phone. \\\"Berg will meet us there so we can balance out the vehicles. He's still waiting for the speedboat. Should be there any minute.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Then what?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Then we get off these rural roads onto some kind of interstate highway. Get as far from here as possible by sunrise. The Ozarks will be crawling with law enforcement sooner than later,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"At some point I'm going to need some sleep,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Why? You slept on the helicopter,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Really?\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"He was out like alight once the shooting stopped.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I apologize if that's a faux pas when your best friend is flying the helicopter. Something about the rhythm of the rotors or something just pulled me under,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"It's actually pretty normal,\\\" she said. \\\"We'd takeoff with a platoon of Marines, headed fora hot LZ, and half of them would be out within the first five minutes-like they were in the backseat of a car on a road trip. Then again, they were always exhausted when we were flying them around.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"That's me right now,\\\" said Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Five minutes from passing out again.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're all right therewith you,\\\" said Rich. \\\"We'll pick a decent-size city we can reach by dawn and find a motel with a few sets of adjoining rooms. Rest up and go through what we collected on video. Scan the news out of Branson. Figure out our next move. Based on what we saw at the camp, we'll have to up our game somehow. Convince some people at a much higher level to take a serious look at what we've assembled. We're looking at somewhere around six hundred sleepers, most in positions we might not be able to figure out-until they've done their damage.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't see how we're going to crack this,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Your mother did,\\\" said Rich. \\\"She put you and Karl Berg together fora reason. If anyone can figure out away to pull this off, it'll be him. Karl's cracked a few major conspiracies before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"True America?\\\"\\n\\nRich didn't answer right away, which confirmed what Devin had suspected. Either Karl or Rich had had a hand in whatever had happened to True America. Possibly both of them.\\n\\n\\\"What did Karl tell you about True America?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He said it was a story for another time,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Well. I'll let him decide when that time arrives,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\nDevin let it go for now. He was too tired to pursue a dead-end conversation. Marnie put her head on his shoulder and held his hand, the two of them drifting asleep in the company of two shadowy mercenaries they'd barely known for forty-eight hours. Not coincidentally the same amount of time he'd been awake. Devin didn't resist the sandman. He had a feeling Rich's idea of rest would amount to an hour-long nap while they waited for him to wake up. He'd have to take whatever sleep he could get, whenever he could take it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Felix Orlov crawled up the muddy shore and shrugged off his rucksack, exhausted from the long swim. He rolled onto his back and rested in the fetid sludge, staring at the clear night sky. The fire raging across the lake flickered at the bottom of his field of vision. After he'd caught his breath, he turned his head to see who else had washed upon shore with him. One lay in the muck about forty feet away, where the lake broke off into a cove. He couldn't tell if they were facedown or on their back. Another clambered out of the water between them and dropped flat. Ksenia, judging by the longer hair. Just two?\\n\\nHe propped himself upon his elbows to scan the lake. The third slogged through the water about fifty feet out, kicking and splashing hard enough to suggest panic. That had to be Lashev. The sniper had spent more time trying to convince them to somehow paddle one of the half-sunken pontoon boats across the lake rather than fessing up that he could barely swim. None of them had wanted to abandon most of their gear and swim several hundred yards to an unfamiliar shore, but the M249 machine gun Felix had chosen to leave in the helicopter had made the decision for them.\\n\\nAnd staying on the other side of the lake, trusting their fate to whoever called that camp home, wasn't a viable option. Not after the small war that had been waged out therefor close to fifteen minutes, not to mention the helicopter explosion that had probably rattled windows and set off car alarms for miles. The police would be allover this place soon, the several-story-high bonfire rising above the treetops serving as their beacon. The team was better off on their own, which meant along swim.\\n\\nFelix got upon wobbly legs and reentered the water, wading halfway to his struggling colleague, before he could no longer feel the bottom of the lake. He sidestroked the rest of the way and made the mistake of approaching Lashev directly. Like all terrified swimmers in a near-drowning situation, his teammate instinctively grabbed onto Felix the moment he arrived, intent on dragging him to the bottom, too. He pounded Lashev's face a few times, stunning him long enough to implement a forced-rescue hold-and start swimming.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"He dragged Lashev to waist-high water and let go.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The operative thrashed fora few seconds before realizing he could stand. He immediately waded to shore and sat next to Ksenia. Oleg got up from his spot near the break in the shoreline and plopped down beside Lashev.\\n\\n\\\"No rest for the wicked,\\\" said Felix, trudging out of the water. \\\"We need to steal a boat or a car and get the hell out of here. I'm leaning toward one of the covered docks we spotted inside the cove. Less chance of getting shot trespassing. Most Americans are more heavily armed than the police.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I saw tire tracks near the cove entrance,\\\" said Oleg. \\\"Looks like they lead in the direction of the docks.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Can't they just drive our Jeeps over from the airport?\\\" asked Ksenia.\\n\\n\\\"The people watching over our gear and Jeeps back at the hangar have been diverted to evacuate the camp burning across the lake,\\\" said Felix. \\\"They moved everything away from the hangar, because the helicopters will eventually be traced back to the airport-but that's all I know. They'll contact us when they can spare the personnel to reunite us with our vehicles. Until then, I want to get as far from here as possible.\\\"\\n\\nFelix grabbed his backpack and tossed it in front of the group. He'd volunteered to carry the fifteen-to twenty-pound bag because he was a strong swimmer-and didn't think anyone else would make it across with the equivalent of an anchor strapped to their back. Boots, socks, pistols, and ammunition. The essentials. He'd sealed his satellite phone and wallet in a waterproof bag and stuffed it in one of his cargo pockets.\\n\\nThey'd thrown everything else-the rifles, body armor, helmets, and night vision gear-into the water, as far off the shoreline on the other side of the lake as possible. Why give investigators a sense of their true numbers? Whoever combed through the property would eventually find Oksana and Valerie, unless the camp's residents cleaned up their bodies. He'd provided their general location to Pichugin's contact after the helicopter exploded. Let them deal with it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Five minutes. Don't forget to drain your pistols and work the action a few times. Hold your magazines upside down until they stop dripping. We might not be done using them tonight.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Devin opened his eyes to a dark, unfamiliar room. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly where he'd woken up and why. They'd driven through the night to Nashville, passing through the city and checking into the most nondescript motel he'd ever seen-basically, a two-story rectangle with evenly spaced doors and windows. About as inconspicuous as he could imagine, which was almost as big a selling point as the Cracker Barrel restaurant next door.\\n\\nThey settled into three sets of adjoining rooms, clearly a big coup for the mostly unoccupied motel, since an'exception\\\" was made regarding the usual check-in time. Everyone got their own bed to rest, Rich insisting the team needed to take a time-out before going any further. All Devin really remembered after that was ordering three times the amount of Cracker Barrel he could possibly eat and putting himself into a food coma.\\n\\nHe glanced over at the other bed, finding the blankets rumpled but empty. A quick look at the open, dark bathroom doorway told him Marnie had slipped out at some point to join the team. They'd probably taken a few hours off and gone back to work. How long had he been out? The light peeking through the shade told him he hadn't slept into the night. His watch said he'd given it his best effort: 6:48 p. m. He'd been out for more than ten hours. Rich and Karl probably had the next operation planned by now.\\n\\nDevin rolled off the cheap mattress and reached for the ceiling to give his stiff body a quick stretch. He noticed afresh pair of jeans, a few T-shirts, socks, and underwear on the dresser. Someone had been busy. He grabbed the jeans and checked the inside of the waist, finding them a few sizes too large-but not big enough to slide off. The shirt was a large, which would hang off him but otherwise work just fine for now.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He took everything into the bathroom and changed out of the swampy outfit he'd been wearing, before indulging in a quick shower to wash away the grime of last evening's mission. Feeling deceptively refreshed, he tucked his wallet and satellite phone into his pockets and stepped into the crusty boots next to his bed. The sort-of-human feeling the shower and new clothes had loaned him took a hit when his feet sank into the damp boots. More than just damp. He stood up, and they squished-not that he was complaining.\\n\\nHe swiped the old-school metal key from his nightstand and headed out to find the team. His search didn't last long. A pizza-delivery car idled in the parking lot below, where a teenager was unloading about a dozen pizza boxes between Scott and Alex.\\n\\nThe past week didn't feel real. From setting off to follow his mother's clues to the apartment to the forty-eight-hour whirlwind tour of violence across three states, none of it seemed possible. But here he was-watching a mercenary who had easily killed a half dozen or more people over the past three nights dig into his pocket to pay a pizza-delivery kid. An entirely unremarkable transaction to an outside observer. It made him wonder how many times he'd witnessed something this extraordinary before without even knowing it. Devin met them a few rooms down.\\n\\n\\\"Welcome back to the land of the living,\\\" said Scott.\\n\\n\\\"You didn't have to let me sleep that long,\\\" said Devin, opening the door for them.\\n\\n\\\"Marnie said you were snoring like a sawmill,\\\" said Alex, pausing in the doorway. \\\"You didn't miss much. Most of us crashed well into the afternoon. Except for Rich and Karl. I have no idea how those two are still upright and talking incomplete sentences.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Seriously,\\\" said Devin, following him into the crowded room and closing the door.\\n\\nEveryone was dressed in jeans and plain gray T-shirts. The only way it could look more comical was if all the T-shirts had the same pattern.\\n\\n\\\"There he is,\\\" said Berg, standing in the doorway between the adjoining rooms. \\\"Did they tell you that the Russians surrendered while you were asleep? It's allover.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Pizza coming through,\\\" said Alex, making his way past Berg into the other room.\\n\\nRich appeared in the doorway. \\\"Pizza, soda, water, and beer. One-beer limit.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Seriously?\\\" said Gupta, seated next to Graves at the foot of one of the beds. \\\"I think I can be trusted-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You don't drink, knucklehead,\\\" said Graves.\\n\\n\\\"It's the principle that matters,\\\" said Gupta.\\n\\n\\\"Can I have his beer?\\\" asked Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Yes. And Devin is welcome to mine,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"That still leaves two. It's a twelve-pack,\\\" said Gupta.\\n\\n\\\"There's no rule requiring that they be consumed,\\\" said Graves. \\\"Do I have to share a room with him? I'm retired. Doesn't that get me my own room?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nobody pulling security tonight goes past the limit. We have no idea what kind of law enforcement or government tracking muscle they're capable of harnessing through the people we haven't identified in the network,\\\" said Rich. \\\"We may have to shoot our way out of herein an hour.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll pass on the second,\\\" said Marnie, who sat cross-legged with her back against the dresser. \\\"Consider me part of the watch rotation.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Count me in, too,\\\" said Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Marnie motioned for him to join her.\\n\\n\\\"Good. I'll put the two of you on the four to sunrise, since you slept most of the day,\\\" said Rich as he crossed the room. \\\"Grab some slices and fuel up. Karl has a few things to go over with the team.\\\"\\n\\nDevin dropped next to Marnie as the room emptied.\\n\\n\\\"I'm not really hungry,\\\" she said. \\\"But I'll take that beer.\\\"\\n\\nHe started to getup, his leg muscles screaming from last night's operation.\\n\\n\\\"Sorry,\\\" she said. \\\"I can get it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Don't even think about it,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Drinks are on me, even if I'm not buying.\\\"\\n\\nRich leaned through the doorway with two cans of Budweiser. \\\"Heads up. Pure Americana coming through.\\\"\\n\\nDevin slid back down to the threadbare carpet as the beers floated through the air. Marnie snatched them both out of the air, her hands at least two feet apart when she grabbed them. She handed one off to Devin faster than a blackjack dealer spitting out cards.\\n\\n\\\"Nice trick,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Hand-eye coordination,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"It's a helicopter pilot quirk.\\\"\\n\\nDevin popped his can, followed by Marnie. \\\"So... we actually have a next move?\\\"\\n\\nRich scooted into the room with a Coke and sat on the bed in front of them, a cryptic smile on his face.\\n\\n\\\"Karl's been busy. He spent part of yesterday and all of today researching a lead that sounds promising. Something that could crack the wider sleeper list open. There's that and the big news that came later this afternoon while examining the gun-camera footage. Nice shooting to both of you, by the way. Saw some likely hits when we were slugging it out at the cabins. Impossible to say one hundred percent at night with those cameras, but I'd score them as confirmed.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"This is bizarre,\\\" said Marnie, taking along sip of her beer.\\n\\n\\\"Yeah. There's absolutely nothing normal about this,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Anyway. What's the big news?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Scott's team took out the sentries from the boat dock, on their way east to linkup with Graves and Gupta. The two never knew what hit them, and the team certainly didn't know who they hit-until we reviewed Emily's gun-camera footage. She put alight on them while they were down, to give us a better shot at identifying them,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Berg recognized one of them immediately. Senator Robert Filmore's wife, Emma. The other KIA was their son, Thomas.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"This is going to be front-page news,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"It's definitely going to test the sleeper network's spin doctors.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How the hell did my mother miss them?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"I thought the same thing, but Gupta and Graves did some digging, and neither of their family backgrounds would have raised alarms. It has to be some kind of digital historical-archive manipulation. I'm thinking they only do this for high-profile sleepers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"This kind of calls into question everything,\\\" said Marnie. \\\"If we can't identify them even when we're looking right at them. And if we can't trust Helen's vetting process, how can we trust anyone that fits the age profile?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We can't,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Right now, we have to assume the worst. Our circle of trust just shrank considerably.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The Russians will have to assume that we discovered their identities,\\\" said Devin. \\\"What if they go to work digitally altering all of the family histories? Make it impossible to root out the rest.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's why we have to approach this from multiple angles,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Senator Filmore represents an opportunity. We just don't know what it is yet. We're waiting to see how the Russians handle it. For all we know, they'll arrange some kind of accident that eliminates the entire Filmore family. It wouldn't surprise me. He represents a loose end.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"That's gruesome,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"But not out of the realm of possibilities,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Nothing is out of the realm at this point. Not with the Russians. They'll do anything to protect their sleeper network. Speaking of protecting networks-I need to check on my dad and sister.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll put you indirect touch with them when we finish up here,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I spoke with the contact who arranged their protection, and everything is going well. Your sister wasn't exactly pleased with the work interruption, but I'm told she's making the adjustment. Same with your father. I trust the group watching over them. They'll keep your family safe for as long as this takes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Do we have any idea how long that might be?\\\" asked Devin. \\\"I understand this isn't exactly a timeline-driven operation, but what's your gut feeling?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's impossible to say,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Graves and Gupta are putting together a video of the drone footage, gun-camera evidence, and proof-of-death stills. We could upload that to the internet and promote it as evidence of some kind of cult that committed amass homicide-suicide at the camp. Draw conspiracy crazies from allover the country to the Ozarks to see for themselves and to bug the shit out of Senator Filmore. Put some pressure on the system. Force an error, maybe. I don't know. It's a work in progress. We could go your route and expose and disrupt the current network. Get the whole country working on finding the sleepers. Whatever they're up to, they seem to be picking up speed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That could give them the cover they need to continue operating right in the open, until it's too late. If everyone is a potential sleeper agent, the whole thing devolves into a perverse, hyper-McCarthyism tornado,\\\" said Devin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Rich shrugged. \\\"Karl is reaching out to some trusted allies to try and get them onboard. One of them could get the CIA involved. The other might get us to the source.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"In Russia?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Most likely,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Based on what Karl discovered.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What did he discover?\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"I did some research into who owns the land used for the camp,\\\" said Berg, suddenly looming in the doorway.\\n\\nMarnie flinched, nearly dropping her beer.\\n\\n\\\"Jesus. You scared me,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"A little jumpy, are we?\\\" said Berg. \\\"Welcome to the club. It never goes away if you do this kind of work long enough.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't feel edgy,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"You don't count, and I mean that in the friendliest possible way,\\\" said Berg, getting a laugh out of all of them. \\\" Anyway. The Dreery family bought the land encompassing the Mincy Conservation Area in the early eighteen hundreds. I think. The history is unclear. What we do know is that they leased much of the land to the Missouri Conservation Department in the nineteen thirties, withholding a few large parcels for their own use, to include the fifteen hundred or so acres now encompassing the camp. That parcel was sold to a corporation named Firebird Development, owned by the Belsky family, in 1971.\\n\\n\\\"Long story short, the original Belskys emigrated to the US from Russia in the late eighteen hundreds and accumulated a tidy fortune by American standards. Today's Belskys renounced their US citizenship in 2001, after selling the company to Concordia Management and Consulting for an undisclosed sum, and emerged as well-connected oligarchs on the Moscow scene. Concordia Management and Consulting is owned by mega-oligarch Yuri Pichugin, one of Vladimir Putin's closest confidants. Pichugin rose to prominence between 2001 and 2003, after running a very successful Saint Petersburg catering company. He reportedly met Putin, who is a Saint Petersburg native, through catered events.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"He must have served a mean pierogi,\\\" said Devin, the joke falling flat.\\n\\n\\\"Piroshki, maybe,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Every eastern European country has aversion of pierogi.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sounds the same,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Not even close. It's a sweet or savory stuffed bun, panfried right before serving. To die for,\\\" said Berg. \\\"But I doubt that's how Pichugin rose so quickly into the highest stratosphere of Russian power and wealth. I think the Belsky family originally bought the land, on behalf of the Soviets, for the original summer camp. Maybe they were secret Communists. Maybe they got paid. Who knows?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They sound like opportunists,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Communists. Opportunists. All the same in the end,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Whatever the deal is-the Belskys turn the land over to the GRU, or whoever is running the sleeper network, and everything runs smoothly. The second generation is indoctrinated and trained at the camp before being launched into the world. Then things go dormant fora while, waiting for the third generation. Somewhere along the line, the Belskys figure out away to cash out of this valuable possession.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Opportunism at its finest,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"It has to be Pichugin. I just don't know how he got his mitts on the program. That's the missing link here. How did the sleeper program come into his possession? Unless the Russian Federation outsourced it to him, and he's just a proxy. My gut tells me it's the other way around.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why don't we just go after Pichugin?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\nRich took over from there.\\n\\n\\\"First. His entire network of businesses is located in Russia or former Soviet satellite countries. We've operated in Russia before, but not in awhile-and it's far easier said than done. Second. The guy owns the largest private military contracting agency in the world. He supplies entire mercenary paramilitary units to the highest bidders around the world. Putin allegedly uses Pichugin's forces when he's looking for plausible deniability about Russia's involvement in a conflict, like the eastern Ukraine front, Crimean Peninsula, or Syria. We'd need a small army of our own to go after him.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"They all have their weaknesses,\\\" said Berg. \\\"We've hit harder targets than Pichugin.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Only as a last resort,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Fair enough,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"How did you piece together the link between Belsky's company and Pichugin's?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"A hunch,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Firebird Development was kind of a dead end. An anonymous Delaware corporation, with its listing agent registered as another anonymous Delaware corporation. Classic hide-the-owner shell game. With Russia on my mind, Iran a search through the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control public database to see if Firebird Development was on their sanctions list. Stab in the dark.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Bingo?\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Big time,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Firebird Development popped upon Yuri Pichugin's asset list. Pichugin had been sanctioned through the Magnitsky Act in early 2013, which bans him from entering the United States and freezes all of his US-based assets, including Firebird Development. I found Andrei and Viktor Belsky listed in the sanction filing as the previous owners. Apparently, the US Treasury Department cut through the corporate shell game and surfaced their names. A quick Google search confirmed that the Belskys had indeed moved up in the world.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"This is ahead-scratcher,\\\" said Devin. \\\"I mean... how do we use that information? Try to get the Treasury Department interested?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We don't have anything to offer them. They did their job. Firebird Development's assets, if any still exist, are frozen in accordance with the Magnitsky Act ruling,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"It didn't look like they'd skipped a beat, other than reduced attendance,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Kids these days. Addicted to their phones and social media,\\\" said Rich. \\\"In the seventies and eighties you still had a shot at brainwashing people.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'd laugh if it weren't so true,\\\" said Berg. \\\"I'm going to reach out to someone in Russia who might be able to help. It's along shot, but I'm convinced it's an opportunity to unravel the entire sleeper network. Sergei Kozlov, the GRU general who passed information to your mother in Saint Petersburg, knew more than three names. He likely had access to the entire roster. That's what I suspect he was going to offer the CIA-but he never got past the second meeting. Kozlov may not have been the only senior-level officer at the GRU with access to that information. I'm hoping my contact can point us in the right direction-so we can arrange a chat with one of those officers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That sounds like something my team could pull off,\\\" said Rich. \\\"With a little inside help. We don't have any assets in Russia right now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I might be able to help with that, but it'll be along shot,\\\" said Berg. \\\"We have to approach this from as many angles as possible. Your mother got the sense that the sleeper network was building up to something. That it had accelerated its pace. That's what convinced her to kidnap Wilson. I get the same sense that we're up against a deadline. Maybe not an endgame, but something pivotal.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And we may have accelerated their timeline with our actions over the past few days,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Correct,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Every time we hit them without delivering a crippling or mortal blow, they make an adjustment, though they may not have much flexibility with a major deadline. It's something to consider when we're planning how to proceed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"If we're looking for more angles of attack, I think we should approach MINERVA-whether I'm still employed or not,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Given Jolene Rudd's connection to the DEVTEK honey-trap ploy, I think it's fair to assume that MINERVA has not been compromised. Not by anyone involved in the planning or execution of MINERVA's operation.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What would be in it for MINERVA?\\\" asked Rich. \\\"Aside from doing their patriotic duty to the United States.\\\"\\n\\nDevin couldn't tell if Rich was being sarcastic.\\n\\n\\\"I see two ways to draw them in. The first would be to give them the opportunity to best serve their client. MINERVA is all about client satisfaction. With our information, they could inform DEVTEK that the risks to the company extend well beyond industrial espionage-to possible product sabotage and ruin. I could see them setting up another sting and integrating us into that operation. The other approach is to pay them as a client to boost our surveillance and counterespionage capability,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"Or offer them the DEVTEK information as payment for their services,\\\" said Marnie.\\n\\n\\\"Right. Or both,\\\" said Devin. \\\"Karl. You mentioned some kind of financial backing behind this team? Would it be enough to pay them on top of handing them the DEVTEK lead?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's another angle altogether,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"One we can't rule out,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"First we have to vet the hell out of MINERVA,\\\" said Rich. \\\"I'm not even clear how we'd go about that. My guess is that their employee roster is a well-kept secret.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's why I think paying them makes more sense, if that's feasible. As clients, we could insist on a custom vetting process. Maybe even dangle the DEVTEK information over their heads. Make the information contingent on vetting,\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"That's going to put you in an uncomfortable position,\\\" said Rich. \\\"Going this route will most likely terminate your employment with them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What choice do I have?\\\" asked Devin. \\\"It's along shot, but like Rich said, the more angles we explore, the better.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Hard to argue with that,\\\" said Berg, shrugging. \\\"I just wish we had something up our sleeves that wasn't such along shot.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"One of them has to work,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Not necessarily,\\\" said Berg. \\\"But it is what it is.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How long will it take to hear back from your contacts?\\\" asked Devin.\\n\\n\\\"The bigger question is, How long will it take them to make a difference?\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"That's assuming they agree to help,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Fair point. This will put them in awkward positions at best. Dangerous at worst,\\\" said Berg. \\\"It could take a few weeks. Until things start shaping up, we'll need to lie low. A small group of us should head back to Helen's apartment in Baltimore and keep digging through the files. We're bound to find an opportunity we missed on the first few passes through the information. We barely scratched the surface, to be honest.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll scatter the rest of the team nearby,\\\" said Rich. \\\"We can move fast if we find anything in the files, or one of your contacts comes through.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We'll need to invest in some basic disguises,\\\" said Berg. \\\"Nothing dramatic, but enough to throw off facial-recognition software. There's no telling what the Russians can access through their sleeper network. The DC area has a lot of public-facing cameras.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Noted,\\\" said Rich. \\\"We'll put together some basics before we set off for Baltimore.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"When will we takeoff?\\\" said Devin.\\n\\n\\\"After I get a good night's sleep,\\\" said Berg. \\\"We'll head straight to your mother's apartment and wait for one or more of our long shots to payoff.\\\"\\n\\nMarnie raised her beer. \\\"To long shots.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"To not getting shot,\\\" said Rich.\\n\\n\\\"Cheers to both,\\\" said Berg, raising his can. \\\"Though if I had to choose between the two, I'm going with not getting shot.\\\"\\n\\nWas it possible to have it both ways if they took the fight against the Russians to the next level? Devin clinked all their cans, a heavy sense of dread hanging over the toast. He couldn't shake the distinct feeling that they wouldn't all be alive for the next one.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Yuri Pichugin took General Kuznetzov's call on a secure line in the state-of-the-art, surveillance-proof room deep inside his Lake Ladoga mansion complex. Modeled after the sensitive compartmented information facility concept used by major world intelligence agencies, Pichugin had consulted with the world's top information security consultants to ensure it met or exceeded industry standards.\\n\\nIn truth, it was more for show than anything else. A luxuriously appointed, soundproofed, and electromagnetically sealed space that he mostly used to impress new clients and reassure long-standing allies. He could arrange to have the secure phone line run to either of his offices inside the mansion, and not risk acoustic or digital eavesdropping.\\n\\n\\\"It's late,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"More bad news, I assume?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"More of the same, unfortunately,\\\" said the general. \\\"I have the final casualty count. We lost twenty-six of the parents and fifteen of the children. Plus eight of the ten GRU sleepers brought in for the cabin side of the ambush. Farrington's sharpshooters took a hefty toll.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Have we confirmed it was Farrington?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No. But this has his team's fingerprints allover it,\\\" said the general. \\\"From Baltimore to the torture job on the two morons in Indianapolis-and now this mess. Given Berg's involvement, it has to be Farrington.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And they brought the helicopter pilot along, obviously.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nobody anticipated that. Sanderson and Farrington have never operated in the field with outsiders,\\\" said the general.\\n\\nHe supposed it could have been worse, though he wasn't sure how. The camp had been operating at its new full capacity when it was attacked. Thirty-nine sets of siblings representing the third generation, along with one of their parents, had been onsite. Not only did this represent a sizable blow to the currently active network, but it also potentially endangered the network by further exposing it to Devin Gray and Karl Berg, who would undoubtedly be combing the news and law enforcement bulletins for missing person reports or deadly accidents involving teens and adults, or, in some cases, child and parent. You couldn't just hide the fact that someone was missing in the United States.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Where are the survivors?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The team that had been watching over Orlov's gear at the airport scrambled to arrange transportation out of there. Everyone has been evacuated to a friendly site just off the lake, about a mile south of the Missouri-Arkansas border. That includes the bodies. We're going to keep them there until things settle down, then start smuggling people out in small groups. They managed to retrieve all of the files from the buildings before the fires got out of control, so that's one less thing to worry about.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Big consolation,\\\" said Pichugin, sensing that Kuznetzov was building up to something.\\n\\n\\\"There's one thing that's going to be a significant problem,\\\" said the general.\\n\\n\\\"Just one? What is it?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Senator Filmore's wife and son were killed during the attack. They were found along the trail between the boat landing and the camp. Both of them shot twice in the chest.\\\"\\n\\nThat was how it could be worse. They'd just lost one of the highest-placed sleepers in the entire network.\\n\\n\\\"We have to assume that Farrington's people have identified them. They probably documented the entire raid with video cameras. They'll go after the senator at some point, if only to fuck with us,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"Has Senator Filmore been notified?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"None of the families have been notified,\\\" said the general. \\\"And strict communications protocols have been activated at the evacuation site.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I see,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"Hold off on any notifications, and under no circumstances are any of the sleepers to make contact with anyone. I need to think about how we're going to deal with this, particularly the senator's situation.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Understood,\\\" said the general. \\\"May I make a suggestion?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Of course.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think we need to strongly consider eliminating Senator Filmore and his daughter,\\\" said the general. \\\"Put all of their bodies on a private jet and crash it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Was the daughter at the camp?\\\" asked Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"Yes. She survived.\\\"\\n\\nHe didn't see anyway to salvage the situation with Senator Filmore at this point. If Farrington's people started circulating pictures of the wife and son, the media and federal law enforcement would start asking questions that nobody could adequately answer. They needed to get ahead of that. A tidy plane crash with all four of them onboard would snuff out the fire generated by the pictures.\\n\\n\\\"Make it happen. Quickly,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"And have Alexei prepare a list of the entire network. I want the sleepers broken down into three categories: critical, essential, and nonessential to FIREBIRD. Then break each of those categories down into public sector or private sector. Any operative that can be easily identified represents a risk to FIREBIRD and an opportunity for Farrington and Berg. I expect them to sharpen their sleeper-hunting skills in the upcoming days. The fewer liabilities we have out there-the better.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"As in permanently retire?\\\" said the general.\\n\\n\\\"I mean recall them. Give them twenty-four hours to get on a plane and leave the United States behind,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"Why? What did you think I meant?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I was just making sure,\\\" said the general.\\n\\n\\\"Don't get me wrong, Grigory,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"If we activate a recall of noncritical sleepers, anyone that doesn't comply with the order will experience the other type of recall.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Understood,\\\" said the general.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'll need to speak with the big man regarding a recall.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He may not want to dismantle that much of FIREBIRD yet,\\\" said Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"Will you becoming to Moscow, then?\\\" asked the general.\\n\\n\\\"No. He's in Saint Petersburg. I'll arrange a meeting this afternoon,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"And Grigory? A few more things.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"First. Have we made any progress toward finding Gray, Berg, or any of their suspected associates?\\\" asked Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"Kazakhstan filed a Red Notice for Karl Berg and Richard Farrington yesterday. Russia will file one today, citing the same charges related to their alleged involvement in terrorist attacks against state facilities. Both of them are actually suspected to have been involved with the attack on the Vector Institute in Novosibirsk and the downing of two Russian helicopters in Kazakhstan,\\\" said the general.\\n\\n\\\"They like blowing up helicopters,\\\" grumbled Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"Apparently so. The Red Notices will give our people in US law enforcement an excuse to put some more robust surveillance and detection measures into action. We're still looking at a few days before that gets rolling. We can expand the list of names to other known associates of General Terrence Sanderson-Farrington's mentor-and Farrington himself. Once we get a bunch of names in there, our people inside US law enforcement can start looking at Devin Gray and Marnie Young.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very well,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"And what about DEVTEK? Are we making any progress on that front? Without aback door to their infrastructure-security software, we'll have to do things the hard way-which represents a significant delay. Not to mention the risk.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're working on it. As you can imagine, a company that provides state-of-the-art cybersecurity solutions isn't easy to hack,\\\" said the general. \\\"We're exploring more direct options, but their guard is up after the honey-trap debacle. Kind of ironic that Gray may have been involved in the DEVTEK operation.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"More like annoying,\\\" said Pichugin. \\\"Keep a close eye on MINERVA. If Gray makes the same connection, he could complicate our efforts to breach DEVTEK.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're doing what we canto monitor MINERVA without alerting them to our presence. Not the easiest task, given their specialty,\\\" said the general. \\\"Was there anything else?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes. Give Felix Orlov whatever he needs to make sure the job gets done next time,\\\" said Pichugin.\\n\\n\\\"It wasn't his fault.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I know it wasn't his fault,\\\" said Pichugin, on the verge of screaming at Kuznetzov for underutilizing Orlov. \\\"Which is why I don't want him restrained in anyway. We're licking our wounds this time. Next time we'll be mopping our blood off the floor. We can't afford another setback. Not this close to the finish line. The final dominoes should fall within the next few weeks, driving a permanent wedge between the Americans and their European allies-reopening doors long shut to Russia.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Alexei Kaparov sat alone on a concrete bench a few blocks from his apartment, the dingy gray of Soviet-era block-style high-rises peeking through the trees. Old men crowded around chessboards on the stone tables lining one side of the park's wide brick promenade, pigeons navigating their feet to peck at the lunch crumbs as they fell.\\n\\nKaparov had never taken to chess. He'd taken to vodka instead during his spare time, which had been scarce before he'd retired from the FSB a few years ago. Now, he had all the time in the world on his hands, and there was only so much time he could spend drinking-a challenge he rose to everyday. Maybe he should take up smoking again to fill the void.\\n\\nHe took a short pull from the stainless-steel flask he had brought on his daily walk and relished in the comfortably warm glow that followed. His buzz was cut short by the phone in his pocket. Kaparov debated whether to check the phone or take another swig of vodka. He didn't get many calls these days, so he set the flask on the bench next to him and pulled the phone from his pocket, noticing that he'd received a text message a minute earlier that had somehow gone unnoticed.\\n\\nThe message came from a different number, containing a code word established long ago by an old friend. Kaparov was coming upon the second anniversary of his retirement, a benchmark the two of them had agreed would be the earliest they could finally meet in personas allies and not adversaries. He answered the call.\\n\\n\\\"Karl. So good of you to call,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"I'm very much looking forward to next year's trip, though it's difficult to determine if this all-inclusive idea of yours is legitimate or some kind of scam to get you out of paying full price. I saw something on Tripadvisor about top-shelf liquors not being served, so-\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Alexei. Sorry to interrupt, but I'm afraid this is a business call, and a very serious one at that,\\\" said Karl Berg.\\n\\n\\\"You know what I'm doing right now?\\\" asked Kaparov.\\n\\n\\\"Drinking vodka.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Besides that.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I haven't a clue,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I'm sitting on a park bench watching people older than me play chess,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"Thinking about learning chess. Because I'm bored out of my fucking mind after retiring. I'm retired, Karl, which means I'm no longer in a position to help you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think you might be able to help,\\\" said Berg. \\\"What do you know about Yuri Pichugin? Specifically, his ties to the GRU.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Please tell me you haven't somehow made enemies with Yuri Pichugin,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"He's one of the wealthiest and connected oligarchs in Russia. Connected right to the top, if you know what I mean.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do. I've stumbled across something that might be connected to him,\\\" said Berg. \\\"It's definitely connected to Viktor Belsky. Does that name sound familiar?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I know the name, but not much more than that,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"Midlevel oligarch with decent connections. Returned to Russia from the US in the mid– two thousands, if my memory serves me correctly.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It serves you well. Viktor Belsky and his father sold a company based in the United States to Yuri Pichugin around that time,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Must have been a very successful company,\\\" said Kaparov.\\n\\n\\\"That's the thing,\\\" said Berg. \\\"The Belskys had money, but not that kind of money, and the company they sold to Pichugin didn't appear to have any assets beyond a sizable chunk of land in the middle of the United States. Valuable, but not that valuable.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Karl. Maybe my brain is a little mushy these days,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"But what are we talking about here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The bottom line is that I believe Yuri Pichugin is bankrolling a Soviet-era GRU-run sleeper network in the United States through this company and is pulling the strings on behalf of your beloved leaders.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And you have evidence of this?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're piecing it together, but the network is real. I've seen it firsthand. The network's training camp was located on the land the Belskys sold to Pichugin. I've seen that, too,\\\" said Karl. \\\"The problem is that we're unable to identify close to eighty percent of the network. We're talking upwards of six hundred sleepers.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Six hundred! Come on. That's a ludicrous number,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"But assuming it was true, they'd all be in their seventies by now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm talking about their children,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Second generation?\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"That's the stuff of legends.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not anymore,\\\" said Berg. \\\"They've penetrated everything here. One of them is a senator. And they're working on a third generation.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Maybe this would be a better conversation to have in person,\\\" said Kaparov.\\n\\n\\\"I would gladly discuss this with you in person, in private, but Russia and Kazakhstan have just put me on Interpol's Red Notice list. We've stirred up a bit of a hornet's nest over here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Some of the same off-the-books associates I've used before in the course of our dealings,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I still don't see what I can do to help,\\\" said Kaparov.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Without going into too much detail, the decades-long process of discovering this network started with a GRU general who threw himself under a tram in Saint Petersburg in 2003, immediately after passing some very specific information about the network to one of our officers,\\\" said Berg. \\\"The general was one of a handful of Soviet-era hard-liners still active in the GRU at the time, which is why we were surprised he wanted to defect to the United States. We were in the process of verifying what he had to offer when everything went sideways. He couldn't have been the only GRU general with knowledge of this program. If we can identify another, perhaps we could take the next step toward unearthing the rest of the network.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Two thousand three was a very unlucky year for GRU generals and high-ranking officers,\\\" said Berg. \\\"A few dozen committed suicide, died in car accidents, or drowned in puddles near their dachas. Everyone in the GRU feared some kind of purge, but nobody could figure out if they were next. The only discernible pattern was that there was no pattern. Nobody could figure out where they worked within the GRU. People started calling it the Lost Directorate; then word came down from the top to stop talking about it-and that was it. Reinforced by firings and a few more suspicious deaths.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The Lost Directorate. Sounds like they were running something off the books,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Nothing was off the books in the Soviet Union. We documented and accounted for everything, and we still do. It's in our DNA,\\\" said Kaparov.\\n\\n\\\"Then what I'm asking you to do is lean on some of your Soviet-era comrades in arms to see if any of the possible members of this Lost Directorate survived the purge,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Then you'll send people hereto have a friendly chat with them?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Something like that.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Let me see what I can dig up without getting myself killed,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"This reminds me of something. Have you ever heard the term Khrushchev's Ghost?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I've obviously heard of Khrushchev, but I'm unfamiliar with his ghost.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's a term that floated around in the late sixties, in the aftermath of Khrushchev's reign. Rumors about a group of hard-liners unhappy with the direction Brezhnev was taking the country. Just whispers here and thereabout Khrushchev's Ghost watching over the country. Nothing ever came of it. I only brought it up because it somehow rings the same.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It does, and it sounds creepy as hell, if you ask me,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I thought you'd like it,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"A word of warning, my friend. If this sleeper network is as extensive as you've suggested and has any connection to Khrushchev's Ghost, or any Cold War– era hard-liner faction, it will be positioned to inflict maximum damage on the United States. Meaning-it represents the ultimate under-the-table leverage. Whoever controls it will not go gently into the night. Be very careful with this one.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's the plan,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"And if Pichugin's pulling the strings,\\\" said Kaparov, \\\"keep a close eye on Ukraine. Rumor has it that nearly three-quarters of the separatist ground forces massed near the Donbass region are mercenaries. Battalion-size units in some cases. This represents a significant increase over last year. Something is brewing over there.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sounds like the Wegner Group?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nobody will confirm it,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"But who else could it be? The Wegner Group has been Pichugin's private army for close to a decade.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"More like Putin's private army,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"Once again, nobody will confirm either connection. At least nobody that wants to live to a ripe old age,\\\" said Kaparov.\\n\\n\\\"Thank you for helping outwith this, Alexei. As always, watch your back,\\\" said Berg. \\\"And I owe you again. For the record, all-inclusive is the way to go when you're drinking from nine in the morning into the late hours of the night on a Caribbean vacation. And it's not like you're drinking the high-end stuff anyway.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ha! I just don't want you to think my services come cheap!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm well aware they don't,\\\" said Berg.\\n\\n\\\"I'll callas soon as I know something,\\\" said Kaparov. \\\"Or be on the next flight out of Moscow, headed to the Caribbean, if I somehow kick the same hornet's nest here.\\\"\\n\\nHe ended the call convinced that Karl Berg would be the end of him and determined to soak every ruble possible out of him when they finally met up. If he survived the latest mess Karl had stepped in.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"To start, a big thank-you to my family for supporting this book during the pandemic. Deep Sleep is the second manuscript I produced in'lockdown,\\\" and I'm not going to lie: it took every bit of focus I could muster. Everyone here at home played a significant role in keeping me on my deadline.\\n\\nTo Kosia, my better half, for locking me in the office when necessary and banning me from social media when my attention strayed. More importantly, for taking the conspiracy I created for this story to the next level. The wider geopolitical scope and deeper penetration of the conspiracy were a direct result of a series of brainstorming sessions conducted months before I put words on the pages.\\n\\nAs always, to the editorial team at Thomas& Mercer for enthusiastically giving Deep Sleep the green light and throwing their full support behind it. And to Megha for believing in this project!\\n\\nTo Kevin, who put the final developmental touches on the story. Four books together, and I don't bother to argue with him anymore. I know he's right. I can't wait to get the next book into your hands.\\n\\nTo the Mountainside crew for listening to the earliest iteration of the Deep Sleep concept and passing along invaluable feedback. I had no idea at the time that the vague idea I presented over drinks would be my next series, but the notes I took stuck with me long after our visit.\\n\\nTo my advance reader team. I've enjoyed sharing sneak peeks, cover reveals, and advance copies with you. Thank you forgetting the word out!\\n\\nFinally, to the readers. I know I say this every time, but without you, none of this would be possible.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":285,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Assist in storytelling and proceed with the tale.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 1"},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"ONE\n\nHe left home early, as he always did, six days a week, fifty weeks a year. A cautious breakfast, appropriate to a short, round man aiming to stay in shape through his forties. Along walk down the carpeted corridors of a lakeside house, appropriate to a man who earned a thousand dollars on each of those three hundred days he worked. A thumb on the button of the garage door-opener and a twist of the wrist to start the silent engine of his expensive, imported sedan. A CD into the player, a backward sweep into his gravel driveway, a dab on the brake, a snick of the selector, a nudge on the gas, and the last short drive of his life was underway. Six forty-nine in the morning, Monday.\n\nThe only light on his route to work was green, which was the proximate cause of his death. It meant that as he pulled into his secluded slot behind his professional building the prelude ahead of Bach's B minor fugue still had thirty-eight seconds left to run. He sat and heard it out until the last organ blast echoed to silence, which meant that as he got out of his car the three men were near enough for him to interpret some kind of intention in their approach. So he glanced at them. They looked away and altered course, three men instep, like dancers or soldiers. He turned toward his building. Started walking.\n\nBut then he stopped. And looked back. The three men were at his car.\n\nTrying the doors.\n\n\"Hey!\" he called.\n\nIt was the short universal sound of surprise, anger, challenge. The sort of instinctive sound an earnest, naive citizen makes when something should not be happening. The sort of instinctive sound which gets an earnest, naive citizen killed. He found himself heading straight back to his car. He was outnumbered three to one but he was in the right, which swelled him up and gave him confidence. He strode back and felt outraged and fit and commanding."},{"from":"human","value":"But those were illusory feelings."},{"from":"gpt","value":"A soft, suburban guy like him was never going to be in command of a situation like that. His fitness was just health-club tone. It counted for nothing. His tight abdominals ruptured under the first savage blow. His face jerked forward and down and hard knuckles pulped his lips and smashed his teeth. He was caught by rough hands and knotted arms and held upright like he weighed nothing at all. His keys were snatched from his grasp and he was hit a crashing blow on the ear. His mouth filled with blood. He was dropped onto the blacktop and heavy boots smashed into his back. Then his gut.\n\nThen his head. He blacked out like a television set in a thunderstorm.\n\nThe world just disappeared in front of him. It collapsed into a thin hot line and sputtered away to nothing.\n\nSo he died, because fora split-second he got brave. But not then. He died much later, after the split-second of bravery had faded into long hours of wretched gasping fear, and after the long hours of fear had exploded into long minutes of insane screaming panic.\n\nJack Reacher stayed alive, because he got cautious. He got cautious because he heard an echo from his past. He had a lot of past, and the echo was from the worst part of it.\n\nHe had served thirteen years in the army, and the only time he was wounded it wasn't with a bullet. It was with a fragment of a Marine sergeant's jawbone. Reacher had been stationed in Beirut, in the US compound out by the airport. The compound was truck-bombed. Reacher was standing at the gate. The Marine in sergeant was standing a hundred yards nearer the explosion. The jawbone fragment was the only piece left of the guy. It hit Reacher a hundred yards away and went tumbling through his gut like a bullet. The army surgeon who patched Reacher up told him afterward he was lucky. He told him areal bulletin the gut would have felt much worse. That was the echo Reacher was hearing. And he was paying a whole lot of attention to it, because thirteen years later he was standing therewith a handgun pointing straight at his stomach. From a range of about an inch and a half."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The handgun was a nine-millimeter automatic. It was brand new. It was oiled. It was held low, lined upright on his old scar. The guy holding it looked more or less like he knew what he was doing. The safety mechanism was released. There was no visible tremor in the muzzle. No tension. The trigger finger was ready to go to work.\n\nReacher could see that. He was concentrating hard on that trigger finger.\n\nHe was standing next to a woman. He was holding her arm. He had never seen her before. She was staring at an identical nine-millimeter pointed at her own gut. Her guy was more tensed up than his. Her guy looked uneasy. He looked worried. His gun was trembling with tension.\n\nHis fingernails were chewed. A nervous, jumpy guy. The four of them were standing thereon the street, three of them still like statues and the fourth hopping slightly from foot to foot.\n\nThey were in Chicago. Center of the city, a busy sidewalk, a Monday, last day of June. Broad daylight, bright summer sunshine. The whole situation had materialized in a split second. It had happened in away which couldn't have been choreographed in a million years. Reacher had been walking down the street, going nowhere, not fast, not slow. He had been about to pass the exit door of a storefront dry-cleaner's. The door had opened up in his face and an old metal walking cane had clattered out on the sidewalk right in front of him. He'd glanced up to see a woman in the doorway. She was about to drop an armful of nine dry-cleaning bags. She was someway short of thirty, expensively dressed, dark, attractive, self-assured. She had some kind of a bad leg. Some kind of an injury. Reacher could see from her awkward posture it was causing her pain. She'd thrown him a would-you-mind look and he'd thrown her a no-problem look and scooped up the metal cane. He'd taken the nine bags from her with one hand and given her the cane with the other. He'd flicked the bags up over his shoulder and felt the nine wire hangers bite into his ringer. She had planted the cane on the sidewalk and eased her forearm into the curved-metal clip. He had offered his hand. She had paused. Then she had nodded in an embarrassed fashion and he had taken her arm and waited a beat, feeling helpful but awkward. Then they had turned together to move away. Reacher had figured he would maybe stroll a few steps with her until she was steady on her feet. Then he would let her arm go and hand back her garments. But he'd turned straight into the two guys with the nine-millimeter automatics."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The four of them stood there, face to face in pairs. Like four people eating together in a tight booth in a diner. The two guys with the guns were white, well fed, vaguely military, vaguely alike. Medium height, short brown hair. Big hands, muscular. Big, obvious faces, bland pink features. Tense expressions, hard eyes. The nervous guy was smaller, like he burned up his energy worrying. They both wore checked shirts and poplin windbreakers. They stood there, pressed together. Reacher was a lot taller than the other three. He could see all around them, over their heads. He stood there, surprised, with the woman's dry-cleaning slung over his shoulder. The woman was leaning on her crutch, just staring, silent. The two men were pointing the guns.\n\nClose in. Reacher felt they'd all been standing like that fora longtime. But he knew that feeling was deceptive. It probably hadn't been more than a second and a half.\n\nThe guy opposite Reacher seemed to be the leader. The bigger one. The calmer one. He looked between Reacher and the woman and jerked his automatic's barrel toward the kerb.\n\n\"In the car, bitch,\" the guy said. \"And you, asshole.\" He spoke urgently, but quietly. With authority. Not much of an accent. Maybe from California, Reacher thought. There was a sedan at the kerb. It had been waiting therefor them. A big car, black, expensive. The driver was leaning across behind the front passenger seat. He was stretching over to pop the rear door. The guy opposite Reacher motioned with the gun again. Reacher didn't move. He glanced left and right. He figured he had about another second and a half to make some kind of an assessment. The two guys with the nine-millimeter automatics didn't worry him too much. He was one-handed, because of the dry-cleaning, but he figured the two guys would go down without too much of a problem. The problems lay beside him and behind him. He stared up into the dry-cleaner's window and used it like a mirror."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Twenty yards behind him was a solid mass of hurrying people at a crosswalk. A couple of stray bullets would find a couple of targets.\n\nNo doubt about that. No doubt at all. That was the problem behind him. The problem beside him was the unknown woman. Her capabilities were an unknown quantity. She had some kind of a bad leg. She would be slow to react. Slow to move. He wasn't prepared to go into combat.\n\nNot in that environment, and not with that partner.\n\nThe guy with the Californian accent reached up and grabbed Reacher's wrist where it was pinned against his collar by the weight of the nine clean garments hanging down his back. He used it to pull him toward the car. His trigger finger still looked ready to go to work. Reacher was watching it, corner of his eye. He let the woman's arm go. Stepped over to the car. Threw the bags into the rear seat and climbed in after them. The woman was pushed in behind him. Then the jumpy guy crowded in on them and slammed the door. The leader got in front on the right. Slammed the door. The driver nudged the selector and the car moved smoothly and quietly away down the street.\n\nThe woman was gasping in pain and Reacher figured she had the jumpy guy's gun jammed in her ribs. The leader was twisted around in the front seat with his gun hand resting against the thick leather headrest. The gun was pointing straight at Reacher's chest. It was a Clock 17. Reacher knew all about that weapon. He had evaluated the prototype for his unit. That had been his assignment during his light-duty convalescence after the Beirut wound. The Glock was a tough little weapon. Seven and a half inches long from firing pinto muzzle tip. Long enough to make it accurate. Reacher had hit thumbtack heads at seventy-five feet with it. And it fired a decent projectile. It delivered quarter-ounce bullets at nearly eight hundred miles an hour."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Seventeen rounds to a magazine, hence the name. And it was light. For all its power, it weighed under two pounds. The important parts were steel. The rest of it was plastic. Black polycarbonate, like an expensive camera. A fine piece of craftsmanship. But he hadn't liked it much. Not for the specialized requirements of his unit. He'd recommended rejection. He'd supported the Beretta 92F instead. The Beretta was also a nine-millimeter, a half-pound heavier, an inch longer, two fewer rounds in the magazine. But it had about 10 percent more stopping power than the Clock. That was important to him. And it wasn't plastic. The Beretta had been Reacher's choice. His unit commander had agreed. He had circulated Reacher's paper and the army as a whole had backed his recommendation. The same week they promoted him and pinned on his Silver Star and his Purple Heart, they ordered Berettas even though the Beretta was more expensive and NATO was crazy for the Clock and Reacher had been just about alone voice and was not long out of West Point. Then he had been assigned elsewhere and served all around the world and hadn't really seen a Clock 17 since. Until now. Twelve years later he was getting a pretty damn good second look atone.\n\nHe switched his attention away from the gun and took another look at the guy holding it. He had a decent tan which whitened near his hairline. A recent haircut. The driver had a big shiny brow, thinning hair sweptback, pink and vivid features, the smirk that pig-ugly guys use when they think they're handsome. Same cheap chain store shirt, same windbreaker. Same corn-fed bulk. Same in-charge confidence, edged around with a slight breathlessness. Three guys, all of them maybe thirty or thirty-five, one leader, one solid follower, one jumpy follower. All of them tense but rehearsed, racing through some kind of a mission. A puzzle. Reacher glanced past the steady Clock into the leader's eyes. But the guy shook his head."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"No talking, asshole,\" he said. \"Start talking, I'll shoot you. That's a damn promise. Keep quiet, you could be OK.\"\n\nReacher believed him. The guy's eyes were hard and his mouth was a tight line. So he said nothing. Then the car slowed and pulled onto a lumpy concrete forecourt. It headed around behind an abandoned industrial building. They had driven south. Reacher figured they were now maybe five miles south of the Loop. The driver eased the big sedan to a stop with the rear door lined up with the back of a small panel truck. The truck was standing alone on the empty lot. It was a Ford Econoline, dirty white, not old, but well used. There had been some kind of writing on the side. It had been painted over with fresh white paint which didn't exactly match the bodywork Readier scanned around.\n\nThe lot was full of trash. He saw a paint can discarded near the truck. A brush. There was nobody insight. The place was deserted.\n\nIf he was going to make some kind of a move, this was the right time to make it, and the right location. But the guy in front smiled a thin smile and leaned right over into the back of the car. Caught Reacher's collar with his left hand and ground the tip of the Clock's muzzle into Reacher's ear with his right.\n\n\"Sit still, asshole,\" the guy said.\n\nThe driver got out of the car and skipped around the hood. Pulled anew set of keys from his pocket and opened up the rear doors of the truck. Reacher sat still. Jamming a gun into a person's ear is not necessarily a smart move. If the person suddenly jerks his head around toward it, the gun comes out. It rolls around the person's forehead."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Then even a quick trigger-finger won't do much damage. It might blow a hole in the person's ear, just the outside flap, and it's sure to shatter the person's eardrum. But those are not fatal wounds. Reacher spent a second weighing those odds. Then the jumpy guy dragged the woman out of the car and hustled her straight into the back of the truck. She hopped and limped across the short distance. Straight out of one door and in through the other. Reacher watched her, corner of his eye. Her guy took her pocketbook from her and tossed it back into the car. It fell at Reacher's feet. It thumped heavily on the thick carpet. A big pocketbook, expensive leather, something heavy in it.\n\nSomething metal. Only one metal thing women carry could make a heavy thump like that. He glanced across at her, suddenly interested.\n\nShe was sprawled in the back of the truck. Impeded by her leg. Then the leader in the front pulled Reacher along the leather seat and passed him onto the jumpy guy. As soon as one Clock was out of his ear, the other was jammed into his side. He was dragged over the rough ground. Across to the rear of the truck. He was pushed inside with the woman. The jumpy guy covered them both with the trembling Clock while the leader reached into the car and pulled out the woman's metal crutch. He walked over and tossed it into the truck. It clanged and boomed on the metal siding. He left her dry-cleaning in the back of the sedan with her handbag. Then he pulled a set of handcuffs from the pocket of his jacket. He caught the woman's right wrist and cuffed it with half the handcuff. Pulled her roughly sideways and caught Reacher's left wrist. Snapped the other half of the cuff onto it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Shook the cuff to check it was secure. Slammed the truck's left rear door. Reacher saw the driver emptying plastic bottles into the sedan.\n\nHe caught the pale color and the strong smell of gasoline. One bottle into the backseat, one into the front. Then the leader swung the truck's right rear door shut. Last thing Reacher saw before darkness enveloped him was the driver, pulling a matchbook from his pocket."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWO MILES FROM CHICAGO byroad guest quarters were being prepared. They took the form of a single room. The room was following an unconventional design, specified by a thorough man after a great deal of careful thought. The design called for several unusual features.\n\nThe quarters were designed fora specific purpose, and fora specific guest. The nature of the purpose and the identity of the guest had dictated the unusual features. The construction was concentrated on the second floor of an existing building. A corner room had been selected. It had a series of large windows on the two outside walls.\n\nThey faced south and east. The glass had been smashed out and replaced by heavy plywood sheeting nailed to the remaining window frames The plywood was painted white on the outside, to match the building's siding. On the inside, the plywood was left unfinished.\n\nThe corner room's ceiling was torn out. It was an old building, and the ceiling had been made of heavy plaster. It had been pulled down in a shower of choking dust. The room was now open to the rafters. The interior walling was torn off. The walls had been paneled in old pine, worn smooth with age and polish. That was all gone. The framing of the building and the heavy old tarpaper behind the exterior siding was exposed. The floorboards were pulled up. The dusty ceiling of the room below was visible under the heavy joists. The room was just a shell.\n\nThe old plaster from the ceiling and the boards from the walls and the floor, had been thrown out through the windows before they were covered over with the plywood. The two men who had done the demolition work had shoveled all that debris into a large pile, and they had backed their truck up to the pile ready to cart the trash away. They were very anxious to leave the place looking neat and tidy. This was the first time they had worked for this particular employer, and there had been hints of more work to come. And looking around, they could see that there was plenty more needed doing. All in all, an optimistic situation. New contracts were hard to find, and this particular employer, had shown no concern overprice. The two men felt that to make a good first impression was very much in their long-term interest."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They were hard at work loading their truck with every last plaster fragment when the employer himself stopped by.\n\n\"All done?\" he asked.\n\nThe employer was a huge guy, freakishly bloated, with a high voice and two nickel-sized red spots burning on his pale cheeks. He moved lightly and quietly, like a guy a quarter his size. The overall effect was a guy people looked away from and answered quickly.\n\n\"Just clearing up,\" the first guy said to him. \"Where do we dump this stuff?\"\n\n\"I'll show you,\" the employer said. \" You'll need to make two trips.\n\nBring those boards separately, right?\"\n\nThe second guy nodded. The floorboards were eighteen inches wide, from back when lumbermen had the pick of any tree they wanted. Noway would they fit into the flatbed with the rest of the junk. They finished loading the plaster and their employer squeezed into their truck with them. He was such a big guy, it made fora tight fit. He pointed beyond the old building.\n\n\"Drive north,\" he said, 'about a mile.\"\n\nThe road led them straight out of town and then wound upward through some steep bends. The employer pointed to a place.\n\n\"In there,\" he said, 'all the way in back, OK?\"\n\nHe strolled quietly away and the two guys unloaded their truck. Drove it back south and heaved the old pine boards in. Followed the winding bends again and unloaded. They carried the boards inside and stacked them neatly. All the way in back of the dark space. Then the employer stepped out of the shadows. He had been waiting for them. He had something in his hand.\n\n\"We're all done,\" the first guy said."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The employer nodded.\n\n\"You sure are,\" he said.\n\nHis hand came up. He was holding a gun. A dull black automatic. He shot the first guy in the head. The crash of the bullet was deafening.\n\nBlood and bone and brain sprayed everywhere. The second guy froze in terror. Then he ran. He launched himself sideways in a desperate sprint for cover. The employer smiled. He liked it when they ran. He dropped his huge arm to a shallow angle. Fired and put a bullet through the back of the guy's knee. Smiled again. Now it was better.\n\nHe liked it when they ran, but he liked it better when they were squirming on the floor. He stood and listened to the guy's yelping fora long moment. Then he strolled quietly over and took careful aim. Put a bullet through the other knee. He watched fora while, then he tired of the game. Shrugged and put a final bullet through the guy's head.\n\nThen he laid the gun on the ground and rolled the two bodies over and over until they were stacked neatly inline with the old floorboards."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"THEY HAD BEEN ON THE ROAD AN HOUR AND THIRTY-THREE minutes. Some urban crawling, then an acceleration to a steady cruise. Maybe sixty miles covered. But in the noisy darkness inside the panel truck Reacher had no idea which direction those sixty miles were taking him.\n\nHe was handcuffed to the young woman with the bad leg and within the first few minutes of their forced acquaintance they had worked out how to get as comfortable as they were ever going to get. They had crabbed around inside the truck until they were sitting sideways on the floor, legs straight out, propped against the big wheel well on the right, braced against the motion. The woman sat against the rear side and Reacher sat on the forward side. Their cuffed wrists lay together on the flattop of the metal bulge like they were lovers idling their time away in a cafe.\n\nAt first they hadn't spoken. They'd just sat fora longtime in stunned silence. The immediate problem was the heat. It was the middle of the last day of June in the Midwest. They were shut into an enclosed metal space. There was no ventilation. Reacher figured the rush of air over the outside of the truck's body must be cooling it to an extent, but nowhere near enough. He just sat therein the gloom and used the hot dead time thinking and planning like he was trained to do.\n\nStaying calm, staying relaxed, staying ready, not burning his energy away with useless speculation. Assessing and evaluating. The three guys had shown a measure of efficiency. No great talent, no real finesse, but no significant mistakes. The jumpy guy with the second Clock was the weakest component of the team, but the leader had covered for him pretty well. An efficient threesome. Not at all the worst he'd ever seen. But, at that point, he wasn't worrying. He'd been in worse situations and survived them. Much worse situations, and more than once. So he wasn't worrying yet."},{"from":"human","value":"Then he noticed something."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He noticed that the woman wasn't worrying yet either. She was calm too. She was just sitting there, swaying, cuffed to his wrist, thinking and planning like maybe she was trained to do, as well. He glanced across at her in the gloom and saw her looking steadily at him. A quizzical stare, calm, in control, faintly superior, faintly disapproving. The confidence of youth. She met his gaze. Held it fora long moment. Then she stuck out her cuffed right hand, which jarred his left wrist, but it was an encouraging gesture.\n\nHe reached around and shook her hand and they smiled brief ironic smiles together at their mutual formality.\n\n\"Holly Johnson,\" she said.\n\nShe was assessing him carefully. He could see her eyes traveling around his face. Then they flicked down to his clothing and backup to his face. She smiled again, briefly, like she had decided he merited some kind of courtesy.\n\n\"Nice to meet you,\" she said.\n\nHe looked back at her. Looked at her face. She was a very good-looking woman. Maybe twenty-six, twenty-seven. He looked at her clothes. Aline from an old song ran through his head: hundred dollar dresses, that I ain't paid for yet. He waited for the next line, but it didn't come. So he smiled back at her and nodded.\n\n\"Jack Readier,\" he said. \"Pleasure's all mine, Holly, believe me.\"\n\nIt was difficult to speak, because the truck was cruising noisily. The sound of the engine was fighting with the roar from the road. Reacher would have been happy to sit quiet fora while, but Holly wasn't.\n\n\"I need to get rid of you,\" she said."},{"from":"human","value":"A confident woman, well in control of herself."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He made no reply.\n\nJust glanced at her and glanced away. The next line was: cold, cold-blooded woman. A dying fall, a sad poignant line. An old Memphis Slim song. But the line was not right for her. Not right at all. This was not a cold-blooded woman. He glanced over again and shrugged at her. She was staring at him. Impatient with his silence.\n\n\"You understand exactly what's happening?\" she asked him.\n\nHe watched her face. Watched her eyes. She was staring straight at him. Astonishment on her face. She thought she was stuck in therewith an idiot. She thought he didn't understand exactly what was happening.\n\n\"It's pretty clear, right?\" he said. \"From the evidence?\"\n\n\"What evidence?\" she said. \"It was allover in a split second.\"\n\n\"Exactly,\" he said. That's all the evidence I need, right? Tells me more or less what I need to know.\"\n\nHe stopped talking and started resting again. Next opportunity to getaway would be the next time the truck stopped. Could be some hours away. He felt he could be in fora long day. Felt he should be prepared to conserve his resources.\n\n\"So what do you need to know?\" the woman said.\n\nHer eyes were steady on his.\n\n\"You've been kidnaped,\" he said. \"I'm hereby accident.\"\n\nShe was still looking at him. Still confident. Still thinking. Still not sure whether or not she was cuffed to an idiot.\n\n\"It's pretty clear, right?\" he said again. \"It wasn't me they were after.\"\n\nShe made no reply. Just arched a fine eyebrow.\n\n\"Nobody knew I was going to be there,\" he said. \"I didn't even know I was going to be there. Until I got there. But it was a well planned operation. Must have taken time to setup. Based on surveillance, right? Three guys, one in the car, two on the street. The car was parked exactly level. They had no idea where I was going to be. But obviously they knew for sure where you were going to be. So don't be looking at me like I'm the idiot here. You're the one made the big mistake.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Mistake?\" the woman said.\n\n\"You're too regular in your habits,\" Readier said. They studied your movements, maybe two or three weeks, and you walked right into their arms. They weren't expecting anybody else to be there. That's clear, right? They only brought one set of handcuffs.\"\n\nHe raised his wrist, which raised hers too, to make his point. The woman went quiet fora long moment. She was revising her opinion of him. Reacher rocked with the motion of the vehicle and smiled.\n\n\"And you should know better,\" he said. \"You're a government agent of some sort, right? DEA, CIA, FBI, something like that, maybe a Chicago PD detective? New in the job, still fairly dedicated. And fairly wealthy. So somebody is either looking fora ransom, or you've already become a potential problem to somebody, even though you're new, and either way you should have taken more care of yourself.\"\n\nShe looked across at him. Nodded, eyes wide in the gloom. Impressed.\n\n\"Evidence?\" she asked.\n\nHe smiled at her again.\n\n\"Couple of things,\" he said. \"Your dry-cleaning. My guess is every Monday lunch break you take last week's clothes into get them cleaned and you pickup this week's clothes to wear. That means you must have about fifteen or twenty outfits. Looking at that thing you got on, you're not a cheap dresser. Call it four hundred bucks an outfit, you've got maybe eight grand tied up in things to wear. That's what I call moderately wealthy, and that's what I call too regular in your habits.\"\n\nShe nodded slowly.\n\n\"OK,\" she said. \"Why am Ia government agent?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Easy enough,\" he said. \"You had a Clock 17 shoved at you, you were bundled into a car, you were thrown in a truck, handcuffed to a complete stranger and you've got no idea where the hell they're taking you, or why. Any normal person would befalling apart overall that, screaming the place down. But not you. You're sitting there quite calmly, which suggests some kind of training, maybe some kind of familiarity with upsetting or dangerous situations. And maybe some kind of sure knowledge there'll be a bunch of people looking to get you back soon as they can.\"\n\nHe stopped and she nodded for him to continue.\n\n\"Also, you had a gun in your bag,\" he said. \" Something fairly heavy, maybe a. 38, long barrel. If it was a private weapon, a dresser like you would choose something dainty, like a snub. 22.\n\nBut it was a big revolver, so you were issued with it. So you're some kind of an agent, maybe a cop.\"\n\nThe woman nodded again, slowly.\n\n\"Why am I new in the job?\" she asked.\n\n\"Your age,\" Reacher said. \"What are you? Twenty-six?\"\n\nTwenty-seven,\" she said.\n\n\"That's young fora detective,\" he said. \"College, a few years in uniform? Young for the FBI, DBA, CIA, too. So whatever you are, you're new at it.\"\n\nShe shrugged.\n\n\"OK,\" she said. \"Why am I fairly dedicated?\"\n\nReacher pointed, left-handed, rattling their shared handcuff.\n\n\"Your injury,\" he said. \"You're back to work after some kind of an accident, before you're really recovered. You're still using that crutch for your bad leg. Most people in your position would be staying home and drawing sick pay.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She smiled.\n\n\"I could be handicapped,\" she said. \"Could have been born this way.\"\n\nReacher shook his head in the gloom.\n\n\"That's a hospital crutch,\" he said. They loaned it to you, short term, until you're over your injury. If it was a permanent thing, you'd have bought your own crutch. Probably you'd have bought a dozen.\n\nSprayed them all different to match all your expensive outfits.\"\n\nShe laughed. It was a pleasant sound above the drone and boom of the truck's engine and the roar of the road.\n\n\"Pretty good, Jack Reacher,\" she said. \" I'm an FBI special agent.\n\nSince last fall. I just ripped up my cruciate ligaments playing soccer.\"\n\n\"You play soccer?\" Reacher said. \"Good for you, Holly Johnson. What kind of an FBI agent since last fall?\"\n\nShe was quiet fora beat.\n\n\"Just an agent,\" she said. \"One of many at the Chicago office.\"\n\nReacher shook his head.\n\n\"Not just an agent,\" he said. \"An agent who's doing something to somebody who maybe wants to retaliate. So who are you doing something to?\"\n\nShe shook her head back at him.\n\n\"I can't discuss that,\" she said. \"Not with civilians.\"\n\nHe nodded. He was comfortable with that.\n\n\"OK,\" he said.\n\n\"Any agent makes enemies,\" she said.\n\n\"Naturally,\" he replied.\n\n\"Meas much as anybody,\" she said.\n\nHe glanced across at her. It was a curious remark. Defensive. The remark of a woman trained and eager and ready to go, but chained to a desk since last fall."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Financial section?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"he guessed.\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\"I can't discuss it,\" she said again.\n\n\"But you already made enemies,\" he said.\n\nShe gave him a half-smile which died fast. Then she went quiet. She looked calm, but Reacher could feel in her wrist that she was worried for the first time. But she was hanging in there. And she was wrong.\n\nThey're not out to kill you,\"he said. They could have killed you in that waste ground. Why haul you away in this damn truck? And there's your crutch, too.\"\n\n\"What about my crutch?\" she said.\n\n\"Doesn't make any sense,\" he said. \"Why would they toss your crutch inhere if they're going to kill you? You're a hostage, Holly, that's what you are. You sure you don't know these guys? Never saw them before?\"\n\n\"Never,\" she said. \"I don't know who the hell they are, or what the hell they want from me.\"\n\nHe stared at her. She sounded way too definite. She knew more than she was telling him. They went quiet in the noise. Rocked and bounced with the movement of the truck. Reacher stared into the gloom. He could feel Holly making decisions, next to him. She turned sideways again.\n\n\"I need to get you out of here,\" she said again.\n\nHe glanced at her. Glanced away and grinned.\n\n\"Suits me, Holly,\" he said. \"Sooner the better.\"\n\n\"When will somebody miss you?\" she asked.\n\nThat was a question he would have preferred not to answer. But she was looking hard at him, waiting. So he thought about it, and he told her the truth."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Never,\" he said.\n\n\"Why not?\" she asked. \"Who are you, Readier?\"\n\nHe looked across at her and shrugged.\n\n\"Nobody,\" he said.\n\nShe carried onlooking at him, quizzically. Maybe irritated.\n\n\"OK, what kind of nobody?\" she asked.\n\nHe heard Memphis Slim in his head: got me working in a steel mill.\n\n\"I'm a doorman,\" he said. \"At a club in Chicago.\"\n\n\"Which club?\" she asked.\n\n\"A blues place on the South Side,\" he said. \"You probably don't know it.\"\n\nShe looked at him and shook her head.\n\n\"A doorman?\" she said. \"You're playing this pretty cool fora doorman.\"\n\n\"Doormen deal with a lot of weird situations,\" he said.\n\nShe looked like she wasn't convinced and he put his face down near his wristwatch to check the time. Two-thirty in the afternoon.\n\n\"And how long before somebody misses you?\" he asked.\n\nShe looked at her own watch and made a face.\n\n\"Quite awhile,\" she said. \"I've got a case conference starting at five o'clock this afternoon. Nothing before then. Two and a half hours before anybody even knows I'm gone.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"RIGHT INSIDE THE SHELL OF THE SECOND-FLOOR ROOM, A SECOND shell was taking shape. It was being built from brand-new softwood two-by-fours, nailed together in the conventional way, looking like anew room growing right there inside the old room. But the new room was going to be about afoot smaller in every dimension than the old room had been.\n\nAfoot shorter in length, afoot narrower in width, and afoot shorter in height.\n\nThe new floor joists were going to be raised afoot off the old joists with twelve-inch lengths of the new softwood. The new lengths looked like a forest of short stilts, ready to hold the new floor up. More short lengths were ready to hold the new framing afoot away from the old framing all the way around the sides and the ends. The new framing had the bright yellowness of new wood. It gleamed against the smoky honey color of the old framing. The old framing looked like an ancient skeleton which was suddenly growing anew skeleton right inside itself.\n\nThree men were building the new shell. They were stepping from joist to joist with practiced skill. They looked like men who had built things before. And they were working fast. Their contract demanded they finish on time. The employer had been explicit about it. Some kind of a rush job. The three carpenters were not complaining about that. The employer had accepted their first bid. It had been an inflated bid, with a large horse-trading margin builtin. But the guy had not eaten into that margin. He had not negotiated at all. He had just nodded and told them to start work as soon as the wrecking crew had finished. Work was hard to find, and employers who accepted your first price were even harder to find. So the three men were happy to work hard, work fast, and work late. They were anxious to make a good first impression. Looking around, they could seethe potential fora lot more employment."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"So they were giving it their best shot. They ran up and down the stairs with tools and fresh lumber. They worked by eye, marking cut-lines in the wood with their thumbnails, using their nail guns and their saws until they ran hot. But they paused frequently to measure the gap between the old framing and the new. The employer had made it clear that dimension was critical. The old framing was six inches deep. The new framing was four. The gap was twelve inches.\n\n\"Six and four and twelve,\" one guy said. Twenty-two inches total.\"\n\n\"OK?\" the second guy asked the crew chief.\n\n\"Ideal,\" the crew chief said. \"Exactly what he told us.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"HOLLY JOHNSON'S FIVE O'CLOCK CASE CONFERENCE WAS ALLOCATED to the Chicago FBI office's third-floor meeting room. This was a large room, better than forty feet by twenty, and it was more or less filled by along polished table flanked by thirty chairs, fifteen on each side. The chairs were substantial and leather and the table was made of fine hardwood, but any tendency for the place to look like a corporate boardroom was defused by the scruffy government wall covering and the cheap carpet. There were ninety square yards of carpet on the floor and the whole ninety together had probably cost less than just one of the chairs.\n\nFive o'clock in the summer, the afternoon sun streamed in through the wall of windows and gave the people arriving in the room a choice. If they sat facing the windows, they got the sun in their eyes and squinted through the meeting and ended up with a blinding headache. And the sun overpowered the air conditioning, so if they sat backs to the windows, they got heated up to a point where it got uncomfortable and they started worrying about whether their deodorant was still OK at five o'clock in the afternoon. A tough choice, but the top option was to avoid the headache and take the risk of heating up. So the early attenders took the seats on the window side.\n\nFirst into the room was the FBI lawyer with special responsibility for financial crime. He stood fora moment and made a judgment about the likely duration of the meeting. Maybe forty-five minutes, he thought, knowing Holly, so he turned and tried to assess which seat might get the benefit of the shade from the slim pillar splitting the wall of windows into two. The bar of shadow was lying to the left of the third chair in the row, and he knew it would inch toward the head of the table as time passed. So he spilled his pile of folders onto the table in front of the second chair and shrugged his jacket off and claimed the place by dropping it onto the chair. Then he turned again and strolled to the credenza at the end of the room fora cup of coffee from the filter machine."},{"from":"human","value":"Next in were two agents working on cases that might be tied into the mess that Holly Johnson was dealing with."},{"from":"gpt","value":"They nodded to the lawyer and saw the place he'd claimed. They knew there was no point in choosing between the other fourteen chairs by the window. They were all going to get equally hot. So they just dumped their portfolios at the nearest two places and lined up for coffee.\n\n\"She not here yet?\" one of them said to the lawyer.\n\n\"Haven't seen her all day,\" the lawyer said.\n\n\"Your loss, right?\" the other guy said.\n\nHolly Johnson was anew agent, but talented, and that was making her popular. In the past the Bureau would have taken no pleasure at all in busting the sort of businessmen that Holly was employed to chase down, but times had changed and the Chicago office had gotten quite a taste for it. The businessmen now looked like scumbags, not solid citizens, and the agents were sick and tired of looking at them as they rode the commuter trains home. The agents would begetting off the train miles before the bankers and the stockbrokers were anywhere near their expensive suburbs. They would bethinking about second mortgages and even second jobs, and they'd bethinking about the years of private-detective work they were going to have to put into boost up the mean government pension. And the executives would be sitting therewith smug smiles. So when one or two of them started to take a fall, the Bureau was happy enough about it. When the ones and twos turned into tens and twenties, and then hundreds, it became a blood sport.\n\nThe only drawback was that it was hard work. Probably more difficult to nail than anything else. That was where Holly Johnson's arrival had made things easier. She had the talent. She could look at a balance sheet and just know if anything was wrong with it. It was like she could smell it. She'd sit at her desk and look at the papers, cock her head slightly to one side, and think. Sometimes she'd think for hours, but when she stopped thinking, she'd know what the hell was going on."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Then she'd explain it all in the case conference. She'd make it all sound easy and logical, like there was noway anybody could be in any kind of doubt about it. She was a woman who made progress. She was a woman who made her fellow agents feel better on those commuter trains at night. That's what was making her popular.\n\nFourth person into the third-floor meeting room was the agent assigned to help Holly outwith the fetching and carrying until she recovered from her soccer injury. His name was Milosevic. A slight frame, a slight West Coast accent. Less than forty, casually dressed inexpensive designer khaki, gold at his neck and on his wrist. He was also anew arrival, recently transferred into the Chicago office, because that was where the Bureau found it needed its financial people.\n\nHe joined the line for coffee and looked around the room.\n\n\"She's late?\" he said.\n\nThe lawyer shrugged at him and Milosevic shrugged back. He liked Holly Johnson. He had worked with her five weeks, since the accident on the soccer field, and he had enjoyed every minute of it.\n\n\"She's not usually late for anything,\" he said.\n\nFifth person in was Brogan, Holly's section head. Irish, from Boston via California. The young side of middle age. Dark hair, red Irish face. A tough guy, handsomely dressed in an expensive silk jacket, ambitious. He'd come to Chicago the same time as Milosevic, and he was pissed it wasn't New York. He was looking for the advancement he was sure he deserved. There was a theory that Holly's arrival in his section was enhancing his chances of getting it.\n\n\"She not here yet?\" he said.\n\nThe other four shrugged at him."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I'll kick her ass,\" Brogan said.\n\nHolly had been a stock analyst on Wall Street before applying to join the FBI. Nobody was clear why she'd made the change.\n\nShe had some kind of exalted connections, and some kind of an illustrious father, and the easy guess was she wanted to impress him somehow. Nobody knew for sure whether the old guy was impressed or not, but the feeling was he damn well ought to be. Holly had been one often thousand applicants in her year, and she'd passed right at the top of the four hundred who made it. She'd creamed the recruitment criteria. The Bureau had been looking for college graduates in law or accountancy, or else graduates in flimsier disciplines who'd then worked somewhere for three years at least. Holly had qualified in every way. She had an accountancy degree from Yale, and a Master's from Harvard, and three years on Wall Street on top of all that. She'd blitzed the intelligence tests and the aptitude assessments. She'd charmed the three serving agents who'd grilled her at her main interview.\n\nShe'd sailed through the background checks, which was understandable on account of her connections, and she'd been sent to the FBI Academy at Quantico. Then she'd really started to get serious. She was fit and strong, she learned to shoot, she murdered the leadership reaction course, she scored outstanding in the simulated shootouts in Hogan's Alley. But her major success washer attitude. She did two things at once. First she bought into the whole Bureau ethic in the biggest way possible. It was totally clear to everybody that here was a woman who was going to live and die for the FBI. But second, she did it in away which avoided the slightest trace of bullshit. She tinged her attitude with a gentle mocking humor which saved people from hating her. It made them love her instead. There was no doubt the Bureau had signed a major new asset. They sent her to Chicago and sat back to reap the benefits."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Last into the third-floor conference room was a bunch of men who came in together. Thirteen agents and the agent-in-charge, McGrath. The thirteen agents were clustered around their boss, who was conducting a sort of rolling policy review as he walked. The thirteen agents were hanging onto every word. McGrath had every advantage in the book. He was a man who'd been to the top, and then comeback down again into the field. He'd spent three years in the Hoover Building as an assistant director of the FBI, and then he'd applied fora demotion and a pay cut to take him back to a Field Office. The decision had cost him ten thousand dollars a year in income, but it had bought him back his sanity, and it had bought him undying respect and blind affection from the agents he worked with.\n\nAn agent-in-charge in a Field Office like Chicago is like the captain on a great warship. Theoretically there are people above him, but they're all a couple of thousand miles away in Washington. They're theoretical. The agent-in-charge is real. He runs his command like the hand of God. That's how the Chicago office looked at McGrath. He did nothing to undermine the feeling. He was remote, but he was approachable. He was private, but he made his people feel he'd do anything at all for them. He was a short, stocky man, burning with energy, the sort of tireless guy who radiates total confidence. The sort of guy who makes a crew better just by leading it. His first name was Paul, but he was called Mack, like the truck.\n\nHe let his thirteen agents sit down, ten of them backs to the window and three of them with the sun in their eyes. Then he hauled a chair around and stuck it at the head of the table ready for Holly. He walked down to the other end and hauled another chair around for himself. Sat sideways onto the sun. Started getting worried."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Where is she?\" he said. \"Brogan?\"\n\nThe section head shrugged, palms up.\n\n\"She should be here, far as I know,\" he said.\n\n\"She leave a message with anybody?\" McGrath asked. \"Milosevic?\"\n\nMilosevic and the other fifteen agents and the Bureau lawyer all shrugged and shook their heads. McGrath started worrying more. People have a pattern, a rhythm, like a behavioral fingerprint. Holly was only a minute or two late, but that was so far from normal that it was setting the bells ringing. In eight months he had never known her be late. It had never happened. Other people could be five minutes late into the meeting room and it would seem normal. Because of their pattern. But not Holly. At three minutes past five in the afternoon, McGrath stared at her empty chair and knew there was a problem. He stood up again in the quiet room and walked to the credenza on the opposite wall. There was a phone next to the coffee machine. He picked it up and dialed his office.\n\n\"Holly Johnson call in?\" he asked his secretary.\n\n\"No, Mack,\" she said.\n\nSo he dabbed the cradle and dialed the reception counter, two floors below.\n\n\"Any messages from Holly Johnson?\" he asked the agent at the door.\n\n\"No, chief,\" the agent said. \"Haven't seen her.\"\n\nHe hit the button again and called the main switchboard.\n\n\"Holly Johnson call in?\" he asked.\n\n\"No, sir,\" the switchboard operator said.\n\nHe held the phone and gestured for pen and paper. Then he spoke to the switchboard again.\n\n\"Give me her pager number,\" he said. \"And her cellphone, will you?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The earpiece crackled and he scrawled down the numbers. Cut the switchboard off and dialed Holly's pager. Just got along low tone telling him the pager was switched off. Then he tried the cellphone number. He got an electronic bleep and a recorded message of a woman telling him the phone he was dialing was unreachable. He hung up and looked around the room. It was ten after five, Monday afternoon."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"SIX-THIRTY ON REACHER'S WATCH, THE MOTION INSIDE THE TRUCK changed. Six hours and four minutes they'd cruised steadily, maybe fifty-five or sixty miles an hour, while the heat peaked and fell away. He'd sat, hot and rocking and bouncing in the dark with the wheel well between him and Holly Johnson, ticking off the distance against a map inside his head. He figured they'd been taken maybe three hundred and ninety miles. But he didn't know which direction they were headed. If they were going east, they would be right through Indiana and just about out of Ohio by now, maybe just entering Pennsylvania or West Virginia.\n\nSouth, they would be out of Illinois, into Missouri or Kentucky, maybe even into Tennessee if he'd underestimated their speed. West, they'd be hauling their way across Iowa. They might have looped around the bottom of the lake and headed north up through Michigan. Or straight out northwest, in which case they could be up near Minneapolis.\n\nBut they'd gotten somewhere, because the truck was slowing. Then there was a lurch to the right, like a pull off a highway. There was gear noise and thumping over broken pavement. Cornering forces slammed them around. Holly's crutch slid and rattled side to side across the ridged metal floor. The truck whined upgrades and down slopes, paused at invisible road junctions, accelerated, braked hard, turned a tight left, and then drove slowly down a straight lumpy surface fora quarter hour.\n\n\"Farming country somewhere,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"Obviously,\" Holly said. \"But where?\"\n\nReacher just shrugged at her in the gloom. The truck slowed almost to a stop and turned a tight right. The road surface got worse. The truck bounced forward maybe a hundred and fifty yards and stopped."},{"from":"human","value":"There was the sound of the passenger door opening up in front."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The engine was still running. The passenger door slammed shut. Reacher heard a big door opening and the truck moved slowly forward. The engine noise boomed against metal walls. Reacher heard the door noise again and the engine noise echoed louder. Then it shutdown and died away into stillness.\n\n\"We're in some sort of a barn,\" Reacher said. \"With the door closed.\"\n\nHolly nodded impatiently.\n\n\"I know that,\" she said. \"A cow barn. I can smell it.\"\n\nReacher could hear muffled conversation outside the truck. Footsteps walking around to the rear doors. A key going into the lock. The handle turning. A blinding flood of light as the door opened. Reacher blinked against the sudden electric brightness and stared out across Holly at three men, two Clocks and a shotgun.\n\n\"Out,\" the leader said.\n\nThey struggled out, handcuffed together. Not easy. They were stiff and sore and cramped from bracing themselves against the wheel well for six solid hours. Holly's knee had gone altogether. Reacher started back for her crutch.\n\n\"Leave it there, asshole,\" the leader said.\n\nThe guy sounded tired and irritable. Reacher gave him a steady look and shrugged. Holly stiffened and tried her weight on her leg. Gasped in pain and gave it up. Glanced impersonally at Reacher like he was some kind of a tree and stretched around with her free left hand to hold on tight around his neck. It was the only way she could stay upright.\n\n\"Excuse me, please,\" she muttered.\n\nThe leader gestured with his Glock over to his left. They were in a large cow barn. No cows, but they hadn't been long absent, judging by the odor. The truck was parked in a wide central aisle. Either side were cow stalls, roomy, made up from galvanized steel-piping efficiently welded together. Reacher twisted and held Holly's waist and the two of them hopped and staggered over to the stall the guy with the Clock was pointing at. Holly seized a railing and held on, embarrassed."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Excuse me,\" she muttered again.\n\nReacher nodded and waited. The driver with the shotgun covered them and the leader walked away. He heaved the big door open and stepped through. Reacher caught a glimpse of darkening sky. Cloudy. No clue at all to their location.\n\nThe leader was gone five minutes. There was silence in the barn. The other two guys stood still, weapons out and ready. The jumpy guy with the Clock was staring at Reacher's face. The driver with the shotgun was staring at Holly's breasts. Smiling a half-smile. Nobody spoke.\n\nThen the leader stepped back in. He was carrying a second pair of handcuffs and two lengths of heavy chain.\n\n\"You're making a big mistake here,\" Holly said to him. \"I'm an FBI agent.\"\n\n\"I know that, bitch,\" the guy said. \"Now be quiet.\"\n\n\"You're committing a serious crime,\" Holly said.\n\n\"I know that, bitch,\" the guy said again. \" And I told you to be quiet.\n\nAnother word out of you, I'll shoot this guy in the head. Then you can spend the night with a corpse chained to your wrist, OK?\"\n\nHe waited until she nodded silently. Then the driver with the shotgun took up position behind them and the leader unlocked their cuff and freed their wrists. He looped one of the chains around the stall railing and locked the ends into the spare half of the cuff dangling from Reacher's left arm. Pulled it and rattled it to check it was secure. Then he dragged Holly two stalls away and used the new cuffs and the second length of chain to lock her to the railing, twenty feet from Reacher. Her knee gave way and she fell heavily with a gasp of pain onto the dirty straw. The leader ignored her. Just walked back to where Reacher was chained up. Stood right in front of him."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"So who the hell are you, asshole?\" he said.\n\nReacher didn't reply. He knew the keys to both cuffs were in this guy's pocket. He knew it would take him about a second and a half to snap his neck with the loop of chain hanging off his wrist. But the other two guys were out of reach. One Clock, one shotgun, too faraway to grab before he'd unlocked himself, too near to get a chance to do that. He was dealing with a reasonably efficient set of opponents. So he just shrugged and looked at the straw at his feet. It was clogged with dung.\n\n\"I asked you a damn question,\" the guy said.\n\nReacher looked at him. In the corner of his eye he saw the jumpy guy ratchet his Clock upward a degree or two.\n\n\"I asked you a question, asshole,\" the leader said again, quietly.\n\nThe jumpy guy's Clock was jutting forward. Then it was straight out, shoulder-high. Aimed right at Reacher's head. The muzzle was trembling through a small jerky circle, but probably not trembling enough to make the guy miss. Not from that sort of a close distance.\n\nReacher looked from one guy to the other. The guy with the shotgun tore his attention away from Holly's breasts. He raised the weapon to his hip. Pointed it in Reacher's direction. It was an Ithaca 37.\n\nTwelve-bore. The five-shot version with the pistol grip and no shoulder stock. The guy racked around into the chamber. The crunch-crunch of the mechanism was loud in the barn. It echoed off the metal walls. Died into silence. Reacher saw the trigger move through the first eighth-inch of its short travel."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Name?\" the leader asked.\n\nThe shotgun trigger tightened another eighth. If it fired on that trajectory, Reacher was going to lose both his legs and most of his stomach.\n\n\"Name?\" the leader asked for the second time.\n\nIt was a twelve-bore, wouldn't kill him outright, but he'd bleed to death in the dirty straw. Femoral artery gone, about a minute, maybe a minute and a half. In those circumstances, no real reason to make a big deal out of giving this guy a name.\n\n\"Jack Reacher,\" he said.\n\nThe leader nodded in satisfaction, like he'd achieved a victory.\n\n\"You know this bitch?\" he asked.\n\nReacher glanced across at Holly.\n\n\"Better than I know some people,\" he said. \"I just spent six hours handcuffed to her.\"\n\n\"You some kind of a wiseguy asshole?\" the leader asked.\n\nReacher shook his head.\n\n\"Innocent passerby,\" he said. \"I never saw her before.\"\n\n\"You with the Bureau?\" the guy asked.\n\nReacher shook his head again.\n\n\"I'm a doorman,\" he said. \"Club back in Chicago.\"\n\n\"You sure, asshole?\" the guy said.\n\nReacher nodded.\n\n\"I'm sure,\" he said. \"I'm a wise enough guy that I can recall what I do fora living, one day to the next.\"\n\nThere was silence fora long moment. Tension. Then the jumpy guy with the Clock came out of his shooting stance. The driver with the shotgun swung his weapon down toward the straw on the floor. He turned his head and went back to staring at Holly's breasts. The leader nodded at Reacher."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"OK, asshole,\" he said. \" You behave yourself, you stay alive for now.\n\nSame for the bitch. Nothing's going to happen to anybody. Not just yet.\"\n\nThe three men regrouped in the center aisle and walked out of the barn.\n\nBefore they locked the door, Reacher saw the sky again, briefly.\n\nDarker. Still cloudy. No stars. No clues. He tested the chain. It was securely fastened to the handcuff atone end and the railing at the other. Maybe seven feet long. He could hear Holly doing the same experiment. Tightening her chain and scoping out the radius it gave her to move through.\n\n\"Would you mind looking away?\" she called across.\n\n\"Why?\" he called back.\n\nThere was a short silence. Then a sigh. Part embarrassed, part exasperated.\n\n\"Do you really need to ask?\" she called. \"We were in that truck six hours, and it didn't have a bathroom, did it?\"\n\n\"You going in the next stall?\" he asked.\n\n\"Obviously,\" she said.\n\n\"OK,\" he said. \"You go right and I'll go left. I won't look if you won't.\"\n\nThe three men came back to the barn within an hour with food. Some kind of a beef stew in a metal mess tin, one for each of them. Mostly rare steak chunks and a lot of hard carrots. Whoever these guys were, cooking was not their major talent. Reacher was clear on that. They handed out an enamel mug of weak coffee, one for each of them. Then they got in the truck. Started it up and backed it out of the barn.\n\nTurned the bright lights off. Reacher caught a glimpse of dim emptiness outside. Then they pulled the big door shut and locked it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Left their prisoners in the dark and the quiet.\n\n\"Gas station,\" Holly called from twenty feet away. \"They're filling up for the rest of the ride. Can't do it with us inside. They figure we'd be banging on the side and shouting out for help.\"\n\nReacher nodded and finished his coffee. Sucked the fork from the stew clean. Bent one of the prongs right out and put a little kink into the end with pressure from his thumbnail. It made a little hook. He used it to pick the lock on his handcuff. Took him eighteen seconds, beginning to end. He dropped the cuff and the chain in the straw and walked over to Holly. Bent down and unlocked her wrist. Twelve seconds. Helped her to her feet.\n\n\"Doorman, right?\" she said.\n\n\"Right,\" he said. \"Let's take a look around.\"\n\n\"I can't walk,\" she said. \"My crutch is in the damn truck.\"\n\nReacher nodded. She stayed in her stall, clinging to the railing. He scouted around the big empty barn. It was a sturdy metal structure, built throughout with the same flecked, galvanized metal as the stall railings. The big door was locked from the outside. Probably a steel bar padlocked into place. No problem if he could get at the padlock, but he was inside and the padlock was outside.\n\nThe walls met the floor with aright-angle flange bolted firmly into the concrete. The walls themselves were horizontal metal panels maybe thirty feet long, maybe four feet tall. They were joined together with more right-angle flanges bolted together. Each flange gave a lip about six inches deep. Like a giant stepladder with the treads four feet apart.\n\nHe climbed the wall, hauling himself quickly upward, flange to flange, four feet at a time. The way out of the barn was right thereat the top of the wall, seven sections up, twenty-eight feet off the ground."},{"from":"human","value":"There was a ventilation slot between the top of the wall and the overhanging slope of the metal roof."},{"from":"gpt","value":"About eighteen inches high. A person could roll horizontally through the gap like an old-fashioned high jumper hang down outside and drop twenty feet to the ground below.\n\nHe could do that, but Holly Johnson couldn't. She couldn't even walkover to the wall. She couldn't climb it and she sure as hell couldn't hang down outside and drop twenty feet onto a set of wrecked cruciate ligaments.\n\n\"Get going,\" she called up to him. \"Get out of here, right now.\"\n\nHe ignored her and peered out through the slot into the darkness. The overhanging eaves gave him a low horizon. Empty country as far as the eye could see. He climbed down and went up the other three walls in turn. The second side gave out onto country just as empty as the first. The third had a view of a farmhouse. White shingles. Lights in two windows. The fourth side of the barn looked straight up the farm track. About a hundred and fifty yards to a featureless road.\n\nEmptiness beyond. In the far distance, a single set of headlight beams. Flicking and bouncing. Widely spaced. Growing larger. Getting nearer. The truck, coming back.\n\n\"Can you see where we are?\" Holly called up to him.\n\n\"No idea,\" Reacher called back. \"Farming country somewhere. Could be anywhere. Where do they have cows like this? And fields and stuff?\"\n\n\"Is it hilly out there?\" Holly called. \"Or flat?\"\n\n\"Can't tell,\" Reacher said. Too dark. Maybe a little hilly.\"\n\n\"Could be Pennsylvania,\" Holly said. They have hills and cows there.\"\n\nReacher climbed down the fourth wall and walked back to her stall."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Get out of here, for Christ's sake,\" she said to him. \"Raise the alarm.\"\n\nHe shook his head. He heard the diesel slowing to turn into the track.\n\nThat may not be the best option,\" he said.\n\nShe stared at him.\n\n\"Who the hell gave you an option?\" she said. \" I'm ordering you.\n\nYou're a civilian and I'm FBI and I'm ordering you to get yourself to safety right now.\"\n\nReacher just shrugged and stood there.\n\n\"I'm ordering you, OK?\" Holly said again. \"You going to obey me?\"\n\nReacher shook his head again.\n\n\"No,\" he said.\n\nShe glared at him. Then the truck was back. They heard the roar of the diesel and the groan of the springs on the rough track outside.\n\nReacher locked Holly's cuff and ran back to his stall. They heard the truck door slam and footsteps on the concrete. Reacher chained his wrist to the railing and bent the fork back into shape. When the barn door opened and the light came on, he was sitting quietly on the straw."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"THE MATERIAL USED TO PACK THE TWENTY-TWO-INCH CAVITY between the outside of the old walls and the inside of the new walls was hauled over from its storage shed in an open pickup truck. There was a ton of it and it took four trips. Each consignment was carefully unloaded by a team of eight volunteers. They worked together like an old-fashioned bucket-brigade attending afire. They passed each box along, hand to hand, into the building, up the stairs to the second floor. The boxes were stacked in the hallway outside the modified corner room. The three builders opened each box in turn and carried the material into the room. Then they stacked it carefully into the wide spaces behind the new softwood framing. The unloaders generally paused fora moment and watched them, grateful fora moment of rest.\n\nThe process lasted most of the afternoon because of the amount of material and the care they took in moving it. When the last of the four loads was stacked upstairs, the eight volunteers dispersed. Seven of them headed for the mess hall. The eighth stretched in the last of the afternoon sun and strolled off. It was his habit. Four or five times a week, he would take along walk on his own, especially after a period of heavy work. It was assumed to be his way of relaxing.\n\nHe strolled in the forest. There was a beaten path running west through the silence. He followed it fora half-mile. Then he paused and stretched again. He used the weary twisting motion of a tired man easing a sore back to glance around a complete circle. Then he stepped sideways off the path. Stopped strolling. Started an urgent walk. He dodged trees and followed a wide looping course west, then north. He went straight fora particular tree. There was a large flat rock bedded in needles at its base. He stood still and waited. Listened hard. Then he ducked down and heaved the rock to one side. Underneath was a rectangular shape wrapped in oilcloth. He unfolded the cloth and took out a small hand-held radio. Pulled the stubby antenna and hit a button and waited. Then he whispered along and excited message."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Assist in storytelling and proceed with the tale.\\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\\nAuthor: Lee Child\\nTitle: Die Trying\\nChapter: 1\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"ONE\\n\\nHe left home early, as he always did, six days a week, fifty weeks a year. A cautious breakfast, appropriate to a short, round man aiming to stay in shape through his forties. Along walk down the carpeted corridors of a lakeside house, appropriate to a man who earned a thousand dollars on each of those three hundred days he worked. A thumb on the button of the garage door-opener and a twist of the wrist to start the silent engine of his expensive, imported sedan. A CD into the player, a backward sweep into his gravel driveway, a dab on the brake, a snick of the selector, a nudge on the gas, and the last short drive of his life was underway. Six forty-nine in the morning, Monday.\\n\\nThe only light on his route to work was green, which was the proximate cause of his death. It meant that as he pulled into his secluded slot behind his professional building the prelude ahead of Bach's B minor fugue still had thirty-eight seconds left to run. He sat and heard it out until the last organ blast echoed to silence, which meant that as he got out of his car the three men were near enough for him to interpret some kind of intention in their approach. So he glanced at them. They looked away and altered course, three men instep, like dancers or soldiers. He turned toward his building. Started walking.\\n\\nBut then he stopped. And looked back. The three men were at his car.\\n\\nTrying the doors.\\n\\n\\\"Hey!\\\" he called.\\n\\nIt was the short universal sound of surprise, anger, challenge. The sort of instinctive sound an earnest, naive citizen makes when something should not be happening. The sort of instinctive sound which gets an earnest, naive citizen killed. He found himself heading straight back to his car. He was outnumbered three to one but he was in the right, which swelled him up and gave him confidence. He strode back and felt outraged and fit and commanding.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"But those were illusory feelings.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"A soft, suburban guy like him was never going to be in command of a situation like that. His fitness was just health-club tone. It counted for nothing. His tight abdominals ruptured under the first savage blow. His face jerked forward and down and hard knuckles pulped his lips and smashed his teeth. He was caught by rough hands and knotted arms and held upright like he weighed nothing at all. His keys were snatched from his grasp and he was hit a crashing blow on the ear. His mouth filled with blood. He was dropped onto the blacktop and heavy boots smashed into his back. Then his gut.\\n\\nThen his head. He blacked out like a television set in a thunderstorm.\\n\\nThe world just disappeared in front of him. It collapsed into a thin hot line and sputtered away to nothing.\\n\\nSo he died, because fora split-second he got brave. But not then. He died much later, after the split-second of bravery had faded into long hours of wretched gasping fear, and after the long hours of fear had exploded into long minutes of insane screaming panic.\\n\\nJack Reacher stayed alive, because he got cautious. He got cautious because he heard an echo from his past. He had a lot of past, and the echo was from the worst part of it.\\n\\nHe had served thirteen years in the army, and the only time he was wounded it wasn't with a bullet. It was with a fragment of a Marine sergeant's jawbone. Reacher had been stationed in Beirut, in the US compound out by the airport. The compound was truck-bombed. Reacher was standing at the gate. The Marine in sergeant was standing a hundred yards nearer the explosion. The jawbone fragment was the only piece left of the guy. It hit Reacher a hundred yards away and went tumbling through his gut like a bullet. The army surgeon who patched Reacher up told him afterward he was lucky. He told him areal bulletin the gut would have felt much worse. That was the echo Reacher was hearing. And he was paying a whole lot of attention to it, because thirteen years later he was standing therewith a handgun pointing straight at his stomach. From a range of about an inch and a half.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The handgun was a nine-millimeter automatic. It was brand new. It was oiled. It was held low, lined upright on his old scar. The guy holding it looked more or less like he knew what he was doing. The safety mechanism was released. There was no visible tremor in the muzzle. No tension. The trigger finger was ready to go to work.\\n\\nReacher could see that. He was concentrating hard on that trigger finger.\\n\\nHe was standing next to a woman. He was holding her arm. He had never seen her before. She was staring at an identical nine-millimeter pointed at her own gut. Her guy was more tensed up than his. Her guy looked uneasy. He looked worried. His gun was trembling with tension.\\n\\nHis fingernails were chewed. A nervous, jumpy guy. The four of them were standing thereon the street, three of them still like statues and the fourth hopping slightly from foot to foot.\\n\\nThey were in Chicago. Center of the city, a busy sidewalk, a Monday, last day of June. Broad daylight, bright summer sunshine. The whole situation had materialized in a split second. It had happened in away which couldn't have been choreographed in a million years. Reacher had been walking down the street, going nowhere, not fast, not slow. He had been about to pass the exit door of a storefront dry-cleaner's. The door had opened up in his face and an old metal walking cane had clattered out on the sidewalk right in front of him. He'd glanced up to see a woman in the doorway. She was about to drop an armful of nine dry-cleaning bags. She was someway short of thirty, expensively dressed, dark, attractive, self-assured. She had some kind of a bad leg. Some kind of an injury. Reacher could see from her awkward posture it was causing her pain. She'd thrown him a would-you-mind look and he'd thrown her a no-problem look and scooped up the metal cane. He'd taken the nine bags from her with one hand and given her the cane with the other. He'd flicked the bags up over his shoulder and felt the nine wire hangers bite into his ringer. She had planted the cane on the sidewalk and eased her forearm into the curved-metal clip. He had offered his hand. She had paused. Then she had nodded in an embarrassed fashion and he had taken her arm and waited a beat, feeling helpful but awkward. Then they had turned together to move away. Reacher had figured he would maybe stroll a few steps with her until she was steady on her feet. Then he would let her arm go and hand back her garments. But he'd turned straight into the two guys with the nine-millimeter automatics.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The four of them stood there, face to face in pairs. Like four people eating together in a tight booth in a diner. The two guys with the guns were white, well fed, vaguely military, vaguely alike. Medium height, short brown hair. Big hands, muscular. Big, obvious faces, bland pink features. Tense expressions, hard eyes. The nervous guy was smaller, like he burned up his energy worrying. They both wore checked shirts and poplin windbreakers. They stood there, pressed together. Reacher was a lot taller than the other three. He could see all around them, over their heads. He stood there, surprised, with the woman's dry-cleaning slung over his shoulder. The woman was leaning on her crutch, just staring, silent. The two men were pointing the guns.\\n\\nClose in. Reacher felt they'd all been standing like that fora longtime. But he knew that feeling was deceptive. It probably hadn't been more than a second and a half.\\n\\nThe guy opposite Reacher seemed to be the leader. The bigger one. The calmer one. He looked between Reacher and the woman and jerked his automatic's barrel toward the kerb.\\n\\n\\\"In the car, bitch,\\\" the guy said. \\\"And you, asshole.\\\" He spoke urgently, but quietly. With authority. Not much of an accent. Maybe from California, Reacher thought. There was a sedan at the kerb. It had been waiting therefor them. A big car, black, expensive. The driver was leaning across behind the front passenger seat. He was stretching over to pop the rear door. The guy opposite Reacher motioned with the gun again. Reacher didn't move. He glanced left and right. He figured he had about another second and a half to make some kind of an assessment. The two guys with the nine-millimeter automatics didn't worry him too much. He was one-handed, because of the dry-cleaning, but he figured the two guys would go down without too much of a problem. The problems lay beside him and behind him. He stared up into the dry-cleaner's window and used it like a mirror.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Twenty yards behind him was a solid mass of hurrying people at a crosswalk. A couple of stray bullets would find a couple of targets.\\n\\nNo doubt about that. No doubt at all. That was the problem behind him. The problem beside him was the unknown woman. Her capabilities were an unknown quantity. She had some kind of a bad leg. She would be slow to react. Slow to move. He wasn't prepared to go into combat.\\n\\nNot in that environment, and not with that partner.\\n\\nThe guy with the Californian accent reached up and grabbed Reacher's wrist where it was pinned against his collar by the weight of the nine clean garments hanging down his back. He used it to pull him toward the car. His trigger finger still looked ready to go to work. Reacher was watching it, corner of his eye. He let the woman's arm go. Stepped over to the car. Threw the bags into the rear seat and climbed in after them. The woman was pushed in behind him. Then the jumpy guy crowded in on them and slammed the door. The leader got in front on the right. Slammed the door. The driver nudged the selector and the car moved smoothly and quietly away down the street.\\n\\nThe woman was gasping in pain and Reacher figured she had the jumpy guy's gun jammed in her ribs. The leader was twisted around in the front seat with his gun hand resting against the thick leather headrest. The gun was pointing straight at Reacher's chest. It was a Clock 17. Reacher knew all about that weapon. He had evaluated the prototype for his unit. That had been his assignment during his light-duty convalescence after the Beirut wound. The Glock was a tough little weapon. Seven and a half inches long from firing pinto muzzle tip. Long enough to make it accurate. Reacher had hit thumbtack heads at seventy-five feet with it. And it fired a decent projectile. It delivered quarter-ounce bullets at nearly eight hundred miles an hour.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Seventeen rounds to a magazine, hence the name. And it was light. For all its power, it weighed under two pounds. The important parts were steel. The rest of it was plastic. Black polycarbonate, like an expensive camera. A fine piece of craftsmanship. But he hadn't liked it much. Not for the specialized requirements of his unit. He'd recommended rejection. He'd supported the Beretta 92F instead. The Beretta was also a nine-millimeter, a half-pound heavier, an inch longer, two fewer rounds in the magazine. But it had about 10 percent more stopping power than the Clock. That was important to him. And it wasn't plastic. The Beretta had been Reacher's choice. His unit commander had agreed. He had circulated Reacher's paper and the army as a whole had backed his recommendation. The same week they promoted him and pinned on his Silver Star and his Purple Heart, they ordered Berettas even though the Beretta was more expensive and NATO was crazy for the Clock and Reacher had been just about alone voice and was not long out of West Point. Then he had been assigned elsewhere and served all around the world and hadn't really seen a Clock 17 since. Until now. Twelve years later he was getting a pretty damn good second look atone.\\n\\nHe switched his attention away from the gun and took another look at the guy holding it. He had a decent tan which whitened near his hairline. A recent haircut. The driver had a big shiny brow, thinning hair sweptback, pink and vivid features, the smirk that pig-ugly guys use when they think they're handsome. Same cheap chain store shirt, same windbreaker. Same corn-fed bulk. Same in-charge confidence, edged around with a slight breathlessness. Three guys, all of them maybe thirty or thirty-five, one leader, one solid follower, one jumpy follower. All of them tense but rehearsed, racing through some kind of a mission. A puzzle. Reacher glanced past the steady Clock into the leader's eyes. But the guy shook his head.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"No talking, asshole,\\\" he said. \\\"Start talking, I'll shoot you. That's a damn promise. Keep quiet, you could be OK.\\\"\\n\\nReacher believed him. The guy's eyes were hard and his mouth was a tight line. So he said nothing. Then the car slowed and pulled onto a lumpy concrete forecourt. It headed around behind an abandoned industrial building. They had driven south. Reacher figured they were now maybe five miles south of the Loop. The driver eased the big sedan to a stop with the rear door lined up with the back of a small panel truck. The truck was standing alone on the empty lot. It was a Ford Econoline, dirty white, not old, but well used. There had been some kind of writing on the side. It had been painted over with fresh white paint which didn't exactly match the bodywork Readier scanned around.\\n\\nThe lot was full of trash. He saw a paint can discarded near the truck. A brush. There was nobody insight. The place was deserted.\\n\\nIf he was going to make some kind of a move, this was the right time to make it, and the right location. But the guy in front smiled a thin smile and leaned right over into the back of the car. Caught Reacher's collar with his left hand and ground the tip of the Clock's muzzle into Reacher's ear with his right.\\n\\n\\\"Sit still, asshole,\\\" the guy said.\\n\\nThe driver got out of the car and skipped around the hood. Pulled anew set of keys from his pocket and opened up the rear doors of the truck. Reacher sat still. Jamming a gun into a person's ear is not necessarily a smart move. If the person suddenly jerks his head around toward it, the gun comes out. It rolls around the person's forehead.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Then even a quick trigger-finger won't do much damage. It might blow a hole in the person's ear, just the outside flap, and it's sure to shatter the person's eardrum. But those are not fatal wounds. Reacher spent a second weighing those odds. Then the jumpy guy dragged the woman out of the car and hustled her straight into the back of the truck. She hopped and limped across the short distance. Straight out of one door and in through the other. Reacher watched her, corner of his eye. Her guy took her pocketbook from her and tossed it back into the car. It fell at Reacher's feet. It thumped heavily on the thick carpet. A big pocketbook, expensive leather, something heavy in it.\\n\\nSomething metal. Only one metal thing women carry could make a heavy thump like that. He glanced across at her, suddenly interested.\\n\\nShe was sprawled in the back of the truck. Impeded by her leg. Then the leader in the front pulled Reacher along the leather seat and passed him onto the jumpy guy. As soon as one Clock was out of his ear, the other was jammed into his side. He was dragged over the rough ground. Across to the rear of the truck. He was pushed inside with the woman. The jumpy guy covered them both with the trembling Clock while the leader reached into the car and pulled out the woman's metal crutch. He walked over and tossed it into the truck. It clanged and boomed on the metal siding. He left her dry-cleaning in the back of the sedan with her handbag. Then he pulled a set of handcuffs from the pocket of his jacket. He caught the woman's right wrist and cuffed it with half the handcuff. Pulled her roughly sideways and caught Reacher's left wrist. Snapped the other half of the cuff onto it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Shook the cuff to check it was secure. Slammed the truck's left rear door. Reacher saw the driver emptying plastic bottles into the sedan.\\n\\nHe caught the pale color and the strong smell of gasoline. One bottle into the backseat, one into the front. Then the leader swung the truck's right rear door shut. Last thing Reacher saw before darkness enveloped him was the driver, pulling a matchbook from his pocket.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWO MILES FROM CHICAGO byroad guest quarters were being prepared. They took the form of a single room. The room was following an unconventional design, specified by a thorough man after a great deal of careful thought. The design called for several unusual features.\\n\\nThe quarters were designed fora specific purpose, and fora specific guest. The nature of the purpose and the identity of the guest had dictated the unusual features. The construction was concentrated on the second floor of an existing building. A corner room had been selected. It had a series of large windows on the two outside walls.\\n\\nThey faced south and east. The glass had been smashed out and replaced by heavy plywood sheeting nailed to the remaining window frames The plywood was painted white on the outside, to match the building's siding. On the inside, the plywood was left unfinished.\\n\\nThe corner room's ceiling was torn out. It was an old building, and the ceiling had been made of heavy plaster. It had been pulled down in a shower of choking dust. The room was now open to the rafters. The interior walling was torn off. The walls had been paneled in old pine, worn smooth with age and polish. That was all gone. The framing of the building and the heavy old tarpaper behind the exterior siding was exposed. The floorboards were pulled up. The dusty ceiling of the room below was visible under the heavy joists. The room was just a shell.\\n\\nThe old plaster from the ceiling and the boards from the walls and the floor, had been thrown out through the windows before they were covered over with the plywood. The two men who had done the demolition work had shoveled all that debris into a large pile, and they had backed their truck up to the pile ready to cart the trash away. They were very anxious to leave the place looking neat and tidy. This was the first time they had worked for this particular employer, and there had been hints of more work to come. And looking around, they could see that there was plenty more needed doing. All in all, an optimistic situation. New contracts were hard to find, and this particular employer, had shown no concern overprice. The two men felt that to make a good first impression was very much in their long-term interest.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They were hard at work loading their truck with every last plaster fragment when the employer himself stopped by.\\n\\n\\\"All done?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nThe employer was a huge guy, freakishly bloated, with a high voice and two nickel-sized red spots burning on his pale cheeks. He moved lightly and quietly, like a guy a quarter his size. The overall effect was a guy people looked away from and answered quickly.\\n\\n\\\"Just clearing up,\\\" the first guy said to him. \\\"Where do we dump this stuff?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'll show you,\\\" the employer said. \\\" You'll need to make two trips.\\n\\nBring those boards separately, right?\\\"\\n\\nThe second guy nodded. The floorboards were eighteen inches wide, from back when lumbermen had the pick of any tree they wanted. Noway would they fit into the flatbed with the rest of the junk. They finished loading the plaster and their employer squeezed into their truck with them. He was such a big guy, it made fora tight fit. He pointed beyond the old building.\\n\\n\\\"Drive north,\\\" he said, 'about a mile.\\\"\\n\\nThe road led them straight out of town and then wound upward through some steep bends. The employer pointed to a place.\\n\\n\\\"In there,\\\" he said, 'all the way in back, OK?\\\"\\n\\nHe strolled quietly away and the two guys unloaded their truck. Drove it back south and heaved the old pine boards in. Followed the winding bends again and unloaded. They carried the boards inside and stacked them neatly. All the way in back of the dark space. Then the employer stepped out of the shadows. He had been waiting for them. He had something in his hand.\\n\\n\\\"We're all done,\\\" the first guy said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The employer nodded.\\n\\n\\\"You sure are,\\\" he said.\\n\\nHis hand came up. He was holding a gun. A dull black automatic. He shot the first guy in the head. The crash of the bullet was deafening.\\n\\nBlood and bone and brain sprayed everywhere. The second guy froze in terror. Then he ran. He launched himself sideways in a desperate sprint for cover. The employer smiled. He liked it when they ran. He dropped his huge arm to a shallow angle. Fired and put a bullet through the back of the guy's knee. Smiled again. Now it was better.\\n\\nHe liked it when they ran, but he liked it better when they were squirming on the floor. He stood and listened to the guy's yelping fora long moment. Then he strolled quietly over and took careful aim. Put a bullet through the other knee. He watched fora while, then he tired of the game. Shrugged and put a final bullet through the guy's head.\\n\\nThen he laid the gun on the ground and rolled the two bodies over and over until they were stacked neatly inline with the old floorboards.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"THEY HAD BEEN ON THE ROAD AN HOUR AND THIRTY-THREE minutes. Some urban crawling, then an acceleration to a steady cruise. Maybe sixty miles covered. But in the noisy darkness inside the panel truck Reacher had no idea which direction those sixty miles were taking him.\\n\\nHe was handcuffed to the young woman with the bad leg and within the first few minutes of their forced acquaintance they had worked out how to get as comfortable as they were ever going to get. They had crabbed around inside the truck until they were sitting sideways on the floor, legs straight out, propped against the big wheel well on the right, braced against the motion. The woman sat against the rear side and Reacher sat on the forward side. Their cuffed wrists lay together on the flattop of the metal bulge like they were lovers idling their time away in a cafe.\\n\\nAt first they hadn't spoken. They'd just sat fora longtime in stunned silence. The immediate problem was the heat. It was the middle of the last day of June in the Midwest. They were shut into an enclosed metal space. There was no ventilation. Reacher figured the rush of air over the outside of the truck's body must be cooling it to an extent, but nowhere near enough. He just sat therein the gloom and used the hot dead time thinking and planning like he was trained to do.\\n\\nStaying calm, staying relaxed, staying ready, not burning his energy away with useless speculation. Assessing and evaluating. The three guys had shown a measure of efficiency. No great talent, no real finesse, but no significant mistakes. The jumpy guy with the second Clock was the weakest component of the team, but the leader had covered for him pretty well. An efficient threesome. Not at all the worst he'd ever seen. But, at that point, he wasn't worrying. He'd been in worse situations and survived them. Much worse situations, and more than once. So he wasn't worrying yet.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Then he noticed something.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He noticed that the woman wasn't worrying yet either. She was calm too. She was just sitting there, swaying, cuffed to his wrist, thinking and planning like maybe she was trained to do, as well. He glanced across at her in the gloom and saw her looking steadily at him. A quizzical stare, calm, in control, faintly superior, faintly disapproving. The confidence of youth. She met his gaze. Held it fora long moment. Then she stuck out her cuffed right hand, which jarred his left wrist, but it was an encouraging gesture.\\n\\nHe reached around and shook her hand and they smiled brief ironic smiles together at their mutual formality.\\n\\n\\\"Holly Johnson,\\\" she said.\\n\\nShe was assessing him carefully. He could see her eyes traveling around his face. Then they flicked down to his clothing and backup to his face. She smiled again, briefly, like she had decided he merited some kind of courtesy.\\n\\n\\\"Nice to meet you,\\\" she said.\\n\\nHe looked back at her. Looked at her face. She was a very good-looking woman. Maybe twenty-six, twenty-seven. He looked at her clothes. Aline from an old song ran through his head: hundred dollar dresses, that I ain't paid for yet. He waited for the next line, but it didn't come. So he smiled back at her and nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Jack Readier,\\\" he said. \\\"Pleasure's all mine, Holly, believe me.\\\"\\n\\nIt was difficult to speak, because the truck was cruising noisily. The sound of the engine was fighting with the roar from the road. Reacher would have been happy to sit quiet fora while, but Holly wasn't.\\n\\n\\\"I need to get rid of you,\\\" she said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"A confident woman, well in control of herself.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He made no reply.\\n\\nJust glanced at her and glanced away. The next line was: cold, cold-blooded woman. A dying fall, a sad poignant line. An old Memphis Slim song. But the line was not right for her. Not right at all. This was not a cold-blooded woman. He glanced over again and shrugged at her. She was staring at him. Impatient with his silence.\\n\\n\\\"You understand exactly what's happening?\\\" she asked him.\\n\\nHe watched her face. Watched her eyes. She was staring straight at him. Astonishment on her face. She thought she was stuck in therewith an idiot. She thought he didn't understand exactly what was happening.\\n\\n\\\"It's pretty clear, right?\\\" he said. \\\"From the evidence?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What evidence?\\\" she said. \\\"It was allover in a split second.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Exactly,\\\" he said. That's all the evidence I need, right? Tells me more or less what I need to know.\\\"\\n\\nHe stopped talking and started resting again. Next opportunity to getaway would be the next time the truck stopped. Could be some hours away. He felt he could be in fora long day. Felt he should be prepared to conserve his resources.\\n\\n\\\"So what do you need to know?\\\" the woman said.\\n\\nHer eyes were steady on his.\\n\\n\\\"You've been kidnaped,\\\" he said. \\\"I'm hereby accident.\\\"\\n\\nShe was still looking at him. Still confident. Still thinking. Still not sure whether or not she was cuffed to an idiot.\\n\\n\\\"It's pretty clear, right?\\\" he said again. \\\"It wasn't me they were after.\\\"\\n\\nShe made no reply. Just arched a fine eyebrow.\\n\\n\\\"Nobody knew I was going to be there,\\\" he said. \\\"I didn't even know I was going to be there. Until I got there. But it was a well planned operation. Must have taken time to setup. Based on surveillance, right? Three guys, one in the car, two on the street. The car was parked exactly level. They had no idea where I was going to be. But obviously they knew for sure where you were going to be. So don't be looking at me like I'm the idiot here. You're the one made the big mistake.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Mistake?\\\" the woman said.\\n\\n\\\"You're too regular in your habits,\\\" Readier said. They studied your movements, maybe two or three weeks, and you walked right into their arms. They weren't expecting anybody else to be there. That's clear, right? They only brought one set of handcuffs.\\\"\\n\\nHe raised his wrist, which raised hers too, to make his point. The woman went quiet fora long moment. She was revising her opinion of him. Reacher rocked with the motion of the vehicle and smiled.\\n\\n\\\"And you should know better,\\\" he said. \\\"You're a government agent of some sort, right? DEA, CIA, FBI, something like that, maybe a Chicago PD detective? New in the job, still fairly dedicated. And fairly wealthy. So somebody is either looking fora ransom, or you've already become a potential problem to somebody, even though you're new, and either way you should have taken more care of yourself.\\\"\\n\\nShe looked across at him. Nodded, eyes wide in the gloom. Impressed.\\n\\n\\\"Evidence?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nHe smiled at her again.\\n\\n\\\"Couple of things,\\\" he said. \\\"Your dry-cleaning. My guess is every Monday lunch break you take last week's clothes into get them cleaned and you pickup this week's clothes to wear. That means you must have about fifteen or twenty outfits. Looking at that thing you got on, you're not a cheap dresser. Call it four hundred bucks an outfit, you've got maybe eight grand tied up in things to wear. That's what I call moderately wealthy, and that's what I call too regular in your habits.\\\"\\n\\nShe nodded slowly.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" she said. \\\"Why am Ia government agent?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Easy enough,\\\" he said. \\\"You had a Clock 17 shoved at you, you were bundled into a car, you were thrown in a truck, handcuffed to a complete stranger and you've got no idea where the hell they're taking you, or why. Any normal person would befalling apart overall that, screaming the place down. But not you. You're sitting there quite calmly, which suggests some kind of training, maybe some kind of familiarity with upsetting or dangerous situations. And maybe some kind of sure knowledge there'll be a bunch of people looking to get you back soon as they can.\\\"\\n\\nHe stopped and she nodded for him to continue.\\n\\n\\\"Also, you had a gun in your bag,\\\" he said. \\\" Something fairly heavy, maybe a. 38, long barrel. If it was a private weapon, a dresser like you would choose something dainty, like a snub. 22.\\n\\nBut it was a big revolver, so you were issued with it. So you're some kind of an agent, maybe a cop.\\\"\\n\\nThe woman nodded again, slowly.\\n\\n\\\"Why am I new in the job?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"Your age,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"What are you? Twenty-six?\\\"\\n\\nTwenty-seven,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"That's young fora detective,\\\" he said. \\\"College, a few years in uniform? Young for the FBI, DBA, CIA, too. So whatever you are, you're new at it.\\\"\\n\\nShe shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" she said. \\\"Why am I fairly dedicated?\\\"\\n\\nReacher pointed, left-handed, rattling their shared handcuff.\\n\\n\\\"Your injury,\\\" he said. \\\"You're back to work after some kind of an accident, before you're really recovered. You're still using that crutch for your bad leg. Most people in your position would be staying home and drawing sick pay.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She smiled.\\n\\n\\\"I could be handicapped,\\\" she said. \\\"Could have been born this way.\\\"\\n\\nReacher shook his head in the gloom.\\n\\n\\\"That's a hospital crutch,\\\" he said. They loaned it to you, short term, until you're over your injury. If it was a permanent thing, you'd have bought your own crutch. Probably you'd have bought a dozen.\\n\\nSprayed them all different to match all your expensive outfits.\\\"\\n\\nShe laughed. It was a pleasant sound above the drone and boom of the truck's engine and the roar of the road.\\n\\n\\\"Pretty good, Jack Reacher,\\\" she said. \\\" I'm an FBI special agent.\\n\\nSince last fall. I just ripped up my cruciate ligaments playing soccer.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You play soccer?\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Good for you, Holly Johnson. What kind of an FBI agent since last fall?\\\"\\n\\nShe was quiet fora beat.\\n\\n\\\"Just an agent,\\\" she said. \\\"One of many at the Chicago office.\\\"\\n\\nReacher shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Not just an agent,\\\" he said. \\\"An agent who's doing something to somebody who maybe wants to retaliate. So who are you doing something to?\\\"\\n\\nShe shook her head back at him.\\n\\n\\\"I can't discuss that,\\\" she said. \\\"Not with civilians.\\\"\\n\\nHe nodded. He was comfortable with that.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Any agent makes enemies,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Naturally,\\\" he replied.\\n\\n\\\"Meas much as anybody,\\\" she said.\\n\\nHe glanced across at her. It was a curious remark. Defensive. The remark of a woman trained and eager and ready to go, but chained to a desk since last fall.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Financial section?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"he guessed.\\n\\nShe shook her head.\\n\\n\\\"I can't discuss it,\\\" she said again.\\n\\n\\\"But you already made enemies,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe gave him a half-smile which died fast. Then she went quiet. She looked calm, but Reacher could feel in her wrist that she was worried for the first time. But she was hanging in there. And she was wrong.\\n\\nThey're not out to kill you,\\\"he said. They could have killed you in that waste ground. Why haul you away in this damn truck? And there's your crutch, too.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What about my crutch?\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Doesn't make any sense,\\\" he said. \\\"Why would they toss your crutch inhere if they're going to kill you? You're a hostage, Holly, that's what you are. You sure you don't know these guys? Never saw them before?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Never,\\\" she said. \\\"I don't know who the hell they are, or what the hell they want from me.\\\"\\n\\nHe stared at her. She sounded way too definite. She knew more than she was telling him. They went quiet in the noise. Rocked and bounced with the movement of the truck. Reacher stared into the gloom. He could feel Holly making decisions, next to him. She turned sideways again.\\n\\n\\\"I need to get you out of here,\\\" she said again.\\n\\nHe glanced at her. Glanced away and grinned.\\n\\n\\\"Suits me, Holly,\\\" he said. \\\"Sooner the better.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"When will somebody miss you?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nThat was a question he would have preferred not to answer. But she was looking hard at him, waiting. So he thought about it, and he told her the truth.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Never,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Why not?\\\" she asked. \\\"Who are you, Readier?\\\"\\n\\nHe looked across at her and shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Nobody,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe carried onlooking at him, quizzically. Maybe irritated.\\n\\n\\\"OK, what kind of nobody?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nHe heard Memphis Slim in his head: got me working in a steel mill.\\n\\n\\\"I'm a doorman,\\\" he said. \\\"At a club in Chicago.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Which club?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"A blues place on the South Side,\\\" he said. \\\"You probably don't know it.\\\"\\n\\nShe looked at him and shook her head.\\n\\n\\\"A doorman?\\\" she said. \\\"You're playing this pretty cool fora doorman.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Doormen deal with a lot of weird situations,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe looked like she wasn't convinced and he put his face down near his wristwatch to check the time. Two-thirty in the afternoon.\\n\\n\\\"And how long before somebody misses you?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nShe looked at her own watch and made a face.\\n\\n\\\"Quite awhile,\\\" she said. \\\"I've got a case conference starting at five o'clock this afternoon. Nothing before then. Two and a half hours before anybody even knows I'm gone.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"RIGHT INSIDE THE SHELL OF THE SECOND-FLOOR ROOM, A SECOND shell was taking shape. It was being built from brand-new softwood two-by-fours, nailed together in the conventional way, looking like anew room growing right there inside the old room. But the new room was going to be about afoot smaller in every dimension than the old room had been.\\n\\nAfoot shorter in length, afoot narrower in width, and afoot shorter in height.\\n\\nThe new floor joists were going to be raised afoot off the old joists with twelve-inch lengths of the new softwood. The new lengths looked like a forest of short stilts, ready to hold the new floor up. More short lengths were ready to hold the new framing afoot away from the old framing all the way around the sides and the ends. The new framing had the bright yellowness of new wood. It gleamed against the smoky honey color of the old framing. The old framing looked like an ancient skeleton which was suddenly growing anew skeleton right inside itself.\\n\\nThree men were building the new shell. They were stepping from joist to joist with practiced skill. They looked like men who had built things before. And they were working fast. Their contract demanded they finish on time. The employer had been explicit about it. Some kind of a rush job. The three carpenters were not complaining about that. The employer had accepted their first bid. It had been an inflated bid, with a large horse-trading margin builtin. But the guy had not eaten into that margin. He had not negotiated at all. He had just nodded and told them to start work as soon as the wrecking crew had finished. Work was hard to find, and employers who accepted your first price were even harder to find. So the three men were happy to work hard, work fast, and work late. They were anxious to make a good first impression. Looking around, they could seethe potential fora lot more employment.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"So they were giving it their best shot. They ran up and down the stairs with tools and fresh lumber. They worked by eye, marking cut-lines in the wood with their thumbnails, using their nail guns and their saws until they ran hot. But they paused frequently to measure the gap between the old framing and the new. The employer had made it clear that dimension was critical. The old framing was six inches deep. The new framing was four. The gap was twelve inches.\\n\\n\\\"Six and four and twelve,\\\" one guy said. Twenty-two inches total.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"OK?\\\" the second guy asked the crew chief.\\n\\n\\\"Ideal,\\\" the crew chief said. \\\"Exactly what he told us.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"HOLLY JOHNSON'S FIVE O'CLOCK CASE CONFERENCE WAS ALLOCATED to the Chicago FBI office's third-floor meeting room. This was a large room, better than forty feet by twenty, and it was more or less filled by along polished table flanked by thirty chairs, fifteen on each side. The chairs were substantial and leather and the table was made of fine hardwood, but any tendency for the place to look like a corporate boardroom was defused by the scruffy government wall covering and the cheap carpet. There were ninety square yards of carpet on the floor and the whole ninety together had probably cost less than just one of the chairs.\\n\\nFive o'clock in the summer, the afternoon sun streamed in through the wall of windows and gave the people arriving in the room a choice. If they sat facing the windows, they got the sun in their eyes and squinted through the meeting and ended up with a blinding headache. And the sun overpowered the air conditioning, so if they sat backs to the windows, they got heated up to a point where it got uncomfortable and they started worrying about whether their deodorant was still OK at five o'clock in the afternoon. A tough choice, but the top option was to avoid the headache and take the risk of heating up. So the early attenders took the seats on the window side.\\n\\nFirst into the room was the FBI lawyer with special responsibility for financial crime. He stood fora moment and made a judgment about the likely duration of the meeting. Maybe forty-five minutes, he thought, knowing Holly, so he turned and tried to assess which seat might get the benefit of the shade from the slim pillar splitting the wall of windows into two. The bar of shadow was lying to the left of the third chair in the row, and he knew it would inch toward the head of the table as time passed. So he spilled his pile of folders onto the table in front of the second chair and shrugged his jacket off and claimed the place by dropping it onto the chair. Then he turned again and strolled to the credenza at the end of the room fora cup of coffee from the filter machine.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Next in were two agents working on cases that might be tied into the mess that Holly Johnson was dealing with.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They nodded to the lawyer and saw the place he'd claimed. They knew there was no point in choosing between the other fourteen chairs by the window. They were all going to get equally hot. So they just dumped their portfolios at the nearest two places and lined up for coffee.\\n\\n\\\"She not here yet?\\\" one of them said to the lawyer.\\n\\n\\\"Haven't seen her all day,\\\" the lawyer said.\\n\\n\\\"Your loss, right?\\\" the other guy said.\\n\\nHolly Johnson was anew agent, but talented, and that was making her popular. In the past the Bureau would have taken no pleasure at all in busting the sort of businessmen that Holly was employed to chase down, but times had changed and the Chicago office had gotten quite a taste for it. The businessmen now looked like scumbags, not solid citizens, and the agents were sick and tired of looking at them as they rode the commuter trains home. The agents would begetting off the train miles before the bankers and the stockbrokers were anywhere near their expensive suburbs. They would bethinking about second mortgages and even second jobs, and they'd bethinking about the years of private-detective work they were going to have to put into boost up the mean government pension. And the executives would be sitting therewith smug smiles. So when one or two of them started to take a fall, the Bureau was happy enough about it. When the ones and twos turned into tens and twenties, and then hundreds, it became a blood sport.\\n\\nThe only drawback was that it was hard work. Probably more difficult to nail than anything else. That was where Holly Johnson's arrival had made things easier. She had the talent. She could look at a balance sheet and just know if anything was wrong with it. It was like she could smell it. She'd sit at her desk and look at the papers, cock her head slightly to one side, and think. Sometimes she'd think for hours, but when she stopped thinking, she'd know what the hell was going on.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Then she'd explain it all in the case conference. She'd make it all sound easy and logical, like there was noway anybody could be in any kind of doubt about it. She was a woman who made progress. She was a woman who made her fellow agents feel better on those commuter trains at night. That's what was making her popular.\\n\\nFourth person into the third-floor meeting room was the agent assigned to help Holly outwith the fetching and carrying until she recovered from her soccer injury. His name was Milosevic. A slight frame, a slight West Coast accent. Less than forty, casually dressed inexpensive designer khaki, gold at his neck and on his wrist. He was also anew arrival, recently transferred into the Chicago office, because that was where the Bureau found it needed its financial people.\\n\\nHe joined the line for coffee and looked around the room.\\n\\n\\\"She's late?\\\" he said.\\n\\nThe lawyer shrugged at him and Milosevic shrugged back. He liked Holly Johnson. He had worked with her five weeks, since the accident on the soccer field, and he had enjoyed every minute of it.\\n\\n\\\"She's not usually late for anything,\\\" he said.\\n\\nFifth person in was Brogan, Holly's section head. Irish, from Boston via California. The young side of middle age. Dark hair, red Irish face. A tough guy, handsomely dressed in an expensive silk jacket, ambitious. He'd come to Chicago the same time as Milosevic, and he was pissed it wasn't New York. He was looking for the advancement he was sure he deserved. There was a theory that Holly's arrival in his section was enhancing his chances of getting it.\\n\\n\\\"She not here yet?\\\" he said.\\n\\nThe other four shrugged at him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'll kick her ass,\\\" Brogan said.\\n\\nHolly had been a stock analyst on Wall Street before applying to join the FBI. Nobody was clear why she'd made the change.\\n\\nShe had some kind of exalted connections, and some kind of an illustrious father, and the easy guess was she wanted to impress him somehow. Nobody knew for sure whether the old guy was impressed or not, but the feeling was he damn well ought to be. Holly had been one often thousand applicants in her year, and she'd passed right at the top of the four hundred who made it. She'd creamed the recruitment criteria. The Bureau had been looking for college graduates in law or accountancy, or else graduates in flimsier disciplines who'd then worked somewhere for three years at least. Holly had qualified in every way. She had an accountancy degree from Yale, and a Master's from Harvard, and three years on Wall Street on top of all that. She'd blitzed the intelligence tests and the aptitude assessments. She'd charmed the three serving agents who'd grilled her at her main interview.\\n\\nShe'd sailed through the background checks, which was understandable on account of her connections, and she'd been sent to the FBI Academy at Quantico. Then she'd really started to get serious. She was fit and strong, she learned to shoot, she murdered the leadership reaction course, she scored outstanding in the simulated shootouts in Hogan's Alley. But her major success washer attitude. She did two things at once. First she bought into the whole Bureau ethic in the biggest way possible. It was totally clear to everybody that here was a woman who was going to live and die for the FBI. But second, she did it in away which avoided the slightest trace of bullshit. She tinged her attitude with a gentle mocking humor which saved people from hating her. It made them love her instead. There was no doubt the Bureau had signed a major new asset. They sent her to Chicago and sat back to reap the benefits.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Last into the third-floor conference room was a bunch of men who came in together. Thirteen agents and the agent-in-charge, McGrath. The thirteen agents were clustered around their boss, who was conducting a sort of rolling policy review as he walked. The thirteen agents were hanging onto every word. McGrath had every advantage in the book. He was a man who'd been to the top, and then comeback down again into the field. He'd spent three years in the Hoover Building as an assistant director of the FBI, and then he'd applied fora demotion and a pay cut to take him back to a Field Office. The decision had cost him ten thousand dollars a year in income, but it had bought him back his sanity, and it had bought him undying respect and blind affection from the agents he worked with.\\n\\nAn agent-in-charge in a Field Office like Chicago is like the captain on a great warship. Theoretically there are people above him, but they're all a couple of thousand miles away in Washington. They're theoretical. The agent-in-charge is real. He runs his command like the hand of God. That's how the Chicago office looked at McGrath. He did nothing to undermine the feeling. He was remote, but he was approachable. He was private, but he made his people feel he'd do anything at all for them. He was a short, stocky man, burning with energy, the sort of tireless guy who radiates total confidence. The sort of guy who makes a crew better just by leading it. His first name was Paul, but he was called Mack, like the truck.\\n\\nHe let his thirteen agents sit down, ten of them backs to the window and three of them with the sun in their eyes. Then he hauled a chair around and stuck it at the head of the table ready for Holly. He walked down to the other end and hauled another chair around for himself. Sat sideways onto the sun. Started getting worried.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Where is she?\\\" he said. \\\"Brogan?\\\"\\n\\nThe section head shrugged, palms up.\\n\\n\\\"She should be here, far as I know,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"She leave a message with anybody?\\\" McGrath asked. \\\"Milosevic?\\\"\\n\\nMilosevic and the other fifteen agents and the Bureau lawyer all shrugged and shook their heads. McGrath started worrying more. People have a pattern, a rhythm, like a behavioral fingerprint. Holly was only a minute or two late, but that was so far from normal that it was setting the bells ringing. In eight months he had never known her be late. It had never happened. Other people could be five minutes late into the meeting room and it would seem normal. Because of their pattern. But not Holly. At three minutes past five in the afternoon, McGrath stared at her empty chair and knew there was a problem. He stood up again in the quiet room and walked to the credenza on the opposite wall. There was a phone next to the coffee machine. He picked it up and dialed his office.\\n\\n\\\"Holly Johnson call in?\\\" he asked his secretary.\\n\\n\\\"No, Mack,\\\" she said.\\n\\nSo he dabbed the cradle and dialed the reception counter, two floors below.\\n\\n\\\"Any messages from Holly Johnson?\\\" he asked the agent at the door.\\n\\n\\\"No, chief,\\\" the agent said. \\\"Haven't seen her.\\\"\\n\\nHe hit the button again and called the main switchboard.\\n\\n\\\"Holly Johnson call in?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"No, sir,\\\" the switchboard operator said.\\n\\nHe held the phone and gestured for pen and paper. Then he spoke to the switchboard again.\\n\\n\\\"Give me her pager number,\\\" he said. \\\"And her cellphone, will you?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The earpiece crackled and he scrawled down the numbers. Cut the switchboard off and dialed Holly's pager. Just got along low tone telling him the pager was switched off. Then he tried the cellphone number. He got an electronic bleep and a recorded message of a woman telling him the phone he was dialing was unreachable. He hung up and looked around the room. It was ten after five, Monday afternoon.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"SIX-THIRTY ON REACHER'S WATCH, THE MOTION INSIDE THE TRUCK changed. Six hours and four minutes they'd cruised steadily, maybe fifty-five or sixty miles an hour, while the heat peaked and fell away. He'd sat, hot and rocking and bouncing in the dark with the wheel well between him and Holly Johnson, ticking off the distance against a map inside his head. He figured they'd been taken maybe three hundred and ninety miles. But he didn't know which direction they were headed. If they were going east, they would be right through Indiana and just about out of Ohio by now, maybe just entering Pennsylvania or West Virginia.\\n\\nSouth, they would be out of Illinois, into Missouri or Kentucky, maybe even into Tennessee if he'd underestimated their speed. West, they'd be hauling their way across Iowa. They might have looped around the bottom of the lake and headed north up through Michigan. Or straight out northwest, in which case they could be up near Minneapolis.\\n\\nBut they'd gotten somewhere, because the truck was slowing. Then there was a lurch to the right, like a pull off a highway. There was gear noise and thumping over broken pavement. Cornering forces slammed them around. Holly's crutch slid and rattled side to side across the ridged metal floor. The truck whined upgrades and down slopes, paused at invisible road junctions, accelerated, braked hard, turned a tight left, and then drove slowly down a straight lumpy surface fora quarter hour.\\n\\n\\\"Farming country somewhere,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"Obviously,\\\" Holly said. \\\"But where?\\\"\\n\\nReacher just shrugged at her in the gloom. The truck slowed almost to a stop and turned a tight right. The road surface got worse. The truck bounced forward maybe a hundred and fifty yards and stopped.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"There was the sound of the passenger door opening up in front.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The engine was still running. The passenger door slammed shut. Reacher heard a big door opening and the truck moved slowly forward. The engine noise boomed against metal walls. Reacher heard the door noise again and the engine noise echoed louder. Then it shutdown and died away into stillness.\\n\\n\\\"We're in some sort of a barn,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"With the door closed.\\\"\\n\\nHolly nodded impatiently.\\n\\n\\\"I know that,\\\" she said. \\\"A cow barn. I can smell it.\\\"\\n\\nReacher could hear muffled conversation outside the truck. Footsteps walking around to the rear doors. A key going into the lock. The handle turning. A blinding flood of light as the door opened. Reacher blinked against the sudden electric brightness and stared out across Holly at three men, two Clocks and a shotgun.\\n\\n\\\"Out,\\\" the leader said.\\n\\nThey struggled out, handcuffed together. Not easy. They were stiff and sore and cramped from bracing themselves against the wheel well for six solid hours. Holly's knee had gone altogether. Reacher started back for her crutch.\\n\\n\\\"Leave it there, asshole,\\\" the leader said.\\n\\nThe guy sounded tired and irritable. Reacher gave him a steady look and shrugged. Holly stiffened and tried her weight on her leg. Gasped in pain and gave it up. Glanced impersonally at Reacher like he was some kind of a tree and stretched around with her free left hand to hold on tight around his neck. It was the only way she could stay upright.\\n\\n\\\"Excuse me, please,\\\" she muttered.\\n\\nThe leader gestured with his Glock over to his left. They were in a large cow barn. No cows, but they hadn't been long absent, judging by the odor. The truck was parked in a wide central aisle. Either side were cow stalls, roomy, made up from galvanized steel-piping efficiently welded together. Reacher twisted and held Holly's waist and the two of them hopped and staggered over to the stall the guy with the Clock was pointing at. Holly seized a railing and held on, embarrassed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Excuse me,\\\" she muttered again.\\n\\nReacher nodded and waited. The driver with the shotgun covered them and the leader walked away. He heaved the big door open and stepped through. Reacher caught a glimpse of darkening sky. Cloudy. No clue at all to their location.\\n\\nThe leader was gone five minutes. There was silence in the barn. The other two guys stood still, weapons out and ready. The jumpy guy with the Clock was staring at Reacher's face. The driver with the shotgun was staring at Holly's breasts. Smiling a half-smile. Nobody spoke.\\n\\nThen the leader stepped back in. He was carrying a second pair of handcuffs and two lengths of heavy chain.\\n\\n\\\"You're making a big mistake here,\\\" Holly said to him. \\\"I'm an FBI agent.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I know that, bitch,\\\" the guy said. \\\"Now be quiet.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're committing a serious crime,\\\" Holly said.\\n\\n\\\"I know that, bitch,\\\" the guy said again. \\\" And I told you to be quiet.\\n\\nAnother word out of you, I'll shoot this guy in the head. Then you can spend the night with a corpse chained to your wrist, OK?\\\"\\n\\nHe waited until she nodded silently. Then the driver with the shotgun took up position behind them and the leader unlocked their cuff and freed their wrists. He looped one of the chains around the stall railing and locked the ends into the spare half of the cuff dangling from Reacher's left arm. Pulled it and rattled it to check it was secure. Then he dragged Holly two stalls away and used the new cuffs and the second length of chain to lock her to the railing, twenty feet from Reacher. Her knee gave way and she fell heavily with a gasp of pain onto the dirty straw. The leader ignored her. Just walked back to where Reacher was chained up. Stood right in front of him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"So who the hell are you, asshole?\\\" he said.\\n\\nReacher didn't reply. He knew the keys to both cuffs were in this guy's pocket. He knew it would take him about a second and a half to snap his neck with the loop of chain hanging off his wrist. But the other two guys were out of reach. One Clock, one shotgun, too faraway to grab before he'd unlocked himself, too near to get a chance to do that. He was dealing with a reasonably efficient set of opponents. So he just shrugged and looked at the straw at his feet. It was clogged with dung.\\n\\n\\\"I asked you a damn question,\\\" the guy said.\\n\\nReacher looked at him. In the corner of his eye he saw the jumpy guy ratchet his Clock upward a degree or two.\\n\\n\\\"I asked you a question, asshole,\\\" the leader said again, quietly.\\n\\nThe jumpy guy's Clock was jutting forward. Then it was straight out, shoulder-high. Aimed right at Reacher's head. The muzzle was trembling through a small jerky circle, but probably not trembling enough to make the guy miss. Not from that sort of a close distance.\\n\\nReacher looked from one guy to the other. The guy with the shotgun tore his attention away from Holly's breasts. He raised the weapon to his hip. Pointed it in Reacher's direction. It was an Ithaca 37.\\n\\nTwelve-bore. The five-shot version with the pistol grip and no shoulder stock. The guy racked around into the chamber. The crunch-crunch of the mechanism was loud in the barn. It echoed off the metal walls. Died into silence. Reacher saw the trigger move through the first eighth-inch of its short travel.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Name?\\\" the leader asked.\\n\\nThe shotgun trigger tightened another eighth. If it fired on that trajectory, Reacher was going to lose both his legs and most of his stomach.\\n\\n\\\"Name?\\\" the leader asked for the second time.\\n\\nIt was a twelve-bore, wouldn't kill him outright, but he'd bleed to death in the dirty straw. Femoral artery gone, about a minute, maybe a minute and a half. In those circumstances, no real reason to make a big deal out of giving this guy a name.\\n\\n\\\"Jack Reacher,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThe leader nodded in satisfaction, like he'd achieved a victory.\\n\\n\\\"You know this bitch?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nReacher glanced across at Holly.\\n\\n\\\"Better than I know some people,\\\" he said. \\\"I just spent six hours handcuffed to her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You some kind of a wiseguy asshole?\\\" the leader asked.\\n\\nReacher shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Innocent passerby,\\\" he said. \\\"I never saw her before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You with the Bureau?\\\" the guy asked.\\n\\nReacher shook his head again.\\n\\n\\\"I'm a doorman,\\\" he said. \\\"Club back in Chicago.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You sure, asshole?\\\" the guy said.\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\n\\\"I'm sure,\\\" he said. \\\"I'm a wise enough guy that I can recall what I do fora living, one day to the next.\\\"\\n\\nThere was silence fora long moment. Tension. Then the jumpy guy with the Clock came out of his shooting stance. The driver with the shotgun swung his weapon down toward the straw on the floor. He turned his head and went back to staring at Holly's breasts. The leader nodded at Reacher.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"OK, asshole,\\\" he said. \\\" You behave yourself, you stay alive for now.\\n\\nSame for the bitch. Nothing's going to happen to anybody. Not just yet.\\\"\\n\\nThe three men regrouped in the center aisle and walked out of the barn.\\n\\nBefore they locked the door, Reacher saw the sky again, briefly.\\n\\nDarker. Still cloudy. No stars. No clues. He tested the chain. It was securely fastened to the handcuff atone end and the railing at the other. Maybe seven feet long. He could hear Holly doing the same experiment. Tightening her chain and scoping out the radius it gave her to move through.\\n\\n\\\"Would you mind looking away?\\\" she called across.\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" he called back.\\n\\nThere was a short silence. Then a sigh. Part embarrassed, part exasperated.\\n\\n\\\"Do you really need to ask?\\\" she called. \\\"We were in that truck six hours, and it didn't have a bathroom, did it?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You going in the next stall?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"Obviously,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said. \\\"You go right and I'll go left. I won't look if you won't.\\\"\\n\\nThe three men came back to the barn within an hour with food. Some kind of a beef stew in a metal mess tin, one for each of them. Mostly rare steak chunks and a lot of hard carrots. Whoever these guys were, cooking was not their major talent. Reacher was clear on that. They handed out an enamel mug of weak coffee, one for each of them. Then they got in the truck. Started it up and backed it out of the barn.\\n\\nTurned the bright lights off. Reacher caught a glimpse of dim emptiness outside. Then they pulled the big door shut and locked it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Left their prisoners in the dark and the quiet.\\n\\n\\\"Gas station,\\\" Holly called from twenty feet away. \\\"They're filling up for the rest of the ride. Can't do it with us inside. They figure we'd be banging on the side and shouting out for help.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded and finished his coffee. Sucked the fork from the stew clean. Bent one of the prongs right out and put a little kink into the end with pressure from his thumbnail. It made a little hook. He used it to pick the lock on his handcuff. Took him eighteen seconds, beginning to end. He dropped the cuff and the chain in the straw and walked over to Holly. Bent down and unlocked her wrist. Twelve seconds. Helped her to her feet.\\n\\n\\\"Doorman, right?\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Right,\\\" he said. \\\"Let's take a look around.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I can't walk,\\\" she said. \\\"My crutch is in the damn truck.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded. She stayed in her stall, clinging to the railing. He scouted around the big empty barn. It was a sturdy metal structure, built throughout with the same flecked, galvanized metal as the stall railings. The big door was locked from the outside. Probably a steel bar padlocked into place. No problem if he could get at the padlock, but he was inside and the padlock was outside.\\n\\nThe walls met the floor with aright-angle flange bolted firmly into the concrete. The walls themselves were horizontal metal panels maybe thirty feet long, maybe four feet tall. They were joined together with more right-angle flanges bolted together. Each flange gave a lip about six inches deep. Like a giant stepladder with the treads four feet apart.\\n\\nHe climbed the wall, hauling himself quickly upward, flange to flange, four feet at a time. The way out of the barn was right thereat the top of the wall, seven sections up, twenty-eight feet off the ground.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"There was a ventilation slot between the top of the wall and the overhanging slope of the metal roof.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"About eighteen inches high. A person could roll horizontally through the gap like an old-fashioned high jumper hang down outside and drop twenty feet to the ground below.\\n\\nHe could do that, but Holly Johnson couldn't. She couldn't even walkover to the wall. She couldn't climb it and she sure as hell couldn't hang down outside and drop twenty feet onto a set of wrecked cruciate ligaments.\\n\\n\\\"Get going,\\\" she called up to him. \\\"Get out of here, right now.\\\"\\n\\nHe ignored her and peered out through the slot into the darkness. The overhanging eaves gave him a low horizon. Empty country as far as the eye could see. He climbed down and went up the other three walls in turn. The second side gave out onto country just as empty as the first. The third had a view of a farmhouse. White shingles. Lights in two windows. The fourth side of the barn looked straight up the farm track. About a hundred and fifty yards to a featureless road.\\n\\nEmptiness beyond. In the far distance, a single set of headlight beams. Flicking and bouncing. Widely spaced. Growing larger. Getting nearer. The truck, coming back.\\n\\n\\\"Can you see where we are?\\\" Holly called up to him.\\n\\n\\\"No idea,\\\" Reacher called back. \\\"Farming country somewhere. Could be anywhere. Where do they have cows like this? And fields and stuff?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Is it hilly out there?\\\" Holly called. \\\"Or flat?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Can't tell,\\\" Reacher said. Too dark. Maybe a little hilly.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Could be Pennsylvania,\\\" Holly said. They have hills and cows there.\\\"\\n\\nReacher climbed down the fourth wall and walked back to her stall.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Get out of here, for Christ's sake,\\\" she said to him. \\\"Raise the alarm.\\\"\\n\\nHe shook his head. He heard the diesel slowing to turn into the track.\\n\\nThat may not be the best option,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe stared at him.\\n\\n\\\"Who the hell gave you an option?\\\" she said. \\\" I'm ordering you.\\n\\nYou're a civilian and I'm FBI and I'm ordering you to get yourself to safety right now.\\\"\\n\\nReacher just shrugged and stood there.\\n\\n\\\"I'm ordering you, OK?\\\" Holly said again. \\\"You going to obey me?\\\"\\n\\nReacher shook his head again.\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe glared at him. Then the truck was back. They heard the roar of the diesel and the groan of the springs on the rough track outside.\\n\\nReacher locked Holly's cuff and ran back to his stall. They heard the truck door slam and footsteps on the concrete. Reacher chained his wrist to the railing and bent the fork back into shape. When the barn door opened and the light came on, he was sitting quietly on the straw.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"THE MATERIAL USED TO PACK THE TWENTY-TWO-INCH CAVITY between the outside of the old walls and the inside of the new walls was hauled over from its storage shed in an open pickup truck. There was a ton of it and it took four trips. Each consignment was carefully unloaded by a team of eight volunteers. They worked together like an old-fashioned bucket-brigade attending afire. They passed each box along, hand to hand, into the building, up the stairs to the second floor. The boxes were stacked in the hallway outside the modified corner room. The three builders opened each box in turn and carried the material into the room. Then they stacked it carefully into the wide spaces behind the new softwood framing. The unloaders generally paused fora moment and watched them, grateful fora moment of rest.\\n\\nThe process lasted most of the afternoon because of the amount of material and the care they took in moving it. When the last of the four loads was stacked upstairs, the eight volunteers dispersed. Seven of them headed for the mess hall. The eighth stretched in the last of the afternoon sun and strolled off. It was his habit. Four or five times a week, he would take along walk on his own, especially after a period of heavy work. It was assumed to be his way of relaxing.\\n\\nHe strolled in the forest. There was a beaten path running west through the silence. He followed it fora half-mile. Then he paused and stretched again. He used the weary twisting motion of a tired man easing a sore back to glance around a complete circle. Then he stepped sideways off the path. Stopped strolling. Started an urgent walk. He dodged trees and followed a wide looping course west, then north. He went straight fora particular tree. There was a large flat rock bedded in needles at its base. He stood still and waited. Listened hard. Then he ducked down and heaved the rock to one side. Underneath was a rectangular shape wrapped in oilcloth. He unfolded the cloth and took out a small hand-held radio. Pulled the stubby antenna and hit a button and waited. Then he whispered along and excited message.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":286,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Carry on with the plot as the author's writing partner.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 23"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"In the accommodation huts, men and women were working in the gloom, cleaning their rifles. The word about Loder had traveled quickly. They all knew about the tribunal. They all knew the likely outcome. Any six of them could be selected for the firing squad. If there was going to be a firing squad. Most people figured there probably was. An officer like Loder, the commander might limit it to a firing squad. Probably nothing worse. So they cleaned their rifles, and left them locked and loaded next to their beds.\n\nThose of them with enough demerits to be on tomorrow's punishment detail were trying to get some sleep. If he didn't limit it to a firing squad, they could be in fora lot of work. Messy, unpleasant work. And even if Loder got away with it, there was always the other guy. The big guy who had come in with the federal bitch. There wasn't much chance of him surviving ivn past breakfast time. They couldn't remember the last time any stray stranger had lasted longer than that.\n\nHolly Johnson had a rule. It was a rule bred into her, like a family motto. It had been reinforced by her long training at Quantico. It was a rule distilled from thousands of years of military history and hundreds of years of law-enforcement experience. The rule said: hope for the best, but plan for the worst.\n\nShe had no reason to believe she would not be speeding south in a jeep just as soon as her new ally could arrange it. He was Bureau-trained, the same as she was. She knew that if the tables were turned, she would get him out, no problem at all. So she knew she could just sit tight and wait. But she wasn't doing that. She was hoping for the best, but she was planning for the worst."},{"from":"human","value":"She had given upon the bathroom."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Noway out there. Now she was going over the room itself, inch by inch. The new pine boarding was nailed tight to the frame, all six surfaces. It was driving her crazy.\n\nInch-thick pine board, the oldest possible technology, used for ten thousand years, and there was noway through it. Fora lone woman without any tools, it might as well have been the side of a battleship.\n\nSo she concentrated on finding tools. It was like she was personally speeding through Darwin's evolutionary process. Apes came down from the trees and they made tools. She was concentrating on the bed. The mattress was useless. It was a thin, crushed thing, no wire springs inside. But the bed frame was more promising. It was bolted together from iron tubes and flanges. If she could take it apart, she could put one of the little right-angle flanges in the end of the longest tube and make a pry-bar seven feet long. But the bolts were all painted over. She had strong hands, but she couldn't begin to move them. Her fingers just bruised and slipped on her sweat.\n\nLoder had been dragged away and Reacher was locked up alone with the last remaining guard from the evening detail. The guard sat behind the plain desk and propped his weapon on the wooden surface with the muzzle pointing directly at him sitting on his chair. His hands were still cuffed behind him. He had decisions to make. First was noway could he sit all night like that. He glanced calmly at the guard and eased himself up and slid his hands underneath.\n\nPressed his chest down onto his thighs and looped his hands out under his feet. Then he sat up and leaned back and forced a smile, hands together in his lap.\n\n\"Long arms,\" he said. \"Useful.\""},{"from":"human","value":"The guard nodded slowly."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He had small piercing eyes, setback in a narrow face. They gleamed out above the big beard, through the camouflage smudges, but the gleam looked innocent enough.\n\n\"What's your name?\" Reacher asked him.\n\nThe guy hesitated. Shuffled in his seat. Reacher could see some kind of natural courtesy was prompting a reply. But there were obvious tactical considerations for the guy. Reacher kept on forcing the smile.\n\n\"I'm Reacher,\" he said. \"You know my name. You got a name? We're here all night, we may as well be a little civilized about it, right?\"\n\nThe guy nodded again, slowly. Then he shrugged.\n\n\"Ray,\" he said.\n\n\"Ray?\" Reacher said. \"That your first name or your last?\"\n\n\"Last,\" the guy said. \"Joseph Ray.\"\n\nReacher nodded.\n\n\"OK, Mr. Ray,\" he said. \"Pleased to meet you.\"\n\n\"Call me Joe,\" Joseph Ray said.\n\nReacher forced the smile again. The ice was broken. Like conducting an interrogation. Reacher had done it a thousand times. But never from this side of the desk. Never when he was the one wearing the cuffs.\n\n\"Joe, you're going to have to help me out a little,\" he said. \"I need some background here. I don't know where I am, or why, or who all you guys are. Can you fill me in on some basic information?\"\n\nRay was looking at him like he was maybe having difficulty knowing whereto start. Then he was glancing around the room like maybe he was wondering whether he was allowed to start at all.\n\n\"Where exactly are we?\" Reacher asked him. \"You can tell me that, right?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Montana,\" Ray said.\n\nReacher nodded.\n\n\"OK,\" he said. \"Wherein Montana?\"\n\n\"Near a town called Yorke,\" Ray said. \"An old mining town, just about abandoned.\"\n\nReadier nodded again.\n\n\"OK,\" he said. \"What are you guys doing here?\"\n\n\"We're building a bastion,\" Ray said. \"A place of our own.\"\n\n\"What for?\" Readier asked him.\n\nRay shrugged. An inarticulate guy. At first, he said nothing. Then he sat forward and launched into what seemed to Reacher like a mantra, like something the guy had rehearsed many times. Or like something the guy had been told many times.\n\n\"We came up hereto escape the tyranny of America,\" he said. \"We have to draw up our borders and say, it's going to be different inside here.\"\n\n\"Different how?\" Reacher asked him.\n\n\"We have to take America back, piece by piece,\" Ray said. \"We have to build a place where the white man can live free, unmolested, in peace, with proper freedoms and proper laws.\"\n\n\"You think you can do that?\" Reacher said.\n\n\"It happened before,\" Ray said. \" It happened in 1776. People said enough is enough. They said we want a better country than this. Now we're saying it again. We're saying we want our country back. And we're going to get it back. Because now we're acting together. There were a dozen militias up here. They all wanted the same things. But they were all acting alone. Beau's mission was to put people together.\n\nNow we're unified and we're going to take our country back. We're starting here. We're starting now.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher nodded. Glanced to his right and down at the dark stain where Loder's nose had bled onto the floor.\n\n\"Like this?\" he said. \"What about voting and democracy? All that kind of stuff? You should vote people out and vote new people in, right?\"\n\nRay smiled sadly and shook his head.\n\n\"We've been voting for two hundred and twenty years,\" he said. \" Gets worse all the time. Government's not interested in how we vote.\n\nThey've taken all the power away from us. Given our country away. You know where the government of this country really is?\"\n\nReacher shrugged.\n\n\"DC, right?\" he said.\n\n\"Wrong,\" Ray said. \" It's in New York. The United Nations building.\n\nEver asked yourself why the UN is so near Wall Street? Because that's the government. The United Nations and the banks. They run the world. America's just a small part of it. The president is just one voice on a damn committee. That's why voting is no damn good.\n\nYou think the United Nations and the world banks care what we vote?\"\n\n\"You sure about all this?\" Reacher asked.\n\nRay nodded, vigorously.\n\n\"Sure I'm sure,\" he said. \" I've seen it at work. Why do you think we send billions of dollars to the Russians when we got poverty herein America? You think that's the free choice of an American government?\n\nWe send it because the world government tells us to send it. You know we got camps here? Hundreds of camps allover the country? Most of them are for United Nations troops. Foreign troops, waiting to move in when we start any trouble. But forty-three of them are concentration camps. That's where they're going to put us when we start speaking out.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You sure?\" Reacher said again.\n\n\"Sure I'm sure,\" Ray said again. \"Beau's got the documents. We've got the proof. There are things going on you wouldn't believe. You know it's a secret federal law that all babies born in the hospital get a microchip implanted just under their skin? When they take them away, they're not weighing them and cleaning them up. They're implanting a microchip. Pretty soon the whole population is going to be visible to secret satellites. You think the space shuttle gets used for science experiments? You think the world government would authorize expenditure for stuff like that? You got to be kidding. The space shuttle is thereto launch surveillance satellites.\"\n\n\"You're joking, right?\" Reacher said.\n\nRay shook his head.\n\n\"Noway,\" he said. \" Beau's got the documents. There's another secret law, guy in Detroit sent Beau the stuff. Every car builtin America since 1985 has a secret radio transmitter box in it, so the satellites can see where it's going. You buy a car, the radar screens in the UN Building know where you are, every minute of the day and night. They've got foreign forces training in America, right now, ready for the official takeover. You know why we-send so much money to Israel? Not because we care what happens to the Israelis. Why should we care? We send the money because that's where the UN is training the secret world army. It's like an experimental place. Why do you think the UN never stops the Israelis from invading people? Because the UN has told them what to do in the first place. Training them for the world takeover.\n\nThere are three thousand helicopters right now, at airbases round the US, all ready for them to use. Helicopters, painted flat black, no markings.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"You sure?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher said again. He was keeping his voice somewhere between worried and skeptical. \"I never heard about any of this stuff.\"\n\nThat proves it, right?\" Ray said.\n\n\"Why?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"Obvious, right?\" Ray said. \"You think the world government is going to allow media access to that stuff? World government controls the media, right? They own it. So it's logical that whatever doesn't appear in the media is what is really happening, right? They tell you the safe stuff, and they keep the secrets away from you. It's all true, believe me. I told you, Beau's got the documents. Did you know every US highway sign has a secret mark on the back? You drive out and take a look. A secret sign, to direct the world troops around the country. They're getting ready to takeover. That's why we need a place of our own.\"\n\n\"You think they're going to attack you?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"No doubt about it,\" Ray said. \"They're going to come right after us.\"\n\n\"And you figure you can defend yourselves?\" Reacher said. \"A few guys in some little town in Montana?\"\n\nJoe Ray shook his head.\n\n\"Not a few guys,\" he said. There area hundred of us.\"\n\n\"A hundred guys?\" Reacher said. \"Against the world government?\"\n\nRay shook his head again.\n\n\"We can defend ourselves,\" he said. \"Beau's a smart leader. This territory is good. We're in a valley here. Sixty miles north to south, sixty miles east to west. Canadian border along the northern edge.\"\n\nHe swept his hand through the air, above eye level, left to right like a karate chop, to demonstrate the geography. Reacher nodded. He was familiar with the Canadian border. Ray used his other hand, up and down the left edge of his invisible map."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Rapid River,\" he said."},{"from":"gpt","value":"That's our western border. It's a big river, completely wild. Noway to cross it.\"\n\nHe moved the Canadian border hand across and rubbed a small circle in the air, like he was cleaning a pane of glass.\n\n\"National forest,\" he said. \" You seen it? Fifty miles, east to west.\n\nThick virgin forest, noway through. You want an eastern border, that forest is as good as you're going to get.\"\n\n\"What about the south?\" Reacher asked.\n\nRay chopped his hand sideways at chest level.\n\n\"Ravine,\" he said. \" Natural-born tank trap. Believe me, I know tanks.\n\nNoway through, except one road and one track. Wooden bridge takes the track over the ravine.\"\n\nReacher nodded. He remembered the white truck pattering over a wooden structure.\n\nThat bridge gets blown,\"Ray said.\" Noway through.\"\n\n\"What about the road?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"Same thing,\" Ray said. \"We blow the bridge and we're safe. Charges are set right now.\"\n\nReacher nodded slowly. He was thinking about air attack, artillery, missiles, smart bombs, infiltration of special forces, airborne troops, parachutes. He was thinking about navy SEALs bridging the river or Marines bridging the ravine. He was thinking about NATO units rumbling straight down from Canada.\n\n\"What about Holly?\" he asked. \"What do you want with her?\"\n\nRay smiled. His beard parted and his teeth shone out as bright as his eyes.\n\n\"Beau's secret weapon,\" he said. Think about it. The world government is going to use her old man to lead the attack. That's why they appointed him. You think the president appoints those guys? You got to be joking. Old man Johnson's a world government guy, just waiting for the secret command to move. But when he gets here, what's he going to find?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"He comes up from the south, right?\" Ray said. \"First building he sees is that old courthouse, southeast corner of town. You were just there. She's upon the second floor, right? You notice the new construction? Special room, double walls, twenty-two inches apart. The space is packed with dynamite and blasting caps from the old mine stores. The first stray shell will blow old man Johnson's little girl to kingdom come.\"\n\nReacher nodded again, slowly. Ray looked at him.\n\n\"We're not asking much,\" he said. \"Sixty miles by sixty miles, what is that? Thirty-six hundred square miles of territory.\"\n\n\"But why now?\" Reacher asked. \"What's the big hurry?\"\n\n\"What's the date?\" Ray asked back.\n\nReacher shrugged.\n\n\"July something?\" he said.\n\n\"July second,\" Ray said. Two days to go.\"\n\nTo what?\" Reacher said.\n\n\"Independence Day,\" Ray said. \"July fourth.\"\n\n\"So?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"We're declaring independence,\" Ray said. \" Day after tomorrow. The birth of a brand-new nation. That's when they'll come for us, right?\n\nFreedom for the little guys? That's not in their plan.\"\n\nTWENTY-FOUR\n\nTHE BUREAU LEAR REFUELED AT FARGO IN AND FLEW STRAIGHT southwest to California. McGrath had argued again in favor of heading straight for Montana, but Webster had overruled him. One step at a time was Webster's patient way, so they were going to checkout the Beau Borken story in California and then they were going to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado to meet with General Johnson. McGrath was about the only Bureau guy alive capable of shouting at Webster, and he had, but arguing is not the same thing as winning, so they were all in the air heading first for Mojave, McGrath and Webster and Brogan and Milosevic, all overtired, overanxious and morose in the hot noisy cabin."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I need all the background I can get,\" Webster said. They put me in personal charge and these are not the type of guys I can be vague with, right?\"\n\nMcGrath glared at him and thought: don't play your stupid Beltway games with Holly's life, Webster. But he said nothing. Just sat tight until the tiny plane started arrowing down toward the airfield on the edge of the desert.\n\nThey were on the ground just after two o'clock in the morning, West Coast time. The Mojave agent-in-charge met them on the deserted tarmac in his own car. Drove them south through the sleeping town.\n\nThe Borkens were a Kendall family,\"he said.\" Small town, fifty miles from here. Fanning place, mostly citrus. One-man police department.\n\nThe sheriff is waiting for us down there.\"\n\n\"He know anything?\" McGrath asked.\n\nThe guy at the wheel shrugged.\n\n\"Maybe,\" he said. \"Small town, right?\"\n\nFifty miles through the desert night at eighty-five took them just thirty-six minutes. Kendall was a small knot of buildings adrift in a sea of groves. There was a gas station, a general store, a grower's operation and a low cement building with whip antennas spearing upward from the roof. A smart black-and-white was parked upon the apron outside. It was marked: Kendall County Sheriff. There was a single light in the office window behind the car.\n\nThe five agents stretched and yawned in the dry night air and trooped single file into the cement building. The Kendall County sheriff was a guy about sixty, solid, gray. He looked reliable. Webster waved him back into his seat and McGrath laid the four glossy mugshots on his desk in front of him."},{"from":"human","value":"\"You know these guys?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"he asked.\n\nThe sheriff slid the photographs nearer and looked at each of them in turn. He picked them up and shuffled them into anew order. Laid them back down on the desk like he was dealing a hand of giant playing cards. Then he nodded and reached down to his desk pedestal. Rolled open a drawer. Lifted out three buff files. He placed the files underneath three of the photographs. Laid a stubby finger on the first face.\n\n\"Peter Wayne Bell,\" he said. \" Mojave kid, but he was down here a lot.\n\nNot a very nice boy, as I believe you know.\"\n\nHe nodded across to his monitor screen on a computer cart at the end of the desk. A page from the National Crime Center Database was glowing green. It was the report from the North Dakota cops about the identity of the body they had found in a ditch. The identity, and the history.\n\nThe sheriff moved his wrist and laid a finger on the next photograph.\n\nIt was the gunman who had pushed Holly Johnson into the back of the Lexus.\n\n\"Steven Stewart,\" he said. \"Called Stevie, or Little Stevie. Farmboy, a couple of bushels short of a wagonload, know what I mean? Jumpy, jittery sort of a boy.\"\n\n\"What's in his file?\" Webster asked.\n\nThe sheriff shrugged.\n\n\"Nothing too serious,\" he said. The boy was just too plain dumb for his own good. Group of kids would go out and mess around, and guess who'd be the one still stood there when I roll up? Little Stevie, that's who. I locked him up a dozen times, I guess, but he never did much of what you would want to call serious shit.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"McGrath nodded and pointed to the photograph of the gunman who had gotten into the front seat of the Lexus.\n\nThis guy?\" he asked.\n\nThe sheriff moved his finger and laid it on the guy's glossy throat.\n\nTony Loder,\"he said. This is a fairly bad guy. Smarter than Stevie, dumber than you or me. I'll give you the file. Maybe it won't keep you Bureau guys awake nights, but it sure won't help you sleep any better than you were going to anyhow.\"\n\n\"What about the big guy?\" Webster asked.\n\nThe sheriff jumped his finger along the row and shook his grizzled head.\n\n\"Never saw this guy before,\" he said. That's for damn sure. I'd remember him if I had.\"\n\n\"We think maybe he's a foreigner,\" Webster said. \" Maybe European.\n\nMaybe had an accent. That ring any bells with you?\"\n\nThe sheriff just kept on shaking his head.\n\n\"Never saw him before,\" he said again. \"I'd remember.\"\n\n\"OK,\" McGrath said. \"Bell, Little Stevie Stewart, Tony Loder and the mystery man. Where do these Borken guys fit in?\"\n\nThe sheriff shrugged.\n\n\"Old Dutch Borken never fit in nowhere,\" he said. That was his problem. He was in Nam, infantry grunt, moved out here when he got out of the service. Brought a pretty wife and a little fatten-year-old boy with him, started growing citrus, did pretty well fora long while.\n\nHe was a strange guy, a loner, never saw much of him. But he was happy enough, I guess. Then the wife took sick and died, and the boy started acting weird, the market took a couple of hits, profits were down, the growers all started getting into the banks for loans, interest went up, land went down, the ion collateral was disappearing, irrigation water got expensive, they all started going belly-up one after the other."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Borken took it bad and swallowed his shotgun.\"\n\nWebster nodded.\n\nThe little fatten-year-old was Beau Borken?\" he asked.\n\nThe sheriff nodded.\n\n\"Beau Borken,\" he said. \"Very strange boy. Very smart. But obsessed.\"\n\n\"With what?\" McGrath asked.\n\n\"Mexicans started coming up,\" the sheriff said. \"Cheap labor. Young Beau was dead set against it. He started hollering about keeping Kendall white. Joined the John Birch types.\"\n\n\"So he was a racist?\" McGrath said.\n\n\"At first,\" the sheriff said. Then he got into all that conspiracy stuff. Talking about the Jews running the government. Or the United Nations, or both, or some damn thing. The government was all communists, taking over the world, secret plans for everything. Big conspiracy against everybody, especially him. Banks controlled the government, or was it the government controlled the banks? So the banks were all communists and they were out to destroy America. He figured the exact reason the bank loaned his father the money was so it could default him later and give the farm to the Mexicans or the blacks or some damn thing. He was raving about it, all the time.\"\n\n\"So what happened?\" Webster said.\n\n\"Well, of course, the bank did end up defaulting him,\" the sheriff said. The guy wasn't paying the loan, was he? But they didn't give his land to the Mexicans. They sold it onto the same big corporation owns everything else around here, which is owned by the pension funds, which probably means it's owned by you and me, not communists or Mexicans or anybody else, right?\"\n\n\"But the boy blamed the conspiracy for his father's death?\" Brogan asked."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"He sure did,\" the sheriff said. \"But the truth is it was Beau himself who did for the old man. I figure old Dutch could have faced just about anything, except his only boy had turned out to be a complete lunatic. A cruel, selfish, weird boy. That's why he swallowed the damn shotgun, if you want to know the truth.\"\n\n\"So where did Beau go?\" Webster asked.\n\n\"Montana,\" the sheriff said. That's what I heard. He was into all those right-wing groups, you know, the militias. Built himself up to leader. Said the white man was going to have to stand and fight.\"\n\n\"And those other guys went with him?\" Brogan asked.\n\nThe three of them for sure,\" the sheriff said. This big guy, I never saw before. But Little Stevie and Loder and Peter Bell, they were all in awe of Beau, like little robots. They all went up there together.\n\nThey had a little cash, and they stripped the Borken place of anything they could carry, and they headed north. Figured to buy some cheap land up there and defend themselves, you know, although against who I can't say, because the way I hear it there ain't nobody up there, and if there is they're all white people anyway.\"\n\n\"What's in his file?\" Webster asked.\n\nThe sheriff shook his head.\n\n\"Just about nothing,\" he said. \"Beau's way too smart to get caught doing anything bad.\"\n\n\"But?\" McGrath said. \"He's doing stuff without getting caught?\"\n\nThe sheriff nodded.\n\nThat armored car robbery?\"he said.\" North of the state somewhere? I heard about that. Didn't stick to him, did it? I told you, way too smart.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Anything else we should know?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"Webster asked.\n\nThe sheriff thought fora while and nodded again.\n\nThere was a fifth guy,\"he said.\" Name of Odell Fowler. He'll turn up alongside of Beau, for sure. You can bet on that. Loder and Stevie and Bell get sent outdoing mischief, you can be damn sure Borken and Fowler are sitting therein the shadows pulling their strings.\"\n\n\"Anything else?\" Webster said again.\n\n\"Originally there was a sixth guy,\" the sheriff said. \"Guy named Packer. Six of them, all thick as thieves. But Packer took up with a Mexican girl. Couldn't help himself, I guess, just plain fell in love with her. Beau told him to stop seeing her. They fell out about it, a lot of tension going on. One day Packer's not around anymore, and Beau is all smiling and relaxed. We found Packer out in the scrub, nailed to a big wooden cross. Crucified. Dead fora couple of days.\"\n\n\"And you figure Borken did it?\" Brogan asked.\n\n\"Couldn't prove it,\" the sheriff replied. \"But I'm sure of it. And I'm sure he talked the others into helping him do it. He's a born leader. He can talk anybody into doing anything, I can promise you that.\"\n\nKendall back to Mojave was fifty miles by car. Mojave to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado was another eight hundred and thirty miles by Lear. Three hours of travel, door to door, which put them down at Peterson through the gorgeous mountain dawn. It was the kind of sight people pay money to see, but the four FBI men took no notice at all.\n\nThursday July third, the fourth day of the crisis, and no proper rest and no proper nutrition had left them ragged and focused on nothing except the job in hand."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"General Johnson himself was not available to meet them. He was elsewhere on the giant base, on duty glad-handing the returning night patrols. His aide saluted Webster, shook hands with the other three, and walked them allover to a crew room reserved for their use. There was a huge photograph on the table, black-and-white, crisply focused.\n\nSome kind of a landscape. It looked like the surface of the moon.\n\nThat's Anadyr, in Siberia,\"the aide said.\" Satellite photograph. Last week, there was a big airbase there. A nuclear bomber base. The runway was aimed straight at our missile silos in Utah. Arms reduction treaty required it to be blown up. The Russians complied last week.\"\n\nThe four agents bent for another look. There was no trace of any man-made structure in the picture. Just savage craters.\n\n\"Complied?\" McGrath said. \"Looks like they did an enthusiastic job of work.\"\n\n\"So?\" Webster said.\n\nThe aide pulled a map from the portfolio. Unfolded it and stepped around so that the agents could share his view. It was a slice of the world, eastern Asia and the western United States, with the mass of Alaska right in the center and the North Pole right at the top. The aide stretched his thumb and finger apart and spanned the distance from Siberia southeast down to Utah.\n\n\"Anadyr was here,\" he said. \"Utah is here. Naturally we knew all about the bomber base, and we had countermeasures in place, which included big missile bases in Alaska, here, and then a chain of four small surface-to-air facilities strung out north to south all the way underneath Anadyr's flightpath into Utah, which are here, here, here and here, straddling the line between Montana and the Idaho panhandle.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The agents ignored the red dots in Idaho. But they looked closely at the locations in Montana.\n\n\"What sort of bases are these?\" Webster asked.\n\nThe aide shrugged.\n\n\"They were kind of temporary,\" he said. \" Thrown together in the sixties, just sort of survived ever since. Frankly, we didn't expect to have to use them. The Alaska missiles were more than adequate.\n\nNothing would have gotten past them. But you know how it was, right?\n\nCouldn't be too ready.\"\n\n\"What sort of weapons?\" McGrath asked.\n\nThere was a Patriot battery at each facility,\"the aide said.\" We pulled those out awhile back. Sold them to Israel. All that's left is Stingers, you know, shoulder-launch infantry systems.\"\n\nWebster looked at the guy.\n\n\"Stingers?\" he said. \"You were going to shoot Soviet bombers down with infantry systems?\"\n\nThe aide nodded. Looked definite about it.\n\n\"Why not?\" he said. \"Don't forget, those bases were basically window-dressing. Nothing was supposed to get past Alaska. But the Stingers would have worked. We supplied thousands of them to Afghanistan. They knocked down hundreds of Soviet planes. Mostly helicopters, I guess, but the principle is good. A heat-seeker is a heat-seeker, right? Makes no difference if it gets launched off a truck or off a GI's shoulder.\"\n\n\"So what happens now?\" Webster asked him.\n\n\"We're closing the bases down,\" the guy said. \"That's why the general is here, gentlemen. We're pulling the equipment and the personnel back hereto Peterson, and there's going to be some ceremonies, you know, end-of-an-era stuff.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Where are these bases?\" McGrath asked. \" The Montana ones?\n\nExactly?\"\n\nThe aide pulled the map closer and checked the references.\n\n\"Southernmost one is hidden on some farmland near Missoula,\" he said.\n\n\"Northern one is hidden in a valley, about forty miles south of Canada, near a little place called Yorke. Why? Is there a problem?\"\n\nMcGrath shrugged.\n\n\"We don't know yet,\" he said.\n\nThe aide showed them whereto get breakfast and left them to wait for the general. Johnson arrived after the eggs but before the toast, so they left the toast uneaten and walked back together to the crew room.\n\nJohnson looked a lot different from the glossy guy Webster had met with Monday evening. The early hour and three days' strain made him look twenty pounds thinner and twenty years older. His face was pale and his eyes were red. He looked like a man on the verge of defeat.\n\n\"So what do we know?\" he asked.\n\n\"We think we know most of it,\" Webster answered. \"Right now our operational assumption is your daughter's been kidnaped by a militia group from Montana. We know their location, more or less. Somewhere in the northwestern valleys.\"\n\nJohnson nodded slowly.\n\n\"Any communication?\" he asked.\n\nWebster shook his head.\n\n\"Not yet,\" he said.\n\n\"So what's the reason?\" Johnson asked. \"What do they want?\"\n\nWebster shook his head again.\n\n\"We don't know that yet,\" he said.\n\nJohnson nodded again, vaguely.\n\n\"Who are they?\" he asked.\n\nMcGrath opened the envelope he was carrying."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We've got four names,\" he said. \"Three of the snatch squad, and there's pretty firm evidence about who the militia leader is. A guy named Beau Borken. That name mean anything to you?\"\n\n\"Borken?\" Johnson said. He shook his head. That name means nothing.\"\n\n\"OK,\" McGrath said. \"What about this guy? His name's Peter Bell.\"\n\nMcGrafti passed Johnson the computer print of Bell at the wheel in the Lexus. Johnson took along look at it and shook his head.\n\n\"He's dead,\" McGrath said. \"Didn't make it back to Montana.\"\n\n\"Good,\" Johnson said.\n\nMcGrath passed him another picture.\n\n\"Steven Stewart?\" he said.\n\nJohnson paid the print some attention, but ended up shaking his head.\n\n\"Never saw this guy before,\" he said.\n\nTony Loder?\" McGrath asked.\n\nJohnson stared at Loder's face and shook his head.\n\n\"No,\" he said.\n\nThose three and Borken are all from California,\"McGrath said. There maybe another guy called Odell Fowler. You heard that name?\"\n\nJohnson shook his head.\n\n\"And there's this guy,\" McGrath said. \"We don't know who he is.\"\n\nHe passed over the photograph of the big guy. Johnson glanced at it, then glanced away. But then his gaze drifted back.\n\n\"You know this one?\" McGrath asked him.\n\nJohnson shrugged.\n\n\"He's vaguely familiar,\" he said. \"Maybe somebody I once saw?\"\n\n\"Recently?\" McGrath asked.\n\nJohnson shook his head.\n\n\"Not recently,\" he said. \"Probably along time ago.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Military?\" Webster asked.\n\n\"Probably,\" Johnson said again. \"Most of the people I see are military.\"\n\nHis aide crowded his shoulder fora look.\n\n\"Means nothing tome,\" he said. \"But we should fax this to the Pentagon. If this guy is military maybe there'll be somebody somewhere who served with him.\"\n\nJohnson shook his head.\n\n\"Fax it to the military police,\" he said. This guy's a criminal, right? Chances are he was in trouble before, in the service. Somebody there will remember him.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"THEY CAME FOR HIM AN HOUR AFTER DAWN. HE WAS DOZING ON his hard chair, hands cuffed in his lap, Joseph Ray awake and alert opposite him. He had spent most of the night thinking about dynamite. Old dynamite, leftover from abandoned mining operations. He imagined hefting a stick in his hand. Feeling the weight. Figuring the volume of the cavity behind Holly's walls. Picturing it packed with old dynamite.\n\nOld dynamite, rotting, the nitroglycerin sweating out, going unstable.\n\nMaybe a ton of unstable old dynamite packed in all around her, still not so far gone it would explode with random movement, but gone bad enough it would explode under the impact of astray artillery shell. Ora stray bullet. Or even a sharp blow with a hammer.\n\nThen there was a rattle of feet on shale as a detachment of men halted outside the hut. The door was flung open and Reacher turned his head and saw six guards. The point man clattered inside and hauled him up by the arm. He was dragged outside into the bright morning sun to face five men, line abreast, automatic rifles at the slope. Camouflage fatigues, beards. He stood and squinted in the light. The rifle muzzles jerked him into rough formation and the six men marched him across the diameter of the clearing to a narrow path running away from the sun into the forest.\n\nFifty yards in there was another clearing. A rough scrubby rectangle, small in area. Two plywood and cedar structures. Neither had any windows. The guards halted him and the point man used his rifle barrel to indicate the left-hand building.\n\n\"Command hut,\" he said.\n\nThen he pointed to the right."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Punishment hut,\" he said."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We try to avoid that one.\"\n\nThe six men laughed with the secure confidence of an elite detachment and the point man knocked on the command hut door. Paused a beat and opened it. Reacher was shoved inside with a rifle muzzle in the small of his back.\n\nThe hut was blazing with light. Electric bulbs added to green daylight from mossy skylights set into the roof. There was a plain oak desk and matching chairs, big old round things like Reacher had seen in old movies about newspaper offices or country banks. There was no decor except flags and banners nailed to the walls. There was a huge red swastika behind the desk, and several similar black-and-white motifs on the other walls. There was a detailed map of Montana pinned to aboard on the back wall. A tiny portion of the northwest corner of the state was outlined in black. There were bundles of pamphlets and manuals stacked on the bare floor. One was titled: Dry It, You'll Like It. It claimed to show how food could be preserved to withstand a siege.\n\nAnother claimed to show how guerillas could derail passenger trains.\n\nThere was a polished mahogany bookcase, incongruously fine, packed with books. The bar of daylight from the door fell across them and illuminated their cloth spines and gold-blocked titles. They were standard histories of the art of war, translations from German and Japanese. There was a whole shelf with texts about Pearl Harbor. Texts that Reacher himself had studied, elsewhere and along time ago.\n\nHe stood still. Borken was behind the desk. His hair gleamed white in the light. The black uniform showed up gray. Borken was just staring silently at him. Then he waved him to a chair. Motioned the guards to wait outside."},{"from":"human","value":"Reacher sat heavily."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Fatigue was gnawing at him and adrenalin was burning his stomach. The guards tramped across the floor and stepped outside. They closed the door quietly. Borken moved his arm and rolled open a drawer. Took out an ancient handgun. Laid it on the desktop with aloud clatter.\n\n\"I made my decision,\" he said. \"About whether you live or die.\"\n\nThen he pointed at the old revolver lying on the desk.\n\n\"You know what this is?\" he asked.\n\nReacher glanced at it through the glare and nodded.\n\n\"It's a Marshal Colt,\" he said.\n\nBorken nodded.\n\n\"You bet your ass it is,\" he said. \"It's an original 1873 Marshal Colt, just like the US cavalry were given. It's my personal weapon.\"\n\nHe picked it up, right-handed, and hefted it.\n\n\"You know what it fires?\" he said.\n\nReacher nodded again.\n\n\"Forty-fives,\" he said. \"Six shots.\"\n\n\"Right first time,\" Borken said. \"Six forty-fives, nine hundred feet per second out of a seven and a half inch barrel. You know what those bullets could do to you?\"\n\nReacher shrugged.\n\n\"Depends if they hit me or not,\" he said.\n\nBorken looked blank. Then he grinned. His wet mouth curled upward and his tight cheeks nearly forced his eyes shut.\n\nThey'd hit you,\"he said.\" If I'm firing, they'd hit you.\"\n\nReacher shrugged again.\n\n\"From there, maybe,\" he said.\n\n\"From anywhere,\" Borken said. \"From here, from fifty feet, from fifty yards, if I'm firing, they'd hit you.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Holdup your right hand,\" Reacher said.\n\nBorken looked blank again. Then he put the gun down and held up his huge white hand like he was waving to a vague acquaintance or taking an oath.\n\n\"Bullshit,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"Bullshit?\" Borken repeated.\n\n\"For sure,\" Reacher said. That gun's reasonably accurate, but it's not the best weapon in the world. To hit a man at fifty yards with it, you'd need to practice like crazy. And you haven't been.\"\n\n\"I haven't?\" Borken said.\n\n\"No, you haven't,\" Reacher said. \" Look at the damn thing. It was designed in the 1870s, right? You seen old photographs? People were much smaller. Scrappy little guys, just immigrated from Europe, been starving for generations. Small people, small hands. Look at the stock on that thing. Tight curve, way too small for you. Yougrab that thing, your hand looks like a bunch of bananas around it. And that stock is hundred-and-twenty-year-old walnut. Hard as a rock. The back of the stock and the end of the frame below the hammer would be pounding you with the recoil. You used that gun a lot, you'd have a pad of callus between your thumb and forefinger I could see from here.\n\nBut you haven't, so don't tell me you've been practicing with it, and don't tell me you can be a marksman without practicing with it.\"\n\nBorken looked hard at him. Then he smiled again. His wet lips parted and his eyes closed into slits. He rolled open the opposite drawer and lifted out another handgun. It was a Sig-Sauer 9mm. Maybe five years old. Well used, but well maintained. A big boxy grip fora big hand."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I lied,\" he said. This is my personal weapon. And now I know something. I know my decision was the right one.\"\n\nHe paused so Reacher could ask him about his decision. Reacher stayed silent. Clamped his lips. He wasn't about to ask him about anything, not even if it would be the last sentence he would ever live to say.\n\n\"We're serious here, you know,\" Borken said to him. \" Totally serious.\n\nWe're not playing games. And we're correct about what's going on.\"\n\nHe paused again, so Reacher could ask him what was going on. Reacher said nothing. Just sat and stared into space.\n\n\"America has got a despotic government,\" Borken said. \"A dictatorship, controlled from abroad by our enemies. Our current president is a member of a world government which controls our lives in secret. His federal system is a smokescreen for total control. They're planning to disarm us and enslave us. It's started already. Let's be totally clear about that.\"\n\nHe paused. Picked up the old revolver again. Reacher saw him checking the fit of the stock in his hand. Felt the charisma radiating out of him. Felt compelled to listen to the soft, hypnotic voice.\n\nTwo main methods,\"Borken said. The first is the attempt to disarm the civilian population. The second amendment guarantees our right to bear arms, but they're going to abolish that. The gun laws, all this beefing about crime, homicides, drug wars, it's all aimed at disarming people like us. And when we're disarmed, they can do what they like with us, right? That's why it was in the Constitution in the first place. Those old guys were smart. They knew the only thing that could control a government was the people's willingness and ability to shoot them down.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Borken paused again. Reacher stared up at the swastika behind his head.\n\n\"Second method is the squeeze on small business,\" Borken said. \"This is a personal theory of mine. You don't hear it much around the Movement. But I spotted it. It puts me way ahead of the others in my understanding.\"\n\nBorken waited, but Reacher still stayed silent. Looking away.\n\n\"It's obvious, right?\" Borken said to him. \"World government is basically a communistic type of government. They don't want a strong small-business sector. But that's what America had. Millions of people, all working hard for themselves and making a living. Too many just to murder out of hand, when the time comes. So the numbers have to be reduced in advance. So the federal government was instructed to squeeze the small businessman. They put on all kinds of regulations, all kinds of laws and taxes, they rig the markets, they bring the small guy to his knees, then they order the banks to come sniffing round with attractive loans, and as soon as the ink is dry on the loan papers they jack up the interest, and rig the market some more, until the poor guy defaults. Then they takeaway his business, and so that's one less for the gas ovens when the time comes.\"\n\nReacher glanced at him. Said nothing.\n\n\"Believe it,\" Borken said. \"It's like they're solving a corpse-disposal problem in advance. Get rid of the middle class now, they don't need so many concentration camps later.\"\n\nReacher was just staring at Borken's eyes. Like looking at a bright light. The fat red lips were smiling an indulgent smile.\n\n\"I told you, we're way ahead of the others,\" he said. \"We've seen it coming. What else is the Federal Reserve for? That's the key to this whole thing. America was basically a nation founded on business, right? Control business, you control everything. How do you control business? You control the banks. How do you control the banks? You setup a bullshit Federal Reserve system. You tell the banks what to do. That's the key. The world government controls everything, through the Fed. I've seen it happen.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"His eyes were open wide. Shining with no color.\n\n\"I saw them do it to my own father,\" he screamed. \"May his poor soul rest in peace. The Fed bankrupted him.\"\n\nReacher tore his gaze away. Shrugged at the corner of the room. Said nothing. He started trying to recall the sequence of titles in Borken's fine mahogany bookcase. Warfare from ancient China through Renaissance Italy through Pearl Harbor. He concentrated on naming the titles to himself, left to right, trying to resist the glare of Borken's attention.\n\n\"We're serious here,\" Borken was saying again. \"You may look at me and think I'm some kind of a despot, or a cult leader, or whatever the world would want to label me. But I'm not. I'm a good leader, I won't deny that. Even an inspired leader. Call me intelligent and perceptive, I won't argue with you. But I don't need to be. My people don't need any encouraging. They don't need much leading. They need guidance, and they need discipline, but don't let that fool you. I'm not coercing anybody. Don't make the mistake of underestimating their will. Don't ignore their desire fora change for the better.\"\n\nReacher was silent. He was still concentrating on the books, skimming in his mind through the events of December 1941, as seen from the Japanese point of view.\n\n\"We're not criminals here, you know,\" Borken was saying. \"When a government turns bad, it's the very best people who stand up against it. Or do you think we should all just act like sheep?\"\n\nReacher risked another glance at him. Risked speaking.\n\n\"You're pretty selective,\" he said. \"About who's here and who's not.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Borken shrugged.\n\n\"Like unto like,\" he said. That's nature's way, isn't it? Black people have got the whole of Africa. White people have got this place.\"\n\n\"What about Jewish dentists?\" Reacher asked. \"What place have they got?\"\n\nBorken shrugged again.\n\nThat was an operational error,\"he said.\" Loder should have waited until he was clear. But mistakes happen.\"\n\n\"Should have waited until I was clear, too,\" Reacher said.\n\nBorken nodded.\n\n\"I agree with you,\" he said. \"It would have been better for you that way. But they didn't, and so here you are among us.\"\n\n\"Just because I'm white?\" Reacher said.\n\n\"Don't knock it,\" Borken replied. \"White people got precious few rights left.\"\n\nReacher stared at him. Stared around the bright, hate-filled room.\n\nShuddered.\n\n\"I've made a study of tyranny,\" Borken said. \" And how to combat it.\n\nThe first rule is you make a firm decision, to live free or die, and you mean it. Live free or die. The second rule is you don't act like a sheep. You stand up and you resist them. You study their system and you learn to hate it. And then you act. But how do you act? The brave man fights back. He retaliates, right?\"\n\nReacher shrugged. Said nothing.\n\n\"The brave man retaliates,\" Borken repeated. \" But the man who is both brave and clever acts differently. He retaliates first. In advance.\n\nHe strikes the first blows. He gives them what they don't expect, when and where they don't expect it. That's what we're doing here. We're retaliating first. It's their war, but we're going to strike the first blows. We're going to give them what they don't expect. We're going to upset their plans.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher glanced back at the bookcase. Five thousand classic pages, all saying the same thing: don't do what they expect you to do.\n\n\"Go look at the map,\" Borken said.\n\nReacher thrust his cuffed hands forward and lifted himself awkwardly out of the chair. Walked over to the map of Montana on the wall. He found Yorke in the top left-hand corner. Well inside the small black outline. He checked the scale and looked at the contour shading and the colors. The river Joseph Ray had talked about lay thirty miles to the west, on the other side of high mountains. It was a thick blue slash running down the map. There were enormous brown heights shown to the north, all the way up to Canada. The only road ran north through Yorke and terminated at some abandoned mine workings. A few haphazard tracks ran through solid forest to the east. To the south, contour lines merged together to show a tremendous east-west ravine.\n\n\"Look at that terrain, Reacher,\" Borken said quietly. \"What does it' tell you?\"\n\nReacher looked at it. It told him he couldn't get out. Not on foot, not with Holly. There were weeks of rough walking east and north.\n\nNatural barriers west and south. The terrain made a better prison than wire fences or minefields could have. He had once been in Siberia, after glasnost, following upon ancient stories about Korean MIAs. The gulags had been completely open. No wire, no barriers. He had asked his hosts: but where are the fences? The Russians had pointed out over the miles of snow and said: there are the fences. Nowhere to run. He looked up at the map again. The terrain was the barrier. To get out was going to require a vehicle. And a lot of luck."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They can't get in,\"Borken said.\" We're impregnable. We can't be stopped. And we mustn't be stopped. That would be a disaster of truly historic proportions. Suppose the Redcoats had stopped the American Revolution in 1776?\"\n\nReacher glanced around the tiny wooden room and shuddered.\n\nThis isn't the American Revolution,\" he said.\n\n\"Isn't it?\" Borken asked. \"How is it different? They wanted freedom from a tyrannical government. So do we.\"\n\n\"You're murderers,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"So were they in 1776,\" Borken said. They killed people. The established system called that murder, too.\"\n\n\"You're racists,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"Same in 1776,\" Borken said. \" Jefferson and his slaves? They knew black people were inferior. Back then, they were exactly the same as we are now. But then they became the new redcoats. Slowly, over the years. It's fallen to us to get back to how it should have stayed.\n\nLive free or die, Reacher. It's a noble aim. Always has been, don't you think?\"\n\nHe was leaning forward with his great bulk pressing tight against the desk. His hands were in the air. His colorless eyes were shining.\n\n\"But there were mistakes made in 1776,\" he said. \" I've studied the history. War could have been avoided if both sides had acted sensibly.\n\nAnd war should always be avoided, don't you think?\"\n\nReacher shrugged.\n\n\"Not necessarily,\" he said.\n\n\"Well, you're going to help us avoid it,\" Borken said. That's my decision. You're going to be my emissary.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Your what?\" Reacher said.\n\n\"You're independent,\" Borken said. \" Not one of us. No ax to grind. An American like them, an upstanding citizen, no felony icu convictions.\n\nA clever, perceptive man. You notice things. They'll listen to you.\"\n\n\"What?\" Readier said again.\n\n\"We're organized here,\" Borken said. \"We're ready for nationhood. You need to understand that. We have an army, we have a treasury, we have financial reserves, we have a legal system, we have democracy. I'm going to show all that to you today. I'm going to show you a society ready for independence, ready to live free or die, and just a day away from doing so. Then I'm going to send you south to America. You're going to tell them our position is strong and their position is hopeless.\"\n\nReacher just stared at him.\n\n\"And you can tell them about Holly,\" Borken said quietly. \"In her special little room. You can tell them about my secret weapon. My insurance policy.\"\n\n\"You're crazy,\" Reacher said.\n\nThe hut went silent. Quieter than silent.\n\n\"Why?\" Borken whispered. \"Why am I crazy? Exactly?\"\n\n\"You're not thinking straight,\" Reacher said. \"Don't you realize that Holly counts for nothing? The president will replace Johnson faster than you can blink an eye. They'll crush you like a bug and Holly will be just another casualty. You should send her back outwith me.\"\n\nBorken was shaking his bloated head, happily, confidently.\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"That won't happen. There's more to Holly than who her father is. Hasn't she told you that?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher stared at him and Borken checked his watch.\n\n\"Time to go,\" he said. \"Time for you to see our legal system at work.\"\n\nHolly heard the quiet footsteps outside her door and eased off the bed.\n\nThe lock clicked back and the young soldier with the scarred forehead stepped up into the room. He had his finger to his lips and Holly nodded. She limped to the bathroom and set the shower running noisily into the empty tub. The young soldier followed her in and closed the door.\n\n\"We can only do this once a day,\" Holly whispered. \"They'll get suspicious if they hear the shower too often.\"\n\nThe young guy nodded.\n\n\"We'll get out tonight,\" he said. \"Can't do it this morning. We're all on duty at Loder's trial. I'll come by just after dusk, with a jeep. We'll make a run for it in the dark. Head south. Risky, but we'll make it.\"\n\n\"Not without Readier,\" Holly said.\n\nThe young guy shook his head.\n\n\"Can't promise that,\" he said. \"He's in with Borken now. God knows what's going to happen to him.\"\n\n\"I go, he goes,\" Holly said.\n\nThe young guy looked at her, nervously.\n\n\"OK,\" he said. \"I'll try.\"\n\nHe opened the bathroom door and crept out. Holly watched him go and turned the shower off. Stared after him.\n\nHe looped north and west and took along route back through the woods, same way as he had come. The sentry Fowler had hidden in the trees fifteen feet off the main path never saw him. But the one he had hidden in the backwoods did. He caught a glimpse of a camouflage uniform hustling through the undergrowth. Spun around fast, but was too late to make the face. He shrugged and thought hard. Figured he'd keep it to himself. Better to ignore it than report he'd failed to make the actual ID."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"So the young man with the scar hurried all the way and was back in his hut two minutes before he was due to escort his commander down to the tribunal hearing.\n\nIn the daylight, the courthouse on the southeast corner of the abandoned town of Yorke looked pretty much the same as a hundred others Reacher had seen allover rural America. Built early in the century.\n\nBig, white, pillared, ornate. Enough square solidity to communicate its serious purpose, but enough lightness in its details to make it a handsome structure. He saw a fine cupola floating off the top of the building, with a fine clock in it, probably paid for by a public subscription held long ago among along-forgotten generation. More or less the same as a hundred others, but the roof was steeper-pitched than some, and heavier built. He guessed it had to be that way in the north of Montana. That roof could be carrying a hundred tons of snow all winter long. But this was the third morning of July, and there was no snow on the roof. Reacher was warm after walking a mile in the pale northern sun. Borken had gone ahead separately and Reacher had been marched down through the forest by the same six elite guards. Still in handcuffs. They marched him straight up the front steps and inside.\n\nThe first-floor interior was one large space, interrupted by pillars holding up the second floor, paneled in broad smooth planks sawed from huge pines. The wood was dark from age and polish, and the panels were stern and simple in their design.\n\nEvery seat was taken. Every bench was full. The room was a sea of camouflage green. Men and women. Sitting rigidly upright, rifles exactly vertical between their knees. Waiting expectantly. Some children, silent and confused. Reacher was led in front of the crowd, over to a table in the well of the court. Fowler was waiting there."},{"from":"human","value":"Stevie next to him."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He nodded to a chair. Reacher sat. The guards stood behind him. A minute later, the double doors opened and Beau Borken walked over to the judge's bench. The old floor creaked beneath his bulk. Every person in the room except Reacher stood up. Stood to attention and saluted, as if they were hearing an inaudible cue. Borken was still in his black uniform, with belt and boots. He had added a large holster to hold his Sig-Sauer. He held a slim leather-bound book. He came in with six armed men in a loose formation. They took up station in front of the bench and stood at rigid attention, gazing forward, looking blank.\n\nThe people sat down again. Reacher glanced up at the ceiling and quartered it with his eyes. Worked out which was the southeast corner.\n\nThe doors opened again and the crowd drew breath. Loder was pushed into the room. He was surrounded by six guards. They pushed him to the table opposite Fowler's. The accused's table. The guards stood behind him and forced him into the chair with their hands on both his shoulders. His face was white with fear and crusted with blood. His nose was broken and his lips were split. Borken stared across at him.\n\nSat down heavily in the judge's chair and placed his big hands, palms down, on the bench. Looked around the quiet room and spoke.\n\n\"We all know why we're here,\" he said.\n\nHolly could sense there was a big crowd in the room below her. She could feel the faint rumble of a body of people holding themselves still and quiet. But she didn't stop working. No reason to believe her Bureau contact would fail, but she was still going to spend the day preparing. Justin case."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Her search fora tool had led her to the one she had brought in with her. Her metal crutch. It was a one-inch aluminum tube, with an elbow clip and a handle. The tube was too wide and the metal was too soft to act as a pry-bar. But she realized that maybe if she pulled the rubber foot off, the open end of the tube could be molded into a makeshift wrench. She could maybe crush the tube around the shape of the bolts holding the bed together. Then she could bend the tube at aright angle, and maybe use the whole thing like a flimsy tire iron.\n\nBut first she had to scrape away the thick paint on the bolts. It was smooth and slick, and it welded the bolts to the frame. She used the edge of the elbow clip to flake the top layers. Then she scraped at the seams until she saw bright metal. Now her idea was to limp back and forth from the bathroom with a towel soaked in hot water. She would press the towel hard on the bolts and let the heat from the water expand the metal and crack its grip. Then the soft aluminum of the crutch might just prove strong enough to do the job.\n\n\"Reckless endangerment of the mission,\" Beau Borken said.\n\nHis voice was low and hypnotic. The room was quiet. The guards in front of the judge's bench stared forward. The guard at the end was staring at Reacher. He was the younger guy with the trimmed beard and the scar on his forehead Reacher had seen guarding Loder the previous night. He was staring at Reacher with curiosity.\n\nBorken held up the slim leather-bound volume and swung it slowly, left to right, like it was a searchlight and he wanted to bathe the whole of the room with its bright beam."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The Constitution of the United States,\"he said.\" Sadly abused, but the greatest political tract ever devised by man. The model for our own constitution.\"\n\nHe turned the pages of the book. The rustle of stiff paper was loud in the quiet room. He started reading.\n\nThe Bill of Rights,\"he said. The fifth amendment specifies no person shall beheld to answer fora capital crime without a grand jury indictment except in cases arising in the militia in times of public danger. It says no person shall be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law. The sixth amendment specifies the accused shall have the right to a speedy public trial in front of a local jury. It says the accused has the right to assistance of counsel.\"\n\nBorken stopped again. Looked around the room. Held up the book.\n\nThis book tells us what to do,\"he said.\" So we need a jury. Doesn't say how many. I figure three men will do. Volunteers?\"\n\nThere was a flurry of hands. Borken pointed randomly here and there and three men walked across the pine floor. They stacked their rifles and filed into the jury box. Borken turned in his seat and spoke to them.\n\n\"Gentlemen,\" he said. \"This is a militia matter and this is a time of public danger. Are we agreed on that?\"\n\nThe new jurymen all nodded and Borken turned and looked down from the bench toward Loder, alone at his table.\n\n\"You had counsel?\" he said.\n\n\"You offering me a lawyer now?\" Loder asked.\n\nHis voice was thick and nasal. Borken shook his head.\n\nThere are no lawyers here,\"he said.\" Lawyers are what went wrong with the rest of America. We're not going to have lawyers here. We don't want them. The Bill of Rights doesn't say anything about lawyers. It says counsel. Counsel means advice. That's what my dictionary says."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"You had advice? You want any?\"\n\n\"You got any?\" Loder said.\n\nBorken nodded and smiled a cold smile.\n\n\"Plead guilty,\" he said.\n\nLoder just shook his head and dropped his eyes.\n\n\"OK,\" Borken said. \"You've had counsel, but you're pleading not guilty?\"\n\nLoder nodded. Borken looked down at his book again. Turned back to the beginning.\n\nThe Declaration of Independence,\"he said.\" It is the right of the people to alter or to abolish the old government and to institute new government in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.\"\n\nHe stopped and scanned the crowd.\n\n\"You all understand what that means?\" he said. The old laws are gone.\n\nNow we have new laws. New ways of doing things. We're putting right two hundred years of mistakes. We're going back to where we should have been all along. This is the first trial under a brand-new system. A better system. A system with afar stronger claim to legitimacy. We have the right to do it, and what we are doing is right.\"\n\nThere was a slight murmur from the crowd. Reacher detected no disapproval in the sound. They were all hypnotized. Basking in Borken's bright glow like reptiles in a hot noontime sun. Borken nodded to Fowler. Fowler stood up next to Reacher and turned to the jury box.\n\n\"The facts are these,\" Fowler said. The commander sent Loder out on a mission of great importance for all our futures. Loder performed badly. He was gone for just five days, but he made five serious mistakes. Mistakes which could have wrecked the whole venture."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Specifically, he left a trail by burning two vehicles. Then he mistimed two operations and thereby snarled up two civilians. And finally he allowed Peter Bell to desert. Five serious mistakes.\"\n\nFowler stood there. Reacher stared at him, urgently.\n\n\"I'm calling a witness,\" Fowler said. \"Stevie Stewart.\"\n\nLittle Stevie stood up fast and Fowler nodded him across to the old witness box, alongside and below the judge's bench. Borken leaned down and handed him a black book. Reacher couldn't see what book it was, but it wasn't a Bible. Not unless they had started making Bibles with swastikas on the cover.\n\n\"You swear to tell the truth here?\" Borken asked.\n\nStevie nodded.\n\n\"I do, sir,\" he said.\n\nHe put the book down and turned to Fowler, ready for the first question.\n\n\"The five mistakes I mentioned?\" Fowler said. \"You see Loder make them?\"\n\nStevie nodded again.\n\n\"He made them,\" he said.\n\n\"He take responsibility for them?\" Fowler asked.\n\n\"Sure did,\" Stevie said. \"He played the big boss the whole time we were away.\"\n\nFowler nodded Stevie back to the table. The courtroom was silent.\n\nBorken smiled knowingly at the jurymen and glanced down at Loder.\n\n\"Anything to say in your defence?\" he asked quietly."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"' \"\" \"\" IS NAME IS JACK REACHER,\" WEBSTER SAID.\n\nII'Good call, General,\" McGrath said. \" I guess they rem em-. 1.\n\nAbered him.\"\n\nJohnson nodded.\n\n\"Military police keeps good records,\" he said.\n\nThey were still in the commandeered crew room inside Peterson Air Force Base. Ten o'clock in the morning, Thursday July third. The fax machine was rolling out along reply to their inquiry. The face in the photograph had been identified immediately. The subject's service record had been pulled straight off the Pentagon computer and faxed along with the name.\n\n\"You recall this guy now?\" Brogan asked.\n\n\"Readier?\" Johnson repeated vaguely. \"I don't know. What did he do?\"\n\nWebster and the general's aide were crowding the machine, reading the report as the paper spooled out. They twisted it right side up and walked slowly away to keep it up off the floor.\n\n\"What did he do?\" McGrath asked them urgently.\n\n\"Nothing,\" Webster said.\n\n\"Nothing?\" McGrath repeated. \"Why would they have a record on him if he didn't do anything?\"\n\n\"He was one of them,\" Webster said. \"Major Jack Reacher, military police.\"\n\nThe aide was racing through the length of paper.\n\n\"Silver Star,\" he said. Two Bronzes, Purple Heart. This is a hell of a record, sir. This guy was a hero, for God's sake.\"\n\nMcGrath opened up his envelope and pulled out the original video pictures of the kidnap, black-and-white, un enlarged grainy. He selected the first picture of Reacher's involvement. The one catching him in the act of seizing Holly's crutch and pulling the dry-cleaning from her grasp. He slid the photograph across the table."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Carry on with the plot as the author's writing partner.\\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\\nAuthor: Lee Child\\nTitle: Die Trying\\nChapter: 23\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"In the accommodation huts, men and women were working in the gloom, cleaning their rifles. The word about Loder had traveled quickly. They all knew about the tribunal. They all knew the likely outcome. Any six of them could be selected for the firing squad. If there was going to be a firing squad. Most people figured there probably was. An officer like Loder, the commander might limit it to a firing squad. Probably nothing worse. So they cleaned their rifles, and left them locked and loaded next to their beds.\\n\\nThose of them with enough demerits to be on tomorrow's punishment detail were trying to get some sleep. If he didn't limit it to a firing squad, they could be in fora lot of work. Messy, unpleasant work. And even if Loder got away with it, there was always the other guy. The big guy who had come in with the federal bitch. There wasn't much chance of him surviving ivn past breakfast time. They couldn't remember the last time any stray stranger had lasted longer than that.\\n\\nHolly Johnson had a rule. It was a rule bred into her, like a family motto. It had been reinforced by her long training at Quantico. It was a rule distilled from thousands of years of military history and hundreds of years of law-enforcement experience. The rule said: hope for the best, but plan for the worst.\\n\\nShe had no reason to believe she would not be speeding south in a jeep just as soon as her new ally could arrange it. He was Bureau-trained, the same as she was. She knew that if the tables were turned, she would get him out, no problem at all. So she knew she could just sit tight and wait. But she wasn't doing that. She was hoping for the best, but she was planning for the worst.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"She had given upon the bathroom.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Noway out there. Now she was going over the room itself, inch by inch. The new pine boarding was nailed tight to the frame, all six surfaces. It was driving her crazy.\\n\\nInch-thick pine board, the oldest possible technology, used for ten thousand years, and there was noway through it. Fora lone woman without any tools, it might as well have been the side of a battleship.\\n\\nSo she concentrated on finding tools. It was like she was personally speeding through Darwin's evolutionary process. Apes came down from the trees and they made tools. She was concentrating on the bed. The mattress was useless. It was a thin, crushed thing, no wire springs inside. But the bed frame was more promising. It was bolted together from iron tubes and flanges. If she could take it apart, she could put one of the little right-angle flanges in the end of the longest tube and make a pry-bar seven feet long. But the bolts were all painted over. She had strong hands, but she couldn't begin to move them. Her fingers just bruised and slipped on her sweat.\\n\\nLoder had been dragged away and Reacher was locked up alone with the last remaining guard from the evening detail. The guard sat behind the plain desk and propped his weapon on the wooden surface with the muzzle pointing directly at him sitting on his chair. His hands were still cuffed behind him. He had decisions to make. First was noway could he sit all night like that. He glanced calmly at the guard and eased himself up and slid his hands underneath.\\n\\nPressed his chest down onto his thighs and looped his hands out under his feet. Then he sat up and leaned back and forced a smile, hands together in his lap.\\n\\n\\\"Long arms,\\\" he said. \\\"Useful.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The guard nodded slowly.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He had small piercing eyes, setback in a narrow face. They gleamed out above the big beard, through the camouflage smudges, but the gleam looked innocent enough.\\n\\n\\\"What's your name?\\\" Reacher asked him.\\n\\nThe guy hesitated. Shuffled in his seat. Reacher could see some kind of natural courtesy was prompting a reply. But there were obvious tactical considerations for the guy. Reacher kept on forcing the smile.\\n\\n\\\"I'm Reacher,\\\" he said. \\\"You know my name. You got a name? We're here all night, we may as well be a little civilized about it, right?\\\"\\n\\nThe guy nodded again, slowly. Then he shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Ray,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Ray?\\\" Reacher said. \\\"That your first name or your last?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Last,\\\" the guy said. \\\"Joseph Ray.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\n\\\"OK, Mr. Ray,\\\" he said. \\\"Pleased to meet you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Call me Joe,\\\" Joseph Ray said.\\n\\nReacher forced the smile again. The ice was broken. Like conducting an interrogation. Reacher had done it a thousand times. But never from this side of the desk. Never when he was the one wearing the cuffs.\\n\\n\\\"Joe, you're going to have to help me out a little,\\\" he said. \\\"I need some background here. I don't know where I am, or why, or who all you guys are. Can you fill me in on some basic information?\\\"\\n\\nRay was looking at him like he was maybe having difficulty knowing whereto start. Then he was glancing around the room like maybe he was wondering whether he was allowed to start at all.\\n\\n\\\"Where exactly are we?\\\" Reacher asked him. \\\"You can tell me that, right?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Montana,\\\" Ray said.\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said. \\\"Wherein Montana?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Near a town called Yorke,\\\" Ray said. \\\"An old mining town, just about abandoned.\\\"\\n\\nReadier nodded again.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said. \\\"What are you guys doing here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're building a bastion,\\\" Ray said. \\\"A place of our own.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What for?\\\" Readier asked him.\\n\\nRay shrugged. An inarticulate guy. At first, he said nothing. Then he sat forward and launched into what seemed to Reacher like a mantra, like something the guy had rehearsed many times. Or like something the guy had been told many times.\\n\\n\\\"We came up hereto escape the tyranny of America,\\\" he said. \\\"We have to draw up our borders and say, it's going to be different inside here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Different how?\\\" Reacher asked him.\\n\\n\\\"We have to take America back, piece by piece,\\\" Ray said. \\\"We have to build a place where the white man can live free, unmolested, in peace, with proper freedoms and proper laws.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You think you can do that?\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"It happened before,\\\" Ray said. \\\" It happened in 1776. People said enough is enough. They said we want a better country than this. Now we're saying it again. We're saying we want our country back. And we're going to get it back. Because now we're acting together. There were a dozen militias up here. They all wanted the same things. But they were all acting alone. Beau's mission was to put people together.\\n\\nNow we're unified and we're going to take our country back. We're starting here. We're starting now.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher nodded. Glanced to his right and down at the dark stain where Loder's nose had bled onto the floor.\\n\\n\\\"Like this?\\\" he said. \\\"What about voting and democracy? All that kind of stuff? You should vote people out and vote new people in, right?\\\"\\n\\nRay smiled sadly and shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"We've been voting for two hundred and twenty years,\\\" he said. \\\" Gets worse all the time. Government's not interested in how we vote.\\n\\nThey've taken all the power away from us. Given our country away. You know where the government of this country really is?\\\"\\n\\nReacher shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"DC, right?\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Wrong,\\\" Ray said. \\\" It's in New York. The United Nations building.\\n\\nEver asked yourself why the UN is so near Wall Street? Because that's the government. The United Nations and the banks. They run the world. America's just a small part of it. The president is just one voice on a damn committee. That's why voting is no damn good.\\n\\nYou think the United Nations and the world banks care what we vote?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You sure about all this?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\nRay nodded, vigorously.\\n\\n\\\"Sure I'm sure,\\\" he said. \\\" I've seen it at work. Why do you think we send billions of dollars to the Russians when we got poverty herein America? You think that's the free choice of an American government?\\n\\nWe send it because the world government tells us to send it. You know we got camps here? Hundreds of camps allover the country? Most of them are for United Nations troops. Foreign troops, waiting to move in when we start any trouble. But forty-three of them are concentration camps. That's where they're going to put us when we start speaking out.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You sure?\\\" Reacher said again.\\n\\n\\\"Sure I'm sure,\\\" Ray said again. \\\"Beau's got the documents. We've got the proof. There are things going on you wouldn't believe. You know it's a secret federal law that all babies born in the hospital get a microchip implanted just under their skin? When they take them away, they're not weighing them and cleaning them up. They're implanting a microchip. Pretty soon the whole population is going to be visible to secret satellites. You think the space shuttle gets used for science experiments? You think the world government would authorize expenditure for stuff like that? You got to be kidding. The space shuttle is thereto launch surveillance satellites.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're joking, right?\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nRay shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Noway,\\\" he said. \\\" Beau's got the documents. There's another secret law, guy in Detroit sent Beau the stuff. Every car builtin America since 1985 has a secret radio transmitter box in it, so the satellites can see where it's going. You buy a car, the radar screens in the UN Building know where you are, every minute of the day and night. They've got foreign forces training in America, right now, ready for the official takeover. You know why we-send so much money to Israel? Not because we care what happens to the Israelis. Why should we care? We send the money because that's where the UN is training the secret world army. It's like an experimental place. Why do you think the UN never stops the Israelis from invading people? Because the UN has told them what to do in the first place. Training them for the world takeover.\\n\\nThere are three thousand helicopters right now, at airbases round the US, all ready for them to use. Helicopters, painted flat black, no markings.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You sure?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher said again. He was keeping his voice somewhere between worried and skeptical. \\\"I never heard about any of this stuff.\\\"\\n\\nThat proves it, right?\\\" Ray said.\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"Obvious, right?\\\" Ray said. \\\"You think the world government is going to allow media access to that stuff? World government controls the media, right? They own it. So it's logical that whatever doesn't appear in the media is what is really happening, right? They tell you the safe stuff, and they keep the secrets away from you. It's all true, believe me. I told you, Beau's got the documents. Did you know every US highway sign has a secret mark on the back? You drive out and take a look. A secret sign, to direct the world troops around the country. They're getting ready to takeover. That's why we need a place of our own.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You think they're going to attack you?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"No doubt about it,\\\" Ray said. \\\"They're going to come right after us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And you figure you can defend yourselves?\\\" Reacher said. \\\"A few guys in some little town in Montana?\\\"\\n\\nJoe Ray shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Not a few guys,\\\" he said. There area hundred of us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"A hundred guys?\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Against the world government?\\\"\\n\\nRay shook his head again.\\n\\n\\\"We can defend ourselves,\\\" he said. \\\"Beau's a smart leader. This territory is good. We're in a valley here. Sixty miles north to south, sixty miles east to west. Canadian border along the northern edge.\\\"\\n\\nHe swept his hand through the air, above eye level, left to right like a karate chop, to demonstrate the geography. Reacher nodded. He was familiar with the Canadian border. Ray used his other hand, up and down the left edge of his invisible map.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Rapid River,\\\" he said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"That's our western border. It's a big river, completely wild. Noway to cross it.\\\"\\n\\nHe moved the Canadian border hand across and rubbed a small circle in the air, like he was cleaning a pane of glass.\\n\\n\\\"National forest,\\\" he said. \\\" You seen it? Fifty miles, east to west.\\n\\nThick virgin forest, noway through. You want an eastern border, that forest is as good as you're going to get.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What about the south?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\nRay chopped his hand sideways at chest level.\\n\\n\\\"Ravine,\\\" he said. \\\" Natural-born tank trap. Believe me, I know tanks.\\n\\nNoway through, except one road and one track. Wooden bridge takes the track over the ravine.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded. He remembered the white truck pattering over a wooden structure.\\n\\nThat bridge gets blown,\\\"Ray said.\\\" Noway through.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What about the road?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"Same thing,\\\" Ray said. \\\"We blow the bridge and we're safe. Charges are set right now.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded slowly. He was thinking about air attack, artillery, missiles, smart bombs, infiltration of special forces, airborne troops, parachutes. He was thinking about navy SEALs bridging the river or Marines bridging the ravine. He was thinking about NATO units rumbling straight down from Canada.\\n\\n\\\"What about Holly?\\\" he asked. \\\"What do you want with her?\\\"\\n\\nRay smiled. His beard parted and his teeth shone out as bright as his eyes.\\n\\n\\\"Beau's secret weapon,\\\" he said. Think about it. The world government is going to use her old man to lead the attack. That's why they appointed him. You think the president appoints those guys? You got to be joking. Old man Johnson's a world government guy, just waiting for the secret command to move. But when he gets here, what's he going to find?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"He comes up from the south, right?\\\" Ray said. \\\"First building he sees is that old courthouse, southeast corner of town. You were just there. She's upon the second floor, right? You notice the new construction? Special room, double walls, twenty-two inches apart. The space is packed with dynamite and blasting caps from the old mine stores. The first stray shell will blow old man Johnson's little girl to kingdom come.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded again, slowly. Ray looked at him.\\n\\n\\\"We're not asking much,\\\" he said. \\\"Sixty miles by sixty miles, what is that? Thirty-six hundred square miles of territory.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But why now?\\\" Reacher asked. \\\"What's the big hurry?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What's the date?\\\" Ray asked back.\\n\\nReacher shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"July something?\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"July second,\\\" Ray said. Two days to go.\\\"\\n\\nTo what?\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"Independence Day,\\\" Ray said. \\\"July fourth.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"We're declaring independence,\\\" Ray said. \\\" Day after tomorrow. The birth of a brand-new nation. That's when they'll come for us, right?\\n\\nFreedom for the little guys? That's not in their plan.\\\"\\n\\nTWENTY-FOUR\\n\\nTHE BUREAU LEAR REFUELED AT FARGO IN AND FLEW STRAIGHT southwest to California. McGrath had argued again in favor of heading straight for Montana, but Webster had overruled him. One step at a time was Webster's patient way, so they were going to checkout the Beau Borken story in California and then they were going to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado to meet with General Johnson. McGrath was about the only Bureau guy alive capable of shouting at Webster, and he had, but arguing is not the same thing as winning, so they were all in the air heading first for Mojave, McGrath and Webster and Brogan and Milosevic, all overtired, overanxious and morose in the hot noisy cabin.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I need all the background I can get,\\\" Webster said. They put me in personal charge and these are not the type of guys I can be vague with, right?\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath glared at him and thought: don't play your stupid Beltway games with Holly's life, Webster. But he said nothing. Just sat tight until the tiny plane started arrowing down toward the airfield on the edge of the desert.\\n\\nThey were on the ground just after two o'clock in the morning, West Coast time. The Mojave agent-in-charge met them on the deserted tarmac in his own car. Drove them south through the sleeping town.\\n\\nThe Borkens were a Kendall family,\\\"he said.\\\" Small town, fifty miles from here. Fanning place, mostly citrus. One-man police department.\\n\\nThe sheriff is waiting for us down there.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He know anything?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nThe guy at the wheel shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Maybe,\\\" he said. \\\"Small town, right?\\\"\\n\\nFifty miles through the desert night at eighty-five took them just thirty-six minutes. Kendall was a small knot of buildings adrift in a sea of groves. There was a gas station, a general store, a grower's operation and a low cement building with whip antennas spearing upward from the roof. A smart black-and-white was parked upon the apron outside. It was marked: Kendall County Sheriff. There was a single light in the office window behind the car.\\n\\nThe five agents stretched and yawned in the dry night air and trooped single file into the cement building. The Kendall County sheriff was a guy about sixty, solid, gray. He looked reliable. Webster waved him back into his seat and McGrath laid the four glossy mugshots on his desk in front of him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You know these guys?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"he asked.\\n\\nThe sheriff slid the photographs nearer and looked at each of them in turn. He picked them up and shuffled them into anew order. Laid them back down on the desk like he was dealing a hand of giant playing cards. Then he nodded and reached down to his desk pedestal. Rolled open a drawer. Lifted out three buff files. He placed the files underneath three of the photographs. Laid a stubby finger on the first face.\\n\\n\\\"Peter Wayne Bell,\\\" he said. \\\" Mojave kid, but he was down here a lot.\\n\\nNot a very nice boy, as I believe you know.\\\"\\n\\nHe nodded across to his monitor screen on a computer cart at the end of the desk. A page from the National Crime Center Database was glowing green. It was the report from the North Dakota cops about the identity of the body they had found in a ditch. The identity, and the history.\\n\\nThe sheriff moved his wrist and laid a finger on the next photograph.\\n\\nIt was the gunman who had pushed Holly Johnson into the back of the Lexus.\\n\\n\\\"Steven Stewart,\\\" he said. \\\"Called Stevie, or Little Stevie. Farmboy, a couple of bushels short of a wagonload, know what I mean? Jumpy, jittery sort of a boy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What's in his file?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThe sheriff shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Nothing too serious,\\\" he said. The boy was just too plain dumb for his own good. Group of kids would go out and mess around, and guess who'd be the one still stood there when I roll up? Little Stevie, that's who. I locked him up a dozen times, I guess, but he never did much of what you would want to call serious shit.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"McGrath nodded and pointed to the photograph of the gunman who had gotten into the front seat of the Lexus.\\n\\nThis guy?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nThe sheriff moved his finger and laid it on the guy's glossy throat.\\n\\nTony Loder,\\\"he said. This is a fairly bad guy. Smarter than Stevie, dumber than you or me. I'll give you the file. Maybe it won't keep you Bureau guys awake nights, but it sure won't help you sleep any better than you were going to anyhow.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What about the big guy?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThe sheriff jumped his finger along the row and shook his grizzled head.\\n\\n\\\"Never saw this guy before,\\\" he said. That's for damn sure. I'd remember him if I had.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We think maybe he's a foreigner,\\\" Webster said. \\\" Maybe European.\\n\\nMaybe had an accent. That ring any bells with you?\\\"\\n\\nThe sheriff just kept on shaking his head.\\n\\n\\\"Never saw him before,\\\" he said again. \\\"I'd remember.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Bell, Little Stevie Stewart, Tony Loder and the mystery man. Where do these Borken guys fit in?\\\"\\n\\nThe sheriff shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Old Dutch Borken never fit in nowhere,\\\" he said. That was his problem. He was in Nam, infantry grunt, moved out here when he got out of the service. Brought a pretty wife and a little fatten-year-old boy with him, started growing citrus, did pretty well fora long while.\\n\\nHe was a strange guy, a loner, never saw much of him. But he was happy enough, I guess. Then the wife took sick and died, and the boy started acting weird, the market took a couple of hits, profits were down, the growers all started getting into the banks for loans, interest went up, land went down, the ion collateral was disappearing, irrigation water got expensive, they all started going belly-up one after the other.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Borken took it bad and swallowed his shotgun.\\\"\\n\\nWebster nodded.\\n\\nThe little fatten-year-old was Beau Borken?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nThe sheriff nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Beau Borken,\\\" he said. \\\"Very strange boy. Very smart. But obsessed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"With what?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\n\\\"Mexicans started coming up,\\\" the sheriff said. \\\"Cheap labor. Young Beau was dead set against it. He started hollering about keeping Kendall white. Joined the John Birch types.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So he was a racist?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\n\\\"At first,\\\" the sheriff said. Then he got into all that conspiracy stuff. Talking about the Jews running the government. Or the United Nations, or both, or some damn thing. The government was all communists, taking over the world, secret plans for everything. Big conspiracy against everybody, especially him. Banks controlled the government, or was it the government controlled the banks? So the banks were all communists and they were out to destroy America. He figured the exact reason the bank loaned his father the money was so it could default him later and give the farm to the Mexicans or the blacks or some damn thing. He was raving about it, all the time.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So what happened?\\\" Webster said.\\n\\n\\\"Well, of course, the bank did end up defaulting him,\\\" the sheriff said. The guy wasn't paying the loan, was he? But they didn't give his land to the Mexicans. They sold it onto the same big corporation owns everything else around here, which is owned by the pension funds, which probably means it's owned by you and me, not communists or Mexicans or anybody else, right?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But the boy blamed the conspiracy for his father's death?\\\" Brogan asked.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"He sure did,\\\" the sheriff said. \\\"But the truth is it was Beau himself who did for the old man. I figure old Dutch could have faced just about anything, except his only boy had turned out to be a complete lunatic. A cruel, selfish, weird boy. That's why he swallowed the damn shotgun, if you want to know the truth.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So where did Beau go?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\n\\\"Montana,\\\" the sheriff said. That's what I heard. He was into all those right-wing groups, you know, the militias. Built himself up to leader. Said the white man was going to have to stand and fight.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And those other guys went with him?\\\" Brogan asked.\\n\\nThe three of them for sure,\\\" the sheriff said. This big guy, I never saw before. But Little Stevie and Loder and Peter Bell, they were all in awe of Beau, like little robots. They all went up there together.\\n\\nThey had a little cash, and they stripped the Borken place of anything they could carry, and they headed north. Figured to buy some cheap land up there and defend themselves, you know, although against who I can't say, because the way I hear it there ain't nobody up there, and if there is they're all white people anyway.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What's in his file?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThe sheriff shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Just about nothing,\\\" he said. \\\"Beau's way too smart to get caught doing anything bad.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But?\\\" McGrath said. \\\"He's doing stuff without getting caught?\\\"\\n\\nThe sheriff nodded.\\n\\nThat armored car robbery?\\\"he said.\\\" North of the state somewhere? I heard about that. Didn't stick to him, did it? I told you, way too smart.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Anything else we should know?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Webster asked.\\n\\nThe sheriff thought fora while and nodded again.\\n\\nThere was a fifth guy,\\\"he said.\\\" Name of Odell Fowler. He'll turn up alongside of Beau, for sure. You can bet on that. Loder and Stevie and Bell get sent outdoing mischief, you can be damn sure Borken and Fowler are sitting therein the shadows pulling their strings.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Anything else?\\\" Webster said again.\\n\\n\\\"Originally there was a sixth guy,\\\" the sheriff said. \\\"Guy named Packer. Six of them, all thick as thieves. But Packer took up with a Mexican girl. Couldn't help himself, I guess, just plain fell in love with her. Beau told him to stop seeing her. They fell out about it, a lot of tension going on. One day Packer's not around anymore, and Beau is all smiling and relaxed. We found Packer out in the scrub, nailed to a big wooden cross. Crucified. Dead fora couple of days.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And you figure Borken did it?\\\" Brogan asked.\\n\\n\\\"Couldn't prove it,\\\" the sheriff replied. \\\"But I'm sure of it. And I'm sure he talked the others into helping him do it. He's a born leader. He can talk anybody into doing anything, I can promise you that.\\\"\\n\\nKendall back to Mojave was fifty miles by car. Mojave to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado was another eight hundred and thirty miles by Lear. Three hours of travel, door to door, which put them down at Peterson through the gorgeous mountain dawn. It was the kind of sight people pay money to see, but the four FBI men took no notice at all.\\n\\nThursday July third, the fourth day of the crisis, and no proper rest and no proper nutrition had left them ragged and focused on nothing except the job in hand.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"General Johnson himself was not available to meet them. He was elsewhere on the giant base, on duty glad-handing the returning night patrols. His aide saluted Webster, shook hands with the other three, and walked them allover to a crew room reserved for their use. There was a huge photograph on the table, black-and-white, crisply focused.\\n\\nSome kind of a landscape. It looked like the surface of the moon.\\n\\nThat's Anadyr, in Siberia,\\\"the aide said.\\\" Satellite photograph. Last week, there was a big airbase there. A nuclear bomber base. The runway was aimed straight at our missile silos in Utah. Arms reduction treaty required it to be blown up. The Russians complied last week.\\\"\\n\\nThe four agents bent for another look. There was no trace of any man-made structure in the picture. Just savage craters.\\n\\n\\\"Complied?\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Looks like they did an enthusiastic job of work.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So?\\\" Webster said.\\n\\nThe aide pulled a map from the portfolio. Unfolded it and stepped around so that the agents could share his view. It was a slice of the world, eastern Asia and the western United States, with the mass of Alaska right in the center and the North Pole right at the top. The aide stretched his thumb and finger apart and spanned the distance from Siberia southeast down to Utah.\\n\\n\\\"Anadyr was here,\\\" he said. \\\"Utah is here. Naturally we knew all about the bomber base, and we had countermeasures in place, which included big missile bases in Alaska, here, and then a chain of four small surface-to-air facilities strung out north to south all the way underneath Anadyr's flightpath into Utah, which are here, here, here and here, straddling the line between Montana and the Idaho panhandle.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The agents ignored the red dots in Idaho. But they looked closely at the locations in Montana.\\n\\n\\\"What sort of bases are these?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThe aide shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"They were kind of temporary,\\\" he said. \\\" Thrown together in the sixties, just sort of survived ever since. Frankly, we didn't expect to have to use them. The Alaska missiles were more than adequate.\\n\\nNothing would have gotten past them. But you know how it was, right?\\n\\nCouldn't be too ready.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What sort of weapons?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nThere was a Patriot battery at each facility,\\\"the aide said.\\\" We pulled those out awhile back. Sold them to Israel. All that's left is Stingers, you know, shoulder-launch infantry systems.\\\"\\n\\nWebster looked at the guy.\\n\\n\\\"Stingers?\\\" he said. \\\"You were going to shoot Soviet bombers down with infantry systems?\\\"\\n\\nThe aide nodded. Looked definite about it.\\n\\n\\\"Why not?\\\" he said. \\\"Don't forget, those bases were basically window-dressing. Nothing was supposed to get past Alaska. But the Stingers would have worked. We supplied thousands of them to Afghanistan. They knocked down hundreds of Soviet planes. Mostly helicopters, I guess, but the principle is good. A heat-seeker is a heat-seeker, right? Makes no difference if it gets launched off a truck or off a GI's shoulder.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So what happens now?\\\" Webster asked him.\\n\\n\\\"We're closing the bases down,\\\" the guy said. \\\"That's why the general is here, gentlemen. We're pulling the equipment and the personnel back hereto Peterson, and there's going to be some ceremonies, you know, end-of-an-era stuff.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Where are these bases?\\\" McGrath asked. \\\" The Montana ones?\\n\\nExactly?\\\"\\n\\nThe aide pulled the map closer and checked the references.\\n\\n\\\"Southernmost one is hidden on some farmland near Missoula,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Northern one is hidden in a valley, about forty miles south of Canada, near a little place called Yorke. Why? Is there a problem?\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"We don't know yet,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThe aide showed them whereto get breakfast and left them to wait for the general. Johnson arrived after the eggs but before the toast, so they left the toast uneaten and walked back together to the crew room.\\n\\nJohnson looked a lot different from the glossy guy Webster had met with Monday evening. The early hour and three days' strain made him look twenty pounds thinner and twenty years older. His face was pale and his eyes were red. He looked like a man on the verge of defeat.\\n\\n\\\"So what do we know?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"We think we know most of it,\\\" Webster answered. \\\"Right now our operational assumption is your daughter's been kidnaped by a militia group from Montana. We know their location, more or less. Somewhere in the northwestern valleys.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson nodded slowly.\\n\\n\\\"Any communication?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nWebster shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Not yet,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"So what's the reason?\\\" Johnson asked. \\\"What do they want?\\\"\\n\\nWebster shook his head again.\\n\\n\\\"We don't know that yet,\\\" he said.\\n\\nJohnson nodded again, vaguely.\\n\\n\\\"Who are they?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nMcGrath opened the envelope he was carrying.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We've got four names,\\\" he said. \\\"Three of the snatch squad, and there's pretty firm evidence about who the militia leader is. A guy named Beau Borken. That name mean anything to you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Borken?\\\" Johnson said. He shook his head. That name means nothing.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"What about this guy? His name's Peter Bell.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrafti passed Johnson the computer print of Bell at the wheel in the Lexus. Johnson took along look at it and shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"He's dead,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Didn't make it back to Montana.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Good,\\\" Johnson said.\\n\\nMcGrath passed him another picture.\\n\\n\\\"Steven Stewart?\\\" he said.\\n\\nJohnson paid the print some attention, but ended up shaking his head.\\n\\n\\\"Never saw this guy before,\\\" he said.\\n\\nTony Loder?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nJohnson stared at Loder's face and shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThose three and Borken are all from California,\\\"McGrath said. There maybe another guy called Odell Fowler. You heard that name?\\\"\\n\\nJohnson shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"And there's this guy,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"We don't know who he is.\\\"\\n\\nHe passed over the photograph of the big guy. Johnson glanced at it, then glanced away. But then his gaze drifted back.\\n\\n\\\"You know this one?\\\" McGrath asked him.\\n\\nJohnson shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"He's vaguely familiar,\\\" he said. \\\"Maybe somebody I once saw?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Recently?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nJohnson shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Not recently,\\\" he said. \\\"Probably along time ago.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Military?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\n\\\"Probably,\\\" Johnson said again. \\\"Most of the people I see are military.\\\"\\n\\nHis aide crowded his shoulder fora look.\\n\\n\\\"Means nothing tome,\\\" he said. \\\"But we should fax this to the Pentagon. If this guy is military maybe there'll be somebody somewhere who served with him.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Fax it to the military police,\\\" he said. This guy's a criminal, right? Chances are he was in trouble before, in the service. Somebody there will remember him.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"THEY CAME FOR HIM AN HOUR AFTER DAWN. HE WAS DOZING ON his hard chair, hands cuffed in his lap, Joseph Ray awake and alert opposite him. He had spent most of the night thinking about dynamite. Old dynamite, leftover from abandoned mining operations. He imagined hefting a stick in his hand. Feeling the weight. Figuring the volume of the cavity behind Holly's walls. Picturing it packed with old dynamite.\\n\\nOld dynamite, rotting, the nitroglycerin sweating out, going unstable.\\n\\nMaybe a ton of unstable old dynamite packed in all around her, still not so far gone it would explode with random movement, but gone bad enough it would explode under the impact of astray artillery shell. Ora stray bullet. Or even a sharp blow with a hammer.\\n\\nThen there was a rattle of feet on shale as a detachment of men halted outside the hut. The door was flung open and Reacher turned his head and saw six guards. The point man clattered inside and hauled him up by the arm. He was dragged outside into the bright morning sun to face five men, line abreast, automatic rifles at the slope. Camouflage fatigues, beards. He stood and squinted in the light. The rifle muzzles jerked him into rough formation and the six men marched him across the diameter of the clearing to a narrow path running away from the sun into the forest.\\n\\nFifty yards in there was another clearing. A rough scrubby rectangle, small in area. Two plywood and cedar structures. Neither had any windows. The guards halted him and the point man used his rifle barrel to indicate the left-hand building.\\n\\n\\\"Command hut,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThen he pointed to the right.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Punishment hut,\\\" he said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We try to avoid that one.\\\"\\n\\nThe six men laughed with the secure confidence of an elite detachment and the point man knocked on the command hut door. Paused a beat and opened it. Reacher was shoved inside with a rifle muzzle in the small of his back.\\n\\nThe hut was blazing with light. Electric bulbs added to green daylight from mossy skylights set into the roof. There was a plain oak desk and matching chairs, big old round things like Reacher had seen in old movies about newspaper offices or country banks. There was no decor except flags and banners nailed to the walls. There was a huge red swastika behind the desk, and several similar black-and-white motifs on the other walls. There was a detailed map of Montana pinned to aboard on the back wall. A tiny portion of the northwest corner of the state was outlined in black. There were bundles of pamphlets and manuals stacked on the bare floor. One was titled: Dry It, You'll Like It. It claimed to show how food could be preserved to withstand a siege.\\n\\nAnother claimed to show how guerillas could derail passenger trains.\\n\\nThere was a polished mahogany bookcase, incongruously fine, packed with books. The bar of daylight from the door fell across them and illuminated their cloth spines and gold-blocked titles. They were standard histories of the art of war, translations from German and Japanese. There was a whole shelf with texts about Pearl Harbor. Texts that Reacher himself had studied, elsewhere and along time ago.\\n\\nHe stood still. Borken was behind the desk. His hair gleamed white in the light. The black uniform showed up gray. Borken was just staring silently at him. Then he waved him to a chair. Motioned the guards to wait outside.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher sat heavily.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Fatigue was gnawing at him and adrenalin was burning his stomach. The guards tramped across the floor and stepped outside. They closed the door quietly. Borken moved his arm and rolled open a drawer. Took out an ancient handgun. Laid it on the desktop with aloud clatter.\\n\\n\\\"I made my decision,\\\" he said. \\\"About whether you live or die.\\\"\\n\\nThen he pointed at the old revolver lying on the desk.\\n\\n\\\"You know what this is?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nReacher glanced at it through the glare and nodded.\\n\\n\\\"It's a Marshal Colt,\\\" he said.\\n\\nBorken nodded.\\n\\n\\\"You bet your ass it is,\\\" he said. \\\"It's an original 1873 Marshal Colt, just like the US cavalry were given. It's my personal weapon.\\\"\\n\\nHe picked it up, right-handed, and hefted it.\\n\\n\\\"You know what it fires?\\\" he said.\\n\\nReacher nodded again.\\n\\n\\\"Forty-fives,\\\" he said. \\\"Six shots.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Right first time,\\\" Borken said. \\\"Six forty-fives, nine hundred feet per second out of a seven and a half inch barrel. You know what those bullets could do to you?\\\"\\n\\nReacher shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Depends if they hit me or not,\\\" he said.\\n\\nBorken looked blank. Then he grinned. His wet mouth curled upward and his tight cheeks nearly forced his eyes shut.\\n\\nThey'd hit you,\\\"he said.\\\" If I'm firing, they'd hit you.\\\"\\n\\nReacher shrugged again.\\n\\n\\\"From there, maybe,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"From anywhere,\\\" Borken said. \\\"From here, from fifty feet, from fifty yards, if I'm firing, they'd hit you.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Holdup your right hand,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nBorken looked blank again. Then he put the gun down and held up his huge white hand like he was waving to a vague acquaintance or taking an oath.\\n\\n\\\"Bullshit,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"Bullshit?\\\" Borken repeated.\\n\\n\\\"For sure,\\\" Reacher said. That gun's reasonably accurate, but it's not the best weapon in the world. To hit a man at fifty yards with it, you'd need to practice like crazy. And you haven't been.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I haven't?\\\" Borken said.\\n\\n\\\"No, you haven't,\\\" Reacher said. \\\" Look at the damn thing. It was designed in the 1870s, right? You seen old photographs? People were much smaller. Scrappy little guys, just immigrated from Europe, been starving for generations. Small people, small hands. Look at the stock on that thing. Tight curve, way too small for you. Yougrab that thing, your hand looks like a bunch of bananas around it. And that stock is hundred-and-twenty-year-old walnut. Hard as a rock. The back of the stock and the end of the frame below the hammer would be pounding you with the recoil. You used that gun a lot, you'd have a pad of callus between your thumb and forefinger I could see from here.\\n\\nBut you haven't, so don't tell me you've been practicing with it, and don't tell me you can be a marksman without practicing with it.\\\"\\n\\nBorken looked hard at him. Then he smiled again. His wet lips parted and his eyes closed into slits. He rolled open the opposite drawer and lifted out another handgun. It was a Sig-Sauer 9mm. Maybe five years old. Well used, but well maintained. A big boxy grip fora big hand.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I lied,\\\" he said. This is my personal weapon. And now I know something. I know my decision was the right one.\\\"\\n\\nHe paused so Reacher could ask him about his decision. Reacher stayed silent. Clamped his lips. He wasn't about to ask him about anything, not even if it would be the last sentence he would ever live to say.\\n\\n\\\"We're serious here, you know,\\\" Borken said to him. \\\" Totally serious.\\n\\nWe're not playing games. And we're correct about what's going on.\\\"\\n\\nHe paused again, so Reacher could ask him what was going on. Reacher said nothing. Just sat and stared into space.\\n\\n\\\"America has got a despotic government,\\\" Borken said. \\\"A dictatorship, controlled from abroad by our enemies. Our current president is a member of a world government which controls our lives in secret. His federal system is a smokescreen for total control. They're planning to disarm us and enslave us. It's started already. Let's be totally clear about that.\\\"\\n\\nHe paused. Picked up the old revolver again. Reacher saw him checking the fit of the stock in his hand. Felt the charisma radiating out of him. Felt compelled to listen to the soft, hypnotic voice.\\n\\nTwo main methods,\\\"Borken said. The first is the attempt to disarm the civilian population. The second amendment guarantees our right to bear arms, but they're going to abolish that. The gun laws, all this beefing about crime, homicides, drug wars, it's all aimed at disarming people like us. And when we're disarmed, they can do what they like with us, right? That's why it was in the Constitution in the first place. Those old guys were smart. They knew the only thing that could control a government was the people's willingness and ability to shoot them down.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Borken paused again. Reacher stared up at the swastika behind his head.\\n\\n\\\"Second method is the squeeze on small business,\\\" Borken said. \\\"This is a personal theory of mine. You don't hear it much around the Movement. But I spotted it. It puts me way ahead of the others in my understanding.\\\"\\n\\nBorken waited, but Reacher still stayed silent. Looking away.\\n\\n\\\"It's obvious, right?\\\" Borken said to him. \\\"World government is basically a communistic type of government. They don't want a strong small-business sector. But that's what America had. Millions of people, all working hard for themselves and making a living. Too many just to murder out of hand, when the time comes. So the numbers have to be reduced in advance. So the federal government was instructed to squeeze the small businessman. They put on all kinds of regulations, all kinds of laws and taxes, they rig the markets, they bring the small guy to his knees, then they order the banks to come sniffing round with attractive loans, and as soon as the ink is dry on the loan papers they jack up the interest, and rig the market some more, until the poor guy defaults. Then they takeaway his business, and so that's one less for the gas ovens when the time comes.\\\"\\n\\nReacher glanced at him. Said nothing.\\n\\n\\\"Believe it,\\\" Borken said. \\\"It's like they're solving a corpse-disposal problem in advance. Get rid of the middle class now, they don't need so many concentration camps later.\\\"\\n\\nReacher was just staring at Borken's eyes. Like looking at a bright light. The fat red lips were smiling an indulgent smile.\\n\\n\\\"I told you, we're way ahead of the others,\\\" he said. \\\"We've seen it coming. What else is the Federal Reserve for? That's the key to this whole thing. America was basically a nation founded on business, right? Control business, you control everything. How do you control business? You control the banks. How do you control the banks? You setup a bullshit Federal Reserve system. You tell the banks what to do. That's the key. The world government controls everything, through the Fed. I've seen it happen.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"His eyes were open wide. Shining with no color.\\n\\n\\\"I saw them do it to my own father,\\\" he screamed. \\\"May his poor soul rest in peace. The Fed bankrupted him.\\\"\\n\\nReacher tore his gaze away. Shrugged at the corner of the room. Said nothing. He started trying to recall the sequence of titles in Borken's fine mahogany bookcase. Warfare from ancient China through Renaissance Italy through Pearl Harbor. He concentrated on naming the titles to himself, left to right, trying to resist the glare of Borken's attention.\\n\\n\\\"We're serious here,\\\" Borken was saying again. \\\"You may look at me and think I'm some kind of a despot, or a cult leader, or whatever the world would want to label me. But I'm not. I'm a good leader, I won't deny that. Even an inspired leader. Call me intelligent and perceptive, I won't argue with you. But I don't need to be. My people don't need any encouraging. They don't need much leading. They need guidance, and they need discipline, but don't let that fool you. I'm not coercing anybody. Don't make the mistake of underestimating their will. Don't ignore their desire fora change for the better.\\\"\\n\\nReacher was silent. He was still concentrating on the books, skimming in his mind through the events of December 1941, as seen from the Japanese point of view.\\n\\n\\\"We're not criminals here, you know,\\\" Borken was saying. \\\"When a government turns bad, it's the very best people who stand up against it. Or do you think we should all just act like sheep?\\\"\\n\\nReacher risked another glance at him. Risked speaking.\\n\\n\\\"You're pretty selective,\\\" he said. \\\"About who's here and who's not.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Borken shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Like unto like,\\\" he said. That's nature's way, isn't it? Black people have got the whole of Africa. White people have got this place.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What about Jewish dentists?\\\" Reacher asked. \\\"What place have they got?\\\"\\n\\nBorken shrugged again.\\n\\nThat was an operational error,\\\"he said.\\\" Loder should have waited until he was clear. But mistakes happen.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Should have waited until I was clear, too,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nBorken nodded.\\n\\n\\\"I agree with you,\\\" he said. \\\"It would have been better for you that way. But they didn't, and so here you are among us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Just because I'm white?\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"Don't knock it,\\\" Borken replied. \\\"White people got precious few rights left.\\\"\\n\\nReacher stared at him. Stared around the bright, hate-filled room.\\n\\nShuddered.\\n\\n\\\"I've made a study of tyranny,\\\" Borken said. \\\" And how to combat it.\\n\\nThe first rule is you make a firm decision, to live free or die, and you mean it. Live free or die. The second rule is you don't act like a sheep. You stand up and you resist them. You study their system and you learn to hate it. And then you act. But how do you act? The brave man fights back. He retaliates, right?\\\"\\n\\nReacher shrugged. Said nothing.\\n\\n\\\"The brave man retaliates,\\\" Borken repeated. \\\" But the man who is both brave and clever acts differently. He retaliates first. In advance.\\n\\nHe strikes the first blows. He gives them what they don't expect, when and where they don't expect it. That's what we're doing here. We're retaliating first. It's their war, but we're going to strike the first blows. We're going to give them what they don't expect. We're going to upset their plans.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher glanced back at the bookcase. Five thousand classic pages, all saying the same thing: don't do what they expect you to do.\\n\\n\\\"Go look at the map,\\\" Borken said.\\n\\nReacher thrust his cuffed hands forward and lifted himself awkwardly out of the chair. Walked over to the map of Montana on the wall. He found Yorke in the top left-hand corner. Well inside the small black outline. He checked the scale and looked at the contour shading and the colors. The river Joseph Ray had talked about lay thirty miles to the west, on the other side of high mountains. It was a thick blue slash running down the map. There were enormous brown heights shown to the north, all the way up to Canada. The only road ran north through Yorke and terminated at some abandoned mine workings. A few haphazard tracks ran through solid forest to the east. To the south, contour lines merged together to show a tremendous east-west ravine.\\n\\n\\\"Look at that terrain, Reacher,\\\" Borken said quietly. \\\"What does it' tell you?\\\"\\n\\nReacher looked at it. It told him he couldn't get out. Not on foot, not with Holly. There were weeks of rough walking east and north.\\n\\nNatural barriers west and south. The terrain made a better prison than wire fences or minefields could have. He had once been in Siberia, after glasnost, following upon ancient stories about Korean MIAs. The gulags had been completely open. No wire, no barriers. He had asked his hosts: but where are the fences? The Russians had pointed out over the miles of snow and said: there are the fences. Nowhere to run. He looked up at the map again. The terrain was the barrier. To get out was going to require a vehicle. And a lot of luck.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They can't get in,\\\"Borken said.\\\" We're impregnable. We can't be stopped. And we mustn't be stopped. That would be a disaster of truly historic proportions. Suppose the Redcoats had stopped the American Revolution in 1776?\\\"\\n\\nReacher glanced around the tiny wooden room and shuddered.\\n\\nThis isn't the American Revolution,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Isn't it?\\\" Borken asked. \\\"How is it different? They wanted freedom from a tyrannical government. So do we.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're murderers,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"So were they in 1776,\\\" Borken said. They killed people. The established system called that murder, too.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're racists,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"Same in 1776,\\\" Borken said. \\\" Jefferson and his slaves? They knew black people were inferior. Back then, they were exactly the same as we are now. But then they became the new redcoats. Slowly, over the years. It's fallen to us to get back to how it should have stayed.\\n\\nLive free or die, Reacher. It's a noble aim. Always has been, don't you think?\\\"\\n\\nHe was leaning forward with his great bulk pressing tight against the desk. His hands were in the air. His colorless eyes were shining.\\n\\n\\\"But there were mistakes made in 1776,\\\" he said. \\\" I've studied the history. War could have been avoided if both sides had acted sensibly.\\n\\nAnd war should always be avoided, don't you think?\\\"\\n\\nReacher shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Not necessarily,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Well, you're going to help us avoid it,\\\" Borken said. That's my decision. You're going to be my emissary.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Your what?\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"You're independent,\\\" Borken said. \\\" Not one of us. No ax to grind. An American like them, an upstanding citizen, no felony icu convictions.\\n\\nA clever, perceptive man. You notice things. They'll listen to you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Readier said again.\\n\\n\\\"We're organized here,\\\" Borken said. \\\"We're ready for nationhood. You need to understand that. We have an army, we have a treasury, we have financial reserves, we have a legal system, we have democracy. I'm going to show all that to you today. I'm going to show you a society ready for independence, ready to live free or die, and just a day away from doing so. Then I'm going to send you south to America. You're going to tell them our position is strong and their position is hopeless.\\\"\\n\\nReacher just stared at him.\\n\\n\\\"And you can tell them about Holly,\\\" Borken said quietly. \\\"In her special little room. You can tell them about my secret weapon. My insurance policy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're crazy,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nThe hut went silent. Quieter than silent.\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" Borken whispered. \\\"Why am I crazy? Exactly?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're not thinking straight,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Don't you realize that Holly counts for nothing? The president will replace Johnson faster than you can blink an eye. They'll crush you like a bug and Holly will be just another casualty. You should send her back outwith me.\\\"\\n\\nBorken was shaking his bloated head, happily, confidently.\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" he said. \\\"That won't happen. There's more to Holly than who her father is. Hasn't she told you that?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher stared at him and Borken checked his watch.\\n\\n\\\"Time to go,\\\" he said. \\\"Time for you to see our legal system at work.\\\"\\n\\nHolly heard the quiet footsteps outside her door and eased off the bed.\\n\\nThe lock clicked back and the young soldier with the scarred forehead stepped up into the room. He had his finger to his lips and Holly nodded. She limped to the bathroom and set the shower running noisily into the empty tub. The young soldier followed her in and closed the door.\\n\\n\\\"We can only do this once a day,\\\" Holly whispered. \\\"They'll get suspicious if they hear the shower too often.\\\"\\n\\nThe young guy nodded.\\n\\n\\\"We'll get out tonight,\\\" he said. \\\"Can't do it this morning. We're all on duty at Loder's trial. I'll come by just after dusk, with a jeep. We'll make a run for it in the dark. Head south. Risky, but we'll make it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not without Readier,\\\" Holly said.\\n\\nThe young guy shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Can't promise that,\\\" he said. \\\"He's in with Borken now. God knows what's going to happen to him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I go, he goes,\\\" Holly said.\\n\\nThe young guy looked at her, nervously.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said. \\\"I'll try.\\\"\\n\\nHe opened the bathroom door and crept out. Holly watched him go and turned the shower off. Stared after him.\\n\\nHe looped north and west and took along route back through the woods, same way as he had come. The sentry Fowler had hidden in the trees fifteen feet off the main path never saw him. But the one he had hidden in the backwoods did. He caught a glimpse of a camouflage uniform hustling through the undergrowth. Spun around fast, but was too late to make the face. He shrugged and thought hard. Figured he'd keep it to himself. Better to ignore it than report he'd failed to make the actual ID.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"So the young man with the scar hurried all the way and was back in his hut two minutes before he was due to escort his commander down to the tribunal hearing.\\n\\nIn the daylight, the courthouse on the southeast corner of the abandoned town of Yorke looked pretty much the same as a hundred others Reacher had seen allover rural America. Built early in the century.\\n\\nBig, white, pillared, ornate. Enough square solidity to communicate its serious purpose, but enough lightness in its details to make it a handsome structure. He saw a fine cupola floating off the top of the building, with a fine clock in it, probably paid for by a public subscription held long ago among along-forgotten generation. More or less the same as a hundred others, but the roof was steeper-pitched than some, and heavier built. He guessed it had to be that way in the north of Montana. That roof could be carrying a hundred tons of snow all winter long. But this was the third morning of July, and there was no snow on the roof. Reacher was warm after walking a mile in the pale northern sun. Borken had gone ahead separately and Reacher had been marched down through the forest by the same six elite guards. Still in handcuffs. They marched him straight up the front steps and inside.\\n\\nThe first-floor interior was one large space, interrupted by pillars holding up the second floor, paneled in broad smooth planks sawed from huge pines. The wood was dark from age and polish, and the panels were stern and simple in their design.\\n\\nEvery seat was taken. Every bench was full. The room was a sea of camouflage green. Men and women. Sitting rigidly upright, rifles exactly vertical between their knees. Waiting expectantly. Some children, silent and confused. Reacher was led in front of the crowd, over to a table in the well of the court. Fowler was waiting there.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Stevie next to him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He nodded to a chair. Reacher sat. The guards stood behind him. A minute later, the double doors opened and Beau Borken walked over to the judge's bench. The old floor creaked beneath his bulk. Every person in the room except Reacher stood up. Stood to attention and saluted, as if they were hearing an inaudible cue. Borken was still in his black uniform, with belt and boots. He had added a large holster to hold his Sig-Sauer. He held a slim leather-bound book. He came in with six armed men in a loose formation. They took up station in front of the bench and stood at rigid attention, gazing forward, looking blank.\\n\\nThe people sat down again. Reacher glanced up at the ceiling and quartered it with his eyes. Worked out which was the southeast corner.\\n\\nThe doors opened again and the crowd drew breath. Loder was pushed into the room. He was surrounded by six guards. They pushed him to the table opposite Fowler's. The accused's table. The guards stood behind him and forced him into the chair with their hands on both his shoulders. His face was white with fear and crusted with blood. His nose was broken and his lips were split. Borken stared across at him.\\n\\nSat down heavily in the judge's chair and placed his big hands, palms down, on the bench. Looked around the quiet room and spoke.\\n\\n\\\"We all know why we're here,\\\" he said.\\n\\nHolly could sense there was a big crowd in the room below her. She could feel the faint rumble of a body of people holding themselves still and quiet. But she didn't stop working. No reason to believe her Bureau contact would fail, but she was still going to spend the day preparing. Justin case.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Her search fora tool had led her to the one she had brought in with her. Her metal crutch. It was a one-inch aluminum tube, with an elbow clip and a handle. The tube was too wide and the metal was too soft to act as a pry-bar. But she realized that maybe if she pulled the rubber foot off, the open end of the tube could be molded into a makeshift wrench. She could maybe crush the tube around the shape of the bolts holding the bed together. Then she could bend the tube at aright angle, and maybe use the whole thing like a flimsy tire iron.\\n\\nBut first she had to scrape away the thick paint on the bolts. It was smooth and slick, and it welded the bolts to the frame. She used the edge of the elbow clip to flake the top layers. Then she scraped at the seams until she saw bright metal. Now her idea was to limp back and forth from the bathroom with a towel soaked in hot water. She would press the towel hard on the bolts and let the heat from the water expand the metal and crack its grip. Then the soft aluminum of the crutch might just prove strong enough to do the job.\\n\\n\\\"Reckless endangerment of the mission,\\\" Beau Borken said.\\n\\nHis voice was low and hypnotic. The room was quiet. The guards in front of the judge's bench stared forward. The guard at the end was staring at Reacher. He was the younger guy with the trimmed beard and the scar on his forehead Reacher had seen guarding Loder the previous night. He was staring at Reacher with curiosity.\\n\\nBorken held up the slim leather-bound volume and swung it slowly, left to right, like it was a searchlight and he wanted to bathe the whole of the room with its bright beam.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The Constitution of the United States,\\\"he said.\\\" Sadly abused, but the greatest political tract ever devised by man. The model for our own constitution.\\\"\\n\\nHe turned the pages of the book. The rustle of stiff paper was loud in the quiet room. He started reading.\\n\\nThe Bill of Rights,\\\"he said. The fifth amendment specifies no person shall beheld to answer fora capital crime without a grand jury indictment except in cases arising in the militia in times of public danger. It says no person shall be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law. The sixth amendment specifies the accused shall have the right to a speedy public trial in front of a local jury. It says the accused has the right to assistance of counsel.\\\"\\n\\nBorken stopped again. Looked around the room. Held up the book.\\n\\nThis book tells us what to do,\\\"he said.\\\" So we need a jury. Doesn't say how many. I figure three men will do. Volunteers?\\\"\\n\\nThere was a flurry of hands. Borken pointed randomly here and there and three men walked across the pine floor. They stacked their rifles and filed into the jury box. Borken turned in his seat and spoke to them.\\n\\n\\\"Gentlemen,\\\" he said. \\\"This is a militia matter and this is a time of public danger. Are we agreed on that?\\\"\\n\\nThe new jurymen all nodded and Borken turned and looked down from the bench toward Loder, alone at his table.\\n\\n\\\"You had counsel?\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"You offering me a lawyer now?\\\" Loder asked.\\n\\nHis voice was thick and nasal. Borken shook his head.\\n\\nThere are no lawyers here,\\\"he said.\\\" Lawyers are what went wrong with the rest of America. We're not going to have lawyers here. We don't want them. The Bill of Rights doesn't say anything about lawyers. It says counsel. Counsel means advice. That's what my dictionary says.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"You had advice? You want any?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You got any?\\\" Loder said.\\n\\nBorken nodded and smiled a cold smile.\\n\\n\\\"Plead guilty,\\\" he said.\\n\\nLoder just shook his head and dropped his eyes.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" Borken said. \\\"You've had counsel, but you're pleading not guilty?\\\"\\n\\nLoder nodded. Borken looked down at his book again. Turned back to the beginning.\\n\\nThe Declaration of Independence,\\\"he said.\\\" It is the right of the people to alter or to abolish the old government and to institute new government in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.\\\"\\n\\nHe stopped and scanned the crowd.\\n\\n\\\"You all understand what that means?\\\" he said. The old laws are gone.\\n\\nNow we have new laws. New ways of doing things. We're putting right two hundred years of mistakes. We're going back to where we should have been all along. This is the first trial under a brand-new system. A better system. A system with afar stronger claim to legitimacy. We have the right to do it, and what we are doing is right.\\\"\\n\\nThere was a slight murmur from the crowd. Reacher detected no disapproval in the sound. They were all hypnotized. Basking in Borken's bright glow like reptiles in a hot noontime sun. Borken nodded to Fowler. Fowler stood up next to Reacher and turned to the jury box.\\n\\n\\\"The facts are these,\\\" Fowler said. The commander sent Loder out on a mission of great importance for all our futures. Loder performed badly. He was gone for just five days, but he made five serious mistakes. Mistakes which could have wrecked the whole venture.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Specifically, he left a trail by burning two vehicles. Then he mistimed two operations and thereby snarled up two civilians. And finally he allowed Peter Bell to desert. Five serious mistakes.\\\"\\n\\nFowler stood there. Reacher stared at him, urgently.\\n\\n\\\"I'm calling a witness,\\\" Fowler said. \\\"Stevie Stewart.\\\"\\n\\nLittle Stevie stood up fast and Fowler nodded him across to the old witness box, alongside and below the judge's bench. Borken leaned down and handed him a black book. Reacher couldn't see what book it was, but it wasn't a Bible. Not unless they had started making Bibles with swastikas on the cover.\\n\\n\\\"You swear to tell the truth here?\\\" Borken asked.\\n\\nStevie nodded.\\n\\n\\\"I do, sir,\\\" he said.\\n\\nHe put the book down and turned to Fowler, ready for the first question.\\n\\n\\\"The five mistakes I mentioned?\\\" Fowler said. \\\"You see Loder make them?\\\"\\n\\nStevie nodded again.\\n\\n\\\"He made them,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"He take responsibility for them?\\\" Fowler asked.\\n\\n\\\"Sure did,\\\" Stevie said. \\\"He played the big boss the whole time we were away.\\\"\\n\\nFowler nodded Stevie back to the table. The courtroom was silent.\\n\\nBorken smiled knowingly at the jurymen and glanced down at Loder.\\n\\n\\\"Anything to say in your defence?\\\" he asked quietly.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"' \\\"\\\" \\\"\\\" IS NAME IS JACK REACHER,\\\" WEBSTER SAID.\\n\\nII'Good call, General,\\\" McGrath said. \\\" I guess they rem em-. 1.\\n\\nAbered him.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Military police keeps good records,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThey were still in the commandeered crew room inside Peterson Air Force Base. Ten o'clock in the morning, Thursday July third. The fax machine was rolling out along reply to their inquiry. The face in the photograph had been identified immediately. The subject's service record had been pulled straight off the Pentagon computer and faxed along with the name.\\n\\n\\\"You recall this guy now?\\\" Brogan asked.\\n\\n\\\"Readier?\\\" Johnson repeated vaguely. \\\"I don't know. What did he do?\\\"\\n\\nWebster and the general's aide were crowding the machine, reading the report as the paper spooled out. They twisted it right side up and walked slowly away to keep it up off the floor.\\n\\n\\\"What did he do?\\\" McGrath asked them urgently.\\n\\n\\\"Nothing,\\\" Webster said.\\n\\n\\\"Nothing?\\\" McGrath repeated. \\\"Why would they have a record on him if he didn't do anything?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He was one of them,\\\" Webster said. \\\"Major Jack Reacher, military police.\\\"\\n\\nThe aide was racing through the length of paper.\\n\\n\\\"Silver Star,\\\" he said. Two Bronzes, Purple Heart. This is a hell of a record, sir. This guy was a hero, for God's sake.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath opened up his envelope and pulled out the original video pictures of the kidnap, black-and-white, un enlarged grainy. He selected the first picture of Reacher's involvement. The one catching him in the act of seizing Holly's crutch and pulling the dry-cleaning from her grasp. He slid the photograph across the table.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":287,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Continue the story as the author's writing assistant.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 35"},{"from":"human","value":"They were leaning into the truck."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Their voices were muffled by the thick canvas siding.\n\n\"Does he need the missile as well?\" Fowler asked.\n\n\"Just the launcher,\" Borken answered. \"It's in the electronic part.\"\n\nReadier lay among the scuffling rats and heard the sound of the clips being undone. Then the squeak of the rubber as a launcher came out of its mountings. Then the rattle of the tailgate bolts ramming home. The footsteps receded. The flashlight beams flicked back toward the doors.\n\nThe hinges creaked and the bulky timber doors thumped shut. Reacher heard the launcher being laid gently on the shale and the gasps as the two men lifted the old log back into the brackets. The rattle of the chain and the click of the padlocks. The crunch of the footsteps crossing the shale.\n\nHe rolled away from the corpses and hit out at a rat. Caught it with an angry backhand and sent it squealing off into the dark. He sat up and waited. Walked slowly to the door. Listened hard. Waited six minutes. Put his hands into the gap at the bottom of the doors and pulled them apart.\n\nThey wouldn't move more than an inch. He laid his palms flat on the smooth timbers and bunched up his shoulders and heaved. They were rock solid. Like trying to pushover a tree. He tried fora minute. He was straining like a weightlifter. The doors were jammed. Then he suddenly realized why. They had put the warped old log back in the brackets the other way around. The curve pointing in toward him, not out away from him. Clamping the doors with extra efficiency, instead of allowing the foot of loose movement it had allowed before."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He pictured the log as he had seen it. More than afoot thick, warped, but dried like iron. Curving away, it was no problem. Curving in, it would be immovable. He glanced at the army trucks. Gave it up. There was no space to hit the doors with any kind of momentum. The truck would be pressing on them with all the torque of a big diesel engine, but it wouldn't be enough. He couldn't imagine how much force it would take to shatter that old log.\n\nHe thought about using a missile. Gave it up. Too noisy and it wouldn't work anyway. They didn't arm themselves until they were thirty feet into the air. And they only carried six and a half pounds of explosive. Enough to smash a jet engine in flight, but six and a half pounds of explosive against those old timbers would be like scratching at them with a nail file He was trapped inside, and Holly was waiting.\n\nIt was not in his nature to panic. Never had been. He was a calm man, and his long training had made him calmer. He had been taught to assess and evaluate, and to use pure force of will to prevail. You're Jack Readier, he had been told. You can do anything. First his mother had told him, then his father, then the quiet deadly men in the training schools. And he had believed them.\n\nBut, at the same time, he hadn't believed them. Part of his mind always said: you've just been lucky. Always lucky. And, in the quiet times, he would sit and wait for his luck to run out. He sat on the stony ground with his back against the timbers of the door and asked himself: has it run out now?\n\nHe flicked the flashlight beam around the cavern. The rats were staying away from him. They were interested in the darkness in back."},{"from":"human","value":"They're deserting me, he thought."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Deserting the sinking ship. Then his mind clicked in again. No, they're interested in the tunnels, he thought. Because tunnels lead places. He remembered the giant mouse holes blasted into the rock face, north wall of the bowl. Maybe all interconnected by these narrow seams in back.\n\nHe ran back into the depth of the cavern, past the trucks, past the grotesque heap of corpses. Back to where he could no longer stand. A rat disappeared into the seam to his left. He dropped to his stomach and flicked the flashlight on. Crawled after it.\n\nHe crawled into a skeleton. He scrabbled with his feet and came face to face with a grinning skull. And another. There were four or five skeletons jammed into the excavated seam. Jumbled bones in a pile. He gasped in shock and backed off afoot. Looked carefully. Used the flashlight closeup.\n\nAll males. He could see that from the five pelvises. The skulls showed gunshot wounds. All in the temples. Neat entry wounds, neat exit holes. Jacketed high-velocity handgun bullets. Fairly recent, certainly within a year. The flesh hadn't decayed. It had been eaten off. He could seethe parallel scrape marks on the bones from rodent teeth.\n\nThe bones were all disturbed. The rats had hauled them away to eat.\n\nThere were scraps of clothing material here and there. Some of the ribcages were still covered. Rats don't disturb clothing much. Not on the torso. Why should they? They eat their way in through the inside.\n\nThe soft parts first. They come to the ribs from the back.\n\nThe clothing material was khaki and olive green. Some black and gray camouflage. Reacher saw a colored thread. Traced it back to a shoulder flash hidden under a gnawed shoulder blade. It was a curved felt badge embroidered in silk. It said: Northwestern Freemen. He pulled at the skeleton's jacket. The ribcage collapsed. The breast pocket had three chromium stars punched through."},{"from":"human","value":"Reacher made a thorough search, lying on his stomach, up to his armpits in bones."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He pieced together five separate uniforms. He found two more badges. One said: White Christian Identity. The other said:\n\nMontana Constitutional Militia. He lined up the five splintered skulls. Checked the teeth. He was looking at five men, middle-aged, maybe between forty and fifty. Five leaders. The leaders who had disappeared. The leaders who could not stand the pace. The leaders who had abandoned their members to Beau Borken.\n\nThe roof was too low for Reacher to climb over the bones. He had to push them aside and crawl through them. The rats showed no interest.\n\nThese bones were picked clean. Their new feast lay back inside the cavern. They swarmed back in that direction. He held the flashlight out in front of him and pushed on into the mountain against the squealing tide.\n\nHe lost his sense of direction. He hoped he was going roughly west, but he couldn't tell. The roof came down to a couple of feet. He was crawling through an old geological seam, excavated long ago for its ore. The roof came down even more. Down to afoot and a half. It was cold. The seam narrowed. His arms were out in front of him. The seam became too narrow to pull them back. He was crawling down a slim rock tube, a billion tons of mountain above him, no idea where he was going.\n\nAnd the flashlight was failing. The battery was spent. Its light was fading to a dull orange glow.\n\nHe was breathing hard. And shaking. Not from exertion. From dread.\n\nFrom terror. This was not what he had expected. He had visualized a stroll down a spacious abandoned gallery. Not this narrow crack in the rock. He was pushing himself head-first into his worst childhood nightmare. He was a guy who had survived most things, and he was a guy who was rarely afraid. But he had known since his early boyhood that he was terrified of being trapped in the dark in a space too small to turn his giant frame. All his damp childhood nightmares had been about being closed into tight spaces. He lay on his stomach and screwed his eyes shut. Lay and panted and gagged. Forced the air in and out through his clamping throat. Then he inched himself slowly onward into the nightmare."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The glow from the flashlight finally died a hundred yards into the tunnel. The darkness was total. The seam was narrowing. It was pushing his shoulders down. He was forcing himself into a space that was way too small for him. His face was forced sideways. He fought to stay calm. He remembered what he had said to Borken: people were smaller then. Scrappy little guys, migrating west, seeking their fortune in the bowels of the mountain. People half the size of Reacher, squirming along, maybe on their backs, chipping the bright veins out of the rock roof.\n\nHe was using the dead flashlight like a blind man uses a white cane. It smashed on solid rock two feet ahead of his face. He heard the tinkle of glass over the rasping of his breath. He struggled ahead and felt with his hands. A solid wall. The tunnel went no farther. He tried to move backward. He couldn't move at all. To push himself backward with his hands, he had to raise his chest to get leverage. But the roof was too low to let him do that. His shoulders were jammed up hard against it. He could get no leverage. His feet could push him forward, but they couldn't pull him backward. He went rigid with panic. His throat clamped solid. His head hit the roof and his cheek hit the grit floor. He fought a scream by breathing fast.\n\nHe had to go back. He hooked his toes into the grit. Turned his hands inward and planted his thumbs on the floor. Pulled with his toes and pushed with his thumbs. He moved backward a fraction and then the rock clamped hard against his sides. To slide his weight backward, his shoulder muscles were bunching and jamming against the rock. He breathed out and let his arms go limp. Pulled with his toes. They scrabbled uselessly in the grit. He helped them with his thumbs. His shoulders bunched and jammed again."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He jerked his hips from side to side. He had a couple of inches spare.\n\nHe smashed his hands into the shale and heaved backward. His body jammed solid, like a wedge in a door. He tilted sideways and banged his cheek on the roof. Jerked back down and caught his other cheek on the floor. The rock was crushing in on his ribs. This time, he couldn't fight the scream. He had to let it go. He opened his mouth and wailed in terror. The air in his lungs crushed his chest against the floor and his back against the roof.\n\nHe couldn't tell if his eyes were open or shut. He pushed forward with his feet and regained the inch he'd moved back. He stretched with his arms. Felt up ahead again. His shoulders were jammed so tight he couldn't move his hands through much of an angle. He spread his fingers and scrabbled them left and right, up and down. Solid rock ahead. Noway to go forward. Noway to move backward.\n\nHe was going to die trapped inside the mountain. He knew it. The rats knew it. They were sniffing up behind him. Coming closer. He felt them at his feet. He kicked out and sent them squealing away. But they came back. He felt their weight on his legs. They were swarming over him. They burrowed up around his shoulders. Slid under his armpits. He felt cold oily fur on his face as they forced their way past. The flick of their tails as they ran ahead.\n\nTo where? He let them run over his arm, to estimate their direction.\n\nThey were moving ahead of him, into the blind darkness. He felt with his hands. Felt them flowing left. Their passage was stirring the air. The air was cool. He felt it move, a faint breeze, on the sweat on the left side of his face. He jammed himself hard against the right hand wall and moved his left arm sideways, ahead of him. Felt for the left hand wall. It wasn't there. He was stuck at a junction in the tunnels. Anew seam ran at aright angle away from the end of the seam he was in. A tight, narrow right angle. Ninety degrees. He forced himself backward as far as his thumbs would push him. He scraped his face on the end wall and jammed his side into the rock. Folded himself arms first around the corner and dragged his legs behind him."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The new seam was no better. It was no wider. The roof was no higher.\n\nHe hauled himself along, gasping and sweating and shaking. He propelled himself with his toes, an inch at a time. The rats forced their way past him. The rock tore at his sides and his back. But there was still a slight breeze on his face. The tunnel was heading somewhere. He was gasping and panting. He crawled on. Then the new seam widened. Still very low. A flat, low crack in the rock. He crawled on through it, exhausted. Fifty yards. A hundred. Then he felt the roof soar away above him. He pushed on with his toes and suddenly he felt the air change and he was lying halfway into the motor-pool cavern. He realized his eyes were wide open and the white Econoline was right therein front of him in the dark.\n\nHe rolled onto his back and lay gasping on the grit. Gasping and shaking. Staggered to his feet and looked back. The seam was invisible. Hidden in the shadow. He made it as far as the white truck and collapsed against its side. The luminous figures on his watch showed he'd been in the tunnels nearly three hours. Most of the time jammed there sweating in panic. A three-hour screaming nightmare come to life. His pants and his jacket were shredded. Every muscle in his body was on fire. His face and hands and elbows and knees were bleeding. But it was the fear that had done it to him. The fear of not getting through. He could still feel the rock pressing down on his back and pressing upon his chest. He could feel it clamping inward on his ribs. He got up again and limped to the doors. Pushed them open and stood in the moonlight, arms out, eyes crazy, mouth open, breathing in lungfuls of the sweet night air."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He was halfway across the bowl before he started thinking straight. So he ran back and ducked into the motor pool once more. Found what he wanted. He found it on one of the jeep's tow hook assemblies. Some heavy stiff wire, ready to feed a trailer's electric circuits. He wrenched it out and stripped the insulation with his teeth. Ran back to the moonlight.\n\nHe kept close to the road, all the way back to Yorke. Two miles, twenty minutes at a slow agonizing jog through the trees. He looped around behind the ruined northeastern block and approached the courthouse from the rear. Circled it silently in the shadows. Waited and listened.\n\nHe tried to think like Borken. Complacent. Happy with his perimeter.\n\nConstant information from inside the FBI. Reacher locked into the punishment hut, Holly locked into her prison room. Would he post a sentry? Not tonight. Not when he was expecting heavy action tomorrow and beyond. He would want his people fresh. Readier nodded and gambled he was right.\n\nHe arrived at the courthouse steps. Deserted. He tried the door.\n\nLocked. He smiled. Nobody posts a sentry behind a locked door. He bent the wire into a shallow hook and felt for the mechanism. An old two-lever. Eight seconds. He stepped inside. Waited and listened.\n\nNothing. He went up the stairs.\n\nThe lock on Holly's door was new. But cheap. He worked quietly which delayed him. Took him more than thirty seconds before the last tumbler clicked back. He pulled the door open slowly and stepped onto the built-up floor. Glanced apprehensively at the walls. She was on a mattress on the floor. Fully dressed and ready. Awake and watching him. Huge eyes bright in the gloom. He gestured her outside. Turned and climbed down and waited in the corridor for her. She picked up her crutch and limped to the door. Climbed carefully down the step and stood next to him."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Hello, Readier,\" she whispered. \"How are you doing?\"\n\n\"I've felt better,\" he whispered back. Time to time.\"\n\nShe turned and glanced back into her room. He followed her gaze and saw the dark stain on the floor.\n\n\"Woman who brought me lunch,\" she whispered.\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"What with?\" he whispered back.\n\nTart of the bed frame,\" she said.\n\nHe saw the satisfaction on her face and smiled.\n\nThat should do it,\"he said, quietly.\" Bed frames are good for that.\"\n\nShe took a last look at the room and gently closed the door. Followed him through the dark and slowly down the stairs. Across the lobby and through the double doors and out into the bright silent moonlight.\n\n\"Christ,\" she said, urgently. \"What happened to you?\"\n\nHe glanced down and checked himself over in the light of the moon. He was gray from head to foot with dust and grit. His clothing was shredded. He was streaked with sweat and blood. Still shaky.\n\n\"Long story,\" he said. \"You got somebody in Chicago you can trust?\"\n\n\"McGrath,\" she said immediately. \"He's my agent-in-charge. Why?\"\n\nThey crossed the wide street arm-in-arm, looking left and right.\n\nSkirted the mound in front of the ruined office building. Found the path running northwest.\n\n\"You need to send him a fax,\" he said. They've got missiles. You need to warn him. Tonight, because their line is going to be cut first thing in the morning.\"\n\nThe mole tell them that?\" she asked.\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"How?\" she asked. \"How is he communicating?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Short-wave radio,\" Reacher said. \"Has to be. Anything else is traceable.\"\n\nHe swayed and leaned on a tree. Gave her the spread, everything, beginning to end.\n\n\"Shit,\" she said. \"Ground-to-air missiles? Mass suicide? A nightmare.\"\n\n\"Not our nightmare,\" he said. \"We're out of here.\"\n\n\"We should stay and help them,\" she said. The families.\"\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"Best help is for us to get out,\" he said. \"Maybe losing you will change their plan. And we can tell them about the layout around here.\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" she said.\n\n\"I do,\" he said. \" First rule is stick to priorities. That's you.\n\nWe're out of here.\"\n\nShe shrugged and nodded.\n\n\"Now?\" she asked.\n\n\"Right now,\" he said.\n\n\"How?\" she asked.\n\n\"Jeep through the forest,\" he said. \"I found their motor pool. We getup there, steal a jeep, by then it should be light enough to find our way through. I saw a map in Borken's office. There are plenty of tracks running east through the forest.\"\n\nShe nodded and he pushed off the tree. They hustled up the winding path to the Bastion. A mile, in the dark. They stumbled on the stones and saved their breath for walking. The clearing was dark and silent.\n\nThey worked their way around beyond the mess hall to the back of the communications hut. They came out one of the trees and Reacher stepped close and pressed his ear to the plywood siding. There was no sound inside.\n\nHe used the wire again and they were inside within ten seconds. Holly found paper and pen. Wrote her message. Dialed the Chicago fax number and fed the sheet into the machine. It whirred obediently and pulled the paper through. Fed it back out into her waiting hand. She hit the button for the confirmation. Didn't want to leave any trace behind."},{"from":"human","value":"Another sheet fed out."},{"from":"gpt","value":"It showed the destination number correct. Timed the message at ten minutes to five, Friday morning, the fourth of July.\n\nShe shredded both papers small and buried the pieces in the bottom of a trashcan.\n\nReacher rooted around on the long counter and found a paperclip.\n\nFollowed Holly back out into the moonlight and relocked the door.\n\nDodged around and found the cable leading down from the short-wave whip into the side of the hut. Took the paperclip and worried at it until it broke. Forced the broken end through the cable like a pin. Pushed it through until it was even, a fraction showing at each side. The metal would short-circuit the antenna by connecting the wire inside to the foil screen. The signal would comedown out of the ether, down the wire, leak into the foil and runaway to ground without ever reaching the short-wave unit itself. The best way to disable a radio. Smash one up, it gets repaired. This way, the fault is untraceable, until an exhausted technician finally thinks to check.\n\n\"We need weapons,\" Holly whispered to him.\n\nHe nodded. They crept together to the armory door. He looked at the lock. Gave it up. It was a huge thing. Unpickable.\n\n\"I'll take the Glock from the guy guarding me,\" he whispered.\n\nShe nodded. They ducked back into the trees and walked through to the next clearing. Reacher tried to think of a story to explain his appearance to Joseph Ray. Figured he might say something about being beamed over to the UN. Talk about how high-speed beaming can rip you up a little. They crept around behind the punishment hut and listened.\n\nAll quiet. They skirted the corner and Reacher pulled the door. Walked straight into a nine-millimeter. This time, it wasn't a Glock. It was a Sig-Sauer. Not Joseph Ray's. It was Beau Borken's. He was standing just inside the door with Little Stevie at his side, grinning."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"FOUR-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, WEBSTER WAS MORE THAN READY for the watch change. Johnson and Garber and the general's aide were dozing in their chairs. McGrath was outside with the telephone linemen. They were just finishing up. The job had taken much longer than they had anticipated. Some kind of interface problem. They had physically cut the phone line coming out of Yorke, and bent the stiff copper down to a temporary terminal box they had placed at the base of a pole. Then they had spooled cable from the terminal box down the road to the mobile command vehicle. Connected it into one of the communications ports.\n\nBut it didn't work. Not right away. The linemen had fussed with multimeters and muttered about impedances and capacitances. They had worked for three solid hours. They were ready to blame the army truck for the incompatibility when they thought to go back and check their own temporary terminal box. The fault lay there. A failed component.\n\nThey wired in a spare and the whole circuit worked perfectly. Four thirty-five in the morning, McGrath was shaking their hands and swearing them to silence when Webster came out of the trailer. The two men stood and watched them drive away. The noise of their truck died around the curve. Webster and McGrath stayed standing in the bright moonlight. They stood therefor five minutes while McGrath smoked.\n\nThey didn't speak. Just gazed north into the distance and wondered.\n\n\"Go wake your boys up,\" Webster said. \"We'll stand down fora spell.\"\n\nMcGrath nodded and walked down to the accommodation trailers. Roused Milosevic and Brogan. They were fully dressed on their bunks. They got up and yawned. Came down the ladder and found Webster standing therewith Johnson and his aide. Garber standing behind them."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The telephone line is done,\" Webster said.\n\n\"Already?\" Brogan said. \"I thought it was being done in the morning.\"\n\n\"We figured sooner was better than later,\" Webster said. He inclined his head toward General Johnson. It was a gesture which said: he's worried, right?\n\n\"OK,\" Milosevic said. \"We'll look after it.\"\n\n\"Wake us at eight,\" Webster said. \"Or earlier if necessary, OK?\"\n\nBrogan nodded and walked north to the command vehicle. Milosevic followed. They paused together fora look at the mountains in the moonlight. As they paused, the fax machine inside the empty command trailer started whirring. It fed its first communication face upward into the message tray. It was ten to five in the morning, Friday the fourth of July.\n\nBrogan woke General Johnson an hour and ten minutes later, six o'clock exactly. He knocked loudly on the accommodation trailer door and got no response, so he went in and shook the old guy by the shoulder.\n\nTeterson Air Force Base, sir,\"Brogan said. They need to talk to you.\"\n\nJohnson staggered up to the command vehicle in his shirt and pants.\n\nMilosevic joined Brogan outside in the pre-dawn glow to give him some privacy. Johnson was back out in five minutes.\n\n\"We need a conference,\" he called.\n\nHe ducked back into the trailer. Milosevic walked down and roused the others. They came forward, Webster and the general's aide yawning and stretching, Garber ramrod-straight. McGrath was dressed and smoking.\n\nMaybe hadn't tried to sleep at all. They filed up the ladder and took their places around the or n table, bleak red eyes, hair fuzzed on the back from the pillows."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Teterson called, \"Johnson told them.\" They're sending a helicopter search-and-rescue out, first light, looking for the missile unit.\"\n\nHis aide nodded.\n\nThat would be standard procedure,\" he said.\n\n\"Based on an assumption,\" Johnson said. \"They think the unit has suffered some kind of mechanical and electrical malfunction.\"\n\n\"Which is not uncommon,\" his aide said. \"If their radio fails, their procedure would be to repair it. If a truck also broke down at the same time, their procedure would be to wait as a group for assistance.\"\n\n\"Circle the wagons?\" McGrath asked.\n\nThe aide nodded again.\n\n\"Exactly so,\" he said. They would pull off the road and wait fora chopper.\"\n\n\"So do we tell them?\" McGrath asked.\n\nThe aide sat forward.\n\nThat's the question,\"he said. Tell them what exactly? We don't even know for sure that these maniacs have got them at all. It's still possible it's just a radio problem and a truck problem together.\"\n\n\"Dream on,\" Johnson said.\n\nWebster shrugged. He knew how to deal with such issues.\n\n\"What's the upside?\" he said.\n\nThere is no upside,\"Johnson said.\" We tell Peterson the missiles have been captured, the cat's out of the bag, we lose control of the situation, we're seen to have disobeyed Washington by making an issue out of it before Monday.\"\n\n\"OK, so what's the downside?\" Webster asked.\n\nTheoretical,\"Johnson said.\" We have to assurrje they've been captured, so we also have to assume they've been well hidden. In which case the air force will never find them. They'll just fly around fora while and then go home and wait.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Webster nodded.\n\n\"OK,\" he said. \"No upside, no downside, no problem.\"\n\nThere was a short silence.\n\n\"So we sit tight,\" Johnson said. \"We let the chopper fly.\"\n\nMcGrath shook his head. Incredulous.\n\n\"Suppose they use them to shoot the chopper down?\" he asked.\n\nThe general's aide smiled an indulgent smile.\n\n\"Can't be done,\" he said. The IFF wouldn't allow it.\"\n\n\"IFF?\" McGrath repeated.\n\n\"Identify Friend or Foe,\" the aide said. \" It's an electronic system.\n\nThe chopper will be beaming a signal. The missile reads it as friendly, refuses to launch.\"\n\n\"Guaranteed?\" McGrath asked.\n\nThe aide nodded.\n\n\"Foolproof,\" he said.\n\nGarber glowered at him. But he said nothing. Not his field of expertise.\n\n\"OK,\" Webster said. \"Back to bed. Wake us again at eight, Brogan.\"\n\nOn the tarmac at Peterson, a Boeing CH-47D Chinook was warming its engines and sipping the first of its eight hundred fifty-eight gallons of fuel. A Chinook is a giant aircraft, whose twin rotors thump through an oval of air a hundred feet long and sixty wide. It weighs more than ten tons empty, and it can lift another eleven. It's a giant flying box, the engines and the fuel tanks strapped to the top and the sides, the crew perched high at the front. Any helicopter can search, but when heavy equipment is at stake, only a Chinook can rescue.\n\nBecause of the holiday weekend, the Peterson dispatcher assigned a skeleton crew of two. No separate spotter. He figured he didn't need one. How difficult could it be to find five army trucks on some shoulder in Montana?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You should have stayed here,\" Borken said. \"Right, Joe?\"\n\nReacher glanced into the gloom inside the punishment hut. Joseph Ray was standing to attention on the yellow square. He was staring straight ahead. He was naked. Bleeding from the mouth and nose.\n\n\"Right, Joe?\" Borken said again.\n\nRay made no reply. Borken walked over and crashed his fist into his face. Ray stumbled and fell backward. Staggered against the back wall and scrambled to regain his position on the square.\n\n\"I asked you a question,\" Borken said.\n\nRay nodded. The blood poured off his chin.\n\n\"Readier should have stayed here,\" he said.\n\nBorken hit him again. A hard straight right to the face. Ray's head snapped back. Blood spurted. Borken smiled.\n\n\"No talking when you're on the square, Joe,\" he said. \"You know the rules.\"\n\nBorken stepped back and placed the muzzle of the Sig-Sauer in Reacher's ear. Used it to propel him out into the clearing. Gestured Stevie to follow.\n\n\"You stay on the square, Joe,\" he called over his shoulder.\n\nStevie slammed the door shut. Borken reversed his direction and used the Sig-Sauer to shove Readier toward him.\n\nTell Fowler to get rid of this guy,\"he told him.\" He's outlived his usefulness, such as it ever was. Put the bitch back in her room. Put a ring of sentries right around the building. We got things to do, right? No time for this shit. Parade ground at six-thirty. Everybody there. I'm going to read them the proclamation, before we fax it.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"McGrath couldn't sleep. He walked back to the accommodations trailer with the others and got back on his bunk, but he gave it up after ten minutes. Quarter to seven in the morning, he was back in the command vehicle with Brogan and Milosevic.\n\n\"You guys take a break if you want,\" he said. \"I'll look after things here.\"\n\n\"We could go organize some breakfast,\" Brogan said. \"Diners in Kalispell should be open by now.\"\n\nMcGrath nodded vaguely. Started into his jacket for his wallet. \"Don't worry about it,\" Brogan said. \"I'll pay. My treat.\" \"OK, thanks,\"\n\nMcGrath said. \"Get coffee. Lots of it.\" Brogan and Milosevic stood up and left. McGrath stood in the doorway and watched them drive an army sedan south. The sound of the car faded and he was left with the silent humming of the equipment behind him. He turned to sit down.\n\nThe clock ticked around to seven. The fax machine started whirring.\n\nHolly smoothed her hands over the old mattress like Reacher was thereon it. Like it was really his body under her, scarred and battered, hot and hard and muscular, not a worn striped cotton cover stuffed with ancient horsehair. She blinked the tears out of her eyes. Blew a deep sigh and focused on the next decision. No Readier, no Jackson, no weapon, no tools, six sentries in the street outside. She glanced around the room for the thousandth time and started scoping it out allover again.\n\nMcGrath woke the others by thumping on the sides of the accommodations trailer with both fists. Then he ran back to the command post and found a third copy of the message spooling out of the machine. He already had two. Now he had three."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Webster was the first into the trailer. Then Johnson, a minute behind.\n\nThen Garber, and finally the general's aide. They rattled up the ladder one by one and hurried over to the table. McGrath was absorbed in reading.\n\n\"What, Mack?\" Webster asked him.\n\nThey're declaring independence,\"McGrath said.\" Listen to this.\"\n\nHe glanced around the four faces. Started reading out loud.\n\n\"\"Governments are instituted among men.\" he read\" \"Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. It is the right of the people to alter or abolish them after along train of abuses and usurpations.\"\n\nThey're quoting from the original,\" Webster said.\n\n\"Paraphrasing,\" Garber said.\n\nMcGrath nodded.\n\n\"Listen to this,\" he said again. \"The history of the present government of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all designed to establish an absolute tyranny over the people.\"\n\n\"What the hell is this?\" Webster said. 1776 allover again?\"\n\n\"It gets worse,\" McGrath said.\"\" We therefore are the representatives of the Free States of America, located initially in what was formerly Yorke County in what was formerly Montana, and we solemnly publish and declare that this territory is now a free and independent state, which is absolved of allegiance to the United States, with all political connection totally dissolved, and that as a free and independent state has full power to levy war, conclude peace, defend its land borders and its airspace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other things as all independent states may do.\"\n\nHe looked up. Shuffled the three copies into a neat stack and laid them on the table in silence."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Why three copies?\" Garber asked.\n\nThree destinations,\"McGrath said.\" If we hadn't intercepted them, they'd be allover the place by now.\"\n\n\"Where?\" Webster asked.\n\n\"First one is a DC number,\" McGrath said. \"I'm guessing it's the White House.\"\n\nJohnson's aide scooted his chair to the computer terminal. McGrath read him the number. He tapped it in, and the screen scrolled down. He nodded.\n\n\"The White House,\" he said. \"Next?\"\n\n\"New York somewhere,\" McGrath said. Readout the number from the second sheet.\n\n\"United Nations,\" the aide said. \"They want witnesses.\"\n\nThird one, I don't know,\"McGrath said.\" Area code is 404.\"\n\n\"Atlanta, Georgia,\" Garber said.\n\n\"What's in Atlanta, Georgia?\" Webster asked.\n\nThe aide was busy at the keyboard.\n\n\"CNN,\" he said. They want publicity.\"\n\nJohnson nodded.\n\n\"Smart moves,\" he said. They want it all on live TV. Christ, can you imagine? The United Nations as umpires and round-the-clock coverage on the cable news? The whole world watching?\"\n\n\"So what do we do?\" Webster asked.\n\nThere was along silence.\n\n\"Why did they say airspace?\" Garber asked out loud.\n\nThey were paraphrasing,\"Webster said. 1776, there wasn't any airspace.\"\n\nThe missiles,\"Garber said.\" Is it possible they've disabled the IFF?\"\n\nThere was another long silence. They heard a car pull up. Doors slammed. Brogan and Milosevic rattled up the ladder and stepped into the hush. They carried brown bags and Styrofoam cups with plastic lids."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The giant search-and-rescue Chinook made it north from Peterson in Colorado to Malmstrom Air Force Base outside of Great Falls in Montana without incident. It touched down there and fuel bowsers came out to meet it. The crew walked to the mess for coffee. Walked back twenty minutes later. Took off again and swung gently in the morning air before lumbering away northwest.\n\nTHIRTY-EIGHT\n\nWE'RE GETTING NO REACTION,\"FOWLER SAID.\" MAKES US wonder why.\"\n\nReacher shrugged at him. They were in the command hut. Stevie had dragged him through the trees to the Bastion, and then Fowler had dragged him back again with two armed guards. The punishment hut was unavailable. Still occupied by Joseph Ray. They used the command hut instead. They sat Reacher down and Fowler locked his left wrist to the arm of the chair with a handcuff. The guards took up position on either side, rifles sloped, watchful. Then Fowler walked up to join Borken and Stevie for the ceremony on the parade ground. Reacher heard faint shouting and cheering in the distance as the proclamation was readout. Then he heard nothing. Ninety minutes later, Fowler came back to the hut alone. He sat down behind Borken's desk and lit a cigarette, and the armed guards remained standing.\n\n\"We faxed it an hour ago,\" Fowler said. \"No reaction.\"\n\nReacher smelled his smoke and gazed at the banners on the walls. Dark reds and dull whites, vivid crooked symbols in black.\n\n\"Do you know why we're getting no reaction?\" Fowler asked.\n\nReacher just shook his head.\n\n\"You know what I think?\" Fowler said'They cut the line. Phone company is colluding with the federal agents. We were told it would happen at seven-thirty. It obviously happened earlier.\""},{"from":"human","value":"Reacher shrugged again."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Made no reply.\n\n\"We would expect to be informed about a thing like that,\" Fowler said.\n\nHe picked up his Clock and propped it in front of him, button the desktop, swiveling it like naval artillery left and right.\n\n\"And we haven't been,\" he said.\n\n\"Maybe your pal from Chicago has given you up,\" Reacher said.\n\nFowler shook his head. His Clock came to rest aimed at Reacher's chest.\n\n\"We've been getting a stream of intelligence,\" he said. \" We know where they are, how many of them there are, what their intentions are. But now, when we still need information, we aren't getting it.\n\nCommunication has been interrupted.\"\n\nReacher said nothing.\n\n\"We're investigating,\" Fowler said. \"We're checking the radio right now.\"\n\nReacher said nothing.\n\n\"Anything you want to tell us about the radio?\" Fowler asked.\n\n\"What radio?\" Reacher said.\n\n\"It worked OK yesterday,\" Fowler said. \"Now it doesn't work at all, and you were wandering around all night.\"\n\nHe ducked down and rolled open the drawer where Borken kept the Colt Marshal. But he didn't come outwith a revolver. He came outwith a small black radio transmitter.\n\n\"This was Jackson's,\" he said. \"He was most anxious to show us where it was hidden. In fact he was begging to show us. He screamed and cried and begged. Just about tore his fingernails off digging it up, he was so anxious.\"\n\nHe smiled and put the unit carefully in his pocket.\n\n\"We figure we just switch it on,\" he said. That should put us straight through to the federal scum, person-to-person. This stage of the process, we need to talk direct. See if we can persuade them to restore our fax line.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Terrific plan,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"The fax line is important, you see,\" Fowler said. \"Vital. The world must be allowed to know what we're doing here. The world must be allowed to watch and witness. History is being made here. You understand that, right?\"\n\nReadier stared at the wall.\n\n\"They've got cameras, you know,\" Fowler said. \"Surveillance planes are up there right now. Now it's daylight again, they can see what we're doing. So how can we exploit that fact?\"\n\nReacher shook his head.\n\n\"You can leave me out of it,\" he said.\n\nFowler smiled.\n\n\"Of course we'll leave you out of it,\" he said. \"Why would they care about seeing you nailed to a tree? You're nothing but apiece of shit, to us and to them. But Holly Johnson, there's a different story. Maybe we'll call them upon their own little transmitter and tell them to watch us do it with their own spy cameras. That might make them think about it. They might trade a fax line for her left breast.\"\n\nHe ground out his cigarette. Leaned forward. Spoke quietly.\n\n\"We're serious here, Reacher,\" he said. \" You saw what we did to Jackson. We could do that to her. We could do that to you. We need to be able to communicate with the world. We need that fax line. So we need the short-wave to confirm what the hell they've done with it.\n\nWe need those things very badly. You understand that, right? So if you want to avoid a lot of unnecessary pain, for you and for her, you better tell me what you did to the radio.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher was twisted around, looking at the bookcase. Trying to recall the details of the inexpert translations of the Japanese Pearl Harbor texts he'd read.\n\nTell me now,\"Fowler said softly.\" I can keep them away from you and from her. No pain for either of you. Otherwise, nothing I can do about it.\"\n\nHe laid his Clock on the desk.\n\n\"You want a cigarette?\" he asked.\n\nHe held out the pack. Smiled. The good cop. The friend. The ally.\n\nThe protector. The oldest routine in the book. Requiring the oldest response. Reacher glanced around. Two guards, one on each side of him, the right-hand guard nearer, the left-hand guard back almost against the sidewall. Rifles held easy in the crook of their arms.\n\nFowler behind the desk, holding out the pack. Reacher shrugged and nodded. Took a cigarette with his free right hand. He hadn't smoked in ten years, but when somebody offers you a lethal weapon you take it.\n\n\"So tell me,\" Fowler said. \"And be quick.\"\n\nHe thumbed his lighter and held it out. Reacher bent forward and lit his cigarette from the flame. Took a deep draw and leaned back. The smoke felt good. Ten years, and he still enjoyed it. He inhaled deeply and took another lungful.\n\n\"How did you disable our radio?\" Fowler asked.\n\nReacher took a third pull. Trickled the smoke out of his nose and held the cigarette like a sentry does, between the thumb and forefinger, palm hooded around it. Take quick deep pulls, and the coal on the end of a cigarette heats up to a couple of thousand degrees. Lengthens to a point. He rotated his palm, like he was studying the glowing tip while he thought about something, until the cigarette was pointing straightforward like an arrow."},{"from":"human","value":"\"How did you disable our radio?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"Fowler asked again.\n\n\"You'll hurt Holly if I don't tell you?\" Reacher asked back.\n\nFowler nodded. Smiled his lipless smile.\n\nThat's a promise,\"he said.\" I'll hurt her so bad she'll be begging to die.\"\n\nReacher shrugged unhappily. Sketched a listen-up gesture. Fowler nodded and shuffled on his chair and leaned close. Reacher snapped forward and jammed the cigarette into his eye. Fowler screamed and Reacher was on his feet, the chair cuffed to his wrist clattering after him. He windmilled right and the chair swung through a wide arc and smashed against the nearer guard's head. It splintered and jerked away as Reacher danced to his left. He caught the farther guard with a forearm smash to the throat as his rifle came up. Snapped back and hit Fowler with the wreckage of the chair. Used the follow-through momentum to swing back to the first guard. Finished him with an elbow to the head. The guy went down. Reacher grabbed his rifle by the barrel and swung straight back at the other guard. Felt skull bones explode under the butt. He dropped the rifle and spun and smashed the chair to pieces against Fowler's shoulders. Grabbed him by the ears and smashed his face into the desktop, once, twice, three times. Took a leg from the broken chair and jammed it crossways under his throat.\n\nFolded his elbows around each exposed end and locked his hands together. Tested his grip and bunched his shoulders. Jerked hard, once, and broke Fowler's neck against the chair leg with a single loud crunch.\n\nHe took both rifles and the Clock and the handcuff key. Out of the door and around to the back of the hut. Straight into the trees. He put the Clock in his pocket. Took the handcuff off his wrist. Put a rifle in each hand. Breathing hard. He was in pain. Swinging the heavy wooden chair had opened the red weal on his wrist into a wound."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He raised it to his mouth and sucked at it and buttoned the cuff of his shirt over it.\n\nThen he heard a helicopter. The faint bass thumping of a heavy twin-rotor machine, a Boeing, a Sea Knight or a Chinook, far to the southeast. He thought: last night Borken talked about eight Marines.\n\nThey've only got eight Marines, he said. The Marines use Sea Knights.\n\nHe thought: they're going fora frontal assault. Holly's paneled walls flashed into his mind and he set off racing through the trees.\n\nHe got as far as the Bastion. The thumping from the air built louder.\n\nHe risked stepping out onto the stony path. It was a Chinook. Not a Sea Knight. Search-and-rescue markings, not Marine Corps. It was following the road up from the southeast, a mile away, a hundred feet up, using its vicious downdraft to part the surrounding foliage and aid its search. It looked slow and ponderous, hanging nose-down in the air, yawing slightly from side to side as it approached. Reacher guessed it must be pretty close to the town of Yorke itself.\n\nThen he glanced into the clearing and saw a guy, fifty yards away. A grunt, camouflage fatigues. A Stinger on his shoulder. Turning and aiming through the crude open sight. He saw him acquire the target.\n\nThe guy steadied himself and stood with his feet apart. His hand fumbled for the activator. The missile's infrared sensor turned on.\n\nReacher waited for the IFF to shut it down. It didn't happen. The missile started squealing its high-pitched tone. It was locked on the heat from the Chinook's engines. The guy's finger tightened on the trigger."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher dropped the rifle in his left hand. Swung the other one up and clicked the safety off with his thumb as he did so. Stepped to his left and leaned his shoulder on a tree. Aimed at the guy's head and fired.\n\nBut the guy fired first. A fraction of a second before Reacher's bullet killed him, he pulled the Stinger's trigger. Two things happened. The Stinger's rocket motor lit up. It exploded along its launch tube. Then the guy was hit in the head. The impact knocked him sideways. The launcher caught the rear of the missile and flipped it.\n\nIt came out and stalled tail-down in the air like a javelin, cushioned on the thrust of its launch, virtually motionless.\n\nThen it corrected itself. Reacher watched in horror as it did exactly what it was designed to do. Its eight little wings popped out. It hung almost vertical until it acquired the helicopter again. Then its second-stage rocket lit up and it blasted into the sky. Before the guy's body hit the ground it was homing in on the Chinook at a thousand miles an hour.\n\nThe Chinook was lumbering steadily northwest. A mile away. Following the road. The road ran straight up through the town. Between the abandoned buildings. On the southeast corner the first building it passed was the courthouse. The Chinook was closing on it at eighty miles an hour. The Stinger was heading into meet it at a thousand miles an hour.\n\nOne mile at a thousand miles an hour. One thousandth of an hour. A fraction over three and a half seconds. It felt like a lifetime to Reacher. He watched the missile all the way. A wonderful, brutal weapon. A simple, unshakable purpose. Designed to recognize the exact heat-signature of aircraft exhaust, designed to follow it until it either got there or ran out of fuel. A simple three-and-a-half-second mission."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The Chinook pilot saw it early. He wasted the first second of its flight, frozen. Not in horror, not in fear, just in simple disbelief that a heat-seeking missile had been fired at him from a small wooded clearing in Montana. Then his instinct and training took over. Evade and avoid. Evade the missile, avoid crashing on settlements below.\n\nReacher saw him throw the nose down and the tail up. The big Chinook wheeled away and spewed a wide fan of exhaust into the atmosphere. Then the tail flipped the other way, engines screaming, superheated fumes spraying another random arc. The missile patiently followed the first curve. Tightened its radius. The Chinook dropped slowly and then rose violently in the air. Spiraled upward and away from the town. The missile turned and followed the second arc. Arrived at where the heat had been a split-second before. Couldn't find it. It turned a full lazy circle right underneath the helicopter. Caught an echo of the new maneuver and set about climbing a relentless new spiral.\n\nThe pilot won an extra second, but that was all. The Stinger caught him right at the top of his desperate climb. It followed the trail of heat all the way into the starboard engine itself. Exploded hard against the exhaust nacelle.\n\nSix and a half pounds of high explosive against ten tons of aircraft, but the explosive always wins. Reacher saw the starboard engine disintegrate, then the rear rotor housing blow off. Shattered fragments of the drivetrain exploded outward like shrapnel and the rotor detached and spun away in terrible slow motion. The Chinook stalled in the air and fell, tail-down, checked only by the screaming forward rotor, and slowly spun to the earth, like a holed ship slips slowly below the sea."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Holly heard the helicopter. She heard the low-frequency beat pulsing faintly through her walls. She heard it grow louder. Then she heard the explosion and the shriek of the forward rotor grabbing the air.\n\nThen she heard nothing.\n\nShe jammed her elbow into her crutch and limped across to the diagonal partition. The prison room was completely empty except for the mattress. So her search was going to have to start again in the bathroom.\n\n\"Only one question,\" Webster said. \"How long can we keep the lid on this?\"\n\nGeneral Johnson said nothing in reply. Neither did his aide. Webster moved his gaze across to Garber. Garber was looking grim.\n\n\"Not too damn long,\" he said.\n\n\"But how long?\" Webster asked. \"A day? An hour?\"\n\n\"Six hours,\" Garber said.\n\n\"Why?\" McGrath asked.\n\n\"Standard procedure,\" Garber said. They'll investigate the crash, obviously. Normally they'd send another chopper out. But not if there's a suspicion of ground fire. So they'll come byroad from Malmstrom. Six hours.\"\n\nWebster nodded. Turned to Johnson.\n\n\"Can you delay them, General?\" he asked.\n\nJohnson shook his head.\n\n\"Not really,\" he said. His voice was low and resigned. \"They just lost a Chinook. Crew of two. I can't call them and say, dome a favor, don't investigate that. I could try, I guess, and they might agree at first, but it would leak, and then we'd be back where we started. Might gain us an hour.\"\n\nWebster nodded.\n\n\"Seven hours, six hours, what's the difference?\" he said."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Nobody replied.\n\n\"We've got to move now,\" McGrath said. \"Forget the White House. We can't wait any longer. We need to do something right now, people. Six hours from now, the whole situation blows right out of control. We'll lose her.\"\n\nSix hours is three hundred and sixty minutes. They wasted the first two sitting in silence. Johnson stared into space. Webster drummed his fingers on the table. Garber stared at McGrath, awry expression on his face. McGrath was staring at the map. Milosevic and Brogan were standing in the silence, holding the brown bags of breakfast and the Styrofoam cups.\n\n\"Coffee here, anybody wants it,\" Brogan said.\n\nGarber waved him over.\n\n\"Eat and plan,\" he said.\n\n\"Map,\" Johnson said.\n\nMcGrath slid the map across the table. They all sat forward. Back in motion. Three hundred and fifty eight minutes to go.\n\n\"Ravine's about four miles north of us,\" the aide said. \"All we got is eight Marines in a LAV-25.\"\n\nThat tank thing?\" McGrath asked.\n\nThe aide shook his head.\n\n\"Light Armored Vehicle,\" he said. \"LAV. Eight wheels, no tracks.\"\n\n\"Bulletproof?\" Webster asked.\n\n\"For sure,\" the aide said. They can drive it all the way to Yorke.\"\n\n\"If it gets through the ravine,\" Garber said.\n\nJohnson nodded.\n\nThat's the big question,\"he said.\" We need to go take a look.\"\n\nThe Light Armored Vehicle looked just like a tank to McGrath's hasty civilian glance, except there were eight wheels on it instead of tracks. The hull was welded up out of brutal sloping armor plates and there was a turret with a gun. The driver sat forward, and the commander satin the turret. In the rear, two rows of three Marines sat back to back, facing weapon ports. Each port had its own periscope. McGrath could visualize the vehicle rumbling into battle, invulnerable, weapons bristling out of those ports. Down into the ravine, up the other side, along the road to Yorke to the courthouse."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He pulled Webster to one side and spoke urgently.\n\n\"We never told them,\" he said. \"About the dynamite in the walls.\"\n\n\"And we're not going to,\" Webster said quietly. The old guy would freak out. He's close to falling apart right now. I'm going to tell the Marines direct. They're going in there. They'll have to deal with it. Makes no difference if Johnson knows in advance or not.\"\n\nMcGrath intercepted Johnson and Webster ran over to the armored vehicle. McGrath saw the Marine commander leaning down from the turret. Saw him nodding and grimacing as Webster spoke. Then the general's aide fired up the army Chevrolet. Johnson and Garber crammed into the front with him. McGrath jumped in back. Brogan and Milosevic crushed in alongside him.\n\nWebster finished up and raced back to the Chevy. Squeezed in next to Milosevic. The LAV fired up its big diesel with a blast of black smoke. Then it crunched into gear and lumbered off north. The Chevy accelerated in its wake.\n\nFour miles north they crested a slight rise and entered a curve. Slowed and jammed to a stop in the lee of a craggy outcrop. The Marine commander vaulted down from the turret and ran north on the road.\n\nWebster and Johnson and McGrath got out and hurried after him. They paused together in the lee of the rock face and crept around the curve.\n\nStared out and down into the ravine. It was an intimidating sight.\n\nIt ran left to right in front of them, more or less straight. And it was not just a trench. It was a trench and a step. The whole crust of the earth had fractured, and the southern plate had fallen below the level of the northern plate. Like adjacent sections of an old concrete highway where a car thumps up an inch at the seam. Expanded to geological size, that inch was a fifty-foot disparity."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Where the earth had fractured and fallen, the edges had brokenup into giant boulders. The scouring of the glaciers had tumbled those boulders south. The ice and the heave and the weather over a million years had raked out the fracture and turned it into a trench. It had cutback the rock plates to where they became solid again. Some places, it had carved a hundred-yard width. Other places, tougher seams of rock had kept the gap down to twenty yards.\n\nThen the roots of a thousand generations of trees and the frozen water of the winters had eroded the edges until there was a steep ragged descent to the bottom and a steep ragged rise backup the northern side to the top, fifty feet higher than the starting point. There were stunted trees and tangled undergrowth and rock slides. The road itself was lifted progressively on concrete trestles and rose gently across abridge. Then more concrete trestles set it down on the level ground to the north and it snaked away through the forest into the mountains.\n\nBut the bridge was blown. Charges had been exploded against the two center trestles. A twenty-foot section of the center span had fallen a hundred feet into the trench. The four men in the lee of the outcrop could see fragments of the road lying shattered in the bottom of the ravine.\n\n\"What do you think?\" Johnson asked urgently.\n\nThe Marine commander was giving it a fast sweep through his field glasses. Left and right, up and down, examining the exact terrain.\n\n\"I think it's shit, sir,\" he said.\n\n\"Can you get through?\" Johnson asked him.\n\nThe guy lowered his field glasses and shook his head.\n\n\"Not a hope in hell,\" he said.\n\nHe stepped across, shoulder-to-shoulder with the general, so Johnson could share the same line of sight. Started talking rapidly and pointing as he did so."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We could get down to the bottom,\" he said. \"We could go in right there, where the rock slide gives us a reasonable descent. But getting up the other side is the problem, sir. The LAV can't climb much more than forty-five degrees. Most of the north face looks a lot steeper than that. Some places, it's near enough vertical. Any gentle slopes are overgrown. And they've felled trees. See there, sir?\"\n\nHe pointed to a wooded area on the slope opposite. Trees had been felled and left lying with their chopped ends facing south.\n\n\"Abatises,\" the Marine said. The vehicle is going to stall against them. No doubt about that. Coming uphill, slowly, those things would stop a tank. We go in there, we'll be trapped in the ditch, no doubt at all.\"\n\n\"So what the hell do we do?\" Johnson said.\n\nThe Marine officer shrugged.\n\n\"Bring me some engineers,\" he said. \"The gap they blew is only about twenty feet wide. We can bridge that.\"\n\n\"How long will that take?\" Webster asked.\n\nThe Marine shrugged again.\n\n\"All the way up here?\" he said. \"Six hours? Maybe eight?\"\n\n\"Way too long,\" Webster said.\n\nThen the radio receiver in McGrath's pocket started crackling."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"REACHER WAS HIDING OUT IN THE WOODS, WORRIED ABOUT THE dogs. They were the only thing he wasn't certain about. People, he could handle. Dogs, he had very little experience. He was in the trees, north of the Bastion, south of the rifle range. He had heard the Chinook hit the ground from a mile away. It hit tail first, smashing and tearing into the wooded slope. It looked to have slipped sideways in the air and missed the courthouse by two hundred yards. No explosions. Not from the courthouse or from the chopper itself. No sound of fuel tanks going up. Reacher was reasonably optimistic for the crew. He figured the trees and the collapse of the big boxy body might have cushioned the impact for them. He had known chopper crews survive worse.\n\nHe had an M-16 rifle in his hand and a Glock in his pocket. The Clock was fully loaded. Seventeen shells. The M-16 had the short clip.\n\nTwenty shells, less the one that had killed the guy with the missile.\n\nThe second M-16 had the long clip. A full load of thirty. But it was hidden in the trees. Because Reacher had a rule: choose the weapon you know for sure is in working order.\n\nHe felt instinctively that the focus of attention would be in the southeast direction. That was where Holly was being held, and that was where the Chinook had comedown. That was wherethe opposition forces would be massing. He felt people would be turning to face southeast, apprehensively, staring down into the rest of the United States, waiting. So he turned his back and headed northwest.\n\nHe moved cautiously. The bulk of the enemy was elsewhere, but he knew there were squads out looking for him. He knew they had already discovered Fowler's body. He had seen two separate patrols searching the woods. Six men in each, heavily armed, crashing through the undergrowth, searching. Not difficult to avoid. But the dogs would be difficult to avoid. That was why he was worried. That was why he was moving cautiously."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He stayed in the trees and skirted the western end of the rifle range.\n\nTracked back east around the parade ground. Fifty yards north, he turned again and paralleled the road up to the mines. He stayed in the trees and moved at a fast jog. Used the time to start laying out some priorities. And a timescale He figured he had maybe three hours.\n\nBringing down the Chinook was going to provoke some kind of a violent reaction. No doubt about that. But in all his years in the service, he had never known anything happen faster than three hours. So he had three hours, and a lot of ground to cover.\n\nHe slowed to a fast walk when the rocky ground started rising under his feet. Followed a wide uphill circle west and cut straight into the edge of the bowl where the mine entrances were. He heard diesel engines idling. He bent double and crept across to the cover of a rock. Looked out and down.\n\nHe was just above halfway up the slope surrounding the bowl. Looking more or less due east across its diameter. The log doors of the farther shed were standing open. Four of the missile unit's trucks were standing on the shale. The four with the weapon racks in back.\n\nThe troop carrier was still inside.\n\nThere was a handful of men in the bowl. They were set in an approximate circle around the cluster of trucks. Reacher counted eight guys. Fatigues, rifles, tense limbs. What had the kitchen woman said?\n\nThe mines were off limits. Except to the people Borken trusted.\n\nReacher watched them. Eight trusted lieutenants, acting out a reasonable imitation of sentry duty.\n\nHe watched them fora couple of minutes. Slid his rifle to his shoulder. He was less than a hundred yards away. He could hear the rattle of the shale as the sentries moved around. He clicked the selector to the single-shot position. He had nineteen shells in the box, and he needed to fire a minimum of eight. He needed to be cautious with ammunition."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The M-16 is a good rifle. Easy to use, easy to maintain. Easy to aim.\n\nThe carrying handle has a grooved top which lines up with an identical groove in the front sight. At a hundred yards, you squint down the handle groove and let it merge with the front groove, and what you see is what you hit. Reacher rested his weight on the rock and lined up the first target. Practiced the slight sweep that would take him onto the second. And the third. He rehearsed the full sequence of eight shots. He didn't want his elbow snagging somewhere in the middle.\n\nHe returned to the first target. Waited a beat and fired. The sound of the shot crashed through the mountains. The right front tire of the first truck exploded. He swept the sights onto the left front. Fired again. The truck dropped to its rims like a stunned ox falling to its knees.\n\nHe kept firing steadily. He had fired five shots and hit five tires before anybody reacted. Ashe fired the sixth he saw in the corner of his eye the sentries diving for cover. Some were just dropping to the ground. Others were running for the shed. He fired the seventh.\n\nPaused before the eighth. The farthest tire was the hardest shot. The angle was oblique. The sidewall was unavailable to him. He was going to have to fire at the treads. Possible that the shell might glance off. He fired. He hit. The tire burst. The front of the last truck dropped.\n\nThe nearest sentry was still on his feet. Not heading for the shed.\n\nJust standing and staring toward the rock Reacher was behind. Raising his rifle. It was an M-16, same as Reacher's. Long magazine, thirty shells. The guy was standing there, sighting it in on the rock. A brave man, or an idiot. Reacher crouched and waited. The guy fired."},{"from":"human","value":"His weapon was set on automatic."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He loosed off a burst of three. Three shots in a fifth of a second. They smashed into the trees fifteen feet above Reacher's head. Twigs and leaves drifted down and landed near him. The guy ran ten yards closer. Fired again. Three more shells.\n\nWay off to Reacher's left. He heard the whine of the bullets and the thunking as they hit the trees before he heard the muzzle blast.\n\nBullets which travel faster than sound do that. You hear it all in reverse order. The bullet gets there before the sound of the shot.\n\nReacher had decisions to take. How close was he going to let this guy get? And was he going to fire a warning shot? The next burst of three was nearer. Low, but nearer. Not more than six feet away. Reacher decided: not much damn closer, and no warning shot. The guy was all pumped up. No percentage in trying a warning shot. This guy was not going to get calmed down in any kind of a hurry.\n\nHe lay on his side. Straightened his legs and came out at the base of the rock. Fired once and hit the guy in the chest. He went down in a heap on the shale. The rifle flew off to his right. Reacher stayed where he was. Watched carefully. The guy was still alive. So Reacher fired again. Hit him through the top of the head. Kinder not to leave him with a sucking chest wound for the last ten minutes of his life.\n\nThe echoes of the brief firefight died into the mountain silence and then the air was still. The other seven guys were nowhere. The trucks were all resting nose-down on their front rims. Disabled. Maybe they could be driven out of the bowl, but the first of the mountain hairpins was going to strip the blown tires right off. The trucks were neutralized. No doubt about that."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher crawled backward ten yards and stood up in the trees. Jogged down the slope and headed back toward the Bastion. Seventeen shells in the Glock, nine in the rifle. Progress, at a price.\n\nThe dogs found him halfway back. Two big rangy animals. German shepherds. He saw them at the same time as they saw him. They were loping along with that kind of infinite energy big dogs display. Long bounding strides, eager expressions, wet mouths gaping. They stopped short on stiff front legs and switched direction in a single fluid stride. Thirty yards away. Then twenty. Then ten. Acceleration. New energy in their movement. Snarls rising in their throats.\n\nPeople, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a manor a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got.\n\nHis response was their problem. But dogs were different.\n\nNo freewill. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.\n\nHe left the Clock in his pocket. The rifle was better. It was about two and a half feet longer than the handgun. An extra two and a half feet of separation seemed like a good idea. The dogs stopped short of him. The fur on their shoulders was raised. The fur down their backs was raised, following their spines. They crouched, front feet splayed, heads down, snarling loudly. They had yellow teeth. Lots of them.\n\nTheir eyes were brown. Reacher could see fine dark eyelashes, like a girl's.\n\nOne of them was forward of the other. The leader of the pack. He knew dogs had to have a pecking order. Two dogs, one of them had to be superior to the other. Like people. He didn't know how dogs worked it out for themselves. Posturing, maybe. Maybe smell. Maybe fighting."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Continue the story as the author's writing assistant.\\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\\nAuthor: Lee Child\\nTitle: Die Trying\\nChapter: 35\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"They were leaning into the truck.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Their voices were muffled by the thick canvas siding.\\n\\n\\\"Does he need the missile as well?\\\" Fowler asked.\\n\\n\\\"Just the launcher,\\\" Borken answered. \\\"It's in the electronic part.\\\"\\n\\nReadier lay among the scuffling rats and heard the sound of the clips being undone. Then the squeak of the rubber as a launcher came out of its mountings. Then the rattle of the tailgate bolts ramming home. The footsteps receded. The flashlight beams flicked back toward the doors.\\n\\nThe hinges creaked and the bulky timber doors thumped shut. Reacher heard the launcher being laid gently on the shale and the gasps as the two men lifted the old log back into the brackets. The rattle of the chain and the click of the padlocks. The crunch of the footsteps crossing the shale.\\n\\nHe rolled away from the corpses and hit out at a rat. Caught it with an angry backhand and sent it squealing off into the dark. He sat up and waited. Walked slowly to the door. Listened hard. Waited six minutes. Put his hands into the gap at the bottom of the doors and pulled them apart.\\n\\nThey wouldn't move more than an inch. He laid his palms flat on the smooth timbers and bunched up his shoulders and heaved. They were rock solid. Like trying to pushover a tree. He tried fora minute. He was straining like a weightlifter. The doors were jammed. Then he suddenly realized why. They had put the warped old log back in the brackets the other way around. The curve pointing in toward him, not out away from him. Clamping the doors with extra efficiency, instead of allowing the foot of loose movement it had allowed before.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He pictured the log as he had seen it. More than afoot thick, warped, but dried like iron. Curving away, it was no problem. Curving in, it would be immovable. He glanced at the army trucks. Gave it up. There was no space to hit the doors with any kind of momentum. The truck would be pressing on them with all the torque of a big diesel engine, but it wouldn't be enough. He couldn't imagine how much force it would take to shatter that old log.\\n\\nHe thought about using a missile. Gave it up. Too noisy and it wouldn't work anyway. They didn't arm themselves until they were thirty feet into the air. And they only carried six and a half pounds of explosive. Enough to smash a jet engine in flight, but six and a half pounds of explosive against those old timbers would be like scratching at them with a nail file He was trapped inside, and Holly was waiting.\\n\\nIt was not in his nature to panic. Never had been. He was a calm man, and his long training had made him calmer. He had been taught to assess and evaluate, and to use pure force of will to prevail. You're Jack Readier, he had been told. You can do anything. First his mother had told him, then his father, then the quiet deadly men in the training schools. And he had believed them.\\n\\nBut, at the same time, he hadn't believed them. Part of his mind always said: you've just been lucky. Always lucky. And, in the quiet times, he would sit and wait for his luck to run out. He sat on the stony ground with his back against the timbers of the door and asked himself: has it run out now?\\n\\nHe flicked the flashlight beam around the cavern. The rats were staying away from him. They were interested in the darkness in back.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"They're deserting me, he thought.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Deserting the sinking ship. Then his mind clicked in again. No, they're interested in the tunnels, he thought. Because tunnels lead places. He remembered the giant mouse holes blasted into the rock face, north wall of the bowl. Maybe all interconnected by these narrow seams in back.\\n\\nHe ran back into the depth of the cavern, past the trucks, past the grotesque heap of corpses. Back to where he could no longer stand. A rat disappeared into the seam to his left. He dropped to his stomach and flicked the flashlight on. Crawled after it.\\n\\nHe crawled into a skeleton. He scrabbled with his feet and came face to face with a grinning skull. And another. There were four or five skeletons jammed into the excavated seam. Jumbled bones in a pile. He gasped in shock and backed off afoot. Looked carefully. Used the flashlight closeup.\\n\\nAll males. He could see that from the five pelvises. The skulls showed gunshot wounds. All in the temples. Neat entry wounds, neat exit holes. Jacketed high-velocity handgun bullets. Fairly recent, certainly within a year. The flesh hadn't decayed. It had been eaten off. He could seethe parallel scrape marks on the bones from rodent teeth.\\n\\nThe bones were all disturbed. The rats had hauled them away to eat.\\n\\nThere were scraps of clothing material here and there. Some of the ribcages were still covered. Rats don't disturb clothing much. Not on the torso. Why should they? They eat their way in through the inside.\\n\\nThe soft parts first. They come to the ribs from the back.\\n\\nThe clothing material was khaki and olive green. Some black and gray camouflage. Reacher saw a colored thread. Traced it back to a shoulder flash hidden under a gnawed shoulder blade. It was a curved felt badge embroidered in silk. It said: Northwestern Freemen. He pulled at the skeleton's jacket. The ribcage collapsed. The breast pocket had three chromium stars punched through.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher made a thorough search, lying on his stomach, up to his armpits in bones.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He pieced together five separate uniforms. He found two more badges. One said: White Christian Identity. The other said:\\n\\nMontana Constitutional Militia. He lined up the five splintered skulls. Checked the teeth. He was looking at five men, middle-aged, maybe between forty and fifty. Five leaders. The leaders who had disappeared. The leaders who could not stand the pace. The leaders who had abandoned their members to Beau Borken.\\n\\nThe roof was too low for Reacher to climb over the bones. He had to push them aside and crawl through them. The rats showed no interest.\\n\\nThese bones were picked clean. Their new feast lay back inside the cavern. They swarmed back in that direction. He held the flashlight out in front of him and pushed on into the mountain against the squealing tide.\\n\\nHe lost his sense of direction. He hoped he was going roughly west, but he couldn't tell. The roof came down to a couple of feet. He was crawling through an old geological seam, excavated long ago for its ore. The roof came down even more. Down to afoot and a half. It was cold. The seam narrowed. His arms were out in front of him. The seam became too narrow to pull them back. He was crawling down a slim rock tube, a billion tons of mountain above him, no idea where he was going.\\n\\nAnd the flashlight was failing. The battery was spent. Its light was fading to a dull orange glow.\\n\\nHe was breathing hard. And shaking. Not from exertion. From dread.\\n\\nFrom terror. This was not what he had expected. He had visualized a stroll down a spacious abandoned gallery. Not this narrow crack in the rock. He was pushing himself head-first into his worst childhood nightmare. He was a guy who had survived most things, and he was a guy who was rarely afraid. But he had known since his early boyhood that he was terrified of being trapped in the dark in a space too small to turn his giant frame. All his damp childhood nightmares had been about being closed into tight spaces. He lay on his stomach and screwed his eyes shut. Lay and panted and gagged. Forced the air in and out through his clamping throat. Then he inched himself slowly onward into the nightmare.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The glow from the flashlight finally died a hundred yards into the tunnel. The darkness was total. The seam was narrowing. It was pushing his shoulders down. He was forcing himself into a space that was way too small for him. His face was forced sideways. He fought to stay calm. He remembered what he had said to Borken: people were smaller then. Scrappy little guys, migrating west, seeking their fortune in the bowels of the mountain. People half the size of Reacher, squirming along, maybe on their backs, chipping the bright veins out of the rock roof.\\n\\nHe was using the dead flashlight like a blind man uses a white cane. It smashed on solid rock two feet ahead of his face. He heard the tinkle of glass over the rasping of his breath. He struggled ahead and felt with his hands. A solid wall. The tunnel went no farther. He tried to move backward. He couldn't move at all. To push himself backward with his hands, he had to raise his chest to get leverage. But the roof was too low to let him do that. His shoulders were jammed up hard against it. He could get no leverage. His feet could push him forward, but they couldn't pull him backward. He went rigid with panic. His throat clamped solid. His head hit the roof and his cheek hit the grit floor. He fought a scream by breathing fast.\\n\\nHe had to go back. He hooked his toes into the grit. Turned his hands inward and planted his thumbs on the floor. Pulled with his toes and pushed with his thumbs. He moved backward a fraction and then the rock clamped hard against his sides. To slide his weight backward, his shoulder muscles were bunching and jamming against the rock. He breathed out and let his arms go limp. Pulled with his toes. They scrabbled uselessly in the grit. He helped them with his thumbs. His shoulders bunched and jammed again.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He jerked his hips from side to side. He had a couple of inches spare.\\n\\nHe smashed his hands into the shale and heaved backward. His body jammed solid, like a wedge in a door. He tilted sideways and banged his cheek on the roof. Jerked back down and caught his other cheek on the floor. The rock was crushing in on his ribs. This time, he couldn't fight the scream. He had to let it go. He opened his mouth and wailed in terror. The air in his lungs crushed his chest against the floor and his back against the roof.\\n\\nHe couldn't tell if his eyes were open or shut. He pushed forward with his feet and regained the inch he'd moved back. He stretched with his arms. Felt up ahead again. His shoulders were jammed so tight he couldn't move his hands through much of an angle. He spread his fingers and scrabbled them left and right, up and down. Solid rock ahead. Noway to go forward. Noway to move backward.\\n\\nHe was going to die trapped inside the mountain. He knew it. The rats knew it. They were sniffing up behind him. Coming closer. He felt them at his feet. He kicked out and sent them squealing away. But they came back. He felt their weight on his legs. They were swarming over him. They burrowed up around his shoulders. Slid under his armpits. He felt cold oily fur on his face as they forced their way past. The flick of their tails as they ran ahead.\\n\\nTo where? He let them run over his arm, to estimate their direction.\\n\\nThey were moving ahead of him, into the blind darkness. He felt with his hands. Felt them flowing left. Their passage was stirring the air. The air was cool. He felt it move, a faint breeze, on the sweat on the left side of his face. He jammed himself hard against the right hand wall and moved his left arm sideways, ahead of him. Felt for the left hand wall. It wasn't there. He was stuck at a junction in the tunnels. Anew seam ran at aright angle away from the end of the seam he was in. A tight, narrow right angle. Ninety degrees. He forced himself backward as far as his thumbs would push him. He scraped his face on the end wall and jammed his side into the rock. Folded himself arms first around the corner and dragged his legs behind him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The new seam was no better. It was no wider. The roof was no higher.\\n\\nHe hauled himself along, gasping and sweating and shaking. He propelled himself with his toes, an inch at a time. The rats forced their way past him. The rock tore at his sides and his back. But there was still a slight breeze on his face. The tunnel was heading somewhere. He was gasping and panting. He crawled on. Then the new seam widened. Still very low. A flat, low crack in the rock. He crawled on through it, exhausted. Fifty yards. A hundred. Then he felt the roof soar away above him. He pushed on with his toes and suddenly he felt the air change and he was lying halfway into the motor-pool cavern. He realized his eyes were wide open and the white Econoline was right therein front of him in the dark.\\n\\nHe rolled onto his back and lay gasping on the grit. Gasping and shaking. Staggered to his feet and looked back. The seam was invisible. Hidden in the shadow. He made it as far as the white truck and collapsed against its side. The luminous figures on his watch showed he'd been in the tunnels nearly three hours. Most of the time jammed there sweating in panic. A three-hour screaming nightmare come to life. His pants and his jacket were shredded. Every muscle in his body was on fire. His face and hands and elbows and knees were bleeding. But it was the fear that had done it to him. The fear of not getting through. He could still feel the rock pressing down on his back and pressing upon his chest. He could feel it clamping inward on his ribs. He got up again and limped to the doors. Pushed them open and stood in the moonlight, arms out, eyes crazy, mouth open, breathing in lungfuls of the sweet night air.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He was halfway across the bowl before he started thinking straight. So he ran back and ducked into the motor pool once more. Found what he wanted. He found it on one of the jeep's tow hook assemblies. Some heavy stiff wire, ready to feed a trailer's electric circuits. He wrenched it out and stripped the insulation with his teeth. Ran back to the moonlight.\\n\\nHe kept close to the road, all the way back to Yorke. Two miles, twenty minutes at a slow agonizing jog through the trees. He looped around behind the ruined northeastern block and approached the courthouse from the rear. Circled it silently in the shadows. Waited and listened.\\n\\nHe tried to think like Borken. Complacent. Happy with his perimeter.\\n\\nConstant information from inside the FBI. Reacher locked into the punishment hut, Holly locked into her prison room. Would he post a sentry? Not tonight. Not when he was expecting heavy action tomorrow and beyond. He would want his people fresh. Readier nodded and gambled he was right.\\n\\nHe arrived at the courthouse steps. Deserted. He tried the door.\\n\\nLocked. He smiled. Nobody posts a sentry behind a locked door. He bent the wire into a shallow hook and felt for the mechanism. An old two-lever. Eight seconds. He stepped inside. Waited and listened.\\n\\nNothing. He went up the stairs.\\n\\nThe lock on Holly's door was new. But cheap. He worked quietly which delayed him. Took him more than thirty seconds before the last tumbler clicked back. He pulled the door open slowly and stepped onto the built-up floor. Glanced apprehensively at the walls. She was on a mattress on the floor. Fully dressed and ready. Awake and watching him. Huge eyes bright in the gloom. He gestured her outside. Turned and climbed down and waited in the corridor for her. She picked up her crutch and limped to the door. Climbed carefully down the step and stood next to him.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Hello, Readier,\\\" she whispered. \\\"How are you doing?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I've felt better,\\\" he whispered back. Time to time.\\\"\\n\\nShe turned and glanced back into her room. He followed her gaze and saw the dark stain on the floor.\\n\\n\\\"Woman who brought me lunch,\\\" she whispered.\\n\\nHe nodded.\\n\\n\\\"What with?\\\" he whispered back.\\n\\nTart of the bed frame,\\\" she said.\\n\\nHe saw the satisfaction on her face and smiled.\\n\\nThat should do it,\\\"he said, quietly.\\\" Bed frames are good for that.\\\"\\n\\nShe took a last look at the room and gently closed the door. Followed him through the dark and slowly down the stairs. Across the lobby and through the double doors and out into the bright silent moonlight.\\n\\n\\\"Christ,\\\" she said, urgently. \\\"What happened to you?\\\"\\n\\nHe glanced down and checked himself over in the light of the moon. He was gray from head to foot with dust and grit. His clothing was shredded. He was streaked with sweat and blood. Still shaky.\\n\\n\\\"Long story,\\\" he said. \\\"You got somebody in Chicago you can trust?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"McGrath,\\\" she said immediately. \\\"He's my agent-in-charge. Why?\\\"\\n\\nThey crossed the wide street arm-in-arm, looking left and right.\\n\\nSkirted the mound in front of the ruined office building. Found the path running northwest.\\n\\n\\\"You need to send him a fax,\\\" he said. They've got missiles. You need to warn him. Tonight, because their line is going to be cut first thing in the morning.\\\"\\n\\nThe mole tell them that?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nHe nodded.\\n\\n\\\"How?\\\" she asked. \\\"How is he communicating?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Short-wave radio,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Has to be. Anything else is traceable.\\\"\\n\\nHe swayed and leaned on a tree. Gave her the spread, everything, beginning to end.\\n\\n\\\"Shit,\\\" she said. \\\"Ground-to-air missiles? Mass suicide? A nightmare.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not our nightmare,\\\" he said. \\\"We're out of here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We should stay and help them,\\\" she said. The families.\\\"\\n\\nHe shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Best help is for us to get out,\\\" he said. \\\"Maybe losing you will change their plan. And we can tell them about the layout around here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I don't know,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"I do,\\\" he said. \\\" First rule is stick to priorities. That's you.\\n\\nWe're out of here.\\\"\\n\\nShe shrugged and nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Now?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"Right now,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"How?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"Jeep through the forest,\\\" he said. \\\"I found their motor pool. We getup there, steal a jeep, by then it should be light enough to find our way through. I saw a map in Borken's office. There are plenty of tracks running east through the forest.\\\"\\n\\nShe nodded and he pushed off the tree. They hustled up the winding path to the Bastion. A mile, in the dark. They stumbled on the stones and saved their breath for walking. The clearing was dark and silent.\\n\\nThey worked their way around beyond the mess hall to the back of the communications hut. They came out one of the trees and Reacher stepped close and pressed his ear to the plywood siding. There was no sound inside.\\n\\nHe used the wire again and they were inside within ten seconds. Holly found paper and pen. Wrote her message. Dialed the Chicago fax number and fed the sheet into the machine. It whirred obediently and pulled the paper through. Fed it back out into her waiting hand. She hit the button for the confirmation. Didn't want to leave any trace behind.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Another sheet fed out.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It showed the destination number correct. Timed the message at ten minutes to five, Friday morning, the fourth of July.\\n\\nShe shredded both papers small and buried the pieces in the bottom of a trashcan.\\n\\nReacher rooted around on the long counter and found a paperclip.\\n\\nFollowed Holly back out into the moonlight and relocked the door.\\n\\nDodged around and found the cable leading down from the short-wave whip into the side of the hut. Took the paperclip and worried at it until it broke. Forced the broken end through the cable like a pin. Pushed it through until it was even, a fraction showing at each side. The metal would short-circuit the antenna by connecting the wire inside to the foil screen. The signal would comedown out of the ether, down the wire, leak into the foil and runaway to ground without ever reaching the short-wave unit itself. The best way to disable a radio. Smash one up, it gets repaired. This way, the fault is untraceable, until an exhausted technician finally thinks to check.\\n\\n\\\"We need weapons,\\\" Holly whispered to him.\\n\\nHe nodded. They crept together to the armory door. He looked at the lock. Gave it up. It was a huge thing. Unpickable.\\n\\n\\\"I'll take the Glock from the guy guarding me,\\\" he whispered.\\n\\nShe nodded. They ducked back into the trees and walked through to the next clearing. Reacher tried to think of a story to explain his appearance to Joseph Ray. Figured he might say something about being beamed over to the UN. Talk about how high-speed beaming can rip you up a little. They crept around behind the punishment hut and listened.\\n\\nAll quiet. They skirted the corner and Reacher pulled the door. Walked straight into a nine-millimeter. This time, it wasn't a Glock. It was a Sig-Sauer. Not Joseph Ray's. It was Beau Borken's. He was standing just inside the door with Little Stevie at his side, grinning.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"FOUR-THIRTY IN THE MORNING, WEBSTER WAS MORE THAN READY for the watch change. Johnson and Garber and the general's aide were dozing in their chairs. McGrath was outside with the telephone linemen. They were just finishing up. The job had taken much longer than they had anticipated. Some kind of interface problem. They had physically cut the phone line coming out of Yorke, and bent the stiff copper down to a temporary terminal box they had placed at the base of a pole. Then they had spooled cable from the terminal box down the road to the mobile command vehicle. Connected it into one of the communications ports.\\n\\nBut it didn't work. Not right away. The linemen had fussed with multimeters and muttered about impedances and capacitances. They had worked for three solid hours. They were ready to blame the army truck for the incompatibility when they thought to go back and check their own temporary terminal box. The fault lay there. A failed component.\\n\\nThey wired in a spare and the whole circuit worked perfectly. Four thirty-five in the morning, McGrath was shaking their hands and swearing them to silence when Webster came out of the trailer. The two men stood and watched them drive away. The noise of their truck died around the curve. Webster and McGrath stayed standing in the bright moonlight. They stood therefor five minutes while McGrath smoked.\\n\\nThey didn't speak. Just gazed north into the distance and wondered.\\n\\n\\\"Go wake your boys up,\\\" Webster said. \\\"We'll stand down fora spell.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath nodded and walked down to the accommodation trailers. Roused Milosevic and Brogan. They were fully dressed on their bunks. They got up and yawned. Came down the ladder and found Webster standing therewith Johnson and his aide. Garber standing behind them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The telephone line is done,\\\" Webster said.\\n\\n\\\"Already?\\\" Brogan said. \\\"I thought it was being done in the morning.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We figured sooner was better than later,\\\" Webster said. He inclined his head toward General Johnson. It was a gesture which said: he's worried, right?\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" Milosevic said. \\\"We'll look after it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Wake us at eight,\\\" Webster said. \\\"Or earlier if necessary, OK?\\\"\\n\\nBrogan nodded and walked north to the command vehicle. Milosevic followed. They paused together fora look at the mountains in the moonlight. As they paused, the fax machine inside the empty command trailer started whirring. It fed its first communication face upward into the message tray. It was ten to five in the morning, Friday the fourth of July.\\n\\nBrogan woke General Johnson an hour and ten minutes later, six o'clock exactly. He knocked loudly on the accommodation trailer door and got no response, so he went in and shook the old guy by the shoulder.\\n\\nTeterson Air Force Base, sir,\\\"Brogan said. They need to talk to you.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson staggered up to the command vehicle in his shirt and pants.\\n\\nMilosevic joined Brogan outside in the pre-dawn glow to give him some privacy. Johnson was back out in five minutes.\\n\\n\\\"We need a conference,\\\" he called.\\n\\nHe ducked back into the trailer. Milosevic walked down and roused the others. They came forward, Webster and the general's aide yawning and stretching, Garber ramrod-straight. McGrath was dressed and smoking.\\n\\nMaybe hadn't tried to sleep at all. They filed up the ladder and took their places around the or n table, bleak red eyes, hair fuzzed on the back from the pillows.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Teterson called, \\\"Johnson told them.\\\" They're sending a helicopter search-and-rescue out, first light, looking for the missile unit.\\\"\\n\\nHis aide nodded.\\n\\nThat would be standard procedure,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Based on an assumption,\\\" Johnson said. \\\"They think the unit has suffered some kind of mechanical and electrical malfunction.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Which is not uncommon,\\\" his aide said. \\\"If their radio fails, their procedure would be to repair it. If a truck also broke down at the same time, their procedure would be to wait as a group for assistance.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Circle the wagons?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nThe aide nodded again.\\n\\n\\\"Exactly so,\\\" he said. They would pull off the road and wait fora chopper.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So do we tell them?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nThe aide sat forward.\\n\\nThat's the question,\\\"he said. Tell them what exactly? We don't even know for sure that these maniacs have got them at all. It's still possible it's just a radio problem and a truck problem together.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dream on,\\\" Johnson said.\\n\\nWebster shrugged. He knew how to deal with such issues.\\n\\n\\\"What's the upside?\\\" he said.\\n\\nThere is no upside,\\\"Johnson said.\\\" We tell Peterson the missiles have been captured, the cat's out of the bag, we lose control of the situation, we're seen to have disobeyed Washington by making an issue out of it before Monday.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"OK, so what's the downside?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nTheoretical,\\\"Johnson said.\\\" We have to assurrje they've been captured, so we also have to assume they've been well hidden. In which case the air force will never find them. They'll just fly around fora while and then go home and wait.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Webster nodded.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said. \\\"No upside, no downside, no problem.\\\"\\n\\nThere was a short silence.\\n\\n\\\"So we sit tight,\\\" Johnson said. \\\"We let the chopper fly.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath shook his head. Incredulous.\\n\\n\\\"Suppose they use them to shoot the chopper down?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nThe general's aide smiled an indulgent smile.\\n\\n\\\"Can't be done,\\\" he said. The IFF wouldn't allow it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"IFF?\\\" McGrath repeated.\\n\\n\\\"Identify Friend or Foe,\\\" the aide said. \\\" It's an electronic system.\\n\\nThe chopper will be beaming a signal. The missile reads it as friendly, refuses to launch.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Guaranteed?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nThe aide nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Foolproof,\\\" he said.\\n\\nGarber glowered at him. But he said nothing. Not his field of expertise.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" Webster said. \\\"Back to bed. Wake us again at eight, Brogan.\\\"\\n\\nOn the tarmac at Peterson, a Boeing CH-47D Chinook was warming its engines and sipping the first of its eight hundred fifty-eight gallons of fuel. A Chinook is a giant aircraft, whose twin rotors thump through an oval of air a hundred feet long and sixty wide. It weighs more than ten tons empty, and it can lift another eleven. It's a giant flying box, the engines and the fuel tanks strapped to the top and the sides, the crew perched high at the front. Any helicopter can search, but when heavy equipment is at stake, only a Chinook can rescue.\\n\\nBecause of the holiday weekend, the Peterson dispatcher assigned a skeleton crew of two. No separate spotter. He figured he didn't need one. How difficult could it be to find five army trucks on some shoulder in Montana?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You should have stayed here,\\\" Borken said. \\\"Right, Joe?\\\"\\n\\nReacher glanced into the gloom inside the punishment hut. Joseph Ray was standing to attention on the yellow square. He was staring straight ahead. He was naked. Bleeding from the mouth and nose.\\n\\n\\\"Right, Joe?\\\" Borken said again.\\n\\nRay made no reply. Borken walked over and crashed his fist into his face. Ray stumbled and fell backward. Staggered against the back wall and scrambled to regain his position on the square.\\n\\n\\\"I asked you a question,\\\" Borken said.\\n\\nRay nodded. The blood poured off his chin.\\n\\n\\\"Readier should have stayed here,\\\" he said.\\n\\nBorken hit him again. A hard straight right to the face. Ray's head snapped back. Blood spurted. Borken smiled.\\n\\n\\\"No talking when you're on the square, Joe,\\\" he said. \\\"You know the rules.\\\"\\n\\nBorken stepped back and placed the muzzle of the Sig-Sauer in Reacher's ear. Used it to propel him out into the clearing. Gestured Stevie to follow.\\n\\n\\\"You stay on the square, Joe,\\\" he called over his shoulder.\\n\\nStevie slammed the door shut. Borken reversed his direction and used the Sig-Sauer to shove Readier toward him.\\n\\nTell Fowler to get rid of this guy,\\\"he told him.\\\" He's outlived his usefulness, such as it ever was. Put the bitch back in her room. Put a ring of sentries right around the building. We got things to do, right? No time for this shit. Parade ground at six-thirty. Everybody there. I'm going to read them the proclamation, before we fax it.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"McGrath couldn't sleep. He walked back to the accommodations trailer with the others and got back on his bunk, but he gave it up after ten minutes. Quarter to seven in the morning, he was back in the command vehicle with Brogan and Milosevic.\\n\\n\\\"You guys take a break if you want,\\\" he said. \\\"I'll look after things here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We could go organize some breakfast,\\\" Brogan said. \\\"Diners in Kalispell should be open by now.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath nodded vaguely. Started into his jacket for his wallet. \\\"Don't worry about it,\\\" Brogan said. \\\"I'll pay. My treat.\\\" \\\"OK, thanks,\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath said. \\\"Get coffee. Lots of it.\\\" Brogan and Milosevic stood up and left. McGrath stood in the doorway and watched them drive an army sedan south. The sound of the car faded and he was left with the silent humming of the equipment behind him. He turned to sit down.\\n\\nThe clock ticked around to seven. The fax machine started whirring.\\n\\nHolly smoothed her hands over the old mattress like Reacher was thereon it. Like it was really his body under her, scarred and battered, hot and hard and muscular, not a worn striped cotton cover stuffed with ancient horsehair. She blinked the tears out of her eyes. Blew a deep sigh and focused on the next decision. No Readier, no Jackson, no weapon, no tools, six sentries in the street outside. She glanced around the room for the thousandth time and started scoping it out allover again.\\n\\nMcGrath woke the others by thumping on the sides of the accommodations trailer with both fists. Then he ran back to the command post and found a third copy of the message spooling out of the machine. He already had two. Now he had three.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Webster was the first into the trailer. Then Johnson, a minute behind.\\n\\nThen Garber, and finally the general's aide. They rattled up the ladder one by one and hurried over to the table. McGrath was absorbed in reading.\\n\\n\\\"What, Mack?\\\" Webster asked him.\\n\\nThey're declaring independence,\\\"McGrath said.\\\" Listen to this.\\\"\\n\\nHe glanced around the four faces. Started reading out loud.\\n\\n\\\"\\\"Governments are instituted among men.\\\" he read\\\" \\\"Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. It is the right of the people to alter or abolish them after along train of abuses and usurpations.\\\"\\n\\nThey're quoting from the original,\\\" Webster said.\\n\\n\\\"Paraphrasing,\\\" Garber said.\\n\\nMcGrath nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Listen to this,\\\" he said again. \\\"The history of the present government of the United States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations all designed to establish an absolute tyranny over the people.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What the hell is this?\\\" Webster said. 1776 allover again?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It gets worse,\\\" McGrath said.\\\"\\\" We therefore are the representatives of the Free States of America, located initially in what was formerly Yorke County in what was formerly Montana, and we solemnly publish and declare that this territory is now a free and independent state, which is absolved of allegiance to the United States, with all political connection totally dissolved, and that as a free and independent state has full power to levy war, conclude peace, defend its land borders and its airspace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other things as all independent states may do.\\\"\\n\\nHe looked up. Shuffled the three copies into a neat stack and laid them on the table in silence.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Why three copies?\\\" Garber asked.\\n\\nThree destinations,\\\"McGrath said.\\\" If we hadn't intercepted them, they'd be allover the place by now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Where?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\n\\\"First one is a DC number,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"I'm guessing it's the White House.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson's aide scooted his chair to the computer terminal. McGrath read him the number. He tapped it in, and the screen scrolled down. He nodded.\\n\\n\\\"The White House,\\\" he said. \\\"Next?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"New York somewhere,\\\" McGrath said. Readout the number from the second sheet.\\n\\n\\\"United Nations,\\\" the aide said. \\\"They want witnesses.\\\"\\n\\nThird one, I don't know,\\\"McGrath said.\\\" Area code is 404.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Atlanta, Georgia,\\\" Garber said.\\n\\n\\\"What's in Atlanta, Georgia?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThe aide was busy at the keyboard.\\n\\n\\\"CNN,\\\" he said. They want publicity.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Smart moves,\\\" he said. They want it all on live TV. Christ, can you imagine? The United Nations as umpires and round-the-clock coverage on the cable news? The whole world watching?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So what do we do?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThere was along silence.\\n\\n\\\"Why did they say airspace?\\\" Garber asked out loud.\\n\\nThey were paraphrasing,\\\"Webster said. 1776, there wasn't any airspace.\\\"\\n\\nThe missiles,\\\"Garber said.\\\" Is it possible they've disabled the IFF?\\\"\\n\\nThere was another long silence. They heard a car pull up. Doors slammed. Brogan and Milosevic rattled up the ladder and stepped into the hush. They carried brown bags and Styrofoam cups with plastic lids.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The giant search-and-rescue Chinook made it north from Peterson in Colorado to Malmstrom Air Force Base outside of Great Falls in Montana without incident. It touched down there and fuel bowsers came out to meet it. The crew walked to the mess for coffee. Walked back twenty minutes later. Took off again and swung gently in the morning air before lumbering away northwest.\\n\\nTHIRTY-EIGHT\\n\\nWE'RE GETTING NO REACTION,\\\"FOWLER SAID.\\\" MAKES US wonder why.\\\"\\n\\nReacher shrugged at him. They were in the command hut. Stevie had dragged him through the trees to the Bastion, and then Fowler had dragged him back again with two armed guards. The punishment hut was unavailable. Still occupied by Joseph Ray. They used the command hut instead. They sat Reacher down and Fowler locked his left wrist to the arm of the chair with a handcuff. The guards took up position on either side, rifles sloped, watchful. Then Fowler walked up to join Borken and Stevie for the ceremony on the parade ground. Reacher heard faint shouting and cheering in the distance as the proclamation was readout. Then he heard nothing. Ninety minutes later, Fowler came back to the hut alone. He sat down behind Borken's desk and lit a cigarette, and the armed guards remained standing.\\n\\n\\\"We faxed it an hour ago,\\\" Fowler said. \\\"No reaction.\\\"\\n\\nReacher smelled his smoke and gazed at the banners on the walls. Dark reds and dull whites, vivid crooked symbols in black.\\n\\n\\\"Do you know why we're getting no reaction?\\\" Fowler asked.\\n\\nReacher just shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"You know what I think?\\\" Fowler said'They cut the line. Phone company is colluding with the federal agents. We were told it would happen at seven-thirty. It obviously happened earlier.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher shrugged again.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Made no reply.\\n\\n\\\"We would expect to be informed about a thing like that,\\\" Fowler said.\\n\\nHe picked up his Clock and propped it in front of him, button the desktop, swiveling it like naval artillery left and right.\\n\\n\\\"And we haven't been,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Maybe your pal from Chicago has given you up,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nFowler shook his head. His Clock came to rest aimed at Reacher's chest.\\n\\n\\\"We've been getting a stream of intelligence,\\\" he said. \\\" We know where they are, how many of them there are, what their intentions are. But now, when we still need information, we aren't getting it.\\n\\nCommunication has been interrupted.\\\"\\n\\nReacher said nothing.\\n\\n\\\"We're investigating,\\\" Fowler said. \\\"We're checking the radio right now.\\\"\\n\\nReacher said nothing.\\n\\n\\\"Anything you want to tell us about the radio?\\\" Fowler asked.\\n\\n\\\"What radio?\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"It worked OK yesterday,\\\" Fowler said. \\\"Now it doesn't work at all, and you were wandering around all night.\\\"\\n\\nHe ducked down and rolled open the drawer where Borken kept the Colt Marshal. But he didn't come outwith a revolver. He came outwith a small black radio transmitter.\\n\\n\\\"This was Jackson's,\\\" he said. \\\"He was most anxious to show us where it was hidden. In fact he was begging to show us. He screamed and cried and begged. Just about tore his fingernails off digging it up, he was so anxious.\\\"\\n\\nHe smiled and put the unit carefully in his pocket.\\n\\n\\\"We figure we just switch it on,\\\" he said. That should put us straight through to the federal scum, person-to-person. This stage of the process, we need to talk direct. See if we can persuade them to restore our fax line.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Terrific plan,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"The fax line is important, you see,\\\" Fowler said. \\\"Vital. The world must be allowed to know what we're doing here. The world must be allowed to watch and witness. History is being made here. You understand that, right?\\\"\\n\\nReadier stared at the wall.\\n\\n\\\"They've got cameras, you know,\\\" Fowler said. \\\"Surveillance planes are up there right now. Now it's daylight again, they can see what we're doing. So how can we exploit that fact?\\\"\\n\\nReacher shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"You can leave me out of it,\\\" he said.\\n\\nFowler smiled.\\n\\n\\\"Of course we'll leave you out of it,\\\" he said. \\\"Why would they care about seeing you nailed to a tree? You're nothing but apiece of shit, to us and to them. But Holly Johnson, there's a different story. Maybe we'll call them upon their own little transmitter and tell them to watch us do it with their own spy cameras. That might make them think about it. They might trade a fax line for her left breast.\\\"\\n\\nHe ground out his cigarette. Leaned forward. Spoke quietly.\\n\\n\\\"We're serious here, Reacher,\\\" he said. \\\" You saw what we did to Jackson. We could do that to her. We could do that to you. We need to be able to communicate with the world. We need that fax line. So we need the short-wave to confirm what the hell they've done with it.\\n\\nWe need those things very badly. You understand that, right? So if you want to avoid a lot of unnecessary pain, for you and for her, you better tell me what you did to the radio.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher was twisted around, looking at the bookcase. Trying to recall the details of the inexpert translations of the Japanese Pearl Harbor texts he'd read.\\n\\nTell me now,\\\"Fowler said softly.\\\" I can keep them away from you and from her. No pain for either of you. Otherwise, nothing I can do about it.\\\"\\n\\nHe laid his Clock on the desk.\\n\\n\\\"You want a cigarette?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nHe held out the pack. Smiled. The good cop. The friend. The ally.\\n\\nThe protector. The oldest routine in the book. Requiring the oldest response. Reacher glanced around. Two guards, one on each side of him, the right-hand guard nearer, the left-hand guard back almost against the sidewall. Rifles held easy in the crook of their arms.\\n\\nFowler behind the desk, holding out the pack. Reacher shrugged and nodded. Took a cigarette with his free right hand. He hadn't smoked in ten years, but when somebody offers you a lethal weapon you take it.\\n\\n\\\"So tell me,\\\" Fowler said. \\\"And be quick.\\\"\\n\\nHe thumbed his lighter and held it out. Reacher bent forward and lit his cigarette from the flame. Took a deep draw and leaned back. The smoke felt good. Ten years, and he still enjoyed it. He inhaled deeply and took another lungful.\\n\\n\\\"How did you disable our radio?\\\" Fowler asked.\\n\\nReacher took a third pull. Trickled the smoke out of his nose and held the cigarette like a sentry does, between the thumb and forefinger, palm hooded around it. Take quick deep pulls, and the coal on the end of a cigarette heats up to a couple of thousand degrees. Lengthens to a point. He rotated his palm, like he was studying the glowing tip while he thought about something, until the cigarette was pointing straightforward like an arrow.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"How did you disable our radio?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Fowler asked again.\\n\\n\\\"You'll hurt Holly if I don't tell you?\\\" Reacher asked back.\\n\\nFowler nodded. Smiled his lipless smile.\\n\\nThat's a promise,\\\"he said.\\\" I'll hurt her so bad she'll be begging to die.\\\"\\n\\nReacher shrugged unhappily. Sketched a listen-up gesture. Fowler nodded and shuffled on his chair and leaned close. Reacher snapped forward and jammed the cigarette into his eye. Fowler screamed and Reacher was on his feet, the chair cuffed to his wrist clattering after him. He windmilled right and the chair swung through a wide arc and smashed against the nearer guard's head. It splintered and jerked away as Reacher danced to his left. He caught the farther guard with a forearm smash to the throat as his rifle came up. Snapped back and hit Fowler with the wreckage of the chair. Used the follow-through momentum to swing back to the first guard. Finished him with an elbow to the head. The guy went down. Reacher grabbed his rifle by the barrel and swung straight back at the other guard. Felt skull bones explode under the butt. He dropped the rifle and spun and smashed the chair to pieces against Fowler's shoulders. Grabbed him by the ears and smashed his face into the desktop, once, twice, three times. Took a leg from the broken chair and jammed it crossways under his throat.\\n\\nFolded his elbows around each exposed end and locked his hands together. Tested his grip and bunched his shoulders. Jerked hard, once, and broke Fowler's neck against the chair leg with a single loud crunch.\\n\\nHe took both rifles and the Clock and the handcuff key. Out of the door and around to the back of the hut. Straight into the trees. He put the Clock in his pocket. Took the handcuff off his wrist. Put a rifle in each hand. Breathing hard. He was in pain. Swinging the heavy wooden chair had opened the red weal on his wrist into a wound.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He raised it to his mouth and sucked at it and buttoned the cuff of his shirt over it.\\n\\nThen he heard a helicopter. The faint bass thumping of a heavy twin-rotor machine, a Boeing, a Sea Knight or a Chinook, far to the southeast. He thought: last night Borken talked about eight Marines.\\n\\nThey've only got eight Marines, he said. The Marines use Sea Knights.\\n\\nHe thought: they're going fora frontal assault. Holly's paneled walls flashed into his mind and he set off racing through the trees.\\n\\nHe got as far as the Bastion. The thumping from the air built louder.\\n\\nHe risked stepping out onto the stony path. It was a Chinook. Not a Sea Knight. Search-and-rescue markings, not Marine Corps. It was following the road up from the southeast, a mile away, a hundred feet up, using its vicious downdraft to part the surrounding foliage and aid its search. It looked slow and ponderous, hanging nose-down in the air, yawing slightly from side to side as it approached. Reacher guessed it must be pretty close to the town of Yorke itself.\\n\\nThen he glanced into the clearing and saw a guy, fifty yards away. A grunt, camouflage fatigues. A Stinger on his shoulder. Turning and aiming through the crude open sight. He saw him acquire the target.\\n\\nThe guy steadied himself and stood with his feet apart. His hand fumbled for the activator. The missile's infrared sensor turned on.\\n\\nReacher waited for the IFF to shut it down. It didn't happen. The missile started squealing its high-pitched tone. It was locked on the heat from the Chinook's engines. The guy's finger tightened on the trigger.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher dropped the rifle in his left hand. Swung the other one up and clicked the safety off with his thumb as he did so. Stepped to his left and leaned his shoulder on a tree. Aimed at the guy's head and fired.\\n\\nBut the guy fired first. A fraction of a second before Reacher's bullet killed him, he pulled the Stinger's trigger. Two things happened. The Stinger's rocket motor lit up. It exploded along its launch tube. Then the guy was hit in the head. The impact knocked him sideways. The launcher caught the rear of the missile and flipped it.\\n\\nIt came out and stalled tail-down in the air like a javelin, cushioned on the thrust of its launch, virtually motionless.\\n\\nThen it corrected itself. Reacher watched in horror as it did exactly what it was designed to do. Its eight little wings popped out. It hung almost vertical until it acquired the helicopter again. Then its second-stage rocket lit up and it blasted into the sky. Before the guy's body hit the ground it was homing in on the Chinook at a thousand miles an hour.\\n\\nThe Chinook was lumbering steadily northwest. A mile away. Following the road. The road ran straight up through the town. Between the abandoned buildings. On the southeast corner the first building it passed was the courthouse. The Chinook was closing on it at eighty miles an hour. The Stinger was heading into meet it at a thousand miles an hour.\\n\\nOne mile at a thousand miles an hour. One thousandth of an hour. A fraction over three and a half seconds. It felt like a lifetime to Reacher. He watched the missile all the way. A wonderful, brutal weapon. A simple, unshakable purpose. Designed to recognize the exact heat-signature of aircraft exhaust, designed to follow it until it either got there or ran out of fuel. A simple three-and-a-half-second mission.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The Chinook pilot saw it early. He wasted the first second of its flight, frozen. Not in horror, not in fear, just in simple disbelief that a heat-seeking missile had been fired at him from a small wooded clearing in Montana. Then his instinct and training took over. Evade and avoid. Evade the missile, avoid crashing on settlements below.\\n\\nReacher saw him throw the nose down and the tail up. The big Chinook wheeled away and spewed a wide fan of exhaust into the atmosphere. Then the tail flipped the other way, engines screaming, superheated fumes spraying another random arc. The missile patiently followed the first curve. Tightened its radius. The Chinook dropped slowly and then rose violently in the air. Spiraled upward and away from the town. The missile turned and followed the second arc. Arrived at where the heat had been a split-second before. Couldn't find it. It turned a full lazy circle right underneath the helicopter. Caught an echo of the new maneuver and set about climbing a relentless new spiral.\\n\\nThe pilot won an extra second, but that was all. The Stinger caught him right at the top of his desperate climb. It followed the trail of heat all the way into the starboard engine itself. Exploded hard against the exhaust nacelle.\\n\\nSix and a half pounds of high explosive against ten tons of aircraft, but the explosive always wins. Reacher saw the starboard engine disintegrate, then the rear rotor housing blow off. Shattered fragments of the drivetrain exploded outward like shrapnel and the rotor detached and spun away in terrible slow motion. The Chinook stalled in the air and fell, tail-down, checked only by the screaming forward rotor, and slowly spun to the earth, like a holed ship slips slowly below the sea.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Holly heard the helicopter. She heard the low-frequency beat pulsing faintly through her walls. She heard it grow louder. Then she heard the explosion and the shriek of the forward rotor grabbing the air.\\n\\nThen she heard nothing.\\n\\nShe jammed her elbow into her crutch and limped across to the diagonal partition. The prison room was completely empty except for the mattress. So her search was going to have to start again in the bathroom.\\n\\n\\\"Only one question,\\\" Webster said. \\\"How long can we keep the lid on this?\\\"\\n\\nGeneral Johnson said nothing in reply. Neither did his aide. Webster moved his gaze across to Garber. Garber was looking grim.\\n\\n\\\"Not too damn long,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"But how long?\\\" Webster asked. \\\"A day? An hour?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Six hours,\\\" Garber said.\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\n\\\"Standard procedure,\\\" Garber said. They'll investigate the crash, obviously. Normally they'd send another chopper out. But not if there's a suspicion of ground fire. So they'll come byroad from Malmstrom. Six hours.\\\"\\n\\nWebster nodded. Turned to Johnson.\\n\\n\\\"Can you delay them, General?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nJohnson shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Not really,\\\" he said. His voice was low and resigned. \\\"They just lost a Chinook. Crew of two. I can't call them and say, dome a favor, don't investigate that. I could try, I guess, and they might agree at first, but it would leak, and then we'd be back where we started. Might gain us an hour.\\\"\\n\\nWebster nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Seven hours, six hours, what's the difference?\\\" he said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Nobody replied.\\n\\n\\\"We've got to move now,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Forget the White House. We can't wait any longer. We need to do something right now, people. Six hours from now, the whole situation blows right out of control. We'll lose her.\\\"\\n\\nSix hours is three hundred and sixty minutes. They wasted the first two sitting in silence. Johnson stared into space. Webster drummed his fingers on the table. Garber stared at McGrath, awry expression on his face. McGrath was staring at the map. Milosevic and Brogan were standing in the silence, holding the brown bags of breakfast and the Styrofoam cups.\\n\\n\\\"Coffee here, anybody wants it,\\\" Brogan said.\\n\\nGarber waved him over.\\n\\n\\\"Eat and plan,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Map,\\\" Johnson said.\\n\\nMcGrath slid the map across the table. They all sat forward. Back in motion. Three hundred and fifty eight minutes to go.\\n\\n\\\"Ravine's about four miles north of us,\\\" the aide said. \\\"All we got is eight Marines in a LAV-25.\\\"\\n\\nThat tank thing?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nThe aide shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Light Armored Vehicle,\\\" he said. \\\"LAV. Eight wheels, no tracks.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Bulletproof?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\n\\\"For sure,\\\" the aide said. They can drive it all the way to Yorke.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"If it gets through the ravine,\\\" Garber said.\\n\\nJohnson nodded.\\n\\nThat's the big question,\\\"he said.\\\" We need to go take a look.\\\"\\n\\nThe Light Armored Vehicle looked just like a tank to McGrath's hasty civilian glance, except there were eight wheels on it instead of tracks. The hull was welded up out of brutal sloping armor plates and there was a turret with a gun. The driver sat forward, and the commander satin the turret. In the rear, two rows of three Marines sat back to back, facing weapon ports. Each port had its own periscope. McGrath could visualize the vehicle rumbling into battle, invulnerable, weapons bristling out of those ports. Down into the ravine, up the other side, along the road to Yorke to the courthouse.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He pulled Webster to one side and spoke urgently.\\n\\n\\\"We never told them,\\\" he said. \\\"About the dynamite in the walls.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And we're not going to,\\\" Webster said quietly. The old guy would freak out. He's close to falling apart right now. I'm going to tell the Marines direct. They're going in there. They'll have to deal with it. Makes no difference if Johnson knows in advance or not.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath intercepted Johnson and Webster ran over to the armored vehicle. McGrath saw the Marine commander leaning down from the turret. Saw him nodding and grimacing as Webster spoke. Then the general's aide fired up the army Chevrolet. Johnson and Garber crammed into the front with him. McGrath jumped in back. Brogan and Milosevic crushed in alongside him.\\n\\nWebster finished up and raced back to the Chevy. Squeezed in next to Milosevic. The LAV fired up its big diesel with a blast of black smoke. Then it crunched into gear and lumbered off north. The Chevy accelerated in its wake.\\n\\nFour miles north they crested a slight rise and entered a curve. Slowed and jammed to a stop in the lee of a craggy outcrop. The Marine commander vaulted down from the turret and ran north on the road.\\n\\nWebster and Johnson and McGrath got out and hurried after him. They paused together in the lee of the rock face and crept around the curve.\\n\\nStared out and down into the ravine. It was an intimidating sight.\\n\\nIt ran left to right in front of them, more or less straight. And it was not just a trench. It was a trench and a step. The whole crust of the earth had fractured, and the southern plate had fallen below the level of the northern plate. Like adjacent sections of an old concrete highway where a car thumps up an inch at the seam. Expanded to geological size, that inch was a fifty-foot disparity.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Where the earth had fractured and fallen, the edges had brokenup into giant boulders. The scouring of the glaciers had tumbled those boulders south. The ice and the heave and the weather over a million years had raked out the fracture and turned it into a trench. It had cutback the rock plates to where they became solid again. Some places, it had carved a hundred-yard width. Other places, tougher seams of rock had kept the gap down to twenty yards.\\n\\nThen the roots of a thousand generations of trees and the frozen water of the winters had eroded the edges until there was a steep ragged descent to the bottom and a steep ragged rise backup the northern side to the top, fifty feet higher than the starting point. There were stunted trees and tangled undergrowth and rock slides. The road itself was lifted progressively on concrete trestles and rose gently across abridge. Then more concrete trestles set it down on the level ground to the north and it snaked away through the forest into the mountains.\\n\\nBut the bridge was blown. Charges had been exploded against the two center trestles. A twenty-foot section of the center span had fallen a hundred feet into the trench. The four men in the lee of the outcrop could see fragments of the road lying shattered in the bottom of the ravine.\\n\\n\\\"What do you think?\\\" Johnson asked urgently.\\n\\nThe Marine commander was giving it a fast sweep through his field glasses. Left and right, up and down, examining the exact terrain.\\n\\n\\\"I think it's shit, sir,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Can you get through?\\\" Johnson asked him.\\n\\nThe guy lowered his field glasses and shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Not a hope in hell,\\\" he said.\\n\\nHe stepped across, shoulder-to-shoulder with the general, so Johnson could share the same line of sight. Started talking rapidly and pointing as he did so.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We could get down to the bottom,\\\" he said. \\\"We could go in right there, where the rock slide gives us a reasonable descent. But getting up the other side is the problem, sir. The LAV can't climb much more than forty-five degrees. Most of the north face looks a lot steeper than that. Some places, it's near enough vertical. Any gentle slopes are overgrown. And they've felled trees. See there, sir?\\\"\\n\\nHe pointed to a wooded area on the slope opposite. Trees had been felled and left lying with their chopped ends facing south.\\n\\n\\\"Abatises,\\\" the Marine said. The vehicle is going to stall against them. No doubt about that. Coming uphill, slowly, those things would stop a tank. We go in there, we'll be trapped in the ditch, no doubt at all.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So what the hell do we do?\\\" Johnson said.\\n\\nThe Marine officer shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"Bring me some engineers,\\\" he said. \\\"The gap they blew is only about twenty feet wide. We can bridge that.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How long will that take?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThe Marine shrugged again.\\n\\n\\\"All the way up here?\\\" he said. \\\"Six hours? Maybe eight?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Way too long,\\\" Webster said.\\n\\nThen the radio receiver in McGrath's pocket started crackling.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"REACHER WAS HIDING OUT IN THE WOODS, WORRIED ABOUT THE dogs. They were the only thing he wasn't certain about. People, he could handle. Dogs, he had very little experience. He was in the trees, north of the Bastion, south of the rifle range. He had heard the Chinook hit the ground from a mile away. It hit tail first, smashing and tearing into the wooded slope. It looked to have slipped sideways in the air and missed the courthouse by two hundred yards. No explosions. Not from the courthouse or from the chopper itself. No sound of fuel tanks going up. Reacher was reasonably optimistic for the crew. He figured the trees and the collapse of the big boxy body might have cushioned the impact for them. He had known chopper crews survive worse.\\n\\nHe had an M-16 rifle in his hand and a Glock in his pocket. The Clock was fully loaded. Seventeen shells. The M-16 had the short clip.\\n\\nTwenty shells, less the one that had killed the guy with the missile.\\n\\nThe second M-16 had the long clip. A full load of thirty. But it was hidden in the trees. Because Reacher had a rule: choose the weapon you know for sure is in working order.\\n\\nHe felt instinctively that the focus of attention would be in the southeast direction. That was where Holly was being held, and that was where the Chinook had comedown. That was wherethe opposition forces would be massing. He felt people would be turning to face southeast, apprehensively, staring down into the rest of the United States, waiting. So he turned his back and headed northwest.\\n\\nHe moved cautiously. The bulk of the enemy was elsewhere, but he knew there were squads out looking for him. He knew they had already discovered Fowler's body. He had seen two separate patrols searching the woods. Six men in each, heavily armed, crashing through the undergrowth, searching. Not difficult to avoid. But the dogs would be difficult to avoid. That was why he was worried. That was why he was moving cautiously.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He stayed in the trees and skirted the western end of the rifle range.\\n\\nTracked back east around the parade ground. Fifty yards north, he turned again and paralleled the road up to the mines. He stayed in the trees and moved at a fast jog. Used the time to start laying out some priorities. And a timescale He figured he had maybe three hours.\\n\\nBringing down the Chinook was going to provoke some kind of a violent reaction. No doubt about that. But in all his years in the service, he had never known anything happen faster than three hours. So he had three hours, and a lot of ground to cover.\\n\\nHe slowed to a fast walk when the rocky ground started rising under his feet. Followed a wide uphill circle west and cut straight into the edge of the bowl where the mine entrances were. He heard diesel engines idling. He bent double and crept across to the cover of a rock. Looked out and down.\\n\\nHe was just above halfway up the slope surrounding the bowl. Looking more or less due east across its diameter. The log doors of the farther shed were standing open. Four of the missile unit's trucks were standing on the shale. The four with the weapon racks in back.\\n\\nThe troop carrier was still inside.\\n\\nThere was a handful of men in the bowl. They were set in an approximate circle around the cluster of trucks. Reacher counted eight guys. Fatigues, rifles, tense limbs. What had the kitchen woman said?\\n\\nThe mines were off limits. Except to the people Borken trusted.\\n\\nReacher watched them. Eight trusted lieutenants, acting out a reasonable imitation of sentry duty.\\n\\nHe watched them fora couple of minutes. Slid his rifle to his shoulder. He was less than a hundred yards away. He could hear the rattle of the shale as the sentries moved around. He clicked the selector to the single-shot position. He had nineteen shells in the box, and he needed to fire a minimum of eight. He needed to be cautious with ammunition.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The M-16 is a good rifle. Easy to use, easy to maintain. Easy to aim.\\n\\nThe carrying handle has a grooved top which lines up with an identical groove in the front sight. At a hundred yards, you squint down the handle groove and let it merge with the front groove, and what you see is what you hit. Reacher rested his weight on the rock and lined up the first target. Practiced the slight sweep that would take him onto the second. And the third. He rehearsed the full sequence of eight shots. He didn't want his elbow snagging somewhere in the middle.\\n\\nHe returned to the first target. Waited a beat and fired. The sound of the shot crashed through the mountains. The right front tire of the first truck exploded. He swept the sights onto the left front. Fired again. The truck dropped to its rims like a stunned ox falling to its knees.\\n\\nHe kept firing steadily. He had fired five shots and hit five tires before anybody reacted. Ashe fired the sixth he saw in the corner of his eye the sentries diving for cover. Some were just dropping to the ground. Others were running for the shed. He fired the seventh.\\n\\nPaused before the eighth. The farthest tire was the hardest shot. The angle was oblique. The sidewall was unavailable to him. He was going to have to fire at the treads. Possible that the shell might glance off. He fired. He hit. The tire burst. The front of the last truck dropped.\\n\\nThe nearest sentry was still on his feet. Not heading for the shed.\\n\\nJust standing and staring toward the rock Reacher was behind. Raising his rifle. It was an M-16, same as Reacher's. Long magazine, thirty shells. The guy was standing there, sighting it in on the rock. A brave man, or an idiot. Reacher crouched and waited. The guy fired.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"His weapon was set on automatic.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He loosed off a burst of three. Three shots in a fifth of a second. They smashed into the trees fifteen feet above Reacher's head. Twigs and leaves drifted down and landed near him. The guy ran ten yards closer. Fired again. Three more shells.\\n\\nWay off to Reacher's left. He heard the whine of the bullets and the thunking as they hit the trees before he heard the muzzle blast.\\n\\nBullets which travel faster than sound do that. You hear it all in reverse order. The bullet gets there before the sound of the shot.\\n\\nReacher had decisions to take. How close was he going to let this guy get? And was he going to fire a warning shot? The next burst of three was nearer. Low, but nearer. Not more than six feet away. Reacher decided: not much damn closer, and no warning shot. The guy was all pumped up. No percentage in trying a warning shot. This guy was not going to get calmed down in any kind of a hurry.\\n\\nHe lay on his side. Straightened his legs and came out at the base of the rock. Fired once and hit the guy in the chest. He went down in a heap on the shale. The rifle flew off to his right. Reacher stayed where he was. Watched carefully. The guy was still alive. So Reacher fired again. Hit him through the top of the head. Kinder not to leave him with a sucking chest wound for the last ten minutes of his life.\\n\\nThe echoes of the brief firefight died into the mountain silence and then the air was still. The other seven guys were nowhere. The trucks were all resting nose-down on their front rims. Disabled. Maybe they could be driven out of the bowl, but the first of the mountain hairpins was going to strip the blown tires right off. The trucks were neutralized. No doubt about that.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher crawled backward ten yards and stood up in the trees. Jogged down the slope and headed back toward the Bastion. Seventeen shells in the Glock, nine in the rifle. Progress, at a price.\\n\\nThe dogs found him halfway back. Two big rangy animals. German shepherds. He saw them at the same time as they saw him. They were loping along with that kind of infinite energy big dogs display. Long bounding strides, eager expressions, wet mouths gaping. They stopped short on stiff front legs and switched direction in a single fluid stride. Thirty yards away. Then twenty. Then ten. Acceleration. New energy in their movement. Snarls rising in their throats.\\n\\nPeople, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a manor a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got.\\n\\nHis response was their problem. But dogs were different.\\n\\nNo freewill. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.\\n\\nHe left the Clock in his pocket. The rifle was better. It was about two and a half feet longer than the handgun. An extra two and a half feet of separation seemed like a good idea. The dogs stopped short of him. The fur on their shoulders was raised. The fur down their backs was raised, following their spines. They crouched, front feet splayed, heads down, snarling loudly. They had yellow teeth. Lots of them.\\n\\nTheir eyes were brown. Reacher could see fine dark eyelashes, like a girl's.\\n\\nOne of them was forward of the other. The leader of the pack. He knew dogs had to have a pecking order. Two dogs, one of them had to be superior to the other. Like people. He didn't know how dogs worked it out for themselves. Posturing, maybe. Maybe smell. Maybe fighting.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":288,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Help keep the tale going for the author.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 37"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher crawled backward ten yards and stood up in the trees. Jogged down the slope and headed back toward the Bastion. Seventeen shells in the Glock, nine in the rifle. Progress, at a price.\n\nThe dogs found him halfway back. Two big rangy animals. German shepherds. He saw them at the same time as they saw him. They were loping along with that kind of infinite energy big dogs display. Long bounding strides, eager expressions, wet mouths gaping. They stopped short on stiff front legs and switched direction in a single fluid stride. Thirty yards away. Then twenty. Then ten. Acceleration. New energy in their movement. Snarls rising in their throats.\n\nPeople, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a manor a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got.\n\nHis response was their problem. But dogs were different.\n\nNo freewill. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.\n\nHe left the Clock in his pocket. The rifle was better. It was about two and a half feet longer than the handgun. An extra two and a half feet of separation seemed like a good idea. The dogs stopped short of him. The fur on their shoulders was raised. The fur down their backs was raised, following their spines. They crouched, front feet splayed, heads down, snarling loudly. They had yellow teeth. Lots of them.\n\nTheir eyes were brown. Reacher could see fine dark eyelashes, like a girl's.\n\nOne of them was forward of the other. The leader of the pack. He knew dogs had to have a pecking order. Two dogs, one of them had to be superior to the other. Like people. He didn't know how dogs worked it out for themselves. Posturing, maybe. Maybe smell. Maybe fighting."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He stared at the forward dog. Stared into its eyes. Time to time, he had heard people talking about dogs. They said: never show fear. Stare the dog down. Don't let it know you're afraid. Reacher wasn't afraid.\n\nHe was standing therewith an M16 in his hands. The only thing he was worried about was having to use it.\n\nHe stared silently at the doglike he used to stare at some service guy gone bad. A hard, silent stare like a physical force, like a cold, crushing pressure. Bleak, cold eyes, unblinking. It had worked a hundred times with people. Now it was working with the lead dog.\n\nThe dog was only partially trained. Reacher could see that. It could go through the motions. But it couldn't deliver. It hadn't been trained to ignore its victim's input. It was eye to eye with him, backing off fractionally like his glare was a painful weight on its narrow forehead. Reacher turned up the temperature. Narrowed his eyes and bared his own teeth. Sneered like a tough guy in a bad movie. The dog's head dropped. Its eyes swiveled upward to maintain contact. Its tail dropped down between its legs.\n\n\"Sit,\" Reacher said. He said it calmly but firmly. Plenty of emphasis on the plosive consonant at the end of the word. The dog moved automatically. Shuffled its hind legs inward and sat. The other dog followed suit, like a shadow. They sat side by side and stared up at him.\n\n\"Lie down,\" Reacher said.\n\nThe dogs didn't move. Just stayed sitting, looking at him, puzzled.\n\nMaybe the wrong word. Not the command they were accustomed to."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Down,\" Reacher said.\n\nThey slid their front paws forward and dropped their bellies to the forest floor. Looking up at him.\n\n\"Stay,\" Reacher said.\n\nHe gave them a look like he meant it and moved off south. Forced himself to walk slow. Five yards into the trees, he turned. The dogs were still on the ground. Their necks were twisted around, watching him walkaway.\n\n\"Stay,\" he called again.\n\nThey stayed. He walked.\n\nHe could hear people in the Bastion. The sound of a fair-sized crowd trying to keep quiet. He heard it when he was still north of the parade ground. He skirted the area in the trees and walked around the far end of the rifle range. Came through the trees behind the mess hall. Opposite the kitchen door. He walked a circle deep in the woods behind the buildings until he got an angle. Crept forward to take a look.\n\nThere were maybe thirty people in the Bastion. They were standing in a tight group. Edging forward into a cluster. All men, all in camouflage fatigues, all heavily armed. Rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, pockets bulging with spare magazines. The crowd ebbed and flowed. Shoulders touched and parted. Reacher glimpsed Beau Borken in the center of the mass of people. He was holding a small black radio transmitter. Reacher recognized it. It was Jackson's. Borken had retrieved it from Fowler's pocket He was holding it up to\" his ear.\n\nStaring into space like he'd just switched it on and was waiting fora reply."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"MCGRATH SNATCHED THE RADIO FROM HIS POCKET. FLIPPED IT open and stared at it. It was crackling loudly in his hand. Webster stepped forward and took it from him. Ducked back to the cover of the rock face and clicked the button.\n\n\"Jackson?\" he said. \"This is Harland Webster.\"\n\nMcGrath and Johnson crowded in on him. The three men crouched against the rock wall. Webster moved the unit an inch from his ear so the other two could listen in. In the cover of the rock, in the silence of the mountains, they could hear it crackling and hissing and the fast breathing of a person on the other end. Then they heard a voice.\n\n\"Harland Webster?\" the voice said. \"Well, well, the headman himself.\"\n\n\"Jackson?\" Webster said again.\n\n\"No,\" the voice said. This is not Jackson.\"\n\nWebster glanced at McGrath.\n\n\"So who is it?\" he asked.\n\n\"Beau Borken,\" the voice said. \"And as of today, I guess that's President Borken. President of the Free States of America. But feel free to speak informally.\"\n\n\"Where's Jackson?\" Webster asked.\n\nThere was a pause. Nothing to hear except the faint electronic sound of FBI telecommunications technology. Satellites and microwaves.\n\n\"Where's Jackson?\" Webster asked again.\n\n\"He died,\" the voice said.\n\nWebster glanced at McGrath again.\n\n\"How?\" he asked.\n\n\"Just died,\" Borken said. \"Relatively quickly, really.\"\n\n\"Was he sick?\" Webster asked.\n\nThere was another pause. Then there was the sound of laughter. A high, tinny sound. Aloud, shrieking laugh which overloaded Webster's earpiece and spilled into distortion and bounced off the rock wall."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"No, he wasn't sick, Webster,\" Borken said. \"He was pretty healthy, up until the last ten minutes.\"\n\n\"What did you do to him?\" Webster asked.\n\n\"Same as I'm going to do to the general's little girl,\" Borken said.\n\n\"Listen up, and I'll tell you the exact details. You need to pay attention, because you need to know what you're dealing with here.\n\nWe're serious here. We mean business, you understand? You listening?\"\n\nJohnson pushed in close. White and sweating.\n\n\"You crazy bastards,\" he yelled.\n\n\"Who's that?\" Borken asked. That the general himself?\"\n\n\"General Johnson,\" Webster said.\n\nThere was a chuckle on the radio. Just a short, satisfied sound.\n\n\"A full house,\" Borken said. \"The director of the FBI and the joint chairman. We're flattered, believe me. But I guess the birth of anew nation deserves nothing less.\"\n\n\"What do you want?\" Webster asked.\n\n\"We crucified him,\" Borken said. \"We found a couple of trees a yard apart, and we nailed him up. We're going to do that to your daughter, General, if you step out of line. Then we cut his balls off. He was pleading and screaming for us not to, but we did it anyway. We can't do that to your kid, her being a woman and all, but we'll find some equivalent, you know what I mean? Do you think she'll be screaming and pleading, General? You know her better than me. Personally, I'm betting she will be. She likes to think she's a tough cookie, but when she sees those blades coming close, she's going to change her damn tune pretty quick, I'm just about sure of that.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Johnson turned whiter. All his blood just drained away. He fell back and sat heavily against the rock. His mouth was working soundlessly.\n\n\"What the hell do you bastards want?\" Webster yelled.\n\nThere was another silence. Then the voice came back, quiet and firm.\n\n\"I want you to stop yelling,\" it said. \"I want you to apologize for yelling at me. I want you to apologize for calling me a rude name. I'm the President of the Free States, and I'm owed some courtesy and deference, wouldn't you say?\"\n\nHis voice was quiet, but McGrath heard it clearly enough. He looked across at Webster in panic. They were close to losing, before they had even started. First rule was to negotiate. To keep them talking, and gradually gain the upper hand. Establish dominance. Classic siege theory. But to start out by apologizing for yelling was to kiss goodbye to any hope of dominance. That was to lie down and rollover.\n\nFrom that point on, you were their plaything. McGrath shook his head urgently. Webster nodded back. Said nothing. Just held the radio without speaking. He knew how to do this. He had been in this situation before. Several times. He knew the protocol. Now, the first one to speak was the weaker one. And it wasn't going to be him.\n\nHe and McGrath gazed at the ground and waited.\n\n\"You still there?\" Borken asked.\n\nWebster carried on staring down. Saying nothing.\n\n\"You there?\" Borken said again.\n\n\"What's on your mind, Beau?\" Webster asked, calmly.\n\nThere was angry breathing over the air.\n\n\"You cut my phone line,\" Borken said. \"I want it restored.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"No, we didn't,\" Webster said. \"Doesn't your phone work?\"\n\n\"My faxes,\" Borken said. \"I got no response.\"\n\n\"What faxes?\" Webster said.\n\n\"Don't bullshit me,\" Borken said. \"I know you cut the line. I want it fixed.\"\n\nWebster winked at McGrath.\n\n\"OK,\" he said. \"We can do that. But you've got to do something for us first.\"\n\n\"What?\" Borken asked.\n\n\"Holly,\" Webster said. \"Bring her down to the bridge and leave her there.\"\n\nThere was another silence. Then the laughter started up again. High and loud.\n\n\"No dice,\" Borken said. \"And no deals.\"\n\nWebster nodded to himself. Lowered his voice. Sounded like the most reasonable man on earth.\n\n\"Listen, Mr. Borken,\" he said. \"If we can't deal, how can we help each other?\"\n\nAnother silence. McGrath stared at Webster. The next reply was crucial. Win or lose.\n\n\"You listen tome, Webster,\" the voice said. \"No deals. You don't do exactly what I say, Holly dies. Ina lot of pain. I holdall the cards, and I'm not doing deals. You understand that?\"\n\nWebster's shoulders slumped. McGrath looked away.\n\n\"Restore the fax line,\" the voice said. \"I need communications. The world must know what we're doing here. This is a big moment in history, Webster. I won't be denied by your stupid games. The world must witness the first blows being struck against your tyranny.\"\n\nWebster stared at the ground."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"This decision is too big for you alone,\"Borken said.\" You need to consult with the White House. There's an interest there too, wouldn't you say?\"\n\nEven over the tinny hand-held radio the force of Borken's voice was obvious. Webster was flinching like a physical weight was against his ear. Flinching and gasping, as his heart and lungs fought each other for space inside his chest.\n\n\"Make your decision,\" Borken said. \"I'll callback in two minutes.\"\n\nThen the radio went dead. Webster stared at it like he had never seen such apiece of equipment before. McGrath leaned over and clicked the button off.\n\n\"OK,\" he said. \"We stall, right? Tell him we're fixing the line. Tell him it will take an hour, maybe two. Tell him we're in contact with the White House, the UN, CNN, whoever. Tell him whatever the hell he wants to hear.\"\n\n\"Why is he doing this?\" Webster asked, vaguely. \"Escalating everything? He's making it so we have to attack him. So we have to, right? Like he wants us to. He's giving us no choice. He's provoking us.\"\n\n\"He's doing it because he's crazy,\" McGrath said.\n\n\"He must be,\" Webster said. \"He's a maniac. Otherwise I just can't understand why he's trying to attract so much attention. Because like he says, he holds all the cards already.\"\n\n\"We'll worry about that later, chief,\" McGrath said. \"Right now, we just need to stall him.\"\n\nWebster nodded. Forced himself back to the problem in hand.\n\n\"But we need longer than two hours,\" he said. \"Hostage Rescue will take at least four to get over here. Maybe five, maybe six.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"OK, it's the Fourth of July,\" McGrath said. Tell him the linemen are all off-duty. Tell him it could take us all day to get them back.\"\n\nThey stared at each other. Glanced at Johnson. He was right out of it. Just slumped against the rock face white and inert, barely breathing. Ninety hours of mortal stress and emotion had finally broken him. Then the radio in Webster's hand crackled again.\n\n\"Well?\" Borken asked, when the static cleared.\n\n\"OK, we agree,\" Webster said. \"We'll fix the line. But it's going to take sometime. Linemen are off-duty for the holidays.\"\n\nThere was a pause. Then a chuckle.\n\n\"Independence Day,\" Borken said. \"Maybe I should have chosen another date.\"\n\nWebster made no reply.\n\n\"I want your Marines where I can see them,\" Borken said.\n\n\"What Marines?\" Webster said.\n\nThere was another short laugh. Short and complacent.\n\n\"You got eight Marines,\" Borken said. \"And an armored car. We got lookouts allover the place. We've been watching you. Like you're watching us with those damn planes. You're lucky Stingers don't shoot that high, or you'd have more than a damn helicopter on the ground by now.\"\n\nWebster made no reply. Just scanned the horizon. McGrath was doing the same thing, automatically, looking for the glint of the sun on field glasses.\n\n\"I figure you're close to the bridge right now,\" Borken said. \"Am I right?\"\n\nWebster shrugged. McGrath prompted him with a nod.\n\n\"We're close to the bridge,\" Webster said."},{"from":"human","value":"\"I want the Marines on the bridge,\" Borken said."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Sitting on the edge in a neat little row. Their vehicle behind them. I want that to happen now, you understand? Or we go to work on Holly. Your choice, Webster. Or maybe it's the general's choice. His daughter, and his Marines, right?\"\n\nJohnson roused himself and glanced up. Five minutes later the Marines were sitting on the fractured edge of the roadway, feet dangling down into the abyss. Their LAV was parked up behind them. Webster was still in the lee of the rock face with McGrath and Johnson. The radio still pressed to his ear. He could hear muffled sounds. Like Borken had pressed his handover the microphone and was using a walkie-talkie.\n\nHe could hear his muffled voice alternating with crackly replies. Then he heard the hand come away and the voice comeback again, loud and clear in the earpiece.\n\n\"OK, Webster, good work,\" Borken said to him. \"Our scouts can see all eight of them. So can our riflemen. If they move, they die. Who else have you got therewith you?\"\n\nWebster paused. McGrath shook his head urgently.\n\n\"Can't you see?\" Webster asked. \"I thought you were watching us.\"\n\n\"Not right now,\" Borken said. \"I pulled my people back a little. Into our defensive positions.\"\n\nThere's nobody else here,\"Webster said.\" Just me and the general.\"\n\nThere was another pause.\n\n\"OK, you two can join the Marines,\" Borken said. \"On the bridge. On the end of the line.\"\n\nWebster waited fora long moment. A blank expression on his face. Then he got up and nodded to Johnson. Johnson got up unsteadily and the two of them walked forward together around the curve. Left McGrath on his own, crouched in the lee of the rock."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"McGrath waited there two minutes and crawled back south to the Chevrolet. Garber and Johnson's aide were in front and Milosevic and Brogan were in back. They were all staring at him.\n\n\"What the hell happened?\" Brogan asked.\n\n\"We're in deep, deep shit,\" McGrath said.\n\nTwo minutes of hurried explanation, and the others agreed with him.\n\n\"So what now?\" Garber asked.\n\n\"We go get Holly,\" McGrath said. \"Before he realizes we're bullshitting him.\"\n\n\"But how?\" Brogan asked.\n\nMcGrath glanced at him. Glanced at Milosevic.\n\nThe three of us,\"he said.\" End of the day, this is a Bureau affair.\n\nCall it whatever you want, terrorism, sedition, kidnaping, it's all FBI territory.\"\n\n\"We're going to do it?\" Milosevic said. \"Just the three of us? Right now?\"\n\n\"You got a better way?\" McGrath said. \"You want something done properly, you do it yourself, right?\"\n\nGarber was twisted around, scanning along the three faces on the rear seat.\n\n\"So go do it,\" he said.\n\nMcGrath nodded and held up his right hand. The thumb and the first two fingers sticking out.\n\n\"I'm the thumb,\" he said. \" I go in east of the road. Brogan, you're the first finger. You walk a mile west of the road and go in from there. Milo, you're the second finger. You walk two miles west and go north from there. We infiltrate separately, spaced out a mile between each of us. We meetup back on the road a half-mile shy of the town."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Clear?\"\n\nBrogan made a face. Then he nodded. Milosevic shrugged. Garber glanced at McGrath and the general's aide started the Chevy and rolled it gently south. He stopped it again after four hundred yards where the road came back out of the rock cover and there was clear access left and right into the countryside. The three FBI men checked their weapons. They each had a government-issue. 38 in a shiny brown leather shoulder holster. Full load of six, plus another six in a speed loader in their pockets.\n\nTry to capture a couple of rifles,\"McGrath said.\" Don't worry about taking prisoners. You see somebody, you shoot the bastard down, OK?\"\n\nMilosevic had the longest walk, so he was first to go. He ducked across the road and struck out due west across the mountain scrub. He made it to a small stand of trees and disappeared. McGrath lit a cigarette and sent Brogan after him. Garber waited until Brogan was in the trees, then he turned back to McGrath.\n\n\"Don't forget what I told you about Readier,\" he said. \"I'm not wrong about that guy. He's on your side, believe me.\"\n\nMcGrath shrugged and said nothing. Smoked in silence. Opened the Chevy's door and slid out. Ground out the cigarette under his shoe and walked away east, across the grassy shoulder and onto the scrub.\n\nMcGrath was not far off fifty, and a heavy smoker, but he was a fit man. He had that type of mongrel constitution that age and smoke could not hurt. He was short at five seven, but sturdy. About one-sixty, made up of that hard slab by muscle which needs no maintenance and never fades into fat. He felt the same as he had as a kid. No better, no worse. His Bureau training had been along time ago, and fairly rudimentary compared to what people were getting now. But he'd aced it. Physically, he'd been indestructible. Not the fastest guy in his class, but easily the best stamina. The training runs in the early days of Quantico had been crude. Around and around in the Virginia woods, using natural obstacles. McGrath would come in maybe third or fourth every time. But if they were sent around again, he could do the same exact time, just about to the second. The faster guys would be struggling at his side as he pounded relentlessly onward. Then they would fallback. Second time around McGrath would come in first. Third time around, he would be the only guy to finish."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"So he was jogging comfortably as he approached the southern edge of the ravine. He had worked about three hundred yards east to a point where the slopes were reasonable and not directly overlooked. He went straight down without pausing. Short, stiff strides against the incline. The footing was loose. He skidded on small avalanches of gravel and used the stunted trees to check his speed. He dodged around the litter of rocks in the bottom of the trench and started up the northern slope.\n\nGoing up was harder. He kicked his toes into the gravel for grip and hauled himself upward with handfuls of grass. He zigzagged between the small trees and bushes, looking for leverage. The extra fifty feet on the northern rim was a punishment. He tracked right to where a small landslide had created a straight path at a kinder angle. Slipped and slid upward through the crushed rock to the top.\n\nHe waited in the overhang, where the earth had fallen away beneath the crust of roots. Listened hard. Heard nothing except silence. He lifted himself onto the rim. Stood therewith his chest against the earth, head and shoulders exposed, looking north into enemy territory.\n\nHe saw nothing. Just the gentle initial slopes, then the hills, then the giant mountains glowering in the far distance. Blue sky, a million trees, clean air, total silence. He thought: you're along way from Chicago, Mack.\n\nAhead of him was a belt of scrub where the ancient rock was too close to the surface for much to grow. Then a ragged belt of trees, interrupted at first by rocky outcrops, then growing denser into the distance. He could seethe curved gap in the treetops where the road must run. Three hundred yards to his left. He rolled up onto the grass and ran for the trees. Worked left toward the road and shadowed it north in the forest."},{"from":"human","value":"He jogged along, dodging trees like a slow-motion parody of a wide receiver heading for the end zone."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The map was printed in his mind. He figured he had maybe three miles to go. Three miles at a slow jog, not much better than a fast walk, maybe forty-five, fifty minutes. The ground was rising gently under his feet. Every fourth or fifth stride, his feet hit the floor a fraction sooner than they should have as the gradient lifted him into the hills. He tripped a couple of times on roots. Once, he slammed into a pine trunk. But he pounded on, relentlessly.\n\nAfter forty minutes, he stopped. He figured Brogan and Milosevic were having a similar journey, but they were dealing with extra distance because they had tracked west at the outset. So he expected a delay.\n\nWith luck they would be about twenty minutes behind him. He walked deeper into the woods and sat down against a trunk. Lit a cigarette.\n\nHe figured he was maybe a half-mile shy of the rendezvous. The map in his head said the road was about due to arrow up into the town.\n\nHe waited fifteen minutes. Two cigarettes. Then he stood up and walked on. He went cautiously. He was getting close. He made two diversions to his left and found the road. Just crept through the trees until he caught the gleam of sun on the gray cement. Then he dodged back and carried on north. He walked until he saw the forest thinning ahead. He saw sunlight on open spaces beyond the last trees.\n\nHe stopped and stepped left and right to find a view. He saw the road running up to the town. He saw buildings. A gray ruin on a knoll on the left. The courthouse on the right. Better preserved. Gleaming white in the sunshine. He stared through the trees at it fora long moment. Then he turned back. Paced five hundred yards into the woods."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Drifted over toward the road until he could just make out the gray gleam through the trees. Leaned on a trunk and waited for Brogan and Milosevic.\n\nThis time, he resisted the attraction of another cigarette. He had learned along time ago that to smoke while in hiding was not a smart thing to do. The smell drifts, and a keen nose can detect it. So he leaned on the tree and stared down in frustration. Stared at his shoes. They were ruined from the scramble up the north face of the ravine. He had jabbed them hard into the rocky slope and they were scratched to pieces. He stared at the ruined toecaps and instantly knew he had been betrayed. Panic rose in his throat. His chest seized hard. It hit him like a prison door swinging gently shut. It swung soundlessly inward on greased hinges and clanged shut right in his face.\n\nWhat had Borken said on the radio? He had said: like you're watching us with those damn planes. But what had the general's aide told him back in the Butte office? You lookup and you see a tiny vapor trail and you think it's TWA. You don't think it's the air force checking if you've shined your shoes this morning. So how did Borken know there were surveillance planes in the sky? Because he had been told. But by who? Who the hell knew?\n\nHe glanced around wildly and the first thing he saw was a dog coming at him from dead ahead. Then another. They bounded through the trees at him. He heard a sound from behind him. The crunch of feet and the flick of branches. Then the same sound from his right. The snicking and slapping of a weapon from his left. The dogs were at his feet. He spun in a panic-stricken circle. All around him men were coming at him through the trees. Lean, bearded men, in camouflage gear, carrying rifles and machine guns. Grenades slung from their webbing. Maybe fifteen or twenty men. They stepped forward calmly and purposefully."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They were in a complete ring, right around him. He turned one way, then the other. He was surrounded. They were raising their weapons.\n\nHe had fifteen or twenty automatic weapons pointing straight at him like spokes in a wheel.\n\nThey stood silent, weapons ready. McGrath glanced from one to the next, in a complete wild circle. Then one of them stepped forward.\n\nSome kind of an officer. His hand went straight in under McGrath's jacket. Jerked the. 38 out of his holster. Then the guy's hand went into McGrath's pocket. Closed over the speed loader and pulled it out.\n\nThe guy slipped both items into his own pocket and smiled. Swung his fist and hit McGrath in the face. McGrath staggered and was prodded back forward with the muzzle of a rifle. Then he heard tires on the road. The grumble of a motor. He glanced left and caught a flash of olive green in the sun. A jeep. Two men in it. The soldiers pressed in and forced him out of the forest. They jostled him through the trees and onto the shoulder. He blinked in the sun. He could feel his nose was bleeding. The jeep rolled forward and stopped alongside him.\n\nThe driver stared at him with curiosity. Another lean, bearded man in uniform. In the passenger seat was a huge man wearing black. Beau Borken. McGrath recognized him from his Bureau file photograph. He stared at him. Then Borken leaned over and grinned.\n\n\"Hello, Mr. McGrath,\" he said. \"You made good time.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"REACHER WATCHED THE WHOLE THING HAPPEN. HE WAS A HUNDRED and fifty yards away in the trees. Northwest of the ambush, high up the slope on the other side of the road. There was a dead sentry at his feet. The guy was lying in the dirt with his head at right angles to his neck.\n\nReacher had his field glasses raised to his eyes. Watching. Watching what, he wasn't exactly sure.\n\nHe had caught the gist of the radio conversation in the Bastion. He had heard Borken's side. He had guessed the replies. He had heard the southern lookouts calling in on the walkie-talkies. He knew about the Marines on the bridge. He knew about Webster and Johnson sitting there alongside them, on the end of the line.\n\nHe had wondered who else was down there. Maybe more military, maybe more FBI. The military wouldn't come. Johnson would have ordered them to sit tight. If anybody came, it would be the FBI. He figured they might have substantial numbers standing by. He figured they would becoming in, sooner or later. He needed to exploit them. Needed to use them as a diversion while he got Holly out. So he had moved southeast to wait for their arrival. Now, an hour later, he was gazing down at the short stocky guy getting loaded into the jeep. Dark suit, white shirt, town shoes. FBI, for sure.\n\nBut not the hostage rescue team. This guy had no equipment. The HRT came in all loaded down with paramilitary gear. Reacher was familiar with their procedures. He had read some of their manuals. Heard about some of their training. He knew guys who had been in and out of Quantico. He knew how the HRT worked. They were a high-technology operation. They looked like regular soldiers, in blue. They had vehicles. This guy he was watching was on foot in the forest. Dressed like he had just stepped out of a meeting."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"It was a puzzle. Eight Marines. No hostage rescue team. An unarmed search-and-rescue Chinook. Then Reacher suddenly thought maybe he understood. Maybe this was a very clandestine operation. Low profile.\n\nInvisible. They had tracked Holly all the way west from Chicago, but for some reason they maybe weren't gathering any kind of a big force.\n\nThey were dealing with it alone. Some tactical reason. Maybe apolitical reason. Maybe something to do with Holly and the White House. Maybe the policy was to deal with this secretly, deal with it hard, tackle it with a tight little team. So tight the right hand didn't know what the left was doing. Hence the unarmed search-and-rescue chopper. It had come in blind. Hadn't known what it was getting into.\n\nIn which case this ambushed guy he was watching was direct from Chicago. Part of the original operation that must have started up back on Monday. He looked like a senior guy. Maybe approaching fifty.\n\nCould be Brogan, Holly's section head. Could even be McGrath, the top boy. In either case that made Milosevic the mole. Question was, was he up here as well, or was he still back in Chicago?\n\nThe jeep turned slowly in the road. The Bureau guy in the suit was in back, jammed between two armed men. His nose was bleeding and Reacher could see a swelling starting on his face. Borken had twisted his bulk around and was talking at him. The rest of the ambush squad was forming up in the road. The jeep drove past them, north toward town.\n\nPassed by thirty yards from where Reacher was standing in the trees. He watched it go. Turned and picked up his rifle. Strolled through the woods, deep in thought."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"His problem was priority order. He had a rule: stick to the job in hand. The job in hand was getting Holly away safe. Nothing else. But this Bureau guy was in trouble. He thought about Jackson. The last Bureau guy they'd gotten hold of. Maybe this new guy was heading for the same fate. In which case, he ought to intervene. And he liked the look of the guy. He looked tough. Small, but strong. A lot of energy. Some kind of charisma there. Maybe anally would be a smart thing to have. Two heads, better than one. Two pairs of hands. Four trigger fingers. Useful. But his rule was: stick to the job in hand.\n\nIt had worked for him many times over the years. It was a rule which had served him well. Should he bend that rule? Or not? He stopped and stood concealed in the forest while the ambush squad marched by on the road. Listened to the sound of their footsteps die away. Stood there and thought about the guy some more and forced himself toward a tough decision.\n\nGeneral Garber watched the whole thing happen, too. He was a hundred and fifty yards south of the ambush. West side of the road, behind a rocky outcrop, exactly three hundred yards south of where Readier had been. He had waited three minutes and then followed McGrath in through the ravine. Garber was also a reasonably fit man, but a lot older and it had cost him a lotto keep pace with McGrath. He had arrived at the rocky outcrop and collapsed, out of breath. He figured he had maybe fifteen or twenty minutes to recover before the rendezvous took place.\n\nThen his plan was to follow behind the three agents and see what was going to happen. He didn't want anybody making mistakes about Jack Readier."},{"from":"human","value":"But the rendezvous had never happened."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He had watched the ambush and realized a lot of mistakes had been made about a lot of things.\n\n\"You're going to die,\" Borken said.\n\nMcGrath was jammed between two soldiers on the backseat of the jeep.\n\nHe was bouncing around because the road was rough. But he couldn't move his arms, because the seat was not really wide enough for three people. So he put the shrug into his injured face instead.\n\n\"We're all going to die,\" he said. \"Sooner or later.\"\n\n\"Sooner or later, right,\" Borken said. \"But for you, it's going to be sooner not later.\"\n\nBorken was twisted around in the front seat, staring. McGrath looked past him at the vast blue sky. He looked at the smallwhite clouds and thought: who was it? Who knew? Air force operational personnel, he guessed, but that link was ludicrous. Had to be somebody nearer and closer. Somebody more involved. The only possibilities were Johnson or his aide, or Webster himself, or Brogan, or Milosevic.\n\nGarber, conceivably. He seemed pretty hot on excusing this Reacher guy. Was this some military police conspiracy to overthrow the joint chiefs?\n\n\"Who was it, Borken?\" he asked.\n\n\"Who was what, dead man?\" Borken asked back.\n\n\"Who's been talking to you?\" McGrath said.\n\nBorken smiled and tapped his finger on his temple.\n\n\"Common cause,\" he said. This sort of issue, there area lot more people than you think on our side.\"\n\nMcGrath glanced back to the sky and thought about Dexter, safe in the White House. What had Webster said he'd said? Twelve million people?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Or was it sixty-six million?\n\n\"You're going to die,\" Borken said again.\n\nMcGrath shifted his focus back.\n\n\"So tell me who it was, before I do,\" he said.\n\nBorken grinned at him.\n\n\"You'll find out,\" he said. \"It's going to be a big surprise.\"\n\nThe jeep pulled up in front of the courthouse. McGrath twisted and looked up at it. There were six soldiers standing guard outside the building. They were fanned into a rough arc, facing south and east.\n\n\"She in there?\" he asked.\n\nBorken nodded and smiled.\n\n\"Right now she is,\" he said. \"I may have to get her out later.\"\n\nThe walkie-talkie on his belt burst into life. Aloud burst of static and a quick distorted message. He pressed the key and bent his head down. Acknowledged the information without unclipping the unit. Then he pulled the radio transmitter from his pocket. Flipped it open and pulled up the short antenna. Pressed the send button.\n\n\"Webster?\" he said. \"You lied tome. Twice. First, there were three of your agents down therewith you. We just rounded them all up.\"\n\nHe listened to the response. Kept the radio tight against his ear.\n\nMcGrath could not hear what Webster was saying.\n\n\"Doesn't matter anyway,\" Borken said. \" They weren't all on your side.\n\nSome people in this world will do anything for money.\"\n\nHe paused fora response. Apparently there was none.\n\n\"And you bullshitted me,\" Borken said. \"You weren't going to fix the line at all, were you? You were just stringing me along.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Webster was starting a reply, but Borken cut him off.\n\n\"You and Johnson,\" he said. \"You can get off the bridge now. The Marines stay there. We're watching. You and Johnson walk back to your trucks. Get yourselves in front of those TVs. Should be some interesting action pretty soon.\"\n\nHe clicked off the radio and folded it back into his pocket. A big wide smile on his face.\n\n\"You're going to die,\" he said to McGrath for the third time.\n\n\"Which one?\" McGrath asked. \"Brogan or Milosevic?\"\n\nBorken grinned again.\n\n\"Guess,\" he said. \"Figure it out for yourself. You're supposed to be the big smart federal investigator. Agent-in-charge, right?\"\n\nThe driver jumped down and pulled a pistol from his holster. Aimed it two-handed at McGrath's head. The left-hand guard squeezed out and unslung his rifle. Held it ready. The right-hand guy did the same.\n\nThen Borken eased his bulk down.\n\n\"Out,\" he said. \"We walk from here.\"\n\nMcGrath shrugged and eased himself down into the circle of weapons.\n\nBorken stepped behind him and caught his arms. Cuffed his wrists together behind his back. Then he shoved him forward. Pointed beyond the ruined county office.\n\n\"Up there, dead man,\" he said.\n\nThey left the jeep behind them next to the courthouse. The two guards formed up. McGrath stumbled across the street and up onto the lumpy knoll. He was pushed past the dead tree. He was pushed left until he found the path. He followed it around behind the old building. The rough ground bit up through the thin soles of his ruined city shoes. He might as well have been walking barefoot."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Faster, asshole,\" Borken grunted at him.\n\nThe guards were behind him, prodding him forward with the muzzles of their rifles. He picked up the pace and stumbled on through the woods.\n\nHe felt the blood clotting on his lip and nose. After a mile, he came out into the clearing he recognized from the surveillance pictures. It looked bigger. From seven miles overhead, it had looked like a neat hole in the trees, with a tidy circle of buildings. From ground level, it looked as big as a stadium. Rough shale on the floor of the clearing, big wooden huts propped expertly on solid concrete piles.\n\n\"Wait here,\" Borken said.\n\nHe walked away and the two guards took up station either side of McGrath as he gazed around. He saw the communications hut, with the phone wire and the whip antenna. He saw the other buildings. Smelled stale institutional food coming out of the largest. Saw the farthest hut, standing on its own. Must be their armory, he thought.\n\nHe glanced up and saw the vapor trails in the sky. The urgency of the situation was written up there, white on blue. The planes had abandoned their innocent east-west trawling. Their trails had tightened into continuous circles, one just inside the other. They were flying around and around, centered seven miles above his head. He stared up at them and mouthed: help! He wondered if their lenses were good enough to pick that out. Wondered if maybe Webster or Johnson or Garber or Johnson's gofer could lipread His best guess was: yes, and no.\n\nReacher's problem was a hell of an irony. For the first time in his life, he wished his opponents were better shots. He was concealed in the trees a hundred yards northwest of the courthouse. Looking down at six sentries. They were ranged in a loose arc, to the south and east beyond the big white building. Reacher's rifle was trained on the nearest man. But he wasn't shooting. Because if he did, the six men were going to shoot back. And they were going to miss."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher was happy with an M-16 and a range of a hundred yards. He could pretty much absolutely guarantee to hit what he wanted with that weapon at that range. He would bet his life on it. Many times, he had. And normally, the worse shots his opponents were, the happier he'd be about it. But not in this situation.\n\nHe would be shooting from a northwest direction. His opponents would be shooting back from the southeast. They would hear his shots, maybe see some muzzle flash, they would take aim, and they would fire. And they would miss. They would shoot high and wide. The targets on the rifle range were mute evidence for that conclusion. There had been some competent shooting at three and four hundred yards. The damaged targets bore witness to that fact. But Reacher's experience was that guys who could shoot just about competently us at three or four hundred yards on a range would be useless in a firefight. Lying still on a mat and sighting in on a target in your own time was one thing. Shooting into a noisy confused hailstorm of bullets was a very different thing.\n\nA different thing entirely. The guy defending the missile trucks had proved that. His salvos had been allover the place. And that was the problem. Shooting back from the southeast, these guys' stray rounds were going to be allover the place, too. Up and down, left and right.\n\nThe down rounds and the left rounds were no problem. They were just going to damage the scrubby vegetation. But the up rounds and the right rounds were going to hit the courthouse.\n\nThe M-16 uses bullets designated M855. Common NATO rounds, 5.56 millimeters in caliber, just a fraction under a quarter-inch wide.\n\nFairly heavy for their size, because they area sandwich of lead and steel inside a copper jacket. Designed for penetration. Those stray rounds which hit the courthouse were going to impact the siding at two thousand miles an hour. They were going to punch through the old wood like it wasn't thereat all. They were going to smash through the unstable dynamite like a train wreck. The energy of their impact was going to act like a better blasting cap than anything any mining company had ever possessed. That was what those bullets were designed to do. Some committee had asked fora bullet capable of shooting through the sides of ammunition trucks. And that's what had been delivered."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"So Reacher wasn't shooting. Three sentries, he might have risked it.\n\nHe figured he could get off three aimed shots in maybe three seconds.\n\nToo fast for any reaction. But six was too many. They were too spaced out. Too much physical movement was required between rounds. The later targets would have time to react. Not much time. Certainly not enough to be accurate. That was the problem.\n\nReversing the geometry would be no help, either. He could work himself right around to the south. It would take him maybe twenty minutes to skirt around in the trees and comeback at them from the opposite direction. But then what? He would be looking at his targets, uphill.\n\nThe courthouse would be right behind them. He could hit each of them in the head, no problem at all. But he couldn't ask the bullets just to stop therein midair. He couldn't prevent those high-energy copper-jackets bursting on out of the back of those skulls and heading on their uphill trajectories straight toward the courthouse's second-story walls. He shook his head and lowered his rifle.\n\nMcGrath saw Borken conferring with somebody on the edge of the clearing. It was the guy who had led the ambush squad. The guy who had taken his gun and his bullets and punched him in the face. The two of them were glancing at their watches and glancing up at the sky. They were nodding. Borken slapped the guy on the shoulder and turned away.\n\nDucked into the trees and disappeared back toward the town. The ambush leader started in toward McGrath. He was smiling. He was unslinging his rifle.\n\n\"Showtime,\" he called.\n\nHe stepped near and reversed the rifle in his hands as he did so."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Smashed the butt into McGrath's stomach. McGrath went down on the shale. One guard jammed the muzzle of his rifle into McGrath's throat.\n\nThe other jammed his into McGrath's stomach, right where the blow had landed.\n\n\"Lie still, asshole,\" the unit leader said. \"I'll be back in a minute.\"\n\nMcGrath could not move his head because of the rifle in his throat, but he followed the guy with his eyes. He was going into the next-to-last hut inline. Not the armory, which stood on its own. Some kind of an equipment store. He came outwith a mallet and ropes and four metal objects. Dull green, army issue. Ashe got nearer, McGrath recognized what they were. They were tent pegs. Maybe eighteen inches long, designed for some kind of big mess tent.\n\nThe guy dropped his load on the shale. The metal pegs clinked on the stones. The guy nodded to the soldier with the gun in McGrath's belly who straightened up and stepped away. The unit leader took his place.\n\nUsed his own weapon to keep McGrath pinned down.\n\nThe soldier got busy. He seemed to know what he was supposed to do. He used the mallet to drive the first peg into the ground. The ground was stony and the guy had to work hard. He was swinging the mallet in a big arc and using a lot of force. He drove the peg down until it was two-thirds buried. Then he paced off maybe eight feet and started driving the second. McGrath followed him with his eyes. When the second peg was in, the guy paced another eight feet at aright angle and hammered the third peg in. The fourth peg completed an exact square, eight feet on each side. McGrath had a pretty good idea what that square was for."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We normally do this in the woods,\" the unit leader said. \"We normally do it vertically, with trees.\"\n\nThen the guy pointed upward at the sky.\n\n\"But we need to let them see,\" he said. They can't see properly in the woods. This time of year, too many leaves in the way, right?\"\n\nThe guard who had driven the tent pegs into the ground was panting from the exertion. He changed places with his leader again. Jammed his rifle into McGrath's gut and leaned on it, recovering. McGrath gasped and squirmed under the pressure. The leader squatted down and sorted through the ropes. Untangled one and caught McGrath by the ankle.\n\nLooped the rope around and tied it off, hard. Used the rope to drag McGrath by the leg into the approximate center of the square. Then he tied the loose end to the fourth peg. Tied it tight and tested it.\n\nThe second length of rope went around McGrath's other ankle. It was tied off to the third peg. McGrath's legs were forced apart at aright angle. His hands were still cuffed behind his back, crushed against the rocky ground. The leader used the sole of his boot to roll McGrath's upper body sideways. Ducked down and unlocked the cuff.\n\nCaught a wrist and looped a rope around. Tied it tight and hauled the wrist up to the second peg. He pulled on it until McGrath's arm was stretched tight, in a perfect straight line with the opposite leg. Then he tied it tight to the peg and reached down for the other wrist. The soldiers jammed their muzzles in tighter. McGrath stared up at the vapor trails and gasped in pain as his arm was stretched tight and he was tied into a perfect cross."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The two soldiers jerked their rifles away and stepped back. They stood with their leader. Gazing down. McGrath lifted his head and looked wildly around. Pulled on the ropes, and then realized he was only pulling the knots tighter. The three men stepped farther back and glanced up at the sky. McGrath realized they were making sure the cameras got an uninterrupted view.\n\nThe cameras were getting an uninterrupted view. Seven miles in the sky, the pilots were flying circles, one on a tight radius of a few miles, the other outside him on a wider path. Their cameras were trained downward, under the relentless control of their computers. The inside plane was focusing tight on the clearing where McGrath was spreadeagled. The outer camera was zoomed wider, taking in the whole of the area from the courthouse in the south to the abandoned mines in the north. Their real-time video signals were bouncing down more or less vertically to the dish vehicle parked behind the mobile command post. The dish was focusing the datastream and feeding it through the thick armored cable into the observation truck. Then the decoding computers were feeding the large color monitors. Their phosphor screens were displaying the appalling truth. General Johnson and his aide and Webster were motionless in front of them. Motionless, silent, staring. Video recorders were whirring away, dispassionately recording every second's activity taking place six miles to the north. The whole vehicle was humming with faint electronic energy. But it was as silent as a tomb.\n\n\"Can you zoom in?\" Webster asked quietly. \"On McGrath?\"\n\nThe general's aide twisted a black rubber knob. Stared at the screen.\n\nHe zoomed in until the individual pixels in the picture began to clump together and distort. Then he backed off a fraction.\n\n\"Close as we can get,\" he said."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"It was close enough. McGrath's spreadeagled figure just about filled the screens. The unit leader could be seen from directly above, stepping over the lengths of rope as he circled. He had a knife in his hand. A black handle, a shiny blade, maybe ten inches long. It looked like a big kitchen knife. The sort of thing a gourmet cook might buy.\n\nUseful for slicing a tough cut of steak into strips. The sort of tool that would get set out on the kitchen counter by somebody making a stew or a stroganoff.\n\nThey saw the guy lay the knife flat on McGrath's chest. Then he used both hands to fold back the flaps on McGrath's jacket. He loosened McGrath's tie and pulled it sideways, almost up under his ear. Then he grasped the shirt and tore it open. The cotton pulled apart under the knife, leaving the knife where it was, now next to the skin. The guy pulled the tails out of the waistband and tucked the shirt right back to the sides. Carefully, well out of the way, like he was a surgeon faced with a difficult emergency procedure.\n\nThey saw the guy pickup the knife again. He was squatted down to McGrath's right, leaning over slightly, holding the knife. He was holding it point-down, close to McGrath's belly. The electronic pink of McGrath's skin was reflected in the faces of the watchers inside the observation vehicle.\n\nThey saw the guy raise the knife an inch. They saw his index finger slide along the back of the blade, like he was adjusting his grip for extra precision. They saw the blade move down. The pale sun glinted on the steel. Then their view was disrupted. A silent puff of pink mist obscured the picture. When it cleared, the knife was still in the guy's hand. But the guy had no head. His whole head was a shattered pink wound, and he was toppling slowly sideways."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"THE LEFT-HAND GUARD WENT DOWN EASILY ENOUGH, TOO. REACHER put a bullet through the side of his head, just above the ear, and he fell heavily, right on top of the spreadeagled Bureau guy. But the right-hand guard reacted. He spun away and hurdled the taut ropes, racing for the trees. Reacher paused a beat and dropped him ten feet away. The guy sprawled and slid noisily through the shale and put up a slick of dust.\n\nTwitched once and died.\n\nThen Reacher waited. The last staccato echo of the three shots came back off the farthest mountains and faded into quiet. Reacher watched the trees, all around the Bastion. Watched for movement. The sunlight was bright. Too bright to be sure. There was a lot of contrast between the brightness of the clearing and the dark of the forest. So he waited.\n\nThen he came out from behind the radio hut at a desperate run. He sprinted straight across the clearing to the mess in the middle. Hauled the bodies out of the way. The guard was sprawled right on top of the Bureau guy. The unit leader was across his legs. He dumped them out of the way and found the knife. Sawed through the four coarse ropes.\n\nDragged the Bureau guy upright and pushed him off back the way he'd come. Then he grabbed the two nearest rifles and sprinted after him.\n\nCaught him up halfway. The guy was just tottering along. So Reacher caught him under the arms and bundled him to safety. Threw him well into the trees behind the huts and stood bent over, panting. Then he took the magazines off the new rifles and put one in his pocket and one on his own gun. They were both the elongated thirty-shot versions."},{"from":"human","value":"He'd been down to six rounds."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Now he had sixty. A ten-fold increase.\n\nAnd he had another pair of hands.\n\n\"Are you Brogan?\" he asked. \"Or McGrath?\"\n\nThe guy answered stiffly and neutrally. There was fear and panic and confusion in his face.\n\n\"McGrath,\" he said. \"FBI.\"\n\nReacher nodded. The guy was shaken up, but he was anally. He took Fowler's Clock out of his pocket and held it out to him, butt first.\n\nMcGrath was panting quietly and glancing wildly toward the deep cover of the trees. There was aggression in his stance. His hands were balled into fists.\n\n\"What?\" Reacher asked him, concerned.\n\nMcGrath darted forward and snatched the Clock and stepped back. Raised it and went into a shooting stance and pointed it two-handed. At Reacher's head. The cut ends of the ropes trailed down from his wrists. Reacher just stared blankly at him.\n\n\"Hell are you doing?\" he asked.\n\n\"You're one of them,\" McGrath said back. \"Drop the rifle, OK?\"\n\n\"What?\" Reacher said again.\n\n\"Just do it, OK?\" McGrath said.\n\nReacher stared at him, incredulous. Pointed through the trees at the sprawled bodies in the Bastion.\n\n\"What about that?\" he asked. \"Doesn't that mean anything to you?\"\n\nThe Clock did not waver. It was rock-steady, pointed straight at his head, at the apex of a perfect braced position. McGrath looked like a picture in a training manual, except for the ropes hanging like streamers from his wrists and ankles.\n\n\"Doesn't that count for something?\" Reacher asked again, pointing."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Not necessarily,\" McGrath growled back. \" You killed Peter Bell, too.\n\nWe know that. Just because you don't allow your troops to rape and torture your hostages doesn't necessarily put you on the side of the angels.\"\n\nReacher looked at him fora long moment, astonished Thought hard. Then he nodded cautiously and dropped the rifle exactly halfway between the two of them. Drop it right at his own feet, McGrath would just tell him to kick it over toward him. Drop it too near McGrath's feet, and it wouldn't work. This guy was an experienced agent. From the look of his shooting stance, Reacher was expecting at least a basic level of competence from him.\n\nMcGrath glanced down. Hesitated. He clearly didn't want Reacher near him. He didn't want him stepping nearer to nudge the rifle on toward him. So he slid his own foot forward to drag the weapon back close. He was maybe ten inches shorter than Reacher, all told. Aiming the Clock at Reacher's head from six feet away, he was aiming it upward at a fairly steep angle. Ashe slid his foot forward, he decreased his effective height by maybe an inch, which automatically increased the upward slope of his arms by a proportionate degree. And as he slid his foot forward, it brought him slightly closer to Reacher, which increased the upward angle yet more. By the time his toe was scrabbling for the weapon, his upper arms were near his face, interfering with his vision. Reacher waited for him to glance down again.\n\nHe glanced down. Reacher let his knees go and fell vertically. Lashed back upward with his forearm and batted the Clock away. Swiped a wide arc with his other arm behind McGrath's knees and dumped him flat on his back in the dirt. Closed his handover McGrath's wrist and squeezed gently until the Glock shook free. He picked it up by the barrel and held it the wrong way around."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Look at this,\" he said.\n\nHe shook his cuff back and exposed the crusted weal on his left wrist.\n\n\"I'm not one of them,\" he said. \"They had me handcuffed most of the time.\"\n\nThen he held the Glock out, butt first, offering it again. McGrath stared at it, and then stared back into the clearing. He ducked his head left and right to take in the bodies. Glanced back at Reacher, still confused.\n\n\"We had you down as a bad guy,\" he said.\n\nReacher nodded.\n\n\"Evidently,\" he said. \"But why?\"\n\n\"Video in the dry cleaners,\" McGrath said. \"Looked just like you were snatching her up.\"\n\nReacher shook his head.\n\n\"Innocent passerby,\" he said.\n\nMcGrath kept onlooking hard at him. Quizzically, thinking. Reacher saw him arrive at a decision. He nodded in turn and accepted the Glock and laid it on the forest floor, exactly between them, like its positioning was a symbol, a treaty. He started fumbling at his shirt bur tons Cut ends of rope flailed at his wrists and ankles.\n\n\"OK, can we start over?\" he said, embarrassed.\n\nReacher nodded and stuck out his hand.\n\n\"Sure,\" he said. \"I'm Reacher, you're McGrath. Holly's agent-in-charge. Pleased to meet you.\"\n\nMcGrath smiled ruefully and shook hands limply. Then he started fumbling at the knots on his wrist, one-handed.\n\n\"You know a guy called Garber?\" McGrath asked.\n\nReacher nodded."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Used to work for him,\" he said.\n\n\"Garber told us you were clean,\" McGrath said. \"We didn't believe him.\"\n\n\"Naturally,\" Reacher said. \"Garber always tells the truth. So nobody ever believes him.\"\n\n\"So I apologize,\" McGrath said. \"I'm sorry, OK? But just try and see it my way. You've been public enemy number one for five days.\"\n\nReacher waved the apology away and stood up and helped McGrath to his feet. Bent back down to the dirt and picked up the Glock and handed it to him.\n\n\"Your nose OK?\" he asked.\n\nMcGrath slipped the gun into his jacket pocket. Touched his nose gently and grimaced.\n\n\"Bastard hit me,\" he said. \"I think it's broken. Just turned and hit me, like they couldn't wait.\"\n\nThere was a noise in the woods, off to the left. Reacher caught McGrath's arm and pulled him deeper into the forest. Pushed through the brush and got facing east. He stood silently and listened for movement. McGrath was taking the ropes off his ankles and winding himself up to ask a question.\n\n\"So is Holly OK?\" he said.\n\nReacher nodded. But grimly.\n\n\"So far,\" he said. \"But it's going to be a hell of a problem getting her out.\"\n\n\"I know about the dynamite,\" McGrath said. That was the last thing Jackson called in. Monday night.\"\n\n\"It's a problem,\" Reacher said again. \" One stray round, and she's had it. And there area hundred trigger-happy people up here. Whatever we do, we need to do it carefully. Have you got reinforcements coming in?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Hostage rescue?\"\n\nMcGrath shook his head.\n\n\"Not yet,\" he said. \"Politics.\"\n\n\"Maybe that's good,\" Reacher said. \"They're talking about mass suicide if they look like getting beat. Live free or die, you know?\"\n\n\"Whichever,\" McGrath said. \"Their choice. I don't care what happens to them. I just care about Holly.\"\n\nThey fell silent and crept together through the trees. Stopped deep in the woods, about level with the back of the mess hall. Now Reacher was winding himself up to ask a question. But he waited, frozen, a finger to his lips. There was noise to his left. A patrol, sweeping the fringe of the forest. McGrath made to move, but Reacher caught his arm and stopped him. Better to stand stock still than to risk making noise of their own. The patrol came nearer. Reacher raised his rifle and switched it to rapid fire. Smothered the sound of the click with his palm. McGrath held his breath. The patrol was visible, ten feet away through the trees. Six men, six rifles. They were glancing rhythmically as they walked, left and right, left and right, between the edge of the sunny clearing and the dark green depths of the woods.\n\nReacher breathed out, silently. Amateurs, with poor training and bad tactics. The bright sun in their eyes on every second glance was ruining their chances of seeing into the gloom of the forest. They were blind. They passed by without stopping. Reacher followed the sound of their progress and turned back to McGrath.\n\n\"Where are Brogan and Milosevic?\" he whispered.\n\nMcGrath nodded, morosely.\n\n\"I know,\" he said, quietly. \"One of them is bent. I finally figured that out about half a second before they grabbed me up.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Where are they?\" Reacher asked again.\n\n\"Up here somewhere,\" McGrath said. \"We came in through the ravine together, a mile apart.\"\n\n\"Which one is it?\" Readier asked.\n\nMcGrath shrugged.\n\n\"I don't know,\" he said. \"Can't figure it out. I've been going over and over it. They both did good work. Milosevic found the dry cleaner. He brought the video in. Brogan did a lot of work tracing it all back hereto Montana. He traced the truck. He liaised with Quantico. My gut says neither one is bent.\"\n\n\"When was I ID'd?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"Thursday morning,\" McGrath said. \"We had your complete history.\"\n\nReacher nodded.\n\n\"He called it in right away,\" he said. These people suddenly knew who I was, Thursday morning.\"\n\nMcGrath shrugged again.\n\nThey were both thereat the time,\"he said.\" We were all down at Peterson.\"\n\n\"Did you get Holly's fax?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"What fax?\" McGrath said. \"When?\"\n\nThis morning,\"Reacher said.\" Early, maybe ten to five? She faxed you a warning.\"\n\n\"We're intercepting their line,\" McGrath said. \"Ina truck,\" down the road here. But ten to five, I was in bed.\"\n\n\"So who was minding the store?\" Reacher asked.\n\nMcGrath nodded.\n\n\"Milosevic and Brogan,\" he said, sourly. The two of them. Ten to five this morning, they'd just gone on duty. Whichever one of them it is must have gotten the fax and concealed it. But which one, I just don't know.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher nodded back.\n\n\"We could figure it out,\" he said. \"Or we could just wait and see. One of them will be walking around best of friends and the other will be in handcuffs, or dead. We'll be able to tell the difference.\"\n\nMcGrath nodded, sourly.\n\n\"I can't wait,\" he said.\n\nThen Reacher stiffened and pulled him ten yards farther into the woods.\n\nHe had heard the patrol coming back through the trees.\n\nInside the courtroom, Borken had heard the three shots. He was sitting in the judge's chair and he heard them clearly. They went: crack crack... crack and repeated a dozen times as each of the distant slopes cannoned the echo back toward him. He sent a runner back to the Bastion. A mile there, a mile back on the winding path through the woods. Twenty minutes wasted, then the runner got back panting with the news. Three corpses, four cut ropes.\n\n\"Readier,\" Borken said. \"I should have wasted him at the beginning.\"\n\nMilosevic nodded in agreement.\n\n\"I want him kept away from me,\" he said. \"I heard the autopsy report on your friend Peter Bell. I just want my money and safe passage out of here, OK?\"\n\nBorken nodded. Then he laughed. A sharp, nervous laugh that was part excitement, part tension. He stood up and walked out from behind the bench. Laughed and grinned and slapped Milosevic on the shoulder.\n\nHolly Johnson knew no more than most people do about dynamite. She couldn't remember its exact chemical composition. She knew ammonium nitrate and nitrocellulose were in there somewhere. She wondered about nitroglycerin. Was that mixed in too? Or was that some other kind of explosive? Either way, she figured dynamite was some kind of a sticky fluid, soaked into a porous material and molded into sticks."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Heavy sticks, quite dense. If her walls were packed with heavy dense sticks they would absorb a lot of sound. Like a soundproofing layer in a city apartment. Which meant the shots she'd heard had been reasonably close.\n\nShe'd heard: crack crack... crack. But she didn't know who was shooting at who, or why. They weren't handgun shots. She knew the flat bark of a handgun from her time at Quantico. These were shots from along gun. Not the heavy thump of the big Barratts from the rifle range. A lighter weapon than that. Somebody firing a medium-caliber rifle three times. Or three people firing once, in a ragged volley. But whichever it was, something was happening. And she had to be ready.\n\nGarber heard the shots, too. Crack crack... crack, maybe a thousand yards northwest of him, maybe twelve hundred. Then a dozen spaced echoes coming back from the mountainsides. He was in no doubt about what they represented. An M-16, firing singles, the first pair in a tight group of two which the military called a double tap. The sound of a competent shooter. The idea was to get the second round off before the first shell case hit the ground. Then a third target, or maybe an insurance shot into the second. An unmistakable rhythm. Like a signature. The audible signature of somebody with hundreds of hours of weapons training behind him. Garber nodded to himself and moved forward through the trees.\n\n\"It must be Brogan,\" Reacher whispered.\n\nMcGrath looked surprised.\n\n\"Why Brogan?\" he asked.\n\nThey were squatted down, backs to adjacent trunks, thirty yards into the woods, invisible. The search patrol had tracked back and missed them again. McGrath had given Reacher the whole story. He had rattled through the important parts of the investigation, one professional to another, in a sort of insider's shorthand. Reacher had asked sharp questions and McGrath had given short answers."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Help keep the tale going for the author.\\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\\nAuthor: Lee Child\\nTitle: Die Trying\\nChapter: 37\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher crawled backward ten yards and stood up in the trees. Jogged down the slope and headed back toward the Bastion. Seventeen shells in the Glock, nine in the rifle. Progress, at a price.\\n\\nThe dogs found him halfway back. Two big rangy animals. German shepherds. He saw them at the same time as they saw him. They were loping along with that kind of infinite energy big dogs display. Long bounding strides, eager expressions, wet mouths gaping. They stopped short on stiff front legs and switched direction in a single fluid stride. Thirty yards away. Then twenty. Then ten. Acceleration. New energy in their movement. Snarls rising in their throats.\\n\\nPeople, Reacher was certain about. Dogs were different. People had freedom of choice. If a manor a woman ran snarling toward him, they did so because they chose to. They were asking for whatever they got.\\n\\nHis response was their problem. But dogs were different.\\n\\nNo freewill. Easily misled. It raised an ethical problem. Shooting a dog because it had been induced to do something unwise was not the sort of thing Reacher wanted to do.\\n\\nHe left the Clock in his pocket. The rifle was better. It was about two and a half feet longer than the handgun. An extra two and a half feet of separation seemed like a good idea. The dogs stopped short of him. The fur on their shoulders was raised. The fur down their backs was raised, following their spines. They crouched, front feet splayed, heads down, snarling loudly. They had yellow teeth. Lots of them.\\n\\nTheir eyes were brown. Reacher could see fine dark eyelashes, like a girl's.\\n\\nOne of them was forward of the other. The leader of the pack. He knew dogs had to have a pecking order. Two dogs, one of them had to be superior to the other. Like people. He didn't know how dogs worked it out for themselves. Posturing, maybe. Maybe smell. Maybe fighting.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He stared at the forward dog. Stared into its eyes. Time to time, he had heard people talking about dogs. They said: never show fear. Stare the dog down. Don't let it know you're afraid. Reacher wasn't afraid.\\n\\nHe was standing therewith an M16 in his hands. The only thing he was worried about was having to use it.\\n\\nHe stared silently at the doglike he used to stare at some service guy gone bad. A hard, silent stare like a physical force, like a cold, crushing pressure. Bleak, cold eyes, unblinking. It had worked a hundred times with people. Now it was working with the lead dog.\\n\\nThe dog was only partially trained. Reacher could see that. It could go through the motions. But it couldn't deliver. It hadn't been trained to ignore its victim's input. It was eye to eye with him, backing off fractionally like his glare was a painful weight on its narrow forehead. Reacher turned up the temperature. Narrowed his eyes and bared his own teeth. Sneered like a tough guy in a bad movie. The dog's head dropped. Its eyes swiveled upward to maintain contact. Its tail dropped down between its legs.\\n\\n\\\"Sit,\\\" Reacher said. He said it calmly but firmly. Plenty of emphasis on the plosive consonant at the end of the word. The dog moved automatically. Shuffled its hind legs inward and sat. The other dog followed suit, like a shadow. They sat side by side and stared up at him.\\n\\n\\\"Lie down,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nThe dogs didn't move. Just stayed sitting, looking at him, puzzled.\\n\\nMaybe the wrong word. Not the command they were accustomed to.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Down,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nThey slid their front paws forward and dropped their bellies to the forest floor. Looking up at him.\\n\\n\\\"Stay,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nHe gave them a look like he meant it and moved off south. Forced himself to walk slow. Five yards into the trees, he turned. The dogs were still on the ground. Their necks were twisted around, watching him walkaway.\\n\\n\\\"Stay,\\\" he called again.\\n\\nThey stayed. He walked.\\n\\nHe could hear people in the Bastion. The sound of a fair-sized crowd trying to keep quiet. He heard it when he was still north of the parade ground. He skirted the area in the trees and walked around the far end of the rifle range. Came through the trees behind the mess hall. Opposite the kitchen door. He walked a circle deep in the woods behind the buildings until he got an angle. Crept forward to take a look.\\n\\nThere were maybe thirty people in the Bastion. They were standing in a tight group. Edging forward into a cluster. All men, all in camouflage fatigues, all heavily armed. Rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, pockets bulging with spare magazines. The crowd ebbed and flowed. Shoulders touched and parted. Reacher glimpsed Beau Borken in the center of the mass of people. He was holding a small black radio transmitter. Reacher recognized it. It was Jackson's. Borken had retrieved it from Fowler's pocket He was holding it up to\\\" his ear.\\n\\nStaring into space like he'd just switched it on and was waiting fora reply.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"MCGRATH SNATCHED THE RADIO FROM HIS POCKET. FLIPPED IT open and stared at it. It was crackling loudly in his hand. Webster stepped forward and took it from him. Ducked back to the cover of the rock face and clicked the button.\\n\\n\\\"Jackson?\\\" he said. \\\"This is Harland Webster.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath and Johnson crowded in on him. The three men crouched against the rock wall. Webster moved the unit an inch from his ear so the other two could listen in. In the cover of the rock, in the silence of the mountains, they could hear it crackling and hissing and the fast breathing of a person on the other end. Then they heard a voice.\\n\\n\\\"Harland Webster?\\\" the voice said. \\\"Well, well, the headman himself.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Jackson?\\\" Webster said again.\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" the voice said. This is not Jackson.\\\"\\n\\nWebster glanced at McGrath.\\n\\n\\\"So who is it?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"Beau Borken,\\\" the voice said. \\\"And as of today, I guess that's President Borken. President of the Free States of America. But feel free to speak informally.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Where's Jackson?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThere was a pause. Nothing to hear except the faint electronic sound of FBI telecommunications technology. Satellites and microwaves.\\n\\n\\\"Where's Jackson?\\\" Webster asked again.\\n\\n\\\"He died,\\\" the voice said.\\n\\nWebster glanced at McGrath again.\\n\\n\\\"How?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"Just died,\\\" Borken said. \\\"Relatively quickly, really.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Was he sick?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nThere was another pause. Then there was the sound of laughter. A high, tinny sound. Aloud, shrieking laugh which overloaded Webster's earpiece and spilled into distortion and bounced off the rock wall.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"No, he wasn't sick, Webster,\\\" Borken said. \\\"He was pretty healthy, up until the last ten minutes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What did you do to him?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\n\\\"Same as I'm going to do to the general's little girl,\\\" Borken said.\\n\\n\\\"Listen up, and I'll tell you the exact details. You need to pay attention, because you need to know what you're dealing with here.\\n\\nWe're serious here. We mean business, you understand? You listening?\\\"\\n\\nJohnson pushed in close. White and sweating.\\n\\n\\\"You crazy bastards,\\\" he yelled.\\n\\n\\\"Who's that?\\\" Borken asked. That the general himself?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"General Johnson,\\\" Webster said.\\n\\nThere was a chuckle on the radio. Just a short, satisfied sound.\\n\\n\\\"A full house,\\\" Borken said. \\\"The director of the FBI and the joint chairman. We're flattered, believe me. But I guess the birth of anew nation deserves nothing less.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What do you want?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\n\\\"We crucified him,\\\" Borken said. \\\"We found a couple of trees a yard apart, and we nailed him up. We're going to do that to your daughter, General, if you step out of line. Then we cut his balls off. He was pleading and screaming for us not to, but we did it anyway. We can't do that to your kid, her being a woman and all, but we'll find some equivalent, you know what I mean? Do you think she'll be screaming and pleading, General? You know her better than me. Personally, I'm betting she will be. She likes to think she's a tough cookie, but when she sees those blades coming close, she's going to change her damn tune pretty quick, I'm just about sure of that.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Johnson turned whiter. All his blood just drained away. He fell back and sat heavily against the rock. His mouth was working soundlessly.\\n\\n\\\"What the hell do you bastards want?\\\" Webster yelled.\\n\\nThere was another silence. Then the voice came back, quiet and firm.\\n\\n\\\"I want you to stop yelling,\\\" it said. \\\"I want you to apologize for yelling at me. I want you to apologize for calling me a rude name. I'm the President of the Free States, and I'm owed some courtesy and deference, wouldn't you say?\\\"\\n\\nHis voice was quiet, but McGrath heard it clearly enough. He looked across at Webster in panic. They were close to losing, before they had even started. First rule was to negotiate. To keep them talking, and gradually gain the upper hand. Establish dominance. Classic siege theory. But to start out by apologizing for yelling was to kiss goodbye to any hope of dominance. That was to lie down and rollover.\\n\\nFrom that point on, you were their plaything. McGrath shook his head urgently. Webster nodded back. Said nothing. Just held the radio without speaking. He knew how to do this. He had been in this situation before. Several times. He knew the protocol. Now, the first one to speak was the weaker one. And it wasn't going to be him.\\n\\nHe and McGrath gazed at the ground and waited.\\n\\n\\\"You still there?\\\" Borken asked.\\n\\nWebster carried on staring down. Saying nothing.\\n\\n\\\"You there?\\\" Borken said again.\\n\\n\\\"What's on your mind, Beau?\\\" Webster asked, calmly.\\n\\nThere was angry breathing over the air.\\n\\n\\\"You cut my phone line,\\\" Borken said. \\\"I want it restored.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"No, we didn't,\\\" Webster said. \\\"Doesn't your phone work?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My faxes,\\\" Borken said. \\\"I got no response.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What faxes?\\\" Webster said.\\n\\n\\\"Don't bullshit me,\\\" Borken said. \\\"I know you cut the line. I want it fixed.\\\"\\n\\nWebster winked at McGrath.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said. \\\"We can do that. But you've got to do something for us first.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Borken asked.\\n\\n\\\"Holly,\\\" Webster said. \\\"Bring her down to the bridge and leave her there.\\\"\\n\\nThere was another silence. Then the laughter started up again. High and loud.\\n\\n\\\"No dice,\\\" Borken said. \\\"And no deals.\\\"\\n\\nWebster nodded to himself. Lowered his voice. Sounded like the most reasonable man on earth.\\n\\n\\\"Listen, Mr. Borken,\\\" he said. \\\"If we can't deal, how can we help each other?\\\"\\n\\nAnother silence. McGrath stared at Webster. The next reply was crucial. Win or lose.\\n\\n\\\"You listen tome, Webster,\\\" the voice said. \\\"No deals. You don't do exactly what I say, Holly dies. Ina lot of pain. I holdall the cards, and I'm not doing deals. You understand that?\\\"\\n\\nWebster's shoulders slumped. McGrath looked away.\\n\\n\\\"Restore the fax line,\\\" the voice said. \\\"I need communications. The world must know what we're doing here. This is a big moment in history, Webster. I won't be denied by your stupid games. The world must witness the first blows being struck against your tyranny.\\\"\\n\\nWebster stared at the ground.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"This decision is too big for you alone,\\\"Borken said.\\\" You need to consult with the White House. There's an interest there too, wouldn't you say?\\\"\\n\\nEven over the tinny hand-held radio the force of Borken's voice was obvious. Webster was flinching like a physical weight was against his ear. Flinching and gasping, as his heart and lungs fought each other for space inside his chest.\\n\\n\\\"Make your decision,\\\" Borken said. \\\"I'll callback in two minutes.\\\"\\n\\nThen the radio went dead. Webster stared at it like he had never seen such apiece of equipment before. McGrath leaned over and clicked the button off.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said. \\\"We stall, right? Tell him we're fixing the line. Tell him it will take an hour, maybe two. Tell him we're in contact with the White House, the UN, CNN, whoever. Tell him whatever the hell he wants to hear.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why is he doing this?\\\" Webster asked, vaguely. \\\"Escalating everything? He's making it so we have to attack him. So we have to, right? Like he wants us to. He's giving us no choice. He's provoking us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He's doing it because he's crazy,\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\n\\\"He must be,\\\" Webster said. \\\"He's a maniac. Otherwise I just can't understand why he's trying to attract so much attention. Because like he says, he holds all the cards already.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We'll worry about that later, chief,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Right now, we just need to stall him.\\\"\\n\\nWebster nodded. Forced himself back to the problem in hand.\\n\\n\\\"But we need longer than two hours,\\\" he said. \\\"Hostage Rescue will take at least four to get over here. Maybe five, maybe six.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"OK, it's the Fourth of July,\\\" McGrath said. Tell him the linemen are all off-duty. Tell him it could take us all day to get them back.\\\"\\n\\nThey stared at each other. Glanced at Johnson. He was right out of it. Just slumped against the rock face white and inert, barely breathing. Ninety hours of mortal stress and emotion had finally broken him. Then the radio in Webster's hand crackled again.\\n\\n\\\"Well?\\\" Borken asked, when the static cleared.\\n\\n\\\"OK, we agree,\\\" Webster said. \\\"We'll fix the line. But it's going to take sometime. Linemen are off-duty for the holidays.\\\"\\n\\nThere was a pause. Then a chuckle.\\n\\n\\\"Independence Day,\\\" Borken said. \\\"Maybe I should have chosen another date.\\\"\\n\\nWebster made no reply.\\n\\n\\\"I want your Marines where I can see them,\\\" Borken said.\\n\\n\\\"What Marines?\\\" Webster said.\\n\\nThere was another short laugh. Short and complacent.\\n\\n\\\"You got eight Marines,\\\" Borken said. \\\"And an armored car. We got lookouts allover the place. We've been watching you. Like you're watching us with those damn planes. You're lucky Stingers don't shoot that high, or you'd have more than a damn helicopter on the ground by now.\\\"\\n\\nWebster made no reply. Just scanned the horizon. McGrath was doing the same thing, automatically, looking for the glint of the sun on field glasses.\\n\\n\\\"I figure you're close to the bridge right now,\\\" Borken said. \\\"Am I right?\\\"\\n\\nWebster shrugged. McGrath prompted him with a nod.\\n\\n\\\"We're close to the bridge,\\\" Webster said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I want the Marines on the bridge,\\\" Borken said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Sitting on the edge in a neat little row. Their vehicle behind them. I want that to happen now, you understand? Or we go to work on Holly. Your choice, Webster. Or maybe it's the general's choice. His daughter, and his Marines, right?\\\"\\n\\nJohnson roused himself and glanced up. Five minutes later the Marines were sitting on the fractured edge of the roadway, feet dangling down into the abyss. Their LAV was parked up behind them. Webster was still in the lee of the rock face with McGrath and Johnson. The radio still pressed to his ear. He could hear muffled sounds. Like Borken had pressed his handover the microphone and was using a walkie-talkie.\\n\\nHe could hear his muffled voice alternating with crackly replies. Then he heard the hand come away and the voice comeback again, loud and clear in the earpiece.\\n\\n\\\"OK, Webster, good work,\\\" Borken said to him. \\\"Our scouts can see all eight of them. So can our riflemen. If they move, they die. Who else have you got therewith you?\\\"\\n\\nWebster paused. McGrath shook his head urgently.\\n\\n\\\"Can't you see?\\\" Webster asked. \\\"I thought you were watching us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not right now,\\\" Borken said. \\\"I pulled my people back a little. Into our defensive positions.\\\"\\n\\nThere's nobody else here,\\\"Webster said.\\\" Just me and the general.\\\"\\n\\nThere was another pause.\\n\\n\\\"OK, you two can join the Marines,\\\" Borken said. \\\"On the bridge. On the end of the line.\\\"\\n\\nWebster waited fora long moment. A blank expression on his face. Then he got up and nodded to Johnson. Johnson got up unsteadily and the two of them walked forward together around the curve. Left McGrath on his own, crouched in the lee of the rock.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"McGrath waited there two minutes and crawled back south to the Chevrolet. Garber and Johnson's aide were in front and Milosevic and Brogan were in back. They were all staring at him.\\n\\n\\\"What the hell happened?\\\" Brogan asked.\\n\\n\\\"We're in deep, deep shit,\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nTwo minutes of hurried explanation, and the others agreed with him.\\n\\n\\\"So what now?\\\" Garber asked.\\n\\n\\\"We go get Holly,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Before he realizes we're bullshitting him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But how?\\\" Brogan asked.\\n\\nMcGrath glanced at him. Glanced at Milosevic.\\n\\nThe three of us,\\\"he said.\\\" End of the day, this is a Bureau affair.\\n\\nCall it whatever you want, terrorism, sedition, kidnaping, it's all FBI territory.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're going to do it?\\\" Milosevic said. \\\"Just the three of us? Right now?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You got a better way?\\\" McGrath said. \\\"You want something done properly, you do it yourself, right?\\\"\\n\\nGarber was twisted around, scanning along the three faces on the rear seat.\\n\\n\\\"So go do it,\\\" he said.\\n\\nMcGrath nodded and held up his right hand. The thumb and the first two fingers sticking out.\\n\\n\\\"I'm the thumb,\\\" he said. \\\" I go in east of the road. Brogan, you're the first finger. You walk a mile west of the road and go in from there. Milo, you're the second finger. You walk two miles west and go north from there. We infiltrate separately, spaced out a mile between each of us. We meetup back on the road a half-mile shy of the town.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Clear?\\\"\\n\\nBrogan made a face. Then he nodded. Milosevic shrugged. Garber glanced at McGrath and the general's aide started the Chevy and rolled it gently south. He stopped it again after four hundred yards where the road came back out of the rock cover and there was clear access left and right into the countryside. The three FBI men checked their weapons. They each had a government-issue. 38 in a shiny brown leather shoulder holster. Full load of six, plus another six in a speed loader in their pockets.\\n\\nTry to capture a couple of rifles,\\\"McGrath said.\\\" Don't worry about taking prisoners. You see somebody, you shoot the bastard down, OK?\\\"\\n\\nMilosevic had the longest walk, so he was first to go. He ducked across the road and struck out due west across the mountain scrub. He made it to a small stand of trees and disappeared. McGrath lit a cigarette and sent Brogan after him. Garber waited until Brogan was in the trees, then he turned back to McGrath.\\n\\n\\\"Don't forget what I told you about Readier,\\\" he said. \\\"I'm not wrong about that guy. He's on your side, believe me.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath shrugged and said nothing. Smoked in silence. Opened the Chevy's door and slid out. Ground out the cigarette under his shoe and walked away east, across the grassy shoulder and onto the scrub.\\n\\nMcGrath was not far off fifty, and a heavy smoker, but he was a fit man. He had that type of mongrel constitution that age and smoke could not hurt. He was short at five seven, but sturdy. About one-sixty, made up of that hard slab by muscle which needs no maintenance and never fades into fat. He felt the same as he had as a kid. No better, no worse. His Bureau training had been along time ago, and fairly rudimentary compared to what people were getting now. But he'd aced it. Physically, he'd been indestructible. Not the fastest guy in his class, but easily the best stamina. The training runs in the early days of Quantico had been crude. Around and around in the Virginia woods, using natural obstacles. McGrath would come in maybe third or fourth every time. But if they were sent around again, he could do the same exact time, just about to the second. The faster guys would be struggling at his side as he pounded relentlessly onward. Then they would fallback. Second time around McGrath would come in first. Third time around, he would be the only guy to finish.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"So he was jogging comfortably as he approached the southern edge of the ravine. He had worked about three hundred yards east to a point where the slopes were reasonable and not directly overlooked. He went straight down without pausing. Short, stiff strides against the incline. The footing was loose. He skidded on small avalanches of gravel and used the stunted trees to check his speed. He dodged around the litter of rocks in the bottom of the trench and started up the northern slope.\\n\\nGoing up was harder. He kicked his toes into the gravel for grip and hauled himself upward with handfuls of grass. He zigzagged between the small trees and bushes, looking for leverage. The extra fifty feet on the northern rim was a punishment. He tracked right to where a small landslide had created a straight path at a kinder angle. Slipped and slid upward through the crushed rock to the top.\\n\\nHe waited in the overhang, where the earth had fallen away beneath the crust of roots. Listened hard. Heard nothing except silence. He lifted himself onto the rim. Stood therewith his chest against the earth, head and shoulders exposed, looking north into enemy territory.\\n\\nHe saw nothing. Just the gentle initial slopes, then the hills, then the giant mountains glowering in the far distance. Blue sky, a million trees, clean air, total silence. He thought: you're along way from Chicago, Mack.\\n\\nAhead of him was a belt of scrub where the ancient rock was too close to the surface for much to grow. Then a ragged belt of trees, interrupted at first by rocky outcrops, then growing denser into the distance. He could seethe curved gap in the treetops where the road must run. Three hundred yards to his left. He rolled up onto the grass and ran for the trees. Worked left toward the road and shadowed it north in the forest.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"He jogged along, dodging trees like a slow-motion parody of a wide receiver heading for the end zone.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The map was printed in his mind. He figured he had maybe three miles to go. Three miles at a slow jog, not much better than a fast walk, maybe forty-five, fifty minutes. The ground was rising gently under his feet. Every fourth or fifth stride, his feet hit the floor a fraction sooner than they should have as the gradient lifted him into the hills. He tripped a couple of times on roots. Once, he slammed into a pine trunk. But he pounded on, relentlessly.\\n\\nAfter forty minutes, he stopped. He figured Brogan and Milosevic were having a similar journey, but they were dealing with extra distance because they had tracked west at the outset. So he expected a delay.\\n\\nWith luck they would be about twenty minutes behind him. He walked deeper into the woods and sat down against a trunk. Lit a cigarette.\\n\\nHe figured he was maybe a half-mile shy of the rendezvous. The map in his head said the road was about due to arrow up into the town.\\n\\nHe waited fifteen minutes. Two cigarettes. Then he stood up and walked on. He went cautiously. He was getting close. He made two diversions to his left and found the road. Just crept through the trees until he caught the gleam of sun on the gray cement. Then he dodged back and carried on north. He walked until he saw the forest thinning ahead. He saw sunlight on open spaces beyond the last trees.\\n\\nHe stopped and stepped left and right to find a view. He saw the road running up to the town. He saw buildings. A gray ruin on a knoll on the left. The courthouse on the right. Better preserved. Gleaming white in the sunshine. He stared through the trees at it fora long moment. Then he turned back. Paced five hundred yards into the woods.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Drifted over toward the road until he could just make out the gray gleam through the trees. Leaned on a trunk and waited for Brogan and Milosevic.\\n\\nThis time, he resisted the attraction of another cigarette. He had learned along time ago that to smoke while in hiding was not a smart thing to do. The smell drifts, and a keen nose can detect it. So he leaned on the tree and stared down in frustration. Stared at his shoes. They were ruined from the scramble up the north face of the ravine. He had jabbed them hard into the rocky slope and they were scratched to pieces. He stared at the ruined toecaps and instantly knew he had been betrayed. Panic rose in his throat. His chest seized hard. It hit him like a prison door swinging gently shut. It swung soundlessly inward on greased hinges and clanged shut right in his face.\\n\\nWhat had Borken said on the radio? He had said: like you're watching us with those damn planes. But what had the general's aide told him back in the Butte office? You lookup and you see a tiny vapor trail and you think it's TWA. You don't think it's the air force checking if you've shined your shoes this morning. So how did Borken know there were surveillance planes in the sky? Because he had been told. But by who? Who the hell knew?\\n\\nHe glanced around wildly and the first thing he saw was a dog coming at him from dead ahead. Then another. They bounded through the trees at him. He heard a sound from behind him. The crunch of feet and the flick of branches. Then the same sound from his right. The snicking and slapping of a weapon from his left. The dogs were at his feet. He spun in a panic-stricken circle. All around him men were coming at him through the trees. Lean, bearded men, in camouflage gear, carrying rifles and machine guns. Grenades slung from their webbing. Maybe fifteen or twenty men. They stepped forward calmly and purposefully.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They were in a complete ring, right around him. He turned one way, then the other. He was surrounded. They were raising their weapons.\\n\\nHe had fifteen or twenty automatic weapons pointing straight at him like spokes in a wheel.\\n\\nThey stood silent, weapons ready. McGrath glanced from one to the next, in a complete wild circle. Then one of them stepped forward.\\n\\nSome kind of an officer. His hand went straight in under McGrath's jacket. Jerked the. 38 out of his holster. Then the guy's hand went into McGrath's pocket. Closed over the speed loader and pulled it out.\\n\\nThe guy slipped both items into his own pocket and smiled. Swung his fist and hit McGrath in the face. McGrath staggered and was prodded back forward with the muzzle of a rifle. Then he heard tires on the road. The grumble of a motor. He glanced left and caught a flash of olive green in the sun. A jeep. Two men in it. The soldiers pressed in and forced him out of the forest. They jostled him through the trees and onto the shoulder. He blinked in the sun. He could feel his nose was bleeding. The jeep rolled forward and stopped alongside him.\\n\\nThe driver stared at him with curiosity. Another lean, bearded man in uniform. In the passenger seat was a huge man wearing black. Beau Borken. McGrath recognized him from his Bureau file photograph. He stared at him. Then Borken leaned over and grinned.\\n\\n\\\"Hello, Mr. McGrath,\\\" he said. \\\"You made good time.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"REACHER WATCHED THE WHOLE THING HAPPEN. HE WAS A HUNDRED and fifty yards away in the trees. Northwest of the ambush, high up the slope on the other side of the road. There was a dead sentry at his feet. The guy was lying in the dirt with his head at right angles to his neck.\\n\\nReacher had his field glasses raised to his eyes. Watching. Watching what, he wasn't exactly sure.\\n\\nHe had caught the gist of the radio conversation in the Bastion. He had heard Borken's side. He had guessed the replies. He had heard the southern lookouts calling in on the walkie-talkies. He knew about the Marines on the bridge. He knew about Webster and Johnson sitting there alongside them, on the end of the line.\\n\\nHe had wondered who else was down there. Maybe more military, maybe more FBI. The military wouldn't come. Johnson would have ordered them to sit tight. If anybody came, it would be the FBI. He figured they might have substantial numbers standing by. He figured they would becoming in, sooner or later. He needed to exploit them. Needed to use them as a diversion while he got Holly out. So he had moved southeast to wait for their arrival. Now, an hour later, he was gazing down at the short stocky guy getting loaded into the jeep. Dark suit, white shirt, town shoes. FBI, for sure.\\n\\nBut not the hostage rescue team. This guy had no equipment. The HRT came in all loaded down with paramilitary gear. Reacher was familiar with their procedures. He had read some of their manuals. Heard about some of their training. He knew guys who had been in and out of Quantico. He knew how the HRT worked. They were a high-technology operation. They looked like regular soldiers, in blue. They had vehicles. This guy he was watching was on foot in the forest. Dressed like he had just stepped out of a meeting.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It was a puzzle. Eight Marines. No hostage rescue team. An unarmed search-and-rescue Chinook. Then Reacher suddenly thought maybe he understood. Maybe this was a very clandestine operation. Low profile.\\n\\nInvisible. They had tracked Holly all the way west from Chicago, but for some reason they maybe weren't gathering any kind of a big force.\\n\\nThey were dealing with it alone. Some tactical reason. Maybe apolitical reason. Maybe something to do with Holly and the White House. Maybe the policy was to deal with this secretly, deal with it hard, tackle it with a tight little team. So tight the right hand didn't know what the left was doing. Hence the unarmed search-and-rescue chopper. It had come in blind. Hadn't known what it was getting into.\\n\\nIn which case this ambushed guy he was watching was direct from Chicago. Part of the original operation that must have started up back on Monday. He looked like a senior guy. Maybe approaching fifty.\\n\\nCould be Brogan, Holly's section head. Could even be McGrath, the top boy. In either case that made Milosevic the mole. Question was, was he up here as well, or was he still back in Chicago?\\n\\nThe jeep turned slowly in the road. The Bureau guy in the suit was in back, jammed between two armed men. His nose was bleeding and Reacher could see a swelling starting on his face. Borken had twisted his bulk around and was talking at him. The rest of the ambush squad was forming up in the road. The jeep drove past them, north toward town.\\n\\nPassed by thirty yards from where Reacher was standing in the trees. He watched it go. Turned and picked up his rifle. Strolled through the woods, deep in thought.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"His problem was priority order. He had a rule: stick to the job in hand. The job in hand was getting Holly away safe. Nothing else. But this Bureau guy was in trouble. He thought about Jackson. The last Bureau guy they'd gotten hold of. Maybe this new guy was heading for the same fate. In which case, he ought to intervene. And he liked the look of the guy. He looked tough. Small, but strong. A lot of energy. Some kind of charisma there. Maybe anally would be a smart thing to have. Two heads, better than one. Two pairs of hands. Four trigger fingers. Useful. But his rule was: stick to the job in hand.\\n\\nIt had worked for him many times over the years. It was a rule which had served him well. Should he bend that rule? Or not? He stopped and stood concealed in the forest while the ambush squad marched by on the road. Listened to the sound of their footsteps die away. Stood there and thought about the guy some more and forced himself toward a tough decision.\\n\\nGeneral Garber watched the whole thing happen, too. He was a hundred and fifty yards south of the ambush. West side of the road, behind a rocky outcrop, exactly three hundred yards south of where Readier had been. He had waited three minutes and then followed McGrath in through the ravine. Garber was also a reasonably fit man, but a lot older and it had cost him a lotto keep pace with McGrath. He had arrived at the rocky outcrop and collapsed, out of breath. He figured he had maybe fifteen or twenty minutes to recover before the rendezvous took place.\\n\\nThen his plan was to follow behind the three agents and see what was going to happen. He didn't want anybody making mistakes about Jack Readier.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"But the rendezvous had never happened.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He had watched the ambush and realized a lot of mistakes had been made about a lot of things.\\n\\n\\\"You're going to die,\\\" Borken said.\\n\\nMcGrath was jammed between two soldiers on the backseat of the jeep.\\n\\nHe was bouncing around because the road was rough. But he couldn't move his arms, because the seat was not really wide enough for three people. So he put the shrug into his injured face instead.\\n\\n\\\"We're all going to die,\\\" he said. \\\"Sooner or later.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sooner or later, right,\\\" Borken said. \\\"But for you, it's going to be sooner not later.\\\"\\n\\nBorken was twisted around in the front seat, staring. McGrath looked past him at the vast blue sky. He looked at the smallwhite clouds and thought: who was it? Who knew? Air force operational personnel, he guessed, but that link was ludicrous. Had to be somebody nearer and closer. Somebody more involved. The only possibilities were Johnson or his aide, or Webster himself, or Brogan, or Milosevic.\\n\\nGarber, conceivably. He seemed pretty hot on excusing this Reacher guy. Was this some military police conspiracy to overthrow the joint chiefs?\\n\\n\\\"Who was it, Borken?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"Who was what, dead man?\\\" Borken asked back.\\n\\n\\\"Who's been talking to you?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nBorken smiled and tapped his finger on his temple.\\n\\n\\\"Common cause,\\\" he said. This sort of issue, there area lot more people than you think on our side.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath glanced back to the sky and thought about Dexter, safe in the White House. What had Webster said he'd said? Twelve million people?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Or was it sixty-six million?\\n\\n\\\"You're going to die,\\\" Borken said again.\\n\\nMcGrath shifted his focus back.\\n\\n\\\"So tell me who it was, before I do,\\\" he said.\\n\\nBorken grinned at him.\\n\\n\\\"You'll find out,\\\" he said. \\\"It's going to be a big surprise.\\\"\\n\\nThe jeep pulled up in front of the courthouse. McGrath twisted and looked up at it. There were six soldiers standing guard outside the building. They were fanned into a rough arc, facing south and east.\\n\\n\\\"She in there?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nBorken nodded and smiled.\\n\\n\\\"Right now she is,\\\" he said. \\\"I may have to get her out later.\\\"\\n\\nThe walkie-talkie on his belt burst into life. Aloud burst of static and a quick distorted message. He pressed the key and bent his head down. Acknowledged the information without unclipping the unit. Then he pulled the radio transmitter from his pocket. Flipped it open and pulled up the short antenna. Pressed the send button.\\n\\n\\\"Webster?\\\" he said. \\\"You lied tome. Twice. First, there were three of your agents down therewith you. We just rounded them all up.\\\"\\n\\nHe listened to the response. Kept the radio tight against his ear.\\n\\nMcGrath could not hear what Webster was saying.\\n\\n\\\"Doesn't matter anyway,\\\" Borken said. \\\" They weren't all on your side.\\n\\nSome people in this world will do anything for money.\\\"\\n\\nHe paused fora response. Apparently there was none.\\n\\n\\\"And you bullshitted me,\\\" Borken said. \\\"You weren't going to fix the line at all, were you? You were just stringing me along.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Webster was starting a reply, but Borken cut him off.\\n\\n\\\"You and Johnson,\\\" he said. \\\"You can get off the bridge now. The Marines stay there. We're watching. You and Johnson walk back to your trucks. Get yourselves in front of those TVs. Should be some interesting action pretty soon.\\\"\\n\\nHe clicked off the radio and folded it back into his pocket. A big wide smile on his face.\\n\\n\\\"You're going to die,\\\" he said to McGrath for the third time.\\n\\n\\\"Which one?\\\" McGrath asked. \\\"Brogan or Milosevic?\\\"\\n\\nBorken grinned again.\\n\\n\\\"Guess,\\\" he said. \\\"Figure it out for yourself. You're supposed to be the big smart federal investigator. Agent-in-charge, right?\\\"\\n\\nThe driver jumped down and pulled a pistol from his holster. Aimed it two-handed at McGrath's head. The left-hand guard squeezed out and unslung his rifle. Held it ready. The right-hand guy did the same.\\n\\nThen Borken eased his bulk down.\\n\\n\\\"Out,\\\" he said. \\\"We walk from here.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath shrugged and eased himself down into the circle of weapons.\\n\\nBorken stepped behind him and caught his arms. Cuffed his wrists together behind his back. Then he shoved him forward. Pointed beyond the ruined county office.\\n\\n\\\"Up there, dead man,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThey left the jeep behind them next to the courthouse. The two guards formed up. McGrath stumbled across the street and up onto the lumpy knoll. He was pushed past the dead tree. He was pushed left until he found the path. He followed it around behind the old building. The rough ground bit up through the thin soles of his ruined city shoes. He might as well have been walking barefoot.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Faster, asshole,\\\" Borken grunted at him.\\n\\nThe guards were behind him, prodding him forward with the muzzles of their rifles. He picked up the pace and stumbled on through the woods.\\n\\nHe felt the blood clotting on his lip and nose. After a mile, he came out into the clearing he recognized from the surveillance pictures. It looked bigger. From seven miles overhead, it had looked like a neat hole in the trees, with a tidy circle of buildings. From ground level, it looked as big as a stadium. Rough shale on the floor of the clearing, big wooden huts propped expertly on solid concrete piles.\\n\\n\\\"Wait here,\\\" Borken said.\\n\\nHe walked away and the two guards took up station either side of McGrath as he gazed around. He saw the communications hut, with the phone wire and the whip antenna. He saw the other buildings. Smelled stale institutional food coming out of the largest. Saw the farthest hut, standing on its own. Must be their armory, he thought.\\n\\nHe glanced up and saw the vapor trails in the sky. The urgency of the situation was written up there, white on blue. The planes had abandoned their innocent east-west trawling. Their trails had tightened into continuous circles, one just inside the other. They were flying around and around, centered seven miles above his head. He stared up at them and mouthed: help! He wondered if their lenses were good enough to pick that out. Wondered if maybe Webster or Johnson or Garber or Johnson's gofer could lipread His best guess was: yes, and no.\\n\\nReacher's problem was a hell of an irony. For the first time in his life, he wished his opponents were better shots. He was concealed in the trees a hundred yards northwest of the courthouse. Looking down at six sentries. They were ranged in a loose arc, to the south and east beyond the big white building. Reacher's rifle was trained on the nearest man. But he wasn't shooting. Because if he did, the six men were going to shoot back. And they were going to miss.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher was happy with an M-16 and a range of a hundred yards. He could pretty much absolutely guarantee to hit what he wanted with that weapon at that range. He would bet his life on it. Many times, he had. And normally, the worse shots his opponents were, the happier he'd be about it. But not in this situation.\\n\\nHe would be shooting from a northwest direction. His opponents would be shooting back from the southeast. They would hear his shots, maybe see some muzzle flash, they would take aim, and they would fire. And they would miss. They would shoot high and wide. The targets on the rifle range were mute evidence for that conclusion. There had been some competent shooting at three and four hundred yards. The damaged targets bore witness to that fact. But Reacher's experience was that guys who could shoot just about competently us at three or four hundred yards on a range would be useless in a firefight. Lying still on a mat and sighting in on a target in your own time was one thing. Shooting into a noisy confused hailstorm of bullets was a very different thing.\\n\\nA different thing entirely. The guy defending the missile trucks had proved that. His salvos had been allover the place. And that was the problem. Shooting back from the southeast, these guys' stray rounds were going to be allover the place, too. Up and down, left and right.\\n\\nThe down rounds and the left rounds were no problem. They were just going to damage the scrubby vegetation. But the up rounds and the right rounds were going to hit the courthouse.\\n\\nThe M-16 uses bullets designated M855. Common NATO rounds, 5.56 millimeters in caliber, just a fraction under a quarter-inch wide.\\n\\nFairly heavy for their size, because they area sandwich of lead and steel inside a copper jacket. Designed for penetration. Those stray rounds which hit the courthouse were going to impact the siding at two thousand miles an hour. They were going to punch through the old wood like it wasn't thereat all. They were going to smash through the unstable dynamite like a train wreck. The energy of their impact was going to act like a better blasting cap than anything any mining company had ever possessed. That was what those bullets were designed to do. Some committee had asked fora bullet capable of shooting through the sides of ammunition trucks. And that's what had been delivered.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"So Reacher wasn't shooting. Three sentries, he might have risked it.\\n\\nHe figured he could get off three aimed shots in maybe three seconds.\\n\\nToo fast for any reaction. But six was too many. They were too spaced out. Too much physical movement was required between rounds. The later targets would have time to react. Not much time. Certainly not enough to be accurate. That was the problem.\\n\\nReversing the geometry would be no help, either. He could work himself right around to the south. It would take him maybe twenty minutes to skirt around in the trees and comeback at them from the opposite direction. But then what? He would be looking at his targets, uphill.\\n\\nThe courthouse would be right behind them. He could hit each of them in the head, no problem at all. But he couldn't ask the bullets just to stop therein midair. He couldn't prevent those high-energy copper-jackets bursting on out of the back of those skulls and heading on their uphill trajectories straight toward the courthouse's second-story walls. He shook his head and lowered his rifle.\\n\\nMcGrath saw Borken conferring with somebody on the edge of the clearing. It was the guy who had led the ambush squad. The guy who had taken his gun and his bullets and punched him in the face. The two of them were glancing at their watches and glancing up at the sky. They were nodding. Borken slapped the guy on the shoulder and turned away.\\n\\nDucked into the trees and disappeared back toward the town. The ambush leader started in toward McGrath. He was smiling. He was unslinging his rifle.\\n\\n\\\"Showtime,\\\" he called.\\n\\nHe stepped near and reversed the rifle in his hands as he did so.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Smashed the butt into McGrath's stomach. McGrath went down on the shale. One guard jammed the muzzle of his rifle into McGrath's throat.\\n\\nThe other jammed his into McGrath's stomach, right where the blow had landed.\\n\\n\\\"Lie still, asshole,\\\" the unit leader said. \\\"I'll be back in a minute.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath could not move his head because of the rifle in his throat, but he followed the guy with his eyes. He was going into the next-to-last hut inline. Not the armory, which stood on its own. Some kind of an equipment store. He came outwith a mallet and ropes and four metal objects. Dull green, army issue. Ashe got nearer, McGrath recognized what they were. They were tent pegs. Maybe eighteen inches long, designed for some kind of big mess tent.\\n\\nThe guy dropped his load on the shale. The metal pegs clinked on the stones. The guy nodded to the soldier with the gun in McGrath's belly who straightened up and stepped away. The unit leader took his place.\\n\\nUsed his own weapon to keep McGrath pinned down.\\n\\nThe soldier got busy. He seemed to know what he was supposed to do. He used the mallet to drive the first peg into the ground. The ground was stony and the guy had to work hard. He was swinging the mallet in a big arc and using a lot of force. He drove the peg down until it was two-thirds buried. Then he paced off maybe eight feet and started driving the second. McGrath followed him with his eyes. When the second peg was in, the guy paced another eight feet at aright angle and hammered the third peg in. The fourth peg completed an exact square, eight feet on each side. McGrath had a pretty good idea what that square was for.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We normally do this in the woods,\\\" the unit leader said. \\\"We normally do it vertically, with trees.\\\"\\n\\nThen the guy pointed upward at the sky.\\n\\n\\\"But we need to let them see,\\\" he said. They can't see properly in the woods. This time of year, too many leaves in the way, right?\\\"\\n\\nThe guard who had driven the tent pegs into the ground was panting from the exertion. He changed places with his leader again. Jammed his rifle into McGrath's gut and leaned on it, recovering. McGrath gasped and squirmed under the pressure. The leader squatted down and sorted through the ropes. Untangled one and caught McGrath by the ankle.\\n\\nLooped the rope around and tied it off, hard. Used the rope to drag McGrath by the leg into the approximate center of the square. Then he tied the loose end to the fourth peg. Tied it tight and tested it.\\n\\nThe second length of rope went around McGrath's other ankle. It was tied off to the third peg. McGrath's legs were forced apart at aright angle. His hands were still cuffed behind his back, crushed against the rocky ground. The leader used the sole of his boot to roll McGrath's upper body sideways. Ducked down and unlocked the cuff.\\n\\nCaught a wrist and looped a rope around. Tied it tight and hauled the wrist up to the second peg. He pulled on it until McGrath's arm was stretched tight, in a perfect straight line with the opposite leg. Then he tied it tight to the peg and reached down for the other wrist. The soldiers jammed their muzzles in tighter. McGrath stared up at the vapor trails and gasped in pain as his arm was stretched tight and he was tied into a perfect cross.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The two soldiers jerked their rifles away and stepped back. They stood with their leader. Gazing down. McGrath lifted his head and looked wildly around. Pulled on the ropes, and then realized he was only pulling the knots tighter. The three men stepped farther back and glanced up at the sky. McGrath realized they were making sure the cameras got an uninterrupted view.\\n\\nThe cameras were getting an uninterrupted view. Seven miles in the sky, the pilots were flying circles, one on a tight radius of a few miles, the other outside him on a wider path. Their cameras were trained downward, under the relentless control of their computers. The inside plane was focusing tight on the clearing where McGrath was spreadeagled. The outer camera was zoomed wider, taking in the whole of the area from the courthouse in the south to the abandoned mines in the north. Their real-time video signals were bouncing down more or less vertically to the dish vehicle parked behind the mobile command post. The dish was focusing the datastream and feeding it through the thick armored cable into the observation truck. Then the decoding computers were feeding the large color monitors. Their phosphor screens were displaying the appalling truth. General Johnson and his aide and Webster were motionless in front of them. Motionless, silent, staring. Video recorders were whirring away, dispassionately recording every second's activity taking place six miles to the north. The whole vehicle was humming with faint electronic energy. But it was as silent as a tomb.\\n\\n\\\"Can you zoom in?\\\" Webster asked quietly. \\\"On McGrath?\\\"\\n\\nThe general's aide twisted a black rubber knob. Stared at the screen.\\n\\nHe zoomed in until the individual pixels in the picture began to clump together and distort. Then he backed off a fraction.\\n\\n\\\"Close as we can get,\\\" he said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It was close enough. McGrath's spreadeagled figure just about filled the screens. The unit leader could be seen from directly above, stepping over the lengths of rope as he circled. He had a knife in his hand. A black handle, a shiny blade, maybe ten inches long. It looked like a big kitchen knife. The sort of thing a gourmet cook might buy.\\n\\nUseful for slicing a tough cut of steak into strips. The sort of tool that would get set out on the kitchen counter by somebody making a stew or a stroganoff.\\n\\nThey saw the guy lay the knife flat on McGrath's chest. Then he used both hands to fold back the flaps on McGrath's jacket. He loosened McGrath's tie and pulled it sideways, almost up under his ear. Then he grasped the shirt and tore it open. The cotton pulled apart under the knife, leaving the knife where it was, now next to the skin. The guy pulled the tails out of the waistband and tucked the shirt right back to the sides. Carefully, well out of the way, like he was a surgeon faced with a difficult emergency procedure.\\n\\nThey saw the guy pickup the knife again. He was squatted down to McGrath's right, leaning over slightly, holding the knife. He was holding it point-down, close to McGrath's belly. The electronic pink of McGrath's skin was reflected in the faces of the watchers inside the observation vehicle.\\n\\nThey saw the guy raise the knife an inch. They saw his index finger slide along the back of the blade, like he was adjusting his grip for extra precision. They saw the blade move down. The pale sun glinted on the steel. Then their view was disrupted. A silent puff of pink mist obscured the picture. When it cleared, the knife was still in the guy's hand. But the guy had no head. His whole head was a shattered pink wound, and he was toppling slowly sideways.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"THE LEFT-HAND GUARD WENT DOWN EASILY ENOUGH, TOO. REACHER put a bullet through the side of his head, just above the ear, and he fell heavily, right on top of the spreadeagled Bureau guy. But the right-hand guard reacted. He spun away and hurdled the taut ropes, racing for the trees. Reacher paused a beat and dropped him ten feet away. The guy sprawled and slid noisily through the shale and put up a slick of dust.\\n\\nTwitched once and died.\\n\\nThen Reacher waited. The last staccato echo of the three shots came back off the farthest mountains and faded into quiet. Reacher watched the trees, all around the Bastion. Watched for movement. The sunlight was bright. Too bright to be sure. There was a lot of contrast between the brightness of the clearing and the dark of the forest. So he waited.\\n\\nThen he came out from behind the radio hut at a desperate run. He sprinted straight across the clearing to the mess in the middle. Hauled the bodies out of the way. The guard was sprawled right on top of the Bureau guy. The unit leader was across his legs. He dumped them out of the way and found the knife. Sawed through the four coarse ropes.\\n\\nDragged the Bureau guy upright and pushed him off back the way he'd come. Then he grabbed the two nearest rifles and sprinted after him.\\n\\nCaught him up halfway. The guy was just tottering along. So Reacher caught him under the arms and bundled him to safety. Threw him well into the trees behind the huts and stood bent over, panting. Then he took the magazines off the new rifles and put one in his pocket and one on his own gun. They were both the elongated thirty-shot versions.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"He'd been down to six rounds.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Now he had sixty. A ten-fold increase.\\n\\nAnd he had another pair of hands.\\n\\n\\\"Are you Brogan?\\\" he asked. \\\"Or McGrath?\\\"\\n\\nThe guy answered stiffly and neutrally. There was fear and panic and confusion in his face.\\n\\n\\\"McGrath,\\\" he said. \\\"FBI.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded. The guy was shaken up, but he was anally. He took Fowler's Clock out of his pocket and held it out to him, butt first.\\n\\nMcGrath was panting quietly and glancing wildly toward the deep cover of the trees. There was aggression in his stance. His hands were balled into fists.\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Reacher asked him, concerned.\\n\\nMcGrath darted forward and snatched the Clock and stepped back. Raised it and went into a shooting stance and pointed it two-handed. At Reacher's head. The cut ends of the ropes trailed down from his wrists. Reacher just stared blankly at him.\\n\\n\\\"Hell are you doing?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"You're one of them,\\\" McGrath said back. \\\"Drop the rifle, OK?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Reacher said again.\\n\\n\\\"Just do it, OK?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nReacher stared at him, incredulous. Pointed through the trees at the sprawled bodies in the Bastion.\\n\\n\\\"What about that?\\\" he asked. \\\"Doesn't that mean anything to you?\\\"\\n\\nThe Clock did not waver. It was rock-steady, pointed straight at his head, at the apex of a perfect braced position. McGrath looked like a picture in a training manual, except for the ropes hanging like streamers from his wrists and ankles.\\n\\n\\\"Doesn't that count for something?\\\" Reacher asked again, pointing.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Not necessarily,\\\" McGrath growled back. \\\" You killed Peter Bell, too.\\n\\nWe know that. Just because you don't allow your troops to rape and torture your hostages doesn't necessarily put you on the side of the angels.\\\"\\n\\nReacher looked at him fora long moment, astonished Thought hard. Then he nodded cautiously and dropped the rifle exactly halfway between the two of them. Drop it right at his own feet, McGrath would just tell him to kick it over toward him. Drop it too near McGrath's feet, and it wouldn't work. This guy was an experienced agent. From the look of his shooting stance, Reacher was expecting at least a basic level of competence from him.\\n\\nMcGrath glanced down. Hesitated. He clearly didn't want Reacher near him. He didn't want him stepping nearer to nudge the rifle on toward him. So he slid his own foot forward to drag the weapon back close. He was maybe ten inches shorter than Reacher, all told. Aiming the Clock at Reacher's head from six feet away, he was aiming it upward at a fairly steep angle. Ashe slid his foot forward, he decreased his effective height by maybe an inch, which automatically increased the upward slope of his arms by a proportionate degree. And as he slid his foot forward, it brought him slightly closer to Reacher, which increased the upward angle yet more. By the time his toe was scrabbling for the weapon, his upper arms were near his face, interfering with his vision. Reacher waited for him to glance down again.\\n\\nHe glanced down. Reacher let his knees go and fell vertically. Lashed back upward with his forearm and batted the Clock away. Swiped a wide arc with his other arm behind McGrath's knees and dumped him flat on his back in the dirt. Closed his handover McGrath's wrist and squeezed gently until the Glock shook free. He picked it up by the barrel and held it the wrong way around.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Look at this,\\\" he said.\\n\\nHe shook his cuff back and exposed the crusted weal on his left wrist.\\n\\n\\\"I'm not one of them,\\\" he said. \\\"They had me handcuffed most of the time.\\\"\\n\\nThen he held the Glock out, butt first, offering it again. McGrath stared at it, and then stared back into the clearing. He ducked his head left and right to take in the bodies. Glanced back at Reacher, still confused.\\n\\n\\\"We had you down as a bad guy,\\\" he said.\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Evidently,\\\" he said. \\\"But why?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Video in the dry cleaners,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Looked just like you were snatching her up.\\\"\\n\\nReacher shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Innocent passerby,\\\" he said.\\n\\nMcGrath kept onlooking hard at him. Quizzically, thinking. Reacher saw him arrive at a decision. He nodded in turn and accepted the Glock and laid it on the forest floor, exactly between them, like its positioning was a symbol, a treaty. He started fumbling at his shirt bur tons Cut ends of rope flailed at his wrists and ankles.\\n\\n\\\"OK, can we start over?\\\" he said, embarrassed.\\n\\nReacher nodded and stuck out his hand.\\n\\n\\\"Sure,\\\" he said. \\\"I'm Reacher, you're McGrath. Holly's agent-in-charge. Pleased to meet you.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath smiled ruefully and shook hands limply. Then he started fumbling at the knots on his wrist, one-handed.\\n\\n\\\"You know a guy called Garber?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nReacher nodded.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Used to work for him,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Garber told us you were clean,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"We didn't believe him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Naturally,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Garber always tells the truth. So nobody ever believes him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So I apologize,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"I'm sorry, OK? But just try and see it my way. You've been public enemy number one for five days.\\\"\\n\\nReacher waved the apology away and stood up and helped McGrath to his feet. Bent back down to the dirt and picked up the Glock and handed it to him.\\n\\n\\\"Your nose OK?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nMcGrath slipped the gun into his jacket pocket. Touched his nose gently and grimaced.\\n\\n\\\"Bastard hit me,\\\" he said. \\\"I think it's broken. Just turned and hit me, like they couldn't wait.\\\"\\n\\nThere was a noise in the woods, off to the left. Reacher caught McGrath's arm and pulled him deeper into the forest. Pushed through the brush and got facing east. He stood silently and listened for movement. McGrath was taking the ropes off his ankles and winding himself up to ask a question.\\n\\n\\\"So is Holly OK?\\\" he said.\\n\\nReacher nodded. But grimly.\\n\\n\\\"So far,\\\" he said. \\\"But it's going to be a hell of a problem getting her out.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I know about the dynamite,\\\" McGrath said. That was the last thing Jackson called in. Monday night.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It's a problem,\\\" Reacher said again. \\\" One stray round, and she's had it. And there area hundred trigger-happy people up here. Whatever we do, we need to do it carefully. Have you got reinforcements coming in?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Hostage rescue?\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Not yet,\\\" he said. \\\"Politics.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Maybe that's good,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"They're talking about mass suicide if they look like getting beat. Live free or die, you know?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Whichever,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Their choice. I don't care what happens to them. I just care about Holly.\\\"\\n\\nThey fell silent and crept together through the trees. Stopped deep in the woods, about level with the back of the mess hall. Now Reacher was winding himself up to ask a question. But he waited, frozen, a finger to his lips. There was noise to his left. A patrol, sweeping the fringe of the forest. McGrath made to move, but Reacher caught his arm and stopped him. Better to stand stock still than to risk making noise of their own. The patrol came nearer. Reacher raised his rifle and switched it to rapid fire. Smothered the sound of the click with his palm. McGrath held his breath. The patrol was visible, ten feet away through the trees. Six men, six rifles. They were glancing rhythmically as they walked, left and right, left and right, between the edge of the sunny clearing and the dark green depths of the woods.\\n\\nReacher breathed out, silently. Amateurs, with poor training and bad tactics. The bright sun in their eyes on every second glance was ruining their chances of seeing into the gloom of the forest. They were blind. They passed by without stopping. Reacher followed the sound of their progress and turned back to McGrath.\\n\\n\\\"Where are Brogan and Milosevic?\\\" he whispered.\\n\\nMcGrath nodded, morosely.\\n\\n\\\"I know,\\\" he said, quietly. \\\"One of them is bent. I finally figured that out about half a second before they grabbed me up.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Where are they?\\\" Reacher asked again.\\n\\n\\\"Up here somewhere,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"We came in through the ravine together, a mile apart.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Which one is it?\\\" Readier asked.\\n\\nMcGrath shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"I don't know,\\\" he said. \\\"Can't figure it out. I've been going over and over it. They both did good work. Milosevic found the dry cleaner. He brought the video in. Brogan did a lot of work tracing it all back hereto Montana. He traced the truck. He liaised with Quantico. My gut says neither one is bent.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"When was I ID'd?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"Thursday morning,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"We had your complete history.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\n\\\"He called it in right away,\\\" he said. These people suddenly knew who I was, Thursday morning.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath shrugged again.\\n\\nThey were both thereat the time,\\\"he said.\\\" We were all down at Peterson.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Did you get Holly's fax?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"What fax?\\\" McGrath said. \\\"When?\\\"\\n\\nThis morning,\\\"Reacher said.\\\" Early, maybe ten to five? She faxed you a warning.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're intercepting their line,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Ina truck,\\\" down the road here. But ten to five, I was in bed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So who was minding the store?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\nMcGrath nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Milosevic and Brogan,\\\" he said, sourly. The two of them. Ten to five this morning, they'd just gone on duty. Whichever one of them it is must have gotten the fax and concealed it. But which one, I just don't know.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher nodded back.\\n\\n\\\"We could figure it out,\\\" he said. \\\"Or we could just wait and see. One of them will be walking around best of friends and the other will be in handcuffs, or dead. We'll be able to tell the difference.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath nodded, sourly.\\n\\n\\\"I can't wait,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThen Reacher stiffened and pulled him ten yards farther into the woods.\\n\\nHe had heard the patrol coming back through the trees.\\n\\nInside the courtroom, Borken had heard the three shots. He was sitting in the judge's chair and he heard them clearly. They went: crack crack... crack and repeated a dozen times as each of the distant slopes cannoned the echo back toward him. He sent a runner back to the Bastion. A mile there, a mile back on the winding path through the woods. Twenty minutes wasted, then the runner got back panting with the news. Three corpses, four cut ropes.\\n\\n\\\"Readier,\\\" Borken said. \\\"I should have wasted him at the beginning.\\\"\\n\\nMilosevic nodded in agreement.\\n\\n\\\"I want him kept away from me,\\\" he said. \\\"I heard the autopsy report on your friend Peter Bell. I just want my money and safe passage out of here, OK?\\\"\\n\\nBorken nodded. Then he laughed. A sharp, nervous laugh that was part excitement, part tension. He stood up and walked out from behind the bench. Laughed and grinned and slapped Milosevic on the shoulder.\\n\\nHolly Johnson knew no more than most people do about dynamite. She couldn't remember its exact chemical composition. She knew ammonium nitrate and nitrocellulose were in there somewhere. She wondered about nitroglycerin. Was that mixed in too? Or was that some other kind of explosive? Either way, she figured dynamite was some kind of a sticky fluid, soaked into a porous material and molded into sticks.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Heavy sticks, quite dense. If her walls were packed with heavy dense sticks they would absorb a lot of sound. Like a soundproofing layer in a city apartment. Which meant the shots she'd heard had been reasonably close.\\n\\nShe'd heard: crack crack... crack. But she didn't know who was shooting at who, or why. They weren't handgun shots. She knew the flat bark of a handgun from her time at Quantico. These were shots from along gun. Not the heavy thump of the big Barratts from the rifle range. A lighter weapon than that. Somebody firing a medium-caliber rifle three times. Or three people firing once, in a ragged volley. But whichever it was, something was happening. And she had to be ready.\\n\\nGarber heard the shots, too. Crack crack... crack, maybe a thousand yards northwest of him, maybe twelve hundred. Then a dozen spaced echoes coming back from the mountainsides. He was in no doubt about what they represented. An M-16, firing singles, the first pair in a tight group of two which the military called a double tap. The sound of a competent shooter. The idea was to get the second round off before the first shell case hit the ground. Then a third target, or maybe an insurance shot into the second. An unmistakable rhythm. Like a signature. The audible signature of somebody with hundreds of hours of weapons training behind him. Garber nodded to himself and moved forward through the trees.\\n\\n\\\"It must be Brogan,\\\" Reacher whispered.\\n\\nMcGrath looked surprised.\\n\\n\\\"Why Brogan?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nThey were squatted down, backs to adjacent trunks, thirty yards into the woods, invisible. The search patrol had tracked back and missed them again. McGrath had given Reacher the whole story. He had rattled through the important parts of the investigation, one professional to another, in a sort of insider's shorthand. Reacher had asked sharp questions and McGrath had given short answers.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":289,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"In your role as the author's collaborator, continue the tale.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 40"},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Heavy sticks, quite dense. If her walls were packed with heavy dense sticks they would absorb a lot of sound. Like a soundproofing layer in a city apartment. Which meant the shots she'd heard had been reasonably close.\n\nShe'd heard: crack crack... crack. But she didn't know who was shooting at who, or why. They weren't handgun shots. She knew the flat bark of a handgun from her time at Quantico. These were shots from along gun. Not the heavy thump of the big Barratts from the rifle range. A lighter weapon than that. Somebody firing a medium-caliber rifle three times. Or three people firing once, in a ragged volley. But whichever it was, something was happening. And she had to be ready.\n\nGarber heard the shots, too. Crack crack... crack, maybe a thousand yards northwest of him, maybe twelve hundred. Then a dozen spaced echoes coming back from the mountainsides. He was in no doubt about what they represented. An M-16, firing singles, the first pair in a tight group of two which the military called a double tap. The sound of a competent shooter. The idea was to get the second round off before the first shell case hit the ground. Then a third target, or maybe an insurance shot into the second. An unmistakable rhythm. Like a signature. The audible signature of somebody with hundreds of hours of weapons training behind him. Garber nodded to himself and moved forward through the trees.\n\n\"It must be Brogan,\" Reacher whispered.\n\nMcGrath looked surprised.\n\n\"Why Brogan?\" he asked.\n\nThey were squatted down, backs to adjacent trunks, thirty yards into the woods, invisible. The search patrol had tracked back and missed them again. McGrath had given Reacher the whole story. He had rattled through the important parts of the investigation, one professional to another, in a sort of insider's shorthand. Reacher had asked sharp questions and McGrath had given short answers."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Time and distance,\" Reacher said. That was crucial. Think about it from their point of view. They put us in the truck and they raced off straight to Montana. What's that? Maybe seventeen hundred miles?\n\nEighteen hundred?\"\n\n\"Probably,\" McGrath allowed.\n\n\"And Brogan's a smart guy,\" Reacher said. \" And he knows you're a smart guy. He knows you're smart enough to know that he's smart enough. So he can't dead-end the whole thing. But what he can do is keep you all far enough behind the action to stop you being a problem. And that's what he did. He managed the flow of information. The communication had to be two-way, right? So Monday, he knew they'd rented a truck.\n\nBut right through Wednesday, he was still \"focusing you on stolen trucks, right? He wasted a lot of time with that Arizona thing. Then he finally makes the big breakthrough with the rental firm and the stuff with the mud, and he looks like the big hero, but in reality what he's done is keep you way behind the chase. He's given them all the time they need to get us here.\"\n\n\"But he still got us here, right?\" McGrath said. \"A ways behind them, OK, but he brought us right here all the same.\"\n\n\"No loss to him,\" Reacher said. \" Borken was just itching to tell you where she was, soon as she was safely here, right? The destination was never going to be a secret, was it? That was the whole point.\n\nShe was a deterrent to stop you attacking. No point in that, without telling you exactly where she was.\"\n\nMcGrath grunted. Thinking about it. Unconvinced."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They bribed him,\"Reacher said.\" You better believe it. They've got a big war chest, McGrath. Twenty million dollars, stolen bearer bonds.\"\n\nThe armored car robbery?\"McGrath asked.\" Northern California somewhere? They did that?\"\n\nThey're boasting about it,\" Reacher said.\n\nMcGrath ran it through his head. Went pale. Reacher saw it and nodded.\n\n\"Right,\" he said. \"Let me make a guess: Brogan was never short of money, was he? Never groused about the salary, did he?\"\n\n\"Shit,\" McGrath said. Two alimony checks every month, girlfriend, silk jackets, and I never even thought twice about it. I was just so grateful he wasn't one of the moaners.\"\n\n\"He's collecting his next payment right now,\" Reacher said. \"And Milosevic is dead or locked up somewhere.\"\n\nMcGrath nodded slowly.\n\n\"And Brogan worked out of California,\" he said. \" Before he came tome.\n\nShit, I never thought twice. A buck gets ten he was the exact agent who went after Borken. He said Sacramento couldn't make it stick. Said the files were unclear as to why not. Why not is because Borken was handing him bucketfuls of dollars to make sure it didn't stick. And the bastard was taking them.\"\n\nReacher nodded. Said nothing.\n\n\"Shit,\" McGrath said again. \"Shit, shit, shit. My fault.\"\n\nStill Reacher said nothing. More tactful just to keep quiet. He understood McGrath's feelings. Understood his position. He had been in the same position himself, time to time in the past. He had felt the knife slip in, right between the shoulder blades."},{"from":"human","value":"\"I'll deal with Brogan later,\" McGrath said finally."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"After we go get Holly. She mention meat all? She realize I'd come get her? She mention that?\"\n\nReacher nodded.\n\n\"She told me she trusted her people,\" he said."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TWENTY YEARS GENERAL CAREER HAD killed a man. He hadn't meant to. He had meant to lay the man out and take his weapon.\n\nThat was all. The man was part of an inner screen of sentries. They were posted at haphazard intervals in a line a hundred yards south of the courthouse. Garber had trawled back and forth in the woods and scoped them out. A ragged line of sentries, maybe forty or fifty yards between each one, two on the shoulders of the road and the rest in the forest.\n\nGarber had selected the one nearest to a straight line between himself and the big white building. The man was going to have to move. Garber needed direct access. And he needed a weapon. So he had selected the man and worked nearer to him. He had scraped up a fist-sized rock from the damp forest floor. He had worked around behind him.\n\nTheir lack of training made the whole thing easy. A sentry screen should be mobile. They should be moving side-to-side along the length of the perimeter they are told to defend. That way, they cover every inch of the territory, and they find out if the next man inline has been ambushed and dumped on the floor. But these men were static. Just standing there. Watching and listening. Bad tactic.\n\nThe selected man was wearing a forage cap. It was camouflaged with the wrong camouflage. It was a black-and-gray interrupted pattern.\n\nCarefully designed to be very effective in an urban environment.\n\nUseless in a sun-dappled forest. Garber had come up behind the man and swung the rock. Hit him neatly on the back of the head.\n\nHit him too hard. Problem was, people are different. There's no set amount of impact that will do it. Not like playing pool. You want to roll the ball into the corner pocket, you know just about exactly how hard you need to cue. But skulls are different. Some are hard. This man's wasn't. It cracked like an eggshell and the spinal cord severed right up at the top and the man was dead before he hit the ground."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Shit,\" Garber breathed.\n\nHe wasn't worried about the ethics of the situation. Not worried about that at all. Forty years of dealing with hard men gone bad had defined a whole lot of points for him, ethically. He was worried about buzzards. Unconscious men don't attract them. Dead men do. Buzzards circling overhead spread information. They tell the other sentries: one of your number is dead.\n\nSo Garber changed his plan slightly. He took the dead man's M-16 and moved forward farther than he really wanted to. He moved up to within twenty yards of where the trees petered out. He worked left and right until he saw a rock outcrop, ten yards beyond the edge of the woods.\n\nThat would be the site of his next cautious penetration. He slipped behind a tree and squatted down. Stripped the rifle and checked its condition. Reassembled it, and waited.\n\nHarland Webster rolled back the videotape for the fourth time and watched the action again. The puff of pink mist, the guard going down, the second guard taking off, the camera's sudden jerked zoom out to cover the whole of the clearing, the second guard silently sprawling.\n\nThen along pause. Then Reacher's crazy sprint. Reacher tossing bodies out of the way, slashing at the ropes, bundling McGrath to safety.\n\n\"We made a mistake about that guy,\" Webster said.\n\nGeneral Johnson nodded.\n\n\"I wish Garber was still here,\" he said. \"I owe him an apology.\"\n\n\"Planes are low on fuel,\" the aide said into the silence.\n\nJohnson nodded again.\n\n\"Send one back,\" he said. \"We don't need both of them up there anymore. Let them spell each other.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The aide called Peterson and within half a minute three of the six screens in the vehicle went blank as the outer plane peeled off and headed south. The inner plane relaxed its radius and zoomed its camera out to cover the whole area. The close-up of the clearing fell away to the size of a quarter and the big white courthouse swam into view, bottom right-hand corner of the screens. Three identical views on three glowing screens, one for each of them. They hunched forward in their chairs and stared. The radio in Webster's pocket started crackling.\n\n\"Webster?\" Borken's voice said. \"You there?\"\n\n\"I'm here,\" Webster replied.\n\n\"What's with the plane?\" Borken said. \"You losing interest or something?\"\n\nFora second, Webster wondered how he knew. Then he remembered the vapor trails. They were like a diagram, up therein the sky.\n\n\"Who was it?\" he asked. \"Brogan or Milosevic?\"\n\n\"What's with the plane?\" Borken asked again.\n\n\"Low fuel,\" Webster said. \"It'll be back.\"\n\nThere was a pause. Then Borken's voice came back.\n\n\"OK,\" he said.\n\n\"So who was it?\" Webster asked again. \"Brogan or Milosevic?\"\n\nBut the radio just went dead on him. He clicked the button off and caught Johnson looking at him. Johnson's face was saying: the military man turned out good and the Bureau guy turned out bad. Webster shrugged. Tried to make it rueful. Tried to make it mean: we both made mistakes. But Johnson's face said: you should have known.\n\n\"Could be a problem, right?\" the aide said. \" Brogan and Milosevic?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Whichever one is the good guy, he still thinks Reacher's his enemy. And whichever one is the bad guy, he knows Reacher's his enemy.\"\n\nWebster looked away. Turned back to the bank of screens.\n\nBorken put the radio back in the pocket of his black uniform. Drummed his fingers on the judge's desk. Looked at the people looking back at him.\n\n\"One camera is enough,\" he said.\n\n\"Sure,\" Milosevic said. \"One is as good as two.\"\n\n\"We don't need interference right now,\" Borken said. \"So we should nail Reacher before we do anything else.\"\n\nMilosevic glanced around, nervously.\n\n\"Don't look at me,\" he said. \"I'm staying inhere. I just want my money.\"\n\nBorken looked at him. Still thinking.\n\n\"You know how to catch a tiger?\" he asked. \"Ora leopard or something? Out in the jungle?\"\n\n\"What?\" Milosevic asked.\n\n\"You tether a goat to a stake,\" Borken said. \"And lie in wait.\"\n\n\"What?\" Milosevic asked again.\n\n\"Reacher was willing to rescue McGrath, right?\" Borken said. \"So maybe he's willing to rescue your pal Brogan, too.\"\n\nGeneral Garber heard the commotion and risked moving up a few yards. He made it to where the trees thinned out and he crouched. Shuffled sideways to his left to get a better view. The courthouse was dead ahead up the rise. The south wall was face-onto him, but he had a narrow angle down the front. He could seethe main entrance. He could seethe steps up to the door. He saw a gaggle of men come out. Six men. There were two flanking point men, alert, scanning around, rifles poised. The other four were carrying somebody, spreadeagled, face-down. The person had been seized by the wrists and the ankles. It was a man. Garber could tell by the voice. He was bucking and thrashing and screaming. It was Brogan."},{"from":"human","value":"Garber went cold."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He knew what had happened to Jackson. McGrath had told him. He raised his rifle. Sighted in on the nearer point man.\n\nTracked him smoothly as he moved right to left. Then his peripheral vision swept the other five. Then he thought about the sentry screen behind him. He grimaced and lowered the rifle. Impossible odds. He had a rule: stick to the job in hand. He'd preached it like a gospel for forty years. And the job in hand was to get Holly Johnson out alive. He crept backward into the forest and shrugged at the two men beside him.\n\nThe Chinook crew had clambered out of their wrecked craft and stumbled away into the forest. They had thought they were heading south, but in their disorientation they had moved due north. They had passed straight through the sentry screen without knowing anything about it and come upon a three-star general sitting at the base of a pine. The general had hauled them down and told them to hide. They thought they were in a dream, and they were hoping to wake up. They said nothing and listened as the screaming faded behind the ruined county offices.\n\nReacher and McGrath heard it minutes later. Faintly, at first, deep in the forest to their left. Then it built louder. They moved together level with a gap between huts where they could see across the Bastion to the mouth of the track. They were ten feet into the forest, far enough back to be well concealed, far enough forward to observe.\n\nThey saw the two point men burst out into the sunlight. Then four more men, walking instep, rifles slung, leaning outward, arms counterbalancing something heavy they were carrying. Something that was bucking and thrashing and screaming.\n\n\"Christ,\" McGrath whispered. That's Brogan.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher stared fora longtime. Silent. Then he nodded.\n\n\"I was wrong,\" he said. \"Milosevic is the bad guy.\"\n\nMcGrath clicked the Clock's trigger to release the safety device.\n\n\"Wait,\" Reacher whispered.\n\nHe moved right and signaled McGrath to follow. They stayed deep in the trees and paralleled the six men and Brogan across the clearing. The men were moving slow across the shale, and Brogan's screaming was getting louder. They looped past the bodies and the tent pegs and the cut ropes and walked on.\n\nThey're going to the punishment hut,\" Reacher whispered.\n\nThey lost sight of them as the trees closed around the path to the next clearing. But they could still hear the screaming. Sounded like Brogan knew exactly what was going to happen to him. McGrath remembered recounting Borken's end of the conversation on the radio.\n\nReacher remembered burying Jackson's mangled body.\n\nThey risked getting a little closer to the next clearing. Saw the six men head for the windowless hut and stop at the door. The point men turned and covered the area with their rifles. The guy gripping Brogan's right wrist fumbled the key out of his pocket with his spare hand. Brogan yelled for help. He yelled for mercy. The guy unlocked the door. Swung it open. Stopped in surprise on the threshold and shouted.\n\nJoseph Ray came out. Still naked, his clothes balled in his arms.\n\nDried blood allover the bottom of his face like a mask. He danced and stumbled over the shale in his bare feet. The six men watched him go.\n\n\"Who the hell's that?\" McGrath whispered.\n\n\"Just some asshole,\" Reacher whispered back."},{"from":"human","value":"Brogan was dropped onto the ground."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Then he was hauled upright by the collar. He was staring wildly around and screaming. Reacher saw his face, white and terrified, mouth open. The six men threw him into the hut. They stepped in after him. The door slammed. McGrath and Reacher moved closer. They heard screams and the thump of a body hitting the walls. Those sounds went on for several minutes. Then it went quiet. The door opened. The six men filed out, smiling and dusting their hands. The last man darted back fora final kick.\n\nReacher heard the blow land and Brogan scream. Then the guy locked the door and hustled after the others. They crunched over the stones and were gone. The clearing fell silent.\n\nHolly limped across the raised floor to the door. Pressed her ear onto it and listened. All quiet. No sound. She limped back to her mattress and picked up the spare pair of fatigue trousers. Used her teeth to pick the seams. Tore the material apart until she had separated the front panel of one of the legs. It gave her apiece of canvas cloth maybe thirty inches long and six wide. She took it into the bathroom and ran the sink full of hot water. Soaked the strip of cloth in it. Then she took off her trousers. Squeezed the soaking canvas out and bound it as tight as she could around her knee. Tied it off and put her trousers back on. Her idea was the hot wet cloth might shrink slightly as it dried. It might tighten more. It was as near as she was going to get to solving her problem. Keeping the joint rigid was the only way to kill the pain.\n\nThen she did what she'd been rehearsing. She pulled the rubber foot off the bottom of her crutch. Smashed the metal end into the tile in the shower. The tile shattered. She reversed the crutch and used the end of the curved elbow clip to prise the shards off the wall. She selected two. Each was a rough triangle, narrow at the QfiQ base and pointed. She used the edge of the elbow clip to scrape away the clay at the leading point. Left the vitrified white surface layer intact, like the blade of a knife."},{"from":"human","value":"She put her weapons in two separate pockets."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Pulled the shower curtain to conceal the damage. Put the rubber foot back on the crutch. Limped back to her mattress and sat down to wait.\n\nThe problem with using just one camera was that it had to beset to a fairly wide shot. That was the only way to cover the whole area. So any particular thing was small on the screen. The group of men carrying something had shown up like a large insect crawling across the glass.\n\n\"Was that Brogan?\" Webster asked out loud.\n\nThe aide ran the video back and watched again.\n\n\"He's face down,\" he said. \"Hard to tell.\"\n\nHe froze the action and used the digital manipulator to enlarge the picture. Adjusted the joystick to put the spreadeagled man in the center of the screen. Zoomed right in until the image blurred.\n\n\"Hard to tell,\" he said again. \"It's one of them, that's for sure.\"\n\n\"I think it was Brogan,\" Webster said.\n\nJohnson looked hard. Used his finger and thumb against the screen to estimate the guy's height, head to toes.\n\n\"How tall is he?\" he asked.\n\n\"How tall is he?\" Reacher asked suddenly.\n\n\"What?\" McGrath said.\n\nReacher was behind McGrath in the trees, staring out at the punishment hut. He was staring at the front wall. The wall was maybe twelve feet long, eight feet high. Right to left there was a two-foot panel, then the door, thirty inches wide, hinged on the right, handle on the left.\n\nThen a panel probably seven and a half feet wide running down to the end of the building.\n\n\"How tall is he?\" Reacher asked again."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Christ, does it matter?\" McGrath said.\n\n\"I think it does,\" Reacher said.\n\nMcGrath turned and stared at him.\n\n\"Five nine, maybe five ten,\" he said. \"Not an especially big guy.\"\n\nThe cladding was made up of horizontal eight-by-fours nailed over the frame. There was a seam halfway up. The floor was probably three-quarters board laid over two-by-fours. Therefore the floor started nearly five inches above the bottom of the outside cladding.\n\nAbout an inch and a half below the bottom of the doorway.\n\n\"Skinny, right?\" Reacher said.\n\nMcGrath was still staring at him.\n\nThirty-eight regular, best guess,\" he said.\n\nReacher nodded. The walls would be two-by-fours clad inside and outwith the plywood. Total thickness five and a half inches, maybe less if the inside cladding was thinner. Call it the inside face of the end wall was five inches in from the corner, and the floor was five inches up from the bottom.\n\n\"Right-handed or left-handed?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"Speak tome,\" McGrath hissed.\n\n\"Which?\" Reacher said.\n\n\"Right-handed,\" McGrath said. \"I'm pretty sure.\"\n\nThe two-by-fours would be on sixteen-inch centers. That was the standard dimension. But from the corner of the hut to the right-hand edge of the door, the distance was only two feet. Two feet less five inches, for the thickness of the end wall, was nineteen inches. There was probably a two-by-four set right in the middle of that span. Unless they skimped it, which was no problem. The wall would be stuffed with fiberglass wadding, for insulation."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Stand back,\" Reacher whispered.\n\n\"Why?\" McGrath said.\n\n\"Just do it,\" Reacher replied.\n\nMcGrath moved out of the way. Reacher put his eyes on a spot ten inches in from the end of the hut and just shy of five feet up from the bottom. Swayed left and rested his shoulder on a tree. Raised his M-16 and sighted it in.\n\n\"Hell are you doing?\" McGrath hissed.\n\nReacher made no reply. Just waited for his heart to beat and fired.\n\nThe rifle cracked and the bullet punched through the siding a hundred yards away. Ten inches from the corner, five feet from the ground.\n\n\"Hell are you doing?\" McGrath hissed again.\n\nReacher just grabbed his arm and pulled him into the woods. Dragged him north and waited. Two things happened. The six men burst back into the clearing. And the door of the punishment hut opened. Brogan was framed in the doorway. His right arm washanging limp. His right shoulder was shattered and pumping blood. In his right hand, he was holding his Bureau. 38. The hammer was back.\n\nHis ringer was tight on the trigger.\n\nReadier snicked the M-16 to burst fire. Stitched five bursts of three shells into the ground, halfway across the clearing. The six men skidded away, like they were suddenly facing an invisible barrier or a drop off a tall cliff. They ran for the woods. Brogan stepped out of the hut. Stood in a bar of sunshine and tried to lift his revolver.\n\nHis arm wouldn't work. It hung uselessly.\n\n\"Decoy,\" Reacher said. \"They thought I'd go in after him. He was waiting behind the door with his gun. I knew he was the bad guy. But they had me fooled fora moment.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"McGrath nodded slowly. Stared at the government-issue. 38 in Brogan's hand. Remembered his own being confiscated. He raised the Clock and wedged his wrist against a tree. Sighted down the barrel.\n\n\"Forget it,\" Reacher said.\n\nMcGrath kept his eyes on Brogan and shook his head.\n\n\"I'm not going to forget it,\" he said quietly. \"Bastard sold Holly out.\"\n\n\"I meant forget the Clock,\" Reacher said. That's a hundred yards.\n\nClock won't get near. You'd be lucky to hit the damn hut from here.\"\n\nMcGrath lowered the Clock and Reacher handed him the M-16. Watched with interest as McGrath sighted it in.\n\n\"Where?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"Chest,\" McGrath said.\n\nReacher nodded.\n\n\"Chest is good,\" he said.\n\nMcGrath steadied himself and fired. He was good, but not really good.\n\nThe rifle was still set to burst fire, and it loosed three rounds. The first hit Brogan in the upper left of his forehead, and the other two stitched upward and blasted fragments off the door frame. Good, but not very. But good enough to do the job. Brogan went down like a marionette with the strings cut. He just telescoped into the ground, right in front of the doorway. Reacher took the M-16 back and sprayed the trees on the edge of the clearing until the magazine clicked empty.\n\nReloaded and handed the Clock back to McGrath. Nodded him east through the forest. They turned together and walked straight into Joseph Ray. He was unarmed and half dressed."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Blood dried on his face like brown paint. He was fumbling with his shirt buttons. They were done up into the wrong holes.\n\n\"Women and children are going to die,\" he said.\n\n\"You all got an hour, Joe,\" Reacher said back to him. \"Spread the word. Anybody wants to stay alive, better head for the hills.\"\n\nThe guy just shook his head.\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"We've got to assemble on the parade ground. Those are our instructions. We've got to wait for Beau there.\"\n\n\"Beau won't becoming,\" Reacher said.\n\nRay shook his head again.\n\n\"He will be,\" he said. \"You won't beat Beau, whoever you are. Can't be done. We got to wait for him. He's going to tell us what to do.\"\n\n\"Run for it, Joe,\" Reacher said. \"For Christ's sake, get your kids out of here.\"\n\n\"Beau says they have to stay here,\" Ray said. \"Either to enjoy the fruits of victory, or to suffer the consequences of defeat.\"\n\nReacher just stared at him. Ray's bright eyes shone out. His teeth flashed in a brief defiant smile. He ducked his head and ran away.\n\n\"Women and children are going to die?\" McGrath repeated.\n\n\"Borken's propaganda,\" Reacher said. \"He's got them all convinced compulsory suicide is the penalty forgetting beat around here.\"\n\n\"And they're standing still for it?\" McGrath asked.\n\n\"He controls them,\" Reacher said. \"Worse than you can imagine.\"\n\n\"I'm not interested in beating them,\" McGrath said. \"Right now, I just want to get Holly out.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Same thing,\" Reacher said.\n\nThey walked on in silence, through the trees in the direction of the Bastion.\n\n\"How did you know?\" McGrath asked. \"About Brogan?\"\n\nReacher shrugged.\n\n\"I just felt it,\" he said. \"His face, I guess. They like hitting people in the face. They did it to you. But Brogan was unmarked. I saw his face, no damage, no blood. I figured that was wrong. The excitement of an ambush, the tension, they'd have worked it off by roughing him up a little. Like they did with you. But he was theirs, so he just walked in, handshakes all around.\"\n\nMcGrath nodded. Put his hand up and felt his nose.\n\n\"But what if you were wrong?\" he said.\n\n\"Wouldn't have mattered,\" Reacher said. \"If I was wrong, he wouldn't have been standing behind the door. He'd have been down on the floor with a bunch of broken ribs because all that thumping around would have been for real.\"\n\nMcGrath nodded again.\n\n\"And all that shouting,\" Reacher said. \"They paraded along, real slow, with the guy shouting his head off. They were trying to attract my attention.\"\n\nThey're good at that,\"McGrath said.\" Webster's worried about it. He doesn't understand why Borken seems so set on getting attention, escalating this whole thing way bigger than he needs to.\"\n\nThey were in the woods. Halfway between the small clearing and the Bastion. Reacher stopped. Like the breath had been knocked out of him. His hands went up to his mouth. He stood breathless, like all the air had been sucked off the planet."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Christ, I know why,\" he said. \"It's a decoy.\"\n\n\"What?\" McGrath asked.\n\n\"I'm getting a bad feeling,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"About what?\" McGrath asked him, urgently.\n\n\"Borken,\" Reacher said. \" Something doesn't add up. His intentions.\n\nStrike the first blow. But where's Stevie? You know what? I think there are two first blows, McGrath. This stuff up here and something else, somewhere else. A surprise attack. Like Pearl Harbor, like his damn war books. That's why he's set on escalating everything. Holly, the suicide thing. He wants all the attention up here.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"HOLLY WAS STANDING UPRIGHT AND FACING HER DOOR WHEN THEY came for her.\n\nThe tight wrap on her knee was drying stiff. So she had to stand, because her leg would no longer bend. And she wanted to stand, because that was the best way to do it.\n\nShe heard the footsteps in the lobby. Heard them clatter up the stairs. Two men, she estimated. She heard them halt outside her door.\n\nHeard the key slide in and the lock click back. She blinked once and took a breath. The door opened. Two men crowded in. Two rifles. She stood upright and faced them. One stepped forward. \"Outside, bitch,\" he said.\n\nShe gripped her crutch. Leaned on it heavily and limped across the floor. Slowly. She wanted to be outside before anybody realized she could move better than they thought. Before anybody realized she was armed and dangerous.\n\n\"Strike the first blow,\" Reacher said. \"I interpreted that all wrong.\"\n\n\"Why?\" McGrath asked urgently.\n\n\"Because I haven't seen Stevie,\" Reacher said. \"Not since early this morning. Stevie's not here anymore. Stevie's gone somewhere else.\"\n\n\"Reacher, you're not making any sense,\" McGrath said.\n\nReacher shook his head like he was clearing it and snapped back into focus. Set off racing east through the trees. Talking quietly, but urgently.\n\n\"I was wrong,\" he said. \" Borken said they were going to strike the first blow. Against the system. I thought he meant the declaration of independence. I thought that was the first blow. The declaration, and the battle to secure this territory. I thought that was it. On its own. But they're doing something else as well. Somewhere else."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They're doing two things at once. Simultaneous.\"\n\n\"What are you saying?\" McGrath asked.\n\n\"Attention,\" Reacher said. The declaration of independence is focusing attention up herein Montana, right?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" McGrath said. They planned to have CNN and the United Nations up here watching it happen. That's a lot of attention.\"\n\n\"But they'd have been in the wrong place,\" Reacher said. \" Borken had a bookcase full of theory telling him not to do what they expect. A whole shelf all about Pearl Harbor. And I overheard him talking in the mine. When he was fetching the missile launcher. Fowler was with him.\n\nBorken told Fowler by tonight this place will be way down the list of priorities. So they're doing something else someplace else as well.\n\nSomething different, maybe something bigger. Twin blows against the system.\"\n\n\"But what?\" McGrath asked. \"And where? Near here?\"\n\n\"No,\" Reacher said. \" Probably faraway. Like Pearl Harbor was.\n\nThey're reaching out, trying to land a killer blow somewhere. Because there's a time factor here. It's all coordinated.\"\n\nMcGrath stared at him.\n\nThey planned it well,\"Reacher said.\" Getting everybody's attention fixed up here. Independence. That stuff they were going to do with you. They were going to kill you slowly, with the cameras watching.\n\nThen the threats of mass suicide, women and children dying. A high-stakes siege. So nobody would be looking anywhere else. Borken's cleverer than I thought. Twin blows, each one covering for the other.\n\nEverybody's looking up here, then something big happens someplace else, everybody's looking down there, and he consolidates his new nation backup here.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"But where is it happening, for God's sake?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"McGrath asked. \"And what the hell is it?\"\n\nReacher stopped and shook his head.\n\n\"I just don't know,\" he said.\n\nThen he froze. There was a crashing noise up ahead and a patrol of six men burst around a tight thicket of pines and stopped dead in front of them. They had M-16s in their hands, grenades on their belts, and surprise and delight on their faces.\n\nBorken had deployed every man he had to the search for Reacher, except for the two he had retained to deal with Holly. He heard them start down the courthouse stairs. He pulled the radio from his pocket and flipped it open. Extended the stubby antenna and pressed the button.\n\n\"Webster?\" he said. \"Get focused in, OK? We'll talk again in a minute.\"\n\nHe didn't wait for any reply. Just snapped the radio off and turned his head as he tracked the sound of the footsteps on their way outside.\n\nFrom seventy-five yards south, Garber saw them come out of the door and down the steps. He had moved out of the woods. He had moved forward and crouched behind the outcrop of rock. He figured that was safe enough, now he had back-up of a sort. The Chinook crewmen were thirty yards behind him, well separated, well hidden, instructed to yell if anybody approached from the rear. So Garber was resting easy, staring up the slope at the big white building.\n\nHe saw two armed men, bearded, starting down the steps. They were dragging a smaller figure with a crutch. A halo of dark hair, neat green fatigues. Holly Johnson. He had never seen her before. Only in the photographs the Bureau men had showed him. The photographs had not done her justice. Even from seventy-five yards, he could feel the glow of her character. Some kind of radiant energy. He felt it, and pulled his rifle closer."},{"from":"human","value":"The M-16 in Reacher's hands was a 1987 product manufactured by the Colt Firearms Company in Hartford, Connecticut."},{"from":"gpt","value":"It was the A2 version. Its principal new feature was the replacement of automatic fire with burst fire. For the sake of economy, the trigger relocked after each burst of three shells. The idea was to waste less ammunition.\n\nSix targets, three shells each from the fresh magazine, a total of eighteen shells and six trigger pulls. Each burst of three shells took a fifth of a second, so the firing sequence itself amounted to just one and a fifth seconds. It was pulling the trigger over and over again which wasted the time. It wasted so much time for Reacher that he ran into trouble after the fourth guy was down. He wasn't aiming. He was just tracking a casual left-to-right arc, close range into the bodies in front of him. The opposing rifles were coming up as a unit. The first four never got there. But the fifth and the sixth were already raised horizontal by the time the fourth went back down, two-and-a-quarter seconds into the sequence.\n\nSo Reacher gambled. It was the sort of instinctive gamble you take so fast that to call it a split-second decision is to understate the speed by an absurd factor. He skipped his M-16 straight to the sixth guy, totally sure that McGrath would take the fifth guy with the Clock. The sort of instinctive gamble you take based on absolutely nothing at all except a feeling, which is itself based on absolutely nothing at all except the look of the guy and how he compares with the look of other people worth trusting in the past.\n\nThe flat crack of the Clock was lost under the rattle of the M-16 but the fifth guy went down simultaneous with the sixth. Reacher and McGrath crashed sideways together into the brush and flattened into the ground. Stared through the sudden dead silence at the cordite smoke rising gently through the shafts of sunlight. No movement. No survivors. McGrath blew a big sigh and stuck out his hand, from flat on the ground. Reacher twisted around and shook it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You're pretty quick for an old guy,\" he said.\n\nThat's how I got to bean old guy,\" McGrath said back.\n\nThey stood up slowly and ducked back farther into the trees. Then they could hear more people moving toward them in the forest. A stream of people was moving northwest out of the Bastion. McGrath raised the Clock again and Reacher snicked the M-16 back to singles. He had twelve shells left. Too few to waste, even with the A2's economy measure. Then they saw women through the trees. Women and children.\n\nSome men with them. Family groups. They were marching in columns of two. Reacher saw Joseph Ray, a woman at his side, two boys marching blankly in front of him. He saw the woman from the mess kitchen, marching side by side with a man. Three children walking stolidly in front of them.\n\n\"Where are they going?\" McGrath whispered.\n\n\"The parade ground,\" Reacher said. \"Borken ordered it, right?\"\n\n\"Why don't they just run for it?\" McGrath said.\n\nReacher shrugged and said nothing. He had no explanation. He stood concealed and watched the blank faces pass through the dappled woods.\n\nThen he touched McGrath's arm and they sprinted on through the trees and came out behind the mess hall. Reacher glanced cautiously around.\n\nStretched up and grabbed at the roof overhang. Put afoot upon the window ledge and hauled himself up onto the shingles. Crawled up the slope of the roof and steadied himself against the bright metal chimney. Raised the stolen field glasses and trained them southeast, down toward the town, thinking: OK, but what the hell else is happening? And where?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"General Johnson's aide had the most aptitude with the computer controls, either from familiarity with such things, or from being younger. He used the rubber knobs and the joystick to focus on the area in front of the courthouse steps. Then he zoomed out a touch to frame the view. He had the western face of the courthouse on the right of the screen and the eastern face of the ruined county office on the left. In between were the two lawns, one abandoned and scrubby, the other still reasonably flat. The road ran vertically up the center of the picture, like a map. The jeep which had brought McGrath in was still there where they had dumped it. The aide used it to check his focus. It came in crisp and clear. It was a military surplus vehicle.\n\nSmudged white stencils. They could seethe windshield folded down, and a canvas map case and a jerrycan for fuel and a short-handled shovel clipped on the rear.\n\nThey all saw the two men bring Holly out. From above, they were in a perfect straight diagonal line, with Holly alone in the middle, like the shape you see when a die rolls a three. They brought her out and waited. Then they saw a huge figure lumbering down the courthouse steps behind them. Borken. He stepped into the road and looked up.\n\nRight into the camera, invisible seven miles above him. He stared and waved. Raised his right hand high. There was a black gun in it. Then he looked down and fiddled with something in his left hand. Raised it to his ear. The radio on the desk in front of Webster crackled.\n\nWebster picked it up and flipped it open.\n\n\"Yes?\" he said.\n\nThey saw Borken waving up at the camera again."},{"from":"human","value":"\"See me?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"he said.\n\n\"We see you,\" Webster said quietly.\n\n\"See this?\" Borken asked.\n\nHe raised the gun again. The general's aide zoomed in tight. Borken's huge bulk filled the screen. Upturned pink face, black pistol held high.\n\n\"We see it,\" Webster said.\n\nThe aide zoomed back out. Borken resumed his proper perspective.\n\n\"Sig-Sauer P226,\" Borken said. \"You familiar with that weapon?\"\n\nWebster paused. Glanced around.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said.\n\n\"Nine-millimeter,\" Borken said. \"Fifteen shots to a clip.\"\n\n\"So?\" Webster asked.\n\nBorken laughed. Aloud sound in Webster's ear.\n\n\"Time for some target practice,\" Borken said. \"And guess what the target is?\"\n\nThey saw the two men move toward Holly. Then they saw Holly's crutch come up. She held it level with both hands. She smashed it hard into the first man's gut. She whipped it back and swung it. Spun and hit the second man in the head. But it was light aluminum. No weight behind it. She dropped it and her hands went to her pockets. Came outwith something in each palm. Things that glinted and caught the sun.\n\nShe skipped forward and slashed desperately at the face in front of her. Danced and whirled and swung the glinting weapons.\n\nThe aide jerked the zoom control. The first man was down, clutching at his throat and face. Blood on his hands. Holly was spinning fast circles, slashing at the air like a panther in a cage turning on a stiff leg, the other foot dancing in and out as she darted left and right. Webster could hear distorted breathing and gasping through the earpiece. He could hear shouting and screaming. He stared at the screen and pleaded silently: go left, Holly, go for the jeep."},{"from":"human","value":"She went right."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Swung her left hand high and held her right hand low, like a boxer. Darted for the second man. He raised his rifle, but crossways, in a sheer panic move toward off the slashing blow. He punched the rifle up to meet her arm and her wrist cracked against the barrel. Her weapon flew off into the air. She kicked hard under the rifle and caught him in the groin. He wheeled away and collapsed. She darted for Borken. Her glittering hand swung a vicious arc. Webster heard a shriek in his ear. The camera showed Borken ducking away, Holly swarming after him. But the first man was up again, behind her.\n\nHesitating. Then he was swinging his rifle like a bat. He caught her with the stock flat on the back of her head. She went limp. Her leg stayed stiff. She collapsed over it like she was falling over agate and sprawled on the road at Borken's feet.\n\nTwo down. One of them was Holly. Reacher adjusted the field glasses and stared at her. Two still standing. A grunt with a rifle, and Borken with a handgun and the radio. All in a tight knot, visible through the trees twelve hundred yards southeast and three hundred feet below. Reacher stared at Holly, inert on the ground. He wanted her.\n\nHe loved her for her courage. Two armed men and Borken, and she'd gone for it. Hopeless but she'd gone for it. He lowered the field glasses and hitched his legs around the chimney. Like he was riding a metal horse. The chimney was warm. His upper body was flat on the slope of the roof. His head and shoulders were barely above the ridge. He raised the field glasses again, and held his breath, and waited."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They saw Borken's agitated gestures and then the injured man was getting up and moving in with the other who had hither. They saw them pinning her arms behind her and dragging her to her feet. Her head was hanging down. One leg was bent, and the other was stiff. They propped heron it and paused. Borken signaled them to move. They dragged her away across the road. Then Borken's voice came back in Webster's ear, loud and breathy.\n\n\"OK, fun's over,\" he said. Tut her old man on.\"\n\nWebster handed the radio to Johnson. He stared at it. Raised it to his ear.\n\n\"Anything you want,\" he said. \"Anything at all. Just don't hurt her.\"\n\nBorken laughed. Aloud, relieved chuckle.\n\nThat's the kind of attitude I like,\"he said.\" Now watch this.\"\n\nThe two men dragged Holly up the knoll in front of the ruinedoffice building. Dragged her over to the stump of the dead tree. They turned her and walked her until her back thumped against the wood. They wrapped her arms around the stump behind her. Her head came up. She shook it, in a daze. One man held both wrists while the other fumbled with something. Handcuffs. He locked her wrists behind the tree. The two men stepped away, back toward Borken. Holly fell and slid down the stump. Then she pushed back and stood up. Shook her head again and gazed around.\n\n\"Target practice,\" Borken said into the radio.\n\nJohnson's aide fiddled with the zoom and made the picture bigger.\n\nBorken was walking away. He walked twenty yards south and turned, the Sig-Sauer pointing at the ground, the radio up at his face."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Here goes,\" he said.\n\nHe turned side-on and raised his arm. Held it out absolutely straight, shoulders turned like a duelist in an old movie. Squinted down the barrel and fired. The pistol kicked silently and there was a puff of dust in the ground, three feet from where Holly was standing still.\n\nBorken laughed again.\n\n\"Bad shot,\" he said. \"I need the practice. Might take me awhile to get close. But I've got fourteen more shells, right?\"\n\nHe fired again. A puff of dust from the earth. Three feet the other side of the stump.\n\nThirteen left,\"Borken said.\" I guess CNN is your best bet, right?\n\nCall them and tell them the whole story. Make it an official statement. Get Webster to back you up. Then patch them through on this radio. You won't give me my fax line, I'm going to have to communicate direct.\"\n\n\"You're crazy,\" Johnson said.\n\n\"You're the one who's crazy,\" Borken said. \"I'm a force of history. I can't be stopped. I'm shooting at your daughter. The president's godchild. You don't understand, Johnson. The world is changing. I'm changing it. The world must be my witness.\"\n\nJohnson was silent. Stunned.\n\n\"OK,\" Borken said. \" I'm going to hangup now. You make that call.\n\nThirteen bullets left. I don't hear from CNN, the last one kills her.\"\n\nJohnson heard the line go dead and looked up at the screensand saw Borken drop the radio on the ground. Saw him raise the Sig-Sauer two-handed. Saw him sight it in. Saw him put around right between his daughter's feet."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Reacher rested against the warm chimney and lowered the glasses. Ran a desperate calculation through his head. A calculation involving time and distance. He was twelve hundred yards away to the northwest. He couldn't get therein time. And he couldn't get there silently. He lay chest down on the roof of the mess hall and called down to McGrath.\n\nHis voice was already quiet and relaxed. Like he was ordering in a restaurant.\n\n\"McGrath?\" he said. \"Go break into the armory. It's the hut on the end, apart from the others.\"\n\n\"OK,\" McGrath called. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"You know what a Barren looks like?\" Reacher called. \"Big black thing, scope, big muzzle brake on it. Find a full magazine. Probably be next to them.\"\n\n\"OK,\" McGrath said again.\n\n\"And hurry,\" Reacher said.\n\nGarber's view up from the south cleared when the two soldiers came back around and stood behind Beau Borken. They hung back, like they didn't want to put him off his aim. Borken was maybe sixty feet from Holly, shooting up the rise of the knoll. Garber was seventy yards away down the steep slope. Holly was just left of straight ahead. Borken was just to the right. His black bulk was perfectly outlined against the whiteness of the south wall of the courthouse. Garber saw that somebody had blanked the upper-story windows with new white wood.\n\nBorken's head was framed dead center against one of the new rectangles.\n\nGarber smiled. It would be like shooting fora small pink bullseye on a sheet of white paper. He snicked the M-16 to burst fire and checked it visually. Then he raised it to his shoulder."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"McGrath stretched upon his toes and passed the Barrett up toward Reacher. Reacher stretched his hand down and pulled it up. Glanced at it and passed it back down.\n\n\"Not this one,\" he said. \"Find one with the serial number ending in five-zero-two-four, OK?\"\n\n\"Why?\" McGrath called.\n\n\"Because I know for sure it shoots straight,\" Reacher said. \"I used it before.\"\n\n\"Christ,\" McGrath said. He set off again at a dead run. Reacher lay back on the roof, trying to keep his heartbeat under control.\n\nBorken's tenth shot was still wide, but not by much. Holly jumped as far as her cuffs would allow. Borken took to pacing back and forth in delight. He was pacing and laughing and stopping to shoot. Garber was tracking his huge bulk left and right against the whiteness of the building. Just waiting for him to stop moving. Because Garber had a rule: make the first shot count.\n\nMcGrath found the rifle Reacher had used before and passed it up to the roof. Reacher took it and checked the number. Nodded. McGrath ran like crazy for the mouth of the stony track. Disappeared down it at a sprint. Reacher watched him go. Thumbed the big bullets in the magazine and checked the spring. Pressed the magazine home gently with his palm. Raised the Barrett to his shoulder and balanced it carefully on the ridgeline. Pulled the stock in and ducked his eye to the scope.\n\nUsed his left thumb to ease the focus out to twelve hundred yards. It racked the lens right out to the stop. He laid his left palm over the barrel. Operated the silky mechanism and put around in the breech."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Stared down at the scene below.\n\nThe telescope on the rifle bunched it all up, but the geometry was fine. Holly was upon the knoll, slightly to the right of dead ahead.\n\nHandcuffed to the dead tree. He stared at her face fora long moment.\n\nThen he nudged the scope. Borken was below her, maybe sixty feet farther on, firing up the rise at her, slightly to the left. He was walking short arcs, back and forth. But anywhere he chose to stop, there was a hundred miles of empty country behind his head. The courthouse walls were well away from Reacher's trajectory. Safe enough. Safe, but not easy. Twelve hundred yards was a hell of a distance. He breathed out and waited for Borken to stop pacing.\n\nThen he froze. In the corner of his eye, he caught the gleam of sun on dull metal. Maybe seventy yards farther on down the slope. A rock. A man behind the rock. A rifle. A familiar head, grizzled hair on some of it. General Garber. Garber, with an M-16, behind a rock, moving the muzzle side to side as he tracked his target, who was walking short arcs seventy yards directly in front of him.\n\nReacher breathed out and smiled. He felt a warm flood of gratitude.\n\nGarber. He had backup. Garber, shooting from just seventy yards. In that split-second he knew Holly was safe. The warm flood of gratitude coursed through him.\n\nThen it changed to an icy blast of panic. His brain kicked in. The compressed geometry below him exploded into a dreadful diagram. Like something on a page, like a textbook explanation of a disaster. From Garber's angle, the courthouse was directly behind Borken. When Borken stopped moving, Garber was going to fire at him. He might hit or he might miss. Either way, his bullet was going to hit the courthouse wall. Probably right up therein the southeastern corner, second floor. The ton of old dynamite would go up in a percussive fireball a quarter mile wide. It would vaporize Holly and shred Garber himself."},{"from":"human","value":"The shock-wave would probably knock Reacher right off the mess hall roof, twelve hundred yards away."},{"from":"gpt","value":"How the hell could Garber not know?\n\nBorken stopped pacing. Stood sideways on and steadied himself. Reacher blew out a lungful of air. He moved the Barrett. He put the crosshairs dead center on Holly Johnson's temple, right where the soft dark hair billowed down toward her eyes. He kept his lungs empty and waited for the next thump of his heart. Then he squeezed the trigger.\n\nGarber watched Borken's arm come up. Waited until he had steadied.\n\nSquinted down the M-16's sighting grooves and put the pink and whitehead dead center. It sat there, big and obvious against the blur of sunny whitewall behind it. He waited like he'd been taught to a lifetime ago. Waited until his breath was out and his heart was between beats. Then he pulled the trigger.\n\nGeneral Johnson had closed his eyes. His aide was staring at the screen. Webster was watching through a lattice of fingers, mouth open, like a child with anew babysitter watching a horror movie on television, way after his bedtime.\n\nFirst thing out of the barrel of Reacher's Barrett was a blast of hot gas. The powder in the cartridge exploded in a fraction of a millionth of a second and expanded to a superheated bubble. That bubble of gas hurled the bullet down the barrel and forced ahead of it and around it to explode out into the atmosphere. Most of it was smashed sideways by the muzzle brake in a perfectly balanced radial pattern, like a donut, so that the recoil moved the barrel straight back against Reacher's shoulder without deflecting it either sideways or up or down.\n\nMeanwhile, behind it, the bullet was starting to spin inside the barrel as the rifling grooves grabbed at it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Then the gas ahead of the bullet was heating the oxygen in the air to the point where the air caught fire. There was a brief flash of flame and the bullet burst out through the exact center of it, spearing through the burned air at nineteen hundred miles an hour. A thousandth of a second later, it was a yard away, followed by a cone of gunpowder particles and a puff of soot. Another thousandth of a second later, it was six feet away, and its sound was bravely chasing after it, three times slower.\n\nThe bullet took five-hundredths of a second to cross the Bastion, by which time the sound of its shot had just passed Reacher's ears and cleared the ridge of the roof. The bullet had a hand-polished copper jacket, and it was flying straight and true, but by the time it passed soundlessly over McGrath's head it had slowed a little. The friction of the air had heated it and slowed it. And the air was moving it. It was moving it right-to-left as the gentle mountain breeze tugged imperceptibly at it. Half a second into its travel, the bullet had covered thirteen hundred feet and it had moved seven inches to the left.\n\nAnd it had dropped seven inches. Gravity had pulled it in. The more gravity pulled, the more the bullet slowed. The more it slowed, the more gravity deflected it. It speared onward in a perfect graceful curve. A whole second after leaving the barrel, it was nine hundred yards into its journey. Way past McGrath's running figure, but still over the trees. Still three hundred yards short of its target. Another sixth of a second later, it was clear of the trees and alongside the ruined office building. Now it was a slow bullet. It had pulled four feet left, and five feet down. It passed well clear of Holly and was twenty feet beyond her before she heard the hiss in the air. The sound of its shot was still to come. It had just about caught up with McGrath, running through the trees."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Then there was a second bulletin the air. And a third, and a fourth.\n\nGarber fired a second-and-a-quarter later than Reacher. His rifle was set to auto. It fired a burst of three. Three shells in a fifth of a second. His bullets were smaller and lighter. Because they were lighter, they were faster. They came in at well over two thousand miles an hour. He was nearer the target. Because his bullets were faster and lighter and he was nearer, friction and gravity never really chipped in. His three bullets stayed pretty straight.\n\nReacher's bullet hit Borken in the head a full second-and-a-third after he fired it. It entered the front of his forehead and was out of the back of his skull three ten-thousandths of a second later. In and out without really slowing much more at all, because Borken's skull and brains were nothing to a two-ounce lead projectile with a needlepoint and a polished copper jacket. The bullet was well on over the endless forest beyond before the pressure wave built up in Borken's skull and exploded it.\n\nThe effect is mathematical and concerns kinetic energy. The way it had been explained to Reacher, long ago, it was all about equivalents. The bullet weighed only two ounces, but it was fast. Equivalent to something heavy, but slow. Two ounces moving at a thousand miles an hour was maybe similar to something weighing ten pounds moving at three miles an hour. Maybe something like a sledgehammer swinging hard in a man's hand. That was pretty much the effect. Reacher was watching it through the scope. Heart in his mouth. A full second-and-a-third is along time to wait. He watched Borken's skull explode like it had been burst from the inside with a sledgehammer. It came apart like a diagram. Reacher saw curved shards of bone bursting outward and red mist blooming."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"But what he couldn't see were Garber's three bullets, hurtling through the mess unimpeded, and flying straight on toward the courthouse wall."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"THE CLASSIC MISTAKE IN FIRING AN AUTOMATIC WEAPON IS TO let the recoil from the first bullet jerk the barrel upward, so that the second bullet goes high, and the third higher still. But Garber did not make that mistake. He had enough hours on the range to be reliable from seventy yards. He had been through enough edgy situations to know how to stay cool and concentrated. He put all three bullets right through the exact center of the pink cloud that had been Borken's head.\n\nThey spent two ten-thousandths of a second traveling through it and flew on uninterrupted. They smashed through the new plywood sheeting in the window frame The leading bullet was distorted slightly by the impact and jerked left, tearing through the inner pine siding twenty-two inches later. It crossed Holly's room and re-entered the wall to the left of the doorway. Smashed right through and buried itself in the far wall of the corridor.\n\nThe second bullet came in through the first bullet's hole and therefore traversed the twenty-two-inch gap in a straight line. It came out through the inner siding and was thrown to the right. Crossed the room and smashed on through the bathroom partition and shattered the cheap, white ceramic toilet.\n\nThe third shell was rising just a fraction. It hit a nail in the outer wall and turned aright angle. Drilled itself sideways and down through eight of the new two-by-fours like a demented termite before its energy was expended. It ended up looking like a random blob of lead pressed into the back of the new pine boarding.\n\nReacher saw Garber's muzzle flash through his scope. Knew he must be firing triples. Knew he must have hit the courthouse wall. He stared down from twelve hundred yards away and gripped the ridge of the roof and shut his eyes. Waited for the explosion."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Garber knew his shots hadn't killed Borken. There hadn't been time.\n\nEven dealing with tiny fractions of a second, there's a rhythm. Fire... hit. Borken had been hit before his bullets could possibly have gotten there. So somebody else was up and shooting. There was a team inaction. Garber smiled. Fired again. Pumped his trigger finger nine more times and stitched Borken's two soldiers allover the courthouse wall with his remaining twenty-seven shells.\n\nMilosevic came out of the courthouse lobby and down the steps at a run.\n\nHe had his Bureau. 38 held high in his right hand and his gold shield in his left.\n\n\"FBI agent!\" he screamed. \"Everybody freeze!\"\n\nHe glanced to his right at Holly and then at Garber on his way up to meet him and at McGrath racing around from behind the office building.\n\nMcGrath went straight for Holly. He hugged her tight against the dead tree. She was laughing. She couldn't hug back, because her arms were still cuffed behind the post. McGrath let her go and ran down the slope. Smacked a high five with Milosevic.\n\n\"Who's got the keys?\" McGrath yelled.\n\nGarber pointed over toward the two dead soldiers. McGrath ran to them and searched through the oozing pockets. Came outwith a key and ran backup to the knoll. Ducked around to the back of the stump and unlocked Holly's wrists. She staggered away and McGrath darted forward and grabbed her arm. Milosevic found her crutch on the road and tossed it over. McGrath caught it and handed it to her. She got steady and came down the rise, arm in arm with McGrath. They made it to level ground and stood there together, gazing around in the sudden deafening quiet."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Who do I thank?\" Holly asked.\n\nShe was holding McGrath's arm, staring at the remains of Borken, lying sixty feet away. The corpse was flat on its back, high and wide. It had no head.\n\nThis is General Garber,\"McGrath said. Top boy in the military police.\"\n\nGarber shook his head.\n\n\"Wasn't me,\" he said. \"Somebody beat me to it.\"\n\n\"Wasn't me,\" Milosevic said.\n\nThen Garber nodded behind them.\n\n\"Probably this guy,\" he said.\n\nReacher was on his way down the knoll. Out of breath. A frame six five high and two hundred twenty pounds in weight is good fora lot of things, but not for sprinting a mile.\n\n\"Reacher,\" Holly said.\n\nHe ignored her. Ignored everybody. Just ran on south and turned to stare up at the whitewall. He saw bullet holes. A lot of bullet holes. Probably thirty holes, most of them scattered over the second floor in the southeastern corner. He stared at them fora second and ran for the jeep parked at the curb. Snatched the shovel from its clips under the spare fuel can. Sprinted for the steps. Crashed through the door and up the stairs to Holly's room. Ran for the front wall.\n\nHe could see at least a dozen exit holes punched through the wood.\n\nRagged splintered holes. He smashed the blade of the shovel into one of them. Split the pine board length ways and used the shovel to wrench it off. Smashed the shovel behind the next and tore it away from the nails securing it. By the time McGrath was in the room, he had exposed four feet of studding. By the time Holly joined them, they were staring into an empty cavity."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"No dynamite,\" she said, quietly.\n\nReacher ducked away to the adjacent wall. Tore enough boards off to be sure.\n\nThere never was any,\"Holly said.\" Shit, I can't believe it.\"\n\nThere was some,\"McGrath said.\" Jackson called it in. Described the whole thing. I saw his report. He unloaded the truck with seven other guys. He carried it up here. He saw it going into the walls, for God's sake. A ton of dynamite. Kind of a hard thing to be confused about.\"\n\n\"So they put it in,\" Reacher said. \"And then they took it out. They let people see it going in, then they took it out again secretly. They used it somewhere else.\"\n\nTook it out again?\" Holly repeated.\n\n\"Women and children have to die,\" Reacher said, slowly.\n\n\"What?\" Holly asked. \"What are you saying?\"\n\n\"But not here,\" he said. \"Not these women and children.\"\n\n\"What?\" Holly said again.\n\n\"Not mass suicide,\" Reacher said. \"Mass murder.\"\n\nThen he just went blank. He was silent. But in his head he was hearing something. He was hearing the same terrible blast he had heard thirteen years before. The sound of Beirut. The sound of the Marine compound, out near the airport. He was hearing it allover again, and it was deafening him.\n\n\"Now we know what it is,\" he muttered through the shattering roar.\n\n\"What is it?\" McGrath asked.\n\n\"Low on its springs,\" Reacher said. \"But we don't know where it's gone.\"\n\n\"What?\" Holly said again.\n\n\"Women and children have to die,\" Reacher repeated. \" Borken said so."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He said the historical circumstances justified it. But he didn't mean these women and these children up here.\"\n\n\"What the hell are you talking about?\" McGrath said.\n\nReacher glanced at him, and then at Holly, surprised, like he was seeing them both for the first time.\n\n\"I was in the motor pool,\" he said. \"I saw the truck. Our truck? It was parked up, low on its springs, like it had a heavyweight inside.\"\n\n\"What?\" Holly said again.\n\n\"They've made themselves a truck bomb,\" Reacher said. \" Stevie's delivering it somewhere, some public place. That's the other attack.\n\nThey're going to explode it in a crowd. There's a whole ton of dynamite in it. And he's six hours ahead of us.\"\n\nMcGrath was first down the stairs.\n\n\"Into the jeep,\" he yelled.\n\nGarber ran for the jeep. But Milosevic was much nearer. He vaulted in and fired it up. Then McGrath was helping Holly into the front seat.\n\nReacher was on the sidewalk, staring south, lost in thought. Milosevic was drawing his revolver. He was thumbing the hammer back. Garber stopped. Raised his rifle and aimed. Milosevicleaned across in front of Holly. McGrath jumped away. Milosevic stamped on the gas and roared away one-handed with the muzzle jammed into Holly's side. One-handed over the rough road, the jeep was allover the place. No chance of hitting Milosevic. Garber could see that. He lowered his rifle and watched them go.\n\n\"Both of them?\" Webster said to himself. \"Please, God, no.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"In your role as the author's collaborator, continue the tale.\\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\\nAuthor: Lee Child\\nTitle: Die Trying\\nChapter: 40\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Heavy sticks, quite dense. If her walls were packed with heavy dense sticks they would absorb a lot of sound. Like a soundproofing layer in a city apartment. Which meant the shots she'd heard had been reasonably close.\\n\\nShe'd heard: crack crack... crack. But she didn't know who was shooting at who, or why. They weren't handgun shots. She knew the flat bark of a handgun from her time at Quantico. These were shots from along gun. Not the heavy thump of the big Barratts from the rifle range. A lighter weapon than that. Somebody firing a medium-caliber rifle three times. Or three people firing once, in a ragged volley. But whichever it was, something was happening. And she had to be ready.\\n\\nGarber heard the shots, too. Crack crack... crack, maybe a thousand yards northwest of him, maybe twelve hundred. Then a dozen spaced echoes coming back from the mountainsides. He was in no doubt about what they represented. An M-16, firing singles, the first pair in a tight group of two which the military called a double tap. The sound of a competent shooter. The idea was to get the second round off before the first shell case hit the ground. Then a third target, or maybe an insurance shot into the second. An unmistakable rhythm. Like a signature. The audible signature of somebody with hundreds of hours of weapons training behind him. Garber nodded to himself and moved forward through the trees.\\n\\n\\\"It must be Brogan,\\\" Reacher whispered.\\n\\nMcGrath looked surprised.\\n\\n\\\"Why Brogan?\\\" he asked.\\n\\nThey were squatted down, backs to adjacent trunks, thirty yards into the woods, invisible. The search patrol had tracked back and missed them again. McGrath had given Reacher the whole story. He had rattled through the important parts of the investigation, one professional to another, in a sort of insider's shorthand. Reacher had asked sharp questions and McGrath had given short answers.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Time and distance,\\\" Reacher said. That was crucial. Think about it from their point of view. They put us in the truck and they raced off straight to Montana. What's that? Maybe seventeen hundred miles?\\n\\nEighteen hundred?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Probably,\\\" McGrath allowed.\\n\\n\\\"And Brogan's a smart guy,\\\" Reacher said. \\\" And he knows you're a smart guy. He knows you're smart enough to know that he's smart enough. So he can't dead-end the whole thing. But what he can do is keep you all far enough behind the action to stop you being a problem. And that's what he did. He managed the flow of information. The communication had to be two-way, right? So Monday, he knew they'd rented a truck.\\n\\nBut right through Wednesday, he was still \\\"focusing you on stolen trucks, right? He wasted a lot of time with that Arizona thing. Then he finally makes the big breakthrough with the rental firm and the stuff with the mud, and he looks like the big hero, but in reality what he's done is keep you way behind the chase. He's given them all the time they need to get us here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But he still got us here, right?\\\" McGrath said. \\\"A ways behind them, OK, but he brought us right here all the same.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No loss to him,\\\" Reacher said. \\\" Borken was just itching to tell you where she was, soon as she was safely here, right? The destination was never going to be a secret, was it? That was the whole point.\\n\\nShe was a deterrent to stop you attacking. No point in that, without telling you exactly where she was.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath grunted. Thinking about it. Unconvinced.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They bribed him,\\\"Reacher said.\\\" You better believe it. They've got a big war chest, McGrath. Twenty million dollars, stolen bearer bonds.\\\"\\n\\nThe armored car robbery?\\\"McGrath asked.\\\" Northern California somewhere? They did that?\\\"\\n\\nThey're boasting about it,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nMcGrath ran it through his head. Went pale. Reacher saw it and nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Right,\\\" he said. \\\"Let me make a guess: Brogan was never short of money, was he? Never groused about the salary, did he?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Shit,\\\" McGrath said. Two alimony checks every month, girlfriend, silk jackets, and I never even thought twice about it. I was just so grateful he wasn't one of the moaners.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He's collecting his next payment right now,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"And Milosevic is dead or locked up somewhere.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath nodded slowly.\\n\\n\\\"And Brogan worked out of California,\\\" he said. \\\" Before he came tome.\\n\\nShit, I never thought twice. A buck gets ten he was the exact agent who went after Borken. He said Sacramento couldn't make it stick. Said the files were unclear as to why not. Why not is because Borken was handing him bucketfuls of dollars to make sure it didn't stick. And the bastard was taking them.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded. Said nothing.\\n\\n\\\"Shit,\\\" McGrath said again. \\\"Shit, shit, shit. My fault.\\\"\\n\\nStill Reacher said nothing. More tactful just to keep quiet. He understood McGrath's feelings. Understood his position. He had been in the same position himself, time to time in the past. He had felt the knife slip in, right between the shoulder blades.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I'll deal with Brogan later,\\\" McGrath said finally.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"After we go get Holly. She mention meat all? She realize I'd come get her? She mention that?\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\n\\\"She told me she trusted her people,\\\" he said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"FOR THE FIRST TIME IN TWENTY YEARS GENERAL CAREER HAD killed a man. He hadn't meant to. He had meant to lay the man out and take his weapon.\\n\\nThat was all. The man was part of an inner screen of sentries. They were posted at haphazard intervals in a line a hundred yards south of the courthouse. Garber had trawled back and forth in the woods and scoped them out. A ragged line of sentries, maybe forty or fifty yards between each one, two on the shoulders of the road and the rest in the forest.\\n\\nGarber had selected the one nearest to a straight line between himself and the big white building. The man was going to have to move. Garber needed direct access. And he needed a weapon. So he had selected the man and worked nearer to him. He had scraped up a fist-sized rock from the damp forest floor. He had worked around behind him.\\n\\nTheir lack of training made the whole thing easy. A sentry screen should be mobile. They should be moving side-to-side along the length of the perimeter they are told to defend. That way, they cover every inch of the territory, and they find out if the next man inline has been ambushed and dumped on the floor. But these men were static. Just standing there. Watching and listening. Bad tactic.\\n\\nThe selected man was wearing a forage cap. It was camouflaged with the wrong camouflage. It was a black-and-gray interrupted pattern.\\n\\nCarefully designed to be very effective in an urban environment.\\n\\nUseless in a sun-dappled forest. Garber had come up behind the man and swung the rock. Hit him neatly on the back of the head.\\n\\nHit him too hard. Problem was, people are different. There's no set amount of impact that will do it. Not like playing pool. You want to roll the ball into the corner pocket, you know just about exactly how hard you need to cue. But skulls are different. Some are hard. This man's wasn't. It cracked like an eggshell and the spinal cord severed right up at the top and the man was dead before he hit the ground.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Shit,\\\" Garber breathed.\\n\\nHe wasn't worried about the ethics of the situation. Not worried about that at all. Forty years of dealing with hard men gone bad had defined a whole lot of points for him, ethically. He was worried about buzzards. Unconscious men don't attract them. Dead men do. Buzzards circling overhead spread information. They tell the other sentries: one of your number is dead.\\n\\nSo Garber changed his plan slightly. He took the dead man's M-16 and moved forward farther than he really wanted to. He moved up to within twenty yards of where the trees petered out. He worked left and right until he saw a rock outcrop, ten yards beyond the edge of the woods.\\n\\nThat would be the site of his next cautious penetration. He slipped behind a tree and squatted down. Stripped the rifle and checked its condition. Reassembled it, and waited.\\n\\nHarland Webster rolled back the videotape for the fourth time and watched the action again. The puff of pink mist, the guard going down, the second guard taking off, the camera's sudden jerked zoom out to cover the whole of the clearing, the second guard silently sprawling.\\n\\nThen along pause. Then Reacher's crazy sprint. Reacher tossing bodies out of the way, slashing at the ropes, bundling McGrath to safety.\\n\\n\\\"We made a mistake about that guy,\\\" Webster said.\\n\\nGeneral Johnson nodded.\\n\\n\\\"I wish Garber was still here,\\\" he said. \\\"I owe him an apology.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Planes are low on fuel,\\\" the aide said into the silence.\\n\\nJohnson nodded again.\\n\\n\\\"Send one back,\\\" he said. \\\"We don't need both of them up there anymore. Let them spell each other.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The aide called Peterson and within half a minute three of the six screens in the vehicle went blank as the outer plane peeled off and headed south. The inner plane relaxed its radius and zoomed its camera out to cover the whole area. The close-up of the clearing fell away to the size of a quarter and the big white courthouse swam into view, bottom right-hand corner of the screens. Three identical views on three glowing screens, one for each of them. They hunched forward in their chairs and stared. The radio in Webster's pocket started crackling.\\n\\n\\\"Webster?\\\" Borken's voice said. \\\"You there?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm here,\\\" Webster replied.\\n\\n\\\"What's with the plane?\\\" Borken said. \\\"You losing interest or something?\\\"\\n\\nFora second, Webster wondered how he knew. Then he remembered the vapor trails. They were like a diagram, up therein the sky.\\n\\n\\\"Who was it?\\\" he asked. \\\"Brogan or Milosevic?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What's with the plane?\\\" Borken asked again.\\n\\n\\\"Low fuel,\\\" Webster said. \\\"It'll be back.\\\"\\n\\nThere was a pause. Then Borken's voice came back.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"So who was it?\\\" Webster asked again. \\\"Brogan or Milosevic?\\\"\\n\\nBut the radio just went dead on him. He clicked the button off and caught Johnson looking at him. Johnson's face was saying: the military man turned out good and the Bureau guy turned out bad. Webster shrugged. Tried to make it rueful. Tried to make it mean: we both made mistakes. But Johnson's face said: you should have known.\\n\\n\\\"Could be a problem, right?\\\" the aide said. \\\" Brogan and Milosevic?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Whichever one is the good guy, he still thinks Reacher's his enemy. And whichever one is the bad guy, he knows Reacher's his enemy.\\\"\\n\\nWebster looked away. Turned back to the bank of screens.\\n\\nBorken put the radio back in the pocket of his black uniform. Drummed his fingers on the judge's desk. Looked at the people looking back at him.\\n\\n\\\"One camera is enough,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Sure,\\\" Milosevic said. \\\"One is as good as two.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We don't need interference right now,\\\" Borken said. \\\"So we should nail Reacher before we do anything else.\\\"\\n\\nMilosevic glanced around, nervously.\\n\\n\\\"Don't look at me,\\\" he said. \\\"I'm staying inhere. I just want my money.\\\"\\n\\nBorken looked at him. Still thinking.\\n\\n\\\"You know how to catch a tiger?\\\" he asked. \\\"Ora leopard or something? Out in the jungle?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Milosevic asked.\\n\\n\\\"You tether a goat to a stake,\\\" Borken said. \\\"And lie in wait.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Milosevic asked again.\\n\\n\\\"Reacher was willing to rescue McGrath, right?\\\" Borken said. \\\"So maybe he's willing to rescue your pal Brogan, too.\\\"\\n\\nGeneral Garber heard the commotion and risked moving up a few yards. He made it to where the trees thinned out and he crouched. Shuffled sideways to his left to get a better view. The courthouse was dead ahead up the rise. The south wall was face-onto him, but he had a narrow angle down the front. He could seethe main entrance. He could seethe steps up to the door. He saw a gaggle of men come out. Six men. There were two flanking point men, alert, scanning around, rifles poised. The other four were carrying somebody, spreadeagled, face-down. The person had been seized by the wrists and the ankles. It was a man. Garber could tell by the voice. He was bucking and thrashing and screaming. It was Brogan.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Garber went cold.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He knew what had happened to Jackson. McGrath had told him. He raised his rifle. Sighted in on the nearer point man.\\n\\nTracked him smoothly as he moved right to left. Then his peripheral vision swept the other five. Then he thought about the sentry screen behind him. He grimaced and lowered the rifle. Impossible odds. He had a rule: stick to the job in hand. He'd preached it like a gospel for forty years. And the job in hand was to get Holly Johnson out alive. He crept backward into the forest and shrugged at the two men beside him.\\n\\nThe Chinook crew had clambered out of their wrecked craft and stumbled away into the forest. They had thought they were heading south, but in their disorientation they had moved due north. They had passed straight through the sentry screen without knowing anything about it and come upon a three-star general sitting at the base of a pine. The general had hauled them down and told them to hide. They thought they were in a dream, and they were hoping to wake up. They said nothing and listened as the screaming faded behind the ruined county offices.\\n\\nReacher and McGrath heard it minutes later. Faintly, at first, deep in the forest to their left. Then it built louder. They moved together level with a gap between huts where they could see across the Bastion to the mouth of the track. They were ten feet into the forest, far enough back to be well concealed, far enough forward to observe.\\n\\nThey saw the two point men burst out into the sunlight. Then four more men, walking instep, rifles slung, leaning outward, arms counterbalancing something heavy they were carrying. Something that was bucking and thrashing and screaming.\\n\\n\\\"Christ,\\\" McGrath whispered. That's Brogan.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher stared fora longtime. Silent. Then he nodded.\\n\\n\\\"I was wrong,\\\" he said. \\\"Milosevic is the bad guy.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath clicked the Clock's trigger to release the safety device.\\n\\n\\\"Wait,\\\" Reacher whispered.\\n\\nHe moved right and signaled McGrath to follow. They stayed deep in the trees and paralleled the six men and Brogan across the clearing. The men were moving slow across the shale, and Brogan's screaming was getting louder. They looped past the bodies and the tent pegs and the cut ropes and walked on.\\n\\nThey're going to the punishment hut,\\\" Reacher whispered.\\n\\nThey lost sight of them as the trees closed around the path to the next clearing. But they could still hear the screaming. Sounded like Brogan knew exactly what was going to happen to him. McGrath remembered recounting Borken's end of the conversation on the radio.\\n\\nReacher remembered burying Jackson's mangled body.\\n\\nThey risked getting a little closer to the next clearing. Saw the six men head for the windowless hut and stop at the door. The point men turned and covered the area with their rifles. The guy gripping Brogan's right wrist fumbled the key out of his pocket with his spare hand. Brogan yelled for help. He yelled for mercy. The guy unlocked the door. Swung it open. Stopped in surprise on the threshold and shouted.\\n\\nJoseph Ray came out. Still naked, his clothes balled in his arms.\\n\\nDried blood allover the bottom of his face like a mask. He danced and stumbled over the shale in his bare feet. The six men watched him go.\\n\\n\\\"Who the hell's that?\\\" McGrath whispered.\\n\\n\\\"Just some asshole,\\\" Reacher whispered back.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Brogan was dropped onto the ground.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Then he was hauled upright by the collar. He was staring wildly around and screaming. Reacher saw his face, white and terrified, mouth open. The six men threw him into the hut. They stepped in after him. The door slammed. McGrath and Reacher moved closer. They heard screams and the thump of a body hitting the walls. Those sounds went on for several minutes. Then it went quiet. The door opened. The six men filed out, smiling and dusting their hands. The last man darted back fora final kick.\\n\\nReacher heard the blow land and Brogan scream. Then the guy locked the door and hustled after the others. They crunched over the stones and were gone. The clearing fell silent.\\n\\nHolly limped across the raised floor to the door. Pressed her ear onto it and listened. All quiet. No sound. She limped back to her mattress and picked up the spare pair of fatigue trousers. Used her teeth to pick the seams. Tore the material apart until she had separated the front panel of one of the legs. It gave her apiece of canvas cloth maybe thirty inches long and six wide. She took it into the bathroom and ran the sink full of hot water. Soaked the strip of cloth in it. Then she took off her trousers. Squeezed the soaking canvas out and bound it as tight as she could around her knee. Tied it off and put her trousers back on. Her idea was the hot wet cloth might shrink slightly as it dried. It might tighten more. It was as near as she was going to get to solving her problem. Keeping the joint rigid was the only way to kill the pain.\\n\\nThen she did what she'd been rehearsing. She pulled the rubber foot off the bottom of her crutch. Smashed the metal end into the tile in the shower. The tile shattered. She reversed the crutch and used the end of the curved elbow clip to prise the shards off the wall. She selected two. Each was a rough triangle, narrow at the QfiQ base and pointed. She used the edge of the elbow clip to scrape away the clay at the leading point. Left the vitrified white surface layer intact, like the blade of a knife.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"She put her weapons in two separate pockets.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Pulled the shower curtain to conceal the damage. Put the rubber foot back on the crutch. Limped back to her mattress and sat down to wait.\\n\\nThe problem with using just one camera was that it had to beset to a fairly wide shot. That was the only way to cover the whole area. So any particular thing was small on the screen. The group of men carrying something had shown up like a large insect crawling across the glass.\\n\\n\\\"Was that Brogan?\\\" Webster asked out loud.\\n\\nThe aide ran the video back and watched again.\\n\\n\\\"He's face down,\\\" he said. \\\"Hard to tell.\\\"\\n\\nHe froze the action and used the digital manipulator to enlarge the picture. Adjusted the joystick to put the spreadeagled man in the center of the screen. Zoomed right in until the image blurred.\\n\\n\\\"Hard to tell,\\\" he said again. \\\"It's one of them, that's for sure.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think it was Brogan,\\\" Webster said.\\n\\nJohnson looked hard. Used his finger and thumb against the screen to estimate the guy's height, head to toes.\\n\\n\\\"How tall is he?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"How tall is he?\\\" Reacher asked suddenly.\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nReacher was behind McGrath in the trees, staring out at the punishment hut. He was staring at the front wall. The wall was maybe twelve feet long, eight feet high. Right to left there was a two-foot panel, then the door, thirty inches wide, hinged on the right, handle on the left.\\n\\nThen a panel probably seven and a half feet wide running down to the end of the building.\\n\\n\\\"How tall is he?\\\" Reacher asked again.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Christ, does it matter?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\n\\\"I think it does,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nMcGrath turned and stared at him.\\n\\n\\\"Five nine, maybe five ten,\\\" he said. \\\"Not an especially big guy.\\\"\\n\\nThe cladding was made up of horizontal eight-by-fours nailed over the frame. There was a seam halfway up. The floor was probably three-quarters board laid over two-by-fours. Therefore the floor started nearly five inches above the bottom of the outside cladding.\\n\\nAbout an inch and a half below the bottom of the doorway.\\n\\n\\\"Skinny, right?\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nMcGrath was still staring at him.\\n\\nThirty-eight regular, best guess,\\\" he said.\\n\\nReacher nodded. The walls would be two-by-fours clad inside and outwith the plywood. Total thickness five and a half inches, maybe less if the inside cladding was thinner. Call it the inside face of the end wall was five inches in from the corner, and the floor was five inches up from the bottom.\\n\\n\\\"Right-handed or left-handed?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"Speak tome,\\\" McGrath hissed.\\n\\n\\\"Which?\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"Right-handed,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"I'm pretty sure.\\\"\\n\\nThe two-by-fours would be on sixteen-inch centers. That was the standard dimension. But from the corner of the hut to the right-hand edge of the door, the distance was only two feet. Two feet less five inches, for the thickness of the end wall, was nineteen inches. There was probably a two-by-four set right in the middle of that span. Unless they skimped it, which was no problem. The wall would be stuffed with fiberglass wadding, for insulation.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Stand back,\\\" Reacher whispered.\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\n\\\"Just do it,\\\" Reacher replied.\\n\\nMcGrath moved out of the way. Reacher put his eyes on a spot ten inches in from the end of the hut and just shy of five feet up from the bottom. Swayed left and rested his shoulder on a tree. Raised his M-16 and sighted it in.\\n\\n\\\"Hell are you doing?\\\" McGrath hissed.\\n\\nReacher made no reply. Just waited for his heart to beat and fired.\\n\\nThe rifle cracked and the bullet punched through the siding a hundred yards away. Ten inches from the corner, five feet from the ground.\\n\\n\\\"Hell are you doing?\\\" McGrath hissed again.\\n\\nReacher just grabbed his arm and pulled him into the woods. Dragged him north and waited. Two things happened. The six men burst back into the clearing. And the door of the punishment hut opened. Brogan was framed in the doorway. His right arm washanging limp. His right shoulder was shattered and pumping blood. In his right hand, he was holding his Bureau. 38. The hammer was back.\\n\\nHis ringer was tight on the trigger.\\n\\nReadier snicked the M-16 to burst fire. Stitched five bursts of three shells into the ground, halfway across the clearing. The six men skidded away, like they were suddenly facing an invisible barrier or a drop off a tall cliff. They ran for the woods. Brogan stepped out of the hut. Stood in a bar of sunshine and tried to lift his revolver.\\n\\nHis arm wouldn't work. It hung uselessly.\\n\\n\\\"Decoy,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"They thought I'd go in after him. He was waiting behind the door with his gun. I knew he was the bad guy. But they had me fooled fora moment.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"McGrath nodded slowly. Stared at the government-issue. 38 in Brogan's hand. Remembered his own being confiscated. He raised the Clock and wedged his wrist against a tree. Sighted down the barrel.\\n\\n\\\"Forget it,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nMcGrath kept his eyes on Brogan and shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"I'm not going to forget it,\\\" he said quietly. \\\"Bastard sold Holly out.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I meant forget the Clock,\\\" Reacher said. That's a hundred yards.\\n\\nClock won't get near. You'd be lucky to hit the damn hut from here.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath lowered the Clock and Reacher handed him the M-16. Watched with interest as McGrath sighted it in.\\n\\n\\\"Where?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"Chest,\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Chest is good,\\\" he said.\\n\\nMcGrath steadied himself and fired. He was good, but not really good.\\n\\nThe rifle was still set to burst fire, and it loosed three rounds. The first hit Brogan in the upper left of his forehead, and the other two stitched upward and blasted fragments off the door frame. Good, but not very. But good enough to do the job. Brogan went down like a marionette with the strings cut. He just telescoped into the ground, right in front of the doorway. Reacher took the M-16 back and sprayed the trees on the edge of the clearing until the magazine clicked empty.\\n\\nReloaded and handed the Clock back to McGrath. Nodded him east through the forest. They turned together and walked straight into Joseph Ray. He was unarmed and half dressed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Blood dried on his face like brown paint. He was fumbling with his shirt buttons. They were done up into the wrong holes.\\n\\n\\\"Women and children are going to die,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"You all got an hour, Joe,\\\" Reacher said back to him. \\\"Spread the word. Anybody wants to stay alive, better head for the hills.\\\"\\n\\nThe guy just shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" he said. \\\"We've got to assemble on the parade ground. Those are our instructions. We've got to wait for Beau there.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Beau won't becoming,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nRay shook his head again.\\n\\n\\\"He will be,\\\" he said. \\\"You won't beat Beau, whoever you are. Can't be done. We got to wait for him. He's going to tell us what to do.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Run for it, Joe,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"For Christ's sake, get your kids out of here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Beau says they have to stay here,\\\" Ray said. \\\"Either to enjoy the fruits of victory, or to suffer the consequences of defeat.\\\"\\n\\nReacher just stared at him. Ray's bright eyes shone out. His teeth flashed in a brief defiant smile. He ducked his head and ran away.\\n\\n\\\"Women and children are going to die?\\\" McGrath repeated.\\n\\n\\\"Borken's propaganda,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"He's got them all convinced compulsory suicide is the penalty forgetting beat around here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And they're standing still for it?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\n\\\"He controls them,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Worse than you can imagine.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm not interested in beating them,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"Right now, I just want to get Holly out.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Same thing,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nThey walked on in silence, through the trees in the direction of the Bastion.\\n\\n\\\"How did you know?\\\" McGrath asked. \\\"About Brogan?\\\"\\n\\nReacher shrugged.\\n\\n\\\"I just felt it,\\\" he said. \\\"His face, I guess. They like hitting people in the face. They did it to you. But Brogan was unmarked. I saw his face, no damage, no blood. I figured that was wrong. The excitement of an ambush, the tension, they'd have worked it off by roughing him up a little. Like they did with you. But he was theirs, so he just walked in, handshakes all around.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath nodded. Put his hand up and felt his nose.\\n\\n\\\"But what if you were wrong?\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Wouldn't have mattered,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"If I was wrong, he wouldn't have been standing behind the door. He'd have been down on the floor with a bunch of broken ribs because all that thumping around would have been for real.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath nodded again.\\n\\n\\\"And all that shouting,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"They paraded along, real slow, with the guy shouting his head off. They were trying to attract my attention.\\\"\\n\\nThey're good at that,\\\"McGrath said.\\\" Webster's worried about it. He doesn't understand why Borken seems so set on getting attention, escalating this whole thing way bigger than he needs to.\\\"\\n\\nThey were in the woods. Halfway between the small clearing and the Bastion. Reacher stopped. Like the breath had been knocked out of him. His hands went up to his mouth. He stood breathless, like all the air had been sucked off the planet.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Christ, I know why,\\\" he said. \\\"It's a decoy.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\n\\\"I'm getting a bad feeling,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"About what?\\\" McGrath asked him, urgently.\\n\\n\\\"Borken,\\\" Reacher said. \\\" Something doesn't add up. His intentions.\\n\\nStrike the first blow. But where's Stevie? You know what? I think there are two first blows, McGrath. This stuff up here and something else, somewhere else. A surprise attack. Like Pearl Harbor, like his damn war books. That's why he's set on escalating everything. Holly, the suicide thing. He wants all the attention up here.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"HOLLY WAS STANDING UPRIGHT AND FACING HER DOOR WHEN THEY came for her.\\n\\nThe tight wrap on her knee was drying stiff. So she had to stand, because her leg would no longer bend. And she wanted to stand, because that was the best way to do it.\\n\\nShe heard the footsteps in the lobby. Heard them clatter up the stairs. Two men, she estimated. She heard them halt outside her door.\\n\\nHeard the key slide in and the lock click back. She blinked once and took a breath. The door opened. Two men crowded in. Two rifles. She stood upright and faced them. One stepped forward. \\\"Outside, bitch,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe gripped her crutch. Leaned on it heavily and limped across the floor. Slowly. She wanted to be outside before anybody realized she could move better than they thought. Before anybody realized she was armed and dangerous.\\n\\n\\\"Strike the first blow,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"I interpreted that all wrong.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" McGrath asked urgently.\\n\\n\\\"Because I haven't seen Stevie,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Not since early this morning. Stevie's not here anymore. Stevie's gone somewhere else.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Reacher, you're not making any sense,\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nReacher shook his head like he was clearing it and snapped back into focus. Set off racing east through the trees. Talking quietly, but urgently.\\n\\n\\\"I was wrong,\\\" he said. \\\" Borken said they were going to strike the first blow. Against the system. I thought he meant the declaration of independence. I thought that was the first blow. The declaration, and the battle to secure this territory. I thought that was it. On its own. But they're doing something else as well. Somewhere else.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They're doing two things at once. Simultaneous.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What are you saying?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\n\\\"Attention,\\\" Reacher said. The declaration of independence is focusing attention up herein Montana, right?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Sure,\\\" McGrath said. They planned to have CNN and the United Nations up here watching it happen. That's a lot of attention.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But they'd have been in the wrong place,\\\" Reacher said. \\\" Borken had a bookcase full of theory telling him not to do what they expect. A whole shelf all about Pearl Harbor. And I overheard him talking in the mine. When he was fetching the missile launcher. Fowler was with him.\\n\\nBorken told Fowler by tonight this place will be way down the list of priorities. So they're doing something else someplace else as well.\\n\\nSomething different, maybe something bigger. Twin blows against the system.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But what?\\\" McGrath asked. \\\"And where? Near here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" Reacher said. \\\" Probably faraway. Like Pearl Harbor was.\\n\\nThey're reaching out, trying to land a killer blow somewhere. Because there's a time factor here. It's all coordinated.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath stared at him.\\n\\nThey planned it well,\\\"Reacher said.\\\" Getting everybody's attention fixed up here. Independence. That stuff they were going to do with you. They were going to kill you slowly, with the cameras watching.\\n\\nThen the threats of mass suicide, women and children dying. A high-stakes siege. So nobody would be looking anywhere else. Borken's cleverer than I thought. Twin blows, each one covering for the other.\\n\\nEverybody's looking up here, then something big happens someplace else, everybody's looking down there, and he consolidates his new nation backup here.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"But where is it happening, for God's sake?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"McGrath asked. \\\"And what the hell is it?\\\"\\n\\nReacher stopped and shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"I just don't know,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThen he froze. There was a crashing noise up ahead and a patrol of six men burst around a tight thicket of pines and stopped dead in front of them. They had M-16s in their hands, grenades on their belts, and surprise and delight on their faces.\\n\\nBorken had deployed every man he had to the search for Reacher, except for the two he had retained to deal with Holly. He heard them start down the courthouse stairs. He pulled the radio from his pocket and flipped it open. Extended the stubby antenna and pressed the button.\\n\\n\\\"Webster?\\\" he said. \\\"Get focused in, OK? We'll talk again in a minute.\\\"\\n\\nHe didn't wait for any reply. Just snapped the radio off and turned his head as he tracked the sound of the footsteps on their way outside.\\n\\nFrom seventy-five yards south, Garber saw them come out of the door and down the steps. He had moved out of the woods. He had moved forward and crouched behind the outcrop of rock. He figured that was safe enough, now he had back-up of a sort. The Chinook crewmen were thirty yards behind him, well separated, well hidden, instructed to yell if anybody approached from the rear. So Garber was resting easy, staring up the slope at the big white building.\\n\\nHe saw two armed men, bearded, starting down the steps. They were dragging a smaller figure with a crutch. A halo of dark hair, neat green fatigues. Holly Johnson. He had never seen her before. Only in the photographs the Bureau men had showed him. The photographs had not done her justice. Even from seventy-five yards, he could feel the glow of her character. Some kind of radiant energy. He felt it, and pulled his rifle closer.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The M-16 in Reacher's hands was a 1987 product manufactured by the Colt Firearms Company in Hartford, Connecticut.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It was the A2 version. Its principal new feature was the replacement of automatic fire with burst fire. For the sake of economy, the trigger relocked after each burst of three shells. The idea was to waste less ammunition.\\n\\nSix targets, three shells each from the fresh magazine, a total of eighteen shells and six trigger pulls. Each burst of three shells took a fifth of a second, so the firing sequence itself amounted to just one and a fifth seconds. It was pulling the trigger over and over again which wasted the time. It wasted so much time for Reacher that he ran into trouble after the fourth guy was down. He wasn't aiming. He was just tracking a casual left-to-right arc, close range into the bodies in front of him. The opposing rifles were coming up as a unit. The first four never got there. But the fifth and the sixth were already raised horizontal by the time the fourth went back down, two-and-a-quarter seconds into the sequence.\\n\\nSo Reacher gambled. It was the sort of instinctive gamble you take so fast that to call it a split-second decision is to understate the speed by an absurd factor. He skipped his M-16 straight to the sixth guy, totally sure that McGrath would take the fifth guy with the Clock. The sort of instinctive gamble you take based on absolutely nothing at all except a feeling, which is itself based on absolutely nothing at all except the look of the guy and how he compares with the look of other people worth trusting in the past.\\n\\nThe flat crack of the Clock was lost under the rattle of the M-16 but the fifth guy went down simultaneous with the sixth. Reacher and McGrath crashed sideways together into the brush and flattened into the ground. Stared through the sudden dead silence at the cordite smoke rising gently through the shafts of sunlight. No movement. No survivors. McGrath blew a big sigh and stuck out his hand, from flat on the ground. Reacher twisted around and shook it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You're pretty quick for an old guy,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThat's how I got to bean old guy,\\\" McGrath said back.\\n\\nThey stood up slowly and ducked back farther into the trees. Then they could hear more people moving toward them in the forest. A stream of people was moving northwest out of the Bastion. McGrath raised the Clock again and Reacher snicked the M-16 back to singles. He had twelve shells left. Too few to waste, even with the A2's economy measure. Then they saw women through the trees. Women and children.\\n\\nSome men with them. Family groups. They were marching in columns of two. Reacher saw Joseph Ray, a woman at his side, two boys marching blankly in front of him. He saw the woman from the mess kitchen, marching side by side with a man. Three children walking stolidly in front of them.\\n\\n\\\"Where are they going?\\\" McGrath whispered.\\n\\n\\\"The parade ground,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Borken ordered it, right?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why don't they just run for it?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nReacher shrugged and said nothing. He had no explanation. He stood concealed and watched the blank faces pass through the dappled woods.\\n\\nThen he touched McGrath's arm and they sprinted on through the trees and came out behind the mess hall. Reacher glanced cautiously around.\\n\\nStretched up and grabbed at the roof overhang. Put afoot upon the window ledge and hauled himself up onto the shingles. Crawled up the slope of the roof and steadied himself against the bright metal chimney. Raised the stolen field glasses and trained them southeast, down toward the town, thinking: OK, but what the hell else is happening? And where?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"General Johnson's aide had the most aptitude with the computer controls, either from familiarity with such things, or from being younger. He used the rubber knobs and the joystick to focus on the area in front of the courthouse steps. Then he zoomed out a touch to frame the view. He had the western face of the courthouse on the right of the screen and the eastern face of the ruined county office on the left. In between were the two lawns, one abandoned and scrubby, the other still reasonably flat. The road ran vertically up the center of the picture, like a map. The jeep which had brought McGrath in was still there where they had dumped it. The aide used it to check his focus. It came in crisp and clear. It was a military surplus vehicle.\\n\\nSmudged white stencils. They could seethe windshield folded down, and a canvas map case and a jerrycan for fuel and a short-handled shovel clipped on the rear.\\n\\nThey all saw the two men bring Holly out. From above, they were in a perfect straight diagonal line, with Holly alone in the middle, like the shape you see when a die rolls a three. They brought her out and waited. Then they saw a huge figure lumbering down the courthouse steps behind them. Borken. He stepped into the road and looked up.\\n\\nRight into the camera, invisible seven miles above him. He stared and waved. Raised his right hand high. There was a black gun in it. Then he looked down and fiddled with something in his left hand. Raised it to his ear. The radio on the desk in front of Webster crackled.\\n\\nWebster picked it up and flipped it open.\\n\\n\\\"Yes?\\\" he said.\\n\\nThey saw Borken waving up at the camera again.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"See me?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"he said.\\n\\n\\\"We see you,\\\" Webster said quietly.\\n\\n\\\"See this?\\\" Borken asked.\\n\\nHe raised the gun again. The general's aide zoomed in tight. Borken's huge bulk filled the screen. Upturned pink face, black pistol held high.\\n\\n\\\"We see it,\\\" Webster said.\\n\\nThe aide zoomed back out. Borken resumed his proper perspective.\\n\\n\\\"Sig-Sauer P226,\\\" Borken said. \\\"You familiar with that weapon?\\\"\\n\\nWebster paused. Glanced around.\\n\\n\\\"Yes,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"Nine-millimeter,\\\" Borken said. \\\"Fifteen shots to a clip.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nBorken laughed. Aloud sound in Webster's ear.\\n\\n\\\"Time for some target practice,\\\" Borken said. \\\"And guess what the target is?\\\"\\n\\nThey saw the two men move toward Holly. Then they saw Holly's crutch come up. She held it level with both hands. She smashed it hard into the first man's gut. She whipped it back and swung it. Spun and hit the second man in the head. But it was light aluminum. No weight behind it. She dropped it and her hands went to her pockets. Came outwith something in each palm. Things that glinted and caught the sun.\\n\\nShe skipped forward and slashed desperately at the face in front of her. Danced and whirled and swung the glinting weapons.\\n\\nThe aide jerked the zoom control. The first man was down, clutching at his throat and face. Blood on his hands. Holly was spinning fast circles, slashing at the air like a panther in a cage turning on a stiff leg, the other foot dancing in and out as she darted left and right. Webster could hear distorted breathing and gasping through the earpiece. He could hear shouting and screaming. He stared at the screen and pleaded silently: go left, Holly, go for the jeep.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"She went right.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Swung her left hand high and held her right hand low, like a boxer. Darted for the second man. He raised his rifle, but crossways, in a sheer panic move toward off the slashing blow. He punched the rifle up to meet her arm and her wrist cracked against the barrel. Her weapon flew off into the air. She kicked hard under the rifle and caught him in the groin. He wheeled away and collapsed. She darted for Borken. Her glittering hand swung a vicious arc. Webster heard a shriek in his ear. The camera showed Borken ducking away, Holly swarming after him. But the first man was up again, behind her.\\n\\nHesitating. Then he was swinging his rifle like a bat. He caught her with the stock flat on the back of her head. She went limp. Her leg stayed stiff. She collapsed over it like she was falling over agate and sprawled on the road at Borken's feet.\\n\\nTwo down. One of them was Holly. Reacher adjusted the field glasses and stared at her. Two still standing. A grunt with a rifle, and Borken with a handgun and the radio. All in a tight knot, visible through the trees twelve hundred yards southeast and three hundred feet below. Reacher stared at Holly, inert on the ground. He wanted her.\\n\\nHe loved her for her courage. Two armed men and Borken, and she'd gone for it. Hopeless but she'd gone for it. He lowered the field glasses and hitched his legs around the chimney. Like he was riding a metal horse. The chimney was warm. His upper body was flat on the slope of the roof. His head and shoulders were barely above the ridge. He raised the field glasses again, and held his breath, and waited.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They saw Borken's agitated gestures and then the injured man was getting up and moving in with the other who had hither. They saw them pinning her arms behind her and dragging her to her feet. Her head was hanging down. One leg was bent, and the other was stiff. They propped heron it and paused. Borken signaled them to move. They dragged her away across the road. Then Borken's voice came back in Webster's ear, loud and breathy.\\n\\n\\\"OK, fun's over,\\\" he said. Tut her old man on.\\\"\\n\\nWebster handed the radio to Johnson. He stared at it. Raised it to his ear.\\n\\n\\\"Anything you want,\\\" he said. \\\"Anything at all. Just don't hurt her.\\\"\\n\\nBorken laughed. Aloud, relieved chuckle.\\n\\nThat's the kind of attitude I like,\\\"he said.\\\" Now watch this.\\\"\\n\\nThe two men dragged Holly up the knoll in front of the ruinedoffice building. Dragged her over to the stump of the dead tree. They turned her and walked her until her back thumped against the wood. They wrapped her arms around the stump behind her. Her head came up. She shook it, in a daze. One man held both wrists while the other fumbled with something. Handcuffs. He locked her wrists behind the tree. The two men stepped away, back toward Borken. Holly fell and slid down the stump. Then she pushed back and stood up. Shook her head again and gazed around.\\n\\n\\\"Target practice,\\\" Borken said into the radio.\\n\\nJohnson's aide fiddled with the zoom and made the picture bigger.\\n\\nBorken was walking away. He walked twenty yards south and turned, the Sig-Sauer pointing at the ground, the radio up at his face.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Here goes,\\\" he said.\\n\\nHe turned side-on and raised his arm. Held it out absolutely straight, shoulders turned like a duelist in an old movie. Squinted down the barrel and fired. The pistol kicked silently and there was a puff of dust in the ground, three feet from where Holly was standing still.\\n\\nBorken laughed again.\\n\\n\\\"Bad shot,\\\" he said. \\\"I need the practice. Might take me awhile to get close. But I've got fourteen more shells, right?\\\"\\n\\nHe fired again. A puff of dust from the earth. Three feet the other side of the stump.\\n\\nThirteen left,\\\"Borken said.\\\" I guess CNN is your best bet, right?\\n\\nCall them and tell them the whole story. Make it an official statement. Get Webster to back you up. Then patch them through on this radio. You won't give me my fax line, I'm going to have to communicate direct.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You're crazy,\\\" Johnson said.\\n\\n\\\"You're the one who's crazy,\\\" Borken said. \\\"I'm a force of history. I can't be stopped. I'm shooting at your daughter. The president's godchild. You don't understand, Johnson. The world is changing. I'm changing it. The world must be my witness.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson was silent. Stunned.\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" Borken said. \\\" I'm going to hangup now. You make that call.\\n\\nThirteen bullets left. I don't hear from CNN, the last one kills her.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson heard the line go dead and looked up at the screensand saw Borken drop the radio on the ground. Saw him raise the Sig-Sauer two-handed. Saw him sight it in. Saw him put around right between his daughter's feet.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Reacher rested against the warm chimney and lowered the glasses. Ran a desperate calculation through his head. A calculation involving time and distance. He was twelve hundred yards away to the northwest. He couldn't get therein time. And he couldn't get there silently. He lay chest down on the roof of the mess hall and called down to McGrath.\\n\\nHis voice was already quiet and relaxed. Like he was ordering in a restaurant.\\n\\n\\\"McGrath?\\\" he said. \\\"Go break into the armory. It's the hut on the end, apart from the others.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" McGrath called. \\\"What do you want?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You know what a Barren looks like?\\\" Reacher called. \\\"Big black thing, scope, big muzzle brake on it. Find a full magazine. Probably be next to them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"OK,\\\" McGrath said again.\\n\\n\\\"And hurry,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nGarber's view up from the south cleared when the two soldiers came back around and stood behind Beau Borken. They hung back, like they didn't want to put him off his aim. Borken was maybe sixty feet from Holly, shooting up the rise of the knoll. Garber was seventy yards away down the steep slope. Holly was just left of straight ahead. Borken was just to the right. His black bulk was perfectly outlined against the whiteness of the south wall of the courthouse. Garber saw that somebody had blanked the upper-story windows with new white wood.\\n\\nBorken's head was framed dead center against one of the new rectangles.\\n\\nGarber smiled. It would be like shooting fora small pink bullseye on a sheet of white paper. He snicked the M-16 to burst fire and checked it visually. Then he raised it to his shoulder.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"McGrath stretched upon his toes and passed the Barrett up toward Reacher. Reacher stretched his hand down and pulled it up. Glanced at it and passed it back down.\\n\\n\\\"Not this one,\\\" he said. \\\"Find one with the serial number ending in five-zero-two-four, OK?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" McGrath called.\\n\\n\\\"Because I know for sure it shoots straight,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"I used it before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Christ,\\\" McGrath said. He set off again at a dead run. Reacher lay back on the roof, trying to keep his heartbeat under control.\\n\\nBorken's tenth shot was still wide, but not by much. Holly jumped as far as her cuffs would allow. Borken took to pacing back and forth in delight. He was pacing and laughing and stopping to shoot. Garber was tracking his huge bulk left and right against the whiteness of the building. Just waiting for him to stop moving. Because Garber had a rule: make the first shot count.\\n\\nMcGrath found the rifle Reacher had used before and passed it up to the roof. Reacher took it and checked the number. Nodded. McGrath ran like crazy for the mouth of the stony track. Disappeared down it at a sprint. Reacher watched him go. Thumbed the big bullets in the magazine and checked the spring. Pressed the magazine home gently with his palm. Raised the Barrett to his shoulder and balanced it carefully on the ridgeline. Pulled the stock in and ducked his eye to the scope.\\n\\nUsed his left thumb to ease the focus out to twelve hundred yards. It racked the lens right out to the stop. He laid his left palm over the barrel. Operated the silky mechanism and put around in the breech.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Stared down at the scene below.\\n\\nThe telescope on the rifle bunched it all up, but the geometry was fine. Holly was upon the knoll, slightly to the right of dead ahead.\\n\\nHandcuffed to the dead tree. He stared at her face fora long moment.\\n\\nThen he nudged the scope. Borken was below her, maybe sixty feet farther on, firing up the rise at her, slightly to the left. He was walking short arcs, back and forth. But anywhere he chose to stop, there was a hundred miles of empty country behind his head. The courthouse walls were well away from Reacher's trajectory. Safe enough. Safe, but not easy. Twelve hundred yards was a hell of a distance. He breathed out and waited for Borken to stop pacing.\\n\\nThen he froze. In the corner of his eye, he caught the gleam of sun on dull metal. Maybe seventy yards farther on down the slope. A rock. A man behind the rock. A rifle. A familiar head, grizzled hair on some of it. General Garber. Garber, with an M-16, behind a rock, moving the muzzle side to side as he tracked his target, who was walking short arcs seventy yards directly in front of him.\\n\\nReacher breathed out and smiled. He felt a warm flood of gratitude.\\n\\nGarber. He had backup. Garber, shooting from just seventy yards. In that split-second he knew Holly was safe. The warm flood of gratitude coursed through him.\\n\\nThen it changed to an icy blast of panic. His brain kicked in. The compressed geometry below him exploded into a dreadful diagram. Like something on a page, like a textbook explanation of a disaster. From Garber's angle, the courthouse was directly behind Borken. When Borken stopped moving, Garber was going to fire at him. He might hit or he might miss. Either way, his bullet was going to hit the courthouse wall. Probably right up therein the southeastern corner, second floor. The ton of old dynamite would go up in a percussive fireball a quarter mile wide. It would vaporize Holly and shred Garber himself.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The shock-wave would probably knock Reacher right off the mess hall roof, twelve hundred yards away.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"How the hell could Garber not know?\\n\\nBorken stopped pacing. Stood sideways on and steadied himself. Reacher blew out a lungful of air. He moved the Barrett. He put the crosshairs dead center on Holly Johnson's temple, right where the soft dark hair billowed down toward her eyes. He kept his lungs empty and waited for the next thump of his heart. Then he squeezed the trigger.\\n\\nGarber watched Borken's arm come up. Waited until he had steadied.\\n\\nSquinted down the M-16's sighting grooves and put the pink and whitehead dead center. It sat there, big and obvious against the blur of sunny whitewall behind it. He waited like he'd been taught to a lifetime ago. Waited until his breath was out and his heart was between beats. Then he pulled the trigger.\\n\\nGeneral Johnson had closed his eyes. His aide was staring at the screen. Webster was watching through a lattice of fingers, mouth open, like a child with anew babysitter watching a horror movie on television, way after his bedtime.\\n\\nFirst thing out of the barrel of Reacher's Barrett was a blast of hot gas. The powder in the cartridge exploded in a fraction of a millionth of a second and expanded to a superheated bubble. That bubble of gas hurled the bullet down the barrel and forced ahead of it and around it to explode out into the atmosphere. Most of it was smashed sideways by the muzzle brake in a perfectly balanced radial pattern, like a donut, so that the recoil moved the barrel straight back against Reacher's shoulder without deflecting it either sideways or up or down.\\n\\nMeanwhile, behind it, the bullet was starting to spin inside the barrel as the rifling grooves grabbed at it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Then the gas ahead of the bullet was heating the oxygen in the air to the point where the air caught fire. There was a brief flash of flame and the bullet burst out through the exact center of it, spearing through the burned air at nineteen hundred miles an hour. A thousandth of a second later, it was a yard away, followed by a cone of gunpowder particles and a puff of soot. Another thousandth of a second later, it was six feet away, and its sound was bravely chasing after it, three times slower.\\n\\nThe bullet took five-hundredths of a second to cross the Bastion, by which time the sound of its shot had just passed Reacher's ears and cleared the ridge of the roof. The bullet had a hand-polished copper jacket, and it was flying straight and true, but by the time it passed soundlessly over McGrath's head it had slowed a little. The friction of the air had heated it and slowed it. And the air was moving it. It was moving it right-to-left as the gentle mountain breeze tugged imperceptibly at it. Half a second into its travel, the bullet had covered thirteen hundred feet and it had moved seven inches to the left.\\n\\nAnd it had dropped seven inches. Gravity had pulled it in. The more gravity pulled, the more the bullet slowed. The more it slowed, the more gravity deflected it. It speared onward in a perfect graceful curve. A whole second after leaving the barrel, it was nine hundred yards into its journey. Way past McGrath's running figure, but still over the trees. Still three hundred yards short of its target. Another sixth of a second later, it was clear of the trees and alongside the ruined office building. Now it was a slow bullet. It had pulled four feet left, and five feet down. It passed well clear of Holly and was twenty feet beyond her before she heard the hiss in the air. The sound of its shot was still to come. It had just about caught up with McGrath, running through the trees.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Then there was a second bulletin the air. And a third, and a fourth.\\n\\nGarber fired a second-and-a-quarter later than Reacher. His rifle was set to auto. It fired a burst of three. Three shells in a fifth of a second. His bullets were smaller and lighter. Because they were lighter, they were faster. They came in at well over two thousand miles an hour. He was nearer the target. Because his bullets were faster and lighter and he was nearer, friction and gravity never really chipped in. His three bullets stayed pretty straight.\\n\\nReacher's bullet hit Borken in the head a full second-and-a-third after he fired it. It entered the front of his forehead and was out of the back of his skull three ten-thousandths of a second later. In and out without really slowing much more at all, because Borken's skull and brains were nothing to a two-ounce lead projectile with a needlepoint and a polished copper jacket. The bullet was well on over the endless forest beyond before the pressure wave built up in Borken's skull and exploded it.\\n\\nThe effect is mathematical and concerns kinetic energy. The way it had been explained to Reacher, long ago, it was all about equivalents. The bullet weighed only two ounces, but it was fast. Equivalent to something heavy, but slow. Two ounces moving at a thousand miles an hour was maybe similar to something weighing ten pounds moving at three miles an hour. Maybe something like a sledgehammer swinging hard in a man's hand. That was pretty much the effect. Reacher was watching it through the scope. Heart in his mouth. A full second-and-a-third is along time to wait. He watched Borken's skull explode like it had been burst from the inside with a sledgehammer. It came apart like a diagram. Reacher saw curved shards of bone bursting outward and red mist blooming.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"But what he couldn't see were Garber's three bullets, hurtling through the mess unimpeded, and flying straight on toward the courthouse wall.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"THE CLASSIC MISTAKE IN FIRING AN AUTOMATIC WEAPON IS TO let the recoil from the first bullet jerk the barrel upward, so that the second bullet goes high, and the third higher still. But Garber did not make that mistake. He had enough hours on the range to be reliable from seventy yards. He had been through enough edgy situations to know how to stay cool and concentrated. He put all three bullets right through the exact center of the pink cloud that had been Borken's head.\\n\\nThey spent two ten-thousandths of a second traveling through it and flew on uninterrupted. They smashed through the new plywood sheeting in the window frame The leading bullet was distorted slightly by the impact and jerked left, tearing through the inner pine siding twenty-two inches later. It crossed Holly's room and re-entered the wall to the left of the doorway. Smashed right through and buried itself in the far wall of the corridor.\\n\\nThe second bullet came in through the first bullet's hole and therefore traversed the twenty-two-inch gap in a straight line. It came out through the inner siding and was thrown to the right. Crossed the room and smashed on through the bathroom partition and shattered the cheap, white ceramic toilet.\\n\\nThe third shell was rising just a fraction. It hit a nail in the outer wall and turned aright angle. Drilled itself sideways and down through eight of the new two-by-fours like a demented termite before its energy was expended. It ended up looking like a random blob of lead pressed into the back of the new pine boarding.\\n\\nReacher saw Garber's muzzle flash through his scope. Knew he must be firing triples. Knew he must have hit the courthouse wall. He stared down from twelve hundred yards away and gripped the ridge of the roof and shut his eyes. Waited for the explosion.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Garber knew his shots hadn't killed Borken. There hadn't been time.\\n\\nEven dealing with tiny fractions of a second, there's a rhythm. Fire... hit. Borken had been hit before his bullets could possibly have gotten there. So somebody else was up and shooting. There was a team inaction. Garber smiled. Fired again. Pumped his trigger finger nine more times and stitched Borken's two soldiers allover the courthouse wall with his remaining twenty-seven shells.\\n\\nMilosevic came out of the courthouse lobby and down the steps at a run.\\n\\nHe had his Bureau. 38 held high in his right hand and his gold shield in his left.\\n\\n\\\"FBI agent!\\\" he screamed. \\\"Everybody freeze!\\\"\\n\\nHe glanced to his right at Holly and then at Garber on his way up to meet him and at McGrath racing around from behind the office building.\\n\\nMcGrath went straight for Holly. He hugged her tight against the dead tree. She was laughing. She couldn't hug back, because her arms were still cuffed behind the post. McGrath let her go and ran down the slope. Smacked a high five with Milosevic.\\n\\n\\\"Who's got the keys?\\\" McGrath yelled.\\n\\nGarber pointed over toward the two dead soldiers. McGrath ran to them and searched through the oozing pockets. Came outwith a key and ran backup to the knoll. Ducked around to the back of the stump and unlocked Holly's wrists. She staggered away and McGrath darted forward and grabbed her arm. Milosevic found her crutch on the road and tossed it over. McGrath caught it and handed it to her. She got steady and came down the rise, arm in arm with McGrath. They made it to level ground and stood there together, gazing around in the sudden deafening quiet.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Who do I thank?\\\" Holly asked.\\n\\nShe was holding McGrath's arm, staring at the remains of Borken, lying sixty feet away. The corpse was flat on its back, high and wide. It had no head.\\n\\nThis is General Garber,\\\"McGrath said. Top boy in the military police.\\\"\\n\\nGarber shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Wasn't me,\\\" he said. \\\"Somebody beat me to it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Wasn't me,\\\" Milosevic said.\\n\\nThen Garber nodded behind them.\\n\\n\\\"Probably this guy,\\\" he said.\\n\\nReacher was on his way down the knoll. Out of breath. A frame six five high and two hundred twenty pounds in weight is good fora lot of things, but not for sprinting a mile.\\n\\n\\\"Reacher,\\\" Holly said.\\n\\nHe ignored her. Ignored everybody. Just ran on south and turned to stare up at the whitewall. He saw bullet holes. A lot of bullet holes. Probably thirty holes, most of them scattered over the second floor in the southeastern corner. He stared at them fora second and ran for the jeep parked at the curb. Snatched the shovel from its clips under the spare fuel can. Sprinted for the steps. Crashed through the door and up the stairs to Holly's room. Ran for the front wall.\\n\\nHe could see at least a dozen exit holes punched through the wood.\\n\\nRagged splintered holes. He smashed the blade of the shovel into one of them. Split the pine board length ways and used the shovel to wrench it off. Smashed the shovel behind the next and tore it away from the nails securing it. By the time McGrath was in the room, he had exposed four feet of studding. By the time Holly joined them, they were staring into an empty cavity.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"No dynamite,\\\" she said, quietly.\\n\\nReacher ducked away to the adjacent wall. Tore enough boards off to be sure.\\n\\nThere never was any,\\\"Holly said.\\\" Shit, I can't believe it.\\\"\\n\\nThere was some,\\\"McGrath said.\\\" Jackson called it in. Described the whole thing. I saw his report. He unloaded the truck with seven other guys. He carried it up here. He saw it going into the walls, for God's sake. A ton of dynamite. Kind of a hard thing to be confused about.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So they put it in,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"And then they took it out. They let people see it going in, then they took it out again secretly. They used it somewhere else.\\\"\\n\\nTook it out again?\\\" Holly repeated.\\n\\n\\\"Women and children have to die,\\\" Reacher said, slowly.\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Holly asked. \\\"What are you saying?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But not here,\\\" he said. \\\"Not these women and children.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Holly said again.\\n\\n\\\"Not mass suicide,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Mass murder.\\\"\\n\\nThen he just went blank. He was silent. But in his head he was hearing something. He was hearing the same terrible blast he had heard thirteen years before. The sound of Beirut. The sound of the Marine compound, out near the airport. He was hearing it allover again, and it was deafening him.\\n\\n\\\"Now we know what it is,\\\" he muttered through the shattering roar.\\n\\n\\\"What is it?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\n\\\"Low on its springs,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"But we don't know where it's gone.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Holly said again.\\n\\n\\\"Women and children have to die,\\\" Reacher repeated. \\\" Borken said so.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He said the historical circumstances justified it. But he didn't mean these women and these children up here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What the hell are you talking about?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nReacher glanced at him, and then at Holly, surprised, like he was seeing them both for the first time.\\n\\n\\\"I was in the motor pool,\\\" he said. \\\"I saw the truck. Our truck? It was parked up, low on its springs, like it had a heavyweight inside.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Holly said again.\\n\\n\\\"They've made themselves a truck bomb,\\\" Reacher said. \\\" Stevie's delivering it somewhere, some public place. That's the other attack.\\n\\nThey're going to explode it in a crowd. There's a whole ton of dynamite in it. And he's six hours ahead of us.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath was first down the stairs.\\n\\n\\\"Into the jeep,\\\" he yelled.\\n\\nGarber ran for the jeep. But Milosevic was much nearer. He vaulted in and fired it up. Then McGrath was helping Holly into the front seat.\\n\\nReacher was on the sidewalk, staring south, lost in thought. Milosevic was drawing his revolver. He was thumbing the hammer back. Garber stopped. Raised his rifle and aimed. Milosevicleaned across in front of Holly. McGrath jumped away. Milosevic stamped on the gas and roared away one-handed with the muzzle jammed into Holly's side. One-handed over the rough road, the jeep was allover the place. No chance of hitting Milosevic. Garber could see that. He lowered his rifle and watched them go.\\n\\n\\\"Both of them?\\\" Webster said to himself. \\\"Please, God, no.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":290,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Take the role of the writer's aide, proceed with the narrative.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 43"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He said the historical circumstances justified it. But he didn't mean these women and these children up here.\"\n\n\"What the hell are you talking about?\" McGrath said.\n\nReacher glanced at him, and then at Holly, surprised, like he was seeing them both for the first time.\n\n\"I was in the motor pool,\" he said. \"I saw the truck. Our truck? It was parked up, low on its springs, like it had a heavyweight inside.\"\n\n\"What?\" Holly said again.\n\n\"They've made themselves a truck bomb,\" Reacher said. \" Stevie's delivering it somewhere, some public place. That's the other attack.\n\nThey're going to explode it in a crowd. There's a whole ton of dynamite in it. And he's six hours ahead of us.\"\n\nMcGrath was first down the stairs.\n\n\"Into the jeep,\" he yelled.\n\nGarber ran for the jeep. But Milosevic was much nearer. He vaulted in and fired it up. Then McGrath was helping Holly into the front seat.\n\nReacher was on the sidewalk, staring south, lost in thought. Milosevic was drawing his revolver. He was thumbing the hammer back. Garber stopped. Raised his rifle and aimed. Milosevicleaned across in front of Holly. McGrath jumped away. Milosevic stamped on the gas and roared away one-handed with the muzzle jammed into Holly's side. One-handed over the rough road, the jeep was allover the place. No chance of hitting Milosevic. Garber could see that. He lowered his rifle and watched them go.\n\n\"Both of them?\" Webster said to himself. \"Please, God, no.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We could use another chopper right now,\" the aide said. \"I don't think we have to worry about the missiles anymore.\"\n\nHe panned the camera north and west and zoomed in on the mountain bowl in front of the mine entrances. The four missile trucks were sitting inert. The sprawled body of the dead sentry was nearby.\n\n\"OK, call in a chopper,\" Johnson said.\n\n\"Better coming direct from you, sir,\" the aide said.\n\nJohnson turned sideways to use the phone. Then he spun back to watch as the jeep drove into shot. It bounced up out of the last hairpin into the bowl and raced across the shale. Swerved around the dead trucks and slewed to a stop in front of the left-hand shed. Milosevic jumped out and danced around the hood. Revolver steady on Holly as he approached. He pulled her out by the arm and dragged her to the big wooden doors. Levered one open with his foot and pushed her inside. He followed her in and the huge door swung shut. Webster glanced away from the screen.\n\n\"Call the chopper, sir,\" the aide said.\n\n\"Make it a fast one,\" Webster added.\n\nQuickest way to the mines was a shortcut through the Bastion. It was deserted and quiet. They ran through it and headed north across the rifle range toward the parade ground. Stopped short in the woods. The whole remaining militia population was standing silently in neat ranks, quiet fearful faces turned to the front, where Borken's upturned box still awaited his arrival.\n\nReacher ignored them and led the others around in the trees. Then in a straight line to the road. Straight north along it. Reacher was carrying the big Barren. He had retrieved it from the mess hall roof, because he liked it. Garber was hurrying at his side. McGrath was pushing ahead as fast as he could, desperate to get to Holly."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They ducked back into the woods before the last hairpin and Reacher scouted ahead. He holed up behind the rock he'd used before and covered every inch of the bowl with the Barrett's scope. Then he waved the other two up to join him.\n\n\"They're in the motor pool,\" he said. \"Left-hand shed.\"\n\nHe pointed with the fat barrel of the sniper rifle and the others saw the abandoned jeep and nodded. He ran over the shale and crouched behind the hood of the first missile truck. Garber sent McGrath next.\n\nThen he ran over. They crouched together behind the truck and stared at the log doors.\n\n\"What now?\" Garber asked. \"Frontal assault?\"\n\n\"He's got a gun to her head,\" McGrath said. \"I don't want her hurt, Reacher. She's precious tome, OK?\"\n\n\"Any other way in?\" Garber asked.\n\nReacher stared at the doors and the roaring of the Beirut bomb receded and was replaced by the quiet whimpering of an earlier nightmare. He spent a minute trawling desperately for an alternative. He thought about the rifles and the missiles and the trucks. Then he gave it up.\n\n\"Keep him occupied,\" he said. Talk to him, anything.\"\n\nHe left the Barrett and took the Clock back from McGrath. Dodged to the next truck, and the next, all the way level with the entrance to the other cavern. The charnel house, full of bodies and skeletons and rats. He heard McGrath calling to Milosevic in a faint faraway voice and he ran to the big log doors. Ducked in through the gap and moved back into the dark.\n\nHe had no flashlight. He felt his way around the troop carrier and eased on into the mountain. He held his hand above his head and felt the roof comedown. Felt for the bodies in the pile and skirted them."},{"from":"human","value":"Crouched and headed left for the skeletons."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The rats were hearing him and smelling him and squealing angry warnings all the way back to their nests. He dropped to his knees and then lay down and swam through the pile of damp bones. Felt the roof of the tunnel lower and the sides press in. Took a deep breath and felt the fear comeback.\n\nThe fastest helicopter available on that day was a Marine Corps Night Hawk stationed at Malmstrom. It was along, fat, humped machine, but it was quick. Within minutes of Johnson's call, it was spinning up and receiving orders to head west and north to a gravel turnout on the last road in Montana. Then it was in the air. The Marine pilot found the road and followed it north, fast and low, until he spotted a cluster of army command vehicles parked tight into a rock cutting. He swung back and put down on the turnout and waited. Saw three men racing south toward him. One was a civilian and two were army. One was a colonel and the other was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The pilot shrugged at his crewman who pointed upward through the plexiglass canopy. There was alone vapor trail maybe thirty-six thousand feet up. Some big jet was unwinding a tight spiral and streaking south. The pilot shrugged again and figured whatever was happening, it was happening to the south. So he made a provisional course calculation and was surprised when the brass clambered aboard and ordered him to head north into the mountains.\n\nReacher was laughing. He was hauling himself along through the tunnel and laughing out loud. Shaking and crying with laughter. He was no longer afraid. The tight clamp of the rock on his body was like a caress. He had done this once, and survived it. It was possible. He was going to get through.\n\nThe fear had disappeared as suddenly as it had come. He had pushed through the pile of bones in the dark and stretched out and felt the rock clampdown against his back. His chest had seized and his throat had gagged tight. He had felt the hot damp flush of panic and pressed himself into the ground. He had felt his strength drain away. Then he had focused. The job in hand. Holly. Milosevic's revolver pushed against the dark billow of her hair, her fabulous eyes dull with despair. He had seen her in his mind at the end of the tunnel. Holly."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Then the tunnel seemed to straighten and become a warm smooth tube. An exact fit for his bulky shoulders. Like it was tailored for him, and him alone. A simple horizontal journey. He had learned along time ago that somethings were worth being afraid of. And somethings were not. Things that he had done before and survived did not justify fear.\n\nTo be afraid of a survivable thing was irrational. And whatever else he was, Reacher knew he was a rational man. In that split second the fear disappeared and he felt himself relax. He was a fighter. An avenger. And Holly was waiting for him. He thrust his arms forward like a swimmer diving for the water and swarmed through the mountain toward her.\n\nHe charged along with a tidy rhythm. Like marching out on the open road, but doing it lying down in the dark. Small deft movements of hands and feet. Head lowered. Laughing with relief. He felt the tunnel get smaller and hug him. He slid on through. He felt the blank wall ahead and folded himself neatly around the corner. Breathed easily and stopped laughing. Told himself it was time for quiet. He crawled on as fast as he could. Slowed up when he sensed the roof soaring away above him. Crept forward until the smell of the air told him he was nearly through.\n\nThen he heard the helicopter. He heard the faint thumping of the rotors in the distance. He heard feet scuffling forty yards in front of him. The inarticulate sound of surprise and panic. He heard Milosevic's voice. High-pitched. West Coast accent.\n\n\"Keep that chopper away from here,\" Milosevic screamed through the door.\n\nThe noise was getting nearer. Growing louder.\n\n\"Keep it away, you hear?\" Milosevic screamed. \"I'll kill her, McGrath. That's a promise, you hear?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"It was totally dark. There were vehicles between Reacher and the cracks of light around the door. But not the white truck. That was gone. He rolled up into the space where it had been and pulled the Clock from his pocket. The thumping of the rotor blades was very close. It was battering the doors and filling the cavern.\n\n\"I'll trade her with you,\" Milosevic screamed through the door. \"I get out of here unharmed, you get her back, OK? McGrath? You hear me?\"\n\nIf there was a reply, Reacher didn't hear it.\n\n\"I'm not with these guys,\" Milosevic screamed. \"This whole thing is nothing to do with me. Brogan got me into it. He made me do it.\"\n\nThe noise was shattering. The heavy doors were shaking.\n\n\"I did it for the money, that's all,\" Milosevic screamed. \"Brogan was giving me money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, McGrath. You'd have done the exact same thing. Brogan was making me rich. He bought me a Ford Explorer. The Limited Edition. Thirty-five grand. How the hell else was I ever going to get one?\"\n\nReacher listened to the screaming voice in the darkness. He didn't want to shoot him. For one crazy moment, he felt absurdly grateful to him, because he had banished his childhood nightmare. He had forced him to confront it and defeat it. He had made him a betterman. He wanted to run up to him and shake him by the hand. He could picture himself doing it. But then the picture changed. He needed to run up to him and shake him by the throat and ask him if he knew where Stevie had taken the white truck. That was what he needed to do. That was why he didn't want to shoot him. He crept forward in the deafening noise and skirted around the vehicles."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He was operating in a one-dimensional world. He could see nothing because of the darkness. He could hear nothing, because of the helicopter. He sensed movement near the doors. Came out from behind a pickup and saw a shape framed against the cracks of light. A shape that should have been two shapes. Wide at the top, four legs.\n\nMilosevic with his arm around Holly's throat, his gun at her head. He waited for his vision to build. Their faces faded in from black to gray. Holly in front of Milosevic. Reacher raised the Clock. Circled left to get an angle. His shin caught a fender. He staggered and backed into a pile of paint cans. They crashed silently to the rock floor, inaudible in the crushing noise from outside. He sprinted closer to the light.\n\nMilosevic sensed it and turned. Reacher saw his mouth open in a silent shout. Saw him twist and push Holly out in front of him like a shield.\n\nSaw him stall with indecision, his revolver up in the air. Reacher dodged right, then danced back left. He saw Milosevic track him both ways. Saw Holly use the sway to tear herself out of his grip. The rotor noise was shattering. He saw Milosevic glancing left and right.\n\nSaw him making his decision. Reacher was armed, Holly was not.\n\nMilosevic lunged forward. The. 38 flashed silently in the noise. The brief white flame was blinding in the dark. Reacher lost his sense of where Holly was. He cursed and held his fire. He saw Milosevic aim again. Beyond him, he saw Holly's arm come up and stretch around his head from behind. He saw her hand touch his face with gentle precision. He saw him stumble. Then the door heaved open and Holly staggered away from the shattering flood of noise and sunlight and crashed straight into his arms."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The sunlight fell in a bright bar across Milosevic. He was lying on his back. His. 38 was in his hand. The hammer was back. There was a shard of bathroom tile sticking out of his head where his left eye should have been. It was maybe three inches in and three inches out. A small worm of blood was running away from the point of entry.\n\nThen the open door was crowded with people. Readier saw McGrath and Garber standing in a blast of dust. A Night Hawk was landing behind them. Three men were spilling out and running over. A civilian and a colonel. And General Johnson. Holly twisted and saw them and buried her face back in Reacher's chest.\n\nGarber was the first to them. He pulled them out into the light and the noise. They stumbled awkwardly, four-legged. The downdraft tore at them. McGrath stepped near and Holly pulled herself from Reacher's grip and threw herself at him and hugged him hard. Then General Johnson was moving in on her through the crowd.\n\n\"Holly,\" he mouthed through the din.\n\nShe straightened in the light. Grinned at him. Hooked her hair back behind her ears. Pulled away from McGrath and hugged her father close.\n\n\"Still stuff for me to do, Dad,\" she screamed over the engines. \"I'll tell you everything later, OK?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"REACHER MADE A TWIRLING SIGNAL WITH HIS HAND TO TELL THE helicopter pilot to keep the engines spinning and ran through the noise and the eddying dust to take the Barrett back from Garber. He waved the others toward the machine. Hustled them up the ladder and followed them in through the sliding door. Laid the Barrett on the metal floor and dumped himself into a canvas chair. Pulled his headset on. Thumbed the button and called through to the pilot.\n\n\"Standby, OK?\" he said. \"I'll give you a course as soon as I've got one.\"\n\nThe pilot nodded and ran the engines up out of idle. The rotor thumped faster and the noise built louder. The weight of the aircraft came up off the tires.\n\n\"Where the hell are we going?\" Webster shouted.\n\n\"We're chasing Stevie, chief,\" McGrath shouted back. \"He's driving the truck. The truck is full of dynamite. He's going to explode it somewhere. Remember what the Kendall sheriff said? Stevie always got sent out to do the dirty work? You want me to draw you a damn picture?\"\n\n\"But he can't have gotten out of here,\" Webster yelled. The bridge is blown. And there are no tracks through the forest. They closed them all.\"\n\n\"Forest Service guy didn't say that,\" McGrath yelled back. They closed some of them. He wasn't sure which ones, was all. What he said was maybe there's away through, maybe there isn't.\"\n\nThey had two years to spy it out,\"Reacher shouted.\" You said the pickup had spent time on Forest Service tracks, right? Crushed sandstone allover the underside? They had two whole years to find away through the maze.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Webster glanced to his left, east, over to where the forest lay beyond the giant mountain. He nodded urgently, eyes wide.\n\n\"OK, so we got to stop him,\" he yelled. \"But where has he gone?\"\n\n\"He's six hours ahead of us,\" Reacher shouted. \"We can assume the forest was pretty slow. Call it two hours? Then four hours on the open road. Maybe two hundred miles? Diesel Econoline, hauling a ton, can't be averaging more than about fifty.\"\n\n\"But which damn direction?\" Webster yelled through the noise.\n\nHolly glanced at Reacher. That was a question they had asked each other a number of times, in relation to that exact same truck. Reacher opened up the map in his head and trawled around it allover again, clockwise.\n\n\"Could have gone east,\" he shouted. \"He'd still be in Montana, past Great Falls. Could be down in Idaho. Could be in Oregon. Could be halfway to Seattle.\"\n\n\"No,\" Garber yelled. Think about it the other way around. That's the key to this thing. Where has he been ordered to go? What would the target be?\"\n\nReacher nodded slowly. Garber was making sense. The target.\n\n\"What does Borken want to attack?\" Johnson yelled.\n\nBorken had said: you study the system and you learn to hate it. Reacher thought hard and nodded again and thumbed his mike and called through to the pilot.\n\n\"OK, let's go,\" he said. \"Straight on south of here should do it.\"\n\nThe noise increased louder and the Night Hawk lifted heavily off the ground. It swung in the air and rose clear of the cliffs. Slipped south and banked around. Dropped its nose and accelerated hard. The noise moved up out of the cabin and settled to a deep roar inside the engines. The ground tilted and flashed past below. Reacher saw the mountain hairpins unwinding and the parade ground sliding past. The knot of tiny people was breaking up."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They were drifting away into the trees and being swallowed up under the green canopy. Then the narrow slash of the rifle range was under them, then the broad stony circle of the Bastion. Then the aircraft rose sharply as the ground fell away so that the big white courthouse slipped by underneath as small as a dollhouse. Then they were over the ravine, over the broken bridge, and away into the vast forested spaces to the south.\n\nReacher tapped the pilot on the shoulder and spoke through the intercom.\n\n\"What speed are we doing?\" he asked.\n\n\"Hundred and sixty,\" the pilot said.\n\n\"Course?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"Dead on south,\" the pilot said.\n\nReacher nodded. Closed his eyes and started to calculate. It was like being back in grade school. He's two hundred miles ahead, doing fifty miles an hour. You're chasing him at a hundred and sixty. How long before you catch him? Grade-school math had been OK for Reacher. So had fighting in the yard. The fighting part had stayed with him better than the math. He was sure there must be some kind of a formula for it. Something with x and y allover the damn page. Something equaling something else. But if there was a formula, he had long ago forgotten it. So he had to do it by trial and error. Another hour, Stevie would be two hundred and fifty miles from home. The Night Hawk would have done one hundred and sixty. Way behind. An hour after that, Stevie would be three hundred miles out, and the Night Hawk would be three hundred and twenty. Overshot. Therefore they were going to catch him somewhere near the top of the second hour. If they were headed in the right direction.\n\nFlathead Lake came into view, far ahead and far below. Reacher could seethe roads snaking across the rugged terrain. He thumbed the button on his mike."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Still south?\" he asked.\n\n\"Dead on,\" the pilot said.\n\n\"Still one-sixty?\" Reacher asked.\n\n\"Dead on,\" the pilot said again.\n\n\"OK, stick with it,\" Reacher said. \"Hour and fifty minutes, maybe.\"\n\n\"So where is he going?\" Webster asked.\n\n\"San Francisco,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"Why?\" McGrath asked.\n\n\"Or Minneapolis,\" Reacher said. \"But I'm gambling on San Francisco.\"\n\n\"Why?\" McGrath asked again.\n\n\"San Francisco or Minneapolis,\" Reacher said. \"Think about it. Other possibilities would be Boston, New York, Philly, Cleveland, Richmond in Virginia, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City in Missouri, or Dallas in Texas.\"\n\nMcGrath just shrugged blankly. Webster looked puzzled. Johnson glanced at his aide. Garber was motionless. But Holly was smiling.\n\nShe smiled and winked at Reacher. He winked back and the Night Hawk thumped on south over Missoula at a hundred and sixty miles an hour.\n\n\"Christ, it's the Fourth of July,\" Webster said suddenly.\n\nTell me about it,\"Reacher said.\" Lots of people gathered in public places. Families, kids and all.\"\n\nWebster nodded grimly.\n\n\"OK, where exactly in San Francisco?\" he asked.\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"North end of Market,\" Holly said. \" Right near Embarcadero Plaza.\n\nThat's where, chief. I've been thereon the Fourth. Big parade in the afternoon, fireworks over the water at night. Huge crowds all daylong.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Huge crowds everywhere on the Fourth,\" Webster said."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You better be guessing right, people.\"\n\nMcGrath looked up. A slow smile was spreading over his bruised face.\n\n\"We are guessing right,\" he said. \"It's San Francisco for sure. Not Minneapolis or anyplace else.\"\n\nReacher smiled back and winked. McGrath had gotten it.\n\n\"You want to tell me why?\" Webster asked him.\n\nMcGrath was still smiling.\n\n\"Go figure,\" he said. \"You're the damn director.\"\n\n\"Because it's the nearest?\" Webster asked.\n\nMcGrath nodded.\n\n\"In both senses,\" he said, and smiled again.\n\n\"What both senses?\" Webster asked. \"What are we talking about?\"\n\nNobody answered him. The military men were quiet. Holly and McGrath were staring out through the windows at the ground, two thousand feet below. Reacher was craning up, looking ahead through the pilot's plexiglass canopy.\n\n\"Where are we?\" he asked him.\n\nThe pilot pointed down at a concrete ribbon below.\n\nThat's US 93,\"he said.\" Just about to leave Montana and enter Idaho.\n\nStill heading due south.\"\n\nReacher nodded.\n\n\"Great,\" he said. \" Follow 93. It's the only road goes south, right?\n\nWe'll catch him somewhere between here and Nevada.\"\n\nHe started worrying near the top of the second hour. Started worrying badly. Started desperate revisions to his grade-school calculations.\n\nMaybe Stevie was driving faster than fifty. He was a fast driver.\n\nFaster than Bell had been. Maybe he was doing nearer sixty. Where did that put him? Three hundred and sixty miles out. In which case they wouldn't catch him until two hours\" ; 0:+ ' fifteen minutes had elapsed. What if he was doing seventy? Could that Econoline sustain seventy, hour after hour, with a ton in back? Maybe. Probably. In which case he was four hundred and twenty miles out. A total of two hours forty minutes before they overhauled him. That was the envelope. Somewhere between one hour fifty minutes and two hours forty minutes, somewhere between Montana and Nevada. A whole fifty minutes of rising panic."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"More than a hundred miles of concrete ribbon to watch before he could know for sure he was wrong and they had to peel off hopelessly northeast toward Minnesota.\n\nThe helicopter was flying nose-down, top speed, straight along US 93.\n\nThe seven passengers were craned forward, staring down at the road.\n\nThey were over a town called Salmon. The pilot was calling out information like a tour guide. The giant peak of Mount McGuire, ten thousand feet, way off to the right. Twin Peaks, ten and a half thousand feet, up ahead to the right. Borah Peak, highest of all, twelve and a half thousand feet, way ahead to the left. The aircraft rose and fella thousand feet above the terrain. Hurtled along lower than the surrounding peaks, nose-down to the highway like a bloodhound.\n\nTime ticked away. Twenty minutes. Thirty. The road was pretty much empty. It connected Missoula in the north to Twin Falls in Idaho, three hundred miles to the south. Neither was a booming metropolis and this was a holiday. Everybody had already gotten where they were going. There was an occasional automobile and an occasional trucker working overtime. No white Econoline. There had been two white vehicles, but they were both pickups. There had been one panel truck, but it was dark green. That was all. Nothing else. No white truck.\n\nSometimes the road was empty all the way to the horizon in front of them. The time was ticking away. Like a bomb. Forty minutes. Fifty.\n\n\"I'm going to call Minneapolis,\" Webster said. \"We blew it.\"\n\nMcGrath waited, hoping. He shook his head.\n\n\"Not yet,\" he said. That's a desperation move. Mass panic. Can you imagine the crowds? The evacuation? People are going to get trampled.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Webster peered out and down. Stared at the road fora full minute.\n\nFifty-four minutes into the fifty-minute envelope.\n\n\"Get worse than trampled if that damn truck's already up there,\" he said. \"You want to imagine that?\"\n\nTime ticked away. Fifty-eight minutes. An hour. The road stayed empty.\n\n\"There's still time,\" Garber said. \"San Francisco or Minneapolis, either one, he's still got to be along way short.\"\n\nHe glanced at Reacher. Doubt and trust visible in his eyes, in approximately equal measures. More time ticked away. An hour and five minutes. The road still stayed empty, all the way to the distant horizon. The speeding helicopter reeled it in, only to reveal anew horizon, still empty.\n\n\"He could be anywhere,\" Webster said. \"San Francisco's wrong, maybe Minneapolis is wrong, too. He could be in Seattle already. Or anywhere.\"\n\n\"Not Seattle,\" Reacher said.\n\nHe stared forward. Stared on and on. Fear and panic had him by the throat. He checked his watch again and again. An hour and ten minutes. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. An hour and fifteen minutes. He stared at the watch and the empty ribbon below. Then he sat back and went quiet. Chilled with terror. He had hung on as long as he could, but they had reached the point where the math went absurd.\n\nTo be this far south without passing him, Stevie would need to be driving at a hundred miles an hour. Ora hundred and twenty. Ora hundred and fifty. He glanced at the others and spoke in a voice which didn't sound like his own.\n\n\"I blew it,\" he said. \"It must have been Minneapolis.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Then the thump of the engines faded and for the second time that day the huge bass roar of the bomb came back. He kept his eyes wide open so he wouldn't have to see it, but he saw it anyway. Not Marines this time, not hard men camped out in the heat to do a job, but soft people, women and children, small and smaller, camped out in a city park to watch fireworks, vaporizing and bursting into a hazy pink dew like his friends had done thirteen years before. The bone fragments coming out of children and hissing away through the burning air and hitting other children a hundred yards farther on. Hitting them and tearing through their soft guts like shrapnel and putting the luckiest ones in the hospital fora whole agonizing year.\n\nThey were all staring at him. He realized tears were rolling down his cheeks and splashing onto his shirt.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said.\n\nThey looked away.\n\n\"I got calls to make,\" Webster said. \"Why is it Minneapolis now? Why was it ever San Francisco?\"\n\n\"Federal Reserve branches,\" Reacher said quietly. There are twelve of them. The nearest two to Montana are San Francisco and Minneapolis.\n\nBorken hated the Fed. He thought it was the main instrument of the world government. He thought it was a big conspiracy to eliminate the middle classes. It was his special theory. He said it put him ahead in his understanding. And he believed the Fed ordered his father's bank to finagle the old guy into taking a loan so they could deliberately default him later.\"\n\n\"So Borken's attacking the Fed?\" Johnson asked urgently.\n\nReacher nodded.\n\nTwin blows,\"he said.\" In the war against the world government. Attack the old system with a surprise move, like Pearl Harbor. At the same time as setting up a brand-new system for converts to flock to. One bird with two stones.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He stopped talking. Too tired to continue. Too dispirited. Garber was staring at him. Real pain in his face. The beating of the engines was so loud it sounded like total silence.\n\nThe Declaration of Independence was only half of it,\" McGrath said.\n\n\"Double decoy. We were supposed to be focused up there, worried about Holly, worried about a suicide pact, going crazy, while they bombed the Fed behind our backs. I figured San Francisco because of Kendall, remember? I figured Borken would target the nearest branch to where his old man's farm was.\"\n\nWebster nodded.\n\n\"Hell of a plan,\" he said. \"Holiday weekend, agents on leave, big strategic decisions to make, everybody looking in the wrong place. Then the whole world looking at the bombing while Borken secures his territory backup there.\"\n\n\"Where is the Fed in Minneapolis?\" Johnson asked urgently.\n\nWebster shrugged vaguely.\n\n\"No idea,\" he said. \"I've never been to Minneapolis. I imagine it's a big public building, probably in a nice spot, parks all around, maybe on the river or something. There's a river in Minneapolis, right?\"\n\nHolly nodded.\n\n\"It's called the Mississippi,\" she said.\n\n\"No,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"It damn well is,\" Holly said. \"Everybody knows that.\"\n\n\"No,\" Reacher said again. \"It's not Minneapolis. It's San Francisco.\"\n\n\"Mississippi goes nowhere near San Francisco,\" Holly said.\n\nThen she saw a giant smile spreading across Reacher's face. A final gleam of triumph in his tired eyes.\n\n\"What?\" she said.\n\n\"San Francisco was right,\" he said."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Webster grunted in irritation.\n\n\"We'd have passed him already,\" he said. \"Miles back.\"\n\nReacher thumbed his mike. Shouted up to the pilot.\n\nTurn back,\"he said.\" A big wide loop.\"\n\nThen he smiled again. Smiled and closed his eyes.\n\n\"We did pass him,\" he said. \" Miles back. Right over his damn head.\n\nThey painted the truck green.\"\n\nThe Night Hawk swung away into a high banked loop. The passengers swung their gaze from window to window as the landscape rotated below.\n\nThere was paint in the motor pool,\"Reacher said.\" I tripped over the cans. Probably camouflage base coat They slapped it on this morning.\n\nDamn stuff is probably still wet.\"\n\nThey saw a Kenworth they had passed minutes ago. It was snuffling along a thousand feet below. Then along stretch of empty pavement.\n\nThen a white pickup. More empty road. Then a dark-green panel truck, speeding south.\n\n\"Down, down,\" Reacher was calling through.\n\n\"Is that it?\" McGrath asked.\n\nThe gap between the panel truck and the pickup in front was lengthening. The truck was falling back. There was nothing behind it, all the way to the horizon. The Night Hawk was losing height. It was dropping toward the truck the way an eagle heads fora baby rabbit.\n\n\"Is that it?\" McGrath asked again.\n\nThat's it,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"It sure is,\" Holly whooped.\n\n\"You positive?\" McGrath asked.\n\n\"Look at the roof!\" Holly told him.\n\nMcGrath looked. The roof was streaked with dark-green paint, but he could see it was peppered with tiny holes. Like somebody had fired a shotgun right through it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"We stared at those damn holes for two whole days,\" Holly said. \"I'll remember them the rest of my life.\"\n\nThere area hundred and thirteen of them,\"Reacher said.\" I counted.\n\nIt's a prime number.\"\n\nHolly laughed and leaned over. Smacked a joyous high five with him.\n\nThat's our truck,\"she said.\" No doubt about it.\"\n\n\"Can you seethe driver?\" McGrath asked.\n\nThe pilot tilted down and rocked sideways fora close look.\n\n\"It's Stevie,\" Holly shouted back. \"For sure. We've got him.\"\n\nThis thing got weapons?\" Webster asked.\n\nTwo big machine guns,\"the pilot called through.\" But I'm not going to use them. That I can't do. Military can't get involved in law enforcement.\"\n\n\"Can you fly this thing straight and level?\" Reacher asked him. \"Fifty miles an hour? Maybe sixty? Without asking too many questions?\"\n\nThe pilot laughed. It came through the headsets tinny and distorted.\n\n\"I can fly this thing any old way you want me to,\" he said. \"With the general's permission, of course.\"\n\nJohnson nodded cautiously. Reacher leaned down and picked the Barrett up off the floor. Unfastened his harness and stood up into a crouch.\n\nWaved to Holly to change seats with him. She crawled across in front of McGrath and Reacher eased into her place. He could feel the Night Hawk slowing and dropping in the air. He put some length into Holly's harness and fastened it loosely around his waist. Stretched back for the door release. Tugged at the handle and the door slid back on its runners.\n\nThen there was a gale of air coming in as the slipstream howled through the opening and the aircraft was turning half-sideways, sliding through the air like a car skids through snow. The green truck was below and behind, maybe two hundred feet down. The pilot was stabilizing his speed until he matched the truck's progress and tilting the aircraft so that Reacher's eye line was pointing straight down at the road."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"How's this?\" the pilot asked.\n\nReacher thumbed his mike button.\n\n\"Dead on,\" he said. \"Anything up ahead?\"\n\n\"One vehicle coming north,\" the co-pilot said. \"When that's through, you got nothing at all for ten miles.\"\n\n\"Anything behind?\" Reacher asked. He saw the northbound vehicle streak by below.\n\nMcGrath stuck his head out into the gale. Ducked back in and nodded.\n\n\"Clear behind,\" he said.\n\nReacher raised the Barrett to his shoulder. Put around in the breech.\n\nShooting at a moving vehicle from another moving vehicle is not a great recipe for accuracy, but he was looking at a distance of less than seventy yards and a target about twenty feet long and seven feet wide, so he wasn't worrying about it. He put the crosshairs on a point two-thirds of the way down the length of the roof. He figured the forward movement of the truck and the backward movement of the air might put the bullet dead center through the load compartment. He wondered vaguely whether the three-foot mattress was still in there.\n\nAftfi'Wait,\" Webster shouted. \" What if you're wrong? What if it's empty?\n\nYou're only guessing, right? This whole thing is guesswork. We need proof, Reacher. We need some kind of corroboration here.\"\n\nReacher didn't glance back. Kept his eye on the scope.\n\n\"Bullshit,\" he said, quietly, concentrating. This is going to be all the corroboration we need.\"\n\nWebster grabbed his arm.\n\n\"You can't do this,\" he said. \"You could be killing an innocent man.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Bullshit,\" Reacher said again. \"If he's an innocent man, I won't be killing him, will I?\"\n\nHe shook Webster's hand off his arm. Turned to face him.\n\nThink about it, Webster,\"he said.\" Relax. Be logical. The proof comes after I shoot, right? If he's hauling a bomb, we'll know all about it. If he's hauling fresh air, nothing bad will happen to him.\n\nHe'll just get another hole in his damn truck. Number one hundred and fourteen.\"\n\nHe turned back to the door. Raised the rifle again. Acquired the target. Out of sheer habit, he waited for his breath to be out and his heart to be between beats. Then he pulled the trigger. It took a thousandth of a second for the sound of the shot to hit his ear, and seventy times as long as that for the big heavy bullet to hit the truck. Nothing happened fora second. Then the truck ceased to exist.\n\nIt was suddenly a blinding fireball rolling down the highway like a hot white tumbleweed. A gigantic concussion ring blasted outward. The helicopter was hit by a violent shock-wave and tossed sideways and five hundred feet higher in the air. The pilot caught it at the top and slewed back. Steadied it in the air and swung around. Dropped the nose. There was nothing to see on the highway except a roiling cloud of thin smoke slowing into a teardrop shape three hundred yards long.\n\nNo debris, no metal, no hurtling wheels, no clattering wreckage.\n\nNothing at all except microscopic invisible particles of vapor accelerating into the atmosphere way faster than the speed of sound.\n\nThe pilot stuck around at a hover fora long moment and then drifted east. Put his craft gently down on the scrub, a hundred yards from the shoulder. Shut the engines down. Reacher satin the deafening silence and undipped his belt. Laid the Barrett on the floor and vaulted out through the open door. Walked slowly toward the highway."},{"from":"human","value":"A ton of dynamite."},{"from":"gpt","value":"A whole ton. A hell of a bang. There was nothing left at all. He guessed there were flattened grasses fora half-mile all around but that was it. The terrible energy of the explosion had blasted outward and met absolutely nothing at all in its path. Nothing soft, nothing vulnerable. It had blasted outward and then weakened and slowed and died to a puff of breeze miles away and it had hurt nothing.\n\nNothing at all. He stood in the silence and closed his eyes.\n\nThen he heard footsteps behind him. It was Holly. He heard her good leg alternating with her bad leg. Along stride, then a shuffle. He opened his eyes and looked at the road. She walked around in front of him and stopped. Laid her head on his chest and put her arms around him. Squeezed him tight and held on. He raised his hand to her head and smoothed her hair behind her ear, like he had seen her do.\n\n\"All done,\" she said.\n\n\"Get a problem, solve a problem,\" he said. That's my rule.\"\n\nShe was quiet fora longtime.\n\n\"I wish it was always that easy,\" she said.\n\nThe way she said it, after the delay, it was like along speech. Like a closely reasoned argument. He pretended not to know which problem she was talking about.\n\n\"Your father?\" he said. \"You're way, way out of his shadow now.\"\n\nShe shook her head against his chest.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she said.\n\n\"Believe it,\" he said. That thing you did for me on the parade ground was the smartest, coolest, bravest thing I ever saw anybody do, manor woman, young or old. Better than anything I ever did. Better than anything your old man ever did. He'd give his front-teeth for guts like that. So would I. You're way out of anybody's shadow now, Holly."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Believe it.\"\n\n\"I thought I was,\" she said. \"I felt like it. I really did. Fora while. But then when I saw him again, I felt just the same as I always did. I called him Dad.\"\n\n\"He is your dad,\" Reacher said.\n\n\"I know,\" she replied. That's the problem.\"\n\nHe was quiet fora long moment.\n\n\"So change your name,\" he said. That might do it.\"\n\nHe could feel her holding her breath.\n\n\"Is that a proposal?\" she asked.\n\n\"It's a suggestion,\" he said.\n\n\"You think Holly Reacher sounds good?\" she asked.\n\nHis turn to stay quiet fora longtime. His turn to catch his breath.\n\nAnd, finally, his turn to talk about the real problem.\n\n\"It sounds wonderful,\" he said. \"But I guess Holly McGrath sounds better.\"\n\nShe made no reply.\n\n\"He's the lucky guy, right?\" he said.\n\nShe nodded. A small motion of her head against his chest'So tell him,\" he said.\n\nShe shrugged in his arms.\n\n\"I can't,\" she said. \"I'm nervous.\"\n\n\"Don't be,\" he said. \"He might have something similar to tell you.\"\n\nShe looked up. He squinted down at her.\n\n\"You think so?\" she asked.\n\n\"You're nervous, he's nervous,\" Reacher said. \"Somebody should say something. I'm not about to do it for either of you.\"\n\nShe squeezed him harder. Then she stretched up and kissed him. Hard and long on the mouth.\n\nThank you,\" she said."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"For what?\" he asked.\n\n\"For understanding,\" she said.\n\nHe shrugged. It wasn't the end of the world. Just felt like it'Coming?\" she asked.\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"No,\" he said.\n\nShe left him on the shoulder of US 93, right therein Idaho. He watched her all the way back to the Night Hawk. Watched her climb the short ladder. She paused and turned. Looked back at him. Then she ducked up and in. The door closed. The rotor thumped. He knew he would never see her again. His clothes tore at him and the dust swirled all around him as the helicopter took off. He waved it away.\n\nWatched it until it was lost to sight. Then he took a deep breath and looked left and right along the empty highway. Friday, the Fourth of July. Independence Day.\n\nSaturday the fifth and Sunday the sixth, Yorke County was sealed oft and secret army units were moving in and out around the clock. Air artillery squads recovered the missile unit. They took it south in four Chinooks. Quartermasters went in and recovered all the ordnance they could find. They collected enough fora small war.\n\nMedical corpsmen removed the bodies. They found the twenty men from the missile unit in the cave. They found the skeletons Reacher had crawled through. They found five mutilated bodies in another cave.\n\nDressed like workmen. Like builders or carpenters. They took Fowler out of the command hut and Borken from the road in front of the courthouse. They brought Milosevic down from the mountain bowl and Brogan out of the small clearing west of the Bastion. They found Jackson's rough grave in the forest and dug him up. They laid eighteen dead militiamen and one dead woman side by side on the rifle range and helicoptered them away."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"One of Garber's military investigators flew in alone and took the hard disk out of the financial computer and put it on a chopper for transport to Chicago. Engineers moved in and dynamited the mine entrances. Sappers moved into the Bastion and disabled the water supply and tore down the power lines. They set fire to the huts and watched as they burned. Late Sunday night, when the last of the smoke was rising, they marched back to their choppers and lifted away south.\n\nEarly Monday morning, Harland Webster was back in the oft-white parlor inside the White House. Ruth Rosen was smiling at him and asking how his holiday weekend had been. He was smiling back at her and saying nothing. An hour later, the morning sun was rolling west to Chicago and three agents were arresting Brogan's girlfriend. They grilled her for thirty minutes and advised her to get out of town, leaving behind anything he had ever bought her. Then the same agents took Milosevic's brand new Ford Explorer out of the Federal Building's parking lot and drove it five miles south. They left it on a quiet street, doors unlocked, keys in. By the time it had been stolen, Holly Johnson was arriving at the knee clinic for an early appointment. An hour after that, she was back at her desk. Before lunch, the missing money from the bearer-bond robbery was following a route of her own choosing out of the Caymans. Six o'clock Monday evening she was home and packing.\n\nShe threw her bags into her car and drove north. Moved into McGrath's house up in Evanston.\n\nTuesday morning, there were three separate stories on the National Militia Internet. Refugees from an isolated valley in Montana had drifted south and west to new settlements with reports of a recent world government maneuver. Foreign troops had wiped out a band of militia heroes. The foreign battalion had been led by a French mercenary. He had succeeded only because he had used classified SDI technology, including satellites and lasers and microchips. Journalists picked upon the story and called the Hoover Building. Late Tuesday evening, in a prepared statement, an FBI spokesperson denied all knowledge of any such events."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Early Wednesday morning, after five hitched rides and four buses through seven states, Reacher was finally in Wisconsin. It was where he had aimed to be exactly a week before. He liked it there. It struck him as a fine place to be in July. He stayed until Friday afternoon."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Take the role of the writer's aide, proceed with the narrative.\\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\\nAuthor: Lee Child\\nTitle: Die Trying\\nChapter: 43\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He said the historical circumstances justified it. But he didn't mean these women and these children up here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What the hell are you talking about?\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\nReacher glanced at him, and then at Holly, surprised, like he was seeing them both for the first time.\\n\\n\\\"I was in the motor pool,\\\" he said. \\\"I saw the truck. Our truck? It was parked up, low on its springs, like it had a heavyweight inside.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" Holly said again.\\n\\n\\\"They've made themselves a truck bomb,\\\" Reacher said. \\\" Stevie's delivering it somewhere, some public place. That's the other attack.\\n\\nThey're going to explode it in a crowd. There's a whole ton of dynamite in it. And he's six hours ahead of us.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath was first down the stairs.\\n\\n\\\"Into the jeep,\\\" he yelled.\\n\\nGarber ran for the jeep. But Milosevic was much nearer. He vaulted in and fired it up. Then McGrath was helping Holly into the front seat.\\n\\nReacher was on the sidewalk, staring south, lost in thought. Milosevic was drawing his revolver. He was thumbing the hammer back. Garber stopped. Raised his rifle and aimed. Milosevicleaned across in front of Holly. McGrath jumped away. Milosevic stamped on the gas and roared away one-handed with the muzzle jammed into Holly's side. One-handed over the rough road, the jeep was allover the place. No chance of hitting Milosevic. Garber could see that. He lowered his rifle and watched them go.\\n\\n\\\"Both of them?\\\" Webster said to himself. \\\"Please, God, no.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We could use another chopper right now,\\\" the aide said. \\\"I don't think we have to worry about the missiles anymore.\\\"\\n\\nHe panned the camera north and west and zoomed in on the mountain bowl in front of the mine entrances. The four missile trucks were sitting inert. The sprawled body of the dead sentry was nearby.\\n\\n\\\"OK, call in a chopper,\\\" Johnson said.\\n\\n\\\"Better coming direct from you, sir,\\\" the aide said.\\n\\nJohnson turned sideways to use the phone. Then he spun back to watch as the jeep drove into shot. It bounced up out of the last hairpin into the bowl and raced across the shale. Swerved around the dead trucks and slewed to a stop in front of the left-hand shed. Milosevic jumped out and danced around the hood. Revolver steady on Holly as he approached. He pulled her out by the arm and dragged her to the big wooden doors. Levered one open with his foot and pushed her inside. He followed her in and the huge door swung shut. Webster glanced away from the screen.\\n\\n\\\"Call the chopper, sir,\\\" the aide said.\\n\\n\\\"Make it a fast one,\\\" Webster added.\\n\\nQuickest way to the mines was a shortcut through the Bastion. It was deserted and quiet. They ran through it and headed north across the rifle range toward the parade ground. Stopped short in the woods. The whole remaining militia population was standing silently in neat ranks, quiet fearful faces turned to the front, where Borken's upturned box still awaited his arrival.\\n\\nReacher ignored them and led the others around in the trees. Then in a straight line to the road. Straight north along it. Reacher was carrying the big Barren. He had retrieved it from the mess hall roof, because he liked it. Garber was hurrying at his side. McGrath was pushing ahead as fast as he could, desperate to get to Holly.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They ducked back into the woods before the last hairpin and Reacher scouted ahead. He holed up behind the rock he'd used before and covered every inch of the bowl with the Barrett's scope. Then he waved the other two up to join him.\\n\\n\\\"They're in the motor pool,\\\" he said. \\\"Left-hand shed.\\\"\\n\\nHe pointed with the fat barrel of the sniper rifle and the others saw the abandoned jeep and nodded. He ran over the shale and crouched behind the hood of the first missile truck. Garber sent McGrath next.\\n\\nThen he ran over. They crouched together behind the truck and stared at the log doors.\\n\\n\\\"What now?\\\" Garber asked. \\\"Frontal assault?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He's got a gun to her head,\\\" McGrath said. \\\"I don't want her hurt, Reacher. She's precious tome, OK?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Any other way in?\\\" Garber asked.\\n\\nReacher stared at the doors and the roaring of the Beirut bomb receded and was replaced by the quiet whimpering of an earlier nightmare. He spent a minute trawling desperately for an alternative. He thought about the rifles and the missiles and the trucks. Then he gave it up.\\n\\n\\\"Keep him occupied,\\\" he said. Talk to him, anything.\\\"\\n\\nHe left the Barrett and took the Clock back from McGrath. Dodged to the next truck, and the next, all the way level with the entrance to the other cavern. The charnel house, full of bodies and skeletons and rats. He heard McGrath calling to Milosevic in a faint faraway voice and he ran to the big log doors. Ducked in through the gap and moved back into the dark.\\n\\nHe had no flashlight. He felt his way around the troop carrier and eased on into the mountain. He held his hand above his head and felt the roof comedown. Felt for the bodies in the pile and skirted them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Crouched and headed left for the skeletons.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The rats were hearing him and smelling him and squealing angry warnings all the way back to their nests. He dropped to his knees and then lay down and swam through the pile of damp bones. Felt the roof of the tunnel lower and the sides press in. Took a deep breath and felt the fear comeback.\\n\\nThe fastest helicopter available on that day was a Marine Corps Night Hawk stationed at Malmstrom. It was along, fat, humped machine, but it was quick. Within minutes of Johnson's call, it was spinning up and receiving orders to head west and north to a gravel turnout on the last road in Montana. Then it was in the air. The Marine pilot found the road and followed it north, fast and low, until he spotted a cluster of army command vehicles parked tight into a rock cutting. He swung back and put down on the turnout and waited. Saw three men racing south toward him. One was a civilian and two were army. One was a colonel and the other was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The pilot shrugged at his crewman who pointed upward through the plexiglass canopy. There was alone vapor trail maybe thirty-six thousand feet up. Some big jet was unwinding a tight spiral and streaking south. The pilot shrugged again and figured whatever was happening, it was happening to the south. So he made a provisional course calculation and was surprised when the brass clambered aboard and ordered him to head north into the mountains.\\n\\nReacher was laughing. He was hauling himself along through the tunnel and laughing out loud. Shaking and crying with laughter. He was no longer afraid. The tight clamp of the rock on his body was like a caress. He had done this once, and survived it. It was possible. He was going to get through.\\n\\nThe fear had disappeared as suddenly as it had come. He had pushed through the pile of bones in the dark and stretched out and felt the rock clampdown against his back. His chest had seized and his throat had gagged tight. He had felt the hot damp flush of panic and pressed himself into the ground. He had felt his strength drain away. Then he had focused. The job in hand. Holly. Milosevic's revolver pushed against the dark billow of her hair, her fabulous eyes dull with despair. He had seen her in his mind at the end of the tunnel. Holly.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Then the tunnel seemed to straighten and become a warm smooth tube. An exact fit for his bulky shoulders. Like it was tailored for him, and him alone. A simple horizontal journey. He had learned along time ago that somethings were worth being afraid of. And somethings were not. Things that he had done before and survived did not justify fear.\\n\\nTo be afraid of a survivable thing was irrational. And whatever else he was, Reacher knew he was a rational man. In that split second the fear disappeared and he felt himself relax. He was a fighter. An avenger. And Holly was waiting for him. He thrust his arms forward like a swimmer diving for the water and swarmed through the mountain toward her.\\n\\nHe charged along with a tidy rhythm. Like marching out on the open road, but doing it lying down in the dark. Small deft movements of hands and feet. Head lowered. Laughing with relief. He felt the tunnel get smaller and hug him. He slid on through. He felt the blank wall ahead and folded himself neatly around the corner. Breathed easily and stopped laughing. Told himself it was time for quiet. He crawled on as fast as he could. Slowed up when he sensed the roof soaring away above him. Crept forward until the smell of the air told him he was nearly through.\\n\\nThen he heard the helicopter. He heard the faint thumping of the rotors in the distance. He heard feet scuffling forty yards in front of him. The inarticulate sound of surprise and panic. He heard Milosevic's voice. High-pitched. West Coast accent.\\n\\n\\\"Keep that chopper away from here,\\\" Milosevic screamed through the door.\\n\\nThe noise was getting nearer. Growing louder.\\n\\n\\\"Keep it away, you hear?\\\" Milosevic screamed. \\\"I'll kill her, McGrath. That's a promise, you hear?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It was totally dark. There were vehicles between Reacher and the cracks of light around the door. But not the white truck. That was gone. He rolled up into the space where it had been and pulled the Clock from his pocket. The thumping of the rotor blades was very close. It was battering the doors and filling the cavern.\\n\\n\\\"I'll trade her with you,\\\" Milosevic screamed through the door. \\\"I get out of here unharmed, you get her back, OK? McGrath? You hear me?\\\"\\n\\nIf there was a reply, Reacher didn't hear it.\\n\\n\\\"I'm not with these guys,\\\" Milosevic screamed. \\\"This whole thing is nothing to do with me. Brogan got me into it. He made me do it.\\\"\\n\\nThe noise was shattering. The heavy doors were shaking.\\n\\n\\\"I did it for the money, that's all,\\\" Milosevic screamed. \\\"Brogan was giving me money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, McGrath. You'd have done the exact same thing. Brogan was making me rich. He bought me a Ford Explorer. The Limited Edition. Thirty-five grand. How the hell else was I ever going to get one?\\\"\\n\\nReacher listened to the screaming voice in the darkness. He didn't want to shoot him. For one crazy moment, he felt absurdly grateful to him, because he had banished his childhood nightmare. He had forced him to confront it and defeat it. He had made him a betterman. He wanted to run up to him and shake him by the hand. He could picture himself doing it. But then the picture changed. He needed to run up to him and shake him by the throat and ask him if he knew where Stevie had taken the white truck. That was what he needed to do. That was why he didn't want to shoot him. He crept forward in the deafening noise and skirted around the vehicles.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He was operating in a one-dimensional world. He could see nothing because of the darkness. He could hear nothing, because of the helicopter. He sensed movement near the doors. Came out from behind a pickup and saw a shape framed against the cracks of light. A shape that should have been two shapes. Wide at the top, four legs.\\n\\nMilosevic with his arm around Holly's throat, his gun at her head. He waited for his vision to build. Their faces faded in from black to gray. Holly in front of Milosevic. Reacher raised the Clock. Circled left to get an angle. His shin caught a fender. He staggered and backed into a pile of paint cans. They crashed silently to the rock floor, inaudible in the crushing noise from outside. He sprinted closer to the light.\\n\\nMilosevic sensed it and turned. Reacher saw his mouth open in a silent shout. Saw him twist and push Holly out in front of him like a shield.\\n\\nSaw him stall with indecision, his revolver up in the air. Reacher dodged right, then danced back left. He saw Milosevic track him both ways. Saw Holly use the sway to tear herself out of his grip. The rotor noise was shattering. He saw Milosevic glancing left and right.\\n\\nSaw him making his decision. Reacher was armed, Holly was not.\\n\\nMilosevic lunged forward. The. 38 flashed silently in the noise. The brief white flame was blinding in the dark. Reacher lost his sense of where Holly was. He cursed and held his fire. He saw Milosevic aim again. Beyond him, he saw Holly's arm come up and stretch around his head from behind. He saw her hand touch his face with gentle precision. He saw him stumble. Then the door heaved open and Holly staggered away from the shattering flood of noise and sunlight and crashed straight into his arms.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The sunlight fell in a bright bar across Milosevic. He was lying on his back. His. 38 was in his hand. The hammer was back. There was a shard of bathroom tile sticking out of his head where his left eye should have been. It was maybe three inches in and three inches out. A small worm of blood was running away from the point of entry.\\n\\nThen the open door was crowded with people. Readier saw McGrath and Garber standing in a blast of dust. A Night Hawk was landing behind them. Three men were spilling out and running over. A civilian and a colonel. And General Johnson. Holly twisted and saw them and buried her face back in Reacher's chest.\\n\\nGarber was the first to them. He pulled them out into the light and the noise. They stumbled awkwardly, four-legged. The downdraft tore at them. McGrath stepped near and Holly pulled herself from Reacher's grip and threw herself at him and hugged him hard. Then General Johnson was moving in on her through the crowd.\\n\\n\\\"Holly,\\\" he mouthed through the din.\\n\\nShe straightened in the light. Grinned at him. Hooked her hair back behind her ears. Pulled away from McGrath and hugged her father close.\\n\\n\\\"Still stuff for me to do, Dad,\\\" she screamed over the engines. \\\"I'll tell you everything later, OK?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"REACHER MADE A TWIRLING SIGNAL WITH HIS HAND TO TELL THE helicopter pilot to keep the engines spinning and ran through the noise and the eddying dust to take the Barrett back from Garber. He waved the others toward the machine. Hustled them up the ladder and followed them in through the sliding door. Laid the Barrett on the metal floor and dumped himself into a canvas chair. Pulled his headset on. Thumbed the button and called through to the pilot.\\n\\n\\\"Standby, OK?\\\" he said. \\\"I'll give you a course as soon as I've got one.\\\"\\n\\nThe pilot nodded and ran the engines up out of idle. The rotor thumped faster and the noise built louder. The weight of the aircraft came up off the tires.\\n\\n\\\"Where the hell are we going?\\\" Webster shouted.\\n\\n\\\"We're chasing Stevie, chief,\\\" McGrath shouted back. \\\"He's driving the truck. The truck is full of dynamite. He's going to explode it somewhere. Remember what the Kendall sheriff said? Stevie always got sent out to do the dirty work? You want me to draw you a damn picture?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But he can't have gotten out of here,\\\" Webster yelled. The bridge is blown. And there are no tracks through the forest. They closed them all.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Forest Service guy didn't say that,\\\" McGrath yelled back. They closed some of them. He wasn't sure which ones, was all. What he said was maybe there's away through, maybe there isn't.\\\"\\n\\nThey had two years to spy it out,\\\"Reacher shouted.\\\" You said the pickup had spent time on Forest Service tracks, right? Crushed sandstone allover the underside? They had two whole years to find away through the maze.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Webster glanced to his left, east, over to where the forest lay beyond the giant mountain. He nodded urgently, eyes wide.\\n\\n\\\"OK, so we got to stop him,\\\" he yelled. \\\"But where has he gone?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He's six hours ahead of us,\\\" Reacher shouted. \\\"We can assume the forest was pretty slow. Call it two hours? Then four hours on the open road. Maybe two hundred miles? Diesel Econoline, hauling a ton, can't be averaging more than about fifty.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But which damn direction?\\\" Webster yelled through the noise.\\n\\nHolly glanced at Reacher. That was a question they had asked each other a number of times, in relation to that exact same truck. Reacher opened up the map in his head and trawled around it allover again, clockwise.\\n\\n\\\"Could have gone east,\\\" he shouted. \\\"He'd still be in Montana, past Great Falls. Could be down in Idaho. Could be in Oregon. Could be halfway to Seattle.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" Garber yelled. Think about it the other way around. That's the key to this thing. Where has he been ordered to go? What would the target be?\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded slowly. Garber was making sense. The target.\\n\\n\\\"What does Borken want to attack?\\\" Johnson yelled.\\n\\nBorken had said: you study the system and you learn to hate it. Reacher thought hard and nodded again and thumbed his mike and called through to the pilot.\\n\\n\\\"OK, let's go,\\\" he said. \\\"Straight on south of here should do it.\\\"\\n\\nThe noise increased louder and the Night Hawk lifted heavily off the ground. It swung in the air and rose clear of the cliffs. Slipped south and banked around. Dropped its nose and accelerated hard. The noise moved up out of the cabin and settled to a deep roar inside the engines. The ground tilted and flashed past below. Reacher saw the mountain hairpins unwinding and the parade ground sliding past. The knot of tiny people was breaking up.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They were drifting away into the trees and being swallowed up under the green canopy. Then the narrow slash of the rifle range was under them, then the broad stony circle of the Bastion. Then the aircraft rose sharply as the ground fell away so that the big white courthouse slipped by underneath as small as a dollhouse. Then they were over the ravine, over the broken bridge, and away into the vast forested spaces to the south.\\n\\nReacher tapped the pilot on the shoulder and spoke through the intercom.\\n\\n\\\"What speed are we doing?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"Hundred and sixty,\\\" the pilot said.\\n\\n\\\"Course?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"Dead on south,\\\" the pilot said.\\n\\nReacher nodded. Closed his eyes and started to calculate. It was like being back in grade school. He's two hundred miles ahead, doing fifty miles an hour. You're chasing him at a hundred and sixty. How long before you catch him? Grade-school math had been OK for Reacher. So had fighting in the yard. The fighting part had stayed with him better than the math. He was sure there must be some kind of a formula for it. Something with x and y allover the damn page. Something equaling something else. But if there was a formula, he had long ago forgotten it. So he had to do it by trial and error. Another hour, Stevie would be two hundred and fifty miles from home. The Night Hawk would have done one hundred and sixty. Way behind. An hour after that, Stevie would be three hundred miles out, and the Night Hawk would be three hundred and twenty. Overshot. Therefore they were going to catch him somewhere near the top of the second hour. If they were headed in the right direction.\\n\\nFlathead Lake came into view, far ahead and far below. Reacher could seethe roads snaking across the rugged terrain. He thumbed the button on his mike.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Still south?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"Dead on,\\\" the pilot said.\\n\\n\\\"Still one-sixty?\\\" Reacher asked.\\n\\n\\\"Dead on,\\\" the pilot said again.\\n\\n\\\"OK, stick with it,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Hour and fifty minutes, maybe.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So where is he going?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\n\\\"San Francisco,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\n\\\"Or Minneapolis,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"But I'm gambling on San Francisco.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why?\\\" McGrath asked again.\\n\\n\\\"San Francisco or Minneapolis,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Think about it. Other possibilities would be Boston, New York, Philly, Cleveland, Richmond in Virginia, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City in Missouri, or Dallas in Texas.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath just shrugged blankly. Webster looked puzzled. Johnson glanced at his aide. Garber was motionless. But Holly was smiling.\\n\\nShe smiled and winked at Reacher. He winked back and the Night Hawk thumped on south over Missoula at a hundred and sixty miles an hour.\\n\\n\\\"Christ, it's the Fourth of July,\\\" Webster said suddenly.\\n\\nTell me about it,\\\"Reacher said.\\\" Lots of people gathered in public places. Families, kids and all.\\\"\\n\\nWebster nodded grimly.\\n\\n\\\"OK, where exactly in San Francisco?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"I'm not sure,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"North end of Market,\\\" Holly said. \\\" Right near Embarcadero Plaza.\\n\\nThat's where, chief. I've been thereon the Fourth. Big parade in the afternoon, fireworks over the water at night. Huge crowds all daylong.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Huge crowds everywhere on the Fourth,\\\" Webster said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You better be guessing right, people.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath looked up. A slow smile was spreading over his bruised face.\\n\\n\\\"We are guessing right,\\\" he said. \\\"It's San Francisco for sure. Not Minneapolis or anyplace else.\\\"\\n\\nReacher smiled back and winked. McGrath had gotten it.\\n\\n\\\"You want to tell me why?\\\" Webster asked him.\\n\\nMcGrath was still smiling.\\n\\n\\\"Go figure,\\\" he said. \\\"You're the damn director.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Because it's the nearest?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nMcGrath nodded.\\n\\n\\\"In both senses,\\\" he said, and smiled again.\\n\\n\\\"What both senses?\\\" Webster asked. \\\"What are we talking about?\\\"\\n\\nNobody answered him. The military men were quiet. Holly and McGrath were staring out through the windows at the ground, two thousand feet below. Reacher was craning up, looking ahead through the pilot's plexiglass canopy.\\n\\n\\\"Where are we?\\\" he asked him.\\n\\nThe pilot pointed down at a concrete ribbon below.\\n\\nThat's US 93,\\\"he said.\\\" Just about to leave Montana and enter Idaho.\\n\\nStill heading due south.\\\"\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Great,\\\" he said. \\\" Follow 93. It's the only road goes south, right?\\n\\nWe'll catch him somewhere between here and Nevada.\\\"\\n\\nHe started worrying near the top of the second hour. Started worrying badly. Started desperate revisions to his grade-school calculations.\\n\\nMaybe Stevie was driving faster than fifty. He was a fast driver.\\n\\nFaster than Bell had been. Maybe he was doing nearer sixty. Where did that put him? Three hundred and sixty miles out. In which case they wouldn't catch him until two hours\\\" ; 0:+ ' fifteen minutes had elapsed. What if he was doing seventy? Could that Econoline sustain seventy, hour after hour, with a ton in back? Maybe. Probably. In which case he was four hundred and twenty miles out. A total of two hours forty minutes before they overhauled him. That was the envelope. Somewhere between one hour fifty minutes and two hours forty minutes, somewhere between Montana and Nevada. A whole fifty minutes of rising panic.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"More than a hundred miles of concrete ribbon to watch before he could know for sure he was wrong and they had to peel off hopelessly northeast toward Minnesota.\\n\\nThe helicopter was flying nose-down, top speed, straight along US 93.\\n\\nThe seven passengers were craned forward, staring down at the road.\\n\\nThey were over a town called Salmon. The pilot was calling out information like a tour guide. The giant peak of Mount McGuire, ten thousand feet, way off to the right. Twin Peaks, ten and a half thousand feet, up ahead to the right. Borah Peak, highest of all, twelve and a half thousand feet, way ahead to the left. The aircraft rose and fella thousand feet above the terrain. Hurtled along lower than the surrounding peaks, nose-down to the highway like a bloodhound.\\n\\nTime ticked away. Twenty minutes. Thirty. The road was pretty much empty. It connected Missoula in the north to Twin Falls in Idaho, three hundred miles to the south. Neither was a booming metropolis and this was a holiday. Everybody had already gotten where they were going. There was an occasional automobile and an occasional trucker working overtime. No white Econoline. There had been two white vehicles, but they were both pickups. There had been one panel truck, but it was dark green. That was all. Nothing else. No white truck.\\n\\nSometimes the road was empty all the way to the horizon in front of them. The time was ticking away. Like a bomb. Forty minutes. Fifty.\\n\\n\\\"I'm going to call Minneapolis,\\\" Webster said. \\\"We blew it.\\\"\\n\\nMcGrath waited, hoping. He shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"Not yet,\\\" he said. That's a desperation move. Mass panic. Can you imagine the crowds? The evacuation? People are going to get trampled.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Webster peered out and down. Stared at the road fora full minute.\\n\\nFifty-four minutes into the fifty-minute envelope.\\n\\n\\\"Get worse than trampled if that damn truck's already up there,\\\" he said. \\\"You want to imagine that?\\\"\\n\\nTime ticked away. Fifty-eight minutes. An hour. The road stayed empty.\\n\\n\\\"There's still time,\\\" Garber said. \\\"San Francisco or Minneapolis, either one, he's still got to be along way short.\\\"\\n\\nHe glanced at Reacher. Doubt and trust visible in his eyes, in approximately equal measures. More time ticked away. An hour and five minutes. The road still stayed empty, all the way to the distant horizon. The speeding helicopter reeled it in, only to reveal anew horizon, still empty.\\n\\n\\\"He could be anywhere,\\\" Webster said. \\\"San Francisco's wrong, maybe Minneapolis is wrong, too. He could be in Seattle already. Or anywhere.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not Seattle,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\nHe stared forward. Stared on and on. Fear and panic had him by the throat. He checked his watch again and again. An hour and ten minutes. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. An hour and fifteen minutes. He stared at the watch and the empty ribbon below. Then he sat back and went quiet. Chilled with terror. He had hung on as long as he could, but they had reached the point where the math went absurd.\\n\\nTo be this far south without passing him, Stevie would need to be driving at a hundred miles an hour. Ora hundred and twenty. Ora hundred and fifty. He glanced at the others and spoke in a voice which didn't sound like his own.\\n\\n\\\"I blew it,\\\" he said. \\\"It must have been Minneapolis.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Then the thump of the engines faded and for the second time that day the huge bass roar of the bomb came back. He kept his eyes wide open so he wouldn't have to see it, but he saw it anyway. Not Marines this time, not hard men camped out in the heat to do a job, but soft people, women and children, small and smaller, camped out in a city park to watch fireworks, vaporizing and bursting into a hazy pink dew like his friends had done thirteen years before. The bone fragments coming out of children and hissing away through the burning air and hitting other children a hundred yards farther on. Hitting them and tearing through their soft guts like shrapnel and putting the luckiest ones in the hospital fora whole agonizing year.\\n\\nThey were all staring at him. He realized tears were rolling down his cheeks and splashing onto his shirt.\\n\\n\\\"I'm sorry,\\\" he said.\\n\\nThey looked away.\\n\\n\\\"I got calls to make,\\\" Webster said. \\\"Why is it Minneapolis now? Why was it ever San Francisco?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Federal Reserve branches,\\\" Reacher said quietly. There are twelve of them. The nearest two to Montana are San Francisco and Minneapolis.\\n\\nBorken hated the Fed. He thought it was the main instrument of the world government. He thought it was a big conspiracy to eliminate the middle classes. It was his special theory. He said it put him ahead in his understanding. And he believed the Fed ordered his father's bank to finagle the old guy into taking a loan so they could deliberately default him later.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So Borken's attacking the Fed?\\\" Johnson asked urgently.\\n\\nReacher nodded.\\n\\nTwin blows,\\\"he said.\\\" In the war against the world government. Attack the old system with a surprise move, like Pearl Harbor. At the same time as setting up a brand-new system for converts to flock to. One bird with two stones.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He stopped talking. Too tired to continue. Too dispirited. Garber was staring at him. Real pain in his face. The beating of the engines was so loud it sounded like total silence.\\n\\nThe Declaration of Independence was only half of it,\\\" McGrath said.\\n\\n\\\"Double decoy. We were supposed to be focused up there, worried about Holly, worried about a suicide pact, going crazy, while they bombed the Fed behind our backs. I figured San Francisco because of Kendall, remember? I figured Borken would target the nearest branch to where his old man's farm was.\\\"\\n\\nWebster nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Hell of a plan,\\\" he said. \\\"Holiday weekend, agents on leave, big strategic decisions to make, everybody looking in the wrong place. Then the whole world looking at the bombing while Borken secures his territory backup there.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Where is the Fed in Minneapolis?\\\" Johnson asked urgently.\\n\\nWebster shrugged vaguely.\\n\\n\\\"No idea,\\\" he said. \\\"I've never been to Minneapolis. I imagine it's a big public building, probably in a nice spot, parks all around, maybe on the river or something. There's a river in Minneapolis, right?\\\"\\n\\nHolly nodded.\\n\\n\\\"It's called the Mississippi,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"It damn well is,\\\" Holly said. \\\"Everybody knows that.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" Reacher said again. \\\"It's not Minneapolis. It's San Francisco.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mississippi goes nowhere near San Francisco,\\\" Holly said.\\n\\nThen she saw a giant smile spreading across Reacher's face. A final gleam of triumph in his tired eyes.\\n\\n\\\"What?\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"San Francisco was right,\\\" he said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Webster grunted in irritation.\\n\\n\\\"We'd have passed him already,\\\" he said. \\\"Miles back.\\\"\\n\\nReacher thumbed his mike. Shouted up to the pilot.\\n\\nTurn back,\\\"he said.\\\" A big wide loop.\\\"\\n\\nThen he smiled again. Smiled and closed his eyes.\\n\\n\\\"We did pass him,\\\" he said. \\\" Miles back. Right over his damn head.\\n\\nThey painted the truck green.\\\"\\n\\nThe Night Hawk swung away into a high banked loop. The passengers swung their gaze from window to window as the landscape rotated below.\\n\\nThere was paint in the motor pool,\\\"Reacher said.\\\" I tripped over the cans. Probably camouflage base coat They slapped it on this morning.\\n\\nDamn stuff is probably still wet.\\\"\\n\\nThey saw a Kenworth they had passed minutes ago. It was snuffling along a thousand feet below. Then along stretch of empty pavement.\\n\\nThen a white pickup. More empty road. Then a dark-green panel truck, speeding south.\\n\\n\\\"Down, down,\\\" Reacher was calling through.\\n\\n\\\"Is that it?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nThe gap between the panel truck and the pickup in front was lengthening. The truck was falling back. There was nothing behind it, all the way to the horizon. The Night Hawk was losing height. It was dropping toward the truck the way an eagle heads fora baby rabbit.\\n\\n\\\"Is that it?\\\" McGrath asked again.\\n\\nThat's it,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"It sure is,\\\" Holly whooped.\\n\\n\\\"You positive?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\n\\\"Look at the roof!\\\" Holly told him.\\n\\nMcGrath looked. The roof was streaked with dark-green paint, but he could see it was peppered with tiny holes. Like somebody had fired a shotgun right through it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"We stared at those damn holes for two whole days,\\\" Holly said. \\\"I'll remember them the rest of my life.\\\"\\n\\nThere area hundred and thirteen of them,\\\"Reacher said.\\\" I counted.\\n\\nIt's a prime number.\\\"\\n\\nHolly laughed and leaned over. Smacked a joyous high five with him.\\n\\nThat's our truck,\\\"she said.\\\" No doubt about it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Can you seethe driver?\\\" McGrath asked.\\n\\nThe pilot tilted down and rocked sideways fora close look.\\n\\n\\\"It's Stevie,\\\" Holly shouted back. \\\"For sure. We've got him.\\\"\\n\\nThis thing got weapons?\\\" Webster asked.\\n\\nTwo big machine guns,\\\"the pilot called through.\\\" But I'm not going to use them. That I can't do. Military can't get involved in law enforcement.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Can you fly this thing straight and level?\\\" Reacher asked him. \\\"Fifty miles an hour? Maybe sixty? Without asking too many questions?\\\"\\n\\nThe pilot laughed. It came through the headsets tinny and distorted.\\n\\n\\\"I can fly this thing any old way you want me to,\\\" he said. \\\"With the general's permission, of course.\\\"\\n\\nJohnson nodded cautiously. Reacher leaned down and picked the Barrett up off the floor. Unfastened his harness and stood up into a crouch.\\n\\nWaved to Holly to change seats with him. She crawled across in front of McGrath and Reacher eased into her place. He could feel the Night Hawk slowing and dropping in the air. He put some length into Holly's harness and fastened it loosely around his waist. Stretched back for the door release. Tugged at the handle and the door slid back on its runners.\\n\\nThen there was a gale of air coming in as the slipstream howled through the opening and the aircraft was turning half-sideways, sliding through the air like a car skids through snow. The green truck was below and behind, maybe two hundred feet down. The pilot was stabilizing his speed until he matched the truck's progress and tilting the aircraft so that Reacher's eye line was pointing straight down at the road.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"How's this?\\\" the pilot asked.\\n\\nReacher thumbed his mike button.\\n\\n\\\"Dead on,\\\" he said. \\\"Anything up ahead?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"One vehicle coming north,\\\" the co-pilot said. \\\"When that's through, you got nothing at all for ten miles.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Anything behind?\\\" Reacher asked. He saw the northbound vehicle streak by below.\\n\\nMcGrath stuck his head out into the gale. Ducked back in and nodded.\\n\\n\\\"Clear behind,\\\" he said.\\n\\nReacher raised the Barrett to his shoulder. Put around in the breech.\\n\\nShooting at a moving vehicle from another moving vehicle is not a great recipe for accuracy, but he was looking at a distance of less than seventy yards and a target about twenty feet long and seven feet wide, so he wasn't worrying about it. He put the crosshairs on a point two-thirds of the way down the length of the roof. He figured the forward movement of the truck and the backward movement of the air might put the bullet dead center through the load compartment. He wondered vaguely whether the three-foot mattress was still in there.\\n\\nAftfi'Wait,\\\" Webster shouted. \\\" What if you're wrong? What if it's empty?\\n\\nYou're only guessing, right? This whole thing is guesswork. We need proof, Reacher. We need some kind of corroboration here.\\\"\\n\\nReacher didn't glance back. Kept his eye on the scope.\\n\\n\\\"Bullshit,\\\" he said, quietly, concentrating. This is going to be all the corroboration we need.\\\"\\n\\nWebster grabbed his arm.\\n\\n\\\"You can't do this,\\\" he said. \\\"You could be killing an innocent man.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Bullshit,\\\" Reacher said again. \\\"If he's an innocent man, I won't be killing him, will I?\\\"\\n\\nHe shook Webster's hand off his arm. Turned to face him.\\n\\nThink about it, Webster,\\\"he said.\\\" Relax. Be logical. The proof comes after I shoot, right? If he's hauling a bomb, we'll know all about it. If he's hauling fresh air, nothing bad will happen to him.\\n\\nHe'll just get another hole in his damn truck. Number one hundred and fourteen.\\\"\\n\\nHe turned back to the door. Raised the rifle again. Acquired the target. Out of sheer habit, he waited for his breath to be out and his heart to be between beats. Then he pulled the trigger. It took a thousandth of a second for the sound of the shot to hit his ear, and seventy times as long as that for the big heavy bullet to hit the truck. Nothing happened fora second. Then the truck ceased to exist.\\n\\nIt was suddenly a blinding fireball rolling down the highway like a hot white tumbleweed. A gigantic concussion ring blasted outward. The helicopter was hit by a violent shock-wave and tossed sideways and five hundred feet higher in the air. The pilot caught it at the top and slewed back. Steadied it in the air and swung around. Dropped the nose. There was nothing to see on the highway except a roiling cloud of thin smoke slowing into a teardrop shape three hundred yards long.\\n\\nNo debris, no metal, no hurtling wheels, no clattering wreckage.\\n\\nNothing at all except microscopic invisible particles of vapor accelerating into the atmosphere way faster than the speed of sound.\\n\\nThe pilot stuck around at a hover fora long moment and then drifted east. Put his craft gently down on the scrub, a hundred yards from the shoulder. Shut the engines down. Reacher satin the deafening silence and undipped his belt. Laid the Barrett on the floor and vaulted out through the open door. Walked slowly toward the highway.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"A ton of dynamite.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"A whole ton. A hell of a bang. There was nothing left at all. He guessed there were flattened grasses fora half-mile all around but that was it. The terrible energy of the explosion had blasted outward and met absolutely nothing at all in its path. Nothing soft, nothing vulnerable. It had blasted outward and then weakened and slowed and died to a puff of breeze miles away and it had hurt nothing.\\n\\nNothing at all. He stood in the silence and closed his eyes.\\n\\nThen he heard footsteps behind him. It was Holly. He heard her good leg alternating with her bad leg. Along stride, then a shuffle. He opened his eyes and looked at the road. She walked around in front of him and stopped. Laid her head on his chest and put her arms around him. Squeezed him tight and held on. He raised his hand to her head and smoothed her hair behind her ear, like he had seen her do.\\n\\n\\\"All done,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Get a problem, solve a problem,\\\" he said. That's my rule.\\\"\\n\\nShe was quiet fora longtime.\\n\\n\\\"I wish it was always that easy,\\\" she said.\\n\\nThe way she said it, after the delay, it was like along speech. Like a closely reasoned argument. He pretended not to know which problem she was talking about.\\n\\n\\\"Your father?\\\" he said. \\\"You're way, way out of his shadow now.\\\"\\n\\nShe shook her head against his chest.\\n\\n\\\"I don't know,\\\" she said.\\n\\n\\\"Believe it,\\\" he said. That thing you did for me on the parade ground was the smartest, coolest, bravest thing I ever saw anybody do, manor woman, young or old. Better than anything I ever did. Better than anything your old man ever did. He'd give his front-teeth for guts like that. So would I. You're way out of anybody's shadow now, Holly.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Believe it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I thought I was,\\\" she said. \\\"I felt like it. I really did. Fora while. But then when I saw him again, I felt just the same as I always did. I called him Dad.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He is your dad,\\\" Reacher said.\\n\\n\\\"I know,\\\" she replied. That's the problem.\\\"\\n\\nHe was quiet fora long moment.\\n\\n\\\"So change your name,\\\" he said. That might do it.\\\"\\n\\nHe could feel her holding her breath.\\n\\n\\\"Is that a proposal?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"It's a suggestion,\\\" he said.\\n\\n\\\"You think Holly Reacher sounds good?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nHis turn to stay quiet fora longtime. His turn to catch his breath.\\n\\nAnd, finally, his turn to talk about the real problem.\\n\\n\\\"It sounds wonderful,\\\" he said. \\\"But I guess Holly McGrath sounds better.\\\"\\n\\nShe made no reply.\\n\\n\\\"He's the lucky guy, right?\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe nodded. A small motion of her head against his chest'So tell him,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe shrugged in his arms.\\n\\n\\\"I can't,\\\" she said. \\\"I'm nervous.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Don't be,\\\" he said. \\\"He might have something similar to tell you.\\\"\\n\\nShe looked up. He squinted down at her.\\n\\n\\\"You think so?\\\" she asked.\\n\\n\\\"You're nervous, he's nervous,\\\" Reacher said. \\\"Somebody should say something. I'm not about to do it for either of you.\\\"\\n\\nShe squeezed him harder. Then she stretched up and kissed him. Hard and long on the mouth.\\n\\nThank you,\\\" she said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"For what?\\\" he asked.\\n\\n\\\"For understanding,\\\" she said.\\n\\nHe shrugged. It wasn't the end of the world. Just felt like it'Coming?\\\" she asked.\\n\\nHe shook his head.\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" he said.\\n\\nShe left him on the shoulder of US 93, right therein Idaho. He watched her all the way back to the Night Hawk. Watched her climb the short ladder. She paused and turned. Looked back at him. Then she ducked up and in. The door closed. The rotor thumped. He knew he would never see her again. His clothes tore at him and the dust swirled all around him as the helicopter took off. He waved it away.\\n\\nWatched it until it was lost to sight. Then he took a deep breath and looked left and right along the empty highway. Friday, the Fourth of July. Independence Day.\\n\\nSaturday the fifth and Sunday the sixth, Yorke County was sealed oft and secret army units were moving in and out around the clock. Air artillery squads recovered the missile unit. They took it south in four Chinooks. Quartermasters went in and recovered all the ordnance they could find. They collected enough fora small war.\\n\\nMedical corpsmen removed the bodies. They found the twenty men from the missile unit in the cave. They found the skeletons Reacher had crawled through. They found five mutilated bodies in another cave.\\n\\nDressed like workmen. Like builders or carpenters. They took Fowler out of the command hut and Borken from the road in front of the courthouse. They brought Milosevic down from the mountain bowl and Brogan out of the small clearing west of the Bastion. They found Jackson's rough grave in the forest and dug him up. They laid eighteen dead militiamen and one dead woman side by side on the rifle range and helicoptered them away.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"One of Garber's military investigators flew in alone and took the hard disk out of the financial computer and put it on a chopper for transport to Chicago. Engineers moved in and dynamited the mine entrances. Sappers moved into the Bastion and disabled the water supply and tore down the power lines. They set fire to the huts and watched as they burned. Late Sunday night, when the last of the smoke was rising, they marched back to their choppers and lifted away south.\\n\\nEarly Monday morning, Harland Webster was back in the oft-white parlor inside the White House. Ruth Rosen was smiling at him and asking how his holiday weekend had been. He was smiling back at her and saying nothing. An hour later, the morning sun was rolling west to Chicago and three agents were arresting Brogan's girlfriend. They grilled her for thirty minutes and advised her to get out of town, leaving behind anything he had ever bought her. Then the same agents took Milosevic's brand new Ford Explorer out of the Federal Building's parking lot and drove it five miles south. They left it on a quiet street, doors unlocked, keys in. By the time it had been stolen, Holly Johnson was arriving at the knee clinic for an early appointment. An hour after that, she was back at her desk. Before lunch, the missing money from the bearer-bond robbery was following a route of her own choosing out of the Caymans. Six o'clock Monday evening she was home and packing.\\n\\nShe threw her bags into her car and drove north. Moved into McGrath's house up in Evanston.\\n\\nTuesday morning, there were three separate stories on the National Militia Internet. Refugees from an isolated valley in Montana had drifted south and west to new settlements with reports of a recent world government maneuver. Foreign troops had wiped out a band of militia heroes. The foreign battalion had been led by a French mercenary. He had succeeded only because he had used classified SDI technology, including satellites and lasers and microchips. Journalists picked upon the story and called the Hoover Building. Late Tuesday evening, in a prepared statement, an FBI spokesperson denied all knowledge of any such events.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Early Wednesday morning, after five hitched rides and four buses through seven states, Reacher was finally in Wisconsin. It was where he had aimed to be exactly a week before. He liked it there. It struck him as a fine place to be in July. He stayed until Friday afternoon.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":291,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\nTitle: Dr. No\nChapter: 6"},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Doctor No paused. He lifted his arms an inch and dropped them again resignedly in his lap. \" Mister Bond, I said that there was not a cloud in the sky during all these fourteen years. But one was there, all the time, below the horizon. And do you know what it was? It was a bird, a ridiculous bird called a roseate spoonbill! I will not weary you with the details, Mister Bond. You are already aware of some of the circumstances. The two wardens, miles away in the middle of the lake, were provisioned by launch from Cuba. They sent out their reports by the launch. Occasionally, ornithologists from America came by the launch and spent some days at the camp. I did not mind. The area is out of bounds to my men. The wardens were not allowed near my compounds. There was no contact. From the first I made it clear to the Audubon Society that I would not meet their representatives. And then what happens? One day, out of a clear sky, I get a letter by the monthly boat. The roseate spoonbills have become one of the bird wonders of the world. The Society gives me formal notification that they intend to build a hotel on their leasehold, near the river up which you came. Bird lovers from allover the world will come to observe the birds. Films will betaken. Crab Key, they told me in their flattering, persuasive letter, would become famous.\n\n\"Mister Bond,\" the arms were raised and dropped back. Irony gathered at the edges of the set smile. \"Can you believe it? This privacy I had achieved! The plans I had for the future! To be swept aside because of a lot of old women and their birds! I examined the lease. I wrote offering a huge sum to buy it. They refused. So I studied these birds. I found out about their habits. And suddenly the solution was there. And it was easy. Man had always bee: n the worst predator on these birds. Spoonbills are extremely shy. They frighten easily. I sent\"; to Florida fora marsh buggy-the vehicle that is used for oil prospecting, that will cover any kind of terrain. I adapted it to frighten and to burn-not only birds, but humans as well, for the wardens would have to go too. And, one night in December, my marsh buggy howled off across the lake. It smashed the camp, both wardens were reported killed-though one, it turned out, escaped to die in Jamaica-it burned the nesting places, it spread terror among the birds. Complete success! Hysteria spread among the spoonbills. They died in thousands. But then I get a demand fora plane to land on my airstrip. There was to bean investigation. I decide to agree. It seemed wiser. An accident is arranged. A lorry goes out of control down the airstrip as the plane is coming in. The plane is destroyed. All signs of the lorry are removed. The bodies are reverently placed in coffins and I report the tragedy. As I expected, there is further investigation. A destroyer arrives. I receive the captain courteously. He and his officers are brought round by sea and then led inland. They are shown the remains of the camp. My men suggest that the wardens went mad with loneliness and fought each other. The survivor set fire to the camp and escaped in his fishing canoe. The airstrip is examined. My men report that the plane was coming in too fast. The tyres must have burst on impact. The bodies are handed over. It is very sad. The officers are satisfied. The ship leaves. Peace reigns again.\""},{"from":"human","value":"Doctor No coughed delicately."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He looked from Bond to the girl and back again, \"And that, my friends, is my story-or rather the first chapter of what I am confident will be along and interesting tale. Privacy has been re-established. There are now no reseate spoonbills, so there will be no wardens. No doubt the Audubon. Society will decide to accept my offer for the rest of their lease. No matter. If they start their puny operations again, other misfortunes will befall them. This has been a warning tome. There will be no more interference.\"\n\n\"Interesting,\" said Bond. \"An interesting case history. So that was why Strangways had to be removed. What did you do with him and his girl?\"\n\n\"They are at the bottom of the Mona Reservoir. I sent three of my best men. I have a small but efficient machine in Jamaica. I need it. I have established a watch on the intelligence services in Jamaica and Cuba. It is necessary for my further operations. Your Mister Strangways became suspicious and started ferreting about. Fortunately, by this time, the routines of this man were known tome. His death and the girl's were a simple matter of timing. I had hoped to deal with you with similar expedition. You were fortunate. But I knew what type of a man you were from the files at King's House. I guessed that the fly would come to the spider. I was ready for you, and when the canoe showed upon the radar screen I knew you would not getaway.\"\n\nBond said, \"Your radar is not very efficient. There were two canoes. The one you saw was the girl's. I tell you she had nothing to do with me.\"\n\n\"Then she is unfortunate. I happen to be needing a white woman fora small experiment. As we agreed earlier, Mister Bond, one generally gets what one wants.\""},{"from":"human","value":"Bond looked thoughtfully at Doctor No."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He wondered if it was worthwhile even trying to make a dentin this impregnable man. Was it worth wasting breath by threatening or bluffing? Bond had nothing but a miserable two of clubs up his sleeve. The thought of playing it almost bored him. Casually, indifferently he threw it down.\n\n\"Then you're out of luck, Doctor No. You are now a file in London. My thoughts on this case, the evidence of the poisoned fruit and the centipede and the crashed motorcar, are on record. So are the names of Miss Chung and Miss Taro. Instructions were left with someone in Jamaica that my report should be opened and acted upon if I failed to return from Crab Key within three days.\" Bond paused. The face of Doctor No was impassive. Neither the eyes nor the mouth had flickered. The jugular vein throbbed evenly. Bond bent forward. He said softly, \"But because of the girl, and only because of her, Doctor No, I will strike a bargain. In exchange for our safe return to Jamaica, you may have a week's start. You may take your aeroplane and your packet of stamps and try to getaway.\"\n\nBond sat back. \"Any interest, Doctor No?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"A voice behind Bond said quietly, \"Dinner is served.\" Bond swung round. It was the bodyguard. Beside him was another man who might have been his twin. They stood there, two stocky barrels of muscle, their hands buried in the sleeves of their kimonos, and looked over Bond's head at Doctor No.\n\n\"Ah, nine o'clock already.\" Doctor No rose slowly to his feet. \"Come alone. We can continue our conversation in more intimate surroundings. It is kind of you both to have listened tome with such exemplary patience. I hope the modesty of my cuisine and my cellar will not prove a further imposition.\"\n\nDouble doors stood open in the wall behind the two white-jacketed men. Bond and the girl followed Doctor No through into a small octagonal mahogany panelled room lit by a central chandelier in silver with storm glasses round the candles. Beneath it was around mahogany table laid for three. Silver and glass twinkled warmly. The plain dark blue carpet was luxuriously deep. Doctor No took the centre high-backed chair and bowed the girl into the chair on his right. They sat down and unfolded napkins of white silk.\n\nThe hollow ceremony and the charming room maddened Bond. He longed to break it up with his own hands-to wind his silk napkin round Doctor No's throat and squeeze until the contact lenses popped out of the black, damnable eyes.\n\nThe two guards wore white cotton gloves. They served the food with a suave efficiency that was prompted by an occasional word in Chinese from Doctor No.\n\nAt first, Doctor No seemed preoccupied. He slowly ate through three bowls of different soup, feeding himself with a spoon with a short handle that fitted neatly between the pincers. Bond concentrated on hiding his fears from the girl. He sat relaxed and ate and drank with a forced good appetite. He talked cheerfully to the girl about Jamaica-about the birds and the animals and the flowers which were an easy topic for her. Occasionally his feet felt for hers under the table. She became almost gay. Bond thought they were putting on sab excellent imitation of an engaged couple being given dinner by a detested uncle."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond had no idea if his thin bluff had worked. He didn't give much for their chances. Doctor No, and Doctor No's story, exuded impregnability. The incredible biography rang true. Not a word of it was impossible. Perhaps there were other people in\" the world with their private kingdoms-away from the beaten track, where there were no witnesses, where they could do what they liked. And what did Doctor No plan to do next, after he had squashed the flies that had come to annoy him? And if-when-he killed Bond and the girl, would London pickup the threads that Bond had picked up? Probably they would. There would be Pleydell-Smith. The evidence of the poisoned fruit. But where would Bond's replacement get with Doctor No? Not far. Doctor No would shrug his shoulders over the disappearance of Bond and Quarrel, Never heard of them. And there would be no link with the girl. In Morgan's Harbour they would think she had been drowned on one of her expeditions. It was hard to see what could interfere with Doctor No-with the second chapter of his life, whatever it was.\n\nUnderneath his chatter with the girl, Bond prepared for the worst. There were plenty of weapons beside his plate. When the cutlets came, perfectly cooked, Bond fiddled indecisively with the knives and chose the bread knife to eat them with. While he ate and talked, he edged the big steel meat knife towards him. An expansive gesture of his right hand knocked over his glass of champagne and in the split second of the crash his left hand flicked the knife into the deep sleeve of his kimono. In the midst of Bond's apologies and the confusion as he and the bodyguard mopped up the spilled champagne, Bond raised his left arm and felt the knife slip back to below his armpit and then fall inside the kimono against his ribs. When he had finished his cutlets he tightened the silk belt round his waist, shifting the knife across his stomach. The knife nestled comfortingly against his skin and gradually the steel grew warm."},{"from":"human","value":"Coffee came and the meal was ended."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The two guards came and stood close behind Bond's chair and the girl's. They stood with their arms crossed on their chests, impassive, motionless, like executioners.\n\nDoctor No put his cup softly down on his saucer. He laid his two steel claws down on the table in front of him. He sat a fraction more upright. He turned his body an inch in Bond's direction. Now there was no preoccupation in his face. The eyes were hard and direct. The thin mouth creased and opened. \"You have enjoyed your dinner, Mister Bond?\"\n\nBond took a cigarette from the silver box in front of him and lit it. He played with the silver table-lighter. He smelled bad news coming. He must somehow pocket the lighter. Fire might perhaps be another weapon. He said easily, \"Yes. It was excellent.\" He looked across at the girl. He leant forward in his chair and rested his forearms on the table. He crossed them, enveloping the lighter. He smiled at her. \"I hope I ordered what you like.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, it was lovely.\" For her the party was still going on.\n\nBond smoked busily, agitating his hands and forearms to create an atmosphere of movement. He turned to Doctor No. He stubbed out his cigarette and sat back in his chair. He'folded his arms across his chest. The lighter was in his left armpit. He smiled cheerfully.\" And what happens now, Doctor No?\"\n\n\"We can proceed to our after-dinner entertainment, Mister Bond.\" The thin smile creased and vanished. \"I have examined your proposition from every angle. I do not accept it.\"\n\nBond shrugged his shoulders. \"You are unwise.\"\n\n\"No, Mister Bond. I suspect that your proposition is a goldbrick. People in your trade do not behave as you suggest. They make routine reports to their headquarters. They keep their chief aware of the progress of their investigations. I know these things. Secret agents do not behave as you suggest you have done. You have been reading too many novels of suspense. Your little speech reeked of grease-paint and cardboard. No, Mister Bond, I do not accept your story. If it is true, I am prepared to face the consequences. I have too much at stake to be turned from my path. So the police come, the soldiers come. Where area man and a girl? What man and what girl? I know nothing. Please go away. You are disturbing my guanera. Where is your evidence? Your search warrant? The English law is strict, gentlemen. Go home and leave me in peace with my. beloved cormorants. You see, Mister Bond? And let us even say that the worst comes to the worst. That one of my agents talks, which is highly improbable (Bond remembered the fortitude of Miss Chung). What have Ito lose? Two more deaths on the charge sheet. But, Mister Bond, a man can only be hanged once.\" The tall pear-shaped head shook gently from side to side. \"Have you anything else to say? Any questions to ask? You both have a busy night ahead of you. Your time is getting short. And I must get my sleep. The monthly ship is putting in tomorrow and I have the loading to supervise. I shall have to spend the whole day down on the quay. Well, Mister Bond?\""},{"from":"human","value":"Bond looked across at the girl."},{"from":"gpt","value":"She had gone deathly pale. She was gazing at him, waiting for the miracle he would work. He looked down at his hands. He examined his nails carefully. He said, playing for time, \"And then what? After your busy day with the bird dung, what comes next on your programme? What is the next chapter you think you're going to write?\"\n\nBond didn't lookup. The deep quiet authoritative voice came to him as if it was coming down from the night sky.\n\n\"Ah, yes. You must have been wondering, Mister Bond. You have the habit of inquiry. It persists even to the last, even into the shadows. I admire such qualities in a man with only a few hours to live. So I will tell you. I will turnover the next page. It will console you. There is more to this place than bird dung. Your instincts did not betray you.\" Doctor No paused for emphasis. \"This island, Mister Bond, is about to be developed into the most valuable technical intelligence centre in the world.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Bond kept his eyes bent on his hands.\n\n\"Doubtless you know that Turks Island, about three hundred miles from here through the Windward Passage, is the most important centre for testing the guided missiles of the United States?\"\n\n\"It is an important centre, yes.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you have read of the rockets that have been going astray recently? The multi-stage SNARK, for instance, that ended its flight in the forests of Brazil instead of the depths of the South Atlantic?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You recall that it refused to obey the telemetred instructions to change its-course, even to destroy itself. It developed a will of its own?\"\n\n\"I remember.\"\n\n\"There have been other failures, decisive failures, from the long list of prototypes-the ZUNI, MATADOR, PETREL, REGULUS, BOMARC-so many names, so many changes, I can't even remember them all. Well, Mister Bond,\" Doctor No could not keep a note of pride out of his voice, \"it may interest you to know that the vast majority of those failures have been caused from Crab Key.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Is that so?\"\n\n\"You do not believe me? No matter. Others do. Others who have seen the complete abandonment of one series, the MASTODON, because of its recurring navigational errors, its failure to obey the radio directions from Turks Island. Those others are the Russians. The Russians are my partners in this venture. They trained six of my men, Mister Bond. Two of those men are on watch at this moment, watching the radio frequencies, the beams on which these weapons travel. There is a million dollars' worth of equipment up above us in the rock galleries, Mister Bond, sending fingers up into the Heavyside Layer, waiting for the signals, jamming them, countering beams with other beams. And from time to time a rocket soars upon its way a hundred, five hundred miles into the Atlantic. And we track it, as accurately as they are tracking it in the Operations Room on Turks Island. Then, suddenly, our pulses go out to the rocket, its brain is confused, it goes mad, it plunges into the sea, it destroys itself, it roars off at a tangent. Another test has failed. The operators are blamed, the designers, the manufacturers. There is panic in the Pentagon. Something else must be tried, different frequencies, different metals, a different radio brain. Of course,\" Doctor No was fair, \"we too have our difficulties. We track many practice shoots without being able to get through to the brain of the new rocket. But then we communicate urgently with Moscow. Yes, they have even given us a cipher machine with our own frequencies and routines. And the Russians get thinking. They make suggestions. We try them out. And then, one day, Mister Bond, it is like catching the attention of a man in a crowd. Up in the stratosphere the rocket acknowledges our signal. We are recognized and we can speak to it and change its mind,\" Doctor No paused. \"Do you not find that interesting, Mister Bond, this little sideline to my business in guano? It is, I assure you, most profitable. It might be still more so. Perhaps Communist China will pay more. Who knows? I already have my feelers out.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond lifted his eyes. He looked thoughtfully at Doctor No. So he had been right. There 'had been more, much more, in all this than met the eye. This was a big game, a game that explained everything, a game that was certainly, in the international espionage market, well worth the candle. Well, well! Now the pieces in the puzzle fell firmly into place. For this it was certainly worth scaring away a few birds and wiping out a few people. Privacy? Of course Doctor No would have to kill him and the girl. Power? This was it. Doctor No had really got himself into business.\n\nBond looked into the two black holes with anew respect. He said, \"You'll have to kill a lot more people to keep this thing in your hands, Doctor No. It's worth a lot of money. You've got a good property here-a better one than I thought. People are going to want to cut themselves apiece of this cake. I wonder who will get to you first and kill you. Those men up there,\" he gestured towards the ceiling, \"who were trained in Moscow? They're the technicians. I wonder what Moscow is. telling them to do? You wouldn't know that, would you?\"\n\nDoctor No said, \"You persist in underestimating me, Mister Bond. You are an obstinate man, and stupider than I had expected. I am aware of these possibilities. I have taken one of these men and made him into a private monitor. He has duplicates of the ciphers and of the cipher machine. He lives in another part of the mountain. The others think that he died. He watches on all the routine times. He gives me a second copy of all the traffic that passes. So far, the signals from Moscow have been innocent of any sign of conspiracy. I am thinking of these things constantly, Mister Bond. I take precautions and I shall take further precautions. As I said, you underestimate me.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I don't underestimate you, Doctor No. You're a very careful man, but you've got too many files open on you. In my line of business, the same thing applies tome. I know the feeling. But you've got some really bad ones. The Chinese one, for instance. I wouldn't like to have that one. The FBI should be the least painful-robbery and false identity. But do you know the Russians as well as I do? You're a \"best friend\" at the moment. But the'Russians don't have partners. They'll want to take you over-buy you outwith a bullet. Then there's the file you've started with my Service. You really want me to make that one fatter? I shouldn't do it if I were you, Doctor No. They're a tenacious lot of people in my Service. If anything happens tome and the girl, you'll find Crab Key's a very small and naked little island.\"\n\n\"You cannot play for high stakes without taking risks, Mister Bond. I accept the dangers and, so far as I can, I have equipped myself against them. You see, Mister Bond,\" the deep voice held a hint of greed, \" I am on the edge of still greater things. The Chapter Two to which I referred holds the promise of prizes which no one but a fool would throwaway because he was afraid. I have told you that I can bend the beams on which these rockets fly, Mister Bond. I can make them change course and ignore their radio control. What would you say, Mister Bond, if I could go further? If I could bring them down into the sea near this island and salvage the secrets of their construction. At present American destroyers, far out in the South Atlantic, salvage these missiles when they come to the end of their fuel and parachute down into the sea. Sometimes the parachutes fail to open. Sometimes the self-destruction devices fail to operate. No one on Turks Island would be surprised if every now and then the prototype of anew series broke off its flight and came down near Crab Key. To begin with, at least, it would be put down to mechanical failure. Later, perhaps, they would discover that other radio signals besides theirs were guiding their rockets. A jamming war would start. They would try and locate the origin of the false signals. Directly I found they were looking for me, I would have one last fling. Their rockets would go mad. They would land on Havana, on Kingston. They would turn round and home on Miami. Even without warheads, Mister Bond, five tons of metal arriving at a thousand miles an hour can cause plenty of damage in a crowded town. And then what? There would be panic, a public outcry. The experiments would have to cease. The Turks Island base would have to close down. And how much would Russia pay for that to happen, Mister Bond? And how much for each of the prototypes I captured for them? Shall we say ten million dollars for the whole operation?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Twenty million? It would be a priceless victory in the armaments race. I could name my figure. Don't you agree, Mister Bond? And don't you agree that these considerations make your arguments and threats seem rather puny?\"\n\nBond said nothing. There was nothing to say. Suddenly he was back in the quiet room high up above Regent's Park. He could hear the rain slashing softly against the window and M's voice, impatient, sarcastic, saying, \"Oh, some damned business about birds... holiday in the sun'll do you good... routine inquiry.\" And he, Bond, had taken a canoe and a fisherman and a picnic lunch and had gone off-how many days, how many weeks ago?-\"to have a look\". Well, he had had his look into Pandora's Box. He had found out the answers, been told the secrets-and now? Now he was going to be politely shown the way to his grave, taking the secrets with him and the waif he had picked up and dragged along with him on his lunatic adventure. The bitterness inside Bond came up into his mouth so that fora moment he thought he was going to retch. He reached for his champagne and emptied the glass. He said harshly, \"All right, Doctor No. Now let's get on with the cabaret. What's the programme-knife, bullet, poison, rope? But make it quick, I've seen enough of you.\"\n\nDoctor No's lips compressed into a thin purple line. The eyes were hard as onyx under the billiard-ball forehead and skull. The polite mask had gone. The Grand Inquisitor satin the high-backed chair. The hour had struck for the peine forte et dure.\n\nDoctor No spoke a word and the two guards took a step forward and held the two victims above the elbows, forcing their arms back against the sides of their chairs. There was no resistance. Bond concentrated on holding the lighter in his armpit. The white-gloved hands on his biceps felt like steel bands. He smiled across at the girl. \"I'm sorry about this, Honey. I'm afraid we're not going to be able to play together after all.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The girl's eyes in the paleface were blue-black with fear. Her lips trembled. She said, \"Will it hurt?\"\n\n\"Silence!\" Doctor No's voice was the crack of a whip. \"Enough of this foolery. Of course it will hurt. I am interested in pain. I am also interested in rinding out how much the human body can endure. From time to time I make experiments on those of my people who have to be punished. And on trespassers like yourselves. You have both put me to a great deal of trouble, In exchange I intend to put you to a great deal of pain. I shall record the length of your endurance. The facts will be noted. One day my findings will be given to the world. Your deaths will have served the purposes of science. I never waste human material. The German experiments on live humans during the war were of great benefit to science. It is a year since I put a girl to death in the fashion I have chosen for you, woman. She was a Negress. She lasted three hours. She died of terror. I have wanted a white girl for comparison.-I was not surprised when your arrival was reported. I get what I want.\" Doctor No sat back in his chair. His eyes were now fixed on the girl, watching her reactions. She stared back at him, half hypnotized, like a bush mouse in front of a rattlesnake.\n\nBond set his teeth.\n\n\"You area Jamaican, so you will know what I am talking about. This island is called Crab Key. It is called by that name because it is infested with crabs, land crabs-what they call ia Jamaica \"black crabs\". You know them. They weigh about a pound each and they areas big as saucers. At this time of year they come up in thousands from their holes near the shore and climb up towards the mountain. There, in the coral uplands, they go to ground again in holes in the rock and spawn their broods. They march up in armies of hundreds at a time. They march through everything and over everything. In Jamaica they go through houses that are in their path. They are like the lemmings of Norway. It is a compulsive migra-. tion.\" Doctor No paused. He said softly, \"But there is a difference. The crabs devour what they find in their path. And at present, woman, they are \"running\". They are coming up the mountainside in their tens of thousands, great red and orange and black waves of them, scuttling and hurrying and scraping against the rock above us at this moment. And tonight, in the middle of their path, they are going to find the naked body of a woman pegged out-a banquet spread for, them-and they will feel the warm body with their feeding pincers, and one will make the first incision with his fighting claws and then... and then...\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"There was a moan from the girl. Her head fell forward slackly onto her chest. She had fainted. Bond's body heaved in his chair. A string of obscenities hissed out between his clenched teeth. The huge hands of the guard were like fire round his arms. He couldn't even move the chair-legs on the floor. After a moment he desisted. He waited for his voice to steady, then he said, with all the venom he could put into the words, \"You bastard. You'll fry in hell for this.\"\n\nDoctor No smiled thinly. \"Mister Bond, I do not admit the existence of hell. Console yourself. Perhaps they will start at the throat or the heart. The movement of the pulse will attract them. Then it will not belong.\" He spoke a sentence in Chinese. The guard behind the girl's chair leant forward and plucked her bodily out of the chair as if she had been a child and slung the inert body over his shoulder. Between the dangling arms the hair fell down in a golden shower. The guard went to the door and opened it and went out, closing it noiselessly behind him.\n\nFora moment there was silence in the room. Bond thought only of the knife against his skin and of the lighter under his armpit. How much damage could he do with the two pieces of metal? Could he somehow get within range of Doctor No?\n\nDoctor No said quietly, \"You said that power was an illusion, Mister Bond. Do you change your mind? My power to select this particular death for the girl is surely not an illusion. However, let us proceed to the method of your departure. That also has its novel aspects. You see, Mister Bond, I am interested in the anatomy of courage-in the power of the human body to endure. But how to measure human endurance? How to plot a graph of the will to survive, the tolerance of pain, the conquest of fear? I have given much thought to the problem, and I believe I have solved it. It is, of course, only a rough and ready method, and I shall learn by experience as more and more subjects are put to the test. I have prepared you for the experiment as best I could. I gave you a sedative so that your body should be rested and I have fed you well so that you maybe at full strength. Future-what shall I call them-patients, will have the same advantages. All will start equal in that respect. After that it will be a question of the individual's courage and powers of endurance.\" Doctor No paused, watching Bond's face. \"You see, Mister Bond, I have just finished constructing an obstacle race, an assault course against death. I will say no more about it because the element of surprise is one of the constituents of fear. It is the unknown dangers that are the worst, that bear most heavily on the reserves of courage. And I flatter myself that the gauntlet you will run contains a rich assortment of the unexpected. It will be particularly interesting, Mister Bond, that a man of your physical qualities is to be my first competitor. It will be most interesting to observe how far you get down the course I have devised. You should put up a worthy target figure for future runners. I have high expectations of you. You should go far, but when, as is inevitable, you have finally failed at an obstacle, your body will be recovered and I shall most meticulously examine the physical state of your remains. The data will be recorded. You will be the first dot on a graph. Something of an honour, is it not, Mister Bond?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond said nothing. What the hell did all this mean? What could this test consist of? Would it be possible to survive it? Could he conceivably escape from it and get to the girl before it was too late, even if it was only to kill her and save her from her torture? Silently Bond gathered his reserves of courage, steeling his mind against the fear of the unknown that already had him by the throat, focusing his whole will on survival. Somehow, above all else, he must cling to his weapons.\n\nDoctor No rose and stepped away from his chair. He walked slowly to the door and turned. The menacing black holes looked back at Bond from just below the lintel of the door. The head was inclined a fraction. The purple lips creased back. \"Run a good race for me, Mister Bond. My thoughts, as they say, will be with you.\"\n\nDoctor No turned away and the door closed softly behind the long thin gunmetal back."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"There was a man on the lift. The doors were open, waiting. James Bond, his arms still locked to his sides, was marched in. Now the dining-room would be empty. How soon would the guards go back, start clearing away the dinner, notice the missing things? The doors hissed shut. The liftman stood in front of the buttons so that Bond could not see which he had pressed. They were going up. Bond tried to estimate the distance. The lift sighed to a stop. The time seemed rather less than when he had comedown with the girl. The doors opened onto an uncarpeted corridor with rough grey paint on the stonewalls. It ran about twenty yards straight ahead.\n\n\"Hold it, Joe,\" said Bond's guard to the liftman. \"Be right with you.\"\n\nBond was marched down the corridor past doors numbered with letters of the alphabet. There was a faint hum of machinery in the air and behind one door Bond thought he could catch the crackle of radio static. It sounded as if they might be in the engine-room of the mountain. They came to the end door. It was marked with a black Q. It was ajar and the guard pushed Bond into the door so that it swung open. Through the door was a grey painted stone cell about fifteen feet square. There was nothingin it except a wooden chair on which lay, laundered and neatly folded, Bond's black canvas jeans and his blue shirt.\n\nThe guard let goof Bond's arms. Bond turned and looked into the broad yellow face below the crinkly hair. There was a hint of curiosity and pleasure in the liquid brown eyes. The man stood holding the door handle. He said, \"Well, this is it, bud. You're at the starting gate. You can either sit here and rotor find your way out onto the course. Happy landings.\""},{"from":"human","value":"Bond thought it was just worth trying."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He glanced past the guard to where the liftman was standing beside his open doors, watching them. He said softly, \"How would you like to earn ten thousand dollars, guaranteed, and a ticket to anywhere in the world?\" He watched the man's face. The mouth spread in a wide grin to show brownish teeth worn to uneven points by years of chewing sugar-cane.\n\n\"Thanks, Mister. I'd rather stay alive.\" The man made to close the door. Bond whispered urgently, \"We could get out of here together.\"\n\nThe thick lips sneered. The man said, \"Shove it!\" The door shut with a solid click.\n\nBond shrugged his shoulders. He gave the door a cursory glance. It was made of metal and there was no handle on the inside. Bond didn't waste his shoulder on it. He went to the chair and sat down on the neat pile of his clothes and looked round the cell. The walls were entirely naked except fora ventilation grille of thick wire in one corner just below the ceiling. It was wider than his shoulders. It was obviously the way out into the assault course. The only other break in the walls was a thick glass porthole, no bigger than Bond's head, just above the door. Light from the corridor filtered through it into the cell. There was nothing else. It was no good wasting anymore time. It would now be about ten-thirty. Outside, somewhere on the slope of the mountain, the girl would already belying, waiting for the rattle of claws on the grey coral. Bond clenched his teeth at the thought of the pale body spread-eagled out thereunder the stars. Abruptly he stood up. What the hell was he doing sitting still. Whatever lay on the other side of the wire grille, it was time to go.\n\nBond took out his knife and the lighter and threw off the kimono. He dressed in the trousers and shirt and stowed the lighter in his hip pocket. He tried the edge of the knife with his thumb. It was very sharp. It would be better still if he could get a point on it. He knelt on the floor and began whittling the rounded end on the stone. After a precious quarter of an hour he was satisfied. It was no stiletto, but it would serve to stab as well as cut. Bond put the knife between his teeth and set the chair below the grille, and climbed onto it. The grille! Assuming he could tear it off its hinges, the frame of quarter-inch wire might straighten into a spear. That would make a third weapon. Bond reached up with crooked fingers."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The next thing he knew was a searing pain up his arm and the crack of his head hitting the stone floor. He lay, stunned, with only the memory of a blue flash and the hiss and crackle of electricity to tell him what had hit him.\n\nBond got to his knees and stayed there. He bent his head down and shook it slowly from side to side like a wounded animal. He noticed a smell of burning flesh. He lifted his right hand up to his eyes. There was the red smear of an open burn across the inside of his fingers. Seeing it brought the pain. Bond spat out a four-letter word. Slowly he got to his feet He squinted up at the wire grille as if it might strike at him again, like a snake. Grimly he set the chair upright against the wall. He picked up his knife and cut a strip off the discarded kimono and tied it firmly across his fingers. Then he climbed up again onto the chair and looked at the grille. He was meant to get through it. The shock had been to soften him up-a taste of pain to come. Surely he had fused the blasted thing. Surely they would have switched off the current. He looked at it only for an instant, then the fingers of his left hand crooked and went straight up to the impersonal wire mesh. His fingers went through the wire rim and gripped.\n\nNothing! Nothing at all-just wire. Bond grunted. He felt his nerves slacken. He tugged at the wire. It gave an inch. He tugged again and it came away in his hand and dangled down from two strands of copper flex that disappeared into the wall. Bond pulled the grille loose from the flex and got-down from the chair. Yes, there was a join in the frame. He set to work unravelling the mesh. Then using the chair as a hammer, he straightened the heavy wire."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"After ten minutes, Bond had a crooked spear about four feet long. One end, where it had originally been cut by the pliers, was jagged. It would not pierce a man's clothes, but it would be good enough for the face and neck. By using all his strength and the crack at the bottom of the metal door, Bond turned the blunt end into a clumsy crook. He measured the wire against his leg. It was too long. He bent it double, and slipped the spear down a trouser leg. Now it hung from his waistband to just above the knee. He went back to the chair and climbed up again and reached, nervously, for the edge of the ventilator shaft. There was no shock. Bond heaved up and through the opening and lay on his stomach looking along the shaft.\n\nThe shaft was about four inches wider than Bond's shoulders. It was circular and of polished metal.\"Bond reached for his lighter, blessing the inspiration that had made him take it, and nicked it on. Yes, zinc sheeting that looked new. The shaft stretched straight ahead, featureless except for the ridges where the sections of pipe joined. Bond put the lighter back in his pocket and snaked forward.\n\nIt was easygoing. Cool air from the ventilating system blew strongly in Bond's face. The air held no smell of the sea-it was the canned stuff that comes from an air-conditioning plant. Doctor No must have adapted one of the shafts to his purpose. What hazards had he built into it to test out his victims? They would be ingenious and painful-designed to reduce the resistance of the victim. At the winning post, so to speak, there would be the coup de grâce-if the victim ever got that far. It would be something conclusive, something from which there would be no escape, for there would be no prizes in this race except oblivion-an oblivion, thought Bond, he might be glad to win. Unless of course Doctor No had been just a bit too clever. Unless he had underestimated the will to survive. That, thought Bond, was his only hope-to try to survive the intervening hazards, to get through at least to the last ditch."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"There was a faint luminosity ahead. Bond approached it carefully, his senses questing in front of him like antennae. It grew brighter. It was the glint of light against the end of the lateral shaft. He went on until his head touched the metal. He twisted over on his back. Straight above him, at the top of fifty yards or so of vertical shaft, was a steady glimmer. It was like looking up along gun barrel. Bond inched round the square bend and stood upright. So he was supposed to climb straight up this shining tube of metal without a foothold! Was it possible? Bond expanded his shoulders. Yes, they gripped the sides. His feet could also get a temporary purchase, though they would slip except where the ridges at the joints gave him an ounce of upward leverage. Bond shrugged his shoulders and kicked off his shoes. It was no good arguing. He would just have to try.\n\nSix inches at a time, Bond's body began to worm up the shaft-expand shoulders to grip the sides, lift feet, lock knees, force the feet outwards against the metal and, as the feet slipped downwards with his weight, contract shoulders and raise them a few inches higher. Do it again, and again and again and again. Stop at each tiny bulge where the sections joined and use the millimetre of extra support to get some breath and measure the next lap. Otherwise don't lookup, think only of the inches of metal that have to be conquered one by one. Don't worry about the glimmer of light that never grows brighter or nearer. Don't worry about losing your grip and falling to smash your ankles at the bottom of the shaft. Don't worry about cramp. Don't worry about your screaming muscles or the swelling bruises on your shoulders and the sides of your feet. Just take the silver inches as they come, one by one, and conquer them."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"But then the feet began to sweat and slip. Twice Bond lost a yard before his shoulders, scalding with the friction, could put on the brake. Finally he had to stop altogether to let his sweat dry in the downward draught of air. He waited fora full ten minutes, staring at his faint reflection in the polished metal, the face split in half by the knife between the teeth. Still he refused to lookup to see how much more there was, It might be too much to bear. Carefully Bond wiped each foot against a trouser-leg and began again.\n\nNow half Bond's mind was dreaming while the other half fought the battle. He wasn't even conscious of the strengthening breeze or the slowly brightening light. He saw himself as a wounded caterpillar crawling up a waste pipe towards the plug-hole of a bath. What would he see when he got through the plug-hole? A naked girl drying herself? A man shaving? Sunlight streaming through an open window into an empty bathroom?\n\nBond's head bumped against something. The plug was in the plug-hole! The shock of disappointment made him slip a yard before his shoulders got afresh grip. Then he realized. He was at the top! Now he noticed the bright light and the strong wind. Feverishly, but with a more desperate care, he heaved up again until his head touched. The wind was coming into his left ear. Cautiously he turned his head. It was another lateral shaft. Above him light was shining through a thick porthole. All he had to do was inch himself round and grip the edge of the new shaft and somehow gather enough strength to heave himself in. Then he would be able to lie down.\" With an extra delicacy, born of panic that something might now go wrong, that he might make a mistake and plummet back down the shaft to land in a crackle of bone, Bond, his breath steaming against the metal, carried out the manoeuvre and, with his last ounce of strength, jackknifed into the opening and crumpled full length on his face."},{"from":"human","value":"Later-how much later?"},{"from":"gpt","value":"-Bond's eyes opened and his body stirred. The cold had woken him from the fringe of total unconsciousness into which his body had plunged. Painfully he rolled over on his back, his feet and shoulders screaming at shim, and lay gathering his wits and summoning more strength. He had no idea what time it was or whereabouts he was inside the mountain. He lifted his head and looked back at the porthole above the yawning tube out of which he had come. The light was yellowish and the glass looked thick. He remembered the porthole in Room Q. There had been nothing breakable about that one, nor, he guessed, would there be here.\n\nSuddenly, behind the glass, he saw movement. Ashe watched, a pair of eyes materialized from behind the electric light bulb. They stopped and looked at him, the bulb making a yellow glass nose between them. They gazed incuriously at him and then they were gone. Bond's lips snarled back from his teeth. So his progress was going to be observed, reported back to Doctor No!\n\nBond said out loud, viciously, \"---them all,\" and turned sullenly back on his stomach. He raised his head and looked forward. The tunnel shimmered away into blackness. Come on! No good hanging about. He picked up his knife and put it back between his teeth and winced his way forward.\n\nSoon there was no more light. Bond stopped from time to time and used the lighter, but there was nothing but blackness ahead. The air began to get warmer in the shaft, and, perhaps fifty yards further, definitely hot. There was the smell of heat in the air, metallic heat. Bond began to sweat. Soon his body was soaked and he had to pause every few minutes to wipe his eyes. There came aright-hand turn in the shaft. Round it the metal of the big tube was hot against his skin. The smell of heat was very strong. There came another right-angled turn. As soon as Bond's head got round he quickly pulled out his lighter and lit it and then snaked back and lay panting. Bitterly he examined the new hazard, probing it, cursing it. His light had flickered on discoloured, oyster-hued zinc. The next hazard was to be heat!"},{"from":"human","value":"Bond groaned aloud."},{"from":"gpt","value":"How could his bruised flesh stand up to that?-How could he protect his skin from the metal? But there wasn't anything he could do about it. He could either go back, or stay where he was, or goon. There was no other decision to make, no other shift or excuse. There was one, and only one, grain of consolation. This would not be heat that would kill, only maim. This would not be the final killing ground-only one more test of how much he could take.\n\nBond thought of the girl and of what she was going through. Oh well. Get on with it. Now, let's see...\n\nBond took his knife and cutoff the whole front of his shirt and sliced it into strips. The only hope was to put some wrapping round the parts of his body that would have to bear the brunt-his hands and his feet. His knees and elbows would have to get along with their single covering of cotton fabric. Wearily he set to work, cursing softly.\n\nNow he was ready. One, two, three...\n\nBond turned the corner and forged forward into the heat stench.\n\nKeep your naked stomach off the ground! Contract your shoulders! Hands, knees, toes; hands, knees, toes. Faster, faster! Keep going fast so that each touch on the ground is quickly taken over by the next.\n\nThe knees were getting it worst, taking the bulk of Bond's weight. Now the padded hands were beginning to smoulder. There was a spark, and another one, and then a worm of red as the sparks began to run. The smoke from the stuff smarted in Bond's sweating eyes. God, he couldn't do anymore! There was no air. His lungs were bursting. Now his two hands shed sparks as he thrust them forward. The stuff must be nearly gone. Then the flesh would burn. Bond lurched and his bruised shoulder hit the metal. He screamed. He went on screaming, regularly, with each contact of hand or knee or toes. Now he was finished. Now it was the end. Now he would fall flat and slowly fry to death. No! He must drive on, screaming, until his flesh was burned to the bone. The skin must have already gone from the knees. Ina moment the balls of his hands would meet the metal. Only the sweat running dowrr his arms could be keeping the pads of stuff damp. Scream, scream, screamt It helps the pain. It tells you you're alive. Goon! Goon! It can't be much longer. This isn't where you're supposed to die. You are still alive. Don't give up! You can't!"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond's right hand hit something that gave before it. There was a stream of ice-cold air. His other hand hit, then his head. There was a tinny noise. Bond felt the lower edge of an asbestos baffle scrape down his back. He was through. He heard the baffle bang shut. His hands came up against solid wall. They quested to left and right. It was aright-angled bend. His body followed blindly round the corner. The cool air felt like daggers in his lungs. Gingerly he laid his fingers down on the metal. It was cold! With a groan Bond fell on his face and lay still.\n\nSometime later the pain revived him. Bond turned sluggishly over on his back. Vaguely he noticed the lighted porthole above him. Vaguely he took in the eyes gazing down on him. Then he let the black waves take him away again.\n\nSlowly, in the darkness, the blisters formed across the skin and the bruised feet and shoulders stiffened. The sweat dried on the body and then on the rags of clothing, and the cool air soaked down into the overheated lungs and began its insidious work. But the heartbeat on, strongly and regularly inside the tortured envelope, and the healing sorceries of oxygen and rest pumped life back into the arteries and veins and recharged the nerves.\n\nYears later, Bond awoke. He stirred. As his eyes opened and met the other pair, inches away behind the glass, pain took him and shook him like a rat. He waited for the shock to die. He tried again, and then again, until he had measured the strength of his adversary. Then Bond, to hide himself away from the witness, turned over on his stomach and took the full blast of it. Again he waited, exploring his body for its reactions, testing the strength of the resolve that was left in the batteries. How much more could he take now? Bond's lips drew back from his teeth and he snarled into the darkness. It was an animal sound. He had come to the end of his human reactions to pain and adversity. Doctor No had got him cornered. But there were animal reserves of desperation left and, in a strong animal, those reserves are deep."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Slowly, agonizingly, Bond snaked a few yards away from the eyes and then reached for his lighter and lit it. Ahead there was only the black full moon, the yawning circular mouth that led into the stomach of death. Bond put back the lighter. He took a deep breath and got to his hands and knees. The pain was no greater, only different. Slowly, stiffly, \" he winced-forward.\n\nThe cotton fabric at Bond's knees and elbows had burned away. Numbly his mind registered the moisture as his blisters burst against the cool metal. Ashe moved, he flexed his fingers-and toes, testing the pain. Slowly he got the measure of what he could do, what hurt most. This pain is supportable, he argued to himself. If I had been in an aeroplane crash, they would only diagnose superficial contusions and burns. I would be out of hospital in a few days. There's nothing wrong with, me. I'm a survivor from the crash. It hurts, but it's nothing. Think of the bits and pieces of the other passengers. Be thankful. Put it out of your mind. But, nagging behind these reflections, was the knowledge that he had not yet had the crash-that he was still on his way towards it, his resistance, his effectiveness reduced. When would it come? What shape would it take? How much more was he to be softened up before he reached the killing ground?\n\nAhead in the darkness the tiny red pinpoints might have been an hallucination, specks before the eyes as a result of exhaustion. Bond stopped and screwed up his eyes. He shook his head. No, they were still there. Slowly he snaked closer. Now they were moving. Bond stopped again. He listened. Above the quiet thumping of his heart there was a soft, delicate rustling. The pinpoints had increased in number."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Now there were twenty or thirty, shifting to and fro, some quickly, some slowly, allover the circle of blackness ahead. Bond reached for his lighter. He held his breath as he lit the little yellow flame. The red pinpoints went out. Instead, a yard ahead of him, very narrow mesh wire, almost as fine as muslin, blocked the shaft.\n\nBond inched forward, the lighter held before him. It was some sort of a cage with small things living in it. He could hear them scuttling back, away from the light. Afoot away from the mesh he dowsed the light and waited for his eyes to get used to the dark. Ashe waited, listening, he could hear the tiny scuttling back towards him, and gradually the forest of red pinpoints gathered again, peering at him through the mesh.\n\nWhat was it? Bond listened to the pounding of his heart. Snakes? Scorpions? Centipedes?\n\nCarefully he brought his eyes closeup to the little glowing forest. He inched the lighter up beside his face and suddenly pressed the lever. He caught a glimpse of tiny claws hooked through the mesh and of dozens of thick furry feet and of furry sacklike stomachs topped by big insect heads that seemed to be covered with eyes. The things plopped hurriedly off the wire onto the tin and scurried back and huddled in a grey-brown furry mass at the end of the cage.\n\nBond squinted through the mesh, moving the light back and forward. Then he dowsed the light, to save fuel, and let the breath come through his teeth in a quiet sigh.\n\nThey were spiders, giant tarantulas, three or four inches long. There were twenty of them in the cage. And somehow he had to get past them."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond lay and rested and thought while the red eyes gathered again in front of his face.\n\nHow deadly were these things? How much of the tales about them were myth? They could certainly kill animals, but how mortal to men were these giant spiders with the long soft friendly fur of a borzoi? Bond shuddered. He remembered the centipede. The touch of the tarantulas would be much softer. They would be like tiny teddy bears'paws against one's skin-until they bit and emptied their poison sacs into you.\n\nBut again, would this be Doctor No's killing ground? A bite or two perhaps-to send one into a delirium of pain. The horror of having to burst through the mesh in the darkness-Doctor No would not have reckoned with Bond's lighter-and squash through the forest of eyes, crushing some soft bodies, but feeling the jaws of the others lance home. And then more bites from \"the ones that had caught in the clothing. And then the creeping agony of the poison. That would have been the way Doctor No's mind would have worked-to send one screaming on one's way. To what? To the final fence?\n\nBut Bond had the lighter and the knife and the wire spear. All he needed was the nerve, and infinite, infinite precision.\n\nBond softly opened the jaws of the lighter and pulled the wick out an inch with his thumb and fingernail to give a bigger flame. He lit it and, as the spiders scuttled back, he pierced the thin wire mesh with his knife. He made a hole near the frame and cut down sideways and round. Then he seized the flap of wire and wrenched it out of the frame. It tore like stiff calico and came away in one piece. He put the knife back between his teeth and snaked through the opening. The spiders cowered before the flame of the lighter and crowded back on top of each other. Bond slid the wire spear out of his trousers and jabbed the blunt, doubled wire into the middle of them. He jabbed again and again, fiercely pulping the bodies. When some of the spiders tried to escape towards him he waved the light at them and smashed the fugitives one by one. Now the living spiders were attacking the dead and wounded and all Bond had to do was bash and bash into the writhing, sickening mess of blood and fur."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Slowly all movement slackened and then ceased. Were they all dead? Were some shamming? The flame of the lighter was beginning to die. He would have to chance it. Bond reached forward and shovelled the dead mess to one side. Then he took his knife from between his teeth and reached out and slashed open the second curtain of wire, bending the flap down over the heap of pulped bodies. The light flickered and became a red glow. Bond gathered himself and shot his body over the bloody pile of corpses and through the jagged frame.\n\nHe had no idea what bits of metal he touched or whether he had put his knee or his foot among the spiders. All he knew was that he had got through. He heaved himself yards on along the shaft and stopped to gather his breath and his nerve.\n\nAbove him a dim light came on. Bond squinted sideways and upwards, knowing what he would see. The slanting yellow eyes behind the thick glass looked keenly down at him. Slowly, behind the bulb, the head moved from side to side. The eyelids dropped in mock pity. A closed fist, the thumb pointing downwards in farewell and dismissal, inserted itself between the bulb and the glass. Then it was withdrawn. The light went out. Bond turned his face back to the floor of the shaft and rested his forehead on the cool metal. The gesture said that he was coming into the last lap, that the observers had finished with him until they came for his remains. It took an extra ounce of heart out of Bond that there had been no gesture of praise, however small, that he had managed to survive so far. These Chigroes hated him. They only wanted him to die, and as miserably as possible.\n\nBond's teeth ground softly together. He thought of the girl and the thought gave him strength. He wasn't dead yet. Damn it, he wouldn't die! Not until the heart was torn from his body."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond tensed his muscles. It was time to go. With extra care he put his weapons back in their places and painfully began to drag himself on into the blackness.\n\nThe shaft was beginning to slope gently downwards. It made the going easier. Soon the slope grew steeper so that Bond, could almost slide along under the momentum of his weight. It was a blessed relief not to have to make the effort with his muscles. There was a glimmer of grey light ahead, nothing more than a lessening of the darkness, but it was a change. The quality of the air seemed to be different. There was anew, fresh smell to it. What was it? The sea?\n\nSuddenly Bond realized that he was slipping down the shaft. He opened his shoulders and spread his feet to slow himself. It hurt and the braking effect was small. Now the shaft was widening. He could no longer get a grip! He was going faster and faster. A bend was just ahead. And it was a bend downwards!\n\nBond's body crashed into the bend and round it. Christ, he was diving head downwards! Desperately Bond spread his feet and hands. The metal flayed his skin. He was out of control, diving down a gun barrel. Far below there was a circle of grey light. The open air? The sea? The light was tearing up at him. He fought for breath. Stay alive, you fool! Stay alive!\n\nHeadfirst, Bond's body shot out of the shaft and fell through the air, slowly, slowly, down towards the gunmetal sea that waited for him a hundred feet below."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond's body shattered the mirror of the dawn sea like a bomb.\n\nAshe had hurtled down the silver shaft towards the widening disc of light, instinct had told him to get his knife from between his teeth, to get his hands forward to break his fall, and to keep his head down and his body rigid. And, at the last fraction of a second when he glimpsed the up-rushing sea, he had managed to take a gulp of breath. So Bond hit the water in the semblance of a dive, his outstretched clenched fists cleaving a hole for his skull and shoulders, and though, by the time he had shot twenty feet below the surface, he had lost consciousness, the forty-mile-an-hour impact with the water failed to smash him.\n\nSlowly the body rose to the surface and lay, head down, softly rocking in the ripples of the dive. The water-choked\" lungs somehow contrived to send a last message to the brain. The legs and arms thrashed clumsily. The head turned up, water pouring from its open mouth. It sank. Again the legs jerked, instinctively trying to get the body upright in the water. ' This time, coughing horribly, the head jerked above the surface and stayed there. The arms and legs began to move feebly, paddling like a dog, and, through the red and black curtain, the bloodshot eyes saw the lifeline and told the sluggish brain to make for it.\n\nThe killing ground was a narrow deep water inlet at the base of the towering cliff. The lifeline towards which Bond struggled, hampered by the clumsy spear in his trouser-leg, was a strong wire fence, stretched from the rock walls of the inlet ana caging it off from the open sea. The two-feet squares of thick wire were suspended from a cable six feet above the surface and disappeared, algae encrusted, into the depths."},{"from":"human","value":"Bond got to the wire and hung, crucified."},{"from":"gpt","value":"For fifteen minutes he stayed like that, his body occasionally racked with vomiting, until he felt strong enough to turn his head and see where he was. Blearily his eyes took in the towering cliffs above him and the narrow vee of softly breathing water. The place was in deep grey shadow, cutoff from the dawn by the mountain, but out at sea there was the pearly iridescence of first light that meant that for the rest of the world the day was dawning. Here it was dark and gloomy and brooding.\n\nSluggishly Bond's mind puzzled over the wire fence. What was its purpose, closing off this dark cleft of sea? Was it to keep things out, or keep them in? Bond gazed vaguely down into the black depths around him. The wire strands vanished into nothingness below his clinging feet. There were small fish round his legs below the waist. What were they doing? They seemed to be feeding, darting in towards him and then backing away, catching at black strands. Strands of what? Of cotton from his rags? Bond shook his head to clear it. He looked again. No, they were feeding off his blood.\n\nBond shivered. Yes, blood was seeping off his body, off the torn shoulders, the knees, the feet, into the water. Now for the first time he felt the pain of the seawater on his sores and burns. The pain revived him, quickened his mind. If these small fish liked it, what about barracuda and shark? Was that what the wire fence was for, to keep man-eating fish from escaping to sea? Then why hadn't they been after him already? To hell with it! The first thing was to crawl up the wire afld get over to the other side. To put the fence between him and whatever lived in this black aquarium."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Weakly, foothold by foothold, Bond climbed up the wire and over the top and down again to where he could rest well above the water. He hooked the thick cable under his arms and hung, a bit of washing on a line, and gazed vaguely down at the fish that still fed from the blood that dripped off his feet.\n\nNow there was nothing much left of Bond, not many reserves. The last dive down the tube, the crash of impact and the half-death from drowning had squeezed him like a sponge. He was on the verge of surrender, on the verge of giving one small sigh and then slipping back into the soft arms of the water. How beautiful it would be to give in at last and rest-to feel the sea softly take him to its bed and turnout the light.\n\nIt was the explosive flight of the fish from their feeding ground that shook Bond out of his death-dreaming. Something had moved far below the surface. There was a distant shimmer. Something was coming slowly upon the landward side of the fence.\n\nBond's body tautened. His hanging jaw slowly shut and the slackness cleared from his eyes. With the electric shock of danger, life flooded back into him, driving out the lethargy, pumping back the. will to survive.\n\nBond uncramped the fingers that, along time ago, his brain had ordered not to lose his knife. He flexed his fingers and took afresh grip of the silver-plated handle. He reached down and touched the crook of the wire spear that still hung inside his trouser-leg. He shook his head sharply and focused his eyes. Now what?\n\nBelow him the water quivered. Something was stirring in the depths, something huge. A great length of luminescent greyness showed, poised far down in the darkness. Something snaked up from it, a whiplash as thick as Bond's arm. The tip of the thong was swollen to a narrow oval, with regular bud-like markings. It swirled through the water where the fish had been and was withdrawn. Now there was nothing but the huge grey shadow. What was it doing? Was it...? Was it tasting the blood?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"As if in answer, two eyes as big as footballs slowly swam up and into Bond's vision. They stopped, twenty feet below his own, and stared up through the quiet water at his face.\n\nBond's skin crawled on his back. Softly, wearily, his mouth uttered one bitter four-lettered word. So this was the last surprise of Doctor No, the end of the race!\n\nBond stared down, half hypnotized, into the wavering pools of eye far below. So this was the giant squid, the mythical kraken that could pull ships beneath the waves, the fifty-foot-long monster that battled with whales, that weighed a ton or more. What else did he know about them? That they had two long seizing tentacles and ten holding ones. That they had a huge blunt beak beneath eyes that were the only fishes'eyes that worked on the camera principle, like a man's. That their brains were efficient, that they could shoot backwards through the water at thirty knots, by jet-propulsion. That explosive harpoons burst in their jellied mantle without damaging them. That... but the bulging black and white targets of the eyes were rising up towards him. The surface of the water shivered. Now Bond could seethe forest of tentacles that flowered out of the face of the thing. They were weaving in front of the eyes like a bunch of thick snakes. Bond could seethe dots of the suckers on their undersides. Behind the head, the great flap of the mantle softly opened and closed, and behind that the jellied sheen of the body disappeared into the depths. God, the thing was as big as a railway engine!\n\nSoftly, discreetly, Bond snaked his feet and then his arms through the squares in the wire, lacing himself into them, anchoring himself so that the tentacles would have either to tear him to bits or wrench down the wire barrier with him. He squinted to right and left. Either way it was twenty yards along the wire to the land. And movement, even if he was capable of it, would be fatal. He must stay dead quiet and pray that the thing would lose interest. If it didn't... Softly Bond's fingers clenched on the puny knife."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The eyes watched him, coldly, patiently. Delicately, like the questing trunk of an elephant, one of the long seizing tentacles broke the surface and palped its way up the wire towards his leg. It reached his foot. Bond felt the hard kiss of the suckers. He didn't move. He dared not reach down and lose the grip of his arms through the wire. Softly the suckers tugged, testing the amount of yield. It was not enough. Like a huge slimy caterpillar, the tentacle walked slowly on up the leg. It got to the bloody blistered kneecap and stopped there, interested. Bond's teeth gritted with the pain. He could imagine the message going back down the thick tentacle to the brain: Yes, it's good to eat! And the brain signalling back: then get it! Bring it tome!\n\nThe suckers walked on up the thigh. The tip of the tentacle was pointed, then it splayed out so that it almost covered the width of Bond's thigh and then tapered off to a wrist. That was Bond's target. He would just have to take the pain and the horror and wait for the wrist to come within range.\n\nA breeze, the first soft breeze of early morning, whispered across the metal surface of the inlet. It raised small waves that slapped gently against the sheer walls of the cliff. A wedge of cormorants took off from the guanera, five hundred feet above the inlet, and, cackling softly, made out to sea. As they swept over, the noise that had disturbed them reached Bond-the triple blast of a ship's siren that means it is ready to take on cargo. It came from Bond's left. The jetty must be round the corner from the northern arm of the inlet. The tanker from Antwerp had come in. Antwerp! Part of the world outside-the world that was a million miles away, out of Bond's reach-surely out of his reach forever. Just around that corner, men would be in the galley, having breakfast. The radio would be playing. There would be the sizzle of bacon and eggs, th smell of coffee... breakfast cooking..."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\\nTitle: Dr. No\\nChapter: 6\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Doctor No paused. He lifted his arms an inch and dropped them again resignedly in his lap. \\\" Mister Bond, I said that there was not a cloud in the sky during all these fourteen years. But one was there, all the time, below the horizon. And do you know what it was? It was a bird, a ridiculous bird called a roseate spoonbill! I will not weary you with the details, Mister Bond. You are already aware of some of the circumstances. The two wardens, miles away in the middle of the lake, were provisioned by launch from Cuba. They sent out their reports by the launch. Occasionally, ornithologists from America came by the launch and spent some days at the camp. I did not mind. The area is out of bounds to my men. The wardens were not allowed near my compounds. There was no contact. From the first I made it clear to the Audubon Society that I would not meet their representatives. And then what happens? One day, out of a clear sky, I get a letter by the monthly boat. The roseate spoonbills have become one of the bird wonders of the world. The Society gives me formal notification that they intend to build a hotel on their leasehold, near the river up which you came. Bird lovers from allover the world will come to observe the birds. Films will betaken. Crab Key, they told me in their flattering, persuasive letter, would become famous.\\n\\n\\\"Mister Bond,\\\" the arms were raised and dropped back. Irony gathered at the edges of the set smile. \\\"Can you believe it? This privacy I had achieved! The plans I had for the future! To be swept aside because of a lot of old women and their birds! I examined the lease. I wrote offering a huge sum to buy it. They refused. So I studied these birds. I found out about their habits. And suddenly the solution was there. And it was easy. Man had always bee: n the worst predator on these birds. Spoonbills are extremely shy. They frighten easily. I sent\\\"; to Florida fora marsh buggy-the vehicle that is used for oil prospecting, that will cover any kind of terrain. I adapted it to frighten and to burn-not only birds, but humans as well, for the wardens would have to go too. And, one night in December, my marsh buggy howled off across the lake. It smashed the camp, both wardens were reported killed-though one, it turned out, escaped to die in Jamaica-it burned the nesting places, it spread terror among the birds. Complete success! Hysteria spread among the spoonbills. They died in thousands. But then I get a demand fora plane to land on my airstrip. There was to bean investigation. I decide to agree. It seemed wiser. An accident is arranged. A lorry goes out of control down the airstrip as the plane is coming in. The plane is destroyed. All signs of the lorry are removed. The bodies are reverently placed in coffins and I report the tragedy. As I expected, there is further investigation. A destroyer arrives. I receive the captain courteously. He and his officers are brought round by sea and then led inland. They are shown the remains of the camp. My men suggest that the wardens went mad with loneliness and fought each other. The survivor set fire to the camp and escaped in his fishing canoe. The airstrip is examined. My men report that the plane was coming in too fast. The tyres must have burst on impact. The bodies are handed over. It is very sad. The officers are satisfied. The ship leaves. Peace reigns again.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Doctor No coughed delicately.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He looked from Bond to the girl and back again, \\\"And that, my friends, is my story-or rather the first chapter of what I am confident will be along and interesting tale. Privacy has been re-established. There are now no reseate spoonbills, so there will be no wardens. No doubt the Audubon. Society will decide to accept my offer for the rest of their lease. No matter. If they start their puny operations again, other misfortunes will befall them. This has been a warning tome. There will be no more interference.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Interesting,\\\" said Bond. \\\"An interesting case history. So that was why Strangways had to be removed. What did you do with him and his girl?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They are at the bottom of the Mona Reservoir. I sent three of my best men. I have a small but efficient machine in Jamaica. I need it. I have established a watch on the intelligence services in Jamaica and Cuba. It is necessary for my further operations. Your Mister Strangways became suspicious and started ferreting about. Fortunately, by this time, the routines of this man were known tome. His death and the girl's were a simple matter of timing. I had hoped to deal with you with similar expedition. You were fortunate. But I knew what type of a man you were from the files at King's House. I guessed that the fly would come to the spider. I was ready for you, and when the canoe showed upon the radar screen I knew you would not getaway.\\\"\\n\\nBond said, \\\"Your radar is not very efficient. There were two canoes. The one you saw was the girl's. I tell you she had nothing to do with me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Then she is unfortunate. I happen to be needing a white woman fora small experiment. As we agreed earlier, Mister Bond, one generally gets what one wants.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Bond looked thoughtfully at Doctor No.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He wondered if it was worthwhile even trying to make a dentin this impregnable man. Was it worth wasting breath by threatening or bluffing? Bond had nothing but a miserable two of clubs up his sleeve. The thought of playing it almost bored him. Casually, indifferently he threw it down.\\n\\n\\\"Then you're out of luck, Doctor No. You are now a file in London. My thoughts on this case, the evidence of the poisoned fruit and the centipede and the crashed motorcar, are on record. So are the names of Miss Chung and Miss Taro. Instructions were left with someone in Jamaica that my report should be opened and acted upon if I failed to return from Crab Key within three days.\\\" Bond paused. The face of Doctor No was impassive. Neither the eyes nor the mouth had flickered. The jugular vein throbbed evenly. Bond bent forward. He said softly, \\\"But because of the girl, and only because of her, Doctor No, I will strike a bargain. In exchange for our safe return to Jamaica, you may have a week's start. You may take your aeroplane and your packet of stamps and try to getaway.\\\"\\n\\nBond sat back. \\\"Any interest, Doctor No?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"A voice behind Bond said quietly, \\\"Dinner is served.\\\" Bond swung round. It was the bodyguard. Beside him was another man who might have been his twin. They stood there, two stocky barrels of muscle, their hands buried in the sleeves of their kimonos, and looked over Bond's head at Doctor No.\\n\\n\\\"Ah, nine o'clock already.\\\" Doctor No rose slowly to his feet. \\\"Come alone. We can continue our conversation in more intimate surroundings. It is kind of you both to have listened tome with such exemplary patience. I hope the modesty of my cuisine and my cellar will not prove a further imposition.\\\"\\n\\nDouble doors stood open in the wall behind the two white-jacketed men. Bond and the girl followed Doctor No through into a small octagonal mahogany panelled room lit by a central chandelier in silver with storm glasses round the candles. Beneath it was around mahogany table laid for three. Silver and glass twinkled warmly. The plain dark blue carpet was luxuriously deep. Doctor No took the centre high-backed chair and bowed the girl into the chair on his right. They sat down and unfolded napkins of white silk.\\n\\nThe hollow ceremony and the charming room maddened Bond. He longed to break it up with his own hands-to wind his silk napkin round Doctor No's throat and squeeze until the contact lenses popped out of the black, damnable eyes.\\n\\nThe two guards wore white cotton gloves. They served the food with a suave efficiency that was prompted by an occasional word in Chinese from Doctor No.\\n\\nAt first, Doctor No seemed preoccupied. He slowly ate through three bowls of different soup, feeding himself with a spoon with a short handle that fitted neatly between the pincers. Bond concentrated on hiding his fears from the girl. He sat relaxed and ate and drank with a forced good appetite. He talked cheerfully to the girl about Jamaica-about the birds and the animals and the flowers which were an easy topic for her. Occasionally his feet felt for hers under the table. She became almost gay. Bond thought they were putting on sab excellent imitation of an engaged couple being given dinner by a detested uncle.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond had no idea if his thin bluff had worked. He didn't give much for their chances. Doctor No, and Doctor No's story, exuded impregnability. The incredible biography rang true. Not a word of it was impossible. Perhaps there were other people in\\\" the world with their private kingdoms-away from the beaten track, where there were no witnesses, where they could do what they liked. And what did Doctor No plan to do next, after he had squashed the flies that had come to annoy him? And if-when-he killed Bond and the girl, would London pickup the threads that Bond had picked up? Probably they would. There would be Pleydell-Smith. The evidence of the poisoned fruit. But where would Bond's replacement get with Doctor No? Not far. Doctor No would shrug his shoulders over the disappearance of Bond and Quarrel, Never heard of them. And there would be no link with the girl. In Morgan's Harbour they would think she had been drowned on one of her expeditions. It was hard to see what could interfere with Doctor No-with the second chapter of his life, whatever it was.\\n\\nUnderneath his chatter with the girl, Bond prepared for the worst. There were plenty of weapons beside his plate. When the cutlets came, perfectly cooked, Bond fiddled indecisively with the knives and chose the bread knife to eat them with. While he ate and talked, he edged the big steel meat knife towards him. An expansive gesture of his right hand knocked over his glass of champagne and in the split second of the crash his left hand flicked the knife into the deep sleeve of his kimono. In the midst of Bond's apologies and the confusion as he and the bodyguard mopped up the spilled champagne, Bond raised his left arm and felt the knife slip back to below his armpit and then fall inside the kimono against his ribs. When he had finished his cutlets he tightened the silk belt round his waist, shifting the knife across his stomach. The knife nestled comfortingly against his skin and gradually the steel grew warm.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Coffee came and the meal was ended.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The two guards came and stood close behind Bond's chair and the girl's. They stood with their arms crossed on their chests, impassive, motionless, like executioners.\\n\\nDoctor No put his cup softly down on his saucer. He laid his two steel claws down on the table in front of him. He sat a fraction more upright. He turned his body an inch in Bond's direction. Now there was no preoccupation in his face. The eyes were hard and direct. The thin mouth creased and opened. \\\"You have enjoyed your dinner, Mister Bond?\\\"\\n\\nBond took a cigarette from the silver box in front of him and lit it. He played with the silver table-lighter. He smelled bad news coming. He must somehow pocket the lighter. Fire might perhaps be another weapon. He said easily, \\\"Yes. It was excellent.\\\" He looked across at the girl. He leant forward in his chair and rested his forearms on the table. He crossed them, enveloping the lighter. He smiled at her. \\\"I hope I ordered what you like.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes, it was lovely.\\\" For her the party was still going on.\\n\\nBond smoked busily, agitating his hands and forearms to create an atmosphere of movement. He turned to Doctor No. He stubbed out his cigarette and sat back in his chair. He'folded his arms across his chest. The lighter was in his left armpit. He smiled cheerfully.\\\" And what happens now, Doctor No?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We can proceed to our after-dinner entertainment, Mister Bond.\\\" The thin smile creased and vanished. \\\"I have examined your proposition from every angle. I do not accept it.\\\"\\n\\nBond shrugged his shoulders. \\\"You are unwise.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, Mister Bond. I suspect that your proposition is a goldbrick. People in your trade do not behave as you suggest. They make routine reports to their headquarters. They keep their chief aware of the progress of their investigations. I know these things. Secret agents do not behave as you suggest you have done. You have been reading too many novels of suspense. Your little speech reeked of grease-paint and cardboard. No, Mister Bond, I do not accept your story. If it is true, I am prepared to face the consequences. I have too much at stake to be turned from my path. So the police come, the soldiers come. Where area man and a girl? What man and what girl? I know nothing. Please go away. You are disturbing my guanera. Where is your evidence? Your search warrant? The English law is strict, gentlemen. Go home and leave me in peace with my. beloved cormorants. You see, Mister Bond? And let us even say that the worst comes to the worst. That one of my agents talks, which is highly improbable (Bond remembered the fortitude of Miss Chung). What have Ito lose? Two more deaths on the charge sheet. But, Mister Bond, a man can only be hanged once.\\\" The tall pear-shaped head shook gently from side to side. \\\"Have you anything else to say? Any questions to ask? You both have a busy night ahead of you. Your time is getting short. And I must get my sleep. The monthly ship is putting in tomorrow and I have the loading to supervise. I shall have to spend the whole day down on the quay. Well, Mister Bond?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Bond looked across at the girl.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She had gone deathly pale. She was gazing at him, waiting for the miracle he would work. He looked down at his hands. He examined his nails carefully. He said, playing for time, \\\"And then what? After your busy day with the bird dung, what comes next on your programme? What is the next chapter you think you're going to write?\\\"\\n\\nBond didn't lookup. The deep quiet authoritative voice came to him as if it was coming down from the night sky.\\n\\n\\\"Ah, yes. You must have been wondering, Mister Bond. You have the habit of inquiry. It persists even to the last, even into the shadows. I admire such qualities in a man with only a few hours to live. So I will tell you. I will turnover the next page. It will console you. There is more to this place than bird dung. Your instincts did not betray you.\\\" Doctor No paused for emphasis. \\\"This island, Mister Bond, is about to be developed into the most valuable technical intelligence centre in the world.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Really?\\\" Bond kept his eyes bent on his hands.\\n\\n\\\"Doubtless you know that Turks Island, about three hundred miles from here through the Windward Passage, is the most important centre for testing the guided missiles of the United States?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is an important centre, yes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Perhaps you have read of the rockets that have been going astray recently? The multi-stage SNARK, for instance, that ended its flight in the forests of Brazil instead of the depths of the South Atlantic?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You recall that it refused to obey the telemetred instructions to change its-course, even to destroy itself. It developed a will of its own?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I remember.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There have been other failures, decisive failures, from the long list of prototypes-the ZUNI, MATADOR, PETREL, REGULUS, BOMARC-so many names, so many changes, I can't even remember them all. Well, Mister Bond,\\\" Doctor No could not keep a note of pride out of his voice, \\\"it may interest you to know that the vast majority of those failures have been caused from Crab Key.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Is that so?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You do not believe me? No matter. Others do. Others who have seen the complete abandonment of one series, the MASTODON, because of its recurring navigational errors, its failure to obey the radio directions from Turks Island. Those others are the Russians. The Russians are my partners in this venture. They trained six of my men, Mister Bond. Two of those men are on watch at this moment, watching the radio frequencies, the beams on which these weapons travel. There is a million dollars' worth of equipment up above us in the rock galleries, Mister Bond, sending fingers up into the Heavyside Layer, waiting for the signals, jamming them, countering beams with other beams. And from time to time a rocket soars upon its way a hundred, five hundred miles into the Atlantic. And we track it, as accurately as they are tracking it in the Operations Room on Turks Island. Then, suddenly, our pulses go out to the rocket, its brain is confused, it goes mad, it plunges into the sea, it destroys itself, it roars off at a tangent. Another test has failed. The operators are blamed, the designers, the manufacturers. There is panic in the Pentagon. Something else must be tried, different frequencies, different metals, a different radio brain. Of course,\\\" Doctor No was fair, \\\"we too have our difficulties. We track many practice shoots without being able to get through to the brain of the new rocket. But then we communicate urgently with Moscow. Yes, they have even given us a cipher machine with our own frequencies and routines. And the Russians get thinking. They make suggestions. We try them out. And then, one day, Mister Bond, it is like catching the attention of a man in a crowd. Up in the stratosphere the rocket acknowledges our signal. We are recognized and we can speak to it and change its mind,\\\" Doctor No paused. \\\"Do you not find that interesting, Mister Bond, this little sideline to my business in guano? It is, I assure you, most profitable. It might be still more so. Perhaps Communist China will pay more. Who knows? I already have my feelers out.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond lifted his eyes. He looked thoughtfully at Doctor No. So he had been right. There 'had been more, much more, in all this than met the eye. This was a big game, a game that explained everything, a game that was certainly, in the international espionage market, well worth the candle. Well, well! Now the pieces in the puzzle fell firmly into place. For this it was certainly worth scaring away a few birds and wiping out a few people. Privacy? Of course Doctor No would have to kill him and the girl. Power? This was it. Doctor No had really got himself into business.\\n\\nBond looked into the two black holes with anew respect. He said, \\\"You'll have to kill a lot more people to keep this thing in your hands, Doctor No. It's worth a lot of money. You've got a good property here-a better one than I thought. People are going to want to cut themselves apiece of this cake. I wonder who will get to you first and kill you. Those men up there,\\\" he gestured towards the ceiling, \\\"who were trained in Moscow? They're the technicians. I wonder what Moscow is. telling them to do? You wouldn't know that, would you?\\\"\\n\\nDoctor No said, \\\"You persist in underestimating me, Mister Bond. You are an obstinate man, and stupider than I had expected. I am aware of these possibilities. I have taken one of these men and made him into a private monitor. He has duplicates of the ciphers and of the cipher machine. He lives in another part of the mountain. The others think that he died. He watches on all the routine times. He gives me a second copy of all the traffic that passes. So far, the signals from Moscow have been innocent of any sign of conspiracy. I am thinking of these things constantly, Mister Bond. I take precautions and I shall take further precautions. As I said, you underestimate me.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I don't underestimate you, Doctor No. You're a very careful man, but you've got too many files open on you. In my line of business, the same thing applies tome. I know the feeling. But you've got some really bad ones. The Chinese one, for instance. I wouldn't like to have that one. The FBI should be the least painful-robbery and false identity. But do you know the Russians as well as I do? You're a \\\"best friend\\\" at the moment. But the'Russians don't have partners. They'll want to take you over-buy you outwith a bullet. Then there's the file you've started with my Service. You really want me to make that one fatter? I shouldn't do it if I were you, Doctor No. They're a tenacious lot of people in my Service. If anything happens tome and the girl, you'll find Crab Key's a very small and naked little island.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You cannot play for high stakes without taking risks, Mister Bond. I accept the dangers and, so far as I can, I have equipped myself against them. You see, Mister Bond,\\\" the deep voice held a hint of greed, \\\" I am on the edge of still greater things. The Chapter Two to which I referred holds the promise of prizes which no one but a fool would throwaway because he was afraid. I have told you that I can bend the beams on which these rockets fly, Mister Bond. I can make them change course and ignore their radio control. What would you say, Mister Bond, if I could go further? If I could bring them down into the sea near this island and salvage the secrets of their construction. At present American destroyers, far out in the South Atlantic, salvage these missiles when they come to the end of their fuel and parachute down into the sea. Sometimes the parachutes fail to open. Sometimes the self-destruction devices fail to operate. No one on Turks Island would be surprised if every now and then the prototype of anew series broke off its flight and came down near Crab Key. To begin with, at least, it would be put down to mechanical failure. Later, perhaps, they would discover that other radio signals besides theirs were guiding their rockets. A jamming war would start. They would try and locate the origin of the false signals. Directly I found they were looking for me, I would have one last fling. Their rockets would go mad. They would land on Havana, on Kingston. They would turn round and home on Miami. Even without warheads, Mister Bond, five tons of metal arriving at a thousand miles an hour can cause plenty of damage in a crowded town. And then what? There would be panic, a public outcry. The experiments would have to cease. The Turks Island base would have to close down. And how much would Russia pay for that to happen, Mister Bond? And how much for each of the prototypes I captured for them? Shall we say ten million dollars for the whole operation?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Twenty million? It would be a priceless victory in the armaments race. I could name my figure. Don't you agree, Mister Bond? And don't you agree that these considerations make your arguments and threats seem rather puny?\\\"\\n\\nBond said nothing. There was nothing to say. Suddenly he was back in the quiet room high up above Regent's Park. He could hear the rain slashing softly against the window and M's voice, impatient, sarcastic, saying, \\\"Oh, some damned business about birds... holiday in the sun'll do you good... routine inquiry.\\\" And he, Bond, had taken a canoe and a fisherman and a picnic lunch and had gone off-how many days, how many weeks ago?-\\\"to have a look\\\". Well, he had had his look into Pandora's Box. He had found out the answers, been told the secrets-and now? Now he was going to be politely shown the way to his grave, taking the secrets with him and the waif he had picked up and dragged along with him on his lunatic adventure. The bitterness inside Bond came up into his mouth so that fora moment he thought he was going to retch. He reached for his champagne and emptied the glass. He said harshly, \\\"All right, Doctor No. Now let's get on with the cabaret. What's the programme-knife, bullet, poison, rope? But make it quick, I've seen enough of you.\\\"\\n\\nDoctor No's lips compressed into a thin purple line. The eyes were hard as onyx under the billiard-ball forehead and skull. The polite mask had gone. The Grand Inquisitor satin the high-backed chair. The hour had struck for the peine forte et dure.\\n\\nDoctor No spoke a word and the two guards took a step forward and held the two victims above the elbows, forcing their arms back against the sides of their chairs. There was no resistance. Bond concentrated on holding the lighter in his armpit. The white-gloved hands on his biceps felt like steel bands. He smiled across at the girl. \\\"I'm sorry about this, Honey. I'm afraid we're not going to be able to play together after all.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The girl's eyes in the paleface were blue-black with fear. Her lips trembled. She said, \\\"Will it hurt?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Silence!\\\" Doctor No's voice was the crack of a whip. \\\"Enough of this foolery. Of course it will hurt. I am interested in pain. I am also interested in rinding out how much the human body can endure. From time to time I make experiments on those of my people who have to be punished. And on trespassers like yourselves. You have both put me to a great deal of trouble, In exchange I intend to put you to a great deal of pain. I shall record the length of your endurance. The facts will be noted. One day my findings will be given to the world. Your deaths will have served the purposes of science. I never waste human material. The German experiments on live humans during the war were of great benefit to science. It is a year since I put a girl to death in the fashion I have chosen for you, woman. She was a Negress. She lasted three hours. She died of terror. I have wanted a white girl for comparison.-I was not surprised when your arrival was reported. I get what I want.\\\" Doctor No sat back in his chair. His eyes were now fixed on the girl, watching her reactions. She stared back at him, half hypnotized, like a bush mouse in front of a rattlesnake.\\n\\nBond set his teeth.\\n\\n\\\"You area Jamaican, so you will know what I am talking about. This island is called Crab Key. It is called by that name because it is infested with crabs, land crabs-what they call ia Jamaica \\\"black crabs\\\". You know them. They weigh about a pound each and they areas big as saucers. At this time of year they come up in thousands from their holes near the shore and climb up towards the mountain. There, in the coral uplands, they go to ground again in holes in the rock and spawn their broods. They march up in armies of hundreds at a time. They march through everything and over everything. In Jamaica they go through houses that are in their path. They are like the lemmings of Norway. It is a compulsive migra-. tion.\\\" Doctor No paused. He said softly, \\\"But there is a difference. The crabs devour what they find in their path. And at present, woman, they are \\\"running\\\". They are coming up the mountainside in their tens of thousands, great red and orange and black waves of them, scuttling and hurrying and scraping against the rock above us at this moment. And tonight, in the middle of their path, they are going to find the naked body of a woman pegged out-a banquet spread for, them-and they will feel the warm body with their feeding pincers, and one will make the first incision with his fighting claws and then... and then...\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There was a moan from the girl. Her head fell forward slackly onto her chest. She had fainted. Bond's body heaved in his chair. A string of obscenities hissed out between his clenched teeth. The huge hands of the guard were like fire round his arms. He couldn't even move the chair-legs on the floor. After a moment he desisted. He waited for his voice to steady, then he said, with all the venom he could put into the words, \\\"You bastard. You'll fry in hell for this.\\\"\\n\\nDoctor No smiled thinly. \\\"Mister Bond, I do not admit the existence of hell. Console yourself. Perhaps they will start at the throat or the heart. The movement of the pulse will attract them. Then it will not belong.\\\" He spoke a sentence in Chinese. The guard behind the girl's chair leant forward and plucked her bodily out of the chair as if she had been a child and slung the inert body over his shoulder. Between the dangling arms the hair fell down in a golden shower. The guard went to the door and opened it and went out, closing it noiselessly behind him.\\n\\nFora moment there was silence in the room. Bond thought only of the knife against his skin and of the lighter under his armpit. How much damage could he do with the two pieces of metal? Could he somehow get within range of Doctor No?\\n\\nDoctor No said quietly, \\\"You said that power was an illusion, Mister Bond. Do you change your mind? My power to select this particular death for the girl is surely not an illusion. However, let us proceed to the method of your departure. That also has its novel aspects. You see, Mister Bond, I am interested in the anatomy of courage-in the power of the human body to endure. But how to measure human endurance? How to plot a graph of the will to survive, the tolerance of pain, the conquest of fear? I have given much thought to the problem, and I believe I have solved it. It is, of course, only a rough and ready method, and I shall learn by experience as more and more subjects are put to the test. I have prepared you for the experiment as best I could. I gave you a sedative so that your body should be rested and I have fed you well so that you maybe at full strength. Future-what shall I call them-patients, will have the same advantages. All will start equal in that respect. After that it will be a question of the individual's courage and powers of endurance.\\\" Doctor No paused, watching Bond's face. \\\"You see, Mister Bond, I have just finished constructing an obstacle race, an assault course against death. I will say no more about it because the element of surprise is one of the constituents of fear. It is the unknown dangers that are the worst, that bear most heavily on the reserves of courage. And I flatter myself that the gauntlet you will run contains a rich assortment of the unexpected. It will be particularly interesting, Mister Bond, that a man of your physical qualities is to be my first competitor. It will be most interesting to observe how far you get down the course I have devised. You should put up a worthy target figure for future runners. I have high expectations of you. You should go far, but when, as is inevitable, you have finally failed at an obstacle, your body will be recovered and I shall most meticulously examine the physical state of your remains. The data will be recorded. You will be the first dot on a graph. Something of an honour, is it not, Mister Bond?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond said nothing. What the hell did all this mean? What could this test consist of? Would it be possible to survive it? Could he conceivably escape from it and get to the girl before it was too late, even if it was only to kill her and save her from her torture? Silently Bond gathered his reserves of courage, steeling his mind against the fear of the unknown that already had him by the throat, focusing his whole will on survival. Somehow, above all else, he must cling to his weapons.\\n\\nDoctor No rose and stepped away from his chair. He walked slowly to the door and turned. The menacing black holes looked back at Bond from just below the lintel of the door. The head was inclined a fraction. The purple lips creased back. \\\"Run a good race for me, Mister Bond. My thoughts, as they say, will be with you.\\\"\\n\\nDoctor No turned away and the door closed softly behind the long thin gunmetal back.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There was a man on the lift. The doors were open, waiting. James Bond, his arms still locked to his sides, was marched in. Now the dining-room would be empty. How soon would the guards go back, start clearing away the dinner, notice the missing things? The doors hissed shut. The liftman stood in front of the buttons so that Bond could not see which he had pressed. They were going up. Bond tried to estimate the distance. The lift sighed to a stop. The time seemed rather less than when he had comedown with the girl. The doors opened onto an uncarpeted corridor with rough grey paint on the stonewalls. It ran about twenty yards straight ahead.\\n\\n\\\"Hold it, Joe,\\\" said Bond's guard to the liftman. \\\"Be right with you.\\\"\\n\\nBond was marched down the corridor past doors numbered with letters of the alphabet. There was a faint hum of machinery in the air and behind one door Bond thought he could catch the crackle of radio static. It sounded as if they might be in the engine-room of the mountain. They came to the end door. It was marked with a black Q. It was ajar and the guard pushed Bond into the door so that it swung open. Through the door was a grey painted stone cell about fifteen feet square. There was nothingin it except a wooden chair on which lay, laundered and neatly folded, Bond's black canvas jeans and his blue shirt.\\n\\nThe guard let goof Bond's arms. Bond turned and looked into the broad yellow face below the crinkly hair. There was a hint of curiosity and pleasure in the liquid brown eyes. The man stood holding the door handle. He said, \\\"Well, this is it, bud. You're at the starting gate. You can either sit here and rotor find your way out onto the course. Happy landings.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Bond thought it was just worth trying.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He glanced past the guard to where the liftman was standing beside his open doors, watching them. He said softly, \\\"How would you like to earn ten thousand dollars, guaranteed, and a ticket to anywhere in the world?\\\" He watched the man's face. The mouth spread in a wide grin to show brownish teeth worn to uneven points by years of chewing sugar-cane.\\n\\n\\\"Thanks, Mister. I'd rather stay alive.\\\" The man made to close the door. Bond whispered urgently, \\\"We could get out of here together.\\\"\\n\\nThe thick lips sneered. The man said, \\\"Shove it!\\\" The door shut with a solid click.\\n\\nBond shrugged his shoulders. He gave the door a cursory glance. It was made of metal and there was no handle on the inside. Bond didn't waste his shoulder on it. He went to the chair and sat down on the neat pile of his clothes and looked round the cell. The walls were entirely naked except fora ventilation grille of thick wire in one corner just below the ceiling. It was wider than his shoulders. It was obviously the way out into the assault course. The only other break in the walls was a thick glass porthole, no bigger than Bond's head, just above the door. Light from the corridor filtered through it into the cell. There was nothing else. It was no good wasting anymore time. It would now be about ten-thirty. Outside, somewhere on the slope of the mountain, the girl would already belying, waiting for the rattle of claws on the grey coral. Bond clenched his teeth at the thought of the pale body spread-eagled out thereunder the stars. Abruptly he stood up. What the hell was he doing sitting still. Whatever lay on the other side of the wire grille, it was time to go.\\n\\nBond took out his knife and the lighter and threw off the kimono. He dressed in the trousers and shirt and stowed the lighter in his hip pocket. He tried the edge of the knife with his thumb. It was very sharp. It would be better still if he could get a point on it. He knelt on the floor and began whittling the rounded end on the stone. After a precious quarter of an hour he was satisfied. It was no stiletto, but it would serve to stab as well as cut. Bond put the knife between his teeth and set the chair below the grille, and climbed onto it. The grille! Assuming he could tear it off its hinges, the frame of quarter-inch wire might straighten into a spear. That would make a third weapon. Bond reached up with crooked fingers.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The next thing he knew was a searing pain up his arm and the crack of his head hitting the stone floor. He lay, stunned, with only the memory of a blue flash and the hiss and crackle of electricity to tell him what had hit him.\\n\\nBond got to his knees and stayed there. He bent his head down and shook it slowly from side to side like a wounded animal. He noticed a smell of burning flesh. He lifted his right hand up to his eyes. There was the red smear of an open burn across the inside of his fingers. Seeing it brought the pain. Bond spat out a four-letter word. Slowly he got to his feet He squinted up at the wire grille as if it might strike at him again, like a snake. Grimly he set the chair upright against the wall. He picked up his knife and cut a strip off the discarded kimono and tied it firmly across his fingers. Then he climbed up again onto the chair and looked at the grille. He was meant to get through it. The shock had been to soften him up-a taste of pain to come. Surely he had fused the blasted thing. Surely they would have switched off the current. He looked at it only for an instant, then the fingers of his left hand crooked and went straight up to the impersonal wire mesh. His fingers went through the wire rim and gripped.\\n\\nNothing! Nothing at all-just wire. Bond grunted. He felt his nerves slacken. He tugged at the wire. It gave an inch. He tugged again and it came away in his hand and dangled down from two strands of copper flex that disappeared into the wall. Bond pulled the grille loose from the flex and got-down from the chair. Yes, there was a join in the frame. He set to work unravelling the mesh. Then using the chair as a hammer, he straightened the heavy wire.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"After ten minutes, Bond had a crooked spear about four feet long. One end, where it had originally been cut by the pliers, was jagged. It would not pierce a man's clothes, but it would be good enough for the face and neck. By using all his strength and the crack at the bottom of the metal door, Bond turned the blunt end into a clumsy crook. He measured the wire against his leg. It was too long. He bent it double, and slipped the spear down a trouser leg. Now it hung from his waistband to just above the knee. He went back to the chair and climbed up again and reached, nervously, for the edge of the ventilator shaft. There was no shock. Bond heaved up and through the opening and lay on his stomach looking along the shaft.\\n\\nThe shaft was about four inches wider than Bond's shoulders. It was circular and of polished metal.\\\"Bond reached for his lighter, blessing the inspiration that had made him take it, and nicked it on. Yes, zinc sheeting that looked new. The shaft stretched straight ahead, featureless except for the ridges where the sections of pipe joined. Bond put the lighter back in his pocket and snaked forward.\\n\\nIt was easygoing. Cool air from the ventilating system blew strongly in Bond's face. The air held no smell of the sea-it was the canned stuff that comes from an air-conditioning plant. Doctor No must have adapted one of the shafts to his purpose. What hazards had he built into it to test out his victims? They would be ingenious and painful-designed to reduce the resistance of the victim. At the winning post, so to speak, there would be the coup de grâce-if the victim ever got that far. It would be something conclusive, something from which there would be no escape, for there would be no prizes in this race except oblivion-an oblivion, thought Bond, he might be glad to win. Unless of course Doctor No had been just a bit too clever. Unless he had underestimated the will to survive. That, thought Bond, was his only hope-to try to survive the intervening hazards, to get through at least to the last ditch.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There was a faint luminosity ahead. Bond approached it carefully, his senses questing in front of him like antennae. It grew brighter. It was the glint of light against the end of the lateral shaft. He went on until his head touched the metal. He twisted over on his back. Straight above him, at the top of fifty yards or so of vertical shaft, was a steady glimmer. It was like looking up along gun barrel. Bond inched round the square bend and stood upright. So he was supposed to climb straight up this shining tube of metal without a foothold! Was it possible? Bond expanded his shoulders. Yes, they gripped the sides. His feet could also get a temporary purchase, though they would slip except where the ridges at the joints gave him an ounce of upward leverage. Bond shrugged his shoulders and kicked off his shoes. It was no good arguing. He would just have to try.\\n\\nSix inches at a time, Bond's body began to worm up the shaft-expand shoulders to grip the sides, lift feet, lock knees, force the feet outwards against the metal and, as the feet slipped downwards with his weight, contract shoulders and raise them a few inches higher. Do it again, and again and again and again. Stop at each tiny bulge where the sections joined and use the millimetre of extra support to get some breath and measure the next lap. Otherwise don't lookup, think only of the inches of metal that have to be conquered one by one. Don't worry about the glimmer of light that never grows brighter or nearer. Don't worry about losing your grip and falling to smash your ankles at the bottom of the shaft. Don't worry about cramp. Don't worry about your screaming muscles or the swelling bruises on your shoulders and the sides of your feet. Just take the silver inches as they come, one by one, and conquer them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"But then the feet began to sweat and slip. Twice Bond lost a yard before his shoulders, scalding with the friction, could put on the brake. Finally he had to stop altogether to let his sweat dry in the downward draught of air. He waited fora full ten minutes, staring at his faint reflection in the polished metal, the face split in half by the knife between the teeth. Still he refused to lookup to see how much more there was, It might be too much to bear. Carefully Bond wiped each foot against a trouser-leg and began again.\\n\\nNow half Bond's mind was dreaming while the other half fought the battle. He wasn't even conscious of the strengthening breeze or the slowly brightening light. He saw himself as a wounded caterpillar crawling up a waste pipe towards the plug-hole of a bath. What would he see when he got through the plug-hole? A naked girl drying herself? A man shaving? Sunlight streaming through an open window into an empty bathroom?\\n\\nBond's head bumped against something. The plug was in the plug-hole! The shock of disappointment made him slip a yard before his shoulders got afresh grip. Then he realized. He was at the top! Now he noticed the bright light and the strong wind. Feverishly, but with a more desperate care, he heaved up again until his head touched. The wind was coming into his left ear. Cautiously he turned his head. It was another lateral shaft. Above him light was shining through a thick porthole. All he had to do was inch himself round and grip the edge of the new shaft and somehow gather enough strength to heave himself in. Then he would be able to lie down.\\\" With an extra delicacy, born of panic that something might now go wrong, that he might make a mistake and plummet back down the shaft to land in a crackle of bone, Bond, his breath steaming against the metal, carried out the manoeuvre and, with his last ounce of strength, jackknifed into the opening and crumpled full length on his face.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Later-how much later?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"-Bond's eyes opened and his body stirred. The cold had woken him from the fringe of total unconsciousness into which his body had plunged. Painfully he rolled over on his back, his feet and shoulders screaming at shim, and lay gathering his wits and summoning more strength. He had no idea what time it was or whereabouts he was inside the mountain. He lifted his head and looked back at the porthole above the yawning tube out of which he had come. The light was yellowish and the glass looked thick. He remembered the porthole in Room Q. There had been nothing breakable about that one, nor, he guessed, would there be here.\\n\\nSuddenly, behind the glass, he saw movement. Ashe watched, a pair of eyes materialized from behind the electric light bulb. They stopped and looked at him, the bulb making a yellow glass nose between them. They gazed incuriously at him and then they were gone. Bond's lips snarled back from his teeth. So his progress was going to be observed, reported back to Doctor No!\\n\\nBond said out loud, viciously, \\\"---them all,\\\" and turned sullenly back on his stomach. He raised his head and looked forward. The tunnel shimmered away into blackness. Come on! No good hanging about. He picked up his knife and put it back between his teeth and winced his way forward.\\n\\nSoon there was no more light. Bond stopped from time to time and used the lighter, but there was nothing but blackness ahead. The air began to get warmer in the shaft, and, perhaps fifty yards further, definitely hot. There was the smell of heat in the air, metallic heat. Bond began to sweat. Soon his body was soaked and he had to pause every few minutes to wipe his eyes. There came aright-hand turn in the shaft. Round it the metal of the big tube was hot against his skin. The smell of heat was very strong. There came another right-angled turn. As soon as Bond's head got round he quickly pulled out his lighter and lit it and then snaked back and lay panting. Bitterly he examined the new hazard, probing it, cursing it. His light had flickered on discoloured, oyster-hued zinc. The next hazard was to be heat!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Bond groaned aloud.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"How could his bruised flesh stand up to that?-How could he protect his skin from the metal? But there wasn't anything he could do about it. He could either go back, or stay where he was, or goon. There was no other decision to make, no other shift or excuse. There was one, and only one, grain of consolation. This would not be heat that would kill, only maim. This would not be the final killing ground-only one more test of how much he could take.\\n\\nBond thought of the girl and of what she was going through. Oh well. Get on with it. Now, let's see...\\n\\nBond took his knife and cutoff the whole front of his shirt and sliced it into strips. The only hope was to put some wrapping round the parts of his body that would have to bear the brunt-his hands and his feet. His knees and elbows would have to get along with their single covering of cotton fabric. Wearily he set to work, cursing softly.\\n\\nNow he was ready. One, two, three...\\n\\nBond turned the corner and forged forward into the heat stench.\\n\\nKeep your naked stomach off the ground! Contract your shoulders! Hands, knees, toes; hands, knees, toes. Faster, faster! Keep going fast so that each touch on the ground is quickly taken over by the next.\\n\\nThe knees were getting it worst, taking the bulk of Bond's weight. Now the padded hands were beginning to smoulder. There was a spark, and another one, and then a worm of red as the sparks began to run. The smoke from the stuff smarted in Bond's sweating eyes. God, he couldn't do anymore! There was no air. His lungs were bursting. Now his two hands shed sparks as he thrust them forward. The stuff must be nearly gone. Then the flesh would burn. Bond lurched and his bruised shoulder hit the metal. He screamed. He went on screaming, regularly, with each contact of hand or knee or toes. Now he was finished. Now it was the end. Now he would fall flat and slowly fry to death. No! He must drive on, screaming, until his flesh was burned to the bone. The skin must have already gone from the knees. Ina moment the balls of his hands would meet the metal. Only the sweat running dowrr his arms could be keeping the pads of stuff damp. Scream, scream, screamt It helps the pain. It tells you you're alive. Goon! Goon! It can't be much longer. This isn't where you're supposed to die. You are still alive. Don't give up! You can't!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond's right hand hit something that gave before it. There was a stream of ice-cold air. His other hand hit, then his head. There was a tinny noise. Bond felt the lower edge of an asbestos baffle scrape down his back. He was through. He heard the baffle bang shut. His hands came up against solid wall. They quested to left and right. It was aright-angled bend. His body followed blindly round the corner. The cool air felt like daggers in his lungs. Gingerly he laid his fingers down on the metal. It was cold! With a groan Bond fell on his face and lay still.\\n\\nSometime later the pain revived him. Bond turned sluggishly over on his back. Vaguely he noticed the lighted porthole above him. Vaguely he took in the eyes gazing down on him. Then he let the black waves take him away again.\\n\\nSlowly, in the darkness, the blisters formed across the skin and the bruised feet and shoulders stiffened. The sweat dried on the body and then on the rags of clothing, and the cool air soaked down into the overheated lungs and began its insidious work. But the heartbeat on, strongly and regularly inside the tortured envelope, and the healing sorceries of oxygen and rest pumped life back into the arteries and veins and recharged the nerves.\\n\\nYears later, Bond awoke. He stirred. As his eyes opened and met the other pair, inches away behind the glass, pain took him and shook him like a rat. He waited for the shock to die. He tried again, and then again, until he had measured the strength of his adversary. Then Bond, to hide himself away from the witness, turned over on his stomach and took the full blast of it. Again he waited, exploring his body for its reactions, testing the strength of the resolve that was left in the batteries. How much more could he take now? Bond's lips drew back from his teeth and he snarled into the darkness. It was an animal sound. He had come to the end of his human reactions to pain and adversity. Doctor No had got him cornered. But there were animal reserves of desperation left and, in a strong animal, those reserves are deep.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Slowly, agonizingly, Bond snaked a few yards away from the eyes and then reached for his lighter and lit it. Ahead there was only the black full moon, the yawning circular mouth that led into the stomach of death. Bond put back the lighter. He took a deep breath and got to his hands and knees. The pain was no greater, only different. Slowly, stiffly, \\\" he winced-forward.\\n\\nThe cotton fabric at Bond's knees and elbows had burned away. Numbly his mind registered the moisture as his blisters burst against the cool metal. Ashe moved, he flexed his fingers-and toes, testing the pain. Slowly he got the measure of what he could do, what hurt most. This pain is supportable, he argued to himself. If I had been in an aeroplane crash, they would only diagnose superficial contusions and burns. I would be out of hospital in a few days. There's nothing wrong with, me. I'm a survivor from the crash. It hurts, but it's nothing. Think of the bits and pieces of the other passengers. Be thankful. Put it out of your mind. But, nagging behind these reflections, was the knowledge that he had not yet had the crash-that he was still on his way towards it, his resistance, his effectiveness reduced. When would it come? What shape would it take? How much more was he to be softened up before he reached the killing ground?\\n\\nAhead in the darkness the tiny red pinpoints might have been an hallucination, specks before the eyes as a result of exhaustion. Bond stopped and screwed up his eyes. He shook his head. No, they were still there. Slowly he snaked closer. Now they were moving. Bond stopped again. He listened. Above the quiet thumping of his heart there was a soft, delicate rustling. The pinpoints had increased in number.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Now there were twenty or thirty, shifting to and fro, some quickly, some slowly, allover the circle of blackness ahead. Bond reached for his lighter. He held his breath as he lit the little yellow flame. The red pinpoints went out. Instead, a yard ahead of him, very narrow mesh wire, almost as fine as muslin, blocked the shaft.\\n\\nBond inched forward, the lighter held before him. It was some sort of a cage with small things living in it. He could hear them scuttling back, away from the light. Afoot away from the mesh he dowsed the light and waited for his eyes to get used to the dark. Ashe waited, listening, he could hear the tiny scuttling back towards him, and gradually the forest of red pinpoints gathered again, peering at him through the mesh.\\n\\nWhat was it? Bond listened to the pounding of his heart. Snakes? Scorpions? Centipedes?\\n\\nCarefully he brought his eyes closeup to the little glowing forest. He inched the lighter up beside his face and suddenly pressed the lever. He caught a glimpse of tiny claws hooked through the mesh and of dozens of thick furry feet and of furry sacklike stomachs topped by big insect heads that seemed to be covered with eyes. The things plopped hurriedly off the wire onto the tin and scurried back and huddled in a grey-brown furry mass at the end of the cage.\\n\\nBond squinted through the mesh, moving the light back and forward. Then he dowsed the light, to save fuel, and let the breath come through his teeth in a quiet sigh.\\n\\nThey were spiders, giant tarantulas, three or four inches long. There were twenty of them in the cage. And somehow he had to get past them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond lay and rested and thought while the red eyes gathered again in front of his face.\\n\\nHow deadly were these things? How much of the tales about them were myth? They could certainly kill animals, but how mortal to men were these giant spiders with the long soft friendly fur of a borzoi? Bond shuddered. He remembered the centipede. The touch of the tarantulas would be much softer. They would be like tiny teddy bears'paws against one's skin-until they bit and emptied their poison sacs into you.\\n\\nBut again, would this be Doctor No's killing ground? A bite or two perhaps-to send one into a delirium of pain. The horror of having to burst through the mesh in the darkness-Doctor No would not have reckoned with Bond's lighter-and squash through the forest of eyes, crushing some soft bodies, but feeling the jaws of the others lance home. And then more bites from \\\"the ones that had caught in the clothing. And then the creeping agony of the poison. That would have been the way Doctor No's mind would have worked-to send one screaming on one's way. To what? To the final fence?\\n\\nBut Bond had the lighter and the knife and the wire spear. All he needed was the nerve, and infinite, infinite precision.\\n\\nBond softly opened the jaws of the lighter and pulled the wick out an inch with his thumb and fingernail to give a bigger flame. He lit it and, as the spiders scuttled back, he pierced the thin wire mesh with his knife. He made a hole near the frame and cut down sideways and round. Then he seized the flap of wire and wrenched it out of the frame. It tore like stiff calico and came away in one piece. He put the knife back between his teeth and snaked through the opening. The spiders cowered before the flame of the lighter and crowded back on top of each other. Bond slid the wire spear out of his trousers and jabbed the blunt, doubled wire into the middle of them. He jabbed again and again, fiercely pulping the bodies. When some of the spiders tried to escape towards him he waved the light at them and smashed the fugitives one by one. Now the living spiders were attacking the dead and wounded and all Bond had to do was bash and bash into the writhing, sickening mess of blood and fur.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Slowly all movement slackened and then ceased. Were they all dead? Were some shamming? The flame of the lighter was beginning to die. He would have to chance it. Bond reached forward and shovelled the dead mess to one side. Then he took his knife from between his teeth and reached out and slashed open the second curtain of wire, bending the flap down over the heap of pulped bodies. The light flickered and became a red glow. Bond gathered himself and shot his body over the bloody pile of corpses and through the jagged frame.\\n\\nHe had no idea what bits of metal he touched or whether he had put his knee or his foot among the spiders. All he knew was that he had got through. He heaved himself yards on along the shaft and stopped to gather his breath and his nerve.\\n\\nAbove him a dim light came on. Bond squinted sideways and upwards, knowing what he would see. The slanting yellow eyes behind the thick glass looked keenly down at him. Slowly, behind the bulb, the head moved from side to side. The eyelids dropped in mock pity. A closed fist, the thumb pointing downwards in farewell and dismissal, inserted itself between the bulb and the glass. Then it was withdrawn. The light went out. Bond turned his face back to the floor of the shaft and rested his forehead on the cool metal. The gesture said that he was coming into the last lap, that the observers had finished with him until they came for his remains. It took an extra ounce of heart out of Bond that there had been no gesture of praise, however small, that he had managed to survive so far. These Chigroes hated him. They only wanted him to die, and as miserably as possible.\\n\\nBond's teeth ground softly together. He thought of the girl and the thought gave him strength. He wasn't dead yet. Damn it, he wouldn't die! Not until the heart was torn from his body.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond tensed his muscles. It was time to go. With extra care he put his weapons back in their places and painfully began to drag himself on into the blackness.\\n\\nThe shaft was beginning to slope gently downwards. It made the going easier. Soon the slope grew steeper so that Bond, could almost slide along under the momentum of his weight. It was a blessed relief not to have to make the effort with his muscles. There was a glimmer of grey light ahead, nothing more than a lessening of the darkness, but it was a change. The quality of the air seemed to be different. There was anew, fresh smell to it. What was it? The sea?\\n\\nSuddenly Bond realized that he was slipping down the shaft. He opened his shoulders and spread his feet to slow himself. It hurt and the braking effect was small. Now the shaft was widening. He could no longer get a grip! He was going faster and faster. A bend was just ahead. And it was a bend downwards!\\n\\nBond's body crashed into the bend and round it. Christ, he was diving head downwards! Desperately Bond spread his feet and hands. The metal flayed his skin. He was out of control, diving down a gun barrel. Far below there was a circle of grey light. The open air? The sea? The light was tearing up at him. He fought for breath. Stay alive, you fool! Stay alive!\\n\\nHeadfirst, Bond's body shot out of the shaft and fell through the air, slowly, slowly, down towards the gunmetal sea that waited for him a hundred feet below.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond's body shattered the mirror of the dawn sea like a bomb.\\n\\nAshe had hurtled down the silver shaft towards the widening disc of light, instinct had told him to get his knife from between his teeth, to get his hands forward to break his fall, and to keep his head down and his body rigid. And, at the last fraction of a second when he glimpsed the up-rushing sea, he had managed to take a gulp of breath. So Bond hit the water in the semblance of a dive, his outstretched clenched fists cleaving a hole for his skull and shoulders, and though, by the time he had shot twenty feet below the surface, he had lost consciousness, the forty-mile-an-hour impact with the water failed to smash him.\\n\\nSlowly the body rose to the surface and lay, head down, softly rocking in the ripples of the dive. The water-choked\\\" lungs somehow contrived to send a last message to the brain. The legs and arms thrashed clumsily. The head turned up, water pouring from its open mouth. It sank. Again the legs jerked, instinctively trying to get the body upright in the water. ' This time, coughing horribly, the head jerked above the surface and stayed there. The arms and legs began to move feebly, paddling like a dog, and, through the red and black curtain, the bloodshot eyes saw the lifeline and told the sluggish brain to make for it.\\n\\nThe killing ground was a narrow deep water inlet at the base of the towering cliff. The lifeline towards which Bond struggled, hampered by the clumsy spear in his trouser-leg, was a strong wire fence, stretched from the rock walls of the inlet ana caging it off from the open sea. The two-feet squares of thick wire were suspended from a cable six feet above the surface and disappeared, algae encrusted, into the depths.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Bond got to the wire and hung, crucified.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"For fifteen minutes he stayed like that, his body occasionally racked with vomiting, until he felt strong enough to turn his head and see where he was. Blearily his eyes took in the towering cliffs above him and the narrow vee of softly breathing water. The place was in deep grey shadow, cutoff from the dawn by the mountain, but out at sea there was the pearly iridescence of first light that meant that for the rest of the world the day was dawning. Here it was dark and gloomy and brooding.\\n\\nSluggishly Bond's mind puzzled over the wire fence. What was its purpose, closing off this dark cleft of sea? Was it to keep things out, or keep them in? Bond gazed vaguely down into the black depths around him. The wire strands vanished into nothingness below his clinging feet. There were small fish round his legs below the waist. What were they doing? They seemed to be feeding, darting in towards him and then backing away, catching at black strands. Strands of what? Of cotton from his rags? Bond shook his head to clear it. He looked again. No, they were feeding off his blood.\\n\\nBond shivered. Yes, blood was seeping off his body, off the torn shoulders, the knees, the feet, into the water. Now for the first time he felt the pain of the seawater on his sores and burns. The pain revived him, quickened his mind. If these small fish liked it, what about barracuda and shark? Was that what the wire fence was for, to keep man-eating fish from escaping to sea? Then why hadn't they been after him already? To hell with it! The first thing was to crawl up the wire afld get over to the other side. To put the fence between him and whatever lived in this black aquarium.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Weakly, foothold by foothold, Bond climbed up the wire and over the top and down again to where he could rest well above the water. He hooked the thick cable under his arms and hung, a bit of washing on a line, and gazed vaguely down at the fish that still fed from the blood that dripped off his feet.\\n\\nNow there was nothing much left of Bond, not many reserves. The last dive down the tube, the crash of impact and the half-death from drowning had squeezed him like a sponge. He was on the verge of surrender, on the verge of giving one small sigh and then slipping back into the soft arms of the water. How beautiful it would be to give in at last and rest-to feel the sea softly take him to its bed and turnout the light.\\n\\nIt was the explosive flight of the fish from their feeding ground that shook Bond out of his death-dreaming. Something had moved far below the surface. There was a distant shimmer. Something was coming slowly upon the landward side of the fence.\\n\\nBond's body tautened. His hanging jaw slowly shut and the slackness cleared from his eyes. With the electric shock of danger, life flooded back into him, driving out the lethargy, pumping back the. will to survive.\\n\\nBond uncramped the fingers that, along time ago, his brain had ordered not to lose his knife. He flexed his fingers and took afresh grip of the silver-plated handle. He reached down and touched the crook of the wire spear that still hung inside his trouser-leg. He shook his head sharply and focused his eyes. Now what?\\n\\nBelow him the water quivered. Something was stirring in the depths, something huge. A great length of luminescent greyness showed, poised far down in the darkness. Something snaked up from it, a whiplash as thick as Bond's arm. The tip of the thong was swollen to a narrow oval, with regular bud-like markings. It swirled through the water where the fish had been and was withdrawn. Now there was nothing but the huge grey shadow. What was it doing? Was it...? Was it tasting the blood?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"As if in answer, two eyes as big as footballs slowly swam up and into Bond's vision. They stopped, twenty feet below his own, and stared up through the quiet water at his face.\\n\\nBond's skin crawled on his back. Softly, wearily, his mouth uttered one bitter four-lettered word. So this was the last surprise of Doctor No, the end of the race!\\n\\nBond stared down, half hypnotized, into the wavering pools of eye far below. So this was the giant squid, the mythical kraken that could pull ships beneath the waves, the fifty-foot-long monster that battled with whales, that weighed a ton or more. What else did he know about them? That they had two long seizing tentacles and ten holding ones. That they had a huge blunt beak beneath eyes that were the only fishes'eyes that worked on the camera principle, like a man's. That their brains were efficient, that they could shoot backwards through the water at thirty knots, by jet-propulsion. That explosive harpoons burst in their jellied mantle without damaging them. That... but the bulging black and white targets of the eyes were rising up towards him. The surface of the water shivered. Now Bond could seethe forest of tentacles that flowered out of the face of the thing. They were weaving in front of the eyes like a bunch of thick snakes. Bond could seethe dots of the suckers on their undersides. Behind the head, the great flap of the mantle softly opened and closed, and behind that the jellied sheen of the body disappeared into the depths. God, the thing was as big as a railway engine!\\n\\nSoftly, discreetly, Bond snaked his feet and then his arms through the squares in the wire, lacing himself into them, anchoring himself so that the tentacles would have either to tear him to bits or wrench down the wire barrier with him. He squinted to right and left. Either way it was twenty yards along the wire to the land. And movement, even if he was capable of it, would be fatal. He must stay dead quiet and pray that the thing would lose interest. If it didn't... Softly Bond's fingers clenched on the puny knife.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The eyes watched him, coldly, patiently. Delicately, like the questing trunk of an elephant, one of the long seizing tentacles broke the surface and palped its way up the wire towards his leg. It reached his foot. Bond felt the hard kiss of the suckers. He didn't move. He dared not reach down and lose the grip of his arms through the wire. Softly the suckers tugged, testing the amount of yield. It was not enough. Like a huge slimy caterpillar, the tentacle walked slowly on up the leg. It got to the bloody blistered kneecap and stopped there, interested. Bond's teeth gritted with the pain. He could imagine the message going back down the thick tentacle to the brain: Yes, it's good to eat! And the brain signalling back: then get it! Bring it tome!\\n\\nThe suckers walked on up the thigh. The tip of the tentacle was pointed, then it splayed out so that it almost covered the width of Bond's thigh and then tapered off to a wrist. That was Bond's target. He would just have to take the pain and the horror and wait for the wrist to come within range.\\n\\nA breeze, the first soft breeze of early morning, whispered across the metal surface of the inlet. It raised small waves that slapped gently against the sheer walls of the cliff. A wedge of cormorants took off from the guanera, five hundred feet above the inlet, and, cackling softly, made out to sea. As they swept over, the noise that had disturbed them reached Bond-the triple blast of a ship's siren that means it is ready to take on cargo. It came from Bond's left. The jetty must be round the corner from the northern arm of the inlet. The tanker from Antwerp had come in. Antwerp! Part of the world outside-the world that was a million miles away, out of Bond's reach-surely out of his reach forever. Just around that corner, men would be in the galley, having breakfast. The radio would be playing. There would be the sizzle of bacon and eggs, th smell of coffee... breakfast cooking...\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":292,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Extend the plot as the writer's co-author.\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\nTitle: Dr. No\nChapter: 9"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The eyes watched him, coldly, patiently. Delicately, like the questing trunk of an elephant, one of the long seizing tentacles broke the surface and palped its way up the wire towards his leg. It reached his foot. Bond felt the hard kiss of the suckers. He didn't move. He dared not reach down and lose the grip of his arms through the wire. Softly the suckers tugged, testing the amount of yield. It was not enough. Like a huge slimy caterpillar, the tentacle walked slowly on up the leg. It got to the bloody blistered kneecap and stopped there, interested. Bond's teeth gritted with the pain. He could imagine the message going back down the thick tentacle to the brain: Yes, it's good to eat! And the brain signalling back: then get it! Bring it tome!\n\nThe suckers walked on up the thigh. The tip of the tentacle was pointed, then it splayed out so that it almost covered the width of Bond's thigh and then tapered off to a wrist. That was Bond's target. He would just have to take the pain and the horror and wait for the wrist to come within range.\n\nA breeze, the first soft breeze of early morning, whispered across the metal surface of the inlet. It raised small waves that slapped gently against the sheer walls of the cliff. A wedge of cormorants took off from the guanera, five hundred feet above the inlet, and, cackling softly, made out to sea. As they swept over, the noise that had disturbed them reached Bond-the triple blast of a ship's siren that means it is ready to take on cargo. It came from Bond's left. The jetty must be round the corner from the northern arm of the inlet. The tanker from Antwerp had come in. Antwerp! Part of the world outside-the world that was a million miles away, out of Bond's reach-surely out of his reach forever. Just around that corner, men would be in the galley, having breakfast. The radio would be playing. There would be the sizzle of bacon and eggs, th smell of coffee... breakfast cooking..."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The suckers were at his hip. Bond could see into the horny cups. A stagnant sea smell reached him as the hand slowly undulated upwards. How tough was the mottled grey-brown jelly behind the hand? Should he stab? No, it must be a quick' hard slash, straight across, like cutting a rope. Never mind about cutting into his own skin.\n\nNow! Bond took a quick glance into the two football eyes, so patient, so incurious. Ashe did so the other seizing arm broke the surface and shot straight up at his face. Bond jerked back and the hand curled into a fist round the wire in front of his eyes. Ina second it would shift to an armor shoulder and he would be finished. Now!\n\nThe firsthand was on his ribs. Almost without taking aim, Bond's knife-hand slashed down and across. He felt the blade bite into the puddingy flesh and then the knife was almost torn from his grip as the wounded tentacle whipped back into the water. Fora moment the sea boiled around him. Now the other hand let go the wire and slapped across his stomach. The pointed hand stuck like a leech, all the power of the suckers furiously applied. Bond screamed as the suckers bit into his flesh. He slashed madly, again and again. God, his stomach was being torn out! The wire shook with the struggle. Below him the water boiled and foamed. He would have to give in. One more stab, this time into the back of the hand. It worked! The hand jerked free and snaked down and away leaving twenty red circles, edged with blood, across his skin.\n\nBond had not time to worry about them. Now the head of the squid had broken the surface and the sea was being thrashed into foam by the great heaving mantle round it. The eyes were glaring up at him, redly, venomously, and the forest of feeding arms was at his feet and legs, tearing the cotton fabric away and flailing back. Bond was being pulled down, inch by inch. The wire was biting into his armpits. He could even feel his spine being stretched. If he held on he would be torn in half. Now the eyes and the great triangular beak were right out of the water and the beak was reaching up for his feet. There was one hope, only one!"},{"from":"human","value":"Bond thrust his knife between his teeth and his hand dived for the crook of the wire spear."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He tore it out, got it between his two hands and wrenched the doubled wire almost straight.\n\nHe would have to let go with one arm to stoop and get within range. If he missed, he would be torn to shreds on the fence.\n\nNow, before he died of the pain! Now, now!\n\nBond let his whole body slip down the ladder of wire and lunged through and down with all his force.\n\nHe caught a glimpse of the tip of his spear lancing into the centre of a black eyeball and then the whole sea erupted up at him in a fountain of blackness and he fell and hung upside down by the knees, his head an inch from the surface of the water.\n\nWhat had happened? Had he gone blind? He could see nothing. His eyes were stinging and there was a horrible fish taste in his mouth. But he could feel the wire cutting into the tendons behind his knees. So he must be alive! Dazedly Bond let go the spear from his trailing hand and reached up and felt for the nearest strand of wire. He got a hold and reached up his other hand and slowly, agonizingly, pulled himself up so that he was sitting in the fence. Streaks of light came into his eyes. He wiped a hand across his face. Now he could see. He gazed at his hand. It was black and sticky. He looked down at his body. It was covered with black slime, and blackness stained the sea for twenty yards around. Then Bond realized. The wounded squid had emptied its ink sac at him.\n\nBut where was the squid? Would it comeback? Bond searched the sea. Nothing, nothing but the spreading stain of black. Not a movement. Not a ripple. Then don't wait! Getaway from here! Getaway quick! Wildly Bond looked to right and left. Left was towards the ship, but also towards Doctor No. But right was towards nothing. To build the wire fence the men must have come from the left, from the direction of the jetty. There would be some sort of a path. Bond reached for the top cable and frantically began to edge along the swaying fence towards the rocky headland twenty yards away."},{"from":"human","value":"The stinking, bleeding, black scarecrow moved its arms and legs quite automatically."},{"from":"gpt","value":"The thinking, feeling apparatus of Bond was no longer part of his body. It moved alongside his body, or floated above it, keeping enough contact to pull the strings that made the puppet work. Bond was like a cutworm, the two halves of which continue to jerk forward although life has gone and been replaced by the mock life of nervous impulses. Only, with Bond, the two halves were not yet dead. Life was only in abeyance in them. All he needed was an ounce of hope, an ounce of reassurance that it was still worthwhile trying to stay alive.\n\nBond got to the-rock face. Slowly he let himself down to the bottom rung of wire. He gazed vaguely at the softly heaving sheen of water. It was black, impenetrable, as deep as the rest. Should he chance it? He must! He could do nothing until he had washed off the caking slime and blood, the horrible stale fish-smell. Moodily, fatalistically, he took off the rags of his shirt and trousers and hung them on the wire. He looked down at his brown and white body, striped and pock-marked with red. On an instinct he felt his pulse. It was slow but regular. The steady thump of life revived his spirits. What the hell was he worrying about? He was alive. The wounds and bruises on his body were nothing-absolutely nothing. They looked ugly, but nothing was broken. Inside the torn envelope, the machine was quietly, solidly ticking over. Superficial cuts and abrasions, bloody memories, deathly exhaustion-these were hurts that an accident ward would sneer at. Get on, you bastard! Get moving! Clean yourself and wake up. Count your blessings. Think of the girl. Think of the man you've somehow got to find and kill. Hang onto lifelike you've hung onto the knife between your teeth. Stop being sorry for yourself. To hell with what happened just now. Get down into the water and wash!"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Ten minutes later, Bond, his wet rags clinging to his scrubbed, stinging body and his hair slicked back out of his eyes, climbed over the top of the headland.\n\nYes, it was as he had guessed. A narrow rocky track, made by the feet of the workers, led down the other side and round the bulge of the cliff.\n\nFrom close by came various sounds and echoes. A crane was working. He could hear the changing beat of its engine. There were iron ship-noises and the sound of water splashing into the sea from a bilge pump.\n\nBond looked up at the sky. It was pale blue. Clouds tinged with golden pink were trailing away towards the horizon. Far above him the cormorants were wheeling round the guanera. Soon they would be going off to feed. Perhaps even now they were watching the scout groups far out at sea locating the fish. It would be about six o'clock, the dawn of a beautiful day.\n\nBond, leaving drops of blood behind him, picked his way carefully down the track and along the bottom of the shadowed cliff. Round the bead, the track filtered through amaze of giant, tumbled boulders. The noises grew louder. Bond crept softly forward, watching his footholds for loose stones. A voice called out, startlingly close, \"Okay to go?\" There was a distant answer: \"Okay.\" The crane engine accelerated. A few more yards. One more boulder. And another. Now!\n\nBond flattened himself against the rock and warily inched his head round the corner."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"punctually at six o'clock the sunset with a last yellow flash behind the Blue Mountains, a wave of violet shadow poured down Richmond Road, and the crickets and tree frogs in the fine gardens began to zing and tinkle.\n\nApart from the background noise of the insects, the wide empty street was quiet. The wealthy owners of the big, withdrawn houses-the bank managers, company directors and top civil servants-had been home since five o'clock and they would be discussing the day with their wives or taking a shower and changing their clothes. In half an hour the street would come to life again with the cocktail traffic, but now this very superior half mile of'Rich Road', as it was known to the tradesmen of Kingston, held nothing but the suspense of an empty stage and the heavy perfume of night-scented jasmine.\n\nRichmond Road is the \"best\" road in all Jamaica. It is Jamaica's Park Avenue, its Kensington Palace Gardens, its Avenue D'lena. The \"best\" people live in its big old-fashioned houses, each in an acre or two of beautiful lawn set, too trimly, with the finest trees and flowers from the Botanical Gardens at Hope. The long, straight road is cool and quiet and withdrawn from the hot, vulgar sprawl of Kingston where its residents earn their money, and, on the other side of the T-inter-section at its top, lie the grounds of King's House, where the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Jamaica lives with his family. In Jamaica, no road could have a finer ending.\n\nOn the eastern corner of the top intersection stands No 1 Richmond Road, a substantial two-storey house with broad white-painted verandas running round both floors. From the road a gravel path leads up to the pillared entrance through wide lawns marked outwith tennis courts on which this evening, as on all evenings, the sprinklers are at work. This mansion is the social Mecca of Kingston. It is Queen's Club, which, for fifty years, has boasted the power and frequency of its blackballs."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Such stubborn retreats will not long survive in modern Jamaica. One day Queen's Club will have its windows smashed and perhaps be burned to the ground, but for the time being it is a useful place to find in a sub-tropical island-well run, well staffed and with the finest cuisine and cellar in the Caribbean. At that-time of day, on most evenings of the year, you would find the same four motorcars standing in the road outside the club. They were the cars belonging to the high bridge game that assembled punctually at five and played until around midnight. You could almost set your watch by these cars. They belonged, reading from the order in which they now stood against the kerb, to the Brigadier in command of the Caribbean Defence Force, to Kingston's leading criminal lawyer, and to the Mathematics Professor from Kingston University. At the tail of the line* stood the black Sunbeam Alpine of Commander John Strangways, RN (Ret.), Regional Control Officer for the Caribbean-or, less discreetly, the local representative of the British Secret Service.\n\nJust before six-fifteen, the silence of Richmond Road was softly broken. Three blind beggars came round the corner of the intersection and moved slowly down the pavement towards the four cars. They were Chigroes-Chinese Negroes-bulky men, but bowed as they shuffled along, tapping at the kerb with their white sticks. They walked in file. The first man, who wore blue glasses and could presumably see better than the others, walked in front holding a tin cup against the crook of the stick in his left hand. The right hand of the second man rested on his shoulder and the right hand of the third on the shoulder of the second. The eyes of the second and third men were shut. The three men were dressed in rags and wore dirty jippa-jappa baseball caps with long peaks. They said nothing and no noise came from them except the soft tapping of their sticks as they came slowly down the shadowed pavement towards the group of cars."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The three blind men would not have been incongruous in Kingston, where there are many diseased people on the streets, but, in this quiet rich empty street, they made an unpleasant impression. And it was odd that they should all be Chinese Negroes. This is not a common mixture of bloods.\n\nIn the cardroom, the sunburned hand reached out into the green pool of the centre table and gathered up the four cards. There was a quiet snap as the trick went to join the rest.\n\n\"Hundred honours,\" said Strangways, \"and ninety below!\" He looked at his watch and stood up. \"Back in twenty minutes. Your deal, Bill. Order some drinks. Usual for me. Don't bother to cook a hand for me while I'm gone. I always spot them.\"\n\nBill Templar, the Brigadier, laughed shortly. He pinged the bell by his side and raked the cards in towards him. He said, \"Hurry up, blast you. You always let the cards go cold just as your partner's in the money.\"\n\nStrangways was already out of the door. The three men sat back resignedly in their chairs. The coloured steward came in and they ordered drinks for themselves and a whisky and water for Strangways.\n\nThere was this maddening interruption every evening at six-fifteen, about halfway through their second rubber. At this time precisely, even if they were in the middle of a hand, Strangways had to go to his \"office\" and \"make a call\". It was a damned nuisance. But Strangways was a vital part of their four and they put up with it. It was never explained what \"the call\" was, and no one asked. Strangways's job was'hush' and that was that. He was rarely away for more than twenty minutes and it was understood that he paid for his absence with around of drinks."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The drinks came and the three men began to talk racing.\n\nIn fact, this was the most important moment in Strangways's day-the time of his duty radio contact with the powerful transmitter on the roof of the building in Regent's Park that is the headquarters of the Secret Service. Everyday, at eighteen-thirty local time, unless he gave'warning the day before that he would not be on the air-when he had business on one of the other islands in his territory, for instance, or was seriously ill-he would transmit his daily report and receive his orders. If he failed to come on the air precisely at six-thirty, there would be a second call, the'Blue'call, at seven, and, finally, the'Red'call at seven-thirty. After this, if his transmitter remained silent, it was'Emergency', and Section III, his controlling authority in London, would urgently get on the job of finding out what had happened to him.\n\nEven a \"Blue\" call means a bad mark for an agent unless his \"Reasons in Writing\" are unanswerable. London's radio schedules round the world are desperately tight and their minute disruption by even one extra call is a dangerous nuisance. Strangways had never suffered the ignominy of a'Blue'call, let alone a'Red\", and was ascertain as could be that he never would do so. Every evening, at precisely six-fifteen, he left Queen's Club, got into his car and drove for ten minutes up into the foothills of the Blue Mountains to his neat bungalow with the fabulous view over Kingston harbour. At six twenty-five he walked through the hall to the office at the back. He unlocked the door and locked it again behind him. Miss Trueblood, who passed as his secretary, but was in fact his No. 2 and a former Chief Officer WRNS, would already be sitting in front of the dials inside the dummy filing cabinet. She would have the earphones on and would be making first contact, tapping out his call-sign, WXN, on 14 megacycles. There would be a shorthand pad on her elegant knees. Strangways would drop into the chair beside her and pickup the other pair of headphones and, at exactly six twenty-eight, he would takeover from her and wait for the sudden hollowness in the ether that meant that WWW in London was coming into acknowledge."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"It was an iron routine. Strangways was a man of iron routine. Unfortunately, strict patterns of behaviour can be deadly if they are read by an enemy.\n\nStrangways, a tall lean man with a black patch over the right eye and the sort of aquiline good looks you associate with the bridge of a destroyer, walked quickly across the mahogany panelled hallway of Queen's Club and pushed through the light mosquito-wired doors and ran down the three steps to the path.\n\nThere was nothing very much on his mind except the sensual pleasure of the clean fresh evening air and the memory of the finesse that had given him his three spades. There was this case, of course, the case he was working on, a curious and complicated affair that M had rather nonchalantly tossed over the air at him two weeks earlier. But it was going well. A chance lead into the Chinese community had paid off. Some-odd angles had come to light-for the present the merest shadows of angles-but if they jelled, thought Strangways as. he strode down the gravel path and into Richmond Road, he might find himself involved in something very odd indeed.\n\nStrangways shrugged his shoulders. Of course it wouldn't turnout like that. The fantastic never materialized in his line of business. There would be some drab solution that had been embroidered by overheated imaginations and the usual hysteria of the Chinese.\n\nAutomatically, another part of Strangways's mind took in the three blind men. They were tapping slowly towards him down the sidewalk. They were about twenty yards away. He calculated that they would pass him a second or two before he reached his car. Out of shame for his own health and gratitude for it, Strangways felt fora coin. He ran his thumbnail down its edge to make sure it was a florin and not a penny. He took it out. He was parallel with the beggars. How odd, they were all Chigroes! How very odd! Strangways's hand went out. The coin clanged in the tin cup."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Bless you, Master,\" said the leading man. \"Bless you,\" echoed the other two.\n\nThe car key was in Strangways's hand. Vaguely he registered the moment of silence as the tapping of the white sticks ceased. It was too late.\n\nAs Strangways had passed the last man, all three had swivelled. The back two had fanned out a step to have a clear field of fire. Three revolvers, ungainly with their sausage-shaped silencers, whipped out of holsters concealed among the rags. With disciplined precision the three men aimed at different points down Strangways's spine-one between the shoulders, one in the small of the back, one at the pelvis.\n\nThe three heavy coughs were almost one. Strangways's body was hurled forward as if it had been kicked. It lay absolutely still in the small puff of dust from the sidewalk.\n\nIt was six-seventeen. With a squeal of tyres, a dingy motor hearse with black plumes flying from the four corners of its roof took the T-intersection into Richmond Road and shot down towards the group on the pavement. The three men had just had time to pickup Strangways's body when the hearse slid to a stop abreast of them. The double doors at the back were open. So was the plain deal coffin inside. The three men manhandled the body through the doors and into the coffin. They climbed in. The lid was put on and the doors pulled shut. The three Negroes sat down on three of the four little seats at the corners of the coffin and unhurriedly laid their white sticks beside them. Roomy black alpaca coats hungover the backs of the seats. They put the coats on over their rags. Then they took off their baseball caps and reached down to the floor and picked up blacktop hats and put them on their heads."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The driver, who also was a Chinese Negro, looked nervously over his shoulder.\n\n\"Go, man. Go!\" said the biggest of the killers. He glanced down at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. It said six-twenty. Just three minutes for the job. Dead on time.\n\nThe hearse made a decorous U-turn and moved at a sedate speedup to the intersection. There it turned right and at thirty miles an hour it cruised genteelry up the tarmac highway towards the hills, its black plumes streaming the doleful signal of its burden and the three mourners sitting bolt upright with their arms crossed respectfully over their hearts.\n\n'WXN calling WWW... WXN calling WWW...\n\nWXN... WXN... WXN... '\n\nThe centre finger of Mary Trueblood's right hand stabbed softly, elegantly, at the key. She lifted her left wrist. Six twenty-eight. He was a minute late. Mary Trueblood smiled at the thought of the little open Sunbeam tearing up the road towards her. Now, in a second, she would hear the quickstep, then the key in the lock and he would be sitting beside her. There would be the apologetic smile as he reached for the earphones. \"Sorry, Mary. Damned car wouldn't start.\" Or, \"You'd think the blasted police knew my number by now. Stopped meat Halfway Tree.\" Mary Trueblood took the second pair of earphones off their hook and put them on his chair to save him half a second.\n\n\"... WXN calling WWW____WXN calling WWW____\"\n\nShe tuned the dial a hair's breadth and tried again. Her watch said six-twenty-nine. She began to worry. Ina matter of seconds, London would becoming in. Suddenly she thought, God, what could she do if Strangways wasn't on time! It was useless for her to acknowledge London and pretend she was him-useless and dangerous. Radio Security would be monitoring the call, as they monitored every call from an agent. Those instruments which measured the minute peculiarities in an operator's\"fist'would at once detect it wasn't Strangways at the key. Mary Trueblood had been shown the forest of dials in the quiet room on the top floor at headquarters, had watched as the dancing hands registered the weight of each pulse, the speed of each cipher group, the stumble over a particular letter. The Controller had explained it all to her when she had joined the Caribbean station five years before-how a buzzer would sound and the contact be automatically broken if the wrong operator had come on the air. It was the basic protection against a Secret Service'transmitter falling into enemy hands. And, if an agent had been captured and was being forced to contact London under torture, he had only to add a few hairbreadth peculiarities to his usual'fist' and they would tell the story of his capture as clearly as if he had announced it en clair."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Now it had come! Now she was hearing the hollowness in the ether that meant London was coming in. Mary Trueblood glanced at her watch. Six-thirty. Panic! But now, at last, there were the footsteps in the hall. Thank God! Ina second he would come in. She must protect him! Desperately she decided to take a chance and keep the circuit open.\n\n'WWW calling WXN____WWW calling WXN____Can\n\nyou hear me?... can you hear me? ' London was coming over strong, searching for the Jamaica station.\n\nThe footsteps were at the door.\n\nCoolly, confidently, she tapped back: 'Hear you loud and clear... Hear you loud and clear... Hear you...\"\n\nBehind her there was an explosion. Something hither on the ankle. She looked down. It was the lock of the door.\n\nMary Trueblood swivelled sharply on her chair. A man stood in the doorway. It wasn't Strangways. It was a big Negro with yellowish skin and slanting eyes. There was a gun in his hand. It ended in a thick black cylinder.\n\nMary Trueblood opened her mouth to scream.\n\nThe man smiled broadly. Slowly, lovingly, he lifted the gun and shot her three times in and around the left breast.\n\nThe girl slumped sideways off her chair. The earphones slipped off her golden hair onto the floor. For perhaps a second the tiny chirrup of London sounded out into the room. Then it stopped. The buzzer at the Controller's desk in Radio Security had signalled that something was wrong on WXN.\n\nThe killer walked out of the door. He. came back carrying a box with a coloured label on it that said PRESTO FIRE, and a big sugar sack marked TATE& LYLE. He put the box down on the floor and went to the body and roughly forced the sack over the head and down to the ankles. The feet stuck out. He bent them and crammed them in. He dragged the bulky sack out into the hall and came back. In the corner of the room the safe stood open, as he had been told it would, and the cipher books had been taken out and laid on the desk ready for work on the London signals. The man threw these and all the papers in the safe into the centre of the room. He tore down the curtains and added them to the pile. He topped it up with a couple of chairs. He opened the box of Presto firelighters and took out a handful and tucked them into the pile and lit them. Then he went out into the hall and lit similar bonfires inappropriate places. The tinder-dry furniture caught quickly and the flames began to lick up the panelling. . The man went to the front door and opened it. Through the hibiscus hedge he could seethe glint of the hearse. There was no noise except the zing of crickets and the soft tick-over of the car's engine. Up and down the road there was no other sign of life. The man went back into the smoke-filled hall and easily shouldered the sack and came out again, leaving the door open to make a draught. He walked swiftly down the path to the road. The back doors of the hearse were open. He handed in the sack and watched the two men force it into the coffin on top of Strangways's body. Then he climbed in and shut the doors and sat down and put on his top hat. ."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"As the first flames showed in the upper windows of the bungalow, the hearse moved quietly from the sidewalk and went on its way up towards the Mona Reservoir. There the weighted coffin would slip down into its fifty-fathom grave and, in just forty-five minutes, the personnel and records of the Caribbean station of the Secret Service would have been utterly destroyed."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond took one long comprehensive look and pulled back. He leant against the cool face of rock and waited for his breathing to get back to normal. He lifted his knife closeup to his eyes and carefully examined the blade. Satisfied, he slipped it behind him and down the waistband of his trousers up against his spine. There it would be handy but protected from bitting against anything. He wondered about the lighter. He took it out of his hip pocket. As a hunk of metal it might be useful, but it wouldn't light anymore and it might scrape against the rock. He put it down on the ground away from his feet.\n\nThen Bond sat down and meticulously went over the photograph that was in his brain.\n\nRound the corner, not more than ten yards away, was the crane. There was no back to the cabin. Inside it a man sat at the controls. It was the Chinese Negro boss, the driver of the marsh buggy. In front of him the jetty ran twenty yards out into the sea and ended in a T. An aged tanker of around ten thousand tons deadweight was secured alongside the top of the T. It stood well out of the water, its deck perhaps twelve feet above the quay. The tanker was called Blanche, and the Ant of Antwerp showed at her stern. There was no sign of life Onboard except one figure lolling at the wheel in the enclosed bridge. The rest of the crew would be below, battened away from the guano dust. From just to the right of the crane, an overhead conveyor-belt in a corrugated-iron housing ran out from the cliff-face. It was carried on high stanchions above the jetty and stopped just short of the hold of the tanker. Its mouth ended in a huge canvas sock, perhaps six feet in diameter,. The purpose of the crane was to lift the wireframed mouth of the sock so that it hung directly over the hold of the tanker and to move it to right or left to give even distribution. From out of the mouth of the sock, in a solid downward jet, the scrambled-egg-coloured guano dust was pouring into the hold of the tanker at a rate of tons a minute."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Below, on the jetty, to the left and to leeward of the drifting smoke of the guano dust, stood the tall, watchful figure of Doctor No.\n\nThat was all. The morning breeze feathered the deep-water anchorage, still half in shadow beneath the towering cliffs, the'conveyor-belt thudded quietly on its rollers, the crane's engine chuffed rhythmically. There was no other sound, no other movement, no other life apart from the watch at the ship's wheel, the trusty working at the crane, and Doctor No, seeing that all went well. On the other side of the mountain men would be working, feeding the guano to the conveyor-belt that rumbled away through the bowels of the rock, but on this side no one was allowed and no one was necessary. Apart from aiming the canvas mouth of the conveyor, there was nothing else for anyone to do.\n\nBond sat and thought, measuring distances, guessing at angles, remembering exactly where the crane driver's hands and feet were on the levers and the pedals. Slowly, a thin, hard smile broke across the haggard, sunburned face. Yes! It was on! It could be done. But softly, gently, slowly! The prize was almost intolerably sweet.\n\nBond examined the soles of his feet and his hands. They; would serve. They would have to serve. He reached back ana felt the handle of the knife. Shifted it an inch. He stood up and took several slow deep breaths, ran his hands through his salt-and sweat-matted hair, rubbed them harshly up and down his face and then down the tattered sides of his black jeans. He gave a final flex to his fingers. He was ready.\n\nBond stepped up to the rock and inched an eye round. Nothing had changed. His guess at the distances had been right. The crane driver was watchful, absorbed. The neck above the open khaki shirt was naked, offered, waiting. Twenty yards away, Doctor No, also with his back to Bond, stood sentry over the thick rich cataract of whity-yellow dust. On the bridge, the watch was lighting a cigarette."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond looked along the ten yards of path that led past the back of the crane. He picked out the places he would put each foot. Then he came out from behind the rock and ran.\n\nBond ran to the right of the crane, to a point he had chosen where the lateral side of the cabin would hide him from the driver and the jetty. He got there and stopped, crouching, listening. The engine hurried on, the conveyor-belt rumbled steadily out of the mountain above and behind him. There was no change.\n\nThe two iron footholds at the back of the cabin, inches away from Bond's face, looked solid. Anyway the noise of the engine would drown small sounds. But he would have to be quick to yank the man's body out of the seat and get his own hands and feet on the controls. The single stroke of the knife would have to be mortal. Bond felt along his own collarbone, felt the soft triangle of skin beneath which the jugular pumped, remembered the angle of approach behind the man's back, reminded himself to force the blade and hold it in.\n\nFora final second he listened, then he reached behind his back for the knife and went up the iron steps and into the cabin with the stealth and speed of a panther.\n\nAt the last moment there was need to hurry. Bond stood behind the man's back, smelling him. He had time to raise his knife hand almost to the roof of the cabin, time to summon every ounce of strength, before he swept the blade down and into the square inch of smooth, brownish-yellow skin.\n\nThe man's hands and legs splayed away from the controls.\"His face strained back towards Bond. It seemed to Bond that there was a flash of recognition in the bulging eyes before the whites rolled upwards. Then a strangled noise came from the open mouth and the big body rolled sideways off its iron seat and crashed to the floor."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond's eyes didn't even follow it ajs far as the ground. He was akeady in the seat and reaching for the pedals and levers. Everything was out of control. The engine was running in neutral, the wire hawser was tearing off the drum, the tip of the crane was bending slowly forwards like a giraffe's neck, the canvas mouth of the conveyor-belt had wilted and was now pouring its column of dust between the jetty and the ship. Doctor No was staring upwards. His mouth was open. Perhaps he was shouting something.\n\nCoolly, Bond reined the machine in, slowly easing the levers and pedals back to the angles at which the driver had been holding them. The engine accelerated, the gears bit and began to work again. The hawser slowed on the spinning drum and reversed, bringing the canvas mouth up and over the ship. The tip of the crane lifted and stopped. The scene was as before. Now!\n\nBond reached forward for the iron wheel which the driver had been handling when Bond had caught his first glimpse of him. Which way to turn it? Bond tried to the left. The tip of the crane veered slightly to the right. So be it. Bond spun the wheel to the right. Yes, by God, it was answering, moving across the sky, carrying the mouth of the conveyor with it.\n\nBond's eyes flashed to the jetty. Doctor No had moved. He had moved a few paces to a stanchion that Bond had missed. He had a telephone in his hand. He was getting through to the other side of the mountain. Bond could see his hand frantically. jiggling the receiver arm, trying to attract attention.\n\nBond whirled the director wheel. Christ, wouldn't it turn any faster? In seconds Doctor No would get through and it would be too late. Slowly the tip of the crane arced across the sky. Now the mouth of the conveyor was spewing the dust column down over the side of the ship. Now the yellow mound was marching silently across the jetty. Five yards, four, three, two! Don't look round, you bastard! Arrh, got you! Stop the wheel! Now, you take it, Doctor No!"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"At the first brush of the stinking dust column, Doctor No had turned. Bond saw the long arms fling wide as if to embrace the thudding mass. One knee rose to run. The mouth opened and a thin scream came up to Bond above the noise of the engine. Then there was a brief glimpse of a kind of dancing snowman. And then only a mound of yellow bird dung that grew higher and higher.\n\n\"God!\" Bond's voice gave back an iron echo from the walls of the cabin. He thought of the screaming lungs stuffing with the filthy dust, the body bending and then falling under the weight, the last impotent kick of the heels, the last flash of thought-rage, horror, defeat?-and then the silence of the stinking tomb.\n\nNow the yellow mountain was twenty feet high. The stuff was spilling off the sides of the jetty into the sea. Bond glanced\n\n. at the ship. Ashe did so, there came three blasts on its siren.\n\nThe noise crashed round the cliffs. There came a fourth blast which didn't stop. Bond could seethe watch holding onto the lanyard as he craned out of the bridge window, looking down. Bond took his hands off the controls and let them rip. It was time to go.\n\nHe slipped off the iron seat and bent over the dead body. He took the revolver out of the holster and looked at it. He smiled grimly-Smith& Wesson. 38, the regular model. He slipped it down inside his waistband. It was fine to feel the heavy cold metal against his skin. He went to the door of the cabin and dropped down to the ground.\n\nAn iron ladder ran up the cliif behind the crane to where the conveyor-housing jutted out. There was a small door in the corrugated iron wall of the housing. Bond scrambled up the ladder. The door opened easily, letting out a puff of guano dost, and he clambered through."},{"from":"human","value":"Inside, the clanking of the conveyor-belt over its rollers was deafening, but there were dim inspection lights in the stone ceiling of the tunnel and a narrow catwalk that stretched away into the mountain alongside the hurrying river of dust."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond moved quickly along it, breathing shallowly against the fishy ammoniac smell. At all costs he must get to the end before the significance of the ship's siren and of the unanswered telephone overcame the fear of the guards.\n\nBond half ran and half stumbled through the echoing stinking tunnel. How far would it be? Two hundred yards? And then what? Nothing for it but to breakout of the tunnel mouth and start shooting-cause a panic and hope for the best. He would get hold of one of the men and wring out of him where the girl was. Then what? When he got to the place on the mountainside, what would he find? What would be left of her?\n\nBond ran on faster, his head down, watching the narrow breadth of planking, wondering what would happen if he missed his footing and slipped into the rushing river of guano dust. Would he be able to get off the belt again or would he be whirled away and down until he was finally spewed out onto the burial mound of Doctor No?\n\nWhen Bond's head hit into the soft stomach and he felt the hands at his throat, it was too late to think of his revolver. His only reaction was to throw himself down and forward at the legs. The legs gave against his shoulder and there was a shrill scream as the body crashed down on his back.\n\nBond had started the heave that would hurl his attacker sideways and onto the conveyor-belt when the quality of the scream and something light and soft about the impact of the body froze his muscles.\n\nIt couldn't be!\n\nAs if in answer, sharp teeth bit deeply into the calf of his right leg and an elbow jabbed viciously, knowledgeably, backwards into his groin.\n\nBond yelled with the pain. He tried to squirm sideways to protect himself, but even as he shouted'Honey!\" the elbow thudded into him again."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The breath whistled through Bond's teeth with the agony. There was only one way to stop her without throwing heron to the conveyor-belt. He took a firm grip of one ankle and heaved himself to his knees. He stood upright, holding her slung over his shoulder by one leg. The other foot banged against his head, but half-heartedly, as if she too realized that something was wrong.\n\n\"Stop it, Honey! It's me!\"\n\nThrough the din of the conveyor-belt, Bond's shout got through to her. He heard her cry'James!\" from somewhere near the floor. He felt her hands clutch at his legs. \"James, James!\"\n\nBond slowly let her down. He turned and knelt and reached for her. He put his arms round her and held her tightly to him. \"Oh Honey, Honey. Are you all right?\" Desperately, unbelieving, he strained her to him.\n\n\"Yes, James! Oh, yes!\" He felt her hands at his back and his hair. \"Oh, James, my darling!\" she fell against him, sobbing.\n\n\"It's all right, Honey.\" Bond smoo'thed her hair. \"And Doctor No's dead. But now we've got to run for it. We've got to get out of here. Come on! How can we get out of the tunnel? How did you get here? We've got to hurry!\"\n\nAs if in comment, the conveyor-belt stopped with a jerk.\n\nBond pulled the girl to her feet. She was wearing a dirty suit of workmen's blue dungarees. The sleeves and legs were; rolled up. The suit was far too big for her. She looked like a girl in a man's pyjamas. She was powdered white with the guano dust except where the tears had marked her cheeks. She said breathlessly, \"Just up there! There's aside tunnel that leads to the machine shops and the garage. Will they come after us?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"There was no time to talk. Bond said urgently, \"Follow me!\" and started running. Behind him her feet padded softly in the hollow silence. They came to the fork where the side tunnel led off into the rock. Which way would the men come? Down the side tunnel or along the catwalk in the main tunnel? The sound of voices booming far up the side tunnel answered him. Bond drew the girl a few feet up the main tunnel. He brought her close to him and whispered, \"I'm sorry. Honey. I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill them.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" The answering whisper was matter of fact. She pressed his hand and stood back to give him room. She put her hands up to her ears.\n\nBond eased the gun out of his waistband. Softly he broke the cylinder sideways and verified with his thumb that all six chambers were loaded. Bond knew he wasn't going to like this, killing again in cold blood, but these men would be the Chinese Negro gangsters, the strong-arm guards who did the dirty work. They would certainly be murderers many times over. Perhaps they were the ones who had killed Strangways and the girl. But there was no point in trying to ease his conscience. It was kill or be killed. He must just do it efficiently.\n\nThe voices were coming closer. There were three men. They were talking loudly, nervously. Perhaps it was many years since they had even thought of going through the tunnel. Bond wondered if they would look round as they came out into the main tunnel. Or would he have to shoot them in the back?\n\nNow they were very close. He could hear their shoes scuffing the ground.\n\n\"That makes ten bucks you owe me, Sam.\"\n\n\"Not after tonight it won't be. Roll them bones, boy. Roll them bones.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"No dice for me tonight, feller. I'm goin\" to cut maself a slice of de white girl.\"\n\n\"Haw, haw, haw.\"\n\nThe first man came out, then the second, then the third. They were carrying their revolvers loosely in their right hands.\n\nBond said sharply, \"No, you won't.\"\n\nThe three men whirled round. White teeth glinted in open mouths. Bond shot the rear man in the head and the second man in the stomach. The front man's gun was up. A bullet whistled past Bond and away up the main tunnel. Bond's gun crashed. The man clutched at his neck and spun slowly round and fell across the conveyor-belt. The echoes thundered slowly up and down the tunnel. A puff of fine dust rose in the air and settled. Two of the bodies lay still. The man with the stomach shot writhed and jerked.\n\nBond tucked his hot gun into the waistband of his trousers. He said roughly to the girl, \"Come on.\" He reached for her hand and pulled her after him into the mouth of the side tunnel. He said, \"Sorry about that, Honey,\" and started running, pulling her after him by the hand. She said, \"Don't be stupid.\" Then there was no sound but the thud of their naked feet on the stone floor.\n\nThe air was clean in the side tunnel and it was easier going but, after the tension of the shooting, pain began to crowd in again and take possession of Bond's body. He ran automatically. He hardly thought of the girl. His whole mind was focused on taking the pain and on the problems that waited at the end of the tunnel.\n\nHe couldn't tell if the shots had been heard and he had no idea what opposition was left. His only plan was to shoot anyone who got in his way and somehow get to the garage and the marsh buggy. That was their only hope of getting away from the mountain and down to the coast."},{"from":"human","value":"The dim yellow bulbs in the ceiling flickered by overhead."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Still the tunnel stretched on. Behind him, Honey stumbled. Bond stopped, cursing himself for not having thought of her. She reached for him and fora moment she leaned against him panting. \"I'm sorry, James. It's just that...\"\n\nBond held her to him. He said anxiously, \"Are you hurt, Honey?\"\n\n\"No, I'm all right. It's just that I'm so terribly tired. And my feet got rather cut on the mountain. I fella lot in the dark. If we could walk a bit. We're nearly there. And there's a door into the garage before we get to the machine shop. Couldn't we go in there?\"\n\nBond hugged her to him. He said, \"That's just what I'm looking for, Honey. That's our only hope of getting away. If you can stick it till we get there, we've got areal chance.\"\n\nBond put his arm round her waist and took her weight. He didn't trust himself to look at her feet. He knew they must be bad. It was no good being sorry for each other. There wasn't time for it if they we're to stay alive.\n\nThey started moving again, Bond's face grim with the extra effort, the girl's feet leaving bloody footsteps on the ground, and almost immediately she whispered urgently and there was a wooden door in the wall of the tunnel and it was ajar and no sound came from the other side.\n\nBond took out his gun and gently eased the door open. The long garage was empty. Under the neon lights the black and gold painted dragon on wheels looked like afloat waiting for the Lord Mayor's Show. It was pointing towards the sliding doors and the hatch of the armoured cabin stood open. Bond prayed that the tank was full and that the mechanic had carried out his orders to get the damage fixed."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Suddenly, from somewhere outside, there was the sound of voices. They came nearer, several of them, jabbering urgently.\n\nBond took the girl by the hand and ran forward. There was only one place to fide-in the marsh buggy. The girl scrambled in. Bond followed, softly pulling the door shut behind him. They crouched, waiting. Bond thought: only three rounds left in the gun. Too late he remembered the rack of weapons on the wall of the garage. Now the voices were outside. There came the clang of the door being slid back on its runners and a confusion of talk.\n\n\"How d'ya know they were shootin\"?\"\n\n\"Couldn't been nuthen else. I should know.\"\n\n\"Better take rifles. Here, Joe! Take that one, Lemmy! An' some pineapples. Box under da table.\"\n\nThere was the metallic noise of bolts being slid home and safety catches clicked.\n\n\"Some feller must a gone nuts. Couldn't ha\" been da Limey. You ever seen da big pus-feller in da creek? Cheessus! An'da rest of da tricks da Doc fixed up in da tube? An\" dat white gal. She cain't have been in much shape dis niornin\". Any of you men bin to have a look?\"\n\n\"Nossir.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Haw, haw. I'se sho surprised at you fellers. Dat's a fine piece of ass out dere on de crab walk.\"\n\nMore rattling and shuffling of feet, then, \"Okay let's go! Two abreast till we gets to da main tunnel. Shoot at da legs. Whoever's makin'trouble, da Doc'll sure want him to play wit.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Tee-hee.\"\n\nFeet echoed hollowly on the concrete. Bond held his breath as they filed by. Would they notice the shut door of the buggy? But they went on down the garage and into the tunnel and the noise of them slowly faded away.\n\nBond touched the girl's arm and put his finger to his lips. Softly he eased open the door and listened again. Nothing. He dropped to the ground and walked round the buggy and. went to the half-open entrance. Cautiously he edged his head round. There was no one insight. There was a smell of frying food in the air that brought the saliva to Bond's mouth. Dishes and pans clattered in the nearest building, about twenty yards away, and from one of the further Quonsets came the sound of a guitar and a man's voice singing a calypso. Dogs started to bark half-heartedly and then were silent. The Dobermann Pinschers.\n\nBond turned and ran back to the end of the garage. No sound came from the tunnel. Softly Bond closed the tunnel door and locked and bolted it. He went to the arms-rack on the wall and chose another Smith& Wesson and a Remington carbine. He verified that they were loaded and went to the door of the marsh buggy and handed them into the girl. Now the entrance door. Bond put his shoulder to it and softly eased it wide open. The corrugated iron rumbled hollowly. Bond ran back and scrambled through the open hatch and into the driver's seat. \"Shut it, Honey,\" he whispered urgently and bent and turned the ignition key.\n\nThe needle on the gauge swung to Full. Pray God the damned thing would startup quickly. Some diesels were slow. Bond stamped his foot down on the starter."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The grinding rattle was deafening. It must be audible allover the compound! Bond stopped and tried again. The engine fluttered and died. And again, and this time the blessed thing fired and the strong iron pulse hammered as Bond revved it up. Now, gently into gear. Which one? Try this. Yes, it bit. Brake off, you bloody fool! Christ, it had nearly stalled. But now they were out and on the track and Bond rammed his foot down to the floor.\n\n\"Anyone after us?\" Bond had to shout above the noise of the diesel.\n\n\"No. Wait! Yes, there's a man come out of the huts! And another! They're waving and shouting at us. Now some more are corning out. One of them's runoff to the right. Another's gone back into the hut. He's come outwith a rifle. He's lying down. He's firing!\"\n\n\"Close the slot! Lie down on the floor!\" Bond glanced at the speedometer. Twenty. And they were on a slope. There was nothing more to get out of the machine. Bond concentrated on keeping the huge bucking wheels on the track. The cabin bounced and swayed on the springs. It was a job to keep his hands and feet on the controls. An iron fist clanged against the cabin. And another. What was the range? Four hundred? Good shooting! But that would be the lot. He shouted, \"Take a look, Honey! Open the slot an inch.\"\n\n\"The man's got up. He's stopped firing. They're all looking after us-a whole crowd of them. Wait, there's something else. The dogs are coming! There's no one with them. They're just tearing down the track after us. Will they catch us?\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter if they do. Come and sit by me, Honey. Hold tight. Mind your head against the roof.\" Bond eased up the throttle. She was beside him. He grinned sideways at her. \"Hell, Honey. We've made it. When we get down to the lake I'll stop and shoot up the dogs. If I know those brutes I've only got to kill one and the whole pack'll stop to eat him.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond felt her hand at his neck. She kept it there as they swayed and thundered down the track. At the lake, Bond went on fifty yards into the water and turned the machine round and put it in neutral. Through the oblong slot he could seethe pack streaming round the last bend. He reached down for the rifle and pushed it through the aperture. Now the dogs were in the water and swimming. Bond kept his finger on the trigger and sprayed bullets into the middle of them. One floundered, kicking. Then another and another. He could hear their snarling screams above the clatter of the engine. There was blood in the water, A fight had started. He saw one dog leap on one of the wounded ones and sink its teeth into the back of its neck. Now they all seemed to have gone berserk. They were milling around in the frothing bloody water. Bond emptied his magazine among them and dropped the gun on the floor. He said, \"That's that, Honey,\" and put the machine into gear and swung it round and began rolling at an easy speed across the shallow lake towards the distant gap in the mangroves that was the mouth of the river.\n\nFor five minutes they moved along in silence. Then Bond put a hand on the girl's knee and said, \"We should be all right now, Honey. When they find the boss is dead there'll be panic. I guess some of the brighter ones will try and getaway to Cuba in the plane or the launch. They'll worry about their skins, not about us. All the same, we'll not take the canoe out until it's dark. I guess it's about ten by now. We should beat the coast in an hour. Then we'll rest up and try and get in shape for the trip. Weather looks all right and there'll be a bit more moon tonight. Think you can make it?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Her hand squeezed his neck. \"Of course I can, James. But what about you? Your poor body! It's nothing but burns and bruises. And what are those red marks across your stomach?\"\n\n\"Tell you later. I'll be okay. But you tell me what happened to you last night. How in hell did you manage to getaway from the crabs? What went wrong with that bastard's plan? All nightlong I could only think of you out there being slowly eaten to death. God, what a thing to have dreamed up! What happened?\"\n\nThe girl was actually laughing. Bond looked sideways. The golden hair was tousled and the blue eyes were heavy with lack of sleep, but otherwise she might just becoming home from a midnight barbecue.\n\n\"That man thought he knew everything. Silly old fool.\" She might have been talking about a stupid schoolteacher. \"He's much more impressed by the black crabs than I am. To begin with, I don't mind any animal touching me, and anyway those crabs wouldn't think of even nipping someone if they stay quite still and haven't got an open sore or anything. The whole point is that they don't really like meat. They live mostly on plants and things. If he was right and he did kill a black girl that way, either she had an open wound or she must have died of fright. He must have wanted to see if I'd stand it. Filthy old man. I only fainted down thereat dinner because I knew he'd have something much worse for you.\"\n\n\"Well, I'm damned. I wish to heaven I'd known that. I thought of you being picked to pieces.\"\n\nThe girl snorted. \"Of course it wasn't very nice having my clothes taken off and being tied down to pegs in the ground. But those black men didn't dare touch me. They just made jokes and then went away. It wasn't very comfortable out thereon the rock, but I was thinking of you and how I could get at Doctor No and kill him. Then I heard the crabs beginning to run-that's what we call it in Jamaica-and soon they came scurrying and rattling along-hundreds of them. I just lay still and thought of you. They walked round me and over me. I might have been a rock for all they cared. They tickled a bit. One annoyed me by trying to pullout a bit of my hair. But they don't smell or anything, and I just waited for the early morning when they crawl into holes and go to sleep. I got quite fond of them. They were company. Then they got fewer and fewer and finally stopped coming and I could move. I pulled at all the pegs in turn and then concentrated on my right-hand one. In the end I got it out of the crack in the rock and the rest was easy. I got back to the buildings and began scouting about. I got into the machine shop near the garage and found this filthy old suit. Then the conveyor thing started up not faraway and I thought about it and I guessed it must betaking the guano through the mountain. I knew you must be dead by then,\" the quiet voice was matter of fact, \"so I thought I'd get to the conveyor somehow and get through the mountain and kill Doctor No. I took a screwdriver to do it with.\" She giggled. \"When we ran into each other, I'd have stuck it into you only it was in my pocket and I couldn't get to it. I found the door in the back of the machine shop and walked through and into the main tunnel. That's all.\" She caressed the back of his neck. \"Iran along watching my step and the next thing I knew was your head hitting me in the stomach.\" She giggled again. \"Darling, I hope I didn't hurt you too much when we were fighting. My Nanny told me always to hit men there.\""},{"from":"human","value":"Bond laughed."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"She did, did she?\" He reached out and caught her by the hair and pulled her face to him. Her mouth felt its way round his cheek and locked itself against his.\n\nThe machine gave a sideways lurch. The kiss ended. They had hit the first mangrove roots at the entrance to the river."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"You're quite sure of all this?\"\n\nThe Acting Governor's eyes were hunted, resentful. How could these things have been going on under his nose, in one of Jamaica's dependencies? What would the Colonial Office have to say about it? He already saw the long, pale blue envelope marked \"Personal. For Addressee Only\", and the foolscap page with those very wide margins: \"The Secretary\" of State for the Colonies has instructed me to express to you his surprise...\" .\n\n\"Yes, sir. Quite sure.\" Bond had no sympathy for the man. He hadn't liked the reception he had had on his last visit to King's House, nor the mean comments on Strangways and the girl. He liked the memory of them even less now that he knew his friend and the girl were at the bottom of the Mona Reservoir.\n\n\"Er-well we mustn't let any of this get out to the Press. You understand that? I'll send my report into the Secretary of State by the next bag. I'm sure I can rely on your...\"\n\n\"Excuse me, sir.\" The Brigadier in command of the Caribbean Defence Force was a modern young soldier of thirty-five. His military record was good enough for him to be unimpressed by relics from the Edwardian era of Colonial Governors, whom he collectively referred to as \"feather-hatted fuddy-duddies\". \"I think we can assume that Commander Bond is unlikely to communicate with anyone except his Department. And if I may say so, sir, I submit that we should take steps to clear up Crab Key without waiting for approval from London. I can provide a platoon ready to embark by this evening. HMS Narvik came in yesterday. If the programme of receptions and cocktail parties for her could possibly be deferred for forty-eight hours or so...\" The Brigadier let his sarcasm hang in the air."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I agree with the Brigadier, sir.\" The voice of the Police Superintendent was edgy. Quick action might save him from a reprimand, but it would have to be quick. \"And in any case I shall have to proceed immediately against the various Jamaicans who appear to be implicated. I'll have to get the divers working at Mona. If this case is to be cleaned up we can't afford to wait for London. As Mister-er-Commander Bond says, most of these Negro gangsters will probably be in Cuba by now. Have to get in touch with my opposite number in Havana and catch up with them before they take to the hills or go underground. I think we ought to move at once, sir.\"\n\nThere was silence in the cool shadowy room where the meeting was being held. Qn the ceiling above the massive mahogany conference table there was an unexpected dapple of sunlight. Bond guessed that it shone up through the slats of the jalousies from a fountain or a lily pond in the garden outside the tall windows. Faraway there was the sound of tennis balls being knocked about. Distantly a young girl's voice called, \"Smooth. Your serve, Gladys.\" The Governor's children? Secretaries? From one end of the room King George VI, from the other end the Queen, looked down the table with grace and good humour.\n\n\"What do you think, Colonial Secretary?\" The Governor's voice was hustled.\n\nBond listened to the first few words. He gathered that Pleydell-Smith agreed with the other two. He stopped listening. His mind drifted into a world of tennis courts and lily ponds and kings and queens, of London, of people being photographed with pigeons on their heads in Trafalgar Square, of the forsythia that would soon be blazing on the bypass roundabouts, of May, the treasured housekeeper in his flat off the King's Road, getting up to brew herself a cup of tea (here it was eleven o'clock. It would be four o'clock in London), of the first tube trains beginning to run, shaking the ground beneath his cool, dark bedroom. Of the douce weather of England: the soft airs, the'heat waves, the cold spells-\"The only country where you can take a walk everyday of the year\"-Chesterfield's Letters? And then Bond thought of. Crab Key, of the hot ugly wind beginning to blow, of the stink of the marsh gas from the mangrove swamps, the jagged grey, dead coral in whose holes the black crabs were now squatting, the black and red eyes moving swiftly on their stalks as a shadow-a cloud, a bird-broke their small horizons. Down in the bird colony the brown and white and pink birds would be stalking in the shallows, or fighting or nesting, while upon the guanera the cormorants would be streaming back from their breakfast to deposit their milligramme of rent to the landlord who would no longer be collecting. And where would the landlord be? The men from the SS Blanche would have dug him out. The body would have been examined for signs of life and then put somewhere. Would they have washed the yellow dust off him and dressed him in his kimono while the Captain radioed Antwerp for instructions? And where had Doctor No's soul gone to? Had it been a bad soul or just a mad one? Bond thought of the burned twist down in the swamp that had been Quarrel. He remembered the soft ways of the big body, the innocence in the grey, horizon-seeking eyes, the simple lusts and desires, the reverence for superstitions and instincts, the childish faults, the loyalty and even love that Quarrel had given him-the warmth, there was only one word for it, of the man. Surely he hadn't, gone to the same place as Doctor No. Whatever happened to dead people, there was surely one place for the warm and another for the cold. And which, when the time came, would he, Bond, go to?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The Colonial Secretary was mentioning Bond's name. Bond pulled himself together.\n\n\"... survived is quite extraordinary. I do think, sir, that we should show our gratitude to Commander Bond and to his Service by accepting his recommendations. It does seem, sir, that he has done at least three-quarters of the job. Surely the least we can do is look after the other quarter.\"\n\nThe Governor grunted. He squinted down the table at Bond. The chap didn't seem to be paying much attention. But one couldn't be sure with these Secret Service fellows. Dangerous chaps to have around, sniffing and snooping. And their damned Chief carried a lot of guns in Whitehall. Didn't do to get on the wrong side of him. Of course there was something to be said for sending the Narvik. News would leak, of course. All the Press of the world would becoming down on his head. But then suddenly the Governor saw the headlines:\"GOVERNOR TAKES SWIFT ACTION... ISLAND'S STRONGMAN INTERVENES... THE NAVY'S THERE! \"Perhaps after all it would be better to do it that way. Even go down and seethe troops off himself. Yes, that was it, by jove. Cargill, of the Gleaner, was coming to lunch. He'd drop a hint or two to the chap and make sure the story got proper coverage. Yes, that was it. That was the way to play the hand.\n\nThe Governor raised his hands and let them fall flat on the table in a gesture of submission. He embraced the conference with awry smile of surrender.\n\n\"So I am overruled, gentlemen. Well, then,\" the voice was avuncular, telling the children that just this once...\"I accept your verdict. Colonial Secretary, will you please call upon the commanding officer of HMS Narvik and explain the position. In strict confidence, of course. Brigadier, I leave the military arrangements in your hands. Superintendent, you will know what to do.\" The Governor rose. He inclined his head regally in the direction of Bond. \"And it only remains to express my appreciation to Commander-er-Bond, for his part in this affair. I shall not fail to mention your assistance, Commander, to the Secretary of State.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Outside the sun blazed down on the gravel sweep. The interior of the Hillman Minx was a Turkish bath. Bond's bruised hands cringed as they took the wheel.\n\nPleydell-Smith leant through the window. He said, \"Ever heard the Jamaican expression \"rarse\"?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"\"Rarse, man\" is a vulgar expression meaning-er-\"stuff it up\". If I may say so, it would have been appropriate for you to have used the expression just now. However,\" Pleydell-Smith gave a wave of his hand which apologized for his Chief and dismissed him, \"is there anything else I can do for you? You really think you ought to go back to Beau Desert? They were quite definite at the hospital that they want to have you fora week.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" said Bond shortly, \"but I've got to get back. Seethe girl's all right. Would you tell the hospital I'll be back tomorrow? You got off that signal to my Chief?\"\n\n\"Urgent rates.\"\n\n\"Well, then,\" Bond pressed the self-starter, \"I guess that's the lot. You'll seethe Jamaica Institute people about the girl, won't you? She really knows the hell of a lot about the natural history side of the island. Not from books either. If they've got the right sort of job... Like to see her settled. I'll take her up to New York myself and see her through the operation. She'd be ready to start in a couple of weeks after that. Incidentally,\" Bond looked embarrassed, \"she's really the hell of a fine girl. When she comes back... if you and your wife... You know. Just so there's someone to keep an eye on her.\"\n\nPleydell-Smith smiled. He thought he had the picture. He said, \"Don't worry about that. I'll see to it. Betty's rather a hand at that sort of thing. She'll like taking the girl under her wing. Nothing else? See you later in the week, anyway. That hospital's the hell of a place in this heat. You might care to spend a night or two with us before you go ho-I mean to New York. Glad to have you-er-both.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Extend the plot as the writer's co-author.\\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\\nTitle: Dr. No\\nChapter: 9\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The eyes watched him, coldly, patiently. Delicately, like the questing trunk of an elephant, one of the long seizing tentacles broke the surface and palped its way up the wire towards his leg. It reached his foot. Bond felt the hard kiss of the suckers. He didn't move. He dared not reach down and lose the grip of his arms through the wire. Softly the suckers tugged, testing the amount of yield. It was not enough. Like a huge slimy caterpillar, the tentacle walked slowly on up the leg. It got to the bloody blistered kneecap and stopped there, interested. Bond's teeth gritted with the pain. He could imagine the message going back down the thick tentacle to the brain: Yes, it's good to eat! And the brain signalling back: then get it! Bring it tome!\\n\\nThe suckers walked on up the thigh. The tip of the tentacle was pointed, then it splayed out so that it almost covered the width of Bond's thigh and then tapered off to a wrist. That was Bond's target. He would just have to take the pain and the horror and wait for the wrist to come within range.\\n\\nA breeze, the first soft breeze of early morning, whispered across the metal surface of the inlet. It raised small waves that slapped gently against the sheer walls of the cliff. A wedge of cormorants took off from the guanera, five hundred feet above the inlet, and, cackling softly, made out to sea. As they swept over, the noise that had disturbed them reached Bond-the triple blast of a ship's siren that means it is ready to take on cargo. It came from Bond's left. The jetty must be round the corner from the northern arm of the inlet. The tanker from Antwerp had come in. Antwerp! Part of the world outside-the world that was a million miles away, out of Bond's reach-surely out of his reach forever. Just around that corner, men would be in the galley, having breakfast. The radio would be playing. There would be the sizzle of bacon and eggs, th smell of coffee... breakfast cooking...\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The suckers were at his hip. Bond could see into the horny cups. A stagnant sea smell reached him as the hand slowly undulated upwards. How tough was the mottled grey-brown jelly behind the hand? Should he stab? No, it must be a quick' hard slash, straight across, like cutting a rope. Never mind about cutting into his own skin.\\n\\nNow! Bond took a quick glance into the two football eyes, so patient, so incurious. Ashe did so the other seizing arm broke the surface and shot straight up at his face. Bond jerked back and the hand curled into a fist round the wire in front of his eyes. Ina second it would shift to an armor shoulder and he would be finished. Now!\\n\\nThe firsthand was on his ribs. Almost without taking aim, Bond's knife-hand slashed down and across. He felt the blade bite into the puddingy flesh and then the knife was almost torn from his grip as the wounded tentacle whipped back into the water. Fora moment the sea boiled around him. Now the other hand let go the wire and slapped across his stomach. The pointed hand stuck like a leech, all the power of the suckers furiously applied. Bond screamed as the suckers bit into his flesh. He slashed madly, again and again. God, his stomach was being torn out! The wire shook with the struggle. Below him the water boiled and foamed. He would have to give in. One more stab, this time into the back of the hand. It worked! The hand jerked free and snaked down and away leaving twenty red circles, edged with blood, across his skin.\\n\\nBond had not time to worry about them. Now the head of the squid had broken the surface and the sea was being thrashed into foam by the great heaving mantle round it. The eyes were glaring up at him, redly, venomously, and the forest of feeding arms was at his feet and legs, tearing the cotton fabric away and flailing back. Bond was being pulled down, inch by inch. The wire was biting into his armpits. He could even feel his spine being stretched. If he held on he would be torn in half. Now the eyes and the great triangular beak were right out of the water and the beak was reaching up for his feet. There was one hope, only one!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Bond thrust his knife between his teeth and his hand dived for the crook of the wire spear.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He tore it out, got it between his two hands and wrenched the doubled wire almost straight.\\n\\nHe would have to let go with one arm to stoop and get within range. If he missed, he would be torn to shreds on the fence.\\n\\nNow, before he died of the pain! Now, now!\\n\\nBond let his whole body slip down the ladder of wire and lunged through and down with all his force.\\n\\nHe caught a glimpse of the tip of his spear lancing into the centre of a black eyeball and then the whole sea erupted up at him in a fountain of blackness and he fell and hung upside down by the knees, his head an inch from the surface of the water.\\n\\nWhat had happened? Had he gone blind? He could see nothing. His eyes were stinging and there was a horrible fish taste in his mouth. But he could feel the wire cutting into the tendons behind his knees. So he must be alive! Dazedly Bond let go the spear from his trailing hand and reached up and felt for the nearest strand of wire. He got a hold and reached up his other hand and slowly, agonizingly, pulled himself up so that he was sitting in the fence. Streaks of light came into his eyes. He wiped a hand across his face. Now he could see. He gazed at his hand. It was black and sticky. He looked down at his body. It was covered with black slime, and blackness stained the sea for twenty yards around. Then Bond realized. The wounded squid had emptied its ink sac at him.\\n\\nBut where was the squid? Would it comeback? Bond searched the sea. Nothing, nothing but the spreading stain of black. Not a movement. Not a ripple. Then don't wait! Getaway from here! Getaway quick! Wildly Bond looked to right and left. Left was towards the ship, but also towards Doctor No. But right was towards nothing. To build the wire fence the men must have come from the left, from the direction of the jetty. There would be some sort of a path. Bond reached for the top cable and frantically began to edge along the swaying fence towards the rocky headland twenty yards away.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The stinking, bleeding, black scarecrow moved its arms and legs quite automatically.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The thinking, feeling apparatus of Bond was no longer part of his body. It moved alongside his body, or floated above it, keeping enough contact to pull the strings that made the puppet work. Bond was like a cutworm, the two halves of which continue to jerk forward although life has gone and been replaced by the mock life of nervous impulses. Only, with Bond, the two halves were not yet dead. Life was only in abeyance in them. All he needed was an ounce of hope, an ounce of reassurance that it was still worthwhile trying to stay alive.\\n\\nBond got to the-rock face. Slowly he let himself down to the bottom rung of wire. He gazed vaguely at the softly heaving sheen of water. It was black, impenetrable, as deep as the rest. Should he chance it? He must! He could do nothing until he had washed off the caking slime and blood, the horrible stale fish-smell. Moodily, fatalistically, he took off the rags of his shirt and trousers and hung them on the wire. He looked down at his brown and white body, striped and pock-marked with red. On an instinct he felt his pulse. It was slow but regular. The steady thump of life revived his spirits. What the hell was he worrying about? He was alive. The wounds and bruises on his body were nothing-absolutely nothing. They looked ugly, but nothing was broken. Inside the torn envelope, the machine was quietly, solidly ticking over. Superficial cuts and abrasions, bloody memories, deathly exhaustion-these were hurts that an accident ward would sneer at. Get on, you bastard! Get moving! Clean yourself and wake up. Count your blessings. Think of the girl. Think of the man you've somehow got to find and kill. Hang onto lifelike you've hung onto the knife between your teeth. Stop being sorry for yourself. To hell with what happened just now. Get down into the water and wash!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Ten minutes later, Bond, his wet rags clinging to his scrubbed, stinging body and his hair slicked back out of his eyes, climbed over the top of the headland.\\n\\nYes, it was as he had guessed. A narrow rocky track, made by the feet of the workers, led down the other side and round the bulge of the cliff.\\n\\nFrom close by came various sounds and echoes. A crane was working. He could hear the changing beat of its engine. There were iron ship-noises and the sound of water splashing into the sea from a bilge pump.\\n\\nBond looked up at the sky. It was pale blue. Clouds tinged with golden pink were trailing away towards the horizon. Far above him the cormorants were wheeling round the guanera. Soon they would be going off to feed. Perhaps even now they were watching the scout groups far out at sea locating the fish. It would be about six o'clock, the dawn of a beautiful day.\\n\\nBond, leaving drops of blood behind him, picked his way carefully down the track and along the bottom of the shadowed cliff. Round the bead, the track filtered through amaze of giant, tumbled boulders. The noises grew louder. Bond crept softly forward, watching his footholds for loose stones. A voice called out, startlingly close, \\\"Okay to go?\\\" There was a distant answer: \\\"Okay.\\\" The crane engine accelerated. A few more yards. One more boulder. And another. Now!\\n\\nBond flattened himself against the rock and warily inched his head round the corner.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"punctually at six o'clock the sunset with a last yellow flash behind the Blue Mountains, a wave of violet shadow poured down Richmond Road, and the crickets and tree frogs in the fine gardens began to zing and tinkle.\\n\\nApart from the background noise of the insects, the wide empty street was quiet. The wealthy owners of the big, withdrawn houses-the bank managers, company directors and top civil servants-had been home since five o'clock and they would be discussing the day with their wives or taking a shower and changing their clothes. In half an hour the street would come to life again with the cocktail traffic, but now this very superior half mile of'Rich Road', as it was known to the tradesmen of Kingston, held nothing but the suspense of an empty stage and the heavy perfume of night-scented jasmine.\\n\\nRichmond Road is the \\\"best\\\" road in all Jamaica. It is Jamaica's Park Avenue, its Kensington Palace Gardens, its Avenue D'lena. The \\\"best\\\" people live in its big old-fashioned houses, each in an acre or two of beautiful lawn set, too trimly, with the finest trees and flowers from the Botanical Gardens at Hope. The long, straight road is cool and quiet and withdrawn from the hot, vulgar sprawl of Kingston where its residents earn their money, and, on the other side of the T-inter-section at its top, lie the grounds of King's House, where the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Jamaica lives with his family. In Jamaica, no road could have a finer ending.\\n\\nOn the eastern corner of the top intersection stands No 1 Richmond Road, a substantial two-storey house with broad white-painted verandas running round both floors. From the road a gravel path leads up to the pillared entrance through wide lawns marked outwith tennis courts on which this evening, as on all evenings, the sprinklers are at work. This mansion is the social Mecca of Kingston. It is Queen's Club, which, for fifty years, has boasted the power and frequency of its blackballs.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Such stubborn retreats will not long survive in modern Jamaica. One day Queen's Club will have its windows smashed and perhaps be burned to the ground, but for the time being it is a useful place to find in a sub-tropical island-well run, well staffed and with the finest cuisine and cellar in the Caribbean. At that-time of day, on most evenings of the year, you would find the same four motorcars standing in the road outside the club. They were the cars belonging to the high bridge game that assembled punctually at five and played until around midnight. You could almost set your watch by these cars. They belonged, reading from the order in which they now stood against the kerb, to the Brigadier in command of the Caribbean Defence Force, to Kingston's leading criminal lawyer, and to the Mathematics Professor from Kingston University. At the tail of the line* stood the black Sunbeam Alpine of Commander John Strangways, RN (Ret.), Regional Control Officer for the Caribbean-or, less discreetly, the local representative of the British Secret Service.\\n\\nJust before six-fifteen, the silence of Richmond Road was softly broken. Three blind beggars came round the corner of the intersection and moved slowly down the pavement towards the four cars. They were Chigroes-Chinese Negroes-bulky men, but bowed as they shuffled along, tapping at the kerb with their white sticks. They walked in file. The first man, who wore blue glasses and could presumably see better than the others, walked in front holding a tin cup against the crook of the stick in his left hand. The right hand of the second man rested on his shoulder and the right hand of the third on the shoulder of the second. The eyes of the second and third men were shut. The three men were dressed in rags and wore dirty jippa-jappa baseball caps with long peaks. They said nothing and no noise came from them except the soft tapping of their sticks as they came slowly down the shadowed pavement towards the group of cars.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The three blind men would not have been incongruous in Kingston, where there are many diseased people on the streets, but, in this quiet rich empty street, they made an unpleasant impression. And it was odd that they should all be Chinese Negroes. This is not a common mixture of bloods.\\n\\nIn the cardroom, the sunburned hand reached out into the green pool of the centre table and gathered up the four cards. There was a quiet snap as the trick went to join the rest.\\n\\n\\\"Hundred honours,\\\" said Strangways, \\\"and ninety below!\\\" He looked at his watch and stood up. \\\"Back in twenty minutes. Your deal, Bill. Order some drinks. Usual for me. Don't bother to cook a hand for me while I'm gone. I always spot them.\\\"\\n\\nBill Templar, the Brigadier, laughed shortly. He pinged the bell by his side and raked the cards in towards him. He said, \\\"Hurry up, blast you. You always let the cards go cold just as your partner's in the money.\\\"\\n\\nStrangways was already out of the door. The three men sat back resignedly in their chairs. The coloured steward came in and they ordered drinks for themselves and a whisky and water for Strangways.\\n\\nThere was this maddening interruption every evening at six-fifteen, about halfway through their second rubber. At this time precisely, even if they were in the middle of a hand, Strangways had to go to his \\\"office\\\" and \\\"make a call\\\". It was a damned nuisance. But Strangways was a vital part of their four and they put up with it. It was never explained what \\\"the call\\\" was, and no one asked. Strangways's job was'hush' and that was that. He was rarely away for more than twenty minutes and it was understood that he paid for his absence with around of drinks.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The drinks came and the three men began to talk racing.\\n\\nIn fact, this was the most important moment in Strangways's day-the time of his duty radio contact with the powerful transmitter on the roof of the building in Regent's Park that is the headquarters of the Secret Service. Everyday, at eighteen-thirty local time, unless he gave'warning the day before that he would not be on the air-when he had business on one of the other islands in his territory, for instance, or was seriously ill-he would transmit his daily report and receive his orders. If he failed to come on the air precisely at six-thirty, there would be a second call, the'Blue'call, at seven, and, finally, the'Red'call at seven-thirty. After this, if his transmitter remained silent, it was'Emergency', and Section III, his controlling authority in London, would urgently get on the job of finding out what had happened to him.\\n\\nEven a \\\"Blue\\\" call means a bad mark for an agent unless his \\\"Reasons in Writing\\\" are unanswerable. London's radio schedules round the world are desperately tight and their minute disruption by even one extra call is a dangerous nuisance. Strangways had never suffered the ignominy of a'Blue'call, let alone a'Red\\\", and was ascertain as could be that he never would do so. Every evening, at precisely six-fifteen, he left Queen's Club, got into his car and drove for ten minutes up into the foothills of the Blue Mountains to his neat bungalow with the fabulous view over Kingston harbour. At six twenty-five he walked through the hall to the office at the back. He unlocked the door and locked it again behind him. Miss Trueblood, who passed as his secretary, but was in fact his No. 2 and a former Chief Officer WRNS, would already be sitting in front of the dials inside the dummy filing cabinet. She would have the earphones on and would be making first contact, tapping out his call-sign, WXN, on 14 megacycles. There would be a shorthand pad on her elegant knees. Strangways would drop into the chair beside her and pickup the other pair of headphones and, at exactly six twenty-eight, he would takeover from her and wait for the sudden hollowness in the ether that meant that WWW in London was coming into acknowledge.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It was an iron routine. Strangways was a man of iron routine. Unfortunately, strict patterns of behaviour can be deadly if they are read by an enemy.\\n\\nStrangways, a tall lean man with a black patch over the right eye and the sort of aquiline good looks you associate with the bridge of a destroyer, walked quickly across the mahogany panelled hallway of Queen's Club and pushed through the light mosquito-wired doors and ran down the three steps to the path.\\n\\nThere was nothing very much on his mind except the sensual pleasure of the clean fresh evening air and the memory of the finesse that had given him his three spades. There was this case, of course, the case he was working on, a curious and complicated affair that M had rather nonchalantly tossed over the air at him two weeks earlier. But it was going well. A chance lead into the Chinese community had paid off. Some-odd angles had come to light-for the present the merest shadows of angles-but if they jelled, thought Strangways as. he strode down the gravel path and into Richmond Road, he might find himself involved in something very odd indeed.\\n\\nStrangways shrugged his shoulders. Of course it wouldn't turnout like that. The fantastic never materialized in his line of business. There would be some drab solution that had been embroidered by overheated imaginations and the usual hysteria of the Chinese.\\n\\nAutomatically, another part of Strangways's mind took in the three blind men. They were tapping slowly towards him down the sidewalk. They were about twenty yards away. He calculated that they would pass him a second or two before he reached his car. Out of shame for his own health and gratitude for it, Strangways felt fora coin. He ran his thumbnail down its edge to make sure it was a florin and not a penny. He took it out. He was parallel with the beggars. How odd, they were all Chigroes! How very odd! Strangways's hand went out. The coin clanged in the tin cup.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Bless you, Master,\\\" said the leading man. \\\"Bless you,\\\" echoed the other two.\\n\\nThe car key was in Strangways's hand. Vaguely he registered the moment of silence as the tapping of the white sticks ceased. It was too late.\\n\\nAs Strangways had passed the last man, all three had swivelled. The back two had fanned out a step to have a clear field of fire. Three revolvers, ungainly with their sausage-shaped silencers, whipped out of holsters concealed among the rags. With disciplined precision the three men aimed at different points down Strangways's spine-one between the shoulders, one in the small of the back, one at the pelvis.\\n\\nThe three heavy coughs were almost one. Strangways's body was hurled forward as if it had been kicked. It lay absolutely still in the small puff of dust from the sidewalk.\\n\\nIt was six-seventeen. With a squeal of tyres, a dingy motor hearse with black plumes flying from the four corners of its roof took the T-intersection into Richmond Road and shot down towards the group on the pavement. The three men had just had time to pickup Strangways's body when the hearse slid to a stop abreast of them. The double doors at the back were open. So was the plain deal coffin inside. The three men manhandled the body through the doors and into the coffin. They climbed in. The lid was put on and the doors pulled shut. The three Negroes sat down on three of the four little seats at the corners of the coffin and unhurriedly laid their white sticks beside them. Roomy black alpaca coats hungover the backs of the seats. They put the coats on over their rags. Then they took off their baseball caps and reached down to the floor and picked up blacktop hats and put them on their heads.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The driver, who also was a Chinese Negro, looked nervously over his shoulder.\\n\\n\\\"Go, man. Go!\\\" said the biggest of the killers. He glanced down at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. It said six-twenty. Just three minutes for the job. Dead on time.\\n\\nThe hearse made a decorous U-turn and moved at a sedate speedup to the intersection. There it turned right and at thirty miles an hour it cruised genteelry up the tarmac highway towards the hills, its black plumes streaming the doleful signal of its burden and the three mourners sitting bolt upright with their arms crossed respectfully over their hearts.\\n\\n'WXN calling WWW... WXN calling WWW...\\n\\nWXN... WXN... WXN... '\\n\\nThe centre finger of Mary Trueblood's right hand stabbed softly, elegantly, at the key. She lifted her left wrist. Six twenty-eight. He was a minute late. Mary Trueblood smiled at the thought of the little open Sunbeam tearing up the road towards her. Now, in a second, she would hear the quickstep, then the key in the lock and he would be sitting beside her. There would be the apologetic smile as he reached for the earphones. \\\"Sorry, Mary. Damned car wouldn't start.\\\" Or, \\\"You'd think the blasted police knew my number by now. Stopped meat Halfway Tree.\\\" Mary Trueblood took the second pair of earphones off their hook and put them on his chair to save him half a second.\\n\\n\\\"... WXN calling WWW____WXN calling WWW____\\\"\\n\\nShe tuned the dial a hair's breadth and tried again. Her watch said six-twenty-nine. She began to worry. Ina matter of seconds, London would becoming in. Suddenly she thought, God, what could she do if Strangways wasn't on time! It was useless for her to acknowledge London and pretend she was him-useless and dangerous. Radio Security would be monitoring the call, as they monitored every call from an agent. Those instruments which measured the minute peculiarities in an operator's\\\"fist'would at once detect it wasn't Strangways at the key. Mary Trueblood had been shown the forest of dials in the quiet room on the top floor at headquarters, had watched as the dancing hands registered the weight of each pulse, the speed of each cipher group, the stumble over a particular letter. The Controller had explained it all to her when she had joined the Caribbean station five years before-how a buzzer would sound and the contact be automatically broken if the wrong operator had come on the air. It was the basic protection against a Secret Service'transmitter falling into enemy hands. And, if an agent had been captured and was being forced to contact London under torture, he had only to add a few hairbreadth peculiarities to his usual'fist' and they would tell the story of his capture as clearly as if he had announced it en clair.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Now it had come! Now she was hearing the hollowness in the ether that meant London was coming in. Mary Trueblood glanced at her watch. Six-thirty. Panic! But now, at last, there were the footsteps in the hall. Thank God! Ina second he would come in. She must protect him! Desperately she decided to take a chance and keep the circuit open.\\n\\n'WWW calling WXN____WWW calling WXN____Can\\n\\nyou hear me?... can you hear me? ' London was coming over strong, searching for the Jamaica station.\\n\\nThe footsteps were at the door.\\n\\nCoolly, confidently, she tapped back: 'Hear you loud and clear... Hear you loud and clear... Hear you...\\\"\\n\\nBehind her there was an explosion. Something hither on the ankle. She looked down. It was the lock of the door.\\n\\nMary Trueblood swivelled sharply on her chair. A man stood in the doorway. It wasn't Strangways. It was a big Negro with yellowish skin and slanting eyes. There was a gun in his hand. It ended in a thick black cylinder.\\n\\nMary Trueblood opened her mouth to scream.\\n\\nThe man smiled broadly. Slowly, lovingly, he lifted the gun and shot her three times in and around the left breast.\\n\\nThe girl slumped sideways off her chair. The earphones slipped off her golden hair onto the floor. For perhaps a second the tiny chirrup of London sounded out into the room. Then it stopped. The buzzer at the Controller's desk in Radio Security had signalled that something was wrong on WXN.\\n\\nThe killer walked out of the door. He. came back carrying a box with a coloured label on it that said PRESTO FIRE, and a big sugar sack marked TATE& LYLE. He put the box down on the floor and went to the body and roughly forced the sack over the head and down to the ankles. The feet stuck out. He bent them and crammed them in. He dragged the bulky sack out into the hall and came back. In the corner of the room the safe stood open, as he had been told it would, and the cipher books had been taken out and laid on the desk ready for work on the London signals. The man threw these and all the papers in the safe into the centre of the room. He tore down the curtains and added them to the pile. He topped it up with a couple of chairs. He opened the box of Presto firelighters and took out a handful and tucked them into the pile and lit them. Then he went out into the hall and lit similar bonfires inappropriate places. The tinder-dry furniture caught quickly and the flames began to lick up the panelling. . The man went to the front door and opened it. Through the hibiscus hedge he could seethe glint of the hearse. There was no noise except the zing of crickets and the soft tick-over of the car's engine. Up and down the road there was no other sign of life. The man went back into the smoke-filled hall and easily shouldered the sack and came out again, leaving the door open to make a draught. He walked swiftly down the path to the road. The back doors of the hearse were open. He handed in the sack and watched the two men force it into the coffin on top of Strangways's body. Then he climbed in and shut the doors and sat down and put on his top hat. .\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"As the first flames showed in the upper windows of the bungalow, the hearse moved quietly from the sidewalk and went on its way up towards the Mona Reservoir. There the weighted coffin would slip down into its fifty-fathom grave and, in just forty-five minutes, the personnel and records of the Caribbean station of the Secret Service would have been utterly destroyed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond took one long comprehensive look and pulled back. He leant against the cool face of rock and waited for his breathing to get back to normal. He lifted his knife closeup to his eyes and carefully examined the blade. Satisfied, he slipped it behind him and down the waistband of his trousers up against his spine. There it would be handy but protected from bitting against anything. He wondered about the lighter. He took it out of his hip pocket. As a hunk of metal it might be useful, but it wouldn't light anymore and it might scrape against the rock. He put it down on the ground away from his feet.\\n\\nThen Bond sat down and meticulously went over the photograph that was in his brain.\\n\\nRound the corner, not more than ten yards away, was the crane. There was no back to the cabin. Inside it a man sat at the controls. It was the Chinese Negro boss, the driver of the marsh buggy. In front of him the jetty ran twenty yards out into the sea and ended in a T. An aged tanker of around ten thousand tons deadweight was secured alongside the top of the T. It stood well out of the water, its deck perhaps twelve feet above the quay. The tanker was called Blanche, and the Ant of Antwerp showed at her stern. There was no sign of life Onboard except one figure lolling at the wheel in the enclosed bridge. The rest of the crew would be below, battened away from the guano dust. From just to the right of the crane, an overhead conveyor-belt in a corrugated-iron housing ran out from the cliff-face. It was carried on high stanchions above the jetty and stopped just short of the hold of the tanker. Its mouth ended in a huge canvas sock, perhaps six feet in diameter,. The purpose of the crane was to lift the wireframed mouth of the sock so that it hung directly over the hold of the tanker and to move it to right or left to give even distribution. From out of the mouth of the sock, in a solid downward jet, the scrambled-egg-coloured guano dust was pouring into the hold of the tanker at a rate of tons a minute.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Below, on the jetty, to the left and to leeward of the drifting smoke of the guano dust, stood the tall, watchful figure of Doctor No.\\n\\nThat was all. The morning breeze feathered the deep-water anchorage, still half in shadow beneath the towering cliffs, the'conveyor-belt thudded quietly on its rollers, the crane's engine chuffed rhythmically. There was no other sound, no other movement, no other life apart from the watch at the ship's wheel, the trusty working at the crane, and Doctor No, seeing that all went well. On the other side of the mountain men would be working, feeding the guano to the conveyor-belt that rumbled away through the bowels of the rock, but on this side no one was allowed and no one was necessary. Apart from aiming the canvas mouth of the conveyor, there was nothing else for anyone to do.\\n\\nBond sat and thought, measuring distances, guessing at angles, remembering exactly where the crane driver's hands and feet were on the levers and the pedals. Slowly, a thin, hard smile broke across the haggard, sunburned face. Yes! It was on! It could be done. But softly, gently, slowly! The prize was almost intolerably sweet.\\n\\nBond examined the soles of his feet and his hands. They; would serve. They would have to serve. He reached back ana felt the handle of the knife. Shifted it an inch. He stood up and took several slow deep breaths, ran his hands through his salt-and sweat-matted hair, rubbed them harshly up and down his face and then down the tattered sides of his black jeans. He gave a final flex to his fingers. He was ready.\\n\\nBond stepped up to the rock and inched an eye round. Nothing had changed. His guess at the distances had been right. The crane driver was watchful, absorbed. The neck above the open khaki shirt was naked, offered, waiting. Twenty yards away, Doctor No, also with his back to Bond, stood sentry over the thick rich cataract of whity-yellow dust. On the bridge, the watch was lighting a cigarette.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond looked along the ten yards of path that led past the back of the crane. He picked out the places he would put each foot. Then he came out from behind the rock and ran.\\n\\nBond ran to the right of the crane, to a point he had chosen where the lateral side of the cabin would hide him from the driver and the jetty. He got there and stopped, crouching, listening. The engine hurried on, the conveyor-belt rumbled steadily out of the mountain above and behind him. There was no change.\\n\\nThe two iron footholds at the back of the cabin, inches away from Bond's face, looked solid. Anyway the noise of the engine would drown small sounds. But he would have to be quick to yank the man's body out of the seat and get his own hands and feet on the controls. The single stroke of the knife would have to be mortal. Bond felt along his own collarbone, felt the soft triangle of skin beneath which the jugular pumped, remembered the angle of approach behind the man's back, reminded himself to force the blade and hold it in.\\n\\nFora final second he listened, then he reached behind his back for the knife and went up the iron steps and into the cabin with the stealth and speed of a panther.\\n\\nAt the last moment there was need to hurry. Bond stood behind the man's back, smelling him. He had time to raise his knife hand almost to the roof of the cabin, time to summon every ounce of strength, before he swept the blade down and into the square inch of smooth, brownish-yellow skin.\\n\\nThe man's hands and legs splayed away from the controls.\\\"His face strained back towards Bond. It seemed to Bond that there was a flash of recognition in the bulging eyes before the whites rolled upwards. Then a strangled noise came from the open mouth and the big body rolled sideways off its iron seat and crashed to the floor.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond's eyes didn't even follow it ajs far as the ground. He was akeady in the seat and reaching for the pedals and levers. Everything was out of control. The engine was running in neutral, the wire hawser was tearing off the drum, the tip of the crane was bending slowly forwards like a giraffe's neck, the canvas mouth of the conveyor-belt had wilted and was now pouring its column of dust between the jetty and the ship. Doctor No was staring upwards. His mouth was open. Perhaps he was shouting something.\\n\\nCoolly, Bond reined the machine in, slowly easing the levers and pedals back to the angles at which the driver had been holding them. The engine accelerated, the gears bit and began to work again. The hawser slowed on the spinning drum and reversed, bringing the canvas mouth up and over the ship. The tip of the crane lifted and stopped. The scene was as before. Now!\\n\\nBond reached forward for the iron wheel which the driver had been handling when Bond had caught his first glimpse of him. Which way to turn it? Bond tried to the left. The tip of the crane veered slightly to the right. So be it. Bond spun the wheel to the right. Yes, by God, it was answering, moving across the sky, carrying the mouth of the conveyor with it.\\n\\nBond's eyes flashed to the jetty. Doctor No had moved. He had moved a few paces to a stanchion that Bond had missed. He had a telephone in his hand. He was getting through to the other side of the mountain. Bond could see his hand frantically. jiggling the receiver arm, trying to attract attention.\\n\\nBond whirled the director wheel. Christ, wouldn't it turn any faster? In seconds Doctor No would get through and it would be too late. Slowly the tip of the crane arced across the sky. Now the mouth of the conveyor was spewing the dust column down over the side of the ship. Now the yellow mound was marching silently across the jetty. Five yards, four, three, two! Don't look round, you bastard! Arrh, got you! Stop the wheel! Now, you take it, Doctor No!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"At the first brush of the stinking dust column, Doctor No had turned. Bond saw the long arms fling wide as if to embrace the thudding mass. One knee rose to run. The mouth opened and a thin scream came up to Bond above the noise of the engine. Then there was a brief glimpse of a kind of dancing snowman. And then only a mound of yellow bird dung that grew higher and higher.\\n\\n\\\"God!\\\" Bond's voice gave back an iron echo from the walls of the cabin. He thought of the screaming lungs stuffing with the filthy dust, the body bending and then falling under the weight, the last impotent kick of the heels, the last flash of thought-rage, horror, defeat?-and then the silence of the stinking tomb.\\n\\nNow the yellow mountain was twenty feet high. The stuff was spilling off the sides of the jetty into the sea. Bond glanced\\n\\n. at the ship. Ashe did so, there came three blasts on its siren.\\n\\nThe noise crashed round the cliffs. There came a fourth blast which didn't stop. Bond could seethe watch holding onto the lanyard as he craned out of the bridge window, looking down. Bond took his hands off the controls and let them rip. It was time to go.\\n\\nHe slipped off the iron seat and bent over the dead body. He took the revolver out of the holster and looked at it. He smiled grimly-Smith& Wesson. 38, the regular model. He slipped it down inside his waistband. It was fine to feel the heavy cold metal against his skin. He went to the door of the cabin and dropped down to the ground.\\n\\nAn iron ladder ran up the cliif behind the crane to where the conveyor-housing jutted out. There was a small door in the corrugated iron wall of the housing. Bond scrambled up the ladder. The door opened easily, letting out a puff of guano dost, and he clambered through.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Inside, the clanking of the conveyor-belt over its rollers was deafening, but there were dim inspection lights in the stone ceiling of the tunnel and a narrow catwalk that stretched away into the mountain alongside the hurrying river of dust.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond moved quickly along it, breathing shallowly against the fishy ammoniac smell. At all costs he must get to the end before the significance of the ship's siren and of the unanswered telephone overcame the fear of the guards.\\n\\nBond half ran and half stumbled through the echoing stinking tunnel. How far would it be? Two hundred yards? And then what? Nothing for it but to breakout of the tunnel mouth and start shooting-cause a panic and hope for the best. He would get hold of one of the men and wring out of him where the girl was. Then what? When he got to the place on the mountainside, what would he find? What would be left of her?\\n\\nBond ran on faster, his head down, watching the narrow breadth of planking, wondering what would happen if he missed his footing and slipped into the rushing river of guano dust. Would he be able to get off the belt again or would he be whirled away and down until he was finally spewed out onto the burial mound of Doctor No?\\n\\nWhen Bond's head hit into the soft stomach and he felt the hands at his throat, it was too late to think of his revolver. His only reaction was to throw himself down and forward at the legs. The legs gave against his shoulder and there was a shrill scream as the body crashed down on his back.\\n\\nBond had started the heave that would hurl his attacker sideways and onto the conveyor-belt when the quality of the scream and something light and soft about the impact of the body froze his muscles.\\n\\nIt couldn't be!\\n\\nAs if in answer, sharp teeth bit deeply into the calf of his right leg and an elbow jabbed viciously, knowledgeably, backwards into his groin.\\n\\nBond yelled with the pain. He tried to squirm sideways to protect himself, but even as he shouted'Honey!\\\" the elbow thudded into him again.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The breath whistled through Bond's teeth with the agony. There was only one way to stop her without throwing heron to the conveyor-belt. He took a firm grip of one ankle and heaved himself to his knees. He stood upright, holding her slung over his shoulder by one leg. The other foot banged against his head, but half-heartedly, as if she too realized that something was wrong.\\n\\n\\\"Stop it, Honey! It's me!\\\"\\n\\nThrough the din of the conveyor-belt, Bond's shout got through to her. He heard her cry'James!\\\" from somewhere near the floor. He felt her hands clutch at his legs. \\\"James, James!\\\"\\n\\nBond slowly let her down. He turned and knelt and reached for her. He put his arms round her and held her tightly to him. \\\"Oh Honey, Honey. Are you all right?\\\" Desperately, unbelieving, he strained her to him.\\n\\n\\\"Yes, James! Oh, yes!\\\" He felt her hands at his back and his hair. \\\"Oh, James, my darling!\\\" she fell against him, sobbing.\\n\\n\\\"It's all right, Honey.\\\" Bond smoo'thed her hair. \\\"And Doctor No's dead. But now we've got to run for it. We've got to get out of here. Come on! How can we get out of the tunnel? How did you get here? We've got to hurry!\\\"\\n\\nAs if in comment, the conveyor-belt stopped with a jerk.\\n\\nBond pulled the girl to her feet. She was wearing a dirty suit of workmen's blue dungarees. The sleeves and legs were; rolled up. The suit was far too big for her. She looked like a girl in a man's pyjamas. She was powdered white with the guano dust except where the tears had marked her cheeks. She said breathlessly, \\\"Just up there! There's aside tunnel that leads to the machine shops and the garage. Will they come after us?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There was no time to talk. Bond said urgently, \\\"Follow me!\\\" and started running. Behind him her feet padded softly in the hollow silence. They came to the fork where the side tunnel led off into the rock. Which way would the men come? Down the side tunnel or along the catwalk in the main tunnel? The sound of voices booming far up the side tunnel answered him. Bond drew the girl a few feet up the main tunnel. He brought her close to him and whispered, \\\"I'm sorry. Honey. I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Of course.\\\" The answering whisper was matter of fact. She pressed his hand and stood back to give him room. She put her hands up to her ears.\\n\\nBond eased the gun out of his waistband. Softly he broke the cylinder sideways and verified with his thumb that all six chambers were loaded. Bond knew he wasn't going to like this, killing again in cold blood, but these men would be the Chinese Negro gangsters, the strong-arm guards who did the dirty work. They would certainly be murderers many times over. Perhaps they were the ones who had killed Strangways and the girl. But there was no point in trying to ease his conscience. It was kill or be killed. He must just do it efficiently.\\n\\nThe voices were coming closer. There were three men. They were talking loudly, nervously. Perhaps it was many years since they had even thought of going through the tunnel. Bond wondered if they would look round as they came out into the main tunnel. Or would he have to shoot them in the back?\\n\\nNow they were very close. He could hear their shoes scuffing the ground.\\n\\n\\\"That makes ten bucks you owe me, Sam.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not after tonight it won't be. Roll them bones, boy. Roll them bones.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"No dice for me tonight, feller. I'm goin\\\" to cut maself a slice of de white girl.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Haw, haw, haw.\\\"\\n\\nThe first man came out, then the second, then the third. They were carrying their revolvers loosely in their right hands.\\n\\nBond said sharply, \\\"No, you won't.\\\"\\n\\nThe three men whirled round. White teeth glinted in open mouths. Bond shot the rear man in the head and the second man in the stomach. The front man's gun was up. A bullet whistled past Bond and away up the main tunnel. Bond's gun crashed. The man clutched at his neck and spun slowly round and fell across the conveyor-belt. The echoes thundered slowly up and down the tunnel. A puff of fine dust rose in the air and settled. Two of the bodies lay still. The man with the stomach shot writhed and jerked.\\n\\nBond tucked his hot gun into the waistband of his trousers. He said roughly to the girl, \\\"Come on.\\\" He reached for her hand and pulled her after him into the mouth of the side tunnel. He said, \\\"Sorry about that, Honey,\\\" and started running, pulling her after him by the hand. She said, \\\"Don't be stupid.\\\" Then there was no sound but the thud of their naked feet on the stone floor.\\n\\nThe air was clean in the side tunnel and it was easier going but, after the tension of the shooting, pain began to crowd in again and take possession of Bond's body. He ran automatically. He hardly thought of the girl. His whole mind was focused on taking the pain and on the problems that waited at the end of the tunnel.\\n\\nHe couldn't tell if the shots had been heard and he had no idea what opposition was left. His only plan was to shoot anyone who got in his way and somehow get to the garage and the marsh buggy. That was their only hope of getting away from the mountain and down to the coast.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The dim yellow bulbs in the ceiling flickered by overhead.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Still the tunnel stretched on. Behind him, Honey stumbled. Bond stopped, cursing himself for not having thought of her. She reached for him and fora moment she leaned against him panting. \\\"I'm sorry, James. It's just that...\\\"\\n\\nBond held her to him. He said anxiously, \\\"Are you hurt, Honey?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, I'm all right. It's just that I'm so terribly tired. And my feet got rather cut on the mountain. I fella lot in the dark. If we could walk a bit. We're nearly there. And there's a door into the garage before we get to the machine shop. Couldn't we go in there?\\\"\\n\\nBond hugged her to him. He said, \\\"That's just what I'm looking for, Honey. That's our only hope of getting away. If you can stick it till we get there, we've got areal chance.\\\"\\n\\nBond put his arm round her waist and took her weight. He didn't trust himself to look at her feet. He knew they must be bad. It was no good being sorry for each other. There wasn't time for it if they we're to stay alive.\\n\\nThey started moving again, Bond's face grim with the extra effort, the girl's feet leaving bloody footsteps on the ground, and almost immediately she whispered urgently and there was a wooden door in the wall of the tunnel and it was ajar and no sound came from the other side.\\n\\nBond took out his gun and gently eased the door open. The long garage was empty. Under the neon lights the black and gold painted dragon on wheels looked like afloat waiting for the Lord Mayor's Show. It was pointing towards the sliding doors and the hatch of the armoured cabin stood open. Bond prayed that the tank was full and that the mechanic had carried out his orders to get the damage fixed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Suddenly, from somewhere outside, there was the sound of voices. They came nearer, several of them, jabbering urgently.\\n\\nBond took the girl by the hand and ran forward. There was only one place to fide-in the marsh buggy. The girl scrambled in. Bond followed, softly pulling the door shut behind him. They crouched, waiting. Bond thought: only three rounds left in the gun. Too late he remembered the rack of weapons on the wall of the garage. Now the voices were outside. There came the clang of the door being slid back on its runners and a confusion of talk.\\n\\n\\\"How d'ya know they were shootin\\\"?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Couldn't been nuthen else. I should know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Better take rifles. Here, Joe! Take that one, Lemmy! An' some pineapples. Box under da table.\\\"\\n\\nThere was the metallic noise of bolts being slid home and safety catches clicked.\\n\\n\\\"Some feller must a gone nuts. Couldn't ha\\\" been da Limey. You ever seen da big pus-feller in da creek? Cheessus! An'da rest of da tricks da Doc fixed up in da tube? An\\\" dat white gal. She cain't have been in much shape dis niornin\\\". Any of you men bin to have a look?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nossir.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Haw, haw. I'se sho surprised at you fellers. Dat's a fine piece of ass out dere on de crab walk.\\\"\\n\\nMore rattling and shuffling of feet, then, \\\"Okay let's go! Two abreast till we gets to da main tunnel. Shoot at da legs. Whoever's makin'trouble, da Doc'll sure want him to play wit.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Tee-hee.\\\"\\n\\nFeet echoed hollowly on the concrete. Bond held his breath as they filed by. Would they notice the shut door of the buggy? But they went on down the garage and into the tunnel and the noise of them slowly faded away.\\n\\nBond touched the girl's arm and put his finger to his lips. Softly he eased open the door and listened again. Nothing. He dropped to the ground and walked round the buggy and. went to the half-open entrance. Cautiously he edged his head round. There was no one insight. There was a smell of frying food in the air that brought the saliva to Bond's mouth. Dishes and pans clattered in the nearest building, about twenty yards away, and from one of the further Quonsets came the sound of a guitar and a man's voice singing a calypso. Dogs started to bark half-heartedly and then were silent. The Dobermann Pinschers.\\n\\nBond turned and ran back to the end of the garage. No sound came from the tunnel. Softly Bond closed the tunnel door and locked and bolted it. He went to the arms-rack on the wall and chose another Smith& Wesson and a Remington carbine. He verified that they were loaded and went to the door of the marsh buggy and handed them into the girl. Now the entrance door. Bond put his shoulder to it and softly eased it wide open. The corrugated iron rumbled hollowly. Bond ran back and scrambled through the open hatch and into the driver's seat. \\\"Shut it, Honey,\\\" he whispered urgently and bent and turned the ignition key.\\n\\nThe needle on the gauge swung to Full. Pray God the damned thing would startup quickly. Some diesels were slow. Bond stamped his foot down on the starter.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The grinding rattle was deafening. It must be audible allover the compound! Bond stopped and tried again. The engine fluttered and died. And again, and this time the blessed thing fired and the strong iron pulse hammered as Bond revved it up. Now, gently into gear. Which one? Try this. Yes, it bit. Brake off, you bloody fool! Christ, it had nearly stalled. But now they were out and on the track and Bond rammed his foot down to the floor.\\n\\n\\\"Anyone after us?\\\" Bond had to shout above the noise of the diesel.\\n\\n\\\"No. Wait! Yes, there's a man come out of the huts! And another! They're waving and shouting at us. Now some more are corning out. One of them's runoff to the right. Another's gone back into the hut. He's come outwith a rifle. He's lying down. He's firing!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Close the slot! Lie down on the floor!\\\" Bond glanced at the speedometer. Twenty. And they were on a slope. There was nothing more to get out of the machine. Bond concentrated on keeping the huge bucking wheels on the track. The cabin bounced and swayed on the springs. It was a job to keep his hands and feet on the controls. An iron fist clanged against the cabin. And another. What was the range? Four hundred? Good shooting! But that would be the lot. He shouted, \\\"Take a look, Honey! Open the slot an inch.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"The man's got up. He's stopped firing. They're all looking after us-a whole crowd of them. Wait, there's something else. The dogs are coming! There's no one with them. They're just tearing down the track after us. Will they catch us?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Doesn't matter if they do. Come and sit by me, Honey. Hold tight. Mind your head against the roof.\\\" Bond eased up the throttle. She was beside him. He grinned sideways at her. \\\"Hell, Honey. We've made it. When we get down to the lake I'll stop and shoot up the dogs. If I know those brutes I've only got to kill one and the whole pack'll stop to eat him.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond felt her hand at his neck. She kept it there as they swayed and thundered down the track. At the lake, Bond went on fifty yards into the water and turned the machine round and put it in neutral. Through the oblong slot he could seethe pack streaming round the last bend. He reached down for the rifle and pushed it through the aperture. Now the dogs were in the water and swimming. Bond kept his finger on the trigger and sprayed bullets into the middle of them. One floundered, kicking. Then another and another. He could hear their snarling screams above the clatter of the engine. There was blood in the water, A fight had started. He saw one dog leap on one of the wounded ones and sink its teeth into the back of its neck. Now they all seemed to have gone berserk. They were milling around in the frothing bloody water. Bond emptied his magazine among them and dropped the gun on the floor. He said, \\\"That's that, Honey,\\\" and put the machine into gear and swung it round and began rolling at an easy speed across the shallow lake towards the distant gap in the mangroves that was the mouth of the river.\\n\\nFor five minutes they moved along in silence. Then Bond put a hand on the girl's knee and said, \\\"We should be all right now, Honey. When they find the boss is dead there'll be panic. I guess some of the brighter ones will try and getaway to Cuba in the plane or the launch. They'll worry about their skins, not about us. All the same, we'll not take the canoe out until it's dark. I guess it's about ten by now. We should beat the coast in an hour. Then we'll rest up and try and get in shape for the trip. Weather looks all right and there'll be a bit more moon tonight. Think you can make it?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Her hand squeezed his neck. \\\"Of course I can, James. But what about you? Your poor body! It's nothing but burns and bruises. And what are those red marks across your stomach?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Tell you later. I'll be okay. But you tell me what happened to you last night. How in hell did you manage to getaway from the crabs? What went wrong with that bastard's plan? All nightlong I could only think of you out there being slowly eaten to death. God, what a thing to have dreamed up! What happened?\\\"\\n\\nThe girl was actually laughing. Bond looked sideways. The golden hair was tousled and the blue eyes were heavy with lack of sleep, but otherwise she might just becoming home from a midnight barbecue.\\n\\n\\\"That man thought he knew everything. Silly old fool.\\\" She might have been talking about a stupid schoolteacher. \\\"He's much more impressed by the black crabs than I am. To begin with, I don't mind any animal touching me, and anyway those crabs wouldn't think of even nipping someone if they stay quite still and haven't got an open sore or anything. The whole point is that they don't really like meat. They live mostly on plants and things. If he was right and he did kill a black girl that way, either she had an open wound or she must have died of fright. He must have wanted to see if I'd stand it. Filthy old man. I only fainted down thereat dinner because I knew he'd have something much worse for you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, I'm damned. I wish to heaven I'd known that. I thought of you being picked to pieces.\\\"\\n\\nThe girl snorted. \\\"Of course it wasn't very nice having my clothes taken off and being tied down to pegs in the ground. But those black men didn't dare touch me. They just made jokes and then went away. It wasn't very comfortable out thereon the rock, but I was thinking of you and how I could get at Doctor No and kill him. Then I heard the crabs beginning to run-that's what we call it in Jamaica-and soon they came scurrying and rattling along-hundreds of them. I just lay still and thought of you. They walked round me and over me. I might have been a rock for all they cared. They tickled a bit. One annoyed me by trying to pullout a bit of my hair. But they don't smell or anything, and I just waited for the early morning when they crawl into holes and go to sleep. I got quite fond of them. They were company. Then they got fewer and fewer and finally stopped coming and I could move. I pulled at all the pegs in turn and then concentrated on my right-hand one. In the end I got it out of the crack in the rock and the rest was easy. I got back to the buildings and began scouting about. I got into the machine shop near the garage and found this filthy old suit. Then the conveyor thing started up not faraway and I thought about it and I guessed it must betaking the guano through the mountain. I knew you must be dead by then,\\\" the quiet voice was matter of fact, \\\"so I thought I'd get to the conveyor somehow and get through the mountain and kill Doctor No. I took a screwdriver to do it with.\\\" She giggled. \\\"When we ran into each other, I'd have stuck it into you only it was in my pocket and I couldn't get to it. I found the door in the back of the machine shop and walked through and into the main tunnel. That's all.\\\" She caressed the back of his neck. \\\"Iran along watching my step and the next thing I knew was your head hitting me in the stomach.\\\" She giggled again. \\\"Darling, I hope I didn't hurt you too much when we were fighting. My Nanny told me always to hit men there.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Bond laughed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"She did, did she?\\\" He reached out and caught her by the hair and pulled her face to him. Her mouth felt its way round his cheek and locked itself against his.\\n\\nThe machine gave a sideways lurch. The kiss ended. They had hit the first mangrove roots at the entrance to the river.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"You're quite sure of all this?\\\"\\n\\nThe Acting Governor's eyes were hunted, resentful. How could these things have been going on under his nose, in one of Jamaica's dependencies? What would the Colonial Office have to say about it? He already saw the long, pale blue envelope marked \\\"Personal. For Addressee Only\\\", and the foolscap page with those very wide margins: \\\"The Secretary\\\" of State for the Colonies has instructed me to express to you his surprise...\\\" .\\n\\n\\\"Yes, sir. Quite sure.\\\" Bond had no sympathy for the man. He hadn't liked the reception he had had on his last visit to King's House, nor the mean comments on Strangways and the girl. He liked the memory of them even less now that he knew his friend and the girl were at the bottom of the Mona Reservoir.\\n\\n\\\"Er-well we mustn't let any of this get out to the Press. You understand that? I'll send my report into the Secretary of State by the next bag. I'm sure I can rely on your...\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Excuse me, sir.\\\" The Brigadier in command of the Caribbean Defence Force was a modern young soldier of thirty-five. His military record was good enough for him to be unimpressed by relics from the Edwardian era of Colonial Governors, whom he collectively referred to as \\\"feather-hatted fuddy-duddies\\\". \\\"I think we can assume that Commander Bond is unlikely to communicate with anyone except his Department. And if I may say so, sir, I submit that we should take steps to clear up Crab Key without waiting for approval from London. I can provide a platoon ready to embark by this evening. HMS Narvik came in yesterday. If the programme of receptions and cocktail parties for her could possibly be deferred for forty-eight hours or so...\\\" The Brigadier let his sarcasm hang in the air.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I agree with the Brigadier, sir.\\\" The voice of the Police Superintendent was edgy. Quick action might save him from a reprimand, but it would have to be quick. \\\"And in any case I shall have to proceed immediately against the various Jamaicans who appear to be implicated. I'll have to get the divers working at Mona. If this case is to be cleaned up we can't afford to wait for London. As Mister-er-Commander Bond says, most of these Negro gangsters will probably be in Cuba by now. Have to get in touch with my opposite number in Havana and catch up with them before they take to the hills or go underground. I think we ought to move at once, sir.\\\"\\n\\nThere was silence in the cool shadowy room where the meeting was being held. Qn the ceiling above the massive mahogany conference table there was an unexpected dapple of sunlight. Bond guessed that it shone up through the slats of the jalousies from a fountain or a lily pond in the garden outside the tall windows. Faraway there was the sound of tennis balls being knocked about. Distantly a young girl's voice called, \\\"Smooth. Your serve, Gladys.\\\" The Governor's children? Secretaries? From one end of the room King George VI, from the other end the Queen, looked down the table with grace and good humour.\\n\\n\\\"What do you think, Colonial Secretary?\\\" The Governor's voice was hustled.\\n\\nBond listened to the first few words. He gathered that Pleydell-Smith agreed with the other two. He stopped listening. His mind drifted into a world of tennis courts and lily ponds and kings and queens, of London, of people being photographed with pigeons on their heads in Trafalgar Square, of the forsythia that would soon be blazing on the bypass roundabouts, of May, the treasured housekeeper in his flat off the King's Road, getting up to brew herself a cup of tea (here it was eleven o'clock. It would be four o'clock in London), of the first tube trains beginning to run, shaking the ground beneath his cool, dark bedroom. Of the douce weather of England: the soft airs, the'heat waves, the cold spells-\\\"The only country where you can take a walk everyday of the year\\\"-Chesterfield's Letters? And then Bond thought of. Crab Key, of the hot ugly wind beginning to blow, of the stink of the marsh gas from the mangrove swamps, the jagged grey, dead coral in whose holes the black crabs were now squatting, the black and red eyes moving swiftly on their stalks as a shadow-a cloud, a bird-broke their small horizons. Down in the bird colony the brown and white and pink birds would be stalking in the shallows, or fighting or nesting, while upon the guanera the cormorants would be streaming back from their breakfast to deposit their milligramme of rent to the landlord who would no longer be collecting. And where would the landlord be? The men from the SS Blanche would have dug him out. The body would have been examined for signs of life and then put somewhere. Would they have washed the yellow dust off him and dressed him in his kimono while the Captain radioed Antwerp for instructions? And where had Doctor No's soul gone to? Had it been a bad soul or just a mad one? Bond thought of the burned twist down in the swamp that had been Quarrel. He remembered the soft ways of the big body, the innocence in the grey, horizon-seeking eyes, the simple lusts and desires, the reverence for superstitions and instincts, the childish faults, the loyalty and even love that Quarrel had given him-the warmth, there was only one word for it, of the man. Surely he hadn't, gone to the same place as Doctor No. Whatever happened to dead people, there was surely one place for the warm and another for the cold. And which, when the time came, would he, Bond, go to?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The Colonial Secretary was mentioning Bond's name. Bond pulled himself together.\\n\\n\\\"... survived is quite extraordinary. I do think, sir, that we should show our gratitude to Commander Bond and to his Service by accepting his recommendations. It does seem, sir, that he has done at least three-quarters of the job. Surely the least we can do is look after the other quarter.\\\"\\n\\nThe Governor grunted. He squinted down the table at Bond. The chap didn't seem to be paying much attention. But one couldn't be sure with these Secret Service fellows. Dangerous chaps to have around, sniffing and snooping. And their damned Chief carried a lot of guns in Whitehall. Didn't do to get on the wrong side of him. Of course there was something to be said for sending the Narvik. News would leak, of course. All the Press of the world would becoming down on his head. But then suddenly the Governor saw the headlines:\\\"GOVERNOR TAKES SWIFT ACTION... ISLAND'S STRONGMAN INTERVENES... THE NAVY'S THERE! \\\"Perhaps after all it would be better to do it that way. Even go down and seethe troops off himself. Yes, that was it, by jove. Cargill, of the Gleaner, was coming to lunch. He'd drop a hint or two to the chap and make sure the story got proper coverage. Yes, that was it. That was the way to play the hand.\\n\\nThe Governor raised his hands and let them fall flat on the table in a gesture of submission. He embraced the conference with awry smile of surrender.\\n\\n\\\"So I am overruled, gentlemen. Well, then,\\\" the voice was avuncular, telling the children that just this once...\\\"I accept your verdict. Colonial Secretary, will you please call upon the commanding officer of HMS Narvik and explain the position. In strict confidence, of course. Brigadier, I leave the military arrangements in your hands. Superintendent, you will know what to do.\\\" The Governor rose. He inclined his head regally in the direction of Bond. \\\"And it only remains to express my appreciation to Commander-er-Bond, for his part in this affair. I shall not fail to mention your assistance, Commander, to the Secretary of State.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Outside the sun blazed down on the gravel sweep. The interior of the Hillman Minx was a Turkish bath. Bond's bruised hands cringed as they took the wheel.\\n\\nPleydell-Smith leant through the window. He said, \\\"Ever heard the Jamaican expression \\\"rarse\\\"?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"\\\"Rarse, man\\\" is a vulgar expression meaning-er-\\\"stuff it up\\\". If I may say so, it would have been appropriate for you to have used the expression just now. However,\\\" Pleydell-Smith gave a wave of his hand which apologized for his Chief and dismissed him, \\\"is there anything else I can do for you? You really think you ought to go back to Beau Desert? They were quite definite at the hospital that they want to have you fora week.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thanks,\\\" said Bond shortly, \\\"but I've got to get back. Seethe girl's all right. Would you tell the hospital I'll be back tomorrow? You got off that signal to my Chief?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Urgent rates.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, then,\\\" Bond pressed the self-starter, \\\"I guess that's the lot. You'll seethe Jamaica Institute people about the girl, won't you? She really knows the hell of a lot about the natural history side of the island. Not from books either. If they've got the right sort of job... Like to see her settled. I'll take her up to New York myself and see her through the operation. She'd be ready to start in a couple of weeks after that. Incidentally,\\\" Bond looked embarrassed, \\\"she's really the hell of a fine girl. When she comes back... if you and your wife... You know. Just so there's someone to keep an eye on her.\\\"\\n\\nPleydell-Smith smiled. He thought he had the picture. He said, \\\"Don't worry about that. I'll see to it. Betty's rather a hand at that sort of thing. She'll like taking the girl under her wing. Nothing else? See you later in the week, anyway. That hospital's the hell of a place in this heat. You might care to spend a night or two with us before you go ho-I mean to New York. Glad to have you-er-both.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":293,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Assist the writer by carrying on with the story.\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\nTitle: Dr. No\nChapter: 18"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond said: \"Better plan for three days. Weather may break and stop us getting off fora night or two. Couple of good hunting knives. I'll take a gun. You never can tell.\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" said Quarrel emphatically. He relapsed into a brooding silence which lasted until they got to Port Maria.\n\nThey went through the little town and on round the headland to Morgan's Harbour. It was just as Bond remembered-the sugar-loaf of the Isle of Surprise rising out of the calm bay, the canoes drawn up beside the mounds of empty conch shells, the distant boom of the surf on the reef which had so nearly been his grave. Bond, his mind full of memories, took the car down the little side road and through the cane fields in the middle of which the gaunt ruin of the old Great House of Beau Desert Plantation stood up like a stranded galleon.\n\nThey came to the gate leading to the bungalow. Quarrel got out and opened the gate, and Bond drove through and pulled up in the yard behind the white single-storeyed house. It was very quiet. Bond walked round the house and across the lawn to the edge of the sea. Yes, there it was, the stretch of deep, silent water-the submarine path he had taken to the Isle of Surprise. It sometimes came back to him in nightmares. Bond stood looking at it and thinking of Solitaire, the girl he had brought back, torn and bleeding, from that sea. He had carried her across the lawn to the house. What had happened to her? Where was she? Brusquely Bond turned and walked back into the house, driving the phantoms away from him.\n\nIt was eight-thirty. Bond unpacked his few things and changed into sandals and shorts. Soon there was the delicious smell of coffee and frying bacon. They ate their breakfast while Bond fixed his training routine-up at seven, swim a quarter of a mile, breakfast, an hour's sunbathing, run a mile, swim again, lunch, sleep, sunbathe, swim a mile, hot bath and massage, dinner and asleep by nine."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"After breakfast the routine began.\n\nNothing interrupted the grinding week except a brief story in the Daily Gleaner and a telegram from Pleydell-Smith. The Gleaner said that a Sunbeam Talbot, H. 2473, had been involved in a fatal accident on the Devil's Racecourse, a stretch of winding road between Spanish Town and Ochos Rio-on the Kingston-Montego route. A runaway lorry, whose driver was being traced, had crashed into the Sunbeam as it came round a bend. Both vehicles had left the road and hurtled into the ravine below. The two occupants of the Sunbeam, Ben Gibbons of Harbour Street, and Josiah Smith, no address, had been killed. A Mr Bond, an English visitor, who had been lent the car, was asked to contact the nearest police station.\n\nBond burned that copy of the Gleaner. He didn't want to upset Quarrel.\n\nWith only one day to go, the telegram came from Pleydell-Smith. It said:\n\nEACH OBJECT CONTAINED ENOUGH CYANIDE TO KILL A HORSE\n\nSTOP SUGGEST YOU CHANGE YOUR GROCER STOP GOOD LUCK\n\nSMITH\n\nBond also burned the telegram.\n\nQuarrel hired a canoe and they spent three days sailing it. It was a clumsy shell cutout of a single giant cotton tree. It had two thin thwarts, two heavy paddles and a small sail of dirty canvas. It was a blunt instrument. Quarrel was pleased with it.\n\n\"Seven, eight hours, cap'n,\" he said. \"Den we bring down de sail an\" use de paddles. Less target for de radar to see.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The weather held. The forecast from Kingston radio was good. The nights were as black as sin. The two men got in their stores. Bond fitted himself outwith cheap black canvas jeans and a dark blue shirt and rope-soled shoes.\n\nThe last evening came. Bond was glad he was on his way. He had only once been out of the training camp-to get the stores and arrange Quarrel's insurance-and he was chafing to get out of the stable and onto the track. He admitted to himself that this adventure excited him. It had the right ingredients-physical exertion, mystery, and a ruthless enemy. He had a good companion. His cause was just. There might also be the satisfaction of throwing the'holiday in the sun'back in M's teeth. That had rankled. Bond didn't like being coddled.\n\nThe sun blazed beautifully into its grave.\n\nBond went into his bedroom and took out his two guns and looked at them. Neither was apart of him as the Beretta had been-an extension of his right hand-but he already knew them as better weapons. Which should he take? Bond picked up each in turn, hefting them in his hand. It had to be the heavier Smith& Wesson. There would be no close shooting, if there was any shooting, on Crab Key. Heavy, long-range stuff-if anything. The brutal, stumpy revolver had an extra twenty-five yards over the Walther. Bond fitted the holster into the waistband of his jeans and clipped in the gun. He put twenty spare rounds in his pocket. Was it over-insurance to take all this metal on what might only be a tropical picnic?\n\nBond went to the icebox and took a pint of Canadian Club Blended Rye and some ice and soda-water and went and satin the garden and watched the last light flame and die."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The shadows crept from behind the house and marched across the lawn and enveloped him. The Undertaker's Wind that blows at night from the centre of the island, clattered softly in the tops of the palm trees. The frogs began to tinkle among the shrubs. The fireflies, the'blink-a-blinks\", as Quarrel called them, came out and began flashing their sexual morse. Fora moment the melancholy of the tropical dusk caught at Bond's heart. He picked up the bottle and looked at~ it. He had drunk a quarter of it. He poured another big slug into his glass and added some ice. What was he drinking for? Because of the thirty miles of black sea he had to cross tonight? Because he was going into the unknown? Because of Doctor No?\n\nQuarrel came up from the beach. \"Time, cap'n.\"\n\nBond swallowed his drink and followed the Cayman Islander down to the canoe.. It was rocking quietly in the water, its bows on the sand. Quarrel went aft and Bond climbed into the space between the forrard thwart and the bows. The sail, wrapped round the short mast, was at his back. Bond took up his paddle and pushed off, and they turned slowly and headed out for the break in the softly creaming waves that was the passage through the reef. They paddled easily, in unison, the paddles turning in their hands so that they did not leave the water on the forward stroke. The small waves slapped softly against the bows. Otherwise they made no noise. It was dark. Nobody saw them go. They just left the land and went off across the sea.\n\nBond's only duty was to keep paddling. Quarrel did the steering. At the opening through the reef there was a swirl and suck of conflicting currents and they were in amongst the jagged niggerheads and coral trees, bared like fangs by the swell. Bond could feel the strength of Quarrel's great sweeps with the paddle as the heavy craft wallowed and plunged. Again and again Bond's own paddle thudded against rock, and once he had to hold on as the canoe hit a buried mass of brain coral and slid off again. Then they were through, and far below the boat there were indigo patches of sand and around them the solid oily feel of deep water."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Okay, cap'n,\" said Quarrel softly. Bond shipped his paddle and got down off one knee and sat with his back to the thwart. He heard the scratching of Quarrel's nails against canvas as he unwrapped the sail and then the sharp flap as it caught the breeze. The canoe straightened and began to move. It tilted slowly. There was a soft hiss under the bows. A handful of spray tossed up into Bond's face. The wind of their movement was cool and would soon get cold. Bond hunched up his knees and put his arms round them. The wood was already beginning to bite into his buttocks and his back. It crossed his mind that it was going to be the hell of along and uncomfortable night.\n\nIn the darkness ahead Bond could just make out the rim of the world. Then came a layer of black haze above which the stars began, first sparsely and then merging into a dense bright carpet. The Milky Way soared overhead. How many stars? Bond tried counting a finger's length and was soon past the hundred. The stars lit the sea into a faint grey road and then arched away over the tip of the mast towards the black silhouette of Jamaica. Bond looked back. Behind the hunched figure of Quarrel there was a faraway cluster of lights which would be Port Maria. Already they were a couple of miles out. Soon they would be a tenth of the way, then a quarter, then half. That would be around midnight when Bond would takeover. Bond sighed and put his head down to his knees and closed his eyes.\n\nHe must have slept because he was awakened by the clonk of a paddle against the boat. He lifted his arm to show that he had heard and glanced at the luminous blaze of his watch. Twelve-fifteen. Stiffly he unbent his legs and turned and scrambled over the thwart."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Sorry, Quarrel,\" he said, and it was odd to hear his voice."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You ought to have shaken me up before.\"\n\n\"Hit don signify, cap'n,\" said Quarrel with a grey glint of teeth. \"Do yo good to sleep.\"\n\nGingerly they slipped past each other and Bond settled in the stern and picked up the paddle. The sail was secured to a bent nail beside him. It was flapping. Bond brought the bows into the wind and edged them round so that the North Star was directly over Quarrel's bent head in the bows. Fora time this would be fun. There was something to do.\n\nThere was no change in the night except that it seemed darker and emptier. The pulse of the sleeping sea seemed slower. The heavy swell was longer and the troughs deeper. They were running through a patch of phosphorus that winked at the bows and 'dripped jewels when Bond lifted the paddle out of the water. How safe it was, slipping through the night in this ridiculously vulnerable little boat. How kind and soft the sea could be. A covey of flying fish broke the surface in front of the bows and scattered like shrapnel. Some kept going fora time beside the canoe, flying as much as twenty yards before they dived into the wall of the swell. Was some bigger fish after them or did they think the canoe was a fish, or were they just playing? Bond thought of what was going on in the hundreds of fathoms below the boat, the big fish, the shark and barracuda and tarpon and sailfish quietly cruising, the shoals of kingfish and mackerel and bonito and, far below in the grey twilight of the great depths, the phosphorous jellied boneless things that were never seen, the fifty-foot squids, with eyes afoot wide, that streamed along like zeppelins, the last real monsters of the sea, whose size was only known from the fragments found inside whales. What would happen if a wave caught the canoe broadside and capsized them? How long would they last? Bond took an ounce more pains with his steering and put the thought aside."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"One o'clock, two o'clock, three, four. Quarrel awoke and stretched. He called softly to Bond. \"Ah smells land, cap'n.\" Soon there was a thickening of the darkness ahead. The low shadow slowly took on the shape of a huge swimming rat. A pale moon rose slowly behind them. Now the island showed distinctly, a. couple of miles away, and there was the distant grumble of surf.\n\nThey changed places. Quarrel brought down the sail and they took up the paddles. For at least another mile, thought Bond, they would be invisible in the troughs of the waves. Not even radar would distinguish them from the crests. It was the last mile they would have to hurry over with the dawn not far off.\n\nNow he too could smell the land. It had no particular scent. It was just something new in the nose after hours of clean sea. He could make out the white fringe of surf. The swell subsided and the waves became choppier. \"Now, cap'n,\" called Quarrel, and Bond, the sweat already dropping off his chin, dug deeper and more often. God, it was hard work! The hulking log of wood which had sped along so well under the sail now seemed hardly to move. The wave at the bows was only a ripple. Bond's shoulders were aching like fire. The one knee he was resting on was beginning to bruise. His hands were cramped on the clumsy shaft of a paddle made of lead.\n\nIt was incredible, but they were coming up with the reef. Patches of sand showed deep under the boat. Now the surf was a roar. They followed along the edge of the reef, looking for-an opening. A hundred yards inside the reef, breaking the sandline, was the shimmer of water running inland. The river! So the landfall had been all right. The wall of surf broke up. There was a patch of black oily current swelling over hidden coral heads. The nose of the canoe turned towards it and into it. There was a turmoil of water and a series of grating thuds, and then a sudden rush forward into peace and the canoe was moving slowly across a smooth mirror towards the shore."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Quarrel steered the boat towards the lee of a rocky promontory where the beach ended. Bond wondered why the beach didn't shine white under the thin moon. When they grounded and Bond climbed stiffly out he understood why.\n\nThe beach was black. The sand was soft and wonderful to the feet but it must have been formed out of volcanic rock, pounded over the centuries, and Bond's naked feet on it looked like white crabs.\n\nThey made haste. Quarrel took three short lengths of thick bamboo out of the boat and laid them up the flat beach. They heaved the nose of the canoe onto the first and pushed the boat up the rollers. After each yard of progress, Bond picked up the back roller and brought it to the front. Slowly the canoe moved up the sand until at last it was over the back tideline and among the rocks and turtle grass and low sea-grape bushes. They pushed it another twenty yards inland into the beginning of the mangrove. There they covered it with dried seaweed and bits of driftwood from the tideline. Then Quarrel cut lengths of screwpalm and went back over their tracks, sweeping and tidying.\n\nIt was still dark, but the breath of grey in the east would soon be turning to pearl. It was five o'clock. They were dead tired. They exchanged a few words and Quarrel went off among the rocks on the promontory. Bond scooped out a depression in the fine dry sand under a thick bush of sea-grape. There were a few hermit crabs beside his bed. He picked up as many as he could find and hurled them into the mangrove. Then, not caring what other animals or insects might come to his smell and his warmth, he lay down full length in the sand and rested his head on his arm."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He was at once asleep."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond awoke lazily. The feel of the sand reminded him where he was. He glanced at his watch. Ten o'clock. The sun through the round thick leaves of the sea-grape was already hot. A larger shadow moved across the dappled sand in front of his face. Quarrel? Bond shifted his head and peered through the fringe of leaves and grass that concealed him from the beach. He stiffened. His heart missed a beat and then began pounding so that he had to breathe deeply to quieten it. His eyes, as he stared through the blades of grass, were fierce slits.\n\nIt was a naked girl, with her back to him. She was not quite naked. She wore abroad leather belt round her waist with a hunting knife in a leather sheath at her right hip. The belt made her nakedness extraordinarily erotic. She stood not more than five yards away on the tideline looking down at something in her hand. She stood in the classical relaxed pose of the nude, all the weight on the right leg and the left knee bent and turning slightly inwards, the head to one side as she examined the things in her hand.\n\nIt was a beautiful back. The skin was a very light uniform café au lait with the sheen of dull satin. The gentle curve of the backbone was deeply indented, suggesting more powerful muscles than is usual in a woman, and the behind was almost as firm and rounded as a boy's. The legs were straight and beautiful and no pinkness showed under the slightly lifted left heel. She was not a coloured girl.\n\nHer hair was ash blonde. It was cut to the shoulders and hung there and along the side of her bent cheek in thick wet strands. A green diving mask was pushed back above her forehead, and the green rubber thong bound her hair at the back."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The whole scene, the empty beach, the green and blue sea, the naked girl with the strands of fair hair, reminded Bond of something. He searched his mind. Yes, she was Botticelli's Venus, seen from behind.\n\nHow had she got there? What was she doing? Bond looked up and down the beach. It was not black, he now saw, but a deep chocolate brown. To the right he could see as far as the river mouth, perhaps five hundred yards away. The beach was empty and featureless except fora scattering of small pinkish objects. There were a lot of them, shells of some sort Bond supposed, and they looked decorative against the dark brown background. He looked to the left, to where, twenty yards away, the rocks of the small headland began. Yes, there was a yard or two of groove in the sand where a canoe had been drawn up into the shelter of the rocks. It must have been alight one or she couldn't have drawn it up alone. Perhaps the girl wasn't alone. But there was only one set of footprints leading down from the rocks to the sea and another set coming out of the sea and up the beach to where she now stood on the tideline. Did she live here, or had she too sailed over from Jamaica that night? Hell of a thing fora girl to do. Anyway, what in God's name was she doing here?\n\nAs if to answer him, the girl made a throwaway gesture of the right hand and scattered a dozen shells on the sand beside her. They were violent pink and seemed to Bond to be the same as he had noticed on the beach. The girl looked down into her left hand and began to whistle softly to herself. There was a happy note of triumph in the whistle. She was whistling \"Marion\", a plaintive little calypso that has now been cleaned up and made famous outside Jamaica. It had always been one of Bond's favourites. It went:"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"All day, all night, Marion,\n\nSittin'by the seaside siftin\" sand...\n\nThe girl broke off to stretch her arms out in a deep yawn. Bond smiled to himself. He wetted his lips and took up the refrain:\n\n\"The water from her eyes could sail a boat, The hair on her head could tie a goat...\"\n\nThe hands flew down and across her chest. The muscles of her behind bunched with tension. She was listening, her head, still hidden by the curtain of hair, cocked to one side.\n\nHesitantly she began again. The whistle trembled and died. At the first note of Bond's echo, the girl whirled round. She didn't cover her body with the two classical gestures. One hand flew downwards, but the other, instead of hiding her breasts, went up to her face, covering it below the eyes, now wide with fear. \"Who's that?\" The words came out in a terrified whisper.\n\nBond got to his feet and stepped out through the sea-grape. He stopped on the edge of the grass. He held his hands open at his sides to show they were empty. He smiled cheerfully at her. \"It's only me. I'm another trespasser. Don't be frightened.\"\n\nThe girl dropped her hand down from her face. It went to the knife at her belt. Bond watched the fingers curl round the hilt. He looked up at her face. Now he realized why her hand had instinctively gone to it. It was a beautiful face, with wide-apart deep blue eyes under lashes paled by the sun. The mouth was wide and when she stopped pursing the lips with tension they would be full. It was a serious face and the jawline was determined-the face of a girl who fends for herself. And once, reflected Bond, she had failed to fend. For the nose was badly broken, smashed crooked like a boxer's. Bond stiffened with revolt at what had happened to this supremely beautiful girl. No wonder this washer shame and not the beautiful firm breasts that now jutted towards him without concealment."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The eyes examined him fiercely. \"Who are you? What are you doing here?\" There was the slight lilt of a Jamaican accent. The voice was sharp and accustomed to being obeyed.\n\n\"I'm an Englishman. I'm interested in birds.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" the voice was doubtful. The hand still rested on the knife. \"How long have you been watching me? How did you get here?\"\n\n\"Ten minutes, but no more answers until you tell me who you are.\"\n\n\"I'm no one in particular. I come from Jamaica. I collect shells.\"\n\n\"I came in a canoe. Did you?\"\n\n\"Yes. Where is your canoe?\"\n\n\"I've got a friend with me. We've hidden it in the mangroves.\"\n\n\"There are no marks of a canoe landing.\"\n\n\"We're careful. We-covered them up. Not like you.\" Bond gestured towards the rocks. \"You ought to take more trouble. Did you use a sail? Right up to the reef?\"\n\n\"Of course. Why not? I always do.\"\n\n\"Then they'll know you're here. They've got radar.\"\n\n\"They've never caught me yet.\" The girl took her hand away from her knife. She reached up and stripped off the diving mask and stood swinging it. She seemed to think she had the measure of Bond. She said, with some of the sharpness-gone from her voice, \"What's your name?\"\n\n\"Bond. James Bond. What's yours?\"\n\nShe reflected. \"Rider.\"\n\n\"What Rider?\"\n\n\"Honeychile.\"\n\nBond smiled.\n\n\"What's so funny about it?\"\n\n\"Nothing. Honeychile Rider. It's a pretty name.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She unbent. \"People call me \"Honey\".\"\n\n\"Well, I'm glad to meet you.\"\n\nThe prosaic phrase seemed to remind her of her nakedness. She blushed. She said uncertainly, \"I must get dressed.\" She looked down at the scattered shells around her feet. She obviously wanted to pick them up. Perhaps she realized that the movement might be still more revealing than her present pose. She said sharply, \"You're not to touch those while I'm gone.\"\n\nBond smiled at the childish challenge. \"Don't worry, I'll look after them.\"\n\nThe girl looked at him doubtfully and then turned and walked stiff-legged over to the rocks and disappeared behind them.\n\nBond walked the few steps down the beach and bent and picked up one of the shells. It was alive and the two halves were shut tight. It appeared to be some kind of a cockle, rather deeply ribbed and coloured a mauve-pink. Along both edges of the hinge, thin horns stood out, about half a dozen to each side. It didn't seem to Bond a very distinguished shell. He replaced it carefully with the others.\n\nHe stood looking down at the shells and wondering. Was she really collecting them? It certainly looked like it. But what a risk to take to get them-the voyage over alone in the canoe and then back again. And she seemed to realize that this was a dangerous place. \"They've never caught me yet.\" What an extraordinary girl. Bond's heart warmed and his senses stirred as he thought of her. Already, as he had found so often when people had deformities, he had almost forgotten her broken nose. It had somehow slipped away behind his memory of her eyes and her mouth and her amazingly beautiful body. Her imperious attitude and her quality of attack were exciting. The way she had reached for her knife to defend herself! She'was like an animal whose cubs are threatened. Where did she live? Who were her parents? There was something uncared for about her-a dog that nobody wants to pet. Who was she?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bond heard her footsteps riffling the sand. He turned to look at her. She was dressed almost in rags-a faded brown shirt with torn sleeves and a knee-length patched brown cotton skirt held in place by the leather belt with the knife. She had a canvas knapsack slung over one shoulder. She looked like a principal girl dressed as Man Friday.\n\nShe came up with him and at once went down on one knee and began picking up the live shells and stowing them in the knapsack.\n\nBond said, \"Are those rare?\"\n\nShe sat back on her haunches and looked up at him. She surveyed his face. Apparently she was satisfied. \"You promise you won't tell anybody? Swear?\"\n\n\"I promise,\" said Bond.\n\n\"Well then, yes, they are rare. Very. You can get five dollars fora perfect specimen. In Miami. That's where Ideal with. They're called Venus Elegans-The Elegant Venus.\" Her eyes sparkled up at him with excitement. \"This morning I found what I wanted. The bed where they live,\" she waved towards the sea. \"You wouldn't find it though,\" she added with sudden carefulness. \"It's very deep and hidden away. I doubt if you could dive that deep. And anyway,\" she looked happy, \"I'm going to clear the whole bed today. You'd only get the imperfect ones if you came back here.\"\n\nBond laughe'd. \"I promise I won't steal any. I really don't know anything about shells. Cross my heart.\"\n\nShe stood up, her work completed. \"What about these birds of yours? What sort are they? Are they valuable too? I won't tell either if you tell me. I only collect shells.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"They're called roseate spoonbills,\" said Bond."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Sort of pink stork with a flat beak. Ever seen any?\"\n\n\"Oh, those,\" she said scornfully. \"There used to be thousands of them here. But you won't find many now. They scared them all away.\" She sat down on the sand and put her arms round her knees, proud of her superior knowledge and now certain that she had nothing to fear from this man.\n\nBond sat down a yard away. He stretched out and turned towards her, resting on his elbow. He wanted to preserve the picnic atmosphere and try to find out more about this queer, beautiful girl. He said, easily, \"Oh, really. What happened? Who did it?\"\n\nShe shrugged impatiently. \"The people here did it. I don't know who they are. There's a Chinaman. He doesn't like birds or something. He's got a dragon. He sent the dragon after the birds and scared them away. The dragon burned up their nesting places. There used to be two men who lived with the birds and looked after them. They got scared away too, or killed or something.\"\n\nIt all seemed quite natural to her. She gave the facts indifferently, staring out to sea.\n\nBond said, \"This dragon. What kind is he? Have you ever seen him?\"\n\n\"Yes., I've seen him.\" She screwed up her eyes and made awry face as if she was swallowing bitter medicine. She looked earnestly at Bond to make him share her feelings. \"I've been coming here for about a year, looking for shells and exploring. I only found these,\" she waved at the beach, \"about a month ago. On my last trip. But I've found plenty of other good ones. Just before Christmas I thought I'd explore the river. I went up it to the top, where the birdmen had their camp. It was all broken up. It was getting late and I decided to spend the night there. In the middle of the night I woke up. The dragon was coming by only a few chains away from me. It had two great glaring eyes and along snout. It had sort of short wings and a pointed tail. It was all black and gold.\" She frowned at the expression on Bond's face. \"There was a full moon. I could see it quite clearly. It went by me. It was making a sort of roaring noise. It went over the marsh and came to some thick mangrove and it simply climbed over the bushes and went on. A whole flock of birds got up in front of it and suddenly a lot of fire came out of its mouth and it burned a lot of them up and all the trees they'd been roosting in. It was horrible. The most horrible thing I've ever seen.\""},{"from":"human","value":"The girl leant sideways and peered at Bond's face."},{"from":"gpt","value":"She sat up straight again and stared obstinately out to sea. \"I can see you don't believe me,\" she said in a furious, tense voice. \"You're one of these city people. You don't believe anything. Ugh,\" she shuddered with dislike of him.\n\nBond said reasonably, \"Honey, there just aren't such things as dragons in the world. You saw something that looked very like a dragon. I'm just wondering what it was.\"\n\n\"How do you know there aren't such things as dragons?\" Now he had made her really angry. \"Nobody lives on this end of the island. One could easily have survived here. Anyway, what do you think you know about animals and things? I've lived with snakes and things since I was a child. Alone. Have you ever seen a praying mantis eat her husband after they've made love? Have you ever seen the mongoose dance? Oran octopus dance? How long is a hummingbird's tongue? Have you ever had a pet snake that wore a bell round its neck and rang it to wake you? Have you seen a scorpion get sunstroke and kill itself with its own sting? Have you seen the carpet of flowers under the sea at night? Do you know that a John Crow can smell a dead lizard a mile away...?\" The girl had fired these questions like scornful jabs with a rapier. Now she stopped, out of breath. She said hopelessly, \"Oh, you're just city folk like all the rest.\" Bond said, \"Honey, now look here. You know these things. I can't help it that I live in towns. I'd like to know about your things too. I just haven't had that sort of life. I know other things instead. Like...\" Bond searched his mind. He couldn't think of anything as interesting as hers. He finished lamely, \"Like for instance that this Chinaman is going to be more interested in your visit this time. This time he's going to try and stop you getting away.\" He paused and added. \"And me for the matter of that.\" '"},{"from":"human","value":"She turned and looked at him with interest."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Oh. Why? But then it doesn't really matter. One just hides during the day and gets away at night. He's sent dogs after me and even a plane. He hasn't got me yet.\" She examined Bond with anew interest. \"Is it you he's after?\"\n\n\"Well, yes,\" admitted Bond. \"I'm afraid it is. You see we dropped the sail about two miles out so that their radar wouldn't pick us up. I think the Chinaman may have been expecting a visit from me. Your sail will have been reported and I'd bet anything he'll think your canoe was mine. I'd better go and wake my friend up and we'll talk it over. You'll like him. He's a Cayman Islander, name of Quarrel.\"\n\nThe girl said, \"Well, I'm sorry if...\" the sentence trailed away. Apologies wouldn't come easy to someone so much on the defensive. \"But after all I couldn't know, could I?\" She searched his face.\n\nBond smiled into the questing blue eyes. He said reassuringly, \"Of course you couldn't. It's just bad luck-bad luck for you too. I don't suppose he minds too much about a solitary girl who collects shells. You can be sure they've had a good look at your footprints and found clues like that\"-he waved at the scattered shells on the beach. \"But I'm afraid he'd take a different view of me. Now he'll try and hunt me down with everything he's got. I'm only afraid he may get you into the net in the process. Anyway,\" Bond grinned reassuringly, \"we'll see what Quarrel has to say.. You stay here.\"\n\nBond got to his feet. He walked along the promontory and cast about him. Quarrel had hidden himself well. It took Bond five minutes to find him. He was lying in a grassy depression between two big rocks, half covered by aboard of grey driftwood. He was still fast asleep, the brown head, stern in sleep, cradled on his forearm. Bond whistled softly and smiled as the eyes sprang wide open like an animal's. Quarrel saw Bond and scrambled to his feet, almost guiltily. He rubbed his big hands over his face as if he was washing it."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Mornin\", cap'n,\"he said.\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"Guess Ah been down deep. Dat China girl come tome.\"\n\nBond smiled. \"I got something different,\" he said. They sat down and Bond told him about Honeychile Rider and her shells and the fix they were in. \"And now it's eleven o'clock,\" Bond added. \"And we've got to make anew plan.\"\n\nQuarrel scratched his head. He looked sideways at Bond. \"Yo don'plan we jess ditch dis girl?\" he asked hopefully. \"Ain't. nuttin to do wit we...\" Suddenly he stopped. His head swivelled round and pointed like a dog's. He held up a hand for silence, listening intently.\n\nBond held his breath. In the distance, to the eastwards, * 'there was a faint droning.\n\nQuarrel jumped to his feet. \"Quick, cap'n,\" he said urgently. \"Bey's a comin'.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Assist the writer by carrying on with the story.\\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\\nTitle: Dr. No\\nChapter: 18\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond said: \\\"Better plan for three days. Weather may break and stop us getting off fora night or two. Couple of good hunting knives. I'll take a gun. You never can tell.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, sir,\\\" said Quarrel emphatically. He relapsed into a brooding silence which lasted until they got to Port Maria.\\n\\nThey went through the little town and on round the headland to Morgan's Harbour. It was just as Bond remembered-the sugar-loaf of the Isle of Surprise rising out of the calm bay, the canoes drawn up beside the mounds of empty conch shells, the distant boom of the surf on the reef which had so nearly been his grave. Bond, his mind full of memories, took the car down the little side road and through the cane fields in the middle of which the gaunt ruin of the old Great House of Beau Desert Plantation stood up like a stranded galleon.\\n\\nThey came to the gate leading to the bungalow. Quarrel got out and opened the gate, and Bond drove through and pulled up in the yard behind the white single-storeyed house. It was very quiet. Bond walked round the house and across the lawn to the edge of the sea. Yes, there it was, the stretch of deep, silent water-the submarine path he had taken to the Isle of Surprise. It sometimes came back to him in nightmares. Bond stood looking at it and thinking of Solitaire, the girl he had brought back, torn and bleeding, from that sea. He had carried her across the lawn to the house. What had happened to her? Where was she? Brusquely Bond turned and walked back into the house, driving the phantoms away from him.\\n\\nIt was eight-thirty. Bond unpacked his few things and changed into sandals and shorts. Soon there was the delicious smell of coffee and frying bacon. They ate their breakfast while Bond fixed his training routine-up at seven, swim a quarter of a mile, breakfast, an hour's sunbathing, run a mile, swim again, lunch, sleep, sunbathe, swim a mile, hot bath and massage, dinner and asleep by nine.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"After breakfast the routine began.\\n\\nNothing interrupted the grinding week except a brief story in the Daily Gleaner and a telegram from Pleydell-Smith. The Gleaner said that a Sunbeam Talbot, H. 2473, had been involved in a fatal accident on the Devil's Racecourse, a stretch of winding road between Spanish Town and Ochos Rio-on the Kingston-Montego route. A runaway lorry, whose driver was being traced, had crashed into the Sunbeam as it came round a bend. Both vehicles had left the road and hurtled into the ravine below. The two occupants of the Sunbeam, Ben Gibbons of Harbour Street, and Josiah Smith, no address, had been killed. A Mr Bond, an English visitor, who had been lent the car, was asked to contact the nearest police station.\\n\\nBond burned that copy of the Gleaner. He didn't want to upset Quarrel.\\n\\nWith only one day to go, the telegram came from Pleydell-Smith. It said:\\n\\nEACH OBJECT CONTAINED ENOUGH CYANIDE TO KILL A HORSE\\n\\nSTOP SUGGEST YOU CHANGE YOUR GROCER STOP GOOD LUCK\\n\\nSMITH\\n\\nBond also burned the telegram.\\n\\nQuarrel hired a canoe and they spent three days sailing it. It was a clumsy shell cutout of a single giant cotton tree. It had two thin thwarts, two heavy paddles and a small sail of dirty canvas. It was a blunt instrument. Quarrel was pleased with it.\\n\\n\\\"Seven, eight hours, cap'n,\\\" he said. \\\"Den we bring down de sail an\\\" use de paddles. Less target for de radar to see.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The weather held. The forecast from Kingston radio was good. The nights were as black as sin. The two men got in their stores. Bond fitted himself outwith cheap black canvas jeans and a dark blue shirt and rope-soled shoes.\\n\\nThe last evening came. Bond was glad he was on his way. He had only once been out of the training camp-to get the stores and arrange Quarrel's insurance-and he was chafing to get out of the stable and onto the track. He admitted to himself that this adventure excited him. It had the right ingredients-physical exertion, mystery, and a ruthless enemy. He had a good companion. His cause was just. There might also be the satisfaction of throwing the'holiday in the sun'back in M's teeth. That had rankled. Bond didn't like being coddled.\\n\\nThe sun blazed beautifully into its grave.\\n\\nBond went into his bedroom and took out his two guns and looked at them. Neither was apart of him as the Beretta had been-an extension of his right hand-but he already knew them as better weapons. Which should he take? Bond picked up each in turn, hefting them in his hand. It had to be the heavier Smith& Wesson. There would be no close shooting, if there was any shooting, on Crab Key. Heavy, long-range stuff-if anything. The brutal, stumpy revolver had an extra twenty-five yards over the Walther. Bond fitted the holster into the waistband of his jeans and clipped in the gun. He put twenty spare rounds in his pocket. Was it over-insurance to take all this metal on what might only be a tropical picnic?\\n\\nBond went to the icebox and took a pint of Canadian Club Blended Rye and some ice and soda-water and went and satin the garden and watched the last light flame and die.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The shadows crept from behind the house and marched across the lawn and enveloped him. The Undertaker's Wind that blows at night from the centre of the island, clattered softly in the tops of the palm trees. The frogs began to tinkle among the shrubs. The fireflies, the'blink-a-blinks\\\", as Quarrel called them, came out and began flashing their sexual morse. Fora moment the melancholy of the tropical dusk caught at Bond's heart. He picked up the bottle and looked at~ it. He had drunk a quarter of it. He poured another big slug into his glass and added some ice. What was he drinking for? Because of the thirty miles of black sea he had to cross tonight? Because he was going into the unknown? Because of Doctor No?\\n\\nQuarrel came up from the beach. \\\"Time, cap'n.\\\"\\n\\nBond swallowed his drink and followed the Cayman Islander down to the canoe.. It was rocking quietly in the water, its bows on the sand. Quarrel went aft and Bond climbed into the space between the forrard thwart and the bows. The sail, wrapped round the short mast, was at his back. Bond took up his paddle and pushed off, and they turned slowly and headed out for the break in the softly creaming waves that was the passage through the reef. They paddled easily, in unison, the paddles turning in their hands so that they did not leave the water on the forward stroke. The small waves slapped softly against the bows. Otherwise they made no noise. It was dark. Nobody saw them go. They just left the land and went off across the sea.\\n\\nBond's only duty was to keep paddling. Quarrel did the steering. At the opening through the reef there was a swirl and suck of conflicting currents and they were in amongst the jagged niggerheads and coral trees, bared like fangs by the swell. Bond could feel the strength of Quarrel's great sweeps with the paddle as the heavy craft wallowed and plunged. Again and again Bond's own paddle thudded against rock, and once he had to hold on as the canoe hit a buried mass of brain coral and slid off again. Then they were through, and far below the boat there were indigo patches of sand and around them the solid oily feel of deep water.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Okay, cap'n,\\\" said Quarrel softly. Bond shipped his paddle and got down off one knee and sat with his back to the thwart. He heard the scratching of Quarrel's nails against canvas as he unwrapped the sail and then the sharp flap as it caught the breeze. The canoe straightened and began to move. It tilted slowly. There was a soft hiss under the bows. A handful of spray tossed up into Bond's face. The wind of their movement was cool and would soon get cold. Bond hunched up his knees and put his arms round them. The wood was already beginning to bite into his buttocks and his back. It crossed his mind that it was going to be the hell of along and uncomfortable night.\\n\\nIn the darkness ahead Bond could just make out the rim of the world. Then came a layer of black haze above which the stars began, first sparsely and then merging into a dense bright carpet. The Milky Way soared overhead. How many stars? Bond tried counting a finger's length and was soon past the hundred. The stars lit the sea into a faint grey road and then arched away over the tip of the mast towards the black silhouette of Jamaica. Bond looked back. Behind the hunched figure of Quarrel there was a faraway cluster of lights which would be Port Maria. Already they were a couple of miles out. Soon they would be a tenth of the way, then a quarter, then half. That would be around midnight when Bond would takeover. Bond sighed and put his head down to his knees and closed his eyes.\\n\\nHe must have slept because he was awakened by the clonk of a paddle against the boat. He lifted his arm to show that he had heard and glanced at the luminous blaze of his watch. Twelve-fifteen. Stiffly he unbent his legs and turned and scrambled over the thwart.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Sorry, Quarrel,\\\" he said, and it was odd to hear his voice.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You ought to have shaken me up before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Hit don signify, cap'n,\\\" said Quarrel with a grey glint of teeth. \\\"Do yo good to sleep.\\\"\\n\\nGingerly they slipped past each other and Bond settled in the stern and picked up the paddle. The sail was secured to a bent nail beside him. It was flapping. Bond brought the bows into the wind and edged them round so that the North Star was directly over Quarrel's bent head in the bows. Fora time this would be fun. There was something to do.\\n\\nThere was no change in the night except that it seemed darker and emptier. The pulse of the sleeping sea seemed slower. The heavy swell was longer and the troughs deeper. They were running through a patch of phosphorus that winked at the bows and 'dripped jewels when Bond lifted the paddle out of the water. How safe it was, slipping through the night in this ridiculously vulnerable little boat. How kind and soft the sea could be. A covey of flying fish broke the surface in front of the bows and scattered like shrapnel. Some kept going fora time beside the canoe, flying as much as twenty yards before they dived into the wall of the swell. Was some bigger fish after them or did they think the canoe was a fish, or were they just playing? Bond thought of what was going on in the hundreds of fathoms below the boat, the big fish, the shark and barracuda and tarpon and sailfish quietly cruising, the shoals of kingfish and mackerel and bonito and, far below in the grey twilight of the great depths, the phosphorous jellied boneless things that were never seen, the fifty-foot squids, with eyes afoot wide, that streamed along like zeppelins, the last real monsters of the sea, whose size was only known from the fragments found inside whales. What would happen if a wave caught the canoe broadside and capsized them? How long would they last? Bond took an ounce more pains with his steering and put the thought aside.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"One o'clock, two o'clock, three, four. Quarrel awoke and stretched. He called softly to Bond. \\\"Ah smells land, cap'n.\\\" Soon there was a thickening of the darkness ahead. The low shadow slowly took on the shape of a huge swimming rat. A pale moon rose slowly behind them. Now the island showed distinctly, a. couple of miles away, and there was the distant grumble of surf.\\n\\nThey changed places. Quarrel brought down the sail and they took up the paddles. For at least another mile, thought Bond, they would be invisible in the troughs of the waves. Not even radar would distinguish them from the crests. It was the last mile they would have to hurry over with the dawn not far off.\\n\\nNow he too could smell the land. It had no particular scent. It was just something new in the nose after hours of clean sea. He could make out the white fringe of surf. The swell subsided and the waves became choppier. \\\"Now, cap'n,\\\" called Quarrel, and Bond, the sweat already dropping off his chin, dug deeper and more often. God, it was hard work! The hulking log of wood which had sped along so well under the sail now seemed hardly to move. The wave at the bows was only a ripple. Bond's shoulders were aching like fire. The one knee he was resting on was beginning to bruise. His hands were cramped on the clumsy shaft of a paddle made of lead.\\n\\nIt was incredible, but they were coming up with the reef. Patches of sand showed deep under the boat. Now the surf was a roar. They followed along the edge of the reef, looking for-an opening. A hundred yards inside the reef, breaking the sandline, was the shimmer of water running inland. The river! So the landfall had been all right. The wall of surf broke up. There was a patch of black oily current swelling over hidden coral heads. The nose of the canoe turned towards it and into it. There was a turmoil of water and a series of grating thuds, and then a sudden rush forward into peace and the canoe was moving slowly across a smooth mirror towards the shore.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Quarrel steered the boat towards the lee of a rocky promontory where the beach ended. Bond wondered why the beach didn't shine white under the thin moon. When they grounded and Bond climbed stiffly out he understood why.\\n\\nThe beach was black. The sand was soft and wonderful to the feet but it must have been formed out of volcanic rock, pounded over the centuries, and Bond's naked feet on it looked like white crabs.\\n\\nThey made haste. Quarrel took three short lengths of thick bamboo out of the boat and laid them up the flat beach. They heaved the nose of the canoe onto the first and pushed the boat up the rollers. After each yard of progress, Bond picked up the back roller and brought it to the front. Slowly the canoe moved up the sand until at last it was over the back tideline and among the rocks and turtle grass and low sea-grape bushes. They pushed it another twenty yards inland into the beginning of the mangrove. There they covered it with dried seaweed and bits of driftwood from the tideline. Then Quarrel cut lengths of screwpalm and went back over their tracks, sweeping and tidying.\\n\\nIt was still dark, but the breath of grey in the east would soon be turning to pearl. It was five o'clock. They were dead tired. They exchanged a few words and Quarrel went off among the rocks on the promontory. Bond scooped out a depression in the fine dry sand under a thick bush of sea-grape. There were a few hermit crabs beside his bed. He picked up as many as he could find and hurled them into the mangrove. Then, not caring what other animals or insects might come to his smell and his warmth, he lay down full length in the sand and rested his head on his arm.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He was at once asleep.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond awoke lazily. The feel of the sand reminded him where he was. He glanced at his watch. Ten o'clock. The sun through the round thick leaves of the sea-grape was already hot. A larger shadow moved across the dappled sand in front of his face. Quarrel? Bond shifted his head and peered through the fringe of leaves and grass that concealed him from the beach. He stiffened. His heart missed a beat and then began pounding so that he had to breathe deeply to quieten it. His eyes, as he stared through the blades of grass, were fierce slits.\\n\\nIt was a naked girl, with her back to him. She was not quite naked. She wore abroad leather belt round her waist with a hunting knife in a leather sheath at her right hip. The belt made her nakedness extraordinarily erotic. She stood not more than five yards away on the tideline looking down at something in her hand. She stood in the classical relaxed pose of the nude, all the weight on the right leg and the left knee bent and turning slightly inwards, the head to one side as she examined the things in her hand.\\n\\nIt was a beautiful back. The skin was a very light uniform café au lait with the sheen of dull satin. The gentle curve of the backbone was deeply indented, suggesting more powerful muscles than is usual in a woman, and the behind was almost as firm and rounded as a boy's. The legs were straight and beautiful and no pinkness showed under the slightly lifted left heel. She was not a coloured girl.\\n\\nHer hair was ash blonde. It was cut to the shoulders and hung there and along the side of her bent cheek in thick wet strands. A green diving mask was pushed back above her forehead, and the green rubber thong bound her hair at the back.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The whole scene, the empty beach, the green and blue sea, the naked girl with the strands of fair hair, reminded Bond of something. He searched his mind. Yes, she was Botticelli's Venus, seen from behind.\\n\\nHow had she got there? What was she doing? Bond looked up and down the beach. It was not black, he now saw, but a deep chocolate brown. To the right he could see as far as the river mouth, perhaps five hundred yards away. The beach was empty and featureless except fora scattering of small pinkish objects. There were a lot of them, shells of some sort Bond supposed, and they looked decorative against the dark brown background. He looked to the left, to where, twenty yards away, the rocks of the small headland began. Yes, there was a yard or two of groove in the sand where a canoe had been drawn up into the shelter of the rocks. It must have been alight one or she couldn't have drawn it up alone. Perhaps the girl wasn't alone. But there was only one set of footprints leading down from the rocks to the sea and another set coming out of the sea and up the beach to where she now stood on the tideline. Did she live here, or had she too sailed over from Jamaica that night? Hell of a thing fora girl to do. Anyway, what in God's name was she doing here?\\n\\nAs if to answer him, the girl made a throwaway gesture of the right hand and scattered a dozen shells on the sand beside her. They were violent pink and seemed to Bond to be the same as he had noticed on the beach. The girl looked down into her left hand and began to whistle softly to herself. There was a happy note of triumph in the whistle. She was whistling \\\"Marion\\\", a plaintive little calypso that has now been cleaned up and made famous outside Jamaica. It had always been one of Bond's favourites. It went:\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"All day, all night, Marion,\\n\\nSittin'by the seaside siftin\\\" sand...\\n\\nThe girl broke off to stretch her arms out in a deep yawn. Bond smiled to himself. He wetted his lips and took up the refrain:\\n\\n\\\"The water from her eyes could sail a boat, The hair on her head could tie a goat...\\\"\\n\\nThe hands flew down and across her chest. The muscles of her behind bunched with tension. She was listening, her head, still hidden by the curtain of hair, cocked to one side.\\n\\nHesitantly she began again. The whistle trembled and died. At the first note of Bond's echo, the girl whirled round. She didn't cover her body with the two classical gestures. One hand flew downwards, but the other, instead of hiding her breasts, went up to her face, covering it below the eyes, now wide with fear. \\\"Who's that?\\\" The words came out in a terrified whisper.\\n\\nBond got to his feet and stepped out through the sea-grape. He stopped on the edge of the grass. He held his hands open at his sides to show they were empty. He smiled cheerfully at her. \\\"It's only me. I'm another trespasser. Don't be frightened.\\\"\\n\\nThe girl dropped her hand down from her face. It went to the knife at her belt. Bond watched the fingers curl round the hilt. He looked up at her face. Now he realized why her hand had instinctively gone to it. It was a beautiful face, with wide-apart deep blue eyes under lashes paled by the sun. The mouth was wide and when she stopped pursing the lips with tension they would be full. It was a serious face and the jawline was determined-the face of a girl who fends for herself. And once, reflected Bond, she had failed to fend. For the nose was badly broken, smashed crooked like a boxer's. Bond stiffened with revolt at what had happened to this supremely beautiful girl. No wonder this washer shame and not the beautiful firm breasts that now jutted towards him without concealment.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The eyes examined him fiercely. \\\"Who are you? What are you doing here?\\\" There was the slight lilt of a Jamaican accent. The voice was sharp and accustomed to being obeyed.\\n\\n\\\"I'm an Englishman. I'm interested in birds.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh,\\\" the voice was doubtful. The hand still rested on the knife. \\\"How long have you been watching me? How did you get here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ten minutes, but no more answers until you tell me who you are.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I'm no one in particular. I come from Jamaica. I collect shells.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I came in a canoe. Did you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes. Where is your canoe?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I've got a friend with me. We've hidden it in the mangroves.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There are no marks of a canoe landing.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We're careful. We-covered them up. Not like you.\\\" Bond gestured towards the rocks. \\\"You ought to take more trouble. Did you use a sail? Right up to the reef?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Of course. Why not? I always do.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Then they'll know you're here. They've got radar.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They've never caught me yet.\\\" The girl took her hand away from her knife. She reached up and stripped off the diving mask and stood swinging it. She seemed to think she had the measure of Bond. She said, with some of the sharpness-gone from her voice, \\\"What's your name?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Bond. James Bond. What's yours?\\\"\\n\\nShe reflected. \\\"Rider.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What Rider?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Honeychile.\\\"\\n\\nBond smiled.\\n\\n\\\"What's so funny about it?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nothing. Honeychile Rider. It's a pretty name.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She unbent. \\\"People call me \\\"Honey\\\".\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, I'm glad to meet you.\\\"\\n\\nThe prosaic phrase seemed to remind her of her nakedness. She blushed. She said uncertainly, \\\"I must get dressed.\\\" She looked down at the scattered shells around her feet. She obviously wanted to pick them up. Perhaps she realized that the movement might be still more revealing than her present pose. She said sharply, \\\"You're not to touch those while I'm gone.\\\"\\n\\nBond smiled at the childish challenge. \\\"Don't worry, I'll look after them.\\\"\\n\\nThe girl looked at him doubtfully and then turned and walked stiff-legged over to the rocks and disappeared behind them.\\n\\nBond walked the few steps down the beach and bent and picked up one of the shells. It was alive and the two halves were shut tight. It appeared to be some kind of a cockle, rather deeply ribbed and coloured a mauve-pink. Along both edges of the hinge, thin horns stood out, about half a dozen to each side. It didn't seem to Bond a very distinguished shell. He replaced it carefully with the others.\\n\\nHe stood looking down at the shells and wondering. Was she really collecting them? It certainly looked like it. But what a risk to take to get them-the voyage over alone in the canoe and then back again. And she seemed to realize that this was a dangerous place. \\\"They've never caught me yet.\\\" What an extraordinary girl. Bond's heart warmed and his senses stirred as he thought of her. Already, as he had found so often when people had deformities, he had almost forgotten her broken nose. It had somehow slipped away behind his memory of her eyes and her mouth and her amazingly beautiful body. Her imperious attitude and her quality of attack were exciting. The way she had reached for her knife to defend herself! She'was like an animal whose cubs are threatened. Where did she live? Who were her parents? There was something uncared for about her-a dog that nobody wants to pet. Who was she?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bond heard her footsteps riffling the sand. He turned to look at her. She was dressed almost in rags-a faded brown shirt with torn sleeves and a knee-length patched brown cotton skirt held in place by the leather belt with the knife. She had a canvas knapsack slung over one shoulder. She looked like a principal girl dressed as Man Friday.\\n\\nShe came up with him and at once went down on one knee and began picking up the live shells and stowing them in the knapsack.\\n\\nBond said, \\\"Are those rare?\\\"\\n\\nShe sat back on her haunches and looked up at him. She surveyed his face. Apparently she was satisfied. \\\"You promise you won't tell anybody? Swear?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I promise,\\\" said Bond.\\n\\n\\\"Well then, yes, they are rare. Very. You can get five dollars fora perfect specimen. In Miami. That's where Ideal with. They're called Venus Elegans-The Elegant Venus.\\\" Her eyes sparkled up at him with excitement. \\\"This morning I found what I wanted. The bed where they live,\\\" she waved towards the sea. \\\"You wouldn't find it though,\\\" she added with sudden carefulness. \\\"It's very deep and hidden away. I doubt if you could dive that deep. And anyway,\\\" she looked happy, \\\"I'm going to clear the whole bed today. You'd only get the imperfect ones if you came back here.\\\"\\n\\nBond laughe'd. \\\"I promise I won't steal any. I really don't know anything about shells. Cross my heart.\\\"\\n\\nShe stood up, her work completed. \\\"What about these birds of yours? What sort are they? Are they valuable too? I won't tell either if you tell me. I only collect shells.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"They're called roseate spoonbills,\\\" said Bond.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Sort of pink stork with a flat beak. Ever seen any?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, those,\\\" she said scornfully. \\\"There used to be thousands of them here. But you won't find many now. They scared them all away.\\\" She sat down on the sand and put her arms round her knees, proud of her superior knowledge and now certain that she had nothing to fear from this man.\\n\\nBond sat down a yard away. He stretched out and turned towards her, resting on his elbow. He wanted to preserve the picnic atmosphere and try to find out more about this queer, beautiful girl. He said, easily, \\\"Oh, really. What happened? Who did it?\\\"\\n\\nShe shrugged impatiently. \\\"The people here did it. I don't know who they are. There's a Chinaman. He doesn't like birds or something. He's got a dragon. He sent the dragon after the birds and scared them away. The dragon burned up their nesting places. There used to be two men who lived with the birds and looked after them. They got scared away too, or killed or something.\\\"\\n\\nIt all seemed quite natural to her. She gave the facts indifferently, staring out to sea.\\n\\nBond said, \\\"This dragon. What kind is he? Have you ever seen him?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes., I've seen him.\\\" She screwed up her eyes and made awry face as if she was swallowing bitter medicine. She looked earnestly at Bond to make him share her feelings. \\\"I've been coming here for about a year, looking for shells and exploring. I only found these,\\\" she waved at the beach, \\\"about a month ago. On my last trip. But I've found plenty of other good ones. Just before Christmas I thought I'd explore the river. I went up it to the top, where the birdmen had their camp. It was all broken up. It was getting late and I decided to spend the night there. In the middle of the night I woke up. The dragon was coming by only a few chains away from me. It had two great glaring eyes and along snout. It had sort of short wings and a pointed tail. It was all black and gold.\\\" She frowned at the expression on Bond's face. \\\"There was a full moon. I could see it quite clearly. It went by me. It was making a sort of roaring noise. It went over the marsh and came to some thick mangrove and it simply climbed over the bushes and went on. A whole flock of birds got up in front of it and suddenly a lot of fire came out of its mouth and it burned a lot of them up and all the trees they'd been roosting in. It was horrible. The most horrible thing I've ever seen.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The girl leant sideways and peered at Bond's face.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She sat up straight again and stared obstinately out to sea. \\\"I can see you don't believe me,\\\" she said in a furious, tense voice. \\\"You're one of these city people. You don't believe anything. Ugh,\\\" she shuddered with dislike of him.\\n\\nBond said reasonably, \\\"Honey, there just aren't such things as dragons in the world. You saw something that looked very like a dragon. I'm just wondering what it was.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How do you know there aren't such things as dragons?\\\" Now he had made her really angry. \\\"Nobody lives on this end of the island. One could easily have survived here. Anyway, what do you think you know about animals and things? I've lived with snakes and things since I was a child. Alone. Have you ever seen a praying mantis eat her husband after they've made love? Have you ever seen the mongoose dance? Oran octopus dance? How long is a hummingbird's tongue? Have you ever had a pet snake that wore a bell round its neck and rang it to wake you? Have you seen a scorpion get sunstroke and kill itself with its own sting? Have you seen the carpet of flowers under the sea at night? Do you know that a John Crow can smell a dead lizard a mile away...?\\\" The girl had fired these questions like scornful jabs with a rapier. Now she stopped, out of breath. She said hopelessly, \\\"Oh, you're just city folk like all the rest.\\\" Bond said, \\\"Honey, now look here. You know these things. I can't help it that I live in towns. I'd like to know about your things too. I just haven't had that sort of life. I know other things instead. Like...\\\" Bond searched his mind. He couldn't think of anything as interesting as hers. He finished lamely, \\\"Like for instance that this Chinaman is going to be more interested in your visit this time. This time he's going to try and stop you getting away.\\\" He paused and added. \\\"And me for the matter of that.\\\" '\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"She turned and looked at him with interest.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Oh. Why? But then it doesn't really matter. One just hides during the day and gets away at night. He's sent dogs after me and even a plane. He hasn't got me yet.\\\" She examined Bond with anew interest. \\\"Is it you he's after?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, yes,\\\" admitted Bond. \\\"I'm afraid it is. You see we dropped the sail about two miles out so that their radar wouldn't pick us up. I think the Chinaman may have been expecting a visit from me. Your sail will have been reported and I'd bet anything he'll think your canoe was mine. I'd better go and wake my friend up and we'll talk it over. You'll like him. He's a Cayman Islander, name of Quarrel.\\\"\\n\\nThe girl said, \\\"Well, I'm sorry if...\\\" the sentence trailed away. Apologies wouldn't come easy to someone so much on the defensive. \\\"But after all I couldn't know, could I?\\\" She searched his face.\\n\\nBond smiled into the questing blue eyes. He said reassuringly, \\\"Of course you couldn't. It's just bad luck-bad luck for you too. I don't suppose he minds too much about a solitary girl who collects shells. You can be sure they've had a good look at your footprints and found clues like that\\\"-he waved at the scattered shells on the beach. \\\"But I'm afraid he'd take a different view of me. Now he'll try and hunt me down with everything he's got. I'm only afraid he may get you into the net in the process. Anyway,\\\" Bond grinned reassuringly, \\\"we'll see what Quarrel has to say.. You stay here.\\\"\\n\\nBond got to his feet. He walked along the promontory and cast about him. Quarrel had hidden himself well. It took Bond five minutes to find him. He was lying in a grassy depression between two big rocks, half covered by aboard of grey driftwood. He was still fast asleep, the brown head, stern in sleep, cradled on his forearm. Bond whistled softly and smiled as the eyes sprang wide open like an animal's. Quarrel saw Bond and scrambled to his feet, almost guiltily. He rubbed his big hands over his face as if he was washing it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Mornin\\\", cap'n,\\\"he said.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Guess Ah been down deep. Dat China girl come tome.\\\"\\n\\nBond smiled. \\\"I got something different,\\\" he said. They sat down and Bond told him about Honeychile Rider and her shells and the fix they were in. \\\"And now it's eleven o'clock,\\\" Bond added. \\\"And we've got to make anew plan.\\\"\\n\\nQuarrel scratched his head. He looked sideways at Bond. \\\"Yo don'plan we jess ditch dis girl?\\\" he asked hopefully. \\\"Ain't. nuttin to do wit we...\\\" Suddenly he stopped. His head swivelled round and pointed like a dog's. He held up a hand for silence, listening intently.\\n\\nBond held his breath. In the distance, to the eastwards, * 'there was a faint droning.\\n\\nQuarrel jumped to his feet. \\\"Quick, cap'n,\\\" he said urgently. \\\"Bey's a comin'.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":294,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Assist with the plot and keep the story going.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 8"},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harriet Smith's intimacy at Hartfield was soon a settled thing. Quick and decided in her ways, Emma lost no time in inviting, encouraging, and telling her to come very often; and as their acquaintance increased, so did their satisfaction in each other. As a walking companion, Emma had very early foreseen how useful she might find her. In that respect Mrs. Weston's loss had been important. Her father never went beyond the shrubbery, where two divisions of the ground sufficed him for his long walk, or his short, as the year varied; and since Mrs. Weston's marriage her exercise had been too much confined. She had ventured once alone to Randalls, but it was not pleasant; and a Harriet Smith, therefore, one whom she could summon at anytime to a walk, would be a valuable addition to her privileges. But in every respect as she saw more of her, she approved her, and was confirmed in all her kind designs.\n\nHarriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful disposition; was totally free from conceit; and only desiring to be guided by anyone she looked up to. Her early attachment to herself was very amiable; and her inclination for good company, and power of appreciating what was elegant and clever, showed that there was no want of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected. Altogether she was quite convinced of Harriet Smith's being exactly the young friend she wanted,-exactly the something which her home required. Such a friend as Mrs. Weston was out of the question. Two such could never be granted. Two such she did not want. It was quite a different sort of thing,-a sentiment distinct and independent. Mrs. Weston was the object of a regard which had its basis ingratitude and esteem. Harriet would beloved as one to whom she could be useful. For Mrs. Weston there was nothing to be done; for Harriet everything."},{"from":"human","value":"Her first attempts at usefulness were in an endeavour to find out who were the parents; but Harriet could not tell."},{"from":"gpt","value":"She was ready to tell everything in her power, but on this subject questions were vain. Emma was obliged to fancy what she liked; but she could never believe that in the same situation she should not have discovered the truth. Harriet had no penetration. She had been satisfied to hear and believe just what Mrs. Goddard chose to tell her; and looked no farther.\n\nMrs. Goddard, and the teachers, and the girls, and the affairs of the school in general, formed naturally a great part of her conversation,-and but for her acquaintance with the Martins of Abbey-Mill Farm, it must have been the whole. But the Martins occupied her thoughts a good deal: she had spent two very happy months with them, and now loved to talk of the pleasures of her visit, and describe the many comforts and wonders of the place. Emma encouraged her talkativeness,-amused by such a picture of another set of beings, and enjoying the youthful simplicity which could speak with so much exultation of Mrs. Martin's having'two parlours, two very good parlours, indeed; one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard's drawing-room; and of her having an upper maid who had lived five-and-twenty years with her; and of their having eight cows, two of them Alderneys, and one a little Welsh cow, a very pretty little Welsh cow, indeed; and of Mrs. Martin's saying, as she was so fond of it, it should be called her cow; and of their having a very handsome summer-house in their garden, where someday next year they were all to drink tea,-a very handsome summer-house, large enough to hold a dozen people.\"\n\nFor sometime she was amused, without thinking beyond the immediate cause; but as she came to understand the family better, other feelings arose. She had taken up a wrong idea, fancying it was a mother and daughter, a son and son's wife, who all lived together; but when it appeared that the Mr. Martin, who bore apart in the narrative, and was always mentioned with approbation for his great good-nature in doing something or other, was a single man; that there was no young Mrs. Martin, no wife in the case; she did suspect danger to her poor little friend from all this hospitality and kindness,-and that if she were not taken care of, she might be required to sink herself forever."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"With this inspiriting notion, her questions increased in number and meaning; and she particularly led Harriet to talk more of Mr. Martin,-and there was evidently no dislike to it. Harriet was very ready to speak of the share he had had in their moonlight walks and merry evening games; and dwelt a good deal upon his being so very good-humoured and obliging. \"He had gone three miles round one day, in order to bring her some walnuts, because she had said how fond she was of them,-and in everything else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd's son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was very clever, and understood everything. He had a very fine flock; and, while she was with them, he had been bid more for his wool than anybody in the country. She believed everybody spoke well of him. His mother and sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had told her one day (and there was a blush as she said it), that it was impossible for anybody to be a better son; and therefore she was sure whenever he married he would make a good husband. Not that she wanted him to marry. She was in no hurry at all.\"\n\n\"Well done, Mrs. Martin!\" thought Emma. \"You know what you are about.\"\n\n\"And when she had come away, Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose: the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three teachers, Miss Nach, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson, to sup with her.\"\n\n\"Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of his own business. He does not read?\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Oh, yes!"},{"from":"gpt","value":"-that is, no-I do not know-but I believe he has read a good deal-but not what you would think anything of. He reads the Agricultural Reports, and some other books that lie in one of the window seats-but he reads all them to himself. But sometimes of an evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of the Elegant Extracts, very entertaining. And I know he has read the Vicar of Wakefield. He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor the Children of the Abbey. 1 He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can.\"\n\nThe next question was,-\n\n\"What sort of looking man is Mr. Martin?\"\n\n\"Oh! not handsome-not at all handsome. I thought him very plain at first, but I do not think him so plain now. One does not, you know, after a time. But did you never see him? He is in Highbury every now and then, and he is sure to ride through every week in his way to Kingston. He has passed you very often.\"\n\n\"That maybe, and I may have seen him fifty times, but without having any idea of his name. A young farmer, whether on horseback or on foot, is the very last sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do. A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their families in someway or other. But a farmer can need none of my help, and is therefore, in one sense, as much above my notice, as in every other he is below it.\"\n\n\"To be sure. Oh, yes, it is not likely you should ever have observed him; but he knows you very well, indeed-I mean by sight.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I have no doubt of his being a very respectable young man. I know, indeed, that he is so; and, as such, wish him well. What do you imagine his age to be?\"\n\n\"He was four-and-twenty the 8th of last June, and my birthday is the 23d: just a fortnight and a day's difference; which is very odd.\"\n\n\"Only four-and-twenty. That is too young to settle. His mother is perfectly right not to be in a hurry. They seem very comfortable as they are, and if she were to take any pains to marry him, she would probably repent it. Six years hence, if he could meet with a good sort of young woman in the same rank as his own, with a little money, it might be very desirable.\"\n\n\"Six years hence! dear Miss Woodhouse, he would be thirty years old.\"\n\n\"Well, and that is as early as most men can afford to marry, who are not born to an independence. Mr. Martin, I imagine, has his fortune entirely to make-cannot beat all beforehand with the world. Whatever money he might come into when his father died, whatever his share of the family property, it is, I daresay, all afloat, all employed in his stock, and so forth; and though, with diligence and good luck, he maybe rich in time, it is next to impossible that he should have realised anything yet.\"\n\n\"To be sure, so it is. But they live very comfortably. They have no in-doors man-else they do not want for anything; and Mrs. Martin talks of taking a boy another year.\"\n\n\"I wish you may not get into a scrape, Harriet, whenever he does marry,-I mean, as to being acquainted with his wife; for though his sisters, from a superior education, are not to be altogether objected to, it does not follow that he might marry anybody at all fit for you to notice. The misfortune of your birth ought to make you particularly careful as to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a gentleman's daughter, and you must support your claim to that station by everything within your own power, or there will be plenty of people who would take pleasure in degrading you."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Yes, to be sure, I suppose there are."},{"from":"gpt","value":"But while I visit at Hartfield, and you are so kind tome, Miss Woodhouse, I am not afraid of what anybody can do.\"\n\n\"You understand the force of influence pretty well, Harriet; but I would have you so firmly established in good society, as to be independent even of Hartfield and Miss Woodhouse. I want to see you permanently well connected,-and to that end it will be advisable to have as few odd acquaintance as maybe; and, therefore, I say, that if you should still be in this country when Mr. Martin marries, I wish you may not be drawn in by your intimacy with the sisters, to be acquainted with the wife, who will probably be some mere farmer's daughter, without education.\"\n\n\"To be sure. Yes. Not that I think Mr. Martin would ever marry anybody but what had had some education, and been very well brought up. However, I do not mean to setup my opinion against yours,-and I am sure I shall not wish for the acquaintance of his wife. I shall always have a great regard for the Miss Martins, especially Elizabeth, and should be very sorry to give them up, for they are quite as well educated as me. But if he marries a very ignorant, vulgar woman, certainly I had better not visit her, if I can help it.\"\n\nEmma watched her through the fluctuations of this speech, and saw no alarming symptoms of love. The young man had been the first admirer, but she trusted there was no other hold, and that there would be no serious difficulty on Harriet's side to oppose any friendly arrangement of her own.\n\nThey met Mr. Martin the very next day, as they were walking on the Donwell road. He was on foot, and after looking very respectfully at her, looked with most unfeigned satisfaction at her companion. Emma was not sorry to have such an opportunity of survey; and walking a few yards forward, while they talked together, soon made her quick eye sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Robert Martin. His appearance was very neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with gentlemen, she thought he must lose all the ground he had gained in Harriet's inclination. Harriet was not insensible of manner; she had voluntarily noticed her father's gentleness with admiration as well as wonder. Mr. Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They remained but a few minutes together, as Miss Woodhouse must not be kept waiting; and Harriet then came running to her with a smiling face, and in aflutter of spirits, which Miss Woodhouse hoped very soon to compose.\n\n\"Only think of our happening to meet him! How very odd! It was quite a chance, he said, that he had not gone round by Randalls. He did not think we ever walked this road. He thought we walked towards Randalls most days. He has not been able to get the Romance of the Forest yet. He was so busy the last time he was at Kingston that he quite forgot it, but he goes again to-morrow. So very odd we should happen to meet! Well, Miss Woodhouse, is he like what you expected? What do you think of him? Do you think him so very plain?\"\n\n\"He is very plain, undoubtedly, remarkably plain; but that is nothing, compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect much, and I did not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so very clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a degree or two nearer gentility.\"\n\n\"To be sure,\" said Harriet, in a mortified voice, \"he is not so genteel as real gentlemen.\"\n\n\"I think, Harriet, since your acquaintance with us, you have been repeatedly in the company of some, such very real gentlemen, that you must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Martin. At Hartfield, you have had very good specimens of well educated, well bred men. I should be surprised if, after seeing them, you could be in company with Mr. Martin again without perceiving him to be a very inferior creature,-and rather wondering at yourself for having ever thought him at all agreeable before. Do not you begin to feel that now? Were not you struck? I am sure you must have been struck by his awkward look and abrupt manner; and the uncouthness of a voice, which I heard to be wholly unmodulated as I stood here.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Certainly, he is not like Mr. Knightley. He has not such a fine air and way of walking as Mr. Knightley. I seethe difference plain enough. But Mr. Knightley is so very fine a man!\"\n\n\"Mr. Knightley's air is so remarkably good that it is not fair to compare Mr. Martin with him. You might not see one in a hundred, with gentleman so plainly written as in Mr. Knightley. But he is not the only gentleman you have been lately used to. What say you to Mr. Weston and Mr. Elton? Compare Mr. Martin with either of them. Compare their manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being silent. You must seethe difference.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, there is a great difference. But Mr. Weston is almost an old man. Mr. Weston must be between forty and fifty.\"\n\n\"Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not be bad,-the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later age. Mr. Martinis now awkward and abrupt; what will he beat Mr. Weston's time of life?\"\n\n\"There is no saying, indeed,\" replied Harriet, rather solemnly.\n\n\"But there maybe pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross, vulgar farmer,-totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of nothing but profit and loss.\"\n\n\"Will he, indeed? that will be very bad.\"\n\n\"How much his business engrosses him already, is very plain from the circumstance of his forgetting to enquire for the book you recommended. He was a great deal too full of the market to think of anything else,-which is just as it should be, fora thriving man. What has he to do with books? And I have no doubt that he will thrive and be a very rich man in time,-and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb us.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"I wonder he did not remember the book,\" was all Harriet's answer, and spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might be safely left to itself."},{"from":"gpt","value":"She, therefore, said no more for sometime. Her next beginning was,-\n\n\"In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton's manners are superior to Mr. Knightley's or Mr. Weston's. They have more gentleness. They might be more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which everybody likes in him, because there is so much good humour with it-but that would not do to be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley's downright, decided, commanding sort of manner-though it suits him very well: his figure, and look, and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I think a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as a model. Mr. Elton is good humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle. He seems tome to be grown particularly gentle of late. I do not know whether he had any design of ingratiating himself with either of us, Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are softer than they used to be. If he means anything, it must be to please you. Did not I tell you what he said of you the other day?\"\n\nShe then repeated some warm personal praise which she had drawn from Mr. Elton, and now did full justice to; and Harriet blushed and smiled, and said she had always thought Mr. Elton very agreeable.\n\nMr. Elton was the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young farmer out of Harriet's head. She thought it would bean excellent match; and only too palpably desirable, natural and probable, for her to have much merit in planning it. She feared it was what everybody else must think of and predict. It was not likely, however, that anybody should have equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had entered her brain during the very first evening of Harriet's coming to Hartfield. The longer she considered it, the greater washer sense of its expediency. Mr. Elton's situation was most suitable, quite the gentleman himself and without low connections; at the same time not of any family that could fairly object to the doubtful birth of Harriet. He had a comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was known to have some independent property; and she thought very highly of him as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young man, without any deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of the world."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She had already satisfied herself that he thought Harriet a beautiful girl, which she trusted, with such frequent meetings at Hartfield, was foundation enough on his side; and on Harriet's there could belittle doubt that the idea of being preferred by him would have all the usual weight and efficacy. And he was really a very pleasing young man, a young man whom any woman not fastidious might like. He was reckoned very handsome; his person much admired in general, though not by her, there being a want of elegance of feature which she could not dispense with: but the girl who could be gratified by a Robert Martin's riding about the country to get walnuts for her might very well be conquered by Mr. Elton's admiration."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"I do not know what your opinion maybe, Mrs. Weston, \"said Mr. Knightley,\" of this great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith, but I think it a bad thing. \"\n\n\"A bad thing! Do you really think it a bad thing?-why so?\"\n\n\"I think they will neither of them do the other any good.\"\n\n\"You surprise me! Emma must do Harriet good; and by supplying her with anew object of interest, Harriet maybe said to do Emma good. I have been seeing their intimacy with the greatest pleasure. How very differently we feel! Not think they will do each other any good! This will certainly be the beginning of one of our quarrels about Emma, Mr. Knightley.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you think I am come on purpose to quarrel with you, knowing Weston to be out, and that you must still fight your own battle.\"\n\n\"Mr. Weston would undoubtedly support me, if he were here, for he thinks exactly as I do on the subject. We were speaking of it only yesterday, and agreeing how fortunate it was for Emma, that there should be such a girl in Highbury for her to associate with. Mr. Knightley, I shall not allow you to be a fair judge in this case. You are so much used to live alone, that you do not know the value of a companion; and, perhaps, no man can be a good judge of the comforts a woman feels in the society of one of her own sex, after being used to it all her life. I can imagine your objection to Harriet Smith. She is not the superior young woman which Emma's friend ought to be. But, on the other hand, as Emma wants to see her better informed, it will bean inducement to her to read more herself. They will read together. She means it, I know.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through-and very good lists they were-very well chosen, and very neatly arranged-sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen-I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it sometime; and I daresay she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing. You never could persuade her to read half so much as you wished. You know you could not.\"\n\n\"I daresay,\" replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, \"that I thought so then; but since we have parted, I can never remember Emma's omitting to do anything I wished.\"\n\n\"There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as that,\" said Mr. Knightley, feelingly; and fora moment or two he had done. \"But I,\" he soon added, \"who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must still see, hear, and remember. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured; Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her mother she lost the only personable to cope with her. She inherits her mother's talents, and must have been under subjection to her.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I should have been sorry, Mr. Knightley, to be dependent on your recommendation, had I quitted Mr. Woodhouse's family and wanted another situation; I do not think you would have spoken a good word for me to anybody. I am sure you always thought me unfit for the office I held.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said he smiling. \"You are better placed here, very fit fora wife, but not at all fora governess. But you were preparing yourself to bean excellent wife all the time you were at Hartfield. You might not give Emma such a complete education as your powers would seem to promise; but you were receiving a very good education from her, on the very material matrimonial point of submitting your own will, and doing as you were bid; and if Weston had asked me to recommend him a wife, I should certainly have named Miss Taylor.\"\n\n\"Thank you. There will be very little merit in making a good wife to such a man as Mr. Weston.\"\n\n\"Why, to own the truth, I am afraid you are rather thrown away, and that with every disposition to bear, there will be nothing to be borne. We will not despair, however. Weston may grow cross from the wantonness of comfort, or his son may plague him.\"\n\n\"I hope not that. It is not likely. No, Mr. Knightley, do not foretell vexation from that quarter.\"\n\n\"Not I, indeed. I only name possibilities. I do not pretend to Emma's genius for foretelling and guessing. I hope, with all my heart, the young man maybe a Weston in merit, and a Churchill in fortune. But Harriet Smith,-I have not half done about Harriet Smith. I think her the very worst sort of companion that Emma could possibly have. She knows nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing everything. She is a flatterer in all her ways; and so much the worse, because undesigned. Her ignorance is hourly flattery. How can Emma imagine she has anything to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful inferiority? And as for Harriet, I will venture to say that she cannot gain by the acquaintance. Hartfield will only put her out of conceit with all the other places she belongs to. She will grow just refined enough to be uncomfortable with those among whom birth and circumstances have placed her home. I am much mistaken if Emma's doctrines give any strength of mind, or tend at all to make a girl adapt herself rationally to the varieties of her situation in life. They only give a little polish.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I either depend more upon Emma's good sense than you do, or am more anxious for her present comfort; for I cannot lament the acquaintance. How well she looked last night.\"\n\n\"Oh, you would rather talk of her person than her mind, would you? Very well; I shall not attempt to deny Emma's being pretty.\"\n\n\"Pretty! say beautiful rather. Can you imagine anything nearer perfect beauty than Emma altogether-face and figure?\"\n\n\"I do not know what I could imagine, but I confess that I have seldom seen a face or figure more pleasing tome than hers. But I am a partial old friend.\"\n\n\"Such an eye!-the true hazel eye-and so brilliant! regular features, open countenance, with a complexion-oh, what abloom of full health, and such a pretty height and size; such a firm and upright figure. There is health, not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her glance. One hears sometimes of a child being \"the picture of health;\" now Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of grown-up health. She is loveliness itself. Mr. Knightley, is not she?\"\n\n\"I have not a fault to find with her person,\" he replied. \"I think her all you describe. I love to look at her; and I will add this praise, that I do not think her personally vain. Considering how very handsome she is, she appears to belittle occupied with it; her vanity lies another way. Mrs. Weston, I am not to be talked out of my dislike of her intimacy with Harriet Smith, or my dread of its doing them both harm.\"\n\n\"And I, Mr. Knightley, am equally stout in my confidence of its not doing them any harm. With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which maybe trusted; she will never lead anyone really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Very well; I will not plague you anymore. Emma shall bean angel, and I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and Isabella. John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not a blind affection, and Isabella always thinks as he does, except when he is not quite frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their opinions with me.\"\n\n\"I know that you all love her really too well to be unjust or unkind; but excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if I take the liberty, (I consider myself, you know, as having somewhat of the privilege of speech that Emma's mother might have had,) the liberty of hinting, that I do not think any possible good can arise from Harriet Smith's intimacy being made a matter of much discussion among you. Pray excuse me; but supposing any little inconvenience maybe apprehended from the intimacy, it cannot be expected that Emma, accountable to nobody but her father, who perfectly approves the acquaintance, should put an end to it, so long as it is a source of pleasure to herself. It has been so many years my province to give advice, that you cannot be surprised, Mr. Knightley, at this little remains of office.\"\n\n\"Not at all,\" cried he; \"I am much obliged to you for it. It is very good advice, and it shall have a better fate than your advice has often found; for it shall be attended to.\"\n\n\"Mrs. John Knightley is easily alarmed, and might be made unhappy about her sister.\"\n\n\"Be satisfied,\" said he, \"I will not raise any outcry. I will keep my ill-humour to myself. I have a very sincere interest in Emma. Isabella does not seem more my sister: has never excited a greater interest; perhaps hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"So do I,\" said Mrs."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Weston, gently, \"very much.\"\n\n\"She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return: it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attach her; and she goes so seldom from home.\"\n\n\"There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her resolution at present,\" said Mrs. Weston, \"as can well be; and while she is so happy at Hartfield, I cannot wish her to be forming any attachment which would be creating such difficulties, on poor Mr. Woodhouse's account. I do not recommend matrimony at present to Emma, though I mean no slight to the state, I assure you.\"\n\nPart of her meaning was to conceal some favorite thoughts of her own and Mr. Weston's on the subject as much as possible. There were wishes at Randalls respecting Emma's destiny, but it was not desirable to have them suspected; and the quiet transition which Mr. Knightley soon afterwards made to'What does Weston think of the weather?-shall we have rain?\"-convinced her that he had nothing more to say or surmise about Hartfield."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma could not feel a doubt of having given Harriet's fancy a proper direction, and raised the gratitude of her young vanity to a very good purpose; for she found her decidedly more sensible than before of Mr. Elton's being a remarkably handsome man, with most agreeable manners; and as she had no hesitation in following up the assurance of his admiration by agreeable hints, she was soon pretty confident of creating as much liking on Harriet's side as there could be any occasion for. She was quite convinced of Mr. Elton's being in the fairest way of falling in love, if not in love already. She had no scruple with regard to him. He talked of Harriet; and praised her so warmly, that she could not suppose anything wanting which a little time would not add. His perception of the striking improvement of Harriet's manner, since her introduction at Hartfield, was not one of the least agreeable proofs of his growing attachment.\n\n\"You have given Miss Smith all that she required,\" said he: \"you have made her graceful and easy. She was a beautiful creature when she came to you; but, in my opinion, the attractions you have added are infinitely superior to what she received from nature.\"\n\n\"I am glad you think I have been useful to her; but Harriet only wanted drawing out, and receiving a few, very few, hints. She had all the natural grace of sweetness of temper and artlessness in herself. I have done very little.\"\n\n\"If it were admissible to contradict a lady__\" said gallant Mr. Elton.\n\n\"I have, perhaps, given her a little more decision of character,-have taught her to think on points which had not fallen in her way before.\"\n\n\"Exactly so; that is what principally strikes me. So much super-added decision of character! Skilful has been the hand.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Great has been the pleasure, I am sure. I never met with a disposition more truly amiable.\"\n\n\"I have no doubt of it.\" And it was spoken with a sort of sighing animation which had avast deal of the lover. She was not less pleased, another day, with the manner in which he seconded a sudden wish of hers-to have Harriet's picture.\n\n\"Did you ever have your likeness taken, Harriet?\" said she: \"did you ever sit for your picture?\"\n\nHarriet was on the point of leaving the room, and only stopped to say, with a very interesting naïveté,-\n\n\"Oh, dear, no,-never.\"\n\nNo sooner was she out of sight than Emma exclaimed,-\n\n\"What an exquisite possession a good picture of her would be! I would give any money for it. I almost long to attempt her likeness myself. You do not know it, I daresay; but, two or three years ago, I had a great passion for taking likenesses, and attempted several of my friends, and was thought to have a tolerable eye in general; but, from one cause or another, I gave it up in disgust. But, really, I could almost venture, if Harriet would sit tome. It would be such a delight to have her picture!\"\n\n\"Let me entreat you,\" cried Mr. Eiton,-\"it would indeed be a delight: let me entreat you, Miss Woodhouse, to exercise so charming a talent in favour of your friend. I know what your drawings are. How could you suppose me ignorant? Is not this room rich in specimens of your landscapes and flowers? and has not Mrs. Weston some inimitable figure-pieces in her drawing-room at Randalls?\"\n\nYes, good man!-thought Emma-but what has all that to do with taking likenesses? You know nothing of drawing. Don't pretend to be in raptures about mine. Keep your raptures for Harriet's face. \"Well, if you give me such kind encouragement, Mr. Elton, I believe I shall try what I can do. Harriet's features are very delicate, which makes a likeness difficult; and yet there is a peculiarity in the shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth which one ought to catch.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Exactly so,-the shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth,-I have not a doubt of your success. Pray, pray attempt it. As you will do it, it will indeed, to use your own words, bean exquisite possession.\"\n\n\"But I am afraid, Mr. Elton, Harriet will not like to sit,-she thinks so little of her own beauty. Did not you observe her manner of answering me? How completely it meant, \"Why should my picture be drawn?\"\"\n\n\"Oh, yes, I observed it, I assure you. It was not lost on me. But still I cannot imagine she would not be persuaded.\"\n\nHarriet was soon back again, and the proposal almost immediately made; and she had no scruples which could stand many minutes against the earnest pressing of both the others. Emma wished to go to work directly, and therefore produced the portfolio containing her various attempts at portraits, for not one of them had ever been finished, that they might decide together on the best size for Harriet. Her many beginnings were displayed. Miniatures, half-lengths, whole-lengths, pencil, crayon, and water-colours had been all tried in turn. She had always wanted to do everything, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to. She played and sang, and drew in almost every style; but steadiness had always been wanting; and in nothing had she approached the degree of excellence which she would have been glad to command, and ought not to have failed of. She was not much deceived as to her own skill, either as an artist or a musician; but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.\n\nThere was merit in every drawing,-in the least finished, perhaps the most. Her style was spirited; but had there been much less, or had there been ten times more, the delight and admiration of her two companions would have been the same. They were both in ecstasies. A likeness pleases everybody; and Miss Woodhouse's performances must be capital."},{"from":"human","value":"\"No great variety of faces for you,\" said Emma."},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I had only my own family to study from. There is my father,-another of my father;-but the idea of sitting for his picture made him so nervous, that I could only take him by stealth; neither of them very like, therefore. Mrs. Weston again, and again, and again, you see. Dear Mrs. Weston-always my kindest friend on every occasion. She would sit whenever I asked her. There is my sister; and really quite her own little elegant figure-and the face not unlike. I should have made a good likeness of her, if she would have sat longer; but she was in such a hurry to have me draw her four children that she would not be quiet. Then, here come all my attempts at three of those four children:-there they are, Henry, and John, and Bella, from one end of the sheet to the other, and anyone of them might do for anyone of the rest. She was so eager to have them drawn that I could not refuse; but there is no making children of three or four years old standstill, you know; nor can it be very easy to take any likeness of them, beyond the air and complexion, unless they are coarser featured than any of mamma's children ever were. Here is my sketch of the fourth, who was a baby. I took him as he was sleeping on the sofa, and it is as strong a likeness of his cockade c as you would wish to see. He had nestled down his head most conveniently:-that's very like. I am rather proud of little George. The corner of the sofa is very good. Then here is my last,\"-un-closing a pretty sketch of a gentleman in small size, whole-length,-\"my last and my best,-my brother, Mr. John Knightley. This did not want much of being finished, when I put it away in a pet, and vowed I would never take another likeness. I could not help being provoked; for after all my pains, and when I had really made a very good likeness of it-(Mrs. Weston and I were quite agreed in thinking it very like)-only too handsome-too flattering-but that was a fault on the right side;-after all this, came poor dear Isabella's cold approbation of-\"Yes, it was a little like; but to be sure it did not do him justice. \"We had had a great deal of trouble in persuading him to sit at all. It was made a great favour of; and altogether it was more than I could bear; and so I never would finish it, to have it apologised over as an unfavourable likeness, to every morning visiter in Brunswick Square; and, as I said, I did then forswear ever drawing anybody again. But for Harriet's sake, or rather for my own, and as there are no husbands and wives in the case at present, I will break my resolution now.\"\n\nMr. Elton seemed very properly struck and delighted by the idea, and was repeating, \"No husbands and wives in the case at present, indeed, as you observe. Exactly so. No husbands and wives,\" with so interesting a consciousness, that Emma began to consider whether she had not better leave them together at once. But as she wanted to be drawing, the declaration must wait a little longer."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She had soon fixed on the size and sort of portrait. It was to be a whole-length in water-colours, like Mr. John Knightley's, and was destined, if she could please herself, to hold a very honourable station over the mantle-piece.\n\nThe sitting began; and Harriet, smiling and blushing, and afraid of not keeping her attitude and countenance, presented a very sweet mixture of youthful expression to the steady eyes of the artist. But there was no doing anything, with Mr. Elton fidgeting behind her, and watching every touch. She gave him credit for stationing himself where he might gaze and gaze again without offence; but was really obliged to put an end to it, and request him to place himself elsewhere. It then occurred to her to employ him in reading.\n\n\"If he would be so good as to read to them, it would be a kindness indeed! It would amuse away the difficulties of her part, and lessen the irksomeness of Miss Smith's.\"\n\nMr. Elton was only too happy. Harriet listened, and Emma drew in peace. She must allow him to be still frequently coming to look; anything less would certainly have been too little in a lover; and he was ready at the smallest intermission of the pencil to jump up and seethe progress, and be charmed. There was no being displeased with such an encourager, for his admiration made him discern a likeness almost before it was possible. She could not respect his eye, but his love and his complaisance were unexceptionable.\n\nThe sitting was altogether very satisfactory: she was quite enough pleased with the first day's sketch to wish to goon. There was no want of likeness: she had been fortunate in the attitude; and as she meant to throw in a little improvement to the figure, to give a little more height, and considerably more elegance, she had great confidence of its being in every way a pretty drawing at last, and of its filling its destined place with credit to them both;-a standing memorial of the beauty of one, the skill of the other, and the friendship of both; with as many other agreeable associations as Mr. Elton's very promising attachment was likely to add."},{"from":"human","value":"Harriet was to sit again the next day; and Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Elton, just as he ought, entreated for the permission of attending and reading to them again.\n\n\"By all means. We shall be most happy to consider you as one of the party.\"\n\nThe same civilities and courtesies, the same success and satisfaction, took place on the morrow, and accompanied the whole progress of the picture, which was rapid and happy. Everybody who saw it was pleased, but Mr. Elton was in continual raptures, and defended it through every criticism.\n\n\"Miss Woodhouse has given her friend the only beauty she wanted,\" observed Mrs. Weston to him, not in the least suspecting that she was addressing a lover. \"The expression of the eye is most correct, but Miss Smith has not those eyebrows and eyelashes. It is the fault of her face that she has them not.\"\n\n\"Do you think so?\" replied he. \"I cannot agree with you. It appears tome a most perfect resemblance in every feature. I never saw such a likeness in my life. We must allow for the effect of shade, you know.\"\n\n\"You have made her too tall, Emma,\" said Mr. Knightley. Emma knew that she had, but would not own it; and Mr. Elton warmly added,-\n\n\"Oh, no-certainly not too tall-not in the least too tall. Consider she is sitting down, which naturally presents a different-which in short gives exactly the idea;-and the proportions must be preserved, you know. Proportions, fore-shortening:-oh no: it gives one exactly the idea of such a height as Miss Smith's;-exactly so, indeed.\"\n\n\"It is very pretty,\" said Mr. Woodhouse. \"So prettily done! Just as your drawings always are, my dear. I do not know anybody who draws so well as you do. The only thing I do not thoroughly like is, that she seems to be sitting out of doors, with only a little shawl over her shoulders; and it makes one think she must catch cold.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"But, my dear papa, it is supposed to be summer; a warm day in summer. Look at the tree.\"\n\n\"But it is never safe to sit out of doors, my dear.\"\n\n\"You, sir, may say anything,\" cried Mr. Elton; \" but I must confess that I regard it as a most happy thought, the placing Miss Smith out of doors; and the tree is touched with such inimitable spirit! Any other situation would have been much less in character. The naïveté of Miss Smith's manners,-and altogether-oh, it is most admirable! I cannot keep my eyes from it. I never saw such a likeness.\n\nThe next thing wanted was to get the picture framed; and here were a few difficulties. It must be done directly; it must be done in London; the order must go through the hands of some intelligent person whose taste could be depended on; and Isabella, the usual doer of all commissions, must not be applied to, because it was December, and Mr. Woodhouse could not bear the idea of her stirring out of her house in the fogs of December. But no sooner was the distress known to Mr. Elton than it was removed. His gallantry was always on the alert. \"Might he be trusted with the commission, what infinite pleasure should he have in executing it! he could ride to London at anytime. It was impossible to say how much he should be gratified by being employed on such an errand.\"\n\n\"He was too good!-she could not endure the thought!-she would not give him such a troublesome office for the world,\"-brought on the desired repetition of entreaties and assurances,-and a very few minutes settled the business.\n\nMr. Elton was to take the drawing to London, choose the frame, and give the directions; and Emma thought she could so pack it as to ensure its safety without much incommoding him, while he seemed mostly fearful of not being incommoded enough."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What a precious deposit!\" said he, with a tender sigh, as he received it.\n\n\"This man is almost too gallant to be in love,\" thought Emma. \"I should say so, but that I suppose there maybe a hundred different ways of being in love. He is an excellent young man, and will suit Harriet exactly: it will bean \"exactly so,\" as he says himself; but he does sigh and languish, and study for compliments rather more than I could endure as a principal. I come in fora pretty good share as a second. But it is his gratitude on Harriet's account.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The very day of Mr. Elton's going to London produced afresh occasion for Emma's services towards her friend. Harriet had been at Hartfield, as usual, soon after breakfast; and after a time, had gone home to return again to dinner: she returned, and sooner than had been talked of, and with an agitated, hurried look, announcing something extraordinary to have happened which she was longing to tell. Half a minute brought it all out. She had heard, as soon as she got back to Mrs. Goddard's, that Mr. Martin had been there an hour before, and finding she was not at home, nor particularly expected, had left a little parcel for her from one of his sisters, and gone away; and on opening this parcel, she had actually found, besides the two songs which she had lent Elizabeth to copy, a letter to herself; and this letter was from him, from Mr. Martin, and contained a direct proposal of marriage. \"Who could have thought it! She was so surprised she did not know what to do. Yes, quite a proposal of marriage; and a very good letter, at least she thought so. And he wrote as if he really loved her very much-but she did not know-and so, she was come as fast as she could to ask Miss Woodhouse what she should do.\" Emma was half ashamed of her friend for seeming so pleased and so doubtful.\n\n\"Upon my word,\" she cried, \"the young man is determined not to lose anything for want of asking. He will connect himself well if he can.\"\n\n\"Will you read the letter?\" cried Harriet. \"Pray do. I'd rather you would.\"\n\nEmma was not sorry to be pressed. She read, and was surprised. The style of the letter was much above her expectation. There were not merely no grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a gentleman: the language, though plain, was strong and unaffected, and the sentiments it conveyed very much to the credit of the writer. It was short, but expressed good sense, warm attachment, liberality, propriety, even delicacy of feeling. She paused over it, while Harriet stood anxiously watching for her opinion, with a'Well, well,\" and was at last forced to add, \"Is it a good letter? or is it too short?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Yes, indeed, a very good letter,\" replied Emma, rather slowly;-\"so good a letter, Harriet, that, everything considered, I think one of his sisters must have helped him. I can hardly imagine the young man whom I saw talking with you the other day could express himself so well, if left quite to his own powers, and yet it is not the style of a woman; no, certainly, it is too strong and concise; not diffuse enough fora woman. No doubt he is a sensible man, and I suppose may have a natural talent for-thinks strongly and clearly-and when he takes a pen in hand, his thoughts naturally find proper words. It is so with some men. Yes, I understand the sort of mind. Vigorous, decided, with sentiments to a certain point, not coarse. A better written letter, Harriet (returning it), than I had expected.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the still waiting Harriet:-\"well-and-and what shall I do?\"\n\n\"What shall you do! In what respect? Do you mean with regard to this letter?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"But what are you in doubt of? You must answer it of course-and speedily.\"\n\n\"Yes. But what shall I say? Dear Miss Woodhouse, do advise me.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no: the letter had much better be all your own. You will express yourself very properly, I am sure. There is no danger of your not being intelligible, which is the first thing. Your meaning must be unequivocal: no doubts or demurs; and such expressions of gratitude and concern for the pain you are inflicting as propriety requires, will present themselves unbidden to your mind, I am persuaded. You need not be prompted to write with the appearance of sorrow for his disappointment.\"\n\n\"You think I ought to refuse him, then?\" said Harriet, looking down."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Ought to refuse him! My dear Harriet, what do you mean? Are you in any doubt as to that? I thought-but I beg your pardon, perhaps I have been under a mistake. I certainly have been misunderstanding you, if you feel in doubt as to the purport of your answer. I had imagined you were consulting me only as to the wording of it.\"\n\nHarriet was silent. With a little reserve of manner, Emma continued,-\n\n\"You mean to return a favourable answer, I collect.\"\n\n\"No, I do not; that is I do not mean-What shall I do? What would you advise me to do? Pray, dear Miss Woodhouse, tell me what I ought to do?\"\n\n\"I shall not give you any advice, Harriet. I will have nothing to do with it. This is a point which you must settle with your own feelings.\"\n\n\"I had no notion that he liked me so very much,\" said Harriet, contemplating the letter. Fora little while Emma persevered in her silence; but beginning to apprehend the bewitching flattery of that letter might be too powerful, she thought it best to say,-\n\n\"I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a manor not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to \"Yes,\" she ought to say \"No\" directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and older than yourself, to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I want to influence you.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, I am sure you area great deal too kind to-but if you would just advise me what I had best do:-no, no, I do not mean that:-as you say one's mind ought to be quite made up-one should not be hesitating:-it is a very serious thing. It will be safer to say'No, \"perhaps. Do you think I had better say'No? ' .\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Not for the world,\" said Emma, smiling graciously, \"would I advise you either way. You must be the best judge of your own happiness. If you prefer Mr. Martin to every other person; if you think him the most agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you hesitate? You blush, Harriet. Does anybody else occur to you at this moment under such a definition? Harriet, Harriet, do not deceive yourself; do not be runaway with by gratitude and compassion. At this moment whom are you thinking of?\"\n\nThe symptoms were favourable. Instead of answering, Harriet turned away confused, and stood thoughtfully by the fire; and though the letter was still in her hand, it was now mechanically twisted about without regard. Emma waited the result with impatience, but not without strong hopes. At last, with some hesitation, Harriet said,-\n\n\"Miss Woodhouse, as you will not give me your opinion, I must do as well as I can by myself; and I have now quite determined, and really almost made up my mind, to refuse Mr. Martin. Do you think I am right?\"\n\n\"Perfectly, perfectly right, my dearest Harriet; you are doing just what you ought. While you were at all in suspense, I kept my feelings to myself, but now that you are so completely decided I have no hesitation in approving. Dear Harriet, I give myself joy of this. It would have grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the consequence of your marrying Mr. Martin. While you were in the smallest degree wavering, I said nothing about it, because I would not influence; but it would have been the loss of a friend tome. I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am secure of you forever.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harriet had not surmised her own danger, but the idea of it struck her forcibly.\n\n\"You could not have visited me!\" she cried, looking aghast. \"No, to be sure you could not; but I never thought of that before. That would have been too dreadful! What an escape! Dear Miss Woodhouse, I would not give up the pleasure and honour of being intimate with you for anything in the world.\"\n\n\"Indeed, Harriet, it would have been a severe pang to lose you; but it must have been. You would have thrown yourself out of all good society. I must have given you up.\"\n\n\"Dear me! How should I ever have borne it? It would have killed me never to come to Hartfield anymore.\"\n\n\"Dear, affectionate creature! You banished to Abbey-Mill Farm! You confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar all your life! I wonder how the young man could have the assurance to ask it. He must have a pretty good opinion of himself.\"\n\n\"I do not think he is conceited either, in general,\" said Harriet, her conscience opposing such censure; \"at least he is very good natured, and I shall always feel much obliged to him, and have a great regard for-but that is quite a different thing from-and you know, though he may like me, it does not follow that I should-and, certainly, I must confess that since my visiting here I have seen people-and if one comes to compare them, person and manners, there is no comparison at all, one is so very handsome and agreeable. However, I do really think Mr. Martina very amiable young man, and have a great opinion of him; and his being so much attached tome-and his writing such a letter-but as to leaving you, it is what I would not do upon any consideration.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Thank you, thank you, my own sweet little friend. We will not be parted. A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.\"\n\n\"Oh, no;-and it is but a short letter, too.\"\n\nEmma felt the bad taste of her friend, but let it pass with a'very true; and it would be a small consolation to her, for the clownish manner which might be offending her every hour of the day, to know that her husband could write a good letter.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, very. Nobody cares fora letter: the thing is, to be always happy with pleasant companions. I am quite determined to refuse him. But how shall I do? What shall I say?\"\n\nEmma assured her there would be no difficulty in the answer, and advised its being written directly, which was agreed to, in the hope of her assistance; and though Emma continued to protest against any assistance being wanted, it was in fact given in the formation of every sentence. The looking over his letter again, in replying to it, had such a softening tendency, that it was particularly necessary to brace her up with a few decisive expressions; and she was so very much concerned at the idea of making him unhappy, and thought so much of what his mother and sisters would think and say, and was so anxious that they should not fancy her ungrateful, that Emma believed if the young man had come in her way at that moment, he would have been accepted after all.\n\nThis letter, however, was written, and sealed, and sent. The business was finished, and Harriet safe. She was rather low all the evening; but Emma could allow for her amiable regrets, and sometimes relieved them by speaking of her own affection, sometimes by bringing forward the idea of Mr. Elton."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I shall never be invited to Abbey-Mill again,\" was said in rather a sorrowful tone.\n\n\"Nor, if you were, could I ever bear to part with you, my Harriet. You area great deal too necessary at Hartfield to be spared to Abbey-Mill.\"\n\n\"And I am sure I should never want to go there; for I am never happy but at Hartfield.\"\n\nSometime afterwards it was, \"I think Mrs. Goddard would be very much surprised if she knew what had happened. I am sure Miss Nash would-for Miss Nash thinks her own sister very well married, and it is only a linen-draper.\" d\n\n\"One should be sorry to see greater pride or refinement in the teacher of a school, Harriet. I daresay Miss Nash would envy you such an opportunity as this of being married. Even this conquest would appear valuable in her eyes. As to anything superior for you, I suppose she is quite in the dark. The attentions of a certain person can hardly be among the tittle-tattle† of Highbury yet. Hitherto I fancy you and I are the only people to whom his looks and manners have explained themselves.\"\n\nHarriet blushed and smiled, and said something about wondering that people should like her so much. The idea of Mr. Elton was certainly cheering; but still, after a time, she was tender-hearted again towards the rejected Mr. Martin.\n\n\"Now he has got my letter,\" said she softly. \"I wonder what they are all doing-whether his sisters know-if he is unhappy, they will be unhappy too. I hope he will not mind it so very much.\"\n\n\"Let us think of those among our absent friends who are more cheerfully employed,\" cried Emma. \"At this moment, perhaps, Mr. Elton is showing your picture to his mother and sisters, telling how much more beautiful is the original, and after being asked for it five or six times, allowing them to hear your name, your own dear name.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"My picture!"},{"from":"gpt","value":"But he has left my picture in Bond Street.\"\n\n\"Has he so! Then I know nothing of Mr. Elton. No, my dear little modest Harriet, depend upon it, the picture will not be in Bond Street till just before he mounts his horse to-morrow. It is his companion all this evening, his solace, his delight. It opens his designs to his family, it introduces you among them, it diffuses through the party those pleasantest feelings of our nature, eager curiosity and warm prepossession. How cheerful, how animated, how suspicious, how busy their imaginations all are!\"\n\nHarriet smiled again, and her smiles grew stronger."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harriet slept at Hartfield that night. For some weeks past she had been spending more than half her time there, and gradually getting to have abed-room appropriated to herself; and Emma judged it best in every respect, safest and kindest, to keep her with them as much as possible just at present. She was obliged to go the next morning for an hour or two to Mrs. Goddard's, but it was then to be settled that she should return to Hartfield, to make a regular visit of some days.\n\nWhile she was gone, Mr. Knightley called, and sat sometime with Mr. Woodhouse and Emma, till Mr. Woodhouse, who had previously made up his mind to walkout, was persuaded by his daughter not to defer it, and was induced by the entreaties of both, though against the scruples of his own civility, to leave Mr. Knightley for that purpose. Mr. Knightley, who had nothing of ceremony about him, was offering, by his short, decided answers, an amusing contrast to the protracted apologies and civil hesitations of the other.\n\n\"Well, I believe, if you will excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if you will not consider meas doing a very rude thing, I shall take Emma's advice and go out fora quarter of an hour. As the sun is out, I believe I had better take my three turns while I can. I treat you without ceremony, Mr. Knightley. We invalids think we are privileged people.\"\n\n\"My dear sir, do not make a stranger of me.\"\n\n\"I leave an excellent substitute in my daughter. Emma will be happy to entertain you. And therefore I think I will beg your excuse, and take my three turns-my winter walk.\"\n\n\"You cannot do better, sir.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I would ask for the pleasure of your company, Mr. Knightley, but I am a very slow walker, and my pace would be tedious to you; and, besides, you have another long walk before you, to Donwell Abbey.\"\n\n\"Thank you, sir, thank you; I am going this moment myself; and I think the sooner you go the better. I will fetch your greatcoat and open the garden door for you.\"\n\nMr. Woodhouse at last was off; but Mr. Knightley, instead of being immediately off likewise, sat down again, seemingly inclined for more chat. He began speaking of Harriet, and speaking of her with more voluntary praise than Emma had ever heard before.\n\n\"I cannot rate her beauty as you do,\" said he; \"but she is a pretty little creature, and I am inclined to think very well of her disposition. Her character depends upon those she is with; but in good hands she will turnout a valuable woman.\"\n\n\"I am glad you think so; and the good hands, I hope, may not be wanting.\"\n\n\"Come,\" said he, \"you are anxious fora compliment, so I will tell you that you have improved her. You have cured her of her school-girl's giggle; she really does you credit.\"\n\n\"Thank you. I should be mortified, indeed, if I did not believe 1 had been of some use; but it is not everybody who will bestow praise where they may. You do not often overpower me with it.\"\n\n\"You are expecting her again, you say, this morning?\"\n\n\"Almost every moment. She has been gone longer already than she intended.\"\n\n\"Something has happened to delay her; some visiters, perhaps.\"\n\n\"Highbury gossips! Tiresome wretches!\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Harriet may not consider everybody tiresome that you would.\"\n\nEmma knew this was too true for contradiction, and, therefore, said nothing. He presently added, with a smile,-\n\n\"I do not pretend to fix on times or places, but I must tell you that I have good reason to believe your little friend will soon hear of something to her advantage.\"\n\n\"Indeed! how so? of what sort?\"\n\n\"Avery serious sort, I assure you,\" still smiling.\n\n\"Very serious! I can think of but one thing:-who is in love with her? Who makes you their confidant?\"\n\nEmma was more than half in hopes of Mr. Elton's having dropped a hint. Mr. Knightley was a sort of general friend and adviser, and she knew Mr. Elton looked up to him.\n\n\"I have reason to think,\" he replied, \"that Harriet Smith will soon have an offer of marriage, and from a most unexceptionable quarter:-Robert Martinis the man. Her visit to Abbey-Mill, this summer, seems to have done his business. He is desperately in love, and means to marry her.\"\n\n\"He is very obliging,\" said Emma; \"but is he sure that Harriet means to marry him?\"\n\n\"Well, well, means to make her an offer then. Will that do? He came to the Abbey two evenings ago, on purpose to consult me about it. He knows I have a thorough regard for him and all his family, and, I believe, considers meas one of his best friends. He came to ask me whether I thought it would be imprudent in him to settle so early; whether I thought her too young: in short, whether I approved his choice altogether; having some apprehension, perhaps, of her being considered (especially since your making so much of her) as in a line of society above him. I was very much pleased with all that he said. I never hear better sense from anyone than Robert Martin. He always speaks to the purpose; open, straight-forward, and very well judging. He told me everything; his circumstances and plans, and what they all proposed doing in the event of his marriage. He is an excellent young man, both as son and brother. I had no hesitation in advising him to marry. He proved tome that he could afford it; and that being the case, I was convinced he could not do better. I praised the fair lady too, and altogether sent him away very happy. If he had never esteemed my opinion before, he would have thought highly of me then; and, I daresay, left the house thinking me the best friend and counsellor man ever had. This happened the night before last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not allow much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not appear to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should beat Mrs. Goddard's to-day: and she maybe detained by a visiter, without thinking him at all a tiresome wretch.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Pray, Mr. Knightley,\" said Emma, who had been smiling to herself through a great part of this speech, \"how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" replied he, surprised, \"I do not absolutely know it; but it maybe inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?\"\n\n\"Come,\" said she, \"I will tell you something, in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday-that is, he wrote, and was refused.\"\n\nThis was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr. Knightley actually looked red with surprise and displeasure, as he stood up, in tall indignation, and said,-\n\n\"Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the foolish girl about?\"\n\n\"Oh, to be sure,\" cried Emma, \"it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.\"\n\n\"Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin! Madness, if it is so; but I hope you are mistaken.\"\n\n\"I saw her answer; nothing could be clearer.\"\n\n\"You saw her answer! you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.\"\n\n\"And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing,) I should not feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martinis a very respectable young man, but I cannot admit him to be Harriet's equal; and am rather surprised, indeed, that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever got over.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Assist with the plot and keep the story going.\\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\\nAuthor: Jane Austen\\nTitle: Emma\\nChapter: 8\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harriet Smith's intimacy at Hartfield was soon a settled thing. Quick and decided in her ways, Emma lost no time in inviting, encouraging, and telling her to come very often; and as their acquaintance increased, so did their satisfaction in each other. As a walking companion, Emma had very early foreseen how useful she might find her. In that respect Mrs. Weston's loss had been important. Her father never went beyond the shrubbery, where two divisions of the ground sufficed him for his long walk, or his short, as the year varied; and since Mrs. Weston's marriage her exercise had been too much confined. She had ventured once alone to Randalls, but it was not pleasant; and a Harriet Smith, therefore, one whom she could summon at anytime to a walk, would be a valuable addition to her privileges. But in every respect as she saw more of her, she approved her, and was confirmed in all her kind designs.\\n\\nHarriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful disposition; was totally free from conceit; and only desiring to be guided by anyone she looked up to. Her early attachment to herself was very amiable; and her inclination for good company, and power of appreciating what was elegant and clever, showed that there was no want of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected. Altogether she was quite convinced of Harriet Smith's being exactly the young friend she wanted,-exactly the something which her home required. Such a friend as Mrs. Weston was out of the question. Two such could never be granted. Two such she did not want. It was quite a different sort of thing,-a sentiment distinct and independent. Mrs. Weston was the object of a regard which had its basis ingratitude and esteem. Harriet would beloved as one to whom she could be useful. For Mrs. Weston there was nothing to be done; for Harriet everything.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Her first attempts at usefulness were in an endeavour to find out who were the parents; but Harriet could not tell.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She was ready to tell everything in her power, but on this subject questions were vain. Emma was obliged to fancy what she liked; but she could never believe that in the same situation she should not have discovered the truth. Harriet had no penetration. She had been satisfied to hear and believe just what Mrs. Goddard chose to tell her; and looked no farther.\\n\\nMrs. Goddard, and the teachers, and the girls, and the affairs of the school in general, formed naturally a great part of her conversation,-and but for her acquaintance with the Martins of Abbey-Mill Farm, it must have been the whole. But the Martins occupied her thoughts a good deal: she had spent two very happy months with them, and now loved to talk of the pleasures of her visit, and describe the many comforts and wonders of the place. Emma encouraged her talkativeness,-amused by such a picture of another set of beings, and enjoying the youthful simplicity which could speak with so much exultation of Mrs. Martin's having'two parlours, two very good parlours, indeed; one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard's drawing-room; and of her having an upper maid who had lived five-and-twenty years with her; and of their having eight cows, two of them Alderneys, and one a little Welsh cow, a very pretty little Welsh cow, indeed; and of Mrs. Martin's saying, as she was so fond of it, it should be called her cow; and of their having a very handsome summer-house in their garden, where someday next year they were all to drink tea,-a very handsome summer-house, large enough to hold a dozen people.\\\"\\n\\nFor sometime she was amused, without thinking beyond the immediate cause; but as she came to understand the family better, other feelings arose. She had taken up a wrong idea, fancying it was a mother and daughter, a son and son's wife, who all lived together; but when it appeared that the Mr. Martin, who bore apart in the narrative, and was always mentioned with approbation for his great good-nature in doing something or other, was a single man; that there was no young Mrs. Martin, no wife in the case; she did suspect danger to her poor little friend from all this hospitality and kindness,-and that if she were not taken care of, she might be required to sink herself forever.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"With this inspiriting notion, her questions increased in number and meaning; and she particularly led Harriet to talk more of Mr. Martin,-and there was evidently no dislike to it. Harriet was very ready to speak of the share he had had in their moonlight walks and merry evening games; and dwelt a good deal upon his being so very good-humoured and obliging. \\\"He had gone three miles round one day, in order to bring her some walnuts, because she had said how fond she was of them,-and in everything else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd's son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was very clever, and understood everything. He had a very fine flock; and, while she was with them, he had been bid more for his wool than anybody in the country. She believed everybody spoke well of him. His mother and sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had told her one day (and there was a blush as she said it), that it was impossible for anybody to be a better son; and therefore she was sure whenever he married he would make a good husband. Not that she wanted him to marry. She was in no hurry at all.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well done, Mrs. Martin!\\\" thought Emma. \\\"You know what you are about.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And when she had come away, Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose: the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three teachers, Miss Nach, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson, to sup with her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of his own business. He does not read?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Oh, yes!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"-that is, no-I do not know-but I believe he has read a good deal-but not what you would think anything of. He reads the Agricultural Reports, and some other books that lie in one of the window seats-but he reads all them to himself. But sometimes of an evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of the Elegant Extracts, very entertaining. And I know he has read the Vicar of Wakefield. He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor the Children of the Abbey. 1 He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can.\\\"\\n\\nThe next question was,-\\n\\n\\\"What sort of looking man is Mr. Martin?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh! not handsome-not at all handsome. I thought him very plain at first, but I do not think him so plain now. One does not, you know, after a time. But did you never see him? He is in Highbury every now and then, and he is sure to ride through every week in his way to Kingston. He has passed you very often.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That maybe, and I may have seen him fifty times, but without having any idea of his name. A young farmer, whether on horseback or on foot, is the very last sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do. A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their families in someway or other. But a farmer can need none of my help, and is therefore, in one sense, as much above my notice, as in every other he is below it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"To be sure. Oh, yes, it is not likely you should ever have observed him; but he knows you very well, indeed-I mean by sight.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I have no doubt of his being a very respectable young man. I know, indeed, that he is so; and, as such, wish him well. What do you imagine his age to be?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He was four-and-twenty the 8th of last June, and my birthday is the 23d: just a fortnight and a day's difference; which is very odd.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Only four-and-twenty. That is too young to settle. His mother is perfectly right not to be in a hurry. They seem very comfortable as they are, and if she were to take any pains to marry him, she would probably repent it. Six years hence, if he could meet with a good sort of young woman in the same rank as his own, with a little money, it might be very desirable.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Six years hence! dear Miss Woodhouse, he would be thirty years old.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, and that is as early as most men can afford to marry, who are not born to an independence. Mr. Martin, I imagine, has his fortune entirely to make-cannot beat all beforehand with the world. Whatever money he might come into when his father died, whatever his share of the family property, it is, I daresay, all afloat, all employed in his stock, and so forth; and though, with diligence and good luck, he maybe rich in time, it is next to impossible that he should have realised anything yet.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"To be sure, so it is. But they live very comfortably. They have no in-doors man-else they do not want for anything; and Mrs. Martin talks of taking a boy another year.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I wish you may not get into a scrape, Harriet, whenever he does marry,-I mean, as to being acquainted with his wife; for though his sisters, from a superior education, are not to be altogether objected to, it does not follow that he might marry anybody at all fit for you to notice. The misfortune of your birth ought to make you particularly careful as to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a gentleman's daughter, and you must support your claim to that station by everything within your own power, or there will be plenty of people who would take pleasure in degrading you.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yes, to be sure, I suppose there are.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"But while I visit at Hartfield, and you are so kind tome, Miss Woodhouse, I am not afraid of what anybody can do.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You understand the force of influence pretty well, Harriet; but I would have you so firmly established in good society, as to be independent even of Hartfield and Miss Woodhouse. I want to see you permanently well connected,-and to that end it will be advisable to have as few odd acquaintance as maybe; and, therefore, I say, that if you should still be in this country when Mr. Martin marries, I wish you may not be drawn in by your intimacy with the sisters, to be acquainted with the wife, who will probably be some mere farmer's daughter, without education.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"To be sure. Yes. Not that I think Mr. Martin would ever marry anybody but what had had some education, and been very well brought up. However, I do not mean to setup my opinion against yours,-and I am sure I shall not wish for the acquaintance of his wife. I shall always have a great regard for the Miss Martins, especially Elizabeth, and should be very sorry to give them up, for they are quite as well educated as me. But if he marries a very ignorant, vulgar woman, certainly I had better not visit her, if I can help it.\\\"\\n\\nEmma watched her through the fluctuations of this speech, and saw no alarming symptoms of love. The young man had been the first admirer, but she trusted there was no other hold, and that there would be no serious difficulty on Harriet's side to oppose any friendly arrangement of her own.\\n\\nThey met Mr. Martin the very next day, as they were walking on the Donwell road. He was on foot, and after looking very respectfully at her, looked with most unfeigned satisfaction at her companion. Emma was not sorry to have such an opportunity of survey; and walking a few yards forward, while they talked together, soon made her quick eye sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Robert Martin. His appearance was very neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with gentlemen, she thought he must lose all the ground he had gained in Harriet's inclination. Harriet was not insensible of manner; she had voluntarily noticed her father's gentleness with admiration as well as wonder. Mr. Martin looked as if he did not know what manner was.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They remained but a few minutes together, as Miss Woodhouse must not be kept waiting; and Harriet then came running to her with a smiling face, and in aflutter of spirits, which Miss Woodhouse hoped very soon to compose.\\n\\n\\\"Only think of our happening to meet him! How very odd! It was quite a chance, he said, that he had not gone round by Randalls. He did not think we ever walked this road. He thought we walked towards Randalls most days. He has not been able to get the Romance of the Forest yet. He was so busy the last time he was at Kingston that he quite forgot it, but he goes again to-morrow. So very odd we should happen to meet! Well, Miss Woodhouse, is he like what you expected? What do you think of him? Do you think him so very plain?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He is very plain, undoubtedly, remarkably plain; but that is nothing, compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect much, and I did not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so very clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a degree or two nearer gentility.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"To be sure,\\\" said Harriet, in a mortified voice, \\\"he is not so genteel as real gentlemen.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think, Harriet, since your acquaintance with us, you have been repeatedly in the company of some, such very real gentlemen, that you must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Martin. At Hartfield, you have had very good specimens of well educated, well bred men. I should be surprised if, after seeing them, you could be in company with Mr. Martin again without perceiving him to be a very inferior creature,-and rather wondering at yourself for having ever thought him at all agreeable before. Do not you begin to feel that now? Were not you struck? I am sure you must have been struck by his awkward look and abrupt manner; and the uncouthness of a voice, which I heard to be wholly unmodulated as I stood here.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Certainly, he is not like Mr. Knightley. He has not such a fine air and way of walking as Mr. Knightley. I seethe difference plain enough. But Mr. Knightley is so very fine a man!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Knightley's air is so remarkably good that it is not fair to compare Mr. Martin with him. You might not see one in a hundred, with gentleman so plainly written as in Mr. Knightley. But he is not the only gentleman you have been lately used to. What say you to Mr. Weston and Mr. Elton? Compare Mr. Martin with either of them. Compare their manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being silent. You must seethe difference.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, yes, there is a great difference. But Mr. Weston is almost an old man. Mr. Weston must be between forty and fifty.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not be bad,-the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later age. Mr. Martinis now awkward and abrupt; what will he beat Mr. Weston's time of life?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There is no saying, indeed,\\\" replied Harriet, rather solemnly.\\n\\n\\\"But there maybe pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross, vulgar farmer,-totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of nothing but profit and loss.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Will he, indeed? that will be very bad.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How much his business engrosses him already, is very plain from the circumstance of his forgetting to enquire for the book you recommended. He was a great deal too full of the market to think of anything else,-which is just as it should be, fora thriving man. What has he to do with books? And I have no doubt that he will thrive and be a very rich man in time,-and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb us.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I wonder he did not remember the book,\\\" was all Harriet's answer, and spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which Emma thought might be safely left to itself.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She, therefore, said no more for sometime. Her next beginning was,-\\n\\n\\\"In one respect, perhaps, Mr. Elton's manners are superior to Mr. Knightley's or Mr. Weston's. They have more gentleness. They might be more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Weston, which everybody likes in him, because there is so much good humour with it-but that would not do to be copied. Neither would Mr. Knightley's downright, decided, commanding sort of manner-though it suits him very well: his figure, and look, and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I think a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. Elton as a model. Mr. Elton is good humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle. He seems tome to be grown particularly gentle of late. I do not know whether he had any design of ingratiating himself with either of us, Harriet, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are softer than they used to be. If he means anything, it must be to please you. Did not I tell you what he said of you the other day?\\\"\\n\\nShe then repeated some warm personal praise which she had drawn from Mr. Elton, and now did full justice to; and Harriet blushed and smiled, and said she had always thought Mr. Elton very agreeable.\\n\\nMr. Elton was the very person fixed on by Emma for driving the young farmer out of Harriet's head. She thought it would bean excellent match; and only too palpably desirable, natural and probable, for her to have much merit in planning it. She feared it was what everybody else must think of and predict. It was not likely, however, that anybody should have equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had entered her brain during the very first evening of Harriet's coming to Hartfield. The longer she considered it, the greater washer sense of its expediency. Mr. Elton's situation was most suitable, quite the gentleman himself and without low connections; at the same time not of any family that could fairly object to the doubtful birth of Harriet. He had a comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was known to have some independent property; and she thought very highly of him as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young man, without any deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of the world.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She had already satisfied herself that he thought Harriet a beautiful girl, which she trusted, with such frequent meetings at Hartfield, was foundation enough on his side; and on Harriet's there could belittle doubt that the idea of being preferred by him would have all the usual weight and efficacy. And he was really a very pleasing young man, a young man whom any woman not fastidious might like. He was reckoned very handsome; his person much admired in general, though not by her, there being a want of elegance of feature which she could not dispense with: but the girl who could be gratified by a Robert Martin's riding about the country to get walnuts for her might very well be conquered by Mr. Elton's admiration.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"I do not know what your opinion maybe, Mrs. Weston, \\\"said Mr. Knightley,\\\" of this great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith, but I think it a bad thing. \\\"\\n\\n\\\"A bad thing! Do you really think it a bad thing?-why so?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think they will neither of them do the other any good.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You surprise me! Emma must do Harriet good; and by supplying her with anew object of interest, Harriet maybe said to do Emma good. I have been seeing their intimacy with the greatest pleasure. How very differently we feel! Not think they will do each other any good! This will certainly be the beginning of one of our quarrels about Emma, Mr. Knightley.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Perhaps you think I am come on purpose to quarrel with you, knowing Weston to be out, and that you must still fight your own battle.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Weston would undoubtedly support me, if he were here, for he thinks exactly as I do on the subject. We were speaking of it only yesterday, and agreeing how fortunate it was for Emma, that there should be such a girl in Highbury for her to associate with. Mr. Knightley, I shall not allow you to be a fair judge in this case. You are so much used to live alone, that you do not know the value of a companion; and, perhaps, no man can be a good judge of the comforts a woman feels in the society of one of her own sex, after being used to it all her life. I can imagine your objection to Harriet Smith. She is not the superior young woman which Emma's friend ought to be. But, on the other hand, as Emma wants to see her better informed, it will bean inducement to her to read more herself. They will read together. She means it, I know.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through-and very good lists they were-very well chosen, and very neatly arranged-sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen-I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it sometime; and I daresay she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing. You never could persuade her to read half so much as you wished. You know you could not.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I daresay,\\\" replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, \\\"that I thought so then; but since we have parted, I can never remember Emma's omitting to do anything I wished.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as that,\\\" said Mr. Knightley, feelingly; and fora moment or two he had done. \\\"But I,\\\" he soon added, \\\"who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must still see, hear, and remember. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured; Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her mother she lost the only personable to cope with her. She inherits her mother's talents, and must have been under subjection to her.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I should have been sorry, Mr. Knightley, to be dependent on your recommendation, had I quitted Mr. Woodhouse's family and wanted another situation; I do not think you would have spoken a good word for me to anybody. I am sure you always thought me unfit for the office I held.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes,\\\" said he smiling. \\\"You are better placed here, very fit fora wife, but not at all fora governess. But you were preparing yourself to bean excellent wife all the time you were at Hartfield. You might not give Emma such a complete education as your powers would seem to promise; but you were receiving a very good education from her, on the very material matrimonial point of submitting your own will, and doing as you were bid; and if Weston had asked me to recommend him a wife, I should certainly have named Miss Taylor.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thank you. There will be very little merit in making a good wife to such a man as Mr. Weston.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why, to own the truth, I am afraid you are rather thrown away, and that with every disposition to bear, there will be nothing to be borne. We will not despair, however. Weston may grow cross from the wantonness of comfort, or his son may plague him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I hope not that. It is not likely. No, Mr. Knightley, do not foretell vexation from that quarter.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not I, indeed. I only name possibilities. I do not pretend to Emma's genius for foretelling and guessing. I hope, with all my heart, the young man maybe a Weston in merit, and a Churchill in fortune. But Harriet Smith,-I have not half done about Harriet Smith. I think her the very worst sort of companion that Emma could possibly have. She knows nothing herself, and looks upon Emma as knowing everything. She is a flatterer in all her ways; and so much the worse, because undesigned. Her ignorance is hourly flattery. How can Emma imagine she has anything to learn herself, while Harriet is presenting such a delightful inferiority? And as for Harriet, I will venture to say that she cannot gain by the acquaintance. Hartfield will only put her out of conceit with all the other places she belongs to. She will grow just refined enough to be uncomfortable with those among whom birth and circumstances have placed her home. I am much mistaken if Emma's doctrines give any strength of mind, or tend at all to make a girl adapt herself rationally to the varieties of her situation in life. They only give a little polish.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I either depend more upon Emma's good sense than you do, or am more anxious for her present comfort; for I cannot lament the acquaintance. How well she looked last night.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, you would rather talk of her person than her mind, would you? Very well; I shall not attempt to deny Emma's being pretty.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Pretty! say beautiful rather. Can you imagine anything nearer perfect beauty than Emma altogether-face and figure?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not know what I could imagine, but I confess that I have seldom seen a face or figure more pleasing tome than hers. But I am a partial old friend.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Such an eye!-the true hazel eye-and so brilliant! regular features, open countenance, with a complexion-oh, what abloom of full health, and such a pretty height and size; such a firm and upright figure. There is health, not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her glance. One hears sometimes of a child being \\\"the picture of health;\\\" now Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of grown-up health. She is loveliness itself. Mr. Knightley, is not she?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have not a fault to find with her person,\\\" he replied. \\\"I think her all you describe. I love to look at her; and I will add this praise, that I do not think her personally vain. Considering how very handsome she is, she appears to belittle occupied with it; her vanity lies another way. Mrs. Weston, I am not to be talked out of my dislike of her intimacy with Harriet Smith, or my dread of its doing them both harm.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And I, Mr. Knightley, am equally stout in my confidence of its not doing them any harm. With all dear Emma's little faults, she is an excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which maybe trusted; she will never lead anyone really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where Emma errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Very well; I will not plague you anymore. Emma shall bean angel, and I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and Isabella. John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not a blind affection, and Isabella always thinks as he does, except when he is not quite frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their opinions with me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I know that you all love her really too well to be unjust or unkind; but excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if I take the liberty, (I consider myself, you know, as having somewhat of the privilege of speech that Emma's mother might have had,) the liberty of hinting, that I do not think any possible good can arise from Harriet Smith's intimacy being made a matter of much discussion among you. Pray excuse me; but supposing any little inconvenience maybe apprehended from the intimacy, it cannot be expected that Emma, accountable to nobody but her father, who perfectly approves the acquaintance, should put an end to it, so long as it is a source of pleasure to herself. It has been so many years my province to give advice, that you cannot be surprised, Mr. Knightley, at this little remains of office.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not at all,\\\" cried he; \\\"I am much obliged to you for it. It is very good advice, and it shall have a better fate than your advice has often found; for it shall be attended to.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mrs. John Knightley is easily alarmed, and might be made unhappy about her sister.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Be satisfied,\\\" said he, \\\"I will not raise any outcry. I will keep my ill-humour to myself. I have a very sincere interest in Emma. Isabella does not seem more my sister: has never excited a greater interest; perhaps hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"So do I,\\\" said Mrs.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Weston, gently, \\\"very much.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return: it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attach her; and she goes so seldom from home.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her resolution at present,\\\" said Mrs. Weston, \\\"as can well be; and while she is so happy at Hartfield, I cannot wish her to be forming any attachment which would be creating such difficulties, on poor Mr. Woodhouse's account. I do not recommend matrimony at present to Emma, though I mean no slight to the state, I assure you.\\\"\\n\\nPart of her meaning was to conceal some favorite thoughts of her own and Mr. Weston's on the subject as much as possible. There were wishes at Randalls respecting Emma's destiny, but it was not desirable to have them suspected; and the quiet transition which Mr. Knightley soon afterwards made to'What does Weston think of the weather?-shall we have rain?\\\"-convinced her that he had nothing more to say or surmise about Hartfield.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma could not feel a doubt of having given Harriet's fancy a proper direction, and raised the gratitude of her young vanity to a very good purpose; for she found her decidedly more sensible than before of Mr. Elton's being a remarkably handsome man, with most agreeable manners; and as she had no hesitation in following up the assurance of his admiration by agreeable hints, she was soon pretty confident of creating as much liking on Harriet's side as there could be any occasion for. She was quite convinced of Mr. Elton's being in the fairest way of falling in love, if not in love already. She had no scruple with regard to him. He talked of Harriet; and praised her so warmly, that she could not suppose anything wanting which a little time would not add. His perception of the striking improvement of Harriet's manner, since her introduction at Hartfield, was not one of the least agreeable proofs of his growing attachment.\\n\\n\\\"You have given Miss Smith all that she required,\\\" said he: \\\"you have made her graceful and easy. She was a beautiful creature when she came to you; but, in my opinion, the attractions you have added are infinitely superior to what she received from nature.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am glad you think I have been useful to her; but Harriet only wanted drawing out, and receiving a few, very few, hints. She had all the natural grace of sweetness of temper and artlessness in herself. I have done very little.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"If it were admissible to contradict a lady__\\\" said gallant Mr. Elton.\\n\\n\\\"I have, perhaps, given her a little more decision of character,-have taught her to think on points which had not fallen in her way before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Exactly so; that is what principally strikes me. So much super-added decision of character! Skilful has been the hand.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Great has been the pleasure, I am sure. I never met with a disposition more truly amiable.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have no doubt of it.\\\" And it was spoken with a sort of sighing animation which had avast deal of the lover. She was not less pleased, another day, with the manner in which he seconded a sudden wish of hers-to have Harriet's picture.\\n\\n\\\"Did you ever have your likeness taken, Harriet?\\\" said she: \\\"did you ever sit for your picture?\\\"\\n\\nHarriet was on the point of leaving the room, and only stopped to say, with a very interesting naïveté,-\\n\\n\\\"Oh, dear, no,-never.\\\"\\n\\nNo sooner was she out of sight than Emma exclaimed,-\\n\\n\\\"What an exquisite possession a good picture of her would be! I would give any money for it. I almost long to attempt her likeness myself. You do not know it, I daresay; but, two or three years ago, I had a great passion for taking likenesses, and attempted several of my friends, and was thought to have a tolerable eye in general; but, from one cause or another, I gave it up in disgust. But, really, I could almost venture, if Harriet would sit tome. It would be such a delight to have her picture!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Let me entreat you,\\\" cried Mr. Eiton,-\\\"it would indeed be a delight: let me entreat you, Miss Woodhouse, to exercise so charming a talent in favour of your friend. I know what your drawings are. How could you suppose me ignorant? Is not this room rich in specimens of your landscapes and flowers? and has not Mrs. Weston some inimitable figure-pieces in her drawing-room at Randalls?\\\"\\n\\nYes, good man!-thought Emma-but what has all that to do with taking likenesses? You know nothing of drawing. Don't pretend to be in raptures about mine. Keep your raptures for Harriet's face. \\\"Well, if you give me such kind encouragement, Mr. Elton, I believe I shall try what I can do. Harriet's features are very delicate, which makes a likeness difficult; and yet there is a peculiarity in the shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth which one ought to catch.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Exactly so,-the shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth,-I have not a doubt of your success. Pray, pray attempt it. As you will do it, it will indeed, to use your own words, bean exquisite possession.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But I am afraid, Mr. Elton, Harriet will not like to sit,-she thinks so little of her own beauty. Did not you observe her manner of answering me? How completely it meant, \\\"Why should my picture be drawn?\\\"\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, yes, I observed it, I assure you. It was not lost on me. But still I cannot imagine she would not be persuaded.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet was soon back again, and the proposal almost immediately made; and she had no scruples which could stand many minutes against the earnest pressing of both the others. Emma wished to go to work directly, and therefore produced the portfolio containing her various attempts at portraits, for not one of them had ever been finished, that they might decide together on the best size for Harriet. Her many beginnings were displayed. Miniatures, half-lengths, whole-lengths, pencil, crayon, and water-colours had been all tried in turn. She had always wanted to do everything, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to. She played and sang, and drew in almost every style; but steadiness had always been wanting; and in nothing had she approached the degree of excellence which she would have been glad to command, and ought not to have failed of. She was not much deceived as to her own skill, either as an artist or a musician; but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.\\n\\nThere was merit in every drawing,-in the least finished, perhaps the most. Her style was spirited; but had there been much less, or had there been ten times more, the delight and admiration of her two companions would have been the same. They were both in ecstasies. A likeness pleases everybody; and Miss Woodhouse's performances must be capital.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"No great variety of faces for you,\\\" said Emma.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I had only my own family to study from. There is my father,-another of my father;-but the idea of sitting for his picture made him so nervous, that I could only take him by stealth; neither of them very like, therefore. Mrs. Weston again, and again, and again, you see. Dear Mrs. Weston-always my kindest friend on every occasion. She would sit whenever I asked her. There is my sister; and really quite her own little elegant figure-and the face not unlike. I should have made a good likeness of her, if she would have sat longer; but she was in such a hurry to have me draw her four children that she would not be quiet. Then, here come all my attempts at three of those four children:-there they are, Henry, and John, and Bella, from one end of the sheet to the other, and anyone of them might do for anyone of the rest. She was so eager to have them drawn that I could not refuse; but there is no making children of three or four years old standstill, you know; nor can it be very easy to take any likeness of them, beyond the air and complexion, unless they are coarser featured than any of mamma's children ever were. Here is my sketch of the fourth, who was a baby. I took him as he was sleeping on the sofa, and it is as strong a likeness of his cockade c as you would wish to see. He had nestled down his head most conveniently:-that's very like. I am rather proud of little George. The corner of the sofa is very good. Then here is my last,\\\"-un-closing a pretty sketch of a gentleman in small size, whole-length,-\\\"my last and my best,-my brother, Mr. John Knightley. This did not want much of being finished, when I put it away in a pet, and vowed I would never take another likeness. I could not help being provoked; for after all my pains, and when I had really made a very good likeness of it-(Mrs. Weston and I were quite agreed in thinking it very like)-only too handsome-too flattering-but that was a fault on the right side;-after all this, came poor dear Isabella's cold approbation of-\\\"Yes, it was a little like; but to be sure it did not do him justice. \\\"We had had a great deal of trouble in persuading him to sit at all. It was made a great favour of; and altogether it was more than I could bear; and so I never would finish it, to have it apologised over as an unfavourable likeness, to every morning visiter in Brunswick Square; and, as I said, I did then forswear ever drawing anybody again. But for Harriet's sake, or rather for my own, and as there are no husbands and wives in the case at present, I will break my resolution now.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Elton seemed very properly struck and delighted by the idea, and was repeating, \\\"No husbands and wives in the case at present, indeed, as you observe. Exactly so. No husbands and wives,\\\" with so interesting a consciousness, that Emma began to consider whether she had not better leave them together at once. But as she wanted to be drawing, the declaration must wait a little longer.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She had soon fixed on the size and sort of portrait. It was to be a whole-length in water-colours, like Mr. John Knightley's, and was destined, if she could please herself, to hold a very honourable station over the mantle-piece.\\n\\nThe sitting began; and Harriet, smiling and blushing, and afraid of not keeping her attitude and countenance, presented a very sweet mixture of youthful expression to the steady eyes of the artist. But there was no doing anything, with Mr. Elton fidgeting behind her, and watching every touch. She gave him credit for stationing himself where he might gaze and gaze again without offence; but was really obliged to put an end to it, and request him to place himself elsewhere. It then occurred to her to employ him in reading.\\n\\n\\\"If he would be so good as to read to them, it would be a kindness indeed! It would amuse away the difficulties of her part, and lessen the irksomeness of Miss Smith's.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Elton was only too happy. Harriet listened, and Emma drew in peace. She must allow him to be still frequently coming to look; anything less would certainly have been too little in a lover; and he was ready at the smallest intermission of the pencil to jump up and seethe progress, and be charmed. There was no being displeased with such an encourager, for his admiration made him discern a likeness almost before it was possible. She could not respect his eye, but his love and his complaisance were unexceptionable.\\n\\nThe sitting was altogether very satisfactory: she was quite enough pleased with the first day's sketch to wish to goon. There was no want of likeness: she had been fortunate in the attitude; and as she meant to throw in a little improvement to the figure, to give a little more height, and considerably more elegance, she had great confidence of its being in every way a pretty drawing at last, and of its filling its destined place with credit to them both;-a standing memorial of the beauty of one, the skill of the other, and the friendship of both; with as many other agreeable associations as Mr. Elton's very promising attachment was likely to add.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Harriet was to sit again the next day; and Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Elton, just as he ought, entreated for the permission of attending and reading to them again.\\n\\n\\\"By all means. We shall be most happy to consider you as one of the party.\\\"\\n\\nThe same civilities and courtesies, the same success and satisfaction, took place on the morrow, and accompanied the whole progress of the picture, which was rapid and happy. Everybody who saw it was pleased, but Mr. Elton was in continual raptures, and defended it through every criticism.\\n\\n\\\"Miss Woodhouse has given her friend the only beauty she wanted,\\\" observed Mrs. Weston to him, not in the least suspecting that she was addressing a lover. \\\"The expression of the eye is most correct, but Miss Smith has not those eyebrows and eyelashes. It is the fault of her face that she has them not.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Do you think so?\\\" replied he. \\\"I cannot agree with you. It appears tome a most perfect resemblance in every feature. I never saw such a likeness in my life. We must allow for the effect of shade, you know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You have made her too tall, Emma,\\\" said Mr. Knightley. Emma knew that she had, but would not own it; and Mr. Elton warmly added,-\\n\\n\\\"Oh, no-certainly not too tall-not in the least too tall. Consider she is sitting down, which naturally presents a different-which in short gives exactly the idea;-and the proportions must be preserved, you know. Proportions, fore-shortening:-oh no: it gives one exactly the idea of such a height as Miss Smith's;-exactly so, indeed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is very pretty,\\\" said Mr. Woodhouse. \\\"So prettily done! Just as your drawings always are, my dear. I do not know anybody who draws so well as you do. The only thing I do not thoroughly like is, that she seems to be sitting out of doors, with only a little shawl over her shoulders; and it makes one think she must catch cold.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"But, my dear papa, it is supposed to be summer; a warm day in summer. Look at the tree.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But it is never safe to sit out of doors, my dear.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You, sir, may say anything,\\\" cried Mr. Elton; \\\" but I must confess that I regard it as a most happy thought, the placing Miss Smith out of doors; and the tree is touched with such inimitable spirit! Any other situation would have been much less in character. The naïveté of Miss Smith's manners,-and altogether-oh, it is most admirable! I cannot keep my eyes from it. I never saw such a likeness.\\n\\nThe next thing wanted was to get the picture framed; and here were a few difficulties. It must be done directly; it must be done in London; the order must go through the hands of some intelligent person whose taste could be depended on; and Isabella, the usual doer of all commissions, must not be applied to, because it was December, and Mr. Woodhouse could not bear the idea of her stirring out of her house in the fogs of December. But no sooner was the distress known to Mr. Elton than it was removed. His gallantry was always on the alert. \\\"Might he be trusted with the commission, what infinite pleasure should he have in executing it! he could ride to London at anytime. It was impossible to say how much he should be gratified by being employed on such an errand.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He was too good!-she could not endure the thought!-she would not give him such a troublesome office for the world,\\\"-brought on the desired repetition of entreaties and assurances,-and a very few minutes settled the business.\\n\\nMr. Elton was to take the drawing to London, choose the frame, and give the directions; and Emma thought she could so pack it as to ensure its safety without much incommoding him, while he seemed mostly fearful of not being incommoded enough.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What a precious deposit!\\\" said he, with a tender sigh, as he received it.\\n\\n\\\"This man is almost too gallant to be in love,\\\" thought Emma. \\\"I should say so, but that I suppose there maybe a hundred different ways of being in love. He is an excellent young man, and will suit Harriet exactly: it will bean \\\"exactly so,\\\" as he says himself; but he does sigh and languish, and study for compliments rather more than I could endure as a principal. I come in fora pretty good share as a second. But it is his gratitude on Harriet's account.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The very day of Mr. Elton's going to London produced afresh occasion for Emma's services towards her friend. Harriet had been at Hartfield, as usual, soon after breakfast; and after a time, had gone home to return again to dinner: she returned, and sooner than had been talked of, and with an agitated, hurried look, announcing something extraordinary to have happened which she was longing to tell. Half a minute brought it all out. She had heard, as soon as she got back to Mrs. Goddard's, that Mr. Martin had been there an hour before, and finding she was not at home, nor particularly expected, had left a little parcel for her from one of his sisters, and gone away; and on opening this parcel, she had actually found, besides the two songs which she had lent Elizabeth to copy, a letter to herself; and this letter was from him, from Mr. Martin, and contained a direct proposal of marriage. \\\"Who could have thought it! She was so surprised she did not know what to do. Yes, quite a proposal of marriage; and a very good letter, at least she thought so. And he wrote as if he really loved her very much-but she did not know-and so, she was come as fast as she could to ask Miss Woodhouse what she should do.\\\" Emma was half ashamed of her friend for seeming so pleased and so doubtful.\\n\\n\\\"Upon my word,\\\" she cried, \\\"the young man is determined not to lose anything for want of asking. He will connect himself well if he can.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Will you read the letter?\\\" cried Harriet. \\\"Pray do. I'd rather you would.\\\"\\n\\nEmma was not sorry to be pressed. She read, and was surprised. The style of the letter was much above her expectation. There were not merely no grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a gentleman: the language, though plain, was strong and unaffected, and the sentiments it conveyed very much to the credit of the writer. It was short, but expressed good sense, warm attachment, liberality, propriety, even delicacy of feeling. She paused over it, while Harriet stood anxiously watching for her opinion, with a'Well, well,\\\" and was at last forced to add, \\\"Is it a good letter? or is it too short?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yes, indeed, a very good letter,\\\" replied Emma, rather slowly;-\\\"so good a letter, Harriet, that, everything considered, I think one of his sisters must have helped him. I can hardly imagine the young man whom I saw talking with you the other day could express himself so well, if left quite to his own powers, and yet it is not the style of a woman; no, certainly, it is too strong and concise; not diffuse enough fora woman. No doubt he is a sensible man, and I suppose may have a natural talent for-thinks strongly and clearly-and when he takes a pen in hand, his thoughts naturally find proper words. It is so with some men. Yes, I understand the sort of mind. Vigorous, decided, with sentiments to a certain point, not coarse. A better written letter, Harriet (returning it), than I had expected.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well,\\\" said the still waiting Harriet:-\\\"well-and-and what shall I do?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What shall you do! In what respect? Do you mean with regard to this letter?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But what are you in doubt of? You must answer it of course-and speedily.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes. But what shall I say? Dear Miss Woodhouse, do advise me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, no, no: the letter had much better be all your own. You will express yourself very properly, I am sure. There is no danger of your not being intelligible, which is the first thing. Your meaning must be unequivocal: no doubts or demurs; and such expressions of gratitude and concern for the pain you are inflicting as propriety requires, will present themselves unbidden to your mind, I am persuaded. You need not be prompted to write with the appearance of sorrow for his disappointment.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You think I ought to refuse him, then?\\\" said Harriet, looking down.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Ought to refuse him! My dear Harriet, what do you mean? Are you in any doubt as to that? I thought-but I beg your pardon, perhaps I have been under a mistake. I certainly have been misunderstanding you, if you feel in doubt as to the purport of your answer. I had imagined you were consulting me only as to the wording of it.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet was silent. With a little reserve of manner, Emma continued,-\\n\\n\\\"You mean to return a favourable answer, I collect.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, I do not; that is I do not mean-What shall I do? What would you advise me to do? Pray, dear Miss Woodhouse, tell me what I ought to do?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I shall not give you any advice, Harriet. I will have nothing to do with it. This is a point which you must settle with your own feelings.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I had no notion that he liked me so very much,\\\" said Harriet, contemplating the letter. Fora little while Emma persevered in her silence; but beginning to apprehend the bewitching flattery of that letter might be too powerful, she thought it best to say,-\\n\\n\\\"I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a manor not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to \\\"Yes,\\\" she ought to say \\\"No\\\" directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and older than yourself, to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I want to influence you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, no, I am sure you area great deal too kind to-but if you would just advise me what I had best do:-no, no, I do not mean that:-as you say one's mind ought to be quite made up-one should not be hesitating:-it is a very serious thing. It will be safer to say'No, \\\"perhaps. Do you think I had better say'No? ' .\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Not for the world,\\\" said Emma, smiling graciously, \\\"would I advise you either way. You must be the best judge of your own happiness. If you prefer Mr. Martin to every other person; if you think him the most agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you hesitate? You blush, Harriet. Does anybody else occur to you at this moment under such a definition? Harriet, Harriet, do not deceive yourself; do not be runaway with by gratitude and compassion. At this moment whom are you thinking of?\\\"\\n\\nThe symptoms were favourable. Instead of answering, Harriet turned away confused, and stood thoughtfully by the fire; and though the letter was still in her hand, it was now mechanically twisted about without regard. Emma waited the result with impatience, but not without strong hopes. At last, with some hesitation, Harriet said,-\\n\\n\\\"Miss Woodhouse, as you will not give me your opinion, I must do as well as I can by myself; and I have now quite determined, and really almost made up my mind, to refuse Mr. Martin. Do you think I am right?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Perfectly, perfectly right, my dearest Harriet; you are doing just what you ought. While you were at all in suspense, I kept my feelings to myself, but now that you are so completely decided I have no hesitation in approving. Dear Harriet, I give myself joy of this. It would have grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the consequence of your marrying Mr. Martin. While you were in the smallest degree wavering, I said nothing about it, because I would not influence; but it would have been the loss of a friend tome. I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am secure of you forever.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harriet had not surmised her own danger, but the idea of it struck her forcibly.\\n\\n\\\"You could not have visited me!\\\" she cried, looking aghast. \\\"No, to be sure you could not; but I never thought of that before. That would have been too dreadful! What an escape! Dear Miss Woodhouse, I would not give up the pleasure and honour of being intimate with you for anything in the world.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Indeed, Harriet, it would have been a severe pang to lose you; but it must have been. You would have thrown yourself out of all good society. I must have given you up.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dear me! How should I ever have borne it? It would have killed me never to come to Hartfield anymore.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dear, affectionate creature! You banished to Abbey-Mill Farm! You confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar all your life! I wonder how the young man could have the assurance to ask it. He must have a pretty good opinion of himself.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not think he is conceited either, in general,\\\" said Harriet, her conscience opposing such censure; \\\"at least he is very good natured, and I shall always feel much obliged to him, and have a great regard for-but that is quite a different thing from-and you know, though he may like me, it does not follow that I should-and, certainly, I must confess that since my visiting here I have seen people-and if one comes to compare them, person and manners, there is no comparison at all, one is so very handsome and agreeable. However, I do really think Mr. Martina very amiable young man, and have a great opinion of him; and his being so much attached tome-and his writing such a letter-but as to leaving you, it is what I would not do upon any consideration.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Thank you, thank you, my own sweet little friend. We will not be parted. A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, no;-and it is but a short letter, too.\\\"\\n\\nEmma felt the bad taste of her friend, but let it pass with a'very true; and it would be a small consolation to her, for the clownish manner which might be offending her every hour of the day, to know that her husband could write a good letter.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes, very. Nobody cares fora letter: the thing is, to be always happy with pleasant companions. I am quite determined to refuse him. But how shall I do? What shall I say?\\\"\\n\\nEmma assured her there would be no difficulty in the answer, and advised its being written directly, which was agreed to, in the hope of her assistance; and though Emma continued to protest against any assistance being wanted, it was in fact given in the formation of every sentence. The looking over his letter again, in replying to it, had such a softening tendency, that it was particularly necessary to brace her up with a few decisive expressions; and she was so very much concerned at the idea of making him unhappy, and thought so much of what his mother and sisters would think and say, and was so anxious that they should not fancy her ungrateful, that Emma believed if the young man had come in her way at that moment, he would have been accepted after all.\\n\\nThis letter, however, was written, and sealed, and sent. The business was finished, and Harriet safe. She was rather low all the evening; but Emma could allow for her amiable regrets, and sometimes relieved them by speaking of her own affection, sometimes by bringing forward the idea of Mr. Elton.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I shall never be invited to Abbey-Mill again,\\\" was said in rather a sorrowful tone.\\n\\n\\\"Nor, if you were, could I ever bear to part with you, my Harriet. You area great deal too necessary at Hartfield to be spared to Abbey-Mill.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And I am sure I should never want to go there; for I am never happy but at Hartfield.\\\"\\n\\nSometime afterwards it was, \\\"I think Mrs. Goddard would be very much surprised if she knew what had happened. I am sure Miss Nash would-for Miss Nash thinks her own sister very well married, and it is only a linen-draper.\\\" d\\n\\n\\\"One should be sorry to see greater pride or refinement in the teacher of a school, Harriet. I daresay Miss Nash would envy you such an opportunity as this of being married. Even this conquest would appear valuable in her eyes. As to anything superior for you, I suppose she is quite in the dark. The attentions of a certain person can hardly be among the tittle-tattle† of Highbury yet. Hitherto I fancy you and I are the only people to whom his looks and manners have explained themselves.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet blushed and smiled, and said something about wondering that people should like her so much. The idea of Mr. Elton was certainly cheering; but still, after a time, she was tender-hearted again towards the rejected Mr. Martin.\\n\\n\\\"Now he has got my letter,\\\" said she softly. \\\"I wonder what they are all doing-whether his sisters know-if he is unhappy, they will be unhappy too. I hope he will not mind it so very much.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Let us think of those among our absent friends who are more cheerfully employed,\\\" cried Emma. \\\"At this moment, perhaps, Mr. Elton is showing your picture to his mother and sisters, telling how much more beautiful is the original, and after being asked for it five or six times, allowing them to hear your name, your own dear name.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"My picture!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"But he has left my picture in Bond Street.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Has he so! Then I know nothing of Mr. Elton. No, my dear little modest Harriet, depend upon it, the picture will not be in Bond Street till just before he mounts his horse to-morrow. It is his companion all this evening, his solace, his delight. It opens his designs to his family, it introduces you among them, it diffuses through the party those pleasantest feelings of our nature, eager curiosity and warm prepossession. How cheerful, how animated, how suspicious, how busy their imaginations all are!\\\"\\n\\nHarriet smiled again, and her smiles grew stronger.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harriet slept at Hartfield that night. For some weeks past she had been spending more than half her time there, and gradually getting to have abed-room appropriated to herself; and Emma judged it best in every respect, safest and kindest, to keep her with them as much as possible just at present. She was obliged to go the next morning for an hour or two to Mrs. Goddard's, but it was then to be settled that she should return to Hartfield, to make a regular visit of some days.\\n\\nWhile she was gone, Mr. Knightley called, and sat sometime with Mr. Woodhouse and Emma, till Mr. Woodhouse, who had previously made up his mind to walkout, was persuaded by his daughter not to defer it, and was induced by the entreaties of both, though against the scruples of his own civility, to leave Mr. Knightley for that purpose. Mr. Knightley, who had nothing of ceremony about him, was offering, by his short, decided answers, an amusing contrast to the protracted apologies and civil hesitations of the other.\\n\\n\\\"Well, I believe, if you will excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if you will not consider meas doing a very rude thing, I shall take Emma's advice and go out fora quarter of an hour. As the sun is out, I believe I had better take my three turns while I can. I treat you without ceremony, Mr. Knightley. We invalids think we are privileged people.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear sir, do not make a stranger of me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I leave an excellent substitute in my daughter. Emma will be happy to entertain you. And therefore I think I will beg your excuse, and take my three turns-my winter walk.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You cannot do better, sir.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I would ask for the pleasure of your company, Mr. Knightley, but I am a very slow walker, and my pace would be tedious to you; and, besides, you have another long walk before you, to Donwell Abbey.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thank you, sir, thank you; I am going this moment myself; and I think the sooner you go the better. I will fetch your greatcoat and open the garden door for you.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Woodhouse at last was off; but Mr. Knightley, instead of being immediately off likewise, sat down again, seemingly inclined for more chat. He began speaking of Harriet, and speaking of her with more voluntary praise than Emma had ever heard before.\\n\\n\\\"I cannot rate her beauty as you do,\\\" said he; \\\"but she is a pretty little creature, and I am inclined to think very well of her disposition. Her character depends upon those she is with; but in good hands she will turnout a valuable woman.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am glad you think so; and the good hands, I hope, may not be wanting.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Come,\\\" said he, \\\"you are anxious fora compliment, so I will tell you that you have improved her. You have cured her of her school-girl's giggle; she really does you credit.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thank you. I should be mortified, indeed, if I did not believe 1 had been of some use; but it is not everybody who will bestow praise where they may. You do not often overpower me with it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You are expecting her again, you say, this morning?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Almost every moment. She has been gone longer already than she intended.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Something has happened to delay her; some visiters, perhaps.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Highbury gossips! Tiresome wretches!\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Harriet may not consider everybody tiresome that you would.\\\"\\n\\nEmma knew this was too true for contradiction, and, therefore, said nothing. He presently added, with a smile,-\\n\\n\\\"I do not pretend to fix on times or places, but I must tell you that I have good reason to believe your little friend will soon hear of something to her advantage.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Indeed! how so? of what sort?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Avery serious sort, I assure you,\\\" still smiling.\\n\\n\\\"Very serious! I can think of but one thing:-who is in love with her? Who makes you their confidant?\\\"\\n\\nEmma was more than half in hopes of Mr. Elton's having dropped a hint. Mr. Knightley was a sort of general friend and adviser, and she knew Mr. Elton looked up to him.\\n\\n\\\"I have reason to think,\\\" he replied, \\\"that Harriet Smith will soon have an offer of marriage, and from a most unexceptionable quarter:-Robert Martinis the man. Her visit to Abbey-Mill, this summer, seems to have done his business. He is desperately in love, and means to marry her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He is very obliging,\\\" said Emma; \\\"but is he sure that Harriet means to marry him?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, well, means to make her an offer then. Will that do? He came to the Abbey two evenings ago, on purpose to consult me about it. He knows I have a thorough regard for him and all his family, and, I believe, considers meas one of his best friends. He came to ask me whether I thought it would be imprudent in him to settle so early; whether I thought her too young: in short, whether I approved his choice altogether; having some apprehension, perhaps, of her being considered (especially since your making so much of her) as in a line of society above him. I was very much pleased with all that he said. I never hear better sense from anyone than Robert Martin. He always speaks to the purpose; open, straight-forward, and very well judging. He told me everything; his circumstances and plans, and what they all proposed doing in the event of his marriage. He is an excellent young man, both as son and brother. I had no hesitation in advising him to marry. He proved tome that he could afford it; and that being the case, I was convinced he could not do better. I praised the fair lady too, and altogether sent him away very happy. If he had never esteemed my opinion before, he would have thought highly of me then; and, I daresay, left the house thinking me the best friend and counsellor man ever had. This happened the night before last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not allow much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not appear to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should beat Mrs. Goddard's to-day: and she maybe detained by a visiter, without thinking him at all a tiresome wretch.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Pray, Mr. Knightley,\\\" said Emma, who had been smiling to herself through a great part of this speech, \\\"how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Certainly,\\\" replied he, surprised, \\\"I do not absolutely know it; but it maybe inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Come,\\\" said she, \\\"I will tell you something, in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday-that is, he wrote, and was refused.\\\"\\n\\nThis was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr. Knightley actually looked red with surprise and displeasure, as he stood up, in tall indignation, and said,-\\n\\n\\\"Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the foolish girl about?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, to be sure,\\\" cried Emma, \\\"it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin! Madness, if it is so; but I hope you are mistaken.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I saw her answer; nothing could be clearer.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You saw her answer! you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing,) I should not feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martinis a very respectable young man, but I cannot admit him to be Harriet's equal; and am rather surprised, indeed, that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever got over.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":295,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Carry on with the plot as the author's writing partner.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 12"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Pray, Mr. Knightley,\" said Emma, who had been smiling to herself through a great part of this speech, \"how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?\"\n\n\"Certainly,\" replied he, surprised, \"I do not absolutely know it; but it maybe inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?\"\n\n\"Come,\" said she, \"I will tell you something, in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday-that is, he wrote, and was refused.\"\n\nThis was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr. Knightley actually looked red with surprise and displeasure, as he stood up, in tall indignation, and said,-\n\n\"Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the foolish girl about?\"\n\n\"Oh, to be sure,\" cried Emma, \"it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.\"\n\n\"Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin! Madness, if it is so; but I hope you are mistaken.\"\n\n\"I saw her answer; nothing could be clearer.\"\n\n\"You saw her answer! you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.\"\n\n\"And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing,) I should not feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martinis a very respectable young man, but I cannot admit him to be Harriet's equal; and am rather surprised, indeed, that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever got over.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Not Harriet's equal!\" exclaimed Mr. Knightley, loudly and warmly; and with calmer asperity added, a few moments afterwards, \"No, he is not her equal, indeed, for he is as much her superior in sense as in situation. Emma, your infatuation about that girl blinds you. What are Harriet Smith's claims, either of birth, nature, or education, to any connection higher than Robert Martin? She is the natural daughter of nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and certainly no respectable relations. She is known only as parlour-boarder at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too young and too simple to have acquired anything herself. At her age she can have no experience; and, with her little wit, is not very likely ever to have any that can avail her. She is pretty, and she is good tempered, and that is all. My only scruple in advising the match was on his account, as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connection for him. I felt that, as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better; and that, as to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do worse. But I could not reason so to a man in love, and was willing to trust to there being no harm in her; to her having that sort of disposition which, in good hands like his, might be easily led aright, and turnout very well. The advantage of the match I felt to be all on her side; and had not the smallest doubt (nor have I now) that there would be a general cry-out upon her extreme good luck. Even your satisfaction I made sure of. It crossed my mind immediately that you would not regret your friend's leaving Highbury, for the sake of her being settled so well. I remember saying to myself,\"Even Emma, with all her partiality for Harriet, will think this a good match. '\"\n\n\"I cannot help wondering at your knowing so little of Emma as to say any such thing. What! think a farmer (and with all his sense and all his merit Mr. Martinis nothing more) a good match for my intimate friend! Not regret her leaving Highbury for the sake of marrying a man whom I could never admit as an acquaintance of my own! I wonder you should think it possible for me to have such feelings. I assure you mine are very different. I must think your statement by no means fair. You are not just to Harriet's claims. They would be estimated very differently by others as well as myself; Mr. Martin maybe the richest of the two, but he is undoubtedly her inferior as to rank in society. The sphere in which she moves is much above his. It would be a degradation.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"A degradation to illegitimacy and ignorance, to be married to a respectable, intelligent gentleman-farmer!\"\n\n\"As to the circumstances of her birth, though in a legal sense she maybe called Nobody, it will not hold in commonsense. She is not to pay for the offence of others, by being held below the level of those with whom she is brought up. There can scarcely be a doubt that her father is a gentleman-and a gentleman of fortune. Her allowance is very liberal; nothing has ever been grudged for her improvement or comfort. That she is a gentleman's daughter is indubitable tome; that she associates with gentlemen's daughters, no one, I apprehend, will deny. She is superior to Mr. Robert Martin.\"\n\n\"Whoever might be her parents,\" said Mr. Knightley, \"whoever may have had the charge of her, it does not appear to have been any part of their plan to introduce her into what you would call good society. After receiving a very indifferent education, she is left in Mrs. Goddard's hands to shift as she can;-to move, in short, in Mrs. Goddard's line, to have Mrs. Goddard's acquaintance. Her friends evidently thought this good enough for her; and it was good enough. She desired nothing better herself. Till you chose to turn her into a friend, her mind had no distaste for her own set, nor any ambition beyond it. She was as happy as possible with the Martins in the summer. She had no sense of superiority then. If she has it now, you have given it. You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma. Robert Martin would never have proceeded so far, if he had not felt persuaded of her not being disinclined to him. I know him well. He has too much real feeling to address any woman on the hap-hazard of selfish passion. And as to conceit, he is the farthest from it of any man I know. Depend upon it, he had encouragement.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"It was most convenient to Emma not to make a direct reply to this assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject again.\n\n\"You area very warm friend to Mr. Martin; but, as I said before, are unjust to Harriet. Harriet's claims to marry well are not so contemptible as you represent them. She is not a clever girl, but she has better sense than you are aware of, and does not deserve to have her understanding spoken of so slightingly. Waving that point, however, and supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and good natured, let me tell you, that in the degree she possesses them, they are not trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a beautiful girl, and must bethought so by ninety-nine people out of a hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are generally supposed; till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of being admired and sought after, of having the power of choosing from among many, consequently a claim to be nice. e Her good nature, too, is not so very slight a claim, comprehending, as it does, real, thorough sweetness of temper and manner, a very humble opinion of herself, and a great readiness to be pleased with other people. I am very much mistaken if your sex in general would not think such beauty, and such temper, the highest claims a woman could possess.\"\n\n\"Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have is almost enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do.\"\n\n\"To be sure,\" cried she playfully. \"I know that is the feeling of you all. I know that such a girl as Harriet is exactly what every man delights in-what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his judgment. Oh, Harriet may pick and choose. Were you, yourself, ever to marry, she is the very woman for you. And is she, at seventeen, just entering into life, just beginning to be known, to be wondered at because she does not accept the first offer she receives? No-pray let her have time to look about her.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy,\" said Mr. Knightley presently, \"though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet. You will puff her up with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a claim to, that, in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good enough for her. Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief. Nothing so easy as fora young lady to raise her expectations too high. Miss Harriet Smith may not find offers of marriage flow in so fast, though she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity,-and most prudent men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable, and happy forever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of consequence and large fortune, she maybe a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's all the rest of her life,-or, at least (for Harriet Smith is a girl who will marry somebody or other), till she grow desperate, and is glad to catch at the old writing master's son.\"\n\n\"We think so very differently on this point, Mr. Knightley, that there can be no use in canvassing it. We shall only be making each other more angry. But as to my letting her marry Robert Martin, it is impossible: she has refused him, and so decidedly, I think, as must prevent any second application. She must abide by the evil of having refused him, whatever it maybe; and as to the refusal itself, I will not pretend to say that I might not influence her a little; but I assure you there was very little for me or for anybody to do. His appearance is so much against him, and his manner so bad, that if she ever were disposed to favour him, she is not now. I can imagine, that before she had seen anybody superior, she might tolerate him. He was the brother of her friends, and he took pains to please her; and altogether, having seen nobody better (that must have been his great assistant), she might not, while she was at Abbey-Mill, find him disagreeable. But the case is altered now. She knows now what gentlemen are; and nothing but a gentleman in education and manner has any chance with Harriet.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Nonsense, arrant nonsense, as ever was talked!\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"cried Mr. Knightley. \"Robert Martin's manners have sense, sincerity, and good-humour to recommend them; and his mind has more true gentility than Harriet Smith could understand.\"\n\nEmma made no answer, and tried to look cheerfully unconcerned, but was really feeling uncomfortable, and wanting him very much to begone. She did not repent what she had done; she still thought herself a better judge of such a point of female right and refinement than he could be: but yet she had a sort of habitual respect for his judgment in general, which made her dislike having it so loudly against her; and to have him sitting just opposite to her in angry state, was very disagreeable. Some minutes passed in this unpleasant silence, with only one attempt on Emma's side to talk of the weather, but he made no answer. He was thinking. The result of his thoughts appeared at last in these words,-\n\n\"Robert Martin has no great loss-if he can but think so; and I hope it will not belong before he does. Your views for Harriet are best known to yourself; but as you make no secret of your love of match-making, it is fair to suppose that views, and plans, and projects you have;-and as a friend I shall just hint to you, that if Elton is the man, I think it will be all labour in vain.\"\n\nEmma laughed and disclaimed. He continued,-\n\n\"Depend upon it, Elton will not do. Elton is a good sort of man, and a very respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent match. He knows the value of a good income as well as anybody. Elton may talk sentimentally but he will act rationally. He is as well acquainted with his own claims as you can be with Harriet's. He knows that he is a very handsome young man, and a great favourite wherever he goes; and from his general way of talking in unreserved moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does not mean to throw himself away. I have heard him speak with great animation of a large family of young ladies that his sisters are intimate with, who have all twenty thousand pounds apiece.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I am very much obliged to you,\" said Emma, laughing again. \"If I had set my heart on Mr. Elton's marrying Harriet, it would have been very kind to open my eyes; but at present I only want to keep Harriet to myself. I have done with match-making, indeed. I could never hope to equal my own doings at Randalls. I shall leave off while I am well.\"\n\n\"Good morning to you,\" said he, rising and walking off abruptly. He was very much vexed. He felt the disappointment of the young man, and was mortified to have been the means of promoting it, by the sanction he had given; and the part which he was persuaded Emma had taken in the affair was provoking him exceedingly.\n\nEmma remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more indistinctness in the cause of hers than in his. She did not always feel so absolutely satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that her opinions were right and her adversary's wrong, as Mr. Knightley. He walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her. She was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and the return of Harriet were very adequate restoratives. Harriet's staying away so long was beginning to make her uneasy. The possibility of the young man's coming to Mrs. Goddard's that morning, and meeting with Harriet, and pleading his own cause, gave alarming ideas. The dread of such a failure, after all, became the prominent uneasiness; and when Harriet appeared, and in very good spirits, and without having any such reason to give for her long absence, she felt a satisfaction which settled her with her own mind; and convinced her, that, let Mr. Knightley think or say what he would, she had done nothing which woman's friendship and woman's feelings would not justify."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He had frightened her a little about Mr. Elton; but when she considered that Mr. Knightley could not have observed him as she had done, neither with the interest nor (she must be allowed to tell herself, in spite of Mr. Knightley's pretensions) with the skill of such an observer on such a question as herself, that he had spoken it hastily and in anger, she was able to believe, that he had rather said what he wished resentfully to be true, than what he knew anything about. He certainly might have heard Mr. Elton speak with more unreserve than she had ever done, and Mr. Elton might not be of an imprudent, inconsiderate disposition, as to money matters: he might naturally be rather attentive than otherwise to them; but then, Mr. Knightley did not make due allowance for the influence of a strong passion at war with all interested motives. Mr. Knightley saw no such passion, and of course thought nothing of its effects; but she saw too much of it to feel a doubt of its overcoming any hesitations that a reasonable prudence might originally suggest; and more than a reasonable, becoming degree of prudence, she was very sure did not belong to Mr. Elton.\n\nHarriet's cheerful look and manner established hers: she came back, not to think of Mr. Martin, but to talk of Mr. Elton. Miss Nash had been telling her something, which she repeated immediately with great delight. Mr. Perry had been to Mrs. Goddard's to attend a sick child, and Miss Nash had seen him; and he had told Miss Nash, that as he was coming back yesterday from Clayton Park he had met Mr. Elton, and found, to his great surprise, that Mr. Elton was actually on his road to London, and not meaning to return till the morrow, though it was the whist-club f night, which he had been never known to miss before; and Mr. Perry had remonstrated with him about it, and told him how shabby it was in him, their best player, to absent himself, and tried very much to persuade him to put off his journey only one day; but it would not do: Mr. Elton had been determined to goon, and had said, in a very particular way indeed, that he was going on business which he would not put off for any inducement in the world; and something about a very enviable commission, and being the bearer of something exceedingly precious. Mr. Perry could not quite understand him, but he was very sure there must be a lady in the case, and he told him so; and Mr. Elton only looked very conscious and smiling, and rode off in great spirits. Miss Nash had told her all this, and had talked a great deal more about Mr. Elton; and said, looking so very significantly at her, \"that she did not pretend to understand what his business might be, but she only knew, that any woman whom Mr. Elton could prefer she should think the luckiest woman in the world; for, beyond a doubt, Mr. Elton had not his equal for beauty or agreeableness.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Knightley might quarrel with her, but Emma could not quarrel with herself. He was so much displeased, that it was longer than usual before he came to Hartfield again; and when they did meet, his grave looks showed that she was not forgiven. She was sorry, but could not repent. On the contrary, her plans and proceedings were more and more justified, and endeared to her by the general appearances of the next few days.\n\nThe picture, elegantly framed, came safely to hand soon after Mr. Elton's return, and being hungover the mantle-piece of the common sitting-room, he got up to look at it, and sighed out his half sentences of admiration just as he ought; and as for Harriet's feelings, they were visibly forming themselves into as strong an attachment as her youth and sort of mind admitted. Emma was soon perfectly satisfied of Mr. Martin's being no otherwise remembered, than as he furnished a contrast with Mr. Elton, of the utmost advantage to the latter.\n\nHer views of improving her little friend's mind, by a great deal of useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few first chapters, and the intention of going onto-morrow. It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet's fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension, or exercise it on sober facts; and the only literary pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin quarto g of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with ciphers and trophies.\n\nIn this age of literature, such collections on a very grand scale are not uncommon. Miss Nash, headteacher at Mrs. Goddard's, had written out at least three hundred; and Harriet, who had taken the first hint of it from her, hoped, with Miss Woodhouse's help, to get a great many more. Emma assisted with her invention, memory, and taste; and as Harriet wrote a very pretty hand, it was likely to bean arrangement of the first order, inform as well as quantity."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Woodhouse was almost as much interested in the business as the girls, and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting in. \"So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young-he wondered he could not remember them; but he hoped he should in time.\" And it always ended in'Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.\" h\n\nHis good friend Perry, too, whom he had spoken to on the subject, did not at present recollect anything of the riddle kind; but he had desired Perry to be upon the watch, and as he went about so much, something, he thought, might come from that quarter.\n\nIt was by no means his daughter's wish that the intellects of Highbury in general should be put under requisition. Mr. Elton was the only one whose assistance she asked. He was invited to contribute any really good enigmas, charades, or conundrums, that he might recollect; and she had the pleasure of seeing him most intently at work with his recollections; and at the same time, as she could perceive, most earnestly careful that nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe a compliment to the sex, should pass his lips. They owed to him their two or three politest puzzles; and the joy and exultation with which at last he recalled, and rather sentimentally recited, that well-known charade,-made her quite sorry to acknowledge that they had transcribed it some pages ago already.\n\n\"Why will you not write one yourself for us, Mr. Elton?\" said she; \"that is the only security for its freshness; and nothing could be easier to you.\"\n\n\"Oh, no; he had never written, hardly ever, anything of the kind in his life. The stupidest fellow! He was afraid not even Miss Woodhouse\"-he stopped a moment-\"or Miss Smith could inspire him.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The very next day, however, produced some proof of inspiration. He called fora few moments, just to leave apiece of paper on the table containing, as he said, a charade which a friend of his had addressed to a young lady, the object of his admiration; but which, from his manner, Emma was immediately convinced must be his own.\n\n\"I do not offer it for Miss Smith's collection,\" said he. \"Being my friend's, I have no right to expose it in any degree to the public eye, but perhaps you may not dislike looking at it.\"\n\nThe speech was more to Emma than to Harriet, which Emma could understand. There was deep consciousness about him, and he found it easier to meet her eye than her friend's. He was gone the next moment:-after another moment's pause,-\n\n\"Take it,\"-said Emma, smiling, and pushing the paper towards Harriet,-\"it is for you. Take your own.\"\n\nBut Harriet was in a tremour, and could not touch it; and Emma, never loth to be first, was obliged to examine it herself.\n\nShe cast her eye over it, pondered, caught the meaning, read it through again to be quite certain, and quite mistress of the lines, and then passing it to Harriet, sat happily, smiling, and saying to herself, while Harriet was puzzling over the paper in all the confusion of hope and dulness, \" Very well, Mr. Eton, very well, indeed. I have read worse charades. Courtship-a very good hint. I give you credit for it. This is feeling your way. This is saying very plainly-\"Pray, Miss Smith, give me leave to pay my addresses to you. Approve my charade and my intentions in the same glance.\"\n\nMay its approval beam in that soft eye!"},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harriet exactly. Soft is the very word for her eye-of all epithets, the justest that could be given.\n\nThy ready wit the word will soon supply.\n\nHumph-Harriet's ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in love, indeed, to describe her so. Ah! Mr. Knightley, I wish you had the benefit of this; I think this would convince you. For once in your life you would be obliged to own yourself mistaken. An excellent charade, indeed-and very much to the purpose. Things must come to a crisis soon now.\"\n\nShe was obliged to break off from these very pleasant observations, which were otherwise of a sort to run into great length, by the eagerness of Harriet's wondering opinions.\n\n\"What can it be, Miss Woodhouse?-what can it be? I have not an idea-I cannot guess it in the least. What can it possibly be? Do try to find it out, Miss Woodhouse. Do help me. I never saw anything so hard. Is it kindgom? I wonder who the friend was-and who could be the young lady. Do you think it is a good one? Can it be woman?\n\nAnd woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.\n\nCan it be Neptune?\n\nBehold him there, this monarch of the seas!\n\nOra trident? or a mermaid? or a shark? Oh, no: shark is only one syllable. It must be very clever, or he would not have brought it. Oh, Miss Woodhouse, do you think we shall ever find it out?\"\n\n\"Mermaids and sharks! Nonsense! My dear Harriet, what are you thinking of? Where would be the use of his bringing us a charade made by a friend upon a mermaid or a shark? Give me the paper, and listen."},{"from":"human","value":"Avery proper compliment!"},{"from":"gpt","value":"-and then follows the application, which I think, my dear Harriet, you cannot find much difficulty in comprehending. Read it in comfort to yourself. There can be no doubt of its being written for you and to you.\"\n\nHarriet could not long resist so delightful a persuasion. She read the concluding lines, and was all flutter and happiness. She could not speak. But she was not wanted to speak. It was enough for her to feel. Emma spoke for her.\n\n\"There is so pointed, and so particular a meaning in this compliment,\" said she, \"that I cannot have a moment's doubt as to Mr. Elton's intentions. You are his object,-and you will soon receive the completest proof of it. I thought it must be so. I thought I could not be so deceived; but now it is clear: the state of his mind is as clear and decided as my wishes on the subject have been ever since I knew you. Yes, Harriet, just so long have I been wanting the very circumstance to happen which has happened. I could never tell whether an attachment between you and Mr. Elton were most desirable or most natural. Its probability and its eligibility have really so equalled each other! I am very happy. I congratulate you, my dear Harriet, with all my heart. This is an attachment which a woman may well feel pride in creating. This is a connection which offers nothing but good. It will give you everything that you want,-consideration, independence, a proper home,-it will fix you in the centre of all your real friends, close to Hartfield and tome, and confirm our intimacy forever. This, Harriet, is an alliance which can never raise a blush in either of us.\"\n\n\"Dear Miss Woodhouse,\" and'Dear Miss Woodhouse,\" was all that Harriet, with many tender embraces, could articulate at first; but when they did arrive at something more like conversation, it was sufficiently clear to her friend that she saw, felt, anticipated, and remembered just as she ought. Mr. Elton's superiority had very ample acknowledgment."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Whatever you say is always right,\" cried Harriet, \"and therefore I suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so; but otherwise I could not have imagined it. It is so much beyond anything I deserve. Mr. Elton, who might marry anybody! There cannot be two opinions about him. He is so very superior. Only think of those sweet verses-\"To Miss-.\" Dear me, how clever! Could it really be meant for me?\"\n\n\"I cannot make a question, or listen to a question about that. It is a certainty. Receive it on my judgment. It is a sort of prologue to the play, a motto to the chapter; and will be soon followed by matter-of-fact prose.\"\n\n\"It is a sort of thing which nobody could have expected. I am sure, a month ago, I had no more idea myself!-The strangest things do take place!\"\n\n\"When Miss Smiths and Mr. Eltons get acquainted-they do indeed-and really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so evidently, so palpably desirable-what courts the pre-arrangement of other people-should so immediately shape itself into the proper form. You and Mr. Elton are by situation called together; you belong to one another by every circumstance of your respective homes. Your marrying will be equal to the match at Randalls. There does seem to be a something in the air of Hartfield which gives love exactly the right direction, and sends it into the very channel where it ought to flow.\n\nThe course of truelove never did run smooth-3\n\nA Hartfield edition of Shakspeare would have along note on that passage.\"\n\n\"That Mr. Elton should really be in love with me,-me, of all people, who did not know him, to speak to him, at Michaelmas! 4 And he, the very handsomest man that ever was, and a man that everybody looks up to, quite like Mr. Knightley! His company so sought after, that everybody says he need not eat a single meal by himself if he does not choose it; that he has more invitations than there are days in the week. And so excellent in the church! Miss Nash has put down all the texts he has ever preached from since he came to Highbury. Dear me! When I look back to the first time I saw him! How little did I think! The two Abbotts and Iran into the front room and peeped through the blind when we heard he was going by, and Miss Nash came and scolded us away, and staid i to look through herself; however, she called me back presently, and let me look too, which was very good-natured. And how beautiful we thought he looked! He was arm in arm with Mr. Cole.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"This is an alliance which, whoever-whatever your friends maybe, must be agreeable to them, provided at least they have commonsense; and we are not to be addressing our conduct to fools.\n\nIf they are anxious to see you happily married, here is a man whose amiable character gives every assurance of it: if they wish to have you settled in the same country and circle which they have chosen to place you in, here it will be accomplished; and if their only object is that you should, in the common phrase, be well married, here is the comfortable fortune, the respectable establishment, the rise in the world which must satisfy them.\"\n\n\"Yes, very true. How nicely you talk! I love to hear you. You understand everything. You and Mr. Elton are one as clever as the other. This charade! If I had studied a twelvemonth, I could never have made anything like it.\"\n\n\"I thought he meant to try his skill, by his manner of declining it yesterday.\"\n\n\"I do think it is, without exception, the best charade I ever read.\"\n\n\"1 never read one more to the purpose, certainly.\"\n\n\"It is as long again as almost all we have had before.\"\n\n\"I do not consider its length as particularly in its favour. Such things in general cannot be too short.\"\n\nHarriet was too intent on the lines to hear. The most satisfactory comparisons were rising in her mind.\n\n\"It is one thing,\" said she, presently, her cheeks in aglow, \"to have very good sense in a common way, like everybody else, and if there is anything to say, to sit down and write a letter, and say just what you must, in a short way; and another, to write verses and charades like this.\""},{"from":"human","value":"Emma could not have desired a more spirited rejection of Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Martin's prose.\n\n\"Such sweet lines!\" continued Harriet-\"these two last! But how shall I ever be able to return the paper, or say I have found it out? Oh, Miss Woodhouse what can we do about that?\"\n\n\"Leave it tome. You do nothing. He will be here this evening, I daresay, and then I will give it him back, and some nonsense or other will pass between us, and you shall not be committed. Your soft eyes shall choose their own time for beaming. Trust tome.\"\n\n\"Oh, Miss Woodhouse, what a pity that I must not write this beautiful charade into my book! I am sure I have not got one half so good.\"\n\n\"Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should not write it into your book.\"\n\n\"Oh, but those two lines are-\"-\"The best of all. Granted;-for private enjoyment; and for private enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know, because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its meaning change. But take it away, and all appropriation ceases, and a very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend upon it, he would not like to have his charade slighted much better than his passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities, or neither. Give me the book, I will write it down, and then there can be no possible reflection on you.\"\n\nHarriet submitted, though her mind could hardly separate the parts, so as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a declaration of love. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree of publicity.\n\n\"I shall never let that book go out of my own hands,\" said she."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Very well,\" replied Emma, \"a most natural feeling, and the longer it lasts, the better I shall be pleased."},{"from":"gpt","value":"But here is my father coming: you will not object to my reading the charade to him. It will be giving him so much pleasure. He loves anything of the sort, and especially anything that pays woman a compliment. He has the tenderest spirit of gallantry towards us all. You must let me read it to him.\"\n\nHarriet looked grave.\n\n\"My dear Harriet, you must not refine too much upon this charade. You will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning which maybe affixed to it. Do not be overpowered by such a little tribute of admiration. If he had been anxious for secrecy, he would not have left the paper while I was by; but he rather pushed it towards me than towards you. Do not let us be too solemn on the business. He has encouragement enough to proceed, without our sighing out our souls over this charade.\"\n\n\"Oh no: I hope I shall not be ridiculous about it. Do as you please.\"\n\nMr. Woodhouse came in, and very soon led to the subject again, by the recurrence of his very frequent enquiry of'Well, my dears, how does your book goon? Have you got anything fresh?\"\n\n\"Yes, papa; we have something to read you, something quite fresh. Apiece of paper was found on the table this morning-(dropped, we suppose, by a fairy)-containing a very pretty charade, and we have just copied it in.\"\n\nShe read it to him, just as he liked to have anything read, slowly and distinctly, and two or three times over, with explanations of every part as she proceeded; and he was very much pleased, and, as she had foreseen, especially struck with the complimentary conclusion."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Ay, that's very just, indeed; that's very properly said."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Very true. \"Woman, lovely woman.\" It is such a pretty charade, my dear, that I can easily guess what fairy brought it. Nobody could have written so prettily but you, Emma.\"\n\nEmma only nodded, and smiled. After a little thinking, and a very tender sigh, he added,-\n\n\"Ah, it is no difficulty to see who you take after. Your dear mother was so clever at all those things. If I had but her memory. But I can remember nothing; not even that particular riddle which you have heard me mention: I can only recollect the first stanza; and there are several.\n\nAnd that is all that I can recollect of it; but it is very clever all the way through. But I think, my dear, you said you had got it.\"\n\n\"Yes, papa, it is written out in our second page. We copied it from the Elegant Extracts. It was Garrick's, you know.\"\n\n\"Ay, very true:-I wish I could recollect more of it.\n\nKitty, a fair but frozen maid,\n\nThe name makes me think of poor Isabella; for she was very near being christened Catherine after her grand-mamma. I hope we shall have her here next week. Have you thought, my dear, where you shall put her, and what room there will be for the children?\n\n\"Oh yes-she will have her own room, of course; the room she always has;-and there is the nursery for the children,-just as usual, you know. Why should there be any change?\"\n\n\"I do not know, my dear-but it is so long since she was here:-not since last Easter, and then only fora few days. Mr. John Knightley's being a lawyer is very inconvenient. Poor Isabella!-she is sadly taken away from us all;-and how sorry she will be when she comes, not to see Miss Taylor here.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"She will not be surprised, papa, at least.\"\n\n\"I do not know, my dear. I am sure I was very much surprised when I first heard she was going to be married.\"\n\n\"We must ask Mr. and Mrs. Weston to dine with us, while Isabella is here.\"\n\n\"Yes, my dear, if there is time. But-(in a very depressed tone)-she is coming for only one week. There will not be time for anything.\"\n\n\"It is unfortunate that they cannot stay longer,-but it seems a case of necessity. Mr. John Knightley must be in town again on the 28th; and we ought to be thankful, papa, that we are to have the whole of the time they can give to the country, that two or three days are not to betaken out for the Abbey. Mr. Knightley promises to give up his claim this Christmas, though you know it is longer since they were with him than with us.\"\n\n\"It would be very hard, indeed, my dear, if poor Isabella were to be anywhere but at Hartfield.\"\n\nMr. Woodhouse could never allow for Mr. Knightley's claims on his brother, or anybody's claims on Isabella, except his own. He sat musing a little while, and then said,-\n\n\"But I do not see why poor Isabella should be obliged to go back so soon, though he does. I think, Emma, I shall try and persuade her to stay longer with us. She and the children might stay very well.\"\n\n\"Ah, papa, that is what you never have been able to accomplish, and I do not think you ever will. Isabella cannot bear to stay behind her husband.\"\n\nThis was too true for contradiction. Unwelcome as it was, Mr. Woodhouse could only give a submissive sigh; and as Emma saw his spirits affected by the idea of his daughter's attachment to her husband, she immediately led to such a branch of the subject as must raise them."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Harriet must give us as much of her company as she can while my brother and sister are here."},{"from":"gpt","value":"I am sure she will be pleased with the children. We are very proud of the children, are not we, papa? I wonder which she will think the handsomest, Henry or John?\"\n\n\"Ay, I wonder which she will. Poor little dears, how glad they will be to come. They are very fond of being at Hartfield, Harriet.\"\n\n\"I daresay they are, sir. I am sure I do not know who is not.\"\n\n\"Henry is a fine boy, but John is very like his mamma. Henry is the eldest, he was named after me, not after his father. John, the second, is named after his father. Some people are surprised, I believe, that the eldest was not, but Isabella would have him called Henry, which I thought very pretty of her. And he is a very clever boy, indeed. They are all remarkably clever; and they have so many pretty ways. They will come and standby my chair and say, \"Grandpapa, can you give me a bit of string?\" and once Henry asked me fora knife, but I told him knives were only made for grandpapas. I think their father is too rough with them very often.\"\n\n\"He appears rough to you,\" said Emma, \"because you are so very gentle yourself; but if you could compare him with other papas, you would not think him rough. He wishes his boys to be active and hardy; and if they misbehave, can give them a sharp word now and then: but he is an affectionate father-certainly Mr. John Knightley is an affectionate father. The children are all fond of him.\"\n\n\"And then their uncle comes in, and tosses them up to the ceiling in a very frightful way.\"\n\n\"But they like it, papa; there is nothing they like so much. It is such enjoyment to them, that if their uncle did not lay down the rule of their taking turns, whichever began would never give way to the other.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Well, I cannot understand it.\"\n\n\"That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.\"\n\nLater in the morning, and just as the girls were going to separate in preparation for the regular four o'clock dinner, the hero of this inimitable charade walked in again. Harriet turned away: but Emma could receive him with the usual smile, and her quick eye soon discerned in his the consciousness of having made a push-of having thrown a die; and she imagined he was come to see how it might turn up. His ostensible reason, however, was to ask whether Mr. Woodhouse's party could be made up in the evening without him, or whether he should be in the smallest degree necessary at Hartfield. If he were, everything else must give way; but otherwise his friend Cole had been saying so much about his dining with him-had made such a point of it-that he had promised him conditionally to come.\n\nEmma thanked him, but could not allow of his disappointing his friend on their account; her father was sure of his rubber. Here-urged-she re-declined; and he seemed then about to make his bow, when, taking the paper from the table, she returned it.\n\n\"Oh, here is the charade you were so obliging as to leave with us; thank you for the sight of it. We admired it so much, that I have ventured to write it into Miss Smith's collection. Your friend will not take it amiss I hope. Of course I have not transcribed beyond the eight first lines.\"\n\nMr. Elton certainly did not very well know what to say. He looked rather doubtingly-rather confused; said something about'honour;\"-glanced at Emma and at Harriet, and then seeing the book open on the table, took it up, and examined it very attentively. With the view of passing off an awkward moment, Emma smilingly said,-"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You must make my apologies to your friend; but so good a charade must not be confined to one or two. He maybe sure of every woman's approbation while he writes with such gallantry.\"\n\n\"I have no hesitation in saying,\" replied Mr. Elton, though hesitating a good deal while he spoke,-\"I have no hesitation in saying-at least if my friend feels at all as I do-I have not the smallest doubt that, could he see his little effusion honoured as I see it, (looking at the book again, and replacing it on the table,) he would consider it as the proudest moment of his life.\"\n\nAfter this speech he was gone as soon as possible. Emma could not think it too soon; for with all his good and agreeable qualities there was a sort of parade in his speeches which was very apt to incline her to laugh. She ran away to indulge the inclination, leaving the tender and the sublime of pleasure to Harriet's share."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Though now the middle of December, there had yet been no weather to prevent the young ladies from tolerably regular exercise; and on the morrow, Emma had a charitable visit to pay to a poor sick family who lived a little way out of Highbury.\n\nTheir road to this detached cottage was down Vicarage Lane, a lane leading at right-angles from the broad, though irregular, main street of the place; and, as maybe inferred, containing the blessed abode of Mr. Elton. A few inferior dwellings were first to be passed, and then, about a quarter of a mile down the lane, rose the vicarage; an old and not very good house, almost as close to the road as it could be. It had no advantage of situation: but had been very much smartened up by the present proprietor; and, such as it was, there could be no possibility of the two friends passing it without a slackened pace and observing eyes. Emma's remark was,-\n\n\"There it is. There go you and your riddle-book one of these days.\" Harriet's was,-\n\n\"Oh, what a sweet house! How very beautiful! There are the yellow curtains that Miss Nash admires so much.\"\n\n\"I do not often walk this way now,\" said Emma, as they proceeded, \"but then there will bean inducement, and I shall gradually get intimately acquainted with all the hedges, gates, pools, and pollards of this part of Highbury.\"\n\nHarriet, she found, had never in her life been within-side the vicarage; and her curiosity to see it was so extreme, that, considering exteriors and probabilities, Emma could only class it, as a proof of love, with Mr. Elton's seeing ready wit in her.\n\n\"I wish we could contrive it,\" said she; \"but I cannot think of any tolerable pretence forgoing in;-no servant that I want to enquire about of his housekeeper-no message from my father.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She pondered, but could think of nothing. After a mutual silence of some minutes, Harriet thus began again,\n\n\"I do so wonder, Miss Woodhouse, that you should not be married, or going to be married-so charming as you are.\"\n\nEmma laughed, and replied,-\n\n\"My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry; I must find other people charming-one other person at least. And I am not only not going to be married at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all.\"\n\n\"Ah, so you say; but I cannot believe it.\"\n\n\"I must see somebody very superior to anyone I have seen yet, to be tempted: Mr. Elton, you know (recollecting herself), is out of the question; and I do not wish to see any such person. I would rather not be tempted. I cannot really change for the better. If I were to marry, I must expect to repent it.\"\n\n\"Dear me!-it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!\"\n\n\"I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were Ito fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing; but I never have been in love: it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"But then, to bean old maid at last, like Miss Bates!\"\n\n\"That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates-so silly, so satisfied, so smiling, so prosing, so undistinguishing and unfastidious, and so apt to tell everything relative to everybody about me, I would marry to-morrow. But between us, I am convinced there never can be any likeness, except in being unmarried.\"\n\n\"But still, you will bean old maid-and that's so dreadful!\"\n\n\"Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and maybe as sensible and pleasant as anybody else! And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and commonsense of the world as appears at first; fora very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross. This does not apply, however, to Miss Bates: she is only too good natured and too silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very much to the taste of everybody, though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not contracted her mind: I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the world she would be very likely to giveaway sixpence of it; and nobody is afraid of her: that is a great charm.\"\n\n\"Dear me! but what shall you do? How shall you employ yourself when you grow old?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman's usual occupations of eye, and hand, and mind, will be as open tome then as they are now, or with no important variation. If I draw less, I shall read more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is, in truth, the great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil to be avoided in not marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the children of a sister I love so much to care about. There will be enough of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation that declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and every fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a parent, it suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and blinder. My nephews and nieces: I shall often have a niece with me.\"\n\n\"Do you know Miss Bates's niece? That is, I know you must have seen her a hundred times-but are you acquainted?\"\n\n\"Oh yes; we are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to Highbury. By the by, that is almost enough to put one out of conceit with a niece. Heaven forbid, at least, that I should ever bore people half so much about all the Knightleys together as she does about Jane Fairfax. One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax. Every letter from her is read forty times over: her compliments to all friends go round and round again; and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of nothing else fora month. I wish Jane Fairfax very well; but she tires me to death.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They were now approaching the cottage, and all idle topics were superseded. Emma was very compassionate; and the distresses of the poor were assure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her counsel and her patience, as from her purse. She understood their ways, could allow for their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic expectations of extraordinary virtue from those for whom education had done so little, entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and always gave her assistance with as much intelligence as goodwill. In the present instance, it was sickness and poverty together which she came to visit; and after remaining there as long as she could give comfort or advice, she quitted the cottage with such an impression of the scene as made her say to Harriet, as they walked away,-\n\n\"These are the sights, Harriet, to do one good. How trifling they make everything else appear! I feel now as if I could think of nothing but these poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet who can say how soon it may all vanish from my mind?\"\n\n\"Very true,\" said Harriet. \"Poor creatures! one can think of nothing else.\"\n\n\"And really, I do not think the impression will soon be over,\" said Emma, as she crossed the low hedge, and tottering footstep which ended the narrow, slippery path through the cottage garden, and brought them into the lane again. \"I do not think it will,\" stopping to look once more at all the outward wretchedness of the place, and recall the still greater within.\n\n\"Oh dear, no,\" said her companion.\n\nThey walked on. The lane made a slight bend; and when that bend was passed, Mr. Elton was immediately insight; and so near as to give Emma time only to say farther,-\n\n\"Ah, Harriet, here comes a very sudden trial of our stability in good thoughts. Well (smiling), I hope it maybe allowed that if compassion has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to do all we can for them, the rest is empty sympathy, only distressing to ourselves.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Harriet could just answer, \"Oh dear, yes,\" before the gentleman joined them. The wants and sufferings of the poor family, however, were the first subject on meeting. He had been going to call on them. His visit he would now defer; but they had a very interesting parley about what could be done and should be done. Mr. Elton then turned back to accompany them.\n\n\"To fall in with each other on such an errand as this,\" thought Emma; \"to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase of love on each side. I should not wonder if it were to bring on the declaration. It must, if I were not here. I wish I were anywhere else.\"\n\nAnxious to separate herself from them as far as she could, she soon afterwards took possession of a narrow footpath, a little raised on one side of the lane, leaving them together in the main road. But she had not been there two minutes when she found that Harriet's habits of dependence and imitation were bringing her up too, and that, in short, they would both be soon after her. This would not do; she immediately stopped, under pretence of having some alteration to make in the lacing of her half-boot, and stooping down incomplete occupation of the footpath, begged them to have the goodness to walk on, and she would follow in half a minute. They did as they were desired; and by the time she judged it reasonable to have done with her boot, she had the comfort of further delay in her power, being overtaken by a child from the cottage, setting out, according to orders, with her pitcher, to fetch broth from Hartfield. To walk by the side of this child, and talk to and question her, was the most natural thing in the world, or would have been the most natural, had shebeen acting just then without design; and by this means the others were still able to keep ahead, without any obligation of waiting for her. She gained on them, however, involuntarily: the child's pace was quick, and theirs rather slow; and she was the more concerned at it, from their being evidently in a conversation which interested them. Mr. Elton was speaking with animation, Harriet listening with a very pleased attention; and Emma having sent the child on, was beginning to think how she might drawback a little more, when they both looked around, and she was obliged to join them."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Elton was still talking, still engaged in some interesting detail; and Emma experienced some disappointment when she found that he was only giving his fair companion an account of the yesterday's party at his friend Cole's, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root, and all the dessert.\n\n\"This would soon have led to something better, of course,\" washer consoling reflection; \"anything interests between those who love; and anything will serve as introduction to what is near the heart. If I could but have kept longer away.\"\n\nThey now walked on together quietly till within view of the vicarage pales, when a sudden resolution, of at least getting Harriet into the house, made her again find something very much amiss about her boot, and fall behind to arrange it once more. She then broke the lace off short, and dexterously throwing it into a ditch, was presently obliged to entreat them to stop, and acknowledge her inability to put herself to rights so as to be able to walk home intolerable comfort.\n\n\"Part of my lace is gone,\" said she, \"and I do not know how I am to contrive. I really am a most troublesome companion to you both, but I hope I am not often so ill-equipped. Mr. Elton, I must beg leave to stop at your house, and ask your housekeeper fora bit of riband or string, or anything just to keep my boot on.\"\n\nMr. Elton looked all happiness at this proposition; and nothing could exceed his alertness and attention in conducting them into his house, and endeavouring to make everything appear to advantage. The room they were taken into was the one he chiefly occupied, and looking forwards; behind it was another with which it immediately communicated: the door between them was open, and Emma passed into it with the housekeeper, to receive her assistance in the most comfortable manner. She was obliged to leave the door ajar as she found it; but she fully intended that Mr. Elton should close it. It was not closed, however, it still remained ajar; but by engaging the housekeeper in incessant conversation, she hoped to make it practicable for him to choose his own subject in the adjoining room. For ten minutes she could hear nothing but herself. It could be protracted no longer. She was then obliged to be finished, and make her appearance."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The lovers were standing together atone of the windows. It had a most favourable aspect; and, for half a minute, Emma felt the glory of having schemed successfully. But it would not do; he had not come to the point. He had been most agreeable, most delightful: he had told Harriet that he had seen them go by, and had purposely followed them; other little gallantries and allusions had been dropped, but nothing serious.\n\n\"Cautious, very cautious,\" thought Emma: \"he advances inch by inch, and will hazard nothing till he believes himself secure.\"\n\nStill, however, though everything had not been accomplished by her ingenious device, she could not but flatter herself that it had been the occasion of much present enjoyment to both, and must be leading them forward to the great event."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Elton must now be left to himself. It was no longer in Emma's power to superintend his happiness, or quicken his measures. The coming of her sister's family was so very near at hand, that first in anticipation, and then in reality, it became henceforth the prime object of interest; and during the ten days of their stay at Hartfield it was not to be expected-she did not herself expect-that anything beyond occasional, fortuitous assistance could be afforded by her to the lovers. They might advance rapidly if they would, however; they must advance somehow or other, whether they would or no. She hardly wished to have more leisure for them. There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.\n\nMr. and Mrs. John Knightley, from having been longer than usual absent from Surrey, were exciting, of course, rather more than the usual interest. Till this year, every long vacation since their marriage had been divided between Hartfield and Donwell Abbey: but all the holidays of this autumn had been given to sea-bathing for the children; and it was therefore many months since they had been seen in a regular way by their Surrey connections, or seen at all by Mr. Woodhouse, who could not be induced to get so far as London, even for poor Isabella's sake; and who, consequently, was now most nervously and apprehensively happy in forestalling this too short visit.\n\nHe thought much of the evils of the journey for her, and not a little of the fatigues of his own horses and coachman who were to bring some of the party the last half of the way; but his alarms were needless: the sixteen miles being happily accomplished, and Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley, their five children, and a competent number of nursery-maids, all reaching Hartfield in safety. The bustle and joy of such an arrival, the many to be talked to, welcomed, encouraged, and variously dispersed and disposed of, produced a noise and confusion which his nerves could not have borne under any other cause, nor have endured much longer even for this; but the ways of Hartfield and the feelings of her father were so respected by Mrs. John Knightley, that in spite of maternal solicitude for the immediate enjoyment of her little ones, and for their having instantly all the liberty and attendance, all the eating and drinking, and sleeping and playing, which they could possibly wish for, without the smallest delay, the children were never allowed to belong a disturbance to him, either in themselves or in any restless attendance on them."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mrs. John Knightley was a pretty, elegant little woman, of gentle, quiet manners, and a disposition remarkably amiable and affectionate, wrapt up in her family, a devoted wife, a doting mother, and so tenderly attached to her father and sister that, but for these higher ties, a warmer love might have seemed impossible. She could never see a fault in any of them. She was not a woman of strong understanding or any quickness; and with this resemblance of her father, she inherited also much of his constitution; was delicate in her own health, over-careful of that of her children, had many fears and many nerves, and was as fond of her own Mr. Wingfield in town as her father could be of Mr. Perry. They were alike, too, in a general benevolence of temper, and a strong habit of regard for every old acquaintance.\n\nMr. John Knightley was a tall, gentleman-like, and very clever man; rising in his profession, domestic, and respectable in his private character: but with reserved manners which prevented his being generally pleasing; and capable of being sometimes out of humour. He was not an ill-tempered man, not so often unreasonably cross as to deserve such a reproach: but his temper was not his great perfection; and, indeed, with such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper must hurt his. He had all the clearness and quickness of mind which she wanted; and he could sometimes act an ungracious, or say a severe thing. He was not a great favourite with his fair sister-in-law. Nothing wrong in him escaped her. She was quick in feeling the little injuries to Isabella, which Isabella never felt herself. Perhaps she might have passed over more had his manners been flattering to Isabella's sister, but they were only those of a calmly kind brother and friend, without praise and without blindness; but hardly any degree of personal compliment could have made her regardless of that greatest fault of all in her eyes which he sometimes fell into, the want of respectful forbearance towards her father. There he had not always the patience that could have been wished. Mr. Woodhouse's peculiarities and fidgetiness were sometimes provoking him to a rational remonstrance or sharp retort equally ill bestowed. It did not often happen; for Mr. John Knightley had really a great regard for his father-in-law, and generally a strong sense of what was due to him: but it was too often for Emma's charity, especially as there was all the pain of apprehension frequently to be endured, though the offence came not. The beginning, however, of every visit displayed none but the properest feelings, and this being of necessity so short might be hoped to pass away in unsullied cordiality. They had not been long seated and composed when Mr. Woodhouse, with a melancholy shake of the head and a sigh, called his daughter's attention to the sad change at Hartfield since she had been there last."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Ah, my dear,\" said he, \"poor Miss Taylor."},{"from":"gpt","value":"It is a grievous business.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, sir,\" cried she, with ready sympathy, \"how you must miss her! And dear Emma too. What a dreadful loss to you both! I have been so grieved for you. I could not imagine how you could possibly do without her. It is a sad change, indeed; but I hope she is pretty well, sir.\"\n\n\"Pretty well, my dear,-I hope,-pretty well. I do not know but that the place agrees with her tolerably.\"\n\nMr. John Knightley here asked Emma, quietly, whether there were any doubts of the air of Randalls.\n\n\"Oh no: none in the least. I never saw Mrs. Weston better in my life,-never looking so well. Papa is only speaking his own regret.\"\n\n\"Very much to the honour of both,\" was the handsome reply.\n\n\"And do you see her, sir, tolerably often?\" asked Isabella in the plaintive tone which just suited her father.\n\nMr. Woodhouse hesitated. \"Not near so often, my dear, as I could wish.\"\n\n\"Oh, papa, we have missed seeing them but one entire day since they married. Either in the morning or evening of everyday, excepting one, have we seen either Mr. Weston or Mrs. Weston, and generally both, either at Randalls or here; and as you may suppose, Isabella, most frequently here. They are very, very kind in their visits. Mr. Weston is really as kind as herself. Papa, if you speak in that melancholy way, you will be giving Isabella a false idea of us all. Everybody must be aware that Miss Taylor must be missed; but everybody ought also to be assured that Mr. and Mrs. Weston do really prevent our missing her by any means to the extent we ourselves anticipated,-which is the exact truth.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Just as it should be,\" said Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"John Knightley, \"and just as I hoped it was from your letters. Her wish of showing you attention could not be doubted, and his being a disengaged and social man makes it all easy. I have been always telling you, my love, that I had no idea of the change being so very material to Hartfield as you apprehended; and now you have Emma's account, I hope you will be satisfied.\"\n\n\"Why, to be sure,\" said Mr. Woodhouse,-\"yes, certainly. I cannot deny that Mrs. Weston,-poor Mrs. Weston,-does come and see us pretty often; but then, she is always obliged to go away again.\"\n\n\"It would be very hard upon Mr. Weston if she did not, papa. You quite forget poor Mr. Weston.\"\n\n\"I think, indeed,\" said John Knightley, pleasantly, \"that Mr. Weston has some little claim. You and I, Emma, will venture to take the part of the poor husband. I being a husband, and you not being a wife, the claims of the man may very likely strike us with equal force. As for Isabella, she has been married long enough to seethe convenience of putting all the Mr. Westons aside as much as she can.\"\n\n\"Me, my love,\" cried his wife, hearing and understanding only in part. \"Are you talking about me? I am sure nobody ought to be, or can be, a greater advocate for matrimony than I am; and if it had not been for the misery of her leaving Hartfield, I should never have thought of Miss Taylor but as the most fortunate woman in the world; and as to slighting Mr. Weston,-that excellent Mr. Weston,-I think there is nothing he does not deserve. I believe he is one of the very best tempered men that ever existed. Excepting yourself and your brother, I do not know his equal for temper. I shall never forget his flying Henry's kite for him that very windy day last Easter; and ever since his particular kindness last September twelvemonth in writing that note, at twelve o'clock at night, on purpose to assure me that there was no scarlet fever at Cobham, 6 I have been convinced there could not be a more feeling heart nor a better man in existence. If anybody can deserve him, it must be Miss Taylor.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Where is the young man?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"said John Knightley. \"Has he been hereon this occasion, or has he not?\"\n\n\"He has not been here yet,\" replied Emma. \"There was a strong expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.\"\n\n\"But you should tell them of the letter, my dear,\" said her father. \" He wrote a letter to poor Mrs. Weston, to congratulate her, and a very proper, handsome letter it was. She showed it tome. I thought it very well done of him, indeed. Whether it was his own idea, you know, one cannot tell. He is but young, and his uncle, perhaps-\n\n\"My dear papa, he is three-and-twenty. You forget how time passes.\"\n\n\"Three-and-twenty! is he, indeed? Well, I could not have thought it; and he was but two years old when he lost his poor mother. Well, time does fly indeed! and my memory is very bad. However, it was an exceeding good, pretty letter, and gave Mr. and Mrs. Weston a great deal of pleasure. I remember it was written from Weymouth, and dated Sept. 28th, and began \"My dear Madam,\" but I forget how it went on; and it was signed \"F. C. Weston Churchill.\" I remember that perfectly.\"\n\n\"How very pleasing and proper of him!\" cried the good-hearted Mrs. John Knightley. \"I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is something so shocking in a child's being taken away from his parents and natural home! I never can comprehend how Mr. Weston could part with him. To give up one's child! I really never could think well of anybody who proposed such a thing to anybody else.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Carry on with the plot as the author's writing partner.\\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\\nAuthor: Jane Austen\\nTitle: Emma\\nChapter: 12\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Pray, Mr. Knightley,\\\" said Emma, who had been smiling to herself through a great part of this speech, \\\"how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Certainly,\\\" replied he, surprised, \\\"I do not absolutely know it; but it maybe inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Come,\\\" said she, \\\"I will tell you something, in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday-that is, he wrote, and was refused.\\\"\\n\\nThis was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr. Knightley actually looked red with surprise and displeasure, as he stood up, in tall indignation, and said,-\\n\\n\\\"Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the foolish girl about?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, to be sure,\\\" cried Emma, \\\"it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin! Madness, if it is so; but I hope you are mistaken.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I saw her answer; nothing could be clearer.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You saw her answer! you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing,) I should not feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martinis a very respectable young man, but I cannot admit him to be Harriet's equal; and am rather surprised, indeed, that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever got over.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Not Harriet's equal!\\\" exclaimed Mr. Knightley, loudly and warmly; and with calmer asperity added, a few moments afterwards, \\\"No, he is not her equal, indeed, for he is as much her superior in sense as in situation. Emma, your infatuation about that girl blinds you. What are Harriet Smith's claims, either of birth, nature, or education, to any connection higher than Robert Martin? She is the natural daughter of nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and certainly no respectable relations. She is known only as parlour-boarder at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too young and too simple to have acquired anything herself. At her age she can have no experience; and, with her little wit, is not very likely ever to have any that can avail her. She is pretty, and she is good tempered, and that is all. My only scruple in advising the match was on his account, as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connection for him. I felt that, as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better; and that, as to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do worse. But I could not reason so to a man in love, and was willing to trust to there being no harm in her; to her having that sort of disposition which, in good hands like his, might be easily led aright, and turnout very well. The advantage of the match I felt to be all on her side; and had not the smallest doubt (nor have I now) that there would be a general cry-out upon her extreme good luck. Even your satisfaction I made sure of. It crossed my mind immediately that you would not regret your friend's leaving Highbury, for the sake of her being settled so well. I remember saying to myself,\\\"Even Emma, with all her partiality for Harriet, will think this a good match. '\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I cannot help wondering at your knowing so little of Emma as to say any such thing. What! think a farmer (and with all his sense and all his merit Mr. Martinis nothing more) a good match for my intimate friend! Not regret her leaving Highbury for the sake of marrying a man whom I could never admit as an acquaintance of my own! I wonder you should think it possible for me to have such feelings. I assure you mine are very different. I must think your statement by no means fair. You are not just to Harriet's claims. They would be estimated very differently by others as well as myself; Mr. Martin maybe the richest of the two, but he is undoubtedly her inferior as to rank in society. The sphere in which she moves is much above his. It would be a degradation.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"A degradation to illegitimacy and ignorance, to be married to a respectable, intelligent gentleman-farmer!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"As to the circumstances of her birth, though in a legal sense she maybe called Nobody, it will not hold in commonsense. She is not to pay for the offence of others, by being held below the level of those with whom she is brought up. There can scarcely be a doubt that her father is a gentleman-and a gentleman of fortune. Her allowance is very liberal; nothing has ever been grudged for her improvement or comfort. That she is a gentleman's daughter is indubitable tome; that she associates with gentlemen's daughters, no one, I apprehend, will deny. She is superior to Mr. Robert Martin.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Whoever might be her parents,\\\" said Mr. Knightley, \\\"whoever may have had the charge of her, it does not appear to have been any part of their plan to introduce her into what you would call good society. After receiving a very indifferent education, she is left in Mrs. Goddard's hands to shift as she can;-to move, in short, in Mrs. Goddard's line, to have Mrs. Goddard's acquaintance. Her friends evidently thought this good enough for her; and it was good enough. She desired nothing better herself. Till you chose to turn her into a friend, her mind had no distaste for her own set, nor any ambition beyond it. She was as happy as possible with the Martins in the summer. She had no sense of superiority then. If she has it now, you have given it. You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma. Robert Martin would never have proceeded so far, if he had not felt persuaded of her not being disinclined to him. I know him well. He has too much real feeling to address any woman on the hap-hazard of selfish passion. And as to conceit, he is the farthest from it of any man I know. Depend upon it, he had encouragement.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It was most convenient to Emma not to make a direct reply to this assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject again.\\n\\n\\\"You area very warm friend to Mr. Martin; but, as I said before, are unjust to Harriet. Harriet's claims to marry well are not so contemptible as you represent them. She is not a clever girl, but she has better sense than you are aware of, and does not deserve to have her understanding spoken of so slightingly. Waving that point, however, and supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and good natured, let me tell you, that in the degree she possesses them, they are not trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a beautiful girl, and must bethought so by ninety-nine people out of a hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are generally supposed; till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of being admired and sought after, of having the power of choosing from among many, consequently a claim to be nice. e Her good nature, too, is not so very slight a claim, comprehending, as it does, real, thorough sweetness of temper and manner, a very humble opinion of herself, and a great readiness to be pleased with other people. I am very much mistaken if your sex in general would not think such beauty, and such temper, the highest claims a woman could possess.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have is almost enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"To be sure,\\\" cried she playfully. \\\"I know that is the feeling of you all. I know that such a girl as Harriet is exactly what every man delights in-what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his judgment. Oh, Harriet may pick and choose. Were you, yourself, ever to marry, she is the very woman for you. And is she, at seventeen, just entering into life, just beginning to be known, to be wondered at because she does not accept the first offer she receives? No-pray let her have time to look about her.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy,\\\" said Mr. Knightley presently, \\\"though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet. You will puff her up with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a claim to, that, in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good enough for her. Vanity working on a weak head produces every sort of mischief. Nothing so easy as fora young lady to raise her expectations too high. Miss Harriet Smith may not find offers of marriage flow in so fast, though she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may choose to say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity,-and most prudent men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable, and happy forever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of consequence and large fortune, she maybe a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's all the rest of her life,-or, at least (for Harriet Smith is a girl who will marry somebody or other), till she grow desperate, and is glad to catch at the old writing master's son.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We think so very differently on this point, Mr. Knightley, that there can be no use in canvassing it. We shall only be making each other more angry. But as to my letting her marry Robert Martin, it is impossible: she has refused him, and so decidedly, I think, as must prevent any second application. She must abide by the evil of having refused him, whatever it maybe; and as to the refusal itself, I will not pretend to say that I might not influence her a little; but I assure you there was very little for me or for anybody to do. His appearance is so much against him, and his manner so bad, that if she ever were disposed to favour him, she is not now. I can imagine, that before she had seen anybody superior, she might tolerate him. He was the brother of her friends, and he took pains to please her; and altogether, having seen nobody better (that must have been his great assistant), she might not, while she was at Abbey-Mill, find him disagreeable. But the case is altered now. She knows now what gentlemen are; and nothing but a gentleman in education and manner has any chance with Harriet.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Nonsense, arrant nonsense, as ever was talked!\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"cried Mr. Knightley. \\\"Robert Martin's manners have sense, sincerity, and good-humour to recommend them; and his mind has more true gentility than Harriet Smith could understand.\\\"\\n\\nEmma made no answer, and tried to look cheerfully unconcerned, but was really feeling uncomfortable, and wanting him very much to begone. She did not repent what she had done; she still thought herself a better judge of such a point of female right and refinement than he could be: but yet she had a sort of habitual respect for his judgment in general, which made her dislike having it so loudly against her; and to have him sitting just opposite to her in angry state, was very disagreeable. Some minutes passed in this unpleasant silence, with only one attempt on Emma's side to talk of the weather, but he made no answer. He was thinking. The result of his thoughts appeared at last in these words,-\\n\\n\\\"Robert Martin has no great loss-if he can but think so; and I hope it will not belong before he does. Your views for Harriet are best known to yourself; but as you make no secret of your love of match-making, it is fair to suppose that views, and plans, and projects you have;-and as a friend I shall just hint to you, that if Elton is the man, I think it will be all labour in vain.\\\"\\n\\nEmma laughed and disclaimed. He continued,-\\n\\n\\\"Depend upon it, Elton will not do. Elton is a good sort of man, and a very respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent match. He knows the value of a good income as well as anybody. Elton may talk sentimentally but he will act rationally. He is as well acquainted with his own claims as you can be with Harriet's. He knows that he is a very handsome young man, and a great favourite wherever he goes; and from his general way of talking in unreserved moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does not mean to throw himself away. I have heard him speak with great animation of a large family of young ladies that his sisters are intimate with, who have all twenty thousand pounds apiece.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I am very much obliged to you,\\\" said Emma, laughing again. \\\"If I had set my heart on Mr. Elton's marrying Harriet, it would have been very kind to open my eyes; but at present I only want to keep Harriet to myself. I have done with match-making, indeed. I could never hope to equal my own doings at Randalls. I shall leave off while I am well.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Good morning to you,\\\" said he, rising and walking off abruptly. He was very much vexed. He felt the disappointment of the young man, and was mortified to have been the means of promoting it, by the sanction he had given; and the part which he was persuaded Emma had taken in the affair was provoking him exceedingly.\\n\\nEmma remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more indistinctness in the cause of hers than in his. She did not always feel so absolutely satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that her opinions were right and her adversary's wrong, as Mr. Knightley. He walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her. She was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and the return of Harriet were very adequate restoratives. Harriet's staying away so long was beginning to make her uneasy. The possibility of the young man's coming to Mrs. Goddard's that morning, and meeting with Harriet, and pleading his own cause, gave alarming ideas. The dread of such a failure, after all, became the prominent uneasiness; and when Harriet appeared, and in very good spirits, and without having any such reason to give for her long absence, she felt a satisfaction which settled her with her own mind; and convinced her, that, let Mr. Knightley think or say what he would, she had done nothing which woman's friendship and woman's feelings would not justify.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He had frightened her a little about Mr. Elton; but when she considered that Mr. Knightley could not have observed him as she had done, neither with the interest nor (she must be allowed to tell herself, in spite of Mr. Knightley's pretensions) with the skill of such an observer on such a question as herself, that he had spoken it hastily and in anger, she was able to believe, that he had rather said what he wished resentfully to be true, than what he knew anything about. He certainly might have heard Mr. Elton speak with more unreserve than she had ever done, and Mr. Elton might not be of an imprudent, inconsiderate disposition, as to money matters: he might naturally be rather attentive than otherwise to them; but then, Mr. Knightley did not make due allowance for the influence of a strong passion at war with all interested motives. Mr. Knightley saw no such passion, and of course thought nothing of its effects; but she saw too much of it to feel a doubt of its overcoming any hesitations that a reasonable prudence might originally suggest; and more than a reasonable, becoming degree of prudence, she was very sure did not belong to Mr. Elton.\\n\\nHarriet's cheerful look and manner established hers: she came back, not to think of Mr. Martin, but to talk of Mr. Elton. Miss Nash had been telling her something, which she repeated immediately with great delight. Mr. Perry had been to Mrs. Goddard's to attend a sick child, and Miss Nash had seen him; and he had told Miss Nash, that as he was coming back yesterday from Clayton Park he had met Mr. Elton, and found, to his great surprise, that Mr. Elton was actually on his road to London, and not meaning to return till the morrow, though it was the whist-club f night, which he had been never known to miss before; and Mr. Perry had remonstrated with him about it, and told him how shabby it was in him, their best player, to absent himself, and tried very much to persuade him to put off his journey only one day; but it would not do: Mr. Elton had been determined to goon, and had said, in a very particular way indeed, that he was going on business which he would not put off for any inducement in the world; and something about a very enviable commission, and being the bearer of something exceedingly precious. Mr. Perry could not quite understand him, but he was very sure there must be a lady in the case, and he told him so; and Mr. Elton only looked very conscious and smiling, and rode off in great spirits. Miss Nash had told her all this, and had talked a great deal more about Mr. Elton; and said, looking so very significantly at her, \\\"that she did not pretend to understand what his business might be, but she only knew, that any woman whom Mr. Elton could prefer she should think the luckiest woman in the world; for, beyond a doubt, Mr. Elton had not his equal for beauty or agreeableness.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Knightley might quarrel with her, but Emma could not quarrel with herself. He was so much displeased, that it was longer than usual before he came to Hartfield again; and when they did meet, his grave looks showed that she was not forgiven. She was sorry, but could not repent. On the contrary, her plans and proceedings were more and more justified, and endeared to her by the general appearances of the next few days.\\n\\nThe picture, elegantly framed, came safely to hand soon after Mr. Elton's return, and being hungover the mantle-piece of the common sitting-room, he got up to look at it, and sighed out his half sentences of admiration just as he ought; and as for Harriet's feelings, they were visibly forming themselves into as strong an attachment as her youth and sort of mind admitted. Emma was soon perfectly satisfied of Mr. Martin's being no otherwise remembered, than as he furnished a contrast with Mr. Elton, of the utmost advantage to the latter.\\n\\nHer views of improving her little friend's mind, by a great deal of useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few first chapters, and the intention of going onto-morrow. It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Harriet's fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension, or exercise it on sober facts; and the only literary pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin quarto g of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with ciphers and trophies.\\n\\nIn this age of literature, such collections on a very grand scale are not uncommon. Miss Nash, headteacher at Mrs. Goddard's, had written out at least three hundred; and Harriet, who had taken the first hint of it from her, hoped, with Miss Woodhouse's help, to get a great many more. Emma assisted with her invention, memory, and taste; and as Harriet wrote a very pretty hand, it was likely to bean arrangement of the first order, inform as well as quantity.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Woodhouse was almost as much interested in the business as the girls, and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting in. \\\"So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young-he wondered he could not remember them; but he hoped he should in time.\\\" And it always ended in'Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.\\\" h\\n\\nHis good friend Perry, too, whom he had spoken to on the subject, did not at present recollect anything of the riddle kind; but he had desired Perry to be upon the watch, and as he went about so much, something, he thought, might come from that quarter.\\n\\nIt was by no means his daughter's wish that the intellects of Highbury in general should be put under requisition. Mr. Elton was the only one whose assistance she asked. He was invited to contribute any really good enigmas, charades, or conundrums, that he might recollect; and she had the pleasure of seeing him most intently at work with his recollections; and at the same time, as she could perceive, most earnestly careful that nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe a compliment to the sex, should pass his lips. They owed to him their two or three politest puzzles; and the joy and exultation with which at last he recalled, and rather sentimentally recited, that well-known charade,-made her quite sorry to acknowledge that they had transcribed it some pages ago already.\\n\\n\\\"Why will you not write one yourself for us, Mr. Elton?\\\" said she; \\\"that is the only security for its freshness; and nothing could be easier to you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, no; he had never written, hardly ever, anything of the kind in his life. The stupidest fellow! He was afraid not even Miss Woodhouse\\\"-he stopped a moment-\\\"or Miss Smith could inspire him.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The very next day, however, produced some proof of inspiration. He called fora few moments, just to leave apiece of paper on the table containing, as he said, a charade which a friend of his had addressed to a young lady, the object of his admiration; but which, from his manner, Emma was immediately convinced must be his own.\\n\\n\\\"I do not offer it for Miss Smith's collection,\\\" said he. \\\"Being my friend's, I have no right to expose it in any degree to the public eye, but perhaps you may not dislike looking at it.\\\"\\n\\nThe speech was more to Emma than to Harriet, which Emma could understand. There was deep consciousness about him, and he found it easier to meet her eye than her friend's. He was gone the next moment:-after another moment's pause,-\\n\\n\\\"Take it,\\\"-said Emma, smiling, and pushing the paper towards Harriet,-\\\"it is for you. Take your own.\\\"\\n\\nBut Harriet was in a tremour, and could not touch it; and Emma, never loth to be first, was obliged to examine it herself.\\n\\nShe cast her eye over it, pondered, caught the meaning, read it through again to be quite certain, and quite mistress of the lines, and then passing it to Harriet, sat happily, smiling, and saying to herself, while Harriet was puzzling over the paper in all the confusion of hope and dulness, \\\" Very well, Mr. Eton, very well, indeed. I have read worse charades. Courtship-a very good hint. I give you credit for it. This is feeling your way. This is saying very plainly-\\\"Pray, Miss Smith, give me leave to pay my addresses to you. Approve my charade and my intentions in the same glance.\\\"\\n\\nMay its approval beam in that soft eye!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harriet exactly. Soft is the very word for her eye-of all epithets, the justest that could be given.\\n\\nThy ready wit the word will soon supply.\\n\\nHumph-Harriet's ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in love, indeed, to describe her so. Ah! Mr. Knightley, I wish you had the benefit of this; I think this would convince you. For once in your life you would be obliged to own yourself mistaken. An excellent charade, indeed-and very much to the purpose. Things must come to a crisis soon now.\\\"\\n\\nShe was obliged to break off from these very pleasant observations, which were otherwise of a sort to run into great length, by the eagerness of Harriet's wondering opinions.\\n\\n\\\"What can it be, Miss Woodhouse?-what can it be? I have not an idea-I cannot guess it in the least. What can it possibly be? Do try to find it out, Miss Woodhouse. Do help me. I never saw anything so hard. Is it kindgom? I wonder who the friend was-and who could be the young lady. Do you think it is a good one? Can it be woman?\\n\\nAnd woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.\\n\\nCan it be Neptune?\\n\\nBehold him there, this monarch of the seas!\\n\\nOra trident? or a mermaid? or a shark? Oh, no: shark is only one syllable. It must be very clever, or he would not have brought it. Oh, Miss Woodhouse, do you think we shall ever find it out?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mermaids and sharks! Nonsense! My dear Harriet, what are you thinking of? Where would be the use of his bringing us a charade made by a friend upon a mermaid or a shark? Give me the paper, and listen.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Avery proper compliment!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"-and then follows the application, which I think, my dear Harriet, you cannot find much difficulty in comprehending. Read it in comfort to yourself. There can be no doubt of its being written for you and to you.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet could not long resist so delightful a persuasion. She read the concluding lines, and was all flutter and happiness. She could not speak. But she was not wanted to speak. It was enough for her to feel. Emma spoke for her.\\n\\n\\\"There is so pointed, and so particular a meaning in this compliment,\\\" said she, \\\"that I cannot have a moment's doubt as to Mr. Elton's intentions. You are his object,-and you will soon receive the completest proof of it. I thought it must be so. I thought I could not be so deceived; but now it is clear: the state of his mind is as clear and decided as my wishes on the subject have been ever since I knew you. Yes, Harriet, just so long have I been wanting the very circumstance to happen which has happened. I could never tell whether an attachment between you and Mr. Elton were most desirable or most natural. Its probability and its eligibility have really so equalled each other! I am very happy. I congratulate you, my dear Harriet, with all my heart. This is an attachment which a woman may well feel pride in creating. This is a connection which offers nothing but good. It will give you everything that you want,-consideration, independence, a proper home,-it will fix you in the centre of all your real friends, close to Hartfield and tome, and confirm our intimacy forever. This, Harriet, is an alliance which can never raise a blush in either of us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dear Miss Woodhouse,\\\" and'Dear Miss Woodhouse,\\\" was all that Harriet, with many tender embraces, could articulate at first; but when they did arrive at something more like conversation, it was sufficiently clear to her friend that she saw, felt, anticipated, and remembered just as she ought. Mr. Elton's superiority had very ample acknowledgment.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Whatever you say is always right,\\\" cried Harriet, \\\"and therefore I suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so; but otherwise I could not have imagined it. It is so much beyond anything I deserve. Mr. Elton, who might marry anybody! There cannot be two opinions about him. He is so very superior. Only think of those sweet verses-\\\"To Miss-.\\\" Dear me, how clever! Could it really be meant for me?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I cannot make a question, or listen to a question about that. It is a certainty. Receive it on my judgment. It is a sort of prologue to the play, a motto to the chapter; and will be soon followed by matter-of-fact prose.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is a sort of thing which nobody could have expected. I am sure, a month ago, I had no more idea myself!-The strangest things do take place!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"When Miss Smiths and Mr. Eltons get acquainted-they do indeed-and really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so evidently, so palpably desirable-what courts the pre-arrangement of other people-should so immediately shape itself into the proper form. You and Mr. Elton are by situation called together; you belong to one another by every circumstance of your respective homes. Your marrying will be equal to the match at Randalls. There does seem to be a something in the air of Hartfield which gives love exactly the right direction, and sends it into the very channel where it ought to flow.\\n\\nThe course of truelove never did run smooth-3\\n\\nA Hartfield edition of Shakspeare would have along note on that passage.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That Mr. Elton should really be in love with me,-me, of all people, who did not know him, to speak to him, at Michaelmas! 4 And he, the very handsomest man that ever was, and a man that everybody looks up to, quite like Mr. Knightley! His company so sought after, that everybody says he need not eat a single meal by himself if he does not choose it; that he has more invitations than there are days in the week. And so excellent in the church! Miss Nash has put down all the texts he has ever preached from since he came to Highbury. Dear me! When I look back to the first time I saw him! How little did I think! The two Abbotts and Iran into the front room and peeped through the blind when we heard he was going by, and Miss Nash came and scolded us away, and staid i to look through herself; however, she called me back presently, and let me look too, which was very good-natured. And how beautiful we thought he looked! He was arm in arm with Mr. Cole.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"This is an alliance which, whoever-whatever your friends maybe, must be agreeable to them, provided at least they have commonsense; and we are not to be addressing our conduct to fools.\\n\\nIf they are anxious to see you happily married, here is a man whose amiable character gives every assurance of it: if they wish to have you settled in the same country and circle which they have chosen to place you in, here it will be accomplished; and if their only object is that you should, in the common phrase, be well married, here is the comfortable fortune, the respectable establishment, the rise in the world which must satisfy them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, very true. How nicely you talk! I love to hear you. You understand everything. You and Mr. Elton are one as clever as the other. This charade! If I had studied a twelvemonth, I could never have made anything like it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I thought he meant to try his skill, by his manner of declining it yesterday.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do think it is, without exception, the best charade I ever read.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"1 never read one more to the purpose, certainly.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is as long again as almost all we have had before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not consider its length as particularly in its favour. Such things in general cannot be too short.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet was too intent on the lines to hear. The most satisfactory comparisons were rising in her mind.\\n\\n\\\"It is one thing,\\\" said she, presently, her cheeks in aglow, \\\"to have very good sense in a common way, like everybody else, and if there is anything to say, to sit down and write a letter, and say just what you must, in a short way; and another, to write verses and charades like this.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Emma could not have desired a more spirited rejection of Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Martin's prose.\\n\\n\\\"Such sweet lines!\\\" continued Harriet-\\\"these two last! But how shall I ever be able to return the paper, or say I have found it out? Oh, Miss Woodhouse what can we do about that?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Leave it tome. You do nothing. He will be here this evening, I daresay, and then I will give it him back, and some nonsense or other will pass between us, and you shall not be committed. Your soft eyes shall choose their own time for beaming. Trust tome.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, Miss Woodhouse, what a pity that I must not write this beautiful charade into my book! I am sure I have not got one half so good.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should not write it into your book.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, but those two lines are-\\\"-\\\"The best of all. Granted;-for private enjoyment; and for private enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know, because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its meaning change. But take it away, and all appropriation ceases, and a very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend upon it, he would not like to have his charade slighted much better than his passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities, or neither. Give me the book, I will write it down, and then there can be no possible reflection on you.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet submitted, though her mind could hardly separate the parts, so as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a declaration of love. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree of publicity.\\n\\n\\\"I shall never let that book go out of my own hands,\\\" said she.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Very well,\\\" replied Emma, \\\"a most natural feeling, and the longer it lasts, the better I shall be pleased.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"But here is my father coming: you will not object to my reading the charade to him. It will be giving him so much pleasure. He loves anything of the sort, and especially anything that pays woman a compliment. He has the tenderest spirit of gallantry towards us all. You must let me read it to him.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet looked grave.\\n\\n\\\"My dear Harriet, you must not refine too much upon this charade. You will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning which maybe affixed to it. Do not be overpowered by such a little tribute of admiration. If he had been anxious for secrecy, he would not have left the paper while I was by; but he rather pushed it towards me than towards you. Do not let us be too solemn on the business. He has encouragement enough to proceed, without our sighing out our souls over this charade.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh no: I hope I shall not be ridiculous about it. Do as you please.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Woodhouse came in, and very soon led to the subject again, by the recurrence of his very frequent enquiry of'Well, my dears, how does your book goon? Have you got anything fresh?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, papa; we have something to read you, something quite fresh. Apiece of paper was found on the table this morning-(dropped, we suppose, by a fairy)-containing a very pretty charade, and we have just copied it in.\\\"\\n\\nShe read it to him, just as he liked to have anything read, slowly and distinctly, and two or three times over, with explanations of every part as she proceeded; and he was very much pleased, and, as she had foreseen, especially struck with the complimentary conclusion.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Ay, that's very just, indeed; that's very properly said.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Very true. \\\"Woman, lovely woman.\\\" It is such a pretty charade, my dear, that I can easily guess what fairy brought it. Nobody could have written so prettily but you, Emma.\\\"\\n\\nEmma only nodded, and smiled. After a little thinking, and a very tender sigh, he added,-\\n\\n\\\"Ah, it is no difficulty to see who you take after. Your dear mother was so clever at all those things. If I had but her memory. But I can remember nothing; not even that particular riddle which you have heard me mention: I can only recollect the first stanza; and there are several.\\n\\nAnd that is all that I can recollect of it; but it is very clever all the way through. But I think, my dear, you said you had got it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, papa, it is written out in our second page. We copied it from the Elegant Extracts. It was Garrick's, you know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ay, very true:-I wish I could recollect more of it.\\n\\nKitty, a fair but frozen maid,\\n\\nThe name makes me think of poor Isabella; for she was very near being christened Catherine after her grand-mamma. I hope we shall have her here next week. Have you thought, my dear, where you shall put her, and what room there will be for the children?\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes-she will have her own room, of course; the room she always has;-and there is the nursery for the children,-just as usual, you know. Why should there be any change?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not know, my dear-but it is so long since she was here:-not since last Easter, and then only fora few days. Mr. John Knightley's being a lawyer is very inconvenient. Poor Isabella!-she is sadly taken away from us all;-and how sorry she will be when she comes, not to see Miss Taylor here.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"She will not be surprised, papa, at least.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not know, my dear. I am sure I was very much surprised when I first heard she was going to be married.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We must ask Mr. and Mrs. Weston to dine with us, while Isabella is here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, my dear, if there is time. But-(in a very depressed tone)-she is coming for only one week. There will not be time for anything.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is unfortunate that they cannot stay longer,-but it seems a case of necessity. Mr. John Knightley must be in town again on the 28th; and we ought to be thankful, papa, that we are to have the whole of the time they can give to the country, that two or three days are not to betaken out for the Abbey. Mr. Knightley promises to give up his claim this Christmas, though you know it is longer since they were with him than with us.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It would be very hard, indeed, my dear, if poor Isabella were to be anywhere but at Hartfield.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Woodhouse could never allow for Mr. Knightley's claims on his brother, or anybody's claims on Isabella, except his own. He sat musing a little while, and then said,-\\n\\n\\\"But I do not see why poor Isabella should be obliged to go back so soon, though he does. I think, Emma, I shall try and persuade her to stay longer with us. She and the children might stay very well.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ah, papa, that is what you never have been able to accomplish, and I do not think you ever will. Isabella cannot bear to stay behind her husband.\\\"\\n\\nThis was too true for contradiction. Unwelcome as it was, Mr. Woodhouse could only give a submissive sigh; and as Emma saw his spirits affected by the idea of his daughter's attachment to her husband, she immediately led to such a branch of the subject as must raise them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Harriet must give us as much of her company as she can while my brother and sister are here.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"I am sure she will be pleased with the children. We are very proud of the children, are not we, papa? I wonder which she will think the handsomest, Henry or John?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ay, I wonder which she will. Poor little dears, how glad they will be to come. They are very fond of being at Hartfield, Harriet.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I daresay they are, sir. I am sure I do not know who is not.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Henry is a fine boy, but John is very like his mamma. Henry is the eldest, he was named after me, not after his father. John, the second, is named after his father. Some people are surprised, I believe, that the eldest was not, but Isabella would have him called Henry, which I thought very pretty of her. And he is a very clever boy, indeed. They are all remarkably clever; and they have so many pretty ways. They will come and standby my chair and say, \\\"Grandpapa, can you give me a bit of string?\\\" and once Henry asked me fora knife, but I told him knives were only made for grandpapas. I think their father is too rough with them very often.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He appears rough to you,\\\" said Emma, \\\"because you are so very gentle yourself; but if you could compare him with other papas, you would not think him rough. He wishes his boys to be active and hardy; and if they misbehave, can give them a sharp word now and then: but he is an affectionate father-certainly Mr. John Knightley is an affectionate father. The children are all fond of him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And then their uncle comes in, and tosses them up to the ceiling in a very frightful way.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But they like it, papa; there is nothing they like so much. It is such enjoyment to them, that if their uncle did not lay down the rule of their taking turns, whichever began would never give way to the other.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Well, I cannot understand it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.\\\"\\n\\nLater in the morning, and just as the girls were going to separate in preparation for the regular four o'clock dinner, the hero of this inimitable charade walked in again. Harriet turned away: but Emma could receive him with the usual smile, and her quick eye soon discerned in his the consciousness of having made a push-of having thrown a die; and she imagined he was come to see how it might turn up. His ostensible reason, however, was to ask whether Mr. Woodhouse's party could be made up in the evening without him, or whether he should be in the smallest degree necessary at Hartfield. If he were, everything else must give way; but otherwise his friend Cole had been saying so much about his dining with him-had made such a point of it-that he had promised him conditionally to come.\\n\\nEmma thanked him, but could not allow of his disappointing his friend on their account; her father was sure of his rubber. Here-urged-she re-declined; and he seemed then about to make his bow, when, taking the paper from the table, she returned it.\\n\\n\\\"Oh, here is the charade you were so obliging as to leave with us; thank you for the sight of it. We admired it so much, that I have ventured to write it into Miss Smith's collection. Your friend will not take it amiss I hope. Of course I have not transcribed beyond the eight first lines.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Elton certainly did not very well know what to say. He looked rather doubtingly-rather confused; said something about'honour;\\\"-glanced at Emma and at Harriet, and then seeing the book open on the table, took it up, and examined it very attentively. With the view of passing off an awkward moment, Emma smilingly said,-\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You must make my apologies to your friend; but so good a charade must not be confined to one or two. He maybe sure of every woman's approbation while he writes with such gallantry.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have no hesitation in saying,\\\" replied Mr. Elton, though hesitating a good deal while he spoke,-\\\"I have no hesitation in saying-at least if my friend feels at all as I do-I have not the smallest doubt that, could he see his little effusion honoured as I see it, (looking at the book again, and replacing it on the table,) he would consider it as the proudest moment of his life.\\\"\\n\\nAfter this speech he was gone as soon as possible. Emma could not think it too soon; for with all his good and agreeable qualities there was a sort of parade in his speeches which was very apt to incline her to laugh. She ran away to indulge the inclination, leaving the tender and the sublime of pleasure to Harriet's share.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Though now the middle of December, there had yet been no weather to prevent the young ladies from tolerably regular exercise; and on the morrow, Emma had a charitable visit to pay to a poor sick family who lived a little way out of Highbury.\\n\\nTheir road to this detached cottage was down Vicarage Lane, a lane leading at right-angles from the broad, though irregular, main street of the place; and, as maybe inferred, containing the blessed abode of Mr. Elton. A few inferior dwellings were first to be passed, and then, about a quarter of a mile down the lane, rose the vicarage; an old and not very good house, almost as close to the road as it could be. It had no advantage of situation: but had been very much smartened up by the present proprietor; and, such as it was, there could be no possibility of the two friends passing it without a slackened pace and observing eyes. Emma's remark was,-\\n\\n\\\"There it is. There go you and your riddle-book one of these days.\\\" Harriet's was,-\\n\\n\\\"Oh, what a sweet house! How very beautiful! There are the yellow curtains that Miss Nash admires so much.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not often walk this way now,\\\" said Emma, as they proceeded, \\\"but then there will bean inducement, and I shall gradually get intimately acquainted with all the hedges, gates, pools, and pollards of this part of Highbury.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet, she found, had never in her life been within-side the vicarage; and her curiosity to see it was so extreme, that, considering exteriors and probabilities, Emma could only class it, as a proof of love, with Mr. Elton's seeing ready wit in her.\\n\\n\\\"I wish we could contrive it,\\\" said she; \\\"but I cannot think of any tolerable pretence forgoing in;-no servant that I want to enquire about of his housekeeper-no message from my father.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She pondered, but could think of nothing. After a mutual silence of some minutes, Harriet thus began again,\\n\\n\\\"I do so wonder, Miss Woodhouse, that you should not be married, or going to be married-so charming as you are.\\\"\\n\\nEmma laughed, and replied,-\\n\\n\\\"My being charming, Harriet, is not quite enough to induce me to marry; I must find other people charming-one other person at least. And I am not only not going to be married at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ah, so you say; but I cannot believe it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I must see somebody very superior to anyone I have seen yet, to be tempted: Mr. Elton, you know (recollecting herself), is out of the question; and I do not wish to see any such person. I would rather not be tempted. I cannot really change for the better. If I were to marry, I must expect to repent it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dear me!-it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were Ito fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing; but I never have been in love: it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"But then, to bean old maid at last, like Miss Bates!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That is as formidable an image as you could present, Harriet; and if I thought I should ever be like Miss Bates-so silly, so satisfied, so smiling, so prosing, so undistinguishing and unfastidious, and so apt to tell everything relative to everybody about me, I would marry to-morrow. But between us, I am convinced there never can be any likeness, except in being unmarried.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But still, you will bean old maid-and that's so dreadful!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable, and maybe as sensible and pleasant as anybody else! And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and commonsense of the world as appears at first; fora very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross. This does not apply, however, to Miss Bates: she is only too good natured and too silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very much to the taste of everybody, though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not contracted her mind: I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the world she would be very likely to giveaway sixpence of it; and nobody is afraid of her: that is a great charm.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dear me! but what shall you do? How shall you employ yourself when you grow old?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman's usual occupations of eye, and hand, and mind, will be as open tome then as they are now, or with no important variation. If I draw less, I shall read more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is, in truth, the great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil to be avoided in not marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the children of a sister I love so much to care about. There will be enough of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation that declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and every fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a parent, it suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and blinder. My nephews and nieces: I shall often have a niece with me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Do you know Miss Bates's niece? That is, I know you must have seen her a hundred times-but are you acquainted?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes; we are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to Highbury. By the by, that is almost enough to put one out of conceit with a niece. Heaven forbid, at least, that I should ever bore people half so much about all the Knightleys together as she does about Jane Fairfax. One is sick of the very name of Jane Fairfax. Every letter from her is read forty times over: her compliments to all friends go round and round again; and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of nothing else fora month. I wish Jane Fairfax very well; but she tires me to death.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They were now approaching the cottage, and all idle topics were superseded. Emma was very compassionate; and the distresses of the poor were assure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her counsel and her patience, as from her purse. She understood their ways, could allow for their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic expectations of extraordinary virtue from those for whom education had done so little, entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and always gave her assistance with as much intelligence as goodwill. In the present instance, it was sickness and poverty together which she came to visit; and after remaining there as long as she could give comfort or advice, she quitted the cottage with such an impression of the scene as made her say to Harriet, as they walked away,-\\n\\n\\\"These are the sights, Harriet, to do one good. How trifling they make everything else appear! I feel now as if I could think of nothing but these poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet who can say how soon it may all vanish from my mind?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very true,\\\" said Harriet. \\\"Poor creatures! one can think of nothing else.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And really, I do not think the impression will soon be over,\\\" said Emma, as she crossed the low hedge, and tottering footstep which ended the narrow, slippery path through the cottage garden, and brought them into the lane again. \\\"I do not think it will,\\\" stopping to look once more at all the outward wretchedness of the place, and recall the still greater within.\\n\\n\\\"Oh dear, no,\\\" said her companion.\\n\\nThey walked on. The lane made a slight bend; and when that bend was passed, Mr. Elton was immediately insight; and so near as to give Emma time only to say farther,-\\n\\n\\\"Ah, Harriet, here comes a very sudden trial of our stability in good thoughts. Well (smiling), I hope it maybe allowed that if compassion has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to do all we can for them, the rest is empty sympathy, only distressing to ourselves.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Harriet could just answer, \\\"Oh dear, yes,\\\" before the gentleman joined them. The wants and sufferings of the poor family, however, were the first subject on meeting. He had been going to call on them. His visit he would now defer; but they had a very interesting parley about what could be done and should be done. Mr. Elton then turned back to accompany them.\\n\\n\\\"To fall in with each other on such an errand as this,\\\" thought Emma; \\\"to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase of love on each side. I should not wonder if it were to bring on the declaration. It must, if I were not here. I wish I were anywhere else.\\\"\\n\\nAnxious to separate herself from them as far as she could, she soon afterwards took possession of a narrow footpath, a little raised on one side of the lane, leaving them together in the main road. But she had not been there two minutes when she found that Harriet's habits of dependence and imitation were bringing her up too, and that, in short, they would both be soon after her. This would not do; she immediately stopped, under pretence of having some alteration to make in the lacing of her half-boot, and stooping down incomplete occupation of the footpath, begged them to have the goodness to walk on, and she would follow in half a minute. They did as they were desired; and by the time she judged it reasonable to have done with her boot, she had the comfort of further delay in her power, being overtaken by a child from the cottage, setting out, according to orders, with her pitcher, to fetch broth from Hartfield. To walk by the side of this child, and talk to and question her, was the most natural thing in the world, or would have been the most natural, had shebeen acting just then without design; and by this means the others were still able to keep ahead, without any obligation of waiting for her. She gained on them, however, involuntarily: the child's pace was quick, and theirs rather slow; and she was the more concerned at it, from their being evidently in a conversation which interested them. Mr. Elton was speaking with animation, Harriet listening with a very pleased attention; and Emma having sent the child on, was beginning to think how she might drawback a little more, when they both looked around, and she was obliged to join them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Elton was still talking, still engaged in some interesting detail; and Emma experienced some disappointment when she found that he was only giving his fair companion an account of the yesterday's party at his friend Cole's, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root, and all the dessert.\\n\\n\\\"This would soon have led to something better, of course,\\\" washer consoling reflection; \\\"anything interests between those who love; and anything will serve as introduction to what is near the heart. If I could but have kept longer away.\\\"\\n\\nThey now walked on together quietly till within view of the vicarage pales, when a sudden resolution, of at least getting Harriet into the house, made her again find something very much amiss about her boot, and fall behind to arrange it once more. She then broke the lace off short, and dexterously throwing it into a ditch, was presently obliged to entreat them to stop, and acknowledge her inability to put herself to rights so as to be able to walk home intolerable comfort.\\n\\n\\\"Part of my lace is gone,\\\" said she, \\\"and I do not know how I am to contrive. I really am a most troublesome companion to you both, but I hope I am not often so ill-equipped. Mr. Elton, I must beg leave to stop at your house, and ask your housekeeper fora bit of riband or string, or anything just to keep my boot on.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Elton looked all happiness at this proposition; and nothing could exceed his alertness and attention in conducting them into his house, and endeavouring to make everything appear to advantage. The room they were taken into was the one he chiefly occupied, and looking forwards; behind it was another with which it immediately communicated: the door between them was open, and Emma passed into it with the housekeeper, to receive her assistance in the most comfortable manner. She was obliged to leave the door ajar as she found it; but she fully intended that Mr. Elton should close it. It was not closed, however, it still remained ajar; but by engaging the housekeeper in incessant conversation, she hoped to make it practicable for him to choose his own subject in the adjoining room. For ten minutes she could hear nothing but herself. It could be protracted no longer. She was then obliged to be finished, and make her appearance.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The lovers were standing together atone of the windows. It had a most favourable aspect; and, for half a minute, Emma felt the glory of having schemed successfully. But it would not do; he had not come to the point. He had been most agreeable, most delightful: he had told Harriet that he had seen them go by, and had purposely followed them; other little gallantries and allusions had been dropped, but nothing serious.\\n\\n\\\"Cautious, very cautious,\\\" thought Emma: \\\"he advances inch by inch, and will hazard nothing till he believes himself secure.\\\"\\n\\nStill, however, though everything had not been accomplished by her ingenious device, she could not but flatter herself that it had been the occasion of much present enjoyment to both, and must be leading them forward to the great event.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Elton must now be left to himself. It was no longer in Emma's power to superintend his happiness, or quicken his measures. The coming of her sister's family was so very near at hand, that first in anticipation, and then in reality, it became henceforth the prime object of interest; and during the ten days of their stay at Hartfield it was not to be expected-she did not herself expect-that anything beyond occasional, fortuitous assistance could be afforded by her to the lovers. They might advance rapidly if they would, however; they must advance somehow or other, whether they would or no. She hardly wished to have more leisure for them. There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.\\n\\nMr. and Mrs. John Knightley, from having been longer than usual absent from Surrey, were exciting, of course, rather more than the usual interest. Till this year, every long vacation since their marriage had been divided between Hartfield and Donwell Abbey: but all the holidays of this autumn had been given to sea-bathing for the children; and it was therefore many months since they had been seen in a regular way by their Surrey connections, or seen at all by Mr. Woodhouse, who could not be induced to get so far as London, even for poor Isabella's sake; and who, consequently, was now most nervously and apprehensively happy in forestalling this too short visit.\\n\\nHe thought much of the evils of the journey for her, and not a little of the fatigues of his own horses and coachman who were to bring some of the party the last half of the way; but his alarms were needless: the sixteen miles being happily accomplished, and Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley, their five children, and a competent number of nursery-maids, all reaching Hartfield in safety. The bustle and joy of such an arrival, the many to be talked to, welcomed, encouraged, and variously dispersed and disposed of, produced a noise and confusion which his nerves could not have borne under any other cause, nor have endured much longer even for this; but the ways of Hartfield and the feelings of her father were so respected by Mrs. John Knightley, that in spite of maternal solicitude for the immediate enjoyment of her little ones, and for their having instantly all the liberty and attendance, all the eating and drinking, and sleeping and playing, which they could possibly wish for, without the smallest delay, the children were never allowed to belong a disturbance to him, either in themselves or in any restless attendance on them.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mrs. John Knightley was a pretty, elegant little woman, of gentle, quiet manners, and a disposition remarkably amiable and affectionate, wrapt up in her family, a devoted wife, a doting mother, and so tenderly attached to her father and sister that, but for these higher ties, a warmer love might have seemed impossible. She could never see a fault in any of them. She was not a woman of strong understanding or any quickness; and with this resemblance of her father, she inherited also much of his constitution; was delicate in her own health, over-careful of that of her children, had many fears and many nerves, and was as fond of her own Mr. Wingfield in town as her father could be of Mr. Perry. They were alike, too, in a general benevolence of temper, and a strong habit of regard for every old acquaintance.\\n\\nMr. John Knightley was a tall, gentleman-like, and very clever man; rising in his profession, domestic, and respectable in his private character: but with reserved manners which prevented his being generally pleasing; and capable of being sometimes out of humour. He was not an ill-tempered man, not so often unreasonably cross as to deserve such a reproach: but his temper was not his great perfection; and, indeed, with such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper must hurt his. He had all the clearness and quickness of mind which she wanted; and he could sometimes act an ungracious, or say a severe thing. He was not a great favourite with his fair sister-in-law. Nothing wrong in him escaped her. She was quick in feeling the little injuries to Isabella, which Isabella never felt herself. Perhaps she might have passed over more had his manners been flattering to Isabella's sister, but they were only those of a calmly kind brother and friend, without praise and without blindness; but hardly any degree of personal compliment could have made her regardless of that greatest fault of all in her eyes which he sometimes fell into, the want of respectful forbearance towards her father. There he had not always the patience that could have been wished. Mr. Woodhouse's peculiarities and fidgetiness were sometimes provoking him to a rational remonstrance or sharp retort equally ill bestowed. It did not often happen; for Mr. John Knightley had really a great regard for his father-in-law, and generally a strong sense of what was due to him: but it was too often for Emma's charity, especially as there was all the pain of apprehension frequently to be endured, though the offence came not. The beginning, however, of every visit displayed none but the properest feelings, and this being of necessity so short might be hoped to pass away in unsullied cordiality. They had not been long seated and composed when Mr. Woodhouse, with a melancholy shake of the head and a sigh, called his daughter's attention to the sad change at Hartfield since she had been there last.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Ah, my dear,\\\" said he, \\\"poor Miss Taylor.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It is a grievous business.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes, sir,\\\" cried she, with ready sympathy, \\\"how you must miss her! And dear Emma too. What a dreadful loss to you both! I have been so grieved for you. I could not imagine how you could possibly do without her. It is a sad change, indeed; but I hope she is pretty well, sir.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Pretty well, my dear,-I hope,-pretty well. I do not know but that the place agrees with her tolerably.\\\"\\n\\nMr. John Knightley here asked Emma, quietly, whether there were any doubts of the air of Randalls.\\n\\n\\\"Oh no: none in the least. I never saw Mrs. Weston better in my life,-never looking so well. Papa is only speaking his own regret.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very much to the honour of both,\\\" was the handsome reply.\\n\\n\\\"And do you see her, sir, tolerably often?\\\" asked Isabella in the plaintive tone which just suited her father.\\n\\nMr. Woodhouse hesitated. \\\"Not near so often, my dear, as I could wish.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, papa, we have missed seeing them but one entire day since they married. Either in the morning or evening of everyday, excepting one, have we seen either Mr. Weston or Mrs. Weston, and generally both, either at Randalls or here; and as you may suppose, Isabella, most frequently here. They are very, very kind in their visits. Mr. Weston is really as kind as herself. Papa, if you speak in that melancholy way, you will be giving Isabella a false idea of us all. Everybody must be aware that Miss Taylor must be missed; but everybody ought also to be assured that Mr. and Mrs. Weston do really prevent our missing her by any means to the extent we ourselves anticipated,-which is the exact truth.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Just as it should be,\\\" said Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"John Knightley, \\\"and just as I hoped it was from your letters. Her wish of showing you attention could not be doubted, and his being a disengaged and social man makes it all easy. I have been always telling you, my love, that I had no idea of the change being so very material to Hartfield as you apprehended; and now you have Emma's account, I hope you will be satisfied.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why, to be sure,\\\" said Mr. Woodhouse,-\\\"yes, certainly. I cannot deny that Mrs. Weston,-poor Mrs. Weston,-does come and see us pretty often; but then, she is always obliged to go away again.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It would be very hard upon Mr. Weston if she did not, papa. You quite forget poor Mr. Weston.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I think, indeed,\\\" said John Knightley, pleasantly, \\\"that Mr. Weston has some little claim. You and I, Emma, will venture to take the part of the poor husband. I being a husband, and you not being a wife, the claims of the man may very likely strike us with equal force. As for Isabella, she has been married long enough to seethe convenience of putting all the Mr. Westons aside as much as she can.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Me, my love,\\\" cried his wife, hearing and understanding only in part. \\\"Are you talking about me? I am sure nobody ought to be, or can be, a greater advocate for matrimony than I am; and if it had not been for the misery of her leaving Hartfield, I should never have thought of Miss Taylor but as the most fortunate woman in the world; and as to slighting Mr. Weston,-that excellent Mr. Weston,-I think there is nothing he does not deserve. I believe he is one of the very best tempered men that ever existed. Excepting yourself and your brother, I do not know his equal for temper. I shall never forget his flying Henry's kite for him that very windy day last Easter; and ever since his particular kindness last September twelvemonth in writing that note, at twelve o'clock at night, on purpose to assure me that there was no scarlet fever at Cobham, 6 I have been convinced there could not be a more feeling heart nor a better man in existence. If anybody can deserve him, it must be Miss Taylor.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Where is the young man?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"said John Knightley. \\\"Has he been hereon this occasion, or has he not?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He has not been here yet,\\\" replied Emma. \\\"There was a strong expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But you should tell them of the letter, my dear,\\\" said her father. \\\" He wrote a letter to poor Mrs. Weston, to congratulate her, and a very proper, handsome letter it was. She showed it tome. I thought it very well done of him, indeed. Whether it was his own idea, you know, one cannot tell. He is but young, and his uncle, perhaps-\\n\\n\\\"My dear papa, he is three-and-twenty. You forget how time passes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Three-and-twenty! is he, indeed? Well, I could not have thought it; and he was but two years old when he lost his poor mother. Well, time does fly indeed! and my memory is very bad. However, it was an exceeding good, pretty letter, and gave Mr. and Mrs. Weston a great deal of pleasure. I remember it was written from Weymouth, and dated Sept. 28th, and began \\\"My dear Madam,\\\" but I forget how it went on; and it was signed \\\"F. C. Weston Churchill.\\\" I remember that perfectly.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How very pleasing and proper of him!\\\" cried the good-hearted Mrs. John Knightley. \\\"I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is something so shocking in a child's being taken away from his parents and natural home! I never can comprehend how Mr. Weston could part with him. To give up one's child! I really never could think well of anybody who proposed such a thing to anybody else.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":296,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Co-writing with the writer, continue the narrative.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 16"},{"from":"human","value":"\"Where is the young man?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"said John Knightley. \"Has he been hereon this occasion, or has he not?\"\n\n\"He has not been here yet,\" replied Emma. \"There was a strong expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.\"\n\n\"But you should tell them of the letter, my dear,\" said her father. \" He wrote a letter to poor Mrs. Weston, to congratulate her, and a very proper, handsome letter it was. She showed it tome. I thought it very well done of him, indeed. Whether it was his own idea, you know, one cannot tell. He is but young, and his uncle, perhaps-\n\n\"My dear papa, he is three-and-twenty. You forget how time passes.\"\n\n\"Three-and-twenty! is he, indeed? Well, I could not have thought it; and he was but two years old when he lost his poor mother. Well, time does fly indeed! and my memory is very bad. However, it was an exceeding good, pretty letter, and gave Mr. and Mrs. Weston a great deal of pleasure. I remember it was written from Weymouth, and dated Sept. 28th, and began \"My dear Madam,\" but I forget how it went on; and it was signed \"F. C. Weston Churchill.\" I remember that perfectly.\"\n\n\"How very pleasing and proper of him!\" cried the good-hearted Mrs. John Knightley. \"I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is something so shocking in a child's being taken away from his parents and natural home! I never can comprehend how Mr. Weston could part with him. To give up one's child! I really never could think well of anybody who proposed such a thing to anybody else.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Nobody ever did think well of the Churchills, I fancy,\" observed Mr. John Knightley, coolly. \"But you need not imagine Mr. Weston to have felt what you would feel in giving up Henry or John. Mr. Weston is rather an easy, cheerful tempered man, than a man of strong feelings: he takes things as he finds them, and makes enjoyment of them somehow or other, depending, I suspect, much more upon what is called society for his comforts, that is, upon the power of eating and drinking, and playing whist with his neighbours five times a week, than upon family affection, or anything that home affords.\"\n\nEmma could not like what bordered on a reflection on Mr. Weston, and had half a mind to take it up; but she struggled, and let it pass. She would keep the peace if possible; and there was something honourable and valuable in the strong domestic habits, the all-sufficiency of home to himself, whence resulted her brother's disposition to look down on the common rate of social intercourse, and those to whom it was important. It had a high claim to forbearance."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Knightley was to dine with them, rather against the inclination of Mr. Woodhouse, who did not like that anyone should share with him in Isabella's first day. Emma's sense of right, however, had decided it; and, besides the consideration of what was due to each brother, she had particular pleasure, from the circumstance of the late disagreement between Mr. Knightley and herself, in procuring him the proper invitation.\n\nShe hoped they might now become friends again. She thought it was time to makeup. Making-up, indeed, would not do. She certainly had not been in the wrong, and he would never own that he had. Concession must be out of the question: but it was time to appear to forget that they had ever quarrelled; and she hoped it might rather assist the restoration of friendship, that when he came into the room she had one of the children with her,-the youngest, a nice little girl about eight months old, who was now making her first visit to Hartfield, and very happy to be danced about in her aunt's arms. It did assist; for though he began with grave looks and short questions, he was soon led onto talk of them all in the usual way, and to take the child out of her arms with all the unceremoniousness of perfect amity. Emma felt they were friends again; and the conviction giving her at first great satisfaction, and then a little sauciness, she could not help saying, as he was admiring the baby,-\n\n\"What a comfort it is, that we think alike about our nephews and nieces. As to men and women, our opinions are sometimes very different; but with regard to these children, I observe we never disagree.\"\n\n\"If you were as much guided by nature in your estimate of men and women, and as little under the power of fancy and whim in your dealings with them, as you are where these children are concerned, we might always think alike.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"To be sure-our discordances must always arise from my being in the wrong.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said he, smiling, \"and reason good. I was sixteen years old when you were born.\"\n\n\"A material difference, then,\" she replied; \"and no doubt you were much my superior in judgment at that period of our lives; but does not the lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal nearer?\"\n\n\"Yes, a good deal nearer.\"\n\n\"But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we think differently.\"\n\n\"I have still the advantage of you by sixteen years' experience, and by not being a pretty young woman and a spoiled child. Come, my dear Emma, let us befriends, and say no more about it. Tell your aunt, little Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old grievances, and that if she were not wrong before, she is now.\"\n\n\"That's true,\" she cried, \"very true. Little Emma, grow up a better woman than your aunt. Be infinitely cleverer and not half so conceited. Now, Mr. Knightley, a word or two more, and I have done. As far as good intentions went, we were both right, and I must say, that no effects on my side of the argument have yet proved wrong. I only want to know that Mr. Martinis not very, very bitterly disappointed.\"\n\n\"A man cannot be more so,\" was his short, full answer.\n\n\"Ah! Indeed I am very sorry. Come, shake hands with me.\"\n\nThis had just taken place, and with great cordiality, when John Knightley made his appearance; and'How d'ye do, George?\" and'John, how are you?\" succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do everything for the good of the other."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The evening was quiet and conversible, as Mr. Woodhouse declined cards entirely for the sake of comfortable talk with his dear Isabella, and the little party made two natural divisions: on one side he and his daughter; on the other the two Mr. Knightleys; their subjects totally distinct, or very rarely mixing, and Emma only occasionally joining in one or the other.\n\nThe brothers talked of their own concerns and pursuits, but principally of those of the elder, whose temper was by much the most communicative, and who was always the greater talker. As a magistrate, he had generally some point of law to consult John about, or, at least, some curious anecdote to give; and as a farmer, as keeping in hand the home-farm at Donwell, he had to tell what every field was to bear next year, and to give all such local information as could not fail of being interesting to a brother, whose home it had equally been the longest part of his life, and whose attachments were strong. The plan of a drain, the change of a fence, the felling of a tree, and the destination of every acre for wheat, turnips, or spring corn, was entered into with as much equality of interest by John as his cooler manners rendered possible; and if his willing brother ever left him anything to enquire about, his enquiries even approached atone of eagerness.\n\nWhile they were thus comfortably occupied, Mr. Woodhouse was enjoying a full flow of happy regrets and fearful affection with his daughter.\n\n\"My poor dear Isabella,\" said he, fondly taking her hand, and interrupting, fora few moments, her busy labours for someone of her five children, \"how long it is, how terribly long since you were here! And how tired you must be after your journey! You must go to bed early, my dear,-and I recommend a little gruel to you before you go. You and I will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear Emma, suppose we all have a little gruel.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma could not suppose any such thing, knowing, as she did, that both the Mr. Knightleys were as unpersuadable on that article as herself, and two basins only were ordered. After a little more discourse in praise of gruel, with some wondering at its not being taken every evening by everybody, he proceeded to say, with an air of grave reflection,-\n\n\"It was an awkward business, my dear, your spending the autumn at South End instead of coming here. I never had much opinion of the sea air.\"\n\n\"Mr. Wingfield most strenuously recommended it, sir, or we should not have gone. He recommended it for all the children, but particularly for the weakness in little Bella's throat,-both sea air and bathing.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear, but Perry had many doubts about the sea doing her any good; and as to myself, I have been long perfectly convinced, though perhaps I never told you so before, that the sea is very rarely of use to anybody. I am sure it almost killed me once.\"\n\n\"Come, come,\" cried Emma, feeling this to bean unsafe subject, \"I must beg you not to talk of the sea. It makes me envious and miserable; I who have never seen it! South End is prohibited, if you please. My dear Isabella, I have not heard you make one enquiry after Mr. Perry yet; and he never forgets you.\"\n\n\"Oh, good Mr. Perry, how is he, sir?\"\n\n\"Why, pretty well; but not quite well. Poor Perry is bilious, and he has not time to take care of himself; he tells me he has not time to take care of himself-which is very sad-but he is always wanted all round the country. I suppose there is not a man in such practice anywhere. But then, there is not so clever a man anywhere.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"And Mrs. Perry and the children, how are they? Do the children grow? I have a great regard for Mr. Perry. I hope he will be calling soon. He will be so pleased to see my little ones.\"\n\n\"I hope he will be hereto-morrow, for I have a question or two to ask him about myself of some consequence. And, my dear, whenever he comes, you had better let him look at little Bella's throat.\"\n\n\"Oh, my dear sir, her throat is so much better that I have hardly any uneasiness about it. Either bathing has been of the greatest service to her, or else it is to be attributed to an excellent embrocation of Mr. Wingfield's, which we have been applying at times ever since August.\"\n\n\"It is not very likely, my dear, that bathing should have been of use to her; and if I had known you were wanting an embrocation, I would have spoken to-\"\n\n\"You seem tome to have forgotten Mrs. and Miss Bates,\" said Emma; \"I have not heard one enquiry after them.\"\n\n\"Oh, the good Bateses-I am quite ashamed of myself; but you mention them inmost of your letters. I hope they are quite well. Good old Mrs. Bates. I will call upon her to-morrow, and take my children. They are always so pleased to see my children. And that excellent Miss Bates!-such thorough worthy people! How are they, sir?\"\n\n\"Why, pretty well, my dear, upon the whole. But poor Mrs. Bates had a bad cold about a month ago.\"\n\n\"How sorry I am! but colds were never so prevalent as they have been this autumn. Mr. Wingfield told me that he had never known them more general or heavy, except when it has been quite an influenza.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"That has been a good deal the case, my dear, but not to the degree you mention."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Perry says that colds have been very general, but not so heavy as he has very often known them in November. Perry does not call it altogether a sickly season.\"\n\n\"No, I do not know that Mr. Wingfield considers it very sickly, except-\"\n\n\"Ah, my poor dear child, the truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. It is a dreadful thing to have you forced to live there;-so far off!-and the air so bad!\"\n\n\"No, indeed, we are not at all in a bad air. Our part of London is so very superior to most others. You must not confound us with London in general, my dear sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very different from almost all the rest. We are so very airy! I should be unwilling, I own, to live in any other part of the town; there is hardly any other that I could be satisfied to have my children in: but we are so remarkably airy! Mr. Wingfield thinks the vicinity of Brunswick Square decidedly the most favourable as to air.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear, it is not like Hartfield. You make the best of it-but after you have been a week at Hartfield, you are all of you different creatures; you do not look like the same. Now I cannot say that I think you are any of you looking well at present.\"\n\n\"I am sorry to hear you say so, sir: but I assure you, excepting those little nervous headaches and palpitations which I am never entirely free from anywhere, I am quite well myself; and if the children were rather pale before they went to bed, it was only because they were a little more tired than usual, from their journey and the happiness of coming. I hope you will think better of their looks to-morrow; for I assure you Mr. Wingfield told me, that he did not believe he had ever sent us off, altogether, in such good case. I trust, at least, that you do not think Mr. Knightley looking ill,\" turning her eyes with affectionate anxiety towards her husband."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Middling, my dear; I cannot compliment you. I think Mr. John Knightley very far from looking well.\"\n\n\"What is the matter, sir? Did you speak tome?\" cried Mr. John Knightley, hearing his own name.\n\n\"I am sorry to find, my love, that my father does not think you looking well; but I hope it is only from being a little fatigued. I could have wished, however, as you know, that you had seen Mr. Wingfield before you left home.\"\n\n\"My dear Isabella,\" exclaimed he, hastily, \"pray do not concern yourself about my looks. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and the children, and let me look as I choose.\"\n\n\"I did not thoroughly understand what you were telling your brother,\" cried Emma, \"about your friend Mr. Graham's intending to have a bailiff from Scotland, to look after his new estate. But will it answer? Will not the old prejudice be too strong?\"\n\nAnd she talked in this way so long and successfully that, when forced to give her attention again to her father and sister, she had nothing worse to hear than Isabella's kind enquiry after Jane Fairfax; and Jane Fairfax, though no great favourite with her in general, she was, at that moment, very happy to assist in praising.\n\n\"That sweet, amiable Jane Fairfax!\" said Mrs. John Knightley. \"It is so long since I have seen her, except now and then fora moment accidentally in town. What happiness it must be to her good old grandmother and excellent aunt, when she comes to visit them! I always regret excessively, on dear Emma's account, that she cannot be more at Highbury; but now their daughter is married, I suppose Colonel and Mrs. Campbell will not be able to part with her at all. She would be such a delightful companion for Emma.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Woodhouse agreed to it all, but added,-\n\n\"Our little friend, Harriet Smith, however, is just such another pretty kind of young person. You will like Harriet. Emma could not have a better companion than Harriet.\"\n\n\"I am most happy to hear it; but only Jane Fairfax one knows to be so very accomplished and superior, and exactly Emma's age.\"\n\nThis topic was discussed very happily, and others succeeded of similar moment, and passed away with similar harmony; but the evening did not close without a little return of agitation. The gruel came, and supplied a great deal to be said-much praise and many comments-undoubting decision of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty severe philippics 7 upon the many houses where it was never met with tolerable; but, unfortunately, among the failures which the daughter had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most prominent, was in her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin. Often as she had wished for and ordered it, she had never been able to get anything tolerable. Here was a dangerous opening.\n\n\"Ah,\" said Mr. Woodhouse, shaking his head, and fixing his eyes on her with tender concern. The ejaculation in Emma's ear expressed, \"Ah, there is no end of the sad consequences of your going to South End. It does not bear talking of.\" And fora little while she hoped he would not talk of it, and that a silent rumination might suffice to restore him to the relish of his own smooth gruel. After an interval of some minutes, however, he began with,-\n\n\"I shall always be very sorry that you went to the sea this autumn, instead of coming here.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"But why should you be sorry, sir? I assure you, it did the children a great deal of good.\"\n\n\"And, moreover, if you must go to the sea, it had better not have been to South End. South End is an unhealthy place. Perry was surprised to hear you had fixed upon South End.\"\n\n\"I know there is such an idea with many people, but indeed it is quite a mistake, sir. We all had our health perfectly well there, never found the least inconvenience from the mud, and Mr. Wingfield says it is entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy; and I am sure he maybe depended on, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air, and his own brother and family have been there repeatedly.\"\n\n\"You should have gone to Cromer, j my dear, if you went anywhere. Perry was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all the sea-bathing places. A fine open sea, he says, and very pure air. And, by what I understand, you might have had lodgings there quite away from the sea-a quarter of a mile off-very comfortable. You should have consulted Perry.\"\n\n\"But, my dear sir, the difference of the journey; only consider how great it would have been. A hundred miles, perhaps, instead of forty.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear,\" as Perry says, \"where health is at stake, nothing else should be considered; and if one is to travel, there is not much to choose between forty miles and a hundred. Better not move at all, better stay in London altogether, than travel forty miles to get into a worse air. This is just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very ill-judged measure.\"\n\nEmma's attempts to stop her father had been vain; and when he had reached such a point as this, she could not wonder at her brother-in-law's breaking out."},{"from":"human","value":"\"Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Perry,\" said he, in a voice of very strong displeasure, \"would do as well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. Why does he make it any business of his to wonder at what I do?-at my taking my family to one part of the coast or another? I maybe allowed, I hope, the use of my judgment as well as Mr. Perry. I want his directions no more than his drugs.\" He paused, and growing cooler in a moment, added, with only sarcastic dryness, \"If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and five children a distance of a hundred and thirty miles with no greater expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.\"\n\n\"True, true,\" cried Mr. Knightley, with most ready interposition,-\"very true. That's a consideration, indeed. But, John, as to what I was telling you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive any difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly the present line of the path.... The only way of proving it, however, will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you at the Abbey to-morrow morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and you shall give me your opinion.\"\n\nMr. Woodhouse was rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his friend Perry, to whom he had, in fact, though unconsciously, been attributing many of his own feelings and expressions; but the soothing attentions of his daughters gradually removed the present evil, and the immediate alertness of one brother, and better recollections of the other, prevented any renewal of it."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"There could hardly be a happier creature in the world than Mrs. John Knightley, in this short visit to Hartfield, going about every morning among her old acquaintance with her five children, and talking over what she had done every evening with her father and sister. She had nothing to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful visit;-perfect, in being much too short.\n\nIn general their evenings were less engaged with friends than their mornings: but one complete dinner engagement, and out of the house too, there was no avoiding, though at Christmas. Mr. Weston would take no denial: they must all dine at Randalls one day;-even Mr. Woodhouse was persuaded to think it a possible thing in preference to a division of the party.\n\nHow they were all to be conveyed, he would have made a difFculty if he could, but as his son and daughter's carriage and horses were actually at Hartfield, he was notable to make more than a simple question on that head; it hardly amounted to a doubt; nor did it occupy Emma long to convince him that they might in one of the carriages find room for Harriet also.\n\nHarriet, Mr. Elton, and Mr. Knightley, their own especial set, were the only persons invited to meet them:-the hours were to be early as well as the numbers few; Mr. Woodhouse's habits and inclination being consulted in everything.\n\nThe evening before this great event (for it was a very great event that Mr. Woodhouse should dine out on the 24th of December) had been spent by Harriet at Hartfield, and she had gone home so much indisposed with a cold, that, but for her own earnest wish of being nursed by Mrs. Goddard, Emma could not have allowed her to leave the house. Emma called on her the next day, and found her doom already signed with regard to Randalls. She was very feverish and had a bad sore-throat: Mrs. Goddard was full of care and affection, Mr. Perry was talked of, and Harriet herself was too ill and low to resist the authority which excluded her from this delightful engagement, though she could not speak of her loss without many tears."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma sat with her as long as she could, to attend her in Mrs. Goddard's unavoidable absences, and raise her spirits by representing how much Mr. Elton's would be depressed when he knew her state; and left her at last tolerably comfortable, in the sweet dependence of his having a most comfortless visit, and of their all missing her very much. She had not advanced many yards from Mrs. Goddard's door, when she was met by Mr. Elton himself, evidently coming towards it, and as they walked on slowly together in conversation about the invalid,-of whom he, on the rumour of considerable illness, had been going to enquire, that he might carry some report of her to Hartfield,-they were overtaken by Mr. John Knightley returning from the daily visit to Donwell, with his two eldest boys, whose healthy, glowing faces showed all the benefit of a country run, and seemed to ensure a quick despatch of the roast mutton and rice pudding they were hastening home for. They joined company and proceeded together. Emma was just describing the nature of her friend's complaint:-\"a throat very much inflamed, with a great deal of heat about her, a quick low pulse, & c., k and she was sorry to find from Mrs. Goddard that Harriet was liable to very bad sore throats, and had often alarmed her with them.\" Mr. Elton looked all alarm on the occasion, as he exclaimed,-\n\n\"A sore throat!-I hope not infectious. 1 hope not of a putrid infectious sort. Has Perry seen her? Indeed you should take care of yourself as well as of your friend. Let me entreat you to run no risks. Why does not Perry see her?\"\n\nEmma, who was not really at all frightened herself, tranquillised this excess of apprehension by assurances of Mrs. Goddard's experience and care; but as there must still remain a degree of uneasinesswhich she could not wish to reason away, which she would rather feed and assist than not, she added soon afterwards-as if quite another subject,-"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"It is so cold, so very cold, and looks and feels so very much like snow, that if it were to any other place or with any other party, I should really try not to go out to-day, and dissuade my father from venturing; but as he has made up his mind, and does not seem to feel the cold himself, I do not like to interfere, as I know it would be so great a disappointment to Mr. and Mrs. Weston. But upon my word, Mr. Elton, in your case, I should certainly excuse myself. You appear tome a little hoarse already; and when you consider what demand of voice and what fatigues to-morrow will bring, I think it would be no more than common prudence to stay at home and take care of yourself to-night.\"\n\nMr. Elton looked as if he did not very well know what answer to make; which was exactly the case; for though very much gratified by the kind care of such a fair lady, and not liking to resist any advice of hers, he had not really the least inclination to give up the visit; but Emma, too eager and busy in her own previous conceptions and views to hear him impartially, or see him with clear vision, was very well satisfied with his muttering acknowledgment of its being'very cold, certainly very cold,\" and walked on, rejoicing in having extricated himself from Randalls, and secured him the power of sending to enquire after Harriet every hour of the evening.\n\n\"You do quite right,\" said she:-\"we will make your apologies to Mr. and Mrs. Weston.\"\n\nBut hardly had she so spoken when she found her brother was civilly offering a seat in his carriage, if the weather were Mr. Elton's only objection, and Mr. Elton actually accepting the offer with much prompt satisfaction. It was a done thing: Mr. Elton was to go; and never had his broad handsome face expressed more pleasure than at this moment; never had his smile been stronger; nor his eyes more exulting than when he next looked at her."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Well,\" said she to herself, \"this is most strange! After I had gotten him off so well, to choose to go into company, and leave Harriet ill behind! Most strange indeed! But there is, I believe, in many men, especially single men, such an inclination-such a passion for dining out; a dinner engagement is so high in the class of their pleasures, their employments, their dignities, almost their duties, that anything gives way to it-and this must be the case with Mr. Elton: a most valuable, amiable, pleasing young man undoubtedly, and very much in love with Harriet; but still, he cannot refuse an invitation, he must dine out wherever he is asked. What a strange thing love is! he can see ready wit in Harriet, but will not dine alone for her.\"\n\nSoon afterwards Mr. Elton quitted them, and she could not but do him the justice of feeling that there was a great deal of sentiment in his manner of naming Harriet at parting; in the tone of his voice while assuring her that he should call at Mrs. Goddard's for news of her fair friend, the last thing before he prepared for the happiness of meeting her again, when he hoped to be able to give a better report; and he sighed and smiled himself off in away that left the balance of approbation much in his favour.\n\nAfter a few minutes of entire silence between them, John Knightley began with,-\n\n\"I never in my life saw a man more intent on being agreeable than Mr. Elton. It is downright labour to him where ladies are concerned. With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please every feature works.\"\n\n\"Mr. Elton's manners are not perfect,\" replied Emma; \"but where there is a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great deal. Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority. There is such perfect good temper and goodwill in Mr. Elton as one cannot but value.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Yes,\" said Mr. John Knightley presently, with some slyness, \"he seems to have a great deal of goodwill towards you.\"\n\n\"Me!\" she replied, with a smile of astonishment; \"are you imagining me to be Mr. Elton's object?\"\n\n\"Such an imagination has crossed me, I own, Emma; and if it never occurred to you before, you may as well take it into consideration now.\"\n\n\"Mr. Elton in love with me! What an idea!\" \"I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it is so or not, and to regulate your behaviour accordingly. I think your manners to him encouraging. I speak as a friend, Emma. You had better look about you, and ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do.\"\n\n\"I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I are very good friends, and nothing more;\" and she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are forever falling into; and not very well pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and in want of counsel. He said no more.\n\nMr. Woodhouse had so completely made up his mind to the visit, that in spite of the increasing coldness, he seemed to have no idea of shrinking from it, and set forward at last most punctually with his eldest daughter in his own carriage, with less apparent consciousness of the weather than either of the others; too full of the wonder of his own going, and the pleasure it was to afford at Randalls to see that it was cold, and too well wrapt up to feel it. The cold, however, was severe; and by the time the second carriage was in motion, a few flakes of snow were finding their way down, and the sky had the appearance of being so overcharged as to wantonly a milder air to produce a very white world in a very short time."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma soon saw that her companion was not in the happiest humour. The preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of his children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least, which Mr. John Knightley did not by any means like: he anticipated nothing in the visit that could beat all worth the purchase; and the whole of their drive to the vicarage was spent by him in expressing his discontent.\n\n\"A man,\" said he, \" must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fire-side, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest absurdity-actually snowing at this moment! The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home-and the folly of people's not staying comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it;-and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in everything given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can;-here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow. Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;-four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home.\n\nEmma did not find herself equal to give the pleased assent, which no doubt he was in the habit of receiving, to emulate the'Very true, my love,\" which must have been usually administered by his travelling companion; but she had resolution enough to refrain from making any answer at all. She could not be complying; she dreaded being quarrelsome; her heroism reached only to silence. She allowed him to talk, and arranged the glasses, and wrapped herself up, without opening her lips."},{"from":"human","value":"They arrived, the carriage turned, the step was letdown, and Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Elton, spruce, black, and smiling, was with them instantly. Emma thought with pleasure of some change of subject. Mr. Elton was all obligation and cheerfulness; he was so very cheerful in his civilities indeed, that she began to think he must have received a different account of Harriet from what had reached her. She had sent while dressing, and the answer had been, \"Much the same-not better.\"\n\n\"My report from Mrs. Goddard's,\" said she, presently, \"was not so pleasant as I had hoped:-\"Not better, ' was my answer.\"\n\nHis face lengthened immediately; and his voice was the voice of sentiment as he answered,-\n\n\"Oh no-I am grieved to find-I was on the point of telling you that when I called at Mrs. Goddard's door, which I did the very last thing before I returned to dress, I was told that Miss Smith was not better, by no means better, rather worse. Very much grieved and concerned-I had flattered myself that she must be better after such a cordial as I knew had been given in the morning.\"\n\nEmma smiled, and answered,-\"My visit was of use to the nervous part of her complaint, I hope; but not even I can charm away a sore throat; it is a most severe cold, indeed. Mr. Perry has been with her, as you probably heard.\"\n\n\"Yes-I imagined-that is-I did not-\"\n\n\"He has been used to her in these complaints, and I hope to-morrow morning will bring us both a more comfortable report. But it is impossible not to feel uneasiness. Such a sad loss to our party to-day!\"\n\n\"Dreadful! Exactly so, indeed. She will be missed every moment.\"\n\nThis was very proper; the sigh which accompanied it was really estimable; but it should have lasted longer. Emma was rather in dismay when only half a minute afterwards he began to speak of other things, and in a voice of the greatest alacrity and enjoyment."},{"from":"human","value":"\"What an excellent device,\" said he, \"the use of a sheep-skin for carriages."},{"from":"gpt","value":"How very comfortable they make it;-impossible to feel cold with such precautions. The contrivances of modern days, indeed, have rendered a gentleman's carriage perfectly complete. One is so fenced and guarded from the weather, that not a breath of air can find its way unpermitted. Weather becomes absolutely of no consequence. It is a very cold afternoon-but in this carriage we know nothing of the matter. Ha! snows a little, I see.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said John Knightley, \"and I think we shall have a good deal of it.\"\n\n\"Christmas weather,\" observed Mr. Elton. \"Quite seasonable; and extremely fortunate we may think ourselves that it did not begin yesterday, and prevent this day's party, which it might very possibly have done, for Mr. Woodhouse would hardly have ventured had there been much snow on the ground; but now it is of no consequence. This is quite the season, indeed, for friendly meetings. At Christmas everybody invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather. I was snowed up at a friend's house once fora week. Nothing could be pleasanter. I went for only one night, and could not getaway till that very day se'nnight.\" l Mr. John Knightley looked as if he did not comprehend the pleasure, but said only, coolly,-\n\n\"I cannot wish to be snowed up a week at Randalls.\"\n\nAt another time Emma might have been amused, but she was too much astonished now at Mr. Elton's spirits for other feelings. Harriet seemed quite forgotten in the expectation of a pleasant party.\n\n\"We are sure of excellent fires,\" continued he, \"and everything in the greatest comfort. Charming people, Mr. and Mrs. Weston;-Mrs. Weston indeed is much beyond praise, and he is exactly what one values, so hospitable, and so fond of society;-it will be a small party, but where small parties are select, they are, perhaps, the most agreeable of any. Mr. Weston's dining-room does not accommodate more than ten comfortably; and for my part, I would rather, under such circumstances, fall short by two than exceed by two. I think you will agree with me (turning with a soft air to Emma), I think I shall certainly have your approbation, though Mr. Knightley, perhaps, from being used to the large parties of London, may not quite enter into our feelings.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I know nothing of the large parties of London, sir-I never dine with anybody.\"\n\n\"Indeed! (in atone of wonder and pity,) I had no idea that the law had been so great a slavery. Well, sir, the time must come when you will be paid for all this, when you will have little labour and great enjoyment.\"\n\n\"My first enjoyment,\" replied John Knightley, as they passed through the sweep-gate, \"will be to find myself safe at Hartfield again.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Some change of countenance was necessary for each gentleman as they walked into Mrs. Weston's drawing-room;-Mr. Elton must compose his joyous looks, and Mr. John Knightley disperse his ill-humour. Mr. Elton must smile less, and Mr. John Knightley more, to fit them for the place. Emma only might be as nature prompted, and show herself just as happy as she was. To her, it was real enjoyment to be with the Westons. Mr. Weston was a great favourite, and there was not a creature in the world to whom she spoke with such unreserve as to his wife; not anyone, to whom she related with such conviction of being listened to and understood, of being always interesting and always intelligible, the little affairs, arrangements, perplexities, and pleasures of her father and herself. She could tell nothing of Hartfield, in which Mrs. Weston had not a lively concern; and half an hour's uninterrupted communication of all those little matters on which the daily happiness of private life depends, was one of the first gratifications of each.\n\nThis was a pleasure which perhaps the whole day's visit might not afford, which certainly did not belong to the present half hour; but the very sight of Mrs. Weston, her smile, her touch, her voice, was grateful to Emma, and she determined to think as little as possible of Mr. Elton's oddities, or of anything else unpleasant, and enjoy all that was enjoyable to the utmost.\n\nThe misfortune of Harriet's cold had been pretty well gone through before her arrival. Mr. Woodhouse had been safely seated long enough to give the history of it, besides all the history of his own and Isabella's coming, and of Emma's being to follow; and had, indeed, just got to the end of his satisfaction that James should come and see his daughter, when the others appeared, and Mrs. Weston, who had been almost wholly engrossed by her attentions to him, was able to turn away and welcome her dear Emma."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma's project of forgetting Mr. Elton fora while made her rather sorry to find, when they had all taken their places, that he was close to her. The difficulty was great of driving his strange insensibility towards Harriet from her mind, while he not only sat at her elbow, but was continually obtruding his happy countenance on her notice, and solicitously addressing her upon every occasion. Instead of forgetting him, his behaviour was such that she could not avoid the internal suggestion of'Can it really be as my brother imagined? can it be possible for this man to be beginning to transfer his affections from Harriet tome?-Absurd and insufferable!\"-Yet he would be so anxious for her being perfectly warm, would be so interested about her father, and so delighted with Mrs. Weston; and, at last, would begin admiring her drawings with so much zeal and so little knowledge, as seemed terribly like a would-be lover, and made it some effort with her to preserve her good manners. For her own sake she could not be rude; and for Harriet's, in the hope that all would yet turnout right, she was even positively civil: but it was an effort; especially as something was going on amongst the others, in the most overpowering period of Mr. Elton's nonsense, which she particularly wished to listen to. She heard enough to know that Mr. Weston was giving some information about his son: she heard the words'my son,\" and'Frank,\" and'my son,\" repeated several times over; and, from a few other half syllables, very much suspected that he was announcing an early visit from his son; but before she could quiet Mr. Elton, the subject was so completely past, that any reviving question from her would have been awkward.\n\nNow it so happened, that, in spite of Emma's resolution of never marrying, there was something in the name, in the idea, of Mr. Frank Churchill, which always interested her. She had frequently thought.-especially since his father's marriage with Miss Taylor,-that if she were to marry, he was the very person to suit her in age, character, and condition. He seemed, by this connection between the families, quite to belong to her. She could not but suppose it to be a match that everybody who knew them must think of. That Mr. and Mrs. Weston did think of it, she was very strongly persuaded; and though not meaning to be induced by him, or by anybody else, to give up a situation which she believed more replete with good than any she could change it for, she had a great curiosity to see him, a decided intention of finding him pleasant, of being liked by him to a certain degree, and a sort of pleasure in the idea of their being coupled in their friends' imaginations."},{"from":"human","value":"With such sensations, Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Elton's civilities were dreadfully ill-timed; but she had the comfort of appearing very polite, while feeling very cross;-and of thinking that the rest of the visit could not possibly pass without bringing forward the same information again, or the substance of it, from the open-hearted Mr. Weston. So it proved;-for, when happily released from Mr. Elton, and seated by Mr. Weston at dinner, he made use of the very first interval in the cares of hospitality, the very first leisure from the saddle of mutton, to say to her,-\n\n\"We wantonly two more to be just the right number. I should like to see two more here,-your pretty little friend, Miss Smith, and my son,-and then I should say we were quite complete. I believe you did not hear me telling the others in the drawing-room that we are expecting Frank. I had a letter from him this morning, and he will be with us within a fortnight.\"\n\nEmma spoke with a very proper degree of pleasure, and fully assented to his proposition, of Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Smith making their party quite complete.\n\n\"He has been wanting to come to us,\" continued Mr. Weston, \"ever since September: every letter has been full of it; but he cannot command his own time. He has those to please who must be pleased, and who (between ourselves) are sometimes to be pleased only by a good many sacrifices. But now I have no doubt of seeing him hereabout the second week in January.\"\n\n\"What a very great pleasure it will be to you! and Mrs. Weston is so anxious to be acquainted with him, that she must be almost as happy as yourself.\"\n\n\"Yes, she would be, but that she thinks there will be another put-off. She does not depend upon his coming so much as I do; but she does not know the parties so well as I do. The case, you see, is-(but this is quite between ourselves: I did not mention a syllable of it in the other room. There are secrets in all families, you know)-the case is, that a party of friends are invited to pay a vsit at Enscombe in January, and that Frank's coming depends upon their being put off. If they are not put off, he cannot stir. But I know they will, because it is a family that a certain lady, of some consequence at Enscombe, has a particular dislike to; and though it is thought necessary to invite them once in two or three years, they always are put off when it comes to the point. I have not the smallest doubt of the issue. I am as confident of seeing Frank here before the middle of January, as I am of being here myself: but your good friend there (nodding towards the upper end of the table) has so few vagaries herself, and has been so little used to them at Hartfield, that she cannot calculate on their effects, as I have been long in the practice of doing.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I am sorry there should be anything like doubt in the case,\" replied Emma; \"but am disposed to side with you, Mr. Weston. If you think he will come, I shall think so too; for you know Enscombe.\"\n\n\"Yes-I have some right to that knowledge; though I have never been at the place in my life. She is an odd woman! But I never allow myself to speak ill of her, on Frank's account; for I do believe her to be very fond of him. I used to think she was not capable of being fond of anybody except herself: but she has always been kind to him (in her way-allowing for little whims and caprices, and expecting everything to be as she likes). And it is no small credit, in my opinion, to him, that he should excite such an affection; for, though I would not say it to anybody else, she has no more heart than a stone to people in general, and the devil of a temper.\"\n\nEmma liked the subject so well, that she began upon it, to Mrs. Weston, very soon after their moving into the drawing-room; wishing her joy,-yet observing, that she knew the first meeting must be rather alarming. Mrs. Weston agreed to it; but added, that she should be very glad to be secure of undergoing the anxiety of a first meeting at the time talked of; \"for I cannot depend upon his coming. I cannot be so sanguine as Mr. Weston. I am very much afraid that it will all end in nothing. Mr. Weston, I daresay, has been telling you exactly how the matter stands.\"\n\n\"Yes-it seems to depend upon nothing but the ill-humour of Mrs. Churchill, which I imagine to be the most certain thing in the world.\"\n\n\"My Emma!\" replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, \"what is the certainty of caprice?\" Then turning to Isabella, who had not been attending before,-\"You must know, my dear Mrs. Knightley, that we are by no means so sure of seeing Mr. Frank Churchill, in any opinion, as his father thinks. It depends entirely upon his aunt's spirits and pleasure; in short, upon her temper. To you-to my two daughters-I may venture on the truth. Mrs. Churchill rules at Enscombe, and is a very odd-tempered woman; and his coming now depends upon her being willing to spare him.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Oh, Mrs. Churchill, everybody knows Mrs. Churchill,\" replied Isabella; \"and I am sure I never think of that poor young man without the greatest compassion. To be constantly living with an ill-tempered person must be dreadful. It is what we happily have never known anything of; but it must be a life of misery. What a blessing, that she never had any children! Poor little creatures, how unhappy she would have made them!\"\n\nEmma wished she had been alone with Mrs. Weston. She should then have heard more: Mrs. Weston would speak to her with a degree of unreserve which she would not hazard with Isabella; and, she really believed, would scarcely try to conceal anything relative to the Churchills from her, excepting those views on the young man, of which her own imagination had already given her such instinctive knowledge. But at present there was nothing more to be said. Mr. Woodhouse very soon followed them into the drawing-room. To be sitting long after dinner was a confinement that he could not endure. Neither wine nor conversation was anything to him; and gladly did he move to those with whom he was always comfortable.\n\nWhile he talked to Isabella, however, Emma found an opportunity of saying,-\n\n\"And so you do not consider this visit from your son as by any means certain. I am sorry for it. The introduction must be unpleasant, whenever it takes place; and the sooner it could be over the better.\"\n\n\"Yes; and every delay makes one more apprehensive of other delays. Even if this family, the Braithwaites, are put off, I am still afraid that some excuse maybe found for disappointing us. I cannot bear to imagine any reluctance on his side; but I am sure there is a great wish on the Churchills to keep him to themselves. There is jealousy. They are jealous even of his regard for his father. In short, I can feel no dependence on his coming, and I wish Mr. Weston were less sanguine.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"He ought to come,\" said Emma. \"If he could stay only a couple of days, he ought to come; and one can hardly conceive a young man's not having it in his power to do as much as that. A young woman, if she fall into bad hands, maybe teazed, and kept at a distance from those she wants to be with; but one cannot comprehend a young man's being under such restraint, as not to be able to spend a week with his father, if he likes it.\"\n\n\"One ought to beat Enscombe, and know the ways of the family, before one decides upon what he can do,\" replied Mrs. Weston. \"One ought to use the same caution, perhaps, in judging of the conduct of anyone individual of anyone family; but Enscombe, I believe, certainly must not be judged by general rules: she is so very unreasonable; and everything gives way to her.\"\n\n\"But she is so fond of the nephew: he is so very great a favourite. Now, according to my idea of Mrs. Churchill, it would be most natural, that while she makes no sacrifice for the comfort of the husband, to whom she owes everything, while she exercises incessant caprice towards him, she should frequently be governed by the nephew, to whom she owes nothing at all.\"\n\n\"My dearest Emma, do not pretend, with your sweet temper, to understand a bad one, or to lay down rules for it: you must let it go its own way. I have no doubt of his having, at times, considerable influence; but it maybe perfectly impossible for him to know beforehand when it will be.\"\n\nEmma listened, and then coolly said, \"I shall not be satisfied, unless he comes.\"\n\n\"He may have a great deal of influence on some points,\" continued Mrs. Weston, \"and on others, very little; and among those, on which she is beyond his reach, it is but too likely maybe this very circumstance of his coming away from them to visit us.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Woodhouse was soon ready for his tea; and when he had drank his tea he was quite ready to go home; and it was as much as his three companions could do, to entertain away his notice of the lateness of the hour, before the other gentlemen appeared. Mr. Weston was chatty and convivial, and no friend to early separations of any sort; but at last the drawing-room party did receive an augmentation. Mr. Elton, in very good spirits, was one of the first to walk in. Mrs. Weston and Emma were sitting together on a sofa. He joined them immediately, and with scarcely an invitation, seated himself between them.\n\nEmma, in good spirits too, from the amusement afforded her mind by the expectation of Mr. Frank Churchill, was willing to forget his late improprieties, and be as well satisfied with him as before, and on his making Harriet his very first subject, was ready to listen with most friendly smiles.\n\nHe professed himself extremely anxious about her fair friend-her fair, lovely, amiable friend. \"Did she know?-had she heard anything about her, since their being at Randalls?-he felt much anxiety-he must confess that the nature of her complaint alarmed him considerably.\" And in this style he talked on for sometime very properly, not much attending to any answer, but altogether sufficiently awake to the terror of a bad sore throat; and Emma was quite in charity with him.\n\nBut at last there seemed a perverse turn; it seemed all at once as if he were more afraid of its being a bad sore throat on her account than on Harriet's-more anxious that she should escape the infection, than that there should be no infection in the complaint. He began with great earnestness to entreat her to refrain from visiting the sick chamber again, for the present-to entreat her to promise him not to venture into such hazard till he had seen Mr. Perry and learned his opinion; and though she tried to laugh it off and bring the subject back into its proper course, there was no putting an end to his extreme solicitude about her. She was vexed. It did appear-there was no concealing it-exactly like the pretence of being in love with her, instead of Harriet; an inconstancy, if real, the most contemptible and abominable! and she had difficulty in behaving with temper. He turned to Mrs. Weston to implore her assistance: \" Would not she give him her support?-would not she add her persuasions to his, to induce Miss Woodhouse not to go to Mrs. Goddard's, till it were certain that Miss Smith's disorder had no infection? He could not be satisfied without a promise-would not she give him her influence in procuring it?"},{"from":"human","value":"\"So scrupulous for others,\" he continued, \"and yet so careless for herself!"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She wanted me to nurse my cold by staying at home today, and yet will not promise to avoid the danger of catching an ulcerated sore throat herself. Is this fair, Mrs. Weston? Judge between us. Have not I some right to complain? I am sure of your kind support and aid.\"\n\nEmma saw Mrs. Weston's surprise, and felt that it must be great, at an address which, in words and manner, was assuming to himself the right of first interest in her; and as for herself, she was too much provoked and offended to have the power of directly saying anything to the purpose. She could only give him a look; but it was such a look as she thought must restore him to his senses; and then left the sofa, removing to a seat by her sister, and giving her all her attention.\n\nShe had not time to know how Mr. Elton took the reproof, so rapidly did another subject succeed; for Mr. John Knightley now came into the room from examining the weather, and opened on them all with the information of the ground being covered with snow, and of its still snowing fast, with a strong drifting wind; concluding with these words to Mr. Woodhouse;-\n\n\"This will prove a spirited beginning of your winter engagements, sir. Something new for your coachman and horses to be making their way through a storm of snow.\"\n\nPoor Mr. Woodhouse was silent from consternation; but everybody else had something to say; everybody was either surprised, or not surprised, and had some question to ask, or some comfort to offer. Mrs. Weston and Emma tried earnestly to cheer him and turn his attention from his son-in-law, who was pursuing his triumph rather unfeelingly.\n\n\"I admired your resolution very much, sir,\" said he, \"in venturing out in such weather, for of course you saw there would be snow very soon. Everybody must have seen the snow coming on. I admired your spirit; and I daresay we shall get home very well. Another hour or two's snow can hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand. I daresay we shall be all safe at Hartfield before midnight.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Weston, with triumph of a different sort, was confessing that he had known it to be snowing sometime, but had not said a word, lest it should make Mr. Woodhouse uncomfortable, and bean excuse for his hurrying away. As to there being any quantity of snow fallen or likely to fall to impede their return, that was a mere joke; he was afraid they would find no difficulty. He wished the road might be impassable, that he might be able to keep them all at Randalls; and with the utmost good-will was sure that accommodation might be found for everybody, calling on his wife to agree with him, that, with a little contrivance, everybody might be lodged, which she hardly knew how to do, from the consciousness of there being but two spare rooms in the house.\n\n\"What is to be done, my dear Emma? what is to be done?\" was Mr. Woodhouse's first exclamation, and all that he could say for sometime. To her he looked for comfort; and her assurances of safety, her representation of the excellence of the horses, and of James, and of their having so many friends about them, revived him a little.\n\nHis eldest daughter's alarm was equal to his own. The horror of being blocked up at Randalls, while her children were at Hartfield, was full in her imagination; and fancying the road to be now just passable for adventurous people, but in a state that admitted no delay, she was eager to have it settled, that her father and Emma should remain at Randalls while she and her husband set forward instantly through all the possible accumulations of drifted snow that might impede them.\n\n\"You had better order the carriage directly, my love,\" said she: \"I daresay we shall be able to get along, if we set off directly; and if we do come to anything very bad, I can get out and walk. I am not at all afraid. I should not mind walking half the way. I could change my shoes, you know, the moment I got home; and it is not the sort of thing that gives me cold.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Indeed!\" replied he. \"Then, my dear Isabella, it is the most extraordinary sort of thing in the world, for in general everything does give you cold. Walk home!-you are prettily shod for walking home, I daresay. It will be bad enough for the horses.\"\n\nIsabella turned to Mrs. Weston for her approbation of the plan. Mrs. Weston could only approve. Isabella then went to Emma; but Emma could not so entirely give up the hope of their being all able to getaway; and they were still discussing the point, when Mr. Knightley, who had left the room immediately after his brother's first report of the snow, came back again, and told them that he had been out of doors to examine, and could answer for there not being the smallest difficulty in their getting home, whenever they liked it, either now or an hour hence. He had gone beyond the sweep-someway along the Highbury road-the snow was nowhere above half an inch deep-in many places hardly enough to whiten the ground; a very few flakes were falling at present, but the clouds were parting, and there was every appearance of its being soon over. He had seen the coachmen, and they both agreed with him in there being nothing to apprehend.\n\nTo Isabella, the relief of such tidings was very great, and they were scarcely less acceptable to Emma on her father's account, who was immediately set as much at ease on the subject as his nervous constitution allowed; but the alarm that had been raised could not be appeased so as to admit of any comfort for him while he continued at Randalls. He was satisfied of there being no present danger in returning home, but no assurance could convince him that it was safe to stay; and while the others were variously urging and recommending, Mr. Knightley and Emma settled it in a few brief sentences: thus,-"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Yes, do.\"\n\nAnd the bell was rung, and the carriages spoken for. A few minutes more, and Emma hoped to see one troublesome companion deposited in his own house, to get sober and cool, and the other recover his temper and happiness when this visit of hardship were over.\n\nThe carriage came; and Mr. Woodhouse, always the first object on such occasions, was carefully attended to his own by Mr. Knightley and Mr. Weston; but not all that either could say could prevent some renewal of alarm at the sight of the snow which had actually fallen, and the discovery of a much darker night than he had been prepared for. \"He was afraid they should have a very bad drive. He was afraid poor Isabella would not like it. And there would be poor Emma in the carriage behind. He did not know what they had best do. They must keep as much together as they could;\" and James was talked to, and given a charge to go very slow, and wait for the other carriage.\n\nIsabella stept in after her father; John Knightley, forgetting that he did not belong to their party, stept in after his wife very naturally; so that Emma found, on being escorted and followed into the second carriage by Mr. Elton, that the door was to be lawfully shut on them, and that they were to have a tête-à-tête drive. It would not have been the awkwardness of a moment, it would have been rather a pleasure, previous to the suspicions of this very day; she could have talked to him of Harriet, and the three quarters of a mile would have seemed but one. But how, she would rather it had not happened. She believed he had been drinking too much of Mr. Weston's good wine; and felt sure that he would want to be talking nonsense."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of the weather and the night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her subject cutup-her hand seized-her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known, hoping-fearing-adoring-ready to die if she refused him; but flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and unexampled passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short, very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible. It really was so. Without scruple-without apology-without much apparent diffidence, Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself her lover. She tried to stop him; but vainly; he would goon, and say it all. Angry as she was, the thought of the moment made her resolve to restrain herself when she did speak. She felt that half this folly must be drunkenness, and therefore could hope that it might belong only to the passing hour. Accordingly, with a mixture of the serious and the playful, which she hoped would best suit his half and half state, she replied,-\n\n\"I am very much astonished, Mr. Elton. This tome, you forget yourself-you take me for my friend-any message to Miss Smith I shall be happy to deliver; but no more of this tome, if you please.\"\n\n\"Miss Smith!-Message to Miss Smith!-What could she possibly mean!\"-And he repeated her words with such assurance of accent, such boastful pretence of amazement, that she could not help replying with quickness,-"},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Mr. Elton, this is the most extraordinary conduct! and I can account for it only in one way; you are not yourself, or you could not speak either tome, or of Harriet, in such a manner. Command yourself enough to say no more, and I will endeavour to forget it.\"\n\nBut Mr. Elton had only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at all to confuse his intellects. He perfectly knew his own meaning; and having warmly protested against her suspicion as most injurious, and slightly touched upon his respect for Miss Smith as her friend,-but acknowledging his wonder that Miss Smith should be mentioned at all,-he resumed the subject of his own passion, and was very urgent fora favourable answer.\n\nAs she thoughtless of his inebriety, she thought more of his inconstancy and presumption; and with fewer struggles for politeness, replied,-\n\n\"It is impossible for me to doubt any longer. You have made yourself too clear. Mr. Elton, my astonishment is much beyond anything I can express. After such behaviour, as I have witnessed during the last month, to Miss Smith-such attentions as I have been in the daily habit of observing-to be addressing me in this manner-this is an unsteadiness of character, indeed, which I had not supposed possible! Believe me, sir, I am far-very far-from gratified in being the object of such professions.\"\n\n\"Good heaven!\" cried Mr. Elton, \"what can be the meaning of this? Miss Smith! I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence-never paid her any attentions, but as your friend: never cared whether she were dead or alive, but as your friend. If she has fancied otherwise, her own wishes have misled her, and I am very sorry-extremely sorry. But, Miss Smith, indeed! Oh, Miss Woodhouse, who can think of Miss Smith when Miss Woodhouse is near? No, upon my honour, there is no unsteadiness of character. I have thought only of you. I protest against having paid the smallest attention to anyone else. Everything that I have said or done, for many weeks past, has been with the sole view of marking my adoration of yourself. You cannot really, seriously doubt it. No! (in an accent meant to be insinuating) I am sure you have seen and understood me.\""},{"from":"human","value":"It would be impossible to say what Emma felt on hearing this; which of all her unpleasant sensations was uppermost."},{"from":"gpt","value":"She was too completely overpowered to be immediately able to reply; and two moments of silence being ample encouragement for Mr. Elton's sanguine state of mind, he tried to take her hand again, as he joyously exclaimed.-\n\n\"Charming Miss Woodhouse! allow me to interpret this interesting silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" cried Emma, \"it confesses no such thing. So far from having long understood you, I have been in a most complete error with respect to your views till this moment. As to myself I am very sorry that you should have been giving way to any feelings-Nothing could be farther from my wishes-your attachment to my friend Harriet-your pursuit of her (pursuit it appeared)-gave me great pleasure, and I have been very earnestly wishing you success; but had I supposed that she were not your attraction to Hartfield, I should certainly have thought you judged ill in making your visits so frequent. Am Ito believe that you have never sought to recommend yourself particularly to Miss Smith? that you have never thought seriously of her?\"\n\n\"Never, madam,\" cried he, affronted in his turn: \"never, I assure you. I think seriously of Miss Smith!-Miss Smith is a very good sort of girl; and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish her extremely well; and, no doubt, there are men who might not object to-Everybody has their level; but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss. I need not so totally despair of an equal alliance as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith! No, madam, my visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only; and the encouragement I received-\"\n\n\"Encouragement! I give you encouragement!-sir, you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my friend. In no other light could you have been more tome than a common acquaintance. I am exceedingly sorry; but it is well that the mistake ends where it does. Had the same behaviour continued, Miss Smith might have been led into a misconception of your views; not being aware, probably, anymore than myself, of the very great inequality which you are so sensible of. But, as it is, the disappointment is single, and, I trust, will not be lasting. I have no thoughts of matrimony at present.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Co-writing with the writer, continue the narrative.\\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\\nAuthor: Jane Austen\\nTitle: Emma\\nChapter: 16\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Where is the young man?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"said John Knightley. \\\"Has he been hereon this occasion, or has he not?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He has not been here yet,\\\" replied Emma. \\\"There was a strong expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But you should tell them of the letter, my dear,\\\" said her father. \\\" He wrote a letter to poor Mrs. Weston, to congratulate her, and a very proper, handsome letter it was. She showed it tome. I thought it very well done of him, indeed. Whether it was his own idea, you know, one cannot tell. He is but young, and his uncle, perhaps-\\n\\n\\\"My dear papa, he is three-and-twenty. You forget how time passes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Three-and-twenty! is he, indeed? Well, I could not have thought it; and he was but two years old when he lost his poor mother. Well, time does fly indeed! and my memory is very bad. However, it was an exceeding good, pretty letter, and gave Mr. and Mrs. Weston a great deal of pleasure. I remember it was written from Weymouth, and dated Sept. 28th, and began \\\"My dear Madam,\\\" but I forget how it went on; and it was signed \\\"F. C. Weston Churchill.\\\" I remember that perfectly.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How very pleasing and proper of him!\\\" cried the good-hearted Mrs. John Knightley. \\\"I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is something so shocking in a child's being taken away from his parents and natural home! I never can comprehend how Mr. Weston could part with him. To give up one's child! I really never could think well of anybody who proposed such a thing to anybody else.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Nobody ever did think well of the Churchills, I fancy,\\\" observed Mr. John Knightley, coolly. \\\"But you need not imagine Mr. Weston to have felt what you would feel in giving up Henry or John. Mr. Weston is rather an easy, cheerful tempered man, than a man of strong feelings: he takes things as he finds them, and makes enjoyment of them somehow or other, depending, I suspect, much more upon what is called society for his comforts, that is, upon the power of eating and drinking, and playing whist with his neighbours five times a week, than upon family affection, or anything that home affords.\\\"\\n\\nEmma could not like what bordered on a reflection on Mr. Weston, and had half a mind to take it up; but she struggled, and let it pass. She would keep the peace if possible; and there was something honourable and valuable in the strong domestic habits, the all-sufficiency of home to himself, whence resulted her brother's disposition to look down on the common rate of social intercourse, and those to whom it was important. It had a high claim to forbearance.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Knightley was to dine with them, rather against the inclination of Mr. Woodhouse, who did not like that anyone should share with him in Isabella's first day. Emma's sense of right, however, had decided it; and, besides the consideration of what was due to each brother, she had particular pleasure, from the circumstance of the late disagreement between Mr. Knightley and herself, in procuring him the proper invitation.\\n\\nShe hoped they might now become friends again. She thought it was time to makeup. Making-up, indeed, would not do. She certainly had not been in the wrong, and he would never own that he had. Concession must be out of the question: but it was time to appear to forget that they had ever quarrelled; and she hoped it might rather assist the restoration of friendship, that when he came into the room she had one of the children with her,-the youngest, a nice little girl about eight months old, who was now making her first visit to Hartfield, and very happy to be danced about in her aunt's arms. It did assist; for though he began with grave looks and short questions, he was soon led onto talk of them all in the usual way, and to take the child out of her arms with all the unceremoniousness of perfect amity. Emma felt they were friends again; and the conviction giving her at first great satisfaction, and then a little sauciness, she could not help saying, as he was admiring the baby,-\\n\\n\\\"What a comfort it is, that we think alike about our nephews and nieces. As to men and women, our opinions are sometimes very different; but with regard to these children, I observe we never disagree.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"If you were as much guided by nature in your estimate of men and women, and as little under the power of fancy and whim in your dealings with them, as you are where these children are concerned, we might always think alike.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"To be sure-our discordances must always arise from my being in the wrong.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes,\\\" said he, smiling, \\\"and reason good. I was sixteen years old when you were born.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"A material difference, then,\\\" she replied; \\\"and no doubt you were much my superior in judgment at that period of our lives; but does not the lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal nearer?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, a good deal nearer.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we think differently.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have still the advantage of you by sixteen years' experience, and by not being a pretty young woman and a spoiled child. Come, my dear Emma, let us befriends, and say no more about it. Tell your aunt, little Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old grievances, and that if she were not wrong before, she is now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's true,\\\" she cried, \\\"very true. Little Emma, grow up a better woman than your aunt. Be infinitely cleverer and not half so conceited. Now, Mr. Knightley, a word or two more, and I have done. As far as good intentions went, we were both right, and I must say, that no effects on my side of the argument have yet proved wrong. I only want to know that Mr. Martinis not very, very bitterly disappointed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"A man cannot be more so,\\\" was his short, full answer.\\n\\n\\\"Ah! Indeed I am very sorry. Come, shake hands with me.\\\"\\n\\nThis had just taken place, and with great cordiality, when John Knightley made his appearance; and'How d'ye do, George?\\\" and'John, how are you?\\\" succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do everything for the good of the other.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The evening was quiet and conversible, as Mr. Woodhouse declined cards entirely for the sake of comfortable talk with his dear Isabella, and the little party made two natural divisions: on one side he and his daughter; on the other the two Mr. Knightleys; their subjects totally distinct, or very rarely mixing, and Emma only occasionally joining in one or the other.\\n\\nThe brothers talked of their own concerns and pursuits, but principally of those of the elder, whose temper was by much the most communicative, and who was always the greater talker. As a magistrate, he had generally some point of law to consult John about, or, at least, some curious anecdote to give; and as a farmer, as keeping in hand the home-farm at Donwell, he had to tell what every field was to bear next year, and to give all such local information as could not fail of being interesting to a brother, whose home it had equally been the longest part of his life, and whose attachments were strong. The plan of a drain, the change of a fence, the felling of a tree, and the destination of every acre for wheat, turnips, or spring corn, was entered into with as much equality of interest by John as his cooler manners rendered possible; and if his willing brother ever left him anything to enquire about, his enquiries even approached atone of eagerness.\\n\\nWhile they were thus comfortably occupied, Mr. Woodhouse was enjoying a full flow of happy regrets and fearful affection with his daughter.\\n\\n\\\"My poor dear Isabella,\\\" said he, fondly taking her hand, and interrupting, fora few moments, her busy labours for someone of her five children, \\\"how long it is, how terribly long since you were here! And how tired you must be after your journey! You must go to bed early, my dear,-and I recommend a little gruel to you before you go. You and I will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear Emma, suppose we all have a little gruel.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma could not suppose any such thing, knowing, as she did, that both the Mr. Knightleys were as unpersuadable on that article as herself, and two basins only were ordered. After a little more discourse in praise of gruel, with some wondering at its not being taken every evening by everybody, he proceeded to say, with an air of grave reflection,-\\n\\n\\\"It was an awkward business, my dear, your spending the autumn at South End instead of coming here. I never had much opinion of the sea air.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Wingfield most strenuously recommended it, sir, or we should not have gone. He recommended it for all the children, but particularly for the weakness in little Bella's throat,-both sea air and bathing.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ah, my dear, but Perry had many doubts about the sea doing her any good; and as to myself, I have been long perfectly convinced, though perhaps I never told you so before, that the sea is very rarely of use to anybody. I am sure it almost killed me once.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Come, come,\\\" cried Emma, feeling this to bean unsafe subject, \\\"I must beg you not to talk of the sea. It makes me envious and miserable; I who have never seen it! South End is prohibited, if you please. My dear Isabella, I have not heard you make one enquiry after Mr. Perry yet; and he never forgets you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, good Mr. Perry, how is he, sir?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why, pretty well; but not quite well. Poor Perry is bilious, and he has not time to take care of himself; he tells me he has not time to take care of himself-which is very sad-but he is always wanted all round the country. I suppose there is not a man in such practice anywhere. But then, there is not so clever a man anywhere.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"And Mrs. Perry and the children, how are they? Do the children grow? I have a great regard for Mr. Perry. I hope he will be calling soon. He will be so pleased to see my little ones.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I hope he will be hereto-morrow, for I have a question or two to ask him about myself of some consequence. And, my dear, whenever he comes, you had better let him look at little Bella's throat.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, my dear sir, her throat is so much better that I have hardly any uneasiness about it. Either bathing has been of the greatest service to her, or else it is to be attributed to an excellent embrocation of Mr. Wingfield's, which we have been applying at times ever since August.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is not very likely, my dear, that bathing should have been of use to her; and if I had known you were wanting an embrocation, I would have spoken to-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You seem tome to have forgotten Mrs. and Miss Bates,\\\" said Emma; \\\"I have not heard one enquiry after them.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, the good Bateses-I am quite ashamed of myself; but you mention them inmost of your letters. I hope they are quite well. Good old Mrs. Bates. I will call upon her to-morrow, and take my children. They are always so pleased to see my children. And that excellent Miss Bates!-such thorough worthy people! How are they, sir?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Why, pretty well, my dear, upon the whole. But poor Mrs. Bates had a bad cold about a month ago.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How sorry I am! but colds were never so prevalent as they have been this autumn. Mr. Wingfield told me that he had never known them more general or heavy, except when it has been quite an influenza.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"That has been a good deal the case, my dear, but not to the degree you mention.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Perry says that colds have been very general, but not so heavy as he has very often known them in November. Perry does not call it altogether a sickly season.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, I do not know that Mr. Wingfield considers it very sickly, except-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ah, my poor dear child, the truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. It is a dreadful thing to have you forced to live there;-so far off!-and the air so bad!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, indeed, we are not at all in a bad air. Our part of London is so very superior to most others. You must not confound us with London in general, my dear sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very different from almost all the rest. We are so very airy! I should be unwilling, I own, to live in any other part of the town; there is hardly any other that I could be satisfied to have my children in: but we are so remarkably airy! Mr. Wingfield thinks the vicinity of Brunswick Square decidedly the most favourable as to air.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ah, my dear, it is not like Hartfield. You make the best of it-but after you have been a week at Hartfield, you are all of you different creatures; you do not look like the same. Now I cannot say that I think you are any of you looking well at present.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am sorry to hear you say so, sir: but I assure you, excepting those little nervous headaches and palpitations which I am never entirely free from anywhere, I am quite well myself; and if the children were rather pale before they went to bed, it was only because they were a little more tired than usual, from their journey and the happiness of coming. I hope you will think better of their looks to-morrow; for I assure you Mr. Wingfield told me, that he did not believe he had ever sent us off, altogether, in such good case. I trust, at least, that you do not think Mr. Knightley looking ill,\\\" turning her eyes with affectionate anxiety towards her husband.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Middling, my dear; I cannot compliment you. I think Mr. John Knightley very far from looking well.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What is the matter, sir? Did you speak tome?\\\" cried Mr. John Knightley, hearing his own name.\\n\\n\\\"I am sorry to find, my love, that my father does not think you looking well; but I hope it is only from being a little fatigued. I could have wished, however, as you know, that you had seen Mr. Wingfield before you left home.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear Isabella,\\\" exclaimed he, hastily, \\\"pray do not concern yourself about my looks. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and the children, and let me look as I choose.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I did not thoroughly understand what you were telling your brother,\\\" cried Emma, \\\"about your friend Mr. Graham's intending to have a bailiff from Scotland, to look after his new estate. But will it answer? Will not the old prejudice be too strong?\\\"\\n\\nAnd she talked in this way so long and successfully that, when forced to give her attention again to her father and sister, she had nothing worse to hear than Isabella's kind enquiry after Jane Fairfax; and Jane Fairfax, though no great favourite with her in general, she was, at that moment, very happy to assist in praising.\\n\\n\\\"That sweet, amiable Jane Fairfax!\\\" said Mrs. John Knightley. \\\"It is so long since I have seen her, except now and then fora moment accidentally in town. What happiness it must be to her good old grandmother and excellent aunt, when she comes to visit them! I always regret excessively, on dear Emma's account, that she cannot be more at Highbury; but now their daughter is married, I suppose Colonel and Mrs. Campbell will not be able to part with her at all. She would be such a delightful companion for Emma.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Woodhouse agreed to it all, but added,-\\n\\n\\\"Our little friend, Harriet Smith, however, is just such another pretty kind of young person. You will like Harriet. Emma could not have a better companion than Harriet.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am most happy to hear it; but only Jane Fairfax one knows to be so very accomplished and superior, and exactly Emma's age.\\\"\\n\\nThis topic was discussed very happily, and others succeeded of similar moment, and passed away with similar harmony; but the evening did not close without a little return of agitation. The gruel came, and supplied a great deal to be said-much praise and many comments-undoubting decision of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty severe philippics 7 upon the many houses where it was never met with tolerable; but, unfortunately, among the failures which the daughter had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most prominent, was in her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin. Often as she had wished for and ordered it, she had never been able to get anything tolerable. Here was a dangerous opening.\\n\\n\\\"Ah,\\\" said Mr. Woodhouse, shaking his head, and fixing his eyes on her with tender concern. The ejaculation in Emma's ear expressed, \\\"Ah, there is no end of the sad consequences of your going to South End. It does not bear talking of.\\\" And fora little while she hoped he would not talk of it, and that a silent rumination might suffice to restore him to the relish of his own smooth gruel. After an interval of some minutes, however, he began with,-\\n\\n\\\"I shall always be very sorry that you went to the sea this autumn, instead of coming here.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"But why should you be sorry, sir? I assure you, it did the children a great deal of good.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And, moreover, if you must go to the sea, it had better not have been to South End. South End is an unhealthy place. Perry was surprised to hear you had fixed upon South End.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I know there is such an idea with many people, but indeed it is quite a mistake, sir. We all had our health perfectly well there, never found the least inconvenience from the mud, and Mr. Wingfield says it is entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy; and I am sure he maybe depended on, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air, and his own brother and family have been there repeatedly.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You should have gone to Cromer, j my dear, if you went anywhere. Perry was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all the sea-bathing places. A fine open sea, he says, and very pure air. And, by what I understand, you might have had lodgings there quite away from the sea-a quarter of a mile off-very comfortable. You should have consulted Perry.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But, my dear sir, the difference of the journey; only consider how great it would have been. A hundred miles, perhaps, instead of forty.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ah, my dear,\\\" as Perry says, \\\"where health is at stake, nothing else should be considered; and if one is to travel, there is not much to choose between forty miles and a hundred. Better not move at all, better stay in London altogether, than travel forty miles to get into a worse air. This is just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very ill-judged measure.\\\"\\n\\nEmma's attempts to stop her father had been vain; and when he had reached such a point as this, she could not wonder at her brother-in-law's breaking out.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Perry,\\\" said he, in a voice of very strong displeasure, \\\"would do as well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. Why does he make it any business of his to wonder at what I do?-at my taking my family to one part of the coast or another? I maybe allowed, I hope, the use of my judgment as well as Mr. Perry. I want his directions no more than his drugs.\\\" He paused, and growing cooler in a moment, added, with only sarcastic dryness, \\\"If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and five children a distance of a hundred and thirty miles with no greater expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"True, true,\\\" cried Mr. Knightley, with most ready interposition,-\\\"very true. That's a consideration, indeed. But, John, as to what I was telling you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive any difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly the present line of the path.... The only way of proving it, however, will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you at the Abbey to-morrow morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and you shall give me your opinion.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Woodhouse was rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his friend Perry, to whom he had, in fact, though unconsciously, been attributing many of his own feelings and expressions; but the soothing attentions of his daughters gradually removed the present evil, and the immediate alertness of one brother, and better recollections of the other, prevented any renewal of it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There could hardly be a happier creature in the world than Mrs. John Knightley, in this short visit to Hartfield, going about every morning among her old acquaintance with her five children, and talking over what she had done every evening with her father and sister. She had nothing to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful visit;-perfect, in being much too short.\\n\\nIn general their evenings were less engaged with friends than their mornings: but one complete dinner engagement, and out of the house too, there was no avoiding, though at Christmas. Mr. Weston would take no denial: they must all dine at Randalls one day;-even Mr. Woodhouse was persuaded to think it a possible thing in preference to a division of the party.\\n\\nHow they were all to be conveyed, he would have made a difFculty if he could, but as his son and daughter's carriage and horses were actually at Hartfield, he was notable to make more than a simple question on that head; it hardly amounted to a doubt; nor did it occupy Emma long to convince him that they might in one of the carriages find room for Harriet also.\\n\\nHarriet, Mr. Elton, and Mr. Knightley, their own especial set, were the only persons invited to meet them:-the hours were to be early as well as the numbers few; Mr. Woodhouse's habits and inclination being consulted in everything.\\n\\nThe evening before this great event (for it was a very great event that Mr. Woodhouse should dine out on the 24th of December) had been spent by Harriet at Hartfield, and she had gone home so much indisposed with a cold, that, but for her own earnest wish of being nursed by Mrs. Goddard, Emma could not have allowed her to leave the house. Emma called on her the next day, and found her doom already signed with regard to Randalls. She was very feverish and had a bad sore-throat: Mrs. Goddard was full of care and affection, Mr. Perry was talked of, and Harriet herself was too ill and low to resist the authority which excluded her from this delightful engagement, though she could not speak of her loss without many tears.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma sat with her as long as she could, to attend her in Mrs. Goddard's unavoidable absences, and raise her spirits by representing how much Mr. Elton's would be depressed when he knew her state; and left her at last tolerably comfortable, in the sweet dependence of his having a most comfortless visit, and of their all missing her very much. She had not advanced many yards from Mrs. Goddard's door, when she was met by Mr. Elton himself, evidently coming towards it, and as they walked on slowly together in conversation about the invalid,-of whom he, on the rumour of considerable illness, had been going to enquire, that he might carry some report of her to Hartfield,-they were overtaken by Mr. John Knightley returning from the daily visit to Donwell, with his two eldest boys, whose healthy, glowing faces showed all the benefit of a country run, and seemed to ensure a quick despatch of the roast mutton and rice pudding they were hastening home for. They joined company and proceeded together. Emma was just describing the nature of her friend's complaint:-\\\"a throat very much inflamed, with a great deal of heat about her, a quick low pulse, & c., k and she was sorry to find from Mrs. Goddard that Harriet was liable to very bad sore throats, and had often alarmed her with them.\\\" Mr. Elton looked all alarm on the occasion, as he exclaimed,-\\n\\n\\\"A sore throat!-I hope not infectious. 1 hope not of a putrid infectious sort. Has Perry seen her? Indeed you should take care of yourself as well as of your friend. Let me entreat you to run no risks. Why does not Perry see her?\\\"\\n\\nEmma, who was not really at all frightened herself, tranquillised this excess of apprehension by assurances of Mrs. Goddard's experience and care; but as there must still remain a degree of uneasinesswhich she could not wish to reason away, which she would rather feed and assist than not, she added soon afterwards-as if quite another subject,-\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"It is so cold, so very cold, and looks and feels so very much like snow, that if it were to any other place or with any other party, I should really try not to go out to-day, and dissuade my father from venturing; but as he has made up his mind, and does not seem to feel the cold himself, I do not like to interfere, as I know it would be so great a disappointment to Mr. and Mrs. Weston. But upon my word, Mr. Elton, in your case, I should certainly excuse myself. You appear tome a little hoarse already; and when you consider what demand of voice and what fatigues to-morrow will bring, I think it would be no more than common prudence to stay at home and take care of yourself to-night.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Elton looked as if he did not very well know what answer to make; which was exactly the case; for though very much gratified by the kind care of such a fair lady, and not liking to resist any advice of hers, he had not really the least inclination to give up the visit; but Emma, too eager and busy in her own previous conceptions and views to hear him impartially, or see him with clear vision, was very well satisfied with his muttering acknowledgment of its being'very cold, certainly very cold,\\\" and walked on, rejoicing in having extricated himself from Randalls, and secured him the power of sending to enquire after Harriet every hour of the evening.\\n\\n\\\"You do quite right,\\\" said she:-\\\"we will make your apologies to Mr. and Mrs. Weston.\\\"\\n\\nBut hardly had she so spoken when she found her brother was civilly offering a seat in his carriage, if the weather were Mr. Elton's only objection, and Mr. Elton actually accepting the offer with much prompt satisfaction. It was a done thing: Mr. Elton was to go; and never had his broad handsome face expressed more pleasure than at this moment; never had his smile been stronger; nor his eyes more exulting than when he next looked at her.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Well,\\\" said she to herself, \\\"this is most strange! After I had gotten him off so well, to choose to go into company, and leave Harriet ill behind! Most strange indeed! But there is, I believe, in many men, especially single men, such an inclination-such a passion for dining out; a dinner engagement is so high in the class of their pleasures, their employments, their dignities, almost their duties, that anything gives way to it-and this must be the case with Mr. Elton: a most valuable, amiable, pleasing young man undoubtedly, and very much in love with Harriet; but still, he cannot refuse an invitation, he must dine out wherever he is asked. What a strange thing love is! he can see ready wit in Harriet, but will not dine alone for her.\\\"\\n\\nSoon afterwards Mr. Elton quitted them, and she could not but do him the justice of feeling that there was a great deal of sentiment in his manner of naming Harriet at parting; in the tone of his voice while assuring her that he should call at Mrs. Goddard's for news of her fair friend, the last thing before he prepared for the happiness of meeting her again, when he hoped to be able to give a better report; and he sighed and smiled himself off in away that left the balance of approbation much in his favour.\\n\\nAfter a few minutes of entire silence between them, John Knightley began with,-\\n\\n\\\"I never in my life saw a man more intent on being agreeable than Mr. Elton. It is downright labour to him where ladies are concerned. With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please every feature works.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Elton's manners are not perfect,\\\" replied Emma; \\\"but where there is a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great deal. Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority. There is such perfect good temper and goodwill in Mr. Elton as one cannot but value.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yes,\\\" said Mr. John Knightley presently, with some slyness, \\\"he seems to have a great deal of goodwill towards you.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Me!\\\" she replied, with a smile of astonishment; \\\"are you imagining me to be Mr. Elton's object?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Such an imagination has crossed me, I own, Emma; and if it never occurred to you before, you may as well take it into consideration now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Elton in love with me! What an idea!\\\" \\\"I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it is so or not, and to regulate your behaviour accordingly. I think your manners to him encouraging. I speak as a friend, Emma. You had better look about you, and ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I are very good friends, and nothing more;\\\" and she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are forever falling into; and not very well pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and in want of counsel. He said no more.\\n\\nMr. Woodhouse had so completely made up his mind to the visit, that in spite of the increasing coldness, he seemed to have no idea of shrinking from it, and set forward at last most punctually with his eldest daughter in his own carriage, with less apparent consciousness of the weather than either of the others; too full of the wonder of his own going, and the pleasure it was to afford at Randalls to see that it was cold, and too well wrapt up to feel it. The cold, however, was severe; and by the time the second carriage was in motion, a few flakes of snow were finding their way down, and the sky had the appearance of being so overcharged as to wantonly a milder air to produce a very white world in a very short time.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma soon saw that her companion was not in the happiest humour. The preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of his children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least, which Mr. John Knightley did not by any means like: he anticipated nothing in the visit that could beat all worth the purchase; and the whole of their drive to the vicarage was spent by him in expressing his discontent.\\n\\n\\\"A man,\\\" said he, \\\" must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fire-side, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest absurdity-actually snowing at this moment! The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home-and the folly of people's not staying comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it;-and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in everything given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can;-here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow. Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;-four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home.\\n\\nEmma did not find herself equal to give the pleased assent, which no doubt he was in the habit of receiving, to emulate the'Very true, my love,\\\" which must have been usually administered by his travelling companion; but she had resolution enough to refrain from making any answer at all. She could not be complying; she dreaded being quarrelsome; her heroism reached only to silence. She allowed him to talk, and arranged the glasses, and wrapped herself up, without opening her lips.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"They arrived, the carriage turned, the step was letdown, and Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Elton, spruce, black, and smiling, was with them instantly. Emma thought with pleasure of some change of subject. Mr. Elton was all obligation and cheerfulness; he was so very cheerful in his civilities indeed, that she began to think he must have received a different account of Harriet from what had reached her. She had sent while dressing, and the answer had been, \\\"Much the same-not better.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My report from Mrs. Goddard's,\\\" said she, presently, \\\"was not so pleasant as I had hoped:-\\\"Not better, ' was my answer.\\\"\\n\\nHis face lengthened immediately; and his voice was the voice of sentiment as he answered,-\\n\\n\\\"Oh no-I am grieved to find-I was on the point of telling you that when I called at Mrs. Goddard's door, which I did the very last thing before I returned to dress, I was told that Miss Smith was not better, by no means better, rather worse. Very much grieved and concerned-I had flattered myself that she must be better after such a cordial as I knew had been given in the morning.\\\"\\n\\nEmma smiled, and answered,-\\\"My visit was of use to the nervous part of her complaint, I hope; but not even I can charm away a sore throat; it is a most severe cold, indeed. Mr. Perry has been with her, as you probably heard.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes-I imagined-that is-I did not-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He has been used to her in these complaints, and I hope to-morrow morning will bring us both a more comfortable report. But it is impossible not to feel uneasiness. Such a sad loss to our party to-day!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Dreadful! Exactly so, indeed. She will be missed every moment.\\\"\\n\\nThis was very proper; the sigh which accompanied it was really estimable; but it should have lasted longer. Emma was rather in dismay when only half a minute afterwards he began to speak of other things, and in a voice of the greatest alacrity and enjoyment.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What an excellent device,\\\" said he, \\\"the use of a sheep-skin for carriages.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"How very comfortable they make it;-impossible to feel cold with such precautions. The contrivances of modern days, indeed, have rendered a gentleman's carriage perfectly complete. One is so fenced and guarded from the weather, that not a breath of air can find its way unpermitted. Weather becomes absolutely of no consequence. It is a very cold afternoon-but in this carriage we know nothing of the matter. Ha! snows a little, I see.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes,\\\" said John Knightley, \\\"and I think we shall have a good deal of it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Christmas weather,\\\" observed Mr. Elton. \\\"Quite seasonable; and extremely fortunate we may think ourselves that it did not begin yesterday, and prevent this day's party, which it might very possibly have done, for Mr. Woodhouse would hardly have ventured had there been much snow on the ground; but now it is of no consequence. This is quite the season, indeed, for friendly meetings. At Christmas everybody invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather. I was snowed up at a friend's house once fora week. Nothing could be pleasanter. I went for only one night, and could not getaway till that very day se'nnight.\\\" l Mr. John Knightley looked as if he did not comprehend the pleasure, but said only, coolly,-\\n\\n\\\"I cannot wish to be snowed up a week at Randalls.\\\"\\n\\nAt another time Emma might have been amused, but she was too much astonished now at Mr. Elton's spirits for other feelings. Harriet seemed quite forgotten in the expectation of a pleasant party.\\n\\n\\\"We are sure of excellent fires,\\\" continued he, \\\"and everything in the greatest comfort. Charming people, Mr. and Mrs. Weston;-Mrs. Weston indeed is much beyond praise, and he is exactly what one values, so hospitable, and so fond of society;-it will be a small party, but where small parties are select, they are, perhaps, the most agreeable of any. Mr. Weston's dining-room does not accommodate more than ten comfortably; and for my part, I would rather, under such circumstances, fall short by two than exceed by two. I think you will agree with me (turning with a soft air to Emma), I think I shall certainly have your approbation, though Mr. Knightley, perhaps, from being used to the large parties of London, may not quite enter into our feelings.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I know nothing of the large parties of London, sir-I never dine with anybody.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Indeed! (in atone of wonder and pity,) I had no idea that the law had been so great a slavery. Well, sir, the time must come when you will be paid for all this, when you will have little labour and great enjoyment.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My first enjoyment,\\\" replied John Knightley, as they passed through the sweep-gate, \\\"will be to find myself safe at Hartfield again.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Some change of countenance was necessary for each gentleman as they walked into Mrs. Weston's drawing-room;-Mr. Elton must compose his joyous looks, and Mr. John Knightley disperse his ill-humour. Mr. Elton must smile less, and Mr. John Knightley more, to fit them for the place. Emma only might be as nature prompted, and show herself just as happy as she was. To her, it was real enjoyment to be with the Westons. Mr. Weston was a great favourite, and there was not a creature in the world to whom she spoke with such unreserve as to his wife; not anyone, to whom she related with such conviction of being listened to and understood, of being always interesting and always intelligible, the little affairs, arrangements, perplexities, and pleasures of her father and herself. She could tell nothing of Hartfield, in which Mrs. Weston had not a lively concern; and half an hour's uninterrupted communication of all those little matters on which the daily happiness of private life depends, was one of the first gratifications of each.\\n\\nThis was a pleasure which perhaps the whole day's visit might not afford, which certainly did not belong to the present half hour; but the very sight of Mrs. Weston, her smile, her touch, her voice, was grateful to Emma, and she determined to think as little as possible of Mr. Elton's oddities, or of anything else unpleasant, and enjoy all that was enjoyable to the utmost.\\n\\nThe misfortune of Harriet's cold had been pretty well gone through before her arrival. Mr. Woodhouse had been safely seated long enough to give the history of it, besides all the history of his own and Isabella's coming, and of Emma's being to follow; and had, indeed, just got to the end of his satisfaction that James should come and see his daughter, when the others appeared, and Mrs. Weston, who had been almost wholly engrossed by her attentions to him, was able to turn away and welcome her dear Emma.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma's project of forgetting Mr. Elton fora while made her rather sorry to find, when they had all taken their places, that he was close to her. The difficulty was great of driving his strange insensibility towards Harriet from her mind, while he not only sat at her elbow, but was continually obtruding his happy countenance on her notice, and solicitously addressing her upon every occasion. Instead of forgetting him, his behaviour was such that she could not avoid the internal suggestion of'Can it really be as my brother imagined? can it be possible for this man to be beginning to transfer his affections from Harriet tome?-Absurd and insufferable!\\\"-Yet he would be so anxious for her being perfectly warm, would be so interested about her father, and so delighted with Mrs. Weston; and, at last, would begin admiring her drawings with so much zeal and so little knowledge, as seemed terribly like a would-be lover, and made it some effort with her to preserve her good manners. For her own sake she could not be rude; and for Harriet's, in the hope that all would yet turnout right, she was even positively civil: but it was an effort; especially as something was going on amongst the others, in the most overpowering period of Mr. Elton's nonsense, which she particularly wished to listen to. She heard enough to know that Mr. Weston was giving some information about his son: she heard the words'my son,\\\" and'Frank,\\\" and'my son,\\\" repeated several times over; and, from a few other half syllables, very much suspected that he was announcing an early visit from his son; but before she could quiet Mr. Elton, the subject was so completely past, that any reviving question from her would have been awkward.\\n\\nNow it so happened, that, in spite of Emma's resolution of never marrying, there was something in the name, in the idea, of Mr. Frank Churchill, which always interested her. She had frequently thought.-especially since his father's marriage with Miss Taylor,-that if she were to marry, he was the very person to suit her in age, character, and condition. He seemed, by this connection between the families, quite to belong to her. She could not but suppose it to be a match that everybody who knew them must think of. That Mr. and Mrs. Weston did think of it, she was very strongly persuaded; and though not meaning to be induced by him, or by anybody else, to give up a situation which she believed more replete with good than any she could change it for, she had a great curiosity to see him, a decided intention of finding him pleasant, of being liked by him to a certain degree, and a sort of pleasure in the idea of their being coupled in their friends' imaginations.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"With such sensations, Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Elton's civilities were dreadfully ill-timed; but she had the comfort of appearing very polite, while feeling very cross;-and of thinking that the rest of the visit could not possibly pass without bringing forward the same information again, or the substance of it, from the open-hearted Mr. Weston. So it proved;-for, when happily released from Mr. Elton, and seated by Mr. Weston at dinner, he made use of the very first interval in the cares of hospitality, the very first leisure from the saddle of mutton, to say to her,-\\n\\n\\\"We wantonly two more to be just the right number. I should like to see two more here,-your pretty little friend, Miss Smith, and my son,-and then I should say we were quite complete. I believe you did not hear me telling the others in the drawing-room that we are expecting Frank. I had a letter from him this morning, and he will be with us within a fortnight.\\\"\\n\\nEmma spoke with a very proper degree of pleasure, and fully assented to his proposition, of Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Smith making their party quite complete.\\n\\n\\\"He has been wanting to come to us,\\\" continued Mr. Weston, \\\"ever since September: every letter has been full of it; but he cannot command his own time. He has those to please who must be pleased, and who (between ourselves) are sometimes to be pleased only by a good many sacrifices. But now I have no doubt of seeing him hereabout the second week in January.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What a very great pleasure it will be to you! and Mrs. Weston is so anxious to be acquainted with him, that she must be almost as happy as yourself.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, she would be, but that she thinks there will be another put-off. She does not depend upon his coming so much as I do; but she does not know the parties so well as I do. The case, you see, is-(but this is quite between ourselves: I did not mention a syllable of it in the other room. There are secrets in all families, you know)-the case is, that a party of friends are invited to pay a vsit at Enscombe in January, and that Frank's coming depends upon their being put off. If they are not put off, he cannot stir. But I know they will, because it is a family that a certain lady, of some consequence at Enscombe, has a particular dislike to; and though it is thought necessary to invite them once in two or three years, they always are put off when it comes to the point. I have not the smallest doubt of the issue. I am as confident of seeing Frank here before the middle of January, as I am of being here myself: but your good friend there (nodding towards the upper end of the table) has so few vagaries herself, and has been so little used to them at Hartfield, that she cannot calculate on their effects, as I have been long in the practice of doing.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I am sorry there should be anything like doubt in the case,\\\" replied Emma; \\\"but am disposed to side with you, Mr. Weston. If you think he will come, I shall think so too; for you know Enscombe.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes-I have some right to that knowledge; though I have never been at the place in my life. She is an odd woman! But I never allow myself to speak ill of her, on Frank's account; for I do believe her to be very fond of him. I used to think she was not capable of being fond of anybody except herself: but she has always been kind to him (in her way-allowing for little whims and caprices, and expecting everything to be as she likes). And it is no small credit, in my opinion, to him, that he should excite such an affection; for, though I would not say it to anybody else, she has no more heart than a stone to people in general, and the devil of a temper.\\\"\\n\\nEmma liked the subject so well, that she began upon it, to Mrs. Weston, very soon after their moving into the drawing-room; wishing her joy,-yet observing, that she knew the first meeting must be rather alarming. Mrs. Weston agreed to it; but added, that she should be very glad to be secure of undergoing the anxiety of a first meeting at the time talked of; \\\"for I cannot depend upon his coming. I cannot be so sanguine as Mr. Weston. I am very much afraid that it will all end in nothing. Mr. Weston, I daresay, has been telling you exactly how the matter stands.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes-it seems to depend upon nothing but the ill-humour of Mrs. Churchill, which I imagine to be the most certain thing in the world.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My Emma!\\\" replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, \\\"what is the certainty of caprice?\\\" Then turning to Isabella, who had not been attending before,-\\\"You must know, my dear Mrs. Knightley, that we are by no means so sure of seeing Mr. Frank Churchill, in any opinion, as his father thinks. It depends entirely upon his aunt's spirits and pleasure; in short, upon her temper. To you-to my two daughters-I may venture on the truth. Mrs. Churchill rules at Enscombe, and is a very odd-tempered woman; and his coming now depends upon her being willing to spare him.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Oh, Mrs. Churchill, everybody knows Mrs. Churchill,\\\" replied Isabella; \\\"and I am sure I never think of that poor young man without the greatest compassion. To be constantly living with an ill-tempered person must be dreadful. It is what we happily have never known anything of; but it must be a life of misery. What a blessing, that she never had any children! Poor little creatures, how unhappy she would have made them!\\\"\\n\\nEmma wished she had been alone with Mrs. Weston. She should then have heard more: Mrs. Weston would speak to her with a degree of unreserve which she would not hazard with Isabella; and, she really believed, would scarcely try to conceal anything relative to the Churchills from her, excepting those views on the young man, of which her own imagination had already given her such instinctive knowledge. But at present there was nothing more to be said. Mr. Woodhouse very soon followed them into the drawing-room. To be sitting long after dinner was a confinement that he could not endure. Neither wine nor conversation was anything to him; and gladly did he move to those with whom he was always comfortable.\\n\\nWhile he talked to Isabella, however, Emma found an opportunity of saying,-\\n\\n\\\"And so you do not consider this visit from your son as by any means certain. I am sorry for it. The introduction must be unpleasant, whenever it takes place; and the sooner it could be over the better.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes; and every delay makes one more apprehensive of other delays. Even if this family, the Braithwaites, are put off, I am still afraid that some excuse maybe found for disappointing us. I cannot bear to imagine any reluctance on his side; but I am sure there is a great wish on the Churchills to keep him to themselves. There is jealousy. They are jealous even of his regard for his father. In short, I can feel no dependence on his coming, and I wish Mr. Weston were less sanguine.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"He ought to come,\\\" said Emma. \\\"If he could stay only a couple of days, he ought to come; and one can hardly conceive a young man's not having it in his power to do as much as that. A young woman, if she fall into bad hands, maybe teazed, and kept at a distance from those she wants to be with; but one cannot comprehend a young man's being under such restraint, as not to be able to spend a week with his father, if he likes it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"One ought to beat Enscombe, and know the ways of the family, before one decides upon what he can do,\\\" replied Mrs. Weston. \\\"One ought to use the same caution, perhaps, in judging of the conduct of anyone individual of anyone family; but Enscombe, I believe, certainly must not be judged by general rules: she is so very unreasonable; and everything gives way to her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But she is so fond of the nephew: he is so very great a favourite. Now, according to my idea of Mrs. Churchill, it would be most natural, that while she makes no sacrifice for the comfort of the husband, to whom she owes everything, while she exercises incessant caprice towards him, she should frequently be governed by the nephew, to whom she owes nothing at all.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dearest Emma, do not pretend, with your sweet temper, to understand a bad one, or to lay down rules for it: you must let it go its own way. I have no doubt of his having, at times, considerable influence; but it maybe perfectly impossible for him to know beforehand when it will be.\\\"\\n\\nEmma listened, and then coolly said, \\\"I shall not be satisfied, unless he comes.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He may have a great deal of influence on some points,\\\" continued Mrs. Weston, \\\"and on others, very little; and among those, on which she is beyond his reach, it is but too likely maybe this very circumstance of his coming away from them to visit us.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Woodhouse was soon ready for his tea; and when he had drank his tea he was quite ready to go home; and it was as much as his three companions could do, to entertain away his notice of the lateness of the hour, before the other gentlemen appeared. Mr. Weston was chatty and convivial, and no friend to early separations of any sort; but at last the drawing-room party did receive an augmentation. Mr. Elton, in very good spirits, was one of the first to walk in. Mrs. Weston and Emma were sitting together on a sofa. He joined them immediately, and with scarcely an invitation, seated himself between them.\\n\\nEmma, in good spirits too, from the amusement afforded her mind by the expectation of Mr. Frank Churchill, was willing to forget his late improprieties, and be as well satisfied with him as before, and on his making Harriet his very first subject, was ready to listen with most friendly smiles.\\n\\nHe professed himself extremely anxious about her fair friend-her fair, lovely, amiable friend. \\\"Did she know?-had she heard anything about her, since their being at Randalls?-he felt much anxiety-he must confess that the nature of her complaint alarmed him considerably.\\\" And in this style he talked on for sometime very properly, not much attending to any answer, but altogether sufficiently awake to the terror of a bad sore throat; and Emma was quite in charity with him.\\n\\nBut at last there seemed a perverse turn; it seemed all at once as if he were more afraid of its being a bad sore throat on her account than on Harriet's-more anxious that she should escape the infection, than that there should be no infection in the complaint. He began with great earnestness to entreat her to refrain from visiting the sick chamber again, for the present-to entreat her to promise him not to venture into such hazard till he had seen Mr. Perry and learned his opinion; and though she tried to laugh it off and bring the subject back into its proper course, there was no putting an end to his extreme solicitude about her. She was vexed. It did appear-there was no concealing it-exactly like the pretence of being in love with her, instead of Harriet; an inconstancy, if real, the most contemptible and abominable! and she had difficulty in behaving with temper. He turned to Mrs. Weston to implore her assistance: \\\" Would not she give him her support?-would not she add her persuasions to his, to induce Miss Woodhouse not to go to Mrs. Goddard's, till it were certain that Miss Smith's disorder had no infection? He could not be satisfied without a promise-would not she give him her influence in procuring it?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"So scrupulous for others,\\\" he continued, \\\"and yet so careless for herself!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She wanted me to nurse my cold by staying at home today, and yet will not promise to avoid the danger of catching an ulcerated sore throat herself. Is this fair, Mrs. Weston? Judge between us. Have not I some right to complain? I am sure of your kind support and aid.\\\"\\n\\nEmma saw Mrs. Weston's surprise, and felt that it must be great, at an address which, in words and manner, was assuming to himself the right of first interest in her; and as for herself, she was too much provoked and offended to have the power of directly saying anything to the purpose. She could only give him a look; but it was such a look as she thought must restore him to his senses; and then left the sofa, removing to a seat by her sister, and giving her all her attention.\\n\\nShe had not time to know how Mr. Elton took the reproof, so rapidly did another subject succeed; for Mr. John Knightley now came into the room from examining the weather, and opened on them all with the information of the ground being covered with snow, and of its still snowing fast, with a strong drifting wind; concluding with these words to Mr. Woodhouse;-\\n\\n\\\"This will prove a spirited beginning of your winter engagements, sir. Something new for your coachman and horses to be making their way through a storm of snow.\\\"\\n\\nPoor Mr. Woodhouse was silent from consternation; but everybody else had something to say; everybody was either surprised, or not surprised, and had some question to ask, or some comfort to offer. Mrs. Weston and Emma tried earnestly to cheer him and turn his attention from his son-in-law, who was pursuing his triumph rather unfeelingly.\\n\\n\\\"I admired your resolution very much, sir,\\\" said he, \\\"in venturing out in such weather, for of course you saw there would be snow very soon. Everybody must have seen the snow coming on. I admired your spirit; and I daresay we shall get home very well. Another hour or two's snow can hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand. I daresay we shall be all safe at Hartfield before midnight.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Weston, with triumph of a different sort, was confessing that he had known it to be snowing sometime, but had not said a word, lest it should make Mr. Woodhouse uncomfortable, and bean excuse for his hurrying away. As to there being any quantity of snow fallen or likely to fall to impede their return, that was a mere joke; he was afraid they would find no difficulty. He wished the road might be impassable, that he might be able to keep them all at Randalls; and with the utmost good-will was sure that accommodation might be found for everybody, calling on his wife to agree with him, that, with a little contrivance, everybody might be lodged, which she hardly knew how to do, from the consciousness of there being but two spare rooms in the house.\\n\\n\\\"What is to be done, my dear Emma? what is to be done?\\\" was Mr. Woodhouse's first exclamation, and all that he could say for sometime. To her he looked for comfort; and her assurances of safety, her representation of the excellence of the horses, and of James, and of their having so many friends about them, revived him a little.\\n\\nHis eldest daughter's alarm was equal to his own. The horror of being blocked up at Randalls, while her children were at Hartfield, was full in her imagination; and fancying the road to be now just passable for adventurous people, but in a state that admitted no delay, she was eager to have it settled, that her father and Emma should remain at Randalls while she and her husband set forward instantly through all the possible accumulations of drifted snow that might impede them.\\n\\n\\\"You had better order the carriage directly, my love,\\\" said she: \\\"I daresay we shall be able to get along, if we set off directly; and if we do come to anything very bad, I can get out and walk. I am not at all afraid. I should not mind walking half the way. I could change my shoes, you know, the moment I got home; and it is not the sort of thing that gives me cold.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Indeed!\\\" replied he. \\\"Then, my dear Isabella, it is the most extraordinary sort of thing in the world, for in general everything does give you cold. Walk home!-you are prettily shod for walking home, I daresay. It will be bad enough for the horses.\\\"\\n\\nIsabella turned to Mrs. Weston for her approbation of the plan. Mrs. Weston could only approve. Isabella then went to Emma; but Emma could not so entirely give up the hope of their being all able to getaway; and they were still discussing the point, when Mr. Knightley, who had left the room immediately after his brother's first report of the snow, came back again, and told them that he had been out of doors to examine, and could answer for there not being the smallest difficulty in their getting home, whenever they liked it, either now or an hour hence. He had gone beyond the sweep-someway along the Highbury road-the snow was nowhere above half an inch deep-in many places hardly enough to whiten the ground; a very few flakes were falling at present, but the clouds were parting, and there was every appearance of its being soon over. He had seen the coachmen, and they both agreed with him in there being nothing to apprehend.\\n\\nTo Isabella, the relief of such tidings was very great, and they were scarcely less acceptable to Emma on her father's account, who was immediately set as much at ease on the subject as his nervous constitution allowed; but the alarm that had been raised could not be appeased so as to admit of any comfort for him while he continued at Randalls. He was satisfied of there being no present danger in returning home, but no assurance could convince him that it was safe to stay; and while the others were variously urging and recommending, Mr. Knightley and Emma settled it in a few brief sentences: thus,-\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yes, do.\\\"\\n\\nAnd the bell was rung, and the carriages spoken for. A few minutes more, and Emma hoped to see one troublesome companion deposited in his own house, to get sober and cool, and the other recover his temper and happiness when this visit of hardship were over.\\n\\nThe carriage came; and Mr. Woodhouse, always the first object on such occasions, was carefully attended to his own by Mr. Knightley and Mr. Weston; but not all that either could say could prevent some renewal of alarm at the sight of the snow which had actually fallen, and the discovery of a much darker night than he had been prepared for. \\\"He was afraid they should have a very bad drive. He was afraid poor Isabella would not like it. And there would be poor Emma in the carriage behind. He did not know what they had best do. They must keep as much together as they could;\\\" and James was talked to, and given a charge to go very slow, and wait for the other carriage.\\n\\nIsabella stept in after her father; John Knightley, forgetting that he did not belong to their party, stept in after his wife very naturally; so that Emma found, on being escorted and followed into the second carriage by Mr. Elton, that the door was to be lawfully shut on them, and that they were to have a tête-à-tête drive. It would not have been the awkwardness of a moment, it would have been rather a pleasure, previous to the suspicions of this very day; she could have talked to him of Harriet, and the three quarters of a mile would have seemed but one. But how, she would rather it had not happened. She believed he had been drinking too much of Mr. Weston's good wine; and felt sure that he would want to be talking nonsense.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of the weather and the night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her subject cutup-her hand seized-her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known, hoping-fearing-adoring-ready to die if she refused him; but flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and unexampled passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short, very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible. It really was so. Without scruple-without apology-without much apparent diffidence, Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself her lover. She tried to stop him; but vainly; he would goon, and say it all. Angry as she was, the thought of the moment made her resolve to restrain herself when she did speak. She felt that half this folly must be drunkenness, and therefore could hope that it might belong only to the passing hour. Accordingly, with a mixture of the serious and the playful, which she hoped would best suit his half and half state, she replied,-\\n\\n\\\"I am very much astonished, Mr. Elton. This tome, you forget yourself-you take me for my friend-any message to Miss Smith I shall be happy to deliver; but no more of this tome, if you please.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Miss Smith!-Message to Miss Smith!-What could she possibly mean!\\\"-And he repeated her words with such assurance of accent, such boastful pretence of amazement, that she could not help replying with quickness,-\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Mr. Elton, this is the most extraordinary conduct! and I can account for it only in one way; you are not yourself, or you could not speak either tome, or of Harriet, in such a manner. Command yourself enough to say no more, and I will endeavour to forget it.\\\"\\n\\nBut Mr. Elton had only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at all to confuse his intellects. He perfectly knew his own meaning; and having warmly protested against her suspicion as most injurious, and slightly touched upon his respect for Miss Smith as her friend,-but acknowledging his wonder that Miss Smith should be mentioned at all,-he resumed the subject of his own passion, and was very urgent fora favourable answer.\\n\\nAs she thoughtless of his inebriety, she thought more of his inconstancy and presumption; and with fewer struggles for politeness, replied,-\\n\\n\\\"It is impossible for me to doubt any longer. You have made yourself too clear. Mr. Elton, my astonishment is much beyond anything I can express. After such behaviour, as I have witnessed during the last month, to Miss Smith-such attentions as I have been in the daily habit of observing-to be addressing me in this manner-this is an unsteadiness of character, indeed, which I had not supposed possible! Believe me, sir, I am far-very far-from gratified in being the object of such professions.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Good heaven!\\\" cried Mr. Elton, \\\"what can be the meaning of this? Miss Smith! I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence-never paid her any attentions, but as your friend: never cared whether she were dead or alive, but as your friend. If she has fancied otherwise, her own wishes have misled her, and I am very sorry-extremely sorry. But, Miss Smith, indeed! Oh, Miss Woodhouse, who can think of Miss Smith when Miss Woodhouse is near? No, upon my honour, there is no unsteadiness of character. I have thought only of you. I protest against having paid the smallest attention to anyone else. Everything that I have said or done, for many weeks past, has been with the sole view of marking my adoration of yourself. You cannot really, seriously doubt it. No! (in an accent meant to be insinuating) I am sure you have seen and understood me.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"It would be impossible to say what Emma felt on hearing this; which of all her unpleasant sensations was uppermost.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She was too completely overpowered to be immediately able to reply; and two moments of silence being ample encouragement for Mr. Elton's sanguine state of mind, he tried to take her hand again, as he joyously exclaimed.-\\n\\n\\\"Charming Miss Woodhouse! allow me to interpret this interesting silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, sir,\\\" cried Emma, \\\"it confesses no such thing. So far from having long understood you, I have been in a most complete error with respect to your views till this moment. As to myself I am very sorry that you should have been giving way to any feelings-Nothing could be farther from my wishes-your attachment to my friend Harriet-your pursuit of her (pursuit it appeared)-gave me great pleasure, and I have been very earnestly wishing you success; but had I supposed that she were not your attraction to Hartfield, I should certainly have thought you judged ill in making your visits so frequent. Am Ito believe that you have never sought to recommend yourself particularly to Miss Smith? that you have never thought seriously of her?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Never, madam,\\\" cried he, affronted in his turn: \\\"never, I assure you. I think seriously of Miss Smith!-Miss Smith is a very good sort of girl; and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish her extremely well; and, no doubt, there are men who might not object to-Everybody has their level; but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss. I need not so totally despair of an equal alliance as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith! No, madam, my visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only; and the encouragement I received-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Encouragement! I give you encouragement!-sir, you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my friend. In no other light could you have been more tome than a common acquaintance. I am exceedingly sorry; but it is well that the mistake ends where it does. Had the same behaviour continued, Miss Smith might have been led into a misconception of your views; not being aware, probably, anymore than myself, of the very great inequality which you are so sensible of. But, as it is, the disappointment is single, and, I trust, will not be lasting. I have no thoughts of matrimony at present.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":297,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Extend the narrative as the author's co-writer.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 20"},{"from":"human","value":"It would be impossible to say what Emma felt on hearing this; which of all her unpleasant sensations was uppermost."},{"from":"gpt","value":"She was too completely overpowered to be immediately able to reply; and two moments of silence being ample encouragement for Mr. Elton's sanguine state of mind, he tried to take her hand again, as he joyously exclaimed.-\n\n\"Charming Miss Woodhouse! allow me to interpret this interesting silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.\"\n\n\"No, sir,\" cried Emma, \"it confesses no such thing. So far from having long understood you, I have been in a most complete error with respect to your views till this moment. As to myself I am very sorry that you should have been giving way to any feelings-Nothing could be farther from my wishes-your attachment to my friend Harriet-your pursuit of her (pursuit it appeared)-gave me great pleasure, and I have been very earnestly wishing you success; but had I supposed that she were not your attraction to Hartfield, I should certainly have thought you judged ill in making your visits so frequent. Am Ito believe that you have never sought to recommend yourself particularly to Miss Smith? that you have never thought seriously of her?\"\n\n\"Never, madam,\" cried he, affronted in his turn: \"never, I assure you. I think seriously of Miss Smith!-Miss Smith is a very good sort of girl; and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish her extremely well; and, no doubt, there are men who might not object to-Everybody has their level; but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss. I need not so totally despair of an equal alliance as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith! No, madam, my visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only; and the encouragement I received-\"\n\n\"Encouragement! I give you encouragement!-sir, you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my friend. In no other light could you have been more tome than a common acquaintance. I am exceedingly sorry; but it is well that the mistake ends where it does. Had the same behaviour continued, Miss Smith might have been led into a misconception of your views; not being aware, probably, anymore than myself, of the very great inequality which you are so sensible of. But, as it is, the disappointment is single, and, I trust, will not be lasting. I have no thoughts of matrimony at present.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He was too angry to say another word; her manner too decided to invite supplication: and in this state of swelling resentment, and mutually deep mortification, they had to continue together a few minutes longer, for the fears of Mr. Woodhouse had confined them to afoot pace. If there had not been so much anger, there would have been desperate awkwardness; but their straight-forward emotions left no room for the little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage turned into Vicarage Lane, or when it stopped, they found themselves, all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another syllable passed. Emma then felt it indispensable to wish him a goodnight. The compliment was just returned, coldly and proudly; and, under indescribable irritation of spirits, she was then conveyed to Hartfield.\n\nThere she was welcomed, with the utmost delight, by her father, who had been trembling for the dangers of a solitary drive from Vicarage Lane-turning a corner which he could never bear to think of-and in strange hands-a mere common coachman-no James; and there it seemed as if her return only were wanted to make everything go well: for Mr. John Knightley, ashamed of his ill-humour, was now all kindness and attention; and so particularly solicitous for the comfort of her father, as to seem-if not quite ready to join him in a basin of gruel-perfectly sensible of its being exceedingly wholesome; and the day was concluding in peace and comfort to all their little party, except herself. But her mind had never been in such perturbation; and it needed a very strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the usual hour of separating allowed her the relief of quiet reflection."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable. It was a wretched business, indeed. Such an overthrow of everything she had been wishing for! Such a development of everything most unwelcome! Such a blow for Harriet!-that was the worst of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation of some sort or other; but, compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken-more in error-more disgraced by misjudgment than she actually was,-could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.\n\n\"If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have borne anything. He might have doubled his presumption tome-but poor Harriet!\"\n\nHow she could have been so deceived! He protested that he had never thought seriously of Harriet-never! She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made everything bend to it. His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.\n\nThe picture! How eager he had been about the picture!-and the charade!-and a hundred other circumstances;-how clearly they had seemed to point at Harriet. To be sure, the charade, with its'ready wit\"-but then, the'soft eyes\"-in fact it suited neither; it was a jumble without taste or truth. Who could have seen through such thick-headed nonsense?\n\nCertainly she had often, especially of late, thought his manners to herself unnecessarily gallant; but it had passed as his way, as a mere error of judgment, of knowledge, of taste, as one proof, among others, that he had not always lived in the best society; that with all the gentleness of his address, true elegance was sometimes wanting; but, till this very day, she had never for an instant suspected it to mean anything but grateful respect to her as Harriet's friend."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"To Mr. John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on the subject, for the first start of its possibility. There was no denying that those brothers had penetration. She remembered what Mr. Knightley had once said to her about Mr. Elton, the caution he had given the conviction he had professed that Mr. Elton would never marry indiscreetly; and blushed to think how much truer a knowledge of his character had been there shown than any she had reached herself. It was dreadfully mortifying; but Mr. Elton was proving himself, in many respects, the very reverse of what she had meant and believed him; proud, assuming, conceited: very full of his own claims, and little concerned about the feelings of others.\n\nContrary to the usual course of things, Mr. Elton's wanting to pay his addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion. His professions and his proposals did him no service. She thought nothing of his attachment, and was insulted by his hopes. He wanted to marry well, and having the arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love; but she was perfectly easy as to his not suffering any disappointment that need be cared for. There had been no real affection either in his language or manners. Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He only wanted to aggrandise and enrich himself; and if Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield, the heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite so easily obtained as he had fancied, he would soon try for Miss Somebody else with twenty, or with ten.\n\nBut, that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as aware of his views, accepting his intentions, meaning, in short, to marry him!-should suppose himself her equal in connection or mind!-look down upon her friend, so well understanding the gradations of rank below him, and be so blind to what rose above, as to fancy himself showing no presumption in addressing her!-it was most provoking."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he washer inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind. The very want of such equality might prevent his perception of it; but he must know that in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior. He must know that the Woodhouses had been settled for several generations at Hartfield, the younger branch of a very ancient family,-and that the Eltons were nobody. The landed property of Hartfield certainly was inconsiderable, being but a sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate, to which all the rest of Highbury belonged; but their fortune, from other sources, was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donwell Abbey itself, in every other kind of consequence; and the Woodhouses had long held a high place in the consideration of the neighbourhood which Mr. Elton had first entered not two years ago, to make his way as he could, without any alliances but in trade, or anything to recommend him to notice but his situation and his civility. But he had fancied her in love with him; that evidently must have been his dependence; and after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners and a conceited head, Emma was obliged, in common honesty, to stop and admit, that her own behaviour to him had been so complaisant and obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as (supposing her real motive unperceived) might warrant a man of ordinary observation and delicacy, like Mr. Elton, in fancying himself a very decided favourite. If she had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to wonder that he, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken hers.\n\nThe first error, and the worst, lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active apart in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Here have I,\" said she, \"actually talked poor Harriet into being very much attached to this man. She might never have thought of him but for me; and certainly never would have thought of him with hope, if I had not assured her of his attachment, for she is as modest and humble as I used to think him. Oh that I had been satisfied with persuading her not to accept young Martin! There I was quite right: that was well done of me; but there I should have stopped, and left the rest to time and chance. I was introducing her into good company, and giving her the opportunity of pleasing someone worth having; I ought not to have attempted more. But now, poor girl, her peace is cutup for sometime. I have been but half a friend to her; and if she were not to feel this disappointment so very much, I am sure I have not an idea of anybody else who would beat all desirable for her:-William Coxe-oh no, I could not endure William Coxe,-a pert young lawyer.\"\n\nShe stopped to blush and laugh at her own relapse, and then resumed a more serious, more dispiriting cogitation upon what had been, and might be, and must be. The distressing explanation she had to make to Harriet, and all that poor Harriet would be suffering, with the awkwardness of future meetings, the difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the acquaintance, of subduing feelings, concealing resentment, and avoiding éclat, were enough to occupy her inmost unmirthful reflections sometime longer, and she went to bed at last with nothing settled but the conviction of her having blundered most dreadfully.\n\nTo youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma's, though under temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma got upon the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had gone to bed; more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her, and to depend on getting tolerably out of it.\n\nIt was a great consolation that Mr. Elton should not be really in love with her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to disappoint him; that Harriet's nature should not be of that superior sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive; and that there could be no necessity for anybody's knowing what had passed except the three principals, and especially for her father's being given a moment's uneasiness about it.\n\nThese were very cheering thoughts; and the sight of a great deal of snow on the ground did her further service, for anything was welcome that might justify their all three being quite asunder at present.\n\nThe weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas-day, she could not go to church. Mr. Woodhouse would have been miserable had his daughter attempted it, and she was therefore safe from either exciting or receiving unpleasant and most unsuitable ideas. The ground covered with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and thaw, which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every morning beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting into freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner. No intercourse with Harriet possible but by note; no church for heron Sunday anymore than on Christmas-day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. Elton's absenting himself.\n\nIt was weather which might fairly confine everybody at home; and though she hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort in some society or other, it was very pleasant to have her father so well satisfied with his being all alone in his own house, too wise to stir out; and to hear him say to Mr. Knightley, whom no weather could keep entirely from them,-"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Ah, Mr. Knightley, why do not you stay at homelike poor Mr. Elton?\"\n\nThese days of confinement would have been, but for her private perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited her brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance to his companions; and he had, besides, so thoroughly cleared off his ill-humour at Randalls, that his amiableness never failed him during the rest of his stay at Hartfield. He was always agreeable and obliging, and speaking pleasantly of everybody. But with all the hopes of cheerfulness, and all the present comfort of delay, there was still such an evil hanging over her in the hour of explanation with Harriet, as made it impossible for Emma to be ever perfectly at ease."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley were not detained long at Hartfield. The weather soon improved enough for those to move who must move; and Mr. Woodhouse having, as usual, tried to persuade his daughter to stay behind with all her children, was obliged to seethe whole party set off, and return to his lamentations over the destiny of poor Isabella;-which poor Isabella, passing her life with those she doted on, full of their merits, blind to their faults, and always innocently busy, might have been a model of right feminine happiness.\n\nThe evening of the very day on which they went brought a note from Mr. Elton to Mr. Woodhouse, along, civil, ceremonious note, to say, with Mr. Elton's best compliments, \"that he was proposing to leave Highbury the following morning in his way to Bath; where, in compliance with the pressing entreaties of some friends, he had engaged to spend a few weeks; and very much regretted the impossibility he was under, from various circumstances of weather and business, of taking a personal leave of Mr. Woodhouse, of whose friendly civilities he should ever retain a grateful sense; and had Mr. Woodhouse any commands, should be happy to attend to them.\"\n\nEmma was most agreeably surprised. Mr. Elton's absence just at this time was the very thing to be desired. She admired him for contriving it, though notable to give him much credit for the manner in which it was announced. Resentment could not have been more plainly spoken than in a civility to her father, from which she was so pointedly excluded. She had not even a share in his opening compliments. Her name was not mentioned; and there was so striking a change in all this, and such an ill-judged solemnity of leave-taking in his grateful acknowledgments, as she thought, at first, could not escape her father's suspicion."},{"from":"human","value":"It did, however."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Her father was quite taken up with the surprise of so sudden a journey, and his fears that Mr. Elton might never get safely to the end of it, and saw nothing extraordinary in his language. It was a very useful note, for it supplied them with fresh matter for thought and conversation during the rest of their lonely evening. Mr. Woodhouse talked over his alarms, and Emma was inspirits to persuade them away with all her usual promptitude.\n\nShe now resolved to keep Harriet no longer in the dark. She had reason to believe her nearly recovered from her cold, and it was desirable that she should have as much time as possible forgetting the better of her other complaint before the gentleman's return. She went to Mrs. Goddard's accordingly the very next day, to undergo the necessary penance of communication; and a severe one it was. She had to destroy all the hopes which she had been so industriously feeding, to appear in the ungracious character of the one preferred, and acknowledge herself grossly mistaken and misjudging in all her ideas on one subject, all her observations, all her convictions, all her prophecies for the last six weeks.\n\nThe confession completely renewed her first shame, and the sight of Harriet's tears made her think that she should never be in charity with herself again.\n\nHarriet bore the intelligence very well, blaming nobody, and in everything testifying such an ingenuousness of disposition and lowly opinion of herself, as must appear with particular advantage at that moment to her friend.\n\nEmma was in the humour to value simplicity and modesty to the utmost; and all that was amiable, all that ought to be attaching, seemed on Harriet's side, not her own. Harriet did not consider herself as having anything to complain of. The affection of such a man as Mr. Elton would have been too great a distinction. She never could have deserved him; and nobody but so partial and kinda friend as Miss Woodhouse would have thought it possible."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Her tears fell abundantly; but her grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma's eyes; and she listened to her, and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding,-really for the time convinced that Harriet was the superior creature of the two, and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do.\n\nIt was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of her life. Her second duty now, inferior only to her father's claims, was to promote Harriet's comfort, and endeavour to prove her own affection in some better method than by match-making. She got her to Hartfield, and showed her the most unvarying kindness, striving to occupy and amuse her, and by books and conversation to drive Mr. Elton from her thoughts.\n\nTime, she knew, must be allowed for this being thoroughly done; and she could suppose herself but an indifferent judge of such matters in general, and very inadequate to sympathise in an attachment to Mr. Elton in particular; but it seemed to her reasonable that at Harriet's age, and with the entire extinction of all hope, such a progress might be made towards a state of composure by the time of Mr. Elton's return, as to allow them all to meet again in the common routine of acquaintance, without any danger of betraying sentiments or increasing them.\n\nHarriet did think him all perfection, and maintain the non-existence of anybody equal to him in person or goodness, and did, in truth, prove herself more resolutely in love than Emma had foreseen; but yet it appeared to her so natural, so inevitable to strive against an inclination of that sort unrequited, that she could not comprehend its continuing very long in equal force."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"If Mr. Elton, on his return, made his own indifference as evident and indubitable as she could not doubt he would anxiously do, she could not imagine Harriet's persisting to place her happiness in the sight or the recollection of him.\n\nTheir being fixed, so absolutely fixed, in the same place, was bad for each, for all three. Not one of them had the power of removal, or of effecting any material change of society. They must encounter each other, and make the best of it.\n\nHarriet was further unfortunate in the tone of her companions at Mrs. Goddard's, Mr. Elton being the adoration of all the teachers and great girls in the school; and it must beat Hartfield only that she could have any chance of hearing him spoken of with cooling moderation or repellant truth. Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be found, if anywhere; and Emma felt that, till she saw her in the way of cure, there could be no true peace for herself."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Frank Churchill did not come. When the time proposed drew near, Mrs. Weston's fears were justified in the arrival of a letter of excuse. For the present, he could not be spared, to his'very great mortification and regret; but still he looked forward with the hope of coming to Randalls at no distant period.\"\n\nMrs. Weston was exceedingly disappointed,-much more disappointed, in fact, than her husband, though her dependence on seeing the young man had been so much more sober; but a sanguine temper, though forever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again. For half an hour Mr. Weston was surprised and sorry: but then he began to perceive that Frank's coming two or three months later would be a much better plan, better time of year, better weather; and that he would be able, without any doubt, to stay considerably longer with them than if he had come sooner.\n\nThese feelings rapidly restored his comfort, while Mrs. Weston, of a more apprehensive disposition, foresaw nothing but a repetition of excuses and delays; and after all her concern for what her husband was to suffer, suffered a great deal more herself.\n\nEmma was not at this time in a state of spirits to care really about Mr. Frank Churchill's not coming, except as a disappointment at Randalls. The acquaintance, at present, had no charm for her. She wanted, rather, to be quiet and out of temptation; but still, as it was desirable that she should appear, in general, like her usual self, she took care to express as much interest in the circumstance, and enter as warmly into Mr. and Mrs. Weston's disappointment as might naturally belong to their friendship.\n\nShe was the first to announce it to Mr. Knightley; and exclaimed quite as much as was necessary (or, being acting apart, perhaps rather more,) at the conduct of the Churchills in keeping him away. She then proceeded to say a good deal more than she felt of the advantage of such an addition to their confined society in Surrey; the pleasure of looking at somebody new; the gala-day to Highbury entire, which the sight of him would have made; and ending with reflections on the Churchills again, found herself directly involved in a disagreement with Mr. Knightley; and, to her great amusement, perceived that she was taking the other side of the question from her real opinion, and, making use of Mrs. Weston's arguments against herself."},{"from":"human","value":"\"The Churchills are very likely in fault,\" said Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Knightley, coolly; \"but I daresay he might come if he would.\"\n\n\"I do not know why you should say so. He wishes exceedingly to come; but his uncle and aunt will not spare him.\"\n\n\"I cannot believe that he has not the power of coming, if he made a point of it. It is too unlikely for me to believe it without proof.\"\n\n\"How odd you are! What has Mr. Frank Churchill done, to make you suppose him such an unnatural creature?\"\n\n\"I am not supposing him at all an unnatural creature, in suspecting that he may have learned to be above his connections, and to care very little for anything but his own pleasure, from living with those who have always set him the example of it. It is a great deal more natural than one could wish, that a young man, brought up by those who are proud, luxurious, and selfish, should be proud, luxurious, and selfish too. If Frank Churchill had wanted to see his father, he would have contrived it between September and January. A man at his age,-what is he?-three or four and twenty-cannot be without the means of doing as much as that. It is impossible.\"\n\n\"That's easily said, and easily felt by you, who have always been your own master. You are the worst judge in the world, Mr. Knightley, of the difficulties of dependence. You do not know what it is to have tempers to manage.\"\n\n\"It is not to be conceived that a man of three or four and twenty should not have liberty of mind or limb to that amount. He cannot want money, he cannot want leisure. We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both, that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom. We hear of him forever at some watering-place or other; a little while ago he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the Churchills.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Yes, sometimes he can.\"\n\n\"And those times are, whenever he thinks it worth his while; whenever there is any temptation of pleasure.\"\n\n\"It is very unfair to judge of anybody's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation. Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family maybe. We ought to be acquainted with Enscombe, and with Mrs. Churchill's temper, before we pretend to decide with what her nephew can do. He may, at times, be able to do a great deal more than he can at others.\"\n\n\"There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chooses, and that is, his duty; not by manœuvering and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. It is Frank Churchill's duty to pay this attention to his father. He knows it to be so, by his promises and messages; but if he wished to do it, it might be done. A man who felt rightly would say at once, simply and resolutely, to Mrs. Churchill,\"Every sacrifice of mere pleasure you will always find me ready to make to your convenience; but I must go and see my father immediately. I know he would be hurt by my failing in such a mark of respect to him on the present occasion. I shall, therefore, set off to-morrow. ' If he would say so to her at once, in the tone of decision becoming a man, there would be no opposition made to his going.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Emma, laughing; \"but perhaps there might be some made to his coming back again. Such language fora young man entirely dependent to use! Nobody but you, Mr. Knightley, would imagine it possible: but you have not an idea of what is requisite in situations directly opposite to your own. Mr. Frank Churchill to be making such a speech as that to the uncle and aunt who have brought him up, and are to provide for him!-standing up in the middle of the room, I suppose, and speaking as loud as he could! How can you imagine such conduct practicable?\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Depend upon it, Emma, a sensible man would find no difficulty in it."},{"from":"gpt","value":"He would feel himself in the right; and the declaration,-made, of course, as a man of sense would make it, in a proper manner,-would do him more good, raise him higher, fix his interest stronger with the people he depended on, than all that a line of shifts and expedients can ever do. Respect would be added to affection. They would feel that they could trust him; that the nephew, who had done rightly by his father, would do rightly by them; for they know, as well as he does,-as well as all the world must know,-that he ought to pay this visit to his father; and while meanly exerting their power to delay it, are in their hearts not thinking the better of him for submitting to their whims. Respect for right conduct is felt by everybody. If he would act in this sort of manner, on principle, consistently, regularly, their little minds would bend to his.\"\n\n\"I rather doubt that. You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones. I can imagine, that if you, as you are, Mr. Knightley, were to be transported and placed all at once in Mr. Frank Churchill's situation, you would be able to say and do just what you have been recommending for him; and it might have a very good effect. The Churchills might not have a word to say in return; but then, you would have no habits of early obedience and long observance to breakthrough. To him who has, it might not be so easy to burst forth at once into perfect independence, and set all their claims on his gratitude and regard at nought. He may have as strong a sense of what would be right as you can have, without being so equal, under particular circumstances, to act up to it.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Then, it would not be so strong a sense. If it failed to produce equal exertion, it could not bean equal conviction.\"\n\n\"Oh the difference of situation and habit! I wish you would try to understand what an amiable young man maybe likely to feel indirectly opposing those whom, as child and boy, he has been looking up to all his life.\"\n\n\"Your amiable young man is a very weak young man, if this be the first occasion of his carrying through a resolution to do right against the will of others. It ought to have been a habit with him, by this time, of following his duty, instead of consulting expediency. I can allow for the fears of the child, but not of the man. Ashe became rational, he ought to have roused himself, and shaken off all that was unworthy in their authority. He ought to have opposed the first attempt on their side to make him slight his father. Had he begun as he ought, there would have been no difficulty now.\"\n\n\"We shall never agree about him,\" cried Emma; \"but that is nothing extraordinary. I have not the least idea of his being a weak young man: I feel sure that he is not. Mr. Weston would not be blind to folly, though in his own son; but he is very likely to have a more yielding, complying, mild disposition, than would suit your notions of man's perfection. I daresay he has; and though it may cut him off from some advantages, it will secure him many others.\"\n\n\"Yes; all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade himself that he has hit upon the very best method in the world of preserving peace at home, and preventing his father's having any right to complain. His letters disgust me.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Your feelings are singular. They seem to satisfy everybody else.\" \"I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs. Weston. They hardly can satisfy a woman of her good sense and quick feelings: standing in a mother's place, but without a mother's affection to blind her. It is on her account that attention to Randalls is doubly due, and she must doubly feel the omission. Had shebeen a person of consequence herself, he would have come, I daresay; and it would not have signified whether he did or no. Can you think your friend behind-hand in these sort of considerations? Do you suppose she does not often say all this to herself? No, Emma; your amiable young man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He maybe very \"amiable,\" have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people,-nothing really amiable about him.\"\n\n\"You seem determined to think ill of him.\" \"Me! not at all,\" replied Mr. Knightley, rather displeased; \"I do not want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits as any other man; but I hear of none, except what are merely personal,-that he is well-grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners.\"\n\n\"Well, if he have nothing else to recommend him, he will be a treasure at Highbury. We do not often look upon fine young men, well bred and agreeable. We must not be nice, and ask for all the virtues into the bargain. Cannot you imagine, Mr. Knightley, what a sensation his coming will produce? There will be but one subject throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury; but one interest-one object of curiosity; it will be all Mr. Frank Churchill; we shall think and speak of nobody else.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"You will excuse my being so much overpowered."},{"from":"gpt","value":"If I find him conversible, I shall be glad of his acquaintance; but if he is only a chattering coxcomb, he will not occupy much of my time or thoughts.\"\n\n\"My idea of him is, that he can adapt his conversation to the taste of everybody, and has the power as well as the wish of being universally agreeable. To you, he will talk of farming; tome, of drawing or music; and soon to everybody, having that general information on all subjects which will enable him to follow the lead, or take the lead, just as propriety may require, and to speak extremely well on each; that is my idea of him.\"\n\n\"And mine,\" said Mr. Knightley, warmly, \"is, that if he turnout anything like it, he will be the most insufferable fellow breathing! What! at three-and-twenty to be the king of his company-the great man-the practised politician, who is to read everybody's character, and make everybody's talents conduce to the display of his own superiority; to be dispensing his flatteries around, that he may make all appear like fools compared with himself! My dear Emma, your own good sense could not endure such a puppy when it came to the point.\"\n\n\"I will say no more about him,\" cried Emma,-\"you turn everything to evil. We are both prejudiced; you against, I for him; and we have no chance of agreeing till he is really here.\"\n\n\"Prejudiced! I am not prejudiced.\"\n\n\"But I am very much, and without being at all ashamed of it. My love for Mr. and Mrs. Weston gives me a decided prejudice in his favour.\"\n\n\"He is a person I never think of from one month's end to another,\" said Mr. Knightley, with a degree of vexation, which made Emma immediately talk of something else, though she could not comprehend why he should be angry."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of mind which she was always used to acknowledge in him; for with all the high opinion of himself, which she had often laid to his charge, she had never before fora moment supposed it could make him unjust to the merit of another.\n\nEND OF THE FIRST VOLUME."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma and Harriet had been walking together one morning, and, in Emma's opinion, been talking enough of Mr. Elton for that day. She could not think that Harriet's solace or her own sins required more; and she was therefore industriously getting rid of the subject as they returned;-but it burst out again when she thought she had succeeded, and after speaking sometime of what the poor must suffer in winter, and receiving no other answer than a very plaintive-\"Mr. Elton is so good to the poor!\" she found something else must be done.\n\nThey were just approaching the house where lived Mrs. and Miss Bates. She determined to call upon them and seek safety in numbers. There was always sufficient reason for such an attention: Mrs. and Miss Bates loved to be called on; and she knew she was considered by the very few who presumed ever to see imperfection in her as rather negligent in that respect, and as not contributing what she ought to the stock of their scanty comforts.\n\nShe had had many a hint from Mr. Knightley and some from her own heart, as to her deficiency, but none were equal to counteract the persuasion of its being very disagreeable,-a waste of time-tiresome women-and all the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second rate and third rate of Highbury, who were calling on them forever, and therefore she seldom went near them. But now she made the sudden resolution of not passing their door without going in; observing, as she proposed it to Harriet, that, as well as she could calculate, they were just now quite safe from any letter from Jane Fairfax.\n\nThe house belonged to people in business. Mrs. and Miss Bates occupied the drawing-room floor; and there, in the very moderate-sized apartment, which was everything to them, the visiters were most cordially and even gratefully welcomed; the quiet neat old lady, who with her knitting was seated in the warmest corner, wanting even to give up her place to Miss Woodhouse, and her more active, talking daughter, almost ready to overpower them with care and kindness, thanks for their visit, solicitude for their shoes, anxious enquiries after Mr. Woodhouse's health, cheerful communications about her mother's, and sweet-cake from the buffet:-\"Mrs. Cole hadjust been there, just called in for ten minutes, and had been so good as to sit an hour with them, and she had taken apiece of cake, and been so kind as to say she liked it very much; and, therefore, she hoped Miss Woodhouse and Miss Smith would do them the favour to eat apiece too.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The mention of the Coles was sure to be followed by that of Mr. Elton. There was intimacy between them, and Mr. Cole had heard from Mr. Elton since his going away. Emma knew what was coming: they must have the letter over again, and settle how long he had been gone, and how much he was engaged in company, and what a favourite he was wherever he went, and how full the Master of the Ceremonies'ball had been; and she went through it very well, with all the interest and all the commendation that could be requisite, and always putting forward to prevent Harriet's being obliged to say a word.\n\nThis she had been prepared for when she entered the house; but meant, having once talked him handsomely over, to be no farther incommoded by any troublesome topic, and to wander at large amongst all the mistresses and misses of Highbury, and their card-parties. She had not been prepared to have Jane Fairfax succeed Mr. Elton; but he was actually hurried off by Miss Bates; she jumped away from him at last abruptly to the Coles, to usher in a letter from her niece.\n\n\"Oh yes,-Mr. Elton, I understood,-certainly as to dancing,-Mrs. Cole was telling me that dancing at the rooms at Bath was-Mrs. Cole was so kind as to sit sometime with us, talking of Jane; for as soon as she came in, she began enquiring after her, Jane is so very great a favourite there. Whenever she is with us, Mrs. Cole does not know how to show her kindness enough; and I must say that Jane deserves it as much as anybody can. And so she began enquiring after her directly, saying, \"I know you cannot have heard from Jane lately, because it is not her time for writing;\" and when I immediately said, \"But indeed we have, we had a letter this very morning,\" I do not know that I ever saw anybody more surprised. \"Have you, upon your honour?\" said she; \"well, that is quite unexpected. Do let me hear what she says.\"\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma's politeness was at hand directly, to say, with smiling interest,-\n\n\"Have you heard from Miss Fairfax so lately? I am extremely happy. I hope she is well?\"\n\n\"Thank you. You are so kind!\" replied the happily deceived aunt, while eagerly hunting for the letter. \"Oh, here it is. I was sure it could not be far off; but I had put my huswife m upon it, you see, without being aware, and so it was quite hid, but I had it in my hand so very lately that I was almost sure it must be on the table. I was reading it to Mrs. Cole, and, since she went away, I was reading it again to my mother, for it is such a pleasure to her-a letter from Jane-that she can never hear it often enough; so I knew it could not be far off, and here it is, only just under my huswife,-and since you are so kind as to wish to hear what she says; but, first of all, I really must, injustice to Jane, apologise for her writing so short a letter, only two pages you see, hardly two, and in general she fills the whole paper and crosses half. 8 My mother often wonders that I can make it out so well. She often says, when the letter is first opened, \"Well, Hetty, now I think you will be put to it to make out all that checker-work\"-don't you, ma'am? And then I tell her, I am sure she would contrive to make it out herself, if she had nobody to do it for her, every word of it,-I am sure she would pore over it till she had made out every word. And, indeed, though my mother's eyes are not so good as they were, she can see amazingly well still, thank God! with the help of spectacles. It is such a blessing! My mother's are really very good indeed. Jane often says, when she is here, \"I am sure, grandmamma, you must have had very strong eyes to see as you do-and so much fine work as you have done too!-I only wish my eyes may last meas well\".\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"All this spoken extremely fast obliged Miss Bates to stop for\n\nbreath; and Emma said something very civil about the excellence of Miss Fairfax's handwriting.\n\n\"You are extremely kind,\" replied Miss Bates highly gratified; \"you who are such a judge, and write so beautifully yourself. I am sure there is nobody's praise that could give us so much pleasure as Miss Woodhouse's. My mother does not hear; she is a little deaf, you know. Ma'am,\" addressing her, \"do you hear what Miss Woodhouse is so obliging to say about Jane's handwriting?\"\n\nAnd Emma had the advantage of hearing her own silly compliment repeated twice over before the good old lady could comprehend it. She was pondering, in the meanwhile, upon the possibility, without seeming very rude, of making her escape from Jane Fairfax's letter, and had almost resolved on hurrying away directly under some slight excuse, when Miss Bates turned to her again and seized her attention.\n\n\"My mother's deafness is very trifling, you see, just nothing at all. By only raising my voice, and saying anything two or three times over, she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice. But it is very remarkable that she should always hear Jane better than she does me. Jane speaks so distinct! However, she will not find her grandmamma at all deafer than she was two years ago; which is saying a great deal at my mother's time of life, and it really is full two years, you know, since she was here. We never were so long without seeing her before, and as I was telling Mrs. Cole, we shall hardly know how to make enough of her now.\"\n\n\"Are you expecting Miss Fairfax here soon?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes; next week.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Indeed! That must be a very great pleasure.\"\n\n\"Thank you. You are very kind. Yes, next week. Everybody is so surprised; and everybody says the same obliging things. I am sure she will be as happy to see her friends at Highbury as they can be to see her. Yes, Friday or Saturday; she cannot say which, because Col. Campbell will be wanting the carriage himself one of those days. So very good of them to send her the whole way! But they always do, you know. Oh yes, Friday or Saturday next. That is what she writes about. That is the reason of her writing out of rule, as we call it; for, in the common course, we should not have heard from her before next Tuesday or Wednesday.\"\n\n\"Yes, so I imagined. I was afraid there could belittle chance of my hearing anything of Miss Fairfax to-day.\"\n\n\"So obliging of you! No, we should not have heard, if it had not been for this particular circumstance, of her being to come here so soon. My mother is so delighted! for she is to be three months with us at least. Three months, she says so, positively, as I am going to have the pleasure of reading to you. The case is, you see, that the Campbells are going to Ireland. Mrs. Dixon has persuaded her father and mother to come over and see her directly. They had not intended to go over till the summer, but she is so impatient to see them again;-for till she married, last October, she was never away from them so much as a week, which must make it very strange to be indifferent kingdoms, I was going to say, but however different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent letter to her mother, or her father,-I declare I do not know which it was, but we shall see presently in Jane's letter,-wrote in Mr. Dixon's name as well as her own, to press their coming over directly; and they would give them the meeting in Dublin, and take them back to their country-seat, Baly-craig,-a beautiful place I fancy. Jane has heard a great deal of its beauty,-from Mr. Dixon, I mean,-I do not know that she ever heard about it from anybody else,-but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his addresses,-and as Jane used to be very often walking outwith them,-for Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about their daughter's not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all blame them: of course she heard everything he might be telling Miss Campbell about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word that he had shown them some drawings of the place, views that he had taken himself. He is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Jane was quite longing to go to Ireland, from his account of things.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"At this moment, an ingenious and animating suspicion entering Emma's brain with regard to Jane Fairfax, this charming Mr. Dixon, and the not going to Ireland, she said, with the insidious design of further discovery,-\n\n\"You must feel it very fortunate that Miss Fairfax should be allowed to come to you at such a time. Considering the very particular friendship between her and Mrs. Dixon, you could hardly have expected her to be excused from accompanying Colonel and Mrs. Campbell.\"\n\n\"Very true, very true, indeed. The very thing that we have always been rather afraid of; for we should not have liked to have her at such a distance from us, for months together,-notable to come if anything was to happen; but you see everything turns out for the best. They want her (Mr. and Mrs. Dixon) excessively to come over with Colonel and Mrs. Campbell; quite depend upon it; nothing can be more kind or pressing than their joint invitation, Jane says, as you will hear presently. Mr. Dixon does not seem in the least backward in any attention. He is a most charming young man. Ever since the service he rendered Jane at Weymouth, when they were out in that party on the water, and she, by the sudden whirling round of something or other among the sails, would have been dashed into the sea at once, and actually was all but gone, if he had not, with the greatest presence of mind, caught hold of her habit,-I can never think of it without trembling!-but ever since we had the history of that day, I have been so fond of Mr. Dixon!\"\n\n\"But, in spite of all her friends' urgency, and her own wish of seeing Ireland, Miss Fairfax prefers devoting the time to you and Mrs. Bates?\"\n\n\"Yes-entirely her own doing, entirely her own choice; and Colonel and Mrs. Campbell think she does quite right, just what they should recommend; and indeed they particularly wish her to try her native air, as she has not been quite so well as usual lately.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I am concerned to hear of it. I think they judge wisely; but Mrs. Dixon must be very much disappointed. Mrs. Dixon, I understand, has no remarkable degree of personal beauty,-is not by any means to be compared with Miss Fairfax.\"\n\n\"Oh no. You are very obliging to say such things, but certainly not. There is no comparison between them. Miss Campbell always was absolutely plain, but extremely elegant and amiable.\"\n\n\"Yes, that of course.\"\n\n\"Jane caught a bad cold, poor thing! so long ago as the 7th of November (as I am going to read to you), and has never been well since. Along time, is not it, fora cold to hang upon her? She never mentioned it before, because she would not alarm us. Just like her! so considerate!-But, however, she is so far from well, that her kind friends the Campbells think she had better come home, and try an air that always agrees with her: and they have no doubt that three or four months at Highbury will entirely cure her; and it is certainly a great deal better that she should come here than go to Ireland, if she is unwell. Nobody could nurse her as we should do.\"\n\n\"It appears tome the most desirable arrangement in the world.\" \"And so she is to come to us next Friday or Saturday, and the Campbells leave town in their way to Holyhead the Monday following, as you will find from Jane's letter. So sudden!-You may guess, dear Miss Woodhouse, what a flurry it has thrown me in! If it was not for the drawback of her illness,-but I am afraid we must expect to see her grown thin, and looking very poorly. I must tell you what an unlucky thing happened tome as to that. I always make a point of reading Jane's letters through to myself first, before I read them aloud to my mother, you know, for fear of there being anything in them to distress her. Jane desired me to do it, so I always do; and so I began to-day with my usual caution: but no sooner did I come to the mention of her being unwell, than I burst out, quite frightened, with \"Bless me! poor Jane is ill!\"-which my mother, being on the watch, heard distinctly, and was sadly alarmed at. However, when I read on, I found it was not near so bad as I fancied at first; and I make so light of it now to her, that she does not think much about it: but I cannot imagine how I could be so off my guard! If Jane does not get well soon, we will call in Mr. Perry. The expense shall not bethought of; and though he is so liberal and so fond of Jane, that I daresay he would not mean to charge anything for attendance, we could not suffer it to be so, you know. He has a wife and family to maintain, and is not to be giving away his time. Well, now I have just given you a hint of what Jane writes about, we will turn to her letter; and I am sure she tells her own story a great deal better than I can tell it for her.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"I am afraid we must be running away,\" said Emma, glancing at Harriet, and beginning to rise, \"my father will be expecting us. I had no intention, I thought I had no power, of staying more than five minutes, when I first entered the house. I merely called, because I would not pass the door without enquiring after Mrs. Bates; but I have been so pleasantly detained! Now, however, we must wish you and Mrs. Bates good morning.\"\n\nAnd not all that could be urged to detain her succeeded. She regained the street, happy in this, that though much had been forced on her against her will, though she had, in fact, heard the whole substance of Jane Fairfax's letter, she had been able to escape the letter itself."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Jane Fairfax was an orphan, the only child of Mrs. Bates's youngest daughter.\n\nThe marriage of Lieut. Fairfax, of the-regiment of infantry, and Miss Jane Bates, had had its day of fame and pleasure, hope and interest; but nothing now remained of it save the melancholy remembrance of him dying inaction abroad-of his widow sinking under consumption and grief soon afterwards-and this girl.\n\nBy birth she belonged to Highbury: and when at three years old, on losing her mother, she became the property, the charge, the consolation, the fondling of her grandmother and aunt, there had seemed every probability of her being permanently fixed there; of her being taught only what very limited means could command, and growing up with no advantages of connection or improvement to be engrafted on what nature had given her in a pleasing person, good understanding, and warm-hearted, well-meaning relations.\n\nBut the compassionate feelings of a friend of her father gave a change to her destiny. This was Col. Campbell, who had very highly regarded Fairfax, as an excellent officer and most deserving young man; and farther, had been indebted to him for such attentions, during a severe camp-fever, as he believed had saved his life. These were claims which he did not learn to overlook, though some years passed away from the death of poor Fairfax before his own return to England put anything in his power. When he did return, he sought out the child and took notice of her. He was a married man with only one living child, a girl, about Jane's age: and Jane became their guest, paying them long visits and growing a favourite with all; and, before she was nine years old, his daughter's great fondness for her, and his own wish of being areal friend, united to produce an offer from Col. Campbell of undertaking the whole charge of her education. It was accepted; and from that period Jane had belonged to Col. Campbell's family, and had lived with them entirely, only visiting her grandmother from time to time."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The plan was that she should be brought up for educating others; the very few hundred pounds which she inherited from her father making independence impossible. To provide for her otherwise was out of Col. Campbell's power; for though his income, by pay and appointments, was handsome, his fortune was moderate, and must be all his daughter's; but, by giving her an education, he hoped to be supplying the means of respectable subsistence hereafter.\n\nSuch was Jane Fairfax's history. She had fallen into good hands, known nothing but kindness from the Campbells, and been given an excellent education. Living constantly with right-minded and well-informed people, her heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline and culture; and Col. Campbell's residence being in London, every lighter talent had been done full justice to, by the attendance of first-rate masters. Her disposition and abilities were equally worthy of all that friendship could do; and at eighteen or nineteen she was, as far as such an early age can be qualified for the care of children, fully competent to the office of instruction herself; but she was too much beloved to be parted with. Neither father nor mother could promote, and the daughter could not endure it. The evil day was put off. It was easy to decide that she was still too young; and Jane remained with them, sharing, as another daughter, in all the rational pleasures of an elegant society, and a judicious mixture of home and amusement, with only the drawback of the future,-the sobering suggestions of her own good understanding to remind her that all this might soon be over.\n\nThe affection of the whole family, the warm attachment of Miss Campbell in particular, was the more honourable to each party from the circumstance of Jane's decided superiority both in beauty and acquirements. That nature had given it in feature could not be unseen by the young woman, nor could her higher powers of mind be unfelt by the parents. They continued together with unabated regard, however, till the marriage of Miss Campbell, who by that chance, that luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs, giving attraction to what is moderate rather than to what is superior, engaged the affections of Mr. Dixon, a young man, rich and agreeable, almost as soon as they were acquainted; and was eligibly and happily settled, while Jane Fairfax had yet her bread to earn."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"This event had very lately taken place; too lately for anything to be yet attempted by her less fortunate friend towards entering on her path of duty; though she had now reached the age which her own judgment had fixed on for beginning. She had long resolved that one-and-twenty should be the period. With the fortitude of a devoted noviciate, she had resolved atone-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice, and retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification forever.\n\nThe good sense of Col. and Mrs. Campbell could not oppose such a resolution, though their feelings did. As long as they lived, no exertions would be necessary, their home might be hers forever; and for their own comfort they would have retained her wholly; but this would be selfishness:-what must beat last, had better be soon. Perhaps they began to feel it might have been kinder and wiser to have resisted the temptation of any delay, and spared her from a taste of such enjoyments of ease and leisure as must now be relinquished. Still, however, affection was glad to catch at any reasonable excuse for not hurrying on the wretched moment. She had never been quite well since the time of their daughter's marriage; and till she should have completely recovered her usual strength, they must forbid her engaging in duties, which, so far from being compatible with a weakened frame and varying spirits, seemed, under the most favourable circumstances, to require something more than human perfection of body and mind to be discharged with tolerable comfort.\n\nWith regard to her not accompanying them to Ireland, her account to her aunt contained nothing but truth, though there might be some truths not told. It washer own choice to give the time of their absence to Highbury; to spend, perhaps, her last months of perfect liberty with those kind relations to whom she was so very dear: and the Campbells, whatever might be their motive or motives, whether single, or double, or treble, gave the arrangement their ready sanction, and said, that they depended more on a few months spent in her native air, for the recovery of her health, than on anything else. Certain it was that she was to come; and that Highbury, instead of welcoming that perfect novelty which had been so long promised it-Mr. Frank Churchill-must put up for the present with Jane Fairfax, who could bring only the freshness of a two years' absence."},{"from":"human","value":"Emma was sorry to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like through three long months!"},{"from":"gpt","value":"-to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought! Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a difficult question to answer: Mr. Knightley had once told her it was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to bethought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her. But'she could never get acquainted with her: she did not know how it was, but there was such coldness and reserve-such apparent indifference whether she pleased or not-and then, her aunt was such an eternal talker!-and she was made such a fuss with by everybody!-and it had been always imagined that they were to be so intimate-because their ages were the same, everybody had supposed they must be so fond of each other.\" These were her reasons; she had no better.\n\nIt was a dislike so little just,-every imputed fault was so magnified by fancy,-that she never saw Jane Fairfax, the first time after any considerable absence, without feeling that she had injured her; and now, when the due visit was paid, on her arrival, after a two years' interval, she was particularly struck with the very appearance and manners, which for those two whole years she had been depreciating. Jane Fairfax was very elegant, remarkably elegant; and she had herself the highest value for elegance. Her height was pretty, just such as almost everybody would think tall, and nobody could think very tall; her figure particularly graceful; her size a most becoming medium, between fat and thin, though a slight appearance of ill-health seemed to point out the likeliest evil of the two. Emma could not but feel all this; and then, her face-her features-there was more beauty in them all together than she had remembered; it was not regular, but it was very pleasing beauty. Her eyes, a deep grey, with dark eyelashes and eyebrows, had never been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire it: elegance, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in Highbury. There, not to be vulgar, was distinction and merit."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"In short, she sat, during the first visit, looking at Jane Fairfax with twofold complacency,-the sense of pleasure and the sense of rendering justice, and was determining that she would dislike her no longer. When she took in her history, indeed, her situation, as well as her beauty; when she considered what all this elegance was destined to, what she was going to sink from, how she was going to live, it seemed impossible to feel anything but compassion and respect; especially, if to every well-known particular, entitling her to interest, were added the highly probable circumstance of an attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she had so naturally started to herself. In that case, nothing could be more pitiable or more honourable than the sacrifices she had resolved on. Emma was very willing now to acquit her of having seduced Mr. Dixon's affections from his wife, or of anything mischievous which her imagination had suggested at first. If it were love, it might be simple, single, successless love on her side alone. She might have been unconsciously sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his conversation with her friend; and from the best, the purest of motives, might now be denying herself this visit to Ireland, and resolving to divide herself effectually from him and his connections by soon beginning her career of laborious duty.\n\nUpon the whole, Emma left her with such softened, charitable feelings, as made her look around in walking home, and lament that Highbury afforded no young man worthy of giving her independence,-nobody that she could wish to scheme about for her.\n\nThese were charming feelings, but not lasting. Before she had committed herself by any public profession of eternal friendship for Jane Fairfax, or done more towards a recantation of past prejudices and errors, than saying to Mr. Knightley, \"She certainly is handsome; she is better than handsome!\" Jane had spent an evening at Hartfield with her grandmother and aunt, and everything was relapsing much into its usual state. Former provocations re-appeared. The aunt was as tiresome as ever; more tiresome, because anxiety for her health was now added to admiration of her powers; and they had to listen to the description of exactly how little bread and butter she ate for breakfast, and how small a slice of mutton for dinner as well as to see exhibitions of new caps and new workbags for her mother and herself; and Jane's offences rose again. They had music: Emma was obliged to play; and the thanks and praise which necessarily followed appeared to her an affectation of candour, an air of greatness, meaning only to showoff in higher style her own very superior performance. She was, besides, which was the worst of all, so cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapt up in a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"If anything could be more, where all was most, she was more reserved on the subject of Weymouth and the Dixons than anything. She seemed bent on giving no real insight into Mr. Dixon's character, or her own value for his company, or opinion of the suitableness of the match. It was all general approbation and smoothness; nothing delineated or distinguished. It did her no service, however. Her caution was thrown away. Emma saw its artifice, and returned to her first surmises. There probably was something more to conceal than her own preference; Mr. Dixon, perhaps, had been very near changing one friend for the other, or been fixed only to Miss Campbell, for the sake of the future twelve thousand pounds.\n\nThe like reserve prevailed on other topics. She and Mr. Frank Churchill had been at Weymouth at the same time. It was known that they were a little acquainted; but not a syllable of real information could Emma procure as to what he truly was. \"Was he handsome?\"-\"She believed he was reckoned a very fine young man.\"-\"Was he agreeable?\"-\"He was generally thought so.\"-\"Did he appear a sensible young man; a young man of information?\"-\"At a watering-place, or in a common London acquaintance, it was difficult to decide on such points. Manners were all that could be safely judged of, under a much longer knowledge than they had yet had of Mr. Churchill. She believed everybody found his manners pleasing.\" Emma could not forgive her."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma could not forgive her: but as neither provocation nor resentment were discerned by Mr. Knightley, who had been of the party, and had seen only proper attention and pleasing behavior on each side, he was expressing the next morning, being at Hartfield again on business with Mr. Woodhouse, his approbation of the whole; not so openly as he might have done had her father been out of the room, but speaking plain enough to be very intelligible to Emma. He had been used to think her unjust to Jane, and had now great pleasure in marking an improvement.\n\n\"Avery pleasant evening,\" he began as soon as Mr. Woodhouse had been talked into what was necessary, told that he understood, and the papers swept away;-\"particularly pleasant. You and Miss Fairfax gave us some very good music. I do not know a more luxurious state, sir, than sitting at one's ease to be entertained a whole evening by two such young women; sometimes with music and sometimes with conversation. I am sure Miss Fairfax must have found the evening pleasant, Emma. You left nothing undone. I was glad you made her play so much for having no instrument at her grandmother's, it must have been areal indulgence.\"\n\n\"I am happy you approved,\" said Emma, smiling; \"but I hope I am not often deficient in what is due to guests at Hartfield.\"\n\n\"No, my dear,\" said her father instantly; \"that I am sure you are not. There is nobody half so attentive and civil as you are. If anything, you are too attentive. The muffin last night,-if it had been handed round once, I think it would have been enough.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Mr. Knightley, nearly at the same time; \"you are not often deficient; not often deficient, either in manner or comprehension. I think you understand me, therefore.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"An arch look expressed-\"I understand you well enough;\" but she said only, \"Miss Fairfax is reserved.\"\n\n\"I always told you she was-a little; but you will soon overcome all that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be honoured.\"\n\n\"You think her diffident. I do not see it.\"\n\n\"My dear Emma,\" said he, moving from his chair into one close by her, \"you are not going to tell me, I hope, that you had not a pleasant evening.\"\n\n\"Oh no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions, and amused to think how little information I obtained.\"\n\n\"I am disappointed,\" was his only answer.\n\n\"I hope everybody had a pleasant evening,\" said Mr. Woodhouse, in his quiet way. \"I had. Once, I felt the fire rather too much; but then I moved back my chair a little, a very little, and it did not disturb me. Miss Bates was very chatty and good humoured, as she always is, though she speaks rather too quick. However, she is very agreeable, and Mrs. Bates, too, in a different way. I like old friends; and Miss Jane Fairfax is a very pretty sort of young lady; a very pretty and a very well behaved young lady indeed. She must have found the evening agreeable, Mr. Knightley, because she had Emma.\"\n\n\"True, sir; and Emma, because she had Miss Fairfax.\"\n\nEmma saw his anxiety, and wishing to appease it, at least for the present, said, and with a sincerity which no one could question,-\n\n\"She is a sort of elegant creature that one cannot keep one's eyes from. I am always watching her to admire; and I do pity her from my heart.\""}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Extend the narrative as the author's co-writer.\\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\\nAuthor: Jane Austen\\nTitle: Emma\\nChapter: 20\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"It would be impossible to say what Emma felt on hearing this; which of all her unpleasant sensations was uppermost.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She was too completely overpowered to be immediately able to reply; and two moments of silence being ample encouragement for Mr. Elton's sanguine state of mind, he tried to take her hand again, as he joyously exclaimed.-\\n\\n\\\"Charming Miss Woodhouse! allow me to interpret this interesting silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, sir,\\\" cried Emma, \\\"it confesses no such thing. So far from having long understood you, I have been in a most complete error with respect to your views till this moment. As to myself I am very sorry that you should have been giving way to any feelings-Nothing could be farther from my wishes-your attachment to my friend Harriet-your pursuit of her (pursuit it appeared)-gave me great pleasure, and I have been very earnestly wishing you success; but had I supposed that she were not your attraction to Hartfield, I should certainly have thought you judged ill in making your visits so frequent. Am Ito believe that you have never sought to recommend yourself particularly to Miss Smith? that you have never thought seriously of her?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Never, madam,\\\" cried he, affronted in his turn: \\\"never, I assure you. I think seriously of Miss Smith!-Miss Smith is a very good sort of girl; and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish her extremely well; and, no doubt, there are men who might not object to-Everybody has their level; but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss. I need not so totally despair of an equal alliance as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith! No, madam, my visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only; and the encouragement I received-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Encouragement! I give you encouragement!-sir, you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my friend. In no other light could you have been more tome than a common acquaintance. I am exceedingly sorry; but it is well that the mistake ends where it does. Had the same behaviour continued, Miss Smith might have been led into a misconception of your views; not being aware, probably, anymore than myself, of the very great inequality which you are so sensible of. But, as it is, the disappointment is single, and, I trust, will not be lasting. I have no thoughts of matrimony at present.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He was too angry to say another word; her manner too decided to invite supplication: and in this state of swelling resentment, and mutually deep mortification, they had to continue together a few minutes longer, for the fears of Mr. Woodhouse had confined them to afoot pace. If there had not been so much anger, there would have been desperate awkwardness; but their straight-forward emotions left no room for the little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage turned into Vicarage Lane, or when it stopped, they found themselves, all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another syllable passed. Emma then felt it indispensable to wish him a goodnight. The compliment was just returned, coldly and proudly; and, under indescribable irritation of spirits, she was then conveyed to Hartfield.\\n\\nThere she was welcomed, with the utmost delight, by her father, who had been trembling for the dangers of a solitary drive from Vicarage Lane-turning a corner which he could never bear to think of-and in strange hands-a mere common coachman-no James; and there it seemed as if her return only were wanted to make everything go well: for Mr. John Knightley, ashamed of his ill-humour, was now all kindness and attention; and so particularly solicitous for the comfort of her father, as to seem-if not quite ready to join him in a basin of gruel-perfectly sensible of its being exceedingly wholesome; and the day was concluding in peace and comfort to all their little party, except herself. But her mind had never been in such perturbation; and it needed a very strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the usual hour of separating allowed her the relief of quiet reflection.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and Emma sat down to think and be miserable. It was a wretched business, indeed. Such an overthrow of everything she had been wishing for! Such a development of everything most unwelcome! Such a blow for Harriet!-that was the worst of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation of some sort or other; but, compared with the evil to Harriet, all was light; and she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken-more in error-more disgraced by misjudgment than she actually was,-could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.\\n\\n\\\"If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have borne anything. He might have doubled his presumption tome-but poor Harriet!\\\"\\n\\nHow she could have been so deceived! He protested that he had never thought seriously of Harriet-never! She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made everything bend to it. His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.\\n\\nThe picture! How eager he had been about the picture!-and the charade!-and a hundred other circumstances;-how clearly they had seemed to point at Harriet. To be sure, the charade, with its'ready wit\\\"-but then, the'soft eyes\\\"-in fact it suited neither; it was a jumble without taste or truth. Who could have seen through such thick-headed nonsense?\\n\\nCertainly she had often, especially of late, thought his manners to herself unnecessarily gallant; but it had passed as his way, as a mere error of judgment, of knowledge, of taste, as one proof, among others, that he had not always lived in the best society; that with all the gentleness of his address, true elegance was sometimes wanting; but, till this very day, she had never for an instant suspected it to mean anything but grateful respect to her as Harriet's friend.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"To Mr. John Knightley was she indebted for her first idea on the subject, for the first start of its possibility. There was no denying that those brothers had penetration. She remembered what Mr. Knightley had once said to her about Mr. Elton, the caution he had given the conviction he had professed that Mr. Elton would never marry indiscreetly; and blushed to think how much truer a knowledge of his character had been there shown than any she had reached herself. It was dreadfully mortifying; but Mr. Elton was proving himself, in many respects, the very reverse of what she had meant and believed him; proud, assuming, conceited: very full of his own claims, and little concerned about the feelings of others.\\n\\nContrary to the usual course of things, Mr. Elton's wanting to pay his addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion. His professions and his proposals did him no service. She thought nothing of his attachment, and was insulted by his hopes. He wanted to marry well, and having the arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love; but she was perfectly easy as to his not suffering any disappointment that need be cared for. There had been no real affection either in his language or manners. Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He only wanted to aggrandise and enrich himself; and if Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield, the heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite so easily obtained as he had fancied, he would soon try for Miss Somebody else with twenty, or with ten.\\n\\nBut, that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as aware of his views, accepting his intentions, meaning, in short, to marry him!-should suppose himself her equal in connection or mind!-look down upon her friend, so well understanding the gradations of rank below him, and be so blind to what rose above, as to fancy himself showing no presumption in addressing her!-it was most provoking.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he washer inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind. The very want of such equality might prevent his perception of it; but he must know that in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior. He must know that the Woodhouses had been settled for several generations at Hartfield, the younger branch of a very ancient family,-and that the Eltons were nobody. The landed property of Hartfield certainly was inconsiderable, being but a sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate, to which all the rest of Highbury belonged; but their fortune, from other sources, was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donwell Abbey itself, in every other kind of consequence; and the Woodhouses had long held a high place in the consideration of the neighbourhood which Mr. Elton had first entered not two years ago, to make his way as he could, without any alliances but in trade, or anything to recommend him to notice but his situation and his civility. But he had fancied her in love with him; that evidently must have been his dependence; and after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners and a conceited head, Emma was obliged, in common honesty, to stop and admit, that her own behaviour to him had been so complaisant and obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as (supposing her real motive unperceived) might warrant a man of ordinary observation and delicacy, like Mr. Elton, in fancying himself a very decided favourite. If she had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to wonder that he, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken hers.\\n\\nThe first error, and the worst, lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active apart in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Here have I,\\\" said she, \\\"actually talked poor Harriet into being very much attached to this man. She might never have thought of him but for me; and certainly never would have thought of him with hope, if I had not assured her of his attachment, for she is as modest and humble as I used to think him. Oh that I had been satisfied with persuading her not to accept young Martin! There I was quite right: that was well done of me; but there I should have stopped, and left the rest to time and chance. I was introducing her into good company, and giving her the opportunity of pleasing someone worth having; I ought not to have attempted more. But now, poor girl, her peace is cutup for sometime. I have been but half a friend to her; and if she were not to feel this disappointment so very much, I am sure I have not an idea of anybody else who would beat all desirable for her:-William Coxe-oh no, I could not endure William Coxe,-a pert young lawyer.\\\"\\n\\nShe stopped to blush and laugh at her own relapse, and then resumed a more serious, more dispiriting cogitation upon what had been, and might be, and must be. The distressing explanation she had to make to Harriet, and all that poor Harriet would be suffering, with the awkwardness of future meetings, the difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the acquaintance, of subduing feelings, concealing resentment, and avoiding éclat, were enough to occupy her inmost unmirthful reflections sometime longer, and she went to bed at last with nothing settled but the conviction of her having blundered most dreadfully.\\n\\nTo youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma's, though under temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma got upon the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had gone to bed; more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her, and to depend on getting tolerably out of it.\\n\\nIt was a great consolation that Mr. Elton should not be really in love with her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to disappoint him; that Harriet's nature should not be of that superior sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive; and that there could be no necessity for anybody's knowing what had passed except the three principals, and especially for her father's being given a moment's uneasiness about it.\\n\\nThese were very cheering thoughts; and the sight of a great deal of snow on the ground did her further service, for anything was welcome that might justify their all three being quite asunder at present.\\n\\nThe weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas-day, she could not go to church. Mr. Woodhouse would have been miserable had his daughter attempted it, and she was therefore safe from either exciting or receiving unpleasant and most unsuitable ideas. The ground covered with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and thaw, which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every morning beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting into freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner. No intercourse with Harriet possible but by note; no church for heron Sunday anymore than on Christmas-day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. Elton's absenting himself.\\n\\nIt was weather which might fairly confine everybody at home; and though she hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort in some society or other, it was very pleasant to have her father so well satisfied with his being all alone in his own house, too wise to stir out; and to hear him say to Mr. Knightley, whom no weather could keep entirely from them,-\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Ah, Mr. Knightley, why do not you stay at homelike poor Mr. Elton?\\\"\\n\\nThese days of confinement would have been, but for her private perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited her brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance to his companions; and he had, besides, so thoroughly cleared off his ill-humour at Randalls, that his amiableness never failed him during the rest of his stay at Hartfield. He was always agreeable and obliging, and speaking pleasantly of everybody. But with all the hopes of cheerfulness, and all the present comfort of delay, there was still such an evil hanging over her in the hour of explanation with Harriet, as made it impossible for Emma to be ever perfectly at ease.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley were not detained long at Hartfield. The weather soon improved enough for those to move who must move; and Mr. Woodhouse having, as usual, tried to persuade his daughter to stay behind with all her children, was obliged to seethe whole party set off, and return to his lamentations over the destiny of poor Isabella;-which poor Isabella, passing her life with those she doted on, full of their merits, blind to their faults, and always innocently busy, might have been a model of right feminine happiness.\\n\\nThe evening of the very day on which they went brought a note from Mr. Elton to Mr. Woodhouse, along, civil, ceremonious note, to say, with Mr. Elton's best compliments, \\\"that he was proposing to leave Highbury the following morning in his way to Bath; where, in compliance with the pressing entreaties of some friends, he had engaged to spend a few weeks; and very much regretted the impossibility he was under, from various circumstances of weather and business, of taking a personal leave of Mr. Woodhouse, of whose friendly civilities he should ever retain a grateful sense; and had Mr. Woodhouse any commands, should be happy to attend to them.\\\"\\n\\nEmma was most agreeably surprised. Mr. Elton's absence just at this time was the very thing to be desired. She admired him for contriving it, though notable to give him much credit for the manner in which it was announced. Resentment could not have been more plainly spoken than in a civility to her father, from which she was so pointedly excluded. She had not even a share in his opening compliments. Her name was not mentioned; and there was so striking a change in all this, and such an ill-judged solemnity of leave-taking in his grateful acknowledgments, as she thought, at first, could not escape her father's suspicion.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"It did, however.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Her father was quite taken up with the surprise of so sudden a journey, and his fears that Mr. Elton might never get safely to the end of it, and saw nothing extraordinary in his language. It was a very useful note, for it supplied them with fresh matter for thought and conversation during the rest of their lonely evening. Mr. Woodhouse talked over his alarms, and Emma was inspirits to persuade them away with all her usual promptitude.\\n\\nShe now resolved to keep Harriet no longer in the dark. She had reason to believe her nearly recovered from her cold, and it was desirable that she should have as much time as possible forgetting the better of her other complaint before the gentleman's return. She went to Mrs. Goddard's accordingly the very next day, to undergo the necessary penance of communication; and a severe one it was. She had to destroy all the hopes which she had been so industriously feeding, to appear in the ungracious character of the one preferred, and acknowledge herself grossly mistaken and misjudging in all her ideas on one subject, all her observations, all her convictions, all her prophecies for the last six weeks.\\n\\nThe confession completely renewed her first shame, and the sight of Harriet's tears made her think that she should never be in charity with herself again.\\n\\nHarriet bore the intelligence very well, blaming nobody, and in everything testifying such an ingenuousness of disposition and lowly opinion of herself, as must appear with particular advantage at that moment to her friend.\\n\\nEmma was in the humour to value simplicity and modesty to the utmost; and all that was amiable, all that ought to be attaching, seemed on Harriet's side, not her own. Harriet did not consider herself as having anything to complain of. The affection of such a man as Mr. Elton would have been too great a distinction. She never could have deserved him; and nobody but so partial and kinda friend as Miss Woodhouse would have thought it possible.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Her tears fell abundantly; but her grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma's eyes; and she listened to her, and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding,-really for the time convinced that Harriet was the superior creature of the two, and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do.\\n\\nIt was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of her life. Her second duty now, inferior only to her father's claims, was to promote Harriet's comfort, and endeavour to prove her own affection in some better method than by match-making. She got her to Hartfield, and showed her the most unvarying kindness, striving to occupy and amuse her, and by books and conversation to drive Mr. Elton from her thoughts.\\n\\nTime, she knew, must be allowed for this being thoroughly done; and she could suppose herself but an indifferent judge of such matters in general, and very inadequate to sympathise in an attachment to Mr. Elton in particular; but it seemed to her reasonable that at Harriet's age, and with the entire extinction of all hope, such a progress might be made towards a state of composure by the time of Mr. Elton's return, as to allow them all to meet again in the common routine of acquaintance, without any danger of betraying sentiments or increasing them.\\n\\nHarriet did think him all perfection, and maintain the non-existence of anybody equal to him in person or goodness, and did, in truth, prove herself more resolutely in love than Emma had foreseen; but yet it appeared to her so natural, so inevitable to strive against an inclination of that sort unrequited, that she could not comprehend its continuing very long in equal force.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"If Mr. Elton, on his return, made his own indifference as evident and indubitable as she could not doubt he would anxiously do, she could not imagine Harriet's persisting to place her happiness in the sight or the recollection of him.\\n\\nTheir being fixed, so absolutely fixed, in the same place, was bad for each, for all three. Not one of them had the power of removal, or of effecting any material change of society. They must encounter each other, and make the best of it.\\n\\nHarriet was further unfortunate in the tone of her companions at Mrs. Goddard's, Mr. Elton being the adoration of all the teachers and great girls in the school; and it must beat Hartfield only that she could have any chance of hearing him spoken of with cooling moderation or repellant truth. Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be found, if anywhere; and Emma felt that, till she saw her in the way of cure, there could be no true peace for herself.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Frank Churchill did not come. When the time proposed drew near, Mrs. Weston's fears were justified in the arrival of a letter of excuse. For the present, he could not be spared, to his'very great mortification and regret; but still he looked forward with the hope of coming to Randalls at no distant period.\\\"\\n\\nMrs. Weston was exceedingly disappointed,-much more disappointed, in fact, than her husband, though her dependence on seeing the young man had been so much more sober; but a sanguine temper, though forever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again. For half an hour Mr. Weston was surprised and sorry: but then he began to perceive that Frank's coming two or three months later would be a much better plan, better time of year, better weather; and that he would be able, without any doubt, to stay considerably longer with them than if he had come sooner.\\n\\nThese feelings rapidly restored his comfort, while Mrs. Weston, of a more apprehensive disposition, foresaw nothing but a repetition of excuses and delays; and after all her concern for what her husband was to suffer, suffered a great deal more herself.\\n\\nEmma was not at this time in a state of spirits to care really about Mr. Frank Churchill's not coming, except as a disappointment at Randalls. The acquaintance, at present, had no charm for her. She wanted, rather, to be quiet and out of temptation; but still, as it was desirable that she should appear, in general, like her usual self, she took care to express as much interest in the circumstance, and enter as warmly into Mr. and Mrs. Weston's disappointment as might naturally belong to their friendship.\\n\\nShe was the first to announce it to Mr. Knightley; and exclaimed quite as much as was necessary (or, being acting apart, perhaps rather more,) at the conduct of the Churchills in keeping him away. She then proceeded to say a good deal more than she felt of the advantage of such an addition to their confined society in Surrey; the pleasure of looking at somebody new; the gala-day to Highbury entire, which the sight of him would have made; and ending with reflections on the Churchills again, found herself directly involved in a disagreement with Mr. Knightley; and, to her great amusement, perceived that she was taking the other side of the question from her real opinion, and, making use of Mrs. Weston's arguments against herself.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"The Churchills are very likely in fault,\\\" said Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Knightley, coolly; \\\"but I daresay he might come if he would.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not know why you should say so. He wishes exceedingly to come; but his uncle and aunt will not spare him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I cannot believe that he has not the power of coming, if he made a point of it. It is too unlikely for me to believe it without proof.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How odd you are! What has Mr. Frank Churchill done, to make you suppose him such an unnatural creature?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am not supposing him at all an unnatural creature, in suspecting that he may have learned to be above his connections, and to care very little for anything but his own pleasure, from living with those who have always set him the example of it. It is a great deal more natural than one could wish, that a young man, brought up by those who are proud, luxurious, and selfish, should be proud, luxurious, and selfish too. If Frank Churchill had wanted to see his father, he would have contrived it between September and January. A man at his age,-what is he?-three or four and twenty-cannot be without the means of doing as much as that. It is impossible.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's easily said, and easily felt by you, who have always been your own master. You are the worst judge in the world, Mr. Knightley, of the difficulties of dependence. You do not know what it is to have tempers to manage.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is not to be conceived that a man of three or four and twenty should not have liberty of mind or limb to that amount. He cannot want money, he cannot want leisure. We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both, that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom. We hear of him forever at some watering-place or other; a little while ago he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the Churchills.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yes, sometimes he can.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And those times are, whenever he thinks it worth his while; whenever there is any temptation of pleasure.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is very unfair to judge of anybody's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation. Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family maybe. We ought to be acquainted with Enscombe, and with Mrs. Churchill's temper, before we pretend to decide with what her nephew can do. He may, at times, be able to do a great deal more than he can at others.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chooses, and that is, his duty; not by manœuvering and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. It is Frank Churchill's duty to pay this attention to his father. He knows it to be so, by his promises and messages; but if he wished to do it, it might be done. A man who felt rightly would say at once, simply and resolutely, to Mrs. Churchill,\\\"Every sacrifice of mere pleasure you will always find me ready to make to your convenience; but I must go and see my father immediately. I know he would be hurt by my failing in such a mark of respect to him on the present occasion. I shall, therefore, set off to-morrow. ' If he would say so to her at once, in the tone of decision becoming a man, there would be no opposition made to his going.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" said Emma, laughing; \\\"but perhaps there might be some made to his coming back again. Such language fora young man entirely dependent to use! Nobody but you, Mr. Knightley, would imagine it possible: but you have not an idea of what is requisite in situations directly opposite to your own. Mr. Frank Churchill to be making such a speech as that to the uncle and aunt who have brought him up, and are to provide for him!-standing up in the middle of the room, I suppose, and speaking as loud as he could! How can you imagine such conduct practicable?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Depend upon it, Emma, a sensible man would find no difficulty in it.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He would feel himself in the right; and the declaration,-made, of course, as a man of sense would make it, in a proper manner,-would do him more good, raise him higher, fix his interest stronger with the people he depended on, than all that a line of shifts and expedients can ever do. Respect would be added to affection. They would feel that they could trust him; that the nephew, who had done rightly by his father, would do rightly by them; for they know, as well as he does,-as well as all the world must know,-that he ought to pay this visit to his father; and while meanly exerting their power to delay it, are in their hearts not thinking the better of him for submitting to their whims. Respect for right conduct is felt by everybody. If he would act in this sort of manner, on principle, consistently, regularly, their little minds would bend to his.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I rather doubt that. You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones. I can imagine, that if you, as you are, Mr. Knightley, were to be transported and placed all at once in Mr. Frank Churchill's situation, you would be able to say and do just what you have been recommending for him; and it might have a very good effect. The Churchills might not have a word to say in return; but then, you would have no habits of early obedience and long observance to breakthrough. To him who has, it might not be so easy to burst forth at once into perfect independence, and set all their claims on his gratitude and regard at nought. He may have as strong a sense of what would be right as you can have, without being so equal, under particular circumstances, to act up to it.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Then, it would not be so strong a sense. If it failed to produce equal exertion, it could not bean equal conviction.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh the difference of situation and habit! I wish you would try to understand what an amiable young man maybe likely to feel indirectly opposing those whom, as child and boy, he has been looking up to all his life.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Your amiable young man is a very weak young man, if this be the first occasion of his carrying through a resolution to do right against the will of others. It ought to have been a habit with him, by this time, of following his duty, instead of consulting expediency. I can allow for the fears of the child, but not of the man. Ashe became rational, he ought to have roused himself, and shaken off all that was unworthy in their authority. He ought to have opposed the first attempt on their side to make him slight his father. Had he begun as he ought, there would have been no difficulty now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We shall never agree about him,\\\" cried Emma; \\\"but that is nothing extraordinary. I have not the least idea of his being a weak young man: I feel sure that he is not. Mr. Weston would not be blind to folly, though in his own son; but he is very likely to have a more yielding, complying, mild disposition, than would suit your notions of man's perfection. I daresay he has; and though it may cut him off from some advantages, it will secure him many others.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes; all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade himself that he has hit upon the very best method in the world of preserving peace at home, and preventing his father's having any right to complain. His letters disgust me.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Your feelings are singular. They seem to satisfy everybody else.\\\" \\\"I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs. Weston. They hardly can satisfy a woman of her good sense and quick feelings: standing in a mother's place, but without a mother's affection to blind her. It is on her account that attention to Randalls is doubly due, and she must doubly feel the omission. Had shebeen a person of consequence herself, he would have come, I daresay; and it would not have signified whether he did or no. Can you think your friend behind-hand in these sort of considerations? Do you suppose she does not often say all this to herself? No, Emma; your amiable young man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He maybe very \\\"amiable,\\\" have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people,-nothing really amiable about him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You seem determined to think ill of him.\\\" \\\"Me! not at all,\\\" replied Mr. Knightley, rather displeased; \\\"I do not want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits as any other man; but I hear of none, except what are merely personal,-that he is well-grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, if he have nothing else to recommend him, he will be a treasure at Highbury. We do not often look upon fine young men, well bred and agreeable. We must not be nice, and ask for all the virtues into the bargain. Cannot you imagine, Mr. Knightley, what a sensation his coming will produce? There will be but one subject throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury; but one interest-one object of curiosity; it will be all Mr. Frank Churchill; we shall think and speak of nobody else.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You will excuse my being so much overpowered.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"If I find him conversible, I shall be glad of his acquaintance; but if he is only a chattering coxcomb, he will not occupy much of my time or thoughts.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My idea of him is, that he can adapt his conversation to the taste of everybody, and has the power as well as the wish of being universally agreeable. To you, he will talk of farming; tome, of drawing or music; and soon to everybody, having that general information on all subjects which will enable him to follow the lead, or take the lead, just as propriety may require, and to speak extremely well on each; that is my idea of him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And mine,\\\" said Mr. Knightley, warmly, \\\"is, that if he turnout anything like it, he will be the most insufferable fellow breathing! What! at three-and-twenty to be the king of his company-the great man-the practised politician, who is to read everybody's character, and make everybody's talents conduce to the display of his own superiority; to be dispensing his flatteries around, that he may make all appear like fools compared with himself! My dear Emma, your own good sense could not endure such a puppy when it came to the point.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I will say no more about him,\\\" cried Emma,-\\\"you turn everything to evil. We are both prejudiced; you against, I for him; and we have no chance of agreeing till he is really here.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Prejudiced! I am not prejudiced.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But I am very much, and without being at all ashamed of it. My love for Mr. and Mrs. Weston gives me a decided prejudice in his favour.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He is a person I never think of from one month's end to another,\\\" said Mr. Knightley, with a degree of vexation, which made Emma immediately talk of something else, though she could not comprehend why he should be angry.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of mind which she was always used to acknowledge in him; for with all the high opinion of himself, which she had often laid to his charge, she had never before fora moment supposed it could make him unjust to the merit of another.\\n\\nEND OF THE FIRST VOLUME.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma and Harriet had been walking together one morning, and, in Emma's opinion, been talking enough of Mr. Elton for that day. She could not think that Harriet's solace or her own sins required more; and she was therefore industriously getting rid of the subject as they returned;-but it burst out again when she thought she had succeeded, and after speaking sometime of what the poor must suffer in winter, and receiving no other answer than a very plaintive-\\\"Mr. Elton is so good to the poor!\\\" she found something else must be done.\\n\\nThey were just approaching the house where lived Mrs. and Miss Bates. She determined to call upon them and seek safety in numbers. There was always sufficient reason for such an attention: Mrs. and Miss Bates loved to be called on; and she knew she was considered by the very few who presumed ever to see imperfection in her as rather negligent in that respect, and as not contributing what she ought to the stock of their scanty comforts.\\n\\nShe had had many a hint from Mr. Knightley and some from her own heart, as to her deficiency, but none were equal to counteract the persuasion of its being very disagreeable,-a waste of time-tiresome women-and all the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second rate and third rate of Highbury, who were calling on them forever, and therefore she seldom went near them. But now she made the sudden resolution of not passing their door without going in; observing, as she proposed it to Harriet, that, as well as she could calculate, they were just now quite safe from any letter from Jane Fairfax.\\n\\nThe house belonged to people in business. Mrs. and Miss Bates occupied the drawing-room floor; and there, in the very moderate-sized apartment, which was everything to them, the visiters were most cordially and even gratefully welcomed; the quiet neat old lady, who with her knitting was seated in the warmest corner, wanting even to give up her place to Miss Woodhouse, and her more active, talking daughter, almost ready to overpower them with care and kindness, thanks for their visit, solicitude for their shoes, anxious enquiries after Mr. Woodhouse's health, cheerful communications about her mother's, and sweet-cake from the buffet:-\\\"Mrs. Cole hadjust been there, just called in for ten minutes, and had been so good as to sit an hour with them, and she had taken apiece of cake, and been so kind as to say she liked it very much; and, therefore, she hoped Miss Woodhouse and Miss Smith would do them the favour to eat apiece too.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The mention of the Coles was sure to be followed by that of Mr. Elton. There was intimacy between them, and Mr. Cole had heard from Mr. Elton since his going away. Emma knew what was coming: they must have the letter over again, and settle how long he had been gone, and how much he was engaged in company, and what a favourite he was wherever he went, and how full the Master of the Ceremonies'ball had been; and she went through it very well, with all the interest and all the commendation that could be requisite, and always putting forward to prevent Harriet's being obliged to say a word.\\n\\nThis she had been prepared for when she entered the house; but meant, having once talked him handsomely over, to be no farther incommoded by any troublesome topic, and to wander at large amongst all the mistresses and misses of Highbury, and their card-parties. She had not been prepared to have Jane Fairfax succeed Mr. Elton; but he was actually hurried off by Miss Bates; she jumped away from him at last abruptly to the Coles, to usher in a letter from her niece.\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes,-Mr. Elton, I understood,-certainly as to dancing,-Mrs. Cole was telling me that dancing at the rooms at Bath was-Mrs. Cole was so kind as to sit sometime with us, talking of Jane; for as soon as she came in, she began enquiring after her, Jane is so very great a favourite there. Whenever she is with us, Mrs. Cole does not know how to show her kindness enough; and I must say that Jane deserves it as much as anybody can. And so she began enquiring after her directly, saying, \\\"I know you cannot have heard from Jane lately, because it is not her time for writing;\\\" and when I immediately said, \\\"But indeed we have, we had a letter this very morning,\\\" I do not know that I ever saw anybody more surprised. \\\"Have you, upon your honour?\\\" said she; \\\"well, that is quite unexpected. Do let me hear what she says.\\\"\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma's politeness was at hand directly, to say, with smiling interest,-\\n\\n\\\"Have you heard from Miss Fairfax so lately? I am extremely happy. I hope she is well?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thank you. You are so kind!\\\" replied the happily deceived aunt, while eagerly hunting for the letter. \\\"Oh, here it is. I was sure it could not be far off; but I had put my huswife m upon it, you see, without being aware, and so it was quite hid, but I had it in my hand so very lately that I was almost sure it must be on the table. I was reading it to Mrs. Cole, and, since she went away, I was reading it again to my mother, for it is such a pleasure to her-a letter from Jane-that she can never hear it often enough; so I knew it could not be far off, and here it is, only just under my huswife,-and since you are so kind as to wish to hear what she says; but, first of all, I really must, injustice to Jane, apologise for her writing so short a letter, only two pages you see, hardly two, and in general she fills the whole paper and crosses half. 8 My mother often wonders that I can make it out so well. She often says, when the letter is first opened, \\\"Well, Hetty, now I think you will be put to it to make out all that checker-work\\\"-don't you, ma'am? And then I tell her, I am sure she would contrive to make it out herself, if she had nobody to do it for her, every word of it,-I am sure she would pore over it till she had made out every word. And, indeed, though my mother's eyes are not so good as they were, she can see amazingly well still, thank God! with the help of spectacles. It is such a blessing! My mother's are really very good indeed. Jane often says, when she is here, \\\"I am sure, grandmamma, you must have had very strong eyes to see as you do-and so much fine work as you have done too!-I only wish my eyes may last meas well\\\".\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"All this spoken extremely fast obliged Miss Bates to stop for\\n\\nbreath; and Emma said something very civil about the excellence of Miss Fairfax's handwriting.\\n\\n\\\"You are extremely kind,\\\" replied Miss Bates highly gratified; \\\"you who are such a judge, and write so beautifully yourself. I am sure there is nobody's praise that could give us so much pleasure as Miss Woodhouse's. My mother does not hear; she is a little deaf, you know. Ma'am,\\\" addressing her, \\\"do you hear what Miss Woodhouse is so obliging to say about Jane's handwriting?\\\"\\n\\nAnd Emma had the advantage of hearing her own silly compliment repeated twice over before the good old lady could comprehend it. She was pondering, in the meanwhile, upon the possibility, without seeming very rude, of making her escape from Jane Fairfax's letter, and had almost resolved on hurrying away directly under some slight excuse, when Miss Bates turned to her again and seized her attention.\\n\\n\\\"My mother's deafness is very trifling, you see, just nothing at all. By only raising my voice, and saying anything two or three times over, she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice. But it is very remarkable that she should always hear Jane better than she does me. Jane speaks so distinct! However, she will not find her grandmamma at all deafer than she was two years ago; which is saying a great deal at my mother's time of life, and it really is full two years, you know, since she was here. We never were so long without seeing her before, and as I was telling Mrs. Cole, we shall hardly know how to make enough of her now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Are you expecting Miss Fairfax here soon?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, yes; next week.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Indeed! That must be a very great pleasure.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Thank you. You are very kind. Yes, next week. Everybody is so surprised; and everybody says the same obliging things. I am sure she will be as happy to see her friends at Highbury as they can be to see her. Yes, Friday or Saturday; she cannot say which, because Col. Campbell will be wanting the carriage himself one of those days. So very good of them to send her the whole way! But they always do, you know. Oh yes, Friday or Saturday next. That is what she writes about. That is the reason of her writing out of rule, as we call it; for, in the common course, we should not have heard from her before next Tuesday or Wednesday.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, so I imagined. I was afraid there could belittle chance of my hearing anything of Miss Fairfax to-day.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So obliging of you! No, we should not have heard, if it had not been for this particular circumstance, of her being to come here so soon. My mother is so delighted! for she is to be three months with us at least. Three months, she says so, positively, as I am going to have the pleasure of reading to you. The case is, you see, that the Campbells are going to Ireland. Mrs. Dixon has persuaded her father and mother to come over and see her directly. They had not intended to go over till the summer, but she is so impatient to see them again;-for till she married, last October, she was never away from them so much as a week, which must make it very strange to be indifferent kingdoms, I was going to say, but however different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent letter to her mother, or her father,-I declare I do not know which it was, but we shall see presently in Jane's letter,-wrote in Mr. Dixon's name as well as her own, to press their coming over directly; and they would give them the meeting in Dublin, and take them back to their country-seat, Baly-craig,-a beautiful place I fancy. Jane has heard a great deal of its beauty,-from Mr. Dixon, I mean,-I do not know that she ever heard about it from anybody else,-but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his addresses,-and as Jane used to be very often walking outwith them,-for Colonel and Mrs. Campbell were very particular about their daughter's not walking out often with only Mr. Dixon, for which I do not at all blame them: of course she heard everything he might be telling Miss Campbell about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word that he had shown them some drawings of the place, views that he had taken himself. He is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Jane was quite longing to go to Ireland, from his account of things.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"At this moment, an ingenious and animating suspicion entering Emma's brain with regard to Jane Fairfax, this charming Mr. Dixon, and the not going to Ireland, she said, with the insidious design of further discovery,-\\n\\n\\\"You must feel it very fortunate that Miss Fairfax should be allowed to come to you at such a time. Considering the very particular friendship between her and Mrs. Dixon, you could hardly have expected her to be excused from accompanying Colonel and Mrs. Campbell.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very true, very true, indeed. The very thing that we have always been rather afraid of; for we should not have liked to have her at such a distance from us, for months together,-notable to come if anything was to happen; but you see everything turns out for the best. They want her (Mr. and Mrs. Dixon) excessively to come over with Colonel and Mrs. Campbell; quite depend upon it; nothing can be more kind or pressing than their joint invitation, Jane says, as you will hear presently. Mr. Dixon does not seem in the least backward in any attention. He is a most charming young man. Ever since the service he rendered Jane at Weymouth, when they were out in that party on the water, and she, by the sudden whirling round of something or other among the sails, would have been dashed into the sea at once, and actually was all but gone, if he had not, with the greatest presence of mind, caught hold of her habit,-I can never think of it without trembling!-but ever since we had the history of that day, I have been so fond of Mr. Dixon!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But, in spite of all her friends' urgency, and her own wish of seeing Ireland, Miss Fairfax prefers devoting the time to you and Mrs. Bates?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes-entirely her own doing, entirely her own choice; and Colonel and Mrs. Campbell think she does quite right, just what they should recommend; and indeed they particularly wish her to try her native air, as she has not been quite so well as usual lately.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I am concerned to hear of it. I think they judge wisely; but Mrs. Dixon must be very much disappointed. Mrs. Dixon, I understand, has no remarkable degree of personal beauty,-is not by any means to be compared with Miss Fairfax.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh no. You are very obliging to say such things, but certainly not. There is no comparison between them. Miss Campbell always was absolutely plain, but extremely elegant and amiable.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, that of course.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Jane caught a bad cold, poor thing! so long ago as the 7th of November (as I am going to read to you), and has never been well since. Along time, is not it, fora cold to hang upon her? She never mentioned it before, because she would not alarm us. Just like her! so considerate!-But, however, she is so far from well, that her kind friends the Campbells think she had better come home, and try an air that always agrees with her: and they have no doubt that three or four months at Highbury will entirely cure her; and it is certainly a great deal better that she should come here than go to Ireland, if she is unwell. Nobody could nurse her as we should do.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It appears tome the most desirable arrangement in the world.\\\" \\\"And so she is to come to us next Friday or Saturday, and the Campbells leave town in their way to Holyhead the Monday following, as you will find from Jane's letter. So sudden!-You may guess, dear Miss Woodhouse, what a flurry it has thrown me in! If it was not for the drawback of her illness,-but I am afraid we must expect to see her grown thin, and looking very poorly. I must tell you what an unlucky thing happened tome as to that. I always make a point of reading Jane's letters through to myself first, before I read them aloud to my mother, you know, for fear of there being anything in them to distress her. Jane desired me to do it, so I always do; and so I began to-day with my usual caution: but no sooner did I come to the mention of her being unwell, than I burst out, quite frightened, with \\\"Bless me! poor Jane is ill!\\\"-which my mother, being on the watch, heard distinctly, and was sadly alarmed at. However, when I read on, I found it was not near so bad as I fancied at first; and I make so light of it now to her, that she does not think much about it: but I cannot imagine how I could be so off my guard! If Jane does not get well soon, we will call in Mr. Perry. The expense shall not bethought of; and though he is so liberal and so fond of Jane, that I daresay he would not mean to charge anything for attendance, we could not suffer it to be so, you know. He has a wife and family to maintain, and is not to be giving away his time. Well, now I have just given you a hint of what Jane writes about, we will turn to her letter; and I am sure she tells her own story a great deal better than I can tell it for her.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I am afraid we must be running away,\\\" said Emma, glancing at Harriet, and beginning to rise, \\\"my father will be expecting us. I had no intention, I thought I had no power, of staying more than five minutes, when I first entered the house. I merely called, because I would not pass the door without enquiring after Mrs. Bates; but I have been so pleasantly detained! Now, however, we must wish you and Mrs. Bates good morning.\\\"\\n\\nAnd not all that could be urged to detain her succeeded. She regained the street, happy in this, that though much had been forced on her against her will, though she had, in fact, heard the whole substance of Jane Fairfax's letter, she had been able to escape the letter itself.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Jane Fairfax was an orphan, the only child of Mrs. Bates's youngest daughter.\\n\\nThe marriage of Lieut. Fairfax, of the-regiment of infantry, and Miss Jane Bates, had had its day of fame and pleasure, hope and interest; but nothing now remained of it save the melancholy remembrance of him dying inaction abroad-of his widow sinking under consumption and grief soon afterwards-and this girl.\\n\\nBy birth she belonged to Highbury: and when at three years old, on losing her mother, she became the property, the charge, the consolation, the fondling of her grandmother and aunt, there had seemed every probability of her being permanently fixed there; of her being taught only what very limited means could command, and growing up with no advantages of connection or improvement to be engrafted on what nature had given her in a pleasing person, good understanding, and warm-hearted, well-meaning relations.\\n\\nBut the compassionate feelings of a friend of her father gave a change to her destiny. This was Col. Campbell, who had very highly regarded Fairfax, as an excellent officer and most deserving young man; and farther, had been indebted to him for such attentions, during a severe camp-fever, as he believed had saved his life. These were claims which he did not learn to overlook, though some years passed away from the death of poor Fairfax before his own return to England put anything in his power. When he did return, he sought out the child and took notice of her. He was a married man with only one living child, a girl, about Jane's age: and Jane became their guest, paying them long visits and growing a favourite with all; and, before she was nine years old, his daughter's great fondness for her, and his own wish of being areal friend, united to produce an offer from Col. Campbell of undertaking the whole charge of her education. It was accepted; and from that period Jane had belonged to Col. Campbell's family, and had lived with them entirely, only visiting her grandmother from time to time.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The plan was that she should be brought up for educating others; the very few hundred pounds which she inherited from her father making independence impossible. To provide for her otherwise was out of Col. Campbell's power; for though his income, by pay and appointments, was handsome, his fortune was moderate, and must be all his daughter's; but, by giving her an education, he hoped to be supplying the means of respectable subsistence hereafter.\\n\\nSuch was Jane Fairfax's history. She had fallen into good hands, known nothing but kindness from the Campbells, and been given an excellent education. Living constantly with right-minded and well-informed people, her heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline and culture; and Col. Campbell's residence being in London, every lighter talent had been done full justice to, by the attendance of first-rate masters. Her disposition and abilities were equally worthy of all that friendship could do; and at eighteen or nineteen she was, as far as such an early age can be qualified for the care of children, fully competent to the office of instruction herself; but she was too much beloved to be parted with. Neither father nor mother could promote, and the daughter could not endure it. The evil day was put off. It was easy to decide that she was still too young; and Jane remained with them, sharing, as another daughter, in all the rational pleasures of an elegant society, and a judicious mixture of home and amusement, with only the drawback of the future,-the sobering suggestions of her own good understanding to remind her that all this might soon be over.\\n\\nThe affection of the whole family, the warm attachment of Miss Campbell in particular, was the more honourable to each party from the circumstance of Jane's decided superiority both in beauty and acquirements. That nature had given it in feature could not be unseen by the young woman, nor could her higher powers of mind be unfelt by the parents. They continued together with unabated regard, however, till the marriage of Miss Campbell, who by that chance, that luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs, giving attraction to what is moderate rather than to what is superior, engaged the affections of Mr. Dixon, a young man, rich and agreeable, almost as soon as they were acquainted; and was eligibly and happily settled, while Jane Fairfax had yet her bread to earn.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"This event had very lately taken place; too lately for anything to be yet attempted by her less fortunate friend towards entering on her path of duty; though she had now reached the age which her own judgment had fixed on for beginning. She had long resolved that one-and-twenty should be the period. With the fortitude of a devoted noviciate, she had resolved atone-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice, and retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification forever.\\n\\nThe good sense of Col. and Mrs. Campbell could not oppose such a resolution, though their feelings did. As long as they lived, no exertions would be necessary, their home might be hers forever; and for their own comfort they would have retained her wholly; but this would be selfishness:-what must beat last, had better be soon. Perhaps they began to feel it might have been kinder and wiser to have resisted the temptation of any delay, and spared her from a taste of such enjoyments of ease and leisure as must now be relinquished. Still, however, affection was glad to catch at any reasonable excuse for not hurrying on the wretched moment. She had never been quite well since the time of their daughter's marriage; and till she should have completely recovered her usual strength, they must forbid her engaging in duties, which, so far from being compatible with a weakened frame and varying spirits, seemed, under the most favourable circumstances, to require something more than human perfection of body and mind to be discharged with tolerable comfort.\\n\\nWith regard to her not accompanying them to Ireland, her account to her aunt contained nothing but truth, though there might be some truths not told. It washer own choice to give the time of their absence to Highbury; to spend, perhaps, her last months of perfect liberty with those kind relations to whom she was so very dear: and the Campbells, whatever might be their motive or motives, whether single, or double, or treble, gave the arrangement their ready sanction, and said, that they depended more on a few months spent in her native air, for the recovery of her health, than on anything else. Certain it was that she was to come; and that Highbury, instead of welcoming that perfect novelty which had been so long promised it-Mr. Frank Churchill-must put up for the present with Jane Fairfax, who could bring only the freshness of a two years' absence.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Emma was sorry to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like through three long months!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"-to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought! Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a difficult question to answer: Mr. Knightley had once told her it was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to bethought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her. But'she could never get acquainted with her: she did not know how it was, but there was such coldness and reserve-such apparent indifference whether she pleased or not-and then, her aunt was such an eternal talker!-and she was made such a fuss with by everybody!-and it had been always imagined that they were to be so intimate-because their ages were the same, everybody had supposed they must be so fond of each other.\\\" These were her reasons; she had no better.\\n\\nIt was a dislike so little just,-every imputed fault was so magnified by fancy,-that she never saw Jane Fairfax, the first time after any considerable absence, without feeling that she had injured her; and now, when the due visit was paid, on her arrival, after a two years' interval, she was particularly struck with the very appearance and manners, which for those two whole years she had been depreciating. Jane Fairfax was very elegant, remarkably elegant; and she had herself the highest value for elegance. Her height was pretty, just such as almost everybody would think tall, and nobody could think very tall; her figure particularly graceful; her size a most becoming medium, between fat and thin, though a slight appearance of ill-health seemed to point out the likeliest evil of the two. Emma could not but feel all this; and then, her face-her features-there was more beauty in them all together than she had remembered; it was not regular, but it was very pleasing beauty. Her eyes, a deep grey, with dark eyelashes and eyebrows, had never been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire it: elegance, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in Highbury. There, not to be vulgar, was distinction and merit.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"In short, she sat, during the first visit, looking at Jane Fairfax with twofold complacency,-the sense of pleasure and the sense of rendering justice, and was determining that she would dislike her no longer. When she took in her history, indeed, her situation, as well as her beauty; when she considered what all this elegance was destined to, what she was going to sink from, how she was going to live, it seemed impossible to feel anything but compassion and respect; especially, if to every well-known particular, entitling her to interest, were added the highly probable circumstance of an attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she had so naturally started to herself. In that case, nothing could be more pitiable or more honourable than the sacrifices she had resolved on. Emma was very willing now to acquit her of having seduced Mr. Dixon's affections from his wife, or of anything mischievous which her imagination had suggested at first. If it were love, it might be simple, single, successless love on her side alone. She might have been unconsciously sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his conversation with her friend; and from the best, the purest of motives, might now be denying herself this visit to Ireland, and resolving to divide herself effectually from him and his connections by soon beginning her career of laborious duty.\\n\\nUpon the whole, Emma left her with such softened, charitable feelings, as made her look around in walking home, and lament that Highbury afforded no young man worthy of giving her independence,-nobody that she could wish to scheme about for her.\\n\\nThese were charming feelings, but not lasting. Before she had committed herself by any public profession of eternal friendship for Jane Fairfax, or done more towards a recantation of past prejudices and errors, than saying to Mr. Knightley, \\\"She certainly is handsome; she is better than handsome!\\\" Jane had spent an evening at Hartfield with her grandmother and aunt, and everything was relapsing much into its usual state. Former provocations re-appeared. The aunt was as tiresome as ever; more tiresome, because anxiety for her health was now added to admiration of her powers; and they had to listen to the description of exactly how little bread and butter she ate for breakfast, and how small a slice of mutton for dinner as well as to see exhibitions of new caps and new workbags for her mother and herself; and Jane's offences rose again. They had music: Emma was obliged to play; and the thanks and praise which necessarily followed appeared to her an affectation of candour, an air of greatness, meaning only to showoff in higher style her own very superior performance. She was, besides, which was the worst of all, so cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapt up in a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"If anything could be more, where all was most, she was more reserved on the subject of Weymouth and the Dixons than anything. She seemed bent on giving no real insight into Mr. Dixon's character, or her own value for his company, or opinion of the suitableness of the match. It was all general approbation and smoothness; nothing delineated or distinguished. It did her no service, however. Her caution was thrown away. Emma saw its artifice, and returned to her first surmises. There probably was something more to conceal than her own preference; Mr. Dixon, perhaps, had been very near changing one friend for the other, or been fixed only to Miss Campbell, for the sake of the future twelve thousand pounds.\\n\\nThe like reserve prevailed on other topics. She and Mr. Frank Churchill had been at Weymouth at the same time. It was known that they were a little acquainted; but not a syllable of real information could Emma procure as to what he truly was. \\\"Was he handsome?\\\"-\\\"She believed he was reckoned a very fine young man.\\\"-\\\"Was he agreeable?\\\"-\\\"He was generally thought so.\\\"-\\\"Did he appear a sensible young man; a young man of information?\\\"-\\\"At a watering-place, or in a common London acquaintance, it was difficult to decide on such points. Manners were all that could be safely judged of, under a much longer knowledge than they had yet had of Mr. Churchill. She believed everybody found his manners pleasing.\\\" Emma could not forgive her.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma could not forgive her: but as neither provocation nor resentment were discerned by Mr. Knightley, who had been of the party, and had seen only proper attention and pleasing behavior on each side, he was expressing the next morning, being at Hartfield again on business with Mr. Woodhouse, his approbation of the whole; not so openly as he might have done had her father been out of the room, but speaking plain enough to be very intelligible to Emma. He had been used to think her unjust to Jane, and had now great pleasure in marking an improvement.\\n\\n\\\"Avery pleasant evening,\\\" he began as soon as Mr. Woodhouse had been talked into what was necessary, told that he understood, and the papers swept away;-\\\"particularly pleasant. You and Miss Fairfax gave us some very good music. I do not know a more luxurious state, sir, than sitting at one's ease to be entertained a whole evening by two such young women; sometimes with music and sometimes with conversation. I am sure Miss Fairfax must have found the evening pleasant, Emma. You left nothing undone. I was glad you made her play so much for having no instrument at her grandmother's, it must have been areal indulgence.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am happy you approved,\\\" said Emma, smiling; \\\"but I hope I am not often deficient in what is due to guests at Hartfield.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, my dear,\\\" said her father instantly; \\\"that I am sure you are not. There is nobody half so attentive and civil as you are. If anything, you are too attentive. The muffin last night,-if it had been handed round once, I think it would have been enough.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" said Mr. Knightley, nearly at the same time; \\\"you are not often deficient; not often deficient, either in manner or comprehension. I think you understand me, therefore.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"An arch look expressed-\\\"I understand you well enough;\\\" but she said only, \\\"Miss Fairfax is reserved.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I always told you she was-a little; but you will soon overcome all that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be honoured.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You think her diffident. I do not see it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear Emma,\\\" said he, moving from his chair into one close by her, \\\"you are not going to tell me, I hope, that you had not a pleasant evening.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions, and amused to think how little information I obtained.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am disappointed,\\\" was his only answer.\\n\\n\\\"I hope everybody had a pleasant evening,\\\" said Mr. Woodhouse, in his quiet way. \\\"I had. Once, I felt the fire rather too much; but then I moved back my chair a little, a very little, and it did not disturb me. Miss Bates was very chatty and good humoured, as she always is, though she speaks rather too quick. However, she is very agreeable, and Mrs. Bates, too, in a different way. I like old friends; and Miss Jane Fairfax is a very pretty sort of young lady; a very pretty and a very well behaved young lady indeed. She must have found the evening agreeable, Mr. Knightley, because she had Emma.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"True, sir; and Emma, because she had Miss Fairfax.\\\"\\n\\nEmma saw his anxiety, and wishing to appease it, at least for the present, said, and with a sincerity which no one could question,-\\n\\n\\\"She is a sort of elegant creature that one cannot keep one's eyes from. I am always watching her to admire; and I do pity her from my heart.\\\"\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":298,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 25"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"An arch look expressed-\"I understand you well enough;\" but she said only, \"Miss Fairfax is reserved.\"\n\n\"I always told you she was-a little; but you will soon overcome all that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be honoured.\"\n\n\"You think her diffident. I do not see it.\"\n\n\"My dear Emma,\" said he, moving from his chair into one close by her, \"you are not going to tell me, I hope, that you had not a pleasant evening.\"\n\n\"Oh no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions, and amused to think how little information I obtained.\"\n\n\"I am disappointed,\" was his only answer.\n\n\"I hope everybody had a pleasant evening,\" said Mr. Woodhouse, in his quiet way. \"I had. Once, I felt the fire rather too much; but then I moved back my chair a little, a very little, and it did not disturb me. Miss Bates was very chatty and good humoured, as she always is, though she speaks rather too quick. However, she is very agreeable, and Mrs. Bates, too, in a different way. I like old friends; and Miss Jane Fairfax is a very pretty sort of young lady; a very pretty and a very well behaved young lady indeed. She must have found the evening agreeable, Mr. Knightley, because she had Emma.\"\n\n\"True, sir; and Emma, because she had Miss Fairfax.\"\n\nEmma saw his anxiety, and wishing to appease it, at least for the present, said, and with a sincerity which no one could question,-\n\n\"She is a sort of elegant creature that one cannot keep one's eyes from. I am always watching her to admire; and I do pity her from my heart.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Knightley looked as if he were more gratified than he cared to express; and before he could make any reply, Mr. Woodhouse, whose thoughts were on the Bates's, said,-\n\n\"It is a great pity that their circumstances should be so confined! a great pity indeed! and I have often wished-but it is so little one can venture to do-small, trifling presents, of anything uncommon. Now, we have killed a porker, and Emma thinks of sending them a loin or a leg; it is very small and delicate-Hartfield pork is not like any other pork-but still it is pork-and, my dear Emma, unless one could be sure of their making it into steaks, nicely fried, as ours are fried, without the smallest grease, and not roast it, for no stomach can bear roast pork-I think we had better send the leg-do not you think so, my dear?\"\n\n\"My dear papa, I sent the whole hind-quarter. I knew you would wish it. There will be the leg to be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and the loin to be dressed directly, in any manner they like.\"\n\n\"That's right, my dear, very right. I had not thought of it before, but that was the best way. They must not over-salt the leg; and then, if it is not over-salted, and if it is very thoroughly boiled, just as Serle boils ours, and eaten very moderately of, with a boiled turnip, and a little carrot or parsnip, I do not consider it unwholesome.\"\n\n\"Emma,\" slid Mr. Knightley, presently, \"I have apiece of news for you. You like news-and I heard an article in my way hither that I think will interest you.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"News! Oh yes, I always like news. What is it?-why do you smile so?-where did you hear it?-at Randalls?\"\n\nHe had time only to say,-\n\n\"No, not at Randalls; I have not been near Randalls,\"-when the door was thrown open, and Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax walked into the room. Full of thanks and full of news, Miss Bates knew not which to give quickest. Mr. Knightley soon saw that he had lost his moment, and that not another syllable of communication could rest with him.\n\n\"Oh, my dear sir, how are you this morning? My dear Miss Woodhouse-I come quite overpowered. Such a beautiful hind-quarter of pork! You are too bountiful! Have you heard the news? Mr. Elton is going to be married.\"\n\nEmma had not had time even to think of Mr. Elton, and she was so completely surprised, that she could not avoid a little start, and a little blush, at the sound.\n\n\"There is my news:-I thought it would interest you,\" said Mr. Knightley, with a smile, which implied a conviction of some part of what had passed between them.\n\n\"But where could you hear it?\" cried Miss Bates. \"Where could you possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley? For it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. Cole's note-no, it cannot be more than five-or at least ten-for I had got my bonnet and spencer non, just ready to come out-I was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork-Jane was standing in the passage-were not you, Jane?-for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said, I would go down and see, and Jane said,\"Shall I go down instead? for I think you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen. \"-\"Oh, my dear, \"said I-well, and just then came the note. A Miss Hawkins-that's all I know-a Miss Hawkins of Bath. But, Mr. Knightley, how could you possibly have heard it? for the very moment Mr. Cole told Mrs. Cole of it, she sat down and wrote tome. A Miss Hawkins-\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"I was with Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Cole on business an hour and a half ago. He had just read Elton's letter as I was shown in, and handed it tome directly.\"\n\n\"Well! that is quite-I suppose there never was apiece of news more generally interesting. My dear sir, you really are too bountiful. My mother desires her very best compliments and regards, and a thousand thanks, and says you really quite oppress her.\"\n\n\"We consider our Hartfield pork,\" replied Mr. Woodhouse-\"indeed it certainly is, so very superior to all other pork, that Emma and I cannot have a greater pleasure than-\"\n\n\"Oh, my dear sir, as my mother says, our friends are only too good to us. If ever there were people who, without having great wealth themselves, had everything they could wish for, I am sure it is us. We may well say, that \"our lot is cast in a goodly heritage.\" 9 Well, Mr. Knightley, and so you actually saw the letter-well-\"\n\n\"It was short, merely to announce-but cheerful, exulting of course.\" Here was a sly glance at Emma. \"He had been so fortunate as to-I forget the precise words-one has no business to remember them. The information was, as you state, that he was going to be married to a Miss Hawkins. By his style, I should imagine it just settled.\"\n\n\"Mr. Elton going to be married!\" said Emma, as soon as she could speak. \"He will have everybody's wishes for his happiness.\"\n\n\"He is very young to settle,\" was Mr. Woodhouse's observation.\n\n\"He had better not be in a hurry. He seemed tome very well off as he was. We were always glad to see him at Hartfield.\"\n\n\"Anew neighbour for us all, Miss Woodhouse!\" said Miss Bates joyfully: \"my mother is so pleased!-she says she cannot bear to have the poor old vicarage without a mistress. This is great news, indeed. Jane, you have never seen Mr. Eiton:-no wonder that you have such a curiosity to see him.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Jane's curiosity did not appear of that absorbing nature as wholly to occupy her.\n\n\"No, I have never seen Mr. Elton,\" she replied, starting on this appeal: \"is he-is he a tall man?\"\n\n\"Who shall answer that question?\" cried Emma. \"My father would say, \"Yes;\" Mr. Knightley, \"No;\" and Miss Bates and I, that he is just the happy medium. When you have been here a little longer, Miss Fairfax, you will understand that Mr. Elton is the standard of perfection in Highbury, both in person and mind.\"\n\n\"Very true, Miss Woodhouse, so she will. He is the very best young man;-but, my dear Jane, if you remember, I told you yesterday he was precisely the height of Mr. Perry. Miss Hawkins,-I daresay, an excellent young woman. His extreme attention to my mother-wanting her to sit in the vicarage-pew, that she might hear the better, for my mother is a little deaf, you know-it is not much, but she does not hear quite quick. Jane says that Col. Campbell is a little deaf. He fancied bathing might be good for it-the warm bath-but she says it did him no lasting benefit. Col. Campbell, you know, is quite our angel. And Mr. Dixon seems a very charming young man, quite worthy of him. It is such a happiness when good people get together-and they always do. Now, here will be Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins; and there are the Coles, such very good people; and the Perrys-I suppose there never was a happier or a better couple than Mr. and Mrs. Perry. I say, sir,\" turning to Mr. Woodhouse, \"I think there are few places with such society as Highbury. I always say, we are quite blessed in our neighbours. My dear sir, if there is one thing my mother loves better that another, it is pork-a roast loin of pork-\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"As to who, or what Miss Hawkins is, or how long he has been acquainted with her,\" said Emma, \"nothing, I suppose, can be known."},{"from":"gpt","value":"One feels that it cannot be a very long acquaintance. He has been gone only four weeks.\" Nobody had any information to give; and, after a few more wonderings, Emma said,-\n\n\"You are silent, Miss Fairfax-but I hope you mean to take an interest in this news. You, who have been hearing and seeing so much of late on these subjects, who must have been so deep in the business on Miss Campbell's account-we shall not excuse your being indifferent about Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins.\"\n\n\"When I have seen Mr. Elton,\" replied Jane, \"I daresay I shall be interested-but I believe it requires that with me. And as it is some months since Miss Campbell married, the impression maybe a little worn off.\"\n\n\"Yes, he has been gone just four weeks, as you observe, Miss Woodhouse,\" said Miss Bates, \"four weeks yesterday:-a Miss Hawkins:-well, I had always rather fancied it would be some young lady hereabouts; not that I ever-Mrs. Cole once whispered tome-but I immediately said, \"No, Mr. Elton is a most worthy young man-but-\" In short, I do not think I am particulary quick at those sort of discoveries. I do not pretend to it. What is before me, I see. At the same time, nobody could wonder if Mr. Elton should have aspired-Miss Woodhouse lets me chatter on, so good humouredly. She knows I would not offend for the world. How does Miss Smith do? She seems quite recovered now. Have you heard from Mrs. John Knightley lately? Oh, those dear little children. Jane, do you know I always fancy Mr. Dixon like Mr. John Knightley? I mean in person-tall, and with that sort of look-and not very talkative.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Quite wrong, my dear aunt; there is no likeness at all.\"\n\n\"Very odd! but one never does form a just idea of anybody beforehand. One takes up a notion, and runs away with it. Mr. Dixon, you say, is not, strictly speaking, handsome.\"\n\n\"Handsome! Oh no-far from it-certainly plain. I told you he was plain.\"\n\n\"My dear, you said that Miss Campbell would not allow him to be plain, and that you yourself-\"\n\n\"Oh, as for me, my judgment is worth nothing. Where I have a regard, I always think a person well looking. But I gave what I believed the general opinion, when I called him plain.\"\n\n\"Well, my dear Jane, I believe we must be running away. The weather does not look well, and grandmamma will be uneasy. You are too obliging, my dear Miss Woodhouse; but we really must take leave. This has been a most agreeable piece of news indeed. I shall just go round by Mrs. Cole's; but I shall not stop three minutes: and, Jane, you had better go home directly-I would not have you out in a shower! We think she is the better for Highbury already. Thank you, we do indeed. I shall not attempt calling on Mrs. Goddard, for I really do not think she cares for anything but boiled pork: when we dress the legit will be another thing. Good morning to you, my dear sir. Oh, Mr. Knightley is coming too. Well, that is so very!-I am sure if Jane is tired, you will be so kind as to give her your arm. Mr. Elton, and Miss Hawkins. Good morning to you.\"\n\nEmma, alone with her father, had half her attention wanted by him, while he lamented that young people would be in such a hurry to marry-and to marry strangers too-and the other half she could give to her own view of the subject. It was to herself an amusing and a very welcome piece of news, as proving that Mr. Elton could not have suffered long; but she was sorry for Harriet: Harriet must feel it-and all that she could hope was, by giving the first information herself, to save her from hearing it abruptly from others. It was now about the time that she was likely to call. If she were to meet Miss Bates in her way!-and upon its beginning to rain, Emma was obliged to expect that the weather would be detaining her at Mrs. Goddard's, and that the intelligence would undoubtedly rush upon her without preparation."},{"from":"human","value":"The shower was heavy, but short; and it had not been over five minutes, when in came Harriet, with just the heated, agitated look which hurrying thither with a full heart was likely to give; and the'Oh, Miss Woodhouse, what do you think has happened?\""},{"from":"gpt","value":"which instantly burst forth, had all the evidence of corresponding perturbation. As the blow was given, Emma felt that she could not now show greater kindness than in listening; and Harriet, unchecked, ran eagerly through what she had to tell. \"She had set out from Mrs. Goddard's half an hour ago-she had been afraid it would rain-she had been afraid it would pour down every moment-but she thought she might get to Hartfield first-she had hurried on as fast as possible; but then, as she was passing by the house where a young woman was making up a gown for her, she thought she would just step in and see how it went on; and though she did not seem to stay half a moment there, soon after she came out it began to rain, and she did not know what to do; so she ran on directly, as fast as she could, and took shelter at Ford's.\" Ford's was the principal woollen-draper, linen-draper, and haberdasher's shop united-the shop first in size and fashion in the place. \"And so, there she had sat, without an idea of anything in the world, full ten minutes, perhaps-where, all of a sudden, who should come in-to be sure it was so very odd!-but they always dealt at Ford's-who should come in, but Elizabeth Martin and her brother! Dear Miss Woodhouse! only think. I thought I should have fainted. I did not know what to do. I was sitting near the door-Elizabeth saw me directly; but he did not; he was busy with the umbrella. I am sure she saw me, but she looked away directly, and took no notice; and they both went to quite the farther end of the shop; and I kept sitting near the door. Oh dear; I was so miserable! I am sure I must have been as white as my gown. I could not go away, you know, because of the rain; but I did so wish myself anywhere in the world but there. Oh dear, Miss Woodhouse-well, at last, I fancy, he looked round and saw me; for, instead of going on with their buyings, they began whispering to one another. I am sure they were talking of me; and I could not help thinking that he was persuading her to speak tome-(do you think he was, Miss Woodhouse?)-for presently she came forward-came quite up tome, and asked me how I did, and seemed ready to shake hands, if I would. She did not do any of it in the same way that she used; I could see she was altered; but, however, she seemed to try to be very friendly, and we shook hands, and stood talking sometime; but I know no more what I said-I was in such a tremble! I remember she said she was sorry we never met now; which I thought almost too kind! Dear Miss Woodhouse, I was absolutely miserable! By that time, it was beginning to holdup, and I was determined that nothing should stop me from getting away-and then-only think!-I found he was coming up towards me too-slowly, you know, and as if he did not quite know what to do; and so he came and spoke, and I answered-and I stood fora minute, feeling dreadfully, you know, one cannot tell how; and then I took courage, and said it did not rain, and I must go; and so off I set: and I had not got three yards from the door, when he came after me, only to say, if I was going to Hartfield, he thought I had much better go round by Mr. Cole's stables, for I should find the near way quite floated by this rain. Oh dear, I thought it would have been the death of me! So I said, I was very much obliged to him: you know I could not do less; and then he went back to Elizabeth, and I came round by the stables-I believe I did-but I hardly knew where I was, or anything about it. Oh, Miss Woodhouse, I would rather have done anything than had it happen; and yet, you know, there was a sort of satisfaction in seeing him behave so pleasantly and so kindly. And Elizabeth, too. Oh, Miss Woodhouse, do talk tome, and make me comfortable again.\"\n\nVery sincerely did Emma wish to do so; but it was not immediately in her power. She was obliged to stop and think. She was not thoroughly comfortable herself. The young man's conduct, and his sister's, seemed the result of real feeling, and she could not but pity them. As Harriet described it, there had been an interesting mixture of wounded affection and genuine delicacy in their behaviour: but she had believed them to be well-meaning, worthy people, before; and what difference did this make in the evils of the connection? It was folly to be disturbed by it. Of course, he must be sorry to lose her,-they must be all sorry: ambition, as well as love, had probably been mortified. They might all have hoped to rise by Harriet's acquaintance; and besides, what was the value of Harriet's description? So easily pleased,-so little discerning,-what signified her praise?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She exerted herself, and did try to make her comfortable, by considering all that had passed as a mere trifle, and quite unworthy of being dwelt on.\n\n\"It might be distressing for the moment,\" said she, \"but you seem to have behaved extremely well; and it is over,-and may never,-can never, as a first meeting,-occur again, and therefore you need not think about it.\"\n\nHarriet said, \"Very true,\" and she'would not think about it;\" but still she talked of it-still she could talk of nothing else; and Emma, at last, in order to put the Martins out of her head, was obliged to hurry on the news, which she had meant to give with so much tender caution, hardly knowing herself whether to rejoice or be angry, ashamed or only amused, at such a state of mind in poor Harriet-such a conclusion of Mr. Elton's importance with her!\n\nMr. Elton's rights, however, gradually revived. Though she did not feel the first intelligence as she might have done the day before, or an hour before, its interest soon increased; and before their first conversation was over, she had talked herself into all the sensations of curiosity, wonder and regret, pain and pleasure, as to this fortunate Miss Hawkins, which could conduce to place the Martins under proper subordination in her fancy.\n\nEmma learned to be rather glad that there had been such a meeting. It had been serviceable in deadening the first shock, without retaining any influence to alarm. As Harriet now lived, the Martins could not get at her, without seeking her, where hitherto they had wanted either the courage or the condescension to seek her; for since her refusal of the brother, the sisters had never been at Mrs. Goddard's; and a twelvemonth might pass without their being thrown together again, with any necessity, or even any power of speech."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.\n\nA week had not passed since Miss Hawkins's name was first mentioned in Highbury, before she was, by some means or other, discovered to have every recommendation of person and mind,-to be handsome, elegant, highly accomplished, and perfectly amiable; and when Mr. Elton himself arrived to triumph in his happy prospects, and circulate the fame of her merits, there was very little more for him to do than to tell her Christian name, and say whose music she principally played.\n\nMr. Elton returned, a very happy man. He had gone away rejected and mortified, disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what had appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He had gone away deeply offended, he came back engaged to another; and to another as superior, of course, to the first, asunder such circumstances what is gained always is to what is lost. He came back gay and self-satisfied, eager and busy, caring nothing for Miss Woodhouse, and defying Miss Smith.\n\nThe charming Augusta Hawkins, in addition to all the usual advantages of perfect beauty and merit, was in possession of an independent fortune, of so many thousands as would always be called ten,-a point of some dignity, as well as some convenience. The story told well: he had not thrown himself away-he had gained a woman of 10,000l., or thereabouts, and he had gained her with such delightful rapidity; the first hour of introduction had been so very soon followed by distinguishing notice; the history which he had to give Mrs. Cole of the rise and progress of the affair was so glorious; the steps so quick, from the accidental rencontre, o to the dinner at Mr. Green's, and the party at Mrs. Brown's,-smiles and blushes rising in importance,-with consciousness and agitation richly scattered; the lady had been so easily impressed,-so sweetly disposed;-had, in short, to use a most intelligible phrase, been so very ready to have him, that vanity and prudence were equally contented."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He had caught both substance and shadow, both fortune and affection, and was just the happy man he ought to be;-talking only of himself and his own concerns,-expecting to be congratulated,-ready to be laughed at,-and, with cordial, fearless smiles, now addressing all the young ladies of the place, to whom, a few weeks ago, he would have been more cautiously gallant.\n\nThe wedding was no distant event, as the parties had only themselves to please, and nothing but the necessary preparations to wait for; and when he set out for Bath again, there was a general expectation, which a certain glance of Mrs. Cole's did not seem to contradict, that when he next entered Highbury he would bring his bride.\n\nDuring his present short stay, Emma had barely seen him; but just enough to feel that the first meeting was over, and to give her the impression of his not being improved by the mixture of pique and pretension now spread over his air. She was, in fact, beginning very much to wonder that she had ever thought him pleasing at all; and his sight was so inseparably connected with some very disagreeable feelings, that, except in amoral light, as a penance, a lesson, a source of profitable humiliation to her own mind, she would have been thankful to be assured of never seeing him again. She wished him very well; but he gave her pain; and his welfare twenty miles off would administer most satisfaction.\n\nThe pain of his continued residence in Highbury, however, must certainly be lessened by his marriage. Many vain solicitudes would be prevented-many awkwardnesses smoothed by it. A Mrs. Elton would bean excuse for any change of intercourse; former intimacy\n\nmight sink without remark. It would be almost beginning their life of civility again."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Of the lady individually, Emma thought very little. She was good enough for Mr. Elton, no doubt; accomplished enough for Highbury-handsome enough-to look plain, probably, by Harriet's side. As to connection, there Emma was perfectly easy; persuaded, that after all his own vaunted claims and disdain of Harriet, he had done nothing. On that article, truth seemed attainable. What she was, must be uncertain; but who she was, might be found out; and setting aside the 10,000 l., it did not appear that she was at all Harriet's superior. She brought no name, no blood, no alliance. Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters of a Bristol-merchant, of course, he must be called; but, as the whole of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it was unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been very moderate also. Part of every winter she had been used to spend in Bath; but Bristol washer home, the very heart of Bristol; for though the father and mother had died some years ago, an uncle remained-in the law line:-nothing more distinctly honourable was hazarded of him, than that he was in the law line; and with him the daughter had lived. Emma guessed him to be the drudge of some attorney, and too stupid to rise. And all the grandeur of the connection seemed dependent on the elder sister, who was very well married, to a gentleman in a great way, near Bristol, who kept two carriages! That was the wind-up of the history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.\n\nCould she but have given Harriet her feelings about it all! She had talked her into love; but, alas! she was not so easily to be talked out of it. The charm of an object to occupy the many vacancies of Harriet's mind was not to be talked away. He might be superseded by another; he certainly would, indeed; nothing could be clearer; even a Robert Martin would have been sufficient; but nothing else, she feared, would cure her. Harriet was one of those, who, having once begun, would be always in love. And now, poor girl, she was considerably worse from this reappearance of Mr. Elton-she was always having a glimpse of him somewhere or other. Emma saw him only once; but two or three times everyday Harriet was sure just to meet with him, or just to miss him, just to hear his voice, or see his shoulder, just to have something occur to preserve him in her fancy, in all the favouring warmth of surprise and conjecture. She was, moreover, perpetually hearing about him; for, excepting when at Hartfield, she was always among those who saw no fault in Mr. Elton, and found nothing so interesting as the discussion of his concerns; and every report, therefore, every guess,-all that had already occurred, all that might occur in the arrangement of his affairs, comprehending income, servants, and furniture,-was continually in agitation around her. Her regard was receiving strength by invariable praise of him, and her regrets kept alive, and feelings irritated by ceaseless repetitions of Miss Hawkins's happiness, and continual observation of how much he seemed attached!-his air as he walked by the house-the very sitting of his hat, being all in proof of how much he was in love!"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Had it been allowable entertainment, had there been no pain to her friend, or reproach to herself, in the waverings of Harriet's mind, Emma would have been amused by its variations. Sometimes Mr. Elton predominated, sometimes the Martins; and each was occasionally useful as a check to the other. Mr. Elton's engagement had been the cure of the agitation of meeting Mr. Martin. The unhappiness produced by the knowledge of that engagement had been a little put aside by Elizabeth Martin's calling at Mrs. Goddard's a few days afterwards. Harriet had not been at home; but a note had been prepared and left for her, written in the very style to touch,-a small mixture of reproach with a great deal of kindness; and till Mr. Elton himself appeared, she had been much occupied by it, continually pondering over what could be done in return, and wishing to do more than she dared to confess. But Mr. Elton, in person, had driven away all such cares. While he staid, the Martins were forgotten; and on the very morning of his setting off for Bath again, Emma, to dissipate some of the distress it occasioned, judged it best for her to return Elizabeth Martin's visit.\n\nHow that visit was to be acknowledged, what would be necessary, and what might be safest, had been a point of some doubtful consideration. Absolute neglect of the mother and sisters, when invited to come, would be ingratitude. It must not be; and yet the danger of a renewal of the acquaintance!\n\nAfter much thinking, she could determine on nothing better than Harriet's returning the visit; but in away that, if they had understanding, should convince them that it was to be only a formal acquaintance. She meant to take her in the carriage, leave her at the Abbey-Mill, while she drove a little farther, and call for her again so soon as to allow no time for insidious applications or dangerous recurrences to the past, and give the most decided proof of what degree of intimacy was chosen for the future."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She could think of nothing better; and though there was something in it which her own heart could not approve-something of ingratitude, merely glossed over-it must be done, or what would become of Harriet?"},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Small heart had Harriet for visiting. Only half an hour before her friend called for her at Mrs. Goddard's, her evil stars had led her to the very spot, where, at that moment, a trunk, directed to The Rev. Philip Elton, White Hart, Bath, was to be seen under the operation of being lifted into the butcher's cart, which was to convey it to where the coaches passed; and everything in this world, excepting that trunk and the direction, was consequently a blank.\n\nShe went, however; and when they reached the farm, and she was to be put down, at the end of the broad, neat gravel walk, which led between espalier apple-trees to the front door, the sight of everything which had given her so much pleasure the autumn before, was beginning to revive a little local agitation; and when they parted, Emma observed her to be looking around with a sort of fearful curiosity, which determined her not to allow the visit to exceed the proposed quarter of an hour. She went on herself, to give that portion of time to an old servant who was married, and settled in Donwell.\n\nThe quarter of an hour brought her punctually to the white gate again; and Miss Smith receiving her summons, was with her without delay, and unattended by any alarming young man. She came solitarily down the gravel walk-a Miss Martin just appearing at the door, and parting with her seemingly with ceremonious civility.\n\nHarriet could not very soon give an intelligible account. She was feeling too much; but at last Emma collected from her enough to understand the sort of meeting, and the sort of pain it was creating. She had seen only Mrs. Martin and the two girls. They had received her doubtingly, if not coolly; and nothing beyond the merest common-place had been talked almost all the dme-till just at last, when Mrs. Martin's saying, all of a sudden, that she thought Miss Smith was grown, had brought on a more interesting subject, and a warmer manner. In that very room she had been measured last September with her two friends. There were the pencilled marks and memorandums on the wainscot by the window. He had done it. They all seemed to remember the day, the hour, the party, the occasion,-to feel the same consciousness, the same regrets,-to be ready to return to the same good understanding; and they were just growing again like themselves (Harriet, as Emma must suspect, as ready as the best of them to be cordial and happy,) when the carriage re-appeared, and all was over. The style of the visit, and the shortness of it, were then felt to be decisive. Fourteen minutes to be given to those with whom she had thankfully passed six weeks not six months ago! Emma could not but picture it all, and feel how justly they might resent, how naturally Harriet must suffer. It was a bad business. She would have given a great deal, or endured a great deal, to have had the Martins in a higher rank of life. They were so deserving, that a little higher should have been enough; but as it was, how could she have done otherwise? Impossible! She could not repent. They must be separated; but there was a great deal of pain in the process-so much to herself at this time, that she soon felt the necessity of a little consolation, and resolved ongoing home byway of Randalls to procure it. Her mind was quite sick of Mr. Elton and the Martins. The refreshment of Randalls was absolutely necessary."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"It was a good scheme; but on driving to the door they heard that neither'master nor mistress was at home:\" they had both been out sometime; the man believed they were gone to Hartfield.\n\n\"This is too bad,\" cried Emma, as they turned away. \"And now we shall just miss them; too provoking: I do not know when I have been so disappointed.\" And she leaned back in the corner, to indulge her murmurs, or to reason them away; probably a little of both-such being the commonest process of a not ill-disposed mind. Presently the carriage stopt: she looked up; it was stopt by Mr. and Mrs. Weston, who were standing to speak to her. There was instant pleasure in the sight of them, and still greater pleasure was conveyed in sound; for Mr. Weston immediately accosted her with,-\n\n\"How d'ye do?-how d'ye do?-We have been sitting with your father-glad to see him so well. Frank comes to-morrow-I had a letter this morning-we see him to-morrow by dinner-time to a certainty-he is at Oxford to-day, and he comes fora whole fortnight; I knew it would be so. If he had come at Christmas he could not have staid three days: I was always glad he did not come at Christmas; now we are going to have just the right weather for him,-fine, dry, settled weather. We shall enjoy him completely; everything has turned out exactly as we could wish.\"\n\nThere was no resisting such news, no possibility of avoiding the influence of such a happy face as Mr. Weston's, confirmed as it all was by the words and the countenance of his wife, fewer and quieter, but not less to the purpose. To know that she thought his coming certain was enough to make Emma consider it so, and sincerely did she rejoice in their joy. It was a most delightful reanimation of exhausted spirits. The worn-out past was sunk in the freshness of what was coming; and in the rapidity of half a moment's thought, she hoped Mr. Elton would now be talked of no more."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Weston gave her the history of the engagements at Enscombe, which allowed his son to answer for having an entire fortnight at his command, as well as the route and the method of his journey; and she listened, and smiled, and congratulated.\n\n\"I shall soon bring him over to Hartfield,\" said he, at the conclusion.\n\nEmma could imagine she saw a touch of the arm at this speech, from his wife.\n\n\"We had better move on, Mr. Weston,\" said she; \"we are detaining the girls.\"\n\n\"Well, well, I am ready;\" and turning again to Emma, \"but you must not be expecting such a very fine young man; you have only had my account, you know; I daresay he is really nothing extraordinary,\"-though his own sparkling eyes at the moment were speaking a very different conviction.\n\nEmma could look perfectly unconscious and innocent, and answer in a manner that appropriated nothing.\n\n\"Think of me to-morrow, my dear Emma, about four o'clock,\" was Mrs. Weston's parting injunction; spoken with some anxiety, and meant only for her.\n\n\"Four o'clock!-depend upon it he will be hereby three,\" was Mr. Weston's quick amendment; and so ended a most satisfactory meeting. Emma's spirits were mounted quite up to happiness; everything wore a different air; James and his horses seemed not half so sluggish as before. When she looked at the hedges, she thought the elder at least must soon becoming out; and when she turned round to Harriet she saw something like a look of spring, a tender smile even there.\n\n\"Will Mr. Frank Churchill pass through Bath as well as Oxford?\" was a question, however, which did not augur much."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"But neither geography nor tranquillity could come all at once; and Emma was now in a humour to resolve that they should both come in time.\n\nThe morning of the interesting day arrived, and Mrs. Weston's faithful pupil did not forget either at ten, or eleven, or twelve o'clock, that she was to think of her at four.\n\n\"My dear, dear, anxious friend,\" said she, in mental soliloquy, while walking downstairs from her own room, \"always over-careful for everybody's comfort but your own: I see you now in all your little fidgets, going again and again into his room, to be sure that all is right.\" The clock struck twelve as she passed through the hall. \"\"Tis twelve,-I shall not forget to think of you four hours hence; and by this time to-morrow, perhaps, or a little later, I maybe thinking of the possibility of their all calling here. I am sure they will bring him soon.\"\n\nShe opened the parlour door, and saw two gentlemen sitting with her father,-Mr. Weston and his son. They had been arrived only a few minutes; and Mr. Weston had scarcely finished his explanation of Frank's being a day before his time, and her father was yet in the midst of his very civil welcome and congratulations, when she appeared, to have her share of surprise, introduction, and pleasure.\n\nThe Frank Churchill so long talked of, so high in interest, was actually before her-he was presented to her; and she did not think too much had been said in his praise; he was a very good looking young man; height, air, address, all were unexceptionable, and his countenance had a great deal of the spirit and liveliness of his father's; he looked quick and sensible. She felt immediately that she should like him; and there was a well-bred ease of manner, and a readiness to talk, which convinced her that he came intending to be acquainted with her, and that acquainted they soon must be."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He had reached Randalls the evening before. She was pleased with the eagerness to arrive which had made him alter his plan, and travel earlier, later, and quicker, that he might gain half a day.\n\n\"I told you yesterday,\" cried Mr. Weston with exultation,-\"I told you all that he would be here before the time named. I remembered what I used to do myself. One cannot creep upon ajourney: one cannot help getting on faster than one has planned; and the pleasure of coming in upon one's friends before the look-out begins is worth a great deal more than any little exertion it needs.\"\n\n\"It is a great pleasure where one can indulge in it,\" said the young man, \"though there are not many houses that I should presume on so far; but incoming home I felt I might do anything.\"\n\nThe word homemade his father look on him with fresh complacency. Emma was directly sure that he knew how to make himself agreeable; the conviction was strengthened by what followed. He was very much pleased with Randalls, thought it a most admirably arranged house, would hardly allow it even to be very small, admired the situation, the walk to Highbury, Highbury itself, Hartfield still more, and professed himself to have always felt the sort of interest in the country, which none but one's own country gives, and the greatest curiosity to visit it. That he should never have been able to indulge so amiable a feeling before passed suspiciously through Emma's brain; but still if it were a falsehood, it was a pleasant one, and pleasantly handled. His manner had no air of study or exaggeration. He did really look and speak as if in a state of no common enjoyment.\n\nTheir subjects, in general, were such as belong to an opening acquaintance. On his side were the enquiries,-\" Was she a horse-woman?-Pleasant rides?-Pleasant walks?-Had they a large neighbourhood?-Highbury, perhaps, afforded society enough?-"},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"There were several very pretty houses in and about it.-Balls-had they balls?-Was it a musical society?\"\n\nBut when satisfied on all these points, and their acquaintance proportionately advanced, he contrived to find an opportunity, while their two fathers were engaged with each other, of introducing his mother-in-law, and speaking of her with so much handsome praise, so much warm admiration, so much gratitude for the happiness she secured to his father, and her very kind reception of himself, as was an additional proof of his knowing how to please-and of his certainly thinking it worthwhile to try to please her. He did not advance a word of praise beyond what she knew to be thoroughly deserved by Mrs. Weston; but, undoubtedly, he could know very little of the matter. He understood what would be welcome; he could be sure of little else. \"His father's marriage,\" he said, \"had been the wisest measure: every friend must rejoice in it; and the family from whom he had received such a blessing must be ever considered as having conferred the highest obligation on him.\"\n\nHe got as near as he could to thanking her for Miss Taylor's merits, without seeming quite to forget that, in the common course of things, it was to be rather supposed that Miss Taylor had formed Miss Woodhouse's character, than Miss Woodhouse Miss Taylor's. And at last, as if resolved to qualify his opinion completely for trav elling round to its object, he wound it all up with astonishment at the youth and beauty of her person.\n\n\"Elegant, agreeable manners, I was prepared for,\" said he; \"but I confess that, considering everything, I had not expected more than a very tolerably well-looking woman of a certain age; I did not know that I was to find a pretty young woman in Mrs. Weston.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You cannot see too much perfection in Mrs. Weston, for my feelings,\" said Emma: \"were you to guess her to be eighteen, I should listen with pleasure; but she would be ready to quarrel with you for using such words. Don't let her imagine that you have spoken of her as a pretty young woman.\"\n\n\"I hope I should know better,\" he replied; \"no, depend upon it (with a gallant bow), that in addressing Mrs. Weston I should understand whom I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant in my terms.\"\n\nEmma wondered whether the same suspicion of what might be expected from their knowing each other, which had taken strong possession of her mind, had ever crossed his; and whether his compliments were to be considered as marks of acquiescence, or proofs of defiance. She must see more of him to understand his ways; at present, she only felt they were agreeable.\n\nShe had no doubt of what Mr. Weston was often thinking about. His quick eye she detected again and again glancing towards them with a happy expression; and even, when he might have determined not to look, she was confident that he was often listening.\n\nHer own father's perfect exemption from any thought of the kind, the entire deficiency in him of all such sort of penetration or suspicion, was a most comfortable circumstance. Happily, he was not farther from approving matrimony than from foreseeing it. Though always objecting to every marriage that was arranged, he never suffered beforehand from the apprehension of any; it seemed as if he could not think so ill of any two persons\" understanding as to suppose they meant to marry till it were proved against them. She blessed the favouring blindness. He could now, without the drawback of a single unpleasant surmise, without a glance forward at any possible treachery in his guest, give way to all his natural kind-hearted civility in solicitous enquiries after Mr. Frank Churchill's accommodation on his journey, through the sad evils of sleeping two nights on the road, and express very genuine unmixed anxiety to know that he had certainly escaped catching cold,-which, however, he could not allow him to feel quite assured of himself, till after another night."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"A reasonable visit paid, Mr. Weston began to move. \"He must be going. He had business at the Crown about his hay, and a great many errands for Mrs. Weston at Ford's; but he need not hurry anybody else.\" His son, too well bred to hear the hint, rose immediately also, saying,-\n\n\"As you are going farther on business, sir, I will take the opportunity of paying a visit, which must be paid someday or other, and therefore may as well be paid now. I have the honour of being acquainted with a neighbour of yours (turning to Emma), a lady residing in or near Highbury; a family of the name of Fairfax. I shall have no difficulty, I suppose, in finding the house; though Fairfax, I believe, is not the proper name,-I should rather say Barnes or Bates. Do you know any family of that name?\"\n\n\"To be sure we do,\" cried his father: \"Mrs. Bates-we passed her house-I saw Miss Bates at the window. True, true, you are acquainted with Miss Fairfax; I remember you knew her at Weymouth, and a fine girl she is. Call upon her, by all means.\"\n\n\"There is no necessity for my calling this morning,\" said the young man: \"another day would do as well; but there was that degree of acquaintance at Weymouth which-\"\n\n\"Oh, go to-day, go to-day. Do not defer it. What is right to be done cannot be done too soon. And, besides, I must give you a hint, Frank-any want of attention to her here should be carefully avoided. You saw her with the Campbells, when she was the equal of everybody she mixed with, but here she is with a poor old grandmother, who has barely enough to live on. If you do not call early it will be a slight.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The son looked convinced.\n\n\"I have heard her speak of the acquaintance,\" said Emma: \"she is a very elegant young woman.\"\n\nHe agreed to it, but with so quiet a'Yes,\" as inclined her almost to doubt his real concurrence; and yet there must be a very distinct sort of elegance for the fashionable world, if Jane Fairfax could bethought only ordinarily gifted with it.\n\n\"If you were never particularly struck by her manners before,\" said she, \"I think you will to-day. You will see her to advantage; see her and hear her-no, I am afraid you will not hear her at all, for she has an aunt who never holds her tongue.\"\n\n\"You are acquainted with Miss Jane Fairfax, sir, are you?\" said Mr. Woodhouse, always the last to make his way in conversation; \"then give me leave to assure you, that you will find her a very agreeable young lady. She is staying hereon a visit to her grand-mamma and aunt, very worthy people; I have known them all my life. They will be extremely glad to see you, I am sure; and one of my servants shall go with you to show you the way.\"\n\n\"My dear sir, upon no account in the world; my father can direct me.\"\n\n\"But your father is not going so far; he is only going to the Crown, quite on the other side of the street, and there area great many houses: you might be very much at a loss, and it is a very dirty walk, unless you keep on the footpath; but my coachman can tell you where you had best cross the street.\"\n\nMr. Frank Churchill still declined it, looking as serious as he could; and his father gave his hearty support, by calling out, \"My good friend, this is quite unnecessary; Frank knows a puddle of water when he sees it, and as to Mrs. Bates's, he may get therefrom the Crown in a hop, step, and jump.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"They were permitted to go alone; and with a cordial nod from one, and a graceful bow from the other, the two gentlemen took leave. Emma remained very well pleased with this beginning of the acquaintance, and could now engage to think of them all at Randalls any hour of the day, with full confidence in their comfort."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The next morning brought Mr. Frank Churchill again. He came with Mrs. Weston, to whom and to Highbury he seemed to take very cordially. He had been sitting with her, it appeared, most companionably at home, till her usual hour of exercise; and on being desired to choose their walk, immediately fixed on Highbury. \"He did not doubt there being very pleasant walks in every direction, but if left to him, he should always choose the same. Highbury, that airy, cheerful, happy-looking Highbury, would be his constant attraction.\" Highbury, with Mrs. Weston, stood for Hartfield; and she trusted to its bearing the same construction with him. They walked thither directly.\n\nEmma had hardly expected them: for Mr. Weston, who had called in for half a minute, in order to hear that his son was very handsome, knew nothing of their plans; and it was an agreeable surprise to her, therefore, to perceive them walking up to the house together, arm in arm. She was wanting to see him again; and especially to see him in company with Mrs. Weston, upon his behavior to whom her opinion of him was to depend. If he were deficient there, nothing should make amends for it. But on seeing them together, she became perfectly satisfied. It was not merely in fine words or hyperbolical compliment that he paid his duty; nothing could be more proper or pleasing than his whole manner to her,-nothing could more agreeably denote his wish of considering her as a friend and securing her affection. And there was time enough for Emma to form a reasonable judgment, as their visit included all the rest of the morning. They were all three walking about together for an hour or two,-first round the shrubberies of Hartfield, and afterwards in Highbury. He was delighted with everything: admired Hartfield sufficiently for Mr. Woodhouse's ear; and when their going farther was resolved on, confessed his wish to be made acquainted with the whole village, and found matter of commendation and interest much oftener than Emma could have supposed."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Some of the objects of his curiosity spoke very amiable feelings. He begged to be shown the house which his father had lived in so long, and which had been the home of his father's father; and on recollecting that an old woman, who had nursed him, was still living, walked inquest of her cottage, from one end of the street to the other; and though in some points of pursuit or observation there was no positive merit, they showed, altogether, a goodwill towards Highbury in general, which must be very like a merit to those he was with.\n\nEmma watched, and decided, that with such feelings as were now shown it could not be fairly supposed that he had been ever voluntarily absenting himself: that he had not been acting apart, or making a parade of insincere professions; and that Mr. Knightley certainly had not done him justice.\n\nTheir first pause was at the Crown Inn, an inconsiderable house, though the principal one of the sort, where a couple of pair of post-horses were kept, more for the convenience of the neighbourhood than from any run on the road; and his companions had not expected to be detained by any interest excited there: but in passing it they gave the history of the large room visibly added. It had been built many years ago fora ball-room, and while the neighbourhood had been in a particularly populous, dancing state, had been occasionally used as such: but such brilliant days had long passed away; and now the highest purpose for which it was ever wanted was to accommodate a whist club established among the gentlemen and half gentlemen of the place. He was immediately interested. Its character as a ball-room caught him; and instead of passing on, he stopt for several minutes at the two superior sashed windows which were open, to look in and contemplate its capabilities, and lament that its original purpose should have ceased. He saw no fault in the room; he would acknowledge none which they suggested. No; it was long enough, broad enough, handsome enough. It would hold the very number for comfort. They ought to have balls thereat least every fortnight through the winter. Why had not Miss Woodhouse revived the former good old days of the room? She who could do anything in Highbury! The want of proper families in the place, and the conviction that none beyond the place and its immediate environs could be tempted to attend, were mentioned; but he was not satisfied. He could not be persuaded that so many good-looking houses as he saw around him could not furnish numbers enough for such a meeting; and even when particulars were given and families described, he was still unwilling to admit that the inconvenience of such a mixture would be anything, or that there would be the smallest difficulty in everybody's returning into their proper place the next morning. He argued like a young man very much bent on dancing; and Emma was rather surprised to seethe constitution of the Weston prevail so decidedly against the habits of the Churchills. He seemed to have all the life and spirit, cheerful feelings, and social inclinations of his father, and nothing of the pride or reserve of Enscombe. Of pride, indeed, there was, perhaps scarcely enough; his indifference to a confusion of rank bordered too much on inelegance of mind. He could be no judge, however, of the evil he was holding cheap. It was but an effusion of lively spirits."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"At last he was persuaded to move on from the front of the Crown; and being now almost facing the house where the Bates's lodged, Emma recollected his intended visit the day before, and asked him if he had paid it.\n\n\"Yes, oh yes,\" he replied, \"I was just going to mention it. Avery successful visit. I saw all the three ladies; and felt very much obliged to you for your preparatory hint. If the talking aunt had taken me quite by surprise, it must have been the death of me. As it was, I was only betrayed into paying a most unreasonable visit. Ten minutes would have been all that was necessary, perhaps all that was proper; and I had told my father I should certainly beat home before him, but there was no getting away, no pause; and, to my utter astonishment, I found, when he (finding me nowhere else) joined me thereat last, that I had been actually sitting with them very nearly three quarters of an hour. The good lady had not given me the possibility of escape before.\"\n\n\"And how did you think Miss Fairfax looking?\"\n\n\"III, very ill;-that is, if a young lady can ever be allowed to look ill: but the expression is hardly admissible, Mrs. Weston, is it? Ladies can never look ill; and, seriously, Miss Fairfax is naturally so pale, as almost always to give the appearance of ill health-a most deplorable want of complexion.\"\n\nEmma would not agree to this, and began a warm defence of Miss Fairfax's complexion. \"It was certainly never brilliant, but she would not allow it to have a sickly hue in general; and there was a softness and delicacy in her skin which gave peculiar elegance to the character of her face.\" He listened with all due deference; acknowledged that he had heard many people say the same: but yet he must confess, that to him nothing could make amends for the want of the fine glow of health. Where features were indifferent, a fine complexion gave beauty to them all; and where they were good, the effect was,-fortunately he need not attempt to describe what the effect was."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Well,\" said Emma, \"there is no disputing about taste. At least you admire her, except her complexion.\"\n\nHe shook his head and laughed. \"I cannot separate Miss Fairfax and her complexion.\"\n\n\"Did you see her often at Weymouth? Were you often in the same society?\"\n\nAt this moment they were approaching Ford's, and he hastily exclaimed, \"Ha! this must be the very shop that everybody attends everyday of their lives, as my father informs me. He comes to Highbury himself, he says, six days out of the seven, and has always business at Ford's. If it be not inconvenient to you, pray let us go in, that I may prove myself to belong to the place,-to be a true citizen of Highbury. I must buy something at Ford's. It will betaking out my freedom. I daresay they sell gloves.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, gloves and everything. I do admire your patriotism. You will be adored in Highbury. You were very popular before you came, because you were Mr. Weston's son; but layout half-a-guinea at Ford's, and your popularity will stand upon your own virtues.\"\n\nThey went in; and while the sleek, well-tied parcels of'Men's Beavers\" and'York Tan\" were bringing down and displaying on the counter, he said,-\"But I beg your pardon, Miss Woodhouse, you were speaking tome, you were saying something at the very moment of this burst of my amor patriæ. p Do not let me lose it; I assure you the utmost stretch of public fame would not make me amends for the loss of any happiness in private life.\"\n\n\"I merely asked, whether you had known much of Miss Fairfax and her party at Weymouth?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"And now that I understand your question, I must pronounce it to be a very unfair one. It is always the lady's right to decide on the degree of acquaintance. Miss Fairfax must already have given her account. I shall not commit myself by claiming more than she may choose to allow.\"\n\n\"Upon my word, you answer as discreetly as she could do herself. But her account of everything leaves so much to be guessed; she is so very reserved, so very unwilling to give the least information about anybody, that I really think you may say what you like of your acquaintance with her.\"\n\n\"May I, indeed? Then I will speak the truth, and nothing suits me so well. I met her frequently at Weymouth. I had known the Campbells a little in town; and at Weymouth we were very much in the same set. Col. Campbell is a very agreeable man, and Mrs. Campbell a friendly, warm-hearted woman. I like them all.\"\n\n\"You know Miss Fairfax's situation in life, I conclude; what she is destined to be.\"\n\n\"Yes\"-(rather hesitatingly)-\"I believe I do.\"\n\n\"You get upon delicate subjects, Emma,\" said Mrs. Weston, smiling; \"remember that I am here. Mr. Frank Churchill hardly knows what to say when you speak of Miss Fairfax's situation in life. I will move a little farther off.\"\n\n\"I certainly do forget to think of her,\" said Emma, \"as having ever been anything but my friend and my dearest friend.\"\n\nHe looked as if he fully understood and honoured such a sentiment.\n\nWhen the gloves were bought, and they had quitted the shop again,-\"Did you ever hear the young lady we were speaking of play?\" said Frank Churchill."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Ever hear her!\" repeated Emma. \"You forget how much she belongs to Highbury. I have heard her every year of our lives since we both began. She plays charmingly\"\n\n\"You think so, do you? I wanted the opinion of someone who could really judge. She appeared tome to play well, that is, with considerable taste, but I know nothing of the matter myself. I am excessively fond of music, but without the smallest skill or right of judging of anybody's performance. I have been used to hear hers admired; and I remember one proof of her being thought to play well: a man, a very musical man, and in love with another woman-engaged to her-on the point of marriage-would yet never ask that other woman to sit down to the instrument, if the lady in question could sit down instead-never seemed to like to hear one if he could hear the other. That I thought, in a man of known musical talent, was some proof.\"\n\n\"Proof, indeed!\" said Emma, highly amused. \"Mr. Dixon is very musical, is he? We shall know more about them all, in half an hour, from you, than Miss Fairfax would have vouchsafed in half a year.\"\n\n\"Yes, Mr. Dixon and Miss Campbell were the persons; and I thought it a very strong proof.\"\n\n\"Certainly, very strong it was; to own the truth, a great deal stronger than, if I had been Miss Campbell, would have been at all agreeable tome. I could not excuse a man's having more music than love-more ear than eye-a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings. How did Miss Campbell appear to like it?\"\n\n\"It washer very particular friend, you know.\"\n\n\"Poor comfort!\" said Emma, laughing. \"One would rather have a stranger preferred than one's very particular friend: with a stranger it might not recur again; but the misery of having a very particular friend always at hand, to do everything better than one does one's self! Poor Mrs. Dixon! Well, I am glad she is gone to settle in Ireland.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"You are right. It was not very flattering to Miss Campbell; but she really did not seem to feel it.\"\n\n\"So much the better, or so much the worse: I do not know which. But be it sweetness, or be it stupidity in her-quickness of friendship, or dulness of feeling-there was one person, I think, who must have felt it-Miss Fairfax herself. She must have felt the improper and dangerous distinction.\"\n\n\"As to that-I do not-\"\n\n\"Oh, do not imagine that I expect an account of Miss Fairfax's sensations from you, or from anybody else. They are known to no human being, I guess, but herself; but if she continued to play whenever she was asked by Mr. Dixon, one may guess what one chooses.\"\n\n\"There appeared such a perfectly good understanding among them all-\" he began rather quickly, but checking himself, added, \"however, it is impossible for me to say on what terms they really were-how it might all be behind the scenes. I can only say that there was smoothness outwardly. But you, who have known Miss Fairfax from a child, must be a better judge of her character, and of how she is likely to conduct herself in critical situations, than I can be.\"\n\n\"I have known her from a child, undoubtedly: we have been children and women together; and it is natural to suppose that we should be intimate,-that we should have taken to each other whenever she visited her friends. But we never did. I hardly know how it has happened; a little, perhaps, from that wickedness on my side which was prone to take disgust towards a girl so idolised and so cried up as she always was, by her aunt and grandmother, and all their set. And then, her reserve; I never could attach myself to anyone so completely reserved.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"It is a most repulsive quality, indeed,\" said he. \"Oftentimes very convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.\"\n\n\"Not till the reserve ceases towards one's self; and then the attraction maybe the greater. But I must be more in want of a friend, or an agreeable companion, than I have yet been, to take the trouble of conquering anybody's reserve to procure one. Intimacy between Miss Fairfax and me is quite out of the question. I have no reason to think ill of her-not the least-except that such extreme and perpetual cautiousness of word and manner, such a dread of giving a distinct idea about anybody, is apt to suggest suspicions of there being something to conceal.\"\n\nHe perfectly agreed with her; and after walking together so long, and thinking so much alike, Emma felt herself so well acquainted with him, that she could hardly believe it to be only their second meeting. He was not exactly what she had expected; less of the man of the world in some of his notions, less of the spoiled child of fortune, therefore better than she had expected. His ideas seemed more moderate-his feelings warmer. She was particularly struck by his manner of considering Mr. Elton's house, which, as well as the church, he would go and look at, and would not join them in finding much fault with. No, he could not believe it a bad house; not such a house as a man was to be pitied for having. If it were to be shared with the woman he loved, he could not think any man to be pitied for having that house. There must be ample room in it for every real comfort. The man must be a blockhead who wanted more.\n\nMrs. Weston laughed, and said he did not know what he was talking about. Used only to a large house himself, and without ever thinking how many advantages and accommodations were attached to its size, he could be no judge of the privations inevitably belonging to a small one. But Emma, in her own mind, determined that he did know what he was talking about, and that he showed a very amiable inclination to settle early in life, and to marry, from worthy motives. He might not be aware of the inroads on domestic peace to be occasioned by no housekeeper's room, or a bad butler's pantry; but no doubt he did perfectly feel that Enscombe could not make him happy, and that whenever he were attached, he would willingly give up much of wealth to be allowed an early establishment."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma's very good opinion of Frank Churchill was a little shaken the following day, by hearing that he was gone off to London, merely to have his haircut. A sudden freak seemed to have seized him at breakfast, and he had sent fora chaise and set off intending to return to dinner, but with no more important view that appeared than having his haircut. There was certainly no harm in his travelling sixteen miles twice over on such an errand; but there was an air of foppery and nonsense in it which she could not approve. It did not accord with the rationality of plan, the moderation in expense, or even the unselfish warmth of heart which she had believed herself to discern in him yesterday. Vanity, extravagance, love of change, restlessness of temper, which must be doing something, good or bad; heedlessness as to the pleasure of his father and Mrs. Weston, indifferent as to how his conduct might appear in general; he became liable to all these changes. His father only called him a coxcomb, and thought it a very good story; but that Mrs. Weston did not like it, was clear enough, by her passing it over as quickly as possible, and making no other comment than that'all young people would have their little whims.\"\n\nWith the exception of this little blot, Emma found that his visit hitherto had given her friend only good ideas of him. Mrs. Weston was very ready to say how attentive and pleasant a companion he made himself,-how much she saw to like in his disposition altogether. He appeared to have a very open temper,-certainly a very cheerful and lively one; she could observe nothing wrong in his notions, a great deal decidedly right; he spoke of his uncle with warm regard, was fond of talking of him; said he would be the best man in the world if he were left to himself; and though there was no being attached to the aunt, he acknowledged her kindness with gratitude, and seemed to mean always to speak of her with respect. This was all very promising; and, but for such an unfortunate fancy for having his haircut, there was nothing to denote him unworthy of the distinguished honour which her imagination had given him; the honour, if not of being really in love with her, of being at least very near it, and saved only by her own indifference-(for still her resolution held of never marrying)-the honour, in short, of being marked out for her by all their joint acquaintance."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\\nAuthor: Jane Austen\\nTitle: Emma\\nChapter: 25\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"An arch look expressed-\\\"I understand you well enough;\\\" but she said only, \\\"Miss Fairfax is reserved.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I always told you she was-a little; but you will soon overcome all that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be honoured.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You think her diffident. I do not see it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear Emma,\\\" said he, moving from his chair into one close by her, \\\"you are not going to tell me, I hope, that you had not a pleasant evening.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions, and amused to think how little information I obtained.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am disappointed,\\\" was his only answer.\\n\\n\\\"I hope everybody had a pleasant evening,\\\" said Mr. Woodhouse, in his quiet way. \\\"I had. Once, I felt the fire rather too much; but then I moved back my chair a little, a very little, and it did not disturb me. Miss Bates was very chatty and good humoured, as she always is, though she speaks rather too quick. However, she is very agreeable, and Mrs. Bates, too, in a different way. I like old friends; and Miss Jane Fairfax is a very pretty sort of young lady; a very pretty and a very well behaved young lady indeed. She must have found the evening agreeable, Mr. Knightley, because she had Emma.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"True, sir; and Emma, because she had Miss Fairfax.\\\"\\n\\nEmma saw his anxiety, and wishing to appease it, at least for the present, said, and with a sincerity which no one could question,-\\n\\n\\\"She is a sort of elegant creature that one cannot keep one's eyes from. I am always watching her to admire; and I do pity her from my heart.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Knightley looked as if he were more gratified than he cared to express; and before he could make any reply, Mr. Woodhouse, whose thoughts were on the Bates's, said,-\\n\\n\\\"It is a great pity that their circumstances should be so confined! a great pity indeed! and I have often wished-but it is so little one can venture to do-small, trifling presents, of anything uncommon. Now, we have killed a porker, and Emma thinks of sending them a loin or a leg; it is very small and delicate-Hartfield pork is not like any other pork-but still it is pork-and, my dear Emma, unless one could be sure of their making it into steaks, nicely fried, as ours are fried, without the smallest grease, and not roast it, for no stomach can bear roast pork-I think we had better send the leg-do not you think so, my dear?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear papa, I sent the whole hind-quarter. I knew you would wish it. There will be the leg to be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and the loin to be dressed directly, in any manner they like.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That's right, my dear, very right. I had not thought of it before, but that was the best way. They must not over-salt the leg; and then, if it is not over-salted, and if it is very thoroughly boiled, just as Serle boils ours, and eaten very moderately of, with a boiled turnip, and a little carrot or parsnip, I do not consider it unwholesome.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Emma,\\\" slid Mr. Knightley, presently, \\\"I have apiece of news for you. You like news-and I heard an article in my way hither that I think will interest you.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"News! Oh yes, I always like news. What is it?-why do you smile so?-where did you hear it?-at Randalls?\\\"\\n\\nHe had time only to say,-\\n\\n\\\"No, not at Randalls; I have not been near Randalls,\\\"-when the door was thrown open, and Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax walked into the room. Full of thanks and full of news, Miss Bates knew not which to give quickest. Mr. Knightley soon saw that he had lost his moment, and that not another syllable of communication could rest with him.\\n\\n\\\"Oh, my dear sir, how are you this morning? My dear Miss Woodhouse-I come quite overpowered. Such a beautiful hind-quarter of pork! You are too bountiful! Have you heard the news? Mr. Elton is going to be married.\\\"\\n\\nEmma had not had time even to think of Mr. Elton, and she was so completely surprised, that she could not avoid a little start, and a little blush, at the sound.\\n\\n\\\"There is my news:-I thought it would interest you,\\\" said Mr. Knightley, with a smile, which implied a conviction of some part of what had passed between them.\\n\\n\\\"But where could you hear it?\\\" cried Miss Bates. \\\"Where could you possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley? For it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. Cole's note-no, it cannot be more than five-or at least ten-for I had got my bonnet and spencer non, just ready to come out-I was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork-Jane was standing in the passage-were not you, Jane?-for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said, I would go down and see, and Jane said,\\\"Shall I go down instead? for I think you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen. \\\"-\\\"Oh, my dear, \\\"said I-well, and just then came the note. A Miss Hawkins-that's all I know-a Miss Hawkins of Bath. But, Mr. Knightley, how could you possibly have heard it? for the very moment Mr. Cole told Mrs. Cole of it, she sat down and wrote tome. A Miss Hawkins-\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I was with Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Cole on business an hour and a half ago. He had just read Elton's letter as I was shown in, and handed it tome directly.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well! that is quite-I suppose there never was apiece of news more generally interesting. My dear sir, you really are too bountiful. My mother desires her very best compliments and regards, and a thousand thanks, and says you really quite oppress her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"We consider our Hartfield pork,\\\" replied Mr. Woodhouse-\\\"indeed it certainly is, so very superior to all other pork, that Emma and I cannot have a greater pleasure than-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, my dear sir, as my mother says, our friends are only too good to us. If ever there were people who, without having great wealth themselves, had everything they could wish for, I am sure it is us. We may well say, that \\\"our lot is cast in a goodly heritage.\\\" 9 Well, Mr. Knightley, and so you actually saw the letter-well-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It was short, merely to announce-but cheerful, exulting of course.\\\" Here was a sly glance at Emma. \\\"He had been so fortunate as to-I forget the precise words-one has no business to remember them. The information was, as you state, that he was going to be married to a Miss Hawkins. By his style, I should imagine it just settled.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Elton going to be married!\\\" said Emma, as soon as she could speak. \\\"He will have everybody's wishes for his happiness.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He is very young to settle,\\\" was Mr. Woodhouse's observation.\\n\\n\\\"He had better not be in a hurry. He seemed tome very well off as he was. We were always glad to see him at Hartfield.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Anew neighbour for us all, Miss Woodhouse!\\\" said Miss Bates joyfully: \\\"my mother is so pleased!-she says she cannot bear to have the poor old vicarage without a mistress. This is great news, indeed. Jane, you have never seen Mr. Eiton:-no wonder that you have such a curiosity to see him.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Jane's curiosity did not appear of that absorbing nature as wholly to occupy her.\\n\\n\\\"No, I have never seen Mr. Elton,\\\" she replied, starting on this appeal: \\\"is he-is he a tall man?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Who shall answer that question?\\\" cried Emma. \\\"My father would say, \\\"Yes;\\\" Mr. Knightley, \\\"No;\\\" and Miss Bates and I, that he is just the happy medium. When you have been here a little longer, Miss Fairfax, you will understand that Mr. Elton is the standard of perfection in Highbury, both in person and mind.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very true, Miss Woodhouse, so she will. He is the very best young man;-but, my dear Jane, if you remember, I told you yesterday he was precisely the height of Mr. Perry. Miss Hawkins,-I daresay, an excellent young woman. His extreme attention to my mother-wanting her to sit in the vicarage-pew, that she might hear the better, for my mother is a little deaf, you know-it is not much, but she does not hear quite quick. Jane says that Col. Campbell is a little deaf. He fancied bathing might be good for it-the warm bath-but she says it did him no lasting benefit. Col. Campbell, you know, is quite our angel. And Mr. Dixon seems a very charming young man, quite worthy of him. It is such a happiness when good people get together-and they always do. Now, here will be Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins; and there are the Coles, such very good people; and the Perrys-I suppose there never was a happier or a better couple than Mr. and Mrs. Perry. I say, sir,\\\" turning to Mr. Woodhouse, \\\"I think there are few places with such society as Highbury. I always say, we are quite blessed in our neighbours. My dear sir, if there is one thing my mother loves better that another, it is pork-a roast loin of pork-\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"As to who, or what Miss Hawkins is, or how long he has been acquainted with her,\\\" said Emma, \\\"nothing, I suppose, can be known.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"One feels that it cannot be a very long acquaintance. He has been gone only four weeks.\\\" Nobody had any information to give; and, after a few more wonderings, Emma said,-\\n\\n\\\"You are silent, Miss Fairfax-but I hope you mean to take an interest in this news. You, who have been hearing and seeing so much of late on these subjects, who must have been so deep in the business on Miss Campbell's account-we shall not excuse your being indifferent about Mr. Elton and Miss Hawkins.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"When I have seen Mr. Elton,\\\" replied Jane, \\\"I daresay I shall be interested-but I believe it requires that with me. And as it is some months since Miss Campbell married, the impression maybe a little worn off.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, he has been gone just four weeks, as you observe, Miss Woodhouse,\\\" said Miss Bates, \\\"four weeks yesterday:-a Miss Hawkins:-well, I had always rather fancied it would be some young lady hereabouts; not that I ever-Mrs. Cole once whispered tome-but I immediately said, \\\"No, Mr. Elton is a most worthy young man-but-\\\" In short, I do not think I am particulary quick at those sort of discoveries. I do not pretend to it. What is before me, I see. At the same time, nobody could wonder if Mr. Elton should have aspired-Miss Woodhouse lets me chatter on, so good humouredly. She knows I would not offend for the world. How does Miss Smith do? She seems quite recovered now. Have you heard from Mrs. John Knightley lately? Oh, those dear little children. Jane, do you know I always fancy Mr. Dixon like Mr. John Knightley? I mean in person-tall, and with that sort of look-and not very talkative.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Quite wrong, my dear aunt; there is no likeness at all.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very odd! but one never does form a just idea of anybody beforehand. One takes up a notion, and runs away with it. Mr. Dixon, you say, is not, strictly speaking, handsome.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Handsome! Oh no-far from it-certainly plain. I told you he was plain.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear, you said that Miss Campbell would not allow him to be plain, and that you yourself-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, as for me, my judgment is worth nothing. Where I have a regard, I always think a person well looking. But I gave what I believed the general opinion, when I called him plain.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, my dear Jane, I believe we must be running away. The weather does not look well, and grandmamma will be uneasy. You are too obliging, my dear Miss Woodhouse; but we really must take leave. This has been a most agreeable piece of news indeed. I shall just go round by Mrs. Cole's; but I shall not stop three minutes: and, Jane, you had better go home directly-I would not have you out in a shower! We think she is the better for Highbury already. Thank you, we do indeed. I shall not attempt calling on Mrs. Goddard, for I really do not think she cares for anything but boiled pork: when we dress the legit will be another thing. Good morning to you, my dear sir. Oh, Mr. Knightley is coming too. Well, that is so very!-I am sure if Jane is tired, you will be so kind as to give her your arm. Mr. Elton, and Miss Hawkins. Good morning to you.\\\"\\n\\nEmma, alone with her father, had half her attention wanted by him, while he lamented that young people would be in such a hurry to marry-and to marry strangers too-and the other half she could give to her own view of the subject. It was to herself an amusing and a very welcome piece of news, as proving that Mr. Elton could not have suffered long; but she was sorry for Harriet: Harriet must feel it-and all that she could hope was, by giving the first information herself, to save her from hearing it abruptly from others. It was now about the time that she was likely to call. If she were to meet Miss Bates in her way!-and upon its beginning to rain, Emma was obliged to expect that the weather would be detaining her at Mrs. Goddard's, and that the intelligence would undoubtedly rush upon her without preparation.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"The shower was heavy, but short; and it had not been over five minutes, when in came Harriet, with just the heated, agitated look which hurrying thither with a full heart was likely to give; and the'Oh, Miss Woodhouse, what do you think has happened?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"which instantly burst forth, had all the evidence of corresponding perturbation. As the blow was given, Emma felt that she could not now show greater kindness than in listening; and Harriet, unchecked, ran eagerly through what she had to tell. \\\"She had set out from Mrs. Goddard's half an hour ago-she had been afraid it would rain-she had been afraid it would pour down every moment-but she thought she might get to Hartfield first-she had hurried on as fast as possible; but then, as she was passing by the house where a young woman was making up a gown for her, she thought she would just step in and see how it went on; and though she did not seem to stay half a moment there, soon after she came out it began to rain, and she did not know what to do; so she ran on directly, as fast as she could, and took shelter at Ford's.\\\" Ford's was the principal woollen-draper, linen-draper, and haberdasher's shop united-the shop first in size and fashion in the place. \\\"And so, there she had sat, without an idea of anything in the world, full ten minutes, perhaps-where, all of a sudden, who should come in-to be sure it was so very odd!-but they always dealt at Ford's-who should come in, but Elizabeth Martin and her brother! Dear Miss Woodhouse! only think. I thought I should have fainted. I did not know what to do. I was sitting near the door-Elizabeth saw me directly; but he did not; he was busy with the umbrella. I am sure she saw me, but she looked away directly, and took no notice; and they both went to quite the farther end of the shop; and I kept sitting near the door. Oh dear; I was so miserable! I am sure I must have been as white as my gown. I could not go away, you know, because of the rain; but I did so wish myself anywhere in the world but there. Oh dear, Miss Woodhouse-well, at last, I fancy, he looked round and saw me; for, instead of going on with their buyings, they began whispering to one another. I am sure they were talking of me; and I could not help thinking that he was persuading her to speak tome-(do you think he was, Miss Woodhouse?)-for presently she came forward-came quite up tome, and asked me how I did, and seemed ready to shake hands, if I would. She did not do any of it in the same way that she used; I could see she was altered; but, however, she seemed to try to be very friendly, and we shook hands, and stood talking sometime; but I know no more what I said-I was in such a tremble! I remember she said she was sorry we never met now; which I thought almost too kind! Dear Miss Woodhouse, I was absolutely miserable! By that time, it was beginning to holdup, and I was determined that nothing should stop me from getting away-and then-only think!-I found he was coming up towards me too-slowly, you know, and as if he did not quite know what to do; and so he came and spoke, and I answered-and I stood fora minute, feeling dreadfully, you know, one cannot tell how; and then I took courage, and said it did not rain, and I must go; and so off I set: and I had not got three yards from the door, when he came after me, only to say, if I was going to Hartfield, he thought I had much better go round by Mr. Cole's stables, for I should find the near way quite floated by this rain. Oh dear, I thought it would have been the death of me! So I said, I was very much obliged to him: you know I could not do less; and then he went back to Elizabeth, and I came round by the stables-I believe I did-but I hardly knew where I was, or anything about it. Oh, Miss Woodhouse, I would rather have done anything than had it happen; and yet, you know, there was a sort of satisfaction in seeing him behave so pleasantly and so kindly. And Elizabeth, too. Oh, Miss Woodhouse, do talk tome, and make me comfortable again.\\\"\\n\\nVery sincerely did Emma wish to do so; but it was not immediately in her power. She was obliged to stop and think. She was not thoroughly comfortable herself. The young man's conduct, and his sister's, seemed the result of real feeling, and she could not but pity them. As Harriet described it, there had been an interesting mixture of wounded affection and genuine delicacy in their behaviour: but she had believed them to be well-meaning, worthy people, before; and what difference did this make in the evils of the connection? It was folly to be disturbed by it. Of course, he must be sorry to lose her,-they must be all sorry: ambition, as well as love, had probably been mortified. They might all have hoped to rise by Harriet's acquaintance; and besides, what was the value of Harriet's description? So easily pleased,-so little discerning,-what signified her praise?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She exerted herself, and did try to make her comfortable, by considering all that had passed as a mere trifle, and quite unworthy of being dwelt on.\\n\\n\\\"It might be distressing for the moment,\\\" said she, \\\"but you seem to have behaved extremely well; and it is over,-and may never,-can never, as a first meeting,-occur again, and therefore you need not think about it.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet said, \\\"Very true,\\\" and she'would not think about it;\\\" but still she talked of it-still she could talk of nothing else; and Emma, at last, in order to put the Martins out of her head, was obliged to hurry on the news, which she had meant to give with so much tender caution, hardly knowing herself whether to rejoice or be angry, ashamed or only amused, at such a state of mind in poor Harriet-such a conclusion of Mr. Elton's importance with her!\\n\\nMr. Elton's rights, however, gradually revived. Though she did not feel the first intelligence as she might have done the day before, or an hour before, its interest soon increased; and before their first conversation was over, she had talked herself into all the sensations of curiosity, wonder and regret, pain and pleasure, as to this fortunate Miss Hawkins, which could conduce to place the Martins under proper subordination in her fancy.\\n\\nEmma learned to be rather glad that there had been such a meeting. It had been serviceable in deadening the first shock, without retaining any influence to alarm. As Harriet now lived, the Martins could not get at her, without seeking her, where hitherto they had wanted either the courage or the condescension to seek her; for since her refusal of the brother, the sisters had never been at Mrs. Goddard's; and a twelvemonth might pass without their being thrown together again, with any necessity, or even any power of speech.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.\\n\\nA week had not passed since Miss Hawkins's name was first mentioned in Highbury, before she was, by some means or other, discovered to have every recommendation of person and mind,-to be handsome, elegant, highly accomplished, and perfectly amiable; and when Mr. Elton himself arrived to triumph in his happy prospects, and circulate the fame of her merits, there was very little more for him to do than to tell her Christian name, and say whose music she principally played.\\n\\nMr. Elton returned, a very happy man. He had gone away rejected and mortified, disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what had appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He had gone away deeply offended, he came back engaged to another; and to another as superior, of course, to the first, asunder such circumstances what is gained always is to what is lost. He came back gay and self-satisfied, eager and busy, caring nothing for Miss Woodhouse, and defying Miss Smith.\\n\\nThe charming Augusta Hawkins, in addition to all the usual advantages of perfect beauty and merit, was in possession of an independent fortune, of so many thousands as would always be called ten,-a point of some dignity, as well as some convenience. The story told well: he had not thrown himself away-he had gained a woman of 10,000l., or thereabouts, and he had gained her with such delightful rapidity; the first hour of introduction had been so very soon followed by distinguishing notice; the history which he had to give Mrs. Cole of the rise and progress of the affair was so glorious; the steps so quick, from the accidental rencontre, o to the dinner at Mr. Green's, and the party at Mrs. Brown's,-smiles and blushes rising in importance,-with consciousness and agitation richly scattered; the lady had been so easily impressed,-so sweetly disposed;-had, in short, to use a most intelligible phrase, been so very ready to have him, that vanity and prudence were equally contented.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He had caught both substance and shadow, both fortune and affection, and was just the happy man he ought to be;-talking only of himself and his own concerns,-expecting to be congratulated,-ready to be laughed at,-and, with cordial, fearless smiles, now addressing all the young ladies of the place, to whom, a few weeks ago, he would have been more cautiously gallant.\\n\\nThe wedding was no distant event, as the parties had only themselves to please, and nothing but the necessary preparations to wait for; and when he set out for Bath again, there was a general expectation, which a certain glance of Mrs. Cole's did not seem to contradict, that when he next entered Highbury he would bring his bride.\\n\\nDuring his present short stay, Emma had barely seen him; but just enough to feel that the first meeting was over, and to give her the impression of his not being improved by the mixture of pique and pretension now spread over his air. She was, in fact, beginning very much to wonder that she had ever thought him pleasing at all; and his sight was so inseparably connected with some very disagreeable feelings, that, except in amoral light, as a penance, a lesson, a source of profitable humiliation to her own mind, she would have been thankful to be assured of never seeing him again. She wished him very well; but he gave her pain; and his welfare twenty miles off would administer most satisfaction.\\n\\nThe pain of his continued residence in Highbury, however, must certainly be lessened by his marriage. Many vain solicitudes would be prevented-many awkwardnesses smoothed by it. A Mrs. Elton would bean excuse for any change of intercourse; former intimacy\\n\\nmight sink without remark. It would be almost beginning their life of civility again.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Of the lady individually, Emma thought very little. She was good enough for Mr. Elton, no doubt; accomplished enough for Highbury-handsome enough-to look plain, probably, by Harriet's side. As to connection, there Emma was perfectly easy; persuaded, that after all his own vaunted claims and disdain of Harriet, he had done nothing. On that article, truth seemed attainable. What she was, must be uncertain; but who she was, might be found out; and setting aside the 10,000 l., it did not appear that she was at all Harriet's superior. She brought no name, no blood, no alliance. Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters of a Bristol-merchant, of course, he must be called; but, as the whole of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it was unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been very moderate also. Part of every winter she had been used to spend in Bath; but Bristol washer home, the very heart of Bristol; for though the father and mother had died some years ago, an uncle remained-in the law line:-nothing more distinctly honourable was hazarded of him, than that he was in the law line; and with him the daughter had lived. Emma guessed him to be the drudge of some attorney, and too stupid to rise. And all the grandeur of the connection seemed dependent on the elder sister, who was very well married, to a gentleman in a great way, near Bristol, who kept two carriages! That was the wind-up of the history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.\\n\\nCould she but have given Harriet her feelings about it all! She had talked her into love; but, alas! she was not so easily to be talked out of it. The charm of an object to occupy the many vacancies of Harriet's mind was not to be talked away. He might be superseded by another; he certainly would, indeed; nothing could be clearer; even a Robert Martin would have been sufficient; but nothing else, she feared, would cure her. Harriet was one of those, who, having once begun, would be always in love. And now, poor girl, she was considerably worse from this reappearance of Mr. Elton-she was always having a glimpse of him somewhere or other. Emma saw him only once; but two or three times everyday Harriet was sure just to meet with him, or just to miss him, just to hear his voice, or see his shoulder, just to have something occur to preserve him in her fancy, in all the favouring warmth of surprise and conjecture. She was, moreover, perpetually hearing about him; for, excepting when at Hartfield, she was always among those who saw no fault in Mr. Elton, and found nothing so interesting as the discussion of his concerns; and every report, therefore, every guess,-all that had already occurred, all that might occur in the arrangement of his affairs, comprehending income, servants, and furniture,-was continually in agitation around her. Her regard was receiving strength by invariable praise of him, and her regrets kept alive, and feelings irritated by ceaseless repetitions of Miss Hawkins's happiness, and continual observation of how much he seemed attached!-his air as he walked by the house-the very sitting of his hat, being all in proof of how much he was in love!\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Had it been allowable entertainment, had there been no pain to her friend, or reproach to herself, in the waverings of Harriet's mind, Emma would have been amused by its variations. Sometimes Mr. Elton predominated, sometimes the Martins; and each was occasionally useful as a check to the other. Mr. Elton's engagement had been the cure of the agitation of meeting Mr. Martin. The unhappiness produced by the knowledge of that engagement had been a little put aside by Elizabeth Martin's calling at Mrs. Goddard's a few days afterwards. Harriet had not been at home; but a note had been prepared and left for her, written in the very style to touch,-a small mixture of reproach with a great deal of kindness; and till Mr. Elton himself appeared, she had been much occupied by it, continually pondering over what could be done in return, and wishing to do more than she dared to confess. But Mr. Elton, in person, had driven away all such cares. While he staid, the Martins were forgotten; and on the very morning of his setting off for Bath again, Emma, to dissipate some of the distress it occasioned, judged it best for her to return Elizabeth Martin's visit.\\n\\nHow that visit was to be acknowledged, what would be necessary, and what might be safest, had been a point of some doubtful consideration. Absolute neglect of the mother and sisters, when invited to come, would be ingratitude. It must not be; and yet the danger of a renewal of the acquaintance!\\n\\nAfter much thinking, she could determine on nothing better than Harriet's returning the visit; but in away that, if they had understanding, should convince them that it was to be only a formal acquaintance. She meant to take her in the carriage, leave her at the Abbey-Mill, while she drove a little farther, and call for her again so soon as to allow no time for insidious applications or dangerous recurrences to the past, and give the most decided proof of what degree of intimacy was chosen for the future.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She could think of nothing better; and though there was something in it which her own heart could not approve-something of ingratitude, merely glossed over-it must be done, or what would become of Harriet?\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Small heart had Harriet for visiting. Only half an hour before her friend called for her at Mrs. Goddard's, her evil stars had led her to the very spot, where, at that moment, a trunk, directed to The Rev. Philip Elton, White Hart, Bath, was to be seen under the operation of being lifted into the butcher's cart, which was to convey it to where the coaches passed; and everything in this world, excepting that trunk and the direction, was consequently a blank.\\n\\nShe went, however; and when they reached the farm, and she was to be put down, at the end of the broad, neat gravel walk, which led between espalier apple-trees to the front door, the sight of everything which had given her so much pleasure the autumn before, was beginning to revive a little local agitation; and when they parted, Emma observed her to be looking around with a sort of fearful curiosity, which determined her not to allow the visit to exceed the proposed quarter of an hour. She went on herself, to give that portion of time to an old servant who was married, and settled in Donwell.\\n\\nThe quarter of an hour brought her punctually to the white gate again; and Miss Smith receiving her summons, was with her without delay, and unattended by any alarming young man. She came solitarily down the gravel walk-a Miss Martin just appearing at the door, and parting with her seemingly with ceremonious civility.\\n\\nHarriet could not very soon give an intelligible account. She was feeling too much; but at last Emma collected from her enough to understand the sort of meeting, and the sort of pain it was creating. She had seen only Mrs. Martin and the two girls. They had received her doubtingly, if not coolly; and nothing beyond the merest common-place had been talked almost all the dme-till just at last, when Mrs. Martin's saying, all of a sudden, that she thought Miss Smith was grown, had brought on a more interesting subject, and a warmer manner. In that very room she had been measured last September with her two friends. There were the pencilled marks and memorandums on the wainscot by the window. He had done it. They all seemed to remember the day, the hour, the party, the occasion,-to feel the same consciousness, the same regrets,-to be ready to return to the same good understanding; and they were just growing again like themselves (Harriet, as Emma must suspect, as ready as the best of them to be cordial and happy,) when the carriage re-appeared, and all was over. The style of the visit, and the shortness of it, were then felt to be decisive. Fourteen minutes to be given to those with whom she had thankfully passed six weeks not six months ago! Emma could not but picture it all, and feel how justly they might resent, how naturally Harriet must suffer. It was a bad business. She would have given a great deal, or endured a great deal, to have had the Martins in a higher rank of life. They were so deserving, that a little higher should have been enough; but as it was, how could she have done otherwise? Impossible! She could not repent. They must be separated; but there was a great deal of pain in the process-so much to herself at this time, that she soon felt the necessity of a little consolation, and resolved ongoing home byway of Randalls to procure it. Her mind was quite sick of Mr. Elton and the Martins. The refreshment of Randalls was absolutely necessary.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"It was a good scheme; but on driving to the door they heard that neither'master nor mistress was at home:\\\" they had both been out sometime; the man believed they were gone to Hartfield.\\n\\n\\\"This is too bad,\\\" cried Emma, as they turned away. \\\"And now we shall just miss them; too provoking: I do not know when I have been so disappointed.\\\" And she leaned back in the corner, to indulge her murmurs, or to reason them away; probably a little of both-such being the commonest process of a not ill-disposed mind. Presently the carriage stopt: she looked up; it was stopt by Mr. and Mrs. Weston, who were standing to speak to her. There was instant pleasure in the sight of them, and still greater pleasure was conveyed in sound; for Mr. Weston immediately accosted her with,-\\n\\n\\\"How d'ye do?-how d'ye do?-We have been sitting with your father-glad to see him so well. Frank comes to-morrow-I had a letter this morning-we see him to-morrow by dinner-time to a certainty-he is at Oxford to-day, and he comes fora whole fortnight; I knew it would be so. If he had come at Christmas he could not have staid three days: I was always glad he did not come at Christmas; now we are going to have just the right weather for him,-fine, dry, settled weather. We shall enjoy him completely; everything has turned out exactly as we could wish.\\\"\\n\\nThere was no resisting such news, no possibility of avoiding the influence of such a happy face as Mr. Weston's, confirmed as it all was by the words and the countenance of his wife, fewer and quieter, but not less to the purpose. To know that she thought his coming certain was enough to make Emma consider it so, and sincerely did she rejoice in their joy. It was a most delightful reanimation of exhausted spirits. The worn-out past was sunk in the freshness of what was coming; and in the rapidity of half a moment's thought, she hoped Mr. Elton would now be talked of no more.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Weston gave her the history of the engagements at Enscombe, which allowed his son to answer for having an entire fortnight at his command, as well as the route and the method of his journey; and she listened, and smiled, and congratulated.\\n\\n\\\"I shall soon bring him over to Hartfield,\\\" said he, at the conclusion.\\n\\nEmma could imagine she saw a touch of the arm at this speech, from his wife.\\n\\n\\\"We had better move on, Mr. Weston,\\\" said she; \\\"we are detaining the girls.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, well, I am ready;\\\" and turning again to Emma, \\\"but you must not be expecting such a very fine young man; you have only had my account, you know; I daresay he is really nothing extraordinary,\\\"-though his own sparkling eyes at the moment were speaking a very different conviction.\\n\\nEmma could look perfectly unconscious and innocent, and answer in a manner that appropriated nothing.\\n\\n\\\"Think of me to-morrow, my dear Emma, about four o'clock,\\\" was Mrs. Weston's parting injunction; spoken with some anxiety, and meant only for her.\\n\\n\\\"Four o'clock!-depend upon it he will be hereby three,\\\" was Mr. Weston's quick amendment; and so ended a most satisfactory meeting. Emma's spirits were mounted quite up to happiness; everything wore a different air; James and his horses seemed not half so sluggish as before. When she looked at the hedges, she thought the elder at least must soon becoming out; and when she turned round to Harriet she saw something like a look of spring, a tender smile even there.\\n\\n\\\"Will Mr. Frank Churchill pass through Bath as well as Oxford?\\\" was a question, however, which did not augur much.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"But neither geography nor tranquillity could come all at once; and Emma was now in a humour to resolve that they should both come in time.\\n\\nThe morning of the interesting day arrived, and Mrs. Weston's faithful pupil did not forget either at ten, or eleven, or twelve o'clock, that she was to think of her at four.\\n\\n\\\"My dear, dear, anxious friend,\\\" said she, in mental soliloquy, while walking downstairs from her own room, \\\"always over-careful for everybody's comfort but your own: I see you now in all your little fidgets, going again and again into his room, to be sure that all is right.\\\" The clock struck twelve as she passed through the hall. \\\"\\\"Tis twelve,-I shall not forget to think of you four hours hence; and by this time to-morrow, perhaps, or a little later, I maybe thinking of the possibility of their all calling here. I am sure they will bring him soon.\\\"\\n\\nShe opened the parlour door, and saw two gentlemen sitting with her father,-Mr. Weston and his son. They had been arrived only a few minutes; and Mr. Weston had scarcely finished his explanation of Frank's being a day before his time, and her father was yet in the midst of his very civil welcome and congratulations, when she appeared, to have her share of surprise, introduction, and pleasure.\\n\\nThe Frank Churchill so long talked of, so high in interest, was actually before her-he was presented to her; and she did not think too much had been said in his praise; he was a very good looking young man; height, air, address, all were unexceptionable, and his countenance had a great deal of the spirit and liveliness of his father's; he looked quick and sensible. She felt immediately that she should like him; and there was a well-bred ease of manner, and a readiness to talk, which convinced her that he came intending to be acquainted with her, and that acquainted they soon must be.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He had reached Randalls the evening before. She was pleased with the eagerness to arrive which had made him alter his plan, and travel earlier, later, and quicker, that he might gain half a day.\\n\\n\\\"I told you yesterday,\\\" cried Mr. Weston with exultation,-\\\"I told you all that he would be here before the time named. I remembered what I used to do myself. One cannot creep upon ajourney: one cannot help getting on faster than one has planned; and the pleasure of coming in upon one's friends before the look-out begins is worth a great deal more than any little exertion it needs.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is a great pleasure where one can indulge in it,\\\" said the young man, \\\"though there are not many houses that I should presume on so far; but incoming home I felt I might do anything.\\\"\\n\\nThe word homemade his father look on him with fresh complacency. Emma was directly sure that he knew how to make himself agreeable; the conviction was strengthened by what followed. He was very much pleased with Randalls, thought it a most admirably arranged house, would hardly allow it even to be very small, admired the situation, the walk to Highbury, Highbury itself, Hartfield still more, and professed himself to have always felt the sort of interest in the country, which none but one's own country gives, and the greatest curiosity to visit it. That he should never have been able to indulge so amiable a feeling before passed suspiciously through Emma's brain; but still if it were a falsehood, it was a pleasant one, and pleasantly handled. His manner had no air of study or exaggeration. He did really look and speak as if in a state of no common enjoyment.\\n\\nTheir subjects, in general, were such as belong to an opening acquaintance. On his side were the enquiries,-\\\" Was she a horse-woman?-Pleasant rides?-Pleasant walks?-Had they a large neighbourhood?-Highbury, perhaps, afforded society enough?-\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There were several very pretty houses in and about it.-Balls-had they balls?-Was it a musical society?\\\"\\n\\nBut when satisfied on all these points, and their acquaintance proportionately advanced, he contrived to find an opportunity, while their two fathers were engaged with each other, of introducing his mother-in-law, and speaking of her with so much handsome praise, so much warm admiration, so much gratitude for the happiness she secured to his father, and her very kind reception of himself, as was an additional proof of his knowing how to please-and of his certainly thinking it worthwhile to try to please her. He did not advance a word of praise beyond what she knew to be thoroughly deserved by Mrs. Weston; but, undoubtedly, he could know very little of the matter. He understood what would be welcome; he could be sure of little else. \\\"His father's marriage,\\\" he said, \\\"had been the wisest measure: every friend must rejoice in it; and the family from whom he had received such a blessing must be ever considered as having conferred the highest obligation on him.\\\"\\n\\nHe got as near as he could to thanking her for Miss Taylor's merits, without seeming quite to forget that, in the common course of things, it was to be rather supposed that Miss Taylor had formed Miss Woodhouse's character, than Miss Woodhouse Miss Taylor's. And at last, as if resolved to qualify his opinion completely for trav elling round to its object, he wound it all up with astonishment at the youth and beauty of her person.\\n\\n\\\"Elegant, agreeable manners, I was prepared for,\\\" said he; \\\"but I confess that, considering everything, I had not expected more than a very tolerably well-looking woman of a certain age; I did not know that I was to find a pretty young woman in Mrs. Weston.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You cannot see too much perfection in Mrs. Weston, for my feelings,\\\" said Emma: \\\"were you to guess her to be eighteen, I should listen with pleasure; but she would be ready to quarrel with you for using such words. Don't let her imagine that you have spoken of her as a pretty young woman.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I hope I should know better,\\\" he replied; \\\"no, depend upon it (with a gallant bow), that in addressing Mrs. Weston I should understand whom I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant in my terms.\\\"\\n\\nEmma wondered whether the same suspicion of what might be expected from their knowing each other, which had taken strong possession of her mind, had ever crossed his; and whether his compliments were to be considered as marks of acquiescence, or proofs of defiance. She must see more of him to understand his ways; at present, she only felt they were agreeable.\\n\\nShe had no doubt of what Mr. Weston was often thinking about. His quick eye she detected again and again glancing towards them with a happy expression; and even, when he might have determined not to look, she was confident that he was often listening.\\n\\nHer own father's perfect exemption from any thought of the kind, the entire deficiency in him of all such sort of penetration or suspicion, was a most comfortable circumstance. Happily, he was not farther from approving matrimony than from foreseeing it. Though always objecting to every marriage that was arranged, he never suffered beforehand from the apprehension of any; it seemed as if he could not think so ill of any two persons\\\" understanding as to suppose they meant to marry till it were proved against them. She blessed the favouring blindness. He could now, without the drawback of a single unpleasant surmise, without a glance forward at any possible treachery in his guest, give way to all his natural kind-hearted civility in solicitous enquiries after Mr. Frank Churchill's accommodation on his journey, through the sad evils of sleeping two nights on the road, and express very genuine unmixed anxiety to know that he had certainly escaped catching cold,-which, however, he could not allow him to feel quite assured of himself, till after another night.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"A reasonable visit paid, Mr. Weston began to move. \\\"He must be going. He had business at the Crown about his hay, and a great many errands for Mrs. Weston at Ford's; but he need not hurry anybody else.\\\" His son, too well bred to hear the hint, rose immediately also, saying,-\\n\\n\\\"As you are going farther on business, sir, I will take the opportunity of paying a visit, which must be paid someday or other, and therefore may as well be paid now. I have the honour of being acquainted with a neighbour of yours (turning to Emma), a lady residing in or near Highbury; a family of the name of Fairfax. I shall have no difficulty, I suppose, in finding the house; though Fairfax, I believe, is not the proper name,-I should rather say Barnes or Bates. Do you know any family of that name?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"To be sure we do,\\\" cried his father: \\\"Mrs. Bates-we passed her house-I saw Miss Bates at the window. True, true, you are acquainted with Miss Fairfax; I remember you knew her at Weymouth, and a fine girl she is. Call upon her, by all means.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There is no necessity for my calling this morning,\\\" said the young man: \\\"another day would do as well; but there was that degree of acquaintance at Weymouth which-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, go to-day, go to-day. Do not defer it. What is right to be done cannot be done too soon. And, besides, I must give you a hint, Frank-any want of attention to her here should be carefully avoided. You saw her with the Campbells, when she was the equal of everybody she mixed with, but here she is with a poor old grandmother, who has barely enough to live on. If you do not call early it will be a slight.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The son looked convinced.\\n\\n\\\"I have heard her speak of the acquaintance,\\\" said Emma: \\\"she is a very elegant young woman.\\\"\\n\\nHe agreed to it, but with so quiet a'Yes,\\\" as inclined her almost to doubt his real concurrence; and yet there must be a very distinct sort of elegance for the fashionable world, if Jane Fairfax could bethought only ordinarily gifted with it.\\n\\n\\\"If you were never particularly struck by her manners before,\\\" said she, \\\"I think you will to-day. You will see her to advantage; see her and hear her-no, I am afraid you will not hear her at all, for she has an aunt who never holds her tongue.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You are acquainted with Miss Jane Fairfax, sir, are you?\\\" said Mr. Woodhouse, always the last to make his way in conversation; \\\"then give me leave to assure you, that you will find her a very agreeable young lady. She is staying hereon a visit to her grand-mamma and aunt, very worthy people; I have known them all my life. They will be extremely glad to see you, I am sure; and one of my servants shall go with you to show you the way.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear sir, upon no account in the world; my father can direct me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But your father is not going so far; he is only going to the Crown, quite on the other side of the street, and there area great many houses: you might be very much at a loss, and it is a very dirty walk, unless you keep on the footpath; but my coachman can tell you where you had best cross the street.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Frank Churchill still declined it, looking as serious as he could; and his father gave his hearty support, by calling out, \\\"My good friend, this is quite unnecessary; Frank knows a puddle of water when he sees it, and as to Mrs. Bates's, he may get therefrom the Crown in a hop, step, and jump.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"They were permitted to go alone; and with a cordial nod from one, and a graceful bow from the other, the two gentlemen took leave. Emma remained very well pleased with this beginning of the acquaintance, and could now engage to think of them all at Randalls any hour of the day, with full confidence in their comfort.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The next morning brought Mr. Frank Churchill again. He came with Mrs. Weston, to whom and to Highbury he seemed to take very cordially. He had been sitting with her, it appeared, most companionably at home, till her usual hour of exercise; and on being desired to choose their walk, immediately fixed on Highbury. \\\"He did not doubt there being very pleasant walks in every direction, but if left to him, he should always choose the same. Highbury, that airy, cheerful, happy-looking Highbury, would be his constant attraction.\\\" Highbury, with Mrs. Weston, stood for Hartfield; and she trusted to its bearing the same construction with him. They walked thither directly.\\n\\nEmma had hardly expected them: for Mr. Weston, who had called in for half a minute, in order to hear that his son was very handsome, knew nothing of their plans; and it was an agreeable surprise to her, therefore, to perceive them walking up to the house together, arm in arm. She was wanting to see him again; and especially to see him in company with Mrs. Weston, upon his behavior to whom her opinion of him was to depend. If he were deficient there, nothing should make amends for it. But on seeing them together, she became perfectly satisfied. It was not merely in fine words or hyperbolical compliment that he paid his duty; nothing could be more proper or pleasing than his whole manner to her,-nothing could more agreeably denote his wish of considering her as a friend and securing her affection. And there was time enough for Emma to form a reasonable judgment, as their visit included all the rest of the morning. They were all three walking about together for an hour or two,-first round the shrubberies of Hartfield, and afterwards in Highbury. He was delighted with everything: admired Hartfield sufficiently for Mr. Woodhouse's ear; and when their going farther was resolved on, confessed his wish to be made acquainted with the whole village, and found matter of commendation and interest much oftener than Emma could have supposed.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Some of the objects of his curiosity spoke very amiable feelings. He begged to be shown the house which his father had lived in so long, and which had been the home of his father's father; and on recollecting that an old woman, who had nursed him, was still living, walked inquest of her cottage, from one end of the street to the other; and though in some points of pursuit or observation there was no positive merit, they showed, altogether, a goodwill towards Highbury in general, which must be very like a merit to those he was with.\\n\\nEmma watched, and decided, that with such feelings as were now shown it could not be fairly supposed that he had been ever voluntarily absenting himself: that he had not been acting apart, or making a parade of insincere professions; and that Mr. Knightley certainly had not done him justice.\\n\\nTheir first pause was at the Crown Inn, an inconsiderable house, though the principal one of the sort, where a couple of pair of post-horses were kept, more for the convenience of the neighbourhood than from any run on the road; and his companions had not expected to be detained by any interest excited there: but in passing it they gave the history of the large room visibly added. It had been built many years ago fora ball-room, and while the neighbourhood had been in a particularly populous, dancing state, had been occasionally used as such: but such brilliant days had long passed away; and now the highest purpose for which it was ever wanted was to accommodate a whist club established among the gentlemen and half gentlemen of the place. He was immediately interested. Its character as a ball-room caught him; and instead of passing on, he stopt for several minutes at the two superior sashed windows which were open, to look in and contemplate its capabilities, and lament that its original purpose should have ceased. He saw no fault in the room; he would acknowledge none which they suggested. No; it was long enough, broad enough, handsome enough. It would hold the very number for comfort. They ought to have balls thereat least every fortnight through the winter. Why had not Miss Woodhouse revived the former good old days of the room? She who could do anything in Highbury! The want of proper families in the place, and the conviction that none beyond the place and its immediate environs could be tempted to attend, were mentioned; but he was not satisfied. He could not be persuaded that so many good-looking houses as he saw around him could not furnish numbers enough for such a meeting; and even when particulars were given and families described, he was still unwilling to admit that the inconvenience of such a mixture would be anything, or that there would be the smallest difficulty in everybody's returning into their proper place the next morning. He argued like a young man very much bent on dancing; and Emma was rather surprised to seethe constitution of the Weston prevail so decidedly against the habits of the Churchills. He seemed to have all the life and spirit, cheerful feelings, and social inclinations of his father, and nothing of the pride or reserve of Enscombe. Of pride, indeed, there was, perhaps scarcely enough; his indifference to a confusion of rank bordered too much on inelegance of mind. He could be no judge, however, of the evil he was holding cheap. It was but an effusion of lively spirits.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"At last he was persuaded to move on from the front of the Crown; and being now almost facing the house where the Bates's lodged, Emma recollected his intended visit the day before, and asked him if he had paid it.\\n\\n\\\"Yes, oh yes,\\\" he replied, \\\"I was just going to mention it. Avery successful visit. I saw all the three ladies; and felt very much obliged to you for your preparatory hint. If the talking aunt had taken me quite by surprise, it must have been the death of me. As it was, I was only betrayed into paying a most unreasonable visit. Ten minutes would have been all that was necessary, perhaps all that was proper; and I had told my father I should certainly beat home before him, but there was no getting away, no pause; and, to my utter astonishment, I found, when he (finding me nowhere else) joined me thereat last, that I had been actually sitting with them very nearly three quarters of an hour. The good lady had not given me the possibility of escape before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And how did you think Miss Fairfax looking?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"III, very ill;-that is, if a young lady can ever be allowed to look ill: but the expression is hardly admissible, Mrs. Weston, is it? Ladies can never look ill; and, seriously, Miss Fairfax is naturally so pale, as almost always to give the appearance of ill health-a most deplorable want of complexion.\\\"\\n\\nEmma would not agree to this, and began a warm defence of Miss Fairfax's complexion. \\\"It was certainly never brilliant, but she would not allow it to have a sickly hue in general; and there was a softness and delicacy in her skin which gave peculiar elegance to the character of her face.\\\" He listened with all due deference; acknowledged that he had heard many people say the same: but yet he must confess, that to him nothing could make amends for the want of the fine glow of health. Where features were indifferent, a fine complexion gave beauty to them all; and where they were good, the effect was,-fortunately he need not attempt to describe what the effect was.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Well,\\\" said Emma, \\\"there is no disputing about taste. At least you admire her, except her complexion.\\\"\\n\\nHe shook his head and laughed. \\\"I cannot separate Miss Fairfax and her complexion.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Did you see her often at Weymouth? Were you often in the same society?\\\"\\n\\nAt this moment they were approaching Ford's, and he hastily exclaimed, \\\"Ha! this must be the very shop that everybody attends everyday of their lives, as my father informs me. He comes to Highbury himself, he says, six days out of the seven, and has always business at Ford's. If it be not inconvenient to you, pray let us go in, that I may prove myself to belong to the place,-to be a true citizen of Highbury. I must buy something at Ford's. It will betaking out my freedom. I daresay they sell gloves.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes, gloves and everything. I do admire your patriotism. You will be adored in Highbury. You were very popular before you came, because you were Mr. Weston's son; but layout half-a-guinea at Ford's, and your popularity will stand upon your own virtues.\\\"\\n\\nThey went in; and while the sleek, well-tied parcels of'Men's Beavers\\\" and'York Tan\\\" were bringing down and displaying on the counter, he said,-\\\"But I beg your pardon, Miss Woodhouse, you were speaking tome, you were saying something at the very moment of this burst of my amor patriæ. p Do not let me lose it; I assure you the utmost stretch of public fame would not make me amends for the loss of any happiness in private life.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I merely asked, whether you had known much of Miss Fairfax and her party at Weymouth?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"And now that I understand your question, I must pronounce it to be a very unfair one. It is always the lady's right to decide on the degree of acquaintance. Miss Fairfax must already have given her account. I shall not commit myself by claiming more than she may choose to allow.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Upon my word, you answer as discreetly as she could do herself. But her account of everything leaves so much to be guessed; she is so very reserved, so very unwilling to give the least information about anybody, that I really think you may say what you like of your acquaintance with her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"May I, indeed? Then I will speak the truth, and nothing suits me so well. I met her frequently at Weymouth. I had known the Campbells a little in town; and at Weymouth we were very much in the same set. Col. Campbell is a very agreeable man, and Mrs. Campbell a friendly, warm-hearted woman. I like them all.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You know Miss Fairfax's situation in life, I conclude; what she is destined to be.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes\\\"-(rather hesitatingly)-\\\"I believe I do.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You get upon delicate subjects, Emma,\\\" said Mrs. Weston, smiling; \\\"remember that I am here. Mr. Frank Churchill hardly knows what to say when you speak of Miss Fairfax's situation in life. I will move a little farther off.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I certainly do forget to think of her,\\\" said Emma, \\\"as having ever been anything but my friend and my dearest friend.\\\"\\n\\nHe looked as if he fully understood and honoured such a sentiment.\\n\\nWhen the gloves were bought, and they had quitted the shop again,-\\\"Did you ever hear the young lady we were speaking of play?\\\" said Frank Churchill.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Ever hear her!\\\" repeated Emma. \\\"You forget how much she belongs to Highbury. I have heard her every year of our lives since we both began. She plays charmingly\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You think so, do you? I wanted the opinion of someone who could really judge. She appeared tome to play well, that is, with considerable taste, but I know nothing of the matter myself. I am excessively fond of music, but without the smallest skill or right of judging of anybody's performance. I have been used to hear hers admired; and I remember one proof of her being thought to play well: a man, a very musical man, and in love with another woman-engaged to her-on the point of marriage-would yet never ask that other woman to sit down to the instrument, if the lady in question could sit down instead-never seemed to like to hear one if he could hear the other. That I thought, in a man of known musical talent, was some proof.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Proof, indeed!\\\" said Emma, highly amused. \\\"Mr. Dixon is very musical, is he? We shall know more about them all, in half an hour, from you, than Miss Fairfax would have vouchsafed in half a year.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, Mr. Dixon and Miss Campbell were the persons; and I thought it a very strong proof.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Certainly, very strong it was; to own the truth, a great deal stronger than, if I had been Miss Campbell, would have been at all agreeable tome. I could not excuse a man's having more music than love-more ear than eye-a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings. How did Miss Campbell appear to like it?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It washer very particular friend, you know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Poor comfort!\\\" said Emma, laughing. \\\"One would rather have a stranger preferred than one's very particular friend: with a stranger it might not recur again; but the misery of having a very particular friend always at hand, to do everything better than one does one's self! Poor Mrs. Dixon! Well, I am glad she is gone to settle in Ireland.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"You are right. It was not very flattering to Miss Campbell; but she really did not seem to feel it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"So much the better, or so much the worse: I do not know which. But be it sweetness, or be it stupidity in her-quickness of friendship, or dulness of feeling-there was one person, I think, who must have felt it-Miss Fairfax herself. She must have felt the improper and dangerous distinction.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"As to that-I do not-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh, do not imagine that I expect an account of Miss Fairfax's sensations from you, or from anybody else. They are known to no human being, I guess, but herself; but if she continued to play whenever she was asked by Mr. Dixon, one may guess what one chooses.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There appeared such a perfectly good understanding among them all-\\\" he began rather quickly, but checking himself, added, \\\"however, it is impossible for me to say on what terms they really were-how it might all be behind the scenes. I can only say that there was smoothness outwardly. But you, who have known Miss Fairfax from a child, must be a better judge of her character, and of how she is likely to conduct herself in critical situations, than I can be.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have known her from a child, undoubtedly: we have been children and women together; and it is natural to suppose that we should be intimate,-that we should have taken to each other whenever she visited her friends. But we never did. I hardly know how it has happened; a little, perhaps, from that wickedness on my side which was prone to take disgust towards a girl so idolised and so cried up as she always was, by her aunt and grandmother, and all their set. And then, her reserve; I never could attach myself to anyone so completely reserved.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"It is a most repulsive quality, indeed,\\\" said he. \\\"Oftentimes very convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Not till the reserve ceases towards one's self; and then the attraction maybe the greater. But I must be more in want of a friend, or an agreeable companion, than I have yet been, to take the trouble of conquering anybody's reserve to procure one. Intimacy between Miss Fairfax and me is quite out of the question. I have no reason to think ill of her-not the least-except that such extreme and perpetual cautiousness of word and manner, such a dread of giving a distinct idea about anybody, is apt to suggest suspicions of there being something to conceal.\\\"\\n\\nHe perfectly agreed with her; and after walking together so long, and thinking so much alike, Emma felt herself so well acquainted with him, that she could hardly believe it to be only their second meeting. He was not exactly what she had expected; less of the man of the world in some of his notions, less of the spoiled child of fortune, therefore better than she had expected. His ideas seemed more moderate-his feelings warmer. She was particularly struck by his manner of considering Mr. Elton's house, which, as well as the church, he would go and look at, and would not join them in finding much fault with. No, he could not believe it a bad house; not such a house as a man was to be pitied for having. If it were to be shared with the woman he loved, he could not think any man to be pitied for having that house. There must be ample room in it for every real comfort. The man must be a blockhead who wanted more.\\n\\nMrs. Weston laughed, and said he did not know what he was talking about. Used only to a large house himself, and without ever thinking how many advantages and accommodations were attached to its size, he could be no judge of the privations inevitably belonging to a small one. But Emma, in her own mind, determined that he did know what he was talking about, and that he showed a very amiable inclination to settle early in life, and to marry, from worthy motives. He might not be aware of the inroads on domestic peace to be occasioned by no housekeeper's room, or a bad butler's pantry; but no doubt he did perfectly feel that Enscombe could not make him happy, and that whenever he were attached, he would willingly give up much of wealth to be allowed an early establishment.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma's very good opinion of Frank Churchill was a little shaken the following day, by hearing that he was gone off to London, merely to have his haircut. A sudden freak seemed to have seized him at breakfast, and he had sent fora chaise and set off intending to return to dinner, but with no more important view that appeared than having his haircut. There was certainly no harm in his travelling sixteen miles twice over on such an errand; but there was an air of foppery and nonsense in it which she could not approve. It did not accord with the rationality of plan, the moderation in expense, or even the unselfish warmth of heart which she had believed herself to discern in him yesterday. Vanity, extravagance, love of change, restlessness of temper, which must be doing something, good or bad; heedlessness as to the pleasure of his father and Mrs. Weston, indifferent as to how his conduct might appear in general; he became liable to all these changes. His father only called him a coxcomb, and thought it a very good story; but that Mrs. Weston did not like it, was clear enough, by her passing it over as quickly as possible, and making no other comment than that'all young people would have their little whims.\\\"\\n\\nWith the exception of this little blot, Emma found that his visit hitherto had given her friend only good ideas of him. Mrs. Weston was very ready to say how attentive and pleasant a companion he made himself,-how much she saw to like in his disposition altogether. He appeared to have a very open temper,-certainly a very cheerful and lively one; she could observe nothing wrong in his notions, a great deal decidedly right; he spoke of his uncle with warm regard, was fond of talking of him; said he would be the best man in the world if he were left to himself; and though there was no being attached to the aunt, he acknowledged her kindness with gratitude, and seemed to mean always to speak of her with respect. This was all very promising; and, but for such an unfortunate fancy for having his haircut, there was nothing to denote him unworthy of the distinguished honour which her imagination had given him; the honour, if not of being really in love with her, of being at least very near it, and saved only by her own indifference-(for still her resolution held of never marrying)-the honour, in short, of being marked out for her by all their joint acquaintance.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}},{"rowIdx":299,"cells":{"conversations":{"kind":"list like","value":[{"from":"system","value":"Assist the writer, move the story forward.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 29"},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma's very good opinion of Frank Churchill was a little shaken the following day, by hearing that he was gone off to London, merely to have his haircut. A sudden freak seemed to have seized him at breakfast, and he had sent fora chaise and set off intending to return to dinner, but with no more important view that appeared than having his haircut. There was certainly no harm in his travelling sixteen miles twice over on such an errand; but there was an air of foppery and nonsense in it which she could not approve. It did not accord with the rationality of plan, the moderation in expense, or even the unselfish warmth of heart which she had believed herself to discern in him yesterday. Vanity, extravagance, love of change, restlessness of temper, which must be doing something, good or bad; heedlessness as to the pleasure of his father and Mrs. Weston, indifferent as to how his conduct might appear in general; he became liable to all these changes. His father only called him a coxcomb, and thought it a very good story; but that Mrs. Weston did not like it, was clear enough, by her passing it over as quickly as possible, and making no other comment than that'all young people would have their little whims.\"\n\nWith the exception of this little blot, Emma found that his visit hitherto had given her friend only good ideas of him. Mrs. Weston was very ready to say how attentive and pleasant a companion he made himself,-how much she saw to like in his disposition altogether. He appeared to have a very open temper,-certainly a very cheerful and lively one; she could observe nothing wrong in his notions, a great deal decidedly right; he spoke of his uncle with warm regard, was fond of talking of him; said he would be the best man in the world if he were left to himself; and though there was no being attached to the aunt, he acknowledged her kindness with gratitude, and seemed to mean always to speak of her with respect. This was all very promising; and, but for such an unfortunate fancy for having his haircut, there was nothing to denote him unworthy of the distinguished honour which her imagination had given him; the honour, if not of being really in love with her, of being at least very near it, and saved only by her own indifference-(for still her resolution held of never marrying)-the honour, in short, of being marked out for her by all their joint acquaintance."},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mr. Weston, on his side, added a virtue to the account which must have some weight. He gave her to understand that Frank admired her extremely-thought her very beautiful and very charming; and with so much to be said for him altogether, she found she must not judge him harshly:-as Mrs. Weston observed, \"all young people would have their little whims.\"\n\nThere was one person among his new acquaintance in Surrey not so leniently disposed. In general he was judged, throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury, with great candour; liberal allowances were made for the little excesses of such a handsome young man,-one who smiled so often and bowed so well; but there was one spirit among them not to be softened, from its power of censure, by bows or smiles,-Mr. Knightley. The circumstance was told him at Hartfield: for the moment, he was silent; but Emma heard him almost immediately afterwards say to himself, over a newspaper he held in his hand, \"Hum! just the trifling, silly fellow I took him for.\" She had half a mind to resent; but an instant's observation convinced her that it was really said only to relieve his own feelings, and not meant to provoke; and therefore she let it pass.\n\nAlthough in one instance the bearers of not good tidings, Mr. and Mrs. Weston's visit this morning was in another respect particularly opportune. Something occurred while they were at Hartfield to make Emma want their advice; and, which was still more lucky, she wanted exactly the advice they gave.\n\nThis was the occurrence:-The Coles had been settled some years in Highbury, and were very good sort of people, friendly, liberal, and unpretending; but, on the other hand, they were of low origin, in trade, and only moderately genteel. On their first coming into the country, they had lived in proportion to their income, quietly, keeping little company, and that little unexpensively; but the last year or two had brought them a considerable increase of means-the house in town had yielded greater profits, and fortune in general had smiled on them. With their wealth, their views increased; their want of a larger house, their inclination for more company. They added to their house, to their number of servants, to their expenses of every sort; and by this time were, in fortune and style of living, second only to the family at Hartfield. Their love of society, and their new dining-room, prepared everybody for their keeping dinner-company; and a few parties, chiefly among the single men, had already taken place. The regular and best families Emma could hardly suppose they would presume to invite,-neither Donwell, nor Hartfield, nor Randalls. Nothing should tempt her to go, if they did; and she regretted that her father's known habits would be giving her refusal less meaning than she could wish. The Coles were very respectable in their way, but they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them. This lesson, she very much feared, they would receive only from herself; she had little hope of Mr. Knightley, none of Mr. Weston."},{"from":"human","value":"But she had made up her mind how to meet this presumption so many weeks before it appeared, that when insult came at last, it found her very differently affected."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Donwell and Randalls had received their invitation, and none had come for her father and herself; and Mrs. Weston's accounting for it with'I suppose they will not take the liberty with you; they know you do not dine out,\" was not quite sufficient. She felt that she should like to have had the power of refusal; and afterwards, as the idea of the party to be assembled there, consisting precisely of those whose society was dearest to her, occurred again and again, she did not know that she might not have been tempted to accept. Harriet was to be therein the evening, and the Bateses. They had been speaking of it as they walked about Highbury the day before, and Frank Churchill had most earnestly lamented her absence. Might not the evening end in a dance? had been a question of his. The bare possibility of it acted as a further irritation on her spirits; and her being left in solitary grandeur, even supposing the omission to be intended as a compliment, was but poor comfort.\n\nIt was the arrival of this very invitation, while the Westons were at Hartfield, which made their presence so acceptable; for though her first remark on reading it was that'of course it must be declined,\" she so very soon proceeded to ask them what they advised her to do, that their advice for her going was most prompt and successful.\n\nShe owned that, considering everything, she was not absolutely without inclination for the party. The Coles expressed themselves so properly-there was so much real attention in the manner of it-so much consideration for her father. \"They would have solicited the honour earlier, but had been waiting the arrival of a folding screen from London, which they hoped might keep Mr. Woodhouse from any draught. of air, and therefore induce him the more readily to give them the honour of his company.\" Upon the whole, she was very persuadable; and it being briefly settled among themselves how it might be done without neglecting his comfort,-how certainly Mrs. Goddard, if not Mrs. Bates, might be depended on forbearing him company,-Mr. Woodhouse was to be talked into an acquiescence of his daughter's going out to dinner on a day now near at hand, and spending the whole evening away from him. As for his going, Emma did not wish him to think it possible; the hours would be too late, and the party too numerous. He was soon pretty well resigned."},{"from":"human","value":"\"I am not fond of dinner-visiting,\" said he; \"I never was."},{"from":"gpt","value":"No more is Emma. Late hours do not agree with us. I am sorry Mr. and Mrs. Cole should have done it. I think it would be much better if they would come in one afternoon next summer, and take their tea with us; take us in their afternoon walk, which they might do, as our hours are so reasonable, and yet get home without being out in the damp of the evening. The dews of a summer evening are what I would not expose anybody too. However, as they are so very desirous to have dear Emma dine with them, and as you will both be there, and Mr. Knightley too, to take care of her, I cannot wish to prevent it, provided the weather be what it ought, neither damp, nor cold, nor windy.\" Then turning to Mrs. Weston with a look of gentle reproach,-\"Ah, Miss Taylor, if you had not married, you would have staid at home with me.\"\n\n\"Well, sir,\" cried Mr. Weston, \"as I took Miss Taylor away, it is incumbent on me to supply her place, if I can; and I will step to Mrs. Goddard in a moment, if you wish it.\"\n\nBut the idea of anything to be done in a moment was increasing, not lessening, Mr. Woodhouse's agitation. The ladies knew better how to allay it. Mr. Weston must be quiet, and everything deliberately arranged.\n\nWith this treatment, Mr. Woodhouse was soon composed enough for talking as usual. \"He should be happy to see Mrs. Goddard. He had a great regard for Mrs. Goddard; and Emma should write a line and invite her. James could take the note. But first of all, there must bean answer written to Mrs. Cole.\"\n\n\"You will make my excuses, my dear, as civilly as possible. You will say that I am quite an invalid, and go nowhere, and therefore must decline their obliging invitation; beginning with my compliments, of course. But you will do everything right. I need not tell you what is to be done. We must remember to let James know that the carriage will be wanted on Tuesday. I shall have no fears for you with him. We have never been there above once since the new approach was made; but still I have no doubt that James will take you very safely: and when you get there, you must tell him at what time you would have him come for you again; and you had better name an early hour. You will not like staying late. You will get very tired when tea is over.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"But you would not wish me to come away before I am tired, papa?\"\n\n\"Oh no, my love; but you will soon be tired. There will be a great many people talking at once. You will not like the noise.\"\n\n\"But, my dear sir,\" cried Mr. Weston, \"if Emma comes away early, it will be breaking up the party.\"\n\n\"And no great harm if it does,\" said Mr. Woodhouse. \"The sooner every party breaks up the better.\"\n\n\"But you do not consider how it may appear to the Coles. Emma's going away directly after tea might be giving offence. They are good-natured people, and think little of their own claims; but still they must feel that anybody's hurrying away is no great compliment; and Miss Woodhouse's doing it would be more thought of than any other person's in the room. You would not wish to disappoint and mortify the Coles, I am sure, sir; friendly, good sort of people as ever lived, and who have been your neighbours these ten years.\n\n\"No, upon no account in the world. Mr. Weston, I am much obliged to you for reminding me. I should be extremely sorry to be giving them any pain. I know what worthy people they are. Perry tells me that Mr. Cole never touches malt liquor. You would not think it to look at him, but he is bilious-Mr. Cole is very bilious. No, I would not be the means of giving them any pain. My dear Emma, we must consider this. I am sure, rather than run the risk of hurting Mr. and Mrs. Cole, you would stay a little longer than you might wish. You will not regard being tired. You will be perfectly safe, you know, among your friends.\"\n\n\"Oh yes, papa. I have no fears at all for myself; and I should have no scruples of staying as late as Mrs. Weston, but on your account. I am only afraid of your sitting up for me. I am not afraid of your not being exceedingly comfortable with Mrs. Goddard. She loves piquet, you know; but when she is gone home, I am afraid you will be sitting up by yourself, instead of going to bed at your usual time; and the idea of that would entirely destroy my comfort. You must promise me not to sit up.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"He did, on the condition of some promises on her side: such as that, if she came home cold, she would be sure to warm herself thoroughly; if hungry, that she would take something to eat; that her own maid should sit up for her; and that Serle and the butler should see that everything were safe in the house as usual."},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Frank Churchill came back again; and if he kept his father's dinner waiting it was not known at Hartfield; for Mrs. Weston was too anxious for his being a favourite with Mr. Woodhouse, to betray any imperfection which could be concealed.\n\nHe came back, had had his haircut, and laughed at himself with a very good grace, but without seeming really at all ashamed of what he had done. He had no reason to wish his hair longer to conceal any confusion of face; no reason to wish the money unspent to improve his spirits. He was quite as undaunted and as lively as ever; and, after seeing him, Emma thus moralised to herself:-\n\n\"I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly. It depends upon the character of those who handle it. Mr. Knightley, he is not a trifling, silly young man. If he were, he would have done this differently. He would either have gloried in the achievement, or been ashamed of it. There would have been either the ostentation of a coxcomb, or the evasions of a mind too weak to defend its own vanities. No, I am perfectly sure that he is not trifling or silly.\"\n\nWith Tuesday came the agreeable prospect of seeing him again, and fora longer time than hitherto; of judging of his general manners, and, by inference, of the meaning of his manners towards herself; of guessing how soon it might be necessary for her to throw coldness into her air; and of fancying what the observations of all those might be, who were now seeing them together for the first time.\n\nShe meant to be very happy, in spite of the scene being laid at Mr. Cole's; and without being able to forget that among the failings of Mr. Elton, even in the days of his favour, none had disturbed her more than his propensity to dine with Mr. Cole."},{"from":"human","value":"Her father's comfort was amply secured, Mrs."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bates as well as Mrs. Goddard being able to come; and her last pleasing duty, before she left the house, was to pay her respects to them as they sat together after dinner; and while her father was fondly noticing the beauty of her dress, to make the two ladies all the amends in her power, by helping them to large slices of cake and full glasses of wine, for whatever unwilling self-denial his care of their constitution might have obliged them to practise during the meal. She had provided a plentiful dinner for them; she wished she could know that they had been allowed to eat it.\n\nShe followed another carriage to Mr. Cole's door; and was pleased to see that it was Mr. Knightley's; for Mr. Knightley keeping no horses, having little spare money and a great deal of health, activity, and independence, was too apt, in Emma's opinion, to get about as he could, and not use his carriage so often as became the owner of Donwell Abbey. She had an opportunity now of speaking her approbation while warm from her heart, for he stopped to hand her out.\n\n\"This is coming as you should do,\" said she; \"like a gentleman. I am quite glad to see you.\"\n\nHe thanked her, observing, \"How lucky that we should arrive at the same moment; for, if we had met first in the drawing-room, I doubt whether you would have discerned me to be more of a gentleman than usual. You might not have distinguished how I came by my look or manner.\"\n\n\"Yes I should; I am sure I should. There is always a look of consciousness or bustle when people come in away which they know to be beneath them. You think you carry it off very well, I daresay; but with you it is a sort of bravado, an air of affected unconcern: I always observe it whenever I meet you under those circumstances. Now you have nothing to try for. You are not afraid of being supposed ashamed. You are not striving to look taller than anybody else. Now I shall really be very happy to walk into the same room with you.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Nonsensical girl!\" was his reply, but not at all in anger. Emma had as much reason to be satisfied with the rest of the party as with Mr. Knightley. She was received with a cordial respect which could not but please, and given all the consequence she could wish for. When the Westons arrived, the kindest looks of love, the strongest of admiration, were for her, from both husband and wife: the son approached her with a cheerful eagerness which marked her as his peculiar object, and at dinner she found him seated by her; and, as she firmly believed, not without some dexterity on his side.\n\nThe party was rather large, as it included one other family,-a proper unobjectionable country family, whom the Coles had the advantage of naming among their acquaintance,-and the male part of Mr. Cox's family, the lawyer of Highbury. The less worthy females were to come in the evening, with Miss Bates, Miss Fairfax, and Miss Smith; but already, at dinner, they were too numerous for any subject of conversation to be general; and, while politics and Mr. Elton were talked over, Emma could fairly surrender all her attention to the pleasantness of her neighbour. The first remote sound to which she felt herself obliged to attend was the name of Jane Fairfax. Mrs. Cole seemed to be relating something of her that was expected to be very interesting. She listened, and found it well worth listening to. That very dear part of Emma, her fancy, received an amusing supply. Mrs. Cole was telling that she had been calling on Miss Bates; and, as soon as she entered the room, had been struck by the sight of a piano-forte, a very elegant looking instrument; not a grand, but a large-sized square piano-forte: and the substance of the story, the end of all the dialogue which ensued of surprise, and enquiry, and congratulations on her side, and explanations on Miss Bates's, was, that this piano-forte had arrived from Broadwood's 10 the day before, to the great astonishment of both aunt and niece, entirely unexpected; that, at first, by Miss Bates's account, Jane herself was quite at a loss, quite bewildered to think who could possibly have ordered it; but now they were both perfectly satisfied that it could be from only one quarter,-of course it must be from Colonel Campbell."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"One can suppose nothing else,\" added Mrs. Cole; \"and I was only surprised that there could ever have been a doubt. But Jane, it seems, had a letter from them very lately, and not a word was said about it. She knows their ways best; but I should not consider their silence as any reason for their not meaning to make the present. They might choose to surprise her.\"\n\nMrs. Cole had many to agree with her; everybody who spoke on the subject was equally convinced that it must come from Colonel Campbell, and equally rejoiced that such a present had been made; and there were enough ready to speak to allow Emma to think her own way, and still listen to Mrs. Cole.\n\n\"I declare, I do not know when I have heard anything that has given me more satisfaction. It always has quite hurt me that Jane Fairfax, who plays so delightfully, should not have an instrument. It seemed quite a shame, especially considering how many houses there are where fine instruments are absolutely thrown away. This is like giving ourselves a slap, to be sure; and it was but yesterday I was telling Mr. Cole I really was ashamed to look at our new grand piano-forte in the drawing-room, while I do not know one note from another, and our little girls, who are but just beginning, perhaps may never make anything of it; and there is poor Jane Fairfax, who is mistress of music, has not anything of the nature of an instrument, not even the pitifulest old spinet q in the world, to amuse herself with. I was saying this to Mr. Cole but yesterday, and he quite agreed with me; only he is so particularly fond of music that he could not help indulging himself in the purchase, hoping that some of our good neighbours might be so obliging occasionally to put it to a better use than we can; and that really is the reason why the instrument was bought-or else I am sure we ought to be ashamed of it. We are in great hopes that Miss Woodhouse maybe prevailed with to try it this evening.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Miss Woodhouse made the proper acquiescence; and finding that nothing more was to be entrapped from any communication of Mrs. Cole's, turned to Frank Churchill.\n\n\"Why do you smile?\" said she.\n\n\"Nay, why do you?\"\n\n\"Me! I suppose I smile for pleasure at Colonel Campbell's being so rich and so liberal. It is a handsome present.\"\n\n\"Very.\"\n\n\"I rather wonder that it was never made before.\"\n\n\"Perhaps Miss Fairfax has never been staying here so long before.\"\n\n\"Or that he did not give her the use of their own instrument, which must now be shut up in London, untouched by anybody.\"\n\n\"That is a grand piano-forte, and he might think it too large for Mrs. Bates's house.\"\n\n\"You may say what you choose, but your countenance testifies that your thoughts on this subject are very much like mine.\"\n\n\"I do not know. I rather believe you are giving me more credit for acuteness than I deserve. I smile because you smile, and shall probably suspect whatever I find you suspect; but at present I do not see what there is to question. If Colonel Campbell is not the person, who can be?\"\n\n\"What do you say to Mrs. Dixon?\"\n\n\"Mrs. Dixon! very true, indeed. I had not thought of Mrs. Dixon. She must know, as well as her father, how acceptable an instrument would be; and perhaps the mode of it, the mystery, the surprise, is more like a young woman's scheme than an elderly man's. It is Mrs. Dixon, I daresay. I told you that your suspicions would guide mine.\"\n\n\"If so, you must extend your suspicions, and comprehend Mr. Dixon in them.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Dixon! very well. Yes, I immediately perceive that it must be the joint present of Mr. and Mrs. Dixon. We were speaking the other day, you know, of his being so warm an admirer of her performance.\"\n\n\"Yes, and what you told me on that head confirmed an idea which I had entertained before. I do not mean to reflect upon the good intentions of either Mr. Dixon or Miss Fairfax; but I cannot help suspecting either that, after making his proposals to her friend, he had the misfortune to fall in love with her, or that he became conscious of a little attachment on her side. One might guess twenty things without guessing exactly the right; but I am sure there must be a particular cause for her choosing to come to Highbury, instead of going with the Campbells to Ireland. Here, she must be leading a life of privation and penance; there, it would have been all enjoyment. As to the pretence of trying her native air, I look upon that as a mere excuse. In the summer it might have passed; but what can anybody's native air do for them in the months of January, February, and March? Good fires and carriages would be much more to the purpose inmost cases of delicate health, and I daresay in hers. I do not require you to adopt all my suspicions, though you make so noble a profession of doing it, but I honestly tell you what they are.\"\n\n\"And, upon my word, they have an air of great probability. Mr. Dixon's preference of her music to her friend's I can answer for being very decided.\"\n\n\"And then, he saved her life. Did you ever hear of that? A water party; and by some accident she was falling overboard. He caught her.\"\n\n\"He did. I was there-one of the party.\" \"Were you really? Well! But you observed nothing, of course, for it seems to be anew idea to you. If I had been there, I think I should have made some discoveries.\""},{"from":"human","value":"\"I daresay you would; but I, simple I, saw nothing but the fact, that Miss Fairfax was nearly dashed from the vessel, and that Mr."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Dixon caught her-it was the work of a moment. And though the consequent shock and alarm were very great, and much more durable-indeed I believe it was half an hour before any of us were comfortable again-yet that was too general a sensation for anything of peculiar anxiety to be observable. I do not mean to say, however, that you might not have made discoveries.\"\n\nThe conversation was here interrupted. They were called onto share in the awkwardness of a rather long interval between the courses, and obliged to be as formal and as orderly as the others; but when the table was again safely covered, when every corner dish was placed exactly right, and occupation and ease were generally restored, Emma said,-\n\n\"The arrival of this piano-forte is decisive with me. I wanted to know a little more, and this tells me quite enough. Depend upon it, we shall soon hear that it is a present from Mr. and Mrs. Dixon.\"\n\n\"And if the Dixons should absolutely deny all knowledge of it, we must conclude it to come from the Campbells.\"\n\n\"No, I am sure it is not from the Campbells. Miss Fairfax knows\n\nit is not from the Campbells, or they would have been guessed at first. She would not have been puzzled, had she dared fix on them. I may not have convinced you, perhaps, but I am perfectly convinced myself that Mr. Dixon is a principal in the business.\"\n\n\"Indeed you injure me if you suppose me unconvinced. Your reasonings carry my judgment along with them entirely. At first, while I supposed you satisfied that Colonel Campbell was the giver, I saw it only as paternal kindness, and thought it the most natural thing in the world. But when you mentioned Mrs. Dixon, I felt how much more probable that it should be the tribute of warm female friendship. And now I can see it in no other light than as an offering of love.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"There was no occasion to press the matter farther. The conviction seemed real; he looked as if he felt it. She said no more,-other subjects took their turn; and the rest of the dinner passed away; the dessert succeeded; the children came in, and were talked to and admired amid the usual rate of conversation; a few clever things said, a few downright silly, but by much the larger proportion neither the one nor the other-nothing worse than every-day remarks, dull repetitions, old news, and heavy jokes.\n\nThe ladies had not been long in the drawing-room, before the other ladies, in their different divisions, arrived. Emma watched the entrée of her own particular little friend; and if she could not exult in her dignity and grace, she could not only love the blooming sweetness and the artless manner, but could most heartily rejoice in that light, cheerful, unsentimental disposition which allowed her so many alleviations of pleasure in the midst of the pangs of disappointed affection. There she sat-and who would have guessed how many tears she had been lately shedding? To be in company, nicely dressed herself, and seeing others nicely dressed, to sit and smile and look pretty, and say nothing, was enough for the happiness of the present hour. Jane Fairfax did look and move superior; but Emma suspected she might have been glad to change feelings with Harriet,-very glad to have purchased the mortification of having loved-yes, of having loved even Mr. Elton in vain,-by the surrender of all the dangerous pleasure of knowing herself beloved by the husband of her friend.\n\nIn so large a party it was not necessary that Emma should approach her. She did not wish to speak of the piano-forte, she felt too much in the secret herself, to think the appearance of curiosity or interest fair, and therefore purposely kept at a distance; but by the others, the subject was almost immediately introduced, and she saw the blush of consciousness with which congratulations were received, the blush of guilt which accompanied the name of'my excellent friend Colonel Campbell.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Mrs. Weston, kind-hearted and musical, was particularly interested by the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her perseverance indwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish of saying as little about it as possible, which she plainly read in the fair heroine's countenance.\n\nThey were soon joined by some of the gentlemen; and the very first of the early was Frank Churchill. In he walked, the first and the handsomest; and after paying his compliments en passant to Miss Bates and her niece, made his way directly to the opposite side of the circle, where sat Miss Woodhouse; and till he could find a seat by her, would not sit at all. Emma divined what everybody present must bethinking. She was his object, and everybody must perceive it. She introduced him to her friend Miss Smith, and, at convenient moments afterwards, heard what each thought of the other. \"He had never seen so lovely a face, and was delighted with her naïveté.\" And she,-\"only to be sure it was paying him too great a compliment, but she did think there were some looks a little like Mr. Elton.\" Emma restrained her indignation, and only turned from her in silence.\n\nSmiles of intelligence passed between her and the gentleman on first glancing towards Miss Fairfax; but it was most prudent to avoid speech. He told her that he had been impatient to leave the dining-room-hated sitting long-was always the first to move when he could-that his father, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Cox, and Mr. Cole, were left very busy over parish business-that as long as he had staid, however, it had been pleasant enough, as he found them in general a set of gentlemen-like, sensible men; and spoke so handsomely of Highbury altogether-thought it so abundant in agreeable families-that Emma began to feel she had been used to despise the place rather too much. She questioned him as to the society in Yorkshire, the extent of the neighbourhood about Enscombe, and the sort; and could make out from his answers that, as far as Enscombe was concerned, there was very little going on; that their visitings were among a range of great families, none very near; and that even when days were fixed, and invitations accepted, it was an even chance that Mrs. Churchill were not in health or spirits forgoing; that they made a point of visiting no fresh person; and that, though he had his separate engagements, it was not without difficulty without considerable address at times, that he could getaway, or introduce an acquaintance fora night."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"She saw that Enscombe could not satisfy, and that Highbury, taken in its best, might reasonably please a young man who had more retirement at home than he liked. His importance at Enscombe was very evident. He did not boast, but it naturally betrayed itself, that he had persuaded his aunt where his uncle could do nothing, and on her laughing and noticing it, he owned that he believed (excepting one or two points) he could with time persuade her to anything. One of those points on which his influence failed he then mentioned. He had wanted very much to go abroad-had been very eager indeed to be allowed to travel-but she would not hear of it. This had happened the year before. Now, he said, he was beginning to have no longer the same wish.\n\nThe unpersuadable point, which he did not mention, Emma guessed to be good behaviour to his father.\n\n\"I have made a most wretched discovery,\" said he, after a short pause. \"I have been here a week to-morrow-half my time. I never knew days fly so fast. A week to-morrow!-and I have hardly begun to enjoy myself. But just got acquainted with Mrs. Weston, and others. I hate the recollection.\"\n\n\"Perhaps you may now begin to regret that you spent one whole day, out of so few, in having your haircut.\"\n\n\"No,\" said he, smiling, \"that is no subject of regret at all. I have no pleasure in seeing my friends, unless I can believe myself fit to be seen.\"\n\nThe rest of the gentlemen being now in the room, Emma found herself obliged to turn from him fora few minutes, and listen to Mr. Cole. When Mr. Cole had moved away, and her attention could be restored as before, she saw Frank Churchill looking intently across the room at Miss Fairfax, who was sitting exactly opposite."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"What is the matter?\" said she.\n\nHe started. \"Thank you for rousing me,\" he replied. \"I believe I have been very rude; but really Miss Fairfax has done her hair in so odd away-so very odd away-that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw anything so outrée! r Those curls! This must be a fancy of her own. I see nobody else looking like her. I must go and ask her whether it is an Irish fashion. Shall I?-Yes, I will-I declare I will-and you shall see how she takes it;-whether she colours.\"\n\nHe was gone immediately; and Emma soon saw him standing before Miss Fairfax, and talking to her; but as to its effect on the young lady, as he had improvidently placed himself exactly between them, exactly in front of Miss Fairfax, she could absolutely distinguish nothing.\n\nBefore he could return to his chair, it was taken by Mrs. Weston.\n\n\"This is the luxury of a large party,\" said she: \"one can get near everybody, and say everything. My dear Emma, I am longing to talk to you. I have been making discoveries and forming plans, just like yourself, and I must tell them while the idea is fresh. Do you know how Miss Bates and her niece came here?\"\n\n\"How!-They were invited, were not they?\"\n\n\"Oh yes-but how they were conveyed hither?-the manner of their coming?\"\n\n\"They walked, I conclude. How else could they come?\"\n\n\"Very true. Well, a little while ago it occurred tome how very sad it would be to have Jane Fairfax walking home again, late at night, and cold as the nights are now. And as I looked at her, though I never saw her appear to more advantage, it struck me that she was heated, and would therefore be particularly liable to take cold. Poor girl! I could not bear the idea of it; so, as soon as Mr. Weston came into the room, and I could get at him, I spoke to him about the carriage. You may guess how readily he came into my wishes; and having his approbation, I made my way directly to Miss Bates, to assure her that the carriage would beat her service before it took us home; for I thought it would be making her comfortable at once. Good soul! she was as grateful as possible, you maybe sure. \"Nobody was ever so fortunate as herself!\"-but with many, many thanks,-\"there was no occasion to trouble us, for Mr. Knightley's carriage had brought, and was to take them home again. ' I was quite surprised;-very glad, I am sure; but really quite surprised. Such a very kind attention-and so thoughtful an attention!-the sort of thing that so few men would think of. And, in short, from knowing his usual ways, I am very much inclined to think that it was for their accommodation the carriage was used at all. I do suspect he would not have had a pair of horses for himself, and that it was only as an excuse for assisting them.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Very likely,\" said Emma, \"nothing more likely. I know no man more likely than Mr. Knightley to do the sort of thing-to do anything really good-natured, useful, considerate, or benevolent. He is not a gallant man, but he is a very humane one; and this, considering Jane Fairfax's ill health, would appear a case of humanity to him;-and for an act of unostentatious kindness, there is nobody whom I would fix on more than on Mr. Knightley. I know he had horses to-day-for we arrived together; and I laughed at him about it, but he said not a word that could betray.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Mrs. Weston, smiling, \"you give him credit for more simple, disinterested benevolence in this instance than I do; for while Miss Bates was speaking, a suspicion darted into my head, and I have never been able to get it out again. The more I think of it, the more probable it appears. In short, I have made a match between Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax. Seethe consequence of keeping you company!-What do you say to it?\"\n\n\"Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax!\" exclaimed Emma. \"Dear Mrs. Weston, how could you think of such a thing?-Mr. Knightley!-Mr. Knightley must not marry!-You would not have little Henry cutout from Donwell?-Oh no, no,-Henry must have Donwell. I cannot at all consent to Mr. Knightley's marrying; and I am sure it is not at all likely. I am amazed that you should think of such a thing.\"\n\n\"My dear Emma, I have told you what led me to think of it. I do not want the match-I do not want to injure dear little Henry-but the idea has been given me by circumstances; and if Mr. Knightley really wished to marry, you would not have him refrain on Henry's account, a boy of six years old, who knows nothing of the matter?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Yes, I would. I could not bear to have Henry supplanted. Mr. Knightley marry! No, I have never had such an idea, and I cannot adopt it now. And Jane Fairfax, too, of all women!\"\n\n\"Nay, she has always been a first favourite with him, as you very well know.\"\n\n\"But the imprudence of such a match!\"\n\n\"I am not speaking of its prudence-merely its probability.\"\n\n\"I see no probability in it, unless you have any better foundation than what you mention. His good-nature, his humanity, as I tell you, would be quite enough to account for the horses. He has a great regard for the Bateses, you know, independent of Jane Fairfax-and is always glad to show them attention. My dear Mrs. Weston, do not take to match-making. You do it very ill. Jane Fairfax mistress of the Abbey! Oh no, no;-every feeling revolts. For his own sake, I would not have him do so mad a thing.\"\n\n\"Imprudent, if you please-but not mad. Excepting inequality of fortune, and perhaps a little disparity of age, I can see nothing unsuitable.\"\n\n\"But Mr. Knightley does not want to marry. I am sure he has not the least idea of it. Do not put it into his head. Why should he marry? He is as happy as possible by himself; with his farm, and his sheep, and his library, and all the parish to manage; and he is extremely fond of his brother's children. He has no occasion to marry, either to fill up his time or his heart.\"\n\n\"My dear Emma, as long as he thinks so, it is so; but if he really loves Jane Fairfax-\"\n\n\"Nonsense! He does not care about Jane Fairfax. In the way of love, I am sure he does not. He would do any good to her, or her family; but-"},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Well,\" said Mrs. Weston, laughing, \"perhaps the greatest good he could do them would be to give Jane such a respectable home.\"\n\n\"If it would be good to her, I am sure it would be evil to himself-a very shameful and degrading connection. How would he bear to have Miss Bates belonging to him? To have her haunting the Abbey, and thanking him all daylong for his great kindness in marrying Jane?-\"So very kind and obliging! But he always had been such a very kind neighbour!\" And then fly off, through half a sentence, to her mother's old petticoat.\"Not that it was such a very old petticoat either-for still it would last a great while,-and, indeed, she must thankfully say that their petticoats were all very strong. '\"\n\n\"For shame, Emma! Do not mimic her. You divert me against my conscience. And, upon my word, I do not think Mr. Knightley would be much disturbed by Miss Bates. Little things do not irritate him. She might talk on; and if he wanted to say anything himself, he would only talk louder, and drown her voice. But the question is not, whether it would be a bad connection for him, but whether he wishes it; and I think he does. I have heard him speak, and so must you, so very highly of Jane Fairfax! The interest he takes in her-his anxiety about her health-his concern that she should have no happier prospect! I have heard him express himself so warmly on those points! Such an admirer of her performance on the piano-forte, and of her voice! I have heard him say, that he could listen to her forever. Oh, and I had almost forgotten one idea that occurred tome-this piano-forte that has been sent her by somebody-though we have all been so well satisfied to consider it a present from the Campbells, may it not be from Mr. Knightley? I cannot help suspecting him. I think he is just the person to do it, even without being in love.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Then it can be no argument to prove that he is in love. But I do not think it is at all a likely thing for him to do. Mr. Knightley does nothing mysteriously.\"\n\n\"I have heard him lamenting her having no instrument repeatedly; oftener than I should suppose such a circumstance would, in the common course of things, occur to him.\"\n\n\"Very well; if he had intended to give her one, he would have told her so.\"\n\n\"There might be scruples of delicacy, my dear Emma. I have a very strong notion that it comes from him. I am sure he was particularly silent when Mrs. Cole told us of it at dinner.\"\n\n\"You take up an idea, Mrs. Weston, and runaway with it, as you have many a time reproached me with doing. I see no sign of attachment. I believe nothing of the piano-forte, and proof only shall convince me that Mr. Knightley has any thought of marrying Jane Fairfax.\"\n\nThey combated the point sometime longer in the same way, Emma rather gaining ground over the mind of her friend; for Mrs. Weston was the most used of the two to yield; till a little bustle in the room showed them that tea was over, and the instrument in preparation; and at the same moment Mr. Cole approaching to entreat Miss Woodhouse would do them the honour of trying it. Frank Churchill, of whom, in the eagerness of her conversation with Mrs. Weston, she had been seeing nothing, except that he had found a seat by Miss Fairfax, followed Mr. Cole, to add his very pressing entreaties; and as, in every respect, it suited Emma best to lead, she gave a very proper compliance.\n\nShe knew the limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than she could perform with credit; she wanted neither taste nor spirit in the little things which are generally acceptable, and could accompany her own voice well. One accompaniment to her song took her agreeably by surprise-a second, slightly but correctly taken by Frank Churchill. Her pardon was duly begged at the close of the song, and everything usual followed. He was accused of having a delightful voice, and a perfect knowledge of music; which was properly denied; and that he knew nothing of the matter, and had no voice at all, roundly asserted. They sang together once more; and Emma would then resign her place to Miss Fairfax, whose performance, both vocal and instrumental, she never could attempt to conceal from herself, was infinitely superior to her own."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"With mixed feelings, she seated herself at a little distance from the numbers round the instrument, to listen. Frank Churchill sang again. They had sung together once or twice, it appeared, at Weymouth. But the sight of Mr. Knightley among the most attentive soon drew away half Emma's mind; and she fell into a train of thinking on the subject of Mrs. Weston's suspicions, to which the sweet sounds of the united voices gave only momentary interruptions. Her objections to Mr. Knightley's marrying did not in the least subside. She could see nothing but evil in it. It would be a great disappointment to Mr. John Knightley, consequently to Isabella. Areal injury to the children-a most mortifying change, and material loss to them all-a very great deduction from her father's daily comfort-and, as to herself, she could not at all endure the idea of Jane Fairfax at Donwell Abbey. A Mrs. Knightley for them all to give way to! No-Mr. Knightley must never marry. Little Henry must remain the heir of Donwell.\n\nPresently Mr. Knightley looked back, and came and sat down by her. They talked at first only of the performance. His admiration was certainly very warm; yet she thought, but for Mrs. Weston, it would not have struck her. As a sort of touchstone, however, she began to speak of his kindness in conveying the aunt and niece; and though his answer was in the spirit of cutting the matter short, she believed it to indicate only his disinclination to dwell on any kindness of his own.\n\n\"I often feel concerned,\" said she, \"that I dare not make our carriage more useful on such occasions. It is not that I am without the wish; but you know how impossible my father would deem it that James should put to for such a purpose.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Quite out of the question, quite out of the question,\" he replied; \"but you must often wish it, I am sure.\" And he smiled with such seeming pleasure at the conviction, that she must proceed another step.\n\n\"This present from the Campbells,\" said she-\"this piano-forte is very kindly given.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" he replied, and without the smallest apparent embarrassment. \"But they would have done better had they given her notice of it. Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable. I should have expected better judgment in Colonel Campbell.\"\n\nFrom that moment, Emma could have taken her oath that Mr. Knightley had had no concern in giving the instrument. But whether he were entirely free from peculiar attachment-whether there were no actual preference-remained a little longer doubtful. Towards the end of Jane's second song, her voice grew thick.\n\n\"That will do,\" said he, when it was finished, thinking aloud, \"you have sung quite enough for one evening; now be quiet.\"\n\nAnother song, however, was soon begged for. \"One more;-they would not fatigue Miss Fairfax on any account, and would only ask for one more.\" And Frank Churchill was heard to say, \"I think you could manage this without effort; the first part is so very trifling. The strength of the song falls on the second.\"\n\nMr. Knightley grew angry.\n\n\"That fellow,\" said he, indignantly, \"thinks of nothing but showing off his own voice. Thus must not be.\" And touching Miss Bates, who at that moment passed near,-\"Miss Bates, are you mad, to let your niece sing herself hoarse in this manner? Go, and interfere. They have no mercy on her.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Proceed"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Miss Bates, in her real anxiety for Jane, could hardly stay even to be grateful, before she stepped forward and put an end to all further singing. Here ceased the concert part of the evening, for Miss Woodbouse and Miss Fairfax were the only young lady performers; but soon (within five minutes) the proposal of dancing-originating nobody exactly knew where-was so effectually promoted by Mr. and Mrs. Cole, that everything was rapidly clearing away, to give proper space. Mrs. Weston, capital in her country-dances, was seated, and beginning an irresistible waltz; and Frank Churchill, coming up with most becoming gallantry to Emma, had secured her hand, and led her up to the top.\n\nWhile waiting till the other young people could pair themselves off, Emma found time, in spite of the compliments she was receiving on her voice and her taste, to look about, and see what became of Mr. Knightley. This would be atrial. He was no dancer in general. If he were to be very alert in engaging Jane Fairfax now, it might augur something. There was no immediate appearance. No; he was talking to Mrs. Cole-he was looking on unconcerned; Jane was asked by somebody else, and he was still talking to Mrs. Cole.\n\nEmma had no longer an alarm for Henry: his interest was yet safe; and she led off the dance with genuine spirit and enjoyment. Not more than five couple could be mustered; but the rarity and the suddenness of it made it very delightful, and she found herself well matched in a partner. They were a couple worth looking at.\n\nTwo dances, unfortunately, were all that could be allowed. It was growing late, and Miss Bates became anxious to get home, on her mother's account. After some attempts, therefore, to be permitted to begin again, they were obliged to thank Mrs. Weston, look sorrowful, and have done."},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Perhaps it is as well,\" said Frank Churchill, as he attended Emma to her carriage. \"I must have asked Miss Fairfax, and her languid dancing would not have agreed with me, after yours.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Emma did not repent her condescension in going to the Coles. The visit afforded her many pleasant recollections the next day; and all that she might be supposed to have lost on the side of dignified seclusion must be amply repaid in the splendour of popularity. She must have delighted the Coles-worthy people, who deserved to be made happy!-and left a name behind her that would not soon die away.\n\nPerfect happiness, even in memory, is not common; and there were two points on which she was not quite easy. She doubted whether she had not transgressed the duty of woman by woman, in betraying her suspicions of Jane Fairfax's feelings to Frank Churchill. It was hardly right; but it had been so strong an idea, that it would escape her, and his submission to all that she told was a compliment to her penetration which made it difficult for her to be quite certain that she ought to have held her tongue.\n\nThe other circumstance of regret related also to Jane Fairfax, and there she had no doubt. She did unfeignedly and unequivocally regret the inferiority of her own playing and singing. She did most heartily grieve over the idleness of her childhood; and sat down and practised vigorously an hour and a half.\n\nShe was then interrupted by Harriet's coming in; and if Harriet's praise could have satisfied her, she might soon have been comforted.\n\n\"Oh, if I could but play as well as you and Miss Fairfax!\"\n\n\"Don't class us together, Harriet. My playing is no more like hers than a lamp is like sunshine.\"\n\n\"O dear, I think you play the best of the two. I think you play quite as well as she does. I am sure I had much rather hear you. Everybody last night said how well you played.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Those who knew anything about it must have felt the difference. The truth is, Harriet, that my playing is just good enough to be praised, but Jane Fairfax's is much beyond it.\"\n\n\"Well, I always shall think that you play quite as well as she does, or that if there is any difference nobody would ever find it out. Mr. Cole said how much taste you had, and Mr. Frank Churchill talked a great deal about your taste, and that he valued taste much more than execution.\"\n\n\"Ah, but Jane Fairfax has them both, Harriet.\"\n\n\"Are you sure? I saw she had execution, but I did not know she had any taste. Nobody talked about it; and I hate Italian singing: there is no understanding a word of it. Besides, if she does play so very well, you know, it is no more than she is obliged to do, because she will have to teach. The Coxes were wondering last night whether she would get into any great family. How do you think the Coxes looked?\"\n\n\"Just as they always do,-very vulgar.\"\n\n\"They told me something,\" said Harriet, rather hesitatingly, \"but it is nothing of any consequence.\"\n\nEmma was obliged to ask what they had told her, though fearful of its producing Mr. Elton.\n\n\"They told me that Mr. Martin dined with them last Saturday.\"\n\n\"Oh!\"\n\n\"He came to their father upon some business, and he asked him to stay dinner.\"\n\n\"Oh!\"\n\n\"They talked a great deal about him, especially Anne Cox. I do not know what she meant, but she asked me if I thought I should go and stay there again next summer.\"\n\n\"She meant to be impertinently curious, just as such an Anne Cox should be.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"She said he was very agreeable the day he dined there. He sat by her at dinner. Miss Nash thinks either of the Coxes would be very glad to marry him.\"\n\n\"Very likely; I think they are, without exception, the most vulgar girls in Highbury.\"\n\nHarriet had business at Ford's. Emma thought it most prudent to go with her. Another accidental meeting with the Martins was possible, and, in her present state, would be dangerous.\n\nHarriet, tempted by everything, and swayed by half a word, was always very long at a purchase; and while she was still hanging over muslins, and changing her mind, Emma went to the door for amusement. Much could not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;-Mr. Perry walking hastily by; Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the office door; Mr. Cole's carriage-horses returning from exercise; or astray letter-boy on an obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she knew she had no reason to complain, and was amused enough: quite enough still to stand at the door. A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.\n\nShe looked down the Randalls road. The scene enlarged; two persons appeared; Mrs. Weston and her son-in-law. They were walking into Highbury;-to Hartfield of course: they were stopping, however, in the first place at Mrs. Bates's, whose house was a little nearer Randalls than Ford's, and had all but knocked when Emma caught their eye. Immediately they crossed the road and came forward to her; and the agreeableness of yesterday's engagement seemed to give fresh pleasure to the present meeting. Mrs. Weston informed her that she was going to call on the Bateses, in order to hear the new instrument."},{"from":"human","value":"> Keep going"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"For my companion tells me,\" said she, \"that I absolutely promised Miss Bates last night that I would come this morning. I was not aware of it myself. I did not know that I had fixed a day; but as he says I did, I am going now.\"\n\n\"And while Mrs. Weston pays her visit, I maybe allowed, I hope,\" said Frank Churchill, \"to join your party and wait for her at Hartfield, if you are going home.\"\n\nMrs. Weston was disappointed.\n\n\"I thought you meant to go with me. They would be very much pleased.\"\n\n\"Me! I should be quite in the way. But, perhaps, I maybe equally in the way here. Miss Woodhouse looks as if she did not want me. My aunt always sends me off when she is shopping. She says I fidget her to death; Miss Woodhouse looks as if she could almost say the same. What am Ito do?\"\n\n\"I am hereon no business of my own,\" said Emma, \"I am only waiting for my friend. She will probably have soon done, and then we shall go home. But you had better go with Mrs. Weston and hear the instrument.\"\n\n\"Well, if you advise it. But (with a smile) if Colonel Campbell should have employed a careless friend, and if it should prove to have an indifferent tone, what shall I say? I shall be no support to Mrs. Weston. She might do very well by herself. A disagreeable truth would be palatable through her lips, but I am the wretchedest being in the world at a civil falsehood.\"\n\n\"I do not believe any such thing,\" replied Emma; \"I am persuaded that you can be as insincere as your neighbours, when it is necessary; but there is no reason to suppose the instrument is indifferent. Quite otherwise, indeed, if I understood Miss Fairfax's opinion last night.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"Do come with me,\" said Mrs. Weston, \"if it be not very disagreeable to you. It need not detain us long. We will go to Hartfield afterwards. We will follow them to Hartfield. I really wish you to call with me: it will be felt so great an attention-and I always thought you meant it.\"\n\nHe could say no more; and, with the hope of Hartfield to reward him, returned with Mrs. Weston to Mrs. Bates's door. Emma watched them in, and then joined Harriet at the interesting counter, trying, with all the force of her own mind, to convince her that, if she wanted plain muslin, it was of no use to look at figured; and that a blue riband, be it ever so beautiful, would still never match her yellow pattern. At last it was all settled, even to the destination of the parcel.\n\n\"Should I send it to Mrs. Goddard's, ma'am?\" asked Mrs. Ford.-\"Yes-no-yes, to Mrs. Goddard's. Only my pattern gown is at Hartfield. No, you shall send it to Hartfield, if you please. But then, Mrs. Goddard will want to see it. And I could take the pattern gown home any day. But I shall want the riband directly; so it had better go to Hartfield-at least the riband. You could make it into two parcels, Mrs. Ford, could not you?\"\n\n\"It is not worthwhile, Harriet, to give Mrs. Ford the trouble of two parcels.\"\n\n\"No more it is.\"\n\n\"No trouble in the world, ma'am,\" said the obliging Mrs. Ford.\n\n\"Oh, but indeed I would much rather have it only in one. Then, if you please, you shall send it all to Mrs. Goddard's-I do not know-no, I think, Miss Woodhouse, I may just as well have it sent to Hartfield, and take it home with meat night. What do you advise?\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Continue"},{"from":"gpt","value":"\"That you do not give another half-second to the subject. To Hartfield, if you please, Mrs. Ford.\"\n\n\"Ay, that will be much best,\" said Harriet, quite satisfied; \"I should not at all like to have it sent to Mrs. Goddard's.\"\n\nVoices approached the shop, or rather, one voice and two ladies; Mrs. Weston and Miss Bates met them at the door.\n\n\"My dear Miss Woodhouse,\" said the latter, \"I am just run across to entreat the favour of you to come and sit down with us a little while, and give us your opinion of our new instrument-you and Miss Smith. How do you do, Miss Smith?-Very well, I thank you.-And I begged Mrs. Weston to come with me, that I might be sure of succeeding.\"\n\n\"I hope Mrs. Bates and Miss Fairfax are-\"\n\n\"Very well, I am much obliged to you. My mother is delightfully well; and Jane caught no cold last night. How is Mr. Woodhouse? I am so glad to hear such a good account. Mrs. Weston told me you were here.-Oh, then, said I, I must run across; I am sure Miss Woodhouse will allow me just to run across and entreat her to come in: my mother will be so very happy to see her; and now we are such a nice party, she cannot refuse. \"Ay, pray do,\" said Mr. Frank Churchill, \"Miss Woodhouse's opinion of the instrument will be worth having. \"-But, said I, I shall be more sure of succeeding if one of you will go with me.-\"Oh, \"said he,\"wait half a minute, till I have finished my job: \"for, would you believe it, Miss Woodhouse, there he is, in the most obliging manner in the world, fastening in the rivet of my mother's spectacles. The rivet came out, you know, this morning; so very obliging!-For my mother had no use of her spectacles-could not put them on. And, by the by, everybody ought to have two pair of spectacles; they should indeed. Jane said so. I meant to take them over to John Saunders the first thing I did, but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing, then another, there is no saying what, you know. Atone time, Patty came to say she thought the kitchen chimney wanted sweeping. Oh, said I, Patty, do not come with your bad news tome. Here is the rivet of your mistress's spectacles out. Then the baked apples came home; s Mrs. Wallis sent them by her boy; they are extremely civil and obliging to us, the Wallises, always. I have heard some people say that Mrs. Wallis can be uncivil and give a very rude answer; but we have never known anything but the greatest attention from them. And it cannot be for the value of our custom now, for what is our consumption of bread, you know? only three of us. Besides, dear Jane, at present,-and she really eats nothing,-makes such a shocking breakfast, you would be quite frightened if you saw it. I dare not let my mother know how little she eats; so I say one thing, and then I say another, and it passes off. But about the middle of the day she gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes so well as these baked apples, and they are extremely wholesome; for I took the opportunity the other day of asking Mr. Perry; I happened to meet him in the street. Not that I had any doubt before. I have so often heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple. I believe it is the only way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome. We have apple dumplings, however, very often. Patty makes an excellent apple-dumpling. Well, Mrs. Weston, you have prevailed, I hope, and these ladies will oblige us.\""},{"from":"human","value":"Emma would be'very happy to wait on Mrs."},{"from":"gpt","value":"Bates, & c.,\" and they did at last move out of the shop, with no further delay from Miss Bates than,-\n\n\"How do you do, Mrs. Ford? I beg your pardon; I did not see you before. I hear you have a charming collection of new ribands from town. Jane came back delighted yesterday. Thank ye, the gloves do\n\nvery well-only a little too large about the wrist; but Jane is taking them in.\"\n\n\"What was I talking of?\" said she, beginning again when they were all in the street.\n\nEmma wondered on what, of all the medley, she would fix. \" I declare I cannot recollect what I was talking of. Oh, my mother's spectacles. So very obliging of Mr. Frank Churchill!\"Oh! \"said he,\"I do think I can fasten the rivet; I like a job of this kind excessively. \"Which, you know, showed him to be so very-Indeed I must say that, much as I had heard of him before, and much as I had expected, he very far exceeds anything--I do congratulate you, Mrs. Weston, most warmly. He seems everything the fondest parent could--\"Oh! \"said he,\"I can fasten the rivet. I like a job of that sort excessively. \"I never shall forget his manner. And when I brought out the baked apples from the closet, and hoped our friends would be so very obliging as to take some,\"Oh! \"said he directly,\"there is nothing in the way of fruit half so good, and these are the finest looking home-baked apples I ever saw in my life. \"That, you know, was so very--And I am sure, by his manner, it was no compliment. Indeed they are very delightful apples, and Mrs. Wallis does them full justice, only we do not have them baked more than twice, and Mr. Woodhouse made us promise to have them done three times; but Miss Woodhouse will be so good as not to mention it. The apples themselves are the very finest sort for baking, beyond a doubt; all from Donwell-some of Mr. Knightley's most liberal supply. He sends us a sack every year; and certainly there never was such a keeping apple anywhere as one of his trees-I believe there is two of them. My mother says the orchard was always famous in her younger days. But I was really quite shocked the other day; for Mr. Knightley called one morning, and Jane was eating these apples, and we talked about them, and said how much she enjoyed them, and he asked whether we were not got to the end of our stock. \"I am sure you must be,\" said he, \"and I will send you another supply; for I have a great many more than I can ever use. William Larkins let me keep a larger quantity than usual this year. I will send you some more, before they get good for nothing.\" So I begged he would not-for really as to ours being gone, I could not absolutely say that we had a great many left-it was but half a dozen indeed; but they should be all kept for Jane; and I could not at all bear that he should be sending us more, so liberal as he had been already; and Jane said the same. And when he was gone, she almost quarrelled with me: no I should not say quarrelled, for we never had a quarrel in our lives; but she was quite distressed that I had owned the apples were so nearly gone; she wished I had made him believe we had a great many left. Oh, said I, my dear, I did say as much as I could. However, the very same evening William Larkins came over with a large basket of apples, the same sort of apples, a bushel at least, and I was very much obliged, and went down and spoke to William Larkins, and said everything, as you may suppose. William Larkins is such an old acquaintance! I am always glad to see him. But, however, I found afterwards from Patty, that William said it was all the apples of that sort his master had; he had brought them all-and now his master had not one left to bake or boil. William did not seem to mind it himself, he was so pleased to think his master had sold so many; for William, you know, thinks more of his master's profit than anything; but Mrs. Hodges, he said, was quite displeased at their being all sent away. She could not bear that her master should not be able to have another apple-tart this spring. He told Patty this, but bid her not mind it, and be sure not to say anything to us about it, for Mrs. Hodges would be cross sometimes, and as long as so many sacks were sold, it did not signify who ate the remainder. And so Patty told me, and I was excessively shocked, indeed! I would not have Mr. Knightley know anything about it for the world! He would be so very-I wanted to keep it from Jane's knowledge; but, unluckily, I had mentioned it before I was aware."},{"from":"human","value":"> Next"},{"from":"gpt","value":"Miss Bates had just done as Patty opened the door; and her visiters walked upstairs without having any regular narration to attend to, pursued only by the sounds of her desultory goodwill.\n\n\"Pray take care, Mrs. Weston, there is a step at the turning. Pray take care, Miss Woodhouse, ours is rather a dark staircase-rather darker and narrower than one could wish. Miss Smith, pray take care. Miss Woodhouse, I am quite concerned, I am sure you hit your foot. Miss Smith, the step at the turning.\""},{"from":"human","value":"> Start Chapter"},{"from":"gpt","value":"The appearance of the little sitting-room as they entered was tranquillity itself; Mrs. Bates, deprived of her usual employment, slumbering on one side of the fire, Frank Churchill, at a table near her, most deedily t occupied about her spectacles, and Jane Fairfax, standing with her back to them, intent on her piano-forte.\n\nBusy as he was, however, the young man was yet able to show a most happy countenance on seeing Emma again.\n\n\"This is a pleasure,\" said he, in rather a low voice, \"coming at least ten minutes earlier than I had calculated. You find me trying to be useful; tell me if you think I shall succeed.\"\n\n\"What!\" said Mrs. Weston, \"have not you finished it yet? you would not earn a very good livelihood as a working silversmith at this rate.\"\n\n\"I have not been working uninterruptedly,\" he replied, \"I have been assisting Miss Fairfax in trying to make her instrument stand steadily; it was not quite firm; an unevenness in the floor, I believe. You see we have been wedging one leg with paper. This was very kind of you to be persuaded to come. I was almost afraid you would be hurrying home.\"\n\nHe contrived that she should be seated by him; and was sufficiently employed in looking out the best baked apple for her, and trying to make her help or advise him in his work, till Jane Fairfax was quite ready to sit down to the piano-forte again. That she was not immediately ready, Emma did suspect to arise from the state of her nerves; she had not yet possessed the instrument long enough to touch it without emotion; she must reason herself into the power of performance; and Emma could not but pity such feelings, whatever their origin, and could not but resolve never to expose them to her neighbour again."}],"string":"[\n {\n \"from\": \"system\",\n \"value\": \"Assist the writer, move the story forward.\\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\\nAuthor: Jane Austen\\nTitle: Emma\\nChapter: 29\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma's very good opinion of Frank Churchill was a little shaken the following day, by hearing that he was gone off to London, merely to have his haircut. A sudden freak seemed to have seized him at breakfast, and he had sent fora chaise and set off intending to return to dinner, but with no more important view that appeared than having his haircut. There was certainly no harm in his travelling sixteen miles twice over on such an errand; but there was an air of foppery and nonsense in it which she could not approve. It did not accord with the rationality of plan, the moderation in expense, or even the unselfish warmth of heart which she had believed herself to discern in him yesterday. Vanity, extravagance, love of change, restlessness of temper, which must be doing something, good or bad; heedlessness as to the pleasure of his father and Mrs. Weston, indifferent as to how his conduct might appear in general; he became liable to all these changes. His father only called him a coxcomb, and thought it a very good story; but that Mrs. Weston did not like it, was clear enough, by her passing it over as quickly as possible, and making no other comment than that'all young people would have their little whims.\\\"\\n\\nWith the exception of this little blot, Emma found that his visit hitherto had given her friend only good ideas of him. Mrs. Weston was very ready to say how attentive and pleasant a companion he made himself,-how much she saw to like in his disposition altogether. He appeared to have a very open temper,-certainly a very cheerful and lively one; she could observe nothing wrong in his notions, a great deal decidedly right; he spoke of his uncle with warm regard, was fond of talking of him; said he would be the best man in the world if he were left to himself; and though there was no being attached to the aunt, he acknowledged her kindness with gratitude, and seemed to mean always to speak of her with respect. This was all very promising; and, but for such an unfortunate fancy for having his haircut, there was nothing to denote him unworthy of the distinguished honour which her imagination had given him; the honour, if not of being really in love with her, of being at least very near it, and saved only by her own indifference-(for still her resolution held of never marrying)-the honour, in short, of being marked out for her by all their joint acquaintance.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mr. Weston, on his side, added a virtue to the account which must have some weight. He gave her to understand that Frank admired her extremely-thought her very beautiful and very charming; and with so much to be said for him altogether, she found she must not judge him harshly:-as Mrs. Weston observed, \\\"all young people would have their little whims.\\\"\\n\\nThere was one person among his new acquaintance in Surrey not so leniently disposed. In general he was judged, throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury, with great candour; liberal allowances were made for the little excesses of such a handsome young man,-one who smiled so often and bowed so well; but there was one spirit among them not to be softened, from its power of censure, by bows or smiles,-Mr. Knightley. The circumstance was told him at Hartfield: for the moment, he was silent; but Emma heard him almost immediately afterwards say to himself, over a newspaper he held in his hand, \\\"Hum! just the trifling, silly fellow I took him for.\\\" She had half a mind to resent; but an instant's observation convinced her that it was really said only to relieve his own feelings, and not meant to provoke; and therefore she let it pass.\\n\\nAlthough in one instance the bearers of not good tidings, Mr. and Mrs. Weston's visit this morning was in another respect particularly opportune. Something occurred while they were at Hartfield to make Emma want their advice; and, which was still more lucky, she wanted exactly the advice they gave.\\n\\nThis was the occurrence:-The Coles had been settled some years in Highbury, and were very good sort of people, friendly, liberal, and unpretending; but, on the other hand, they were of low origin, in trade, and only moderately genteel. On their first coming into the country, they had lived in proportion to their income, quietly, keeping little company, and that little unexpensively; but the last year or two had brought them a considerable increase of means-the house in town had yielded greater profits, and fortune in general had smiled on them. With their wealth, their views increased; their want of a larger house, their inclination for more company. They added to their house, to their number of servants, to their expenses of every sort; and by this time were, in fortune and style of living, second only to the family at Hartfield. Their love of society, and their new dining-room, prepared everybody for their keeping dinner-company; and a few parties, chiefly among the single men, had already taken place. The regular and best families Emma could hardly suppose they would presume to invite,-neither Donwell, nor Hartfield, nor Randalls. Nothing should tempt her to go, if they did; and she regretted that her father's known habits would be giving her refusal less meaning than she could wish. The Coles were very respectable in their way, but they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them. This lesson, she very much feared, they would receive only from herself; she had little hope of Mr. Knightley, none of Mr. Weston.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"But she had made up her mind how to meet this presumption so many weeks before it appeared, that when insult came at last, it found her very differently affected.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Donwell and Randalls had received their invitation, and none had come for her father and herself; and Mrs. Weston's accounting for it with'I suppose they will not take the liberty with you; they know you do not dine out,\\\" was not quite sufficient. She felt that she should like to have had the power of refusal; and afterwards, as the idea of the party to be assembled there, consisting precisely of those whose society was dearest to her, occurred again and again, she did not know that she might not have been tempted to accept. Harriet was to be therein the evening, and the Bateses. They had been speaking of it as they walked about Highbury the day before, and Frank Churchill had most earnestly lamented her absence. Might not the evening end in a dance? had been a question of his. The bare possibility of it acted as a further irritation on her spirits; and her being left in solitary grandeur, even supposing the omission to be intended as a compliment, was but poor comfort.\\n\\nIt was the arrival of this very invitation, while the Westons were at Hartfield, which made their presence so acceptable; for though her first remark on reading it was that'of course it must be declined,\\\" she so very soon proceeded to ask them what they advised her to do, that their advice for her going was most prompt and successful.\\n\\nShe owned that, considering everything, she was not absolutely without inclination for the party. The Coles expressed themselves so properly-there was so much real attention in the manner of it-so much consideration for her father. \\\"They would have solicited the honour earlier, but had been waiting the arrival of a folding screen from London, which they hoped might keep Mr. Woodhouse from any draught. of air, and therefore induce him the more readily to give them the honour of his company.\\\" Upon the whole, she was very persuadable; and it being briefly settled among themselves how it might be done without neglecting his comfort,-how certainly Mrs. Goddard, if not Mrs. Bates, might be depended on forbearing him company,-Mr. Woodhouse was to be talked into an acquiescence of his daughter's going out to dinner on a day now near at hand, and spending the whole evening away from him. As for his going, Emma did not wish him to think it possible; the hours would be too late, and the party too numerous. He was soon pretty well resigned.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I am not fond of dinner-visiting,\\\" said he; \\\"I never was.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"No more is Emma. Late hours do not agree with us. I am sorry Mr. and Mrs. Cole should have done it. I think it would be much better if they would come in one afternoon next summer, and take their tea with us; take us in their afternoon walk, which they might do, as our hours are so reasonable, and yet get home without being out in the damp of the evening. The dews of a summer evening are what I would not expose anybody too. However, as they are so very desirous to have dear Emma dine with them, and as you will both be there, and Mr. Knightley too, to take care of her, I cannot wish to prevent it, provided the weather be what it ought, neither damp, nor cold, nor windy.\\\" Then turning to Mrs. Weston with a look of gentle reproach,-\\\"Ah, Miss Taylor, if you had not married, you would have staid at home with me.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, sir,\\\" cried Mr. Weston, \\\"as I took Miss Taylor away, it is incumbent on me to supply her place, if I can; and I will step to Mrs. Goddard in a moment, if you wish it.\\\"\\n\\nBut the idea of anything to be done in a moment was increasing, not lessening, Mr. Woodhouse's agitation. The ladies knew better how to allay it. Mr. Weston must be quiet, and everything deliberately arranged.\\n\\nWith this treatment, Mr. Woodhouse was soon composed enough for talking as usual. \\\"He should be happy to see Mrs. Goddard. He had a great regard for Mrs. Goddard; and Emma should write a line and invite her. James could take the note. But first of all, there must bean answer written to Mrs. Cole.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You will make my excuses, my dear, as civilly as possible. You will say that I am quite an invalid, and go nowhere, and therefore must decline their obliging invitation; beginning with my compliments, of course. But you will do everything right. I need not tell you what is to be done. We must remember to let James know that the carriage will be wanted on Tuesday. I shall have no fears for you with him. We have never been there above once since the new approach was made; but still I have no doubt that James will take you very safely: and when you get there, you must tell him at what time you would have him come for you again; and you had better name an early hour. You will not like staying late. You will get very tired when tea is over.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"But you would not wish me to come away before I am tired, papa?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh no, my love; but you will soon be tired. There will be a great many people talking at once. You will not like the noise.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But, my dear sir,\\\" cried Mr. Weston, \\\"if Emma comes away early, it will be breaking up the party.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And no great harm if it does,\\\" said Mr. Woodhouse. \\\"The sooner every party breaks up the better.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But you do not consider how it may appear to the Coles. Emma's going away directly after tea might be giving offence. They are good-natured people, and think little of their own claims; but still they must feel that anybody's hurrying away is no great compliment; and Miss Woodhouse's doing it would be more thought of than any other person's in the room. You would not wish to disappoint and mortify the Coles, I am sure, sir; friendly, good sort of people as ever lived, and who have been your neighbours these ten years.\\n\\n\\\"No, upon no account in the world. Mr. Weston, I am much obliged to you for reminding me. I should be extremely sorry to be giving them any pain. I know what worthy people they are. Perry tells me that Mr. Cole never touches malt liquor. You would not think it to look at him, but he is bilious-Mr. Cole is very bilious. No, I would not be the means of giving them any pain. My dear Emma, we must consider this. I am sure, rather than run the risk of hurting Mr. and Mrs. Cole, you would stay a little longer than you might wish. You will not regard being tired. You will be perfectly safe, you know, among your friends.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes, papa. I have no fears at all for myself; and I should have no scruples of staying as late as Mrs. Weston, but on your account. I am only afraid of your sitting up for me. I am not afraid of your not being exceedingly comfortable with Mrs. Goddard. She loves piquet, you know; but when she is gone home, I am afraid you will be sitting up by yourself, instead of going to bed at your usual time; and the idea of that would entirely destroy my comfort. You must promise me not to sit up.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"He did, on the condition of some promises on her side: such as that, if she came home cold, she would be sure to warm herself thoroughly; if hungry, that she would take something to eat; that her own maid should sit up for her; and that Serle and the butler should see that everything were safe in the house as usual.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Frank Churchill came back again; and if he kept his father's dinner waiting it was not known at Hartfield; for Mrs. Weston was too anxious for his being a favourite with Mr. Woodhouse, to betray any imperfection which could be concealed.\\n\\nHe came back, had had his haircut, and laughed at himself with a very good grace, but without seeming really at all ashamed of what he had done. He had no reason to wish his hair longer to conceal any confusion of face; no reason to wish the money unspent to improve his spirits. He was quite as undaunted and as lively as ever; and, after seeing him, Emma thus moralised to herself:-\\n\\n\\\"I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly. It depends upon the character of those who handle it. Mr. Knightley, he is not a trifling, silly young man. If he were, he would have done this differently. He would either have gloried in the achievement, or been ashamed of it. There would have been either the ostentation of a coxcomb, or the evasions of a mind too weak to defend its own vanities. No, I am perfectly sure that he is not trifling or silly.\\\"\\n\\nWith Tuesday came the agreeable prospect of seeing him again, and fora longer time than hitherto; of judging of his general manners, and, by inference, of the meaning of his manners towards herself; of guessing how soon it might be necessary for her to throw coldness into her air; and of fancying what the observations of all those might be, who were now seeing them together for the first time.\\n\\nShe meant to be very happy, in spite of the scene being laid at Mr. Cole's; and without being able to forget that among the failings of Mr. Elton, even in the days of his favour, none had disturbed her more than his propensity to dine with Mr. Cole.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Her father's comfort was amply secured, Mrs.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bates as well as Mrs. Goddard being able to come; and her last pleasing duty, before she left the house, was to pay her respects to them as they sat together after dinner; and while her father was fondly noticing the beauty of her dress, to make the two ladies all the amends in her power, by helping them to large slices of cake and full glasses of wine, for whatever unwilling self-denial his care of their constitution might have obliged them to practise during the meal. She had provided a plentiful dinner for them; she wished she could know that they had been allowed to eat it.\\n\\nShe followed another carriage to Mr. Cole's door; and was pleased to see that it was Mr. Knightley's; for Mr. Knightley keeping no horses, having little spare money and a great deal of health, activity, and independence, was too apt, in Emma's opinion, to get about as he could, and not use his carriage so often as became the owner of Donwell Abbey. She had an opportunity now of speaking her approbation while warm from her heart, for he stopped to hand her out.\\n\\n\\\"This is coming as you should do,\\\" said she; \\\"like a gentleman. I am quite glad to see you.\\\"\\n\\nHe thanked her, observing, \\\"How lucky that we should arrive at the same moment; for, if we had met first in the drawing-room, I doubt whether you would have discerned me to be more of a gentleman than usual. You might not have distinguished how I came by my look or manner.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes I should; I am sure I should. There is always a look of consciousness or bustle when people come in away which they know to be beneath them. You think you carry it off very well, I daresay; but with you it is a sort of bravado, an air of affected unconcern: I always observe it whenever I meet you under those circumstances. Now you have nothing to try for. You are not afraid of being supposed ashamed. You are not striving to look taller than anybody else. Now I shall really be very happy to walk into the same room with you.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Nonsensical girl!\\\" was his reply, but not at all in anger. Emma had as much reason to be satisfied with the rest of the party as with Mr. Knightley. She was received with a cordial respect which could not but please, and given all the consequence she could wish for. When the Westons arrived, the kindest looks of love, the strongest of admiration, were for her, from both husband and wife: the son approached her with a cheerful eagerness which marked her as his peculiar object, and at dinner she found him seated by her; and, as she firmly believed, not without some dexterity on his side.\\n\\nThe party was rather large, as it included one other family,-a proper unobjectionable country family, whom the Coles had the advantage of naming among their acquaintance,-and the male part of Mr. Cox's family, the lawyer of Highbury. The less worthy females were to come in the evening, with Miss Bates, Miss Fairfax, and Miss Smith; but already, at dinner, they were too numerous for any subject of conversation to be general; and, while politics and Mr. Elton were talked over, Emma could fairly surrender all her attention to the pleasantness of her neighbour. The first remote sound to which she felt herself obliged to attend was the name of Jane Fairfax. Mrs. Cole seemed to be relating something of her that was expected to be very interesting. She listened, and found it well worth listening to. That very dear part of Emma, her fancy, received an amusing supply. Mrs. Cole was telling that she had been calling on Miss Bates; and, as soon as she entered the room, had been struck by the sight of a piano-forte, a very elegant looking instrument; not a grand, but a large-sized square piano-forte: and the substance of the story, the end of all the dialogue which ensued of surprise, and enquiry, and congratulations on her side, and explanations on Miss Bates's, was, that this piano-forte had arrived from Broadwood's 10 the day before, to the great astonishment of both aunt and niece, entirely unexpected; that, at first, by Miss Bates's account, Jane herself was quite at a loss, quite bewildered to think who could possibly have ordered it; but now they were both perfectly satisfied that it could be from only one quarter,-of course it must be from Colonel Campbell.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"One can suppose nothing else,\\\" added Mrs. Cole; \\\"and I was only surprised that there could ever have been a doubt. But Jane, it seems, had a letter from them very lately, and not a word was said about it. She knows their ways best; but I should not consider their silence as any reason for their not meaning to make the present. They might choose to surprise her.\\\"\\n\\nMrs. Cole had many to agree with her; everybody who spoke on the subject was equally convinced that it must come from Colonel Campbell, and equally rejoiced that such a present had been made; and there were enough ready to speak to allow Emma to think her own way, and still listen to Mrs. Cole.\\n\\n\\\"I declare, I do not know when I have heard anything that has given me more satisfaction. It always has quite hurt me that Jane Fairfax, who plays so delightfully, should not have an instrument. It seemed quite a shame, especially considering how many houses there are where fine instruments are absolutely thrown away. This is like giving ourselves a slap, to be sure; and it was but yesterday I was telling Mr. Cole I really was ashamed to look at our new grand piano-forte in the drawing-room, while I do not know one note from another, and our little girls, who are but just beginning, perhaps may never make anything of it; and there is poor Jane Fairfax, who is mistress of music, has not anything of the nature of an instrument, not even the pitifulest old spinet q in the world, to amuse herself with. I was saying this to Mr. Cole but yesterday, and he quite agreed with me; only he is so particularly fond of music that he could not help indulging himself in the purchase, hoping that some of our good neighbours might be so obliging occasionally to put it to a better use than we can; and that really is the reason why the instrument was bought-or else I am sure we ought to be ashamed of it. We are in great hopes that Miss Woodhouse maybe prevailed with to try it this evening.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Miss Woodhouse made the proper acquiescence; and finding that nothing more was to be entrapped from any communication of Mrs. Cole's, turned to Frank Churchill.\\n\\n\\\"Why do you smile?\\\" said she.\\n\\n\\\"Nay, why do you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Me! I suppose I smile for pleasure at Colonel Campbell's being so rich and so liberal. It is a handsome present.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I rather wonder that it was never made before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Perhaps Miss Fairfax has never been staying here so long before.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Or that he did not give her the use of their own instrument, which must now be shut up in London, untouched by anybody.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"That is a grand piano-forte, and he might think it too large for Mrs. Bates's house.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You may say what you choose, but your countenance testifies that your thoughts on this subject are very much like mine.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not know. I rather believe you are giving me more credit for acuteness than I deserve. I smile because you smile, and shall probably suspect whatever I find you suspect; but at present I do not see what there is to question. If Colonel Campbell is not the person, who can be?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What do you say to Mrs. Dixon?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mrs. Dixon! very true, indeed. I had not thought of Mrs. Dixon. She must know, as well as her father, how acceptable an instrument would be; and perhaps the mode of it, the mystery, the surprise, is more like a young woman's scheme than an elderly man's. It is Mrs. Dixon, I daresay. I told you that your suspicions would guide mine.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"If so, you must extend your suspicions, and comprehend Mr. Dixon in them.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Dixon! very well. Yes, I immediately perceive that it must be the joint present of Mr. and Mrs. Dixon. We were speaking the other day, you know, of his being so warm an admirer of her performance.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes, and what you told me on that head confirmed an idea which I had entertained before. I do not mean to reflect upon the good intentions of either Mr. Dixon or Miss Fairfax; but I cannot help suspecting either that, after making his proposals to her friend, he had the misfortune to fall in love with her, or that he became conscious of a little attachment on her side. One might guess twenty things without guessing exactly the right; but I am sure there must be a particular cause for her choosing to come to Highbury, instead of going with the Campbells to Ireland. Here, she must be leading a life of privation and penance; there, it would have been all enjoyment. As to the pretence of trying her native air, I look upon that as a mere excuse. In the summer it might have passed; but what can anybody's native air do for them in the months of January, February, and March? Good fires and carriages would be much more to the purpose inmost cases of delicate health, and I daresay in hers. I do not require you to adopt all my suspicions, though you make so noble a profession of doing it, but I honestly tell you what they are.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And, upon my word, they have an air of great probability. Mr. Dixon's preference of her music to her friend's I can answer for being very decided.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And then, he saved her life. Did you ever hear of that? A water party; and by some accident she was falling overboard. He caught her.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He did. I was there-one of the party.\\\" \\\"Were you really? Well! But you observed nothing, of course, for it seems to be anew idea to you. If I had been there, I think I should have made some discoveries.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"I daresay you would; but I, simple I, saw nothing but the fact, that Miss Fairfax was nearly dashed from the vessel, and that Mr.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Dixon caught her-it was the work of a moment. And though the consequent shock and alarm were very great, and much more durable-indeed I believe it was half an hour before any of us were comfortable again-yet that was too general a sensation for anything of peculiar anxiety to be observable. I do not mean to say, however, that you might not have made discoveries.\\\"\\n\\nThe conversation was here interrupted. They were called onto share in the awkwardness of a rather long interval between the courses, and obliged to be as formal and as orderly as the others; but when the table was again safely covered, when every corner dish was placed exactly right, and occupation and ease were generally restored, Emma said,-\\n\\n\\\"The arrival of this piano-forte is decisive with me. I wanted to know a little more, and this tells me quite enough. Depend upon it, we shall soon hear that it is a present from Mr. and Mrs. Dixon.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And if the Dixons should absolutely deny all knowledge of it, we must conclude it to come from the Campbells.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No, I am sure it is not from the Campbells. Miss Fairfax knows\\n\\nit is not from the Campbells, or they would have been guessed at first. She would not have been puzzled, had she dared fix on them. I may not have convinced you, perhaps, but I am perfectly convinced myself that Mr. Dixon is a principal in the business.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Indeed you injure me if you suppose me unconvinced. Your reasonings carry my judgment along with them entirely. At first, while I supposed you satisfied that Colonel Campbell was the giver, I saw it only as paternal kindness, and thought it the most natural thing in the world. But when you mentioned Mrs. Dixon, I felt how much more probable that it should be the tribute of warm female friendship. And now I can see it in no other light than as an offering of love.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"There was no occasion to press the matter farther. The conviction seemed real; he looked as if he felt it. She said no more,-other subjects took their turn; and the rest of the dinner passed away; the dessert succeeded; the children came in, and were talked to and admired amid the usual rate of conversation; a few clever things said, a few downright silly, but by much the larger proportion neither the one nor the other-nothing worse than every-day remarks, dull repetitions, old news, and heavy jokes.\\n\\nThe ladies had not been long in the drawing-room, before the other ladies, in their different divisions, arrived. Emma watched the entrée of her own particular little friend; and if she could not exult in her dignity and grace, she could not only love the blooming sweetness and the artless manner, but could most heartily rejoice in that light, cheerful, unsentimental disposition which allowed her so many alleviations of pleasure in the midst of the pangs of disappointed affection. There she sat-and who would have guessed how many tears she had been lately shedding? To be in company, nicely dressed herself, and seeing others nicely dressed, to sit and smile and look pretty, and say nothing, was enough for the happiness of the present hour. Jane Fairfax did look and move superior; but Emma suspected she might have been glad to change feelings with Harriet,-very glad to have purchased the mortification of having loved-yes, of having loved even Mr. Elton in vain,-by the surrender of all the dangerous pleasure of knowing herself beloved by the husband of her friend.\\n\\nIn so large a party it was not necessary that Emma should approach her. She did not wish to speak of the piano-forte, she felt too much in the secret herself, to think the appearance of curiosity or interest fair, and therefore purposely kept at a distance; but by the others, the subject was almost immediately introduced, and she saw the blush of consciousness with which congratulations were received, the blush of guilt which accompanied the name of'my excellent friend Colonel Campbell.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Mrs. Weston, kind-hearted and musical, was particularly interested by the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her perseverance indwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish of saying as little about it as possible, which she plainly read in the fair heroine's countenance.\\n\\nThey were soon joined by some of the gentlemen; and the very first of the early was Frank Churchill. In he walked, the first and the handsomest; and after paying his compliments en passant to Miss Bates and her niece, made his way directly to the opposite side of the circle, where sat Miss Woodhouse; and till he could find a seat by her, would not sit at all. Emma divined what everybody present must bethinking. She was his object, and everybody must perceive it. She introduced him to her friend Miss Smith, and, at convenient moments afterwards, heard what each thought of the other. \\\"He had never seen so lovely a face, and was delighted with her naïveté.\\\" And she,-\\\"only to be sure it was paying him too great a compliment, but she did think there were some looks a little like Mr. Elton.\\\" Emma restrained her indignation, and only turned from her in silence.\\n\\nSmiles of intelligence passed between her and the gentleman on first glancing towards Miss Fairfax; but it was most prudent to avoid speech. He told her that he had been impatient to leave the dining-room-hated sitting long-was always the first to move when he could-that his father, Mr. Knightley, Mr. Cox, and Mr. Cole, were left very busy over parish business-that as long as he had staid, however, it had been pleasant enough, as he found them in general a set of gentlemen-like, sensible men; and spoke so handsomely of Highbury altogether-thought it so abundant in agreeable families-that Emma began to feel she had been used to despise the place rather too much. She questioned him as to the society in Yorkshire, the extent of the neighbourhood about Enscombe, and the sort; and could make out from his answers that, as far as Enscombe was concerned, there was very little going on; that their visitings were among a range of great families, none very near; and that even when days were fixed, and invitations accepted, it was an even chance that Mrs. Churchill were not in health or spirits forgoing; that they made a point of visiting no fresh person; and that, though he had his separate engagements, it was not without difficulty without considerable address at times, that he could getaway, or introduce an acquaintance fora night.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"She saw that Enscombe could not satisfy, and that Highbury, taken in its best, might reasonably please a young man who had more retirement at home than he liked. His importance at Enscombe was very evident. He did not boast, but it naturally betrayed itself, that he had persuaded his aunt where his uncle could do nothing, and on her laughing and noticing it, he owned that he believed (excepting one or two points) he could with time persuade her to anything. One of those points on which his influence failed he then mentioned. He had wanted very much to go abroad-had been very eager indeed to be allowed to travel-but she would not hear of it. This had happened the year before. Now, he said, he was beginning to have no longer the same wish.\\n\\nThe unpersuadable point, which he did not mention, Emma guessed to be good behaviour to his father.\\n\\n\\\"I have made a most wretched discovery,\\\" said he, after a short pause. \\\"I have been here a week to-morrow-half my time. I never knew days fly so fast. A week to-morrow!-and I have hardly begun to enjoy myself. But just got acquainted with Mrs. Weston, and others. I hate the recollection.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Perhaps you may now begin to regret that you spent one whole day, out of so few, in having your haircut.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No,\\\" said he, smiling, \\\"that is no subject of regret at all. I have no pleasure in seeing my friends, unless I can believe myself fit to be seen.\\\"\\n\\nThe rest of the gentlemen being now in the room, Emma found herself obliged to turn from him fora few minutes, and listen to Mr. Cole. When Mr. Cole had moved away, and her attention could be restored as before, she saw Frank Churchill looking intently across the room at Miss Fairfax, who was sitting exactly opposite.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"What is the matter?\\\" said she.\\n\\nHe started. \\\"Thank you for rousing me,\\\" he replied. \\\"I believe I have been very rude; but really Miss Fairfax has done her hair in so odd away-so very odd away-that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw anything so outrée! r Those curls! This must be a fancy of her own. I see nobody else looking like her. I must go and ask her whether it is an Irish fashion. Shall I?-Yes, I will-I declare I will-and you shall see how she takes it;-whether she colours.\\\"\\n\\nHe was gone immediately; and Emma soon saw him standing before Miss Fairfax, and talking to her; but as to its effect on the young lady, as he had improvidently placed himself exactly between them, exactly in front of Miss Fairfax, she could absolutely distinguish nothing.\\n\\nBefore he could return to his chair, it was taken by Mrs. Weston.\\n\\n\\\"This is the luxury of a large party,\\\" said she: \\\"one can get near everybody, and say everything. My dear Emma, I am longing to talk to you. I have been making discoveries and forming plans, just like yourself, and I must tell them while the idea is fresh. Do you know how Miss Bates and her niece came here?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"How!-They were invited, were not they?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh yes-but how they were conveyed hither?-the manner of their coming?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They walked, I conclude. How else could they come?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very true. Well, a little while ago it occurred tome how very sad it would be to have Jane Fairfax walking home again, late at night, and cold as the nights are now. And as I looked at her, though I never saw her appear to more advantage, it struck me that she was heated, and would therefore be particularly liable to take cold. Poor girl! I could not bear the idea of it; so, as soon as Mr. Weston came into the room, and I could get at him, I spoke to him about the carriage. You may guess how readily he came into my wishes; and having his approbation, I made my way directly to Miss Bates, to assure her that the carriage would beat her service before it took us home; for I thought it would be making her comfortable at once. Good soul! she was as grateful as possible, you maybe sure. \\\"Nobody was ever so fortunate as herself!\\\"-but with many, many thanks,-\\\"there was no occasion to trouble us, for Mr. Knightley's carriage had brought, and was to take them home again. ' I was quite surprised;-very glad, I am sure; but really quite surprised. Such a very kind attention-and so thoughtful an attention!-the sort of thing that so few men would think of. And, in short, from knowing his usual ways, I am very much inclined to think that it was for their accommodation the carriage was used at all. I do suspect he would not have had a pair of horses for himself, and that it was only as an excuse for assisting them.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Very likely,\\\" said Emma, \\\"nothing more likely. I know no man more likely than Mr. Knightley to do the sort of thing-to do anything really good-natured, useful, considerate, or benevolent. He is not a gallant man, but he is a very humane one; and this, considering Jane Fairfax's ill health, would appear a case of humanity to him;-and for an act of unostentatious kindness, there is nobody whom I would fix on more than on Mr. Knightley. I know he had horses to-day-for we arrived together; and I laughed at him about it, but he said not a word that could betray.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well,\\\" said Mrs. Weston, smiling, \\\"you give him credit for more simple, disinterested benevolence in this instance than I do; for while Miss Bates was speaking, a suspicion darted into my head, and I have never been able to get it out again. The more I think of it, the more probable it appears. In short, I have made a match between Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax. Seethe consequence of keeping you company!-What do you say to it?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax!\\\" exclaimed Emma. \\\"Dear Mrs. Weston, how could you think of such a thing?-Mr. Knightley!-Mr. Knightley must not marry!-You would not have little Henry cutout from Donwell?-Oh no, no,-Henry must have Donwell. I cannot at all consent to Mr. Knightley's marrying; and I am sure it is not at all likely. I am amazed that you should think of such a thing.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear Emma, I have told you what led me to think of it. I do not want the match-I do not want to injure dear little Henry-but the idea has been given me by circumstances; and if Mr. Knightley really wished to marry, you would not have him refrain on Henry's account, a boy of six years old, who knows nothing of the matter?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Yes, I would. I could not bear to have Henry supplanted. Mr. Knightley marry! No, I have never had such an idea, and I cannot adopt it now. And Jane Fairfax, too, of all women!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nay, she has always been a first favourite with him, as you very well know.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But the imprudence of such a match!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am not speaking of its prudence-merely its probability.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I see no probability in it, unless you have any better foundation than what you mention. His good-nature, his humanity, as I tell you, would be quite enough to account for the horses. He has a great regard for the Bateses, you know, independent of Jane Fairfax-and is always glad to show them attention. My dear Mrs. Weston, do not take to match-making. You do it very ill. Jane Fairfax mistress of the Abbey! Oh no, no;-every feeling revolts. For his own sake, I would not have him do so mad a thing.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Imprudent, if you please-but not mad. Excepting inequality of fortune, and perhaps a little disparity of age, I can see nothing unsuitable.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"But Mr. Knightley does not want to marry. I am sure he has not the least idea of it. Do not put it into his head. Why should he marry? He is as happy as possible by himself; with his farm, and his sheep, and his library, and all the parish to manage; and he is extremely fond of his brother's children. He has no occasion to marry, either to fill up his time or his heart.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"My dear Emma, as long as he thinks so, it is so; but if he really loves Jane Fairfax-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Nonsense! He does not care about Jane Fairfax. In the way of love, I am sure he does not. He would do any good to her, or her family; but-\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Well,\\\" said Mrs. Weston, laughing, \\\"perhaps the greatest good he could do them would be to give Jane such a respectable home.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"If it would be good to her, I am sure it would be evil to himself-a very shameful and degrading connection. How would he bear to have Miss Bates belonging to him? To have her haunting the Abbey, and thanking him all daylong for his great kindness in marrying Jane?-\\\"So very kind and obliging! But he always had been such a very kind neighbour!\\\" And then fly off, through half a sentence, to her mother's old petticoat.\\\"Not that it was such a very old petticoat either-for still it would last a great while,-and, indeed, she must thankfully say that their petticoats were all very strong. '\\\"\\n\\n\\\"For shame, Emma! Do not mimic her. You divert me against my conscience. And, upon my word, I do not think Mr. Knightley would be much disturbed by Miss Bates. Little things do not irritate him. She might talk on; and if he wanted to say anything himself, he would only talk louder, and drown her voice. But the question is not, whether it would be a bad connection for him, but whether he wishes it; and I think he does. I have heard him speak, and so must you, so very highly of Jane Fairfax! The interest he takes in her-his anxiety about her health-his concern that she should have no happier prospect! I have heard him express himself so warmly on those points! Such an admirer of her performance on the piano-forte, and of her voice! I have heard him say, that he could listen to her forever. Oh, and I had almost forgotten one idea that occurred tome-this piano-forte that has been sent her by somebody-though we have all been so well satisfied to consider it a present from the Campbells, may it not be from Mr. Knightley? I cannot help suspecting him. I think he is just the person to do it, even without being in love.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Then it can be no argument to prove that he is in love. But I do not think it is at all a likely thing for him to do. Mr. Knightley does nothing mysteriously.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have heard him lamenting her having no instrument repeatedly; oftener than I should suppose such a circumstance would, in the common course of things, occur to him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very well; if he had intended to give her one, he would have told her so.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"There might be scruples of delicacy, my dear Emma. I have a very strong notion that it comes from him. I am sure he was particularly silent when Mrs. Cole told us of it at dinner.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"You take up an idea, Mrs. Weston, and runaway with it, as you have many a time reproached me with doing. I see no sign of attachment. I believe nothing of the piano-forte, and proof only shall convince me that Mr. Knightley has any thought of marrying Jane Fairfax.\\\"\\n\\nThey combated the point sometime longer in the same way, Emma rather gaining ground over the mind of her friend; for Mrs. Weston was the most used of the two to yield; till a little bustle in the room showed them that tea was over, and the instrument in preparation; and at the same moment Mr. Cole approaching to entreat Miss Woodhouse would do them the honour of trying it. Frank Churchill, of whom, in the eagerness of her conversation with Mrs. Weston, she had been seeing nothing, except that he had found a seat by Miss Fairfax, followed Mr. Cole, to add his very pressing entreaties; and as, in every respect, it suited Emma best to lead, she gave a very proper compliance.\\n\\nShe knew the limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than she could perform with credit; she wanted neither taste nor spirit in the little things which are generally acceptable, and could accompany her own voice well. One accompaniment to her song took her agreeably by surprise-a second, slightly but correctly taken by Frank Churchill. Her pardon was duly begged at the close of the song, and everything usual followed. He was accused of having a delightful voice, and a perfect knowledge of music; which was properly denied; and that he knew nothing of the matter, and had no voice at all, roundly asserted. They sang together once more; and Emma would then resign her place to Miss Fairfax, whose performance, both vocal and instrumental, she never could attempt to conceal from herself, was infinitely superior to her own.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"With mixed feelings, she seated herself at a little distance from the numbers round the instrument, to listen. Frank Churchill sang again. They had sung together once or twice, it appeared, at Weymouth. But the sight of Mr. Knightley among the most attentive soon drew away half Emma's mind; and she fell into a train of thinking on the subject of Mrs. Weston's suspicions, to which the sweet sounds of the united voices gave only momentary interruptions. Her objections to Mr. Knightley's marrying did not in the least subside. She could see nothing but evil in it. It would be a great disappointment to Mr. John Knightley, consequently to Isabella. Areal injury to the children-a most mortifying change, and material loss to them all-a very great deduction from her father's daily comfort-and, as to herself, she could not at all endure the idea of Jane Fairfax at Donwell Abbey. A Mrs. Knightley for them all to give way to! No-Mr. Knightley must never marry. Little Henry must remain the heir of Donwell.\\n\\nPresently Mr. Knightley looked back, and came and sat down by her. They talked at first only of the performance. His admiration was certainly very warm; yet she thought, but for Mrs. Weston, it would not have struck her. As a sort of touchstone, however, she began to speak of his kindness in conveying the aunt and niece; and though his answer was in the spirit of cutting the matter short, she believed it to indicate only his disinclination to dwell on any kindness of his own.\\n\\n\\\"I often feel concerned,\\\" said she, \\\"that I dare not make our carriage more useful on such occasions. It is not that I am without the wish; but you know how impossible my father would deem it that James should put to for such a purpose.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Quite out of the question, quite out of the question,\\\" he replied; \\\"but you must often wish it, I am sure.\\\" And he smiled with such seeming pleasure at the conviction, that she must proceed another step.\\n\\n\\\"This present from the Campbells,\\\" said she-\\\"this piano-forte is very kindly given.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Yes,\\\" he replied, and without the smallest apparent embarrassment. \\\"But they would have done better had they given her notice of it. Surprises are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable. I should have expected better judgment in Colonel Campbell.\\\"\\n\\nFrom that moment, Emma could have taken her oath that Mr. Knightley had had no concern in giving the instrument. But whether he were entirely free from peculiar attachment-whether there were no actual preference-remained a little longer doubtful. Towards the end of Jane's second song, her voice grew thick.\\n\\n\\\"That will do,\\\" said he, when it was finished, thinking aloud, \\\"you have sung quite enough for one evening; now be quiet.\\\"\\n\\nAnother song, however, was soon begged for. \\\"One more;-they would not fatigue Miss Fairfax on any account, and would only ask for one more.\\\" And Frank Churchill was heard to say, \\\"I think you could manage this without effort; the first part is so very trifling. The strength of the song falls on the second.\\\"\\n\\nMr. Knightley grew angry.\\n\\n\\\"That fellow,\\\" said he, indignantly, \\\"thinks of nothing but showing off his own voice. Thus must not be.\\\" And touching Miss Bates, who at that moment passed near,-\\\"Miss Bates, are you mad, to let your niece sing herself hoarse in this manner? Go, and interfere. They have no mercy on her.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Proceed\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Miss Bates, in her real anxiety for Jane, could hardly stay even to be grateful, before she stepped forward and put an end to all further singing. Here ceased the concert part of the evening, for Miss Woodbouse and Miss Fairfax were the only young lady performers; but soon (within five minutes) the proposal of dancing-originating nobody exactly knew where-was so effectually promoted by Mr. and Mrs. Cole, that everything was rapidly clearing away, to give proper space. Mrs. Weston, capital in her country-dances, was seated, and beginning an irresistible waltz; and Frank Churchill, coming up with most becoming gallantry to Emma, had secured her hand, and led her up to the top.\\n\\nWhile waiting till the other young people could pair themselves off, Emma found time, in spite of the compliments she was receiving on her voice and her taste, to look about, and see what became of Mr. Knightley. This would be atrial. He was no dancer in general. If he were to be very alert in engaging Jane Fairfax now, it might augur something. There was no immediate appearance. No; he was talking to Mrs. Cole-he was looking on unconcerned; Jane was asked by somebody else, and he was still talking to Mrs. Cole.\\n\\nEmma had no longer an alarm for Henry: his interest was yet safe; and she led off the dance with genuine spirit and enjoyment. Not more than five couple could be mustered; but the rarity and the suddenness of it made it very delightful, and she found herself well matched in a partner. They were a couple worth looking at.\\n\\nTwo dances, unfortunately, were all that could be allowed. It was growing late, and Miss Bates became anxious to get home, on her mother's account. After some attempts, therefore, to be permitted to begin again, they were obliged to thank Mrs. Weston, look sorrowful, and have done.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Perhaps it is as well,\\\" said Frank Churchill, as he attended Emma to her carriage. \\\"I must have asked Miss Fairfax, and her languid dancing would not have agreed with me, after yours.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Emma did not repent her condescension in going to the Coles. The visit afforded her many pleasant recollections the next day; and all that she might be supposed to have lost on the side of dignified seclusion must be amply repaid in the splendour of popularity. She must have delighted the Coles-worthy people, who deserved to be made happy!-and left a name behind her that would not soon die away.\\n\\nPerfect happiness, even in memory, is not common; and there were two points on which she was not quite easy. She doubted whether she had not transgressed the duty of woman by woman, in betraying her suspicions of Jane Fairfax's feelings to Frank Churchill. It was hardly right; but it had been so strong an idea, that it would escape her, and his submission to all that she told was a compliment to her penetration which made it difficult for her to be quite certain that she ought to have held her tongue.\\n\\nThe other circumstance of regret related also to Jane Fairfax, and there she had no doubt. She did unfeignedly and unequivocally regret the inferiority of her own playing and singing. She did most heartily grieve over the idleness of her childhood; and sat down and practised vigorously an hour and a half.\\n\\nShe was then interrupted by Harriet's coming in; and if Harriet's praise could have satisfied her, she might soon have been comforted.\\n\\n\\\"Oh, if I could but play as well as you and Miss Fairfax!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Don't class us together, Harriet. My playing is no more like hers than a lamp is like sunshine.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"O dear, I think you play the best of the two. I think you play quite as well as she does. I am sure I had much rather hear you. Everybody last night said how well you played.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Those who knew anything about it must have felt the difference. The truth is, Harriet, that my playing is just good enough to be praised, but Jane Fairfax's is much beyond it.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, I always shall think that you play quite as well as she does, or that if there is any difference nobody would ever find it out. Mr. Cole said how much taste you had, and Mr. Frank Churchill talked a great deal about your taste, and that he valued taste much more than execution.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ah, but Jane Fairfax has them both, Harriet.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Are you sure? I saw she had execution, but I did not know she had any taste. Nobody talked about it; and I hate Italian singing: there is no understanding a word of it. Besides, if she does play so very well, you know, it is no more than she is obliged to do, because she will have to teach. The Coxes were wondering last night whether she would get into any great family. How do you think the Coxes looked?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Just as they always do,-very vulgar.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They told me something,\\\" said Harriet, rather hesitatingly, \\\"but it is nothing of any consequence.\\\"\\n\\nEmma was obliged to ask what they had told her, though fearful of its producing Mr. Elton.\\n\\n\\\"They told me that Mr. Martin dined with them last Saturday.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"He came to their father upon some business, and he asked him to stay dinner.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Oh!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"They talked a great deal about him, especially Anne Cox. I do not know what she meant, but she asked me if I thought I should go and stay there again next summer.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"She meant to be impertinently curious, just as such an Anne Cox should be.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"She said he was very agreeable the day he dined there. He sat by her at dinner. Miss Nash thinks either of the Coxes would be very glad to marry him.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very likely; I think they are, without exception, the most vulgar girls in Highbury.\\\"\\n\\nHarriet had business at Ford's. Emma thought it most prudent to go with her. Another accidental meeting with the Martins was possible, and, in her present state, would be dangerous.\\n\\nHarriet, tempted by everything, and swayed by half a word, was always very long at a purchase; and while she was still hanging over muslins, and changing her mind, Emma went to the door for amusement. Much could not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;-Mr. Perry walking hastily by; Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the office door; Mr. Cole's carriage-horses returning from exercise; or astray letter-boy on an obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she knew she had no reason to complain, and was amused enough: quite enough still to stand at the door. A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.\\n\\nShe looked down the Randalls road. The scene enlarged; two persons appeared; Mrs. Weston and her son-in-law. They were walking into Highbury;-to Hartfield of course: they were stopping, however, in the first place at Mrs. Bates's, whose house was a little nearer Randalls than Ford's, and had all but knocked when Emma caught their eye. Immediately they crossed the road and came forward to her; and the agreeableness of yesterday's engagement seemed to give fresh pleasure to the present meeting. Mrs. Weston informed her that she was going to call on the Bateses, in order to hear the new instrument.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Keep going\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"For my companion tells me,\\\" said she, \\\"that I absolutely promised Miss Bates last night that I would come this morning. I was not aware of it myself. I did not know that I had fixed a day; but as he says I did, I am going now.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"And while Mrs. Weston pays her visit, I maybe allowed, I hope,\\\" said Frank Churchill, \\\"to join your party and wait for her at Hartfield, if you are going home.\\\"\\n\\nMrs. Weston was disappointed.\\n\\n\\\"I thought you meant to go with me. They would be very much pleased.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Me! I should be quite in the way. But, perhaps, I maybe equally in the way here. Miss Woodhouse looks as if she did not want me. My aunt always sends me off when she is shopping. She says I fidget her to death; Miss Woodhouse looks as if she could almost say the same. What am Ito do?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I am hereon no business of my own,\\\" said Emma, \\\"I am only waiting for my friend. She will probably have soon done, and then we shall go home. But you had better go with Mrs. Weston and hear the instrument.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Well, if you advise it. But (with a smile) if Colonel Campbell should have employed a careless friend, and if it should prove to have an indifferent tone, what shall I say? I shall be no support to Mrs. Weston. She might do very well by herself. A disagreeable truth would be palatable through her lips, but I am the wretchedest being in the world at a civil falsehood.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I do not believe any such thing,\\\" replied Emma; \\\"I am persuaded that you can be as insincere as your neighbours, when it is necessary; but there is no reason to suppose the instrument is indifferent. Quite otherwise, indeed, if I understood Miss Fairfax's opinion last night.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"Do come with me,\\\" said Mrs. Weston, \\\"if it be not very disagreeable to you. It need not detain us long. We will go to Hartfield afterwards. We will follow them to Hartfield. I really wish you to call with me: it will be felt so great an attention-and I always thought you meant it.\\\"\\n\\nHe could say no more; and, with the hope of Hartfield to reward him, returned with Mrs. Weston to Mrs. Bates's door. Emma watched them in, and then joined Harriet at the interesting counter, trying, with all the force of her own mind, to convince her that, if she wanted plain muslin, it was of no use to look at figured; and that a blue riband, be it ever so beautiful, would still never match her yellow pattern. At last it was all settled, even to the destination of the parcel.\\n\\n\\\"Should I send it to Mrs. Goddard's, ma'am?\\\" asked Mrs. Ford.-\\\"Yes-no-yes, to Mrs. Goddard's. Only my pattern gown is at Hartfield. No, you shall send it to Hartfield, if you please. But then, Mrs. Goddard will want to see it. And I could take the pattern gown home any day. But I shall want the riband directly; so it had better go to Hartfield-at least the riband. You could make it into two parcels, Mrs. Ford, could not you?\\\"\\n\\n\\\"It is not worthwhile, Harriet, to give Mrs. Ford the trouble of two parcels.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No more it is.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"No trouble in the world, ma'am,\\\" said the obliging Mrs. Ford.\\n\\n\\\"Oh, but indeed I would much rather have it only in one. Then, if you please, you shall send it all to Mrs. Goddard's-I do not know-no, I think, Miss Woodhouse, I may just as well have it sent to Hartfield, and take it home with meat night. What do you advise?\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Continue\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"\\\"That you do not give another half-second to the subject. To Hartfield, if you please, Mrs. Ford.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Ay, that will be much best,\\\" said Harriet, quite satisfied; \\\"I should not at all like to have it sent to Mrs. Goddard's.\\\"\\n\\nVoices approached the shop, or rather, one voice and two ladies; Mrs. Weston and Miss Bates met them at the door.\\n\\n\\\"My dear Miss Woodhouse,\\\" said the latter, \\\"I am just run across to entreat the favour of you to come and sit down with us a little while, and give us your opinion of our new instrument-you and Miss Smith. How do you do, Miss Smith?-Very well, I thank you.-And I begged Mrs. Weston to come with me, that I might be sure of succeeding.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I hope Mrs. Bates and Miss Fairfax are-\\\"\\n\\n\\\"Very well, I am much obliged to you. My mother is delightfully well; and Jane caught no cold last night. How is Mr. Woodhouse? I am so glad to hear such a good account. Mrs. Weston told me you were here.-Oh, then, said I, I must run across; I am sure Miss Woodhouse will allow me just to run across and entreat her to come in: my mother will be so very happy to see her; and now we are such a nice party, she cannot refuse. \\\"Ay, pray do,\\\" said Mr. Frank Churchill, \\\"Miss Woodhouse's opinion of the instrument will be worth having. \\\"-But, said I, I shall be more sure of succeeding if one of you will go with me.-\\\"Oh, \\\"said he,\\\"wait half a minute, till I have finished my job: \\\"for, would you believe it, Miss Woodhouse, there he is, in the most obliging manner in the world, fastening in the rivet of my mother's spectacles. The rivet came out, you know, this morning; so very obliging!-For my mother had no use of her spectacles-could not put them on. And, by the by, everybody ought to have two pair of spectacles; they should indeed. Jane said so. I meant to take them over to John Saunders the first thing I did, but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing, then another, there is no saying what, you know. Atone time, Patty came to say she thought the kitchen chimney wanted sweeping. Oh, said I, Patty, do not come with your bad news tome. Here is the rivet of your mistress's spectacles out. Then the baked apples came home; s Mrs. Wallis sent them by her boy; they are extremely civil and obliging to us, the Wallises, always. I have heard some people say that Mrs. Wallis can be uncivil and give a very rude answer; but we have never known anything but the greatest attention from them. And it cannot be for the value of our custom now, for what is our consumption of bread, you know? only three of us. Besides, dear Jane, at present,-and she really eats nothing,-makes such a shocking breakfast, you would be quite frightened if you saw it. I dare not let my mother know how little she eats; so I say one thing, and then I say another, and it passes off. But about the middle of the day she gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes so well as these baked apples, and they are extremely wholesome; for I took the opportunity the other day of asking Mr. Perry; I happened to meet him in the street. Not that I had any doubt before. I have so often heard Mr. Woodhouse recommend a baked apple. I believe it is the only way that Mr. Woodhouse thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome. We have apple dumplings, however, very often. Patty makes an excellent apple-dumpling. Well, Mrs. Weston, you have prevailed, I hope, and these ladies will oblige us.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"Emma would be'very happy to wait on Mrs.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Bates, & c.,\\\" and they did at last move out of the shop, with no further delay from Miss Bates than,-\\n\\n\\\"How do you do, Mrs. Ford? I beg your pardon; I did not see you before. I hear you have a charming collection of new ribands from town. Jane came back delighted yesterday. Thank ye, the gloves do\\n\\nvery well-only a little too large about the wrist; but Jane is taking them in.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What was I talking of?\\\" said she, beginning again when they were all in the street.\\n\\nEmma wondered on what, of all the medley, she would fix. \\\" I declare I cannot recollect what I was talking of. Oh, my mother's spectacles. So very obliging of Mr. Frank Churchill!\\\"Oh! \\\"said he,\\\"I do think I can fasten the rivet; I like a job of this kind excessively. \\\"Which, you know, showed him to be so very-Indeed I must say that, much as I had heard of him before, and much as I had expected, he very far exceeds anything--I do congratulate you, Mrs. Weston, most warmly. He seems everything the fondest parent could--\\\"Oh! \\\"said he,\\\"I can fasten the rivet. I like a job of that sort excessively. \\\"I never shall forget his manner. And when I brought out the baked apples from the closet, and hoped our friends would be so very obliging as to take some,\\\"Oh! \\\"said he directly,\\\"there is nothing in the way of fruit half so good, and these are the finest looking home-baked apples I ever saw in my life. \\\"That, you know, was so very--And I am sure, by his manner, it was no compliment. Indeed they are very delightful apples, and Mrs. Wallis does them full justice, only we do not have them baked more than twice, and Mr. Woodhouse made us promise to have them done three times; but Miss Woodhouse will be so good as not to mention it. The apples themselves are the very finest sort for baking, beyond a doubt; all from Donwell-some of Mr. Knightley's most liberal supply. He sends us a sack every year; and certainly there never was such a keeping apple anywhere as one of his trees-I believe there is two of them. My mother says the orchard was always famous in her younger days. But I was really quite shocked the other day; for Mr. Knightley called one morning, and Jane was eating these apples, and we talked about them, and said how much she enjoyed them, and he asked whether we were not got to the end of our stock. \\\"I am sure you must be,\\\" said he, \\\"and I will send you another supply; for I have a great many more than I can ever use. William Larkins let me keep a larger quantity than usual this year. I will send you some more, before they get good for nothing.\\\" So I begged he would not-for really as to ours being gone, I could not absolutely say that we had a great many left-it was but half a dozen indeed; but they should be all kept for Jane; and I could not at all bear that he should be sending us more, so liberal as he had been already; and Jane said the same. And when he was gone, she almost quarrelled with me: no I should not say quarrelled, for we never had a quarrel in our lives; but she was quite distressed that I had owned the apples were so nearly gone; she wished I had made him believe we had a great many left. Oh, said I, my dear, I did say as much as I could. However, the very same evening William Larkins came over with a large basket of apples, the same sort of apples, a bushel at least, and I was very much obliged, and went down and spoke to William Larkins, and said everything, as you may suppose. William Larkins is such an old acquaintance! I am always glad to see him. But, however, I found afterwards from Patty, that William said it was all the apples of that sort his master had; he had brought them all-and now his master had not one left to bake or boil. William did not seem to mind it himself, he was so pleased to think his master had sold so many; for William, you know, thinks more of his master's profit than anything; but Mrs. Hodges, he said, was quite displeased at their being all sent away. She could not bear that her master should not be able to have another apple-tart this spring. He told Patty this, but bid her not mind it, and be sure not to say anything to us about it, for Mrs. Hodges would be cross sometimes, and as long as so many sacks were sold, it did not signify who ate the remainder. And so Patty told me, and I was excessively shocked, indeed! I would not have Mr. Knightley know anything about it for the world! He would be so very-I wanted to keep it from Jane's knowledge; but, unluckily, I had mentioned it before I was aware.\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Next\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"Miss Bates had just done as Patty opened the door; and her visiters walked upstairs without having any regular narration to attend to, pursued only by the sounds of her desultory goodwill.\\n\\n\\\"Pray take care, Mrs. Weston, there is a step at the turning. Pray take care, Miss Woodhouse, ours is rather a dark staircase-rather darker and narrower than one could wish. Miss Smith, pray take care. Miss Woodhouse, I am quite concerned, I am sure you hit your foot. Miss Smith, the step at the turning.\\\"\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"human\",\n \"value\": \"> Start Chapter\"\n },\n {\n \"from\": \"gpt\",\n \"value\": \"The appearance of the little sitting-room as they entered was tranquillity itself; Mrs. Bates, deprived of her usual employment, slumbering on one side of the fire, Frank Churchill, at a table near her, most deedily t occupied about her spectacles, and Jane Fairfax, standing with her back to them, intent on her piano-forte.\\n\\nBusy as he was, however, the young man was yet able to show a most happy countenance on seeing Emma again.\\n\\n\\\"This is a pleasure,\\\" said he, in rather a low voice, \\\"coming at least ten minutes earlier than I had calculated. You find me trying to be useful; tell me if you think I shall succeed.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"What!\\\" said Mrs. Weston, \\\"have not you finished it yet? you would not earn a very good livelihood as a working silversmith at this rate.\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I have not been working uninterruptedly,\\\" he replied, \\\"I have been assisting Miss Fairfax in trying to make her instrument stand steadily; it was not quite firm; an unevenness in the floor, I believe. You see we have been wedging one leg with paper. This was very kind of you to be persuaded to come. I was almost afraid you would be hurrying home.\\\"\\n\\nHe contrived that she should be seated by him; and was sufficiently employed in looking out the best baked apple for her, and trying to make her help or advise him in his work, till Jane Fairfax was quite ready to sit down to the piano-forte again. That she was not immediately ready, Emma did suspect to arise from the state of her nerves; she had not yet possessed the instrument long enough to touch it without emotion; she must reason herself into the power of performance; and Emma could not but pity such feelings, whatever their origin, and could not but resolve never to expose them to her neighbour again.\"\n }\n]","isConversational":true}}}],"truncated":false,"partial":false},"paginationData":{"pageIndex":2,"numItemsPerPage":100,"numTotalItems":2863,"offset":200,"length":100}},"jwt":"eyJhbGciOiJFZERTQSJ9.eyJyZWFkIjp0cnVlLCJwZXJtaXNzaW9ucyI6eyJyZXBvLmNvbnRlbnQucmVhZCI6dHJ1ZX0sImlhdCI6MTc3NjczNDEyNCwic3ViIjoiL2RhdGFzZXRzL0RlbHRhLVZlY3Rvci9Pcmlvbi1QcmF4aXMtQ28tV3JpdGVyIiwiZXhwIjoxNzc2NzM3NzI0LCJpc3MiOiJodHRwczovL2h1Z2dpbmdmYWNlLmNvIn0.hfabBmsZ-s8vekxdRD1wK_2XOA5IEj95ofh0WJ47UQKStO_kbSB0Q0yKHarczInZ27QQcWLwJXJ8kldl_FGwCg","displayUrls":true,"splitSizeSummaries":[{"config":"default","split":"train","numRows":2863,"numBytesParquet":103776793}]},"discussionsStats":{"closed":1,"open":0,"total":1},"fullWidth":true,"hasGatedAccess":true,"hasFullAccess":true,"isEmbedded":false,"savedQueries":{"community":[],"user":[]}}">
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"from": "system",
"value": "Move the story forward as the writer's assistant.\nTags: science, physics, quantum gravity, theoretical, complex concepts\nAuthor: Lee Smolin\nTitle: Three Roads to Quantum Gravity\nChapter: 15"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Move the narrative forward in collaboration with the writer.\nTags: science, physics, quantum gravity, theoretical, complex concepts\nAuthor: Lee Smolin\nTitle: Three Roads to Quantum Gravity\nChapter: 17"
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{
"from": "human",
"value": "Since then Gambini has been ... |
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{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help the writer, keep the story going.\nTags: science, physics, quantum gravity, theoretical, complex concepts\nAuthor: Lee Smolin\nTitle: Three Roads to Quantum Gravity\nChapter: 20"
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"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
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"from": "gpt",
"val... |
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{
"from": "system",
"value": "Advance the storyline as the writer's tale partner.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 11"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
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{
"from": "gpt",
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Move the story forward as the writer's assistant.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 12"
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"from": "human",
"value": "A dozen paces away stood a clerk of the harb... |
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{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help the author by continuing the tale.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 13"
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"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
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{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"Ju... |
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{
"from": "system",
"value": "Co-writing with the writer, continue the narrative.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 15"
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{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
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"from": "gpt",
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Keep the narrative going for the author.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 18"
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"from": "human",
"value": "The spirits fed him life."
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"from": "gpt"... |
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{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extende the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 20"
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"from": "human",
"value": "Once, long ago now, she had found herself ... |
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"from": "system",
"value": "Helping with the plot, keep the story going.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 21"
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"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
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"from": "gpt",
... |
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"from": "system",
"value": "Help to continue the narrative for the writer.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 25"
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{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"va... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Serve as the author's scribe, continue the tale.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 27"
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{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
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{
"from": "gpt",
"valu... |
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{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the narrative as the plot partner.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 29"
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"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
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"from": "gpt",
... |
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"from": "system",
"value": "Support the writer, proceed with the storyline.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 32"
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"from": "human",
"value": "Beside Precious, Faint muttered something unde... |
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{
"from": "system",
"value": "Serve as the author's scribe, continue the tale.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 33"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
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{
"from": "gpt",
"valu... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the writer's helper, keep the story going.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 34"
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"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
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"from": "gpt",
"valu... |
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"from": "system",
"value": "Assist the writer by carrying on with the story.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 35"
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{
"from": "human",
"value": "\"He won't die, \"the ex-sergeant replied.\""... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help the author by continuing the tale.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 36"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Recc... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist the writer by carrying on with the story.\nTags: epic fantasy, themes of death, redemption, introspection, city setting\nAuthor: Steven Erikson\nTitle: Toll the Hounds\nChapter: 36"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Advance the storyline as the writer's tale partner.\nTags: fantasy, martial arts, competition, cultivation, growth\nAuthor: Will Wight\nTitle: Uncrowned\nChapter: 9"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The force ma... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help keep the tale going for the author.\nTags: fantasy, martial arts, competition, cultivation, growth\nAuthor: Will Wight\nTitle: Uncrowned\nChapter: 19"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It was a comforting presence behind him, using his madra as fuel to hover, but... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: fantasy, martial arts, competition, cultivation, growth\nAuthor: Will Wight\nTitle: Uncrowned\nChapter: 23"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But when he pu... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the narrative as the plot partner.\nTags: dystopian, satire, psychological, crime, language\nAuthor: Anthony Burgess\nTitle: A Clockwork Orange\nChapter: 6"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"Wh... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Support the writer, proceed with the storyline.\nTags: dystopian, satire, psychological, crime, language\nAuthor: Anthony Burgess\nTitle: A Clockwork Orange\nChapter: 9"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"A cup ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Support the writer, proceed with the storyline.\nTags: dystopian, satire, psychological, crime, language\nAuthor: Anthony Burgess\nTitle: A Clockwork Orange\nChapter: 12"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "So I wa... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the narrative as the plot partner.\nTags: dystopian, satire, psychological, crime, language\nAuthor: Anthony Burgess\nTitle: A Clockwork Orange\nChapter: 18"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"That I ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the author's assistant, please continue the story.\nTags: dystopian, satire, psychological, crime, language\nAuthor: Anthony Burgess\nTitle: A Clockwork Orange\nChapter: 24"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "I... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the author's co-writer, advance the plot.\nTags: dystopian, satire, psychological, crime, language\nAuthor: Anthony Burgess\nTitle: A Clockwork Orange\nChapter: 28"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "This evening in the Korova there was a fair number of vecks and pt... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Take on the role of the writer's aide and proceed with the narrative.\nTags: war, historical fiction, World War I, anti-war, classic\nAuthor: Erich Maria Remarque\nTitle: All Quiet on the Western Front\nChapter: 8"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Advance the plot as the writer's tale assistant.\nTags: war, historical fiction, World War I, anti-war, classic\nAuthor: Erich Maria Remarque\nTitle: All Quiet on the Western Front\nChapter: 9"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt"... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the narrative as the plot partner.\nTags: war, historical fiction, World War I, anti-war, classic\nAuthor: Erich Maria Remarque\nTitle: All Quiet on the Western Front\nChapter: 11"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "At once anew warmth flows through me."
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the writer's tale assistant, advance the plot.\nTags: war, historical fiction, World War I, anti-war, classic\nAuthor: Erich Maria Remarque\nTitle: All Quiet on the Western Front\nChapter: 12"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt"... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Take on the role of the writer's aide and proceed with the narrative.\nTags: mystery, detective fiction, crime, classic, suspense\nAuthor: Agatha Christie\nTitle: And Then There Were None\nChapter: 21"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Move the story forward as the writer's assistant.\nTags: dystopian, philosophical fiction, novella, individualism, objectivism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Anthem\nChapter: 2"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "It... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Support the writer, proceed with the storyline.\nTags: dystopian, philosophical fiction, novella, individualism, objectivism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Anthem\nChapter: 8"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "\"No,\" said Collective 0-0009, \"we cannot decide upon this, o... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Take on the role of the writer's aide and proceed with the narrative.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 4"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt"... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Aid the author, keep the plot going.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 14"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"What about the... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Continue the tale as the plot helper for the writer.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 15"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist in storytelling and proceed with the tale.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 15"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "The road grew darker, as it went higher, and pine bra... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the narrative as the plot partner.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 16"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "But ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Scribe for the author and continue the tale.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 16"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Th... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the narrative as the plot partner.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 21"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value":... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the author's co-writer, advance the plot.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 21"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"An... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Take on the role of the writer's aide and proceed with the narrative.\nTags: philosophical fiction, objectivism, dystopian, political, capitalism\nAuthor: Ayn Rand\nTitle: Atlas Shrugged\nChapter: 21"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 2"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"fro... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Take on the role of the writer's aide and proceed with the narrative.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 2"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "He had met her ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Co-writing with the writer, continue the narrative.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 3"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Continue the tale as the plot helper for the writer.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 3"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from":... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Proceed with the plot in your role as storytelling partner.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 4"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "At all events, the German... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 4"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "g... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Scribe for the author and continue the tale.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 5"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "When the sergeant had appeared with his ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "In partnership with the author, move the story forward.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 5"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Serve as the author's scribe, continue the tale.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 6"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Advance the story as the writer's narrative assistant.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 6"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help keep the tale going for the author.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 7"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extende the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 7"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "If we stay here-^ we're done for!... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the plot as the author's writing partner.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 8"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Scribe for the author and continue the tale.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 8"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "In distant Bialystok, Zhilinsky and Oran... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Co-write with the author and continue the story.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 8"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 9"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "g... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Move the story forward in your role as narrative aide.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 9"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "In partnership with the author, move the story forward.\nTags: historical fiction, World War I, Russian literature, epic, military\nAuthor: Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn\nTitle: August 1914\nChapter: 10"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"fro... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Serve as the author's scribe, continue the tale.\nTags: philosophy, ethics, morality, aphorisms, existentialism\nAuthor: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche\nTitle: Beyond Good and Evil\nChapter: 7"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt"... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Collaborate on the narrative and advance it.\nTags: philosophy, ethics, morality, aphorisms, existentialism\nAuthor: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche\nTitle: Beyond Good and Evil\nChapter: 46"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the writer's tale assistant, advance the plot.\nTags: philosophy, ethics, morality, aphorisms, existentialism\nAuthor: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche\nTitle: Beyond Good and Evil\nChapter: 194"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "g... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help keep the tale going for the author.\nTags: philosophy, ethics, morality, aphorisms, existentialism\nAuthor: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche\nTitle: Beyond Good and Evil\nChapter: 221"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Advance the story as the writer's narrative assistant.\nTags: philosophy, ethics, morality, aphorisms, existentialism\nAuthor: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche\nTitle: Beyond Good and Evil\nChapter: 254"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help the author by continuing the tale.\nTags: philosophy, ethics, morality, aphorisms, existentialism\nAuthor: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche\nTitle: Beyond Good and Evil\nChapter: 278"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the writer's co-author, extend the plot.\nTags: science fiction, military science fiction, space opera, BattleTech, mecha\nAuthor: Michael A Stackpole\nTitle: Blood Legacy\nChapter: 4"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist the writer, move the story forward.\nTags: science fiction, military science fiction, space opera, BattleTech, mecha\nAuthor: Michael A Stackpole\nTitle: Blood Legacy\nChapter: 42"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Natasha gave him one of those grins that said ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Continue the tale as the plot helper for the writer.\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\nTitle: Casino Royale\nChapter: 19"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"Go away now... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the author's assistant, please continue the story.\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\nTitle: Casino Royale\nChapter: 25"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "When he turn... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Collaborating with the writer, advance the narrative.\nTags: satire, black comedy, war, anti-war, classic\nAuthor: Joseph Heller\nTitle: Catch 22\nChapter: 23"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"I guess I never really... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help the author by continuing the tale.\nTags: satire, black comedy, war, anti-war, classic\nAuthor: Joseph Heller\nTitle: Catch 22\nChapter: 41"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"I give it away.\"\n\n\"To who?\" ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Move the story forward as the writer's assistant.\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\nAuthor: Dan Brown\nTitle: Deception Point\nChapter: 1"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Pennsylvania... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Keep the narrative going for the author.\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\nAuthor: Dan Brown\nTitle: Deception Point\nChapter: 2"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Gabrielle followed the Secret Serviceman fifty feet down a tiled hallway to a... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\nAuthor: Dan Brown\nTitle: Deception Point\nChapter: 5"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Centered on the foremost section of rear deck, Rachel spied a famil... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Keep the narrative going for the author.\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\nAuthor: Dan Brown\nTitle: Deception Point\nChapter: 5"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"You don't sound like you'... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Keep the narrative going for the author.\nTags: thriller, conspiracy, mystery, science fiction, NASA\nAuthor: Dan Brown\nTitle: Deception Point\nChapter: 6"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Stupid bitch, Sexton tho... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "As the author's co-writer, advance the plot.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 11"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "Silence."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Merc... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Move the story forward in your role as narrative aide.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 16"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist the writer, move the story forward.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 26"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"Wh... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Keep the narrative going for the author.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 35"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\"Our ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Advance the plot as the writer's tale assistant.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 48"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"va... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist in storytelling and proceed with the tale.\nTags: techno-thriller, science fiction, action, conspiracy, nanotechnology\nAuthor: Steven Konkoly\nTitle: Deep Sleep\nChapter: 59"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist in storytelling and proceed with the tale.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 1"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "ONE\n\nHe left home ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the plot as the author's writing partner.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 23"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "In the accommodatio... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Continue the story as the author's writing assistant.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 35"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "They were leaning into the truck."
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value"... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Help keep the tale going for the author.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 37"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Reacher crawled backward ten yards... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "In your role as the author's collaborator, continue the tale.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 40"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Heavy stic... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Take the role of the writer's aide, proceed with the narrative.\nTags: thriller, crime, mystery, action, Jack Reacher\nAuthor: Lee Child\nTitle: Die Trying\nChapter: 43"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Next"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "He said the hi... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\nTitle: Dr. No\nChapter: 6"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Keep going"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Doctor No paused. He... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the plot as the writer's co-author.\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\nTitle: Dr. No\nChapter: 9"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "The eyes watched him, coldly, ... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist the writer by carrying on with the story.\nTags: spy fiction, thriller, action, mystery, James Bond\nAuthor: Ian Fleming\nTitle: Dr. No\nChapter: 18"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Proceed"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Bond said: \"Better plan... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist with the plot and keep the story going.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 8"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Harrie... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Carry on with the plot as the author's writing partner.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 12"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "\... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Co-writing with the writer, continue the narrative.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 16"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "\"Where is the young man?\""
},
{
"from": "gpt",
... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the narrative as the author's co-writer.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 20"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "It would be impossible to say what Emma felt on hearing this; w... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Extend the story in collaboration with the author.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 25"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Continue"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "An arc... |
[
{
"from": "system",
"value": "Assist the writer, move the story forward.\nTags: romance, classic, comedy of manners, matchmaking, social commentary\nAuthor: Jane Austen\nTitle: Emma\nChapter: 29"
},
{
"from": "human",
"value": "> Start Chapter"
},
{
"from": "gpt",
"value": "Emma's ve... |
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