Clair.

It was a challenge, and it would be met. Father Clement sat in the darkness and planned action.

When the doctor emerged from his surgery into the waiting room where Clement planned, he was pale and still shaken by what he had seen. The Jesuits had told him of such things when he had made his vow of personal obedience to Father Clement, but his rational mind had not truly accepted it.

At first there had been hints that the Enemy he swore to fight for the Society of Jesus was literal and existing on this earth. Then the hints had become stories, and the stories became training. Still he had not believe it. Until tonight, when the ruined body of Father Benedict had been brought to his office, long after hours, and that body had been drained entirely of blood. The wound that the blood had been drawn from had been made in the left carotid artery. It had been made with a human mouth. The horror of that knowledge far outweighed any consolation held by the knowledge that most of the other atrocities had been committed after death. Any torture would have been preferable to that first hideous wound.

Father Clement waited patiently for the doctor to compose himself and give his report. There would be no more mistakes like Heathrow. The battle had been enjoined, and the victory would be the Society's. So it was written.

The doctor spoke.

"Cause of death was shock brought on by massive haemorrhage. The blood was removed from the wound in the neck. The presence of capillary damage, skin indentations, and ... and saliva traces indicate that the method of removal was ... was as you ... suggested." Sweat rolled down the doctor's forehead. A detached part of him wondered if he would faint. "His blood was sucked by vampires, Doctor Biller." Father Clement's voice was cold and flat. "We must not hide from the Enemy. Use the words that must be used."

"B ... by vampires." Twenty years of medical discipline, twenty years of faith in science, disappeared from him as he said that word. The apprehension of it clutched at him like an icy hand brushing his shoulder in an empty, unlit room.

The detached part of him wondered about heart attacks.

He must continue. Reduce it to the known, the manageable. "Aside from the superficial mutilations of the face, apparently caused by ... claws, and the traumatic excision of the left eye, the other mutilations occurred after the subject ... after Father Benedict had died."

"Detail them, Doctor Biller. Come to know the Enemy."

His heart raced. Far away he heard his voice speak, but he clearly heard his heartbeat pounding in his ears. How fast can it go? How much can it stand? "The most apparent mutilation is the massive destruction of the chest caused by a large wooden crucifix which has been thrust through the sternum, cracking the lower ribs on each side, destroying the heart, and exiting through the spinal column between the seventeenth and twentieth vertebrae. The tongue has been split along the medial axis, again, it would appear, by claws. Also, the septum appears to have been removed in the same fashion." The room spun. He prayed he would faint before his heart had reached the limits of stress. Father Clement listened impassively.

"Go on, Doctor. All of it."

"The massive destruction of tissue makes it impossible to tell if his genitals have been excised or just shredded unrecognisably." Sweet Jesus, take those images from his mind. "The mutilation has been caused by sharp imple ... by teeth and claws, oh God, Father-" The doctor's mind broke before his body. He collapsed into a sobbing, quaking form, unintelligible words bubbling from his mouth: deep, resonating sounds of unbearable anguish.

Father Clement went to him and held him; rocking the man back and forth to comfort him. The doctor was one of the lay brothers of the Society who had kept their vows a secret from the world. Such agents of influence were necessary to the Society's work when unobtrusive access was needed to the secular seats of power. Such agents within the Washington bureaucracy had first alerted the Society to the initial contact between the Americans and the woman, and had discovered the link between the assassin and the death merchant in Miami. Occasionally these brothers were chosen by the professed of the Five Vows-the Jesuits of the Seventh Grade-and, bound by their oaths, the lay brothers would join in the necessary actions. But always, when faced with the horrible shadow reality that lay under the facade of the modern world, the reaction was the same. The people of the middle ages, the savages of the world today, none would question the truth, that had reduced this doctor to hysteria. Humanity had set its task to isolate itself from horror, and it had succeeded too well. Unknown, unwatched, ignored, the real horrors grew until their slightest touch could devastate. Centuries of progress and enlightenment vanished in that awesome moment of recognition when humans looked into the darkness and saw that the half-seen things that scuttled within it were real.

Father Clement had spent his life in that darkness, fighting with those things. Some would say the darkness existed only within his mind. He would call those people possessed of the Enemy. Forty years ago he had reached out and almost embraced that Enemy. More than any other of his order, he knew the attraction and the power of the Pit. That knowledge drove him. That and the secret fear that the darkness might once again reach out to him, and this time, he might not be able to resist. Father Clement comforted the doctor and prayed for forgiveness for the contempt that he felt toward him.

Father Clement got into the grey Plymouth Fury that had waited for him outside the doctor's office building.

Around him as the morning brightened, the traffic grew; great lumbering creatures roared through the obscuring mist of the steaming sewer openings, bellowing at their mindless near-collisions. His driver accelerated from the curb, pushing them into the monstrous herd past 79th then through the park, to escape from the island hell.

"Is it done?" the driver asked. His eyes never left the manoeuvring of the cars surrounding him. He was young. A scholastic still in his first ten years of service, but he had been trusted with the organisation of the New York House.

"Yes," said Father Clement. "He will prepare the proper documents to show he is the physician of record. The death certificate will state heart attack. Father Benedict was old. No one will be alarmed."

The driver was silent.

"You have word from Toronto?" Clement continued. "Did something come through while I was with the doctor?"

His voice took on a harsh edge in his question. "We have lost," the driver said.

"Everything?" Clement was incredulous.

"Two of the novices escaped. Everyone else is gone. Even the Mounties."

"But how could they? There were ten of us, the Mounties, the police-"

"We didn't face just Helman and the woman. There were Americans, armed with guns. Protective clothing that our arrows wouldn't pierce."

"Americans? Familiars of the Conclave?"

"No. Inquiries are being made now. It is believed they are agents of the government."

Father Clement held his hands to his face. Not now. Not so soon. "So they have joined already. The power of the Americans has been added to the evil of the Conclave."

"Father Clement," the driver seemed apprehensive. He stole a glance at the man beside him. "We may be wrong about that."

"How do you mean?" There could be no mistakes in this war.

"The novices followed St. Clair to the Chinese doctor's facilities. There was an explosion. Helman was there immediately-"

"To protect her," Clement said.

"The novices don't think so, Father. They say he had a machete. In any event, the explosion was deliberately caused."

"What are you trying to say? That Helman is trying to kill the woman? That's impossible. He's an agent of the Americans."

"Father Clement, forgive me, but I have been investigating him. It's true that at certain times in the past, he's been associated with the Americans. Late yesterday, inquiries were made about him in Langley. The lay brother we have there indicated the request came from a friendly source; that is an American agency in a foreign location. That could be the team in Canada. I think it might mean that Helman is being employed by someone other than the Americans.

Otherwise, why would they be checking on him?"

"To confuse us," Clement said. It was weak, but mere was only one other conclusion, and he couldn't see the logic behind it. "Or else he is being employed by the Conclave."

"To kill Adrienne St. Clair."

"But to what purpose? She is their link to the Americans."

"Perhaps the Conclave don't wish to be linked with them."

Clement stared out at the rushing landscape. "Then this entire operation has been for nothing? Is that what you're saying?"

The driver shook his head. "I don't know what the answer is. The only thing I'm sure of is that Helman is not working for the Americans, and the Americans are trying to contact St. Clair, and learn the truth about Helman themselves. We are trapped in the middle."

"The middle of what? What are you daring to suggest?" Clement's voice was raised in anger.

"It is a suggestion, nothing more, Father. We know the Americans want to contact the woman. What we don't definitely know is whether or not they intend to use her as a conduit to the rest of the Conclave. We know that Helman is involved with the woman. What we don't know is how. Is he an agent of the Americans assigned to protect her? Is he an agent of the Conclave assigned to kill her, and fail, as a ploy to confuse us? Or is he truly intended to deliver her to the Final Death? If we act against Helman we may be stopping him from accomplishing something which both we and the Conclave may desire: her death. However, we may be playing into their hands by concentrating on Helman, as they have planned, while the joining of the Americans and the Conclave goes forth, hidden from us by our zeal to attack the most likely target."

"Very complex. What do you suggest we do?"

The driver drew a deep breath. "That, Father Clement, I must leave to you. I don't know." They drove a while in silence.

"What I know," Clement said, finally, "is that someone, something, did what we both saw to Father Benedict. It was the work of the Conclave, attributed to Helman. Both are our enemies. We shall destroy them. The Americans are involved with one or another or all three. They shall destroy them. The woman, the Conclave, Helman, all will fall before us. And if the Americans intercede, we shall destroy them too, as we did the cursed dealer in murder in Florida.

We are the professed of the Five Vows. We shall act. And we shall destroy them."

The car sped along the freeway. The course was set. An ending was inevitable.

Hands clenched to the steering wheel, the scholastic prayed to God that it would be the ending the Society worked for, and not the other, terrifying alternative.

Hell must stay where it was. It could not be allowed to spread over all the earth.

But there were men in Washington who knew that it already had.

Five.

Along the street, behind covered windows, in hedges, on roofs, they waited. Adrienne St. Clair had been seen entering his hotel room. Three hours later, dangerously close to the first rays of morning sun, she had been seen leaving. Inquiries were made through the front desk. He had asked to change his room. He was alive.

Phoenix would return to the street, and they waited for him.

Toronto, January 18 Weston had taken responsibility for letting Helman go. The Jesuits had been the first to storm the townhouse but were easily repulsed. They were trained to meet the emissaries of the Conclave; emissaries who retreated before crucifixes, blistered at the contact of Holy Water and fell beneath the bolt of a crossbow. The Jesuits were no match for the agents of the Nevada Project, with their impenetrable Kevlar body armour and devastating Uzi sub-machine guns.

Weston knew the outrage of the laboratory would not go unpunished by the woman. She had methods of tracking which Weston's people had never been able to quantify. Phoenix might be able to escape from the Jesuits. He might be able to escape from Nevada. But he would not escape her. Weston had gambled and Weston had won. She was desperate for help. Phoenix was experienced, undriven by any loyalties to one side of the conflict or another, therefore he was suitable to be her familiar. She had let him live. It meant they would be in contact again. Weston had lost Christopher Leung. Soon he would gain Helman.

Weston waited for Helman in the basement of the townhouse. The carnage of the Jesuits had been cleaned up, if not obliterated. St. Clair's sanctuary had been repaired and replaced in the false wall under the staircase.

The condition of her sanctuary was further proof to Weston that he had chosen the right target. She was so unlike the others. Her sanctuary in no way resembled a coffin. There was not even the obligatory handful of soil from her native country scattered in it. It was much more like a bed, padded softly, and light tight. She was not a victim of the superstitious nonsense of the Conclave. She was the Nevada Project's last hope.

Earlier that day, Weston's second-in-command had placed a coded phone call to his Toronto station. Lancet had accepted an article by a physician working out of a small clinic in Omaha, funded by the multi-millionaire, Daniel K.

Ludwig. The research definitely pointed to airborne transmission, possibly viral in origin.

The researcher had not published in years, and never in this field. A small fish had slipped through the net. Other journals would see the article and pay closer attention to the other reports that Weston's people had skilfully manoeuvred them into avoiding throughout the past years. One by one they would begin to publish. Within a month or two, the professional circles would be full of speculation. Within three months, the science reporters would have carried the rumours to the feature pages. The country would be in an uproar before the summer was through. And tomorrow, Weston thought, the world.

A small buzz of static crackled through the silence of the basement. Weston turned to look at the speaker.

"We've got a make on Phoenix. Coming up the street behind the backyard. He is armed. Does not appear to have spotted any surveillance."

Weston reached over for his microphone. "Keep low. He's coming right to us."

Static, then nothing.

Weston waited in silence. Phoenix was coming.

The townhouse's street was quiet today, there was no evidence of the grisly battle from the night before. The television crews had left. No doubt the reporters would still be questioning confused residents, but nothing would come of it. The Jesuits had used their influence on the Canadian Mounties; the Mounties had used their influence on the Toronto Police; and Weston's people had then taken over from the Mounties.

As far as the police knew, they were helping the Mounties capture a group of Red Terrorists who were trying to use Toronto as a base of operations. The Mounties, backed by orders from the highest government sources, had forced the Toronto police to relinquish authority over the operation. The police had reacted bitterly. There were rumours of Mounties pulling guns on police officers during the confusion of the previous night. Inquiries would be held, but nothing would be made public. All that mattered was that when the power had been required, it was there. In emergencies, certain structures existed to bypass all the laws and systems. The police could rant and rave, the newspapers could fume, but the secret channels of power were always open. All anyone would ever learn, as had happened so many times in the past, was that the Mounties were in control. And, as far as the Mounties knew, their special Security Service team was still in position and undercover, with instructions not to report until the complete operation was finished. As far as Weston knew, all those Mounties were dead.

Somehow, he didn't feel badly when an agent of an intelligence group died in action. They were like soldiers. It was part of the job. They all knew it. Most accepted it. Especially the victors.

What made Weston feel bad was killing scientists. Especially now, with the Lancet article about to appear.

Maybe it had all been for nothing. He struggled to avoid coughing. With Phoenix so close, he couldn't risk the disorientation of pain.

Weston heard a short surprised grunt from outside the backyard basement window. It ended quickly in what sounded like a drawn out stacatto of hiccups. Phoenix had arrived. Phoenix had been captured.

He was brought downstairs. His arms and legs twitching, eyes rolled up.

The yellow-and-blue-striped body of the battery dart had imbedded itself in his left leg. It was sending intermittent pulses of 40,000 volts of DC current into his central nervous system. It was an offshoot of the Taser pistol, except it didn't need a wire to connect to a battery in the gun and could be fired over a much longer distance. And depending on the size of the battery, and how long it remained in the victim, it could be fatal.

The two men who brought Helman downstairs, lowered him into an easy chair. The chintz-covered chair did not belong to the concrete-walled unfinished basement. It had been brought from upstairs. Weston was uncomfortable sitting in front of unprotected windows.

He went over to Helman and withdrew the battery dart. Helman still twitched. He would for several minutes more.

One of the men soaked an antiseptic fluid onto the pant leg above the wound. The other presented Weston with Helman's collection of weapons.

Eventually, the worst of the shaking left Helman. He directed his eyes to Weston, and Weston spoke.

"I'm glad to finally meet you, Phoenix. I'm impressed with your artillery." He gestured to the magnum and the Bulldog the second guard held. The first guard held the battery dart rifle, aimed at Helman.

"I take it you're 'Marker One'," Helman said.

"That's right," Weston agreed.

"Well, someone with a gun called me Phoenix last night. He was wrong. And you're wrong. I don't know who Phoenix is." Helman found it hard to speak without his teeth chattering, it sounded somewhere Between having a chill and a stutter.

Weston held his hand to his eyes, shutting them as if reading from a file he kept written on his eyelids. "Code designation Phoenix. Domestic Sector. Terminal operations, etc., etc. Operative designation: Helman, Robert Granger.

Used effectively in March '74, December '75, January and April of '77, and November of '80. And so on and so on."

The dates were familiar to Helman, but he couldn't understand their context. "I'm Granger Helman, yes. I don't know Phoenix. I don't know those dates." They were all months in which he had handled closings. Were these people from the Conclave?

Weston sighed and turned away. The second guard handed the pistols to him. The other guard with the battery rifle moved silently off to the side so he would have a clear field of fire.

The second guard, face thin and intense like a long distance runner's, stood in front of Helman holding a small black case. "Well, the Central Intelligence Agency knows those dates. Now stop fucking us around, Phoenix, and answer a few questions before we turn your brains to jelly. You were there last night. You saw what happened to that asshole in the TV van. He was a professional, Helman. Tougher than you, by God. And it only took us eight minutes to get the code responses from him. You know why we killed him? Injected him with a lethal overdose of barbituates?"

The guard screamed into Helman's face. Spittle clouded from his rapidly moving mouth, covering Helman in spray.

Helman could not react. But he could remember the man with the phone employee's badge and the drugged eyes. The man they had killed with a needle in the neck. "Because it was the fucking humane thing to do to him. After the other drugs we loaded him with, he would have been a fucking vegetable."

The guard squatted down in front of Helman, opening the black case. There were vials of clear liquid. And a hypodermic needle. "But you know what, Phoenix? We really killed him because we respected him. We respected him enough to give him a clean death. But not you, you fucker. We'll load you up with the same drugs, you'll tell us everything we want to know. And then we're going to leave you here to wallow in your own shit until the neighbours complain about the smell, because you're not going to have enough brains left over to stand up and fucking walk to the can."

Helman's face was red. He willed his arms to rise up and rip at this maniac's throat but none of his nerves were in sync. Nothing worked. He could only become more enraged and sputter.

The guard held up his hand and snapped his fingers.

"Major, help me hold him down. There's only one way this asshole's going to talk."