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At that island, as we entered, Mazie finished pouring Done flutes "None for you," she told Biggy as he hurried to her side, nostrils flaring, a potential four-legged alcoholic

Tall, y, beautiful, her glossy black hair worn long, Mazie rapped in an elegant black-silk kimono patterned hite koi e al several points of candlelight, they ht sky and stars ever receding into eternity

After s and another introduction, we stood at the island and raised the slender glasses, and Mazie said, "To Oscar, in whom the fire and the rose are now one"

Mrs Fischer and Kipp said, "To Oscar" I didn’t have any idea what the toast s mean, so I said, "To Oscar," as well, and we sipped the chay padded to the corner of the kitchen in which his water bowl stood on ain a nonalcoholic toast, as if he were the designated driver

After a second sip of Donon, Mazie turned to me and spoke as if she already knee’d come here to acquire and what task I had set out upon that would require those acquisitions "Tom, if Tom is your truest name, are you afraid of the battle that lies ahead of you?"

Re what Annamaria had told me, I said, "Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid, but I hope only in proportion to the threat"

"I sense a terrible longing in you, a deep yearning I hope you don’t yearn for death"

"No, ma’am I yearn for what co"

"None of us are But we suffer nonetheless Until we reach that condition Oscar reached a few years ago"

"You mean … fully blue and srace She had an aura of perfect calested that she had once stared down Death hiht see in other eyes

Later, I would learn from Mrs Fischer that Mazie had been an attorney in a major Manhattan law firm when Kipp had been an equities trader After the video of the senator had been posted on YouTube, clearing Kipp and i the former politician in the theft of investors’world seele of rotation

But then the worse thing happened A senior partner in Mazie’s firm introduced her to t clients, Mr Reasoner and Mr Power, business patent infringeator of her talents Because the clients ary to the point of paranoia, the firstwith them took place in a soundproof conference rooan, the senior partner excused himself "for just a moment," without explanation As Mr Reasoner took a seat at the table and opened his briefcase, Mr Power crossed the room to have a closer look at a bronze sculpture hich he professed to be quite taken, and as he passed behind Mazie, she felt soained consciousness, her wrists were bound to the arms of a chair A rubber ball had been placed in her mouth, and her lips had been fir hour, the twodetail their favorite methods of torture, and while they talked, they took turns pinching shut her nose, inducing suffocation panic before letting her breathe again They made certain she understood that if she wasn’t safe in the luxurious offices of this prestigious law firm, she would be safe nowhere If she couldn’t trust a senior partner--or perhaps any senior partner, or anyone at all--in the firm where she had worked for eleven years, she could trust no one anywhere

This was payback, they said, for what Kipp did to the senator, who still had more loyal and powerful friends than could be easily counted Kipp was innocent, yes, but that didn’t matter The only purpose of the innocent was to be used, like cattle, by those who despised innocence Oh, maybe the meek will inherit the earth, but not now, not until the end of time Now the meek, the innocent, had to learn to take as dealt to them and endure it

Reasoner and Power, obviously not their names, said they would not mark her this time, because the punishment that she and Kipp had earned wasn’t to be adle visit Days or weeks, perhaps even ain, four of them instead of two, and they would brutally rape her until they were satiated After that, they ive her several months, maybe a full year, in which to anticipate their third visit No one can be vigilant 24/7 for an extended period of tiht hire could be trusted, because the majority of people were easily corrupted On their third visit, they would torture her, blind her, visit upon her a e that would ensure her permanent disability, but they would not kill her Kipp’s punishrow as he saw her eraded

Finished with her, they took the duct tape off her mouth, untied her wrists from the arms of the chair, and allowed her to remove the rubber ball from her mouth Reasoner placed the ball, the tape, and the cord in his briefcase The two men said, "Have a nice day," and left the conference roo herself that she aiting for the senior partner to return and babble out some excuse, perhaps tearfully, about why he had been unable to warn or to protect her The truth was, she felt too weak to stand She would never be given an excuse She was done here They would already have soed docuh 37, and when at last Mazie left that conference room, she found the entire thirty-sixth floor deserted The hush was so eerie that it would not have been hard to believe that the city in all its boroughs had been depopulated But when the elevator doors opened at the lobby, the bustle and bark of huh it In the street, the braying of car horns and engines and brakes and people overwhelmed her, oppressed her

For a while, she leaned on a lautter When she didn’t, she went honificant financial resources, in fact h and cleverly enough to leave a trail that eventually withered away They made plans that very afternoon, not h that was part of it, but also to fight back, and not ainst the senator and Mazie’s forainst any aspect of the vigorouslycorruption that was a tererous postutter, Mazie had recalled lines froh the world ceaselessly turned and changed, one thing and one alone never changed However you disguise it, this thing does not change: / The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil Their plan seerandiose, foolish, hopeless, but step by step, as they worked to fulfill it, they found the surest footing they’d ever known If they had elected e identities and hide, they would have had no hope of full and et how to stand and, in ti the path of resistance, they had discovered people like Mrs Fischer and Oscar, like Gideon and Chandelle, and they had learned the true and hidden nature of the world

In the candlelit kitchen, Mazie topped off the four glasses of cha Dog in the lead

This subterranean level, as large as the n of principled resistance A wide corridor offered rooms to the front of the house on the left, to the back of the house on the right We were headed to the armory, but first we stopped at a chamber on the left that was occupied by four computer workstations, racks of servers, and all nize For all I knew, the young couple currently laboring therethe CIA or in co ames

The man, in his late twenties, was Leander, Kipp and Mazie’s son He had one of his father’s green eyes, having lost the other one during a tour of duty, as a hanistan, a year before his father crossed the senator Leander had two-thirds of his dad’s winning s been twisted by the scar tissue that disfigured the left side of his face His wife, Harmony, was as cute as Goldie Hawn in her prih to win an iron-ia drawl

As we shook hands, Harmony asked, "Where do I know you from?"

"I’m sure we’ve never met, ma’am"