*****

And then he opened his eyes. The morning sun betrayed itself shyly through the stretched-out clouds on the scarlet horizon beyond the stone balustrade, but the Earth was still a dark enigma, wrapped in a cobalt veil splashed with fainted stars. The sunbed felt comfortable, comfortable enough to keep him asleep overnight under the cover of the sky on that terrace. To his left, an empty chair and a table with a sunshade. And on it, a glass, a half-empty bottle of rakia, a phone, and a Davidoff cigar of the '76 Mille Series, dying slowly on the side of an ashtray.

He didn't move a muscle. For the first time, he felt naked, fully at the mercy of the outside. His fear turned to panic when he heard steps behind him, getting closer to his left until they became a shade wearing camouflage pants and a black thermal long-sleeve t-shirt, sitting on the chair. He managed to just make that out before he shut his eyes and pretended that he was still out cold.

"You think you can fool me?" spat the man with veteran indifference.

Skyler suddenly noticed crushed ice rather than blood running through his veins. He decided to keep his stance. The words could have been aimed at another person, he wanted to believe, but that tone betrayed experience. Too much of it.

"Hey, sleeping beauty, shall I give you a kiss?"

"... over my dead body."

Skyler sat up with the arrogance of a revolutionary sent to the firing squad, only to see, sitting in the chair, a tall, portly man in his forties, brown-haired, barely hiding his sharp, dominant features behind his rough beard, looking grimly at the horizon with icy blue eyes and the Davidoff cigar between his firm fingers. He was born an intrinsic carrier of assertive traits, such as marked tendons and veins on his hands, closed into fists almost by default, or the fierce and wide jaw, hallmark of a fighter, held upright in a perfect balance between trust and pride. His breathing power projected a powerful aura of vital affirmation all around his own self. In contrast, the snowy pallor of his complexion, characteristic of the tranquility of his blood, manifested self-restraint. It therefore constituted an unmistakably masculine man, in the most classically Apollonian sense.

"René Hinault, I suppose," commented Skyler.

The man gazed off at the landscape and then turned to Skyler, who noticed suddenly the sameness in their blue eyes, like still reflections of water.

"You suppose?" he asked menacingly.

The man turned his chair and sat inches away from Skyler's face. A faint outburst of unbegotten rage streaked through Skyler's spine as the man framed his eyes with more perspective, betraying his identity before he spoke another word.

"No longer remember your brother, Sky?"

"You're... Atticus?"

"Fifteen years no see, right?"

"Yeah, sure... Fifteen," he replied without conviction, trying to collect himself. Now he was sure he hated the man. As sure as he didn't know why. "But wait, who's René Hinault?"

Atticus put his fingertips to his forehead.

"Yeah, of course. Nevin Wagner and René Hinault. Both are me."

"What?"

"It's just a defense mechanism to hide me from my enemies."

Skyler shook his head quickly.

"But the two groups were on the brink of a shootout tonight."

"That's because they don't know who I am. I use intermediaries I trust to address my different armed groups, so none of them gets to see the face of their boss. If they don't know me, they can't betray me."

"Then that kind of clash between two of your bands is some kind of occupational hazard to you?"

"We could call it that. Here, it's better to let them fix their issues themselves in those kinds of events. Contacting one side or the other to tell them to pull out could undermine their loyalty to me, and that can escalate quickly. Besides, they want this every now and then. What a warrior fears the most is having nothing to fight for."

"Yeah," Skyler commented with some condescension. "But basically, your priority is to keep hidden."

Atticus sharpened a half-smile.

"I'd already be dead otherwise. In fact, I've faked my death several times to get off the grid."

"What grid?"

"The whole world's grid. It's a matter of peace of mind. One can't run a business of light and heavy weapons, minerals, drugs, and mercenaries without making a few enemies."

"So, it's true you're a warlord."

"Not a warlord. I am the warlord," he responded just before waving his hand with disregard. "But it don't matter now. The news is you. It seems there's been a hell of a racket, and thanks to that, my men have been able to pull you out. 'Cause maybe you knew you were being watched."

"Yes, the NSA. Seiber told me."

"Yeah, well. Blake Norton above all else. Did you get to know him?"

Skyler took a second to think strategically.

"No."

After a sip of rakia and a long drag, Atticus leaned back in his seat in a solemn mood.

"The man in the shade. The official head's only a strawman, a stooge. Someone to just put a face and name to, keeping the identity of the true head unscathed."

"But the NSA is just an intelligence agency. What about the CIA, or even the Pentagon? What makes the NSA that special?"

"The fact that the NSA is the largest spy agency in the world. They control and restrain all the flow of information to their side of the Curtain, and even part of the other one too, from a tip before the stock markets open, to the last affair of the Secretary of Defense. They secretly use all that in their favor to strong-arm literally the whole world, from Washington to Langley, and even Nasdaq. And Norton is the man on top, pulling the strings to suit his own agenda. In a sense, you could say that Blake Norton is the true leader of the free world."

Through Atticus' description, Skyler could clearly evoke the image of dark brown Ray-Bans that watched him carefully, and a killer half smile behind them. He had definitely met Norton in person.

"If the guy's that dangerous, why hasn't he been taken down already?"

"Well, for one, because very few people know who he really is. In fact, it's not sure anyone knows where he actually comes from. His intelligence profile, his military career. He keeps every section of his past in the dark and compartmentalized by different entities across the board. At this point, no one really has the full picture of his whole life, nor do they even know whether their data on him's actually real. By all accounts, he's a living, breathing, top-secret project in the flesh."

"So, the guy's like a ghost."

"Yeah, but that's not the only thing. When it comes to global geopolitical affairs, everything points towards him. He's just the best. Bar none. Word has it he is directly responsible for the current collapse of the Soviet Union, and by the end of the decade, there won't even be dust left on it. Some even say Andropov and Chernenko died by poisoning in some operations he commanded. We'll see if he likes this new one. What's the name? Gavrikov?"

"Gorbachov," replied Skyler automatically.

"That one. But hey, what matters now's that you're safe," he said, waving in dismissal. "Now tell me everything that happened to you. I want to know the whole nine yards."

Skyler, finding himself cornered, decided to undertake a headlong rush to hold out his amnesia, more out of stubbornness than common sense.

"Everything? Well... it is... I think... I think I need to sleep a bit more, just to take the edge off."

Atticus finished the cigar and threw it beyond the terrace.

"Come on, man. You'll sleep later. There's time to spare."

"I feel a bit dizzy from the wound..."

"Yeah, I've already been told. That guy hit you so hard he opened your stitches. The nurses here changed the sutures and disinfected the wound while you were out."

Skyler put his hand to the forehead theatrically.

"Yes, that."

"Well, at least give me the highlights."

Skyler suddenly realized he had just bumped into a blind alley, and not for lack of trying.

"I...I think I'm a bit hungry."

"You'll eat later."

Yes, that was definitely a blind alley. And he was screwed. He never imagined how he could have followed the conversation had the phone on the table not rung miraculously. Atticus didn't let ring a second time.

"Hello...who's asking? One moment, I'll put him on..."

The receiver went from brother to brother.

"Hello."

"Skyler? Is that you?"

Skyler suddenly envisioned a spacious room with a kind of metal column in the center surrounded by computers. Pipes coming out of the top of the column, meandering through the ceiling and down the walls; valves in all of them. And a woman with brown hair and blue eyes, going from one side to another while interspersing glances between the notes in her portfolio and the data from the valve gauges.

"Erika?"

"Are you OK? Did something happen to you?"

"I'm fine, don't worry."

Skyler heard a sigh of relief on the other side of the line.

"Listen, I'm under arrest. You have to tell your brother to help me get out of here."

"Wait..."

The receiver switched hands again.

"Tell me...OK... OK. Let's see, calm down, I'm not catching up... OK, tell me where you are... Yes... Yeah, yeah, I know that... OK, don't worry. Try to stay close to your current location so we can pick you up...What police station? OK, I got enough...Yeah... How did you get this number? No, if you burn it, you'll draw their attention. It will be better if you tear it page by page and flush the hunks down the toilet...Maybe a few hours... I'll try to hurry... OK, we're coming for you. Hey, by the way, do you know something about what happened? Yeah..." His eyes flew wide open. "What? Really? You kidding? Amazing, I'll talk to him right now...All right, get a hold of yourself. I've already been in situations like that. The best thing you can do now is not lose your temper...I know, just try to unwind... yes, I know. See you...bye."

Atticus hung up the phone and gawked, spaced-out, at his brother.

"How come you provoked the accident?"

Years later, Skyler would be completely unable to remember how much time configured that unfathomable silence, or how he could move his trembling lips to articulate sounds that made words.

"Me? The accident?"

"That's what she's told me. Damn, you could have died! Why the hell did you do that?"

"I did...it... because... did it because..."

At that point, his only two options were to speak of his amnesia or to make a huge gamble. He could assume he was finally safe and free to come clean. But he couldn't ignore the fact that his brother was a dangerous warlord. And that he had thrown the cigar off the terrace.

"I did it because God commanded me to."

Now he really had just cracked his head against the alley. Atticus would probably have already capped him in the neck had they not been brothers.

"God commanded you," corroborated Atticus after a stunned in silence. "God spoke...God spoke to you."

"Right."

Atticus again remained perplexed for several seconds.

"And he didn't tell you the meaning of life, or the end of pi. No, he told you to blow away a government facility."

Skyler nodded slowly as he narrowly adopted the thousand-yard stare.

"That's about the size of it."

Seven seconds. Zero blinks. Atticus stood suddenly up and walked slowly into the building.

"Breakfast's in the dining room. I'm gonna go save your friend."

There hadn't been an iota of seriousness, frustration, or condescension in his voice. It was as if Atticus had processed the response as something as real as any other statement. Perhaps it had been his imagination. The wound in Skyler's face pounded again. He laid his head on the sunbed until it stopped hurting. He had definitely head-butted his way out of the alley.