Tim didn’t know where the lisping man was getting his information—Norbert Hollister was long gone, the DuPray Motel closed with a FOR SALE sign out front that would probably stay there for a long time—but it was good information. Tim had never expected to go unnoticed, that would have been na?ve, but he didn’t like the depth of Mr. Smith’s knowledge about the kids.

“That means that Nicholas Wilholm and Kalisha Benson are still here. And Luke Ellis, of course.” The smile reappeared, thinner now. “The author of all our misery.”

“What do you want, Mr. Smith?”

“Very little, actually. We’ll get to it. Meanwhile, let me compliment you. Not just on your bravery, which was apparent on the night you stormed the Institute pretty much single-handed, but on the care you and Officer Wendy have shown in the aftermath. You’ve been parceling them out, haven’t you? Iles first, about a month after returning to South Carolina. The Simms girl two weeks after him. Both with stories about being kidnapped for unknown reasons, held for an unknown length of time at an unknown location, then set free . . . also for unknown reasons. You and Officer Wendy managed to arrange all that while you must have been under some scrutiny yourselves.”

“How do you know all this?”

It was the lisping man’s turn not to answer, but that was all right. Tim guessed at least some of his information had come direct from the newspapers and the Internet. The return of kidnapped children was always news. “When do Wilholm and Benson go?”

Tim considered this and decided to answer. “Nicky leaves this Friday. To his uncle and aunt in Nevada. His brother is already there. Nick’s not crazy about going, but he understands he can’t stay here. Kalisha will stay another week or two. She has a sister, twelve years older, in Houston. Kalisha is eager to reconnect with her.” This was both true and not true. Like the others, Kalisha was suffering from PTSD.

“And their stories will also stand up to police scrutiny?”

“Yes. The stories are simple enough, and of course they’re all afraid of what might happen to them if they told the truth.” Tim paused. “Not that they’d be believed.”

“And young Mr. Ellis? What about him?”

“Luke stays with me. He has no close family and nowhere to go. He’s already returned to his studies. They soothe him. The boy is grieving, Mr. Smith. Grieving for his parents, grieving for his friends.” He paused, looking hard at the blond man. “I suspect he’s also grieving for the childhood your people stole from him.”

He waited for Smith to respond to this. Smith did not, so Tim went on.

“Eventually, if we can work out a story that’s reasonably watertight, he’ll pick up where he left off. Double enrollment at Emerson College and MIT. He’s a very smart boy.” As you well know, he didn’t need to add. “Mr. Smith . . . do you even care?”

“Not much,” Smith said. He took a pack of American Spirits from his breast pocket. “Smoke?”

Tim shook his head.

“I rarely do myself,” Mr. Smith said, “but I’ve been in speech therapy for my lisp, and I allow myself one as a reward when I am able to control it in conversation, especially a long and rather intense one, such as we are having. Did you notice that I lisp?”

“It’s very faint.”

Mr. Smith nodded, seemingly pleased, and lit up. The smell on the cool morning air was sweet and fragrant. A smell that seemed made for tobacco country, which this still was . . . although not at Catawba Farm since the nineteen-eighties.

“I hope you’re sure they will keep shtum, as the saying is. If any one of them talks, there would be consequences for all five. In spite of the flash drive you supposedly have. Not all of my . . . people . . . believe that actually exists.”

Tim smiled without showing his teeth. “It would be unwise for your . . . people . . . to test that idea.”

“I take your point. It would still be a very bad idea for those children to talk about their adventures in the Maine woods. If you’re in communication with Mr. Iles and Miss Simms, you might want to pass that along. Or perhaps Wilholm, Benson, and Ellis can get in touch with them by other means.”

“Are you talking about telepathy? I wouldn’t count on that. It’s reverting to what it was before your people took them. Same with the telekinesis.” He was telling Smith what the children had told him, but Tim wasn’t entirely sure he believed it. All he knew for certain was that awful hum had never come back. “How did you cover it up, Smith? I’m curious.”

“And so you shall remain,” the blond man said. “But I will tell you that it wathn’t just the installation in Maine that needed our attention. There were twenty other Institutes in other parts of the world, and none remain operational. Two of them—in countries where obedience is inculcated in children almost from birth—hung on for six weeks or so, and then there were mass suicides at both.” The word came out thooithides.

Mass suicides or mass murder? Tim wondered, but that wasn’t a topic he intended to raise. The sooner he was rid of this man, the better.

“The Ellis boy—with your help, very much with your help—has ruined us. That undoubtedly sounds melodramatic, but it’s the truth.”

“Do you think I care?” Tim asked. “You were killing children. If there’s a hell, you’ll go there.”

“While you, Mr. Jamieson, undoubtedly believe you’ll go to heaven, assuming there is such a place. And who knows, you might be right. What God could turn away a man who rides to the rescue of defenseless youngsters? If I may crib from Christ on the cross, you will be forgiven because you know not what you did.” He cast his cigarette aside. “But I am going to tell you. It’s what I came for, with the consent of my associates. Thanks to you and Ellis, the world is now on suicide watch.” This time the word came out clean.

Tim said nothing, just waited.

“The first Institute, although not by that name, was in Nazi Germany.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Tim said.

“And why be so judgmental? The Nazis were onto nuclear fission before America. They created antibiotics that are still used today. They more or less invented modern rocketry. And certain German scientists were running ESP experiments, with Hitler’s enthusiastic support. They discovered, almost by accident, that groups of gifted children could cause certain troublesome people—roadblocks to progress, you might say—to cease being troublesome. These children were used up by 1944, because there was no sure method, no scientific method, of finding replacements after they became, in Institute argot, gorks. The most useful test for latent psychic ability came later. Do you know what that test was?”

“BDNF. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor. Luke said that was the marker.”

“Yes, he’s a smart boy, all right. Very smart. Everyone involved now wishes they’d left him alone. His BDNF wasn’t even that high.”

“I imagine Luke also wishes you’d left him alone. And his parents. Now why don’t you go ahead and say your piece.”

“All right. There were conferences both before and after the Second World War ended. If you remember any of your twentieth-century history, you’ll know about some of them.”

“I know about Yalta,” Tim said. “Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin got together to basically carve up the world.”

“Yes, that’s the famous one, but the most important meeting took place in Rio de Janeiro, and no government was involved . . . unless you want to call the group that met—and their successors down through the years—a kind of shadow government. They—we—knew about the German children, and set about finding more. By 1950 we understood the usefulness of BDNF. Institutes were set up, one by one, in isolated locations. Techniques were refined. They have been in place for over seventy years, and by our count, they have saved the world from nuclear holocaust over five hundred times.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Tim said harshly. “A joke.”

“It’s not. Let me give you one example. At the time that the children revolted at the Institute in Maine—a revolt that spread like a virus to all the other Institutes—they had begun working to cause the suicide of an evangelist named Paul Westin. Thanks to Luke Ellis, that man still lives. Ten years from now, he will become a close associate of a Christian gentleman who will become America’s Secretary of Defense. Westin will convince the Secretary that war is imminent, the Secretary will convince the President, and that will eventually result in a preemptive nuclear strike. Only a single missile, but it could start all the dominoes falling. That part is outside our range of prediction.”

“You couldn’t possibly know a thing like that.”

“How do you think we picked our targets, Mr. Jamieson? Out of a hat?”

“Telepathy, I suppose.”

Mr. Smith looked like a patient teacher with a slow pupil. “TKs move objects and TPs read thoughts, but neither of them are able to read the future.” He drew out his cigarettes again. “Sure you won’t have one?”

Tim shook his head.