The Cowboy grinned slyly. 'Okay, shoot.'

  Gumshoe passed on what he had been told by the old British writer. It took a long time to recount, but the Cowboy listened patiently, slugging his beer methodically and occasionally giving Bonnie a friendly smile. Bonnie sat quietly, her painted face in the shadows, her rainbow-coloured hair limned by the moonlight. In her own bizarre way she was attractive and Gumshoe was drawn to her.

  Eventually, when he had finished with Harbinson's story, Gumshoe had a slug of his beer, wiped his lips on his sleeve, and waited patiently for the Cowboy's response. When the Cowboy just gazed thoughtfully across the glittering, moonlit river, not saying a word, just softly humming to himself, Gumshoe, running out of patience, decided to prompt him.

  So, he said, 'did you hear anything about it? Did Wilson actually exist, was he responsible for the flying saucers, and did the US take over his colony, hidden in Antarctica?'

  The Cowboy sighed. 1 never heard of a Wilson,' he said. 'That's why, when you first mentioned his name, I didn't connect it to what I'm about to tell you.'

  'What's that?' Gumshoe asked.

  'The truth of the matter is that when I worked at the Space Surveillance Centre, before the cyborgs took over, we were told to ignore all sightings of any flying object not instantly identifiable and certainly any that appeared to be controlled — in other words, flying saucers. We knew that the saucers were up there — a lot of our pilots had even eyeballed them — but we couldn't do a damned thing about them, though we could track where they came from and returned to.'

  'Antarctica,' Gumshoe said.

  'Right. Most of them from there, though there were also some that ascended and descended over our own top-secret air force and naval bases. Rumour had it that those were our own and I was willing to

  believe it 'cause they never showed the same extraordinary capabilities as those that came from — and returned to — Queen Maud Land in Antarctica.'

  'You could track them that accurately?' Gumshoe asked.

  'Sure. Our spy satellites out in space could pinpoint a single individual on the ground. So, yeah, we were that accurate and we could tell exacdy what part of Antarctica those saucers came from. . . And they came from a specific location in Queen Maud Land, that was damned sure.'

  'And that was a secret colony run by Wilson?'

  'Yeah, I presume so. The talk about a secret colony became more voluble every year and we knew it was being run by a single individual, though we never did know his name — that's why I didn't think about it when we last talked.'

  'Good one,' Gumshoe said.

  'Anyway,' the Cowboy continued, grinning, 'we learnt through the grapevine that the colony had originally been run by the Nazis but that at the time the flying saucers were becoming big news, just after World War Two, the same place

  was being run by a brilliant renegade American scientist — and he was the brains behind the flying saucers. As I said, we never did learn his name, though we gradually learnt that he was an extraordinary guy who had, single-handedly, turned his small Antarctic colony into a major contender on the world stage and was, in fact, becoming even more powerful than the United States and the Soviet Union. In fact, it became pretty widely known, though never officially acknowledged, that he was negotiating with us and the Soviets, playing one against the other, and that he'd been personally responsible for some of the major innovations — and disasters — of the early space age.'

  'The disasters as well?'

  Yeah. Wilson was responsible for the death of Captain Thomas F. Mantell, way back in 1947 — the first case of a pilot being killed while pursuing a UFO. In fact, Mantell was deliberately shot down by one of Wilson's saucers as a warning to the US Air Force that they weren't to pursue him. However, that was small potatoes compared to what came later.'

  'Such as?'

  'Wilson would make certain demands on us and the Soviets and, almost certainly, the Brits and other major powers. If his demands weren't met, he'd arrange some kind of spectacular demonstration or so-called accident. The biggest spectacular, though not the first, was in 1952 when a great number of UFOs — actually Wilson's large and small saucers, both manned and remote-controlled - virtually invaded Washington DC and surrounded the White House when President Truman was resident in the building. That invasion couldn't be stopped and it scared the shit out of everyone who experienced it, so Truman, who'd tried to block Wilson's plans, played ball with Wilson after that. As for the so-called accidents - disasters actually threatened and then carried out by Wilson - they included the explosion on Project Vanguard's first rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, which caused the death of three astronauts, and the killing of President Kennedy by a frustrated

  communist sympathizer who Wilson picked up and turned into a brain-implant patsy. In all of these cases, and others, Wilson's motive was to remind the superpowers of his own far superior technology and make them do his bidding. Invariably, they did.'

  'Wilson was actually negotiating with the superpowers?' Gumshoe asked in disbelief.

  'He sure was. In fact, with regard to the good old US of A, he negotiated covertly with every President from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan — and he kept them in line.'

  'How?'

  'From what I picked up, your Wilson, for all his technological superiority, still needed a lot of things he could only obtain outside Antarctica and he got them by trading with the outside world. Bear in mind that this was the time of the Cold War and the Space Race, when the US and the USSR were both terrified that the other side would win and so were willing to do just about anything to keep ahead of the game. To do that, they needed Wilson's technology and Wilson, aware of this, ruthlessly played one side against the other. Since his technology was so advanced, he could afford to give both the US and the Soviet Union what was, to them, highly advanced technology because it was, to him, already obsolete. So that's how the son of a bitch negotiated — repeatedly giving them a little bit of what they needed while always remaining ahead of them. Pretty smart, right?'

  'Right,' Bonnie said.

  'When did you join the Cheyenne Mountain Complex?' Gumshoe asked the Cowboy.

  'About 1992.'

  'So the American, Wilson, would have been long dead by then and the colony would have already been in US hands.'

  'Right. It was taken over by us in 1982, placed under the command of a former USAF captain, Lee Brandenberg, who'd been instrumental in breaking the Wilson case, kept top secret, run by volunteers instead of slaves and, finally, renamed Freedom

  Bay. As such, it carried on Wilson's work, exploiting his extraordinary technology, but using it for the defence of the West.'

  'If it was top secret, how did you know about it?' 'Those of us working at the Space Surveillance Centre had to be officially informed about the existence of Freedom Bay because it was assumed that with Wilson out of action, most of the flying saucers picked up by our defence systems would be our own.

  What we hadn't counted on, of course, was the fact that Wilson — if such was his name — had spent most of the postwar years, the best part of four decades, abducting and brainwashing people all over the globe while making ever more advanced flying saucers and hiding them in remote locations or even on the seabed — in the Bermuda Triangle, in the so-called Devil's Sea bounded by Japan, Luzon in the Philippines and Guam, in the coastal waters off Argentina, particularly near Plata del Mar, and even in the Great Lakes of Canada and in Loch Ness, Scotland — waiting for the day, even after his death, when his cyborgs and computers would be so advanced that they could operate on their own, multiply and grow, and take over the world when the time was ripe, to continue his work. As we now know — to our cost — that's exactly what happened . . . Now you tell me that the guy was called Wilson. Well, whatever he was called, he certainly existed. You can take that as read. What's your interest, Gumshoe?'

  Gumshoe didn't reply immediately because in truth, when he actually thought about it, he didn't know what his interest was. This had all started, as he now recalled, with that deceptively simple but actually extremely ambiguous e-mail popping up on his computer screen saying wilson is back. That message had, of course, aroused his insatiable hacker's curiosity and sent him on this intriguing chase. In fact, the chase was becoming obsessional, more so than normal, and Gumshoe had often found himself wondering why. Now that the Cowboy had put the question into words, he tried to come up with an answer.

  'I think it's to do with my parents,' he said, glancing uneasily, maybe with embarrassment, at Bonnie.

  'Since the abduction and subsequent disappearance of my folks, I've secredy hated the cyborgs and wanted to somehow bring them down. I'm not alone in this. A lot of the kids my age, a lot that I know personally, lost their folks the same way and now want to strike back at the cyborgs. That's what

  motivates the likes of the Speed Freaks when they play their dangerous games with the cyborg patrols

  — and that's exactly why I do the same.'

  'Right on!' Bonnie whispered.

  Oddly pleased by the remark, Gumshoe threw her a quick smile, then turned back to the Cowboy.

  'When I first saw that e-mail message about Wilson, I was merely amused, then I became intrigued and then I decided to check it out — all pretty normal so far, given my normal hacker's curiosity, the need to know what kind of flame ghoul was trying to do some damage to some thread somewhere in the Net.

  'Course, at first I'd assumed that this Wilson was just an invention, a name picked at random, as anonymous as Smith. Then, when I discovered that he'd actually existed and may have been responsible for the creation of the first flying saucers and, later, the cyborgs . . . well, when I came to that possibility, I just had to go farther, find out more, confirm or deny. Now that I can confirm and know what Wilson was up to, what the cyborgs are almost certainly still doing behind closed doors, in the White House and the Pentagon and elsewhere, I'm more determined than ever to help put a stop to their rule.'

  'How?' the Cowboy asked, quietly implacable.

  Gumshoe sighed. 'I don't know.'

  'They took that writer away,' Bonnie cut in, 'so they might find out that we were talkin' to him — if, of course, they didn't already know, maybe reading his goddamned mind, and took him for that very reason. If that's the case, then for sure they'll come for us. This is real heavy rock 'n' roll.'

  The Cowboy turned his head to stare at her, smiling again,

  though this time it wasn't seductive: it was more of a kindly smile. 'So what's the story behind youY he asked. 'Do you have a cyborg background as well?'

  'Yeah, I do,' Bonnie said, glancing from the Cowboy to Gumshoe, suddenly looking distraught. 'Same as Gumshoe/ she said, turning back to the Cowboy. 'Same as all of us. I was thirteen at the time. I had a kid sister, Marie, two years younger than me. My Mom and Dad went out one day, just goin' to see some relatives, and I said I didn't want to go; instead, I wanted to look after the apartment, just like an adult. So they humoured me, right? We were livin' in Chinatown — we'd only moved in a few months back, when some Chinese were still livin' there but movin' out quickly — and the relatives that my folks were goin' to visit were in Greenbelt, Maryland. So they went in our car, taking Marie with them, and that was the last I ever saw of any of them. No one even knew they were missing — at least, no one but me. I was thirteen years old, in that apartment on my own, and when my folks didn't come back that evening, I was pretty damned scared. They didn't come back the next day, either, and that scared me even more, but I had the sense to pick up the phone and call the relatives that they'd said they were gonna visit, way out there in Greenbelt. The man who answered was my uncle. I'd never liked that son of a bitch. He said that my folks had been, that they'd had a nice visit, and that they'd left about eight that same evenin'. When I told him my folks hadn't come home, he became scared as well - more scared for himself, though - and told me that if my folks didn't turn up, I wasn't to call him about it again 'cause he just didn't want to know. So my folks never returned. I never called that bastard again. I just stayed at home, day after day, night after night, praying every day and night that my family would reappear and eating everything I could find in the kitchen until I'd cleaned the place out. After that, it was go out or starve, so I got up and went out.'

  She glanced from the Cowboy to Gumshoe, as if uncertain that she should continue, looking a lot less hard than she

  normally did, looking almost childlike. Gumshoe felt his throat tighten.

  'I just wandered around Chinatown,' Bonnie continued, 'desperately hoping against hope that I'd see my family, though I knew in my heart that I wouldn't, 'cause when people just upped and disappeared, it meant the cyborgs had got 'em. So I just wandered around, thinkin' about Mom and Dad, thinkin' about my kid sister, only eleven years old, already taken by those damned cyborgs for God only knows what purpose, an' I cried an awful lot as I walked, growin' even more scared, until I was picked up by this guy six years older than me. I was nicely built for my age. I had the body of someone older. This guy charmed me an' asked me about myself and I gave him my story. When he heard that my folks were gone, that their apartment was empty, he suggested that I take him back there and said he'd look after me until my folks returned. So I did — I took him back there — and nat'rally he seduced me. He took me over completely — and took over the apartment. Then, after a couple of months, he threw me out in the street. I survived as best I could, drifting from one man to the next, a whole stream of benefactors, until, when I was fifteen years old, I found this nice steady guy who loved me and really looked after me. That lasted for three years. It was the best time of my life. Then my guy went out on his motorcycle with a bunch of his biker friends and he was zapped by a football and picked up in a paddy wagon and taken away. He hasn't been seen since.'

  She glanced at Gumshoe, as if nervous about his reaction to her past history. When she saw that he was sympathetic, not angry, she returned her gaze to the Cowboy.

  'So,' she said. 'I have my own reasons for hating the cyborgs an' that's why I hang out with the Speed Freaks and why, if you really want to know, I'm now hanging out with him.' She nodded in the direction of Gumshoe. 'I'll hang out with anyone who hates the cyborgs so much that they'll actually try goin' against them — guys like the Speed Freaks. In the eyes of some, that makes me a lowlife, but I don't give a damn.'

  The Cowboy stared thoughtfully at her for a moment, a small, admiring smile playing on his lips. Then he said, 'You ain't no kinda lowlife, that's for sure. You can play in my ball park any day.'

  'Hear, hear,' Gumshoe said.

  Bonnie stared from one to the other, then grinned from ear to ear. 'Oh, boy!' she said softly. 'A gal's got it made here.'

  The Cowboy nodded, then turned to Gumshoe. 'So,' he said. 'Now you know that Wilson existed, that he did some nasty things and that his cyborgs are carrying on his work. What's the point, Gumshoe?'

  'It's not a point,' Gumshoe replied. 'It's one lingering, unanswered question. Was that e-mail message a sign that Wilson's somehow come back?'

  'Come back? From where? You mean from the grave?'

  'I'm not sure what I mean, but I think that message had a purpose — and the purpose was to remind us of Wilson. Who would send it and why?'

  'Might've been Wilson's ghost,' Bonnie said, 'floating out there in cyberspace, tryin' to make his way back into real time. You never know about these things.'

  'Might be Wilson for real, in some other shape or form,' the Cowboy added, 'given the advanced state of his technology even before he died. Might be Wilson's brain resurrected through a goddamned computer or Wilson cloned and now flesh and blood again.'

  Right,' Gumshoe said. 'From what I've learnt, his technology was getting there before he died and it may be there now. He might have had his cyborgs programmed to bring him back when they had the technology. Given the advanced state of the cyborgs of today, I'd say they could possibly do that. In

  fact, the Men in Black are widely believed to be clones and I for one believe that they really are. So Wilson, either as flesh and blood or as some kind of vastly advanced computer intelligence, could indeed be with us again.'

  'Jesus!' Bonnie whispered.

  'He won't help us,' the Cowboy joked. 'But that gets me back to my original question. What, assuming that Wilson's back with us, can we do about him?'

  'We can worry about that,' Gumshoe said, 'when we know if he's really come back. Right now, I want to know if he has or has not, so I'm making that my next job.'

  There was silence for a moment as they all gazed at the night sky, thinking of what was up there: spy satellites and flying saucers and space platforms and the cyborgs' ongoing Moon programme — a constantly growing, interlinking intelligence with a mysterious purpose. None of them liked what they saw up there, so they all lowered their eyes again.

  'Anything else I can help you with?' the Cowboy asked eventually, obviously not too keen on this type of lengthy silence.

  Gumshoe sighed. 'No.' He glanced at Bonnie, then put his empty beer bottle down and climbed to his feet. 'You've told me more than enough. Now I'll have to try to track Wilson down — find out if he's truly back — and you can't help me with that.'

  'Get in touch if you find him,' the Cowboy said, 'and need some kind of back-up.'

  'I will,' Gumshoe said. 'Come on, Bonnie, let's go.'

  Looking more agreeable than she'd ever done before, her features softened by the moonlight, her bizarre make-up less unsettling, Bonnie pushed her chair back and stood up. She smiled at the Cowboy, then at Gumshoe, giving each equal measure, then said, 'Okay. See you soon, Cowboy.'

  'I sure hope so,' the Cowboy said, waving his right hand in languid farewell and grinning lazily at both of them. 'You two take care out there.'

  'I'll try,' Gumshoe said.

  He jumped down off the porch with Bonnie close behind him. Then they both clambered onto the motorcycle and burned out of there, heading back to the low-income housing project running along the east branch of the Potomac. Again they