tomorrow to find one of them suffering from some disability or condition which simply isn't even recognizable by medical science."
To my surprise, Paula MacLain didn't burst into a flurry of questions, and she didn't attempt to argue about what was going on. She looked a tiny bit more pale, and after an inquiring glance at me she lit a long cigarette and drew a slightly shaky breath. A few moments later, she dropped her gaze and considered the half-smoked cigarette. "Usually I take my time on these." She looked back up. "Jason, I appreciate your candor."
I'm sure my startlement showed on my face. "Most people would have said something else, and 'candor' wouldn't be even close to the meaning, either."
"Oh, it's a preposterous story, young man." she said. "Yet I'm old enough to know that sometimes life is preposterous. However, that isn't why I accept that most, if not all, of your story is true."
Taking another drag from the cigarette, she continued. "I've been on many different committees over the years. I've seen a great deal of material handed around marked 'Top Secret' and heard all the 'in the interests of national security' speeches. And so I've been familiar with the sort of reports I get from my own investigators whenever someone else has been nosing around my life.
"After I adopted Jackie and Tai, I started getting faint hints that someone was interested in my life again. The hints were terribly subtle, though, and whenever I hired someone to poke back, so to speak, they found nothing concrete. Just recently—about the time you first contacted me, in fact—these little hints became more frequent, and my best people came to the conclusion that whoever it was had to be top-level intelligence, and that there might be more than one group of them, all sniffing around my family. I tried using my own connections to find out what was going on, but got nothing.
"At one point, Jackie became aware that I thought someone might be spying on us. That night, he tried to leave, taking his little brother with him. When I got him back, he tried to insist that he had to, but he simply wouldn't tell me why. But he's been worried ever since, and I've gotten the extremely strong impression from him that he is more worried about my safety than his own."
I nodded. "That would fit."
"It certainly