Текст книги "Black Rain"
Автор книги: Graham Brown
Соавторы: Graham Brown
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
CHAPTER 8
Arnold Moore had returned to Washington, his residence in absentia for three decades spent traipsing the world. In all that time, he’d spent less than a thousand days in Washington, and never longer than two months at a stretch. After so much time away, returning felt awkward, like being a stranger in his own land, a guest in his own empty home.
Still, this time it would be different. He’d come back to a career winding down and a superior who appeared to be growing tired of their endless clashes. This time, Moore reckoned, he’d come home for good.
Stuart Gibbs, director of operations, was a fairly paranoid man—paranoid and grossly ambitious, a combination that had led to many a metaphorical beheading of former colleagues and confidants. Based on the deteriorating tone of their last few conversations, Moore guessed he was next on the chopping block.
As if to reinforce the point, Stuart Gibbs had spoken to him only once since his arrival. No explanations had been offered and Moore’s repeated calls since had been blatantly ignored. Now, after a week of such treatment, he’d been summoned to a meeting. If it was to be his end, then he intended to air his grievances.
To meet with Gibbs, Moore traveled to the NRI’s main office, a sprawling campus known as the Virginia Industrial Complex, or more affectionately the VIC. The VIC consisted of five sleek buildings nestled among rolling hills, winding paths and rustic stone walls. The glass-walled structures were modern and attractive, the paths around them lit and manicured like those at an expensive resort. Even with the trees and lawns dormant for the winter, the complex felt more like a university mall or suburban office park than anything governmental in nature. Only the presence of armed guards in the parking lot, with their bomb-sniffing dogs and long mirrored poles, suggested otherwise.
Looking forward to the meeting, Moore arrived at the lot early and began a determined march through the crisp January air. Because of a quirk in the topography of the land, the five buildings that made up the complex lay spaced at odd intervals, with four clustered on the eastern side of the property and the fifth, housing the Operations Division and its director, Stuart Gibbs, alone on the western edge, separated from the others by a low-lying ridge and a row of seventy-foot oaks. As a result, Building Five wasn’t visible from the street or the main gate or even from the other structures, and one had to make a lengthy winding trek to reach it. It was supposedly a random occurrence, one Moore had his doubts about, but either way it had always struck him as both ironic and perfectly symbolic of the NRI’s dual and conflicting nature.
The NRI had come into existence in the late ’90s, a Frankenstein’s monster of an organization, divided and charged with two completely separate tasks. The Research Division, its main component, worked with corporate America, universities and leading entrepreneurs. Under that umbrella, corporate members gained access to advanced facilities, specialist personnel and reams of declassified data from NASA and the military. Its purpose was to boost the fortunes of American industry, to counter the subsidies and government assistance that corporations in Europe and Japan enjoyed.
But Research Division was only part of the organization, sometimes referred to as the civilian side. There was another side to the NRI, a darker side, and that was the Operations Division.
Six months after NRI’s creation—and well before the first shovel of dirt had turned at the VIC—a rider was attached to a last-minute spending bill being rushed through Congress. The rider amended the NRI’s charter, effectively dividing the organization in two, or more accurately adding a new division to the NRI’s existing structure. That new entity was called Operations Division, or OpD.
OpD was tasked with a more sinister mission—the active gathering of industrial secrets, including those belonging to foreign powers and entities. In other words, industrial espionage. Appropriately, OpD had been run from its very inception by former members of the CIA, beginning with its director, Stuart Gibbs.
To the outside world the change was invisible. OpD appeared to be almost irrelevant, little more than the support apparatus for Research Division, a handmaiden to its charming and successful big sister. It was Research Division that garnered all the press, Research Division that senators and CEOs enjoyed being linked to, that articles in Time and BusinessWeek focused on. To the adoring public, Research Division was the NRI; it claimed eighty percent of the budget, ninety percent of the staff and four of the five buildings at the Virginia Industrial Complex. But to the few people who knew the truth, OpD was considered the more important entity.
As Moore walked past the other buildings he couldn’t help but smile. In all his years with the NRI he’d yet to set foot in any of them—a fact that wasn’t going to change today. Whatever the future held, it waited for him on the other side of the hill, with Stuart Gibbs, in Building Five.
At the end of his half-mile trek, Moore felt energized. He bounded up the steps and into the lobby, flashed his ID badge and placed his thumb on the infrared scanner. He cleared a second checkpoint on the fourth floor and a minute later stood in the director’s waiting room.
Gibbs’ secretary barely looked up. “He’s ready for you now.”
Moore set his jaw and stepped inside.
The director’s office was a windowless inside room, well lit and large, but surprisingly spartan for a man who carried such a big stick. As Moore entered, Stuart Gibbs stepped forward, extending a hand. “Welcome, Arnold,” he said, “early as always.”
The greeting was odd and hollow; the smile was uneven, like the jagged teeth of some rabid predator. Moore felt anything but welcome.
“Have yourself a seat,” Gibbs said, steering Moore toward the visitors’ chairs in front of his desk, one of which was already occupied.
“I’ve asked Matt Blundin to join us,” Gibbs explained. “He has some information that might interest you.”
Matt Blundin was chief of security for the NRI, a huge apple of a man whose sheer volume could not be contained within the arms of the leather vistors’ chair. He was a smoker and known to be a heavy drinker who preferred late nights to early days. At eight in the morning he reeked of nicotine, and his greasy hair and wrinkled suit did nothing to belie the assumption that he’d been out all night.
Still, Blundin was one of the best in the business, consulted at times by the FBI, the SEC and the Congressional Budget Office, and if he ever left the NRI, a long list of companies waited to make him a wealthy man.
Moore took a seat next to Blundin and wondered if he should have an attorney present.
Gibbs began the conversation. “How long has it been since we spoke face-to-face? Nine months? Maybe a year?” He shrugged. “Too damned long, either way.”
Thin, angular-faced and eight years Moore’s junior, Gibbs stood rigidly straight. His sandy blond hair was turning grayer by the year but remained swept back and gelled with utter precision; his designer suit was impeccable but hanging a little loose. Gibbs had always been gaunt, but he’d lost a few pounds since the last time Moore saw him. It left him looking almost ferretlike. Gibbs the Rodent, Moore thought. Gibbs the Rat.
Moore fired first. “All right, Stuart, enlighten me with your reasons for bringing me here. If you have any.”
“I’m not sure I like your tone,” Gibbs said.
“I’m quite certain that you don’t,” Moore replied. “But that’s what happens when you pull the rug out from under someone and then ignore them for a week. They get a little off-key.”
Gibbs glared at Moore. “The three of us are here for several reasons. Beginning with an incident involving Danielle Laidlaw and the man you sent her to meet last night, a Mr. Duarte Medina.”
Moore felt his face go flush. “What type of incident?”
“She was attacked at the meeting,” Gibbs replied. “Her vehicle was shot up badly and she was almost killed.”
“Damn it,” Moore said. “I knew something like this would happen. I warned you not to pull me out. I could have protected her.”
Almost imperceptibly, Gibbs nodded. “Perhaps,” he said, glancing at Blundin, “or perhaps not. I find it interesting that you didn’t choose this particular contact until after I informed you of the change.”
“Meaning what?”
Gibbs shrugged, as if it were obvious. “If she’d been killed, we’d have had no choice but to send you back.”
Moore ground his teeth. “You can’t actually believe what you’re suggesting.”
“Medina was your contact,” Gibbs said. “Supposedly secure, supposedly trustworthy. Yet the meeting turns out to be an excuse for a hit. Who do you think we’re going to look at? In our position you’d do the same.”
Moore turned to Blundin and then back to Gibbs. He could have throttled the director. “If you think—”
Gibbs cut him off. “You argued with me for weeks about putting her in charge. You’ve been calling for updates every day since you returned despite the fact that you’re no longer a part of the project and were told to forget it. It almost seemed like you were expecting something.”
Moore snapped, “You listen to me, you son of a bitch. Danielle is a friend and a partner. You knew what that meant once. I know, because I know people who worked with you. Maybe you’ve been in this office for too damned long, because it seems you’ve forgotten.” Moore shook his head, realizing midstream that he’d taken the bait. This was just Gibbs’ way of pushing him, of screwing with him and setting him off balance.
“You know goddamned well that I would never endanger her, so cut out this fucking charade and tell me what the hell you really brought me here for.”
Gibbs was silent for a moment, as if he was mulling over what Moore had said. He tilted his chair back. “It’s taken some effort,” he said finally, “but I believe we’ve managed to clear you.”
Moore sat back. The words were spoken too precisely. They were a setup to something else, though he could not guess what.
“Show him the photos,” Gibbs said to Blundin.
Blundin opened a file folder that rested on the desk in front of him. He pulled out a black and white surveillance shot. “Is this your man Duarte?”
Moore studied the photo. It looked like Medina. “I think so.”
“Well, this guy’s dead. Been in the morgue since the day before the attack.”
Moore winced. Medina was the nephew of a man who had helped him before. A man he considered a friend. “Are you sure?”
Blundin nodded.
“Do we know who killed Medina?”
“Not yet. The police down there don’t have much to go on.”
The director took it from there. “But we have a plan to lure them out, and that’s where you actually become useful once again.”
“So now we come to it.”
Gibbs smiled wickedly, and as he spoke there was a certain amount of glee in his voice. “We’re going to make it look as if you’ve fallen into disfavor here. This meeting is the first step. I’m sure the tongues are already wagging out there. In a day or two it’ll be all over the office. Then you’ll be put on administrative leave, pending an investigation. All expectations will point to an early, forced retirement. But don’t worry, it won’t be for disloyalty—that would be too obvious. The write-ups will be for incompetence, misuse of funds and our mutual inability to get along with each other.”
“At least the last part’s true.”
“It makes for a better lie,” Gibbs assured him.
Beside him, Blundin remained quiet, and Moore wondered if he was involved in the scheme or just along for the ride. His jowly face didn’t give much away. Blundin was a good man, but he was one of Gibbs’ boys. Gibbs protected them and they protected him. Moore couldn’t blame Blundin for that; he directed his anger at Gibbs. “And to what end am I to be treated with such scorn?”
“Matt thinks they’ll attempt to buy you off—or rent you, at least. I forgot to tell you, we’ve ruined your credit as well, made it look like you’re in over your head. Big gambling problem. Came on strong when you were in Macau last year.”
Moore grimaced in disbelief. “You can’t actually be serious. The head of the operation suddenly pulled from the front line and put out to pasture? It’s too obvious.”
“These bastards are bold,” Blundin grumbled. “They lured your partner to a meeting connected with the operation and tried to gun her down in plain sight, making no attempt to disguise it. That’s unusual,” he said. “Unprofessional, really. My guess: they’re either disconnected from their controls, or just a bunch of desperate amateurs.”
“Amateurs?” Moore said. “Desperate and disconnected?” His eyes darted from the security chief to the director. “Are you talking about them or us? Because this plan smacks of all three traits, if you ask me.”
“We’ve been planning this for a while,” Gibbs said. “If they want info, and we’re betting they do, they’re going to go after the best target available—and that will be you, a disgruntled, phased-out window-sitter with a lot of information rattling around in his brain.”
Moore shook his head, doubting anyone would be so foolish.
Gibbs showed little sign of being moved, but when he spoke again his tone had become more genuine, no doubt by design. “Arnold, we don’t get along. Never have, right? If we asked the company shrink, she’d say that you resent me for taking what should have been your post and that I’m threatened by your ability. After all, given the chance, you could probably do my job at least as well as I do it, maybe better. Why do you think I send you running all over the damn world? To keep you out of Washington, where you’re the one person who might be willing and able to usurp me. That, and the fact that you’re the best at what you do. But this is the way it is: I run the show. I’m the one who says jump, not you. And right now you’re going to do what I tell you for the greater good of the organization.”
Moore smirked in disgust. The hard sell and the soft sell all wrapped up in one. “I wouldn’t do your job,” he said. “Not the way you do it, at least. So don’t give me that line of crap. What you sense from me is not that I want your title, but that I’d rather you didn’t have it either. Your judgment is poor and you’re reckless, too damned reckless for my taste.” He shook his head again. “This plan is absurd. It’s ludicrous. As ludicrous as everything else you’ve asked us to do. Splitting us up at the last minute, concocting this ridiculous story and throwing me out there as some kind of bait. This is amateur work and it’s going to get people killed. It almost did already.”
“You presume too much, Arnold.” Gibbs’ voice had become a warning; lines were close to being crossed.
“And you think too little,” Moore said. “Do you actually still intend to send her into the jungle with a bunch of civilians and some loan-outs from the Research Department? Even after all this?”
“She has protection.”
“So did Dixon,” Moore shouted. “Where the hell is he now? Did his team suddenly reappear, all tanned and rested and carrying souvenirs from a holiday somewhere? No, they’re missing and probably dead. Cut to shreds by those natives you’re so worried about, or ambushed by the same sons of bitches that shot at Danielle. And now you intend to send her out on the same path. A road people keep going down and not coming back. You’re all but throwing her life away.” Moore pointed an accusing finger at Gibbs. “There are better ways to do this,” he said, “smarter ways. The sooner you admit—”
“Enough!” Gibbs slammed his hand on the desk, his face red with frustration. “There’s no other way. We need this. Your country needs this.”
The room was silent. Moore watched Gibbs rubbing his fingers together while he got ahold of himself.
“You know what we do?” Gibbs said finally. “The greatest country on earth? We borrow money from China to pay the Arabs for their oil. That’s what we do. One day the Chinese are going to stop loaning it to us, or the Arabs are going to stop accepting paper for their hard assets.”
He pushed a folder aside and leaned in toward Moore. “If this thing is out there, then it’s the key to a whole new world, beginning with energy independence and leading the world in power generation for the next hundred years or so. Cold fusion means unlimited clean energy. It means a nation filled with clean, cheap power plants pumping out electricity for cars, trucks, trains and homes without creating carbon-based pollution, global warming or unstorable nuclear waste. And in our possession, it means the end of being a debtor to one possible enemy and a beggar in the eyes of another. You want that to fall into someone else’s hands?”
Moore had heard this speech before. And while he agreed with Gibbs’ assessment as to the magnitude of the changes that a working cold-fusion system would bring to the world, he continued to disagree with the man about the effort needed to get those results.
At Moore’s silence, Gibbs exhaled in frustration. “This is what we pay you for. To run around and gather things up that will keep the country ahead of the competition. This one just happens to be in a hole in the ground somewhere instead of in a lab or on a database. And it also happens to be the big one, the Manhattan Project of our time. I’m not giving that up, but we damn well can’t have an army running around down there, now, can we?”
“No,” Moore said. “But you can send me back before anything else goes wrong.”
Gibbs’ mind was not one to be changed by argument or persuasion; he would only dig in further out of pride. Moore knew this, but had been unable to check himself. He watched as Gibbs took the folder back from Blundin and closed it. The discussion was over.
“You don’t want to do this for me?” Gibbs said. “Fine, don’t.” He leaned forward, the sunken eyes and hollow cheeks suddenly menacing and evil. The Rodent possessed. “But you’re not going back and your partner is still out there. And she will be in danger until we find out who’s shadowing us.”
Moore refused to look away, but he could say nothing. He stared at the director in a dead silence and watched as the jagged smile returned—the deal was done.
CHAPTER 9
Professor McCarter stepped out of the service elevator with Susan Briggs and William Devers at his side. They entered a narrow, angled hallway that ran beneath the hotel toward the chosen meeting room. Bundled pipes and electrical conduits ran overhead and the floor was solid, unadorned concrete. Odd surroundings that left McCarter quietly surprised. His surprise changed to concern when they passed a stocky man with a radio bug in his ear and the bulge of a weapon clearly visible under a dark windbreaker.
The man waved them around a corner, toward their destination.
“Security,” Devers said. “We always have them when we’re overseas. Remember that Russian job I told you about? We had a bunch of ex-paratroopers following us; strangely enough, most of them had no teeth.”
Susan laughed. “Gross.”
“Good people, though,” Devers said. “Very willing to share their vodka. Just didn’t have the best dental plan.” He turned around and studied the man behind them. “We’ll have to see how these guys turn out.”
McCarter glanced over his shoulder. “At least this one has his teeth.”
The hallway dead-ended at Parlor A, and the group entered to find Danielle standing with Mark Polaski.
McCarter chose a spot both front and center, like all his best students. The roll reversal amused him.
As they settled in, Danielle walked to the entrance, signaled the man at the end of the hall and shut the door. “Sorry about the accommodations,” she said, turning back to the group. “I didn’t want to do this in a big hall and this was the only small room available—now I can see why.”
Danielle dimmed the lights and clicked a remote. A picture of a Mayan temple appeared on the screen at the front of the room. “We’re about to embark on a great adventure,” she began. “As some of you already know, we’ll be searching for a branch of the Mayan culture that certain scholars believe may have existed in the Amazon. But to say only that is to sell ourselves short. Our goal is far more ambitious. We’re looking for a place that the Maya considered the land of their own genesis, their Garden of Eden—a city called Tulan Zuyua.”
Susan Briggs turned to McCarter as she realized what Danielle was suggesting. “Are they serious?’ she asked.
McCarter nodded. “I think so,” he said.
Danielle clicked the remote and a photograph of a colorful mural came up. The mural depicted four men in native garb walking fearfully under a midnight sky.
She addressed Professor McCarter. “Feel free to correct me if I get any of this wrong.”
He nodded, expecting to be busy.
“According to Mayan legend, there was an age before the first sunrise, a time when the world was dark, lit only by a gray twilight that lingered on the edge of the horizon. Into the darkness of this pre-dawn world, the Mayan gods created the first humans and then called them to a place named Tulan Zuyua, where they presented each tribe with a patron god. The Quiche Maya, from whom the story comes, received the god Tohil, the creator of fire. And in a world of darkness, this gift set them apart, as they alone now possessed the power to create light and heat.
“Secure in this knowledge, the forefathers of the Quiche tribe set out from Tulan Zuyua in search of a place to call their own. As the legend goes, they left the city transporting their patron deity with them, his spirit contained in a special stone. After a trek across both land and sea they settled in Central America, in areas that became Guatemala, Belize and Mexico, never to return to Tulan Zuyua.”
She clicked the remote and brought up a new photo, a Mayan ruin somewhere in Central America. “Many in the academic world consider Tulan Zuyua to be a myth,” she explained. “And that we’re as likely to find it as we are to locate Atlantis or the Garden of Eden itself. And if it is real, most experts believe it will be found buried under some other Mayan site, the way old San Francisco is buried under the present-day city.
“We, on the other hand, expect to find the great city here in the Amazon, thousands of miles from where anyone would have even thought to look.”
Danielle clicked to the next slide. It displayed a weathered stone with raised markings on it, fronted by a tape measure for scale. “This artifact came to the NRI several months ago, though it was recovered from somewhere in the Amazon some time before that.”
Another click, another photo: a picture of the stone from a different angle. McCarter found himself squinting to make out any details.
“As you can see,” Danielle said. “The surface of the stone is extremely weathered and most of the markings are almost invisible. But through a type of computer-assisted analysis called a micro-density relief, we were able to reconstruct some of the patterns, and the results were surprising.”
The next slide displayed the same stone, this time with a computer-generated outline overlaying it. “These patterns are consistent with only one known writing system: Mayan hieroglyphics. And these two glyphs are well known. One is the name of a person, Jaguar Quitze, one of the original Mayan humans. The other, which was only partially reconstructed, is believed to represent Venus, the morning star.”
McCarter studied the pattern formed by the computer-drawn outline. Clearly Mayan in style, but the underlying rock was so worn down he wondered how they could derive anything from it at all. Well-meaning guesswork perhaps.
While McCarter considered this, Danielle explained more of the NRI’s theory. “Eight months of work has put us in possession of several other items that seem to confirm the existence of the Mayan writing system within the Amazon, but none of them offered proof quite so dramatically as the one stone we do not possess.”
The next image was different from the others, a scanned copy of an old, sepia-toned glossy, complete with a crease running diagonally through one corner and brown discolorations along the edges.
The photo showed two men beside a large rectangular stone. One man had his arms folded across his chest and a foot up on the block. The other man crouched beside it, pointing to something on its face. The image brought to mind a pair of fishermen posing beside a prize catch.
“This photo was taken in 1926 on Blackjack Henry Martin’s first expedition into the Amazon. He left from Manaus in April of that year and did not return until March of 1927, when he was finally chased out of the jungle not by native tribes, wild animals or swarming insects, but by two months of torrential, seasonal downpours.
“Martin, as you may know, was something of a minor celebrity at the time. A wealthy adventurer and a self-described fortune hunter who scoured the globe in search of rare and valuable items, preferably those worthy of a little newsreel footage.
“While he was untrained in any formal way, Martin did record his adventures in a marginally professional manner, and before leaving the stone behind, its dimensions were recorded and this photograph taken.”
She clicked the slide show forward.
“By using another type of computer modeling, one that examines light-source angles and shading density, we were able to enhance the photo, especially this section.” She used a laser pointer to indicate specific parts of the photo and then advanced to the next image—a cropped and magnified view of the large stone with the outline of a new glyph written over it.
As he studied it, recognition hit McCarter in a flash. He’d seen the glyph many times before. During a two-year stint in Yucatan he’d seen it and touched it and traced its outline over and over again. “Seven Caves,” he whispered aloud. “Seven Canyons.”
Danielle smiled. For a moment she was in awe. She looked at the others. “Seven Caves and Seven Canyons are other names the Mayan people use for Tulan Zuyua.”
Susan Briggs opened a notebook and began writing something. “You don’t have to take notes,” McCarter said.
“I know,” she said. “I like to.”
McCarter nodded politely.
“According to Martin he discovered this stone on November 17, 1926, on the side of a prominent rise, a mile from the banks of a secondary tributary they were exploring. The exact location is unknown; the only geographic reference Martin offered was its distance from another landmark he discovered, a place he called the Wall of Skulls.”
The name lingered in the quiet of the room and McCarter glanced at Susan. Her eyes were wide, her face alight with interest. Good for her, he thought.
Danielle continued. “Martin’s notes recall his feelings upon first sighting the wall.” She read from a tattered copy of his autobiography.
“A sight of prominence and order this day, after so many in a land of chaos, disorder and nature in its endlessly tangled forms. The Wall is horrible and yet it is grand. A thousand skulls at least must be part of it. Enemy or friend, it remains unknown, for we were prevented from examining them by the foot soldiers of the tribe known as Chollokwa. Four of whom stood upon its crest when we arrived. Spears they held at the ready and adornment of headdress upon their brow, proud men, all of them with the bearing of Rome’s finest legions.”
“They welcomed him,” she added. “In fact, according to Martin, they insisted that they’d been foretold of his arrival. And they took him to their village in the forest, a few days’ hike from the river.”
She finished up. “By using this information, along with the help of a local trader who claims to have been told of the wall and taken near it, we think we can find it rather quickly. In a week, or perhaps two at the most.”
A week or two. McCarter almost laughed at the timetable. He wondered if she knew how absurdly hard it was to locate anything within the jungle. But then again, that was the least of their problems.
“My interest is piqued,” he said. “Especially by what Martin apparently found out there. But all you’ve really shown us are grainy pictures, a man’s self-serving writings and computer-generated guesses that, with all due respect, might as well be Rorschach inkblot tests. In other words you’re seeing what you want to see. I’m afraid it’ll take more than that to convince me.”
Curt but polite, Danielle replied, “I would expect no less. But then, I’m not finished yet.” She brought up another image, a photo displaying a group of four clear hexagonal crystals.
“These are the Martin’s crystals. A group of quartz objects our intrepid explorer claimed to see during a Chollokwan rain-calling ceremony. The crystals themselves are unremarkable, made of simple quartz with various inclusions. What turned out to be quite remarkable was another object related to them. An object Martin called the cradle.”
Danielle brought up the next image: a golden tray with slots in it, one for each of the crystals, with a fifth slot that went unexplained. “This is the cradle. It’s made of a gold/brass alloy similar to today’s eighteen karat blend. The crystals from the earlier photograph were stored in it—hence the name. That connection was of great interest to Martin, but our research focused on something he largely ignored.”
She switched to a new photo, which showed a design carved into the gold; it almost looked like Braille.
“This is a close-up of the underside of the cradle,” she explained. “It is in fact a highly detailed star pattern. A representation of the night sky as viewed from the southern hemisphere. It is consistent with Mayan art at other ceremonial centers.”
McCarter stared at the picture. It did look like a view of the night sky. He saw a horizon line and what he thought was the Southern Cross. He also realized that the photo had been taken so closely that it showed only a small portion of the underside of the cradle.
Before he could ask why, Danielle clicked to the next photograph. And as he stared at the new image, McCarter forgot about his previous question and found himself struck silent. This time the symbols appeared clearly, perfectly preserved in the surface of the non-corrosive metal. No guesswork was involved, no highlight or computer enhancement needed. The symbols were easy to read in the unretouched photograph, and he knew them well.
