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Back in his room, Sam rummaged through every drawer. He didn’t really expect to find anything related to Project Buffalo, but now that he was here where the project had taken place, where his mother had worked and, according to the official reports, died, he wanted to know everything. There was nothing in the drawers, of course. Just some stationery and rich-people tchotchkes. “A letter opener shaped like a peacock?” Sam shoved it back into a drawer and shook his head.
After Evie had upchucked and before she’d fallen sleep, she’d confessed to Sam what the card had shown her about his mother. “Something about protecting children and Jake not liking her. And Sam, Sam, she… she said he wanted her to keep the Eye open, but she wouldn’t.…” Evie burbled, half out of it.
“What? What about the Eye?” But Evie was already asleep.
Sam remembered his mother as loving but firm. She was direct and opinionated. He could imagine somebody like Jake Marlowe not liking that very much, and he wished he could’ve watched his mother square off against that big-shot goy. He wondered if he would ever see his mother again, if he would ever hear her calling him “Little Fox” in her native Russian. He wondered what he would say to her if he did now that he knew she had been part of Project Buffalo during the war. He couldn’t escape the truth: The mother he loved had been as complicit as Will and all the others.
“Ma?” he said to the empty room. “Ma, it’s me, Sergei. I’m here.”
Silence. He hadn’t expected a response, of course. Just because her memory lingered didn’t mean anything. But his heart sank a little anyway.
He thought about his father back home and found that he missed him. He thought about Jericho, about how, standing next to him, Sam had felt small and dark and foreign, with his streetwise accent, gritted up by the South Side of Chicago and the Lower East Side of New York’s immigrant melting pot. Sam looked hard at one of the gold-framed photographs on the wall. In it, a dozen blue-eyed, tux-clad men sat at a table looking unbothered and smug, as if they expected that the world would bend to them. After all, the world usually did. Sam felt that whatever he’d managed to grab for himself could be taken away at any moment. That was why he held on so tightly. He wondered if he would ever feel like he could let go or if he’d always feel as if he had to fight for his place.
“Jesus, Sergei,” he said, reprimanding himself with a roll of his eyes. “Leave the philosophy to the giant. You’re becoming a real flat tire. How’s about we find something to steal?”
Sam sneaked out of his room and moved silently down the hall. The night had worked on him, reminding him that he was not on top. He was spoiling for a fight. He slipped a silver ashtray into his pocket. That had to be worth some money. There were probably plenty of things in this house that nobody would miss.
Sam sneaked down the winding staircase, peering through its braided, wrought-iron balusters to make sure it was safe. Light seeped out around the half-open door of Marlowe’s private study, where his club meeting was taking place. From where he stood in the shadows, Sam could smell the cigar smoke. Close but out of reach. Outside. Always on the outside. Sam burned with a desire to be on the inside for once. He wished he could hear what those stuffed shirts were talking about.
Wait a minute, he thought. I can.
It was a risk. He wasn’t sure how much time he’d have. But Sam loved risks. He was a gambler, through and through. He grinned. “Why the hell not?”
“Don’t see me,” he said, cloaking himself. Hey, Jericho, he thought with a snort. I can do something you can’t do, pal. And then he let himself into the room.
Wealthy men in tuxedos sat in cushy club chairs playing backgammon and chess. Brandy snifters dotted the tables. The heavy cigar smoke tickled Sam’s nose and throat, and he had to work not to cough or sneeze. Walking among the powerful men undetected, Sam got a thrill. Oh, brother, he thought. How much would I love to move stuff around?
Over by the roaring fireplace, Marlowe raised his glass. “To the Founders Club. Long may they reign.”
“Hear, hear!” the men in cushy chairs said, raising their glasses.
The Founders Club! Sam’s head buzzed—this wasn’t just any club meeting. These were the fellas who had financed Project Buffalo. Sam hoped his invisibility act would last a little longer.
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“How is our pet project coming along for the exhibition, Jake?” a beefy man with a red nose growled around the cigar in his mouth.
“Oh, fine, fine. Jericho’s making excellent progress. Tomorrow we’ll give him the full dose.”
“Imagine it: a class of perfect, pure Americans—done right this time,” a thin man with sloped shoulders said as he moved a chess piece across the board, and Sam didn’t know what that meant. And what were they doing to Jericho?
He moved farther into the room, standing so close to the men he could practically move the chess pieces himself. It gave him a sick thrill. He was tempting fate. He didn’t care. He liked knowing he could move among them and they’d never know it. They didn’t control everything.
“And have you heard any more from your mysterious friend beyond?” a mustachioed, bald man asked as he sipped his brandy.
The great Jake Marlowe looked upset. “No.”
“Honestly, Jake, when will you stop trying?”
“Never! I’m no quitter,” Jake said.
“You’re going to run out of Diviners soon.”
“Not if I can make more of them again.”
The men laughed. “Well, don’t use tainted stock this time. That was your trouble—experimenting on lesser stock.”
“At least if something went wrong with the formula, we didn’t have to care,” the beefy man laughed.
