Wildcard. Rachel Lee

attached. If I were to accept your offer, I’d want to know who I would be beholden to.”

      Cohen looked up at the clouds for a moment, as if he were considering what to say, although Veltroni had no doubt he had long since rehearsed every possible move and countermove in this verbal sparring match.

      “Is it not enough to say I am a man who thinks the world would not be improved by the chaos that would arise from these discoveries?” Cohen asked.

      “No,” Veltroni said. “I am far too old to believe in convenient altruism.”

      “You are a cynic, my friend.”

      “I am a realist,” Veltroni answered.

      “The defense of all cynics and depressives,” Cohen replied with a quick chuckle. “You don’t see the glass as half-empty. It simply is half-empty, correct?”

      “Mockery is a dangerous game, Mr. Cohen. Even a dog tires of being poked with a stick. And I lack the saintly patience of that species.”

      “Please, Monsignor, let us not devolve into boys, strutting about the schoolyard with our chests out. That would demean us and serve no one but your enemies.”

      Veltroni was not accustomed to being lectured, nor to being patronized. His temper flared, his jaw clenching for a moment, before he bit back his reply and forced himself to take a long, slow breath. Wading into battle with an unknown enemy was the height of folly, and he was no fool. But signing a blank check to a stranger was equally foolish.

      “It seems,” Veltroni said, “that we have little more to discuss. I cannot consider your offer unless I know what is involved. My superiors—and I do have them, even if my organization is not a formal organ of the Church—would not permit it. We could sit here and joust all day, but, as I said, I am not blessed with saintly patience.”

      Cohen watched Veltroni rise and walk away. Another man might have regretted the course of the conversation, but Cohen had expected nothing more. Veltroni might lack patience, but Cohen did not. The Guardians had waited over three thousand years for a conjunction of opportunity such as now existed. A few more weeks were but a drop in a vast river of time.

      Veltroni was not yet desperate. But he would be, and sooner than he knew.