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archeological team. To all intents and purposes, we'll be part of the group from the university that's over at . . . Mellangaun Stones, is it? We intend to investigate the area where this artifact was found. And at the same time anything else of a suspicious nature that may crop up."
    Molly thought about the three alleged ghosts that had been reported. "You might have your plate full in that department," she said, and told him about the sightings.
    "No worries," Martin replied. "Just sounds like the usual backwater foolishness. No offense intended."
    "None taken. When will you arrive?"
    "It'll take a week to get the team together and the bona fides all in place. Needless to say, this is for your ears only. Not a word to anyone about our teams' connection to MI5, not even to your friend Mr. Keith, yes?"
    She didn't respond to the slight teasing in Leech's voice. Of course they would still know everything about her. Once you were in MI5, you never fully left their surveillance. "Of course not," she said shortly. "I have learned to keep a secret, Martin."
    "Right then. We'll be in touch."
    Martin Leech and MI5 were not the only things to be in touch. Within a half hour after she hung up the phone, she had received four more reports of sightings during that day and the night before of ghosts or aliens or spirits. Molly Fraser was pretty much a staunch materialist. Still, she had seen her share of horror movies on the telly, and the thought naturally came to her of that creaky plot of the reemergence of something that should remain in the ground, and its cursed aftermath.
    The thought left her as quickly as it had come. Whatever was happening with the unearthed cloth, it smacked of science. And as for the purported ghosts, fraud was still the most likely answer. After all, the work of the crop circle hoaxers might have been considered alien for decades had they not come forward and shown how it had been done. The ghosts were probably nothing more than a well-organized bunch of scrub footballers looking for a cheap laugh.
    Besides, why would ghosts bother to show themselves and scare crofters and housewives and truckers? Just for the fun of it? It was too preposterous. Surely ghosts would want more than that.
     
    H e wanted blood. But not the small amounts that had flowed from the individuals he had met while wandering in the desert. It had at least been entertaining, however, when he'd come across backpackers and hikers. Of the half dozen he had confronted, there were only two of them whom he had not been able to control.
    Fortunately, one of them was a man hiking with his wife, and the woman had been all too susceptible to his desires. She had attacked her husband with the strength of the madwoman that she temporarily was, and had torn clean down to the jugular with her teeth. Then she had taken out a folding knife and disemboweled herself, precisely the way in which he had requested of her.
    The other person whom he had met had been untouchable, his mind as impregnable as if there had been a foot thick layer of lead between them. Ah well , he had thought, as he'd smashed the man's head into a pulp with a rock, sometimes blood didn't tell. Actively killing wasn't nearly as rewarding as directing the mayhem, but it had to be done. He couldn't let the man go and tell of meeting a wanderer in the desert who looked like Jesus and was dressed like John the Baptist.
    But he was bored, this creature who had been known by many names. The Roman Catholic Church had called him the Antichrist; a motley assortment of pilgrims seeking truth, power, and self-justification had proclaimed him the Divine, the Holy One, and the Lord; and Laika Harris, Joseph Stein, and Tony Luciano referred to him only as the Prisoner, the one behind the disappearance of a sculptor in New York and the dehydrated bodies in the desert. They had come close to finding him in New York, and were tracking him down in Utah, only to be outdistanced by Michael LaPierre, who,