Mammoth

One wall facing her desk was a grid of screens displaying various parts of the mammoth compound. On one Matt could see the children still gathering around Fuzzy. On another was a view of Big Mama's quarters. Two attendants were shoveling hay and fruit into her gigantic manger, while another used a machine a little like a Zamboni to muck out the floor, spray and mop it, and spread fresh straw, all in one operation. All three workers seemed to be keeping a wary eye on the irascible old matriarch, though she was securely chained.

He had been coasting along on the pleasurable high he got from watching the circus show, but now the whole improbable plan, which he had been trying not to think about too much, came crashing back into his consciousness.

Could it work?

Well... yes, the first part, anyway. He was dubious about their long-term chances, but there hadn't been time to fill him in on every detail of that part. But the parts Susan had laid out for him seemed well thought out, as he would have expected of her.

Once more he asked himself why he was doing this.

One reason was obvious, and that was his love for Susan. If she wanted to do this, if she thought it was the right thing to do, then that was good enough for him. There was a second reason he thought they might succeed, but he hadn't figured out how to tell her that one yet. In fact, he hadn't had time to reconcile himself to the insanity of the idea.

The third reason was simple. Any robbery of this magnitude could only be carried out with help from the inside. Susan herself was the person with the most unquestioned access to Fuzzy, but even that would not have been enough, alone.

There was another insider.

25

WHILE Matt waited and fretted in Susan's office, a confederate he had never met was seated in a room, waiting and fretting, only a hundred yards away, beneath the circus grandstand seats. His name was Jack Elk, which had almost been a problem when he was hired, six months earlier. He had been born Jack Elkins but had changed his name legally ten years before, at the age of eighteen.

Anyone with the name of an animal was automatically flagged by the perso

How had it happened? How did he come to be sitting here, minutes away from setting in motion a series of events that could end up in one of the most spectacular kidnappings of all time? But... could you kidnap an animal? Maybe if you held it for ransom. Call it simple theft, then. It still carried a prison term.

And he'd only met Susan once. He had insisted on it, even though they both knew it was a security risk. He had to look in her eyes and know that she had Fuzzy's best interests at heart, that she wasn't doing this as part of some personal vendetta against one of the richest men in the world.

Howard Christian. Jesus! He was going up against Howard Christian. And he knew for a fact that Christian never forgot, and never forgave. Jack Elk chewed on his tenth cherry-flavored Tums of the night and watched the clock.

MATT was watching the screen that showed the hallway outside Susan's office door when he saw her open it from the outside, then from the inside. It was a little disorienting. He glanced at the screen showing Fuzzy's quarters. All the guests had gone; there was nothing to see but the star himself, placidly stuffing trunkfuls of his specially blended fodder into his mouth.

"It's time," she said simply, and he stood up. They faced each other for a silent moment, Matt waiting for her to say something else, and he realized she was giving him one last chance to back out. Maybe giving it to herself, too. Her eyes seemed to be pleading with him. It almost looked as if she wanted him to talk her out of it. As for himself, all she had to do was say the word and he was out of there. With her, of course. He didn't give much of a damn about Fuzzy, and she knew that, and didn't care, but he knew that her life had revolved around him for five years, and she had undergone a change at least as radical as the one that had overtaken him during his long quest alone. And he knew that he loved her, and would do anything for her. And there was another reason they had to do this, one he hadn't told her about yet.

So he said, "Let's do it." And surrendered himself to Fate.

JACK Elk saw Susan enter her office. The inside was one of the few places in Fuzzyland that he couldn't look into, others being the rest rooms and the offices of some of the top management and, of course, Howard Christian's offices. Earlier he had seen a man enter, keeping his back mostly to the camera, but there was another camera that gave him a better angle and he had called it up, ran it backward a few seconds, froze a frame that gave him a good three-quarter profile, zoomed in digitally, and enhanced it, just for something to do while he waited. This was what he was good at, skills he had honed in some of the bigger casinos in Las Vegas, where he could spot a pickpocket or a bottom-dealer in a crowd of people as easily as an ornithologist could peg a pelican in a flock of sparrows. He called up the face-recognition program. His own face program, the one he carried around in his brain, was excellent, sharpened by years of BOLOs issued by the casinos concerning card counters and dips and high rollers. This guy's face was familiar, one of those faces you felt was somebody who had been famous briefly, but maybe quite a while ago. Like that, but older.

Whoa! Of course. He was the guy who went back into the past with Susan. Did this change anything? Jack wondered. He glanced at the box on his screen labeled THREAT level. This was an i

Matt was listed as threat level yellow. Near as Jack could figure out, that meant Howard just didn't like the son of a bitch. Of course, since he was working with Susan, Jack would have let him slide even if he was red... unless the reason for the red rating was that he might be a danger to Fuzzy.

Would he be? Of course not, not if he was with Susan. Right?

He was drawn away from his thoughts by the sight of Susan and Matt coming out of her office. She stared right into Jack's camera and gave a slow nod. The operation was ready to start.

Jack wiped his palms on his jeans and got to work.

"SO what's the deal with this guy you're working with?" Matt asked, simply for something to say to take his mind off the weak feeling in his knees. "Jack..."

"Elk. When I first decided to do this, six months ago, I reached out—very cautiously, through a couple hidden Internet accounts—to people I thought might be willing to help. There's an underground network out there and it's not easy to get into. Animal rights fanatics, antifur people, eco-extremists, some of them involved in some very nasty stuff, so naturally they're cautious. But I had somebody I felt pretty sure would talk to me, at least give me a hearing... I'll tell you about him later. We're here."