I sat in my little office for hours as evening deepened into darkness, alone in my quiet, climate controlled, chrome-and-leather cubicle, behind my sleek desk of Brazilian mahogany, and stared at my own personnel file on the desktop computer screen. There was not very much in it. Names. Dates. Schools. None of them made sense to me or touched the faintest wisp of memory.

I looked up at the polished chrome mirror on the wall across from my desk. John G. O’Ryan looked back at me: a stranger with thick, dark hair, an undistinguished face that had a slightly Mediterranean cast to it (why the O’Ryan, then?), just under six feet tall, with a trim build dressed in an executive’s uniform of dark blue three-piece suit, off-white shirt and carefully knotted maroon tie.

The personnel file said that I had been a good athlete at school. I still felt strong and solid. But totally “average.” I could fade into a crowd and become invisible quite easily.

Who am I?I could not escape the feeling that I had been put here, placed into this life, only three years ago by some power or agency that had wiped clean all memory of my earlier life.

I realized that I had to find out who, or what, had put me here. And Aretha was the key to my past; she knew, and she wanted me to know. My heart was pounding now, my breath fast, almost panting. I was feeling some emotion now, and for several minutes I reveled in it. But then, with a deliberate effort I lowered the adrenaline level in my blood, slowed my heartbeat and breathing rate.

Somehow I knew that the grenade had been meant for me. Not Aretha or anyone else. Me. Someone had tried to kill me. With the total certainty of truly in-built instinct, I realized that to try to discover my origins would mean mortal danger for me. Death. But I could not turn back. I had to know. And I realized that whoever I was, whatever my past had been, it must have involved not only Aretha but those two men as well — the angel and the dark spirit. One of them, perhaps both of them, had tried to kill me.