The Hand of War
Page 23
She sighed. “What do you expect me to do, Lacklan? I am a psychiatrist, not a magician!”
“I don’t know, Lara! But you have to do something. Talk to her! Try to persuade her! She won’t listen to Ben, she won’t listen to me. She sees us both as having a vested interest. But you, she doesn’t know you. She doesn’t need to know you are Omega. You are just a friend of mine, somebody impartial. Tell her I used to see you when I got back from England, as a therapist. Just use your techniques to make her see the consequences of what she is going to do!”
She sighed again. “Very well, but I can’t promise anything, Lacklan. I honestly think you’re clutching at straws.”
“If straws is all there is, then that’s what I have to clutch at, right?”
She stared at me, then nodded once. “Alright, let’s go.”
We left our drinks virtually untouched. She grabbed her coat and we left.
As we crossed the road toward the Zombie, in the dull amber of the streetlamps, I asked her, “Have you told Ben I am here?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, but I will have to.”
I studied her a moment across the roof of the car. “Just wait till you’ve talked to her, will you? Let’s at least try and make this work. It’s not too late yet, but once you tell Ben…”
She nodded. “Let’s do it.”
We drove in silence, moving through the city toward the river. Soon the city lights were falling behind us and we were in darkness, surrounded by dense trees, a deep wall of blackness against the night sky, and only the amber beams from my headlamps to show the road ahead.
Unexpectedly, as the darkness closed in around us, Banks said, “You scare me, Lacklan.”
I answered without thinking. “You only need to fear me if you’re my enemy, Lara.”
She stared at my face, but didn’t reply. Shortly after that, I turned onto Chain Bridge Road and a couple of minutes later, I pulled into the drive. The lights were on and I could hear music. I killed the engine, climbed out, and opened the door. Banks was just behind me. The music was big band jazz from the thirties and the forties. There was a lot of clarinet and it sounded like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. It was happy music and made a weird contrast with the stillness of the room. The table was as I had left it, but Marni was sitting in an armchair holding a martini, staring at the fireplace, where the flames were dying down to embers.
Banks closed the door and I went over and switched off the music. Now the only sound was the desultory crack and spit of the burning logs. She still didn’t look at me, but I said, “I’ve brought somebody to talk to you.”
She raised her eyes to mine for a moment, then turned to look at Banks, who was still standing by the door. Marni asked, “Are you a friend of Ben’s?”
I said, “No, this is Lara. She’s a psychiatrist.”
Marni threw back her head and laughed out loud. “So because I don’t agree with you, I need a shrink? Boy! You really have joined Omega!”
I sighed. “Don’t be absurd, Marni. Lara helped me a lot when I left the Regiment, to deal with all the issues I had back then. She has nothing to do with Ben or with Omega. I thought, if you could talk to somebody objective—if we could talk to an objective mediator, we might be able to resolve this, come to some resolution before it’s too late.”
Marni looked at her skeptically. “You just happened to be in Washington?”
Banks smiled at her. “No, I didn’t just happen to be here. I live and work in Washington. This is my home.”
Marni turned to me. “How come you’ve never mentioned this before?”
There was an edge to my voice. “Maybe because we have never actually spoken, because every time I have tried to get close to you, you have run away.” I sighed. “Do you want a drink?” She shrugged. I looked at Banks. “Will you have that drink now? The one you were going to have at your apartment?” She smiled and nodded, and while I poured, she approached Marni and said, “May I sit?”
“Sure.”
“Do you mind if we give this a try? I think it’s worth it, don’t you?”
I handed Banks a martini. She took it and sipped. “Thank you.”
I handed Marni hers and for a moment our eyes met. I smiled. “I guess the first thing is that I need to do is apologize. I said things I should not have said, and which I didn’t mean. I guess we have both been under a lot of stress.”
I raised my glass. “Here’s to fresh starts and new beginnings!”
We all three drank to that. But then Marni sighed and shook her head.
“Look, Lacklan, Lara, I appreciate what you are trying to do, and believe me, Lacklan, I do understand why you’re mad. But I am sorry, I just can’t go through with this. I cannot collaborate with the enemy. I can’t and I won’t.”
Banks sipped and then sighed. “Marni, you know, often, when a situation looks simple, black and white, and our options seem limited, a small change of perspective can suddenly throw up a lot of new options. I believe you love Lacklan, don’t you?”
She shrugged and stared down at her glass. “Of course I do.”
“And you understand, from what he has told me, that if you pull out of this agreement, it will probably cost him and some other people their lives…”
Marni nodded, still staring at her glass.
“Then can we at least agree this much, that it is really very important for us three, tonight, to reach some kind of arrangement that satisfies your conscience, but also ensures Lacklan’s safety?”
Marni drained her glass and handed it to me. “Can I have another, please?”
I took the glass and looked at Banks. “You want a refill?”
“Sure.”
She drained her glass and I refilled both of them at the sideboard. When I handed them back their drinks, Marni looked me square in the eye and said, “No. You have survived till now, fighting and killing, you can continue doing that. To quote your words just before you left, Lacklan, fuck you.”
Twenty Four
I stared at her, then bellowed, “What the hell is the matter with you, Marni? Have you gone out of your mind?”
“Fuck you!”
“Just talk to me!”
“Fuck you!”
“For crying out loud, Marni! What’s got into you?”
“Fuck you!”
“You had better stop saying that Marni, or so help me God…!”
“What? So help you God, what? What are you going to do? Kill me? Is that your fucking answer to everything? Kill! Kill! Kill! That’s all you know how to do, you fucking animal! Well, fuck-you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
She got to her feet, walked to the French windows and stood looking out.
My voice was cold and quiet when I said, “It was you who killed my father…”
After a moment she turned to face me. “And he murdered mine. He was a murdering bastard, just like you. You are your father’s son, Lacklan. Fuck him and fuck you, too. Fuck you both.”
I walked away from her, out into the hall, out into the drive, to my car. I opened the trunk and pulled over my kit bag. I found the Smith & Wesson and loaded it with five 700 grain rounds. I walked back into the house to where she was sitting, with her eyes closed. There was a savageness, a madness to my voice.
“You think you can use me? You think you can tell me you love me in the morning, and then sentence me to death in the evening? You think you can write me off and sentence millions of others to death just to salve your fucking conscience? Well you can’t, Marni. Maybe you’re right, maybe I am a killer. But when I kill, it’s for a reason—a better reason than moral vanity!”
I aimed with both hands and blew her head off at near point blank range. I emptied the five rounds into her, then I went to the garage and collected two of the gallon gasoline cans I had seen earlier. I brought them back to the living room and doused her body and the chair with the contents of one, and the rest of the room with the other. Then I took the candle, went to the door and threw it in.
>
I climbed in my car, lit a cigarette, and drove away into the night, not following any particular road, just heading north and west, following the Potomac, into the dark, toward the wilderness.
After about an hour, when I had reached the outskirts of Bedford, I pulled over to the side of the road, in the cover of some trees, and took Banks’ phone. I sent Ben a message from it.
“One thing I can’t forgive, Ben, is betrayal. Marni betrayed me, after I was willing on so many occasions to give my life for her. I have killed her, and I have taken Dr. Banks hostage. If you come after me, I will kill her. Allow me to disappear and I will let her return to you when I am safe. It’s over, forget me.”
I pressed ‘send’. Then, I climbed out of the car and threw the phone into the trees. After that, I spent half an hour finding the bugs in the car and throwing them after the phone. Finally, I climbed back into the Zombie and smiled at the beautiful woman sitting next to me.
“Before you go, I want to show you my house in Wyoming. We’ll spend a couple of days there. A honeymoon for the wedding we never had. Then, I’ll take you to San Francisco, you can fly from there.”
Marni nodded, leaned forward and kissed me.
“I will come back. We will make it happen. I promise.”
“I know. We’ll never give up.”
“Not till we’re dead.”
* * *
It was the next morning, while we were having an early breakfast of coffee and scrambled eggs at a service station in Indiana, that we heard it on the news.
“…in a week that has rocked the world, we have barely recovered from the revelation that a United States-made tactical nuclear device was smuggled into the United Nations, armed and set to detonate, with sufficient power to take out most of lower Manhattan and part of Brooklyn, we are barely recovering from this devastating shock, when we now hear that a bomb has exploded in the very heart of the Pentagon, killing three people. But as if that were not enough, we are now hearing that the identity of one of the victims has been confirmed as that of former President Dick Hennessy. A tragic loss to the nation, that has left us utterly, utterly stunned. We can’t help but wonder what new horrors are in store for us, and pray, Bill, that this nightmare will soon come to an end…”
We paid, in cash, and as the sun spread its early light over the highway, we climbed into the Zombie and headed north, toward the wilderness.
I knew Banks would be completely unrecognizable—the Smith & Wesson had taken care of any possible identification by dental records, and the fire had taken care of everything else. We had a reprieve, we had some time. Meanwhile, I hoped Mclean would survive, and that he would eventually check his email. Who knew? One day he might become an ally. As for Gibbons, we knew from a phone call to Green College that he was safely back in Oxford. With me out of the frame as his killer, I trusted that Omega would not dare take him out.
And the fiasco at the UN had started to burn out of control. It wasn’t enough to bring Omega down, not yet, but it had hurt them badly, and the fight would continue. We would win. We would win, or we would die.
* * *
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* * *
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ALSO BY BLAKE BANNER
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DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES
An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)
Two Bare Arms (Book 2)
Garden of the Damned (Book 3)
Let Us Prey (Book 4)
The Sins of the Father (Book 5)
Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)
The Heart to Kill (Book 7)
THE OMEGA SERIES
Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)
Double Edged Blade (Book 2)
The Storm (Book 3)
The Hand of War (Book 4)
* * *
[1] See Dawn of the Hunter
[2] See Double Edged Blade
[3] See The Storm