by Dean Koontz
Canning hung up and turned to Lee Ann. "Dragonfly is downstairs right this minute. He's here to ask for political asylum. He doesn't seem to know what he is, and I don't think he's been triggered."
Without a word she left the room and ran down the fourth-floor hall toward the stairs.
Behind the desk, Alexander Webster seemed to have aged twenty years in two minutes. His muscular body had shrunk in on itself. He said, "I guess you'll call this a miracle when you look back on it years from now."
"No," Canning said. "I don't believe in miracles. I don't even believe in coincidence. Somehow, his coming here tonight is tied directly to what you people did to him. I can't guess how, but I'd bet on it."
Shortly, Lee Ann returned with Chai. He was a slender, wiry, rather good-looking young man. He smiled at everyone.
The night bell rang only in James Chin's bedroom. It shrilled again just as he was sliding between the sheets
"What in the hell is going on here?" he grumbled. He pushed back the covers, got up, stepped into his slippers, and picked up his robe.
The night bell rang again.
"Coming, coming, for God's sake."
When he was at the head of the stairs, he heard the bell ring again, behind him in his room.
"Must be a night for mass defections," Obin mumbled to himself. The heels of his slippers slapped noisily on the steps. "Twenty million Chinese have suddenly decided to move to Chicago." When he reached the first-floor hall he heard pounding at the front door. "You're really not going to like Chicago," he told the defectors on the other side of the door. "Wait until you learn about smog and traffic jams." He twisted the lock and opened the door and said, "Oh. General Lin."
Without being invited, the general stepped inside, squeezing past Obin. He said, "A young man named Chai Po-han has come here seeking political asylum."
"As a matter of fact, yes," Obin said. "But—"
"I must see him."
Obin realized that there was something odd about the general. The man was too stiff, too tense—and yet, had that look about the eyes of someone who had been smoking grass or popping pills.
"I must see Chai," General Lin repeated.
"I'm afraid that might not be possible. He has asked for political asylum. In any event, you'll have to go through Ambassador Webster."
"Where is Chai?" the general demanded.
"He's upstairs in Mr. Webster's office. And—"
The general turned away from him and went toward the stairs.
Running after him and grabbing him by the arm, Obin said, "You can't just barge—"
During his programming in Seoul, the general had been told to get to Chai Po-han at any cost once Webster had triggered him. He could perform, now, in none but a brutal fashion. He struck Obin across the face and knocked him backward into the first-floor hall. Then he turned and ran up the steps.
They were all listening to Chai Po-han as he explained about the Ssunan Commune. Webster was still behind his desk. Chai was in one of the armchairs, and Lee Ann was in the other. Fortunately, Canning was on his feet, standing beside Lee Ann, facing Chai, the open office door on his left.
Suddenly, heavy running footsteps echoed in the corridor, interrupting Chai's story. An instant later General Lin Shen-yang burst into the room. His face was a reflection of his tortured mind: wild-eyed, loose-lipped, nostrils flared. He saw Chai and lunged toward him. As he moved he said, "Dragonfly must spread his wings."
Canning brought out his silenced pistol—and was knocked off his feet as a bullet tore through his right shoulder.
Lee Ann screamed.
Rolling, Canning came up onto his kness and saw that Webster had taken a gun from the center desk drawer. The ambassador seemed surprised that Canning was still alive. Before he could get over his surprise, Canning shot him in the face.
An unsilenced gunshot boomed behind him.
He twisted around in time to see Lee Ann fall in a heap, and he felt something snap inside of him. He raised his eyes and saw the general staring stupidly at the smoking revolver in his own hand. The man did not appear to remember that he had drawn and fired it. Indeed, he had probably been following his program and nothing more—an automaton, victim of drugs and subliminal suggestions and modern technology. Nevertheless, Canning put one bullet in his stomach and one in his chest and one in his throat.
The general fell backward, knocking over a floor lamp as he went, landing with a crash.
Chai Po-han, Canning thought.
Dragonfly.
Lin had triggered him.
Where was he now?
Biting his lip hard enough to take his mind off the paint in his shoulder, Canning struggled to his feet and looked around the room.
Chai was standing in a corner by the bookshelves. He had torn open the front of his shirt and was gently pricking his left shoulder with the point of a letter opener that Canning had earlier noticed on Webster's desk. A thin trickle of blood was running down his chest. He stabbed himself again, lightly, gently, then dropped the instrument.
The spansule was broken.
Chai was infected.
For a moment Canning almost buckled under the knowledge of his defeat. Then an energizing thought hit him like a hammer striking a sheet of white-hot steel: the plague virus required a human host, a culture in which it could survive and multiply, living flesh on which it could feed; no virus grew in a dead man; Chai could not infect anyone if he could no longer breathe . . .
As if he had just awakened from a trance, Chai said, "What is happening here?"
"Too much," Canning said. He staggered close enough to put his last two bullets dead-center in Chai Po-han's head.
The boy fell into the bookcases and slid to the floor, dead beyond question.
Dropping his pistol, Canning went back to Lee Ann and knelt at her side. She was lying face-down on the floor. She had been shot in the back, low down, just left of the spine, and she had bled quite a lot. He touched her and began to cry and was still crying when James Obin and the others came up from downstairs
EPILOGUE
NEW YORK CITY: OCTOBER 25
A.W. West was scheduled to have drinks at five-thirty at the Plaza Hotel, where his Swiss attorney was staying during a one-week visit to New York. Prior to that engagement, however, he stopped in at Mark Cross to personally select and purchase a fine matched set of hand-tooled leather luggage that was to be a wedding gift for his favorite nephew.
When he and his bodyguard came out of the Mark Cross store, West decided to walk the short distance to the Plaza. The day was seasonably warm. There was a fresh breeze moving down Fifth Avenue, gently rustling women's skirts. West waved away his limousine, which was waiting at the curb, and set off toward Fifty-eighth Street, where he would cross to the far side of the avenue.
West's bodyguard walked a pace or two behind and to the right of him, studying everyone who approached and passed by them. But he was not particularly worried. He knew that hit men worked around a target's routine, picking a hit point they knew he would cross at a certain time. But this walk was unplanned, unpredictable. There was little chance of any trouble growing out of it.
West wasn't worrying about security precautions. He was just enjoying the walk, the breeze, and the lovely women one could always find on this part of Fifth Avenue.
A Cadillac limousine, not quite so elegant as West's own Rolls-Royce, pulled to the curb a hundred feet ahead, and a well-dressed man climbed out of it. He walked back in the direction of Mark Cross, toward West.
There were so many people on the street who bore watching that West's bodyguard paid scant attention to this one. After all, the man didn't appear to be a thug; he was chauffeur-driven, London-suited, respectable.
As the man from the Cadillac approached West, he smiled broadly and held out his hand.
West frowned. This man was a stranger. Nevertheless, West reflexively raised his own hand to let it be shaken.
"What a surprise!" the stranger
said. Shaking with his right hand, he raised his left hand and showed West the miniature spray can that he held.
"What—"
It was very fast, very clean, and probably invisible to anyone nearby. He sprayed West in the face. The spray can went pssss. It was a short burst.
Don't breathe.' West thought. But he had gasped in surprise, and the thought was too late to save him. Although the gas was colorless and odorless, West felt suddenly as if he were smothering. Then there was an explosion of pain in his chest, and he fell.
The stranger went down on one knee beside him.
The bodyguard pushed through the ring of people that had formed already. "What the hell?"
"Heart attack," the gray-eyed man said. "I'm a doctor. I've seen it before. Call an ambulance." He tore open West's shirt and began to forcefully massage his chest, directly over his heart. He glanced up after a moment, saw the bodyguard, and said, "For God's sake, get an ambulance!"
The bodyguard got up and ran toward the corner of Fifty-eighth and Fifth Avenue in search of a policeman.
After another half-minute the stranger stopped working on West, and said, "He's gone. I'm afraid he's gone." He stood up, adjusted his tie, shook his head sadly, and melted away into the crowd a full minute before West's bodyguard returned.
NEW YORK CITY: NOVEMBER 5
Prescott Hennings stopped at the water fountain in the lobby of his office building. He took a long, cool drink. When he raised his head he found that a rangy man with eyes the color of sheet metal had moved in extremely close to him. "Excuse me," Hennings said.
"Mr. Hennings?"
"Yes?"
"Prescott Hennings?"
"Yes."
The stranger brought a small aerosol can from his jacket pocket and held it up. This can was so small that the stranger's hand concealed it from everyone but Hennings. "Do you know what this is?" he asked pleasantly.
"I don't know you. If you're some sort of salesman or inventor, I don't want to know you," Hennings said, beginning to get irritated.
"No, no," the stranger said, smiling. "I didn't invent it. It was invented by some very clever men at Fort Derrick a few years back. If I spray your face the chemical will give you a fatal heart attack that'll pass any autopsy. That's what happened to Mr. West, you know."
Alarm flushed into Hennings' face.
Canning sprayed him.
Hennings wheezed and staggered back against the fountain. He clutched at his throat, gagged, and fell down.
"Here!" Canning shouted to the other people in the lobby. "Get a doctor! An ambulance! This man's having a heart attack!" He knelt down beside Hennings and examined him. When several other people crowded around, Canning said, "I'm afraid it's too late. Poor fellow."
By six o'clock that evening he was back at the new house just outside of Washington. When he got there, Lee Ann was practicing walking between the parallel bars that were set up for her in the recreation room. The private nurse who worked with her every day was not there.
"Where's Tillie?" he asked.
"I sent her home. I promised I'd just sit in my wheelchair and read until you got here."
"This is a hell of a trick."
She struggled to the end of the bars and collapsed into his arms. "Walking? Not much of a trick. Billions of people do it every day. I used to do it all the time—and I will again."
"You know what I mean," he said, holding her close, holding her on her feet. "What if you'd fallen when there wasn't anyone here to pick you up?"
"I'd have taken a nap on the floor." She cast an impish grin up at him.
He couldn't stay angry with her. He lifted her and carried her around to her wheelchair at the other end of the parallel bars.
"How'd it go?" she asked.
"Just like West."
"Marvelous. You're a good man at your trade."
"Is it starting to bother you—what I'm doing?"
"No," she said. "It would bother me if you weren't doing it. If you weren't getting rid of them, I'd wonder if anyone was—and I wouldn't sleep nights."
He knew exactly what she meant.
THE WHITE HOUSE: NOVEMBER 21
Andrew Rice was on time for the meeting in the Oval Office, but the President and Bob McAlister were already there. He shook hands with McAlister and said good morning to the President. As he sat down, the chair squeaked under him.
"Cold as the devil out there," McAlister said.
Rice said, "Damned early in the season for snow flurries in Washington."
Boring in his left ear with an index finger, the President said, "Shall we get on with it?"
McAlister turned to Rice and said, "Andy, you're as fat as a house."
Andrew Rice's eyes glazed over; he stared through McAlister. His mouth sagged. He waited.
Clearing his throat, the President said, "Andy, when Senator Konlick died in that automobile accident the week before last—well, that took care of the list of Committee leaders you provided us with a couple of months ago. Now, we feel certain that there are men in this thing that you didn't know about back then, men whose connections to it were all but invisible so long as West, Hennings, Konlick, and the others were there to run the show. Now, with The Committee's leadership gap, one of these silent partners must have come forth."
"Yes," Rice said dully. "I was contacted by Cabot Addingdon."
"The real-estate millionaire from Massachusetts who ran for the governorship a few years back."
"That's right," Rice said.
For the next half-hour McAlister and the President pumped him for information. Then McAlister brought him out of the trance, and they sat around talking about trade agreements so that Rice would not suspect the real nature of the meeting.
Later, when Rice had gone to perform a series of make-work tasks for the President, McAlister said, "I'll pass on Addingdon's name to David Canning."
The President wiped a speck of ear wax from his fingertip onto his suit jacket. "Bob, I believe you're looking worse by the day."
"I was going to ask for three weeks off in December."
"By all means."
"I'll fly down to the Caribbean and just relax. That's all I need. Just some rest in the sun."
That was not all he needed. He also needed to regain some of his self-respect, although he knew that he would never regain all of it. He had beaten The Committee by adopting its methods; he had sacrificed morality for expediency. How could he live with that? Even if it was the only thing he could have done, how could he live with it? He needed to find a way to carry the burden of his guilt without collapsing under it. He needed to come to terms with the man he had become and didn't want to be.
"Are you still having trouble sleeping?" the President asked.
"Yes. And you?"
"I'm using sleeping tablets. I'll have the White House physician prescribe some for you."
"Thank you, sir." McAlister hesitated. Then: "I have this recurring nightmare."
"Oh?"
"I keep dreaming that The Committee knows that we've made a zombie out of Rice. I keep dreaming that they've implanted a second set of subliminal keys in him, deeper than ours—and at any time they are going to use him against us."
The President sat up straight in his chair. "God, that is something to think about."
"I've been thinking about a lot of things, too many things," McAlister said wearily. "That's why I can't sleep well."
"The Caribbean will put your mind at ease."
"I'm sure it will," McAlister said, forcing a smile.
But as he had considered the necessity of adopting The Committee's methods in order to destroy it, he had recalled something that William Pitt had said in the House of Commons in 1783, a quote which McAlister had often used in speeches: Necessity is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. He knew he was no tyrant, and he was fairly sure he could say as much for the President. But they had established a dangerous precedent here. What of the men who came into office after them? W
ould they be decent men? Or would they be tyrants who, if they discovered this precedent, would point to it and declare themselves driven by necessity and institute a wider policy of government violence in order to stifle all disagreement with their policies? It was something to lie awake and think about at night. It scared the hell out of him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
K.R. DWYER (a pen name) was born in 1945 in Everett, Pennsylvania, and grew up in nearby Bedford. He is a graduate of Shippensburg State College and worked for a time as a tutor for underprivileged children with the Appalachian Poverty Program. His books (under his own name and pen names) have been published in more than a dozen languages and have sold over four million copies.