He said to Eve, ‘Get her into the lounge room. Stay there till we’ve cleaned up.’
‘She’d be better in her room.’
‘I wouldn’t go upstairs.’
She looked aghast.
It took an hour to get the bodies in the van — and EXIT alerted for the pick-up.
The blood-covered Cain clumped back into the dining room to find the family huddled over the fire beside empty mugs of tea.
He said wearily, ‘All back to normal.’
A wrenching sob from Eve.
Jane glared up at him. ‘Normal?’
‘Well, until they regroup and try again.’
‘Just . . . get us out of here.’
MORTAR
It was a week since the switch. As usual the transition was uncanny. The people at the dinner table seemed the same, even to Cain.
There were subtle differences certainly. The new Eve couldn’t quite match the original’s satin voice. The new Nina acted sulkily pubescent but at heart was rather prim. The new Jane was identical but lacked her counterpart’s practicality.
They didn’t talk shop, kept the conversation general, discussed the mess in Yugoslavia, the skinheads in Germany.
After the meal came the evening routine. Stromlo handled the sked while Cain checked the grid alarms. Their function was now different — not to protect the duplicate family but to make it seem nothing had changed.
Cain strolled to the priest’s room. He was used to the old fraud now, even fond of him. ‘Still no word?’
The Great One shook his head and packed the headset back into the radio. ‘I hope they haven’t forgotten us because, without advance warning, we’re dead.’
‘Right. Next time they’ll probably have a thermal imager. We have to be gone before they come.’
They knew their base was compromised. As they discussed the sabotage of EXIT again, Stromlo felt under his bed for a wrapped bottle. ‘Would you care for a little . . . ?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t mind if I go ahead?’ He didn’t bother with a glass.
‘So, you’re positive the Vatican’s not behind it?’
‘Yes. The Curia needs the status quo.’
‘Is the CIA after Stern?’
‘They don’t know we have the pope or Stern.’
‘So tell me about Stern.’
The priest swigged again. ‘There was a certain organisation doing typhus inoculations in Manila. They added hormones to the injections. Also a trial done in Angola. Stern was involved. But his new project . . . You’re trying to pump me, Ray. I’ve said enough.’ He frowned and changed the subject. ‘The duplicate Nina’s . . . effective, don’t you think?’
Cain smiled. ‘Great arse. Fancy her?’
A pained look. ‘Celibacy is the Church’s gift.’
‘And misogyny the nature of the priesthood?’
‘No. Because the Church is the bride.’
‘Ah!’ He enjoyed these jousts. ‘So Latin American priests commit adultery?’
‘Your facile mind will hang you yet.’ Stromlo’s heavy sigh. ‘John Paul himself said that we have made of sex the only sin — when it could be the least of sins.’
‘Wonderful. He said that?’
Stromlo nodded sagely. ‘”Where does the bedroom end and the stars begin?” I quote the great Drummond de Andrade. What a pope I destroyed! God forgive me!’ He rocked with remorse. ‘What a pope! God! Oh God!’
‘I’m sure you’ll be forgiven. After all, they say God’s a Brazilian.’
‘Deus caritas est. So what else could he be?’ The priest-assassin shut his eyes. ‘Still, my best hope is annihilation — that afterwards there’s nothing.’
‘Life isn’t simple. Why should death be?’
Stromlo’s tortured look. ‘Why are you cruel to me? I crave not to believe. And you still do?’
‘Goodnight, my friend.’ He gripped the man’s shoulder, walked thoughtfully back to his room.
So it wasn’t the Vatican. It wasn’t the CIA. He went to bed still thinking about it, hoping to wake in a whole skin.
Something roused him. A sound?
He put his hand out for the P90, then checked the perimeter alarm handset by his bed. The backlit indicator blinked CLEAR.
He sat up slowly, freeing the bedclothes from the gun, slid out of bed, grabbed his flak jacket, got it on. No time for pants, or boots. He stood up in the dark room, breath suspended, listening, then edged out into the hall.
Broken plastic under his bare foot.
He looked up.
The hall skylight — shattered — open to the stars.
Something stung the inside of his throat.
The last thing he knew was the flesh of his cheek dragging back as it slid down the cold wall.
LIMBO
Cain felt as if he were being cut apart. He tried to open his eyes but had to shut them against the glare.
The next time he knew himself, he was feverishly cold and the unbearable pain remained. When he opened his eyes he saw red-streaked gauze. He gulped air as if he couldn’t get enough. Then he seemed to be floating.
Later they described what they’d done to him.
First, the laparotomy. Bleeding points were ligated and, after peritoneal lavage, damage was assessed and the intestine resected. The surgeon performed an elegant midline opening and single-layer anastomosis of considerable facility.
The neurosurgical team shaved his shattered head, incised his scalp, drilled burr holes through the intact bone near the damage, then nibbled the bone away. The tangential bullet had caused a gutter fracture, subdural haematoma, contusion, and driven fragments into the brain. There hadn’t been time for fancy tests. Relieving pressure was one thing. Finding fragments was another. As bone doesn’t resist infection, debridement had to be complete.
Then, intestines resectioned, brain bruised and swollen, a mess of post-operative hazards, he was wheeled to the ICU. He was attached to nasogastric tubes, a drip, an oxygen sensor, ventilator. He had an ileostomy, abdominal drain, urinary catheter . . .
After days of sedation and checks for exudations and odour — bullets suck in bacteria and debris — he went back into the theatre for a delayed primary closure.
Eventually, two blurs, who were presumably people, persuaded him to hold up two fingers, follow a pencil with his eyes and say words. The words slurred and his left hand didn’t quite work.
The bigger blur said, ‘Obeys commands, opens eyes spontaneously, converses, has reasonable motor function. Now if we get him through biochemical and vascular changes, avoid peritonitis, epilepsy, myonecrosis, we’re crash hot.’
He dragged at a tube that seemed part of him but the smaller blur plucked his hand away.
The bigger blur resumed the record of disaster. ‘You’re looking good, Mr Cain. You have a drain but the colon wasn’t damaged so we’ve avoided a colostomy. You got a temporary stoma — be wearing a bag for a while. When the gut heals, we’ll close it and you can shit the usual way.’ He turned to the smaller blur. ‘When’s his next CT?’
‘Tomorrow,’ the sister said. ‘And Dr Mead wants an MRI.’
The next weeks were discomfort and pain. He was restless, coughed a lot. When he was a little less out of it, an EXIT staff surgeon came and, finally, he got hard details.
‘You’ve taken four hits. The cook found you, drove you to a doctor. We sent a chopper and handled it from there.’
‘How did they . . . ?’ He was slurring.
‘Mortar. Gas canisters lobbed through the roof of the house. The gas was just to disable because they wanted the family alive. They plugged you and Stromlo.’
‘Stromlo’s . . . ?’
‘Dead. You got one in the gut, one to the head. With all the blood from your head, they wouldn’t believe you’d survive.’
‘And my gut?’
‘You’ve lost small intestine basically. Could have been worse than the head. When a bullet connects with body tissue it develops a ya
w.’ The man knew wound ballistics like all Beta medicos. ‘You get a stress wave, millisecond pulsations . . .’
‘I had the vest on.’ He couldn’t get his tongue around the words.
‘There’s still cavitation on impact. It stopped two rounds but weakened enough to let through a third although it absorbed most of its energy. Did no more damage than a low-velocity pistol bullet. But a rough way to lose an appendix. The vest probably saved you a kidney and a pulped liver on the round that got through.’ He replaced the clipboard on the foot of the bed.
‘The duplicates?’
‘In Russia.’
So it had worked. His mind was starting to drift but he mumbled the question that was haunting him. ‘Were we meant to be taken out?’
The doctor shrugged. ‘I’m not up with the politics. But Rhonda insisted we did everything to save you.’
He frowned under the bandage that was probably holding his head together. ‘How will I be after this?’
‘We’re not so worried about your guts now. Your head’s the iffy bit. We’ll know more in a few days.’ He waffled about secondary insults, BP fluctuations, torn bridging veins, blood absorption. ‘Considering what you’ve been through, you’re in great shape.’
‘Don’t snow me. Just tell me.’
The man nodded, strolled to the window, whistled tunelessly, turned around. ‘Okay. You won’t be the same. At best, you may have to walk with a stick.’
The shock of the statement went in. He knew a chapter of his life had closed.
* * *
After a month, the EXIT surgeon cleared him for the flight to Tasmania. He was shuttled to Beta by chopper and wheeled to a one-bed ward. He hoped Pat would come but they told him she was away having treatment.
Eventually Rhonda arrived, looking grave, her hair a mess. The ash and burn holes in the front of her dress told him how stressed she was. She put a hand on his brow.
His bleary look. ‘So were we expendable?’
‘We told you to get out, you mad idiots.’
‘Like hell you did. We got nothing.’
Shock on her face. ‘No signal?’
‘Nothing. We checked the night before. They’d even found the perimeter system.’
‘But the transmission was acknowledged.’
‘Not by us.’
She went almost crimson with anger. The reaction couldn’t have been faked.
‘So it’s still going on?’
She pressed his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Ray.’
‘I’ve been doing some thinking.’ His voice still slurred like a drunk’s. ‘Rehana wasn’t writing “Z”. She was halfway through an “M”. Murchison fixed the job in Chartres. And I reckon Vanqua’s running him.’
She pressed his hand again, tears of rage in her eyes. ‘Just . . . get well.’
EXPOSURE
BUNDANOON, AUSTRALIA, DECEMBER 1993
It took him a year to recover.
The walking frame went early, the ileostomy after two months. But he needed the stick three months more and the slurring was still there.
After eight months he was well enough to direct again but did it mostly from a chair — stop-frame animation, paintbox stuff. He wore the SIG each day, trusting nobody now.
The change was more than physical. He dwelt on his life a good deal — on the training that justified killing as a job. Now that he’d experienced directly through his body what bullets did, viewing death at one remove became hard to distinguish from brutality.
As for the second aspect they’d formed in him, the inner search — the respect for all religions, the capacity to commune with popes — it made him think a lot about Stromlo, that other unfortunate taught to pray and kill. Would the ordeal of EXIT turn him into Stromlo’s clone — tear him apart inside until even death became more terror than release?
He was physically damaged, ageing, less resilient to stress. During his flight to reality, his personal items had moved.
He bought a shack in a country town two hours drive south of Sydney, intending to repair it at weekends. But he pottered around the place unable to get on with things. He didn’t even drive there but drowsed in the train, mind in neutral, a hypnagogic jerk.
One Sunday near the end of summer he made a simple meal and ate it watching the evening news. He’d heard nothing from base for months. The item was a slap in the face:
‘. . . allegations,’ the TV anchor declared with stock concern, ‘that a covert organisation has kidnapped the controversial guru and replaced him with a surgically altered lookalike. A spokesman for “The Square” claims to have a tape showing one of Gustave Raul’s closest associates teaching the substitute to impersonate him.’
Cain froze, fork in air.
A clip of the man followed and they supered his name: Peter Bell. He was described as a US Navy SEAL, dishonourably discharged. It was the man who’d followed him three years ago — on the night he slept with Jojo. Intelligent face, intense eyes — the man Karen Hunt had assured him she could trust.
An interview with Bell followed. He passionately declared that the cult would do anything to get Raul back. He mentioned the traitors who’d engineered the switch — two men and a woman — and implied that he’d cross-examined the men.
Was one Murchison? Had the bastard been caught in his own trap? Being grilled by the fanatical ex-SEAL wouldn’t have been fun. How much had Murchison given them? With prompting it could have been a lot.
The interviewer then asked Bell if he’d interrogated the woman.
Bell said that she’d eluded them but they were keen to locate her.
And they punched up a still of Hunt.
Cain swore at the beautiful face.
The worm had poked its head from the apple.
EXIT was outed.
PRELATES PULL PLUG
THE VATICAN, ROME
The city-state seemed undisturbed. Bernini’s colonnade still stood. The image of the saint’s right foot was still being kissed by reverent lips. The decorative guards still patrolled with their halberds and the fountains, grottoes and hedges still resembled a landscape gardener’s nightmare. There was the usual bustle at the Porta Sant’Anna but the helipad was bare and the ghost, in the second library of the English College, had not lately appeared. Like all deep changes, this one left the surface untouched.
The meeting took place in none of the 10,000 rooms yet appropriately close to the secret archives. Cardinal Sarrum avoided the library’s black desks, uncomfortable chairs, solemnly ticking clock and walked through to the patio.
In the small garden, His Eminence, Cardinal Llosa, stood gazing at the flagging. He was a gaunt, chinless Peruvian with trifocals and spatulate hands who rarely looked at anyone directly. ‘So it has come.’
‘Yes. The Secretariat is manoeuvring to put pressure on four of the governments. We’re only secure if both our guests at EXIT are disposed of.’
‘It’s not enough.’ Llosa’s mouth drew down. ‘The exposure could compromise everything. My people want the whole thing closed.’
Sarrum felt the weight of the domain that bound them. ‘The governments would never agree. Though perhaps we could persuade them to mothball the replacement side.’
Llosa, still staring at the ground, spoke as if in pain. ‘Mothballing still leaves evidence. It has to be obliterated.’
Was he wearing, Sarrum wondered, a cilice, or a spiked chain around his thigh? Had he observed strict silence for an extended period after breakfast? Did he apply a whip to his shrivelled buttocks once a week? Did he cherish maxim 175: “It’s beautiful to be a victim”? He glanced at the man, detesting him and his friends in Opus Dei, self-flagellating fascists all. But this was no occasion for prejudice. His enormously influential counterpart was today an emissary only, representing a further eight curial monsignors. And the purge wasn’t in question. Only the modus operandi.
‘That’s your final position?’
‘Yes.’
Sarrum nodded. ‘I’ll conv
ey it.’ He walked back out of the garden, out of the light, into the gloom of a bureaucracy now pledged to assassinate a pope.
BETA
TASMANIA
Vanqua entered the secure booth, the innermost concrete box, punched his card and waited for the checks. One by one, the ten green lights came on. Only then did he use his day key and pick-up.
Checks at the other end still ran. The security of bouncing off satellites was considerable, but had to be much augmented for such a sensitive real-time contact.
This time it was Washington — Senator Barnaby F. Pickett — a glad-hander with the mind of a snake. ‘Vanqua? You got the 411 on what’s goin’ down?’
‘Your original transmission is confirmed.’
‘Questions?’
‘Are the UK and France in?’
‘No. It’s still a three-tick rumble. You know what that means if you screw up?’
He avoided the test question.
‘So what’s the schedule?’ Pickett prodded.
‘A lot of people need to be recalled. We can’t ship them all at once. But we’ll get started.’
‘Not a pretty assignment.’
‘It’s a routine Department S job. We’ll begin with the support staff here at Beta.’
‘You’re a together dude. So how will you handle Rhonda?’
‘Relieve her of command.’
‘And if she gets wise to the rest . . .’
‘She’ll be contained.’
‘Better be. Lose it and we’re toast. So you now assume full authority for EXIT?’
‘Confirmed.’
‘Keep me posted on all developments. I want a list of everyone in the pipeline.’
‘You’ll be informed.’
‘With the grace of God and a fast infield . . . Everyone they got. You with it?’
‘Understood.’ The new EXIT head replaced the handset and leaned against the wall.
He’d been appointed in ’86. This had taken seven years to engineer. He’d felt triumph at first. Now a terrible joy mixed with pain. At last, he could complete this, avenge the one family member he’d known. Though not identical twins they were one in spirit, heart. They’d never known their parents, only ever had each other. ‘She’s ours, Etta,’ he breathed. ‘The last twist.’
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