Twist: “What if we don’t want to sign?” That was the hippie painter anarchist talking.
“Well, we have some very, very quiet places in the federal housing system where you could spend a few years reconsidering….”
“Where do we sign?” Harmon asked.
—
While that was going on, the president was taken down to his waiting limo. Another large man in a gray suit was waiting in the backseat, and when the car eased into traffic, the fourth car in the motorcade, he handed a slim file to the president, who opened it and found what looked like a chemical analysis. “Just tell me what it says. In English.”
“During his debriefing, Denyers told us that the vice president handled the gun case—the guitar case that was used to carry the gun.”
“Yes.”
“His prints are on it, his DNA. No question.”
“Shit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I guess I knew that,” the president said.
“This is a problem,” said the man in gray. “We have to resolve it.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve spoken to some of our advisors. They’re suggesting that the vice president should resign to devote himself to the fight against his late-stage colon cancer.”
“And the fight will be ultimately unsuccessful?”
“You can bet on it, sir.”
The excitement about the assassination attempt was extreme for about two weeks and then began to fade.
The murder of Senator Dash was a suicide.
The vice president had cancer and, doing the right thing, as always, resigned.
The cover-up held.
—
The Singular scandal was used as a diversion from the assassination attempt, and the news media bit on it, especially when the FBI announced that DNA from twelve bodies had been recovered from the burn pit at Dash’s ranch. Ian Wyeth, the St. Louis neurosurgeon who’d done most of the surgery in America, had disappeared. The FBI leaked word to the media that he was probably hiding in Indonesia, although some thought he’d gone directly to North Korea. Lawrence Janes, director of research at the facility in Eugene, Oregon, was also missing and was more firmly placed in North Korea by unnamed FBI sources. Nobody ever mentioned Varek Royce.
The FBI may or may not have been lying, but in any case, the statements were wildly inaccurate. And the CIA knew exactly where the three men were.
—
After cooperating with the investigation with countless more hours of interviews, the whole group was reunited in Los Angeles at the Twist Hotel. Even Harmon. Even X.
Shay clung to Odin when she finally saw him again, not minding the ache in her mending ribs. Her genius, good-hearted, single-minded, reckless brother. They’d survived. She’d been afraid he wouldn’t—that’s why she’d gotten involved in the first place. But he seemed stronger now. Older. And sadder for the loss of Fenfang. She’d been worried he wouldn’t survive that, either, but she saw now that he would.
Odin’s leg was healing, and he and Twist took long cane-assisted walks to get their strength back.
Twist was his usual high-intensity self. He had a second operation to remove some braces in late September, and by mid-October, he was walking two miles a day.
By mid-November, he was jogging. With his cane, which he spun like a majorette’s baton.
“There’s more than one use for a good gold-headed cane, as you know,” he told Shay. He demonstrated by whacking it against a plaster wall in the hotel, leaving a substantial dent.
He was beginning a new cycle of paintings that were all about speed.
—
On a cool, still October day, Odin, Shay, and all the rest of them, joined by Fenfang’s sister, Wei Wei, who’d flown in from China, took Fenfang’s ashes in a bronze box down to the Pacific Ocean in Malibu. They walked out waist-deep in the water, and a Buddhist priest from Silver Lake said some words.
Shay cried when the ashes were spread on the water, and was offended when Cade and Cruz were surprised.
She cried a second time when she learned that the president had called Marcus West’s parents to tell them that he had died a hero, protecting others and helping to bring down Singular.
—
Fenfang’s cousin Liko was among the prisoners they’d rescued from Senator Dash’s ranch, and Wei Wei was able to see him, but he didn’t seem to know she was there—his prognosis was poor. Robert Morris was in even worse shape and was gone on the last day of October. His wife sent a note to Shay, thanking her for the rescue; Shay cried a third time.
And that was the end of the crying.
—
A government man who simply said he was an “aide” told Shay and Odin privately that the government had confirmed the death of their mother. When the human experimentation had begun, Kathleen Carter had gathered several of the prospective subjects and tried to flee to China. She was killed during the flight.
When Odin asked, “Was she shot or something?” the aide’s eyes switched away.
“The exact circumstances of her death…aren’t really known,” he said.
Shay looked at him for a long moment, until Odin asked, “What?” and Shay said, “They told this guy to go easy on us.” To the aide: “Mom committed suicide, didn’t she?”
The aide said, “I didn’t…As we understand it, she would not allow herself to be captured. She feared that she’d be used in an experiment. Whether she actually committed suicide or not, there’s no way to tell. The North Koreans lie about everything—but the talks they had with the Chinese were very direct, and the Chinese think they were telling the truth.”
Odin: “When you say the talks were very direct…”
“I’d deny saying this, but what I mean is, the Chinese kicked them so hard that the North Koreans are now wearing their asses for hats.”
When the aide went away, Odin draped his arm around Shay’s shoulders and said, “We always knew.” They were both dry-eyed. Their mother had been gone so long she seemed almost like a myth, like a fictional figure.
“Now we’re what we have left,” Shay said. “Just us. It’s enough.”
—
But Singular wasn’t gone, not yet.
On a quiet Thursday evening in early November, Royce, Wyeth, and Janes took the elevator to the roof of their new facility in Honduras, carrying glasses and a full pitcher of margaritas. The new lab was being built in a former military installation that looked out over the Gulf of Fonseca toward the Pacific Ocean. The building was silent: the dayworkers, who were doing the rehabilitation, had gone home.
Royce was pulling strings back in the States, calculating the possibility of going back; his best sources said he hadn’t yet been tied to the assassination attempt. If he couldn’t return, he’d already determined that he and his money would be welcome in Singapore. But what he really wanted was a younger, athletic, and anonymous new body. Wyeth thought he might have it in three years. “We’ve still got all the computer files. And it won’t take long to get the lab up and running.”
“And this time, we won’t be exposed to any snooping,” Royce said as they settled into the lounge chairs on the roof. “I’ve told our friend exactly what’s at stake, and all el presidente said was, ‘I want in.’ ”
Janes said, “We’re gonna need more experimental subjects.”
“Also not a problem,” Royce said. “El presidente says Honduras has all kinds of annoying peasants that he’d like to see the end of. All we need to do is give him a number and he’ll deliver them. We should have been here from the beginning.”
They were sipping their drinks, staring at the starry sky. Royce said, “I just saw a star go out.”
“Probably a plane,” Wyeth said.
Royce couldn’t see the plane because it was painted night-sky gray and had been designed not to be seen—not even by radar.
As Royce spoke, two one-thousand-pound bombs called JDAMs—Joint Direct Attack Munitions—were on the way
down to the Honduran facility. Royce, Janes, and Wyeth never felt a thing. A few seconds after the star winked out, they were just a bunch of hot molecules in a fiery cloud.
—
The president, it seemed, had been serious about scholarships—for Shay, Odin, Cruz, Cade, even Emily. Danny Dill was happy back in Arcata—and happy for the government not to think of him at all.
Odin was weighing MIT against Cal Poly. He wanted to be near Shay. But Shay couldn’t seem to figure out what to do with herself. She was fidgety and restless.
So was Harmon.
—
Shay and Harmon decided to go to Moab and check out the desert tower that Harmon had dared her to climb. They’d stop in Hopi country for a couple of days first to let X get acquainted with his puppies and to pay a proper visit to Harmon’s friends.
They drove to First Mesa, picking over the remnants of the whole Singular conflict as they went. Shay was frustrated that she didn’t know more about what might happen to Varek Royce, Dr. Janes, Wyeth. Denyers. The vice president. They’d seemed to vanish.
“You’re never going to know, so you might as well try to forget about it,” Harmon said. “But I promise you, they’ll be taken care of, one way or another.”
At First Mesa, Harmon couldn’t stay away from the sole white puppy in the litter, and the white puppy couldn’t stay away from him, hanging on to the cuff of his jeans as X looked on with what might have been—probably was—doggy amusement. When Harmon went inside to supper, the white pup managed to get inside with him and find its way onto his lap.
After two days at First Mesa, Shay and Harmon left early on a cool, sunny morning, leaving X with his family, for the three-day round trip to Moab. X had been showing signs of separation anxiety, and Shay had to sit with him for a few minutes, reassuring him that she’d be back; Harmon sat with the white puppy.
When they got in Harmon’s truck, he said, “I cannot, cannot, with my lifestyle, have a dog.”
“It’s too late. That puppy’s your dog, whether you like it or not. And what is your lifestyle anyway?”
“Hmm,” Harmon said. “What’s yours?”
“Good question.”
The drive to Moab took five hours, and then they hooked out into the desert, to the Needles.
Shay stood at the bottom of the tower and looked up.
“Piece of cake,” she said.
“We’ll find out tomorrow,” Harmon said.
They were both sweating heavily as they did the last pitch up the vertical wall at the top of the needle. “Had to be a last piece like this, didn’t there?” Shay said as she clung to foot- and handholds the size of marbles.
“It’s how you find out how good you really are,” Harmon said. He was tied into a bolt thirty feet above her and ten feet to the right. “The bottom four hundred feet kicks your ass. When your ass is thoroughly kicked, this wall comes along…and then you find out whether or not you’re a…” He swallowed the last word.
“You were about to say chicken, weren’t you?” Shay asked. She blew a few strands of hair out of her left eye.
“You get up this far, we already know you’re not a chicken,” Harmon said. “We’ve got another fifty feet. You have to make that move—you saw me do it.”
The next move depended on the momentary friction between a sticky rubber climbing shoe on her left foot and the rough, slanting sandstone of the wall. If she stuck for a fraction of a second, she could catch a protrusion with her left hand, then another with her right, then slam her right foot into a solid edge. If she missed, she’d be hanging from the end of the climbing rope, four hundred feet above the Colorado Plateau.
If she was lucky. Some of the preset bolts they’d encountered on the way up were a little shaky.
“Gonna have to move…,” Harmon said. She could see herself, a tiny speck of blue and red, in his mirrored aviators.
He hadn’t finished the sentence when Shay launched herself. Friction! Grab! Pivot! Grab! Right foot slamming into edge! She stuck there like a spider, breathing hard, the scent of blood in her nose. Harmon was looking down at her, and she said, “You weren’t about to say chicken. You were about to say pussy.”
“I thought better of it,” Harmon said, not denying it. “Let’s go up. From where you’re at, it’s a walk in the park.”
He was lying. Though it wasn’t as difficult as the forty-foot pitch below, it wasn’t anybody’s stroll through anybody’s park. When they finally crossed the top of the wall, they stopped to catch their breath amidst a collection of red boulders. They were past the hard parts but still fifteen feet below the very top of the needle. “Let’s go,” Harmon said after ninety seconds and a few swallows of water for each of them. “We’ve got a meeting.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “And maybe I should apologize in advance.”
—
They climbed the slope to the top. A hundred yards away, a Black Hawk helicopter sat on a flat slab of red stone. A chunky, square man was sitting on the stone reading a book. A taller, thinner man wearing a flight suit was wandering around on the other side of the chopper.
“What’s this?” Shay asked.
“A meeting and an easier way down, if you want it,” Harmon said. “C’mon.”
They walked up to the slab of rock and found that the chunky guy was sitting on a plaid blanket and had a picnic basket and a cooler with him; he’d been reading Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Harmon said to Shay, “Meet my friend Richard, who works with the Central Intelligence Agency. He’s a man of some importance, but not so high up that he’s lost all contact with reality.”
Richard nodded and asked, “Roast beef or turkey?”
—
Richard wouldn’t talk until they had sandwiches and drinks, and then he dug into the picnic basket and handed Shay a stiff brown envelope. “Open it.”
She found, between two pieces of cardboard, a diploma from Hollywood High in Los Angeles. “What?” She read it again. “It’s dated next May.”
“That’s so we can get your senior picture in the yearbook. We’ll get your face in the choir and a couple other places, too. If you want us to.”
“What’s this about?” Shay asked.
“First, you’re advanced enough in all your studies to graduate now, so the diploma’s at least semi-legit,” Richard said. “You won’t have any trouble getting into college. Believe me.”
“That’s nice, but we’re not meeting up here so you can tell me that.”
Richard looked at her for a moment, scratched his neck, and said, “Look, we’ve got this problem, and your name…came up.”
“What problem?” Shay asked suspiciously.
Richard leaned back against a boulder, getting comfortable. “There’s this Russian guy who’s right at the top of the Kremlin hierarchy. Like a lot of those guys, he’s got a place in London, and a bank in London, and a wife and kid in London, in case everything goes sideways in Moscow.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Shut up for a minute and I’ll tell you,” Richard said. “This guy is very secure—bodyguards, electronic sweeps, best possible encryption on his phones, randomizes his movements so you can never tell where he’ll be, or when. Travels in a convoy, with watchers front and back. He has a study in the middle of the house, without windows, so we can’t even read his window glass.”
“Read his window glass?”
“Yeah, you put a laser…Never mind.”
Harmon made a rolling movement with his fingers, as in, Get to the point.
“Okay. He has this eighteen-year-old son named Yuri. A real little asshole. He’s already working toward full-fledged alcoholism, not allowed to drive in England anymore, so he now has a driver to take him around to the clubs. Anyway, he also likes women he can…He likes women younger than himself. Innocents he can impress. ’Cause he doesn’t have a lot going for him, except Daddy’s money. H
e has a distinct taste for redheads….”
“Wait. You want me to go to England and seduce this guy?”
“No, no, no, heaven forbid,” Richard said. “We’d never ask a teenager to do something like that. That’d be immoral. Maybe illegal. Might even be in bad taste.”
Harmon said, “Dick, you’re protesting too much.”
“We really don’t want you to do that,” Richard said to Shay. “What we’d like you to do is to get to know him just well enough to get asked to a party at his house…at his father’s house. He and his friends party in Yuri’s rooms on the first floor, at the back, which are effectively sealed off from the rest of the house. But Yuri’s bedroom has a private bathroom. We know this from the previous owners. There’s an electric wall outlet in there. We need somebody to get in there, unscrew the cover plate, pull the outlet, and rewire one of our outlets in there.”
“It doesn’t blow up, does it?”
“No. This bathroom is right below Yuri’s father’s study, and it’s on the same electric circuit. Our…outlet…will give us access to some of what he does up there.”
Shay stared at him, still suspicious, then asked, “And I don’t have to screw Yuri?”
“No, no, no…though you have to find a way into his private bathroom.”
Shay looked at Harmon, and he shrugged. “They asked me. I said I’d set up a meeting. You can say no and go to Hollywood High. Probably should say no.”
“Hollywood High,” she said. After a moment: “Sounds…boring.”
Richard said, “We’d buy you a few thousand dollars’ worth of classy clothes, entry into Yuri’s clubs, stick you and your dad in a nice two-bedroom flat in Soho so your dad can take the train up to his radiometric archaeological seminar at Oxford on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings…giving you time to party.”
“My dad?”
Richard tipped his head at Harmon. “We’d want somebody experienced close by, in case we need to extract you in a hurry. The Russian security guys can be a little rough…and we might not have totally mentioned to the Brits that we’re thinking about doing this.”
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