"Here we take care of these guys, try to point 'em the right direction, give 'em some discipline, whack 'em when they do wrong, get 'em shaped up. Then somebody comes along and kills 'em. Without even a warrant! How can you execute somebody without no warrant or nothin'?"
He started to denounce Connie. "The one in charge was a little bitch come out of HQ. But when she's watchin' it happen, I look at her face and I know she's made a mistake. She did it, but she hated it—drownin' all those guys like rats! That takes somethin' she ain't got. I figure that was why she went and cut her wrists afterward."
For a few seconds the dim interior of the house spun slowly around Andy's head. "She's dead?" he whispered, filled with a complex of emotions he couldn't have named.
Fowler shook his head. "No such luck. Somebody found her and called the medics. Sometimes I wish those guys would just leave well enough alone, you know? Pretty soon she'll be fixed up and ready to kill a bunch more people, I guess."
"So she's still on Tuamotu."
"Yeah."
At that point, Andy's mouth opened and he heard himself make a request to which Fowler, though looking baffled, agreed. Then the guard picked up his bundle and stood, casting a nervous glance at the doorway of the hut.
"All I want is a nice fish, so the cook can fix it for dinner. I wonder if those guys gonna try and kill me again."
"They won't now," Andy promised, walked him outside, and nodded to Joe, who nodded back. Relieved, Fowler shook Andy's hand for the first time in their long acquaintance. A guard couldn't shake the hand of a prisoner, but the gesture was permitted with a man who was both free and—officially at least—dead.
"You look like you doin' good, Emerson," he said. "Funny, I never figured you for a survivor. It's hard to tell, sometimes. Big guys croak and little guys go on forever. It's really hard to tell."
He started unwrapping his package, which contained the usual mirrors and whatnot. Joe approached, and they squatted on their haunches and started to bargain, all thoughts of killing forgotten.
But Andy's thoughts were of nothing except killing. He'd finally accepted the harsh demand of Destiny, to leave a woman he'd come to love and a life where he was happy and content, in order to kill a man he'd never met. He could curse the burden, but he couldn't shift it.
When he told Esperanza, she surprised him by understanding. She'd seen the Pelican sink, washed Friedberger's face, sung a hymn over his grave. Like all her people she believed in honor and vengeance, so she wept but didn't try to stop him. As for Gomez, there was never any question that he would stand beside Andy if he could identify the target and find a way to reach him.
They met Connie together, choosing the tabooed valley because it was remote and private. Again Sneak accompanied her, and he and Gomez stood back to let the others parley head to head. But something in the atmosphere—maybe the way Gomez looked at him, as if he were personally responsible for the Pelican —made Sneak edgy, and after fidgeting a few minutes, he muttered, "You stay here," and followed Andy and Connie, maybe concerned for her safety as well as his own.
As ever, the valley was shadowy, lush with tropical jungle, blazoned with strange flowers, filled with the sound of rushing water and the echoes rising from the fumarole. Today they sounded sometimes like thunder, sometimes like cries and distant laughter. Connie's long-sleeved uniform shirt gave Andy only glimpses of the bandages around her wrists. She was pale, her face lined, her eyes enormous. She looked years older, and the first thing she said was, "I didn't give the order."
"No?"
"You've got to believe that. I was sent here as an observer, to make sure Tomsky's instructions were carried out. I had to do it. He's like Stalin. You have to become an accomplice in his crimes or he gets rid of you."
"Who's Tomsky?" Andy had never heard the name before.
"The Chief of Security. His name's an open secret, one of those secrets that everybody who's anybody knows."
"Why did he have them killed? Those guys were helpless, totally helpless. They couldn't have hurt him."
She sighed and sat down on the same boulder as the last time. She looked thin, weary, tallowy, used up. Either she was suffering from a wasting illness or she really had hated watching the prisoners drown. Or maybe both. More important, he saw that she hated the man who'd forced her to become his accomplice.
"It comes down to fear," she said. "All the worst things people have ever done have been caused by fear. They burned witches for fear of the Devil. They burned heretics for fear of new ideas. Hitler killed the Jews—well, I don't know why Hitler killed the Jews, but I bet fear was at the base of it.
"As I told you, the world government's in trouble. Rebellions are breaking out on every continent except Antarctica, and if anybody but penguins lived there, they'd probably be rebelling, too. And it's a shame, we really do need a government to prevent another war. But first Sol with his stupid dictatorship and then this fool with his policy of terror have messed things up so badly that it's going to fall. Tomsky's afraid of the future, he knows he'll be held accountable for his crimes, and the prisoners were the only enemies he could get at and destroy. It wasn't a rational action, but whoever said that people are rational?"
"Somebody did," muttered Andy. Somebody long ago, for whatever reason, had called the species Homo sapiens , rational man.
"Well, he must have been an idiot, whoever he was." She opened her hands and looked at the palms as if something written there could explain it all. "What's happened to my life, Andy? There I was, trying to do my job and get ahead, and first I lost you and then I lost my soul. God damn this island," she said with sudden violence. "For me it's the Isle of the Dead."
"Finished whining?" he asked.
"I suppose so, but—"
He wasn't conscious of hearing a sound, yet suddenly he spun on his heel and there was Sneak close behind him. Without a thought, Andy swung the heavy hand he'd developed during years of manual labor and wrestling fat infants out of tight wombs. His knuckles connected with Sneak's left ear and the guard's eyes spun around in his head. As he fell, Andy caught him by his uniform belt, dragged him a few steps, and threw him headfirst into the fumarole. He leaned over, rubbing his knuckles, and waited for the splash, which was a long time coming but came at last.
Connie was shocked. "Andy, he was just making sure I was okay!"
She'd risen, but he pushed her back down. For a few seconds he stood quietly, thinking of the man he'd turned into. Then he dismissed his first homicide with a shrug and got back to business.
"Let's," he suggested, "discuss the assassination of Tomsky." She continued to stare, said nothing, waited for him to go on.
"Think about it. You can arrange it—you're on the inside and he trusts you because you're his accomplice. Killing him will make the rebels love you, you'll be Lady Liberty who freed the people, and when they take over, you can move from the old government to the new one without a bump on the road. How's that sound?"
Slowly she loosened the fastenings on her cuffs, opened them, and looked down at the elastoplast bandages binding her wrists. So she had wounded herself, but whether her suicide attempt had been real or intended only to leave a scar, he couldn't tell. Maybe she'd felt real remorse; or maybe she'd merely been covering her tracks, preparing evidence in case of future need. With Connie, how could you be sure?
"It's an interesting concept," she murmured. "Actually, there's already a cabal inside the Forces that wants to get rid of him. But they need…well, they need somebody to do the dirty work. How'd you come up with the idea, Andy?"
"I didn't. It's what has to be."
She looked him over thoughtfully. "I'll need to find a uniform for you. And shoes." She shook her head over his dirty bare feet.
"You'll have to find disguises for two," he told her. "My friend's coming with me. He's a good man, wants revenge for the Pelican ."
"You trust him?"
"More than I trust myself."
She sighed. "In an
action like this, there are always a million details to work out, and every one has to be done just exactly right, or the whole thing fails. It's not easy being a cop, Andy. You'll find that out."
"It's not easy being a con, either. But I survived."
She looked at him, really looked at him, maybe for the first time in their long, complicated relationship. Not as somebody to be loved, or betrayed, or protected, or destroyed, all the things he'd been to her in the past. Finally she was seeing him as just this…incomprehensible… other.
"You'd survive anything, wouldn't you?" she murmured. "If there's another nuclear war—which is possible, the way things are going—when it's over, there'll be nothing left but cockroaches and kudzu and Andrew Walden Emerson III."
Suddenly she jumped up, all her weakness gone, her eyes blazing at the thought of action. She'd already forgotten Sneak, as if he never had existed at all.
"'A good plot, good friends. An excellent plot, very good friends!'" she cried. "That's in Shakespeare. Give me your pal's name. Both of you were cons, so your vital statistics should still be in the computer—probably in the backup, since you're both supposed to be dead. I'll get the info out, enter it in the military records, create new identities.
"Isn't it nice the world's gotten so abstract? Anybody can fake anything, if they know how. And I know how."
WHILE GOMEZ LOITERED in the Pentagon corridor, remembering and fretting and hoping for the best, Andy had already passed through the hidden door in the paneling, and begun exploring what lay beyond.
He stood in a narrow passage with three other doors, the first labeled Men's Toilet—Officers Only, making him smile at the crudeness of Destiny's excremental joke. If the toilets hadn't been segregated by rank, the Spetsnaz guard could have relieved himself right here, and the whole plot would have come undone. The next door was unlabeled and opened into a storeroom full of quaint metal filing cabinets with rusty steel rods inserted through the handles, secured by padlocks that were also rusty. God knows , he thought, what war these date from.
Behind the final door, a voice muttered, becoming clearer when he opened it a crack. Inside was a darkened studio filled with formidable gadgetry. Bored-looking techs perched on metal stools, watching the tall man's image on three screens. Each showed him from a different angle, and Andy understood that when the images were fused by some digital process and projected in real space, they formed the walking, talking hologram that ruled the world.
But where was the man himself? The studio was a dead end, with no exit but the door where he stood. Maybe, he thought, Tomsky lived in a space warp inaccessible to the real world. He turned back into the passageway and was scratching his head when a voice—he was alone, so he thought at first it must be God's—commanded in harsh, emphatic tones that made his head ring, "Guard, get your ass down to the front office soonest."
Andy had forgotten the earbud. He returned to the hallway with the paneling and started down a deep-pile carpet with interwoven medallions showing the triumphant eagle of the Security Forces and their inescapable motto. Pour servir tout l'Humanité. Der ganzen Humanität zu dienen. Besides the English, these were the only versions he could read, and the odd thought occurred to him that maybe Destiny had sent him here for exactly that purpose—to serve humanity, whatever language it spoke. But even its plans would hit a snag unless he could find the front office, for the hallway was as blank as an elevator shaft turned on its side.
Of course the office found him—that was Destiny's way. When you were playing its game, things came to you. A door appeared in the paneling, one that had no keypad and couldn't be opened from the outside at all. A frowning colonel standing in the aperture said, "Come in, Sergeant. I've got to leave, so stand at attention and wait till I come back."
Even the outer office was palatial, with a wide desk and all the usual equipment, including a document vaporizer to dispose of inconvenient memories. Andy assumed a ramrod stance by an inner door of creamy paneled wood until the officer, after gathering hardcopy from a file, left without ever actually seeing him. Something with a red beret and a X clearance and a standard-issue weapon had done what it was told, and for the colonel, that was sufficient.
Beyond the door a voice was speaking a language rich in consonants. Andy cracked it and peeped into a truly vast office, the biggest he'd seen in the Pentagon, or maybe anywhere. It lay mostly in darkness, except for the man standing at the center in a blaze of light. Andy had found his target at last.
Drawing the heavy impact pistol from its holster, he studied the man minutely, as curious as a lover studying his love. In the studio images, Tomsky had looked unlined, healthy, almost youthful. But those were corrections made by the software. Under the merciless lights he looked old, weary, and stiff as a creature of wood. Power wears out its human receptacles, Andy reflected, remembering how Connie had aged a decade in a third that time.
Directly in front of Tomsky stood a black module gazing at him with multiple eyes, like a spider. Shadowy people lounged here and there—techs, it appeared—plus two aides following the speech phrase by phrase on a green-lit prompter. Their concentration gave Andy his chance. He sidled through the shadows to the edge of the glare. Then, his whole body turning somehow dense and metallic, he slipped off his weapon's safety and with one long stride stepped in front of the transmitter. Tomsky blinked, seeing only a shadow emerge through the blaze of light.
"This is for the Pelican ," Andy said, and shot him point-blank in the face.
He stepped from the dazzle into the darkness, fired again at someone blocking his way, slid through the door and crossed the outer office. In the paneled corridor everything looked phenomenally peaceful. He holstered the pistol, returned to the barrier, stepped though, and changed caps and badges. The trash-disposal chute he'd noticed earlier now seemed to be there just for his benefit. He discarded his surplus equipment, and as the first signs of confusion began to spread—people yelling, answering, nobody sure yet what had happened or where—he rejoined the crowd outside the conference room.
Once again he was only a uniform among other uniforms, a IX among other IX's, an Invisible Man among the other invisible men and women. He felt his pulse and found it elevated, but not by much. His calmness at first surprised him, but then less so, as he reflected on what he'd done. He'd killed the most powerful man in the world, yet that was a mere anticlimax to the years of adventure and suffering that had preceded it. He'd avenged the dead, expunged his shame, rid himself of guilt—wiped his slate clean, in short. But something newly wise at the center of his heart told him that nothing really mattered now, except what he would write upon it in time to come.
He winked at Gomez, who gave him a nod, and together they waited for Connie and the rest of the staff to emerge. Through the steel doors came sounds of shouting and disorder, and Gomez gave him an evil grin and whispered, "You shook 'em up, Big Brudda."
Andy smiled at that, grateful for the only commendation he either needed or wanted.
An hour later he sat in Connie's office, having a drink—her big office on the A Ring, overlooking the five-sided patio with shade trees and jonquils in the garden beds spelling out To Serve All Humanity .
She gave him her version of what had happened in the conference room. How the general officers at first sat in stunned silence, watching the virtual back of a virtual man in uniform emerge from nowhere, shoot virtual Tomsky and make his virtual head virtually explode. Collectively the room gasped, and then came panic.
"Sound the alarm!" shouted somebody, "we're under attack!" Others yelled, "Lockdown! Catch the assassin! Make him talk!" One small plaintive voice was heard asking over and over, "Vhat is Pelican ? Please, does anybody know? Vhat is Pelican ?"
That was when Connie spoke up, her clear, sharp tones cutting through the noise.
"The assassin," she said, "is already in custody. He's made his confession, and he'll repeat it to the whole world on the evening news."
Some people weren't quick-w
itted. A baffled voice queried, "But who captured him? And how'd we get his confession?"
"It's a virtual assassin, you idiot," said somebody who'd been part of the plot against Tomsky. "His confession's in the can, been there for a week. You're out of the loop, that's all."
"Sometimes," Connie went on, in her lecturing voice, "the effect precedes the cause. It's unusual, of course, but it happens. Especially nowadays. Can we get down to business? A new situation has arisen and I suggest we consider how best to deal with it."
"Griffin is right," said another member of the cabal. "Tomsky's dead, he can't hurt us now, and he can't help us either."
"It's time to think about the future," she agreed. "Specifically, how to blame everything bad that's happened on him alone."
Anyway, that was the way she told the story to Andy. Meanwhile Gomez waited in her outer office with a driver she'd assigned them. She wanted them out of Washington quick, but at the same time she wanted Andy where she could find him again, in case of need. "I may have more work for you," she explained. "As I once told you, today all politics is the politics of violence. And you're so good at it."
He sipped his drink—how long had it been since he last tasted scotch?—and wondered if he should lunge across the desk and kill her. God knows, he had motive enough and opportunity beckoned. But then he and Gomez would never get away. So maybe he'd better just go home, kiss Esperanza, and let Corazon wrestle with his fingers again. That felt like a much better plan.
He finished his drink and left, saying he knew she must have a lot to do, now that she'd be helping to run the world. Within an hour he and Gomez were on a military flight to ruined and half-rebuilt Honolulu, and from there they flew on to Tuamotu. The whole journey took fourteen hours, and they slept through most of it.
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