Amelia had left the water running after washing her face. She hadn't quite made it to the toilet, and was trying to clean up the mess with a towel. I set down the pistol and helped her to her feet. "You lie down, honey. I'll take care of this."
She was weeping. She nodded into my shoulder and let me guide her to the bed.
After I cleaned it up and threw the towels into the recycler, I sat on the end of the bed and tried to think. But I couldn't get past the horrible sight of the woman bursting open three times, each time I pulled the trigger.
When she silently threw the rifle out, for some reason I knew she would come through the door shooting. I had a sight picture and the trigger halfway pulled when she leaped out into the corridor.
I'd heard a pattering sound, which must have been her silenced weapon blinding Candi. And then when she threw it out without hesitation, I guess I assumed it was empty and she had another weapon.
But the way I felt as I eased down on the trigger and waited for her to show herself... I had never felt that way in the soldierboy. Ready.
I really wanted her to come out and die. I really wanted to kill her.
Had I changed that much in a few weeks? Or was it actually change? The boy was a different case, an "industrial accident" that I didn't completely cause, and if I could bring him back, I would.
I wouldn't bring Gavrila back except to kill her again.
For some reason I remembered my mother, and her rage when President Brenner was assassinated. I was four. She hadn't liked Brenner at all, I learned later, and that made it worse, as if she had some complicity in the crime. As if the murder were some kind of wish fulfillment.
But that wasn't close to the personal hate I felt for Gavrila-besides, she was almost not human. It was like disposing of a vampire. A vampire who was single-mindedly stalking the woman you loved.
Amelia was quiet now. "I'm sorry you saw that. It was pretty awful."
She nodded, face still buried in the pillow. "At least it's over. That part's over."
I rubbed her back and murmured agreement. We didn't know how Gavrila-like the vampire-was going to return from her grave to kill again.
IN THE GUADALAJARA AIRPORT, Gavrila had written a short note to General Blaisdell and put it in an envelope with his home address. She put that in another envelope, addressed to her brother, with instructions to send it on unread if Gavrila didn't call by tomorrow morning.
This is what it said: If you haven't heard from me by now, I'm dead. The man in charge of the group that killed me is MG Stanton Roser, the most dangerous man in America. An eye for an eye?
Gavrila.
After she had sent that one, she realized it wasn't enough, and on the plane she scribbled another two pages, trying to set down everything she could remember from the minutes when she'd been able to see into Jefferson's mind. Luck was on the other side for that one, though. She dropped it in a mailbox in the Canal Zone and it was automatically routed through Army Intelligence, where a bored tech sergeant read part of it and recycled it as crank mail.
But she hadn't been the only one on the wrong side who had been exposed to the Plan. Lieutenant Thurman heard of Gavrila's death a few minutes after it happened, and put two and two together, and changed into his dress uniform and slipped out into the night. He got by the sentry box with no problem. The shoe who had been pressed into service to replace the one Gavrila had murdered was just this side of catatonic. He passed Thurman through with a rigid salute.
He didn't have any money for a commercial flight, so he had to gamble on using the military. If the wrong person asked for his travel orders, or if he had to go through a retinal scan for security, that would be it – not just AWOL, but fleeing from administrative detention.
A combination of luck and bluff and planning worked, though. He got off the base just by getting aboard a supply chopper that was returning to the Canal Zone. He knew that the CZ had been in bureaucratic chaos for months, ever since it had seceded from Panama and become a U.S. Territory. The Air Force base there was not exactly overseas and not exactly stateside, either. He wait-listed himself on a flight to Washington, misspelling his name, and a half hour later flashed his picture ID and rushed aboard.
He arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at dawn, had a big free breakfast at the Transient Officers' Mess, and then loitered around until nine-thirty. Then he called General Blaisdell.
Lieutenant's bars don't move you through the Pentagon's switchboards very fast. He told two civilians, two sergeants, and a fellow lieutenant that he had a personal message for General Blaisdell. Finally, he wound up with a bird colonel who was his administrative assistant.
She was an attractive woman a few years older than Thurman. She eyed him suspiciously. "You're calling from Andrews," she said, "but my board says you're stationed in Portobello."
"That's right. I'm on compassionate leave."
"Hold your orders up to the lens."
"They aren't here." He shrugged. "My luggage went missing."
"You packed your orders?"
"By mistake."
"That could be an expensive mistake, lieutenant. What is this message for the general?"
"With all due respect, colonel, it's very personal."
"If it's that personal, you'd better put it in a letter and mail it to his home. I pass on everything that goes through this office."
"Please. Just tell him it's from his sister – "
"The general doesn't have a sister."
"His sister Gavrila," he pressed on. "She's in trouble."
Her head jerked up suddenly and she spoke beyond the screen. "Yes, sir. Immediately." She pushed a button and her face was replaced by the green DARPA sigil. A shimmering encryptation bar appeared over it, and then it dissolved to the general's face. He looked kind, grandfatherly.
"Do you have security on your end?"
"No, sir. It's a public phone. But there's no one around."
He nodded. "You spoke with Gavrila?"
"Indirectly, sir." He looked around. "She was captured and had a jack installed. I jacked briefly with her captors. She's dead, sir."
He didn't change expression. "Did she complete her assignment?"
"If that was to get rid of the scientist, no, sir. She was killed in the attempt."
While they were talking, the general made two unobtrusive hand gestures, recognition signals for Enders and for Hammer of God. Of course Thurman didn't respond to either one. "Sir, there's a huge conspiracy – "
"I know, son. Let's continue this conversation face-to-face. I'll send my car down for you. You'll be paged when it arrives."
"Yes, sir," he said to a blank screen.
Thurman drank coffee for most of an hour, looking at the paper without actually reading it. Then he was paged and told that the general's limousine was waiting for him in the arrivals area.
He went there and was surprised to see that the limo had a human driver, a small young female tech sergeant in dress greens. She opened the back door for him. The windows were opaque mirrors.
The seats were deep and soft but covered with uncomfortable plastic. The driver didn't say a word to him, but did turn on some music, soft-drift jazz. She didn't drive, either, other than pushing a button. She read from an old-fashioned paper Bible and ignored the numbing monotony of the huge gray Grossman modules that housed a tenth of a million people each. Thurman was kind of fascinated by them. Who would live that way voluntarily? Of course most of them were probably government draftees, just marking time until their term of service was up.
They traveled alongside a river, in a greenbelt, for several miles, and then went spiraling up an entrance ramp to a broad highway that led to the Pentagon, which was actually two pentagons-the smaller historical building nested inside the one where most of the work was actually done. He could only see the whole structure for a few seconds, and then the car banked down a long arc of concrete toward its home.