Shadow Knight's Mate (6 page)

Denver

A group of the younger members, including Jack and Ronald, was having a good time near the bar, telling anecdotes about their jobs and recent lunches. People already knew the important facts, but got a kick out of hearing the details that couldn't be included in an e-mail, the small signals passed when a mind had been turned.

“He'd been drumming on the tabletop ever since he got there,” Bill Wong was saying of a recent lunch with an undersecretary of state who had been his college roommate. “Just happy with nervous energy, you know, and as I talked about how sick I was of people stealing my ideas, or worse yet stealing them but changing them, leaving out the best parts, he was drumming more and more slowly until he stopped. Then a minute later he was just tapping on the tabletop, with his fingers like this.” Bill made both his hands into the shapes of pistols, the kind small pretend cowboys make as they say,
kew, kew,
his index fingers pointing like barrels. Everyone laughed.

Some older members had joined the small crowd too, and Jack was startled to find Arden Spindler at his side. She smiled at him and didn't say a word.

“You know,” a young man in a suit spoke up. The young man had been a recruit of a few years' standing, since early in college, and he had some remarkable abilities in computers, electronics, and surveillance, but in this crowd his people skills sometimes seemed limited. “I've been wondering, and maybe one of you older members can tell me, doesn't this group have a name? I mean, an organization like this, that's been around so long, you'd think at some point people would start, at least among themselves, referring to it as
some
thing. I realize there's not much structure,
and, and we like it that way, I know, but still it would be nice just to say to one of us quietly, ‘Are you going to the meeting of the—you know, the Foundation, or something.”

Most of the people hearing him looked amused, but a couple nodded thoughtfully, and even the amused ones shot some looks at each other, as if maybe they already had their own secret name for the group.

“I believe Aaron Burr wanted to call it the Council,” one older member said quietly, “but others, I think, thought that sounded too much like a secret governing council with tentacles in—well, just not an image we wanted to cultivate, even among ourselves.”

Jack said, “Professor Gentry told us that during the Civil War it was sometimes referred to as the Interdiction Committee, because of course it was intruding into both camps in order to—”

“Too many syllables,” Elizabeth Rayona protested. She had apparently recovered from her brief session with Arden, though there was still a bright sheen to her eyes. “I can tell why that one didn't catch on.”

The first young man said, “But it does have the weight I think this group deserves. The
gravitas,
if I don't sound too stuffy—”

“How about the Hornets?” Arden interrupted. Several people chuckled, and the young man looked offended.

“I'm serious about this, names—”

“So am I,” Arden protested. “I went to school in Europe, I never got the American high school experience, and I always wanted to belong to a team called the Hornets.” She shook her hands as if holding imaginary pompoms. “Go, Hornets!”

Several people echoed her cheer, laughter became general, and the stuffy young man turned away angrily. But a woman old enough to be his mother drew him back in and stood with her arm around him, looking fondly around the group.

“I've always thought of us as the Circle,” she said.

Her voice was warm and binding and they realized that's how they were standing, in a circle. Some nodded, a few put their arms around each other, and the stuffy young man looked comforted.
Jack gazed around at their faces, some of them known so well to him, others only familiar from nods or legends. It may have been only in retrospect, when he remembered this scene later, but he didn't think so: looking around at their small band, he realized he was home.

The feeling was only diminished slightly by his near-certainty that at least one of these people had tried to have him killed.

Ronald clapped his hands together and said, “Let's sing favorite camp songs! Jack, lead us off!”

People chuckled, and the circle broke apart, but Jack knew the others had felt it too. There was a slight sense of embarrassment as he and Ronald stood together, so that one of them was glad to point and say, “Oh, look, here comes the Chair.”

It was a joke. America has had 44 presidents. The Circle had had twelve Chairs in two hundred and twenty years. The current Chair was 87 years old, rolling across the room in a wheelchair, but that was only temporary, because of hip-replacement surgery. She could still beat any two people in the room at simultaneous visualized chess while reading a novel, and all of them knew it. This group had very little formal structure, and meetings were not called to order, but when Gladys Leaphorn rolled in they all either straightened their posture or self-consciously did not do so. Jack remained stiff-faced as she rolled right up to him. He nodded, clicking his heels together.

“Knock it off, Driscoll,” she growled. “Next time you have a whim to alter the whole dynamic of a meeting of world leaders, you might check with some of us first.”

“Would you have given me your approval, Madame Chair?”

“I don't know. We would have had to think about it.”

“That's what I didn't think there was time for.”

“There's always time for thought,” she growled.

If she had ever played Halo 2, and been surrounded by hostile aliens, she would have known otherwise, Jack thought. Sometimes you just had to act. “So what do you think now?” he asked casually.

Looking as if she were just now thinking about the idea,
Gladys sat for a moment, then shrugged. “Probably didn't do irreparable damage.”

Jack fluttered his hands over his chest as if his heart were going pitty-pat at her praise. Across the room, his former college professor laughed again.

“But seriously, Driscoll, all of you.” The Chair raised her voice. Gladys Leaphorn was a heavy woman with dark skin and the sharp cheekbones and nose of her Cherokee ancestors, and surprisingly delicate hands. She drew attention without demanding it, and even in her wheelchair somehow dominated the room. “Our primary concern right now is the President's new National Security Advisor, one Dennis Wilkerson. Do any of you know him?”

They all looked at her, not even a murmur going around the room. The Chair sighed. “That's what I thought. This is ridiculous, unheard of. Alicia, tell us about him.”

Without hesitation, Alicia Mortenson began, “Dennis Wilkerson, age 38. Raised in the midwest, attending several public schools as his father changed jobs as a salesman, finally graduating in Bloomington. Attended Wilkes-Barre College in Pennsylvania, degree in history, then entered the Air Force, where he worked in computers and digital surveillance, serving in Desert Storm but only on the very fringes.”

“Nothing but fringes in Desert Storm,” someone muttered.

“He did achieve a security clearance, but whether he ever saw classified documents is unknown. Released from service with the rank of captain, he worked in the security field in Cleveland for two years, and by security I mean of office buildings. Then he returned to college, at a small school in Virginia that apparently had an accelerated program—”

“—diploma mill,” someone else muttered. “Download it from the ‘net and print it yourself on your home computer.”

“—because he achieved a Ph.D. in only two years, this time in political science. For the last several years he has taught a couple of unpopular courses at Williams College in Missouri. Until Sophie Cohen, a good friend of several people in this group, abruptly
resigned as National Security Advisor and the President plucked Mr. Wilkerson from his well-deserved obscurity to take her place.”

“And no one here has ever had so much as a cup of coffee with him!” the Chair said. “It's intolerable.”

One member, whose contacts in academia numbered in the thousands, apparently took this personally, stepping forward to say, “Gladys, be fair. The man came out of nowhere. For God's sake, he doesn't even have tenure at that podunk college where he teaches. Apparently he wrote one paper, not even published, which he sent to the President, which so impressed President Dimsky that he lit on him for the NSA job when Sophie unexpectedly resigned. I think the President
liked
the fact that no one's ever heard of this Wilkerson character. You know he thinks himself a great judge of diamonds in the rough.”

Several people, a couple of whom had known President Jefferson Witt since college, rolled their eyes. This group had helped him get elected, but not because of a high opinion of his intellect or abilities.

“Let me just be sure,” Ms. Leaphorn insisted. “Not one person here or elsewhere in our group has ever met this man face to face?”

Jack scanned the group carefully. No one appeared to be hiding anything, but that didn't mean no one was.

He felt lucky that Arden was standing beside him, not looking at him.

“Why don't we approach it from another angle?” Alicia Mortenson said helpfully. “Why did Ms. Cohen resign so abruptly?”

“Again without our having a clue,” the Chair muttered.

“Family health problems. Her husband.”

“That's what they always say,” Ronald observed.

“Oh, he has a genuine health problem,” Arden smiled. “Sophie's going to kill him because she caught him cheating on her. She resigned because she was afraid the scandal was going to go public and in order to devote more time to making his life miserable.”

The Chair from her seated position looked all around the room, and no one seemed to be looking down at her when they made eye contact. They knew what she was demanding now: learn everything about the Cohens' marital history, whether the husband had indulged himself this way before, and most of all learn everything there was to know about his paramour. After a moment of silence the Chair said, “I'm glad we had this chat,” and rolled toward the bar.

“God, I love these meetings,” Ronald said.

So did Jack. He didn't know yet that this would be the last enjoyable one, but he still enjoyed it to the fullest, still liked reminiscing about it.

The two men went through airport security in Reno with great ease. Neither carried any luggage. They didn't even wear jackets. They slipped off their black loafers and put them through the x-ray scanner while everyone around them struggled with coats, satchels, purses, laptops, briefcases, strollers, umbrellas. The two men didn't even carry wallets. The only things they had to take out of their pockets were keys and money clips. They slipped past their fellow travellers and cleared security quickly, not having to pause to reassemble themselves.

They strolled down the concourse, one tall and thin, with blond hair buzzed close to his skull, the other shorter, bulkier, and dark, with a strong nose and even stronger brown eyes. He did the looking around while his companion just strolled. They stopped at a bar, leaning back against high stools. One ordered a Tecate, the other a Coke. When the boy brought the order he offered glasses, but neither man bothered. The blond one took a long drink of the Tecate, then frowned at his companion's drink. “Coke?”

The dark man said, “I don't like to waste good beer,” and he poured his drink into a conveniently placed potted palm. His companion did the same with his beer. Then, as if having a contest, each crushed his can on the tabletop by pressing down with one hand. The cans collapsed into flattened pieces of metal. Each man tore the result in half, creating a sharp edge, then sharpened it further with a key that was a disguised file. Finally, the blond man took his keyring in his palm, and stuck three keys out from between his fingers, turning his hand into a mace. In his other hand he carried the sharpened piece of can.

Now they were armed—and they felt very secure in the airport concourse in assuming they were the only people who were. “I love security,” the blond one said as they walked up toward the passenger gates.

The passenger lounge area around Gate 32 was fairly full. The two men stopped and looked over their possibilities. Several businessmen traveling separately: good possibilities. Three or four family groups they tentatively dismissed. Two thin, leggy women putting their heads together over a magazine. The blond man watched them appreciatively, until his partner nudged his arm.

There was another group of kids in their twenties at whom the men stared closely. Then a young mother with a toddler, who kept running across everyone's legs. Geeky kid with an earplug, playing what looked like a Gameboy on steroids. Middle-aged man and teenage daughter, maybe on a college trip. The dark man looked at the father more closely: take away the girl and he could be the one, their target. Two flight attendants stretching their legs, chatting quietly to each other. Don't turn your back on them: wouldn't be the first time a flight attendant turned out to be a trained killer.

They concentrated first on the people facing them, assuming the ones who were careless enough to sit with their backs to the traffic were harmless.

Jack, the “kid” playing a game on his hand-held device, wondered who the two were. They obviously didn't realize he could see them in two reflections: the glass wall in front of him and the television screen in the other lounge. The two men moved purposefully through the small crowd, obviously looking for someone. Jack appeared to continue playing his game. His cane leaned against the chair beside him. Security hadn't liked that cane, but Jack had walked in with an obvious limp and the x-ray machine hadn't shown anything inside the wooden stick, so they'd let it through.

Jack remained aware of the two men without ever looking directly at them, until they were standing over him. He felt their presence, heard their breathing, and sighed without making a sound. Jack turned off his game so he could see the two in the reflection of the small screen. Whatever happened, he wasn't moving. He felt safe surrounded by people. Until he saw the points
of the keys sticking out from between the taller one's fingers. That hand was about a foot behind his neck.