The 4 Phase Man (27 page)

He looked deeply into Xenos’s eyes. “Amen.”

“You have any evidence of any of this?”

Herb smiled back at the man. “Of what? A paranoid old man’s wild fantasies?” He shook his head. “If the first rule is win, then the second is
don’t get caught.
You know that.” His shrug became a shroud. “No evidence, no plot. You can’t stop what doesn’t exist, can you?”

Xenos heard the truth in the old man’s voice, saw his frustration, felt his anger.

“What are you doing about it?”

“Me? Herb asked innocently.”

“You.”

“Well”—he smiled a secret smile—“I might’ve had a thought or two, but…”

“But?”

“But then”—the older man’s eyes narrowed, his voice became an angry growl—“I don’t
fucking have Alvarez!”
The face immediately relaxed, the voice returning to its usual calm, peaceful nature. “Do I,
son?”

Canvas bounded off the Exec-jet and raced to the waiting jeep. “Go, damn you!”

The Philippine heat was oppressive, slamming into the man in the back of the open car as it raced along the dirt road. His clothes were soaked through after five minutes. But he never moved, never showed any sign of the discomfort they all felt. His mind was so disconnected from his body that it wouldn’t have mattered if it was one hundred degrees above or below zero just then.

All that mattered was the news.

A representative of Chinese intelligence in Macao had been contacted by one of the leaders of the Corsican Union, the non-European branch of the Brotherhood. The man had offered a deal, with Alvarez and Canvas as two of the most critical terms.

And that had galvanized Canvas into a flight halfway around the world in the middle of the night.

The jeep screeched to a halt in front of a corrugated tin building in a jungle clearing.

Heavily armed men openly displayed their machine guns and machetes in defiance of the local law. Two stretch limousines sat off to one side. And a helicopter sat, its rotor turning lazily in the almost nonexistent wind, just on the other side of the clearing.

Canvas leaped off the jeep and rushed into the building.

“What the fuck is this about a deal?” he demanded of the tropical-suited men at the table.

A tall Chinese stood, bowed his head toward the angry man, then gestured at an empty seat. “If you would care to join us, Canvas. We would be happy to explain.”

Canvas looked the room over. Three Chinese, three olive-skinned Europeans. “Talk to me, Yin.”

The Chinese sat down calmly. “It was you who first suggested negotiations, I believe. We are merely carrying that thought to its logical conclusion.”

The Corsicans stared at Canvas with undisguised hostility.
“He has been pleading for your life,
sporco parassita!”
one of them spat out.

“An exaggeration,” Yin said simply. “We have simply been attempting to discover if there is a common ground available that will satisfy all interested parties.” He seemed satisfied. “We’ve settled on financial terms, now we’re discussing human terms.”

Canvas nodded. “You going to kill me, or let them? Stuff like that?”

“We hope it won’t come to that. We are, after all, civilized men here at this table.”

Canvas shook his head as a laugh escaped his lips. “And those, uh,
human terms
, they take old Jerry Goldman into account?”

“Dureté is not involved in this,” a Corsican said angrily. “This involves only tribute for Paolo DiBenetti, guarantees for Congresswoman Alvarez and her children…”

“And justice, the third Corsican said between clenched teeth.”

Canvas nodded sagely. “That would be about me again,” right? The men ignored him. “Yin, do you honestly believe that you can trust these boobs? Or that Goldman will just stay out of things?”

Yin nodded. “You have told us so yourself.”

“That was before we brought his family into things. Before you and your people managed to fuck things up so completely.”

The Chinese diplomat/spy shrugged. “You overdramatize, Canvas.”

“Dureté will not interfere in these matters if his family is no longer disturbed. You have his word on this, the lead Corsican said to Yin.”

“That is acceptable to me. Now then, about Mr. Meadows here.”

Canvas laughed bitterly, shook his head, then turned to leave. “Idiot.”

“Mr. Meadows!”

Canvas turned back to the Chinese. “Yeah?”

“I must ask you to remain until these negotiations are completed. If you attempt to leave, my men outside will stop you.”

“I’m trapped?” Canvas asked pleasantly.

“Essentially,” Yin said firmly. “It does have the convenience of saving me the trouble of sending for you.”

He turned back to the negotiations, hesitated, then suddenly turned back to the big Englishman. “How
did
you know about these negotiations?”

“How indeed?” he repeated affably.

He smiled, as automatic weapons fire erupted from outside the hut. The men inside threw themselves to the floor. Except for Canvas, who stood there, looking down at them, still smiling.

Armed, uniformed men burst into the hut, quickly searching the men on the floor, then lining them up along the far wall. Canvas accepted a .45 from one of the men and casually walked over to the shocked men, two minutes after it was over.

“I hate amateurs,” he said as he blew the brains of two of the Chinese through the front of their faces onto the tin wall. Then he took the gun, placing it under Yin’s quivering chin. “To say nothing of second-raters with delusions of grandeur.” He pulled the trigger three times.

“Watch the Corsies,” he said as he handed the gun back and stepped outside.

The bandit toughs were all dead, blown apart by the disciplined, concentrated fire of the mercenaries. He picked his way through their corpses, casually taking a machete from one. Then met a limousine that was pulling up to the hut.

Xi lowered the window, ignoring the bloody scene. “The negotiations are over?”

“Quite.”

The general sighed. “Our chairman and general secretary has been a brilliant man in his time. Quite ruthless, intelligent, uncompromising.” He sadly shook his head. “But age brings out caution in many.”

“But not you.”

Again, Xi shrugged. “A matter of perspective, really. I have been bred—not for caution, as the West so often misunderstands—but for long-term strategy. And when that strategy calls for boldness, I am quite prepared to employ it.”

“So I’ve noticed lately.” Canvas leaned casually on the open window so he could feel the cooling air-conditioning from inside. “So the negotiations were the chairman’s idea.”

Xi nodded. “An old man’s desire to preserve the status quo. Apple Blossom is in place, so we must take no further risk, merely trust to momentum and time to finish the job.”

“How very Chinese of him.”

The general frowned. “Do you know bezique?”

“Card game.”

“Yes,” Xi said flatly. “It is very popular in my country. Many consider it a true test of one’s patience and self-control. The only way to win is to closely husband your most strategic, most important cards until the most critical moment, then play them all at once.”

“So?”

“The truly gifted player, however, will not wait for that critical moment to come to him. He will force it to happen at a time of his own choosing.”

Canvas was quiet for a long time. “And now is
your
time?”

“It is my country’s time, Canvas. My people s. I just see that more clearly than others.”

The Englishman shook his head. “What do you want me to do?”

“Can you now find Alvarez and the other one, this Xenos?”

Canvas glanced back at the hut. “I imagine.”

“Then destroy them, please.”The window was raised and the limo pulled away into the jungle.

He watched it go, pleased to have clear orders at last; but shaken to his core at having to try to directly confront the one man he could least control.

He tested the heft of the long blade in his hand, laid the flat of it on his shoulder, then started back toward the hut.

“All right, gents,” he called out conversationally, “who wants to be the first to tell the truth to their Uncle Colin?”

He stepped inside, closed the door, and a minute later the screaming began.

Bradley stood in the doorway, watching his uncle read aloud to the empty room, not certain whether or not to intrude on so private a moment.

“Come on in,”Xenos said to his nephew without looking up.

“I didn’t want to disturb you.”

Xenos smiled. “You? Not possible.”

The boy settled in a chair opposite him. “Everybody’s so tense, I was just looking to get away, you know?”

“Oh yeah.” Xenos leaned back in the overstuffed chair. “Something I’ve dedicated the last few years of my life to.” He studied the sixteen-year-old. “How’re you holding up?”

The boy laughed. “Are you kidding?” This is great! I mean the trip, this place, these people! Shit! It’s the best time I’ve ever had. He suddenly looked very guilty. “Except for you getting hurt and all, he said sheepishly.”

Xenos shrugged it off. “I’d always hoped to get to know you in somewhat calmer circumstances.” He paused, glancing down at the book in his hands. “It just never worked out, you know?”

“Mom says …” But he hesitated rather than finish the thought.

“Bradley,” Xenos said supportively. “You don’t ever have to choose your words around me. Never. Just say what you mean and do what you say. That’s all I’ll ever ask of you.”

The boy laughed. “Sounds like a lot.”

“It is.”

A moment of comfortable silence wrapped itself around them.

“Mom says you and Poppy didn’t talk from before I was born.”

“Yeah.”

“She says you had a horrible fight when she was just a little girl and you left.”

“Also true.” The man leaned painfully forward. “Just say it, kid.”

Bradley reached for Xenos’s can of beer, surprised when the man just smiled and pushed it over to him. “Why’d you run away?”

Xenos studied the clear eyes, the smooth skin, the face that reminded him so much of the nightmare/visitation of his pain.

“My father and I disagreed about how I should lead my life. And neither of us was willing to work hard enough to get around it, I guess.”

“Not that,” the boy said as he sipped the beer—obviously disliking the taste, but determined to drink it nonetheless. “I mean afterwards. After you quit.”

“What did your mother tell you about me?”

“She said you worked for something like the CIA, but not the CIA. That you were a very important person there, that you did a lot of bad things for good reasons, and that you split.”

Xenos chuckled bitterly. “Bad things for good reasons,” he repeated. “Makes it sound like cheating on my taxes to pay for Grandmother’s operation.” He shook his head. “Close enough, I guess.”

“So why didn’t you come back to us? To Poppy?”

Xenos flipped through the book on his lap as he talked. “I left when I was around your age, I guess.” Full of life and ready to change the world. You see”—he hesitated—“I was a
true believer.
There was good and there was evil, and as long as you were on the side of good, you couldn’t do anything evil.”

He looked into the fireplace, losing himself in the flames.

“Don’t ever believe in anything, Bradley,” he said wearily. “It hurts too much when you’re proven wrong.”

But the man’s grays were lost on the boy’s clarities.

“Why didn’t you come home afterwards?” he persisted. The answer was clearly important to him.

“Oh, I don’t know. Got lost, I guess.”

“Bullshit,” the boy said clearly and carefully.

Xenos grinned. “You got a lot of your grandfather in you.”

The boy just sat there, silently demanding an answer.

“All right. Truth.” He thought for a moment. “What I did—good, bad, or indifferent—I did because other men told me to do it. They convinced me that democracy was better than totalitarianism or communism or whatever ism we were fighting that month. Or I did it because it was easier than not doing it.”

“I hurt a lot of people,”
a lot!
His voice trailed off. “Maybe helped a few, I don’t really know. Like to think I did.”

He took a deep breath. “I was going to
change the world!”
he almost yelled out in sarcastic exuberance. “Through me, the Maccabee Code was going to be reestablished. Milk and honey would flow, swords beaten into plowshares, evil men beaten off.” He hesitated.
“Peace
made a real thing, not a goal or ideal. When he spoke again, his voice was still as the grave.”

“I didn’t figure out, until it was too late, that
peace
is just a fairy tale, bait to catch people dumb enough to believe in it.”

He managed a strained laugh. “And, God, how I believed.”

“Two-six to Car Wreck.”

Jerry keyed his mike. “Two-six, this is Car Wreck.”

“Two-six to Car Wreck, in position.”