"Cool. Anybody here play?"
"Eden isn't here," Betts said to Geoff. Her unforgiving stare had enough steel in it to drill out his molars. "I don't know where she is. In hiding. So you're wasting your time, Geoff, or whatever your name is."
"It's Geoff. But not McTyer. I'm sorry."
"A sorry piece of
shit
. Why didn't I kick you out of the house before you got your hands on my daughter? God, but you make my blood boil."
Haman laughed and wandered off to look at the piano and plink the keys. The piano seemed to be in tune. Meanwhile Riley went down slowly on one knee, groaning, then eased lower until he was on his hands and knees.
"Let's lift him up on the sofa," Geoff suggested.
He slid the Glock into his belt holster, helped Betts carry Riley to the wicker sofa with chintz-covered cushions. One huge sunflower on each cushion. Riley was pasty from pain. Betts tried to push Geoff away.
"Let him be. Bulging disk. Fourth lumbar vertebra. Takes a shot of cortisone to get the swelling down."
"How about you, Mama?" Haman called to Betts across the room, which took up most of the first floor of the lodge. "You play the piano?"
Birds were waking up outside the lodge, although there was no sign of dawn yet.
"Where did you get the midway attraction?" Betts murmured to Geoff, rearranging the big pillows, trying to make her husband comfortable. Riley said anxiously, rolling his eyes to Geoff, "Guns. Why?"
Haman slammed a fist on the piano keys. Betts flinched, mouth gaping as if the wind had been knocked out of her.
"Get over here, Mama Frizz. I do mean now."
Geoff anticipated the return of her outrage, Betts yelling at Haman to fuck himself. He clamped a hand on her wrist, caught her eye. Betts yelled at him instead, stomping, kicking, landing some kicks on his shins.
Geoff hauled her in close, clinching. Hot blood in her cheeks. "Play the piano for him. Do requests. Give me time to try to get us out of this."
"Out ... of what?" Betts gasped in his ear.
"He'll kill us all. Me included. Then wait around for Eden, kill her too. Now scream at me. Fight."
"Oh oh you bastard! What have you done? What did we ever do to deserve
you
?"
"Maybe someday I can explâ"
Betts slapped him on the side of his neck, hard enough to leave an imprint. Geoff winced, shook it off, and saw Haman's grin over her shoulder. He lowered his head, roughhousing Betts around, allowing her to shove back. Betts screaming her fuck you's until she ran short of breath. Riley lying on his stomach on the sofa, helpless, eyes like a mad bull's, saying, "Hey hey son of a bitch hands to yourself leave her alone goddamn you!" Geoff saying grimly to Betts, "Keep fighting. Haman thinks it's funny. We want him amused."
Betts went for his groin with her knee.
WASHINGTON, D.C. ⢠MAY 29
A
fter a massage and catnap Rona Harvester slipped out of the White House at four A.M., using the tunnel that extended from a subbasement beneath the east wing to the basement of the Treasury Department. Four MORG agents accompanied her, making sure that the surveillance cameras were blacked out before Zephyr's passage.
Three black limos were waiting at the Treasury Building. Rona was driven to a small but elegant European-style hotel with its entrance on Ninth Street, just north of Mount Vernon Square. The hotel was called the Chasseriau. Brick with a copper mansard roof, many chimneys. There were only six fully-staffed four-thousand-square-foot suites available in the hotel, one suite per floor, with a private elevator for each. The suites were free; the platinum elevator key rented for twelve thousand dollars a night. It was the sort of cachet that billionaire business types from the world's capitals found irresistible. They were accustomed to a lot of pampering and they got that too. Multiphasic Operations and Research Group owned the Chasseriau, so everything the guests said or did within the walls was scrutinized, analyzed, and filed while they were in residence. Most of the counter-surveillance devices that the businessmen counted on for their security had been developed and were sold to them by one of MORG's companies.
The seventh and top floor of the hotel was reserved for Victor Wilding's use. A suite-within-a-suite had been created for the total privacy that was not available to the guests below.
"Victor, God. So
good
to see you."
The kiss was a long one. To Rona it seemed that her ardor overmatched his. She took a step back, studying his face, the fading boyishness. Circles of woe beneath his blue eyes. A haggard, pinched look about the mouth. And fear. Rona dug her fingers into his arm below the shoulder.
"You're blaming me."
"No."
"It happened. We're disappointed. We move on. There's another Avatar, somewhere."
"With Kelane Cheng's experience and ability? I don't think so. The news from Plenty Coups isn't good. He's failing more rapidly. It could be a matter of weeks, a few months at the most. Then I'll be recalled. Victor Wilding won't exist anymore."
"Why is he failing? His body, his heart, they're still strong. The worst violence in his brain, the temporal lobe epilepsy, was fixed years ago. Robin Sandza is only thirty-five years old.
Why?
"
"I don't understand all the terminology. Something to do with the neuropeptides that enable the immune and brain cells to communicate. Chinese medicine teaches that the brain is under the control of the body through energy channels. It's the basis of acupuncture."
"Sure. Cheng used acupuncture as well as traditional invasive procedures. And she had the touch, the instinct, to locate the site of the injury that was keeping Robin in a coma. Damn her for dying on us."
"I've been doing a lot of reading lately. The Bible."
"You're reading the Bible?"
"'A broken spirit drieth the bones.' Proverbs."
"And?"
"What did Whitman call the life force? The thin red jellies within us, the marrow, the bones? 'Not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul.'"
"Who is Whitman?"
"Don't you see what I'm getting at? The reason why he's dying now, after all these years, could be spiritual, not mechanistic. Maybe Kelane Cheng had the answer, and the power to heal him. That's why we had to have her. The world is swarming with telepaths, latents, or psi-actives, but her power was unique."
"That's enough. We went after Cheng because of this obsession of yours. You
don't
have to die because Robin Sandza dies. You're talking yourself into dying. It's worse than being the drunk my daddy was. You're soaking up the Bible and giving yourself the religious d.t.'s."
"It's the fate of all doppelgangers."
"Robin released you before they drove him insane at Psi Faculty. He named you. That in itself is proof you're not a doppelganger. But if you were. Naked, you'd be invisible. The sight of a dog would have you crapping your pants. Black light would put you on your knees, gasping for breath. Dpg my ass. You are Victor Wilding. Your name is who you are. The name is stronger than death. Get over this, lover."
Wilding smiled dispiritedly. "He gave me a name. But he couldn't give me a soul. That's the difference, the important difference you can't seem to grasp. Because I have no soul I'm still bound to Robin. Maybe in the same way both of us were bound to Gillian Bellaver. Is it a coincidence that he had a seizure a year ago that nearly killed him? On the same dayâmy research shows it was
the exact moment
âthat Gillian was murdered?"
Rona didn't want to be reminded of Gillian Bellaver. She still wasn't sure he believed that she'd had nothing to do with it, the assassination, although Rona had welcomed the funeral of her rival and nemesis as a gift from the demon gods she had been keeping company with all of her life.
"If there's a connection it doesn't interest me. You don't have a soul? Fine. Neither do I. What I care about is that together we are one. One dick, one pussy, one heart, one mind. I me you we us. Afraid of nothing. Stronger than death. One."
"Yes."
"Good. You're listening to me."
"Yes."
"You look better already."
"You were gone three days. I hate it when you're gone that long."
"Oh, how much I love you. I need a drink but first I want you to fuck me silly. Rough, I like it rough. But you know that. Your pounding cock. I don't have anything on under these jogging shorts. Here it is. Forget God. Pussy is God. Put your hands on it. On your knees before Rona's pussy. Pray to Pussy. Here. Now. Lover/lover. I me you we us."
SAN FRANCISCO ⢠MAY 29 ⢠5:42 A.M. PDT
T
om Sherard was aware of Bertie's voice. In the bedroom of the suite. Talking to someone, but not on the phone. She spoke three or four sentences that weren't clear to him. But she seemed to be doing more listening than talking.
He had made a bed for himself on the floor of the sitting room with plush pillows from the sofas. Bertie uttered terrible whimpering sounds of distress. He got up and went inside, found her sitting on the bed trembling. The nightshirt she was wearing was soaked with her perspiration, as if she'd been in the shower. Her eyes were closed.
"Murder," she said. "Murder!"
He knew better than to disturb her when she was like this. He waited. Maybe he'd had an hour's sleep. San Francisco was waking up at the same pace he was. He heard a cable car's bell in the saffron fog outside.
Bertie slumped suddenly, as if she'd been released from the grip of an electric current. She breathed deeply for almost a minute, then fell over against him, sound asleep.
Sherard worked the drenched nightshirt off Bertie. Her sweat was pure as dew, odorless. Her flesh had sheen. Breasts as firm as boiled eggs. Her pubes had been fashionably depilated. Holding Bertie was giving him an erection. If it hadn't, might have been something to worry about. He sighed, left the bed, and got a bath towel six feet long from the heated rack beside the shower and wrapped her in it. She was peaceful, but he wasn't going to sleep anymore. He left her in the bedroom and ordered room service.
He had eaten his melon and English muffin and was on a second cup of coffee while going through the
Chronicle
when the bedroom doors opened and sleepyhead Bertie came out slowly, blinking, still wearing the towel wrap, collarbones to mid-thigh. Thick hair a-tumble. She sat primly on a sofa opposite him.
"I have such a headache. I never get headaches unless I've been Visiting. Is there more coffee?"
He poured a cup for her. "Don't you remember?"
"Some of it," Bertie said, adding sugar cubes to the black coffee.
"Where were you?"
"In the Astral."
"Who did you see? Talk to?"
Bertie sipped coffee, bowed her head. Rubbed it, grimacing.
"What happened to my nightshirt?"
"You soaked it through. I was afraid you'd catch a cold."
"Is that where the towel came from?"
"Yes."
"But you didn'tâstay with me?"
"You were dead asleep. You'd been through an ordeal. How about something to eat?"
"I'm not hungry yet." She lifted her head, smiled at him. "You're a lovely man. The only man I ever want to wake up to."
"Right now I feel like a dope. Getting us into difficulty last night. I'm afraid you've been tagged by some extremely nasty people."
"Wouldn't be your fault. Or Danny Cheng's."
"How did MORG get on to us, then?"
"You're not thinking."
"You mean Rory Whetstone, Hannafin's guy?"
Bertie nodded. "First he's on the plane with us, then he's lurking around
Cheng's house while we're inside."
"It was on telly this morning. Gas main explosion. So goes the official explanation. Historic old Russian Hill home. Nothing about black helicopters, of course. One body found in the wreckage, presumed to be an employee."
"Song Li. That means Danny and Chien-Chi got out somehow." She sighed in relief. "I'm hungry now. Could I have a ripe mango and, um, let's see, a steak sandwich? New York cut, medium rare, whole wheat. Cucumber relish on the side."
Sherard alerted room service. Bertie helped herself to more coffee, staring out the windows.
When he was off the phone Bertie said, "But Whetstone isn't MMF. I peeped him. He's totally dedicated to Senator Hannafin. If he's tipping off MORG, then it must be an implant of some kind. I think it's a chip with a transponder, not much bigger than an eighth of a carat diamond, embedded behind his left ear."
"I didn't know you also had X-ray vision."
"I don't. And that remark makes me feel like a freak."
"Sorry. Things you take for granted are a bit much for me to swallow whole. Why do you think he's carrying a transponder around in his bean?"