"You were unconscious for a couple of minutes after I pulled you back through the shield."
Eden sobbed. "Failed ... we're going to ..."
Bertie turned her head. "Alex, give Eden a look at what you have there." Alex opened the bag again. Wide enough for Eden to see the bright digital numerals on the detonator timer.
Fifty-four minutes eight seconds. And counting.
"Butâ"
Bertie shook her exuberantly. "
That's
the device that was in the pickup truck, Eden!" Eden, skin cold from shock, heart still beating with massive blows, didn't understand. Bertie said, "Alex needs about three minutes to disarm it when you guys get back to the boat."
"Butâ"
"You switched them, Eden."
"I did
what
?"
"The devices were identical, except one was loaded and the other wasn't. You couldn't shut the other timer down. So you switched them."
"How?"
"If I knew the answer, if I could pull it off, then I'd be the Avatar. But I'm not that good, and besides I don't want to
be
the Avatar."
"Neither do I."
"That's something we really should talk about. Later. Beginning to get crowded up here. And I'm hungry."
"Miss Nkambe?" Carlisle said.
Eden and Bertie turned. He was standing about fifteen feet away, as if he wasn't sure it was all right to come any closer. A car trying to back out almost bumped into him. The parking decks trembled from the weight of cars headed for the exits.
"What's wrong, Carlisle?" Bertie said, but from her expression it was clear she already knew.
"Mr. Sherard's down. He can't move. I've got an ambulance started, but he needs you."
Even before he finished Bertie had run past him, with Eden close behind.
SUN VALLEY, IDAHO ⢠JUNE 8 ⢠10:35 A.M. MDT
R
ona Harvester awoke to sunshine and flowers in her suite at the Camberlane Clinic. There was an IV in the back of her right hand, a leather strap attached to the bed around her wrist. Her left hand was similarly restrained. She had a taste of old blood in the back of her throat. Her eyelids felt as if they were stuck together. She was able to get the right eye open a little more, but still she only had a slit to see through. When she licked a dry underlip she felt the taut pull of surgical tape on her cheeks.
There was a nurse in the room wearing a pink smock. She was looking for a place to put yet another basket of flowers. She heard Rona trying to speak, smiled over her shoulder.
"Good morning, Mrs. Harvester."
Rona trembled. Breathing nasally stung like fury. She breathed through her mouth instead. Her throat was sore and her tongue dry.
"Water."
The nurse brought her a cup with an angled straw. She sipped.
"Doctor will be with you in just a few moments," the nurse said. She had Southeast Asian features, a slip of a body. She wore her hair in a ponytail. Rona coughed and tried to moisten her lips again. She was wearing what looked like a rubber thimble on her right index finger. The nurse glanced at her blood pressure readout on a monitor screen.
"Where am I?" Devastating memories were trying to take shape in Rona's mind. She had only flashes of coherence.
"This is the Camberlane Clinic, Mrs. Harvester. You're in Sun Valley. You were brought here from Montana last night after your horse threw you."
"Horse? I don't . . . remember."
Another face in the room. Black man, young, small mouth, toothy smile, mustache.
"Good morning, Mrs. Harvester. I'm Dr. Wheeler. How are we doing today?"
"Why . . . am I tied down?"
"You've had reconstructive surgery on your nose. There's a protective shield, but while you slept you might have inadvertentlyâ"
"Victor. Where's Victor? Something ha-happened to
Victor
! I remember he . . . there was a phone call. Then . . . oh, shit!"
Wheeler grimaced sympathetically but shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know who you mean. Senator Hannafin may be able to help you. If you feel up to having a visitor."
"Buck ... Hannafin?"
"Yes. He arrived very early this morning."
"What ... day is this?"
"Monday, Mrs. Harvester."
"Is there a TV in here? Turn on the TV! I want to see ... the news. CNN."
"Certainly. Should I tell Senator Hannafin that you'd rather notâ"
"No. Get him in here.
Now
."
Rona heard one of CNN's anchorpersons and turned her head on the flat pillow. While she waited for Buck to appear she tried, with a violently racing heart, to put together a sequence of events from the night before. It was too much of an effort. They'd sedated her with something very powerful. She stared at the TV screen, momentarily seeing a double image. News footage. Rammstein Air Force Base in Germany. Something to do with Allen Dunbar. A shot of Air Force Two on the ground. Dawn there, would have been . . . hours ago. The plane was taking off. What was that all about? Rona realized, after a memory jolt, that the news this morning should have been totally focused on what remained of Nashville, Tennessee. A nation in shock again.
"Hello, Rona. Sorry about your accident, but I understand they're taking real good care of you here."
She turned her head again. "Buck." Image of Hannafin on her doorstep with the young cowgirl type from the Broken Wheel Ranch. "I don't fall off horses." Then she remembered. The melee in the dining room. Clint's elbow in her face. "Where's my husband?"
"Clint checked into Walter Reed about an hour ago, following his psychiatric examination."
"Psyâ? On whose orders!?"
"It'll take a long time, of course, but because there doesn't seem to be anything organically wrong with his brain, Clint should recover fully. Call it a bad case of amnesia. Official word is, the former President suffered another stroke, but it isn't life-threatening and he's resting comfortably."
"
Former
President?"
Buck glanced at the TV mounted on the wall opposite Rona's bed. Saw himself behind a bank of microphones at one of Sun Valley's resort hotels.
He turned down the volume, looked at Rona. His eyes had a touch of red in them. There remained in his breast a hard knot of anger that would have busted the teeth off a sawmill blade.
"Allen Dunbar took his oath as the new President of the United States by Chief Justice Rumsill at five o'clock this morning aboard Air Force One in Germany. President Dunbar arrived at the White House forty minutes ago, and will be addressing the country in just a little while. Stock market dropped about three hundred points after the opening, but it's been recovering nicely. Oh. That nuclear device somebody carelessly left in a Nashville parking facility was recovered and disarmed by a NEST team. That won't be in the news, but I thought you'd want to know. I guess you could say it's all over, Rona."
In spite of her agitation she remembered to smile, as if she'd just heard an unfriendly question at one of her news conferences. "I haven't the slightest idea what you'reâ"
Buck smiled too, glanced at the monitor beside her bed. "'Fraid I've overstayed this visit. Appears your pulse is way up."
"I want to talk to Victor!" Rona yelled. "Get me a phone!
Somebody bring me a fucking phone!
" In times of great stress Rona's voice became as hoarse as a goose honk.
The expression on Buck Hannafin's face cut short her rant.
"No. Oh,
no
. What do you mean? Victor? Dead? I don't
believe
you! That isâyou're tryingâyou're messing with my head, but it won'tâ" Her voice failed completely. She tried to stare Buck down, but the harsh truth was in his eyes. Tears squeezed through the slits of her own eyes.
"
You
," she said, whispering. "You set it all up! Some kind of ambush, wasn't it? Inviting yourself into
my
house! What have you done with
Victorrrrr
?"
"He's dead," Buck said ruthlessly, "and you'll never lay eyes on him again because there wasn't enough of him left to show a spark in hell." His lips compressed into a thin line. Rona flinched. Her pulse rate in spite of the sedatives in her system broke 130, according to the Critikon readout. She began to tremble as Buck went on, "My concern was Clint. Only Clint. I had nothing to do with Wilding's . . . timely demise. Appears he did it all to himself." Buck snapped his fingers. "Spontaneous combustion, I hear. One of the mysteries of nature. Like Wilding himself."
Rona made incoherent grieving sounds. He stared implacably at her, distanced from her sorrow.
"You might say Fate took a hand. By the way, one of our new President's first official acts will be to name Nick Grella as acting head of the FBI, until Bob Hyde shows up. That would seem to be the dimmest of possibilities, since he disappeared in the wilderness over a week ago. One of Nick's, and Justice's priorities, will be the dismantling of the Multiphasic Operations and Research Group. Reckon that won't leave you many friends on either side of the government. Rona, it would be a pure pleasure to strip your treacherous hide, currycomb the meat from your bones, and nail your skeleton to the shithouse door. But in the end that might prove hurtful to Clint. We'll leave it up to him to deal with you, once he's recovered and is able to understand what you had done to him and tried to do to our nation. Until that day comes, I'm sure you'll enjoy a comfortable retirement at Big Country. Don't bother showing up at the White House, you won't get in. Your staff is packing up your things and they'll be sent out directly. Good morning to you."
Buck walked out of the room and down the hall that opened onto to a terrace and a fine view of the Sawtooth Mountains. There were several patients in wheelchairs on the terrace, where they'd been enjoying the cool breezy morning. Now they were distracted by a disturbance going on, inside the clinic. Buck put on his Stetson and took a full minute getting a cigar going. Then he walked down the flagstone steps to the circular drive and a waiting limousine.
He hesitated before getting in. Listened. Even at that distance from the clinic he could hear Rona Harvester screaming. Buck shook his head, knowing he was enjoying this moment too much. But what the hell. He started to laugh. Great gusts of belly-heaving laughter that brought tears to his eyes.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE ⢠JUNE 9 ⢠3:40 A.M. CDT
T
om Sherard awoke in the dead of night feeling as if he were floating vertically underwater. But water wasn't the element he found himself in, because he could breathe normally, without the nasal cannula that had been inserted after the surgery on his neck to remove a small chunk of lead pressing close to the
medulla oblongata
âthat point where his brain was joined to the spinal cord. He had come within a sixteenth of an inch of dying on the floor of the parking garage by the Nashville stadium. The partial paralysis caused by inflamation should have kept him pinned to his bed in the critical care facility of Vanderbilt University Hospital, and he wasâhad beenâon an IV line. But he could lift both arms freely and make slow swimming motions toward the light that glazed the surface of the element in which he was almost free to move about at will. A fluid element, as colorless as a predawn sky, neither cold nor hot: it had the temperature of his blood. The motions of his arms and his free leg caused the element to ripple and take on rainbow hues. He was fascinated.
Come on, Tom. A little more effort now.
He heard the voice inside his head, and knew who it was.
Where are you?
Just keep moving. Straight up.
I'm stuck.
No, you're not. It's the basic fear everyone has, of leaving the body. But you can return, whenever you want. You'll just be Visiting me, for a little while. Probably the last chance we'll have for a long time.
Leave his body?
He looked down and there he was, or it was, as he hovered several feet above the bed in the otherwise cramped hospital unit. High enough to bump his head against the Celotex paneled ceiling. But the ceiling wasn't there. Only the opaque Element with its ghost surround, a lovely pacific light, existed above him. There was a cord of blue light, thin as boot stitching and cool as neon, connecting his noncorporeal body to the sleeping body at the base of the spine. What a neat trick. He felt reassured. And with reassurance came the final upward thrust into another, remembered world.
Sunlight so brilliant his eyes closed involuntarily. He felt a touch of vertigo, staggered a couple of steps to regain his balance. He heard an elephant and a treeful of birds. He breathed the chilly air of the land in which he had been born. He opened his eyes on miles of thick yellow grass and baobob, finger-groves of acacia and fever trees, a brown river with sluggish hippos lying on its banks or immersed to the knobs of their eyes in the dry-season pools, babies clinging to their mothers' backs. He was home again, deep in the Masai Mara, the wild country of his boyhood.