Part 10 (1/2)

Xenos grabbed him and spun the old man around. ”Look at me, d.a.m.n you! I am your son! You taught me to play the piano, to sing. You were the one who was always there for me! Please, G.o.d, I need you here for me now!”

But the old man's eyes remained squinted tightly shut. ”My son is dead.”

Xenos released the old man, seemed to sag, almost deflate. ”I don't sleep, Papa.” His voice was sad and pained, more like a child's than a man's. ”I see their faces, all their faces, Papa. They're all there. Everything you always said. They just stare at me, mock me.” He dropped his head; his shoulders curled in; in every respect the image of a man beyond exhaustion. ”Judge me.”

For the briefest flicker of a second, the old man barely opened his eyes wide enough to see the son, the man, he felt almost a physical longing for. He felt his hand start to reach up...

He spun around, tightly closing his eyes and stalking away.

”You are a ghost! A phantom of my son who has been sent to mock me! I deny you!”

”Papa, the too familiar voice called out in the night. But the old man continued on.”

Then a screeching of tires, a shot, and the old man-a veteran of too many gang wars and pogroms in his life-dived into a storefront doorway. When the sounds stopped, moments later, he cautiously looked back out at a completely deserted street.

Deserted except for a s.h.i.+ning blackish stain near the s.p.a.ce between the buildings.

He slowly walked back-propelled by something more than instinct and less than certainty-stopping by the stain, crouching down, touching it with his tobacco-stained fingers to confirm for his eyes the horrific truth his heart already knew.

Staring into his b.l.o.o.d.y fingers, his anger-at himself, at his son, at the world that had come between them then and now-boiled and raged, finally finding voice and fury.

”b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Give me back my son!”

Five.

”Stupid.”

The impeccably dressed older European gentleman opposite the big man in the back of the limousine looked over at the comment.

”Excuse me?” he asked.

”You heard me right enough.” The big man's tone was full of contempt and disbelief.

A second man merely shrugged. ”The situation was thrust upon us.”

”We did what we could,” a third added. ”When that failed, we relied on your talents.”

The big man shook his head. ”You made it worse by not letting me handle things from the start. If you had, Goldman would be dead and Alvarez would be, well, compliant at worst.”

”But, Canvas, you didn't kill Goldman.”

”Of course not, you stupid carp! After your pointless games, I have to find out how far operational integrity has been compromised, don't I? Who he's working for and what he's told them and why. Christ!” he spit out. ”If you'd just blown the b.u.g.g.e.r away when he came out of the college p.r.i.c.k's apartment, I wouldn't be missing Liverpool v. Man U.” He began to gaze out the window at the pa.s.sing farms and fields. ”Good b.l.o.o.d.y match it was going to be too.”

Silence settled over the car.

”Wo xihuan daifu hao xie de,” the first man whispered casually as he checked his watch.

”Dm,” the second responded while seemingly obsessed with a loose thread on his jacket sleeve.

The third smiled in the direction of Canvas, who never looked away from his window. ”Ni neng jieshao xie sheme liangcai ma?”

The first yawned. ”Wo xiang baoxian.”

”Gentlemen,” Canvas said in a quiet voice, ”before you start talking about my relative quality, or getting insurance against my possible failure, I think you should know two things.”

He turned to face them, his eyes cold, narrow, his body virtually emanating death and destruction. ”First, you'll only get one chance at severing our relations.h.i.+p. Fail that and I start the severing.”

He leaned back, seeming to relax as he returned to studying the countryside. ”Second, I understand that gutter slop you like to speak. So no secrets, right? Wo dong le.”

”Our apologies, Canvas.” The European bowed slightly toward the big man.

”Forget that and tell me about this new Alvarez bulls.h.i.+t.”

”It is not bulls.h.i.+t.” He clearly disliked the word. ”It is an ultimatum, and it is most complicated.”

”You must remember,” the third man quickly added, ”that options available to us in other circ.u.mstances are unavailable now.”

Canvas poured himself a drink. ”And why is that?”

”An unscheduled disappearance of a high-visibility member of Congress; visible, unexplained wounds or injuries; or worse-a death?” The second shook his head. ”That would raise our profile to an unacceptable level.”

”Unacceptable,” the European repeated. ”Ms. Alvarez has reasoned the situation most clearly, I'm afraid.”

”We'll see,” Canvas said as he stretched. ”I'll see.”

For over ten hours Valerie had waited. Constantly evaluating, watching, waiting.

Should I do it now?

Are there enough of them here-the right ones of them-to really hurt?

Have I gotten all I can?

After the usual, routine humiliations, she had been driven for hours-she thought to somewhere in Connecticut. There she'd been searched again, insulted again, and eventually brought into the presence of her three, usual interrogators.

But there'd been something different about it this time. The men in the car, the guards and others in the corridors of this carefully unmarked building, all seemed tenser, nervous, taut. At first she thought they had sensed her plan, or had somehow discovered it outright. But she quickly realized it was something else.

As they'd waited to be let into the conference room where the questioning would take place, she noticed two heavily armed guards in front of a door at the far end of the corridor. She saw the covert, worried looks of the others as they glanced in that direction, then whispered among themselves. But she'd had little time to a.n.a.lyze or guess at the cause of their discomfort.

The questioning had begun simply enough, routine questions about surveillance and suspicions that opened each session. Her secured briefcase had been gingerly placed on the table in front of her-the men obviously aware of its intricate b.o.o.by traps. No one mentioned it throughout the meticulous beginning. It was simply silently acknowledged as her interrogators checked off their lists of the routine Q&A that they lived by.

Finally the preliminaries were over and the main event began.

”Congresswoman, have you retrieved the reports we requested?”

”I have.”