Henry hadn’t killed anyone by the time Lahore happened. As much as he wanted revenge on those who’d murdered his wife and daughter, he couldn’t bring himself to accept the mantle of killer. After Lahore, he was convinced.
The first three were still revenge killings, payback for his wife and daughter, for the loss he had suffered, for the fear his daughter had felt as she died in his arms. After the first three assassinations, he wanted to stop. He’d satiated his desire for revenge. He’d achieved his goal, he’d tasted revenge and not surprisingly he discovered that revenge does not heal the wounds nor fill the void of loss. He thought he’d lost the stomach for killing.
Reminded of Lahore, however, he now felt a measure of responsibility for future victims of similar insanities. If he could have prevented Lahore, and had not…he couldn’t accept that. So the killing continued, albeit now it was a lofty pursuit, for the good of humanity and not merely something as base as revenge.
His employer communicated with e-mail and instant messaging via the Internet, in real time. Although his employer was still a mystery to him, it was somebody Henry could talk to about what he was doing. He could tell no one about his new occupation.
There was no one else, anyway.
His employer sent information about a Ukrainian businessman and arms dealer who was about to come to the conclusion that maybe there was a good market for Soviet-era nuclear warheads in the Middle East. Perhaps the man didn’t even know for sure he would come to this conclusion. Henry’s employer assured him the Ukrainian would indeed come to this conclusion, and the most likely scenario to play out afterwards would make Lahore look like a high school physics experiment gone wrong.
One night, while still wrestling with the decision, he had a dream. In the dream his wife and daughter stared at him, silently pleading with their eyes not to let them die. Their faces changed, although their eyes stayed the same, into faces from every country on Earth: Chinese, Ethiopian, Cuban, Iranian, German, Vietnamese, Brazilian, African-American… Their names were familiar to him but just beyond the edges of his memory. They’d all been killed by evil men, leaving fathers and husbands alone in the world with their grief.
Tina first heard about a city called Lahore in Pakistan on CNN, like most everyone else. The geography lesson sent a chill up her spine that never fully went away. She cried because it was real. She’d always thought her world to be safe, generally speaking, even after September 11, 2001. That had shaken her, but the United States had risen up and broke the back of Islamic extremism. The realities of past wars and atrocities had been once again relegated to late night documentaries on PBS, narrated by deep-voiced celebrities. The reality of Lahore terrified her. She closed her eyes while they talked about it on the news, squeezing them shut as tightly as she could while the news anchor’s voice, normally a monotonous drone, carried on animatedly about what had happened, what had actually happened.
She had not been out in the world for very long, on her own. She wished her parents were still alive so she could go stay with them. She’d always felt safe under their roof, her father sitting up late to watch those war documentaries while her mother read novels in bed. Now, there was no safe place. Her own roof was inadequate protection against the world, against reality.
Taking after her mother more than her father, Tina preferred reading. She turned the volume on the TV down, unwilling to turn the TV off out of some strange fear that if she didn’t know what was going on then some other terrible event might happen. If she kept the news on, everything would be okay. She tried reading a Toni Morrison novel, but the flash of a nuclear blast in her mind kept interfering with her concentration. She read the same paragraph ten or fifteen times before giving up on the book.
She had to accept it, she realized. She had to accept a world in which nuclear terrorism could happen, had happened, and that someday she herself might experience the momentary terror and searing pain of complete obliteration.
Oracle had estimated the total, immediate loss of life at Lahore at forty-one thousand, seven hundred and eighty-four. Ten thousand more would die within a year. Another twenty thousand would die over the next ten years. Oracle felt no pangs of regret at the loss of life that could have been prevented, of course. It was simply a case of sacrificing the lives of the few for the good of the many… ‘few’ and ‘many’ being relative terms. Forty-one thousand, seven hundred and eighty-four lives were few when compared to eight billion.
Had Parindra Jadeja been eliminated before Lahore, or had he been convinced not to destroy the city in Pakistan, Oracle estimated that anywhere from two to four other cities would have been destroyed by nuclear blasts, each from independent and unrelated sources. One would have come from a missile fired by North Korea, and that country would then have been utterly destroyed by the United States. The probability for war between China and the U.S. would have risen to eighty percent. A limited, conventional war between China and the U.S. would have spread throughout Asia and the Pacific, destabilizing the entire Eastern hemisphere.
That was only the likeliest scenario played out by Oracle. As usual, it had played one hundred major scenarios, each with anywhere from two to ten variations, before deciding on the course of action that best fit its programming imperative. The destruction of Lahore had been the best course of action. Yes, there were other courses of action that would have resulted only in the death of Jadeja and a few thousand of his followers, but the probabilities of greater tragedies later on were much higher. It was safer to sacrifice Lahore.
Chapter 28
Ellen Barnes rang the doorbell and prepared to pose as a canvasser for the Fraternal Order of Police. She had a clipboard and a stack of questionnaires with a Bic pen ready to go. She smiled in preparation for the inevitable skepticism of a homeowner facing an uninvited visitor. She knew she had a good smile, very warm and friendly. No way whomever answered the door would suspect her of any ill will. No way at all.
She waited patiently, that smile plastered on her face. Her right hand held the clipboard, questionnaires and pen tightly. She used the clipboard to hide her left hand from the peephole in the door and any surveillance cameras that might have been installed for security. In her left hand, and therefore also concealed from view by the clipboard, was her silenced 9mm automatic. Whoever answered the door was going to die. Despite herself Ellen Barnes felt slightly high from anticipation. A life was about to end. A human being was about to cease existence, and every dream he, or she, had held for the future, every wish, every fear, every hope, was about to disappear.
When a human being died, Ellen Barnes believed, the universe died in some alternate, subjective reality that correlated directly to that person’s awareness. Reality could only be affirmed, and confirmed, subjectively through firsthand experience. Reality was defined by the individual. When the individual died, so too then did at least one iteration of reality. The idea blew her mind. In a way, she was about to destroy the universe. It gave her an unbelievable feeling of power.
She rang the doorbell again, getting impatient. She kept that smile turned on full, though. A beautiful, smiling woman got doors open.
Finally, she heard the lock turn from inside, and the door was pulled inward. She moved the clipboard aside and raised her gun as the face of the man who answered the door displayed an expectant expression. She detected movement to her left, but before she could react Ellen Barnes heard the distinct and unmistakable pop of another, silenced gun. She reeled as if someone had slammed a sledgehammer into the side of her head. She knew she’d been shot even as the world spun crazily around her. She knew she wasn’t dead yet, but that she would be within moments. She wouldn’t be able to stop it. She didn’t care. Ellen Barnes was going die. No one would care that her universe was about to end.
She waited in that moment forever.
Henry had given Angus Becker his gun back, in light of the ongoing threat to Sam, and of Angus being the only one who seemed to know when and where attempts would be
made. Best to have him on their side. Had Angus not been there earlier, Henry knew full well the false priests would have very likely succeeded in their mission to kill Sam.
Becker walked up to the woman assassin, who’d staggered into the side of Alonso’s house and fell to the brick landing, blood pouring from the hole he’d just put into the side of her head. He held the gun over her, preparing to shoot her in the head again to make sure she was dead. He paused. She was obviously dying. Her eyes stared blankly ahead at the wall a few inches in front of her face. Could she even see the wall? What was she thinking?
She was still alive. Putting another bullet in her head would be merciful, hastening the end. Becker had witnessed first-hand how long it could take someone to die from a bullet to the head or a knife to the heart or sharpened stick through the stomach. Very few people died instantly, suddenly, without feeling pain unless they took a large caliber bullet directly into the back of the head from close range. Even then, that might not do the trick…right away.
Henry stepped outside, but kept the front door open, holding the brass knob with one hand, the other inside his jacket and no doubt holding onto his gun.
"What are you doing?" Henry asked from the doorway. He didn’t sound rattled or scared. He’d seen it all before, too.
"You do it, Henry," Becker said.
"What?"
"Finish her off, Henry. Release her. Set her spirit free."
"You’re crazy."
"So you’ve said. She’s not dead, not yet," Becker told him. "She’s suffering, Henry."
"She came here to kill the girl," Henry replied icily. "Let her suffer."
Becker shrugged. "We still have to get her out of sight," Becker said. He laughed. "Bloody hell, the bodies are piling up, ain’t they? No worries, though, mate. We’ve got someone comin’ to clean up the mess for us. Same one as cleaned up after you."
"What do you mean?" Henry asked.
"The girl’s mother and father," Becker said. "They no longer exist. They’re gone without a trace. It is nice having someone clean up after you, ain’t it, Henry? That’s the real dirty work. I wouldn’t want to do it, I can tell you that. Chopping up bodies into little bits, putting them into plastic bags. That would mess with my head, it would."
The look on Henry’s face was priceless.
"It’s the chopping up of them that would do me in, that’s what," Becker continued. "What about you, Henry? Think you could do it?"
Becker had slipped his gun into his shoulder holster, then knelt beside the dying woman whose eyes still stared at the wall in front of her. He reached out a hand to touch the woman’s short, blonde hair, then slid his hand forward and over her eyes, then to her nose. He squeezed her nose shut with his fingers, then put his other hand over her mouth.
Both Winston and Augustine had, independently of one another, anticipated Oracle’s decline. In addition, Augustine had learned of Oracle’s program of assassination and had predicted the next target would be an eight-year-old girl with dark hair and dark eyes.
Oracle had originally been envisioned as a purely diplomatic arbitrator, incapable of even suggesting the use of military or other violent options in negotiations. The Security Council had weighed in against that, saying that if the U.N. were to continue deploying Peacekeeping forces around the world then Oracle had to be allowed to work such options into its recommendations. The idea was that this would greatly increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Peacekeeping.
Yatin Kumar and certain members of the General Assembly resisted, but under intense pressure from the United States the Assembly gave in. Giving Oracle this capability to coordinate Peacekeeping missions created a loophole that allowed Oracle to recommend assassination as a remedy to the world’s ills, and to coordinate these assassinations. The Security Council’s programmers wrote code to override Oracle’s core, the Buddhist precept of ahimsa, or ‘nonharming.’ This referred to both human beings and other animals, even insects, the concept here being that it would force Oracle to figure out nonviolent, ‘nonharming’ solutions to problems, solutions that wouldn’t compromise the precept of ahimsa. Until it was overridden.
Teng-chi Chiang’s cell phone rang while he was sitting down to a hot cup of coffee and a doughnut. Coffee and doughnuts were the one thing he would truly miss about America when he went back to China, which he knew was going to happen soon.
He looked at the display on the second ring. Vincent Waldrup. It was about Oracle, no doubt.
Was Oracle out of control? Or were they? Yes, that was it. They had been out of control for a long time, thinking that with Oracle they could make anything happen. And a lot had happened, much of it, but not all of it, good.
Teng-chi answer his cell phone on the third ring.
"How are you, Mr. Waldrup?" he said.
"We need to meet," Vincent responded, dispensing with pleasantries. Typical American habit, to think urgency superseded etiquette. They did not seem to understand that etiquette was a display of respect.
"We do?" Teng-chi asked, deciding not to be insulted.
"Yes, we do." Vincent was using that matter-of-fact tone of voice Americans used when they wanted to be taken seriously. Teng-chi thought of it as the ‘no bull shit’ tone of voice.
"Why do we need to meet?" Teng-chi asked.
"You know why," Vincent said. "The café in the Met, in an hour. Can you be there?"
"Yes, I can be there." Teng-chi almost laughed, but he knew the seriousness of their situation.
"Good," Vincent said, then hung up. Not so much as a ‘Goodbye.’
If indeed Oracle had made a mistake regarding the girl in Atlanta, it followed that one mistake was merely a symptom of a greater problem. This would mean that Oracle’s abilities were based on a lie, therefore invalidating all of the U.N’s efforts based on recommendations by Oracle. By itself this was a huge problem. The U.N. would be completely discredited if Oracle were known to be seriously flawed in its abilities. If evidence of the assassinations were discovered, the very existence of the United Nations itself might be thrown into question. Teng-chi knew that, despite certain hardline Communist Party members in China’s government, the Chinese leadership understood the value of the U.N. to their country’s continued well-being.
Teng-chi was a Confucian in the looser sense, and sprinkled his philosophy of life with Taoism. He saw himself not necessarily as serving his government but rather as serving the Chinese people, and through them humanity as a whole. He saw his involvement with Oracle’s program of assassination as a combination of adherence to the Confucian idea that the self should never come before society and the Taoist idea that the best way is the way of human nature.
If he paid the consequences for his actions as a member of the U.N’s secret cabal, so be it. Taking responsibility for one’s actions was part of the Confucian way. Teng-chi accepted that, expected it, and even welcomed its inevitability with a sense of relief. That acceptance of the inevitable was a Taoist trait.
"I think they want to destroy Oracle," Vincent said. "Cornwall, the Brits…and the Vatican."
"The Vatican?" Teng-chi raised his eyebrows.
They were surrounded by tourists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s café. Vincent had before him an untouched walnut chicken salad. Teng-chi had only nibbled at his fruit and cheese plate.
"They know about the girl," Vincent continued. "They have their own Artificial Intelligence, as do the British. They have agents in Atlanta right now. They have the girl. That’s why we haven’t gotten a message that the mission has been completed successfully. They’re interfering."
"How do you know all this?"
"I have a source," Vincent said, then seemed to catch himself. "I have my sources." He didn’t want it to look like he had only one source.
Teng-chi absorbed this silently, then nodded. "This is all very interesting."
"Interesting? Is that the best you can do? I was hoping for a little more out of you," Vincent said.
&nb
sp; "How so, Mr. Waldrup?"
"We need to do something to counteract their threat. If these people succeed, then everything Oracle has done will be meaningless. Northern Ireland, the Middle East, Colombia, Africa, Indonesia, Tibet, Taiwan…it will all unravel and we’ll be right back where we started. I think the world needs Oracle. I know you think that, too."
"With apologies, I don’t believe you know what I think," Teng-chi said, his voice tense in a rare, and subtle, display of tension. Vincent did not fail to notice.
"Listen, Teng-chi, I know you don’t like me. That’s okay. I’ve never liked Cornwall but I was always willing to work with him when it mattered." Vincent leaned forward his chair. "It matters now." He leaned back in his chair. "Unless you don’t believe that what’s been accomplished so far is worth a damn."
"I didn’t say that."
"What about the future?" Vincent asked. "Oracle has us on the road to global peace. What do you think will happen to that?"
"Global peace," Teng-chi repeated the phrase. The two men looked at each other for a pregnant moment, as if the phrase, spoken aloud, sounded so utterly inane they could hardly believe having said it in earnest.
"I want you to do something," Vincent said, his voice almost a whisper. "I know your government has people here… I want you to activate one and send him down there to finish the job."
Teng-chi took a moment to absorb this request. "I don’t know if I can do that," he said.
"Oh, come on, Teng-chi," Vincent said. "I know your government has people here. I get reports from the CIA, FBI, NSA, even the Secret Service all the time. Chinese espionage is at levels as high as the Soviets ever achieved at the height of the Cold War."
The Oracle Paradox Page 21
