by Cate Dermody
And then a gunshot would shatter the evening peace in the square, and the man in red would fall, crimson robes drinking crimson blood. Alisha knotted her hands, fingernails cutting into her palms as she waited for the assassination to take place on the screen as vividly as it played out in her memory.
A flash of pale color caught her eye, high on the Vatican roof. Almost even with the camera. Blond hair, colored scarlet by the sunset. The film zoomed in almost violently, clarifying the figure’s features. Cristina. Alisha mouthed the name as the camera pulled back out again, watching her one-time partner instead of the scene in the square below. Cristina crouched and came up with a rifle. An M21, Alisha noted absently, though she knew the weapon’s make from the bullet ballistics. A sniper’s weapon, appropriate for the job at hand.
It was Cristina that Alisha watched as the trigger was pulled, her mind’s eye playing out the scene on the ground without needing to see it again. A second shot was fired, the sound on the screen dull compared to the crack in Alisha’s memory and the bloom of pain that took her breath even now, seven years later. Cristina had never fired again, and her expression was one of dismay and shock as her eye came away from the scope. She glanced around, searching for a second shooter, but discarded the need to find one in favor of survival. Barely two seconds passed before she was on her feet, breaking the gun apart and running for the edge of the roof.
Alisha, too, searched for the second shooter, but he remained invisible, nowhere in the camera’s range. Cristina darted down the length of the roof, disappearing from sight. Alisha reached out, hand trembling, to rewind the footage a few seconds, and watched again as Cristina Lamken’s recorded image pulled the trigger and made the shot that had murdered Cardinal Nyland.
Her life, Alisha had thought a thousand times, was a series of countdowns, yet somehow she couldn’t remember how many times she replayed the scene, watching Cristina take the shot that had ended a good man’s life. Soft white noise filled Alisha’s hearing, only banished when she stood from her crouch and made her way to the apartment’s telephone.
“Washington Post, may I help you?” came over the line seconds later, a brittle perfunctory question. Alisha cradled the phone in her hand gently, as though the woman on the other end might shatter if she held it too hard. Just as if footage that would destroy Cristina Lamken—Nichole Oldenburg—might disappear in a puff of dust if she spoke too forcefully.
“Yes,” Alisha said in a low, careful voice. “Who’s your top political investigative reporter, please?”
The media clamor was overwhelming. Alisha kept to the side, watching from a distance as she had throughout Cristina’s trial. It had been blessedly speedy, given the level of government it dealt with, and in three months Alisha had not missed a day of defense and prosecution arguments. She dressed somberly, as if in mourning, and went unnoticed by the reporters following the trial. Only Cristina, escorted by bailiffs, met Alisha’s eyes every morning as she entered the courtroom. Every morning, Cristina smiled, a thousand things in the faint expression.
Determination. Fear. Regret, in its way. Desperation. Maybe, Alisha thought, maybe even apology. Just possibly, for what she had done. Emotions Alisha had seen once before in her friend’s lovely face, just before Cristina suicided off a Peruvian mountainside. Emotions that played on their history together, their friendship. They stood opposite one another in ideology, and there was no other way for them to end.
I acted alone. Cristina’s unfailing stance, repeated with quiet conviction every day in the courtroom. No one believed her, and yet there was no way to prove otherwise. I acted alone, Cristina repeated, and found Alisha’s gaze out of the dozens in the courtroom.
Sorrow and respect tore Alisha in different directions. She wanted to urge Cristina to save herself, to sell out the Sicarii and those she’d taken orders from. Save herself for her daughter’s sake; save herself however she could, with whatever justifications were necessary. Sentimental foolishness, she knew; Cristina cutting a deal would only make things worse for the Infitialis and anyone who believed in free will over predestination. Reichart, barely around in the past few months, couldn’t afford the kind of meddling that Cristina would bring back to the fore. Alisha’s country couldn’t afford the too-real play at a hereditary presidency that would stifle so much of the ideal America was supposed to uphold. But day in and day out she held her breath, half hoping, half praying that Cristina would break and offer the names of her Sicarii superiors to the eager pundits.
Day in and day out, Cristina did not.
And now she was jostled by the force of reporters and film crews surging around her. A small barrier of bodyguards and lawyers kept her from the brunt of their attack, microphones thrust up and pushed away by grim-faced men bent on escorting her to the armored truck at the foot of the courthouse steps. She looked frail in a way Alisha was unaccustomed to seeing, her pale skin translucent and her eyes large, the tailored suit she wore making her seem fragile amongst the boisterous, pushy crowd. She made a beautiful victim, Alisha thought candidly. She would make a perfect example of a well-behaved criminal up for parole in a few years time, as well.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you can’t be here.” A uniformed man, perfunctory and polite, pushed his way between Alisha and the van she stood beside. She smiled and turned her hand up to reveal the federal identification she carried in her palm.
“I’ll be riding with the prisoner.”
The guard scowled an apology. “I was expecting someone taller. Sorry, ma’am.” He unlocked the door, swinging it open in the faces of gathered press. Flashes went off as Alisha curled her hand around a bar inside the van and pulled herself up into it. She kept her face averted, more automatically than from any real expectation of hiding herself, and sat down on a black plastic seat, waiting for Cristina to be brought in. Voices roared off the van’s interior, making echoes as vibrant as the flashes that turned cold steel into a barrage of light and dark. Alisha scuffed her foot over the corrugated van floor, feeling a line bump beneath her shoe.
Cristina was lifted into the van on a wave of sound, keeping her feet more easily than Alisha expected someone in cuffs to. She registered no surprise at seeing Alisha there, only turned and looked out the double doors before they closed. Her last glimpse of freedom, Alisha thought, and got to her feet to take custody of the prisoner. Cristina lifted her cuffed wrists with a smile playing at her mouth. “You don’t really think you need to chain me to my seat, do you, Ali?”
Alisha pulled a brief smile in return and nodded toward the chair opposite the one she’d taken. “Protocol. Besides, last couple of times we met up, you beat the hell out of me. It’d be embarrassing to have it happen again.”
Cool irritation slid through Cristina’s expression, but she took her seat, allowing Alisha to fasten her chains. Only when she was cuffed at wrist and ankle did Alisha glance up and gesture for the doors to be closed. Silence fell as they clanged shut, the media presence cut away to surprising effect. Alisha returned to her seat across from Cris, swaying as the van rolled forward. Neither spoke for several minutes, both women watching the other as if they were still preparing for battle. Cristina finally exhaled a huff of air and glanced away.
“You came every day.”
“You were my best friend once.” Alisha answered the implied question rather than dance around, savoring the chance to be direct. “I don’t think I can forget that, even after everything. So I came every day. I thought I owed you that. Why didn’t you sell out, Cris? You might have saved yourself.”
“Blood’s thicker than water.”
“What about your daughter’s blood?”
Surprise snapped through Cristina’s features. Then her jaw tightened. “She’ll help my people achieve our goal. She’s with people I trust, and we’ll eventually succeed, Alisha. You’re slowing us down, but you’re not stopping us. You never will stop us. People are too easily led.”
“I have more faith than that,” Alisha said
quietly.
“You always were too idealistic. People want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, and something to fear. That’s all it takes to control them. As long as they’re comfortable, they won’t rebel, and my people have no intention of taking away their comforts. We simply want to regain the positions our forefathers had. People can’t be trusted to make wise decisions on their own. Someone needs to do it for them. Our way of life is a good one. It’s a matter of time before the world comes to see that.” Cristina leaned forward in her enthusiasm, chains taut at her wrists. The van slowed and stopped, engines idling and the lack of tires rolling suddenly loud in the uninsulated armored bed. Alisha glanced toward the front, watching a traffic light turn green. The van started up again, every sound amplified as she turned her attention back to Cristina. Time seemed so short, and there were so many things she wanted to say, but Cristina’s eyes were bright with fervor and she spoke before Alisha had a chance to. “It’s unfortunate some people will die on the path to understanding, but that’s a burden borne by all great monarchs. You’ll see.”
“You want the Attengee drones and the Firebirds so you have a position of superior firepower. So no one dares argue with you. That’s not done for anybody’s good but your own, Cris. ‘There is no king, who, with sufficient force, is not always ready to make himself absolute.’ That’s Thomas Jefferson, two hundred and fifty years ago. He had a lot to say about hereditary government and who it served, too. The answer is always the same: it serves itself.” Alisha shook her head. “Nothing you say is going to convince me you’re right. You have no right to define people’s destinies, or even to try. That’s for everyone to do themselves.”
Cristina’s lip curled. “You’re a fool, Alisha.”
“Maybe, but at least I’m one with faith in humanity. I’d rather be that than convinced people were too stupid to choose their own fates.” She smiled, looking toward the front of the van again. “Was I wrong to ask for this detail?” she asked. “It’s my last government job, escorting you.”
“You were wrong. I’d rather go in alone than with you as my guide. At least alone I wouldn’t go in knowing I was being watched by someone who got personal emotional satisfaction from my failure.”
Alisha studied her one-time friend for long moments, swaying again as the van took a corner. A click sounded, like a switch flipping. Countdown, Alisha found herself thinking. A countdown for the last minutes she would ever spend with Cristina. Regret and weariness swam up inside her, a plaintive wish that things had turned out differently. “All right. I’m sorry if I made this worse for you. It wasn’t my intention.”
“What was?”
Alisha breathed a laugh and ducked her chin, scuffing her foot over the seam in the van’s floor. “I wanted to say goodbye to my friend, that’s all. Even if she died a long time ago.”
“No.” Something strange came into Cristina’s voice, a combination of surprise and a total lack of that same emotion, as if something finally made sense. “No,” she repeated, “but she’s about to. Goodbye, Ali.”
Alisha’s stomach dropped, leaving sickness behind. Time went slowly, a number leaping unbidden to mind. Seventeen. Seventeen seconds ago, there’d been a tell-tale click as the van rounded a corner. Seventeen. Eighteen.
She was on her feet, a gun drawn from the small of her back. Shots fired, shattering the chains that held Cristina. The driver hit the brakes, door flinging open as he jumped out. Alisha fell to the floor, fingers searching the seam she’d noticed earlier. Twenty-one seconds.
Countdown.
The van exploded.
Epilogue
To: Brandon Parker, Frank Reichart
Subject: London Itinerary
Dear Mssrs. Parker and Reichart:
Enclosed is your itinerary for your London visit, scheduled for this evening. I apologize for the short notice, but the situation is somewhat extraordinary. I would appreciate your arrival at the disclosed location no later than 10:00 a.m. local time tomorrow morning. Please bring papers that support your true identification. Thank you for your attention in this matter.
Sincerely,
Eve Prime
Two men entered the bank together, one sandy-blond and the other dark-haired. Instinct drove the darker-haired man to slow and glance around, assessing the exits and the patrons, judging whether there was any danger. The blond drew ahead a few steps, then stopped and looked back, waiting for the more cautious man to catch up.
They were not friends, judging from the way they walked together. More than two feet of space separated their shoulders, and their strides were deliberately matched, despite the dark-haired man having longer legs. They were sharing territory, but not willingly, both of them coming to a halt at the information desk. The blond put his hands on the desk, leaning forward to speak with a red-haired receptionist. She pursed her mouth critically and requested identification, which both men produced without looking at one another. After a moment she nodded, took a key from her own desk, and put it precisely between the two men on the counter.
They both looked at it and each other, as much an assessment as the dark-haired man had given the entire bank a moment earlier. Then the blond sighed and gestured.
Reichart palmed the key and turned on his heel to stalk across the polished floor to another information area, Brandon a half step behind, now that hierarchy had been established. “Safety deposit box 411, please.” His voice, like his footsteps, did not carry as he growled the request to the slight man behind the second counter.
“Of course. It’ll be a few minutes.” The man hurried off, leaving Reichart and Brandon alone. Reichart turned his back to the counter, folding his arms over his chest as he leaned.
“Do you have any idea what this is about?” Brandon broke the silence, voice as low as Reichart’s had been. The bigger man shook his head, abrupt movement. “Do you know who Eve Prime is?” Brandon pressed.
Reichart shot him an impatient glance and Brandon bared his teeth, a brief expression of irritation. “I couldn’t trace the e-mail message backward. The source IP was a dummy address. It’s like it came out of the Internet with no origin point.”
“You obviously missed something.”
“No,” Brandon insisted. “You’ve still got Erika under control, right?”
Reichart slid an indecipherable look at the other man. “Yeah. You could say that. She doesn’t have Internet access, that’s for sure.”
Brandon hesitated, then clenched his jaw and continued. “Then there’s somebody else out there who knows how to contact us through a highly sophisticated security network. You might want to be concerned about that.”
“Here you are.” The bank man reappeared, sliding the deposit box across the counter. “There are private rooms just down that corridor, if you’d like to open it there.”
Reichart put a big hand over the box. “That would be fine. Thanks.” The man nodded and gestured them down the hall, Reichart scooping the box up as he followed Brandon.
…the seam was a trapdoor in the van’s floor. I only made it about twenty feet before the bomb went off, thirty seconds after it set. I got thrown into the scrub at the side of the road, and ran like hell once I got up again. I saw on television that the driver survived, but that Cris and I were lost in the explosion.
I’m going to keep it that way. I think I can do more as a ghost than as a living person, at least for the time being. There’s a lot to be done. The Sicarii may be broken, but they’re not defeated. Cristina’d still be alive if they were, but I have it from pretty damned good sources that they took her out in order to protect themselves. They must have been afraid that federal prison would break her where county jail couldn’t.
Teresa knows I’m alive. I talked to her before my funeral—which was very nice, by the way. Thank you both for speaking at it. I was too far away to hear you, except for bits that the wind carried to me, but it meant a lot that you were there.
The funny thing is how the peopl
e who were there seemed overshadowed by the ones who weren’t. I kept looking for Boyer, and all I could find was Greg, too small and too slight to fill that man’s memory. I even looked for Cristina, though I was there when she died. What is this mess we call our lives, if even our deaths are haunted by the ghosts we’ve seen made?
Besides Teresa, you’re the only two who know I’m alive, and that’s only assuming you’re reading this at all. Both of you had to come to the bank and present yourselves and your IDs for them to hand over the key. One wasn’t enough. I left very specific instructions.
Brandon, I have a message for you from Eve, Lilith’s “daughter”: she says information wants to be free, and that you never should have given her progenitor access to the Internet if you intended to keep her constrained. She’s also sorry about Lilith’s death, but says you should know your work wasn’t entirely lost. Just transmuted, she says, and she says that all living things change, so you should be content with that.
From me, good luck.
And as for you, Frank…
You know where to find me.
Leesh
You know where to find me.
Fog rolled in off the river, cutting a swath of coolness through the muggy Parisian evening and altering the light to misty blue, the color of old paintings and romantic movies, and the color of her own memories. Alisha lifted her face to the cooler air, smiling against it. Voices babbled around her, warm greetings spoken in French, full of joy and life. The café surrounding her spilled out its own doors and down toward the river, a low wall protecting patrons from splashes.
