Shadow Puppets Part 34

Achilles grinned. "Do you know what Poke was saying just before she had that accident and fell into the Rhine?"

Bean said nothing.

"She was saying that I shouldn't hold a grudge against you for telling her to kill me when we first met. He's just a little kid, she said. He didn't know what he was saying."

Still, Bean said nothing.

"I wish I could tell you Sister Carlotta's last words, but... you know how collateral damage is in wartime. You just don't get any warning."

"The embryos," said Bean. "You said you were going to show me where they are."

"All right then," said Achilles. "Follow me.

As soon as Achilles's back was turned, the doctor looked at Bean and frantically shook his head.

"It's all right," Bean told the doctor and the other soldier "You can go on out. You won't be needed any more."

Achilles turned back around. "You're letting your escort go?"

"Except for Peter," said Bean. "He insists on staying with me.

"I didn't hear him say that," said Achilles. "I mean, he seemed so eager to get away when he left this place, I thought for sure he didn't want to see it again."

"I'm trying to figure out how you were able to fool so many people," said Peter.

"But I'm not trying to fool you," said Achilles. "Though I can see how someone like you would long to find a really masterful liar to study with." Laughing, Achilles turned his back again, and led the way toward the main office building.

Peter came closer to Bean as they followed him inside. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" he asked quietly.

"I told you before, I have no idea."

Once inside, they were indeed confronted by another dozen soldiers. Bean knew them all by name. But he said nothing to them, and none of them met his gaze or showed any sign that they knew him.

What does Achilles want? thought Bean. His first plan was to send me out of the compound with a remote-controlled bomb, so it's not as if he planned to keep me alive. Now he's got me surrounded by soldiers, and doesn't tell them to shoot.

Achilles turned around and faced him. "Bean," he said. "I can't believe you didn't make some kind of arrangement for me to get out of here."

"Is that why you tried to blow me up?" asked Bean.

"That was when I believed you'd try to kill me as soon as you thought you had the embryos. Why didn't you?"

"Because I knew I didn't have the embryos."

"Do you and Petra already think of them as your children? Have you named them yet?"

"There's no arrangement to get you out of here, Achilles, because there's no place for you to go. The only people that still had any use for you are busy getting their b.u.t.ts kicked by a bunch of p.i.s.sed-off Muslims. You saw to it that you couldn't go anywhere in s.p.a.ce when you shot down that shuttle."

"In all fairness, Bean, you have to remember that n.o.body was supposed to know it was me who did it. But someone really should tell me-why wasn't Peter on that shuttle? I suppose somebody caught my informant." He looked back and forth from Peter to Bean, looking for an answer.

Bean did not confirm or deny. Peter, too, kept his silence. What if Achilles lived through this somehow? Why bring down Achilles's wrath on a man who already had enough trouble in his life?

"But if you caught my informant," said Achilles, "why in the world would Chamrajnagar-or Graff, if it was him-launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they'd risk a shuttle and its crew just to catch me? I find that quite flattering. Sort of like winning the n.o.bel Prize for scariest villain."

"I think," said Bean, "that you don't have the embryos at all. I think you dispersed them as soon as you got them. I think you already had them implanted in surrogates."

"Wrong," said Achilles. He reached inside his pants pocket and took out a small container Exactly like the ones in which the embryos had been frozen. "I brought one along, just to show you. Of course, he's probably thawed quite a bit. My body heat and all that. What do you think? Do we still have time to get this little sucker implanted in somebody? Petra's already pregnant. I hear, so you can't use her. I know! Peter's mother! She always likes to be so helpful, and she's used to giving birth to geniuses. Here, Peter, catch!"

He tossed the container toward Peter, but too hard, so it sailed over Peter's upstretched hands and hit the floor. It didn't break, but instead rolled and rolled.

"Aren't you going to get it?" Achilles asked Bean.

Bean shrugged. He walked over to where the container had come to rest. The liquid inside it sloshed. Fully thawed.

He stepped on it, broke it, ground it under his foot.

Achilles whistled. "Wow. You are some disciplinarian. Your kids can't get away with anything with you."

Bean walked toward Achilles.

"Now, Bean, I can see how you might be irritated at me, but I never claimed to be an athlete. When did I have a chance to play ball, will you tell me that? You grew up where I did. I can't help it that I don't know how to throw accurately."

He was still affecting his ironic tone of voice, but Bean could see that Achilles was afraid now. He had been expecting Bean to beg, or grieve-something that would keep him off balance and give control to Achilles. But Bean was seeing things through Achilles's eyes now, and he understood: You do whatever your enemy can't believe that you would even think of doing. You just do it.

Bean reached into the b.u.t.t holster that rode inside his pants, hanging from the waistband, and pulled out the flat .22-caliber pistol concealed there. He pointed it at Achilles's right eye, then the left.

Achilles took a couple of steps backward. "You can't kill me," he said. "You don't know where the embryos are.

"I know you don't have them," said Bean, "and that I'm not going to get them without letting you go. And I'm not letting you go. So I guess that means the embryos are forever lost to me. Why should you go on living?"

"Suri," said Achilles. "Are you asleep?"

Suriyawong pulled his long knife from its sheath.

"That's not what's needed here," said Achilles. "He has a gun."

"Hold still, Achilles," said Bean. "Take it like a man. Besides, if I miss, you might live through it and spend the rest of your days as a brain-damaged sh.e.l.l of a man. We want this to be nice and clean and final, don't we?"

Achilles pulled another vial out of his pockets. "This is the real thing, Bean." He reached out his hand, offering it. "You killed one, but there are still the other four."

Bean slapped it out of his hand. This one broke when it hit the floor.

"Those are your children you're killing!" cried Achilles.

"I know you," said Bean. "I know that you would never promise me something you could actually deliver."

"Suriyawong!" shouted Achilles. "Shoot him!"

"Sir," said Suriyawong.

It was the first sound he'd made since Bean came through the east gate.

Suriyawong knelt down, laid his knife on the smooth floor, and slid it toward Achilles until it rested at his feet.

"What's this supposed to be?" demanded Achilles.

"The loan of a knife," said Suriyawong.

"But he has a gun!" cried Achilles.

"I expect you to solve your own problems," said Suriyawong, "without getting any of my men killed."

"Shoot him!" cried Achilles. "I thought you were my friend."

"I told you from the start," said Suriyawong. "I serve the Hegemon." And with that, Suriyawong turned his back on Achilles.

So did all the other soldiers.

Now Bean understood why Suriyawong had worked so hard to earn Achilles's trust: so that at this moment of crisis, Suri was in a position to betray him.

Achilles laughed nervously. "Come on now, Bean. We've known each other a long time." He had backed up against a wall. He tried to lean against it. But his legs were a little wobbly and he started to slide down the wall. "I know you, Bean," he said. "You can't just kill a man in cold blood, no matter how much you hate him. It's not in you to do that."

"Yes it is," said Bean.

He aimed the pistol down at Achilles's right eye and pulled the trigger. The eye snapped shut from the wind of the bullet pa.s.sing between the eyelids and from the obliteration of the eye itself. His head rocked just a little from the force of the little bullet entering, but not leaving.

Then he slumped over and sprawled out on the floor. Dead.

It didn't bring back Poke, or Sister Carlotta, or any of the other people he had killed. It didn't change the nations of the world back to the way they were before Achilles started making them his building blocks, to break apart and put together however he wanted. It didn't end the wars Achilles had started. It didn't make Bean feel any better. There was no joy in vengeance, and precious little in justice, either.

But there was this: Achilles would never kill again.

That was all Bean could ask of a little .22.

CHAPTER TWENTY

HOME

From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Re: Come home He's dead.

I'm not.

He didn't have them.

We'll find them, one way or another, before I die.

Come home. There's n.o.body trying to kill you any more.Petra flew on a commercial jet, in a reserved seat, under her own name, using her own pa.s.sport.

Damascus was full of excitement, for it was now the capital of a Muslim world united for the first time in nearly two thousand years. Sunni and s.h.i.+nite leaders alike had been declaring for the Caliph. And Damascus was the center of it all.

But her excitement was of a different kind. It was partly the baby that was maturing inside her, and the changes already happening to her body. It was partly the relief at being free of the death sentence Achilles had pa.s.sed on her so long ago.

Mostly, though, it was that giddy sense of having been on the edge of losing everything, and winning after all. It swept over her as she was walking down the aisle of the plane, and her knees went rubbery under her and she almost fell.

The man behind her took her elbow and helped her regain her legs. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm just a little bit pregnant," she said.

"You must get over this business of falling down before the baby gets too big."

She laughed and thanked him, then put her own bag in the overhead-without needing help, thank you-and took her seat.

On the one hand, it was sad flying without her husband beside her.

On the other hand, it was wonderful to be flying home to him.He met her at the airport and gathered her into a huge hug. His arms were so long. Had they grown in the few days since he left her?

She refused to think about that.

"I hear you saved the world," she said to him when the embrace finally ended.

"Don't believe those rumors."

"My hero," she said.

"I'd rather be your lover," he whispered.

"My giant," she whispered back.

In answer, he embraced her again, and then leaned back, lifting her off her feet. She laughed as he whirled her around like a child. The way her father had done when she was little. The way he would never do with their children.

"Why are you crying?" he asked her "It's just tears in my eyes," she said. "It's not crying. You've seen crying, and this isn't it. These are happy-to-see-you tears."

"You're just happy to be in a place where trees grow without waiting around to be planted and irrigated."

They walked out of the airport a few minutes later and he was right, she was happy to be out of the desert. In the years they had lived in Ribeirao she had discovered an affinity for lush places. She needed the Earth to be alive around her, everything green, all that photosynthesis going on in public, without a speck of modesty. Things that ate sunlight and drank rain. "It's good to be home," she said.

"Now I'm home, too," said Bean.

"You were here already," she said. "But you weren't, till now."