The 4 Phase Man Part 11

Then he was gone, leaving a chilling presence, like bad aftershave, in the air behind him.

"Where's Smith?" he asked after the door had been locked behind them.

"Lying down," one of his escorts reported flatly. "One of the meds sewed up his face, shot him with some painkiller and s.h.i.+t. But I figured you'd want to talk to him before we sent him to a hospital."

"Yeah."

A minute later they were in the improvised infirmary where Smith-half his face concealed by a b.l.o.o.d.y bandage-was drinking Dewar's from the bottle.

"I've got to go to the f.u.c.king hospital," he said in a pained mumble when he saw Canvas.

"Well," Canvas said easily, "that's not really necessary. Is it, love?" He casually took a gun from the waistband of the man next to him and fired three times into Smith's forehead.

He handed the gun back and started out. "Where you been getting these guys?"

His a.s.sistant merely looked away.

Canvas sighed as they left the room. "All right. He wiped his eyes as if he was exhausted and faced with one final odious job before he could rest."

"Let's go pay our respects."

Xenos had drifted in and out of consciousness for hours. Pain racked his body, nausea roiled in his stomach, and he'd lost all sense of time. He couldn't move, whether because of the ropes that held him to a ceiling beam or not he didn't know.

He hoped it was the ropes.

So he hung there-five inches off the floor-and waited. The next move belonged to the other guys.

The door opened, and a guard ordered the two interior gunmen out. After casting a nervous look up at the seriously wounded man, the final guard left. A moment later Canvas came in.

"Morning," Jerry.

"Who's that? The brighter light from the hallway obscured his view."

"Has it been that long? Canvas closed the door behind him."

Xenos concentrated on the man who came a step closer. "Oh," was all he finally said.

The two men-English and American-sat quietly as their Russian defector instructor finished his lesson.

"Remember, never believe yourself to be smarter, more able or better trained than your subject. It is leverage, not experience or talent, that moves mountains."

The man bowed at the head, then left the small cla.s.sroom.

"Waste of time," Colin Meadows said as he closed his notebook.

Jerry shrugged. "He made some points."

"Granted. But all common sense, really."

The two young men got up, left the building, and began walking through the landscaped grounds of Schweinfurt Intelligence Annex Beta, only one kilometer from the Wall.

"I think most of this stuff is common sense, Colin," the American thought aloud. "I mean, think about it. You need something from somebody, they don't want to give it to you..."

"And physicalizing could just radicalize them. Yeah," the Englishman said simply. "Like I said, waste of time."

They sat down on a bench watching a volleyball game between two teams of French and American service-women.

"You really believe in all this Four Phase stuff?"

Jerry yawned. "They believe it, or they wouldn't have spent the last year and a half training me, I guess."

"Two years for me." Colin slicked back his hair. "An' all they done is convince me of what I knew already."

"Which was?"

The stocky twenty-four-year-old Brit smiled. "That I am different from everybody else." A spasmodic smile flew across his face. "'Cept maybe you, Jer. And if they want to make me more different, and I can make a living off it, why not?'"

The lean twenty-two-year-old American nodded sadly. "I always felt it too. But I'm not in it for the money."

"Why, then?"

Jerry was quiet for a long time. "I want to make things, I don't know, better maybe."

Colin looked disinterested. "Whatever, mate." He concentrated on two of the women standing by the side of the game, toweling their firm bodies. "But I say we put some of their b.l.o.o.d.y awful lessons into practice."

"What do you have in mind?" Jerry asked as he followed the man's gaze.

"That we practice a little leverage to see if we can't get those birds' legs in the air."

Jerry nodded enthusiastically as the fledgling Four Phase Men moved toward their first real... targets.

"Game on."

"Is it morning?"

Canvas smiled warmly. "Always is somewhere," right?

"I suppose. Xenos studied the man below him. He was unarmed, casual, relaxed, and completely in control." A bad sign. "How you been, Colin?"

"Fair. And yourself?" How you been?

"You tell me."

Canvas ignored him, instead pulling up a chair, sitting down, and lighting a cigar. "When my man got taken out so easy," that should have told me. He laughed. "And I got audiologist bills from what one of your toys did to my listener." He shook his head. "That's a new one on me." He shook his head. "You know, between you and the b.i.t.c.h, the insurance copayments on this thing are going to break me."

"Pity."

Canvas looked up sharply. "Not from you, old son. Never from you."

Xenos wet his lips. Canvas noticed, then gave him a drink of cold water from a pitcher nearby.

"Still chasing rainbows?"

Xenos exhaled deeply. "Ain't no rainbows anymore, he whispered."

The sitting man seemed shocked to the core. A wounded look that seemed to say that the blue sky had just been discovered as truly plaid.

"I don't believe it," he said quietly. "Not you. Not ever." Canvas stood and began pacing. "You're a constant of the universe, Jerry. Like the moon's...o...b..t or flowers in spring." He chuckled. "You and me, old son. Sides of a coin."

He came so close that he brushed Xenos's chest-almost intimately-as he looked up into the burned-out eyes. "The White Knight on the side of the demons. The Black Knight on the side of the angels." He reached up, tenderly wiping sweat out of the hanging man's eyes. "We defined each other. We were each other."

"Ancient history."

Canvas gave him another drink. "Not history. We're the last two, you know. For at least our generation." Canvas's voice became veiled and choked with emotion. "Not history. Legend."

Somehow, Xenos managed a weak laugh. "I retired from the legend business."

The standing man regarded the hanging man closely for some minutes, then turned away-physically and emotionally. "I honestly thought you'd retired, Jerry. I'd heard you'd told them all to shove it where the sun don't s.h.i.+ne and disappeared. Somewhere in the Med, I'd heard."

"I did."

Canvas shook his head as he turned back to face him. All emotion banished from his face. "You don't look retired to me." He moved to more closely examine the wounds to Xenos's exposed back and chest. "Looks like a through and through shoulder and a nick on the old collarbone. Must hurt like a nasty b.u.g.g.e.r." He shook his head as he studied the blackening wounds. "My people treating you all right?"

Xenos nodded. "More or less."

"More," I should think. "He looked into the hanging man's" eyes. "The less comes later."

"Pleasantries over, Colin?" Xenos asked in a conversational tone.

"Afraid so, Jerry. Afraid so. You're about to become an object lesson for the Honorable Ms. Alvarez." He hesitated. "Unless you want to tell me what she told you. What you know and who you're working for."

Xenos grimaced in expression and pain. "I don't think so."

Canvas took a deep, somehow sad breath. "No," he said softly. "I don't suppose you would." He started out of the room.

"Colin?"

"Yeah?"

"My father..."

"He's fine. We all know about you and him."

Xenos seemed to relax. "Thanks, man."

"Don't mention it."

Five minutes later Canvas returned with two brutes and Valerie. Then the beatings began.

The knock on the door almost catapulted Avidol off the couch. But he hesitated, waiting to be sure Sarah and Bradley were in the other room by the fire escape, before opening it. A short old man chewing an unlit cigar stood outside, an insincere smile on his face.

"Reb Goldman?"

"Yes?"

The man held out his hand. "Herb Stone. I'm a friend of your son."

"I don't know you, the old scholar said carefully."

"No? I'm not surprised, really. You haven't exactly spoken to Jerry a lot lately, have you?"

Avidol continued to ignore the outstretched hand and the undangerous face beyond it. "Where is my son?"

"Yes, well ... that's what I'd like to talk about." He pushed past the barely resisting man. "Lovely apartment, he murmured perfunctorily as he sat down on the couch."

Avidol sat across from him. "What have you done to my boy?"

Herb looked genuinely shocked. "Me? I a.s.sure you I've done nothing to him at all. At least not lately," he said more to himself. "In fact," he continued in a stronger voice, "I'm worried about him myself."

Suddenly memory attached itself to the wrinkled face and the aged voice. "We've met before," Mr. Stone. Yes? Many years ago, when you came to steal my son. Anger dripped from the old man's voice. "Deny it!"

"You have a marvelous memory," Reb Goldman. I'd forgotten that myself, he obviously lied. "But better we discuss the present than the past."

"The two are joined," Avidol insisted. "If you had not corrupted my jewel then, you would not be here now."

"Interesting point, but-"

"Say what you have come to say, then leave. You and your kind are not welcome here."

Herb leaned back, relaxed. "Now I am intrigued. What kind am I?"

"Where is my son?"

"Answer for answer, Reb Goldman. Isn't that what the Talmud says?"

Avidol jumped up, would've struck the man if not for a life's dedication and discipline. "Do not," he warned in a cold voice, "ever quote from the holy books again." He recovered and slowly sat down. "Every word you speak is a blasphemy."

"And why is that?"

Realizing that there would be no straight answers or direct statement from the man in front of him until he was ready, Avidol resolved to wait him out. For seventy-one years he had studied law, philosophy, theology, morality, and ethics. He was prepared to play the man's word games back at him if that would get him closer to the answers he now desperately needed.

"You have no soul, Mr. Stone. It withered and died many years ago."

Herb played with his cigar. "But it was a grand funeral, I a.s.sure you. Please, do continue."

"You equate the ability to inflict pain with strength. You believe that a lie told with n.o.ble intent is the truth. You think that lives are yours for the taking, if you are strong enough, smart enough, to get away with it."

"Everyone has to have a talent." The ancient spymaster began gesturing with his cigar. "Yours was hypocrisy, as I recall. Jerry's was playing the piano, feral violence, and exquisite mendacity." He seemed to relish the memory, then caught himself. "But isn't that why you disowned him?" Herb asked as he lit his cigar.