Shadow Knight's Mate (37 page)

“Your precious Circle was a failure anyway, even without my speeding up the process. Look at the world you were protecting and tell me they were fulfilling their mission.”

Jack thought he sounded like a lapsed Christian, a man losing his religion and angry about it; angry at God for not existing.

“I created David Wilkerson, you know. The National Security Advisor? I guided him to power right under your noses, right past all of you. I even wrote his silly paper years ago, the one that brought him to the President's attention. I'm sure he doesn't remember it, but I did.”

Jack realized that he was very unlikely to leave this room alive, but on the off chance he did he needed to gather as much information as possible.
Lie to me,
he thought at Bruno.
Show me what a lie looks like.

“Arden brought me here,” Jack said slowly. “How long have you been cultivating her?”

Bruno smiled again. “Longer than you can imagine, old pal. Where is she, by the way? I thought she'd be following you. Well, no matter.” That accounted for his looks past Jack and around the room. For the first time since he'd fallen out of the ceiling, Jack had an inkling of hope. But then Bruno resumed his story. “First I was her stern but kind-hearted math teacher at finishing school. Since then I've been feeding her information little bits at a time. She is completely mine.”

“It's too bad you can't trust her completely. She could have been even more of a help to you.”

“I do trust her completely,” Bruno said. His face was absolutely still as he said it. Nothing flickered. Then he gave the tiniest of smirks. “Anyway, it doesn't matter whether I trust her. How did you know, by the way?”

That was good,
Jack thought.
First a lie, then the truth.
Bruno would never trust any human being completely.

“She was too good,” Jack answered. “Always there when I needed her, always rescuing me when things seemed hopeless. Of course, I didn't trust her from the beginning, because she'd been assigned to me. Then tonight she told me I couldn't get in touch with Rachel and that she'd rely on Don Trimble. I'd already suspected him, partly because he's the treasurer. And he told me he hadn't talked to Arden. She said they have. They needed to coordinate their story. Trimble hasn't bothered to get in touch with Rachel, either, even though he's been here for days. He's obviously working for a different team.” He studied Bruno's face. “So is Arden. So she's been yours all along? Ever since she was in school in Switzerland?”

Bruno's smile was so self-satisfied it could almost live on its own, lift off his face and hover in the air, a UFO of smugness.

So Arden had been bombarded from all sides, for years, to believe that Jack is the villain. “She was even told you couldn't be trusted by her beloved grandmother. Who, you may have noticed, has been MIA for a while.”

Jack stared. He was beginning to lose himself. This had been an intellectual exercise until now, a game, even with the world at stake. Because the world didn't matter, only the people you cared about. And Gladys Leaphorn was like an immortal, a repository of so much history and wisdom she was irreplaceable.. Murdering her would be like going into an art museum swinging a flame thrower. He didn't believe even Bruno capable of that. “You didn't—” he sputtered, but broke off at the transformation of Bruno's face.

Bruno's voice remained smug but very hard. He stared at Jack, waiting for him to attempt something. All boyishness had left his expression. “Not until I no longer needed her,” he said grimly. “I know, you think I couldn't do it. I think I could. After all she wasn't my beloved headmistress, not in the way she was yours. Anyway, I found people who could do it.” Offhandedly he added, “Arden thinks you're responsible for her demise, by the way.”

Jack wanted to leap at him and get his hands around his throat. In fact he felt sure Bruno was waiting for that. He wanted to goad Jack out of intellectual response. Instead Jack did something off-kilter. He closed his eyes for a moment, putting Bruno's existence and everything he'd said out of his mind for a moment, then took his modified PSII off his belt. Jack's fingers scampered over the keys. Yes, he had a connection.

Bruno went back to smiling. “Yes, I have wireless here. Go ahead, check your sources, Jack. Find out how thoroughly everyone mistrusts you. I don't think you'll even get a response from Rocky Mountain headquarters.”

Jack allowed his shoulders to jerk a little as Bruno revealed even more of what he knew. He had obviously devoted his life to a study of the Circle. What a waste.

Jack found his screen filled with angry invective. The National Security Advisor felt he'd been cheated. At an earlier time in his life, like ten minutes ago, Jack would have grinned at the mental havoc he'd caused. Now he just replied with a short message:
you've been playing the game, imperialist. I've been playing you.

And he signed off for good. “Nothing,” he said aloud, just to give Bruno another grin.

“So now what?” he asked, dropping the game so that his hands dangled loose at his sides.

“I thought I'd just let you go,” Bruno said. “Let you go try to stop me. Like one of your games. See how ineffectual you are.”

“I've already stopped you. You just don't know it yet.”

Bruno blinked, staring at Jack's calm face. “You mean your little riots that are about to break out? Crowds chanting for America to re-engage with the world? Are your friends busy writing the signs now? It won't matter, Jack. That will just be the punctuation on your failure.”

That shot hurt. Jack didn't disguise the fact. His shoulders slumped a little more, and his eyes began moving around the room more frantically, looking for some way out or a way to sabotage this madman's plans, even while continuing to talk to him.

Jack's voice turned gentle, almost pleading. “It doesn't matter, Bruno, what you do to me. There are still so many of us, some much smarter—”

“Such as, say, Craig Mortenson?” Bruno purred. He sat down again, the better to enjoy his old acquaintance's reaction.

Jack stopped moving, stopped breathing, almost stopped living. He absolutely believed what Bruno was implying. The smirk confirmed it. He had murdered Craig Mortenson. Jack could see the scene played out in his mind. Not the scene that had actually happened, but something similar.

The thing was, each of the Circle members was so vulnerable, individually. They had the world's best network ever. But they had no armies, no Secret Service, no individual bodyguards. It would be so easy, really, to take any of them out. If anyone knew who they were. If anyone even knew to look. Bruno had exploited that weakness.

Jack's eyes were wet. His head hung down. But he continued to study Bruno from under his brows. “So then Alicia too?”

“Yes,” Bruno said. “Also dead, a little later in another place.”

But Jack had seen, not a flicker in his eyes, but the absence of a flicker. Bruno holding his face immobile. So it was a lie. At least in Bruno's mind, Alicia Mortenson still lived. Jack didn't
understand how that was possible. If Alicia had been there she would have tried to prevent the murder, at the cost of her own life if necessary. If she hadn't been there, she would have hunted down everyone responsible by now.

“So forget about your back-up,” Bruno said almost sympathetically. “It's just you, Jack, and you're completely stymied. I could release you from here right now and you couldn't stop me. You could run screaming into that compound that there's a conspiracy to kill the leaders and they'd shoot you down like a rabid dog before you got three words out. Every security force there has your picture. Your doubles have been doing some nasty things around Europe. Law enforcement officials of a dozen countries know your face and your name.”

Bruno shifted in his chair, making himself more comfortable. “I know what you're thinking now. You could slip in, infiltrate. Mess with some minds. Tell them you have secret information. They'll ask what's your source. I've primed everyone, man. Your doubles have done enough to make everyone mistrust you. To counteract that mistrust, you would have to reveal every secret you have. Either you reveal the entire history of your secret information, or you're a raving lunatic. These are your choices, Jack. You save your group or you save the world. You can't have it both ways. Either way, I win.”

Jack's fingers twitched. Bruno saw him considering options. He actually laughed out loud.

“You won't let me go,” Jack said. “You're not that confident.”

Bruno considered, then shook his head. “No, you're probably right about that. Let's just sit here, enjoy a pleasant evening, watch the show, then when you know how badly you've failed—well, I wouldn't want you to have to live with that pain.”

Bruno saw panic growing on Jack's face, in his posture. Saw him consider running, saw him realize there was no way out. He dug the knife a little deeper.

“After you're gone, I may even bring Rachel into the operation. She can help me run the world. In a subordinate capacity, of course. Just wanted you to know that.”

Jack's breathing was tight, so his voice came thinly. His face was turning red. “Once you kill me, the only sign you'll ever have of Rachel Greene, maybe, is the sound of her breath behind your back just before you lose consciousness. If you hear anything.”

Bruno laughed with utter confidence. “No one will ever know I did you, Jack. I'll be the person most ardently out to avenge you. Rachel and I will join forces. I imagine they'll even bring me in to the group once their forces are so diminished. What do you think, can I make it as a Substitute Legionnaire?”

“I don't think you can make it as a human being.”

Bruno's rage suddenly boiled over. He stood up, dropping the pleasant tone. “I could have been anything! I was the best of the lot at school, you know that. I would have been a legend.
The
legend of the Circle: Bruno of Bruton Hall. I would have been the culmination. I was bred for it. Did you know that?”

“No. And I really don't have time—”

“Now it's Bruton Hall Twenty Years After.”

“Not quite.”

“No, it didn't take me that long. Have a seat, Jack. You've got the best view there is for the end of the world.”

The engines of Air Force One shifted as the plane lost altitude slightly, preparing for the long, slow descent to Munich. The changed rumble woke those few people on board who had been dozing. In the conference room, President Witt was huddled with his Secretary of State and a few others, preparing for the summit. There was a subtle sense of relief in the room, career diplomats ready for a big assignment, a chance they'd thought they had already lost. Even the president was throwing himself into the discussion with some enthusiasm. Ever since announcing his new policy of American isolationism, he had missed something, as if some favorite person were gone from his life, or a treasured heirloom. Jefferson Witt was not an introspective man, so he hadn't explored this feeling, but what he had missed was a sense of being the most powerful person in the world. Now he was going to reassert himself.

“We can concede nothing on Jerusalem,” said Sylvia Rescone, who as ambassador to Italy should have no official position on that subject. But everyone knew that Sylvia had friends and sources all over her half of the world—and opinions on everything.

“Not my job,” the President said confidently. That was going to be his refrain at this conference. America would no longer be the world's referee. “We're not going there to talk specifics.”

“Well,” Secretary of State Lawrence Jackson demurred quietly. “Maybe a few specifics, behind the scenes. These people are calling on us, Mr. President. Not just these summit leaders, but the world. As I predicted, demonstrations are erupting all over Europe, re-American demonstrations, the first anyone has seen since World War II. We have to assure the world—”

“I'd call them riots,” said the Commander of NATO. The military shouldn't have had a place at this table, but the NATO commander was unofficial chief of presidential security on this
trip. “And I don't trust them. Anyone can stage a riot. That doesn't tell you what's behind them. They may just be luring us in.”

Except for Secretary of State Larry Jackson, everyone in the room grinned furtively. The President of the United States had the best security in the world, it hadn't been breached in a long time, and procedures were more thorough now. The summit site was being scoured by security specialists from a dozen countries. The President felt secure on that score.

In a lounge not far away, Dennis Wilkerson stared down at the shattered pieces of his PlayStation2. “Cheater,” he kept muttering.
Changing the damned rules in the middle of the game. European edition, what bullshit.
Wilkerson had enjoyed playing this opponent more than anything else in his life. Wilkerson could win if he really worked at it, even though his opponent was a very skilled player.

So he'd changed the rules to win.
Wilkerson called that cheating.

The cracked little machine still retained some power. Wilkerson could still read the mocking last message.
you were playing the game, imperialist. i was playing you
What the hell did that mean? You're always playing against the other player, it wasn't an automatic game of playing against the machine. Of course the two players had been playing each other.

The shift in air speed and direction of the plane shifted Wilkerson's thoughts as well. Now that his game was smashed, with its connection to his only companion, he felt more of an outcast than ever on this plane. No one listened to him. The Secretary of State had beaten him in influence with the president once these pro-American riots had started. They were meaningless, Wilkerson knew, possibly contrived by allies of Larry Jackson himself. But they had worked to push Wilkerson aside. The president kept assuring him that he was not abandoning the policy—Dennis Wilkerson's policy, the Wilkerson Doctrine—of American isolationism. He was just moderating it, taking it in stages.