Shadow Knight's Mate (43 page)

He had been on campus for a week setting up this moment. His escape would be easy too, but even if something went wrong, he was prepared to give up his life for this. The President was about to turn around his own isolationist policy, the policy the inner circle had pursued for years, secretly even from the rest of the Circle. The world was too difficult and unpredictable a place, and had become much too dangerous. Too many centers of power, too many fanatics. It would all blow up soon, that was inevitable. Better for America to be out of that scene completely, staying safe behind its own borders until time to pick up the pieces.

In another few seconds, with one shot, Don Trimble would accomplish that. The President who was about to change course yet again would be murdered at home. There could be no clearer signal that the world was unsafe. The vice president, who had been cultivated for years by inner circle people, would resume the isolationist policy his predecessor had announced. Especially after the lesson had been driven home yet again that foreign involvement was too dangerous.

The President was talking. Making a little self-deprecating joke, from his expression. Professor Trimble raised his rifle and sighted through the scope. It was strange to have just that tiny
circle of vantage point, jumping all over: the curtains, a Secret Service agent's chest, the First Lady's head, the President's arm, then his face. Trimble did not look the part, but for years he had been practicing for this moment. He was an excellent shot, as he had proven twice in the last few minutes.

There was a rumble beneath his feet. Trimble lowered the rifle. The metal catwalk on which he stood trembled. Trimble shot a sharp look down at the stage. He couldn't afford noise until he made the shot. A Secret Service agent was looking up this way, but obviously couldn't see anything in the dark catwalk area. But he spoke into his shirt cuff, asking a question or giving an order.

The professor started to raise the rifle again, when the source of the vibrations revealed itself. Beneath the catwalk, down on the curving metal floor itself, a panel lifted away. It was set aside quietly, then a human figure sat up. “Phew,” it said, sharply but quietly.

Professor Trimble stood immobilized. He could have killed the interloper immediately, but curiosity got the better of him. Maybe this was one of his own team, ready to help.

But no. The figure rolled completely out of its tiny hiding place, staying below the catwalk, then rolled over and looked up.

It was Jack Driscoll.

Jack moved slowly and stiffly. He had obviously been hidden in his tiny space for some time. Trimble didn't move. His breathing stopped.

Was Jack on his team after all? The inner circle were all so secretive, no one was sure who was in and who wasn't. Trimble had been certain in Salzburg that Jack was the enemy, but here he was again, and the pistol in his hand seemed to indicate an intention to carry out the same kind of plan as Trimble. Trimble waited.

Jack crept out to the edge of the space and looked over it, down toward the stage. But then he did nothing. He didn't take a sniper's position, he didn't ready the pistol. From his head movements, he didn't seem even to be concentrating on the president.

In a moment Trimble understood. Jack wasn't here to perform an assassination. He was here to prevent one.

But for once he was one step behind. Don Trimble smiled, lowered his rifle, and very deliberately cleared his throat.

It was a small sound, but it went through Jack like electricity. His head swivelled then stopped, as he saw for the first time the tall man looming over him. Jack was in an awkward position, looking back over his right shoulder, his right hand holding the gun. He couldn't move that arm any further back, he would have to roll onto his back to get a clear shot, and that would give Professor Trimble more than enough time to shoot him dead, since Trimble already had his high-powered rifle pointed at Jack's back. Somehow he looked as if he knew what he was doing with the gun, too.

“Professor.”

Trimble nodded, still smiling. “Jack.”

They both kept their voices down, but could hear each other clearly in the confined space. Jack said, “I didn't expect to see you here.”

“Yes. You never had any inkling I might be part of another design, did you?”

“Oh, I knew you were part of the group that had other plans. I just thought you'd be skilled enough to guide someone else into doing your dirty work.”

Trimble's smile disappeared. His eyes narrowed. “Bullshit. You didn't know anything.”

“You're right,” Jack said, indicating his own position. “I'm just a figment of your imagination.”

He was still stuck in an awkward position, looking over his shoulder. His left hand was out of sight beneath him.

“How long have you been here?” the professor said, curiosity overcoming him.

“Ten days. You wouldn't happen to have a can of Lysol spray on you, would you?”

“You've known about this conference for ten days?” That was two days longer than Trimble had known.

Jack nodded. “Barely in time to get here ahead of all the security and position myself, so I'd already be here before they
made their security sweeps. And how did you get in?”

Trimble moved his chin, and Jack glanced down toward the end of the catwalk, seeing the body of the Secret Service agent lying there. In that moment everything changed. Jack had been trying to figure out how to get the President, the professor, and himself all out of here alive, with the professor sedated for later questioning. But when he saw the agent, obviously dead, his plan changed. When he turned his head to look at his old professor again, his eyes were cold.

The eye of the rifle was on him. “I'm afraid I need to take you out first,” Don Trimble said, with both amusement and regret in his voice. “What, by the way, did you think you were going to do with that pistol, which I see has no silencer on it? If you somehow managed to shoot me with it, you'd bring so many Secret Service agents up here, you'd be dead in seconds. Were you going to sacrifice yourself nobly for the sake of the mission?”

Jack shook his head. He moved slowly, pulling his left hand out into view.

“Do you see what I have in my other hand? Not the gun, this hand. It's the light switch. See, I'm pushing it down now. If I let it go abruptly, such as if you shoot me, all the lights will come on up here. You'll be spotlighted, with a rifle in your hands. On the other hand, if I let it go very gently, nothing will happen. Your move.”

The professor, in spite of having cast himself as a quick-thinking assassin in control of all the elements, was not very quick on the uptake. He took his eyes off Jack and looked upward and around, suddenly noticing the strategically-placed spotlights. His eyes widened.

While he stood frozen, Jack released the switch. Abruptly. And fired his un-silenced pistol.

The sound of the shot, which went harmlessly into the curtains behind the president, was almost drowned out by all the answering shots. Perhaps 2.8 seconds. Certainly a response time well under five seconds. Those Secret Service agents were good.

One moment Professor Trimble was a tall, efficient-looking man holding a silenced rifle, in the glare of six spotlights. The next
he was an emptying bag of cooling meat.

Everything else in the building was chaotic movement. Jack moved as quickly as the agents, switching off the lights as he climbed to Trimble's level, reaching Trimble's body and shoving it gently to the edge of the catwalk. For a moment the body turned and Trimble seemed to be looking at him in surprise. Then the body went over the edge.

Jack heard screams, knew people had spotted the falling body, and hoped it didn't land on anyone. Agents would be rushing toward it. Some would be on their way up here, too, but not as quickly now that they knew the danger was over. Jack dropped his pistol. That gun had a history, and now it would be Don Trimble's history as well. It would tie him to a well-known extremist group, leading to speculation that terrorists had wanted to keep America isolated. Jack trusted this would steel the President's, and the country's, determination to rejoin the world.

He ran the opposite way down the catwalk, opened another door in the wall, revealing a metal ladder. Jack jumped onto it, closed the door behind him, and slid down the ladder, barely touching the rungs. He landed with a thump on the ground floor, behind a door hidden by a heavy curtain. The architect of this building had been inspired by the magicians who were so popular in the early 1900s when this auditorium went up. Jack had read the architectural plans, probably the first person to do so in over a hundred years. It served him well now.

He stepped out from behind the curtain and was immediately engulfed in a throng of students, some rushing to get out of the building, some to get closer to the stage, some just trying to hold their ground and watch the drama. It took twenty minutes, but the security people got them moving out of the building. Jack blended right in. He had one of those faces. No one would remember him.

But Jack would remember. Being herded toward the exit along with all the other civilians, he took a moment to look back, staring toward the spot where his victim lay. Jack hadn't fired a shot at anyone, but he had quite deliberately committed murder. History would exonerate him, except that history wouldn't remember at all.

But Jack knew his role. He had done what had to be done, without hesitation and now without remorse. When he had been the only person in a position to act, and only one action would serve, he had done it.

He
was the twentieth fanatic. Not the person who had launched the terror attack, but the kind who could. The ruthless kind.

Until today he hadn't known that about himself.

Two Days Later

It took Jack two days to reach headquarters, because he took a very circuitous route, a couple of hops by plane, mostly by cars. It took him that long to get over the idea that he was the most wanted man on earth. He managed to follow the evolving story of the attempted assassination, and never heard anyone suggest, even through back channels, that there had been a second assassin. Still, the Secret Service might be the least of his worries.

One worry was that during the two days he was on the run he couldn't reach anyone. Not anyone on the inside. At headquarters he only got the ominous message, “The number you are trying to reach is not in service.” That was all right, they might have turned off the phones, changed numbers, even closed down the operation for the time being. But he couldn't reach any of them on their own lines, either. Not the Chair, Alicia Mortenson, Janice Gentry, his old friend Ronald.

He did manage to raise Rachel, who was back in Israel. She filled him in rapidly on events in Salzburg, assuming he already knew them. “Didn't Arden—?”

“I haven't talked to her since you and she—”

“I assumed she came to find you.” Rachel sounded puzzled. Jack knew that she was playing back in her mind her last conversation with Arden, in precise detail. Not just the words and facial expressions, but the tells and tics as well. “She said she had to leave. Even left her mother after just being reunited with her. Where did she go, Jack?”

Not to him. Maybe back to headquarters. Maybe to find her grandmother. Maybe that had been a lost cause.

Rachel said, “I'll—”

“No! You stay away, Rache. You and Stevie may be the last of us. You have to—”

“Stevie and I have to regenerate the Circle? Not through reproduction, I hope.”

Jack laughed. Good old Rachel. They finished each other's sentences, even in their heads, and she was the only person on earth who could reliably make him laugh, even now.

Jack began to have long thoughts as he drove down the empty western highway. Obviously Rachel was having them too. As her voice began to fade on his cell phone she said, “I feel that an age is ending. This is what—the fourth age?”

“But there will be a fifth.”

“Yes, and you know what, Jack? There will be two people just like you and me in it.”

“I plan to be there myself.”

“I knew—”

“I know—”

“—you were going to say that,” the finished together. They laughed, on different continents, as he lost her signal completely.

Then Jack drove alone. He felt like the last survivor of a worldwide catastrophe, though in fact life was returning to normal all over the world. America was dominant again, and safe, at least for today. The Circle had succeeded.

So maybe everyone had just adopted the safety plan. Don't answer your phone. Separate. Disappear into your normal life, or a new one you already had in storage.

Two more hours of driving left him feeling very alone. Headquarters came into view, or at least it should have. The headquarters “building” looked like a desert mesa from the outside. Parking was underground, and in fact the road died away five miles from the entrance. The last slow driving was over scrub land, dry cracked earth that would reveal no tracks. Jack sensed no activity. His cell phone remained dead, even though the Circle had had its own disguised tower out here.

And he should have seen the mesa by now, but he didn't. Was he so addled he'd gotten lost? It would be easy to do out here in the western vastness. But no, he recognized a tree, and an unusually-shaped boulder. He was almost at the front door.

Jack's car drifted to a stop and he got out. “No,” he whispered.

Ahead of him was a canyon. A huge hole in the ground. A new one. Right where the mesa had stood.

Jack ran. The wind whipped at him, nothing to block it for hundreds of miles. It could have lifted him off his feet and flown him away. At the edge of the canyon he fell to his knees and skidded to a stop.

The edges of the hole were ragged and black. Nature hadn't scoured this. Jack peered over the edge in the dying light. Roots had been blasted apart. The sides of the hole were black and flat, almost glassy. This was what was left after a huge explosion. Earth had caved in at the bottom, but Jack could see evidences of human life. Electronic parts, burned papers, pieces of furniture. A woman's shoe.