Read The Devil's Footprint Online
Authors: Victor O'Reilly
The Devil's Footprint (42 page)
"When I said your picture was up on her shit list, I was not using a
figure of speech, Kathleen.
Your actual
photograph is up there for all the Yaibo trainees to target on and slobber
over.
In fact, that is where I first saw
you.
You were up there — a target.
"The next thing is that Oshima fucks the brains out of a new Yaibo
recruit called Jin Endo, and he goes up to Washington on a scouting assignment,
motivated to do anything to please his scar-faced lover.
Oshima's ten most wanted are imprinted on his
mind.
And lo and behold, you are in
I guess it was just fate or you were plain
unlucky.
But from the time he caught
sight of you, young Jin Endo was determined to get you.
He wanted to prove himself.
No one down here thought he would do so well,
but to everyone's surprise, he did
good
.
Real good.
That, it turns out, is one
very dangerous young man.
He
racked up quite a score when he was up north."
Oshima was very pleased and is nursing him back to health in the only way
she knows how.
That means General Luis
Barragan is not getting as much as he wants, so he comes and gets drunk with
me.
That's the trouble with this fucking
place.
There is nothing to do except
work.
Barragan's troops have TV and
radio, but Oshima's people are not allowed to watch or listen.
Apparently, they might get contaminated by
capitalist filth.
So they have to make
do with propaganda sessions and a few whores.
Once in, the whores are not allowed out.
They don't last too long.
There
are some very warped people up here.
A
ritual execution is their substitute for the Movie of the Week."
Kathleen collected her thoughts.
Fitzduane had called the world of terrorism and counterterrorism the
only unending war.
It only ended when
all your enemies were dead.
There could
be lulls and truces and peace talks, but there was always some element that
refused to forget and might strike back for some real or imagined
causes
years later.
It
was frightening.
"How did
you
end up here,
Edgar?" she said.
"This is not
your world.
This is no place for
you."
"It is now," said Rheiman grimly.
"I did something from which there was no
turning back, and from that one act followed everything.
I had to survive, so I did what was necessary
and traded what I was good at."
"But you're a kind, gentle man," said Kathleen with as much
conviction as she could muster.
"How could you contemplate working with these animals?"
"I'm not so gentle," said Rheiman flatly.
Kathleen suddenly felt his hands tight around her neck.
He was squeezing.
"Put your hands on mine," he said.
"E-Edgar!" she gasped, terrified.
"Do it!" he shouted.
"DO IT!"
She put her hands on his.
Rheiman's hands were large and strong, and she could feel scar tissue on
the backs, as if they had been cut doing something physical.
This was a man who worked with his brain but
with his hands too.
In
a workshop or a laboratory?
Somewhere like that.
Her neck was held tightly, but he was not increasing the pressure.
She could hear him breathing rapidly, as if under great strain.
But nothing happened.
This was not an attack on her.
This was some memory being relived.
Her fear diminished.
He took his hands away.
He was
very close to her, his face just above her.
She felt drops on her face, a warm wet liquid like blood.
He was sweating!
"That is how it started," he said unsteadily, "one simple
killing with these very hands.
A crime
of passion, they would call it in
jail sentence."
"Where I lived in the States, I faced execution.
I ran.
But it meant I could never go back.
I had to find some place where there was no extradition and they could
use my services.
"I drifted and ended up in
And that is where I met up with Oshima.
We were both on the run, so we got on well
enough at first.
She was interested in
what I could do and brokered the deal with Luis Barragan.
I would get to do what George Bull would not
let me do — build a hydrogen-powered supergun.
Quintana and Barragan would get a deterrent weapon which would allow
them to break away from
parade.
"Now, I think there is more to it.
The way things are going, I don't think this is being planned as a
deterrent at all.
I don't know about
Barragan, but I think Oshima is going to use it and I think Quintana is
involved."
"So stop the work, Edgar," said Kathleen.
"Or delay it in some other way they
won't understand."
Rheiman stood up and paced the cell without speaking.
He was clearly upset.
Kathleen thought of saying something, but it
seemed better to let whatever it was burn itself out.
She had no sense that he was annoyed with
her.
This was some inner turmoil that
only he could deal with.
"God, between Reiko Oshima and Edgar Rheiman she was certainly
keeping interesting company.
And the
smaller fry like Jin Endo sounded like no day at the beach either.
Curiously, she was not afraid as she
contemplated the situation.
She should
be in despair, but somehow she was not.
A rural Irish upbringing must be a more solid foundation than she had
thought.
Rheiman sat down again and leaned toward her.
"Kathleen, in the past — when I worked
for Bull and on other occasions — I argued and I argued and I argued for my
ideas and no one would listen.
Here,
they are doing more than listening.
They
are putting up the funds and other resources to make my life's work
possible.
Every scientist of serious
caliber has a dream they want fulfilled, and it rarely happens.
Other people don't have the vision.
Here, in this godforsaken spot and for the
worst of motives, my vision is going to happen.
I'm so close I can touch it.
I can't stop it now!
"
"And when it's done?" said Kathleen/
"Nothing will matter very much," said Rheiman calmly.
*
*
*
*
*
Dr. John Jaeger was in the operations room at Lamar's when Fitzduane
arrived.
"Dr. Death," said Fitzduane, agreeably, to the
He regretted the words as soon as they passed
his lips.
"I'm sorry, John," he said, "I'm getting a little
frayed.
That was a cheap shot."
Jaeger had been examining the STR shield.
He turned as Fitzduane spoke, and smiled.
"Forget it," he said.
"I've been called much worse.
The Lawrence Livermore Lab tends to provoke
strong reactions."
"I know practically nothing about the place," confessed
Fitzduane.
"Edward Teller, one of the pioneers of the nuclear program, was
behind it," said Jaeger.
"He
reckoned that
results fast enough and that a little competition would be healthy, competition
being the American way and all.
It was
the early fifties and the Soviet threat was very real, so after some hard
bureaucratic infighting, he had his way.
The old Livermore Naval Air Station near
was where it all started."
"What do you do these days?" said Fitzduane.
"We're a scientific think tank," said Jaeger, "about eight
thousand people strong.
Roughly a third work on thermonuclear and other weapons research.
The rest of us do all kinds of good
stuff."
"Such as?" said Fitzduane.
Jaeger shrugged.
"It's a long
list," he said.
"One example
is a ‘radar
on a chip’ — a miniature radar which can be used
for all kinds of civilian applications from wall-stud finders to sudden infant
death syndrome monitors.
Another project
is a ‘biofilter.’
It uses living
microorganisms to clean up polluted groundwater.
And so it goes.
You must come and see us."
"And your project?" said Fitzduane.
"You'll be hearing more about that when the others come in,"
said Jaeger.
"It's all of a piece
with what is going on in Tecuno, but our motives and objectives are
different.
But the science is similar.
Science has no loyalties."
"We have it and they have it," said Fitzduane, "and the
human factor makes the difference?"
"We have it and we try and make sure they never get it," said
Jaeger.
"But if they do — we take it away," said Fitzduane.
"All men — countries — are equal, but
some are more equal than others."
"Some we trust and some we don't — for very good reasons," said
Jaeger.
"There is idealism and
there is personal survival.
I think you
know that, Hugo."
Fitzduane nodded.
"Would it
were otherwise," he said quietly.
*
*
*
*
*
Dan Warner, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Congress of the
Task Force on Terrorism, raised his right hand and made a gesture to the
bartender.
Soon afterward another beer appeared on the table.
That made four.
Up north, he would have felt the
effects.
Down here, in
the feeling he was sweating it out faster than he could drink it in.
It was HOT!
There was no
air-conditioning.
It was not that the
machine was broken.
It did not exist.
Nothing seemed to have changed in the last century, if you ignored the
large color TV over one end of the bar and the jukebox.
The jukebox, a collector's item beneath the
dust, was playing ‘
which had to be half a century old.
"South of the border," Warner hummed, "down
He dedummed the rest of the
jukebox and punched in the song as a temporary distraction from the endless
speeches of Valiente Zarra.
The
candidate was an inspired speaker, but Warner was suffering from a serious case
of overexposure.
There were 756,000 square miles of
guidebook, and Zarra seemed intent on covering every one.
Except Tecuno, of course, where the borders
had been quietly sealed, and a few other areas where even Zarra realized he was
not welcome.
Like
terrorists had agreed to let him in, but the local landowners had not.
But that still left an awful lot of real
estate.
This was one big country.
Lee Cochrane could be arrogant and was certainly stubborn, but he was
also a patriot and a leader with a vision that was not subordinated to the
short-termism that tended to pervade politics.
Assigning Warner to Zarra for the duration of the campaign was a typical
outcome of that vision.
Like it or not,
couple thousand miles of border with Uncle Sam and it was not going to go
away.
The two countries had to get
closer.
There was no other practical
alternative.
proximity also made it a prime haven for terrorists, drug runners, and other
groups who did not harbor kindly thoughts toward the U.S. of A. and had not yet
been awarded either their green cards or citizenship.
The only way —short of direct action — to
keep them in line was to have close relations with the movers and shakers in
the Mexican government.