little African crucifix standing in front of her on the coffee table. He cleared his throat. She let out a little cry and sprang to her feet, her face flushing.
“Oh,” she said, “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“You looked like you wouldn’t have heard a bomb.” He instantly regretted that figure of speech.
“No, I would have heard a bomb.” With that unearthly smile. “Lorna isn’t here. She went to the doctor.”
“Yeah, she called. So, how’s things with God?”
“Fine, as always. Is Lorna…okay?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t cancer. She has some rare disease, which they can apparently fix with antibiotics. She’s also pregnant. How about that?”
“Yes,” said the woman, as if confirming something she already knew. “God be thanked. What will you do?”
“Oh, the usual. Marriage, house in the ‘burbs, driving to soccer games.”
“Not that usual anymore. Well, congratulations and God bless you.”
“You should stick around for the wedding. My mom will be in her glory?every witch doctor in Miami will be there. You could be a bridesmaid. I bet you’d fit right in.”
“Thank you, but I think my ride will be here soon. I have to get ready. Do you know if Lorna has an iron and board?”
Paz directed her to the laundry alcove on one side of the Florida room and then walked through the glass doors to the back patio. He lay down in a padded lounge chair and sipped his beer. He felt very peculiar, and for a while he couldn’t figure out what it was, and then he realized that for the first time in his memory he had absolutely nothing todo, no people to see, no cases to keep track of, no naggings from Mom to avoid, no girlfriends to juggle. He was between lives, and he felt like a sage of the East. Something Willa used to quote popped into his mind, Thomas Merton:
Who can free himself from achievement
And from fame,
Descend and be lost
Amid the masses of men?
He will flow like the Tao, unseen.
Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty.
Paz spent what seemed like a week lying there, watching clouds sweep across the sky and observing the lives of the birds and the larger insects, until Emmylou Dideroff came out and stood in his field of vision. She wore a dark gray calf-length cotton dress, with a freshly starched and ironed white apron over it, black leather boots on her feet and a white headcloth over her hair, marked with a thin bloodred stripe. She smelled pleasantly of spray starch and shone with an austere beauty.
“My boat is empty,” said Paz.
“Yes,” she said. “Good for you.” She held up a grocery bag. “Well, I’m all packed. My earthly goods.”
“You kept the habit.”
“Yes. I couldn’t bear to throw it away, and here I am. Will Lorna be back soon? I’d like to say good-bye to her.”
“Half an hour, maybe,” said Paz. He rose from the lounger. “So, off you go to further adventures.”
“I certainly hope not,” she said with a smile.
“Uh-huh. Little Emmylou rides off into the sunset, her work done. Although no one is really sure what that work was, are they? It’s like all the big boys sit down at the poker table, the U.S. government, the city, the state, the oil companies, the Church, the Sudanese rebels, the Sudan government, and Mr. Sonnenborg?can’t forgethim? and somehow, by dawn’s early light, when the game is all over, who do you think is holding all the chips? Why, good gracious, it’s little Emmylou Dideroff! Let’s see if we can count ‘em up.”
Paz plucked at his fingers as he spoke: “First, we have the fortunate death of the oil explorers. They could’ve hit a mine, but they also could’ve been purposely blown up by someone who didn’t want them talking to anyone. Next we have the fortunate rescue of our heroine, who gets tortured just long enough to convince any normal person that she’s telling the truth. No Joan of Arc last act for Emmylou. Rescued by a mysterious military gang who seem to be financed by our heroine’s own Society, which just happens to get all its income from?hello??oil company stocks. Next, somehow, one of the two people who really believes there’s a lot of oil there, and also happens to be the very guy who tortured our heroine, arrives in Miami looking for her. Now how did he know to come?”
“Skeeter must’ve told him.”
“Skeeter was working for the feds, for Parker. Who was watching you. Why in hell would he have done that?”
“He was a strange man. He always wanted to be the one controlling the play. That was his only pleasure, to make fools out of the whole world. He had no interest at all in how the game came out. He thought every outcome was equally meaningless. That’s why he blew the whistle on Orne Foy.”
“Did he? I kind of figured you for that one.”
“You’re very cynical, Detective.”
“True, but you have to admit you got a history of getting even. As a matter of fact, all the people, every single one of them, who ever crossed or messed with Emmylou Dideroff are dead. Except old Packer, and I’ll lay odds that something’ll happen to him, if it hasn’t already. Add to that, the one other guy who knew you were blowing smoke on the oil business is dead too, of course, although I’ll give you that Skeeter getting knifed was a coincidence pure and simple and?”
“Just another damned Eskimo.”
“What?”
“You want to believe that there are giant wheels turning, deep games being played, and there are, but not by men. God has preserved me in wonderful ways and done his will through me, using what means were at hand, including the plots of evil people. You know, God really wants to talk to us. He tried Scripture, he tries the still small voice, but we’re all unbelievers now, so he mainly speaks to us through a conspiracy of accidents.”
“That’s a way of putting it. Come on, Emmylou, just between the two of us, what’s the true story on the oil?”
She stared at him for what seemed a long time and part of him was terrified that her face would start to change and he’d be having this conversation with the Prince of Darkness. He went on. “I had an idea you might like. If you tell me the real story I’ll get your confessions to SRPU in Washington. That should convince them there’s no oil in your part of Sudan. I mean they don’t really know you.”
Some moments passed until he saw her give a little nod of decision, as if getting a message from somewhere.
She said, “Now I put lives in your hands. Are you ready for that?”
“Yes. I’m used to it.”
“I know, and I’m telling you this not only because of what you propose, which would be an act of mercy in itself, but because you love the truth more than anything, and I don’t want you to dig into this ever again.” She took a deep breath and said, “Richardson found a huge diagenetic trap on the upper Sobat basin, sixty billion barrels or more. I destroyed all their data and I sent them out by a road I knew had been freshly mined by the enemy.”
“Because God told you to?”
“No, it was my own idea.”
“Playing God?”
“Yes. And don’t judge me. It’s not good for your soul, and I’m being judged in a much harder court.”
“But why? The oil would make them rich. Your people. Don’t you want them rolling in it?”
“No. They’re happy. They have their cows and their God and a peace they can defend. Oil would destroy their world. Money and arms would come pouring into Sudan from every oil-addicted country on earth, and there would be mercenaries and the GOS would exterminate them to the last baby and the world would go tut-tut and fill their gas tanks. Now they have a chance. When the world collapses they’ll have a little secure place maybe. Maybe Dol Biong’s heirs will be prince-bishops of a little state, and maybe something good will come of it. I don’t know. But I would and will do anything to give them the chance.Anything.”
Paz saw the mad saint start to come back into her face and then the doorbell rang.
“And I guess we’ll have to leave it at that,” said Paz, moving toward the door. He opened it and there stood a
