Shift: A Novel

military secrets to the Soviet Union, who formally renounces his citizenship yet conveniently forgets to bring his passport when he does so, who’s set up in a luxury apartment in the Soviet Union and marries a girl he’s known for barely a month and is allowed by the Soviet authorities to return to America, where, after a hey-how’s-it-going interview with the FBI, he’s left free to run around taking potshots at retired generals and skip across the border to Mexico to get a visa to knock off Fidel Castro. An idiot might try to chalk this up to a broken personality, but anyone with half a brain can see the lifelong construction of a cover—a boy with the outward appearance of a Marxist, but who’s really the Company’s attempt to get a sleeper inside KGB, and who might well have been doubled by them. Do you really think I’m so stupid I didn’t think anyone would notice all—of—that?”

Melchior’s voice grew louder and louder as he spoke, until Song was genuinely disturbed. Where was all this anger coming from, and at whom was it directed?

“Calm down, Melchior. I didn’t mean—”

“They’ll find it, Song! Every last bit of evidence revealing Caspar’s ties to U.S. and Russian intelligence—real things, plus a lot of stuff that’s probably totally innocent but that’ll come to seem suspicious in hindsight. Someone—a G-man, a Company agent who’s never heard of the Wiz Kids, a nosy reporter—somebody’ll root out everything and bring it to light, and the government will either suppress it or deny it because, like you said, the scandal could bring down administrations or kick off a nuclear war. Do you understand what I’m saying, Song? We don’t have to cover anything up, because the goddamn government of the United States of America will do it for us.”

Melchior’s hands were balled in fists and his face had gone beet red. The sweat rolling out from beneath the wig had thickened into streams that stained his collar.

“But Melchior,” Song said, grabbing his left hand. “What if he makes the sh—”

She stopped. Turning Melchior’s hand over, she opened his fingers, saw something that looked like a handful of seeds. He spread his fingers and the seeds fell open in a long oval, revealing themselves to be a string of beads. No, not beads.

Skulls.

Song looked up at Melchior, her confusion giving way to genuine horror. Not fear, but a sense of betrayal so profound that she couldn’t find words for it.

“Then he makes the shot,” Melchior said, and he slipped the necklace over Song’s head while she just stood there, frozen in place.

“A gift,” he said. “From Caspar.”

“Melchior?” Song’s right hand touched the beads on her chest. “No.”

“Don’t you understand, Song? History doesn’t care about individuals, let alone individual actions. It only cares about symbols. It’s not the shot that matters. It’s not who pulls the trigger, or who it hits, or even if it hits. It’s what we can make it mean.”

Song blinked her eyes as if she was coming out of a trance. “My God. You want him to make it. You want him to kill the president.” She started to say something else, but then her eyes saw the knife in Melchior’s hand. “You—you can’t be serious.”

“I’m sorry, Song. Your entire career has been built around your ability to play one side off against the other. A thousand intelligence agents could identify you, and who knows how many more have bedded you.”

Song tugged at the skulls around her neck, but it was as if the cord that held them together was made of piano wire. She stepped backward, but the staircase was directly behind her. She stumbled and the long string of skulls clacked against the metal treads with a sound like knucklebones shaking in a rattle, then she caught herself and stood on the bottom step.

“I don’t understand. The whole thing—the partnership between you and Ivelitsch, going rogue, it was all my idea.”

Melchior nodded. “It was. I can’t deny it. And my career in intelligence was the Wiz’s creation. But if I’m going to make this thing work, I’ve got to start making decisions on my own.”

Song took another step up and back.

“Pavel was right about you. Your motivations are too complex. Too messy.”

“Don’t be naive, Song. Pavel wanted you out of the picture long before I did. Triumvirates never work, especially when two of them are alpha males and the third’s a beautiful woman.”

“Melchior, please,” she said as she climbed backward up the staircase. “I have money. Connections. Resources. This plane. Houses in—”

“Pavel’s made me aware of all your assets.” Melchior shook his head. “You should have made a will, Song. As it is, all your property will pass to your brother.”

“My—” Song whirled around, only to bounce off something barring the door. She stumbled backward, barely managing to catch herself from falling over the rail. She looked back at the door, at the figure standing there. Her face was pale with confusion and fear.

“Chul-moo? You’re not—” She turned back to Melchior. “He’s not my brother.”

Melchior shrugged. “Identity, like property, or history for that matter, is just a matter of the right documents. Chul-moo is as much your brother as the boy who died in Korea.”

Chul-moo pulled a gun from his jacket but Melchior put up his hand.

“I have to do this myself,” he said. He reached his hand down to Song, and, as if in a spell, she took it. “I owe you that much,” he said, then added, “Balthazar,” and drove the point home.

But even as the blade was piercing fabric and flesh, the scene seemed to melt. First the airplane disappeared, then the hangar and the airport and Dallas, and in its place there were palms and mangroves, a whitesand beach and the roar of surf. Chandler felt the blood rushing over Melchior’s fingers, but they weren’t Melchior’s fingers—they were his. He looked up into Song’s face, but it wasn’t Song.

It was Naz.

Her dark eyes bore into his, and the worst thing of all was that there was no surprise there.