Ghost materialized out of the darkness at the edge of his campfire, silently watching him. Her toes dangled an inch from the ground. Light from the coals glimmered on her dark eyes. She looked diaphanous in the silvery moonlight.
Wally’s eyelids slid lower… lower… The muscles in his neck relaxed. His head dropped. The effort not to fall into a dead sleep made his eyes water.
Ghost’s feet drifted into his narrow, blurry field of view. She reared back, winding up for another whack with the knife. Wally jumped up and lunged at her.
His body passed clean through her. Ghost’s body had no more substance than a wisp of smoke. He landed beside the dwindling campfire with a clang and a thud. “Ouch.” He looked up. Ghost stared down at him, expressionless as always. “What’s your name?” he asked.
She drifted back into the jungle. Silent. Unreadable.
He stood, brushed himself off. But Wally knew she was out there, waiting and watching. So he sat cross- legged beside the dying fire and called out, “My name’s Wally.”
The answer was a silence punctuated only by the chirping of nocturnal wildlife.
23
Friday,
December 18
The Louvre
Paris, France
The security detail for the peace conference was an unholy melange of mercenary commando and hotel concierge. The hotels for blocks around the museum were booked. Negotiators for the Caliphate, emissaries from the People’s Paradise of Africa, UN experts and security, the press of fifty different nations. The perimeter was a greatest hits album of the Committee. Walking in toward the Louvre, Bugsy saw three different flyers floating menacingly in the cool Parisian air. Snipers dotted the rooftops like postmodern gargoyles. In the courtyard, milling around the famous I. M. Pei glass pyramid, were groups of men and women in suits and soldiers in urban camouflage.
When they came close enough to see the familiar forms of Lohengrin and Babel, Simoon released his arm. As if by a common understanding, Simoon reached up and plucked out the earring, and Ellen was walking at his side. Not two lovers in Paris, but two colleagues working for the Committee. And Lohengrin didn’t have to figure out the right etiquette for talking to a dead girl.
Klaus had the lock jawed look that Bugsy associated with the Teutonic God-Man feeling like someone had stepped on his dick. The fog was burning off, the first blue of the sky peeking through. Babel and Ellen were speaking in French. Apparently Ellen spoke French. The things you learn. “So how’s the war?” Bugsy asked.
Lohengrin shook his head, the jaw clamping tighter. “We were putting together an exploratory subcommittee on sanctions against the Nshombos,” he said, the round, full vowels cut almost short with frustration. “Only word got out. Now I have eight memos condemning the existence of the subcommittee and a second subcommittee forming to explore better methods of creating exploratory subcommittees.”
Bugsy chuckled. Lohengrin frowned deeply, then smiled, then laughed and shook his head. “There was a time when we were effective. Now, it’s all become bureaucrats talking to bureaucrats over drinks at the Louvre while people suffer.”
“Isn’t that always what it comes to?” Bugsy said. “I mean, look at what we’re doing. A peace conference. What exactly is that but a place for the kids with the most toys to get together and have a gentlemanly conversation about who’s going to kill the most innocent people? We wouldn’t be doing this at all if hauling out tanks and missiles and battle-ready aces wasn’t actually more destructive, right?”
“I know,” Lohengrin said with disgust. “And yet those days in the desert, marching from the Necropolis to Aswan with the army of the Caliphate slaughtering people and biting at our heels? Then at least we could do something.”
Aswan. Where Simoon had died.
“Yeah,” Bugsy said bitterly. “The good old days. So what’s my line?”
Lohengrin tilted his head. In all fairness, it was a pretty obscure way to ask the question.
“Where do you want me?” Bugsy said. “I’m here being all secure and detailed. I figure…”
Lohengrin nodded and took Bugsy’s elbow, leading him a few steps away from Babel and Cameo. “We need you for coordination. A few dozen wasps here and there throughout the perimeter, but not so many that you would seem… out of place in the reception hall.”
“So no dropping a leg or anything.”
“No.”
“Okay, but I’m going to need warm spots. Sluggish, half-dead wasps aren’t going to fit your bill.”
Lohengrin frowned.
“Cleavage works,” Bugsy said. “If you’ve got anyone with cleavage. Hey! Joking. Just joking. But seriously, it does work.”
“I’ll do what I can. But if trouble comes, I want you to warn us. I do not like the mix of people here. Too many armed men, and it stops being security.”
“Who do we have on the inside?”
Lohengrin nodded across the courtyard to where Burrowing Owl was making polite talk with Tricolor, the local ace host and face of all things French and vaguely trite. Snowblind was just behind them.
“That all?”
“You, me. Babel. Cameo. She did bring…”
“Simoon and Will-o’-Wisp,” Bugsy said. “We’ll have firepower if we need it.”
Lohengrin nodded, but he still didn’t look happy.
“Toad Man as well, provided we can convince him to stop the frog’s legs jokes. And you know Garou?”
“Don’t think we’ve met,” Bugsy said.
“Garou!” Lohengrin called. A decent-looking man came over, eyebrows raised in question. “This is my old friend, Jonathan Hive.”
“Good to meet you,” Bugsy said, holding out a hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Garou looked nonplussed, but shook Bugsy’s hand all the same. “We’ve met,” he said.
“We have?” Bugsy said.
“Twice.”
“Ah.”
Garou nodded to Lohengrin and walked away, looking less than amused.
“Apparently, I have met him,” Bugsy said.
“Yes.”
“Well, at least I got the big faux pas of the night out of the way early.”
“Ah, Paris again.”
“And the weather couldn’t be worse,” Siraj grumbled from where he sat next to Noel in the backseat of a Mercedes limo.
Noel looked out at the falling rain and couldn’t disagree. Through the murk and fog the Louvre loomed. The stones were stained grey from dirt, soot, and exhaust. In the dim light it looked like what it was-a fortress.
His was not a fanciful nature, but Noel found himself looking away. “Now remember. Talk, talk, talk,” he said.
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m not an idiot or a child,” Siraj snapped. The big limo breasted the honking, darting minis and citrons like a shark through minnows. Siraj kept his tone offhanded, but the anxiety showed through. “Do you think Weathers will be here?”
“I doubt it. He’s not the negotiating kind. If Nshombo is here it won’t take much effort to drag this out endlessly. Punch the right buttons and he’ll go on about dialectic materialism for fucking hours.”
“Lovely,” Siraj said sourly.
