plunged into the woods. So much for his helping Cobbs. Ricci whipped off after him, both hands around the shotgun he’d torn from Cobbs’s grasp.
Dex’s lead was slight and his panic flung him blindly through the low branches and undergrowth. He stumbled over roots, crashed against bushes and tree limbs.
Despite the relative bulkiness of his dry suit, Ricci closed the distance between them in less than a minute.
“Hold it, Dex! Not another step!” he called out, and pumped a fresh cartridge into the chamber of the Remington. “I mean it.”
Dex halted under an arcade of pine branches. He was panting from fear and exertion.
“Turn around,” Ricci said. “Slow.”
Dex did as he’d been told.
Ricci moved forward, the gun barrel out in front of him, his finger on the trigger.
Dex stood there in a sort of half slump, still panting, his long hair wet from sweat and pasted to his cheeks and neck. He glanced at Ricci a moment, and then cast his eyes down at some indeterminate patch of ground between them.
Ricci stepped closer, pushed the muzzle of the gun against the underside of Dex’s chin, and forced his head upward.
“Look at me,” Ricci said. And pushed his chin further up with the muzzle. “Look me in the
Dex again did as he’d been told.
“First thing,” Ricci said. “You’re a greedy little slug.”
Dex was quiet, his lips trembling. Perspiration streamed from under his watchcap.
“Second,” Ricci said. “You’re a would-be murderer.”
Dex started to say something, but Ricci silenced him with a prod of the gun barrel.
“I can make it so there’s nothing left under that hat of yours besides mush,” he said. “Better you let me do the talking.”
Dex shut his mouth.
They faced each other in silence. The interwoven branches overhead blocked out most of the morning sunlight and cast lacy patterns of shadow over both their features.
“We always split the take right down the middle, and that was fine by me. Didn’t matter I took the chances, long as you did your job and watched my back,” Ricci said. “But then you went behind it instead. Got down with Cobbs and Phipps on that pinch the other day. Fixed the pressure gauge so I wouldn’t know when my tank was out of air. Emptied my spare. Rather than coming to me when Cobbs laid some heat on you, telling me so we could put him in his place, you cuddled up with him and tried to
Ricci was silent again. From behind him near the slab of rock, he could hear Cobbs’s whimpering sobs.
“I owe you, Dex,” Ricci said. “You deserve for me to pull the trigger, and better believe I’m tempted to do it.”
Dex tensed, his breath coming in staccato bursts. Small blotches of red erupted on his cheeks.
Ricci held the shotgun steadily up to his chin for another second, then shook his head and lowered its barrel toward the ground.
“Relax,” he said. “You, Cobbs, and all your other pals won’t have to worry about me anymore. Wouldn’t have even if nothing had happened today besides us striking the mother lode of urchins. Because I got an offer from somebody out of town and decided to take it. All you would’ve needed to do to know that was wait till this afternoon, when the for-sale sign goes up in front of my house.”
More silence. Dex had a cowed, beaten expression on his face and seemed on the verge of squirming. Yet Ricci sensed he had little true remorse over the wrong he had done and only a partial understanding of its depth. In his own eyes he was a victim and that status both justified his actions and absolved him of blame. The shame in him was mostly over having gotten caught.
“Cobbs’ll be okay,” Ricci said. “I’m running the skiff back to the wharf. The two of you wait till maybe fifteen minutes after I’m gone, then take his boat, get him to the hospital. Anybody asks what happened to him, leave me out of your story. Or I give you my word, you’ll pay.”
Silence.
Ricci looked at him, and felt a sudden abhorrence that came close to making him physically sick. Then he gestured back the way they had come with his head.
“Get out of my sight,” he said at last.
Dex hesitated a moment, as if he still thought there was something he ought to say but didn’t know what it should be, or was afraid it might get him fouled up again. Then he simply nodded, stepped past Ricci, and started to walk away through the woods.
“And, Dex?”
Dex stopped, glanced back over his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” Ricci said. “I’m sure you’ll manage to live with yourself.”
SEVENTEEN
Harlan Devane sat opposite Kuhl at a cane table on his veranda, dealing out a hand of solitaire as the engorged red sun sank through the evening sky into the Bolivian rain forest.
“Give me your assessment,” he said without raising his eyes from the cards.
“The pulse device should fulfill its requirements,” Kuhl said. “We are close to ready for the endgame.”
DeVane turned over a card and examined it. A jack of diamonds. He laid it atop a queen of clubs.
“The trial run seems to have made an outstanding impression on you,” he said.
“Yes,” Kuhl said. “The damage to the train surpassed every expectation.”
DeVane nodded and glanced up from the table.
“Your emphasis on the amount of carnage that resulted fascinates me, Siegfried,” he said. “Do you know the piece of information I find most useful after having heard your account?”
Kuhl looked at him with absolute stillness but did not reply. There was no sign on his face that he was considering an answer, and indeed DeVane would have been surprised and disappointed if he’d had anything to say. The most efficient predator never revealed its thinking, or made it obvious if it was thinking at all. Could anyone know the mind of a shark? A python?
“The signal light,” DeVane said in response to his own question. “That you saw it come back on within seconds of the derailment indicates its circuits were left intact, and able to work normally once the disruption to the electromagnetic field ceased. Not only will the reason for the light’s malfunction never be ascertained, there is no hard evidence a malfunction occurred. The cause of the train wreck will be impossible to determine or trace, and therefore we cannot be incriminated. This to me is the salient detail with regard to our larger objectives.”
Kuhl’s eyes were like small windows into a vast frozen reach.
“If I hadn’t thought it important, it would not have been included in my report,” he said.
“And I welcome your thoroughness.” DeVane studied the neat rows of playing cards in front of him. There was a four of spades in one, a six of clubs in another. He flipped another three off the deck. “Of course, while there is no need for you to explain your selection of a target, I
“Oh?”
DeVane nodded.
“Why a passenger train as opposed to something like a freight train? I wondered. Why send human beings over that hillside rather than cattle or lumber, the accompanying loss of life being nonessential to the test?” He turned over three more cards. “And then the answer came to me. In a snap, as they say.”
Kuhl said nothing.
DeVane looked directly at him. “Are you acquainted with the paintings of Brueghel or Hieronymus Bosch?” he
