still using him as a prop for his act.”
Lucio scowled with contempt.
“El Tio,” he said. “Everything’s disorder since he’s come into the picture. Fucking
Lathrop said nothing.
Lucio sat there sucking his front teeth for a while. When he leaned forward on the couch, Lathrop was amused to notice the back of the cushion underneath him lift high off the springs from his ample weight.
“You got anything else?”
“That’s it.”
Lucio sucked his teeth some more.
“All right, Lathrop. You’re the best. And you can count on this tip being worth a nice bonus,” he said. “As far as how it goes between me and Enrique, we’ll see which of us is the fucking idiot two nights from now at the park.”
Lathrop nodded.
It did indeed promise to be an interesting showdown, and he fully looked forward to being ringside.
“It is interesting how we measure our accomplishments,” DeVane said. “I have many successes behind me, and envision more to come. Widespread ventures that yield abundant rewards. Yet the satisfaction I feel at this moment cannot be reckoned. A single person downed. A problem resolved. I hadn’t realized Roger Gordian had gotten quite that deeply under my skin.”
Kuhl sat across the desk from him in silence. Behind DeVane, slightly to the left of his chair, was one of the few windows in the entire building, a fixed pane of one-way multilaminate glass able to absorb the impact of a bomb blast or high-powered sniper fire. Perfectly square and soundproof, it somehow imparted a greater sense of separateness from the outlying woodlands than would have been presented by a solid wall. Kuhl saw deer tracks in the snow running toward the white-frocked forest spruces and understood the wild longing of the confined predator to lunge against the glass wall of a zoo or aquarium exhibit, a pull older than anything that could be devised to suppress it. And DeVane didn’t fool him. His mannered behavior was embroidery. A wrap he wore as neatly as his expensive suits, and to deliberate effect. But he, too, knew the impulse to strike and taste blood.
“Gordian’s condition,” Kuhl said. “Were you told of it?”
“He remains among the hospital’s general population, which means we can infer that he’s still in the early stage,” DeVane said. “But the symptoms will progress quickly enough.”
Kuhl was without expression.
“I propose that our backups be put in full readiness,” he said.
DeVane smiled, his lips flitting back from his small, white teeth.
“Your exactitude is always appreciated,” he said. “Yes, I agree, let’s surely be prepared for anything.”
There was a brief pause. Then DeVane gestured toward the computer station against the wall to his right, its glowing display filled with rows of unopened E-mail messages.
“Along come the trigger orders, even as we sit here,” he said. “Multiples in some cases. To no surprise, our Sudanese friend has informed me that he’s found a deep well of capital. As have many of his neighbors in the desert. It’s enthralling, the eagerness of my clients. Those in the noisy public arenas. Those in solitude. Those who fear differences of ethnicity and morphology. They want greater prestige, greater wealth, a world re-fashioned under their influence. Or they seek to inflict their internal damage upon mankind, spread the stains of dead loves and passions. Hardly a person to whom I’ve made my offer isn’t groping. And three days from now, they’ll all have the opportunity to chop away at each other.” Another flit of a smile. “We’re in the money, Siegfried. And I have faith that humanity will keep us in it to stay.”
Kuhl peered through the thick synthetic glass at a large bird swooping from the conifers.
“Among the buyers are interests in mortal conflict. They represent titanic polarizing forces,” he said. “The Sleeper triggers will give them a power of mutual destruction that has been unprecedented in history.”
“This concerns you?”
“I don’t fear the prospect of harsh change.”
DeVane looked at him.
“Ah,” he said. “You’ve wondered about me.”
Kuhl nodded. Outside the sealed room, he could see the shadow of the bird’s outspread wings create shifting patterns of light and darkness on the rippled carpet of snow.
DeVane formed a cage with his fingers.
“There is a story, a very ancient one, about a child of the god who rode the chariot of the sun across the sky,” he said. “It illustrates my way of seeing things.”
Kuhl waited. DeVane stared at his finger cage intently, as if to capture his thoughts within it.
“As the tale goes, the son was abandoned by his great and celestial father to struggle on the hard earth with his mother, and did not learn of his paternal heritage until he was on the verge of manhood,” he said. “And then his claims were ridiculed. The rejection and denial of all that he was, all the potential within him, caused him unbearable humiliation. So he went to his father’s manor. Traveled to the Palace of the Sun to ask the chance to prove his birthright, ride the chariot for a single day.” DeVane paused, his face taut around his cheekbones, his gaze fixed on his interlocked fingers. “The father’s first reaction was to scorn him. Deny his request. We can imagine he disputed his paternity, refused to acknowledge the youth was of his blood. But the son possessed an inbred strength of will and prevailed. Perhaps he used coercion, blackmail, the threat to reveal an affair his father had long kept hidden from his highborn peers. Who knows? The young man did what was necessary to get what he wanted. A chance. And he climbed aboard the chariot with a thousand warnings. Fly too high and the earth will freeze, drop too low and it will burn. Steer too far to the left or right and the monsters of the void will snatch you with their claws, suck you into the great darkness. These attempts to dissuade the youth only made him more eager to seize the reins and take to the heavens.” DeVane returned his eyes to Kuhl, the cold shine of steel in them. “Unfortunately, control of the horses did prove beyond him in the end. They were primal forces, you understand, and he was raised on the soil, dirt under his fingernails. Wherever he passed thundering through the sky, chaos was left in his wake. The countryside was seared with fire. Crops blazed. Ice caps melted to flood great cities. Oceans turned to columns of steam. His whipping, runaway ride shook the world. Chaos. But when, at last, the most powerful of the gods struck him down with a lightning bolt, sent him plunging to the ground in flames, the son went to his death without regret. Because in pursuing his ambition, he’d soared above and beyond the limitations of his origins. Beyond what anyone foresaw for him. Beyond those who’d tried to humble him. He had been audacious, and audacity often has consequences. He’d known it from the beginning. Yet what a run it was, Siegfried.
DeVane fell silent. He took a deep breath, unlocked his fingers, leaned slowly backward in his chair. When he next spoke, his voice was calm and quiet.
“Is your curiosity satisfied?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then back to business.” DeVane’s hands were open on the desk. “Is there anything else we should discuss?”
Kuhl nodded.
“Our recruit in UpLink. The one who administered the trigger to Gordian,” he said. “He is weak and faithless.”
DeVane shrugged his shoulders. “A small fry swimming out of his depth and poisoned along with the big fish.”
“As he must realize by now,” Kuhl said. “I ask myself, what if he tries to bite us in his final thrashings?”
DeVane’s eyebrows lifted.
“I see,” he said. “And you suggest…”
“That El Tio have Enrique Quiros put the little creature out of its misery. The sooner the better.”
DeVane regarded him with his coldly metallic eyes.
“Your advice is well taken,” he said. “I’ll contact Enrique.”
Kuhl nodded again and rose from his seat. The large, dark bird had flown off, and there was nothing to be seen past the window panel but the hoofprints in the empty whiteness between the building and the great masts of the trees.
