his chest, three tightly clustered holes from which his life-blood pulsed.
He looked up at the gaunt American, his soft brown eyes unblinking.
And he smiled.
The boy smiled.
The images flooded Janson now, flooded him for the first time, because these
were the images his mind was to banish—banish utterly—the day that followed, and
then all the days that followed. Even unremembered, they had pushed at him,
weighed on him, at times immobilized him. He thought of the little boy on the
basement stairs in the Stone Palace, of his own hand frozen at the trigger, and
he grasped the power of the unremembered.
Yet he remembered now.
He remembered how he sank to the ground and cradled the child in his lap, an
embrace between the dead and the almost dead, victim and victimizer.
What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath
light with darkness?
And he did what he had never done in country. He wept.
The memories that followed were beyond proper retrieval: The child’s parents
soon came, having been summoned by the gunfire. He could see their stricken
faces, yes—sorrowing, with a sorrow that voided even rage. They took their boy
from him, the man and the woman, and the man was keening, keening … and the
mother shook her head, shook her head violently, as if to dislodge the reality
it contained, and holding the lifeless body of her child in her arms, she turned
to the gaunt soldier, as if there were any words she could utter that would make
a difference.
But all she said was, You Americans.
Now the faces, all of them, dissolved, and Janson was left with the hard-eyed
gaze of Alan Demarest.
Demarest had been talking, was talking now. “The past is another country. A
country you never fully left.”
It was true.
“You could never get me out of your head, could you?” Demarest continued.
“No,” Janson said, his voice a broken whisper.
“Why would that be? Because the bond between us was real. It was powerful.
‘Opposition is true friendship,’ William Blake tells us. Oh, Paul—what a history
we shared. Did it haunt you? It haunted me.”
Janson did not reply.
“One day, the United States government handed me the keys to the kingdom,
allowed me to create an empire such as the world had never seen. Of course I
would make it mine. But however big your coffers are, it’s not always easy to
settle your accounts. I just needed you to acknowledge the truth about us two. I
made you, Paul. I molded you from clay, the way God made man.”
“No.” The word came like a groan from deep within him.
Another step closer. “It’s time to be truthful with yourself,” he said gently.
“There’s always been something between us. Something very close to love.”
Janson looked intently at him, mentally imposing Demarest’s features over the
famous countenance of the legendary humanitarian, seeing the points of
resemblance even on the recontoured visage. He shuddered.
“And a lot closer to hate,” Janson said at last.
Demarest’s eyes burned into him like glowing coals. “I made you, and nothing can
ever change that. Accept it. Accept who you are. Once you do, things change. The
nightmares will cease, Paul. Life gets a whole lot easier. Take it from me. I
always sleep well at night. Imagine it—wouldn’t that be something, Paul?”
Janson took a deep breath, and suddenly felt able to focus once more. “I don’t
want that.”
“What? You don’t want to leave the nightmares behind? Now you’re lying to
yourself, Lieutenant.”
“I’m not your lieutenant. And I wouldn’t trade my nightmares for anything.”
“You never healed, because you wouldn’t let yourself heal.”
“Is this what you call healing? You sleep well because something inside you—call
it a soul, call it what you like—is dead. Maybe something happened that snuffed
it out one day, maybe you never had it, but it’s the thing that makes us human.”
“Human? You mean weak. People always mix those two words up.”
“My nightmares are me,” Janson said, in a clear, steady voice. “I have to live
with the things I’ve done on this earth. I don’t have to like them. I’ve done
good and I’ve done bad. As for the bad—I don’t want to be reconciled with the
bad. You tell me I can take that pain away? That pain is how I know who I am and
who I’m not. That pain is how I know I’m not you.”
Suddenly Demarest lashed out, batting the gun out of Janson’s hand. It flew
clattering to the marble floor.
Demarest looked almost mournful as he leveled his pistol. “I tried to reason
with you. I tried to reach you. I’ve done so much to reach you, to bring you
back in touch with your true self. All I wanted from you was an acknowledgment
of the truth—the truth about us both.”
“The truth? You’re a monster. You should have died in Mesa Grande. I wish to God
you had.”
“It’s remarkable—how much you know and how little. How powerful you can be, and
how powerless.” He shook his head. “The man kills the child of another and
cannot even protect his own … ”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The embassy bombing in Caligo—did it shake your world? I thought it might when
I suggested it, five years ago. You’ll have to forgive me: the idea of your
having a child just didn’t sit well with me. A Paul Junior—no, I couldn’t see
it. Always easy to arrange these things through the local talent—those wild-eyed
insurrectionists dreaming of Allah and the virgins of Paradise. I’m afraid I’m
the only one who could appreciate the delicious irony that it was all brought
about by a fertilizer bomb. But really, what kind of a father would you have
made, a baby-killer like you?”
Janson felt as if he had been turned to stone.
A heavy sigh. “And it’s time for me to be going. I have great plans for the
world, you know. Truth is, I’m getting bored with conflict resolution. Conflict
promotion is the new order of the day. Human beings like battle and bloodshed.
Let man be man, I say.”
“Not your prerogative.” Janson struggled to get the words out.
He smiled. “Carpe diem—seize the day. Carpe mundum—seize the world.”
“They made you a god,” Janson said, recalling the president’s words, “when they
didn’t own the heavens.”.
“The heavens are beyond even my ken. Still, I’ll be happy to keep an open mind.
Why don’t you file a report about the hereafter when you get there? I’ll look
forward to your MemCon in re Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.” He was
expressionless as he leveled the pistol two feet away from Janson’s forehead.
“Bon voyage,” he said as his finger curled around the trigger.
Then Janson felt something warm spray against his face. Blinking, he saw that it
came from an exit wound at Demarest’s forehead. Undeflected by window glass, the
sniper’s shot was as precise as if it had been fired point-blank.
Janson reached out and cupped Demarest’s face, holding him erect. “Xin loi,” he
lied. Sorry about that.
For a moment, Demarest’s expression was perfectly blank: he could have been in
deepest meditation; he could have been asleep.
Janson let go, and Demarest crumpled to the ground with the utter relaxation of
life surrendered.
When Janson peered out from the secretary-general’s antique telescope, he found
Jessie precisely where he had stationed her: across the East River, her rifle
positioned on the roof of the old bottling plant, directly beneath the mammoth
neon letters. She was starting to disassemble the weapon with deft, practiced
movements. Then she looked up at him, as if she could feel his gaze upon her.
All at once, Janson had a feeling, an odd, lighter-than-air feeling, that
everything would be all right.
He stepped away from the scope and looked out with his own two eyes, his face
cooled by the breeze. Hunter’s Point. The name had become mordantly appropriate.
Looming above his beloved, the enormous Pepsi-Cola sign glowed red in the
deepening gloom. Now Janson squinted, saw the reflected light from the neon
spilled onto the glistening waters below. For a moment, it looked like a river
of blood.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“I want to thank you for joining us, Mr. Janson,” said President Charles W.
Berquist Jr., seated at the head of the oval table. The handful of people at the
table, mainly senior administrators and analysts from the country’s principal
intelligence agencies, had made their separate ways to the blandly handsome
building on Sixteenth Street, using the side entrance that was accessible from a
private driveway and guaranteed that arrivals and departures would not attract
notice. There would be no tape, no log. It was another meeting that had not,
officially, taken place. “Your nation owes you a debt of gratitude that it will
never know about. But I know. I don’t think it’ll be any surprise that you’ll be