Sympathy for the Devil (35 page)

"All right, thanks. How long do we have?"

"We need to leave in five minutes, sir, if you want to be behind the podium on time."

"No problem. I'll--uhh!"

"Senator? If you need a little more time, I can probably -"

"No, it's okay, Garrett. I feel better now. I'll wash up and join you in the hall in a couple of minutes."

"Very good, Senator. I'll see you shortly." Garrett turned and went out, and a few seconds later came the sound of the suite's door opening and closing.

Less than a minute later, the suite door opened and closed again as Stark left to give his speech to the assembled throng in Kanawha Plaza, and whatever else awaited him that afternoon.

A little later, Mary Margaret Doyle appeared in the doorway of Stark's bathroom, the knees of her blue business suit dirty and her makeup a ruin. She walked a little unsteadily across the living room and toward her own bathroom, intending to wash her face, repair her makeup, and gargle away half a bottle's worth of Listerine. Then she would try to find a Secret Service agent to drive her to the rally.

Libby Chastain leaned sideways and said in Quincey Morris's ear, "Pity that I was so busy with other things last night that I forget to figure out a spell for sore feet - that, and maybe a potion for an uncomfortably full bladder."

Morris tilted back his hat, which kept sliding down over his eyes. It was a straw boater with images of Stark, the American eagle, and the flag alternating on a banner that circled the crown.

Their strategy of ultra-early arrival at the park had paid off. The two of them stood just behind a length of cord wrapped in red, white, and blue velvet. It was one of a long series of such barriers stretched between portable metal poles that ran the length of the macadam-covered walkway, opposite the cascading fountain that was the Kanawha Plaza Corporation's pride and joy. Uniformed police officers strolled up and down the length of the rope line, to keep over-eager Stark supporters from crossing the insubstantial barrier and posing a security risk. When Stark came by, of course, he would be accompanied by the Secret Service detail.

"Are you going to be okay?" Morris asked.

Libby gave him a tired smile. "Sure, I'm just bitching. A woman's right, you know - I think it's in the manual."

"A Woman's Operating Manual? Now
there's
a book I'd like to read, sometime."

"No chance, buster. It's strictly F.F.E.O."

"Meaning?"

"For Female Eyes Only. Anyway, what's a little discomfort compared to saving the world - or whatever it is we're doing here."

There were vendors everywhere selling Stark campaign memorabilia, and Morris had suggested that he and Libby get some on their way into the plaza. "Protective coloration," he'd called it.

So Morris had his straw hat, and they each wore a button nearly the size of a saucer, featuring a photo of Stark looking resolute, with words around the edges following the button's contours. Above Stark's picture it read, 'Howard - the President we need NOW.' Below the image were the words, 'It's the STARK truth.' Libby also had a smaller button pinned to the light jacket she wore. Its message, superimposed over an image of the flag, was 'Make the STARK choice.'

She saw Morris motioning to a vendor who was making his way slowly through the crowd. He was blocking her view, so Libby couldn't see what the man was selling. She did observe Morris handing over money in return for another button that he pinned to his shirt. Then he turned around so Libby could see it.

The button featured an artist's rendering of a demon - nothing remotely realistic, just the cute, Halloween version in red with a long tail and pitchfork. But the face wasn't a cartoon demon. It was Howard Stark's photo, with red horns added by the artist. The caption along the bottom read 'GIVE 'EM HELL, HOWIE!'

Libby and Morris looked at each other, the button representing a lot of things they couldn't discuss while surrounded by so many people. Morris leaned toward Libby and asked "Bad taste?"

She looked him in the eyes. "I hope not," she said. "I really hope not."

The rally started punctually at 3:00, and it was a little less awful than what Libby had been expecting - but only a little.

The Smoky Mountain Seven (unaccountably consisting of six musicians) were better than the venue would have suggested, the preacher was predictably sanctimonious, the two local politicos surprisingly brief. The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance was uneventful, 'The Star Spangled Banner' was sung enthusiastically if not well, and then it was time for the great man himself.

Senator Howard Warren Stark, (R-Ohio), looking tan and robust, was escorted to the podium by a man wearing a suit, sunglasses, and an earpiece.

Stark stepped up to the microphone and adjusted it upward for his height. Then, in temporary abandonment of his Yankee origins, he shouted over the applause and cheering, "HEY, RICHMOND! HOW Y'ALL DOIN'?"

The crowd, as they say, went wild.

Removing the sixteen long screws that held the window in its frame was a piece of cake compared to the task of moving the chest of drawers so that it was lined up with the aperture they'd created by taking the glass down.

Peters had been insistent. "Prone position's the most stable, and with sniping, stability is everything."

"But it's going to be a huge pain in the ass getting it over here with so little room for maneuver. And I can't just levitate the fucking thing, you know. Maybe if you'd said something yesterday, I could've tried putting a spell together, but as it is, we're gonna have to do the hard way. It's stupid, Peters."

"No, Ashley, what would be stupid is not doing everything possible to ensure that I make the shot. Firing offhand - standing upright - is the least stable and that makes it the last resort."

"It was good enough for Lee Harvey Oswald."

"Is that right? Oswald really did it, huh? The conspiracy nuts were all wrong."

"I didn't say he managed it all by himself," she said, "and don't change the subject."

"You're the one who changed it." Part of Peters's mind was detached enough to marvel that here he was, arguing with a millennia-old creature from Hell as if he were having a fight with his girlfriend.

"Look, Ashley, I'm not doing this to piss you off. I don't know what distance Oswald fired from, but it can't have been any 500 meters. Firing offhand is the least reliable position. Prone is best, believe me. The whole body supports the weapon. Kneeling and sitting are both more or less in the middle, and the middle isn't good enough, at his range. The sooner we get started, the sooner I can start letting my arms rest from the strain of moving furniture."

"Why can't you use the desk? It's already
near
the fucking window."

"It's too small. Half my body would be hanging over the edge. It's gotta be the chest of drawers."

"Shit!" Ashley spat the word. She'd walked over to the hole in the wall and stared over at Kanawha Plaza, hands on hips. Finally, she'd turned away, and her facial expression was resigned. "All right, let's get it fucking over with."

And so they had, with Ashley cursing the whole way. She was profane in a number of languages, including one that Peters recognized as the tongue spoken by demons.

Even with all the drawers removed, the chest of drawers was extremely difficult to move around. It took forty-five sweaty, profanity-filled minutes, but finally the immense piece of furniture was in position.

"Satisfied?" Ashley asked, giving the clear impression that his answering "No" would be instantly fatal.

"It's perfect, Ashley. Thank you."

She began undressing, which never took her long. "I'm going to take a shower.
Don't
bother to join me."

When the bathroom door closed behind her, Peters shook his head and said, quietly, "Women."

He reminded himself what she really was, and tried to stop thinking of her as a woman, even though she was acting very human at the moment.

He started flexing his arms slowly, to help the muscles relax from the strain of lifting and putting down the chest of drawers, over and over. He'd had enough sense not to remind Ashley that they were going to have to put the beast back in position, once he had killed Stark. He wanted to live long enough to do his job.

Still flexing, Peters walked over to the rectangular hole in the wall where the window had been. None of the nearby buildings came up this high, or taking the window out would have been unacceptably risky. He stared across at Kanawha Plaza, which was already starting to fill up with people.
Five hundred
meters
.
Shit
.

He hadn't checked his watch when Ashley huffed into the bathroom, but it didn't seem to him very long before her voice came through the closed door, over the hiss of the shower.

"Peters?"

"Yes, dear."

"Get your ass in here."

When he was naked and under the water with her, she put her hands on his hips and tilted her head to look up at him. Since she was almost his height, not much of a tilt was necessary. "This body they gave me seems to come with human emotions, too," she said. "Astaroth's idea of a joke, perhaps. How do you humans
stand
it?"

"Guess we just take them for granted."

"Well, I've been acting a little
too
human - possibly to the detriment of our mission. If I were capable of apologizing to a mere human, which I'm not, I'd be doing it now. Okay?"

He grinned at her. "Okay."

She pulled him up against her, her erect nipples tickling his chest. "I want to ask you something, seriously," she said. "Would getting off now make it easier for you to shoot straight later, or more difficult? Say the word, and I'll make myself look like a repulsive old hag who you wouldn't fuck on a dare. I can always change back to my gorgeous, sexy self later. Or do you think it would relax you - coming, I mean?"

"I never had the opportunity to make the choice before," he said. "The CIA didn't send sexy demons along as assistants when I had to use a rifle in the old days."

"I might take exception to
assistant
, but go on."

"It'll be at least two hours before I have to pull the trigger." He grinned at her again. "This
coming
you were talking about - it can't hurt, and could maybe help."

"You don't know how glad I am to hear that," she said softly, her face inches from his own. "Maybe emotions aren't such a bad idea, after all."

Chapter 33

After delivering his redneck-style greeting, Stark stood there smiling, waiting for the cheering and applause to die down.

Look at them - their pale faces all in a row, like sheep, ready for slaughter.

He held up his hands, asking for quiet. Eventually, the crowd let him have some.

"I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to be here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. I spend so much time in Washington, I almost forgot what
real
people look like!"

More applause, cheering, whistles and rebel yells greeted this, as he knew they would - he had used the line in a hundred different places already, with the same result. In time, relative silence returned.

"And it's real people, people like you and your friends and neighbors, that this campaign is all about."

The cheers and applause were weaker now. The sheep were getting tired. Time to give them something to listen to passively, until he got to the next carefully-scripted applause line.

"Because, you know, it's real people who are suffering, in this great land of ours. People whose jobs have been shipped overseas, or downsized, or just left to wither and die by Wall Street fat cats who just get fatter and fatter, while everyday men and women's lives and bank accounts get leaner and leaner."

The Wall Street fat cats had given millions to Stark's campaign, and would give millions more. They didn't mind being called names out here in Hicksville. They knew what Stark was
really
about - or they thought they did.

"After eight years of socialism at home and cowardice abroad, the choices remaining to us..."

In Room 1408 of the Crowne Plaza, Malachi Peters, facedown atop the chest of drawers, settled the butt of the Remington into the hollow of his shoulder and waited for his heart rate to slow. He was breathing slowly and regularly, and that would soon tamp down the adrenaline rush that occurs in most people when they get ready to kill somebody. There are some who do not experience this excitement. They are called psychopaths.

Peters closed one eye and with the other looked through the scope and its mil dot reticle, which was apparently what everybody was shooting with these days instead of crosshairs. Peters had to admit it was an improvement over what he'd used thirty-some years ago as a CIA assassin. The image he saw through the scope was still in the form of a cross, but now the intersecting lines, instead of being solid, consisted of evenly spaced dots. This allowed for very precise aiming at long distances, and Peters was glad to get it.

He placed the center of the reticle on Stark's head, which appeared so clear to him he might as well be viewing it under a microscope. The chest, not the head, was the sniper's ideal target. It was bigger, didn't move around as much, and a hit anywhere in the chest area was almost guaranteed to get heart, lung, or spine - or some combination thereof.

But diligent research had told him that, these days, more and more politicos wore lightweight body armor out in public. Back in Peters' day, such things were called bulletproof vests. They were big, heavy, and almost impossible to conceal under any clothing tighter than a Hawaiian muumuu. But, as if in compensation for improvements in rifle scopes and ballistics, protective clothing had become lighter, more flexible, and harder to detect.

There was no way to be certain that a chest shot would kill Stark. It would have to be the head.

Now it was time to call on Ashley. His demon companion had proved useful in many ways. She offered fantastic sex, stimulating conversation, encyclopedic knowledge of certain subjects, and a sarcastic wit that kept him on his toes.