The Distance Beacons (31 page)

I tried to think through the case. The letters, the file, the sandals. But what about—"What about O'Malley's men? How did you get them to work for you?"

"We have our spies in Charlestown," he muttered.

I thought about it. Well then, the spies could tell Cowens who was happy working for O'Malley and who wasn't. Men like Santoro and Grimes—they realized they were lackeys, no matter how much they swaggered in front of someone like me. O'Malley was never going to promote them. So they might agree to come to work for the Feds. It was dangerous, but Cowens could offer them what even O'Malley couldn't. "You promised them an exit visa if they did the job?"

"Yes, of course. Florida."

I supposed most people wouldn't mind being a lackey, if they could do it in Florida. I took a quick look at Santoro's corpse, lying a few feet away from Cowens. The poor guy was never going to see Fort Lauderdale now. And it must have seemed so easy at the time. After all, he would be working for the top soldier in New England.

"You controlled everything," I said. "The security at the speech, the investigation afterwards. I bet you even encouraged the president to take her walk through the crowd. You controlled everything except Bolton and Gwen—and me."

"And you," Cowens agreed weakly. He seemed to be running out of energy.

"But even Bolton hiring me turned out well for you, because I messed things up so badly that you had a perfect suspect for people like Fenneman to focus on."

"Not quite bad enough, I guess," he managed to say.

I looked at Gwen, huddled close to me in the corner of the gallery. She gave me an encouraging smile. Yes, well, I hadn't messed up totally. I leaned out into the rotunda. "Look," I said to Cowens, "why don't you drop your gun and we'll get you some medical attention."

Cowens raised the gun instead and fired at me. I quickly drew my head back. "Damn you," he said.

"It's over," I called out to him, keeping myself out of sight. "There isn't anything you can do now. You've served your country well. I'm sure the president will take that into consideration. There's no sense in dragging this out and maybe making things worse for yourself."

"You understand no one! You understand nothing!" Cowens said, his voice suddenly stronger. "I'm an old man," he said, but he sounded young. "I remember movie theaters and—and ATMs and the Super Bowl and Sunday drives. I remember fireworks on the Fourth of July when I was a boy, sitting on my mother's lap in a meadow and waiting for darkness to fall so that—that—" The burst of energy disappeared as abruptly as it had arrived, and his voice became barely audible. "All I've ever wanted was to be a good soldier. To do my duty. To serve my country. And that has become so hard. What duty? What country? Everything is changed now. Not just the Super Bowls but—but the way we see ourselves. The way we see America. I have tried to be faithful, but it has been so... hard."

I could hear him start to sob. "Good soldiers obey their commander-in-chief , General," I said. "President Kramer is your commander-in-chief. So why don't you just drop your gun and do what she wants you to do?"

"You understand nothing," he sobbed. There was a pause, and then he fired his gun again.

And then there was silence.

Gwen and I looked at each other. I peered cautiously into the rotunda. In the dim light, I could see General Cowens lying on the floor. The gun was by his side; blood was oozing from his mouth. His eyes stared sightlessly up at the leaking roof. If he was looking for his duty, he was never going to find it now.

Chapter 22

"He's dead," I whispered to Gwen.

"Are you sure?"

I crawled out into the rotunda and took the gun from Cowens's hand. I felt for a pulse. "Yeah," I said. "I'm sure."

Gwen followed. She picked up the flashlight and aimed it at the dead soldier. Water dripped onto his face and made him appear to be sweating, as if death were as much of an effort as life. "Poor man," she murmured.

I stared at him.

"Quite a scoop, huh?" she said.

I stared at him some more. "The big scoop is when we find the president," I replied finally, breaking my gaze away from the corpse. "Let's go."

We headed in the direction from which Grimes and Cowens had both appeared—into the room filled with statues. There seemed to be a light further on, but we walked slowly among the ancient gods and kings, in case there were more surprises lurking there for us.

The Frenzy had been able to do nothing more than topple most of these statues, and they stared at us from strange and unpleasant angles; many looked like corpses themselves. "Spooky," Gwen murmured.

I didn't disagree. There was another roomful of statues off to the right; that's where the light was coming from. We walked into the new room. The light, it turned out, was from a torch stuck in a bracket on the faded yellow wall. I gazed around the room. I was getting nervous—not because I anticipated any more trouble, exactly, but because I sensed that the end of the case was approaching. And endings are always the hardest part.

We heard a whimper. I glanced at Gwen, and we hurried toward the sound.

We found the president of the United States shivering in the corner, her face to the wall, sitting next to the shattered statue of a pharaoh. Her dyed hair was streaked with plaster dust; her elegant clothes were filthy.

I thought of Ozymandias.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

I thought of Richard the Second.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground/And tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.

I thought of General Cowens, water dripping onto his lifeless features, blood oozing from his mouth down toward the uniform he had worn so proudly.

"Madam President?" I said.

She turned her face from the wall and looked at us. Without her makeup, she appeared older, more vulnerable.
Was this the face/That like the sun did make beholders wink?
"Walter?" she whispered hoarsely.

I nodded.

She got slowly to her feet, then stumbled through the debris and into my arms. "Oh, thank God," she said. "Thank God. You've saved me."

I looked at Gwen over the president's shoulder. She stared impassively at me. I fingered the gun I still held in my hand. The president's back was heaving with her sobs. I could smell the faint remains of her perfume. Outside, the wind howled.

I shook my head. "It won't work," I said.

President Kramer moved her head from my shoulder and looked up at me. "What do you mean?"

I stepped back, out of her embrace. "General Cowens just committed suicide out there," I said.

"Oh my God," she replied.

But she didn't say it quite right. Things were getting too complicated, I figured, and she couldn't think it through on the spur of the moment.

"Before he died," I went on, "he confessed that he kidnapped you to stop the referendum. And he said that all he ever wanted to be was a good soldier. But see, that's kind of a contradiction, as I pointed out to him. Good soldiers obey their leader, and you're his leader. He never responded to my point. Or rather, his response was to shoot himself."

"Well, he must've shot himself because of the contradiction," President Kramer said. "He couldn't live with the situation he had put himself in. Don't you think?"

"Maybe. But it seems to me that there are only two ways his story makes sense. First, if he had killed you. That removes the threat you pose to America's future, and your successors would certainly cancel the referendum. Second, if he kidnapped you, but made sure you believed a radical group like TSAR was responsible. That way, when you were finally released, you might cancel the referendum yourself and become a lot tougher on the locals.

"But you're very much alive, Madam President. And if he was keeping you in the dark about who your real kidnappers were, he was doing a pretty sloppy job. Gwen here was locked up from the moment she was captured. But you're out in the open, and this was where Grimes and Cowens both came from when they went out to the rotunda to try and kill the intruders. How could you not have known Cowens was involved? You certainly didn't sound particularly surprised when I told you he was dead."

President Kramer stared at me in disbelief. "Look at me," she commanded, gesturing at her dirty clothes and haggard appearance. "I have
suffered
here. Can't you see that?"

"Maybe I see a very good actress playing a part for all it's worth. Maybe you were preparing for your role after you sent Cowens to stop us. Maybe you said to him, 'Go out there and try to kill them, but at least give me some time to dirty myself up in case you can't. And be prepared to take the rap if you get into trouble. Do whatever you have to do to protect me. You're expendable. I'm not.'" Maybe that's a better explanation of what's been going on here."

The president made an imperious gesture, as if to end the discussion. "But this is ridiculous," she said. "You're implying that I kidnapped myself. Why in the world would I do that?"

Good question. I took a deep breath. This was my final theory about the damn case; I wanted to make sure I got it right. "'You can accomplish anything you want, if you're willing to risk everything you have,'" I quoted. "Remember? It sounded like your personal philosophy when you said it to me the night before you were kidnapped. And what is it that you want, President Kramer?"

"I just want to be a good president, to help America."

"You want a lot more than that, if you were telling the truth back then. You want to be the Lincoln of the new age. You want to establish a world government with America—and you—at its center. I don't know that you could set your sights any higher. But let's face it: as of that night, you didn't have a prayer of accomplishing any of your goals. Because the very first goal you had set for yourself was to win the referendum—and you didn't have a prayer of doing that. And if you couldn't do that, all the go-slowers back in Atlanta would've kept you from accomplishing anything. Maybe someday America would be what you wanted it to be. But not while you were president."

"I have ambitions," President Kramer said. "I want to accomplish wonderful things that will help the entire world. Is there anything wrong with that?"

"I guess not. Depends on what you do to achieve your goals. You decided you had to speed the process up, to make sure you were successful. You decided to give people a demonstration of what the alternative was to your government, to your vision. Make them think about the dangers waiting for them beyond the boundaries of law and order. Remind them that the Frenzy may not have been a temporary aberration—it may always lurk below the surface, and government may be the only force that can keep it from bursting out into the daylight once again.

"So you told your trusted general, your long-time friend, to set up a kidnapping. Maybe he thought it was a great idea. I bet he thought the opposite, but that didn't matter, because he was a good soldier, and you knew he'd obey. And then you carried out your part while he carried out his. You made it clear to everyone that you wanted security to be minimal, and that made it more credible when the kidnappers struck. You went out into the crowd to shake hands after the speech, so you'd be in exactly the right position for them. And then all you had to do was wait here for the people to respond.

"And they have responded, of course. Cowens ordered the troops to go easy, and that made everyone surprised and grateful. And I'm sure Cowens told you about the vigil in Government Center, about all the people who hadn't cared before who were now suddenly sympathetic to you and your cause. It was working, no doubt about it. And tomorrow morning, I suppose, General Cowens would have rescued you—just in the nick of time. The kidnappers would unfortunately escape—or maybe they'd be killed by the brave Federal soldiers. In any case, you'd be a heroine and the Feds would be heroes, and the referendum would pass. Your gamble would have paid off, and your dream would begin to come true. It was a risky plan, but it was clever, and it almost worked."

I stopped. The speech had exhausted me. I stared at the president; she stared back at me. And I had that awful moment of uncertainty that private eyes never have in the books I read—the feeling that it was all a dim-witted fantasy, that I had overlooked some obvious but compelling piece of evidence or logic that would invalidate my whole theory and make me look like a fool. I couldn't prove any of it, after all. And Lord knows I had been wrong before.