The Fury and the Terror (55 page)

Either way he was a dead man. Even if he completed his assignment. But if he made good, his approval rating would reflect that final triumph. One that would be whispered about for a very long time. They could be cruel; it was the nature of Impact Sector's business. But They had not written him off after his failure. He had been given the opportunity to redeem himself, to leave this life justified. On his terms. On a stage of his choosing.

Face would appreciate that.

PLENTY COUPS, MONTANA • JUNE 7 • 4:38 A.M. MDT

W
ake up, dammit!

Eden Waring's doppelganger stirred in the hammock in which she had been blissfully asleep and tried to ignore the pestering sound, now sharp in her mind, then receding like an echo in a dark-walled dream as she willfully pushed the voice toward oblivion without yielding to its demand. There. For a few moments, silence.

Don't go back to sleep!

The hammock began to sway and then to rock. "Stop!" she cried, but she couldn't hold on and was thrown to the mat-covered floor of her bure at the Muronga Reef Club. She sat up groggily, rubbing a bruised buttock, and tried to climb back into the low-slung hammock, resume her rest. Shut the intruder out of her mind.

Instead she found herself on her feet as if yanked upright by the power of an ancient god she had unwittingly offended during her stay in Fiji. She trembled superstitiously, looking around in bewilderment, hearing the familiar, distant booming of surf on the reef that surrounded—

Snap out of it! You're not in a tropical paradise. They've drugged you. And it's been hell for me too, I haven't slept in forty hours.

"Go away."

Immediately the dpg went lurching helplessly across the bure to the bathroom. She tried to dig in and resist, spraddle-legged, head down like a donkey's, bare feet skidding over the woven grass mats. She clung to the door frame and was jerked loose; momentum caused her to sprawl into the bathtub. An elbow rang against porcelain.

"Owww!"

That hurt me too, my elbow's numb. Stop fighting me, you asshole!

"Why can't you leave me alone? I was h-having so much fun! And I d-don't need you anymore!"

What you need is a cold shower.

The dpg tried to huddle in the tub with her hands in her armpits. One hand was pulled loose. Her arm shot up. She gritted her teeth and made a fist, refusing to grasp the shower lever.

"No . . . I . . . won't."

Yes . . . you . . . will.

Her hand flew open, then closed on the handle. Water gushed from the showerhead, soaking the shorty pajamas she wore. The shower turned to a needle spray. She couldn't get away from it, or her tormentor.

Call me anything you like, but you're going to sober up before I let you out of there.

"I'm not drunk!"

You're worse than that. But it's not your fault.

F
ifteen minutes later Eden Waring's doppelganger was sitting on the bathroom floor wearing a towel and nothing else, her head sagging.

Okay, one more time. Where are you?

Sobbing. "I ... I don't know anymore."

You're in MORG's underground facility at Plenty Coups, Montana.

"But ..."

Fiji is some kind of hallucination they designed for you. To keep you in a happy frame of mind so you'd cooperate with them.

"Who? Are you talking about Victor and Mark?"

Victor? Maybe that's Victor Wilding. What has he asked you to do for him?

"Nothing! He's just a friend! We have lunch together every day."

What do you talk about?

"I don't know. I don't remember."

Think!

"Stop! You're hurting my head. It hurts enough already."

Drink more water. Flush the drugs they've given you out of your system.

"All that water has me peeing like a pig!"

Good. Now what is it Victor Wilding asked you to do?

"Nothing! He's so nice. He's been nicer to me than you've ever been." Eden's doppelganger obeyed a stern nudge in her mind by picking up the liter bottle of spring water. She had a few more swallows, even though she felt bloated. She choked, and some of the water spilled down her chin. "I went with him to see Robin," the dpg said drearily. She took her time focusing on that visit. "I remember that Mark was there too."

Robin? Robin Sandza?

"No, his name is Wilding. He's Victor's twin brother. He was hurt in a fall and he's been unconscious since ... oh, it's a long time, Victor said. Twenty years."

Twenty years in a coma. I had a vision of Robin a week ago. And I've been told everything that was done to him. Victor Wilding isn't his brother. I believe Wilding was a doppelganger. Maybe he still is, that's why he's anxious to keep Robin alive.

Eden's dpg shuddered. "A doppelganger? Couldn't be. It t-takes one to k-know one."

If you were in your right mind, sweetie. You saw Robin, but did you make contact with him?

"Of course I did. I called him, and he came. We went walking ... on the reef together. The reef that's been half destroyed by the crown of thorns."

I don't know what you mean.

"I held his hand. He's a sweet boy. But he was ... too far gone to talk to me while we were together. He told me what he wanted, though. He touched his forehead, then ... pointed to the sky. He wants them to let him go."

Did you tell that to Victor Wilding?

"No. I just couldn't. He loves his bro—he loves Robin so much."

It's his own existence he's concerned about. What did you say to Wilding?

"I told him I'd have to spend more time with Robin before I knew anything. Can I get up now? It's almost dawn. I want to put some clothes on. And I'm hungry."

I don't want you to get dressed. If you're not wearing anything, they can't see you.

"But they're my fr—"

Get this straight, okay? They think you're me, the one and only original Eden Waring. They took me—you—to Plenty Coups hoping you can heal Robin's damaged brain. Give him back his life. But Robin wants to die.

"Yes."

Can you find him? Go there without anyone knowing?

"I think so. He was just down the road about half a mile from the Reef Club."

Oh, shit. You've got to stop hallucinating.

"I'm trying! You can be such a bitch. If I had my own name, I would never be anyone remotely like—"

Shut up and listen. I'm tired. In a day or two, maybe just a few hours, a couple of hundred thousand people will die if I don't do something to prevent it. I don't know if you can help. Maybe. First I want you to find Robin again. He's somewhere in that hole in the ground. Find him, and pull the plug.

"Kill him?"

Release him. It's what he wants from you. Us. Me.

"Yes," the dpg conceded. "Poor guy. But ... what about Victor?"

Sorry I can't be there to see his face when he hears the news.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE • JUNE 7

T
he Citation X jet bringing Eden, Tom Sherard, and Bertie Nkambe from the upper Midwest touched down at Nashville's International Airport at 9:18 A.M., flying low over Old Hickory Lake in order to make the approach to a north-south runway.

Bertie had spent most of the flight talking on the phone, to her mother who was at home in Kenya, and to her brother Kieti in Paris. Tom Sherard used the other, encrypted phone aboard the jet to keep Buck Hannafin and Wanda Chevrille up-to-date. Eden, after the lengthy skull-splitting session with her doppelganger, conducted in secret, was at last able to go get some sleep in a deep soft glove-leather seat with an ice pack at the back of her neck.

O
n the glittering lake they had flown over at two thousand feet, Randy and Herb were relaxing on the lower deck of the houseboat reading the sports pages of the Sunday
Tennessean
after an early two hours of fishing the nearby coves. They'd cleaned their catch, iced down the filets, and cooked their own breakfasts. Microwaved sausage and scrambled eggs, black coffee. The bodies of Cheryl and Sandi, individually wrapped in blue tarps, were long gone from the houseboat, courtesy of a Homefolks CD (casualty dispersal) team. Forensic investigators could not have found evidence that the women had ever been aboard.

Randy and Herb still had most of the day to take it easy.

A
limousine picked up Eden, Bertie, and Tom Sherard and drove them to a hotel on West End opposite the Vanderbilt University campus. On the way to midtown Nashville Eden kept her eyes open long enough to take in a billboard with Garth Brooks's face on it. In concert Sunday, June 7, at seven-thirty P.M. His first Nashville appearance, according to the grandmotherly limo driver, in many years, not counting a visit to Fan Fare during which he had signed autographs for twenty-three hours straight. Trisha Yearwood also was appearing with Brooks, and the venue was huge: Adelphia Coliseum.

Eden yawned. She never listened to country music.

"I need a workout," she said, "or I can't function. Does this hotel have a gym?"

T
hey had a terraced suite on the top floor of the hotel. Nashville was jammed with Brooks fans, but Sherard had encountered no difficulty booking the suite on short notice. One of Katharine Bellaver's trusts owned a fourteen percent interest in the chain.

No one was hungry except Bertie, who was hungry all the time. She ate a couple of high-energy granola bars from her traveling stash of health foods and accompanied Eden to the gym.

Sherard rode the elevator down three floors to another, smaller suite he had reserved.

The two men who were still unpacking after a hasty trip from Washington aboard a Department of Energy jet were Russian-born, former colonels from the Twelfth Department of the Russian General Staff. They were nuclear weapons specialists, trained at NPO Impulse in Stalingrad before the end of the Cold War. Now they were part of an international crisis team devoted to tracking down nuclear warheads, artillery shells, and bombs that had been in the Soviet Republic's arsenal and were now unaccounted for. They were dressed in Banana Republic casual wear and carried DE credentials, Threat Assessment Intel. Mikhail, who said call me Mike, had gruff features and black hair thick as a garden hedge. Alyosha, who said call me Alex, had high color, a lazy habitual smile, and quick-temper blue eyes.

They had with them a twin of what they hoped was the device that MORG had purchased in a terrorists' bazaar on the bleak steppes thousands of kilometers from Krasnoyarsk 26 and now planned to detonate in Tennessee. Their device was exact in every detail except for the plutonium package, which when included was about the size of a softball and weighed seventy-two pounds. Alex told Sherard this with the hostile smirk an expert in mass destruction might be expected to have for the uninitiated.

When Eden, rosy and refreshed from a hard workout on the StairMaster, came to the Russians' suite with Bertie, the visitors looked at Bertie in lustful admiration and looked at Eden with total 'skepticism.

"Where is your crystal ball, honey?" Alex said, his complexion turning redder.

"Do I have to listen to this?" Eden said crossly to Tom Sherard.

"Give her some space, fellas," Tom cautioned.

"Why not?" Mike said. "It's only our asses that are on the line here. Asses to ashes, if you're not for real."

"I don't believe in this ESP," Alex said. "What is it they say in the good old USA? If it ain't shit, it must be Shinola."

"How did you lose part of your ring finger?" Eden asked, glancing casually at his left hand.

"Car door,
honey
."

"Mind if I see?" Eden held out her left hand, palm up. Alex smirked, but he laid his four-and-a-half-digit hand in hers. Eden looked thoughtful. She withdrew her hand.

"You're running a low-grade fever," she said.

"I'm in perfect health," Alex scoffed.

"Not the kind of fever I mean. How long has it been, a few years? Even though she took a pair of scissors to you, you're still crazy about her. Maybe that's the part you liked best in the relationship."

Alex's smile vanished; he looked bewildered. "It was only a puncture through the nail. I neglected it, and infection set in. How could you—"

Eden said, "At least Nadya didn't damage the goodies she was really after, huh, Alex?"