Part 9 (1/2)

”There can be no carelessness. None. Maximum precautions will be taken to prevent any premature disclosure. There will be no second chance for anyone whose actions could compromise us all. All orders will be obeyed, without question, without argument.”

”Chicken s.h.i.+t,” Nicky said again.

”Come here, Mr. McGraw,” Persival said. ”Over here. Stop there. Fine. Now turn and face the condemned.” I was three feet from Persival, but I noted as I turned that Ahman's gun muzzle followed me like an empty steel eye socket.

Persival's voice deepened. ”Dear G.o.d of wrath and mercy, take unto thy bosom this soldier of our faith and grant him eternal peace. We send him to thee now so that he will not further endanger the holy mission with which thou hast entrusted us, thy faithful soldiers in the army of justice. Amen.”

His hand appeared in front of me, holding a slender automatic pistol with a long barrel. ”Take it and shoot him in the head, please,” Persival said. Same tone of voice as he would have said, ”Have some more stew, please.”

And the scenario was suddenly clear. I would shoot Nicky in the head with a blank, and my obedience would remove Persival's lingering suspicion of me, and Nicky would be frightened into being more careful next time. Two birds with one fake stone.

”It's ready to go,” he said. ”Just aim and fire.” There was no great need to aim. Nicky was perhaps fifteen feet from me. If you aim a handgun with the same motion you use to point your finger at someone, if the barrel becomes your finger, you can hit a six-inch circle on the other side of the room ninety-nine out of a hundred times.

So I pointed and fired. It made an unimportant snapping sound. A dark spot appeared beside Nicky's nose, on his good cheek. It snapped his head back a little. He made a coughing sound and sagged down onto one knee, then rolled over backward and rolled down the slope. I moved forward to keep him in sight. He came to rest in dead branches, against a splintered trunk, his back to us. One leg jumped and quivered and vibrated for a few seconds and then subsided. He seemed to become visibly smaller.

The life had gone out of him, now and forever. Persival reached around and tugged the weapon out of my hand and moved back away from me. ”Turn around, slowly.” he said. This was not the scenario I had envisioned. I had imagined all of them crowding around me, Nicky included, whacking me on the back, welcoming me to the team.

Instead, Persival was chunking a magazine into the pistol. The slide had remained back after I had fired. So there had been just the one sh.e.l.l in the chamber. This man took no chances. They held weapons on me. Ahman had set his weapon aside and was collapsing an SX-70 Polaroid while Sammy examined the print as it developed. I recalled hearing that tantalizingly familiar sound of the SX-70 a fraction of a second after I had fired and killed Nicky.

They were all curious about me, all waiting for my reaction. I could read a certain righteous satisfaction on their faces. I was fighting nausea and hoping I hadn't turned so gray-green they would suspect how close I was. Nausea, and a tendency of the world around me to fade in and out. Killing is such an ancient taboo. Only freaks ever adjust to killing people they have known and talked to, except when it is to save their own lives. Discipline enables uniformed people to kill unseen strangers. Children can imitate something seen on television, but the aftershock can be deadly. I had killed before, and it has never ceased being a wrenching psychic trauma. As I sought for some reaction which would make me reasonably acceptable to these people, suddenly I lost control of my acquired ident.i.ty.

I stared at Persival. He was trickery. He was death. He was insane devotion to an incomprehensible cause. He was a shooter of little silver pellets into the necks of the lovely and innocent.

”You dirty, murderous, crazy son of a b.i.t.c.h!” I said in a low and shaky voice.

He raised the reloaded weapon and aimed carefully from eight feet away at a spot on my forehead. I knew where the slug would strike. The spot felt round and icy.

I was convinced I was about to join Nicky. He knew he was going to die, and I could find no better last words than his.

”Chicken s.h.i.+t,” I said.

”Any questions, McGraw?”

”There's nothing I want to know that you can answer.” I was watching the trigger finger. As soon as I saw pressure whiten it, I was going to dive for his ankles and try to come up with the weapon before Sammy and Ahman could blow me away.

”Any last statement, fisherman?”

”I will state that if you don't make the first shot good, I'll get my hands on you before you can fire that thing again.”

He looked at me for a long time, and then of the weapon until it slowly lifted the barrel pointed at the sky.

”I think my first hunch was correct, Brother Thomas. I think we can train you and find a use for you. I think you can become very valuable.”

I could feel the tension go out of all of us. Deep exhalations.

He put the weapon away. He turned to Sammy and reached for the picture. After Persival had examined it, he motioned me closer and handed it to me. I was on the right, in fuzzy focus, enough of the left side of my face showing to make me recognizable. The barrel of the pistol was half raised to the perpendicular, the ineradicable habit pattern of people used to firing pistols and revolvers. Nicky was near the left margin of the print, in sharp focus. He was going down, but his knee had not yet touched. His head was tilted from impact, with the tiny death mark visible next to his nose.

Handing it back, I said, ”is this some kind of leverage?”

”It is, Brother Thomas, but not the way you think. Call it a verification of my instinct, useful when I go after permission for what I have in mind.”

”I don't know what you mean.”

”Ahman, arrange burial. Full roster except, of course, for Barry down on the gate. Have Haris read the service. I am going for a walk with Mr. McGraw.”

Eleven.

PERSIVAL DID not walk well. He moved slowly and seemed to have trouble with his balance. The sky was turning gray, and the wind was cooler. We walked to the end of the small plateau. He seated himself on the trunk of a large pine which had fallen at the edge of the slope.

He lowered himself carefully. With a wry Lincolnesque smile he said, ”I have what the young call bad wheels. I was the guest for a memorable period of time of an amiable old party named Somoza. He had my legs broken.”

I sat astride the log about eight feet from him. ”This,” he said, ”is the ancient definition of the best kind of education, the pupil on one end of a log and the teacher on the other.”

”What do I-”

He stopped me with a raised hand. ”Just let me ramble a bit. Answer me when I ask you a question. You would seem to know small boats and know the sea. And with your background, no one would question your interest in purchasing a certain sort of small boat.”

”I don't want to use my search money for a boat.”

”You are talking trivia, and when you do, you bore me.”

”I came here to find my kid. Maybe that's boring to you, but it's not to me.”

”McGraw, you are going to have to learn how to accept discipline.”

”Mr. Persival, you can't run me the same way you run those people of yours. I'll answer you when you ask questions, and I'll answer the questions you don't ask. I talk when I please.”

He looked me over. He was patently exasperated.

”Brother Thomas, can you swim?”

”Yes.”

”I'm glad to hear that. A lot of commercial fishermen can't. Do you know how to use scuba gear?”

”Yes.”

”Do you know what a limpet mine is?”

”Yes.”

”Can you tell me? I want to be sure you know.”

”It's a mine that sticks to what it is going to blow up. It can be magnetic, or covered with stick.u.m. It can have a timer or be blown up by a transmitter.”

”Very good! You've worked around explosive charges?”