Fire Will Fall (13 page)

I spun around as a camera clicked, but it was only Cora, taking a shot of the water.

"Thought you had a blog to write before lunch," I said.

She said something like, "I can't think of anything to say. Everyone will be reading it."

It sounded like a perfect reason to be out here again so fast. I walked back to the path between the trees, spun around, and caught her watching me, disappointment all over her face. I felt flattered but defensive—probably more defensive. I pretended this was all about her being scared, which was probably part of it, but not all.

"Cora, I'd make a terrible bodyguard," I said. "The only thing I can shoot is a hypo."

"What do you mean?" she asked, suddenly flipping her lens focus this way and that.

"I mean, you're using me like a bulletproof vest. I can't make the terrorists go away. You have to do it yourself. You have to get rid of your own paranoia."

With that she seemed annoyed. Annoyance on Cora equals jerking her chin to the water and finding it oh-so-interesting.

"Say it," I said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever it is that's bothering you. Come on. I'm not a dentist, either, and prying things out of you gets annoying."

"Okay, then, so ... don't be a dentist. Or a bodyguard. Just be a friend." The twisting of the focus on her camera lens turned into some sort of mild spasm.

What came out of my mouth sounded like laughter, but I hoped she didn't take it personally. Ronnie Dobbins and I decided one night last year that we could be friends with women but not with girls, and there's a difference between women and girls that has nothing to do at all with children. As Ronnie summed it up, "A girl is any female between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five who could spin heads on the beach. A woman is any other female. We can be friendly with women, but not with girls."

We both had protective feelings toward our moms, talked to them about anything, were nice to all their friends. I had women friends on my ambulance squad. He could lay a mother lode of personal problems on this one female professor he had who was fiftyish. I really couldn't argue with him.

"Let's face it," he'd said. "We're scuzwads. We're dogs."

I'd broken up with many girls who said they wanted to stay friends, but we never did for long. I joked about it, but people say there's seriousness in all jokes, and this one joke had come out of me in a glurt that night Ronnie and I were cruising: "I can be friends with any girl ... if I'm banging her, too."

I just had no clue what to say to Cora. Out came, "What do we do first? Play Barbies?"

She laughed, Goddess of Manners that she was, then turned to the water, still fooling with her focus wheel. The camera was becoming more like a third arm, something that gave her power, I decided. She would never have tried to lure me closer without having all the dials on the lens to spaz over. I wasn't a champ at being friends with girls, but she wasn't a champ at being friends with anyone. It was a ballsy statement for her.

"You really want to be my friend?" I asked.

She turned sideways and nodded, staring at my sneakers.

"Really?"

"Yes."

"You have to pass the test. I don't let just anyone be my friend."

She took a step backwards, like my bloody-hell thoughts about sex and girls were seeping out of my brain and sending bad images into her head. She'd trusted me before this. I didn't want that to change.

I asked quickly, "Can you come with me in my car after we eat, take pictures of what I tell you to, not ask any questions, and keep it a secret from Rain and Owen?"

TYLER PING
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2002
1:10
P.M.
SHAHZAD'S BEDROOM

H
AMDANI HAD BEEN QUIET AT LUNCH
, but he could get quiet and moody whenever Hodji was leaving town, and I let him toy with his food without harassing him. I wondered if he had more thoughts about how to confirm that VaporStrike was in New Jersey, but I didn't ask.

After heading back upstairs, he fell asleep on his bed, and I went to my room and surfed for tularemia again, hoping to find another dead animal. I got nothing. I tried various searches on dead animals that could disintegrate in a matter of hours, but it's hard to know how to word that in a surf sentence.

Hamdani's asthmatic snores called out to me, and I went to his room and sat down quietly at his terminal. I was all too aware of how he was less mentally screwed up lately than I was, and how I had come to rely on him to do all our dirty work. Hamdani had leashed Omar and VaporStrike, but at the moment the screen blinked sleepily:

OmarLoggi is not online. VaporStrike is not online.

I got a twitch to surf with Dog Leash for Omar's former log-in, back when he poisoned the water in Trinity Falls and we were chasing him around in the days just before the raid.

I typed "Omar0324" and clicked on "leash." Five minutes passed. This program searches through every server personally hosting chat software between here and Tokyo, looking for that log-in. After another minute or two of listening to Hamdani cut logs, I suddenly thought I was dreaming, too, as this popped up:

ALERT
: Omar0324 is Online:
www.tijuanaprime.com/chat/hodgpog-hall/%853.18.05%/
Enter l1:07am

Dumbwad, Jeezus.
Omar was arrogant enough to think we would never look for his old ID, believing he wouldn't have the nerve to use it. I clicked on the link, glancing at Hamdani. I wouldn't wake him up until I had proven that my worth to USIC was as good as his. They were conversing in some strange language that my program recognized as Nobiin, some minor language of Egypt. I ran it through our translator and came up with rough English of

Omar0324:
Tried all the Dr. Scholl's products and none of them is adequate for this job.

HotKeys:
Have you tried a physician?

HotKeys. This log-in was brand new. I wondered quickly if the "hot" referred to some germ involved in the creation of FireFall, making the new guy a scientist, or if the "keys" referred to a keypad, making him a computer specialist. Hodji had predicted that Omar might try to gain more control over his online communications with a professional who could increase security and also counterspy.

Omar0324:
See a doctor in this tired and dusty neighborhood? I would as soon approach a witch doctor. At least I would not get further infected from unclean utensils in that case.

HotKeys:
It is only an infected bunion. You could get an antibiotic.

Omar0324:
I will ask Pasco to help out if it doesn't clear up. How is your work going? Did you find me any answers yet?

Pasco. They had all sorts of new friends, it seemed. Pasco, possibly a doctor, and HotKeys, a probable computer geek, from this session, and Chancellor, the independently wealthy scientist from the last. Even though none of this spelled out any certainties, Hodji would love this stuff. I wished he would hurry up, finish with his meeting, and call. And I wished hellfire upon Omar and his infected goddamn bunion. The guy works tirelessly to poison hundreds of people while looking for an antibiotic for his stink-foot.

HotKeys:
I am working on your answers. I will catch you some v-spies if you have any. Your hundred thousand euros will be well spent—that much I can assure you.

With that, I shook Hamdani to wake up. I couldn't help it. ShadowStrike was obviously paying some guy a hundred thousand euros to try to expose us, and USIC wasn't paying us shit to expose ShadowStrike. Hamdani was almost immediately standing, staring over my shoulder while gulping oxygen into his chest. Finally, he wheezed asthmatically.

"I should have stayed in Pakistan where I was paid well and remained in adequate health," he croaked. "Allah must be angry with me about something."

"Nah. Allah just wanted you to meet me," I joked, though my insides were so blazing over this payment information that I was ready to put my face through the wall.

HotKeys:
Chancellor asked me to pass on a message to you concerning his swans.

"Shit, I was expecting more monkeys or something akin to them," I said. "What does a swan have to do with—"

Hamdani's hand landed on my shoulder, and he said almost as soon as it appeared, "'Swans' would be a code word. Let us translate carefully."

Omar0324:
Hurry. I must leave here soon.

HotKeys:
He says their health has been restored and they are ready for the lake. He says he bolstered gray swan's food to see if it matters.

Omar0324:
You mean #16 food. He may die of food tampering, but I am anxious to see if he endures.

A minute passed like an eternity before Hamdani plopped onto the bed. I watched him hold his stomach and wipe spit off his bottom lip. I was glad I had woken him up. This turned into what I call a "butt-muscle moment," where you can either totally squeeze or totally shit.

"Send it to Hodji," he said. "Tell him it appears that ShadowStrike is holding hostages and is experimenting on them with designer germs and drugs. Perhaps he already knows. Perhaps we need to forgive him for going to Mexico."

It was my first experience with code words, but Hamdani had been doing this for years. I watched him, amazed. And ready to hurl. Sometimes there's nothing to do but turn, type, and hit
SEND.

OWEN EBERMAN
SATURDAY, MAY 4, 2002
1:30
P.M.
PORCH

A
FTER BIG HEADACHES
, we have these things we've come to call aftershocks, which I was having lots of. They're like your headache, only they're gone thirty seconds later, and you can get them every twenty minutes or so. I didn't eat any lunch except what Marg forced me to, and I got it down by taking it to the porch and sharing half with the nanny goat. The Professor was nowhere to be seen.

Sheep was a grin. She was bigger and wider and fatter than the Professor, and her
baa
was lower and louder, more like "
Fww-ay
." The goats reminded me of Rain and me. The loud, dominating female forces the unobtrusive male to look for quiet places to hide out. Sheep was happy to share my cheeseburger and some thoughts.

"You weren't around this morning to hear me tell your boyfriend that I want a meaningful life."

"
Fww-ay.
"

"It used to bother my mom a lot when parents said, 'Raising my kids is the most important job in the world.'"

"
Fww-ay.
"

"She said they were being unwise. We had a neighborhood full of parents where the mom stayed home and gave up everything to raise the kids. Lots of those kids were teenagers when we moved in, so we can see what happened. It didn't make them vice president or Gandhi or the inventor of a cancer cure."

"
Fww-ay.
"

"They just grew up, gave up everything, and threw their lives into
their
kids. It's kind of like the mayflies, ya know?"

"
Fww-ay.
"

"What fun is that?"

"
Fww-ay.
"

"Anyway. If you knew Rain, you would understand why I never, ever allowed her to get into my thoughts during the Dreaded Fifteen. I could so easily fall in love with her, even though I hate her sometimes. I think that's
why
I hate her sometimes."

"
Fww-ay.
"

"She wants that normal life so bad. She could so suck me dry ... oops, bad pun. And it's the weirdest, because I would love to find out if I'm supposed to be, like, a Gandhi. Or a Nelson Mandela. I want to do something before I die that's so outstanding that my great-great-grandkids will know I was there for them. That's what
I
call meaningful living. She wants to be chairman of the PTA. And yet I'm always secretly looking at her like she's stronger than me. What is up? Is there something
wrong
with me? I mean, beyond the obvious?"

I took off my baseball cap and rubbed my itchy nubs.

"
Baa-AA-baa
." The Professor came strutting around from the side of the house. His bell went
ding, ding.
Sheep's bell didn't
ding,
I realized. Sheep backed down from me, told him "Fww-
ay,
" and proceeded to ram him in the side. She didn't want him near me, and he shied away.

"I totally understand, buddy. These women are rough."

I went into the TV room to watch Aleese Holman, a woman, perhaps, but at least not a typical one. She reminded me more of my mom. They were both do-gooders, though Aleese also happened to have an enormous streak of ballsy. Okay, if it was too arrogant to think of becoming a Mandela or a Gandhi, maybe I could become some guy version of Aleese Holman and try to prove that war is wrong. There was a recliner on the far end of this posh new couch, and I pushed the button and said "
Ahhhh
" as I went back.

Rain must have crashed out on her bed upstairs, and I celebrated my aloneness by kissing the remote. I hit
PLAY
,
and a couple of lines showed up on the screen: "June 1984: In Which Aleese Talks about American Soil."

As the footage rolled, you could tell by a close-up of her profile that Aleese was in her early twenties. That's only about six years older than Cora is now, so it was easy to see the likenesses and the differences. She and Cora had the same color hair and almost the same features, but Cora is pretty stunning, and her mother was very muscular around the neck and shoulders, with her wavy hair cropped off short so she wouldn't have to take care of it. But she had that same porcelain skin that could blush rosy pink, and Aleese was blushing.

She was sitting with her knees up, and a baby rested on her knees.

I recognized the voice from behind the camera as a younger Jeremy Ireland, and he said in his thick British, "Tell us what you're doing with a baby, Aleese."