Shadow Puppets (13 page)

“Our tickets—should be to separate destinations.”

He stopped packing and looked at her. “I see,” he said. “You get what you want from me, and then you walk away.”

She laughed nervously. “Well, yes,” she said. “You’ve been telling me this whole time that it’s more dangerous for us to travel together.”

“And now that you’ll have my baby in you, you don’t need to be with me any more,” said Bean. He was still smiling, but she knew that beneath the jest there was true suspicion.

“Whatever the Wiggins do, all hell is going to break loose,” said Petra. “I’ve memorized all your dead drops and you’ve memorized all of mine.”

“I
gave
you all of yours,” said Bean.

“Let’s get back together in a week or so,” said Petra. “If I’m like my mother, I’ll be puking my guts out by then.”

“If the implantation is successful.”

“I’ll miss you every moment,” said Petra.

“God help me, but I’ll miss you too.”

She knew what a painful, frightening thing that was for Bean. To allow himself to love someone so much that he would actually miss her, that was no small matter for him. And the two other women he had allowed himself to love with all his heart had been murdered.

“I won’t let anybody hurt our baby,” she said.

He thought for a moment, and then his face softened. “That baby is probably the best protection you could have.”

She understood and smiled. “No, they won’t kill me till they see what our baby turns out like,” she said. “But that’s no protection from being kidnapped and held until the child is born.”

“As long as you and the baby are alive, I’ll come and get you.”

“That’s the thing that frightens me,” said Petra. “That we might be the bait they use to set a trap for you.”

“We’re looking too far ahead,” said Bean. “They aren’t going to catch us. You or me. And if they do, well, we’ll deal with that.”

They were packed. They both went over the room one more time to make sure they were leaving nothing behind, no sign they had ever been there. Then they left for Women’s Hospital and the child who waited for them there, a bundle of genes wrapped in a few undifferentiated cells, eager to implant themselves in a womb, to start to draw nutrients from a mother’s blood, to begin to divide and distinguish themselves into heart and bowel, hands and feet, eyes and ears, mouth and brain.

Theresa woke up when John Paul got out of bed to pee at four
A.M.
It worried her that he couldn’t make it through the night anymore. He
was still a little young to be having prostate problems.

But it wasn’t her husband’s slackening bladder capacity that kept her awake. It was the memo from Peter informing them that Achilles had done absolutely nothing but what he was supposed to do.

This was impossible. Nobody does exactly what they’re supposed to and nothing else. Achilles should have had some friend, some ally, some contact whom he needed to notify that he was out of China and safe. He had a network of informants and agents, and as he showed when he hopped from Russia to India to China, he was always one step ahead of everybody. The Chinese finally wised up to his pattern and short-circuited it, but that didn’t mean Achilles didn’t have his next move planned. So why hadn’t he done anything to set it in motion?

There were more possibilities than the ones Peter listed, of course. Maybe Achilles had a means of bypassing the electromagnetic shield that surrounded the Ribeirão Preto compound. Of course, he couldn’t have brought such a device with him when he was rescued, or it would have shown up in the search that was conducted during his first bath in Ribeirão. So someone would have to have brought it to him. And Peter was convinced that no such device could exist. Maybe he was right.

Maybe Achilles’s next move was something he planned to do entirely alone.

Maybe there was something he had that he was able to smuggle into Brazil inside his body. Did the surveillance cameras show him, perhaps, combing through his bowel movements? Peter must surely have checked for that.

While she lay there thinking, John Paul had come back from the bathroom. But now she noticed that he had not resumed snoring.

“You’re awake?” she asked.

“Sorry I woke you.”

“I can’t sleep anyway,” she said.

“The Beast?”

“We’re missing something,” said Theresa. “He hasn’t suddenly become a loyal servant of the Hegemony.”

“I’m not going to get back to sleep either,” said John Paul. He got up and padded in bare feet to his computer. She heard him typing and knew that he was checking his mail first.

Busy work, but it was better than lying here staring at the dark ceiling. She got up also, took her desk from the table, and brought it back to bed, where she began checking her own email.

One of the benefits of being the mother of the Hegemon was that she didn’t actually have to answer the tedious mail—she could forward it on to one of Peter’s secretaries to deal with, since it consisted mostly of tedious attempts of people trying to get her to use her supposed influence with Peter to get him to do something that was not within his power to do, was illegal even if he could do it, and which he would certainly not do even if it were legal.

It left her with very few pieces of mail that she needed to deal with personally.

Most of it could be answered with a few sentences and she dealt with it quickly, if a bit sleepily.

She was about to shut down her desk and try again to get back to sleep when a new piece of mail came in.

What was this? Some religious fanatic? But the address was her most private one, used only by John Paul, Peter, and a handful of people she actually liked and knew well.

So who sent it?

She skipped to the bottom. No signature. The message was short.

That was the complete text of the message. It was really annoying, because it didn’t sound like anyone she knew. She didn’t
have
friends who sent letters as empty and pointless as this one. Gossip about a party. Somebody hoping to marry somebody else.

But before she could make any progress on figuring it out, another piece of mail came in.

Another biblical quote. Same person? Bound to be.

But the message was not chatty at all. In fact, it continued the scriptural motif from the subject line. It had nothing to do with the previous message.

Theresa got out of bed. John Paul had to see these letters. They meant something, she knew that, especially arriving together like this. The number of people who knew this address was very, very small. And not one of them would write either of these letters.

Therefore either this address had been compromised—but who would bother? She was only the mother of the Hegemon—or these letters were meant to convey a message. And it was from someone who thought that even at this address, her mail might be intercepted by someone else.

Who was that paranoid, but Bean?

Big oaf, that’s who he said he was. Bean, definitely.

“John Paul,” she said as she padded up behind him.

“This is so strange,” he said.

She assumed he was going to tell her about a similar pair of messages, so she waited.

“The Chinese have imposed a completely absurd law in India. About rocks! People aren’t allowed to carry rocks without a permit! Anyone caught with rocks is subject to arrest—and they’re actually enforcing it. Have they lost their minds?”

She found it impossible to be interested in the idiocies of China’s policies in India. “John Paul, I have to show you something.”

“Sure,” he said, turning to look at the desk she set down on the table next to his computer.

“Read these letters,” she said.

He glanced at one, and before she could imagine he had actually read the whole thing, he flipped to the next one. “Yeah, I got them too,” he said. “A dullbob and a crenchee. You shouldn’t let these things get to you.”

“No,” she said. “Look at them closer. They came to my private address. I think they’re from Bean.”

He looked up at her, then turned to his own computer and called up his own copies of the letters. “Me too,” he said. “I didn’t notice that. Just looked like junk mail, but nobody uses this address.”

“The subject lines—”

“Yes,” said John Paul. “Both scriptures, even though the first one—”

“Yes, and the first one is about left and right hands, and the second one is from the parable or whatever it is when Jesus speaks to the people on his right hand and the people on his left hand.”

“So they both have left and right hands,” said John Paul.

“Two parts to the same message.”

“Could be,” he said.

“The scriptures are all twisted,” said Theresa.

“You Mormons learn your scriptures,” said John Paul. “We Catholics regard that as a really Protestant thing to do.”

“The real scripture says, I was naked, and you clothed me, I was homeless or something like that and you took me in.”

“I was a stranger and you took me in,” said John Paul.

“So you did read scripture.”

“I woke up once during the homily.”

“It’s word games,” said Theresa. “I think the second ‘took you in’ means ‘fooled you,’ not ‘provided shelter for you.’”

By now John Paul was studying the other letter. “This one’s geopolitical. Fine China. India ink. And it ends with ‘blow up’ in all caps.”

“‘Tie the knot,’” said Theresa, looking at the first letter. “The ‘tie’ could mean somebody from Thailand.’”

“That’s stretching it a little,” said John Paul, chuckling.

“It’s all word games,” said Theresa. “‘Power to bite my heel’—that has to refer to the Beast, don’t you think? Achilles, who could only be hurt in the heel.”

“And Achilles was rescued by a Thai—Suriyawong.”

“So now you think ‘tie’ might be ‘Thai’?”

“Yes, you told me so.”

“The Thai
thinks
he’s rescuing this person from a party. Suri rescues Achilles, but Achilles is keeping a secret. He would blow up if he knew.”

Now John Paul was looking at the second letter. “A time to run like hell. Is this a warning?”

“That’s what the last line has to be. She who has ears, let her hear. Use your feet. Because he comes to bring not peace but the sword.”

“Mine says ‘He who has ears to hear.’”

“You’re right, they weren’t identical.”

“Who’s the ‘I’ in these scriptures?”

“Jesus.”

“No, no, I mean, what does the message mean by ‘I’? I think it’s Achilles. I think it’s written as if Achilles were talking. I took you in because you were foolish. Thief in the night, when we aren’t looking for him. We’re stupid because we think he’s not coming but he’s here at the door.”

“A time to run like hell,” said Theresa.

John Paul leaned back and closed his eyes. “A warning from Bean, maybe. Suri thought he was rescuing Achilles but it was exactly what Achilles wanted him to do. And the other letter—that reference to stones, that has to be Petra. They sent us a pair of messages that fit together.”

And now it all fell into place. “This is what’s been bothering me,” said Theresa. “This is why I couldn’t sleep.”

“You didn’t get these letters till just now,” said John Paul.

“No, the thing that was keeping me awake, it was how Achilles has done nothing since he got here except his official duties. I was thinking that even though he was short-circuited by the Chinese arresting him, it made no sense for him not to make contact with his network. But what if the Chinese didn’t arrest him at all? What if that was a setup? ‘You took me in but I was not naked.’”

John Paul nodded. “And I took
you
in, because you were foolish.”

“So the whole point of this was to get Achilles inside the compound.”

“But so what?” said John Paul. “We’ve been suspicious of him anyway.”

“But this is more than suspicion,” said Theresa. “Or they wouldn’t have sent it.”

“There’s no evidence here. Nothing that would persuade Peter.”

“Yes there is,” said Theresa. “Hot soup.”

He looked at her blankly.

“From Ender’s jeesh. Han Tzu. Inside China. He would know. He’s the authority. He ‘spilled everything.’ Definitely a setup.”

“OK,” said John Paul, “so we have the evidence. We know Achilles wasn’t really a prisoner, he wanted to be taken.”

“Don’t you see? This means he really understands Peter. He knew that Peter couldn’t resist rescuing him. Maybe he even knew that Bean and Petra would leave. Think about it—we all knew how dangerous Achilles could be, so maybe he was counting on that.”

“Everybody closest to Peter left, except us—”

“And Peter
tried
to get us to go.”

“And Suriyawong.”

“And Achilles has coopted him.”

“Or Suri has Achilles convinced he has.”

They’d been back and forth on that one before. “Whatever,” said Theresa. “Simply by arriving here, Achilles has succeeded in isolating Peter. Then he’s spent his whole time being Mr. Nice Guy, doing
everything right—and making friends with everybody while he’s at it. Everything’s going smoothly. Except—”

“Except that he’s in a position to kill Peter.”

“If he can do it in a way that doesn’t implicate him.”

“Ready to step in, as Peter’s assistant, and say, ‘Everything’s going smoothly at the Hegemony, we’ll just keep things going till a new Hegemon is chosen,’ and long before they can choose one, he’s compromised all the codes, he’s neutralized the army, and China is completely rid of the Hegemony once and for all. They’ll get advance word of one of Suri’s missions and they wipe out our brave little army and—”

“Why wipe it out, if it already obeys you?” said Theresa.

“We don’t know that Suri—”

“What do you think would happen if Peter tried to leave?” she asked.

John Paul thought about that. “Achilles would take over while he was gone. There’s a long tradition of
that
maneuver.”

“And just as long a tradition of declaring him sick and keeping anyone from having access to him.”

“Well, he can’t restrict access to Peter as long as
we’re
here,” said John Paul.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“Get your passport,” said Theresa.

“We can’t pack anything.”

“Wipe the computers.”