Shift: A Novel (44 page)

Where are you, Tommy?

The cry was so urgent that Chandler looked up at the School Book Depository. The anguish was like a beacon drawing his eyes to the sixth floor. The southeast corner. The window. He saw an outline low above the sill, as if someone was kneeling just behind it. He couldn’t see the face, though, because it was concealed behind a—

He heard the
pfft
and tried to jump to the left, but it was too late. Something punched his abdomen just below the ribs, hard enough to knock the wind from him. Spots danced in front of his eyes and he braced himself for the numbing effect. Instead the spots danced faster, gained size, intensity, color, and he realized Melchior hadn’t shot him with a tranq. He’d shot him with LSD—a
lot
of LSD. Chandler fought to get control of the trip, but the world got brighter and brighter and louder and louder. Jesus, he thought. Melchior must have injected him with thousands of hits. He’d never felt anything like this before.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, looked up in confusion to find Melchior beside him.

“Come on, old buddy. Let’s get you out of the street.”

“What did you …” He couldn’t get the words out. The ground was churning beneath him and it was hard to stay upright. He clutched Melchior’s arm for support. People’s thoughts knifed through his brain, a thousand Technicolor razor blades cutting his mind to mush. Someone was thinking of the case of Ken-L Ration he needed to get on the way home, and someone else was wondering how to tell her boyfriend
she was pregnant. An eleven-year-old boy was dreaming of being the first black superhero and a forty-seven-year-old woman was wondering what would happen if she put a little dill in the mashed potato salad, or a little ground glass.

But none of the minds was more potent than Caspar’s. Chandler saw him in the orphanage again, looking up at Melchior adoringly, saw him as a little boy in his home in New Orleans with his mother and stepfather and brothers, nervously sitting apart from the group, knowing he was different from them. Saw him as a thirteen-year-old in New York City facing a truant officer, a seventeen-year-old enlisting in the Marines, saw him in California, Japan, Russia, England, Finland, America again, rafting through the South like a latter-day Huck Finn until he ended up in Dallas, dressed all in black with a rifle in his hand, telling Marina to hurry up and take the picture. So much travel for such a young soul! He’d seen half the world before most men had finished college. And everywhere he went, he was looking for someone to love him, and someone to kill.

And still there was more: Caspar in Mexico at the Soviet Embassy. Caspar in a Dallas hospital looking down on his newborn daughter. Caspar looking through the scope of a rifle at Melchior at this very moment and not knowing it was Melchior.

“Here you go, Chandler.”

He felt something in his hand, looked down to see Melchior wrapping his fingers around the handle of a cane. No, not a cane: the umbrella. Despite the fact that it came from Melchior, he leaned on it gratefully. There were red spots on Melchior’s fingers and he focused on these. If he could just make these spots go away, he told himself, he could get control of the trip. But a moment later he realized the world had in fact stopped spinning, that the voices and pictures slicing through his brain had subsided to an indistinct murmur. He
was
in control, or at least as much in control as a mahout astride a seven-ton bull elephant. But still the stains remained on Melchior’s fingers.

He looked up at his enemy’s face.

“What have you done?”

Melchior peered into his eyes. “Don’t you know?” His eyes opened wide then, and for a moment it seemed his mind did as well. Chandler
saw Melchior standing in front of a sharply dressed bald man sitting behind a highly polished desk, saw Caspar on his knees in front of Melchior, saw BC fall on the floor at Melchior’s feet, saw Melchior stab him in the heart and drag the body—

“C’mon, Chandler,” Melchior said.
“Push.”

Chandler pushed, harder than he’d ever done. Melchior staggered, took a step back. His eyes closed, but his mind opened wider. Chandler had seen the beginning of his incarnation as Melchior. Now he would see the end.

He beat Song
to the airstrip in north Dallas, parked BC’s Rambler in the hangar she’d rented, and paced the concrete for the next ninety minutes. Just after nine, Song’s Gulfstream finally taxied through the wide-open doors. Melchior couldn’t help but be amazed. A little more than a decade ago, Song had been a homeless runaway in Korea, caught in the middle of a proxy war fought by the newly christened superpowers, with 500 million Red Chinese thrown in for good measure. Now she ruled her own empire, not just of girls, but of intelligence services and a series of shrewd investments that had boosted her net worth to millions of dollars. Ivelitsch had told him: she was worth a lot more than a few compromising pictures or a roll in the hay. She could bankroll them for years, until their own schemes began to pay off. But now Melchior had to ask himself: was it worth the price?

Chul-moo killed the engines and the hangar went silent. The hatch opened and a staircase descended from the fuselage with a nearly silent whine of hydraulics. The fur collar on Song’s jacket was more suited to DC than Dallas at this time of year, and she pulled at it as she descended into the stale air of the hangar. By way of greeting, all she said was:

“Have you heard from Pavel?”

“He docked at No Name Key about twenty minutes ago. They’re in the process of moving the bomb from Giancana’s boat to ours. They should be ready to head north by ten.”

“And Naz is with Garza?”

Melchior nodded. “What about Everton?”

Song’s smile was tired but, underneath that, mischievous. “Like I told you: second and fourth Thursday of every month.” Then, more seriously: “How did your meeting with Caspar go?”

Melchior was silent a moment. “Don’t worry,” he said finally. “He’ll play his part.”

She was on the ground now. She reached up and adjusted Melchior’s wig slightly, let her hands sit on his lapels while she inspected his appearance like a mother about to send her child off to his first day of school.

“The whole world’s going to be looking for you.”

Melchior shook his head. “I don’t exist anymore. With Everton and Jarrell out of the picture, Caspar’s the only person who could ID me, and he’ll be gone soon enough.”

“Gone?”

“Giancana’s going to call in a favor.”

“You think he’ll do that after he finds out you double-crossed him in Cuba?”

“He has to. There are enough bread crumbs between him and Caspar that he’ll face indictment as an accomplice if he doesn’t shut Caspar up.”

“Melchior.” Song’s voice softened, but only slightly. “It’s
Caspar.”

He shook his head. “There’s no Caspar. There never was. There was just Lee, and there’s not much of him left anymore. I’ll be doing him a favor.”

Song took this in. Then, hardening again: “What about the Wiz?”

“Scheider took care of him for us. His brain is fried. He doesn’t know himself anymore, let alone anyone else. Trust me, he’s not long for this world.”

Again Song paused, studying Melchior. There was something different about him. Something she couldn’t put her finger on, but she didn’t like it.

“I don’t understand why we have to go through with it if you’re not actually planning to work with Giancana. We’ve got Orpheus. We’ve got the bomb. What does killing—”

But Melchior was shaking his head.

“We’re not going to kill him.”

“I don’t understand. You just said Caspar was in play.”

“Like you said: it’s
Caspar
. He couldn’t make this shot with a bazooka, and I’ve seen his rifle. It’s a goddamn mail-order antique. Plus there’s a tree blocking his view of the road. He’ll fire, he’ll miss, he’ll be taken into custody, Giancana will have him taken care of. End of story.”

Song shook her head incredulously. “You’re betting a lot on a bad shot. Never mind the fact that a man’s life is at stake. If Giancana doesn’t take Caspar out, if the Bureau finds out about his CIA connections, this could start a scandal that brings down the government. Why don’t you just call the cops and get him picked up?”

“I call the cops and they know it’s a conspiracy, they’ll dig that much harder. Caspar’s got to fuck this up on his own.”

“Melchior, think this through. Caspar’s Company connections are bad enough. But if his ties to KGB come to light, this could kick off World War Three, for God’s sake.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Melchior’s voice went up a notch, and Song had to work to keep her face calm. “I have no doubt Caspar’s past is going to come out. It’s there for anyone to see. I mean, Jesus Christ. A teenager running around spouting a Communist line about the coming revolution, but still joining the Civil Air Patrol and the Marines. A recruit whose boot camp nickname is Oswaldkovitch, who gets posted to the base of the U2, the single most valuable weapon in the U.S. espionage arsenal. A soldier who announces his intention to defect and provide military secrets to the Soviet Union, who formally renounces his citizenship yet conveniently forgets to bring his passport when he does so, who’s set up in a luxury apartment in the Soviet Union and marries a girl he’s known for barely a month and is allowed by the Soviet authorities to return to America, where, after a hey-how’s-it-going interview with the FBI, he’s left free to run around taking potshots at retired generals and skip across the border to Mexico to get a visa to knock off Fidel Castro. An idiot might try to chalk this up to a broken personality, but anyone with half a brain can see the lifelong construction of a cover—a boy with the outward appearance of a Marxist, but who’s really the Company’s attempt to get a sleeper inside KGB, and who might well have been doubled by them. Do you really think I’m so stupid I didn’t think anyone would notice all—of—
that?”

Melchior’s voice grew louder and louder as he spoke, until Song was
genuinely disturbed. Where was all this anger coming from, and at whom was it directed?

“Calm down, Melchior. I didn’t mean—”

“They’ll find it, Song! Every last bit of evidence revealing Caspar’s ties to U.S. and Russian intelligence—real things, plus a lot of stuff that’s probably totally innocent but that’ll come to seem suspicious in hindsight. Someone—a G-man, a Company agent who’s never heard of the Wiz Kids, a nosy reporter—somebody’ll root out everything and bring it to light, and the government will either suppress it or deny it because, like you said, the scandal could bring down administrations or kick off a nuclear war. Do you understand what I’m saying, Song?
We
don’t have to cover anything up, because the goddamn government of the United States of America will do it
for
us.”

Melchior’s hands were balled in fists and his face had gone beet red. The sweat rolling out from beneath the wig had thickened into streams that stained his collar.

“But Melchior,” Song said, grabbing his left hand. “What if he makes the sh—”

She stopped. Turning Melchior’s hand over, she opened his fingers, saw something that looked like a handful of seeds. He spread his fingers and the seeds fell open in a long oval, revealing themselves to be a string of beads. No, not beads.

Skulls.

Song looked up at Melchior, her confusion giving way to genuine horror. Not fear, but a sense of betrayal so profound that she couldn’t find words for it.

“Then he makes the shot,” Melchior said, and he slipped the necklace over Song’s head while she just stood there, frozen in place.

“A gift,” he said. “From Caspar.”

“Melchior?” Song’s right hand touched the beads on her chest. “No.”

“Don’t you understand, Song? History doesn’t care about individuals, let alone individual actions. It only cares about symbols. It’s not the shot that matters. It’s not who pulls the trigger, or who it hits, or even if it hits. It’s what we can make it
mean.”

Song blinked her eyes as if she was coming out of a trance. “My God. You
want
him to make it. You want him to kill the president.” She
started to say something else, but then her eyes saw the knife in Melchior’s hand. “You—you can’t be serious.”

“I’m sorry, Song. Your entire career has been built around your ability to play one side off against the other. A thousand intelligence agents could identify you, and who knows how many more have bedded you.”

Song tugged at the skulls around her neck, but it was as if the cord that held them together was made of piano wire. She stepped backward, but the staircase was directly behind her. She stumbled and the long string of skulls clacked against the metal treads with a sound like knucklebones shaking in a rattle, then she caught herself and stood on the bottom step.

“I don’t understand. The whole thing—the partnership between you and Ivelitsch, going rogue, it was all my idea.”

Melchior nodded. “It was. I can’t deny it. And my career in intelligence was the Wiz’s creation. But if I’m going to make this thing work, I’ve got to start making decisions on my own.”

Song took another step up and back.

“Pavel was right about you. Your motivations are too complex. Too messy.”

“Don’t be naive, Song. Pavel wanted you out of the picture long before I did. Triumvirates never work, especially when two of them are alpha males and the third’s a beautiful woman.”

“Melchior, please,” she said as she climbed backward up the staircase. “I have money. Connections. Resources. This plane. Houses in—”

“Pavel’s made me aware of all your assets.” Melchior shook his head. “You should have made a will, Song. As it is, all your property will pass to your brother.”

“My—” Song whirled around, only to bounce off something barring the door. She stumbled backward, barely managing to catch herself from falling over the rail. She looked back at the door, at the figure standing there. Her face was pale with confusion and fear.

“Chul-moo? You’re not—” She turned back to Melchior. “He’s not my brother.”

Melchior shrugged. “Identity, like property, or history for that matter, is just a matter of the right documents. Chul-moo is as much your brother as the boy who died in Korea.”