The Company of the Dead (53 page)

She held the phone away from her for a moment, fuming, and caught Reid’s eye.

“What?” he said.

She rolled her eyes and handed him the phone. She looked across at the prisoner and shook her head. “What
were
you thinking?”

There was a sudden brisk movement at the corner of her eye. Why was Reid holding his pistol?

“You fucking bitch.”

“Reid?”

“You fucking conniving
bitch
.” Reid held the gun centred on her chest. He closed the door and walked back to the table. He perched on its edge. “Evidence control just came through with the partial print off Kennedy’s gun, honey, and it’s yours.” His voice was a snarled rasp.

“Are you insane? Of course my prints are on it. I’m the one who disarmed him.”

He lashed out at her chair with an abrupt kick. She landed on the floor, her legs twisted beneath her. He was standing over her with the pistol in her face. He kicked her again. His boot smashed into her hip, sending a searing jolt of pain down her leg and up her spine.

“I’m talking about the gun from New York. The gun from Osakatown.”

Hot tears streamed down her face. “That’s impossible. You
know
that’s impossible.”

“Is it?” He reached for the phone again, his eyes never leaving her.

“I’m being set up.” She tasted tears and blood in her mouth and she was crying and she was furious with herself and terrified beyond any previous concept of the sensation. “Framed like Joseph.”

“Your precious, fucking
Joseph
.
You
copied the serial numbers,
you
faked the whole fucking thing.” He dialled a number and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Bring your men in now. This shindig is over.”

He slammed down the phone. He groaned and dropped to the floor.

The prisoner was standing above him. He had Reid’s pistol in one hand and the ashtray in the other. The ashtray had a clump of blood-tangled hair on its scored edge. He looked down at Malcolm and said, “Are you okay, miss?”

She looked over at Reid. His face was pressed against the floor, a trickle of blood was pooling near his mouth. An ugly bruise was forming over the base of his skull. His chest moved with shallow gasps.

She looked back at the prisoner; he was swaying a little in the tide of his exertion. He kept the gun aimed at a point just beyond her.

He said, “Are you alright?”

She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. Her leg ached and there was a dull throb where Reid’s boot had connected. She wanted to vomit. “I’m okay.”

“I’ll need your gun.”

She patted herself down awkwardly. Her skirt was heaped up above her knees and she had to struggle to remove her jacket. She said, “It’s in the outer office.”

Reid was starting to move, his fingers scrabbling at the cement floor. The man who had been her prisoner reached for Reid’s cuffs. With one eye still on her, he twisted Reid’s wrists up and locked them behind his back. Reid groaned.

She looked up and said, “What are you going to do now, Mr Morgan?”

The tac agent rapped on the interrogation room door. The door swung open.

Lightholler hesitated at the entrance and a shove from behind propelled him into the room.

Agent Reid was gagged and cuffed to the desk. The lower part of his face, caked with fresh blood, was bound by a roll of bandages. Agent Malcolm was on her knees.

Morgan, unfettered, held a gun at the back of her neck. Reid saw them and let out a stifled howl.

Lightholler stepped back. The tac was right behind him, reaching for his weapon.

“Hold it right there.” Morgan’s voice was gravel.

Reid bellowed, kicking at the desk.

“Easy, bud. Relax.” The tac had his hand on the holster.

Lightholler slammed a heel where the tac’s shin should have been, overshot and tumbled. The tac glanced down at him and drew his pistol.

The room shuddered explosively. Lightholler was deafened. He saw Morgan’s lips move. “Drop it.”

The request was redundant. The tac agent’s forearm was torn flesh and bone. He was staring at it incredulously. He said, “Shit,” as his pistol clattered on the floor.

Lightholler booted it to the far corner of the room.

Reid fell silent.

“Oh,
fuck
.” The tac agent was bent over, nursing his arm.

“Get those off.” Morgan was pointing at Lightholler’s wrists.

“
Jesus Christ
,” the tac agent howled.

“Captain?” Morgan urged.

Lightholler struggled to his knees and reached for the agent’s key chain. The agent, in an oddly obliging manoeuvre, shifted his wounded elbow to facilitate the exchange. Lightholler removed the keys. The question roared in his brain.
What the hell happened to Morgan?

The historian’s pale eyes were still watery blue but they fixed towards some undefinable distance. His face was lined and carved from steel. Possessed.

“Can you manage, Captain?” Morgan asked in his new voice.

Lightholler nodded. He fumbled with the key, slipping it into the lock. A twist and he was free. He rubbed at his wrists, still dazed.

“Captain?”

Lightholler looked up. He was remembering the last time he’d seen Morgan, in the
Shenandoah
’s hangar. What had happened since? Where was Hardas?

“Would you mind cuffing the agent?”

The tac had his injured arm pressed close to his chest. Lightholler hesitated, read Morgan’s glance, and proceeded to apply the cuffs. The agent growled his anguish.

Lightholler got to his feet and retrieved the other pistol.

“We have to get out of here,” Morgan said. “This piece of shit,” he gestured towards Reid with a nod, “just called in some backup.”

Despite a thousand questions, Lightholler shifted the tac agent to one of the chairs while Morgan attended to Agent Malcolm.

“I’m sorry about that.” Morgan was extending an arm towards her. She waved him away angrily and rose to her feet. “Take a seat.” His gun was now trained back on her.

She dropped into one of the chairs.

Reid was making feral noises at the back of his throat while the tac moaned a low keening lament. Blood pooled on the dirty floor. Morgan tugged the bandages away from Reid’s mouth.

Reid tried to spit.

“Who’s coming?” Morgan asked.

“Girl scouts.” Reid’s saliva was more formed, it splattered against Morgan’s shoes.

Morgan turned. “Any ideas, Captain?”

Lightholler stared back wordlessly.

Morgan’s eyes narrowed. He looked over at Malcolm, who now sat with her hands under her thighs, rocking gently. “She can get us airborne.”

“Don’t you do a
fucking
thing for them,” Reid said through gritted teeth.

Morgan advanced on him with the back of his hand raised. He turned to Malcolm, as if seeking her approval. She looked away. He dropped his hand and replaced the crude gag. He reached for the phone and ripped it from its socket. He grabbed the back of the tac agent’s chair and pushed it up against Reid’s. He tied their wrists together with the bandages and the phone cord. He examined the tac’s wound and bound the skin above it with a spare strip.

Gesturing towards Malcolm with the gun, he said, “This way, if you will, miss.”

She rose unsteadily, avoiding the wild fury of Reid’s eyes. Lightholler took her arm and this time she didn’t resist. They followed Morgan out of the interrogation room.

The sounds registered indistinctly at first, faint and far away—the muffled slam of a door, the furtive scurry of running feet—but the gunshot’s echo rang clearly in Kennedy’s ears.

His thoughts pounded inchoate; murderous and feral, plotting impossible retributions. A part of him realised that it had been small arm’s fire, loud and abrasive, rather than the softer crack of a rifle. He felt the raw graze of his throat but couldn’t recall shouting. Only the gripped steel bars of his cell were real. Those, and the gunshot’s proclamation: no companions, no journal and no hope.

The running footsteps drew nearer, quickened, and a part of him realised that it would all be over soon.

His eyes fixed on the gun first. He only had a vague impression of the forms that stood beyond the bars. They blurred into the aspect of Lightholler and Morgan. He’d sought to save a world by snatching it from fire. He’d only served to fan the flames. Morgan’s spectre, the charred evidence of his crime, shambled to one side. He wondered where Hardas’s ghost hovered and it was all he could do not to mouth a muted apology.

“Major, are you okay?” the spectre rasped.

Time jerked forwards. The gun didn’t fire, the shapes didn’t resolve into his enemies. He stared at Morgan thickly for a moment, trying to make sense of it all.

“Joseph?” Lightholler advanced. He had a set of keys in his hand.

Kennedy stepped back from the cell door. Lightholler wore a spray of dried blood on his shirt. Morgan, scarred by older wounds, had a smear of fresh blood on his sleeve. Blood on the keys.

“We’re alright,” Lightholler said.

“Whose blood?”

“A bit of everyone’s, Joseph.”

Only then did he notice Patricia. She was standing across the room from him, watching their reunion with silent censure. She stood awkwardly, favouring her left leg. Her clothing was rumpled but there was no apparent sign of injury.

“What happened?” Kennedy asked.

“I’m not entirely sure.” Lightholler entered the cell and rummaged around, grabbing his jacket. He gave the bunks a quick inspection and said, “Let’s go.”

“What about Reid? Where’s Hardas? What’s going on?”

“It’s good to see you again, Major.” Morgan spoke softly, but swiftly. “Hardas is dead.” He held Kennedy’s gaze, didn’t shy away or blink. “Reid and another agent have been secured. Agent Malcolm says that the other tac is at the airfield with the Raptor. That’s where we’re going.”

Kennedy looked at Patricia. She remained silent.

“Reid called in backup,” Morgan added. He motioned Kennedy towards the doorway. “Backup he isn’t supposed to have.”

Patricia nodded briskly.

The details could come later. Kennedy walked out of the cell and inspected the surroundings. He took in the adjacent cell—the one Morgan had occupied—the blinded windows and the corridor that must have led down to the interrogation room.

“This is a field office,” he said.

“County Sheriff’s,” Patricia replied.

“And we’re still in Arkansas, right?”

“We’re just outside of Hot Springs,” she answered wearily.

He turned to Lightholler and said, “The journal?”

“Downstairs in the safe.” Lightholler offered a wicked smile. He rattled the keyring. “Nothing’s been touched.”

Kennedy shook his head and muttered, “Evidence Response.” He gazed at Patricia with relief. Anybody else would have turned that manuscript inside out by now.

He followed the others towards an exit that had been obscured from view.

Morgan was alive. They had the journal. They had a plane.

Nothing was impossible just because it was improbable.

Webster stood at an unfiltered view port. At sixty thousand feet, dawn was a swift transition. Cloudscape flashed pink at the world’s edge and moments later day was upon him.

The stratolite’s Eye pulsed with activity. Intel techs pored over the latest maps. Meteorologists jostled with navigators for the scopes that ringed the glass-walled sphere. Surveillance officers peered at the various monitors and compared notes. Command and control.

A table had been cleared among the work stations and a young officer stood before it, propelling coloured markers back and forth across a map of the West Coast with each new intelligence he received.

Webster took meticulous note of the general conversation that flowed around him. He glanced at various screens, taking memory snaps of their contents for later analysis. A deputation from the German Expeditionary Forces was due aboard the
Patton
at 0900 hours. That left little time to finalise his dossier in preparation for their parley.

The fossil of a smile creased his face. He’d forgotten how good all this tasted.

Recent years had brought him an accumulation of paperwork, of other people’s projects to be ratified or vetoed. Conferences were attended and hands were shaken, but the last decent thing he’d sunk his teeth into was Camelot, and look where
that
had led. He put the thought aside.

Clancy had told him to kill the Kennedy angle, and amazingly enough he had been able to do just that. It was only forty-eight hours since the matter had been discussed, but apart from the exchange with Reid, he had given Kennedy scant thought. His smile broadened. All those long months of suppositions and counter schemes and all it took was an atomic detonation, a civil war and the threat of world-spanning conflict to place everything into perspective.

He put together a sketch of the latest reports. There had been delays in the relief of New York. A Canadian recon party had turned up a pair of Luftwaffe pilots thought lost in an earlier sortie. They hung from makeshift crosses in a cotton field outside of Scranton. An uprising by the surviving enclave of New York’s Japanese residents had been brutally suppressed.

British marines had arrived on the outskirts of the city to be greeted by scenes of misery and terror; lean-faced Brandenburg troopers with empty eyes escorting convoys of the civilian dead out of the ruins.

German paratroops had skirmished with a detachment of Union regulars at Fredericksburg, and there had been reports of entanglements between Union and Confederate forces all along the Mason-Dixon Line. The conflict was thus far confined to firefights and artillery exchanges, but there was little hope of averting full hostilities between the two Americas.

At the southern border, a column of Mexican tanks had crossed the Rio Grande. There had been heavy fighting outside of Laredo, but no further advances had been noted. The most recent scout sweep suggested that the Mexicans were entrenching within sight of the border, and it was only with a small amount of resentment that Webster wondered if memories of Kennedy’s last campaign in Mexico had curbed their enthusiasm for a rapid advance.