Daugher did up his trousers and left an empty men's room behind him.
"Done?" Bowman asked.
"Very done."
"You realize, right, that if they connect us to the murder the boss is screwed?"
Daugher thought on that. "Yeah… but's what to connect us? By the time I did it, the bartender had changed, so he can't connect the time the queer was in there with the time I went in there." He showed Eugene's wallet. "Motive: money. What connects us to a need for money? Nothing. Did the boss have a reason to want the fucker dead? Yes. Would we have killed him if the boss had asked? Clearly. But we weren't here; as my old motorcycle gang will swear on a stack of bibles, we were in Dragonback Pass. So they've got nothing, even if they suspect the boss."
Bowman considered that as the two walked. After a few contemplative moments he agreed.
First Landing, Hudson, FSC, 27/9/459 AC
Lourdes had passed on the news when Carrera had called in to the Casa Linda from his hotel in Phoenix Rising. He was shocked, at first. Then, secretly, he was pleased. That made him feel terribly guilty. Still, try as he might, he had not been able to shake the pleasure of Eugene's most timely demise. His shame grew with that failure, warring with his joy.
I am a low-down, no good, bastard. I should be ashamed, he thought, and I am. But even so, I am glad the piece of shit is out of the way.
Having flown up for the funeral, Pat had listened patiently to the Jewish branch of the family's rabbi droning on and on about Eugene's many virtues; his love of animals, his support for equal rights, his staunch activism. All true enough, I suppose, provided you add in "eager support to terrorist organizations."
Now, standing in bright winter sunshine at the graveside, with Eugene's heart-broken mother weeping into her third husband's arms… Aunt Sarah was always good to me. Always. Too bad she has to suffer. She deserves better.
Cousin Annie, smelling more than a little of strong drink, leaned against Pat Hennessey for support. His arm helped her stand as she shook with great shuddering sobs. She whispered, over and over, "Poor Eugene. Oh, the terrible things I've said to him."
As the funeral began to break up, Pat half carried Annie to Aunt Sarah's side. The two women fell upon each other with weeping. Pat and Sarah's current husband held back.
Finally, Annie backed off and Pat took Sarah in his arms, cradling her aged head with one hand. "I am sorry," he whispered to her. "For you, I am sorry. I know what it's like."
Excursus
From: Legio del Cid: to Build an Army (reprinted here with permission of the Army War College, Army of the Federated States of Columbia, Slaughter Ravine, Plains, FSC)
If there were any attribute that perhaps could be applied to all Moslems, and especially the more radical Salafis, everywhere, it would have to be their exquisite sense of timing.
True, of course, self-deception was nearly universal-witness their continuing, and apparently groundless, belief that they could somehow defeat the Zion Defense Force and drive the Jews into the sea. Witness, too, the steady frequency with which the Jews drove the Moslems farther into the desert instead. Yet many Moslems knew better. Indeed, it was precisely those who did know better who made some of the most fertile ground for terrorist recruiting and joined the Salafi Ikhwan.
Bombast, too, was something of a cultural characteristic, one closely related to self-deception. And even among the terrorist crew, those who had given up on victory through real strength, bombast was quite unremarkable. Yet, even here, there were exceptions.
But the sense of timing, that inner light that tells one the precisely wrong time to take an action-if not all Moslems enjoyed it, then certainly the culture was pervaded with it, they all received the dubious benefits of it… and in a sense, all had come to expect it.
Has a young Federated States just ended a war with a great maritime power? Obviously this was the best of all possible times to begin piratical attacks on FSC shipping. Was an older and much more powerful Federated States about to show a little more evenhandedness in Zionic-Moslem relations? That was the surest sign possible that a planeload of handicapped orphans on their way to a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Fantasy World was about to be blown from the sky. Has Zion's prime minister announced he is willing to trade a modicum of security for some chance at peace? Pay that man's life insurance premium because as certain as daylight he'll be dead at Salafi hands before the month is over. Is the Federated States about to engage in a great military enterprise to free one Moslem state from another oppressing it? Be certain that both the Moslem adversary and its friends will do everything possible to insure that the timing of their predictable defeat is perfect… for the Federated States. It was as if an entire culture was locked onto one of those decision-making diagrams, one where every block is labeled, "make serious mistake here," and that culture must always, always, always choose the "yes" arrow… and at the worst possible time.
So it happened that in the Republic of Balboa in the fall of 459…
The first sign of the attack came at a pumping station in El Toro, Balboa. An oil tanker was being refilled with crude from the McKinley oil fields when, suddenly, the station ceased pumping oil and began to spurt air. The puzzled pumping crew immediately called the sending point at the small oil port, Puerto Armados, on the northern side and was informed that pressure was down all along the system.
No one was injured directly by the explosion of the pipeline. Several hours later a small family of sharecroppers downhill by several miles drowned-husband, wife, and two small children-in a flood of silently moving McKinley crude.
The next attack, coming only minutes later, was much more noticeable. A parade celebrating the adoption of Balboa's first constitution passed by a step van loaded with several tons of ammonium nitrate based fertilizer, soaked with fuel, and containing also a number of propane tanks. The thin, sheet-metal walls of the van had been reinforced with thick glass originally intended for one of Ciudad Balboa's newest high rises. As it happened the nearest object to the van was a float carrying a bevy of young high school girls. When the bomb detonated, the glass shattered into shards and flew outward. Without warning the little flock of dark-eyed Balboan beauties was turned into a red paste obscenity in the blink of an eye. Hundreds of bystanders were killed or injured.
Within seconds, another explosion rocked the city, this one in the busy shopping district of Via Hispanica. Windows to small shops and exclusive boutiques were driven inward to tear and rend shoppers and store clerks alike. Several dozen people, those in the immediate vicinity of the blast, simply ceased to exist, blown to atoms. Among these were some numbers of children as well.
Unlike the first two, the third and fourth attacks in the city were suicide bombs. The third detonated at the very peak of the stately Bridge of the Columbias. Twenty-one cars were blown completely off of the bridge on both sides. Some dozens more were destroyed or damaged depending on both distance from the blast and luck. The pavement was blasted entirely through at the spot where the bomb detonated. The enormous steel arches holding up the bridge, however, withstood the blast fairly well.
The last bomb was crashed into the presidential palace, a lightly guarded mansion. It being a national holiday, the president was at home.
Her body was never found.
PART II
Chapter Nine