He offered me a dog treat and I smacked his hand away.
“The other quote,” he said, “is one misquoted by Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. The actual quote is more apt anyway. When confronted by things we do not understand but truly want or need to understand, Aurelius suggests, ‘This, what is it in itself, and by itself, according to its proper constitution? What is the substance of it? What is the matter, or proper use? What is the form, or efficient cause? What is it for in this world, and how long will it abide? Thus must thou examine all things that present themselves unto thee.’ And later, in that same book, Aurelius writes, ‘As every fancy and imagination presents itself unto thee, consider (if it be possible) the true nature, and the proper qualities of it, and reason with thyself about it. ’” He studied me. “Do you understand what that means?”
“I do,” I said, “but I don’t want to.”
“But you must.”
“I must,” I agreed.
“There is no such thing as an alternative fact,” said Rudy. “The truth is only ever the truth. What changes is whether we accept it, even if it is inconvenient and contrary to the truth we’d prefer.”
I sighed and rubbed my face with my callused hands. “Yeah, damn it.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “What then, is the truth? Or, what is the likely truth. Construct a workable theory to explain recent events. If you go outside of your mental comfort zone, what then is probable?”
I gave him a sour look. “Is this how you comfort all of your traumatized patients?”
“You’re not on my couch, Cowboy. This is how I talk to my friend, who is one of the truest, wisest, and most capable people I’ve ever met.”
I sighed. And told him. He listened with his whole being, which is what he always does. I watched his olive skin grow pale. He wears a small silver crucifix under his shirt; it hangs down over his heart. He touched it absently, as he always does when his own worldview changes gears without a clutch.
When I was done he spent a few minutes not looking at me or anything. The distant hospital ICU noises were the only sound.
“Then this is what you have to tell Mr. Church and Joan Holliday,” he said at last, his voice hushed. “Junie, too. She’ll need to be in on this. God.”
“What is it you need to tell me?” said a voice, and we turned to see Mr. Church standing in the doorway.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
Valen ditched the stolen motorcycle twenty blocks from where he had recovered the God Machine. As he had worn leather gloves the whole time, there were no prints to worry about.
His rental car was parked near the border of Maryland and he got in and drove through packed traffic to the hotel in Landover that was the rendezvous point for the six members of his team. Ari would no doubt be waiting, having gone for the closest device. The other five were agents supplied by Gadyuka — three men and two women who had lived in America for most of their lives. People who were above suspicion. They would be debriefed and then sent back to their handlers and probably fold back into their affected daily routines.
Valen wondered if they would be given safe passage out of the country before things got really bad. Knowing Gadyuka, he doubted it. A mass exodus of any kind would raise red flags, and from what the viper said about the DMS, a pattern like that would be noticed.
So, they would be left to die, or — best-case scenario — shelter in place until such time as they could be extricated.
He went to his room without haste, and spent a few minutes sweeping the place for bugs. Then he opened a bottle of vodka and poured himself a generous shot, knocked it back, and poured another.
Over the course of the next two hours, five of the agents arrived, knocked discreetly, and were let in. Only one had actually been required to retrieve a damaged machine. The others were in the field to make sure that each of the remaining devices had thoroughly detonated. They had. The thermite AXL compound, coupled with the timer that sent the machines into overload, resulted in a fireball that was intense and effective, though short-lived.
The agents did not know Valen’s name and referred to him by the false identity under which he’d checked in. James Wilson, a systems software salesman, which was as vanilla as it got.
The agents came and went and Valen sat alone, waiting for Ari.
Minutes crawled past.
Valen tried calling his friend, but there was no answer. Not even voicemail.
He sank into a chair and thought about the day. The cop and his dog — or government agent, or whatever he was — had been a frightening surprise. Gadyuka and Ari would both likely mock him for using a Taser instead of something more lethal. He could even imagine the shape of that mockery — the God Machines had just slaughtered more than thirteen hundred people, and he could not bring himself to shoot a cop and a dog face-to-face.
Valen understood how silly that seemed. Even he did not understand it. By now his crimes had to place him in the highest levels of mass murderers throughout history. Much as he wanted to, Valen could no longer count the dead.
The flat-screen TV mounted over the dresser was black and he did not dare to turn it on. He’d seen enough.
Enough.
More than enough.
Valen poured himself another vodka, sat facing the door, and waited.
But Ari never came.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Jennifer VanOwen checked in with her staff, with the senior advisors, with the chief of staff, and with the president himself. They were all in various degrees of stress, ranging from moderate freak-out to complete panic. That was fine. That was exactly right.
She was the voice of reason, and people throughout the West Wing would remember that. History would remember that Jennifer VanOwen kept her cool. That would play well when she made her move out of the shadows and onto the radar of the power players who were looking for the next face of the party. It was time for a woman to ascend to the American throne.
Such as it was.
For as long as it lasted.
Her contact assured her that there would be six or eight good years before the red, white, and blue lost its value as the currency of global economic power. That was good. She only wanted four years. Not the last four, but the ones coming up. Let someone else sit behind the big desk when it all turned to shit. People would be tripping over themselves to say that it wouldn’t have happened on her watch.
VanOwen told her secretary that she was going to go out to see how things were being handled in the streets. The president hadn’t budged from the bunker, and frankly everyone seemed okay with that. This wasn’t something he was equipped for or capable of handling. The less he got involved and the more he allowed actual experts to make decisions, the better he would look in tomorrow’s news cycle. At least that’s what VanOwen told him.
For her part, VanOwen needed to be visible. Very visible. She picked the right places to be seen huddled in earnest conversation with firefighters, police officials, doctors, aid workers, and ordinary citizens who had come out of the woodwork to lend willing hands and strong backs. Picking those spots had required a few hours of careful monitoring of reports, and some tips from her spies. Her employer’s people had given her some leads, too.
VanOwen spent hours in the field, and she contrived to get smudges of dirt and blood on her expensive suit, her hands, and even her pretty face. Her hair was carefully mussed and she knew that she would look amazing on Fox, CNN, and the BBC news. Her actions were orchestrated to emphasize the power of “us,” but it would drive iron rivets into her campaign once it launched. News reporters would make career jumps off their coverage of her, and that was good. When one cable news show ran different pictures of her — holding an IV bag of blood, working with a black teen to pull a Latina from beneath a collapsed storefront, handing coffee to weary EMTs, standing with a hand to her shocked mouth and tears in her eyes as she viewed a long row of sheet-covered corpses, yelling fiercely to direct an impromptu rescue crew to make a human ladder to pull a child from a sinkhole — the anchor dubbed her Hurricane VanOwen. In that instant she went from a relative Beltway nobody to a force of nature.