As the iron potbellied wood stove started to take the chill off the room, Trevis pumped up the kerosene pressure lamp until the double mantles glowed white-hot.
“I’ll close the shades,” said Prince. “They’ll keep the heat in.”
He went from window to window, pulling down the cheap roller shades and staring out through the cold glass of each window. It was two minutes to seven.
Are you out there waiting somewhere, Raptor? Are you ready, Raptor?
Raptor checked the luminous face of his watch.
6:59:01 and:02 and:03...
It was time.
Trevis heaved his bulging briefcase up on the table and opened it “I’ve got some printouts here, Mr. Prince, that might suggest some avenues for initiating expansion.”
Prince stopped him with a wave of the hand. He had an unpleasant smile on his face. “You won’t need those, Trevis. I’ve had a full report on you and Teresa Bianca. I know what you’ve been doing these past three years.” He chuckled. “You’ve finally found the man you’ve been looking for.”
Trevis slowly let the papers he had started to bring out slide back in the case. His face was very white.
“I used the Letterman hit to bypass you, Trevis. Raptor is going to kill you. Here. Tonight. Right now.”
As he spoke, Trevis’s eyes shifted beyond him to the door. His eyes widened.
Prince looked at the door, almost feeling the icy blast from outside. The door was still closed. He turned back to see Trevis’s right hand come out of the briefcase holding a Walther MPK machine pistol. The muzzle of the Walther, extended by a gas cylinder silencer, was pointed at Prince.
“I couldn’t stomach any more random killing, Prince, so I put that newspaper clipping where Ucelli would find it. I hoped it would bring whoever I was after out into the open.” He paused. “I’m Raptor.”
Prince’s face felt suddenly bloodless. His mouth was without saliva. He thrust out his hands, palms forward. “Money...”
The silenced sub-machinegun made a series of earnest busy clicking sounds. Blood and bone leaped from the front of Prince’s head. Splinters and chips flew from the wall behind him. The gun followed him down, clicking and chattering to itself until the magazine was empty.
Raptor stood for a long moment with the machine pistol hanging straight down at his side. Even an excised tumor leaves a felling of loss.
Trevis returned the gun to the briefcase, shut it, and with his gloved left hand turned the pump on the lantern. There was the hiss of escaping pressure. By the mantles’ dying glow, he picked his way across the unfamiliar room he’d rented by phone, in Prince’s name, earlier in the week, and had paid for with a cashier’s check. He had never been skiing in his life.
Outside, the snow had stopped. Stars crowded the black sky. A nice night for a drive down the mountain. Then he thought: To what? Wasn’t he by this time so steeped in blood that—
But then, in a sudden blinding moment of insight, he understood the ultimate truth in Miyamotu Musashi’s book which had eluded him until now. The Fifth Ring, said Musashi, was the final strategy. The Fifth Ring was the way of the Void. In the Void was only virtue, without evil.
Raptor was in the Void. Raptor was of the Void.
Two men had died back there in the cabin.
Trevis was now free of both of them.
Watch for It
Eric’s first one. The very first.
And it went up early.
If I’d been in my apartment on Durant, with the window open, I probably would have heard it. And probably, at 4:30 in the morning, would have thought like any straight that it had been a truck back-fire. But I’d spent the night balling Elizabeth over in San Francisco while Eric was placing the bomb in Berkeley. With her every minute, I’d made sure, because whatever else you can say about the federal pigs, they’re thorough. I’d known that if anything went wrong, they’d be around looking.
Liz and I heard it together on the noon news, when we were having breakfast before her afternoon classes. She teaches freshman English at SF State.
Eric Whitlach, outspoken student radical on the Berkeley campus, was injured early this morning when a bomb he allegedly was placing under a table in the Student Union detonated prematurely. Police said the explosive device was fastened to a clock mechanism set for 9:30, when the area would have been packed with students. The extent of the young activist’s injuries is not known, but—
“God, that’s terrible,” Liz said with a shudder. She’d been in a number of upper-level courses with both Eric and me. “What could have happened to him, Ross, to make him do... something like that?”
“I guess... Well, I haven’t seen much of him since graduation last June...” I gestured above the remains of our eggs and bacon.
“‘Student revolutionary’ — it’s hard to think of Eric that way.” Then I came up with a nice touch. “Maybe he shouldn’t have gone beyond his M.A. Maybe he should have stopped when we did — before he lost touch.”
When I’d recruited Eric without appearing to, it had seemed a very heavy idea. I mean, nobody actually expects this vocal, kinky, Rubin-type radical to go out and set bombs; because they don’t. We usually avoid Eric’s sort ourselves: they have no sense of history, no discipline. They’re as bad as the Communists on the other side of the street, with their excessive regimentation, their endless orders from somewhere else.
I stood up. “Well, baby, I’d better get back across the Bay...”
“Ross, aren’t you... I mean, can’t you...”
She stopped there, coloring; still a lot of that corrupting Middle America in her. She was ready to try anything at all in bed, but to say right out in daylight that she wanted me to ball her again after class — that still sort of blew her mind.
“I can’t, Liz,” I said all aw-shucksy, laughing down inside at how straight she was. “I was his roommate until four months ago, and the police or somebody might want to ask me questions about him.”
I actually thought that they might, and nothing brings out pig paranoia quicker than somebody not available for harassment when they want him. But nobody showed up. I guess they knew that as long as they had Eric they could get whatever they wanted out of him just by shooting electricity into his balls or something, like the French pigs in Algeria. I know how the fascists operate.
Beyond possible questions by the pigs, however, I knew there’d be a strategy session that night in Berkeley. After dark at Zeta Books, on Telegraph south of the campus, is the usual time and place for a meet. Armand Marsh let me in and locked the door behind me; he runs the store for the Student Socialist Alliance as a cover. He’s a long skinny redheaded cat with ascetic features and quick nervous mannerisms, and is cell-leader for our three-man focal.
I saw that Danzer was in the mailing room when I got there, as was Benny. I didn’t like Danzer being there. Sure, he acted as liaison with other Bay Area focals, but he never went out on operations and so he was an outsider. No outsider can be trusted.
“Benny,” said Armand, “how badly is Whitlach really hurt?”
Benny Leland is night administrator for Alta Monte Hospital. With his close-trimmed hair and conservative clothes he looks like the ultimate straight.
“He took a big splinter off the table right through his shoulder. Damned lucky that he had already set it and was on his way out when it blew. Otherwise they’d have just found a few teeth and toes.”