"In fact, you won't be briefed until the last moment."
"Security or just keeping old Gibson in the dark as usual?"
"Neither, actually. The truth is that we aren't even sure if we'll need to use you at all. If things go smoothly, we won't."
"That's good news."
"I thought it might be."
Despite French's words, though, a clawing tension built inside Gibson all through the evening. He was no longer locked in the small bedroom, and the streamheat had gone so far as to allow him a couple of beers, but that was it, and it hardly made a dent. Unable to read and without a TV to distract him, Gibson found that there was nothing to do except pace, chain-smoke, and stare down at the lights of the cars in the street below. It had gone beyond the level of thinking about it. He wasn't asking himself how or why or what-if any longer; anxiety was a fist-size knot in his stomach, and he had a fist-clenching need to be constantly on the move. The robot state of just doing what he was told, by which he'd been surviving since he'd agreed to cooperate, was a trick that had been used from the dawn of time by those who only stand and wait, but there was a limit to how long he could turn it. He'd reached the point, this final evening, when he simply couldn't pretend anymore, or keep on shifting the fear along with the responsibility. In the morning, he'd be involved in the killing of a president, and that was all she was going to write. His life had become so terrifyingly fragmented that nothing remained on which a hold could be maintained. Mindless motion was the only thing stopping him from coming apart. Finally, even Smith realized that he couldn't go on building up this kind of pressure without something blowing. "Gibson, do you want a tranquilizer? "
"I'd rather have a bottle of Scotch."
"We can't have you hung over in the morning." Down on the street, a black police cruiser was scanning doorways with a spotlight.
Gibson watched until it was gone. "I thought you weren't expecting to have to use me."
"Nothing's settled yet."
"Suppose the local cops have a line on us?"
"They don't. They've been taken care of."
Gibson turned away from the window and paced across the living room. "This shit is starting to get to me. I need a fucking drink."
"Let me give you a shot."
"Will it put me out?"
"It should. You probably won't even dream."
She was already reaching in a drawer for a syringe, a foil-wrapped needle, and a bottle of colorless fluid. "Roll your sleeve up."
Gibson didn't like the idea of being shot up by Smith, but it was worth it if it stopped him twitching. He bared his arm without a word. Doing what he was told seemed to have become habitual.
The drug put Gibson out almost immediately, and he only just made it to the small bedroom before his eyes stopped focusing and their lids began to droop. It didn't stop him dreaming, though, and sleep became an ordeal as his subconscious disgorged a fearful invasion of violent newsreel images, stampeding crowds, screaming mouths, terrified faces, and helpless, ineffectual gestures as flesh tried to ward off bullets.
The images came on relentlessly: huge black cars with Secret Service men swarming all over them, a woman in a pink wool suit crawling back over the trunk of one of them, hand reaching out. Brown hair, a head haloed in the pink spray of its own brains going forward and back, forward and back. Knives slashing, a machete-wielding figure being clubbed to the ground by riot police. Another figure, a wild-eyed, tubercular kid, running alongside an open, horse-drawn carriage. A dead man's pistol shot, and the kid was cut down by the sabers of the hussars, blood spurting, head going backward and forward, backward and forward. And more pistols in the night, pistols in the light of the TV cameras and more shots and more blood, blood matting more brown hair and more hands reaching out, bloodstained white uniforms, and blood running in the gutter, white shirts, dark suits, clubs and sabers swinging, fists hurting, faces blank with shock, screaming. "Get him! Get him!"
And each time he was the assassin. He was always the assassin. Eternal, now and forever, world without end, universe of pain.
"Amen."
"Get him!" "Get him!"
Twice Gibson woke sweating, fearing psych attack but knowing that the nightmares were only the creations of the terror in the black bilges of his own mind.
And then it was morning and Klein was sitting on the bed, holding out a cup of coffee. "Are you okay, Joe? You were screaming during the night."
Gibson struggled and sat up.
"Yeah, yeah. I guess so. I've been having nightmares ever since this thing got started."
He took the coffee and sipped it tentatively.
"What time is it?"
"Six A.M."
"What's happening?"
"I'm afraid I have some bad news."
Gibson lowered the coffee with a sinking feeling in his stomach. "What?"
"Zwald is dead."
"Huh?"
"He tried to back out at the last minute."
"Back out of the assassination?"
"Right."
"I know how he felt."
"Raus's people killed him."
"What did they do? Feed him to Balg?"
Klein shook his head. "I believe they shot him."
Gibson beamed as though the sun had just come up in a blaze of glory and a great weight had slipped from his shoulders. "I don't want to come on like I'm self-obsessed or anything, and I'm sure it's real bad news for the late Leh Zwald, but what does this mean for me? The assassination is canceled, right? So you don't need me anymore, right?"
Klein wasn't smiling. "The assassination hasn't been canceled, Joe."
The sun went out and the weight crashed back onto Gibson like a cement overcoat. "What?"
"The assassination is still on. There are two other shooters, don't forget."
"What happens to me?"
"I'm afraid you're going to have to play the assassin."
Gibson feit sick. "I can't do that. I'll never hold together."
"All you have to do is to walk through the moves that Zwald was going to make. It's no different from what you've been doing already, and you'll be covered every inch of the way."
Gibson started slowly, shaking his head. He felt as though he was going into shock. "No."
"It's very simple. All you have to do is walk into a building, ride up in the elevator, wait awhile, then ride back down again and leave. Once you're clear of the immediate area you'll be pulled out, and Zwald's body produced as that of the lone assassin. All you have to do is allow yourself to be spotted by a few witnesses and that's it."
"That's it? Aren't you forgetting the fact that the president of the country will be shot between this going in and coming out? Won't that make this getaway a little difficult, particularly if I'm pretending to be the assassin?"
"It'll be a total chaos right after the shooting. No one will imagine you're the assassin until well after the fact. Remember that Raus controls most of the news media. He'll make sure that everything is pinned on the late Leh Zwald. Besides, French will be with you every step of the way."
French's voice came from the doorway. "Doesn't that fill you with confidence, Gibson, that I'll be right beside you?"
Gibson was shaking his head again. "I'm not doing this."
French leaned against the doorjamb. He was wearing duty tan workman's coveralls and holding another set, which he tossed onto the bed in front of Gibson. "Put those on and cut out the dramatics."
"I'm telling you, I'm not doing this."
French straightened up and put one hand in his pocket. "I'm going to keep this real simple, Joe." He pulled out a large revolver of local design, not unlike the one that Gibson had fired in Raus's shooting gallery, and pointed it at Gibson. "You see this gun, Joe? Regular pistol, no fancy technology, straight bullet in the brain, right? Well, that's exactly what you're going to get if you're not out of that bed and into those coveralls in the next thirty seconds. You understand me?"