Ghost huddled over his shin, jabbing at a rust spot with her knife. She pivoted the knife, digging at a rivet. Wally realized she was trying to pry his rivets out, to open up his leg and get a better target. It hurt like heck.
“Hey, knock it off,” he said. He reached for her.
Ghost saw him, and dematerialized again. But her preoccupation with the rivets in his leg delayed her just a fraction of second, which was enough time for Wally to dart forward and touch the blade with a fingertip.
It became a ghost knife in her hands. Then it became a ghost knife with a rusty blade. And then it was a ghost knife handle and a pile of rust.
Yep. Steel.
Ghost looked at her ruined knife, then at Wally, then at the remains of the blade. For the first time, the expression on her face changed. Her little eyebrows squeezed together, the corners of her mouth turned down. Anger? Fear? Irritation? Wally couldn’t read her.
She lifted the wooden knife handle threateningly, but she looked a little confused. It might have been cute, if she wasn’t trying to figure out how to stab him. Was she planning to hit him with it?
“A www, come on.” Wally shook his aching head. “Give it a rest, would ya?” He lay down in the boat again. “Try to get some sleep,” he slurred. “You’re still growing.”
Sleep claimed him. And it held him for many, many hours.
On the Congo River, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Kengo came up from the cabin. Michelle expected him to have a smile on his face, or to be swaggering, but instead he just looked frightened. He moved stiffly, like an old man. He gingerly sat down next to her.
“There is something wrong with your friend,” he said.
“Really? It didn’t stop you from screwing her.”
“She is pretty.” His hands shook as he lit a cigarette. “And I thought, well… it doesn’t matter. Yes, I slept with her. But she is so violent.” He put the cigarette into the corner of his mouth, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, and showed Michelle the scratches along his arms. “My back is worse. I don’t know what is chasing her, but I think it rides somewhere inside her.”
Part of Michelle wanted to sympathize with Kengo. After all, Joey had scared him and hurt him. But part of her just wanted him to shut up. She couldn’t worry about both Joey and Adesina.
“Is there a place called Kisan, along the river?” Michelle asked.
Kengo shook his head. “No, no place called Kisan. Do you mean Kisangani?”
Something about the name rang inside Michelle. She knew she’d never heard it before, but it sounded right.
“Yes, that’s it,” she replied. “Kisangani. I need to find the Kisangani Children’s Hospital.” When Kengo said “Kisangani,” a memory of her dream about Adesina became sharper. The details were suddenly more in focus.
“You do not want to go there,” Kengo said, holding his hands up in front of him. “That’s a very bad place.”
“There’s something important I have to do there.”
He stared at her for a moment. “You are both madwomen. Possessed.”
Michelle opened her hand and let a bubble form. “The demons fled this world on September 15, 1946,” she said as she let the bubble loose into the murky river. Water spewed up from the small explosion that followed.
“Do you think any demon would dare come here now?” She got up. “Now stop screwing around and get me to Kisangani.”
People’s Palace
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
“Hei-lian?” He said softly from the doorway.
She sat in the living room of the apartment on the People’s Palace’s third floor watching satellite television. She jumped at his voice. Her green silk robe fell open, letting her bare left breast peek out. “Tom?” she said tentatively. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“Mark. I talked to you before. Please say you remember?”
“Yes,” she said warily. “I’m still not sure if it’s a trick. You claim to be Tom’s alter ego. Mark Meadows.”
“He’s my alter ego. Never mind. The answer is, I don’t know what I’m doing up.”
She frowned. She didn’t bother closing the robe. Her beauty cut him like the blade of Lohengrin’s glowing sword. Whose kiss he remembered, sadly, as well as hers.
Feeling as if he were wrapped in cotton batting, he teetered to the arm of the sofa and sat near her. She lowered herself to perch on the edge of the cushion like a finch ready to fly away at the first hint of danger.
“I know it’s night, and the moon’s up. I can feel myself healing, even if I’m not feeling the pain I should be. That’s weird. When he’s gone through this before it hurt like hell. Anyway, why is he even here? He won’t spend the night the same place twice running, and he’s here in the palace? After trashing the whole peace conference?”
“When Tom got here he was raving, in obvious agony,” she said. “I could hardly believe he was even alive. The medics gave him sedatives and put him on a morphine drip. When his injuries began to heal visibly, I suggested they bring you- him -here.” She shrugged. “Hard to get better in hospital. It’s better in a familiar bed.”
“Yeah.” Mark nodded slowly. “So that’s it. He doesn’t take pain well. Ironic, huh? He’s tried so hard to stay off any kind of drugs for fear I’d take back over.”
“Have you?”
Did she sound eager, or was he wishful-thinking again? “No way. Sorry.”
“What do you want?”
He drew a deep breath to nerve himself. “This is harder than I thought. First, to get it over with: I love you, Sun Hei-lian. I’ve fallen for you hard.”
Her expression didn’t flicker. “Very well.”
“Yeah. I know. Pretty bizarre, right? And what I feel doesn’t put you under any obligation. Which is good, because you need to get away.”
“What do you mean?”
“Away. From here. From Tom. Sooner or later he’ll turn on you. The way he turned on Dolores. She was his lover, too. She worshipped him. And he killed her.”
“That was Butcher Dagon.”
“It was Tom. Dolores was going to tell the world that Dagon was working for Alicia, staging phony atrocities to justify the PPA invasion of Nigeria.”
Hei-lian did not seem too surprised. She studied him. “You say you care about me? About me, not just what I can do for you, with my pussy or my skills or my contacts?”
“Yeah.”
“But nobody’s cared about just me. Not since-since my father disowned me for joining the intelligence service to get him out of prison.”
“You deserve it, Hei-lian. But the truth is, it’s not only about you. Tom’s losing it.”
Her breath caught. “I’ve begun to suspect that, too.”
“You’re scared of him. I’ve seen it in your eyes. Even if Tom can’t.”
“He’s good at not seeing things he doesn’t want to.” She slumped forward, resting arms on thighs. “I’ve tried to warn Beijing. They won’t listen. They can’t see beyond the oil and the coltan and all the other resources they need to try to keep their economic boom alive.”
“He’ll turn on them, too.”
“But I’ve seen another side of him. That’s what’s so strange. He can be so gentle, even kind. To Sprout. Sometimes to me. That’s you, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. “You could kill him, couldn’t you?”
She blinked and drew her head back on her slender neck. “What?”
“You’re a highly trained agent. You could kill him while he slept. You could to it tonight. All I have to do is go back in, lie down, and let go.” Mark shook his head. “I don’t have much longer anyway. He’s starting to come out of it. I can feel him stirring…”
She got up and walked a few paces from him with the green silk tail over her robe brushing the pale backs of her thighs. The television nattered mindlessly on low volume. “You’d let me kill you?”
“I’m asking you to kill me.” He sucked in breath through his teeth. “I know you’ve got a gun. I don’t want to live with what he’s done. What he’s doing. And I really don’t want to ride along for what he’s going to do. The murder, the destruction. And this child ace thing-the utter rape of innocence, man.” He shook his head. “Death’s got to be better than watching it all happen, knowing I was the one who set it all in motion. It’s not like it’s much of a life to lose, anyway. You’ve got a gun and you’re good with it. End it now.”