Fielding wasn’t playing this game. “I never met the man! Not till you tell me he just leapt out and put me in this crap. Joel-this isn’t going to look good on anyone’s record.”
Emily Deacon reached forward and touched one of the wires on Fielding’s vest. He jumped back like a man who’d had a sudden shock.
“He’ll do it, Thornton,” she insisted, “unless you talk. Now’s the time. We’re good listeners.”
“About what?”
“About the Babylon Sisters. About who was behind-”
“Jesus, Emily! I told you. I did everything I could. Didn’t you read what was there? Didn’t you get the message? Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “You do.”
“Fine! All that crazy private army stuff was Kaspar and your old man’s idea. Dan was the boss. Kaspar was the soldier. Just a couple of old hippies with guns and a blank cheque from the CIA or someone. You wonder it all got screwed up?”
“No!” She was adamant. “You showed me what you wanted to, Thornton, and for a reason. It was nothing to do with me. It all was about protecting yourself.”
“This is insane. What the hell are you talking about?”
“You!” she yelled. “You were pulling the strings then, you’re still pulling them now. I couldn’t figure out why there was just one document left on the system when you let me in. Was that an accident? Of course not. It was the document that pointed straight to my dad, not to you. That was why you put it there. For me to find.”
“Joel? We need your men in here.” Fielding wasn’t budging. Costa thought of the minutes, ticking away, and wondered how long the unseen Kaspar would wait.
Emily Deacon stood directly beneath the oculus and allowed herself a glance through the eye above. “It’s about places, Thornton. That’s what Kasper’s been trying to work out for himself all along. Places like this. He and my dad used to meet here, talk things through. He told me so. But my dad was discussing that mission with someone else too. Someone in the Piazza Mattei, someone Kaspar never did get to know.”
That scared him. Just a little. “What of it?”
“That’s what my dad said to Kaspar. Before he died. The one thing. That he wished he’d never gone to see the man in the Piazza Mattei. Kaspar thought he’d found that man, too. He went back there a couple of months ago. He’d worked out there was a property in the square the spooks had been using for years and years. He attacked the guy living there, trying to get some information out of him. He didn’t kill him, though. This wasn’t his man. He was just after intelligence and the man had none. Kaspar didn’t kill just anyone. Not then.”
“So?”
“So he didn’t get his information. But we did. We know.”
Fielding looked at her, astonished. “You’re taking the word of that lunatic? I’m here because of that?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I am.”
Then she put a hand to the front of her own vest, took hold of the tangle of coloured wires.
Costa watched in horror. “Emily-”
“I can show you why, Thornton,” she said, ripping at the wires on her chest, tearing them from the canisters in one rapid, bold movement.
Fielding cowered, half crouching down on the floor. Nothing happened. She just stood there, making the point. Then she threw off the parka, let it fall to the floor and ripped down the zipper on the vest, got rid of that too.
Friedricksen turned and fled for the shadows.
“Get back here!” Leapman yelled at the man, then picked up the vest to look at it. He pulled out the detonator from one of the canisters, upending the contents so sand fell onto the floor in a steady stream. Cocking his head to one side, he took a closer look, scratched at the metal with his finger.
“Fake,” Leapman said.
“It’s a Coke can,” Emily said. “Painted yellow, reshaped with putty. Plus a little white spirit to give it the right smell and a detonator that’s as real as they come. Kaspar’s broke. He didn’t have enough for two sets.”
“Neat,” Leapman conceded. Then he pointed at Fielding’s vest. “And this?”
“Oh,” Emily said brightly, reaching down for the parka, taking something out of the pocket. “This is the real thing. Absolutely.”
She grabbed Fielding by the scruff of his jacket. “This can blow us all to pieces, Thornton. And you know something?”
Emily now held a small plastic device up in her hand, thumb on a button. “It’s not Bill Kaspar who gets to make that choice. It’s me. He trusted me with that. He trusted me with a dummy jacket. Who do you think I believe, Thornton?”
“Emily,” Nic murmured, “this wasn’t part of the-”
“It is now,” she said, circling Fielding, holding the remote in front of his ashen face. “Talk to me, Thornton. Or don’t. Because I really don’t care either way. Not anymore. You screwed my dad. He was a good man. You sold him and his people down the river, let them get there, and hoped-what?”
He was nervous, Costa thought. Just not nervous enough.
“You’ve got to do something here, Leapman,” Fielding pleaded. “This kid’s as crazy as her old man was.”
“I guess,” she went on, ignoring his remark, “you hoped that, once they got there, knew it was a case of give in or die, they’d all think the way you did. That this wasn’t their war, not really. All they had to do was put up their hands, go quietly. That was part of the deal. And when it was over-what? Some quiet, secret negotiation with Baghdad. A hand-over at the Syrian border. Everyone comes home. You disappear and get rich. No awkward questions. But Bill Kasper didn’t go quietly, did he?”
“Sand?” he sneered. She was jabbing a finger into the dark and Fielding knew that. He was growing more confident. She was starting to realize it too. “And Coke cans? That’s what the big man’s up to these days?”
“Proof,” she murmured. “That’s all anyone wants.”
Thornton Fielding’s forehead glistened, shiny with sweat, shaking from side to side. “No, Emily. What they want is an end to this shit. That lunatic put away where he belongs. He killed your dad. You’re supposed to want that too.”
Emily Deacon’s delicate fingers worked their way onto Fielding’s vest, found the topmost canister in the middle row beneath his chin.
“Don’t move, Thornton,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t want to choose the wrong wire. The rest are wired in parallel and will blow if I tamper with them. Kaspar only showed me this once.”
He was rigid, uncertain whether this was a bluff or not. She flicked off a set of wires, delicately removed the canister from its webbing holster.
“He thought you might need convincing,” she said, then flipped the detonator, starting a small, livid spark at its head, and flung it into the darkness near the doors.
Fielding blinked at her. Leapman and Viale were already flattened on the floor. Emily Deacon placed her arms around Fielding, held him tightly.
“Remember when you danced with me?” she asked. “When I was just a kid? We’d go round and round, circles and circles, like a couple of human compasses describing pretty patterns on the floor. People like patterns, Thornton. Patterns make you feel comfortable. They make you think the world’s more than just a mess of chaos.”
A hot, fiery blast roared from somewhere close to the bronze slabs, began to occupy the interior of the building, sending a deafening, screaming roar echoing around the hemisphere. From somewhere outside came the wailing sound of a siren. She clung to him tightly, keeping the two of them upright, struggling against the heat and force of the explosion.
“That’s what Kaspar’s been looking for,” she said, holding the remote to his cheek, finger on the button, the two of them describing a slow, lazy circle on the stone floor. “Something that restores some order. And maybe it’s not there at all. Maybe I should press this and make us nothing. No more memories. No more guilt. No more hate. Does that sound appealing to you?”