7:45 P.M.
He got out of the car and waved the driver on. He glanced to his left and right to make certain the guards around the embassy had retreated to a discreet distance, then took out a cigar and lit it.
Perhaps he was mellowing, he thought, as a number of his advisors had hinted. It was possible, but he did not think so.
He always knew where the Sierras Negras range lay, and he turned now in that direction. He could still recall every sound and sensation from his days in those mountains, remember every bullet he’d fired in every battle, every command given. Every comrade killed.
So many of his people had forgotten, he thought. Those people who had left were better off in the United States, and San Sierra was certainly better off without them. Those people would be at home there; the United States was a nation where short memory had become an institution, virtually a prerequisite for office.
He had personally killed many men; he had ordered mass executions; he had killed or imprisoned men who had once been his friends and comrades in battle. None of these actions had bothered him at the time, and they did not bother him now. Severe measures had been necessary then, and still were on occasion. As far as he was concerned, the disease of economic slavery as represented by moral perverts like Sabrito always sank deep into the soil of raped and abused nations. The latent germs could never be really destroyed, but only kept at bay by sustaining fire in the souls of men who led revolutions. Such cleansing fire could go out if not tended carefully.
The Chinese at least understood that, if they understood little else.
The Russians? He was not sure what the Russians understood. Like himself, the Soviets were brutal and passionate.
However, he thought, the Soviets’ passions, unlike his own, extended only to Mother Russia; for the rest of the world under their domination, it was only control and brutality. As far as he was concerned, the Sierran revolution was far purer than the Russians’.
His revolution could be sustained, he thought, but certain adjustments were now going to have to be made.
He had never liked the Russians. He was, he thought, going to thoroughly enjoy getting rid of the Russians before they got rid of him. The Americans had tried to get rid of him on a number of occasions and had failed; a man rarely survived a single such attempt by the Soviets.
No, he thought, he had not grown soft. Nor would he. The fire still burned in him. He would die a revolutionary, caring about and fighting for the wounded peoples of the world.
Realigning San Sierra with the United States was going to require some banking and redirection of the fire inside him, but the flames would not go out. The Americans would soon realize that, if they did not already. He would remain the leader of San Sierra until he died, and he would make certain that those who followed him possessed sufficient revolutionary ardor; their memories must be good. However, the economic and, to some extent, the political future of San Sierra was now with the Americans; he would not leave San Sierra to be gnawed at and perhaps swallowed by the Russians when he died.
In the end the Americans, for all their confounding arrogance and stupidity, held out the best hope for his land.
Which was why he believed he was choosing the correct option in regard to disposing of John and Alexandra Finway. It would give him personal pleasure to go in this direction because Alexandra Finway had risked her life and broken her body to save his life and the lives of many Sierrans. Both she and her husband possessed rare courage, and he would certainly be dead if it were not for John Finway. But these considerations in themselves would not have been enough to tip the balance in their favor, he thought. Many men, women, and children had died in the revolution, and it was his ongoing responsibility to use whatever means were available to defend the fruits of that revolution and do what was in the best interests of his people.
If it were in San Sierra’s interest to rig a trial, imprison, or even execute the Finways, he would not hesitate to do so. Hard, cruel deeds were often necessary, he thought, for San Sierra’s enemies were often hard and cruel, and he could not afford to be less so.
But the dragons were no longer a threat to him; one dragon was dead, and the dragon’s fire in the other extinguished forever. While it might serve some propaganda purposes to keep the Finways imprisoned in San Sierra, he had decided that sending them home to the United States could serve a number of more useful purposes, especially now that he had a clear picture of what had happened.
And what had almost happened.
The Americans had lofted a bomb at him; more precisely, the CIA had permitted it to be thrown, and the agency’s masters had then hovered like vultures over San Sierra, waiting for the bomb to explode.
First, he would use the Finways to make certain that the CIA suffered far more than mere lingering disappointment. He was going to throw the broken but still dangerous fragments of their bomb back at them and let it land in the State Department; it would amuse him to see how well they managed to juggle these pieces, and he would try to assure that the juggling act lasted for years.
His own agents were busy filling in the spaces, he thought, but he already had enough evidence to prove that the CIA, by default, if not by original design, had conspired to assassinate him and, perhaps, even invade San Sierra. He had hours of film and videotape recordings of the Finways’ interrogations, and he now knew all about the dragons; the man who had been killed at Sierras Negras had been identified, and he had Harry Beeler’s body as evidence of CIA knowledge of and complicity in the plot against his life; he had an aged gunman in custody, a man who, despite his obvious ignorance of everything but his assignment, had been sent to eliminate the problem the Finways now represented, the dilemma the Finways were now in fact going to present for the CIA.
The Finways did not know about the gunman, but he was about to tell them.
From John Finway’s description of the man in the blimp, he knew, although he could not prove, that Harley Shue himself had been on the scene, probably to coordinate an invasion if the assassination attempt had succeeded. He wanted the Finways to know that, too.
There was a great deal he wanted to tell the Finways before he set them free.
He puffed on his cigar and exhaled slowly. He smiled grimly as he reflected on the fact that about the only thing he did not know was the identity of the group or individual who had hired Rick Peters in the first place. But he considered that piece of information irrelevant; there would always be somebody trying to kill him.
This attempt, he thought, had been the most serious; it was the closest he had come to death since the early days of fighting in the mountains. But now, as then, he had gained a considerable advantage and reward: then a country, and now a powerful weapon to make things better for his people. Thanks to Rick Peters, the Finways and the CIA, the economic boycott against San Sierra was about to end. It would be America’s first act of restitution, the first price he would exact for not sharing his considerable knowledge with the rest of the world, including the American public.
Having made this decision, he thought, there was now time and room for kindness.
Alexandra Finway’s body needed more time to heal, and he wanted her fit as possible before he let her go. Also, judging from what he had learned from the interrogations, the two of them would need time alone together to heal their considerable psychological wounds, to come together again as man and wife. He would see that they had the necessary time and space, perhaps two or three months. During that time they would be his guests, and they would experience his country as no tourist ever had or could. In a few weeks, perhaps, he would make arrangements to bring their children down to join them.
Then would come his next scheduled secret meeting with the United States’ Secretary of State. He would bring the Finways with him to present to the Secretary as a special “present”—along with copies of the interrogation videotapes. He had no doubt that the Finways were a gift that would insure long-term fidelity on the part of the Americans in the upcoming marriage of common interests.
He ground out his cigar and walked quickly into the embassy.