32

Wanamaker lurked in the shadow of the balcony, watching with a smug smile as the two young men in loose-fitting sport jackets put a hammerlock on the Weeder and steered him up the aisle. Huxstep, peering from a wing of the stage, formed his left forefinger and thumb into a pistol and sighted over it at the Weeder’s back. The Attorney General, standing next to Wanamaker, noticed Huxstep mouthing the words, “Bang, bang! You’re dead!” “What you do with him,” he mumbled, angling the flame of his lighter into the bowl of his pipe, sucking the tobacco into life, “is clearly not something I need to know.”

Wanamaker started to giggle at what he thought was a joke; Huxstep’s gesture had left little room for doubt about the fate that awaited the Weeder.

Wanamaker’s attitude irritated the Attorney General. He released a cloud of vile-smelling smoke into his face. “I don’t see what there is to laugh about,” he snapped. “You plugged the leak, but not before the Russians found out what you were up to.”

“It could take a while,” Wanamaker ventured, batting feebly at the smoke screen, “but we can get Stufftingle back on track.”

The Attorney General appeared interested. “What do you have in mind?”

“With any luck,” Wanamaker said, “we ought to be able to find out where the Iranians have set up their germ warfare shop. We ought to be able to smuggle in enough contaminated microbes in a year, a year and a half on the outside, to set off an uncontrolled biological reaction, otherwise known as a plague.”

“Frame a proposal,” the Attorney General suggested, “but be careful not to leave a paper trail.” He caught sight of Fargo escorting Snow toward the emergency exit. “What about the girl?” he asked.

“She’s no threat to us,” Wanamaker replied. “She’s convinced the asshole is a raving lunatic-she’s convinced he invented us.”

The idea that he might be a figment of someone’s imagination seemed to amuse the Attorney General. “Wouldn’t it be funny if she were right?” he said, and reaching into his pocket, he began to turn down the hearing aid.