27

IT HAD BEEN TOO LONG since Jae had been in Europe. She was disappointed to see the deterioration of Paris. As the late-afternoon sun descended, the lights came on all over the city, highlighting the indecency and excess that made her glad she was raising her kids in Illinois. Downtown Chicago may look a lot like this, but she was able to shield Brie and Connor from much of it. There were those who would chide her that this was the price of true freedom, but her views had changed when she became a mother.

Jae found Paul’s hotel and picked up the envelope at the desk without a hitch. Soon she was settling into his room and enjoying the view. As she hung her clothes, she looked for his overcoat, but of course he had taken that, wherever he was. “Watch the news,” he had said. She turned on an all-news television station, changed her clothes, ordered dinner from room service, and sat in front of the TV. She hoped Paul would not be too late.

Her meal was just okay for such a palatial hotel, and after a while the news tended to repeat itself. She didn’t know how many times she had seen and heard the loyalty decree announced by Baldwin Dengler. Certain shots showed dignitaries in the background, and she saw Bia Balaam. Then came the demonstrations from around the world, expressions of support and criticism from various leaders, and Styr Magnor taking responsibility for the underground manifesto.

Finally came the coverage of Chancellor Dengler’s forthright response to Magnor, and of course all the international reaction to that. As the news cycled through the same stuff over and over and so-called experts added their conflicting commentaries, Jae was tempted to watch something else. But Paul would have told her to watch the news for a reason. He had to be on some assignment that would wind up being covered.

She noticed his laptop on a TV tray near an easy chair. She settled in behind it as the news droned. The keyboard was locked and required a password. She shouldn’t be snooping, Jae decided, but on the other hand she was here on the NPO’s nickel, and that was what they expected of her. That was, plainly, rationalization, because she had already scotched her assignment by eliminating the element of surprise and even tipping Paul off that he had been bugged.

But still, she wanted to know what he had been working on, and nothing was going to keep her from trying. A distant memory made her wonder if Paul had ever changed his password. He had once used her first name, followed by the last digit in the year of each of their births—his, hers, Brie’s, and Connor’s. She tapped it in. Bingo.

All Jae saw on the desktop were various programs, expense spreadsheets, notes, games, Web links, and a documents folder. She clicked on that and saw that the most recent files were numbered one through four and titled ManDraft. What could that mean? She opened the first and a chill ran down her spine. Christian Manifesto, first draft. Fingers trembling, she opened the second, third, and fourth and told herself she was just curious about how Paul thought, why he made the small changes he had made.

Jae tried with everything in her to find an explanation for this, other than that Paul himself had written the manifesto. She couldn’t make it compute that he was a mole, an infiltrator into the rebellion, and yet himself wrote their manifesto. She could come to no other conclusion than he had flipped. He was part of them, believed in the cause, and had already become enough of a leader that he would be called upon to craft their policy.

Was that what he meant by telling her to watch the news? Was he not really returning until midnight the next night when this warning about the firstborn sons either came true—as had the one in Los Angeles—or proved false and proved these people’s faith in God was misplaced?

Jae couldn’t sit still. She wanted to call Paul, but she knew he wouldn’t even answer if he was in the middle of an assignment he couldn’t tell her about. But was he working on NPO International business, or was he on some caper for the underground? What she had discovered was exactly the type of evidence on Paul NPO USSA was looking for. Her father would worship the ground she walked on if she brought him this chestnut. It’d be just like him to assign me to assassinate Paul.

And should she? If it was true, if he was a traitor, a turncoat, a renegade, a maverick, a threat to the USSA, a mole within the NPO, was it not the responsibility of any honest citizen to expose him? To eliminate him?

Jae moved in and out of the various rooms in Paul’s suite, banging the walls, pulling her hair, grunting in frustration. Why couldn’t he be here? Why did he have to be gone? Why could she not know where he was?

Of one thing she was certain, there would be no more cat-and-mouse games between them. As soon as he walked through that door, she would put it to him. She wanted to know. He had to tell her. Was he the best infiltrator of the underground the NPO had ever produced, or was he a believer, wholly dedicated to the cause of the enemy of the state?

Jae had no idea what she would do with whichever answer he gave her, but she wouldn’t sleep tonight without knowing one way or the other.

“I don’t suppose I need to tell you,” Vibishana said as he drove to a regional International Government office, “but this is a very difficult operation. It will be quick and dirty by design. We have to assume that Magnor/Wren will come into the pub alone as he promised, but that doesn’t mean he will not have already planted compatriots in there.”

“As you will have.”

“Exactly. And while you have to be one of them, Paul, because you will identify him, I cannot be unless there are customarily people of color in that establishment. I’m guessing there are not, and thus I would stand out.”

“I’m afraid that would be an understatement,” Paul said. “A blue-collar pub would likely be a holdout against political correctness and diversity.”

“I will run the point from outside,” Vibishana said. “And Magnor will undoubtedly have people out there too, watching for people like us. We must be thoroughly invisible.”

Paul dug through his stuff and pulled out the bag containing what he called his drinking outfit.

“Perfect,” Vibishana said. “It even smells.”

“That’s from wearing it during half a dozen workouts and never washing it.”

“My best camouflage is a slight limp,” the Indian said, “making me look less than masculine. Harmless.”

“And yet you will be carrying.”

“Of course. The most powerful handheld weapon in history, as will all thirty of my people.”

“Thirty?”

“Does that sound like overkill to you, Paul?”

“A little.”

“As I said, this will be difficult, dangerous—too many variables. Lots of things can go wrong. I intend to assure that nothing does. Once we get the signal from you that Magnor/Wren is where he said he would be, we will not hesitate. We will storm the place, knowing he will also likely have armed personnel there. He will be agitated that he has not yet seen this contact person he expected, and he may try to bolt. That’s why we need your signal as soon as possible after he is seated.”

“And what form would you like that signal to take?”

“Let me put it this way, Paul: Regardless of how hard we work at making you invisible, you will never feel more conspicuous in your life. You need to trust yourself, trust your disguise, trust the situation, trust human nature, and trust us. You will likely assume you have been made and may opt out of giving the signal, fearing Magnor is onto you and that his people will respond before you do. That’s a good reason to make the signal easy, clear, and totally normal. Think about it and be prepared to let me know when we’re briefing our people.”

When they arrived at London’s NPO headquarters, the assignees were already making their way to a meeting room in the back. The breakdown appeared to be about three-to-one men to women, but the women looked roughly the same size as the men. All wore black boots, black cargo-style pants, black T-shirts, and thick leather belts containing weapons and ammunition. They carried duffel bags and helmets with visors.

Vibishana spread the drawing of Horsehead’s Pub on a flip chart, called the meeting to order, and outlined the mission. “You can leave your helmets here. Only these six”—and he read the names—“will wear the all-black outfit you have on now, as you will emerge from the command van on my signal and will be the last on the scene. The rest will dress the parts of street bums and pub patrons.”

As if on cue, the SWAT team began riffling through their bags and pulling out appropriate clothes and shoes. Paul found it eerie that there was no talking and very little noise, but the personnel—men and women—immediately stripped to their underwear where they sat and changed into their getups. Paul was intrigued by where they found to hide their firepower.

The conspicuousness Vibishana predicted began right then as Paul felt obligated to change his clothes too. He wore a stained, sleeveless, ribbed T-shirt, cheap, raggedy suspenders, filthy woolen trousers, and faded, scuffed brown boots with no laces and no socks. Over this he pulled on a grimy denim jacket, too thin for the weather, his built-in reason for camping out in the pub for the better part of the evening. He finished with a floppy, flat hat that he pulled down over his ears and almost over his eyes.

“The key, as you know,” Vibishana lectured, “is that we cannot overplay this. No acknowledgment of each other. No obvious studying of the area. We’re street people; this is our home. We’re bored, listless, barely conscious. We stare, we tune out, we respond slowly. But be aware of people in the area who don’t appear to belong. You should be able to recognize Styr Magnor, aka Steffan Wren’s people because they are not likely to be disguised.

“Magnor himself might be disguised, Agent Stepola, and it’s entirely on you to identify the right man. Whoever is sitting at that back table when you give the signal has about a 50-percent chance of dying before he hits the floor. So—”

“—be sure,” Paul said.

“Be sure.”

Vibishana explained that Paul would be the first of the team in the pub, a little more than an hour before the rendezvous was scheduled. “We will drop him off six blocks from the place, and we will watch for curious eyes. Unless we stop to pick him up because of some suspicious activity, he will go in, settle, and appear to anyone who comes in after him as if he has been drinking for hours. His goal is to have an unobstructed view of the table in the back and be utterly unnoticed.

“A dozen of you—” and Vibishana listed them—“will wander in over the next half hour, blending in and finding spots where you can see Agent Stepola.

“Another dozen—” again he read off the names—“will be in the neighborhood—some in front, some in back—ready to move on my command, which will come through your earpieces. The remaining six will be in the command vehicle with me, and we will move out together at the appropriate time.”

The major general explained that upon the signal from Paul, one of the personnel inside the pub would trigger a signal to him in the van and ignite a flash incendiary between Paul and Magnor/Wren, which should cause a stampede toward the doors. The rest of the inside SWAT team should stay out of the way of the panicked people. “Stay near the walls where you will have the freedom to charge toward Magnor. He will bolt for the back door, where the outside personnel will be on their way in. Now get this. This man is number one on the international most-wanted list. We may terminate him with the least provocation. Allow me to outline what form that might take. If he is armed, shoot to kill, even if he doesn’t reach for his weapon. If he attempts to run through our armed personnel coming in the back door, shoot to kill. If any of his people reach for, point, or fire weapons, shoot to kill—Magnor first. If you hear gunfire—friendly, otherwise, or undetermined—shoot to kill. This man may survive, but dead or alive, he will be in our custody. Understood?”

SWAT personnel nodded.

“Now, Agent Stepola, what will be your signal?”

“I’ll knock an empty glass to the floor.”

Vibishana smirked. “Okay, Doctor. But if you should accidentally drop one early, the place is going to get a lot noisier a lot quicker.”

Jae had to wonder: Was this how God revealed Himself to her? By discovering that her husband was a secret believer? And what did that prove? Because Paul had turned, did that make it true? Did that make God real? What if Paul was wrong?

What if she was wrong and Paul had not turned at all? Could the manifesto on his computer mean something else? Could he have infiltrated the rebellion so deeply that they trusted him to write this for them, not realizing that he didn’t believe it himself? What would become of him—and the resistance—if the threat fizzled at the zero hour the next night?

And if Paul believed, for how long had that been true? Was he in with the underground in Los Angeles? Did he believe the drought was the work of God Himself? Or did he know it was?