Shapes and faces and stabs of knives in his head.
No, I want to think of something pleasant, Ferguson told himself. No more missions.
Swallow the radioactive pill and let it kill the poison.
“Far away for death,” Ferguson whispered. “Just far away.”
He forced his brain to roam into the past . . . to prep school.
Not always pleasant. The Jesuits were a tough crew, toughening up the boys they taught.
Literature? When was it: the American school in Alexandria, the Jesuit school, the Korean school?
He’d never been to a Korean school.
What if they grabbed him now, stuck him in ice-cold water, threatened to freeze him to death if he didn’t talk.
It was freezing here already. Couldn’t get much colder.
“Hence! Home, you idle creatures, get you home.”
The beginning of Julius Caesar. Brother Mark used to say it to end class.
Now that had been a good year. They’d even done that play. He’d been Anthony.
Antony.
Marcus Antonius.
Anthony.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Ferguson, not praise him. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
No good I’ve done.
“Jesus, it’s cold,” said Ferguson, rolling up from the cot and walking to generate some heat.
“ ’Oh judgment, though art fled to brutish beasts,’ ” said Ferguson, the words from Antony’s famous speech springing back from some recess of his brain. “ ‘Men have lost their reason!’ ”
Good God almighty, it was cold.