Текст книги "The Bone Tree"

Автор книги: Greg Iles

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Текущая страница: 51 (всего у книги 58 страниц)

CHAPTER 80

JORDAN GLASS WALKED slowly along the Malecón in Havana, watching young couples stroll down the promenade while old men fished the surf along the seawall. The night air was warm, and Jordan could hardly believe she’d been in the chilly swamp of Lusahatcha County only hours ago. Her Nikon hung around her neck, but she hadn’t taken a single photo since the afternoon, when she’d shot Raúl Castro in his office in El Capitolio. The president had been too ill to be photographed, and Jordan had done a poor job of hiding her disappointment at being passed to his younger brother. Before the session was done, however, she’d had a brief encounter that from her husband’s point of view had made the trip worthwhile.

Jordan couldn’t agree, since she felt certain that had she not left Caitlin alone in Athens Point, the young newspaper publisher would still be alive. Even if Caitlin had insisted on the two of them pushing on to find the Bone Tree using Rambin’s map, with two guns they might have driven off the young man who had killed her. In fact, Jordan thought, if she’d stayed in Athens Point, Harold Wallis might never have summoned the courage to approach them. But maybe she was flattering herself. She’d survived many combat zones, but even a seasoned veteran could be killed by making assumptions about people. And in the end, that was what had killed Caitlin.

She’d been so hungry for that story—so ready to go to the end of the trail Henry Sexton had blazed, and then farther, making the story her own—that her normal defense mechanisms had been blunted. Where normally she might have felt suspicion of a stranger approaching her with information, the fact that the young man was African-American had lulled her into thinking he was naturally on her side. Caitlin probably assumed he’d heard of her quest through Carl Sims’s minister father, who’d put out the word for information on the Bone Tree the previous night. Caitlin would have known she stuck out like a TV actress in the dingy café at the Athens Point crossroads, so it was only natural that someone might recognize and approach her—

A burst of salsa music from the street startled Jordan, and she turned in time to see a gleaming relic of Detroit metal roar past, complete with tail fins and fisheye headlights. The laughing girl in the passenger seat was stunningly beautiful, as most young women down here seemed to be, and watching the antique car race past a dozen others like it gave Jordan the feeling of being lost on a film set. This feeling was magnified by the depressing fact that most of the occupants of the classic cars were tourists who’d paid locals to drive them around Old Havana. More disturbing still, she’d noticed that except for a couple of large ships visible in the harbor, the sea was empty of boats. The government knew that its citizens would not hesitate to strike out for Miami in even the flimsiest craft that offered the promise of a new life.

God, Jordan wished she’d stayed in Mississippi.

Her mind returned to the afternoon’s photo shoot, which had begun as a study in anticlimax. Raúl Castro was a poor substitute for Fidel, or at least the Fidel that Jordan remembered from her visit twenty years earlier. But as she was concluding her work, the president himself had stepped into the room unannounced and told her he remembered her from their previous meeting. Back then, the Cuban leader had been vital and filled with restless energy, and he’d flirted shamelessly with Jordan. The man facing her now was only a shadow of his younger self, a bent figure with a grizzled beard, swept aside by the tides of history.

Speaking softly in Spanish, Jordan told him that her husband had asked her to inquire whether he might answer a couple of questions. Having been briefed before the meeting, Fidel knew that Jordan was married to an FBI agent. In response to her request, he gave her a noncommittal tilt of the head and asked what the subject of her questions might be.

“John F. Kennedy,” she said. “New evidence has been discovered in America.”

Castro gave her a polite smile, but she thought she saw a flicker of interest in his eyes. “You speak much better Spanish than you once did, I believe,” he said.

“I got a lot of practice in El Salvador and Honduras in the 1980s.”

“Excellent. Tell me about this new evidence.”

Jordan had lowered her voice. “I’m not free to do that. But my husband would like to know if an American pilot named David Ferrie once ran guns to your government, before you aligned yourself with the Soviet Union.”

Castro considered the question for some time. Then he said, “This is true. Señor Ferrie was an unstable man, but in those early days we could not be selective in our choice of allies.”

“Thank you. The Bureau also has a reliable report that when you heard of the death of President Kennedy, your first reaction was to say it was a terrible thing for Cuba.”

Castro nodded firmly. “This is also true. Kennedy’s administration worked against us, and even tried to kill me, but privately we were working toward a sort of détente between our countries. Also, the man who stood waiting in the wings in America—and the men behind him—were far worse than the Kennedy brothers, from my perspective. It was Cuba’s good fortune that those men became ensnared in Vietnam. Otherwise, I fear we would have been next on the menu, and the world itself might now be only a memory.”

Again, Jordan thanked him for his candor while struggling to remember the questions John had given her. Pulling out a notecard didn’t seem like an ideal move in a situation where informality was the lubricant for conversation.

“At that time, you also seemed to imply that the CIA or a right-wing cabal was behind the assassination.”

Castro tilted his palm from side to side. “At that time, you must remember, this was a reasonable suspicion, given the events at Playa Girón—excuse me, the Bay of Pigs. And of course the Caribbean Crisis—our blockaded missiles—and the subsequent activities involving Operation Mongoose. It was very easy to see Lee Oswald as the dupe of more devious men. He tried to emigrate here, but we wanted him no more than the Soviets.” Castro waved his hand dismissively. “But that is ancient history. I no longer believe in a CIA conspiracy regarding Kennedy. Such men could not have kept that secret for so long.” The president regarded her curiously, then said, “Does your husband have a new theory about the events in Dallas? What has been discovered?”

Jordan tried to keep her answer as short as possible. “I’m afraid I don’t know that myself. But my husband and some of his colleagues now believe that the president was killed by a Mafia figure that Robert Kennedy was trying to deport from America. Do you have an opinion on that?”

The old dictator’s eyes seemed to deepen as he studied her. “I’ve had a good deal of experience with gangsters, mi cariño. They are venal men. They care only for themselves; they have no morals or mercy. If you seek a man who would murder the president of his country—one who is not a political extremist—then a gangster fighting to survive would be very easy for me to accept. Which mafioso do they have in mind?”

“The boss of New Orleans. Carlos Marcello.”

Castro’s eyes filled with some of the intensity she remembered from an earlier decade. “Ah, sí. Some of my people had dealings with this man. He was a crony of Santo Trafficante, who I held in jail here for some time. Marcello had an interest in the Lansky casinos, and . . .”

“Yes?” Jordan asked, willing him to continue.

“Marcello’s people also had dealings with Señor Jack Ruby, who paid a visit here in connection with the release of Trafficante during the early days of the Revolution.”

“Do you know whether Marcello and David Ferrie knew each other?”

“This I do not know, I’m afraid. But”—the president smiled—“I will inquire among certain men of my acquaintance.”

“Thank you. Can you tell me anything more that might be helpful?”

“Perhaps. But first you must tell me something. I watched you while you were photographing my brother. You seem very sad, mi cariño. Not like the girl I remember from before. Has your trip been made unpleasant in some way?”

Jordan felt heat come into her face. “I lost a friend today. A young woman, only thirty-five.”

The old man’s eyes released the tension they had held. “I see. I am sorry. I experience the same thing often now . . . more with each passing year.”

Jordan forced herself to stay on point, not so much for John as for Caitlin, who would have tried to milk this opportunity for all it was worth. “Can you tell me any more about Carlos Marcello or the other men?”

Castro’s eyes flickered again. Jordan noticed his brother watching carefully from across the office, but the president kept his eyes on her. “Perhaps,” he said finally. “But I shall not. Not today, anyway. I wish to reflect on what you have told me.”

At that point the dictator had nodded with enough formality to let Jordan know that her impromptu interrogation was over.

“Please let your escort know if there is anything we can do to make your stay in Havana more enjoyable. And next time bring your husband with you. I would like to speak to him on this matter. Like so many, I, too, would like to know with certainty who was behind the death of Kennedy.”

And that was the end of it.

After she left the capitol, Jordan had gone to the restaurant in her hotel, but found she had no appetite. She did feel thirsty, which had led to her drinking four Russian vodkas in quick succession. Then she’d begun her walk along the Malecón, watching the dark blue surf hammer the seawall, the waves hurling cold spray over her more than a few times. She’d wanted to fly home immediately, but to New Orleans, not Natchez. With Caitlin dead, the town was forever tainted for her. Yet John was still there, leading a forensic team as they excavated the heart of the tree that had drawn Caitlin to it like a moth to flame.

Jordan could still hear Caitlin laughing in the car as she’d talked about Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift filming Raintree County in Natchez, and how the Bone Tree was like a dark manifestation of that myth. More than ever, Jordan thought of Caitlin as a younger incarnation of herself. Only unlike Jordan, who had cheated death all over the world, Caitlin had walked into its embrace in her own backyard.

Realizing that she’d just walked past the door of her hotel, Jordan backed up and turned in, meaning to buy a double vodka to carry up to her room. But before she reached the bar, the desk clerk called her over in an excited voice. The fiftyish man she remembered as arrogant was a living stereotype, with slicked-back hair and a mustache that looked drawn on with a grease pencil.

“What is it?” Jordan asked, afraid that something had happened to John.

The man’s eyes sparkled with innuendo. “You have a present, Ms. Glass. A very special gift.”

The newly unctuous clerk turned and lifted a breathtaking bird-of-paradise blossom that Jordan had assumed was part of the hotel’s décor. This he presented to her with a suggestive smile. Jordan couldn’t imagine John sending this to her. For one thing he was busy, for another he knew nothing about flowers. If anything, he would have sent roses.

“I think there’s been a mistake,” she said.

The desk clerk gave her a leer. “No mistake, Ms. Glass. El presidente, madam. See? There is a note.”

Jordan opened the sealed envelope and read the brief lines written in what appeared to be painstaking English script on common white notepaper.

I am sorry for your loss, mi cariño. Thirty-five is far too young for anyone to die. As for the other matter, please tell your husband that I agree with him about Señor Marcello. A man who knows much of these things tells me that the pilot Ferrie had close dealings with Marcello’s people. I would be interested to receive a report on this matter, though I do not expect to see one. And anyway, the truth is depressing and simple. The president’s brother pushed too hard against the shadow, and the shadow pushed back. This is the way of life. I doubt we will meet again. Like your young friend, we all share the fate of this flower.

Farewell.

Fidel

Jordan looked down at the flamboyant signature with a disturbing sense of dislocation. She felt a visceral echo of the excitement Caitlin would have felt to hold that piece of paper.

“Well, Señora?” asked the desk clerk. “Will they be sending a car for you?”

Jordan looked up with a glare that backed the clerk up a step. “I’d like a double vodka sent to my room. Two, in fact.”

Then she turned and walked toward the elevators.

“And the flower, Ms. Glass?”

Jordan pressed the elevator button, then looked back at the desk clerk. “You can send that up, too.”

She’d decided to return to Mississippi after all. She would take the bird-of-paradise and leave it beside Caitlin’s grave. The brave girl deserved some symbol of the exotic journalist’s life she’d always wanted, even if in truth that life did not exist.

CHAPTER 81

COLONEL GRIFFITH MACKIEVER watched Special Agent Kaiser’s face as he studied the computer screen on the desk in the study of the Valhalla hunting lodge.

“How long have you had this video?” Kaiser asked, shaking his head as he replayed it.

“I got it yesterday,” Mackiever replied.

“Where?”

“I’d rather not say just yet.”

Kaiser looked up momentarily, then reviewed the video again. “Those are definitely your SWAT officers?”

Mackiever nodded. “I’m sure of it. That’s definitely one of our spotting scopes, and I know I’ve heard those voices before.”

“And they just killed those kids in cold blood.”

“I think that’s the only possible interpretation of that footage. I’m trying to identify the two speakers based on their voices, but I have to be careful. I’m not sure who I can trust in my tech division.”

Kaiser pushed the computer away and leaned back in the chair. “If that goes public, it’ll do irreparable damage to the state police.”

“I realize that. I’ve been struggling with this decision, and in all honesty, I’d prefer not to use it.”

“But . . . ?”

“It may be the only way to bring down Forrest Knox. And if it is . . . then I’ll use it.”

Kaiser nodded thoughtfully. “How can you tie Forrest Knox to this video if you don’t know who the men in it are?”

“The video was found on a computer in Knox’s residence.”

Kaiser looked up sharply. “You searched his home?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Kaiser mulled this over. He obviously had enough experience to know he should not ask questions he did not want the answers to. “Why bring it to me?” he asked finally.

“I have a feeling you want to stop Knox as badly as I do.”

Kaiser’s reaction was difficult to read. “Let me ask you a question, Colonel. I’ve read Forrest’s LSP record. You promoted him twice after you took over the state police. You elevated him to his present position. Can you explain that?”

Mackiever had asked himself this a thousand times. And the answer was depressingly simple. “He was the smartest son of a bitch under my command. He tested off the charts on paper, and he was the best man in the field, bar none. By any objective standard, he ought to be sitting in my chair.”

“I see. But . . . ?”

“It took me a few years to recognize his problem, because he’s so good at hiding it.”

“Which is?”

“He’s a pure sociopath. But he’s not like the robot types we’ve both arrested before. He’s got a genuine warmth that people relate to. He’s more like a highly intelligent wolf than a shark. A thinking predator, if you get my meaning.”

Kaiser smiled strangely. “That’s basically the definition of a human being.”

This brought Mackiever up short. “Well . . . multiply that times ten, and maybe you’ll know what I’m trying to get across. Am I wrong about you wanting to nail Forrest?”

Kaiser closed the computer, slipped the flash drive into his pocket, and stood. “No, sir. You’re not. I’ve got a lot of evidence to process, but this could be the straw that breaks that bastard’s back. We’ve got to find the men in this video.”

“What do you want me to do?” Mackiever asked.

WELL AFTER MIDNIGHT, A steady knocking awakened Jordan from alcohol-induced sleep. When she got to the door in one of John’s T-shirts, she found a Cuban army officer standing in the hall. The captain was in no mood to be patient, but she forced him to take the time to convince her that the Cuban president was summoning her to his estate for a legitimate purpose, and not for some fantasy of a late-night booty call. After she dressed, Jordan carried her camera bag into the hall, but the officer shook his head and said she would have to rely on her memory. No recording devices of any kind would be allowed—not even a notebook and pen.

The car that carried her west past the Bay of Pigs was a black vintage Cadillac limousine with bulletproof glass. The captain did not once look into his rearview mirror to check Jordan out. She didn’t know whether this was out of fear of his commander in chief, or because he’d driven so many women to see Castro in this way that he no longer had any interest in the process.

Their destination proved to be a mansion on the beach with its own private marina, a palace guarded by at least a dozen soldiers and fully staffed by maids and a butler. This was an eye-opening experience, considering that the tenant was theoretically the leader of a Communist revolution.

The butler escorted her to a well-appointed study whose walls displayed dozens of framed photographs dating to the 1950s and ’60s. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Jordan walked slowly down the wall and tried to identify various African and Central American leaders. She recognized Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara, Evo Morales, and of course the pale Soviet premiers grinning as they smoked cigars with Fidel. She was a little surprised to see Castro with his arm around Che Guevara, since she’d heard the Cuban president had been jealous of his more glamorous comrade-in-arms.

“Thank you for coming,” a voice behind her said in Spanish.

She whirled to find the president standing inside the door, watching her.

“I’m told you were sleeping,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m at the age where sleep has deserted me, at least as anything but a torment.”

Jordan elected the direct approach. “Why have you brought me here?”

Castro came farther into the room, then sat in a heavily padded chair and put his slippered feet on an ottoman. All she could think about was how frizzy his white beard looked beneath the pasty face. Gone was the virile, black-haired firebrand who had so impressed her twenty years ago.

“The things you asked me today started me thinking,” he said. “I found myself unable to stop. I finally decided that the time has come to pass on some information to the U.S. government. I will not do it officially, but . . .” The president looked up at her with a flash of his old intensity. “It’s my understanding that your husband may be working with some older men who remember the Kennedy years as clearly as I do. They call themselves the Working Group. Do you know anything about that?”

While Jordan considered how to respond, the president motioned for her to take the seat opposite him.

“Maybe,” she said. “I know he’s working with a retired agent named Dwight Stone.” She perched on the edge of the chair. “Stone’s very ill, and my husband wants to find out who was responsible for what happened in Dallas before time runs out for Stone.”

Castro gave her a tight smile. “Just so.”

“You obviously know more than you told me today, or in your note.”

“Oh, yes, the flower. How childish of me, yes?”

“It was beautiful.”

The president inclined his head. “So . . . let us speak of assassination. I myself have survived over six hundred attempts on my life since taking office.”

“Six hundred?”

“That I know of. Nearly a dozen of those were planned and carried out by the CIA at the direction of the Kennedy administration. Some of those were facilitated by what you call the Mafia. This is well documented, of course. Not news, as you say.”

“Yes, I’ve read about that.”

“Then let me tell you something about which you have not read.”

Jordan waited.

“In 1967, a man with a rifle tried to assassinate me in the Plaza de la Revolución. Had my security services not been warned by one of the man’s confederates, he probably would have succeeded. He was set up to shoot me from seven hundred yards away, and he had the skill to make such a shot.”

“What nationality was the shooter?”

“French Corsican.”

“I see. Was he killed?”

“Not immediately. He was wounded during his capture. Then he was questioned by the security services. He subsequently died during this process, but not before telling most of what he knew.”

Jordan had the feeling that the Corsican’s confession was what she had been brought here to hear.

“And?”

“The story he told was quite interesting. He had been hired to kill me by two American Mafia leaders. Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello.”

Jordan felt an unexpected thrill. “Have you confirmed that he was telling the truth?”

This time Castro’s smile had a reptilian quality to it. “He was telling the truth, you can believe me. But I wasn’t very interested in his story. The Mafia has wanted its casinos back ever since 1959. They will never get them. Sometime after I die, Cuba will revert to capitalism and the Walt Disney company will have Mickey Mouse running the damned casinos.”

For a moment Jordan wondered if the Cuban leader were drunk. In any case, he now seemed to be lost in his own memories. She decided the best thing to do was let him ramble.

“The story that interested me also involved Señor Marcello. By 1967, I had of course heard the craziest theories imaginable about who killed Kennedy. Like Robert Ludlum stories, you know?”

“Yes.”

“Justice Warren’s commission probed many of these theories. But one name that never appeared in the Warren Commission Report was Carlos Marcello. It was as though this man had been rendered invisible during the investigations. But the Corsican told me a very simple story. He said Robert Kennedy had been in the process of deporting Marcello permanently from the United States, and the only way Marcello could stop this was to neutralize the attorney general. To do this, he decided to kill the president. It was no Machiavellian stratagem by the CIA, the military, or corporate America. It was simply a matter of survival.”

“Did this Corsican claim to have been the shooter?”

“No. That was partly what convinced me he was telling the truth. He was not claiming to be the assassin and asking to be spared because of it. He was simply emptying his brain to spare himself further pain.”

Jordan shuddered at the thought of the agony concealed behind the clinical coldness of that phrase.

“He said the shooter was a man who had trained exiles in preparation for Playa Girón at camps in Louisiana. He was one of the white-robed racists, a KKK man. He was also a former U.S. marine, like Oswald. Unlike Oswald, however, he was supposedly a man of great competence.”

“Did the Corsican give this man a name?”

The president vouchsafed Jordan another tight smile. “Sí, he did.”

“What was it?”

Castro closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “I think it best not to go that far at this time.”

Jordan struggled to contain her frustration. “If you learned this in 1967, why has it never been made public?”

“For several reasons, mi cariño. First, my security services did not want anyone knowing that a foreign assassin had come so close to killing me. Second, quite frankly, it served the purposes of the Revolution to have the American public mistrust its leaders. Far better for the man in the street to fear that the CIA or some corporate big shots had murdered their King Arthur, and not some Sicilian gangster trying to save his business.”

Jordan sat quietly, trying to process what she’d been told, and why. “And the Corsican died?”

“Sí. Badly.”

“What do you want me to do with this information?”

The president studied his fingernails for a while. Then he said, “I want you to pass it to your husband. Tell him not to try to contact me for confirmation. I will not confirm it. I tell you now, tonight, because you presented me with a completely unofficial way to let the right people know what we know.”

Jordan didn’t know whether to thank him, ask more questions, or prepare to leave.

“You are a beautiful woman, Ms. Glass. You have aged very well since that day we met in 1987.”

“Was that the year?” Jordan asked. “I wasn’t sure.”

“Yes. I, sadly, have not aged nearly so well. Were I ten years younger I would ask you to stay the night.”

Jordan shifted on the chair. She’d been afraid this was coming. “You know I’m a married woman.”

Castro gave her a jaded smile. “Different women view marriage in different ways. I notice you have not taken your husband’s surname.”

“No. But I’m afraid I’m the one-man variety, nevertheless.”

The light of flirtation died in his eyes. “Pity. Well . . . you’ve heard what I wanted to tell you. My driver will take you back to your hotel.”

Jordan got to her feet before he could have any second thoughts and moved toward the door. As she passed the president, he touched her arm, and looked up at her.

“Any more questions before we say good-bye?”

She knew she should go on, but she stopped anyway. She fought the urge to ask what he was doing living in opulence while his people struggled, but she figured she knew the answer already. Power corrupts, regardless of nationality or philosophy. Instead, she asked, “What will you do if someone makes this information public?”

The old man shrugged. “It’s an American problem. I leave it in their hands. I only have one regret.”

“What’s that?”

“I wish I had let Mrs. Kennedy know this information before she died. Perhaps it might have brought her some peace.”

She gave the dictator a last generous smile, then walked into the hall and hurried toward the mansion’s door. She thought of Caitlin as she passed between the luxurious antiques and crystal lamps, but once she was outside, in the tropical air, she remembered that Dwight Stone was fighting for his life in a Denver hospital. As the army officer shut her into the backseat of the limo, she wondered whether the Corsican’s story would bolster Stone’s will to live. If not, at least it might give him some peace before he died.

IN THE WELL OF the night, Walt looked up from Tom’s unquiet bed and saw Pithy Nolan’s electric wheelchair silhouetted in the door to the hall. This time the old woman did not remain at a distance, but whirred softly into the room and came around the bed so that she would be close to Walt. Her eyes glimmered in the spill of light from the hallway.

“I smelled your cigar in my room earlier, Captain.”

“I’m sorry about that. I needed to settle my nerves.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s good to smell men in this house again. It reminded me of Tom. He never smokes in my presence anymore, but I can always smell that cigar on his clothes.”

Walt smiled to himself. Many times during his life he had looked up or turned at the smell of certain cigars and expected to find Tom Cage standing there.

Pithy Nolan let her gaze fall on Tom for half a minute. “I’ve heard some upsetting news,” she whispered. “About the girl Penn was set to marry.”

“I know about that.”

“Have you told Tom?”

“He knows. It’s weighing mighty heavy on him, too.”

The old woman regarded Tom again. Walt had the feeling she saw very deeply, despite her lack of medical knowledge.

“How much danger is he in?” she asked. “I don’t feel that he’s dying, but . . .”

“He could die, all right. He should be in a hospital. But this is the way he wants it.”

Pithy nodded. “He’s a stubborn man.”

“Do you know why he’s doing this?” Walt asked.

The wise eyes returned to Walt’s face. “Do you not?”

“Up to a point, I guess. But no further.”

Pithy Nolan reached down and sucked a deep inhalation from the oxygen mask on her lap. Then she said, “He’s not doing it for himself. Tom Cage almost never did anything for himself. This man takes care of people. That’s his purpose on earth. And he’ll die fulfilling it, if the gods require it.”

Walt thought about this. “Makes it a mite tough on the people who care about him.”

Pithy nodded, the ghost of a smile upon her lips. “Those who love heroes must walk a stony road.” Then the smile vanished, and her eyes pierced Walt to the quick. “Sometimes we must share their end, as well.”

At some level, Walt figured, he had always known this. “I understand.”

“I read Classics at university,” Pithy said, a hint of wistfulness in her reedy voice. “Do you remember the Spartans?”

“I think so, ma’am.”

“I didn’t care much for them. The Spartans didn’t deserve the glorification they got. But they did have a rather succinct saying that’s never left me. Nothing is more apt when things come to the sticking point.”

“What was that?”

The piercing eyes found his eyes. “‘Come back with your shield—or on it.’ Did you ever hear that saying?”

“Yes, ma’am. And I’ve been in that situation myself. With Tom, as a matter of fact.”

“You must have acquitted yourself well.”

Walt wasn’t so sure.

“My husband never returned from the war,” Pithy said quietly. “He’s resting somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But his shield is with him. He’s sleeping in it. A Curtiss Warhawk.”

In his mind, Walt saw a brave American boy in an aging P-40 being cut to ribbons by a swarm of quicker-turning Zeros. He jumped when Pithy reached out and laid her papery hand on his. It felt featherlight, and neither warm nor cold. But through her thin skin Walt felt something like an electric current running into him.

“I’m going to send Flora in with food and tea,” she said. “Then you need rest, Captain. Marshal your strength. There’s no telling what might be required of you before this business is concluded.”

The regal old woman gave him a sad smile, then turned her chair with the touch of a finger and whirred out of the room like a queen borne upon a royal litter.