That brought more applause and outright cheering, sprinkled with sobbing laughter. All the while, Gregg gave them a wan, strained smile that had nothing of Puppetman in it. Part of him seemed to be simply, scornfully, observing.
"I just wanted all of you to know that we're still in this fight despite everything. I know Ellen is watching this from her room and she wants me to thank you for your sympathy and your continued support. Now, I'd like to get back to her myself. Ms. Sorenson will answer any other questions you might have. Once again, thank you all. Amy-"
Gregg raised his hands in salute; Puppetman yanked hard. They cheered him, tears streaming down their faces. He had it all back.
It was his, now. He knew it. Most of him rejoiced.
2:00 P.M.
The sound of a soap filtered through the cardboard and cottage-cheese stucco walls of the cheap motel room. On the screen of the room television a pretty young joker woman with bright-blue skin was trying to guess the password from Henry Winkler's clues. Wrapped in a cheap, stiff housecoat her mysterious benefactor had bought on sale at Kmart, Sara sat on the end of the bed and stared at the screen as if the images on it mattered.
She was still trying to pull together the broken glass pieces the news flash had left in her belly. The wife of Senator Gregg Hartmann has miscarried in the wake of her tragic fall… The senator was bravely containing his grief as he fought for political survival on the convention floor. Just the sort of persevering spirit America needed to carry her into the nineties, or so the commentator's tone seemed to say. Or had that just been the blood in Sara's ears.
Bastard. Monster. He sacrificed his wife, his unborn child, to save his political hide.
An image of Ellen Hartmann's face surfaced through the shrouds she laid over her memories of the W.H.O. tour. A wan, brave smile, knowing, forbearing… infinitely tragic.
Now she lay broken and near death, the child she had so desired lost.
Sara was never the strident kind of feminist who saw every human interaction in terms of grand collectives, political synecdoche wherein a man was Men and a woman, Women.
Yet this struck her deeply, offended her on some primal level. Angered her: for herself, for Ellen, for all of Hartmann's victims, yes, but especially the women.
For Andrea.
There was a thing the man who had hurried her from the hotel last night as the police cars wailed their red-and-blue way to the latest battle scene, had suggested when they talked in the early hours of this morning. She had promised to consider it before he left about whatever errands he had to tend to-not even reporter's curiosity made her really want to know. Because his suggestion was natural enough, she supposed, for a self-confessed Soviet spymaster. But it shocked a Midwestern girl, transplanted into the neurasthenic garden of the New York intellectual set, even one who prided herself on her case-hardening in the streets and back rooms of Jokertown.
But still, but still… Gregg Hartmann had to be stopped. Gregg Hartmann had to pay.
But Sara Morgenstern didn't want to die. To follow Andi oh-so-ungently into that night she could not believe was good. That was the covert caveat of George Steele's suggestion, neither hidden nor overtly stated.
But what, what chance do I have with that-thing-after me? The laughing, twisted leather boy, who humme to himself and walked through walls. She could not hide forever. And when he found her..
She shook her head, whipstinging her cheeks with the ends of her hair, blinded by hot sudden tears.
Onscreen the blue woman cleaned up in the End Game. Sara hoped it made her happy.
3:00 P.M.
"Stop it." The steady angry flipping of the magazine's pages ceased.
"Why?" Blaise's tone was challenging.
Tach reined in his temper. Poured another brandy. " I am trying to think, and it is irritating me."
"You always stop using contractions when you're pissed."
"Blaise, please."
Propping the phone beneath his chin, Tach called Sara's room. The distant ringing echoed mournfully over and over again.
Tach drummed his fingers on the table, touched the disconnect button and phoned the desk. Blaise's magazine flew across the room like a terrified bird. "This is boring sitting here watching you be stupid! I want to go out."
"You have forfeited that right."
"I don't want to be here when the CIA comes to get you." The boy's grin was ugly.
"Goddamn you."
Fist upraised, Tachyon charged across the room. The knock at the door arrested him before he could strike the child. Hiram and Jay Ackroyd were in the hall. Hiram looked like death. Ackroyd's face was puffy and swollen, and a lot of colors that a face shouldn't be. Tachyon's stomach formed into a small, tight ball, and tried to retreat into his spinal cord. He stepped reluctantly back to let them enter.
Hiram waddled to the window. For the first time in all the years he had known him, Tachyon realized that the ace was not using his gravity power to reduce his own weight.
Worchester's footfalls were ponderous in the suite. Ackroyd seated himself on the sofa, and laid a garment bag across his knees. The silence stretched like cobwebs between the three men and the boy.
Ackroyd jerked his head toward the door. "Lose the kid."
"Hey!" Blaise burst out.
"Blaise, go."
He gave his grandfather a smirk. " I thought I'd forfeited the right."
"GO, damn you!"
"Shit, just when things were getting interesting." Blaise held up his hands, palms out. "Hey, no problem. I'm gone."
The door closed behind him, and the silence resumed. Nerves fraying, Tachyon flung out a hand. "Hiram, what the devil is this?" There was no reply from the ace.
Ackroyd said, "You gotta run a blood test, Doc. Right now."
Tachyon smirked and indicated the room. "What? Here?" The detective grimaced. "Don't be dense, and don't be cute. I'm too fucking tired and I hurt too much to deal with it." The man's fingers trembled slightly as he unzipped the bag. "This is Senator Hartmann's jacket from Syria."
Tachyon stared in blind terror at the black stain on the cloth.
This was it. He could no longer postpone the discovery by reason of convoluted Takisian honor. Sara's accusations would be proved or disproved in old blood.
"How did you come to possess this?"
"That's a long story," Ackroyd said wearily, "and none of us have the time. Let's just say I got it.. from Chrysalis."
"It was… well… sort of a legacy."
Tachyon cleared an obstruction from his throat, and asked cautiously, "And just what do you think I am going to find?"
"The presence of Xenovirus Takis-A."
Moving like an automaton, Tachyon crossed to the dresser, poured a drink, threw it back. " I see a jacket. Anyone could buy a jacket, doctor it with virus positive blood-"
"That's what I thought." Hiram's voice was a 'rusty grinding sound. "But he's," a jerk of the head toward Ackroyd, "been through too much. The link from Syria to this hotel room is clear. It's the sen-it's Hartmann's jacket."
Tachyon pivoted slowly to face Worchester. "Do you want me to do this thing?"
"Do we have any choice?"
"No. I don't suppose we have."
All the way to the Marriott, Puppetman nudged at the gnawing guilt inside Billy Ray. It was a delicious snack, soured and spiced with frustration. Gregg could feel Ray reliving the moment of Ellen's fall again and again, and he knew that every time Billy felt his fingers graze Ellen's hand. Ray sat in the front seat of the limo and watched the traffic far too carefully, blinking too often behind his mirrored sunglasses. Gregg could feel Carnifex aching to strike out at something, someone.
So Simple, Puppetman chortled. He'd do anything if he thought it might make up for his mistake.
Remember that, Gregg told him. Tonight, maybe.
Now that it was over, Gregg was beginning to feel more normal. The numbness and feeling of being split in half was receding. Part of him still hated what he'd done, but after all what choice had he had?