"Drawn to the bait and trapped," said a slight redheaded woman who wore a black turtleneck and jeans. "Set cheese for a rat; set a fine banquet to catch a fine lord."
"Rats and lords," a voice repeated. "A fine rat. A fine lord." It giggled. It was a male voice, cracked and adolescent: the leather boy. Hartmann felt a tickle run along the cord of his scrotum like the fingers of a whore. No doubt about it. He was getting emotion from him like static on a line. A hint of something potent-something terrible. For once Puppetman felt no desire to probe further.
He feared this one. More than the others, Prahler, these casual youths with guns. Even Gimli.
"You went to all this trouble to help Gimli here settle an old, imaginary score?" he made himself say. "That's generous of you."
"We're doing this for the revolution," said a youthful nat with a blond flattop and a heat-lamp tan and the air of having worked hard to memorize the line. His turtleneck and jeans were molded around an athlete's figure. He stood by the wall caressing the muzzle brake of a Soviet assault rifle grounded by his foot.
"You're of no significance, Senator," the woman said. She flipped her square-cut bangs off her forehead. "Simply a tool. What your naive egotism tells you notwithstanding."
"Who the hell are you people?"
"We bear the sacred name of the Red Army Fraction," she told him. She hovered over a stocky youngster who sat cross-legged fiddling with a radio perched on a warped wooden nightstand. He wouldn't meet Hartmann's eyes.
"Comrade Wolf gave it to us," the blond boy said. "He used to hang out with Baader and Meinhof and them. They used to be close like this." He held up a clenched fist.
Hartmann sucked in his lips. Since the terrorist wars had gotten underway for true in the early Seventies, it wasn't uncommon for radical attorneys to come to involve themselves selves directly in the activities of those they represented in court, especially in Germany and Italy. Apparently, if what the kid said was true, Prahler had been a leader in the Baader-Meinhof group and the RAF all along, without the authorities ever getting wind of the fact.
Hartmann looked at Tom Miller. "I'll rephrase my question. How did you get mixed up in this, Gimli?"
"We just happened to be in the right place at the right time, Senator."
The dwarf smirked at him. Puppetman felt an urge to crush that smug face, to tear out the dwarf's guts and throttle him with them. The frustration was physical torment.
Sweat crawled down Hartmann's forehead like a centipede. His emotions were oddly distinct from Puppetman's. His other self whipsawed from rage to fear. What he mostly felt now was tired and annoyed.
And sad. Poor Ronnie. He meant so well. He tried so hard.
The redhead suddenly slapped the seated man on the shoulder. "You idiot, Wilfried, there it was! You went past it." He mumbled apology and dialed back.
"-captured by the Red Army Fraction, acting in concert with comrades from the jokers for a just Society who have fled persecution in Amerika." It was Comrade Wolf's voice, pouring like liquid amber from the cheap little radio. "The terms of his release are these: release of the Palestinian freedom fighter al-Muezzin. An airliner with sufficient fuel to take al-Muezzin to a country in the liberated Third World. Immunity from prosecution for members of this action team. We demand that the Jetboy memorial be torn down and in its place a facility built to provide shelter and medical attention to joker victims of Amerikan intolerance. And finally, just to poke the capitalist swine where it most hurts them, ten million dollars cash, which will be used to aid victims of Amerikan aggression in Central Amerika."
"If these terms are not met by ten o'clock tonight, Berlin time, Senator Gregg Hartmann will be executed."
"We return you now to regularly scheduled programming."
"We have to do something." Hiram Worchester tangled his fingers in his beard and gazed out the window at the patchy Berlin sky.
Digger Downs turned over a card. Trey of clubs. He grimaced.
Billy Ray paced the carpet of Hiram's suite like a tyrannosaurus with an itch. "If I'd been there, this shit would never have happened," he said, and aimed a green glare at Mordecai Jones.
The Hammer sat on the sofa. It was oak and flowered upholstery, and like many of the hotel's furnishings had survived the war. Fortunately they'd built stout furniture back in the 1890s.
Jones made a dirty-gearbox noise toward the center of him and stared at his big hands, which he was working into tangles between his knees.
The door opened and Peregrine flew into the room. Figuratively, at least, her wings jittering on her back. She wore a loose' velour blouse and jeans that muted the advanced state of her pregnancy.
"I just heard on the radio-isn't it terrible?" Then she stopped and stared at the Hammer. "Mordecai-what on earth are you doing here?"
"Just like you, Ms. Peregrine. Won't let me out."
"But why aren't you in the hospital? The reports said you were terribly injured."
"Just shot a little." He slapped his gut. "Got me a pretty tough hide, kind of like that Kevlar stuff you read about in Popular Science."
Downs turned up a new card. Red eight. "Shit," he muttered.
"But a van fell on you," Peregrine said.
"Yeah, but see, I got these funky heavy metals replacing the calcium in my bones, so they're like stronger and more flexible and all, and my innards and whatnot are a lot sturdier than most folks'. And I heal mighty fast-don't even get sick-since I turned up my ace. I'm a pretty durable sort of dude."
"Then why'd you let them get away?" Bill Ray challenged, almost shouting. "Goddamn, the senator was your responsibility. You could've kicked some ass."
"To tell you the entire truth, Mr. Ray, it hurt like a sonofabitch. I wasn't good for much for a while there." The Mister came out differently than Ms. had. Billy Ray cocked his head and looked hard at him. Jones ignored him. "Lay off him, Billy," said Carnifex's partner, Lady Black, who sat to one side with her long legs crossed at the ankles before her.
Peregrine came and touched Mordecai on the shoulder. "It must have been awful. I'm surprised they let you out of the hospital."
"They didn't," Downs said, splitting open the deck in his left hand to catch a peek inside. "He released himself. Smashed right through the wall. The public health people are kind of pissed about it."
Jones looked down at the floor. "Don't like doctors," he muttered.
Peregrine looked around. "Where's Sara? The poor thing. This must be hell for her."
"They let her go over to the crisis control center in City Hall. No other reporter from the tour. Just her." Downs made a face and went back to his solitaire game.
"Sara took over a statement from Mr. Jones about what he saw and heard during the abduction," Lady Black said. "He didn't give one before he left the hospital." After the accident that triggered his wild card virus, Jones had been held by the Oklahoma Department of Public Health as a lab specimen, a virtual prisoner. The experience had given him an almost pathological fear of medical science and all its appurtenances.
"Funny damn thing," Jones said, shaking his head. "I was lying there trying to breathe with this fu-with this van on my chest, and I keep hearing all these people yelling at each other. Like little kids fightin' on a playground."
Hiram turned from the window. The rings that had been sinking in around his eyes since the tour began were even more pronounced. "I understand," he said, bringing his hands up cupped before his chest. They were dainty hands, and fit oddly with his bulk. " I understand what's happening here. This has been a blow to all of us. Senator Hartmann isn't just the last best hope for jokers to get a fair shake-and maybe aces too, with this crazy Barnett fellow on the loosehe's our friend. We're trying to soften the blow by talking around the subject. But it wont do. We have to do something."
"That's what I say." Billy Ray slammed a fist into his palm. "Let's kick butts and take names!"