I told them over and over at debriefing how I'd seen Casaday there, leading the mob. They said over and over that I was mistaken. That it wasn't Casaday, couldn't have been. Then they told me that he had been trying to pull the mob off our trail.
Eventually I was told — officially — to drop the matter. I'm a good soldier, and even I have to sleep sometime. I dropped it — openly.
You wonder how I got the idea there was some kind of high-level conspiracy against wild cards — what brought me clear around the world and back to Vietnam. Do you have an idea, now?
— That's the story you wanted, but it's not all the story. Here's how our adventure differed from the bad fiction poor old Harvey thought couldn't hurt him: our escapade had consequences. It left marks on the souls of those who survived. It always does.
Billy Ray survived, of course. He even kept the name I gave him. I'm flattered. We just shipped him back from here; he was a prisoner of war, of sorts. Working for that devil, our old friend Battle.
Casaday was here too, but he got away. Which was good, because I would have killed him on sight, and Mark would disapprove of that. And I respect Meadows. It's not many hippie peacefreak wimps who conquer their own country from the communists.
Lady Black — well, once she wasn't my subordinate any more I was free to follow certain leads she'd given me. She's a lovely child. We've continued to keep in touch. 1n more ways than one. I'll spare you the details, but I will say that metal isn't the only kind of substance my spirit will enter into — and some of the other ones conduct energy very slowly.
As I told her, I do wonderful things with prosthetics.
Ackroyd never crossed my path again. We're both happier that way. I guess he still blames guns for killing that kid. A real shame his moral courage doesn't match his physical. If he faced up to what he did — instead of blaming objects — I wager he'd sleep better.
By the way: Harvey Melmoth. The Librarian. He died, you know. Exsanguination resulting from an insult to the arteria femoris, the report read.
Bullshit. I told you, that bullet never hit his femoral artery. I've seen enough of those wounds to know. Jay Ackroyd was right all along, you see. They sent us to Tehran to die.
It was a conspiracy. It's still going on; what you're investigating is part of it too. It was following up strands of that conspiracy that led me to Mark and back to Nam. It's big, and it means to finish the wild cards for good.
One last thing, before you turn that tape recorder off: President Carter took personal responsibility of the failure of the rescue mission, and ordered the records sealed in an effort to protect aces from the storm of recrimination. That was big of him; too bad it didn't work. Aces were blamed anyway, even if the public didn't know which ones were involved.
But he was wrong again. The responsibility was mine, and mine alone. I lost three good men and women — I don't count Darius, and I hope they pulled him apart much more slowly than they did Amy. The rest of my team was permanently scarred, one physically, all mentally.
Their blood is on my hands. I grieve them every day. The responsibility is mine.
So ends the narrative of J. Robert Belew, USSF, retired.
The Ashes of Memory
5
"Hannah, don't sit down! Let's movel"
"At least let me drink my coffee; traffic was hell coming from Washington. What's up, Arnold?"
"The call just came in from NYPD. You know that creep Ramblur we talked to the other day — Flashfire? He blew himself up."
"Jesus — "
They arrived to chaos. Ramblur had lived in the basement of his apartment building. A hole had been blown in the corner of the foundation, and half the windows in the building were gone. Black streaks showed where fire had gushed from the apartment, but there looked to be little actual fire damage. Hannah and Simpson, both now in slicks and helmets, walked over the thick snarl of firehoses and into the water-dripping stairwell. Chief Reiger greeted them at the door.
"Well, Ms. Davis! Arnold — how's those kids of yours? Came to see what's left of Flashfire? Come on in…. It ain't a pretty sight."
The chief was right about that, Hannah decided immediately. Ramblur had evidently been at a workbench set along the wall. Most of the damage to the room seemed to be from the initial explosion — there'd been a small fire, but the force of the blast had snuffed out most of the flames. There were shards of glass everywhere and a few unbroken containers of variously colored powders and granules; Hannah opened the screw top lid to one of them and sniffed. She sifted a little of the powder inside onto her palm. "Calcium hypochlorite," she said. "This guy had a regular chemist's shop here. Better tell your people to be careful in here, Chief, and you'd better keep the tenants out. If he has lithium or potassium around, all you have to do is get them wet and we'll have a real beauty of an explosion and fire here again. Where is he, by the way?"
Reiger snorted and pointed across the room. Hannah looked, then gasped involuntarily. Bamblur was unrecognizable. The entire front of the body was a charred mess. The right arm was missing; so was part of the torso on that side. The corpse was in two parts lying close together, severed just below the ribcage; bone poked whitely from the black and red tangle. He'd been flung across the room so viciously that the plasterboard above him was cracked and dented from where he'd hit. The entire mess still steamed. "Bet he didn't even have a chance to say 'Oops!'" Reiger said. Swallowing once, Hannah went over and looked more closely at the remains. She crouched down in front of Ramblur, studying the skeletal, charcoal-black face. The jaw hung open as if in eternal surprise.
"You'd think a pyro with his background and this kind of stockpile would have known What he was doing," she said.
"Maybe he flunked chemistry 101," Reiger said. "Or maybe something slipped."
"Maybe."
Simpson had gone into the bedroom of the apartment. Now he called out. "Hey, Hannah, better take a look over here."
"On my way." She rose, walked across the room, and then stopped at the door.
Simpson was holding an iron bar in one hand, a steel rod exactly like those which had held the doors at the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker. At his feet were two canisters the size of small fire extinguishers. Both of them were a bright, telltale green. There were several gallon and a half drums near the bed. Hannah already knew what they would find in them: jet fuel.
"Congratulations, Ms. Davis," Chief Reiger said, peering into the bedroom behind Hannah. "Looks like you caught your torch."
The pool clerk congratulated her like everyone else in the department as he came into her cubicle. Hannah gave him the same tight-lipped smile she'd given the others. "Thanks, Ned. Listen, I have a meeting with Malcolm at three, and I need these tapes and transcripts copied before then. Think you can do it?"
"Sure. Plenty of time. Bet you get a commendation."
"Well see," Hannah said. "The earlier you can get that done …"
Ned had them back to her at two. Hannah put the copies in a box, sealed it, and walked it down to the mailing department. Then she went and finished typing her report for Malcolm.
The director glanced through the report, riffling the pages without reading, then set it down in front of him. He folded his hands over it and looked up at her. He gave her his best imitation of a smile. "Very good work, Ms. Davis. I'll be drafting a letter for your personal file with my recommendation that you be considered for promotion."