“He’s in trouble. He’s moving north toward Boulder. I’ve been tracking him by satellite, watching over him as best I could, but someone up there has been jamming my signal. I’m sure of it now. They’re actively jamming me. Or they were.”
“What? I don’t understand. They stopped jamming you?”
“I have no way of telling. He’s in a car moving north. Someone just threw his phone and his hands-free set out of the window.”
“Do you think he’s… still alive?”
Chapel had known. He’d known he was walking into a trap. A setup. He’d expected to die here in Denver. He’d gone anyway. Julia had been doing her best not to think about it. Now she felt like she might throw up.
“Normally I can track his pulse and his blood pressure through sensors in his artificial arm, but right now I’m not getting any readings. They could be jamming my signal still, or—”
“Angel!” Julia interrupted. “Just tell me. Do you think he’s dead?” she forced herself to ask.
It was a long time before Angel answered her.
“I don’t know,” she said, finally.
PART FOUR
WASHINGTON, D.C.: APRIL 14, T+60:04
Rupert Hollingshead had always liked the Jefferson Memorial best of Washington’s many landmarks. It was far enough from the Mall that the tourist crowds were always thinner there. In spring it was a wonderful place to enjoy the cherry blossoms. He’d always been a devotee of Jefferson the man, as well, and it was good to sit in the midst of all that neoclassical marble and look up at the man’s wise bronze face and imagine what he would have done in a given situation.
After today, though, he imagined he would feel differently about the place. He would remember it as where he’d been forced to concede defeat.
Tom Banks was waiting for him when he arrived. The CIA director looked pleased with himself, of course. No matter what kind of horror show this had become.
“Your man failed,” Banks said, with barely disguised glee. “He’s dead, dead, dead.”
“He got three of the four,” Hollingshead said, when the two of them were close enough that they could speak without being overheard. “Really, all in all a good show.”
“For a cripple, sure,” Banks said, with a chuckle. “Rupert, old boy, old chum, old pal. You do know how to pick ’em.”
Hollingshead fumed in silence.
“So go ahead. Say the words,” Banks insisted.
“Really? Here, and now? Is that proper protocol?”
“Maybe not. But for my personal satisfaction I’ve got to hear it from your lips,” Banks insisted.
Very well.
“I, Rupert Hollingshead, do affirm that as of this moment the CIA should have full jurisdiction over all secret projects resulting from or evolving from Project Darling Green. The Central Intelligence Agency shall be fully responsible for all further activity, oversight, and secrecy concerning said projects and the Defense Intelligence Agency will have no access to any work product or intelligence product resulting therefrom or associated therewith without the CIA’s prior approval and knowledge. There. Is that enough? Or must I sign something in blood?”
Banks grinned like a feral cat. “I’ve been waiting years for this, Rupert. This project of yours should never have happened in the first place. No sane mind could have approved it, and keeping it going this long was utter stupidity. And now I get to clean up after you.”
“You don’t seem very put out,” Hollingshead observed, “for a man whose workload has just increased.”
“Because it gives me a chance to do something else I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Hang you out to dry. When the president hears about what you did — what you signed off on — he’s going to demote you down to ensign at the very least. He’ll be fucking pissed, to be blunt about it. And you and your stupid bow ties will never darken my doorstep again.”
“All of this. All of this, because you hate me,” Hollingshead said, shaking his head. “Because our two agencies don’t get along. All the deaths, all the misery—”
“Spare me, you old fuck,” Banks said. He turned on his heel and walked away, then. He didn’t even bother with the traditional handshake. Hollingshead watched him go.
Then he turned and with a sigh settled his bulk onto a marble bench where he could look on Jefferson’s face. Maybe for the last time.
He took his cellular phone from his pocket and put it to his ear.
“It’s done,” he said.
Angel’s voice on the other end sounded downcast. Perhaps she’d come to have high hopes for Chapel as well. “He just took over? Just like that?”
“Bought Camp Putnam for a song, yes,” Hollingshead replied. “No questions asked. He seemed anxious to get on with things.” The ghost of a smile touched his lips. “It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for him. He has no idea what he’s just inherited.”
“Director Hollingshead? I’m not sure I understand,” Angel said.
“Give it time.” Hollingshead ended the call.
BOULDER, COLORADO: APRIL 14, T+64:54
There’s two kinds of people who get to just lie in bed all day, Top said. Babies and cripples. Babies are cute, so they get away with it. Cripples ain’t cute.
“I can’t open my eyes, Top.”
You want to be a cripple, that’s fine. Nobody expects anything from a cripple. They just lie there, being a drain on everybody else’s hard work. But that’s fine. Because you’re a war hero, right? You earned the right to do nothin’ all day but feel sorry for yourself. You made that sacrifice. Don’t matter you got two perfectly good legs. You’re all depressed. You’re traumatized. So you’re crippled in the head.
“I got shot. I got shot three times,” Chapel told him.
He did not know if he was speaking out loud.
Darkness surrounded him. Darkness filled his body, an aching kind of darkness he couldn’t understand. He desperately needed to go to the bathroom.
A man whose body’s crippled, sure, people can look at that and pity him. They can feel sorry for him. A man who’s crippled in the head, people can’t see that. They don’t understand it. Now you and me, we both know about trauma. We both know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night and be back there, back in the mud and the fire and hearing the screams. We understand that. Nobody else ever will. They’ll see you lyin’ in this bed, with two perfectly good legs, and they’ll say, he’s just lazy. He’s just milking it. Our tax dollars are payin’ for him to sleep all day and eat Jell-O.
Chapel was lying in a pool of something wet. Had he soiled himself? The shame of it was too much to bear. He wanted to just curl up and go back to sleep. He wanted to sleep forever. He had a feeling that was an attainable goal.
Open your damn eyes when I talk to you, boy.
“Top,” Chapel said, the start of a protest he didn’t know how to finish. He tried to open his eyes, tried to obey orders. It was so hard, though. His eyelids felt like they had been cemented shut. “Top…”
I’m gonna keep yellin’ at you. I’m not gonna stop. Because I’m no cripple. I got one arm, one leg, and one eye, but I refuse to be a cripple. Cripples don’t work no more. I still got work to do, and you’re it.
“I’m trying, Top.”
I know you are. But my boys don’t accept that just tryin’ is enough. My boys — and don’t you dare forget you are one of my boys now — my boys only accept victory. They only accept one hundred percent success. How’s those eyes comin’ along? They open yet?