“Did you see it?” she asked as I came up. “The light he made?”
I told her I had been otherwise occupied.
“It was magnificent,” she said. “He ruled the sky for nearly a minute.”
Her poised demeanor and admiring tone aroused my suspicions. “You knew,” I said.
“A few years back, he told me he wanted to die with Rappy. He only had about fifty years left, he thought, but he was emotionally spent. He said he was contemplating a release.”
“And you knew he would do it tonight.”
“I didn’t know. Perhaps I suspected. He didn’t seem himself.”
I tried to turn her, wanting to search her face for signs of a lie, but she knocked my hand aside.
“You watched for the light,” I said. “You must have known.”
“I wasn’t watching, I happened to be looking out the window,” she said defiantly; then she put a hand to her forehead and blew out a breath, as if trying to steady herself. “Perhaps I knew.”
“You should have told me, even if it were only a suspicion.” Agitatedly, I opened and closed my cell phone several times. “He’s left us a hell of mess.”
“Is that all you take from it?” She shot me a hard look.
“I don’t have time to appreciate Lucan’s artistry now that I’m in command.”
“Are you…in command? We’ll see.”
“You’re challenging my authority?”
“If I’m challenging anything, it’s your willingness to exercise authority.”
“So you are challenging me. Do you want to formalize the challenge?”
“Not at this point,” she said.
She glanced up at the sculpture and I, too, glanced up—the flame of the burning island brightened, and the fall of the woman’s hair glowed redly. Jenay strolled off a couple of paces, her attention gathered by a smaller figure, a bearded, transparent, ax-wielding barbarian. The cell phone made a chilly noise in the empty street. I switched on and, keeping an eye on Jenay, said, “Yes.”
“I can’t reach Skyler,” said Elaine.
“Try him in New York.”
“I’ve tried all his numbers. Everybody’s tried. The whole network is down. We haven’t been able to reach any of our people on the east coast. It’s Rome’s opinion we’ve been compromised.”
“That’s obvious.” I came a step toward Jenay. “What action do they recommend?”
“They recommend we go to a war level,” said Elaine.
“Not yet.” I closed to within arm’s length of Jenay. “Go to Bronze…but tell them to go to Iron if they don’t hear from me every half-hour. And tell the helicopters to fucking clean-up and get us out of here. If the Americans are going to react locally, it’ll take a while, but there’s no point running a risk. Jenay and I are down by the water, about seventy-five yards north of where the causeway used to stand.”
“This is no coincidence,” said Elaine. “Lucan and Skyler, both the same night.”
“No,” I said. “It’s no coincidence.”
Jenay’s face betrayed, I thought, an almost undetectable trace of amusement. I shaped the words, You knew, with my mouth and said to Elaine, “Tell Palermo to prepare a nuke. We may be able to pass Diamante off as some sort of terrorist incident. I doubt it, but it’s worth a try.”
“What’s happening?” Jenay asked as I switched off.
“Don’t treat me like an idiot. You know very well what’s happening.”
She was silent a moment. “Lucan’s forced your hand.”
I chose not to reply.
“It follows that he would,” she said. “Once he made his personal decision, he wouldn’t have let the opportunity pass. And if the Americans are involved…Are we facing war?”
I folded my arms, scarcely able to contain my anger.
“You have to tell me,” she said.
“If you want to continue with your pretense, call Elaine,” I said. “She’ll fill you in.”
Jenay put her hands on her hips. “I realize you’d like to think of me as an element of a conspiracy, but there’s no conspiracy. You’re our leader now. People are going to watch you, they’ll judge you by your actions. If I hesitate to give you my absolute approval, you shouldn’t assume that’s due to a conspiracy.”
“Judge all you want. I won’t be pressured or coerced any further. I’ve been maneuvered into a bad situation, but I may not do what Lucan wanted.”
“What Lucan wanted was for someone to take decisive action. Action he couldn’t bring himself to take, except in the way he did. He was well aware of his weaknesses. He used to tell me you were our hope. He saw in you a leader capable of making the kinds of decisions that we needed.” Jenay touched my forearm. “Whatever he’s done, he did it in part for you.”
“This? This selfish, indulgent act? This treason? Yes, I can see that.”
“Don’t be obtuse! However you perceive it now, it’s an opportunity to prove that Lucan was on the mark about you.”
“Right. He created this fucking disaster just to make my leadership skills bloom.” I went nose-to-nose with her. “He’s killed Skyler! And probably hundreds more! Once they were taken, I’m certain Skyler and his people did what was necessary to preserve our position. But that they were taken, an entire network, it implies the Americans have a means of defeating our mental control. Skyler’s people may not all be dead; a few may be in rooms somewhere spilling our secrets.”
“Well, then. You have your work cut out for you.” She said this flatly, as if to suggest it proved her point.
“Once this gets sorted out,” I said, “if it can be sorted out, I promise there’ll be an investigation.”
Jenay shrugged. “And you’ll have my full support.”
A searchlight swept over the nearby figures, bringing them to flashing life, and a helicopter descended out of the night, its rotors swirling the dust that lay everywhere and making conversation a chore. Jenay and I moved apart, waiting for it to land.
From directly overhead, the burning island and its immediate surround looked even more like a blossom. I thought of those gigantic Sumatran flowers. Corpseflowers. The helicopter veered inland, and we began passing over the darkened Calabrian hills. My headset crackled. The pilots’ helmets were silhouetted against the lights of the control array. Beside me, Jenay gazed out the window as I plotted the next days. Sleeper cells would have to be activated throughout the United States. Hundreds of individuals would be terminated, dozens of hard targets neutralized. I could feel the constrictions that Lucan had devised closing in around me, limiting the scope of my actions, enforcing a restructuring of my attitudes, leaving me to orchestrate the parameters of a new and improved holocaust. Thanks to him, we were entering a dangerous phase of history, one in which we would be more visible, thus more imperiled, than at any time since the Iron Age. This enlisted my paranoia and I imagined, not for the first time, that—unbeknownst to us—another group was monitoring our activities, and, above them, another group, and another, and so on and so forth. The universe as terrorist. Conspiracies of angels and demons. God the infinite suicide bomber.
“I’ve got Palermo on,” said the co-pilot. “The package is ready for delivery.”
“Have we reached a safe distance?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Patch them through to me.”
I hadn’t had a moment to think of Giacinta since rushing out of the hotel. I wondered if she had gone back to sleep, or if she had disobeyed my admonition and was wandering the streets, terrified and confused by the destruction of her home. The image troubled me, but at heart I was indifferent to her fate. Lucan’s actions had nipped that passion in the bud and stripped from me all but the thinnest veneer of sentiment. I wished things were different, that I could indulge in mercy, that I could wound myself with love or its imitation, that I had time for such games, but that wish was subsumed by the eagerness we feel at the onset of war. The desire to wield power, to destroy, to win—they were the enticements of a more involving game. Yet as I gave the order that would erase Diamante from the maps of the world, I nourished a twinge of regret, I savored it, I stored it away in memory for whatever use I might one day find for it. Though we were flying away from the town, the flash, when it came, was visible as a reflection in the helicopter’s plastic canopy. It held for several seconds, considerably less long than the light of Lucan’s release, then swiftly faded. Jenay sighed—in satisfaction, I believed. She rested her hand atop mine, and we continued north toward Rome.