Chaos. The building squealed like an animal in its death-agony.
Cold, black water surged up around Lessing’s ankles, then his thighs. He lost his footing, sank into a muck of churning rubble, rolled head over heels, and found himself hanging onto the very lip of the elevator shaft, bruised and dazed, buffeted by broken woodwork, furniture, and slimy, soft, invisible things. The icy river rolled over and past him, down into the abyss. He clawed at the ironwork grill of the safety door and hung on.
The water diminished to a trickle. He staggered up, slithered over the wrack now almost blocking the corridor, and looked for Hollister. He saw that the section of hallway where they had been was now a jumble of cement blocks and beams and ruin.
Hollister lay under a tilted length of steel girder, almost completely submerged in rubble. Furiously, Lessing dug boards, laths, pipes, and bricks away to free the man’s face.
Hollister opened eyes like red-rimmed marbles in a white-smeared mask. He coughed, choked, and moaned, “Help me!”
The pretty lady in the ice-blue gown handed Lessing a shard of broken glass. This was a time for mercy, she said.
Lessing had to agree. He used the shard to slit the Jew’s throat.
The walls trembled. More cave-ins were imminent. Somewhere below explosions boomed. Was Korinek going to bring the building down? It would make it easier to explain, of course: a savage firefight against terrorists who blew up themselves and the hotel rather than surrender to the forces of goodness and love.
Lessing didn’t care. There was no more to do here. He wiped his bloody hands on his shirt and arose, hugging his injured arm. He would go upstairs, to his own apartment, and wait.
He would be with Liese when the end came.
He picked his way through the destruction, muttering to the lady in ice-blue as he went. Somehow he found a usable staircase on the opposite side of the hotel.
His apartment was cold when he got there. The door to the chasm that had been his bedroom was open. He closed it. He didn’t want to think of Liese lying in the bathroom beyond, unreachable and still.
He heard a noise outside in the corridor. This time he looked before calling out.
It was Sam Morgan, just emerging from his apartment, a black, leatherette briefcase under his arm, for all the world like a young executive on his way to a board meeting!
Morgan uttered a gasp of surprise. “Jesus! Lessing? You still here? Didn’t think anybody was left alive…!”
He nodded wordlessly.
“Can I help? My God… your arm…!”
“No matter now. Where’s Wrench?”
“Wrench? Haven’t seen him. We’ve got to get out of here! Come on!”
“How long you been in town?” An idea was forming at the back of Lessing’s mind. His mental slide-projector clicked, and he blinked at the brilliance of the visual memory.
“Got in today. What the devil does that matter?”
“Nothing. What’s in the briefcase?”
Morgan peered, then came over to take Lessing by his good arm. “Hey, you really have been pounded, man! God! Come on, we’ll get you to a doctor.”
“Through the power tunnels? Right under Korinek’s feet?”
“Of course. We can make it out of Washington and get to our headquarters in Virginia.”
“Sure. Nobody’ll be watching, of course. Sam, what’ve you got in the briefcase?”
“Important Party papers, dammit. First things first. Downstairs “
Lessing reached out and took the briefcase. Morgan made a futile grab after it.
“Sam, all flights into Washington were booked up a week in advance. How did you get here from Chicago?”
“Car, of course,” the other sounded annoyed. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Here, let me carry my own briefcase. You’re wounded.”
He held it back. ‘That’s green light. You had a long drive. All night, then through Korinek’s cordon, through the shelling… through the power tunnels. You must be tired. Thought you might’ve been here for a few days already. Shacking with a girl in a private house somewhere?”
“Fast and lucky, you know me! No, I just got in today.”
“I asked before: what’s in the briefcase? Korinek let you through to pick up some papers? Papers the Jews and their buddies in the ‘coalition’ can’t risk having found? Papers about Pacov?”
“What Pacov? Jews? Coalition? You’re…”
“Crazy? Yeah, I am crazy.” Lessing drew a deep breath. The lady in ice-blue was standing by the bedroom door, watching. “Sam, / know.”
“Know what?” Morgan’s eyes were fixed on him, as a mongoose stares at a cobra.
“The house in Annandale. The clothes there are your size. They’re the kind of thing you wear.” He gestured at Morgan’s elegant suit. “You’ve always had great taste, Sam, rich and fancy.”
“I haven’t a clue…!”
“I do. I have a funny sort of photographic memory, Sam. I see pictures: click, like a snapshot, every detail in living color. Right now I see you at a table in a big room, like a church, with stained-glass windows. It’s an expensive restaurant. You’re talking to somebody, but I can’ t see who it is. You’re wearing a beautiful sport coat, sort of a tweed, I think it’s called… grey. Anyway, you’re rubbing the left sleeve. There’s a blackish stain there, like when the drycleaners can’t completely get a spot out. You remember that?” “Of course not!… And so what?”
”Printer’s ink, I think. That’s what Eighty-Five said ‘James F. Arthur’ had the dry cleaners in Detroit try to take out of his sport coat.”
“You are deranged, Lessing. Give me my goddamned case, and get out of my way…!”
“Aren’t you curious who ‘James F. Arthur’ is, Sam? Anybody else would ask. But you don’t need to… not when you’re ‘James F. Arthur’ yourself. Is that your real name or a pseudonym? ‘James F. Arthur’ is the guy who arranged for the Marvelous Gap spesh-op. He started Pacov to keep the Russians from re-arranging the Middle East, to give Israel some Lebensraum, to help the Jews and their ‘coalition’ take all the marbles. ‘James F. Arthur’ is the greatest genocide who ever lived, and he is you, Sam. You killed half the world!”
“You’re raving, Lessing! AH this just from a spot on my coat?”
“And other things: after we picked you up on that flight to meet Outram in Colorado, our enemies always seemed to be half a jump ahead of us. ” His odd, eidetic memory was dropping slide after slide into his mental projector. “You had to get out of the car before your doggies in the helicopter got there; otherwise they would’ve thumbed you along with Mulder and Wrench and me. And Ponape: who gave the Izzies the plans of our installation? And later, in Oregon “
Morgan relaxed against the door frame. “Okay, Lessing, okay! Let’s say you’ve put it all together. Say I’m a kikibird, a weasel planted way back when Mulder was just another happy, little Nazi kid getting his neighborhood SS gang together. Don’t you think I’m right! Don’t you think it’s right to rid the world of the Nazis once and for all… to stamp them out, eradicate them root and branch? What are they but a bunch of gangsters who ‘re always trying to rock the boat, to stir people up so that they can take things away from their rightful owners?”
“What things?”
“The world, man, the world!”
“And who ‘re its rightful owners?”
“The same ones they’ve always been… the people I work for. They deserve to be on top, because they ‘re smarter and tougher than the Nazis… and a lot more realistic. They understand the way the world works, and they know how to keep the people contented, keep everything on an even keel.”
“Keep everything bland, Sam?” The woman in ice-blue smiled, and he nodded at her. Morgan peered in her direction but didn ‘ t seem to see her; Lessing wondered why. “Mulder trusted you.”