He looked right, then left, then bowed his head again, as others did surrounding him. Guards were everywhere, armed and watchful. GenSyn, many of them, no doubt. Unquestioning, obedient creatures. Reliable. Predictable.
Krenek smiled. So different from me, he thought. They made me better than that. More devious. More human.
But there was still a problem. He was too far back. Had even two of the others been here it might still have worked. But now?
He looked about him, calculating distances, gauging where they were weak, where strong, running high-probability scenarios through his head until he saw it clear. Then, and only then, did he establish his plan. I'll have fifteen seconds. Eighteen at most. I can make it halfway there by then. They'll protect the T'ang and the T'ang's sons. Or try to. But they'll also try to protect Yin Tsu and Fei Yen. That will split their attention.
Yes, but they'd expect him to try to take the Pang. That's where they would concentrate their defenses. Again he smiled, the DeVore part of him remembering his elite training. He could see how they'd do it, forming a screen of bodies in front of him, two guards dragging him back, making the smallest possible target of him. And if seriously threatened they'd open fire, killing anything that came at them, innocent or otherwise.
But he would not attack the T'ang. Nor Han Ch'in. He'd strike where they least expected. Li Yuan would be his target. As he'd always been.
DeVore's words rang clear in his head. "Kill the brain and the beast will fall. Li Shai Tung is old, Han Ch'in incompetent. Only Li Yuan, the youngest, is a threat to us. Get Han Ch'in if you can. Kill the T'ang if you must. But make sure Li Yuan is dead. With him gone the House of Li will not last long."
He waited, knowing the time was fast approaching. Any moment now the saffron-robed officials would turn, facing them, and the vast crowd would rise as one to roar their approval of the marriage. It was then that he'd move forward, using their packed bodies as a screen. He would have five seconds, and then they would kneel again.
Yes, he thought, visualizing it clearly now. He could see himself running, fire blazing from his ruined hands. Could smell the crowd's blind panic, hear the ear-shattering stutter of the crossfire. And then, before his eyes closed finally, he would see the T'ang's son sprawled out on the marble, facedown, blood streaming from a dozen separate wounds.
Yes, he thought. Yes. Seconds from now.
There was a sudden lapse in the singsong incantation. As one the officials turned and faced the crowd. As one the vast crowd rose to its feet.
He made to move forward and felt himself jarred to a halt, then lifted from his feet. Two great hands tore at his chest, two hugely muscled arms pinned his own arms to his sides, slowly crushing him.
"Going somewhere, Mister Krenek?"
KARR THREW down the lifeless carcass of the thing, then came to attention before Tolonen.
"I don't know what happened, sir. One moment it was fine. The next it was like this."
Tblonen got up unsteadily from his chair and came over to where the thing lay. His chest and arm had been strapped tightly and, despite the painkilling drugs, he was finding it difficult to breathe easily. He had cracked two ribs and dislocated his shoulder. Otherwise he'd been very lucky. Luckier than Nocenzi. The Major was even now in intensive care, fighting for his life.
Now, cleaned up and in new dress uniform, the empty left sleeve pinned loosely to the tunic, Tolonen was back in charge. Looking at the copy he felt all his anger rise to the surface again.
"Who let this through? Who authorized the closure of the gates?"
Karr lowered his head slightly. "It was Marshal Kirov, sir. He assumed the explosion in the room killed the last of the copies. It was getting late, and there were still thousands of guests to be processed—"
"Damn it!" Tolonen's chest rose and fell sharply and a flicker of pain crossed his face. How could Kirov be so foolish? How could he risk the T'ang's life so idiotically? So a few thousand guests were inconvenienced—what was that beside the survival of a T'ang?
Kirov was nominally his superior. He had been elected Marshal by the Council of Generals only six months back and in the emergency had been right to step in and take command, but what he had done was inexcusable.
Tolonen shuddered. "Thank you, Karr. I'll deal with things from here."
He watched the big man go, aware that, on his own initiative, Karr had probably saved the T'ang. He alone had thought to get the copy of the tape showing what had happened in the room. He alone had identified from the files the two who had "joined" to such devastating effect. Then he alone had traced the brother, Josef Krenek, understanding what he was and what he planned.
Thank the gods, Tolonen thought. This time we've beaten them.
Tolonen lifted the dead thing's face with the toe of his boot,
then let it fall again. A perfect likeness, this one. The best of them all, perhaps. It was a pity. Now they would never know.
He turned from the body and signaled to his adjutant. At once the young man came across and helped him back to his chair.
"Tell Major Kroger to take over." he said, putting the chair into gear. "I must see Li Shai Tung at once."
IT WAS EVENING. The sunfc last rays had climbed the eastern wall and left the Yu Hua Yuan, transforming the garden of the Imperial City into a huge square dish of shadows. Brightly colored paper lanterns lit the bamboo grove and hung from lines above the lotus-strewn pools and in the eaves of the teahouses. Caged birds sang their sweet, drug-induced songs in the gnarled and ancient branches of the junipers. Below, servants went among the guests with wine and cordials and trays of delicacies, while shoo lin guards stood back against the walls and among the rocks like ghosts.
Li Yuan, looking down on it all from the height of the marble terrace, smiled. All ceremony was done with now. Below him, to his right, the wedding party moved among the guests informally, Han Ch'in talking excitedly, Fei Yen silent, demurely bowing at his side.
He saw his father laugh and reach out to pick a single white blossom from Han's dark hair, then turn to whisper something to his uncle, Li Yun-Ti. There was a gay, almost lighthearted atmosphere to things; a feeling of relief that things had turned out as they had. Yet only an hour earlier things had been very different. Li Yuan had been there at his father's interview with the General.
He had never seen the General so angry. It had taken all his father's skill to calm Tolonen down and persuade him not to confront Kirov himself. But he had seen how shaken his father was to have been proved so conclusively right about the "copies"; how outraged at Kirov's stupidity. His face had been rigidly controlled as he faced his General.
"I ask you to do nothing, Knut. Leave this to me. Kirov is Wei Feng's man. I shall speak with Wei Feng at once."
He had been as good as his word. Yuan leaned out and looked down. Tolonen sat there now in his chair, directly below him, subdued, talking to his fellow generals. Kirov was not among them.
Wei Feng, T'ang of East Asia, had been distraught. The thought that his General had almost cost the lives of a fellow T'ang and his family was more than he could bear. He had turned angrily on Kirov and torn the chi (ing patch, symbol of the Marshal's status as a military officer of the first rank, from his chest, before taking the ceremonial dagger from Kirov's belt and throwing it down.
"You are nothing," he had said to the now prostrate Marshal, tears of anger in his eyes. "And your family is nothing. You have shamed me, Kirov. Now go. Get out of my sight."
News had come only minutes later that Kirov had committed suicide; his son, a major under his command, seconding him before he, too, had killed himself.