City of Ice (57 page)

“Do you believe that?” Mathers asked. He was no longer smiling.

“I’d like not to,” Cinq-Mars told him, “and I’m not going to work that way if I can help it. I know where that logic got André. For Holmes, east of Aldgate meant packing a weapon. For us, it means an escalation. Who knows where it’ll end? Our enemies instinctively will exploit our ethics as a weakness. Do we
tolerate that? Do we let the bastards win? Do we say, we’re ethical, we’re within the law? The country, the society, the Western world may be destroyed but at least we will choose the honorable course, now the barbarians must answer to God. Is that our plan? Or do we do what Norris and André did? Do we become our enemy? Do we meet the bad guys on the streets, or on their country estates, and treat them for what they are—enemies, warriors to be fought and brought down with firepower? Do we behave as they do?”

Mathers cast his eyes to the land beyond. He sighed heavily. “I thought we won,” he argued.

Cinq-Mars raised an eyebrow to that. “Bill, you’ve got to get over your youthful naiveté. We caught Hagop Artinian’s killer, and the Angels delivered him to justice. Good for us. The perp turned out to be one of our own, a good cop once upon a time who went east of Aldgate and came back warped and dead. Maybe we’re all ruined once we cross that line. So far, we saved Julia’s life, and Norris took out our mutual adversary, the man who tried to trick me into blowing her up. Gitteridge got whacked. The Wolverines have been set loose with a huge budget because that child was killed, that poor little boy. Meanwhile, the Rock Machine is looking to strike a deal with the Bandidos out of Texas to bolster their ranks. I don’t know who they are, but do we need another international biker gang on the scene? Something tells me we’ll be making their acquaintance sooner rather than later. So what’s improved, Bill? Everything helps, we’ve had some success, but overall we haven’t made a dent.”

A mare snorted loudly and the child laughed at the sound. They played in the sun, horses and dog and young girl and women and off-duty detectives, and it seemed a fine day, an illustrious day, a beautiful, hot, lazy day of summer, the world carefree and calm. After a while, they retired to the back porch for drinks and a
barbecue, and smoke drifted upward into the branches of the maple tree there, swirled around, and vanished into the bright blue of the high, wide sky. This was a day when it seemed that summer would never end, when winter was forgotten and appeared unlikely to return, when the world was wholly at peace with itself. This was a day like that, dreamlike and fleeting.

The End

The author thanks his agent, Anne McDermid, for making such a monumental difference, and all the editors who have contributed to the novel, especially Susanna Porter at Random House, New York. Particular thanks to Kate Parkin in England; Ed Carson and Iris Tupholme in Canada; and Ruth Coughlin in the U.S.