Next Day of the Condor (6 page)

Whoever’s crazy.

“Remember,
” the soldier who’d had a gun and was named Doug had said:
“We can do anything we want as long as nobody ever knows who we are.”

From his knees, Condor yelled: “Punkin!”

Trashed his way free of the bloody Army jacket.

“Punkin! All clear! FREE BIRD! FREE BIRD!”

There!
Running toward the main entrance from between parked cars.

Her face
not gonna cry
and
gonna run, run, RUN!

Condor—
Vin
,
my name is Vin
—wiped his face with Warren’s jacket, saw the smear of blood, hoped he looked close to whatever survivor’s normal was.

The seven-year-old girl with curly brown hair and red-white-and-blue clothes ran toward the silver-haired man who’d revolutionized her ’
posed to
’s.

Condor pulled his black leather jacket off Warren.

Maneuvered that dead vet’s arms and body enough so Warren wore the gas and blood-stained Army jacket he’d died in.

Shrugged himself into his own black leather jacket with its weight of legends.

Collided with and swept a little girl into his arms.

Swooping
roar
over them as helicopters flew a draw-fire pass.

Malati stumbled toward them.

The package, her responsibility, his arms wrapped tight around the
don’t you dare call her a little girl,
that silver-haired Condor told Malati: “You spy, you lie.”

Then he held the seven-year-old so they stared into each other’s eyes.

“Punkin, I’m so proud of you! You did it! You did everything right! You saved so many people and
us
, you saved you and me and Malati. You’re so great! But Punkin: there’s one more giant big
‘posed to
.”

She nodded with all her heart.

“You can’t tell the whole truth. The real truth. You gotta tell the good truth. The guy who you helped, the man who saved you, the guy who got the gas from the shot-up car, rolled over there and did it, the guy who burned and stabbed the bad guy…

“It was him.” Condor nodded to Warren’s body. “The guy in the Army jacket. That’s the most anybody else probably saw. That’s all you say or tell anybody
ever
. He did it. Got the gas. Tossed it, lit the monster on fire. He rolled his wheelchair away to escape, that bad guy squeezed off a wild shot. Must have hit the Army jacket guy, you don’t know. You only know you made it and you did what you were ‘posed to.”

Every good lie needs a
why.

“Punkin,” said the silver-haired man, “me, Malati, we’re spies. No matter what, we’ve got to be a super secret that nobody but you ever knows. You can only say that we were here with you. Just people who ran and hid and didn’t get shot. We’re all telling the same story with the true part being what you did. But with the wheelchair guy. You, her, me: we’re a
cross our hearts
forever secret.”

Punkin nodded her solemn vow.

Must stay secret
spies in that rampage of her life made as much sense as anything else anyone ever told her.

She hurled herself back into Condor’s arms. He got held tight.

This
, he prayed to the meds:
Let me remember this, this.

Helicopters vibrated the world.

Burnt flesh stench. Shattered glass. Purple smoke swirls. Megaphone commands.

When the three of them sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the shot-to-shit rest stop, before she cell phoned the Panic Line and like a pro triggered the
make sure it holds
cover story of them as
random survivors
not identified in official police reports, named in newspapers or broadcast by television crews who showed up on their own helicopters while flying ambulances were ferrying out the sobbing wounded, before all that, her face pressed against asphalt, Malati whispered to the silver-haired man laying beside her:

“Is it always like this?”

And he said
yes
.

                                 
for
Harlan Ellison

Find out what happens next in the first Condor novel since Watergate,

Last Days of the Condor

Available in February 2015 by Tom Doherty Associates

JAMES GRADY is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Six Days of the Condor
, which became the
Robert Redford
movie,
Three Days of the Condor
. Besides working as a screenwriter for CBS, FX, HBO, and major studios, Grady’s journalism includes time as a muckraker for political columnist Jack Anderson and writing a cultural column for AOL’s
PoliticsDaily.com
. His short fiction has won two Regardies Magazine awards, been nominated for an Edgar, and appears in several “Best Of” anthologies. Born and raised in Montana, Grady and his wife, writer Bonnie Goldstein, live inside DC’s Beltway.

Special thanks to
Joshua Wolff
and
Loki Films
.