Shadow Puppets (32 page)

It was a dazzling tropical morning as they stepped through the gate into the east garden. Birds in all the trees ranted their calls as if they were trying to memorize something and just couldn’t get it to stick. There was not a soul in sight.

Bean wasn’t going to wander around searching for Achilles. He definitely wasn’t going to get far from the gate. So, about ten paces in, he stopped. So did the others.

And they waited.

It didn’t take long. A soldier in the Hegemony uniform stepped out into the open. Then another, and another, until the fifth soldier appeared.

Suriyawong.

He gave no sign of recognition. Rather he looked right past both Bean and Peter as if they were nothing to him.

Achilles stepped out behind them—but stayed close to the trees, so he wouldn’t be too easy a target for sharpshooters. He was carrying, as promised, a small transport fridge.

“Bean,” he said with a smile. “My how you’ve grown.”

Bean said nothing.

“Oh, we aren’t in a jesting mood,” he said. “I’m not either, really. It’s almost a sentimental moment for me, to see you again. To see you as a man. Considering I knew you when you were this high.”

He held out the transport fridge. “Here they are, Bean.”

“You’re just going to give them to me?”

“I don’t really have a use for them. There weren’t any takers in the auction.”

“Volescu went to a lot of trouble to get these for you,” said Bean.

“What trouble? He bribed a guard. Using my money.”

“How did you get Volescu to help you, anyway?” asked Bean.

“He owed me,” said Achilles. “I’m the one who got him out of jail. I got our brilliant Hegemon here to give me authority to authorize the release of prisoners whose crimes had ceased to be crimes. He
didn’t make the connection that I’d be releasing your creator into the wild.” Achilles grinned at Peter.

Peter said nothing.

“You trained these men well, Bean,” said Achilles. “Being with them is like…well, it’s like being with my family again. Like on the streets, you know?”

Bean said nothing.

“Well, all right, you don’t want to chat, so take the embryos.”

Bean remembered one very important fact. Achilles didn’t care about killing his victims with his own hands. It was enough for him that they die, whether he was present or not.

Bean turned to the hazardist. “Would you do me a favor and take this just outside the gate? I want to stay and talk with Achilles for a couple of minutes.”

The hazardist walked up to Achilles and took the transport fridge from him. “Is it fragile?” he asked.

Achilles answered, “It’s very securely packed and padded, but don’t play football with it.”

In only a few steps, he was out the gate.

“So what did you want to talk about?” asked Achilles.

“A couple of little questions I’m curious about.”

“I’ll listen. Maybe I’ll answer.”

“Back in Hyderabad. There was a Chinese officer who knocked you unconscious to break our stalemate.”

“Oh, is that who did it?”

“Whatever happened to him?”

“I’m not sure. I think his chopper was shot down in combat only a few days later.”

“Oh,” said Bean. “Too bad. I wanted to ask him what it felt like to hit you.”

“Really, Bean, aren’t we both too old for that sort of gibe?”

Outside the gate there was a muffled explosion.

Achilles looked around, startled. “What was that?”

“I’m pretty sure,” said Bean, “that it was an explosion.”

“Of what?”

“Of the bomb you just tried to give me,” said Bean. “Inside a containment chamber.”

Achilles tried, for a moment, to look innocent. “I don’t know what you…”

Then he apparently realized there was no point in feigning ignorance when the thing had just exploded. He pulled the remote detonator out of his pocket, pressed the button a couple of times. “Damn all this modern technology, nothing ever works right.” He grinned at Bean. “Got to give me credit for trying.”

“So…do you have the embryos or not?” asked Bean.

“They’re inside, safe,” said Achilles.

Bean knew that was a lie. In fact, he had decided yesterday that it was most likely the embryos had never been brought here at all.

But he’d get more mileage out of this by pretending to believe Achilles. And there was always the chance that it wasn’t a lie.

“Show me,” Bean said.

“You have to come inside, then,” said Achilles.

“OK.”

“That’ll take us outside the range of the sharpshooters you no doubt have all around the compound, waiting to shoot me down.”

“And inside the range of whoever you have waiting for me there.”

“Bean. Be realistic. You’re dead whenever I want you dead.”

“Well, that’s not strictly true,” said Bean. “You’ve wanted me dead a lot more often than I’ve died.”

Achilles grinned. “Do you know what Poke was saying just before she had that accident and fell into the Rhine?”

Bean said nothing.

“She was saying that I shouldn’t hold a grudge against you for telling her to kill me when we first met. He’s just a little kid, she said. He didn’t know what he was saying.”

Still, Bean said nothing.

“I wish I could tell you Sister Carlotta’s last words, but…you know how collateral damage is in wartime. You just don’t get any warning.”

“The embryos,” said Bean. “You said you were going to show me where they are.”

“All right then,” said Achilles. “Follow me.”

As soon as Achilles’s back was turned, the doctor looked at Bean and frantically shook his head.

“It’s all right,” Bean told the doctor and the other soldier. “You can go on out. You won’t be needed any more.”

Achilles turned back around. “You’re letting your escort go?”

“Except for Peter,” said Bean. “He insists on staying with me.”

“I didn’t hear him say that,” said Achilles. “I mean, he seemed so eager to get away when he left this place, I thought for sure he didn’t want to see it again.”

“I’m trying to figure out how you were able to fool so many people,” said Peter.

“But I’m not trying to fool you,” said Achilles. “Though I can see how someone like you would long to find a really masterful liar to study with.” Laughing, Achilles turned his back again, and led the way toward the main office building.

Peter came closer to Bean as they followed him inside. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked quietly.

“I told you before, I have no idea.”

Once inside, they were indeed confronted by another dozen soldiers. Bean knew them all by name. But he said nothing to them, and none of them met his gaze or showed any sign that they knew him.

What does Achilles want? thought Bean. His first plan was to send me out of the compound with a remote-controlled bomb, so it’s not as if he planned to keep me alive. Now he’s got me surrounded by soldiers, and doesn’t tell them to shoot.

Achilles turned around and faced him. “Bean,” he said. “I can’t
believe you didn’t make some kind of arrangement for me to get out of here.”

“Is that why you tried to blow me up?” asked Bean.

“That was when I believed you’d try to kill me as soon as you thought you had the embryos. Why didn’t you?”

“Because I knew I didn’t have the embryos.”

“Do you and Petra already think of them as your children? Have you named them yet?”

“There’s no arrangement to get you out of here, Achilles, because there’s no place for you to go. The only people that still had any use for you are busy getting their butts kicked by a bunch of pissed-off Muslims. You saw to it that you couldn’t go anywhere in space when you shot down that shuttle.”

“In all fairness, Bean, you have to remember that nobody was supposed to know it was me who did it. But someone really should tell me—why wasn’t Peter on that shuttle? I suppose somebody caught my informant.” He looked back and forth from Peter to Bean, looking for an answer.

Bean did not confirm or deny. Peter, too, kept his silence. What if Achilles lived through this somehow? Why bring down Achilles’s wrath on a man who already had enough trouble in his life?

“But if you caught my informant,” said Achilles, “why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and its crew just to catch me? I find that quite…flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain.”

“I think,” said Bean, “that you don’t have the embryos at all. I think you dispersed them as soon as you got them. I think you already had them implanted in surrogates.”

“Wrong,” said Achilles. He reached inside his pants pocket and took out a small container. Exactly like the ones in which the embryos had been frozen. “I brought one along, just to show you. Of course,
he’s probably thawed quite a bit. My body heat and all that. What do you think? Do we still have time to get this little sucker implanted in somebody? Petra’s already pregnant, I hear, so you can’t use her. I know! Peter’s mother! She always likes to be so helpful, and she’s used to giving birth to geniuses. Here, Peter, catch!”

He tossed the container toward Peter, but too hard, so it sailed over Peter’s upstretched hands and hit the floor. It didn’t break, but instead rolled and rolled.

“Aren’t you going to get it?” Achilles asked Bean.

Bean shrugged. He walked over to where the container had come to rest. The liquid inside it sloshed. Fully thawed.

He stepped on it, broke it, ground it under his foot.

Achilles whistled. “Wow. You are some disciplinarian. Your kids can’t get away with
anything
with you.”

Bean walked toward Achilles.

“Now, Bean, I can see how you might be irritated at me, but I never claimed to be an athlete. When did I have a chance to play ball, will you tell me that? You grew up where I did. I can’t help it that I don’t know how to throw accurately.”

He was still affecting his ironic tone of voice, but Bean could see that Achilles was afraid now. He had been expecting Bean to beg, or grieve—something that would keep him off balance and give control to Achilles. But Bean was seeing things through Achilles’s eyes now, and he understood: You do whatever your enemy can’t believe that you would even think of doing. You just do it.

Bean reached into the butt holster that rode inside his pants, hanging from the waistband, and pulled out the flat .22-caliber pistol concealed there. He pointed it at Achilles’s right eye, then the left.

Achilles took a couple of steps backward. “You can’t kill me,” he said. “You don’t know where the embryos are.”

“I know you don’t have them,” said Bean, “and that I’m not going to get them without letting you go. And I’m not letting you go. So I
guess that means the embryos are forever lost to me. Why should you go on living?”

“Suri,” said Achilles. “Are you asleep?”

Suriyawong pulled his long knife from its sheath.

“That’s not what’s needed here,” said Achilles. “He has a gun.”

“Hold still, Achilles,” said Bean. “Take it like a man. Besides, if I miss, you might live through it and spend the rest of your days as a brain-damaged shell of a man. We want this to be nice and clean and final, don’t we?”

Achilles pulled another vial out of his pockets. “This is the real thing, Bean.” He reached out his hand, offering it. “You killed one, but there are still the other four.”

Bean slapped it out of his hand. This one broke when it hit the floor.

“Those are your children you’re killing!” cried Achilles.

“I know you,” said Bean. “I know that you would never promise me something you could actually deliver.”

“Suriyawong!” shouted Achilles. “Shoot him!”

“Sir,” said Suriyawong.

It was the first sound he’d made since Bean came through the east gate.

Suriyawong knelt down, laid his knife on the smooth floor, and slid it toward Achilles until it rested at his feet.

“What’s this supposed to be?” demanded Achilles.

“The loan of a knife,” said Suriyawong.

“But he has a gun!” cried Achilles.

“I expect you to solve your own problems,” said Suriyawong, “without getting any of my men killed.”

“Shoot him!” cried Achilles. “I thought you were my friend.”

“I told you from the start,” said Suriyawong. “I serve the Hegemon.” And with that, Suriyawong turned his back on Achilles.

So did all the other soldiers.

Now Bean understood why Suriyawong had worked so hard to earn Achilles’s trust: so that at this moment of crisis, Suri was in a position to betray him.

Achilles laughed nervously. “Come on now, Bean. We’ve known each other a long time.” He had backed up against a wall. He tried to lean against it. But his legs were a little wobbly and he started to slide down the wall. “I know you, Bean,” he said. “You can’t just kill a man in cold blood, no matter how much you hate him. It’s not in you to do that.”

“Yes it is,” said Bean.

He aimed the pistol down at Achilles’s right eye and pulled the trigger. The eye snapped shut from the wind of the bullet passing between the eyelids and from the obliteration of the eye itself. His head rocked just a little from the force of the little bullet entering, but not leaving.

Then he slumped over and sprawled out on the floor. Dead.

It didn’t bring back Poke, or Sister Carlotta, or any of the other people he had killed. It didn’t change the nations of the world back to the way they were before Achilles started making them his building blocks, to break apart and put together however he wanted. It didn’t end the wars Achilles had started. It didn’t make Bean feel any better. There was no joy in vengeance, and precious little in justice, either.

But there was this: Achilles would never kill again.

That was all Bean could ask of a little .22.

Petra flew on a commercial jet, in a reserved seat, under her own name, using her own passport.

Damascus was full of excitement, for it was now the capital of a Muslim world united for the first time in nearly two thousand years.
Sunni and Shi’ite leaders alike had been declaring for the Caliph. And Damascus was the center of it all.

But her excitement was of a different kind. It was partly the baby that was maturing inside her, and the changes already happening to her body. It was partly the relief at being free of the death sentence Achilles had passed on her so long ago.

Mostly, though, it was that giddy sense of having been on the edge of losing everything, and winning after all. It swept over her as she was walking down the aisle of the plane, and her knees went rubbery under her and she almost fell.

The man behind her took her elbow and helped her regain her legs. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I’m just a little bit pregnant,” she said.

“You must get over this business of falling down before the baby gets too big.”

She laughed and thanked him, then put her own bag in the overhead—without needing help, thank you—and took her seat.

On the one hand, it was sad flying without her husband beside her.

On the other hand, it was wonderful to be flying home to him.

He met her at the airport and gathered her into a huge hug. His arms were so long. Had they grown in the few days since he left her?

She refused to think about that.

“I hear you saved the world,” she said to him when the embrace finally ended.

“Don’t believe those rumors.”

“My hero,” she said.

“I’d rather be your lover,” he whispered.

“My giant,” she whispered back.

In answer, he embraced her again, and then leaned back, lifting
her off her feet. She laughed as he whirled her around like a child.

The way her father had done when she was little.

The way he would never do with their children.

“Why are you crying?” he asked her.

“It’s just tears in my eyes,” she said. “It’s not
crying
. You’ve
seen
crying, and this isn’t it. These are happy-to-see-you tears.”

“You’re just happy to be in a place where trees grow without waiting around to be planted and irrigated.”

They walked out of the airport a few minutes later and he was right, she
was
happy to be out of the desert. In the years they had lived in Ribeirão she had discovered an affinity for lush places. She needed the Earth to be alive around her, everything green, all that photosynthesis going on in public, without a speck of modesty. Things that ate sunlight and drank rain. “It’s good to be home,” she said.

“Now I’m home, too,” said Bean.

“You were here already,” she said.

“But you weren’t, till now.”

She sighed and clung to him a little.

They took the first cab.

They went to the Hegemony compound, of course, but instead of going to their house—if, indeed, it
was
their house, since they had given it up when they resigned from the Hegemon’s service that day back in the Philippines—Bean took her right to the Hegemon’s office.

Peter was waiting there for her, along with Graff and the Wiggins. There were hugs that became kisses and handshakes that became hugs.

Peter told all about what happened up in space. Then they made Petra tell about Damascus, though she protested that it was nothing at all, just a city happy with victory.

“The war’s not over yet,” said Peter.

“They’re full of Muslim unity,” said Petra.

“Next thing you know,” said Graff, “the Christians and Jews will get back together. The only thing standing between them, after all, is that business with Jesus.”

“It’s a good thing,” said Theresa, “to have a little less division in the world.”

“I think it’s going to take a lot of divisions,” said John Paul, “to bring about less division.”

“I told you they were happy in Damascus, not that I thought they were right to be,” said Petra. “There are signs of trouble ahead. There’s an imam preaching that India and Pakistan should be reunited under a single government again.”

“Let me guess,” said Peter. “A Muslim one.”

“If they liked what Virlomi did to the Chinese,” said Bean, “they’ll love what she can get the Hindus to do to get free of the Pakistanis.”

“And Peter will love this one,” said Petra. “An Iraqi politician made a speech in Baghdad in which he very pointedly said, ‘In a world where Allah has chosen a Caliph, why do we need a Hegemon?’”

They laughed, but their faces were serious when the laughing stopped.

“Maybe he’s right,” said Peter. “Maybe when this war is over, the Caliph will
be
the Hegemon, in fact if not in name. Is that a bad thing? The goal was to unite the world in peace. I volunteered to do it, but if somebody else gets it done, I’m not going to get anybody killed just to take the job away from him.”

Theresa took hold of his wrist, and Graff chuckled. “Keep talking like that, and I’ll understand why I’ve been supporting you all these years.”

“The Caliph is not going to replace the Hegemon,” said Bean, “or erase the need for one.”

“No?” asked Peter.

“Because a leader can’t take his people to a place where they don’t want to go.”

“But they want him to rule the world,” said Petra.

“But to rule the world, he has to keep the whole world content with his rule,” said Bean. “And how can he keep non-Muslims content without making orthodox Muslims extremely discontented? It’s what the Chinese found in India. You can’t swallow a nation. It finds a way to get itself vomited out. Begging your pardon, Petra.”

“So your friend Alai will realize this, and not try to rule over non-Muslim people?” asked Theresa.

“Our friend Alai would have no problem with that idea,” said Petra. “The question is whether the Caliph will.”

“I hope we won’t remember this day,” said Graff, “as the time when we first started fighting the next war.”

Peter spoke up. “As I said before, this war’s not over yet.”

“Both of the frontline Chinese armies in India have been surrounded and the noose is tightening,” said Graff. “I don’t think they have a Stalingrad-style defense in them, do you? The Turkic armies have reached the Hwang He and Tibet just declared its independence and is slaughtering the Chinese troops there. The Indonesians and Arabs are impossible to catch and they’re already making a serious dent in internal communications in China. It’s just a matter of time before they realize it’s pointless to keep killing people when the outcome is inevitable.”

“It takes a lot of dead soldiers before governments ever catch on to that,” said Theresa.

“Mother always takes the cheerful view,” said Peter, and they laughed.

Finally, though, it was time for Petra to hear the story of what happened inside the compound. Peter ended up telling most of it, because Bean kept skipping all the details and rushing straight to the end.

“Do you think Achilles believed Suriyawong would really kill Bean for him?” asked Petra.

“I think,” said Bean, “that Suriyawong told him that he would.”

“You mean he intended to do it, and changed his mind?”

“I think,” said Bean, “that Suri planned that moment from the start. He made himself indispensable to Achilles. He won his trust. The cost of it was losing the trust of everyone else.”

“Except you,” said Petra.

“Well, you see, I
know
Suri. Even though you can’t ever really know anybody—don’t throw my own words back up to me, Petra—”

“I didn’t! I wasn’t!”

“I walked into the compound without a plan, and with only one real advantage. I knew two things that Achilles didn’t know. I knew that Suri would never give himself to the service of a man like Achilles, so if he seemed to be doing so, it was a lie. And I knew something about myself. I knew that I could, in fact, kill a man in cold blood if that’s what it took to make my wife and children safe.”

“Yes,” said Peter, “I think that’s the one thing he just didn’t believe, not even at the end.”

“It wasn’t cold blood,” said Theresa.

“Yes it was,” said Bean.

“It was, Mother,” said Peter. “It was the right thing to do, and he chose to do it, and it was done. Without having to work himself up into a frenzy to do it.”

“That’s what heroes do,” said Petra. “Whatever’s necessary for the good of their people.”

“When we start saying words like ‘hero,’” said Bean, “it’s time to go home.”

“Already?” said Theresa. “I mean, Petra just got here. And I have to tell her all my horrible stories about how hard each of my deliveries was. It’s my duty to terrify the mother-to-be. It’s a tradition.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Wiggin,” said Bean. “I’ll bring her back every few days, at least. It’s not that far.”

“Bring me back?” said Petra.

“We left the Hegemon’s employ, remember?” said Bean. “We only
worked for him so we’d have a legal pretext for fighting Achilles and the Chinese, so there’d be nothing for us to do. We have enough money from our Battle School pensions. So we aren’t going to live in Ribeirão Preto.”

“But I like it here,” said Petra.

“Uh-oh, a fight, a fight,” said John Paul.

“Only because you haven’t lived in Araraquara yet. It’s a better place to raise children.”

“I know Araraquara,” said Petra. “You lived there with Sister Carlotta, didn’t you?”

“I lived everywhere with Sister Carlotta,” said Bean. “But it’s a good place to raise children.”

“You’re Greek and I’m Armenian. Of course we need to raise our children to speak Portuguese.”

The house Bean had rented was small, but it had a second bedroom for the baby, and a lovely little garden, and monkeys that lived in the tall trees on the property behind them. Petra imagined her little girl or boy coming out to play and hearing the chatter of the monkeys and delighting in the show they put on for all comers.

“But there’s no furniture,” said Petra.

“I knew I was taking my life in my hands picking out the house without you,” said Bean. “The furniture is up to you.”

“Good,” said Petra. “I’ll make you sleep in a frilly pink room.”

“Will you be sleeping there with me?”

“Of course.”

“Then frilly pink is fine with me, if that’s what it takes.”