The Lie (44 page)

The figure was rendered broadly, freely, yet no detail of its early threat had been lost. The mouth still howled its maniac
speech. The one demonic eye still glared. The stump of a missing arm still flayed the heavens. And from the chest cavity,
from that dark hole where a heart should have been, crawled things black and viscous. If you believed in spirits and demons,
in wizards and fiends and omens of evil, they would have dwelt in such a place as this.

Kate Dinneson sat staring for a long time, hands folded in her lap like those of an obedient child. Her face showed no emotion.

“Well?” said Paulie at last.

“You’re a great artist.”

“Is that all?”

“What else is there?”

“What do you
think
?”

“I’m no art critic,” Kate said.

“I
know
you’re no art critic.”

She turned and faced him. “Shall I tell you how I
feel
?”

“Sure.”

“Like killing myself.”

He laughed.

“I’m not trying to be funny. I think if I believed what you’ve said here, I couldn’t see much point in getting up in the morning.
And if I thought you believed it yourself, I wouldn’t feel much better.”

“Don’t you think I believe it?” Paulie asked.

Something strangled in her, some wistful desire to change what was beyond alteration. “For days, I’ve been hoping you didn’t.”

“You mean you’ve seen the painting before?”

“Every day since you started it. I’ve been coming into your studio and looking when you weren’t around. I kept hoping it might
brighten up a little, but it just kept getting worse. And so did the way I felt.”

He sat numbly. “I didn’t know.”

“I was sure you’d notice some difference in me. I was sure it showed.”

Paulie
had
noticed it. She
had
been different. But he had blamed it on how poorly things were going at Wannsee, with the glowing spirit of the opening seeming
to fade by the day, and egos and petty political squabbling beginning to threaten further progress. Looking at Kate now, he
could pinpoint the changes, could actually sense the anxiety in her face. Even the smoothness of her skin seemed vexed, troubled
by hidden disasters.

Without knowing why, he felt he should apologize. “I’m sorry you don’t like the painting.”

“I don’t just not like it. I hate it. Why in God’s name did you have to paint such an abomination?”

It was fascinating to him to see her circling in, to watch her collecting the necessary anger for her attack. He fought a
lover’s wish to collaborate, to help make it easier for her to do what she so obviously needed to do. Still, her reaction
puzzled him. It was much too strong.

“I don’t understand,” Paulie said. “Why do you let it bother you so?”

“Hopelessness always bothers me. I despise it.”

“I wasn’t really trying to be hopeless.”

“My God!” Kate Dinneson stared at the silently howling mouth. “What
were
you trying to be?”

“Realistic.” Paulie turned to stare with her at the canvas. “At least I thought I was trying to be realistic. You never know
for sure while you’re working. Emotion clouds. Especially in
something like this. Maybe I shouldn’t have touched the whole idea right now.”

“What whole idea?”

“Wannsee’s inevitable failure. All the same hate and killing going on as before. With the exception of a few parts of western
and central Africa. And who knows how long those shaky bits of peace are going to hold.”

Kate looked shocked, hurt. “They’ve just started. You’re not even giving them a chance to make it work.”

“Ah, Kate. It’s never worked before. And I’m afraid not even you, the president, and your noble lie can make it work now.”

She kept her lips tight, made her voice harsh. “When did you get so scared? I’ve never seen you so scared before.”

“Is that what I am?”

“Or would you rather call it being realistic?”

“You might be right. They could be the same thing. Maybe it’s impossible to be realistic anymore without being scared.”

“Oh, damn it! Stop it!”

It came out a shrill shout that startled her as much as it did him.

“What is it, Kate?”

She shut her eyes as though the light had suddenly grown too bright.

“But what’s the
matter
?”

Kate Dinneson opened her eyes and looked past Paulie at the mutilated nude.

“
That’s
the matter,” she said, and ran out of the studio and out of the house.

Paulie found her in the darkness on the crest of a hill that overlooked the sea.

He sat down next to her, but neither of them spoke. A small, warm breath of salt came off the water, which heaved gently under
the moon.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last.

He took her hand. “Just tell me what it is.”

“It’s us. We’ve done it. We’ve started the family I’ve been wanting more than anything.”

Paulie waited for some sensation. But none came. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I went to a doctor.”

“When?”

“Four days ago.”

“And you’re just telling me now?”

“I was afraid.”

“Of
what
, for God’s sake?”

“Of you. Of how you’d feel about it. I was afraid from the minute I saw that painting. I thought, how could you possibly paint
something like this and still want a baby? How could you see such ghastly visions ahead and want a child of your own to have
to face them? Can you blame me for hating that picture? It’s a rusty knife at my belly.”

“It’s only a painting, Kate.”

“It’s
not
only a painting. It’s the way you feel.”

“That has nothing to do with the baby,” Paulie said. “I’m very happy about the baby.”

“How could you be? You’re so pessimistic about everything.”

“Not about everything. Just about the world.”

“What else is there?”

“There’s us,” Paulie said. He was almost smiling, realizing the insane dichotomy between his world pessimism and personal
hope. “And now there’s the baby.”

Kate went soft against him. “Do you mean it? Are you really happy?”

“Yes,” he said, and was astonished to find that he did mean it, that it actually did give him an extraordinary feeling.

Kate held him.

“I was so miserable,” she said. “You’ll never know how miserable.”

Paulie stroked her hair where the moon caught it.

“I’ll have a beautiful pregnancy, darling. You’ll see. I won’t cause any trouble. I won’t bother you at all.”

“Please,” he said. “Bother me.”

“No. Men don’t like to know too much. They just want it to happen. They like the mystery. Darling, I’m going to give you the
most mysterious, the most amazing baby you’ve ever seen.”

“You’re the one who’s mysterious and amazing.”

“No I’m not. But I love you to think so. Oh, Jesus!” She all but shouted the words. “I’m suddenly so happy I could die. Do
you think I shouldn’t be so happy? Do you think there’s something wrong in it?”

“What could be wrong?”

“You know. The way the world is.”

Paulie laughed. “You won’t make things any better by being miserable.”

He kissed her and she pressed him hard and touched him until he felt the magic of the rising begin. They lay back against
the crest of the hill.

“
Here
?” he said.

“Where else, dummy?”

Then she was at him again, smothering the laughter in his throat and pulling at their clothes until they were naked in the
cool grass, feeling it give softly against flesh and even the strangeness of it exciting.

A strangeness, too, in knowing of the tiny living thing inside, too fragile to believe. Paulie must have held back because
Kate said, “Don’t worry. You won’t hurt him.”

Still, there were three of them together instead of two. It was neither better nor worse than before, but different. And he
could feel this child begin to engage him, this new invisible thing he had helped produce, giving wisdom to his touch and
drawing fresh secrets from her flesh.

Afterward, Kate would not let him go, but held on against the final slipping away. “I hate when it ends,” she said. “Why does
it always have to end?”

“It doesn’t really. It’s just getting ready for next time.”

“That’s lovely.”

“I told you I’m no pessimist.”

“Just about the world.”

As Paulie held her, this woman who had been tricked into killing his parents and was now offering him the gift of
his own child in their place, he suddenly felt warm and accounted for, felt the almost mystic grace of the whole idea.

Then they dressed and walked back through the grass and found, when they reached the house, that nothing had really changed.
The bitter threat was still there, still waiting for them.

Kate said nothing. But Paulie only had to look at her face to know what she was feeling.

Then, because all his usual disciplines were suddenly air, and he had nothing else to offer and no one else left to offer
it to, he thought,
Why the hell not?

It took only a moment to cut the canvas free of its stretcher and lay it out on the hearth. Then with Kate standing there
wide-eyed, Paulie struck a match and let the poor howling creature seek its final peace in a shroud of smoke.

Paulie chose to look at it as part of his new contract.

An expectant father had to be more hopeful. It was the heart’s only protection.

Which didn’t mean that the hate and killing were not still out there. Perhaps they always would be. But for the first time
ever, Wannsee was out there too. Along with the lie that was its fire and sword.

No small thing.

The acclaimed author of
Impulse
and
Deceptions
now unleashes his powerful imagination on the international stage, weaving a shimmering tapestry of suspense from a single,
resonant question: How far are you willing to go to achieve world peace?

T
HE
L
IE

The agenda is ambitious: eliminating the mass murder in the name of ethnic cleansing now raging all over Africa. The place
is propitious: the town of Wannsee, Germany, where Hitler’s inner circle once planned the extermination of six million Jews.
The conference is historic. It is also a lie.

Here the idealistic and the Machiavellian will draw together. The master terrorist will fight for light to prevail over darkness,
while hoping, against everything he knows, that no one will die… and the master strategist will exploit the vulnerabilities
of dreamers everywhere for his own covert ends.

Here, linked more than either suspects by both of their violent family histories, two lovers will defy the fate that has consigned
them as mortal enemies. One is Paul Walters, formerly a contract killer for the CIA, now a painter of dark, compelling brilliance,
still expert in the arts of subterfuge and destruction. The other is Kate Dinneson, a rising star in the world of journalism
whose unfolding personal drama will prove more explosive than any story she will ever write.

Together, they will join forces against a vast conspiracy of duplicity and death even more treacherous than the deceptions
each must continue to play against the other.

For a web is tightening around the president of the United States. And an
even greater threat is about to cast a terrifying global shadow—unless one lone man and one lone woman can extinguish it at
its source.

In its scope, its sweep, and its endless surprises, THE LIE fulfills the promise that Michael Weaver so unforgettably exhibited
in his earlier novels. Here is a reading experience that will leave you enthralled from its first page and shattered at its
climax.

M
ICHAEL
W
EAVER
lives on Long Island, New York.

DECEPTIONS

IMPULSE