3rd Degree

Chapter 80

THE RINCON CENTER was full at noon. Hundreds of people chatting over lunch, scanning the sports pages, rush-ing around with bags from the Gap or Office Max. Just relax-ing under the enormous plane of water that fell from the glittering roof.

The pianist was playing. Mariah Carey. “A hero comes along...” But no one seemed to notice the music or the player. Hell, he was awful.

Robert sat reading the paper, his heart beating wildly. No more room for talk or argument, he kept thinking. No more waiting for change. Today he'd make his own. God knows, he was one of the disenfranchised. In and out of VA hospitals. Made crazy by his combat experience, then abandoned. That was what had made him a radical.

He tapped the leather briefcase with his shoes, just to make sure it was still there. He was reminded of something he had seen on TV, in a dramatization of the Civil War. A run-away slave had been freed and then conscripted to fight for the North. He fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. After one, he happened to spot his old master, shell-shocked and wounded among the Confederate prisoners. “Hello, massa,” the slave went up to him and said, “looks like bottom rail's on top now.”

And that's what Robert was thinking as he panned the unsuspecting lawyers and bankers slopping down their lunch. Bottom rail's on top now....

Across the crowd, the man Robert was waiting for stepped into the concourse - the man with the salt-and-pepper hair. His blood came alive. He stood, wrapping his fingers around the case handle, keeping his eyes fixed on the man - his target for today.

This was the moment, he told himself, when all the fancy speeches and vows and homilies turn into deed. He tossed down his newspaper. The area around the fountain was jam-packed. He headed toward the piano.

Are you afraid to act? Are you afraid to set the wheel in motion?

No, Robert said, I'm ready. I've been ready for years.

He stopped and waited at the piano. The pianist started up a new tune, the Beatles: “Something.” More of the white man's garbage.

Robert smiled at the young red-headed dude behind the keyboard. He took a bill out of his wallet and stuffed it in the bowl.

Thanks, man, the pianist nodded.

Robert nodded back, almost laughed at the false cama-raderie, and rested his briefcase against a leg of the piano. He checked the progress of his target - thirty feet away - and casually kicked the briefcase underneath the piano. Take that, you sons of bitches!

Robert started to drift slowly toward the north entrance. This is it, baby. This is what he'd been waiting for. He fumbled through his pocket for the stolen cell phone. The target was only about fifteen feet away. Robert turned at the exit doors and took it all in.

The man with the salt-and-pepper hair stopped at the piano, just as the Professor said he would. He took a dollar bill out of his wallet. Behind him, the eighty-foot column of water splashed down from the ceiling.

Robert pushed through the doors, walked away from the building, and depressed two preassigned keys on the cell phone - G-8.

Then the whole world seemed to burst into smoke and flame, and Robert felt the most incredible satisfaction of his entire life. This was a war he wanted to fight in.

He never saw the flash, only the building wrenching in a rumble of concrete and glass, doors blowing out behind him.

Start the revolution, baby.... Robert smiled to himself. Bottom rail's on top now....