Aces Abroad

PUPPETS

Victor W Milan

MacHeath had a jackknife, so the song went.

Mackie Messer had something better. And it was ever so much easier to keep out of sight.

Mackie blew into the camera store on a breath of cool air and diesel farts from the Kurfiirstendamm. He left off whistling his song, let the door hiss to behind him, and stood with his fists rammed down in his jacket pockets to catch a look around.

Light slamdanced on countertops, the curves of cameras, black and glassy-eyed. He felt the humming of the lights down beneath his skin. This place got on his tits. It was so clean and antiseptic it made him think of a doctor's office. He hated doctors. Always had, since the doctors the Hamburg court sent him to see when he was thirteen said he was crazy and penned him up in a Land juvie/psych ward, and the orderly there was a pig from the Tirol who was always breathing booze and garlic over him and trying to get him to jerk him off… and then he'd turned over his ace and walked on out of there, and the thought brought a smile and a rush of confidence.

On a stool by the display counter lay a Berliner Zeitung folded to the headline: "Wild Card Tour to Visit Wall Today." He smiled, thin.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Then Dieter came in from the back and saw him. He stopped dead and put this foolish smile on his face. "Mackie. Hey. It's a little early, isn't it?"

He had a narrow, pale head with dark hair slicked back in a smear of oil. His suit was blue and ran to too much padding in the shoulders. His tie was thin and iridescent. His lower lip quivered just a little.

Mackie was standing still. His eyes were the eyes of a shark, cold and gray and expressionless as steel marbles.

"I was just, you know, putting in my appearance here, Dieter said." A hand jittered around at the cameras and the neon tubing and the sprawling shiny posters showing the tanned women with shades and too many teeth. The hand glowed the white of a dead fish's belly in the artificial light. "Appearances are important, you know. Got to lull the suspicions of the bourgeoisie. Especially today."

He tried to keep his eyes off Mackie, but they just kept rolling back to him, as if the whole room slanted downward to where he stood. The ace didn't look like much. He was maybe seventeen, looked younger, except for his skin-that had a dryness to it, a touch of parchment age. He wasn't much more than a hundred seventy centimeters tall, even skinnier than Dieter, and his body kind of twisted. He wore a black leather jacket that Dieter knew was scuffed to gray along the canted line of his shoulders, jeans that were tired before he fished them out of a trash can in Dahlem, a pair of Dutch clogs. A brush of straw hair stuck up at random above the drawn-out face of an El Greco martyr, oddly vulnerable. His lips were thin and mobile.

"So you stepped up the timetable, came for me early," Dieter said lamely.

Mackie flashed forward, wrapped his hand in shiny tie, hauled Dieter toward him. "Maybe it's too late for you, comrade. Maybe maybe."

The camera salesman had a curious glossy-pale complexion, like laminated paper. Now his skin turned the color of a sheet of the Zeitung after it had spent the night blowing along a Budapesterstrasse curb. He'd seen what that hand could do.

"M-mackie," he stammered, clutching at the reed-thin arm.

He collected himself then, patted Mackie affectionately on a leather sleeve. "Hey, hey now, brother. What's the matter?"

"You tried to sell us, motherfucker!" Mackie screamed, spraying spittle all over Dieter's after-shave.

Dieter jerked back. His arm twitched with the lust to wipe his cheek. "What the fuck are you talking about, Mackie? I'd never try-"

"Kelly. That Australian bitch. Wolf thought she was acting funny and leaned on her." A grin wnched its way across Mackie's face. "She's never going to the fucking Bundeskriminalamt now, man. She's Speck. Lunchmeat."

Dieter's tongue flicked bluish lips. "Listen, you've got it wrong. She was nothing to me. I knew she was just a groupie, all along-"

His eyes informed on him, sliding ever so slightly to the right. His hand suddenly flared up from below the register with a black snub revolver in it.

Mackie's left hand whirred down, vibrating like the blade of a jigsaw. It sheared through the pistol's top strap, through the cylinder and cartridges, and slashed open the trigger guard a piece of a centimeter in front of Dieter's forefinger. The finger clenched spastically, the hammer came back and clicked to, and the rear half of the cylinder, its fresh-cut face glistening like silver, fell forward onto the countertop. Glass cracked.

Mackie grabbed Dieter by the face and hauled him forward. The camera salesman put down his hands to steady himself, shrieked as they went through the countertops. The broken glass raked him like talons, slashing through blue coat sleeve and blue French shirt and fishbelly skin beneath. His blood streamed over Zeiss lenses and Japanese import cameras that were making inroads in the Federal Republic despite chauvinism and high tariffs, ruining their finish.

"We were comrades! Why? Why?" Mackie's whole skinny body was shaking in hurt fury. Tears filled his eyes. His hands began to vibrate of their own accord.

Dieter squealed as he felt them rasping at the post-shave stubble he could never get rid of, the only flaw in his neo-sleek grooming. " I don't know what you're talking about," he screamed. " I never meant to do it-I was playing her along-"

"Liar!" Mackie yelled. The anger jolted through him like a blast from the third rail, and his hands were buzzing, buzzing, and Dieter was flopping and howling as the flesh began to come off his cheeks, and Mackie gripped him harder, hands on cheekbones, and the rising vibration of his hands was transmitted through bone to the wet mass of Dieter's brain, and the camera salesman's eyes rolled and his tongue came out and the violent agitation flash-boiled the fluids in his skull and his head exploded.

Mackie dropped him, danced back howling like a man on fire, swiping at the clotted stuff that filled his eyes and clung to his cheeks and hair. When he could see, he went around the counter and kicked the quivering body. It slid onto the cuffed linoleum floor. The cash register was flashing orange error-condition warnings, the display case swam with blood, and there were lumps of greasy yellow-gray brains all over everything.

Mackie dabbed at his jacket and screamed again when his hands came away slimy. "You bastard!" He kicked the headless corpse again. "You got this shit all over me, you asshole. Asshole, asshole, asshole!"

He hunkered down, pulled up the tail of Dieter's suit coat, and wiped the worst lumps off his face and hands and leather jacket. "Oh, Dieter, Dieter," he sobbed, " I wanted to talk to you, stupid son of a bitch-" He picked up a cold hand, kissed it, tenderly rested it on a spattered lapel. Then he went back to the john to wash down as best he could.

When he came out, anger and sorrow both had faded, leaving a strange elation. Dieter had tried to fuck with the Fraction and he'd paid the price, and what the hell did it matter if Mackie hadn't been able to find out why? It didn't matter, nothing mattered. Mackie was an ace, he was MacHeath made flesh, invulnerable, and in a couple of hours he was going to show the cocksuckers-

The glass doors up front opened and somebody came in. Laughing to himself, Mackie changed phase and walked through the wall.

Rain jittered briefly on the roof of the Mercedes limo. "We'll be meeting a number of influential people at this luncheon, Senator," said the young black man with the long narrow face and earnest expression, riding with his back to the driver. "It's going to be an excellent opportunity to show your commitment to brotherhood and tolerance, not just for jokers, but for members of oppressed groups of all persuasions. Really excellent."

"I'm sure it will, Ronnie." Chin on hand, Hartmann let his eyes slide away from his junior aide and out the condensation-fogged window. Blocks of apartments rolled by, tan and anonymous. This close to the Wall Berlin seemed always to be holding its breath.

"Aide et Amitie has an international reputation for its work to promote tolerance," Ronnie said. "The head of the Berlin chapter, Herr Prahler, recently received recognition for his efforts to improve public acceptance of the Turkish 'guest workers,' though I understand he's a rather, ah, controversial personality-"

"Communist bastard," grunted Moller from the front seat. He was a strapping blond kid plainclothesman with big hands and prominent ears that made him resemble a hound pup. He spoke English out of. deference to the American senator, though between a grandmother from the Old Country and a few college courses, Hartmann knew enough German to get by.

"Herr Prahler's active in Rote Hilfe, Red Help," explained Moller's opposite number, Blum, from the backseat. He was sitting on the other side of Mordecai Jones, who sometimes and with poor grace responded to the nickname Harlem Hammer. Jones was concentrating on The New York Times crossword puzzle and acting as if no one else were there. "He's a lawyer, you know. Been defending radicals since Andy Baader's salad days."

"Helping damned terrorists get off with a slap on the wrists, you mean."

Blum laughed and shrugged. He was leaner and darker than Moller, and he wore his curly black hair shaggy enough to push even the notoriously liberal standards of the Berlin Schutzpolizei. But his brown artist's eyes were watchful, and the way he held himself suggested he knew how to use the tiny machine pistol in the shoulder holster that bulked out his gray suit coat in a way not even meticulous German tailoring could altogether conceal.

"Even radicals have a right to representation. This is Berlin, Mensch. We take freedom seriously here if only to set an example for our neighbors, ja?" Moller made a skeptical sound low in his throat.

Ronnie fidgeted on the seat and checked his watch. "Maybe we could go a little faster? We don't want to be late." The driver flashed a grin over his shoulder. He resembled a smaller edition of Tom Cruise, though more ferret faced. He couldn't have been as young as he looked. "The streets are narrow here. We-don't want to have an accident. Then we'd be even later."

Hartmann's aide set his mouth and fussed with papers in the briefcase open on his lap. Hartmann slid another glance toward the bulk of the Hammer, who was still stolidly ignoring everybody. Puppetman was amazingly quiescent, given his gut dread of aces. Maybe he was even feeling a certain thrill at Jones's proximity.

Not that Jones looked like an ace. He appeared to be a normal black man in his mid to late thirties, bearded, balding, solidly built, looking none too well at ease knotted into coat and tie. Nothing out of the ordinary.

As a matter of fact he weighed four hundred and seventy pounds and had to sit in the center of the Merc so it wouldn't list. He might be the strongest man in the world, stronger than Golden Boy perhaps, but he refused to engage in any kind of competition to settle the issue. He disliked being an ace, disliked being a celebrity, disliked politicians, and thought the entire tour was a waste of time. Hartmann had the impression he'd only agreed to come along because his neighbors in Harlem got such a kick out of his being in the spotlight, and he hated to let them down.

Jones was a token. He knew it. He resented it. That was one reason Hartmann had goaded him into coming to the Aide et Amitie luncheon; that and the fact that for all their pious pretensions of brotherhood, most Germans didn't like blacks and were uncomfortable around them; they pretended, but that wasn't the sort of thing you could hide from Puppetman. He found the Hammer's pique and the discomfort of their hosts amusing; almost worthwhile to take Jones on as a puppet. But not quite. The Hammer was known primarily as a muscleman ace, but the full scope of his powers was a mvstery Any chance of discovery was too much for Puppetman.

Beyond the minor titillations poking everyone off balance provided, Hartmann was getting fed up with Billy Ray. Carnifex had fumed and blustered when Hartmann ditched him with the rest of the tour back at the Wall-detailed to escort Mrs. Hartmann and the senator's two senior aides back to the hotel-but he couldn't say much without offending their hosts, whose security men were on the job. And anyway, with the Hammer along, what could possibly happen?

"Scheisse," the driver said. He had turned a corner to find a gray and white telephone van parked blocking the street next to an open manhole. He braked to a halt.

"Idiots," said Moller. "They're not supposed to do that." He unlocked the passenger door.

Beside Hartmann, Blum flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror. "Uh-oh," he said softly. His right hand went inside his coat.

Hartmann craned his neck. A second van had cranked itself across the street not thirty feet behind them. Its doors were open, spilling people onto pavement wet from the rain spasm. They held weapons. Blum shouted a warning to his partner.

A figure loomed up beside the car. A terrible metal screeching filled the limousine. Hartmann's breath turned solid in his throat as a hand cut through the roof of the car in a shower of sparks.

Moller winced away. He drew his MP5K from its shoulder holster, pressed it to the window, and fired a burst. Glass exploded outward.

The hand snapped back. "Jesus Christ," Moller shouted, "the bullets went right through him!"

He threw open the door. A man with a ski mask over his face fired an assault rifle from the rear of the telephone van. The noise rattled the car's thick windows, on and on. It sounded oddly remote. The windshield starred. The man who'd cut through the roof screamed and went down. Moller danced back three steps, fell against the Mercedes's fender, collapsed to the pavement squirming and screaming. His coat fell open. Scarlet spiders clung to his chest.

The assault rifle ran dry. The sudden silence was thunderous. Puppetman's fingers were clenched on the padded handle of the door as Moller's mindscream jolted into him like speed hitting the main line. He gasped, at the hot mad pleasure of it, at the cold rush of his own fear.

"Hande hoch!" shouted a figure beside the van that had boxed them from behind. "Hands up!"

Mordecai Jones put a big hand on Hartmann's shoulder and pushed him to the floor. He clambered over him, careful not to squash him, put his weight against the door. Metal wailed and it came away with him as Blum, more conventional, pulled the lever on his own door to disengage the latching mechanism, twisted, and shouldered it open. He brought his MP5K up with his left hand clutching the vestigial foregrip, aimed the stubby machine pistol back around the frame as Hartmann yelled, "Don't shoot!"

The Hammer was racing toward the telephone van. The terrorist who'd shot Moller pointed his weapon at him, pumped his finger on the empty weapon's trigger in a comic pantomime of panic. Jones backhanded him gently. He sailed backward to rebound off the front of a building and land in a heap on the sidewalk.

The moment hung in air like a suspended chord. Jones squatted, got his hands under the phone van's frame. He strained, straightened. The van came up with him. Its driver screamed in terror. The Hammer shifted his grip and pressed the vehicle over his head as if it were a not-particularly-heavy barbell.

A burst of gunfire stuttered from the second van. Bullets shredded open the back of Jones's coat. He teetered, almost lost it, swung in a ponderous circle with the van still balanced above his head. Then several terrorists fired at once. He grimaced and fell backward.

The van landed right on top of him.

The limo driver had his door open and a little black P7 in his hand. As the Hammer fell, Blum blazed a quick burst at the van behind. A man ducked back as 9mm bullets punched neat holes in thin metal-a joker, Hartmann realized. What the hell's going on here?

He ducked his head below window level and grabbed at Blum's coattail. He felt the vehicle shudder on its suspension as bullets struck it. The driver gasped and slumped out of the car. Hartmann heard somebody yelling in English to cease fire. He shouted for Blum to quit shooting.

The policeman turned toward him. "Yes, sir," he said. Then a burst punched through his opened door and sugared the glass in the window and threw him against the senator.

Ronnie was plastered against the back of the driver's seat. "Oh, God," he moaned. "Oh, dear God!" He jumped out the door the Hammer had torn from its hinges and ran, with papers scattered from his briefcase swooping around him like seagulls.

The terrorist Mordecai Jones had brushed aside had recovered enough to come to one knee and stuff another magazine into his AKM. He brought it to his shoulder and emptied it at the senator's aide in a juddering burst. A scream and mist of blood sprayed from Ronnie's mouth. He fell and skidded.

Hartmann huddled on the floor in fugue, half-terrified, half orgasmic. Blum was dying, holding on to Hartmann's arm, the holes in his chest sucking like lamia mouths, his life-force surging into the senator like arrhythmic surf.

"I'm hurt," the policeman said. "Oh, mama, mama please-" He died. Hartmann jerked like a harpooned seal as the last of the man's life gushed into him.

Out by the street Hartmann's young aide was dragging himself along with his arms, glasses askew, leaving a snail-trail of blood on the sidewalk. The slightly built terrorist who had shot him ambled up, stuffing a third magazine into his weapon. He positioned himself in front of the wounded man.

Ronnie blinked up at him. Disjointedly Hartmann remembered he was desperately nearsighted, virtually blind without his glasses.

"Please," Ronnie said, and blood rolled from his mouth. "Please."

"Have a Negerkuss," the terrorist said, and fired a single shot into his forehead.

"Dear God," Hartmann said. A shadow fell across him, heavy as a corpse. He looked up with inhuman eyes at a figure black against the gray-cloud sky beyond. A hand gripped him by the arm, electricity blasted through him, and consciousness exploded in ozone convulsion.

Substantial again, Mackie bounced to his feet and tore off his ski mask. "You shot at me! You could have killed me," he shrieked at Anneke. His face was almost black.

She laughed at him.

The world seemed to come on to Mackie in Kodachrome colors. He started for her, hand beginning to buzz, when a commotion behind him brought his head around.

The dwarf had grabbed Ulrich's rifle by the still-hot muzzle brake and spun him round, echoing Mackie's theme, with variations. "You stupid bastard, you could have killed him!" he screamed. "You could have offed the fucking senator!" Ulrich had fired the final burst that downed the cop in the back of the limousine. Weight lifter though he was, he was only just hanging on to his piece against the dwarf°s surprising strength. The two were orbiting each other out there on the street, spitting at one another like cats.

Mackie had to laugh.

Then Molniya was beside him, touching his shoulder with a gloved hand. "Let it go. We have to move quickly." Mackie arched like a cat to meet the touch. Comrade Molniya was worried he was still mad at Anneke for shooting at him and then laughing about it.

But that was forgotten. Anneke was laughing too, over the body of the man she'd just finished off, and Mackie had to laugh with her.

IA Negerkuss," he said. "You said did he want a Negerkuss. Huh huh. That was pretty good." It meant Negro Kiss, a small chocolate-covered cake. It was especially funny since they'd told him Negro Kisses were a trademark of the group from back in the old days, back when all of them but Wolf were kids."

It was nervous laughter, relieved laughter. He'd thought he'd lost it when the pig shot at him; he'd just seen the gun come up in time to phase out, and the anger burned black within him, the desire to make his hand vibrate till it was hard as a knife blade and drive it into that fucking cop, to make sure he felt the buzz, to feel the hot rush of blood along his arm and spraying in his face. But the bastard was dead, it was too late now…

He'd worried again when the black man picked up the van, but then Comrade Ulrich shot him. He was strong, but he wasn't immune to bullets. Mackie liked Comrade Ulrich. He was so self-assured, so handsome and muscular. Women liked him; Anneke could hardly keep her hands off him. Mackie might have envied him, if he hadn't been an ace.

Mackie didn't have a gun himself. He hated them, and anyway he didn't need a weapon-there wasn't any weapon better than his own body.

The American joker called Scrape was fumbling Hartmann's limp body out of the limousine. "Is he dead?" Mackie called in German, caught up by sudden panic. The dwarf let go of Ulrich's rifle and stared wildly at the car. Ulrich almost fell over.

Scrape looked up at Mackie, face frozen into immobility by its exoskeleton, but his lack of understanding clear from the tilt of his head. Mackie repeated the question in the halting English he'd learned from his mother before the worthless bitch had died and deserted him.

Comrade Molniya pulled his other glove back on. He wore no mask, and now Mackie noticed he looked a little green at the sight of the blood spilled all over the street. "He's fine," he replied for Scrape. "I just shocked him unconscious. Come now, we must hurry"

Mackie grinned and bobbed his head. He felt a certain satisfaction at Molniya's squeamishness, even though he wanted to please the Russian ace almost as much as he did his own cell leader Wolf He went to help Scrape, though he hated being so close to the joker. He feared he might touch him accidentally; the thought made his flesh crawl.

Comrade Wolf stood by with his own unfired Kalashnikov dangling from one huge hand. "Get him in the van," he ordered. "Him too." He nodded to Comrade Wilfried, who'd stumbled from the driver's seat of the telephone van and was on his knees pitching breakfast on the wet asphalt.

It started to rain again. Broad pools of blood on the pavement began to fray like banners whipped by the wind. In the distance sirens commenced their hair-raising chant.

They put Hartmann into the second van. Scrape got behind the wheel. Molniya slid in beside him. The joker backed up onto the sidewalk, turned, and drove away.

Mackie sat on the wheel well, drumming a heavy-metal beat on his thighs. We did it! We captured him! He could barely sit still. His penis was stiff inside his jeans.

Out the back window he saw Ulrich spraying letters on a wall in red paint: RAE He laughed again. That would make the bourgeoisie shit their pants, that was for sure. Ten years ago those initials had been a synonym for terror in the Federal Republic. Now they would be again. It gave Mackie happy chills to think about it.

A joker wrapped head to toe in a shabby cloak stepped up and sprayed three more letters beneath the first with a hand wrapped in bandages: JJS.

The other van heeled way over to the side as its wheels rolled over the supine, body of the black American ace, and they were gone.

With her NEC laptop computer- tucked under one arm and a a bit of her cheek caught between her small side teeth, Sara strode across the lobby of the Bristol Hotel Kempinski with briskness that an outside observer would probably have taken for confidence. It was a misapprehension that had served her well in the past.

Reflexively she ducked into the bar of Berlin's most luxurious hotel. The tour proper's long since been mined out, at least of stuff we can print, she thought, but what the heck? She felt heat in her ears at the thought that she was the star of one of the tour's choicer unprintable vignettes.

Inside was dark, of course. All bars are the same song; the polished wood and brass and old pliable leather and elephant ears were grace notes to set apart this particular refrain. She tipped her sunglasses up on top of her nearly white hair, drawn back this afternoon in a severe ponytail, and let her eyes adjust. They always adjusted to dark more quickly than light.

The bar wasn't crowded. A pair of waiters in arm garters and starched highboy collars worked their way among the tables as if by radar. Three Japanese businessmen sat at a table chattering and pointing at a newspaper, discussing either the exchange rates or the local tit bars, depending. In the corner Hiram was talking shop, in French of course, with the Kempinski's cordon bleu, who was shorter than he was but at least as round. The hotel chef had a tendency to flap his short arms rapidly when he spoke, which made him look like a fat baby bird that wasn't getting the hang of flight.

Chrysalis sat. at the bar drinking in splendid isolation. There was no joker chic here. In Germany, Chrysalis found herself discreetly avoided rather than lionized.

She caught Sara's eye and winked. In the poor light Sara only knew it because of the way Chrysalis's mascaraed eyelashes tracked across a staring eyeball. She smiled. Professional associates back home, sometime rivals in the bartering of information that was the meta-game of Jokertown, they'd grown to be friends on this trip. Sara had more in common with Debra-Jo than her nominal peers who were along.

At least Chrysalis was dressed. She was showing a different face to Europe than she did the country she pretended wasn't her native one. Sometimes Sara envied her, secretly. People looked at her and saw a joker, an exotic, alluring and grotesque. But they didn't see her.

"Looking for me, little lady?"

Sara started, turned. Jack Braun sat at the end of the bar, hardly five feet from her. She hadn't noticed him. She had a tendency to edit him out; the force of him made her uncomfortable.

"I'm going out," she said. She slapped the computer, a touch harder than necessary, so her fingers stung. "Down to the main post office to file my latest material by modem. It's the only place you can get a transatlantic connection that won't scramble all your data."

"I'm surprised you're not off pushing cookies with Senator Gregg," he said, eyeing her cantwise from beneath bushy eyebrows.

She felt color come to her cheeks. "Senator Hartmann attending a banquet may be a hot item for my colleagues with the celebrity-hunting glossies. But it's not exactly hard news, is it, Mr. Braun?"

It was an open afternoon. There wasn't much hard news here, not the kind to interest readers following the WHO tour. The West German authorities had blandly assured the visitors there was no wild card problem in their country, and used the tour as a counter in whatever game they were playing with their Siamese twin to the east-that damp, dreary ceremony this morning, for instance. Of course they were right: even proportionally, the number of German wild card victims was minuscule. The most pathetic or unsightly couple of thousand were kept discreetly tucked away in state housing or clinics. Much as they'd sneered at Americans for their treatment of jokers during the Sixties and Seventies, the Germans were embarrassed by their own.

"Depends on what gets said at the banquet, I guess. What's on your schedule after you file your piece, little lady?" He was grinning that B-movie leading-man grin at her. Golden highlights glimmered on the planes and contour edges of his face. He was flexing his muscles to bring on the glow that gave him his ace name. Irritation tightened the skin at the outskirts of her eyes. He was either coming on to her for real or teasing her. Either way she didn't like it.

"I have work to do. And I could use a little time to catch my breath. Some of us have had a busy time on this tour." Is that really the reason you were relieved when Gregg dropped the hint that it might not be discreet to tag along to the banquet with him? she wondered. She frowned, surprised at the thought, and turned crisply away.

Braun's big hand closed on her arm. She gasped and spun back to him, angry and starting to panic. What could she do against a man who could lift a bus? That detached observer inside her, the journalist within, reflected on the irony that Gregg, whom she'd come to hate, yes, obsessively, should be the first man in years whose touch she'd come to welcome-

But Jack Braun was frowning past her, into the lobby of the hotel. It was filling up with purposeful, husky young men in suit coats.

One of them came into the bar, looked hard at Braun, consulted a piece of paper in his hand. "Herr Braun?"

"That's me. What can I do you for?"

"I am with the Berlin Landespolizei. I'm afraid I must ask you not to leave the hotel."

Braun pushed his jaw forward. "And why might that be?"

"Senator Hartmann has been kidnapped."

Ellen Hartmann shut the door with eggshell care and turned away. The flowered vines fading in the carpet seemed to twine about her ankles as she walked back into the suite and sat down on the bed.

Her eyes were dry. They stung, but they were dry. She smiled slightly. It was hard to let her emotions go. She had so much experience controlling her emotions for the cameras. And Gregg-

I know what he is. But what he is is all I have.

She picked up a handkerchief from the bedside table and methodically began to tear it to pieces.

"Welcome to the land of the living, Senator. For the moment at least.".

Slowly Hartmann's mind drained into consciousness. There was a tinny taste in his mouth and a singing in his ears. His right upper arm ached as if from sunburn. Someone hummed a familiar song. A radio muttered.

His eyes opened to darkness. He felt the obligatory twinge of blindness anxiety, but something pressed his eyeballs, and from the small stinging pull at the back of his head he guessed it was taped gauze. His wrists were bound behind the back of a wooden chair.

After the awareness of captivity, what struck hardest was the smells: sweat, grease, mildew, dust, sodden cloth, unfamliar spices; ancient urine and fresh gun oil, crowding his nostrils clear to his sinuses.

He inventoried all these things before permitting himself to recognize the rasping voice.

"Tom Miller," he said. " I wish I could say it's a pleasure."

"Ah, yes, Senator. But I can." He could feel Gimli's gloating as he could smell his stinking breath-toothpaste and mouthwash belonged to the surface-worshiping nat world. " I could also say you have no idea how long I've waited for this, but of course you do. You know full well."

"Since we know each other so well, why don't you undo my eyes, Tom." As he spoke he probed with his power. It had been ten years since he'd last had physical contact with the dwarf, but he didn't think the link, once created, ever decayed. Puppetman feared loss of control more than anything but discovery; and being discovered itself represented the ultimate loss of power. If he could get his hooks back into Miller's soul, Hartmann could at the very least be sure of holding down the panic that bubbled like magma low in his throat.

"Gimli!" the dwarf shouted. His spittle sprayed Hartmann's lips and cheeks.

Instantly Hartmann dropped the link. Puppetman reeled. For a moment he'd felt Gimli's hatred blazing like an incandescent wire. He suspects!

Most of what he'd sensed was the hate. But beneath that, beneath the conscious surface of Gimli's mind lay awareness that there was something out of the ordinary about Gregg Hartmann, something inextricably tied to the bloody shambles of the Jokertown Riots. Gimli wasn't an ace, Hartmann was sure of that. But Gimli's natural paranoia was itself something of a sixth sense.

For the first time in his life Puppetman faced the possibility he had lost a puppet.

He knew he blanched, knew he flinched, but fortunately his reaction passed for squeamishness at being spat on. "Gimli," the dwarf repeated, and Hartmann sensed he was turning away. "That's my name. And the mask stays on, Senator. You know me, but the same doesn't apply to everybody here. And they'd like to keep it that way."

"That's not going to work too well, Gimli. You think a ski mask is going to disguise a joker with a furry snout? I-that is, if anybody saw you grab me, they'll have little enough trouble identifying you and your gang."

He was saying too much, he belatedly realized-he didn't want Miller dwelling too much on the fact that Hartmann could make him and some of his accomplices. Whatever had put him out had stirred his brains like omelette batter. -an electrical shock of some sort, he thought. Back in the Sixties he'd been a freedom rider briefly-it was an up-and-coming New Frontier sort of thing to do, and there was always the hatred, heady as wine, the possibility of lovely violence, crimson and indigo. A peckerwood state trooper had nailed him with a cattle prod during the Selma protests, which was too firsthand for his taste and sent him back north in a hurry. But it had felt like that, back in the limousine.

"Come now, Gimli," said a gritty baritone voice in accented but clear English. "Why not have the mask off? The whole world will know us soon enough."

"Oh, all right," Gimli said. Puppetman could taste his resentment without having to reach. Tom Miller was having to share stage with someone, and he didn't like it. Little bubbles of interest began to well up through the seethe of Hartmann's incipient panic.

Hartmann heard the scrape of feet on bare floor. Someone fumbled briefly, cursed, and then he caught his breath involuntarily as the tape was unwound, pulling reluctantly away from his hair and skin.

The first thing he saw was Gimli's face. It still looked like a bagful of rotten apples. The look of exultation didn't improve it any. Hartmann pushed his gaze past the dwarf to the rest of the room.

It was a shitty little tenement, like shitty little tenements pretty much everywhere in the world. The wooden floor was stained and the striped wallpaper had patches of damp like a workman's armpits. From the general scatter of crunchy and crinkly trash underfoot, Hartmann guessed the place was derelict. Still, a lightbulb glared in a busted-globe fixture overhead, and he felt a radiator drumming out too much heat the way every radiator in Germany did until it came down June.

For all he knew he could be in the Eastern sector, which was a hell of a cheery thought. On the other hand, he'd been in German homes before. This one smelled wrong, somehow.

There were three other overt jokers in the room, one swathed from head to feet in a dusty-looking cowled robe, one covered with yellowish chitin dotted with tiny red pimples, a third the furry one he'd seen next to the van. The three young nats in Hartmann's field of vision looked offensively normal by comparison.

His power felt others behind him. That was strange. He wasn't usually able to taste another's emotions, unless that one was broadcasting strongly, or was a puppet. He sensed a peculiar squirming in the power inside him.

He glanced back. Two more back there, nats to the eye, though the scrawny youth leaning on the stained wall next to the radiator had an odd look to him. A man in his mid-thirties sat next to him in a gaudy plastic chair with his hands in the pockets of an overcoat. Hartmann thought the older man was subconsciously straining away from the younger; when their eyes met he caught a quick impression of sadness.

That's odd, he thought. Maybe tension had heightened his normal perceptions; maybe he was imagining things. But something was coming off that kid as he grinned at Hartmann, something that prickled all around the edges of his awareness. Again he had that evasive feeling from Puppetman.

A shoe crunched debris. He turned, found himself looking up at an enormous nat dressed in suit coat and trousers of an odd tan-green, almost military. The man had no tie; his shirt collar hung unbuttoned around a thick neck, open to a spray of grizzled blond chest hair. Big hands rested on his hips with the coattails swept up behind, like something out of a little theater production of Inherit the Wind. His long hair lay combed back from a high forehead.

He smiled. He had one of those rugged ugly faces women fall for and men believe.

"A very great pleasure to meet you, Senator." It was the rolling sea swell of the voice he'd heard urge Gimli to remove his blindfold.

"You have the advantage."

"That's true. Oh, but I daresay my name won't be unfamiliar to you. I am Wolfgang Prahler."

Behind Hartmann someone tsked in exasperation. Prahler frowned, then laughed. "Ah, now, Comrade Molniya, do I break security? Well, did we not agree that we must come out into the light of day to accomplish a task so important?" Like many educated Berliners he spoke English with a pronouncedly British cast. From behind, Puppetman felt a flicker of agitation at the name Molniya. It was Russian. It meant lightning; the Soviets had a series of communications satellites by that name.

"What exactly is going on here?" Hartmann demanded. His heart lurched at the words. He didn't mean to take that tone with cold-blooded killers who had him altogether at their mercy. But Puppetman, coming suddenly into arrogance, had taken the bit in his teeth. "Couldn't you wait until the Aide et Amitie banquet to make my acquaintance?"

Prahler's laugh resonated up from deep in his chest. "Very good. But have you not figured it out? It was never intended you should reach the banquet, Senator. You were, as you Americans say, set up."

"Drawn to the bait and trapped," said a slight redheaded woman who wore a black turtleneck and jeans. "Set cheese for a rat; set a fine banquet to catch a fine lord."

"Rats and lords," a voice repeated. "A fine rat. A fine lord." It giggled. It was a male voice, cracked and adolescent: the leather boy. Hartmann felt a tickle run along the cord of his scrotum like the fingers of a whore. No doubt about it. He was getting emotion from him like static on a line. A hint of something potent-something terrible. For once Puppetman felt no desire to probe further.

He feared this one. More than the others, Prahler, these casual youths with guns. Even Gimli.

"You went to all this trouble to help Gimli here settle an old, imaginary score?" he made himself say. "That's generous of you."

"We're doing this for the revolution," said a youthful nat with a blond flattop and a heat-lamp tan and the air of having worked hard to memorize the line. His turtleneck and jeans were molded around an athlete's figure. He stood by the wall caressing the muzzle brake of a Soviet assault rifle grounded by his foot.

"You're of no significance, Senator," the woman said. She flipped her square-cut bangs off her forehead. "Simply a tool. What your naive egotism tells you notwithstanding."

"Who the hell are you people?"

"We bear the sacred name of the Red Army Fraction," she told him. She hovered over a stocky youngster who sat cross-legged fiddling with a radio perched on a warped wooden nightstand. He wouldn't meet Hartmann's eyes.

"Comrade Wolf gave it to us," the blond boy said. "He used to hang out with Baader and Meinhof and them. They used to be close like this." He held up a clenched fist.

Hartmann sucked in his lips. Since the terrorist wars had gotten underway for true in the early Seventies, it wasn't uncommon for radical attorneys to come to involve themselves selves directly in the activities of those they represented in court, especially in Germany and Italy. Apparently, if what the kid said was true, Prahler had been a leader in the Baader-Meinhof group and the RAF all along, without the authorities ever getting wind of the fact.

Hartmann looked at Tom Miller. "I'll rephrase my question. How did you get mixed up in this, Gimli?"

"We just happened to be in the right place at the right time, Senator."

The dwarf smirked at him. Puppetman felt an urge to crush that smug face, to tear out the dwarf's guts and throttle him with them. The frustration was physical torment.

Sweat crawled down Hartmann's forehead like a centipede. His emotions were oddly distinct from Puppetman's. His other self whipsawed from rage to fear. What he mostly felt now was tired and annoyed.

And sad. Poor Ronnie. He meant so well. He tried so hard.

The redhead suddenly slapped the seated man on the shoulder. "You idiot, Wilfried, there it was! You went past it." He mumbled apology and dialed back.

"-captured by the Red Army Fraction, acting in concert with comrades from the jokers for a just Society who have fled persecution in Amerika." It was Comrade Wolf's voice, pouring like liquid amber from the cheap little radio. "The terms of his release are these: release of the Palestinian freedom fighter al-Muezzin. An airliner with sufficient fuel to take al-Muezzin to a country in the liberated Third World. Immunity from prosecution for members of this action team. We demand that the Jetboy memorial be torn down and in its place a facility built to provide shelter and medical attention to joker victims of Amerikan intolerance. And finally, just to poke the capitalist swine where it most hurts them, ten million dollars cash, which will be used to aid victims of Amerikan aggression in Central Amerika."

"If these terms are not met by ten o'clock tonight, Berlin time, Senator Gregg Hartmann will be executed."

"We return you now to regularly scheduled programming."

"We have to do something." Hiram Worchester tangled his fingers in his beard and gazed out the window at the patchy Berlin sky.

Digger Downs turned over a card. Trey of clubs. He grimaced.

Billy Ray paced the carpet of Hiram's suite like a tyrannosaurus with an itch. "If I'd been there, this shit would never have happened," he said, and aimed a green glare at Mordecai Jones.

The Hammer sat on the sofa. It was oak and flowered upholstery, and like many of the hotel's furnishings had survived the war. Fortunately they'd built stout furniture back in the 1890s.

Jones made a dirty-gearbox noise toward the center of him and stared at his big hands, which he was working into tangles between his knees.

The door opened and Peregrine flew into the room. Figuratively, at least, her wings jittering on her back. She wore a loose' velour blouse and jeans that muted the advanced state of her pregnancy.

"I just heard on the radio-isn't it terrible?" Then she stopped and stared at the Hammer. "Mordecai-what on earth are you doing here?"

"Just like you, Ms. Peregrine. Won't let me out."

"But why aren't you in the hospital? The reports said you were terribly injured."

"Just shot a little." He slapped his gut. "Got me a pretty tough hide, kind of like that Kevlar stuff you read about in Popular Science."

Downs turned up a new card. Red eight. "Shit," he muttered.

"But a van fell on you," Peregrine said.

"Yeah, but see, I got these funky heavy metals replacing the calcium in my bones, so they're like stronger and more flexible and all, and my innards and whatnot are a lot sturdier than most folks'. And I heal mighty fast-don't even get sick-since I turned up my ace. I'm a pretty durable sort of dude."

"Then why'd you let them get away?" Bill Ray challenged, almost shouting. "Goddamn, the senator was your responsibility. You could've kicked some ass."

"To tell you the entire truth, Mr. Ray, it hurt like a sonofabitch. I wasn't good for much for a while there." The Mister came out differently than Ms. had. Billy Ray cocked his head and looked hard at him. Jones ignored him. "Lay off him, Billy," said Carnifex's partner, Lady Black, who sat to one side with her long legs crossed at the ankles before her.

Peregrine came and touched Mordecai on the shoulder. "It must have been awful. I'm surprised they let you out of the hospital."

"They didn't," Downs said, splitting open the deck in his left hand to catch a peek inside. "He released himself. Smashed right through the wall. The public health people are kind of pissed about it."

Jones looked down at the floor. "Don't like doctors," he muttered.

Peregrine looked around. "Where's Sara? The poor thing. This must be hell for her."

"They let her go over to the crisis control center in City Hall. No other reporter from the tour. Just her." Downs made a face and went back to his solitaire game.

"Sara took over a statement from Mr. Jones about what he saw and heard during the abduction," Lady Black said. "He didn't give one before he left the hospital." After the accident that triggered his wild card virus, Jones had been held by the Oklahoma Department of Public Health as a lab specimen, a virtual prisoner. The experience had given him an almost pathological fear of medical science and all its appurtenances.

"Funny damn thing," Jones said, shaking his head. "I was lying there trying to breathe with this fu-with this van on my chest, and I keep hearing all these people yelling at each other. Like little kids fightin' on a playground."

Hiram turned from the window. The rings that had been sinking in around his eyes since the tour began were even more pronounced. "I understand," he said, bringing his hands up cupped before his chest. They were dainty hands, and fit oddly with his bulk. " I understand what's happening here. This has been a blow to all of us. Senator Hartmann isn't just the last best hope for jokers to get a fair shake-and maybe aces too, with this crazy Barnett fellow on the loosehe's our friend. We're trying to soften the blow by talking around the subject. But it wont do. We have to do something."

"That's what I say." Billy Ray slammed a fist into his palm. "Let's kick butts and take names!"

"Whose butt?" Lady Black asked tiredly. "Whose name?"

"That sawed-off little bastard Gimli for starters. We should have grabbed him when he was dicking around New York last summer-"

"Where are you going to find him?"

He flung out his arm. "Hell, that's why we ought to be looking for him, instead of sitting here on our duffs wringing our hands and saying how sorry we are the fucking senator's gone."

"There are ten thousand cops out there combing the streets," Lady Black said. "You think we'll find him quicker?"

"But what can we do, Hiram?" Peregrine asked. Her face was pale, and the skin stretched tight over her cheekbones. "I feel so helpless." Her wings opened slightly, then folded again.

Hiram's little pink tongue dabbed his lips. "Peri, I wish I knew. Surely there must be something-"

"They mentioned ransom," Digger Downs said.

Hiram punched his palm twice in unconscious imitation of Carnifex. "That's it. That's it! Maybe we can raise enough money to buy him back."

"Ten million's a lot of bread," Mordecai said.

"That's just a bargaining position," Hiram said, sweeping aside objections with his small hands. "Surely we can work them down."

"What about their demands this terrorist dude be released? We can't do nothing about that."

"Money talks,"-Downs said. "Nobody walks."

"Inelegantly put," Hiram said, beginning to drift here and there like an ungainly cloud, "but correct. Surely if we can scrape together sufficient funds, they'll leap at our offer."

"Now, wait a minute-" Carnifex began.

"I'm a man of not inconsiderable means," Hiram said, scooping up a handful of mints from a silver salver in passing. " I can contribute a fair amount-"

"I have money," Peregrine said excitedly. "I'll help." Mordecai frowned. "I'm not crazy about politicians, but shoot, I feel I lost the man and shit. Count me in, for what it's worth."

"Hold on, dammit!" Billy Ray said. "President Reagan has already announced there will be no negotiating with these terrorists."

"Maybe he'll go for it if we throw in a Bible and a mess of rocket launchers," Mordecai said.

Hiram elevated his chin. "We're private citizens, Mr. Ray. We can do as we please."

"We'll by God see-"

The door opened. Xavier Desmond walked in. " I couldn't bear to sit alone any longer," he said. "I'm so worried-my God, Mordecai, what are you doing here?"

"Never mind that, Des," Hiram said. "We've got a plan."

The man from the Federal Criminal Office tapped his pack of cigarettes on the edge of the desk in the crisis center in City Hall, shook out a cigarette, and put it between his lips. "What on earth were you thinking of, permitting that to go over the air without consulting me!" He made no move to light the cigarette. He had a young man's face with an old man's wrinkles, and lynx yellow eyes. His ears stuck out.

"Herr Neumann," the mayor's representative said, trapping the phone receiver between his shoulder and a couple of chins and getting it quite sweaty, "here in Berlin our reflex is to shy away from censorship. We had enough of that in the bad old days, na ja?"

" I don't mean that. How are we to control this situation if we're not even informed when steps like this are taken?" He leaned back and stroked a finger down one of the furrows that bracketed his mouth. "This could turn into Munich all' over again."

Tachyon studied the digital clock built into the high heel of one of the pair of boots he'd bought on the Ku'damn the day before. Aside from the clocks he was in full seventeenthcentury regalia. This tour was a political stunt, he thought. But still, we might have accomplished some good. Is this how it's going to end?

"Who is this al-Muezzin?" he asked.

"Daoud Hassani is his name. He's an ace who can destroy things with his voice, rather like your own late ace Howler," Neumann said. If he noticed Tachyon's wince he gave no sign. "He's from Palestine. He's one of Nur al-Allah's people, works out of Syria. He claimed responsibility for the downing of that El Al jetliner at Orly last June."

"I'm afraid we've heard far from the last of the Light of Allah," Tachyon said. Neumann nodded grimly. Since the tour had left Syria, there had been three dozen bombings worldwide in retribution for its "treacherous attack" on the ace prophet.

If only that wretched woman had finished the job, Tach thought. He was careful not to speak it aloud, These Earthers could be sensitive about such things.

Sweat ran down the side of his neck and into the lace collar of his blouse. The radiator hummed and groaned with heat. I wish they were less sensitive to cold. Why do these Germans insist on making their hot planet so much hotter? The door opened. Clamor spilled in from the international press corps crammed into the corridor outside. A political aide slipped inside and whispered to the mayor's man. The mayor's man petulantly slammed down his phone.

"Ms. Morgenstern has come from the Kempinski," he announced.

"Bring her in at once," Tachyon said.

The mayor's man jutted his underlip, which gleamed wet in the fluorescents. "Impossible. She's a member of the press, and we have excluded the press from this room for the duration."

Tachyon looked at the man down the length of his fine, straight nose. "I demand that Ms. Morgenstern be admitted at once," he said in that tone of voice reserved on Takis for grooms who tread on freshly polished boots and serving maids who spill soup on heads of allied Psi Lord houses who are guesting in the manor.

"Let her in," Neumann said. "She's brought Herr Jones's tape for us."

Sara was wearing a white trench coat with a hand-wide belt red as a bloody bandage. Tach shook his head. Like all fashion statements she made, this one jarred.

She came to him. They shared a brief, dry embrace. She turned away, unslinging her heavy handbag.

Tachyon wondered. Had that been a touch of metal in her watercolor eyes, or only tears?

"Did. you hear that?" the redhead called Anneke warbled. "One of the pigs we got today was a Jew."

Early afternoon. The radio simmered with reports and conjectures about the kidnapping. The terrorists were exalted, strutting and puffing for each other's benefit.

"One more drop of blood to avenge our brothers in Palestine," said Wolf sonorously.

"What about the nigger ace?" demanded the one who looked like a lifeguard and answered to Ulrich. "Has he died yet?"

"He's not going to anytime soon," Anneke said. "According to the news, he walked out of the hospital within an hour of being admitted."

"That's bullshit! I hit him with half a magazine. I saw that van fall on him."

Anneke sidled over from the radio and ran her fingers along the line of Ulrich's jaw. "Don't you think if he can lift a van all by himself, he might be a little hard to hurt, sweetheart?" She stood up on the toes of her sneakers and kissed him just behind the lobe of his ear. "Besides, we killed two-"

"Three," said Comrade Wilfried, who was still monitoring the airwaves. "The other, uh, policeman just died." He swallowed.

Anneke clapped her hands in delight. "You see?"

"I killed somebody too," said the boy's voice from behind Hartmann. Just the sound of it filled Puppetman with energy. Easy, easy, Hartmann cautioned his other half, wondering, do I have this one? Is it possible to create a puppet without knowing it? Or is he constantly emoting at such a pitch that I can feel it without having the link?

The power didn't answer.

The leather boy shuffled forward. Hartmann saw he was hunchbacked. A joker?

"Comrade Dieter," the teenager said. "I offed himbrrr-like that!" He held his hands up in front of him and suddenly they were vibrating like a powersaw blade, a blur of lethality.

An ace! Hartmann's own breath hit him in the chest. The vibration stopped. The boy showed yellow teeth around at the others. They were very quiet.

Through the pounding in his ears Hartmann heard a scrape of tubular metal on wood as the man in the coat got up from his chair. "You killed someone, Mackie?" he asked mildly. His German was a touch too perfect to be natural. "Why?"

Mackie tucked his head down. "He was an informer, Comrade," he said sidelong. His eyes jittered between Wolf and the other. "Comrade Wolf ordered me to take him into custody. But he-he tried to kill me! That was it. He pulled a gun on me and I buzzed him off." He brandished a vibrating hand again.

The man came slowly forward where Hartmann could see him. He was medium height, dressed well but not too well, hair neat and blond. A man just on the handsome side of nondescriptness. Except for his hands, which were encased in what appeared to be thick rubber gloves. Hartmann watched them in sudden fascination.

"Why wasn't I told of this, Wolf?" The voice stayed level, but Puppetman could hear an unspoken shout of anger. There was sadness too-the power was pulling it in, no question now. And a hell of a lot of fear.

Wolf rolled heavy shoulders. "There was a lot going on this morning, Comrade Molniya. I learned that Dieter planned to betray us, I sent Mackie after him, things got out of hand. But everything's all right now, everything's going fine."

Facts dropped into place like tumblers in a lock. Molniya-lightning. Suddenly Hartmann knew what had happened to him in the -limousine. The gloved man was an ace, who'd used some kind of electric power to shock him under.

Hartmann's teeth almost splintered from the effort it took to bite back the terror. An unknown ace! He'll know me, find me out…

His other self was ice. He doesn't know anything. But how can you know? We don't know his powers. He's a puppet.

It was a fight to keep his face from matching his emotion. How the hell can that be?

I got him when he shocked me. Didn't even have to do anything; his own power fused our nervous systems for a moment. That's all it took.

Mackie squirmed like a puppy caught peeing on the rug. "Did I do right, Comrade Molniya?"

Molniya's lips whitened, but he nodded with visible effort. "Yes

… under the circumstances."

Mackie preened and strutted. "Well, there it is. I executed an enemy of the Revolution. You're not the only ones." Anneke clucked and brushed fingertips across Mackie's cheek. "Preoccupied with the search for individual glory, Comrade? You're going to have to learn to watch those bourgeois tendencies if you want to be part of the Red Army Fraction."

Mackie licked his lips and slunk away, flushing. Puppetman felt what was going on inside him, like the roil beneath the surface of the sun.

What about him? Hartmann asked.

Him too. And the blond jock as well. They both handled us after the Russian shocked you. That jolt made me hypersensitive.

Hartmann let his head drop forward to cover a frown. How could all this happen without my knowledge?

I'm your subconscious, remember? Always on the job.

Comrade Molniya sighed and returned to his seat. He felt hairs rise on the back of his hands and neck as his hyperactive neurons fired off. There was nothing he could do about low-level discharges such as this; they happened of their own accord under stress. It was why he wore glovesand why some of the more lurid tales they told around the Aquarium about his wedding night had damned near come to pass.

He had to smile. What's there to be tense about? Even if he were identified for what he was, after the fact, there would be no international repercussions; that was how the game was played, by us and by them. So his superiors assured him.

Right.

Good God, what did I do to deserve being caught up in this lunatic scheme? He wasn't sure who was crazier, this collection of poor twisted men and bloodthirsty political naifs or his own bosses.

It was the opportunity of the decade, they'd told him. Al-Muezzin was in the vest pocket of the Big K. If we spring him, he'll fall into our hands out of gratitude. Work for us instead. He might even bring the Light of Allah along.

Was it worth the risk? he'd demanded. Was it worth blowing the underground contacts they'd been building in the Federal Republic for ten years? Was it worth risking the Big War, the war neither side was going to win no matter what their fancy paper war plans said? Reagan was president; he was a cowboy, a madman.

But there was only so far you could push, even if you were an ace and a hero, the first man into the Bala Hissar in Kabul on Christmas Day of '79. The gates had closed in his face. He had his orders. He needed no more.

It wasn't that he disagreed with the goals. Their archrivals, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti-the State Security Committee-were arrogant, overpraised, and undercompetent. No good GRU man could ever object to taking those assholes down a peg. As a patriot he knew that Military Intelligence could make far better use of an asset as valuable as Daoud Hassani than their better-known counterparts the