The Devil's Code

CHAPTER 25

ST. JOHN CORBEIL

Corbeil smeared his face and his hands, pulled the black hat on his head, and shuffled across the parking lot to the Emergency Room at Health North. Inside, a nurse behind the reception station glanced at him, an old man, maybe blackcertainly black, with the X baseball hat on his headas he looked uncertainly around and then shuffled down toward the patient rooms.

"Excuse me?" she asked. "Are you looking for somebody?"

"Bafroom," Corbeil said. "Men's room."

"Do you have a family member here?"

"My wife. Upstairs. Kicked m' ass out 'fore I could pee." Corbeil had to keep it short: he didn't sound that much like an old black man.

The nurse bought it. "All right, then. Just straight down the hall. On your right." She went back to her paperwork, and Corbeil shuffled down the hall.

Took the elevator, up four floors, turned out in the hallway, and walked down to the right. Room 411. The door was shut, but not locked. He stepped inside. Hart had said there was only one bed.

One bed with a man sleeping. In the ambient light from the window, he could see Benson lying on his back, one leg suspended in a trapeze, a saline drip hooked into his arm. Corbeil reached into his pocket, took out the cigar tube, slipped out the needle inside, jabbed it into the saline bag, and emptied it. Enough sedative to kill an elephant.

Well, he thought, looking down at Benson, he was supposed to be sleeping.

He couldn't hang around. He had a long way to go this night.

Down the elevator, out through the Emergency Room entrance, driving back home. Scrubbing his face with clean-up packs from a barbecue joint, in case he met somebody in his apartment stairwell. But he met no one.

He glanced at his watch: A long way to go. In the bathroom, he washed his face and hands, scrubbed away the last of the Cover Mark. After drying his hands, he got the pistol from the dresserdetoured around the living room on the way out, unwilling to look at the wrecked walland headed for Hart's place. Hart was expecting him. Had to talk about the next move.

Hart was worried. "I don't know if it'll hold," he said. "I don't know if Benson will hold."

"Take it easy," Corbeil said. They were in Hart's study, a converted family room. In some ways, it aped Corbeil's study: a leather chair, but not quite as sleek. Books, but not as many, and with a narrow range: karate, guns, camping, travel.

Corbeil found it irritating. "If he's caught, he knows that we're his only chance. Giving us away won't help him: he'll wind up with a public defender instead of the best defense money can buy."

"I'm not sure he's that smart," Hart said. He dropped into the leather chair, brooding. Corbeil paced in a lazy circle. As he passed Hart, he took the pistol out of his pocket, paused, and, moving unhurriedly so the motion wouldn't catch Hart's eye, put the muzzle next to the other man's temple and pulled the trigger.

Crack!

Hart slumped. Corbeil waited a moment, listeningrealized that if there were anything to hear, he probably wouldn't, being deafened by the shotthen reached for Hart's throat, pressed his fingers just under his jawbone. No pulse. He hadn't expected any. William Hart was thoroughly dead.

All right. Now: one more shot, with Hart's finger in the trigger. the Webster's should do as a backstop. He fired again, into the heavy hardback dictionary. The little.380 slug penetrated to page 480, and stopped. Corbeil picked up one of the two ejected shells, carefully added one loaded shell to the top of the gun's magazine, pressed the shell against Hart's thumb, replaced the magazine, and dropped the gun on the floor next to the chair.

He looked at his watch. Still a long way to go.

He picked up the dictionary and left.

He drove through the night to Waco, his mind crowded with possibilities. Stay and fight. Run and hide.

The simple fact was this: if nobody knew about the satellite intercepts, none of the killing made sense. Even if somebody knew, it could be blamed on Tom Woods, and then he would kick free. The conspiracy never required his involvement, he thought. Woods could have set it up with the other two. He had the technical backgroundbackground that Corbeil didn't have.

As of now, the danger to himself had narrowed to a single point.

A car was parked in the driveway at the ranch, and there were lights in the main house. Corbeil parked, got out, felt the second gun nestled next to his leg. Took a moment to stand in the driveway, to look up at the stars.

Woods came out on the porch: "Hey, John. What's going on?"

"Hey, Tom. Need to talk about next week. I've got an order from Azerbaijan."

"Jeez, those guys."

Corbeil was looking up. "Look at the stars. You can really see the stars out here."

Woods walked down the three steps of the porch and stood beside his friend to look at the sky.

"Glorious," he said. Then he said something that prolonged his life for a few seconds. "By the way, I'm not sure about this, but there might be something going on out here."

"What do you mean?"

"Somebody may be messing with the dish controls. I don't know where it happenedinside the house or outbut we got an odd signal the other night. I just noticed it."

"Odd?"

"Attenuated, as if the signal were being blocked somehow. Not interfered with, but physically blocked."

"What would do that, Tom?"

"Somebody standing in front of the dish. Something placed near the amplifier loops. that would do it. Could be nothing. Could have been a bird building a nest. Or, if it was inside, it could have been somebody messing with the gain controls, although they're all right now."

"Did you look at the dishes?" Corbeil asked.

"Yeah. Everything looks all right. Might have been nothing at all."

"Probably. We're all a little jumpy with this Firewall thing, that shooting."

"That fuckin' Hart. The guy's a killer, John. He probably enjoyed it."

"Look at the stars," Corbeil said.

"Glorious," Woods said again. The muzzle of Corbeil's gun was an inch from the back of his head.