The City of Mirrors
Page 147

“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Oh, you know.” A shrug, dismissive. “Beats a bullet to the brain. You had me going for a second there.”
“I was angry. I still am.”
“Yeah, I sensed that.” Her eyes took slow measure of his face. “Now that I have a chance to really look at you, I’ve got to say, you’re holding up nicely. That snow on the roof suits you.”
He smiled, just a little. “And you look the same.”
She glanced around the tiny box of a room. “And you’re really running the show here? President and all that.”
“That seems to be the case.”
“Like it?”
“The last couple of days haven’t been so hot.”
These wry exchanges, like a dance to a song that only the two of them could hear: he couldn’t help himself; he’d missed them.
“You’ve put me in a bind, Lish. That was a pretty big splash you made last night.”
“My timing wasn’t the best.”
“As far as this government is concerned, you’re a traitor.”
She looked up. “And what does Peter Jaxon think?”
“You’ve been gone a long time. Amy seems to believe you’re on our side, but she’s not the one calling the shots.”
“I am on your side, Peter. But that doesn’t change the situation. In the end, you’re going to have to give her up. You can’t beat him.”
“See, this is where I have a problem. I’ve never heard you talk that way, not about anything.”
“This is different. Fanning is different. He’s been controlling everything from the start. The only reason we were able to kill the Twelve was because he let us. We’re all pieces on a board to him.”
“So why would you trust him now?”
“Maybe I’m not being clear. I don’t.”
“ ‘He comforted you.’ ‘He took care of you.’ Am I remembering this correctly?”
“He did, Peter. But that’s not the same thing.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Why? So you’ll believe me? The way I see it, you don’t have a choice.”
“Who am I talking to here? You or Fanning?”
Her eyes sharpened with anger; his words had hit the mark. “I took an oath, Peter. Same as you, same as Apgar, same as every man on that wall last night. I stayed with Fanning because I believed he’d leave Kerrville alone. Yes, he was good to me. I never said he wasn’t. Believe it or not, I actually feel sorry for the guy, until I remember what he is.”
“And what’s that?”
“The enemy.”
Was she lying? For the moment, it didn’t matter; that she wanted him to believe her was leverage he could use.
“Tell me what we’re up against, how many dracs are out there.”
“I think what you saw last night.”
“The rest of Fanning’s forces are in New York, in other words. He’s holding them in reserve.”
Alicia nodded. “I wasn’t followed, if that’s what you mean. The rest are in the tunnels under the city.”
“And you don’t know what he wants with Amy?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you. Trying to understand Fanning is a fool’s errand. He’s a complicated man, Peter. I was with him for twenty years, and I never figured him out completely. Mostly, he just seems sad. He doesn’t like what he is, but he sees a kind of justice in it. Or, at least, he wants to.”
Peter frowned. “I’m not following.”
Alicia took a moment to form her thoughts. “In the station, there’s a clock. Long ago, Fanning was supposed to meet a woman there.” She looked up. “It’s a long story. I can give you all of it, but it’d take hours.”
“Give me the short version.”
“The woman’s name was Liz. She was Jonas Lear’s wife.”
Peter was caught short.
“Yeah, it surprised me, too. They all knew each other. Fanning loved her since they were young. When she married Lear, he pretty much gave up on the whole thing, but not really. Then she got sick. She was dying, some kind of cancer. Turns out she loved him, too; she had all along. She and Fanning were going to run away, spend her last days together. You should hear him tell the story, Peter. It’d just about rip your heart out. The clock was where they were going to meet, but Liz never showed. She’d died on the way, but Fanning didn’t know that; he thought she’d changed her mind. That night he got drunk in a bar and went home with a woman. She was a stranger, nobody he knew. He killed her.”
“So he’s a murderer, in other words.”
Alicia made an expression of demurral. “Well, it was sort of an accident, the way he tells it. He was half out of his mind; he thought his life was basically over. She pulled a knife on him, they struggled, she fell on it.”
“Putting him on death row, like the Twelve.”
“No, he got away with it. He actually felt awful about the whole thing. He was plenty mixed up, but he was no hardened killer, at least not yet. It was later that he went to South America with Lear, which is where the virus comes from. Lear had been looking for it for years; he thought he could use it to save his wife, though that was a moot point by then. Fanning describes the guy as totally obsessed.”
“Was that how Fanning caught the virus?”