Busted Flush

Her face had flushed under the blond hair. “The man . . . the man I killed was going to blow up the pipeline, and he didn’t care if any of us died in the explosion. And your kids weren’t entirely innocent, Michael. You know that. How many of the soldiers did they kill, after all? They would have killed you, too.”

“I know,” he told her. “That’s what I told myself afterward. All I was doing was protecting myself. But they were fucking kids!” He nearly shouted the word, slamming his two lower hands down on the table. The wrought iron rang and bent, the glass top shattered, the coffee cups fell to the stones of the patio and shattered loudly. A waiter started angrily toward them, then stopped, evidently deciding that discretion was a better tactic than confrontation. “They were children who had decided that if the Caliphate wasn’t going to protect their home, well, they’d do it themselves. A stupid goddamn decision, but you know what, Kate? I could see myself making the same choice when I was their age. Hell, when you’re twelve you think you’re immortal, and you believe the Good Guys are always gonna win, and that the Good Guys are always on your side. And it doesn’t matter what Fortune or Jayewardene or Baden or any of them say: I killed them. Me.” He stabbed at himself with a sextet of forefingers. “I gotta live with that. And for what? For what, Kate? Please tell me the fucking answer, because this really hurts and I haven’t got anything for it.”

He wanted to weep. He could feel the tears starting again, and he growled and looked away because he couldn’t trust himself to talk and not break down.

She said nothing. Her lips were pressed tightly together and she had a marble in her right hand, running her fingers over the glass ball as if she were about to toss it. “You’re bleeding,” she said finally. He looked at his bottom hands; the glass had cut the right one, and blood spattered his jeans and bare stomach. He picked up a napkin from the wreckage at his feet and tied it around the injured hand with his middle set. The pain somehow felt good. “What are you going to do, Michael?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” he told her. “I really don’t know.”

Rusty had left Michael a message on his room phone.

“I don’t know if John got the message to ya, fella. There’s a press conference or something at the King David Hotel: Jayewardene, John, Prince Siraj.” Rusty’s voice overdrove the phone speaker, crackling and static-laden. “Somethin’ about withdrawing the UN troops in exchange for oil. They said I should be there; the fella that called said it’s about the settlement with the Caliphate . . . .”

The King David Hotel, in the New City just outside the Old City walls, was a palatial and imposing structure that had once served as a fortress, set high enough to overlook the Old City, and catering to the rich who came to visit the ruins of the open city of Jerusalem. By the time Michael reached the lobby floor, he could see the crowd outside the main meeting room: videographers jockeying for position, still cameras flashing like heat lightning, reporters thrusting microphones into the faces of anyone they could find. He pushed through the crush, ignoring the cameras and microphones that were suddenly aimed at him. “Hey, Drummer Boy . . .” “What do you think . . .” “If you have a moment . . .” “I have one question . . .”

They pressed around him like hornets; he walked through them, not making eye contact and not caring who he pushed aside. Security guards in blue berets started toward the commotion, saw who was at the center of it, and stopped. One of them whispered into a lapel mike.

He pushed through the hall doors, closing off the shouting of the reporters left outside. There was no shortage of reporters inside, either; the room was packed, every seat taken and the walls lined with people with video and still cameras.

“I wish to thank everyone for coming.” Secretary-General Jayewardene was already on the dais, smiling to the reporters arrayed before him, his soft, Indian-accented voice booming from the speakers. Barbara Baden was there with him, and John Fortune with Kate standing next to him, while Lohengrin, Rusty, and Tinker stood to one side. Lohengrin was armored up and glowing white for the cameras; Rusty seemed shabby and dull alongside the German’s glory. Kate appeared to be uncomfortable as she watched, not standing as close to Fortune as she usually did, not touching him at all. Once, that would have been all Michael noticed. She saw Michael and her mouth opened slightly, as if she was about to say something.

To the other side of the secretary-general, Prince Siraj stood smiling, portly under his formal Arabian dress. There were men around him—bodyguards, Michael decided.