The Sacred Cut

“Fake,” Leapman said.

“It’s a Coke can,” Emily said. “Painted yellow, reshaped with putty. Plus a little white spirit to give it the right smell and a detonator that’s as real as they come. Kaspar’s broke. He didn’t have enough for two sets.”

“Neat,” Leapman conceded. Then he pointed at Fielding’s vest. “And this?”

“Oh,” Emily said brightly, reaching down for the parka, taking something out of the pocket. “This is the real thing. Absolutely.”

She grabbed Fielding by the scruff of his jacket. “This can blow us all to pieces, Thornton. And you know something?”

Emily now held a small plastic device up in her hand, thumb on a button. “It’s not Bill Kaspar who gets to make that choice. It’s me. He trusted me with that. He trusted me with a dummy jacket. Who do you think I believe, Thornton?”

“Emily,” Nic murmured, “this wasn’t part of the-”

“It is now,” she said, circling Fielding, holding the remote in front of his ashen face. “Talk to me, Thornton. Or don’t. Because I really don’t care either way. Not anymore. You screwed my dad. He was a good man. You sold him and his people down the river, let them get there, and hoped-what?”

He was nervous, Costa thought. Just not nervous enough.

“You’ve got to do something here, Leapman,” Fielding pleaded. “This kid’s as crazy as her old man was.”

“I guess,” she went on, ignoring his remark, “you hoped that, once they got there, knew it was a case of give in or die, they’d all think the way you did. That this wasn’t their war, not really. All they had to do was put up their hands, go quietly. That was part of the deal. And when it was over-what? Some quiet, secret negotiation with Baghdad. A hand-over at the Syrian border. Everyone comes home. You disappear and get rich. No awkward questions. But Bill Kasper didn’t go quietly, did he?”

“Sand?” he sneered. She was jabbing a finger into the dark and Fielding knew that. He was growing more confident. She was starting to realize it too. “And Coke cans? That’s what the big man’s up to these days?”

“Proof,” she murmured. “That’s all anyone wants.”

Thornton Fielding’s forehead glistened, shiny with sweat, shaking from side to side. “No, Emily. What they want is an end to this shit. That lunatic put away where he belongs. He killed your dad. You’re supposed to want that too.”

Emily Deacon’s delicate fingers worked their way onto Fielding’s vest, found the topmost canister in the middle row beneath his chin.

“Don’t move, Thornton,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t want to choose the wrong wire. The rest are wired in parallel and will blow if I tamper with them. Kaspar only showed me this once.”

He was rigid, uncertain whether this was a bluff or not. She flicked off a set of wires, delicately removed the canister from its webbing holster.

“He thought you might need convincing,” she said, then flipped the detonator, starting a small, livid spark at its head, and flung it into the darkness near the doors.

Fielding blinked at her. Leapman and Viale were already flattened on the floor. Emily Deacon placed her arms around Fielding, held him tightly.

“Remember when you danced with me?” she asked. “When I was just a kid? We’d go round and round, circles and circles, like a couple of human compasses describing pretty patterns on the floor. People like patterns, Thornton. Patterns make you feel comfortable. They make you think the world’s more than just a mess of chaos.”

A hot, fiery blast roared from somewhere close to the bronze slabs, began to occupy the interior of the building, sending a deafening, screaming roar echoing around the hemisphere. From somewhere outside came the wailing sound of a siren. She clung to him tightly, keeping the two of them upright, struggling against the heat and force of the explosion.

“That’s what Kaspar’s been looking for,” she said, holding the remote to his cheek, finger on the button, the two of them describing a slow, lazy circle on the stone floor. “Something that restores some order. And maybe it’s not there at all. Maybe I should press this and make us nothing. No more memories. No more guilt. No more hate. Does that sound appealing to you?”

Fielding was silent, eyes screwed tight, fighting to control himself.

“He was my father, Thornton. He thought you were his friend. I remember you in our house. I remember…”

This recollection had some force, it was obvious in her eyes. “I remember you hated that music of his. You used to bring those big band tunes, dance tunes, little me, big you, all those years ago. And you murdered him. Long before Kaspar got there. Somehow I knew he had died back then. I just never wanted to see it.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, stared into her face, shook her, hard. “Dan took the money too, Emily! No one made him. No one made any of them, not on his team. If that fool Kaspar hadn’t started shooting, they’d all have been in and out of there and no one the wiser. One team rich, smart and in on the deal. The other poor and heroes and still with their consciences. It’s a dirty world. You’re telling me you never noticed?”

Costa saw the sudden grief in her face. The way her finger tightened on the button.

“I don’t believe you,” Emily Deacon insisted.

Fielding pushed her away. She didn’t protest.

“Then why did he come back and say nothing?” he asked. “Why didn’t he come back and start asking some questions about what went wrong?”

“He didn’t know!” she screeched.

Fielding gripped her shoulders again, peered into her face with glistening eyes. “You’re too smart to believe that,” he said after a while. “Aren’t you?”

Emily said nothing. She just stood there, shaking her head, staring at him, furious.

“Think about it,” Fielding continued. “Dan did nothing because he was on the payroll, Emily. Everyone on his team was. Before they even went in. Not that it was the money. In the begi

“Then what, Fielding?” she wondered. “You’re telling me this was all some moral decision too?”

Thornton Fielding looked, for a moment, as if he’d forgotten the deadly armament strapped to his body. He was mad with her, furious she didn’t get it.

“You’re so young,” he spat at her. “You really have no idea.”

“Tell me.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head, clutched the deadly vest to him. “Dan and I had been working together off and on for years. Since Nicaragua. We’d spent all that time throwing all ma

He looked at Leapman, and there was disgust in his face. “In that kind of situation either you become like him-an automaton who does what he’s told and doesn’t think twice-or you become the enemy. There is no in between. We’d taken the money, but the truth is we’d have done it for free. We didn’t want the war to spread. There were all these lunatics saying it had to go on, all the way to Baghdad. As if we were a liberating army, bringing peace and joy and freedom to the world. Babylon Sisters wasn’t about Kuwait. It was about being there as a forward base once the hawks back home persuaded Bush to go all the way. You get me?”

She was listening, struggling to take all this in.

“Emily,” he pleaded, “you have to understand. No one needed to get hurt. Dan had arranged for us to get our guys taken, along with him. They’d all be freed, unharmed, later and no one would be the wiser. A straightforward deal. Except…” He sighed, hung his head, stared at the stone floor. “We didn’t bring Bill Kaspar in. Dan and I talked about it but in the end we just didn’t have the guts. We thought he and the rest of them would lie down once they saw what they were up against. We didn’t think he’d feel the urge to make nine people dead heroes. So Dan and his crew had to watch a bloodbath, knowing they couldn’t do a damn thing to stop what was going on. And then-”