Aces Abroad

"That's certainly not something you can say for the JJS," Sara Morgenstern said, coming over to join the conversation. An aide moved to intercept her, reaching a hand to shepherd her away from the important masculine conversation. She shied away from him as if a spark had jumped between them and glared.

Neuma

"Frau Morgenstern. I am also much interested in what you have to say."

"Members of the jokers for a just Society are authentically poor. I can vouch for that at least."

"Would money tempt them, then?"

"That's hard to say. They are committed, in a way I suspect the RAF members aren't. Still-" a butterfly flip of the hand-"they haven't lost any Mideastern aces. On the other hand, when they demand money to benefit jokers, I believe them. Whereas that might mean less to the Red Army people."

Tach frowned. The demand to knock down Jetboy's Tomb and build a joker hospice rankled him. Like most New Yorkers, he wouldn't miss the memorial-an eyesore erected to honor failure, and one he'd personally prefer to forget. But the demand for a hospice was a slap in his face: When has a joker been turned away from my clinic? When?

Neuma

"No, no. She's right. But Gimli-" he snapped his fingers and extended a forefinger. "Tom Miller cares deeply for jokers. But he has also an eye for what Americans call the main chance. You might well be able to tempt him."

Sara nodded. "But why do you ask, Herr Neuma

"Your President has made his decision," he said softly. "But it's my responsibility to advise my government on what course to take. This is a German problem too, you know."

At two-thirty Hiram Worchester came on the air reading a statement in English. Tachyon translated it into German during the pauses.

"Comrade Wolf-Gimli, if you're there," Hiram said, voice fluting with emotion, "we want the senator back. We're willing to negotiate as private citizens."

"Please, for the love of God-and for jokers and aces and all the rest of us-please call us."

Molniya stared at the door. White enamel was coming away in flakes. Striae of green and pink and brown showed beneath the white, around gouges that looked as if someone had used the door for knife-throwing practice. He was all but oblivious to the others in the room. Even the mad boy's incessant humming; he'd long since learned to tune that out for sanity's sake.

I should never have let them go.

It took him aback when both Gimli and Wolf wanted to make the meet with the tour delegation. It was about the first thing they'd agreed on since this whole comic-opera affair had gotten underway.

He'd wanted to forbid them. He didn't like the smell of this rendezvous… but that was foolish. Reagan had closed the door on overt negotiation, but didn't the current Irangate hearings with which the Americans were currently amusing themselves prove he was not averse to using private cha

Besides, he thought, I've long since learned better than to issue orders I doubt will be obeyed.

It had been so different in Spetsnaz. The men he'd commanded were professionals and more, the elite of the Soviet armed forces, full of esprit and skilled as surgeons.

Such a contrast to this muddle of bitter amateurs and murderous dilettantes.

If only he'd at least had someone trained back home, or in a camp in some Soviet client state, Korea or Iraq or Peru. Someone except Gimli, that is-he had the impression years had passed since anything but plastique would open the dwarf's mind enough to accept input from anyone else, nats in particular.

He wished at least he might have gone on the meet. But his place was here, guarding the captive. Without Hartma

Does the KGB have this much trouble with its puppets? Rationally he guessed they did. They'd fluffed a few big ones over the years-the mention of Mexico could still make veterans wince and GRU had evidence of plenty of missteps the Big K thought they'd covered up.

But the Komitet's publicists had done their job well, on both sides of the quaintly named "Iron Curtain." Down behind his forebrain not even Molniya could shake the image of the KGB as the omniscient puppet master, with its strings wrapping the world like a spider's web.

He tried to envision himself as a master spider. It made him smile.

No. I'm not a spider. Just a small, frightened man whom somebody once called hero.

He thought of Ludmilya, his daughter. He shuddered. There are strings attached to me, right enough. But I'm not the one who pulls them.

I want him.

Hartma

He studiously didn't look at the boy in the scuffed leather jacket.

Mackie Messer hummed the old song about the shark and its teeth and the man with his jackknife and fancy gloves. Hartma

I want him.

No! his mind shouted. He's insane. He's dangerous. He could be useful, once I get us out of here.

Hartma

He felt Puppetman's disdain. Seldom had his alter ego seemed more discrete, more other. Fools. What has Hiram Worchester ever been involved in that amounted to anything? It'll fall through.

Then we just wait. Sooner or later something will be worked out. It's how these things go. He felt slimy vines of sweat twining his body inside his blood-spattered shirt and vest.

How long do you think we have to wait? How long before our jokers and their terrorists friends blow up in each other's faces? I have puppets. They're our only way out.

What can they do? I can't just make someone let me go. I'm not that little mind-twister Tachyon.

He felt a smug vibration within.

Don't forget 1976, he told his power. You thought you could handle that too.

The power laughed at him, until he closed his eyes and concentrated and forced it to quiescence.

Has it become a demon, possessing me? he wondered. Am I just another of Puppetman's puppets?

No. I'm the master here. Puppetman's just a fantasy. A personification of my power. A game I play with myself. Inside the tangled corridors of his soul, the echo of triumphant laughter.

"It's raining again," Xavier Desmond said.