Hiro hands him his phone which shows birds-of-paradise on a dusty hillside, and then the view rotates sickeningly into cloudless blue sky before panning over dry distant mountains and settling onto a large white house roofed in red tile, and down by the garden is a wall of glass and behind the glass a fat old man and a pretty young girl are naked on a bed. Crosshairs snap into place alongside fluctuating numbers marked “meters” and “windage” and Kern realizes that this footage is not from a phone but from the scope of a gun. As though reading his thoughts, Hiro says, “It’s an M-110XE, the old U.S. Marine Corps sniper rifle. A classic. We trained with them at the academy.”
A sequence of tones as a number is dialed and then ringing and an older man who sounds like he’s used to giving orders says, “Hello?”
From the phone Hiro’s voice says, “What would you pay for the death of Don Victor Garcia?”
The older man says, “Who the fuck is this?” and then, after a pause, he names a large sum.
Hiro: “I just emailed you the account information. Transfer the funds in the next two minutes and it’s done.”
Older man: “Who is this?”
Hiro: “I think you know. Yesterday I resigned from Don Victor’s service, so, counting me, he’s down five men.”
Older man: “I did hear about that, and yes, I do know who you are. And as much as I would love to see Don Victor dead, and however dearly I would pay for that privilege, the problem is that I don’t trust you in the slightest, you backstabbing, coat-turning son of a bitch.”
Hiro: “I appreciate your point of view. I just sent you a link to the video feed from my rifle’s scope.”
The man and the girl are having sex now, the man’s face turning red, his eyes squeezed shut, the girl staring at the ceiling like she’s trying to remember something as her feet flop up and down on his shoulders. The crosshairs come to rest over the man’s right ear. On his tricep is a tattoo of Saint Death, a skeleton in a robe holding a scythe. Beyond the bed is a television showing rioters in a public square throwing bottles stuffed with burning rags at cops with plastic shields and it must be someplace really poor because none of the cops have powered armor.
Hiro: “If you want to make sure it’s real just turn on CNN.”
Older man: “If you’re fucking with me, if this is a trick with computer graphics, then by the Virgin’s cunt you’ll find out how I got such a hard reputation. You’ll have a team of doctors, quite talented men, graduates of the very best schools, all to keep you alive until I’m done with you. Be certain you understand the consequences of breaking your word to me.”
Hiro: “I’ve got a clear shot at his medulla oblongata but she just put a finger up his ass so you’ve got about thirty seconds to make up your mind.”
A pause in which Kern can hear the older man breathing.
Older man: “I sent it.”
A pop like a firecracker, and the fat man collapses onto the girl. She starts to embrace him and even pats him on the back before she realizes that part of his skull is missing and that his blood is pouring onto her shoulder.
Hiro: “Of course, I’d have killed him either way.”
Now the scope is tracking the girl, her face streaked with blood, as she throws open the French doors and runs across the lawn wearing nothing but striped panties and clutching her blouse to her chest. In one hand she has a man’s watch, its dull gold gleaming, inset with what can only be rubies. The crosshairs find the ground in front of her and there’s another pop, and then the girl is sitting on the manicured lawn, looking stunned, and just as she’s about to cry Hiro-in-the-video shouts, “Hey! You in the panties! His wallet! You forgot to take his wallet!”
Hiro takes his phone back. “That’s our recruiting video. We’re still a young organization.”
Fully awake now, Kern looks out a window at the moonlight on the sea, wonders where they are, and where Akemi is, how many thousands of miles away. Hiro seems to be feeling confessional so he says, “How did you end up working for Cromwell?”
“Because my world’s time is ending, though it sometimes seems I’m the only one who knows it. The U.S. doesn’t care about other sovereignties or collateral damage anymore. A few days of daisy-cutter bombs and all my old bosses are dead and some U.S. senator gets a political win. So I came to the North, and found a software baron who’s been accumulating wealth these hundred years and more, and is eager to adapt to the emerging realities.
“Which reminds me. There’s something I forgot to do.”
Then Hiro’s gun is in his hand and pressed to Kern’s temple. Kern forces himself to meet Hiro’s eyes in order to keep his dignity while part of him wonders if it’s even safe to discharge a round in a plane like this—would it pierce the hull and depressurize the cabin, or, as this is a bird-of-war, would the round bounce off its armor and carom around until both of them were dead? In any case he’s glad to have something to think about besides the steel against his forehead.
“Boom!” says Hiro, and then puts the gun away. “There was an order for your execution, which I gave, and now it’s done. So your old life is gone, and, improbably enough, you have another, and with that life you can do as you will. How’d you like to work for me?”
48
World Is a Chessboard
The outside world is a sense of mass sliding by behind the town car’s darkened windows. Clink from the micro-fridge as the car corners; mouth dry, Thales opens it but finds nothing but two splits of champagne, one open and half empty, its carbonation hissing. As the car corners the crash seat tightens, pressing the gun into his chest.
He isn’t sure what he’ll say when he takes the gun out and points it at the surgeon—is there some form or accepted usage? In the stress of the moment he doubts he’ll be able to manage either the lyrical profanity of a gangster or the ironic detachment of a gentleman-at-arms; best, no doubt, to make his threats simply, and in his own words. He imagines the surgeon seeing the gun and instantly submerging himself in an immovable professional gravity while he, Thales, rants on disjointedly about cities in the waves and oracular strangers and his accelerating sense of losing the thread, and it’s in his mind to stop the car and toss the gun out the window but then he remembers Akemi’s suggestion that his mother sold him out which elicits a sense of emptiness so profound that he feels almost weightless and the imminence of violence no longer much concerns him.
There’s a succession of basso thumps, probably his brothers’ dance music with the volume turned low.
The map is gone from the seat-back display, replaced with an interface he hasn’t seen before, enumerating munitions remaining and hull integrity broken down by panel.
The crash seat seizes him so tightly that it crushes the air from his lungs and then the car clips something and, discontinuously, is spinning, and he wonders if here, right now, this is his death, and then there’s another impact, and the car has stopped.
Engaging, reads the display, and the car hums as the ammunition meters tick down, all at different rates, like stopwatches out of synchrony.