“I wish I had let Mrs. Kennedy know this information before she died. Perhaps it might have brought her some peace.”
She gave the dictator a last generous smile, then walked into the hall and hurried toward the mansion’s door. She thought of Caitlin as she passed between the luxurious antiques and crystal lamps, but once she was outside, in the tropical air, she remembered that Dwight Stone was fighting for his life in a Denver hospital. As the army officer shut her into the backseat of the limo, she wondered whether the Corsican’s story would bolster Stone’s will to live. If not, at least it might give him some peace before he died.
IN THE WELL OF the night, Walt looked up from Tom’s unquiet bed and saw Pithy Nolan’s electric wheelchair silhouetted in the door to the hall. This time the old woman did not remain at a distance, but whirred softly into the room and came around the bed so that she would be close to Walt. Her eyes glimmered in the spill of light from the hallway.
“I smelled your cigar in my room earlier, Captain.”
“I’m sorry about that. I needed to settle my nerves.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s good to smell men in this house again. It reminded me of Tom. He never smokes in my presence anymore, but I can always smell that cigar on his clothes.”
Walt smiled to himself. Many times during his life he had looked up or turned at the smell of certain cigars and expected to find Tom Cage standing there.
Pithy Nolan let her gaze fall on Tom for half a minute. “I’ve heard some upsetting news,” she whispered. “About the girl Penn was set to marry.”
“I know about that.”
“Have you told Tom?”
“He knows. It’s weighing mighty heavy on him, too.”
The old woman regarded Tom again. Walt had the feeling she saw very deeply, despite her lack of medical knowledge.
“How much danger is he in?” she asked. “I don’t feel that he’s dying, but . . .”
“He could die, all right. He should be in a hospital. But this is the way he wants it.”
Pithy nodded. “He’s a stubborn man.”
“Do you know why he’s doing this?” Walt asked.
The wise eyes returned to Walt’s face. “Do you not?”
“Up to a point, I guess. But no further.”
Pithy Nolan reached down and sucked a deep inhalation from the oxygen mask on her lap. Then she said, “He’s not doing it for himself. Tom Cage almost never did anything for himself. This man takes care of people. That’s his purpose on earth. And he’ll die fulfilling it, if the gods require it.”
Walt thought about this. “Makes it a mite tough on the people who care about him.”
Pithy nodded, the ghost of a smile upon her lips. “Those who love heroes must walk a stony road.” Then the smile vanished, and her eyes pierced Walt to the quick. “Sometimes we must share their end, as well.”
At some level, Walt figured, he had always known this. “I understand.”
“I read Classics at university,” Pithy said, a hint of wistfulness in her reedy voice. “Do you remember the Spartans?”
“I think so, ma’am.”
“I didn’t care much for them. The Spartans didn’t deserve the glorification they got. But they did have a rather succinct saying that’s never left me. Nothing is more apt when things come to the sticking point.”
“What was that?”
The piercing eyes found his eyes. “‘Come back with your shield—or on it.’ Did you ever hear that saying?”
“Yes, ma’am. And I’ve been in that situation myself. With Tom, as a matter of fact.”
“You must have acquitted yourself well.”
Walt wasn’t so sure.
“My husband never returned from the war,” Pithy said quietly. “He’s resting somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But his shield is with him. He’s sleeping in it. A Curtiss Warhawk.”
In his mind, Walt saw a brave American boy in an aging P-40 being cut to ribbons by a swarm of quicker-turning Zeros. He jumped when Pithy reached out and laid her papery hand on his. It felt featherlight, and neither warm nor cold. But through her thin skin Walt felt something like an electric current running into him.
“I’m going to send Flora in with food and tea,” she said. “Then you need rest, Captain. Marshal your strength. There’s no telling what might be required of you before this business is concluded.”
The regal old woman gave him a sad smile, then turned her chair with the touch of a finger and whirred out of the room like a queen borne upon a royal litter.
SATURDAY
CHAPTER 82
WALT AWAKENED TO pale light leaking through the heavy drapes of the guest room. His back ached from sleeping on the cot, and his head throbbed from lack of caffeine. Rising onto one elbow, he saw that Tom was not in his bed, and his heart began to race. He scrambled up off the flimsy cot and hurried around the bed, afraid he would find his friend lying dead on the floor.
The floor was empty.
Walt rushed out to the hallway, into darkness. A column of light rose from the well of the staircase, filled with dust motes, and through its lambent swirl he saw a crack of brighter light beneath a door at the end of the corridor. Relieved, he rubbed his eyes and trudged down the hall to the bathroom.
When he opened the door, he saw Tom standing before the sink in shorts, hacking at his face with a safety razor like a man who’d decided that his beard offended God. The IV bag hung from the brass stem of a wall sconce, still trickling saline into Tom’s arm. Last night’s exhaustion had vanished from his eyes. Now they looked . . . not quite wild, but filled with almost messianic intensity.
“What the hell are you doing?” Walt asked.
“Shaving.” Tom hadn’t even looked in Walt’s direction. “You finally got some sleep?”
“Why are you shaving?”