Chapter 54

To my considerable surprise Lee wasn't all that upset when I told her Spook was gone.

"Maybe it was time," she said after she'd got over her initial surprise.

I looked at her, astonished. "I thought you liked him, too, that he was our friend, not just mine."

"I did like him, Jackie," she told me. "I liked him a lot. And I'll miss him, nothing like the way you will, but even so ... I mean, look at all he did for us." She gestured vaguely around her, encompassing the house, the furniture, our whole lives. "And it's not just that, he was a real­ly fine person. But..."

"But?" I prompted.

"Jack, I was always just a little afraid of him, too," she admitted. "I didn't know him nearly as well as you, so that's part of it. But— honey, you were always pretty vague about how you met him, but I've always kind of thought he was part of that Defense Department system where you worked, wasn't he?"

Jesus. Never underestimate female intuition. "DEFCONTROL, yes," I said. "He started talking to me that night late in my shift, the night before everything blew up."

She nodded. "Yes, that's what I thought. DEFCONTROL, was that the name? Short for 'defense control, ' I suppose. National defense. And that means weapons, doesn't it? Maybe even nukes?"

"Yes."

"Which means Spook controlled all those weapons," she went on. "I've always wondered what if he finally got sick of people acting as stupid as they often do and decided to use some of those weapons. Or even just start killing the stupid ones off, the ones he thought were stupid, one at a time the way he did in the barn. It was just too much power."

I was astonished at how closely her own thinking was following Spook's.

"You know how religious people sometimes call themselves God-fearing?" she asked. "Well, I guess that's because they believe God created the world and can destroy it at any time. I'm not sure I believe in God, but I had to believe in Spook, and even though he didn't create the world he could near enough destroy it or most anything in it. I didn't want to become Spook-fearing."

"Huh," I said with a small laugh. "I don't think that was ever a real concern. But you know, it's why he told me he needed to leave, to drop any involvement in anything to do with humanity. He was afraid he might get sucked into too much involvement, start doing the wrong things."

She nodded again. "Wasn't it good that he could think that way?" she said. "He really was a fine person, wasn't he? But now we can start living like other people. Have you thought about what you're going to do? There won't be mornings with Spook any more, will there?"

"No," I agreed with a pang; I'd miss those mornings, miss them badly. "No, there won't, I mean; and no, I haven't thought about what I'll do, either. I'll find something."

We left it there for the moment, but when I told Richard he asked the same thing.

It wasn't something I'd wanted to trust to telephones, so I flew up. I'd phoned to let him know that I, Jack Carstairs, was coming, but not why, and he met the plane. He drove me out to his home, where he'd insisted I'd stay and meet his wife—his kids were away, one at college and one in the workforce—and on the way I gave him my news and told him the tips were done.

His reaction was a striking parallel to Lisa's. When I'd finished he said, "I'm sorry, Jack, sorry for you. He was your friend. Hell, I guess he was mine, too, at least from my side of it; who knows what he thought about me? And I'll miss the tips, I'll have to go back to being just a good cop. But I'm damn glad, too."

"Why?" I asked, already half-knowing the answer.

"Too much power," he said succinctly, echoing Lee's words. "'Absolute power—'"

"I know," I interrupted him. "'—corrupts absolutely.' You said that once before. But why did everybody but me think that way about him?"

"You were too close, Jack," he answered. "He got you out of that mess at the beginning. You were right, by the way, we'd probably have locked you up and kept you locked up until you died, or worse; I never told you, but the security system said you were into DEFCONTROL at the core level. They told me nobody was ever supposed to be able to get where you were. It was why everybody panicked so bad."

"I wondered," I said. "It seemed to me a pretty heavy reaction at the time."

"Mmm." He hesitated. "What the hell, it's long after the fact. Jack, you ever run across the term 'wet work?' I mean, related to security?"

"No. Is it something I want to know?"

"Probably not," he said. "They also call it 'termination with extreme prejudice.' Understand?"

I gave him a shocked look. "Jesus Christ, Richard. Was that going to be me?"

"There was some talk back then," he admitted. "There were some people who thought anybody who'd got as deep into DEFCONTROL as security said you had was too dangerous to be allowed to live. I hit the roof when I heard about it, asked them how did that make us any different from who we were fighting. They just told me I was being a pussy, that sometimes hard decisions had to be made. It was around then that they pushed me to hand you off, said I was getting too close to you."

I shook my head. "Well, thanks for that anyhow. But my God, Richard..."

"Yeah. So you owed Spook a lot more than even you realized. And you got to know him better than anybody, and to you he was just your friend. To me, though..."

He paused for a moment. I simply waited, still shakily adjusting to the idea that some people in my government had wanted to kill me.

"Jack, that day you told me, at your house, I was flat scared. Sure, he blew me off when I said it. I remember every word, 'if I wished to do this'—he meant set off the nukes—'I would have done it already.' But dammit, the point was that he could. And he could kill people individually, too, the way he did in that barn. Jack, this was one scary dude. I liked him, sure, but you have no idea how much I walked on eggs with each one of those 'discussions' I had with him. Oh, yeah, I knew pretty quick when it was you on the phone and when it was him."

"I always figured you did," I put in.

"Yeah, I know. I guess it was the business in the barn, huh? What woke him up to what he could do if he set his mind to it. And, thank God, scared him about it pretty close to as much as he'd scared me."

I shrugged, broad enough that even driving he could see it out of the corner of his eye.

"Think about it, Jack," he went on. "I don't care he's your asshole buddy, do you want anybody running loose out there who has the power of life and death over everyone on this planet? Who can choose, you live, you die, and make it happen?"

"Isn't that more or less what your people had in mind about me?" I asked, a little bitterly.

"They didn't, though," he said. "And there were people like me to stand up for you; I wasn't the only one. With Spook, how could that be so?"

He had a point.

"I told you once, I go to church on Sunday. Not because I'm afraid God will wipe us out if I don't, but to give me a little inspiration to get through the next seven days, and the next after that. I can pray to God for guidance. I can't pray to Spook, and he wouldn't listen if I did, but didn't he have at least a little of the same kind of power as God? Unmonitored, uncontrolled? Too much power."