Whatever Gods May Be Part 26

"The PIA?" Jamie raised her head to look at her tormenter.

"Yes." The interrogator's eyes, patient now, probed Jamie's face for comprehension. "And as far as they're concerned, all of you are hostages. Including your senator."

Jamie sat suddenly erect, alert, awash in adrenaline. "And the PIA generally kill their hostages."

"Yes, they do." Shoo Juh stood, called in the guards, and ordered them to escort the hong mao to the Red Cross office for medical aid.

* 213 *

Chapter tWenty-Five.

Whether to lauGh or Cry Ow!""Sorry." Leonard, the Red Cross physician, placed a sympathetic hand on Jamie's shoulder. "But we don't want this to get infected."

Restless for him to finish, Jamie squiggled on the stretcher that served as an examination table while he irrigated the gouge in her forehead. She was only now beginning to be able to think again. If the PIA are coming, we're in big trouble. If. If. How big an If?

A few feet away, Senator Hillinger had propped herself against a table like it was the only thing holding her up. "Lieutenant, you look like a sodden six-year-old. G.o.d, I don't know whether to laugh or cry." Jamie smiled; she liked the way that sounded.

"I'm sorry." The senator looked distinctly penitent. "I should've- But I might've made it worse-I just-I didn't know what to do." Clearly she was someone who found indecision unsettling, someone who probably couldn't remember the last time an a.n.a.lysis of all the alternatives, even with just seconds to run through them, hadn't produced a clearly preferable choice, an actionable item. But not this time.

"Yeah, well, it's usually like that with Shoo Juh."

"Who?"

"The Zhong special chief interrogator. She's, uh..."

"Responsible for your present condition." The frowning senator pushed herself away from the table while Leonard dabbed Jamie's wound.

"No doubt the official Zhong version will deny that, ma'am."

* 214 *

"How about the unofficial version? What happened?" Leonard now closed in with a small brown bottle. "Iodine," he said. "This'll sting some." Sting it did. But soon he was affixing a bandage.

"What happened?" Senator Hillinger pressed.

Jamie gazed resolutely at her- Not yet-and got a nod in return.

She and Leonard exchanged a brief look, and Jamie sensed beneath their pretense of normalcy an edgy but thus far frustrated quest for a way to end their predicament.

Now catapulted out of numbness, Jamie bounced from question to question. Does that electric fan over there near the door have a higher speed that'd be loud enough to mask our voices? What'd give us hints one way or the other about whether Shoo Juh lied or told the truth?

Jeez, do physicians ever use paperclips?

Jamie turned to Leonard. "I can't leave yet." Her words were mouthed more than spoken. "I need you to pretend to keep treating me."

The doctor didn't skip a beat. "Well now, Lieutenant," he said rather loudly, "I don't like the look of this one bit. I'm going to run a quick test." He picked up a mouth swab and a skinny, three-inch-wide white rectangle. "Open sesame." In seconds, his deft hands had swept the swab across the inside of Jamie's cheek and inserted it into the rectangle. "Stick around. We'll have results in ten or twenty minutes."

"Yes, sir." Jamie lifted off the stretcher and hoped she appeared casual as she walked over to the fan. "Do you mind if I cool off some while I wait?"

The senator understood first. "Good idea," she said and stepped next to Jamie to boost the fan's speed.

Starved for lubricating oil, the fan emitted a metallic screech and clanked erratically. Jamie removed her cammie blouse, stood in her soaked T-s.h.i.+rt in front of it. "Much better. Thank you, ma'am." She turned around so the fan blew at her back and she faced Leonard. "Sir," she whispered, "can you check outside real offhandedly and tell me how close the guards are?"

Leonard obliged, adroitly moving his slight runner's frame to the door. Seconds later, he reported in a hush, "They're on the other side of the yard trying to stay dry. Closest one is at least eighty, a hundred feet away. Want me to stay here and keep watch?"

* 215 *

"Yes, sir. Thanks."

He was close enough that he, too, could hear Jamie's murmured account of what Shoo Juh said, Jamie's comment that she was inclined to believe it but wanted some sort of confirmation, since she couldn't fathom the interrogator's motives. She did not need to explain what the arrival of the PIA meant. Everyone knew the fate of those unfortunate enough to become PIA hostages. For a long moment, the two civilians stood in frozen silence, their faces tense.

"Any chance this interrogator comes from southern China?" Senator Hillinger finally asked.

"She could," said Jamie. "Hong Kong maybe. She speaks Cantonese. And the King's English."

"d.a.m.n." A new frown formed on the senator's face. "This is mutating much faster than I expected. We're in a four-way fight now.

With four-way brinksmans.h.i.+p."

Jamie was confused. "Four-way?"

"Two sides-us and the Chinese." Senator Hillinger squinted at the floor as if she could find a secret there to be deciphered. "And two factions on each side. On both sides, one faction wants to keep fighting, the other wants a truce. And on both sides, neither faction quite has the upper hand." Her eyes rose to find Jamie's. "What's scary is that the center of gravity is probably s.h.i.+fting. And, covertly, some of the players are realigning. It's a fair guess that the factions on each side with a stake in continuing the conflict have opened a new back channel or two. And the factions on each side that want a truce-"

"You're not suggesting Shoo Juh wants a truce?"

"Maybe she does. If she told you the truth." Jamie thought a mindf.u.c.k was likelier. Certainly it felt like a mindf.u.c.k. How could that woman ever want anything I want? The next thought made Jamie lightheaded. What if Shoo Juh did all that to me so she could offer up intel to help persuade her side toward truce?

"It doesn't matter," Jamie said as much to herself as anyone. What matters is the PIA. We need to know if they're really coming. Maybe these civilians could help find out one way or the other. After all, they weren't quite prisoners. Not yet. And what they were and were not capable of might determine the future of everyone in Saint Eh Mo's .

Okay. Not a lot left to lose anymore. So okay. "Where're they housing you?" she asked them.

* 216 *

"In the officers' quarters," Senator Hillinger said. "Access is across the yard from the interrogation area."

"Can you move between here and there at will, no questions?"

"So far," said Leonard.

"Hmm. I'd like to try a small experiment," Jamie said. "It entails one of you going over to your quarters to get something you need to bring back here. While you're there, stall a little, check out everything you can without being obvious. Look for any signs of people leaving or getting ready to leave. You know, gear getting packed or already gone.

Like that."

"I'll go," Leonard said. "I get less attention than you do, Senator.

And I need more iodine anyway. Besides, it's my turn to get wet."

"And, sir, if you spot a paperclip along the way and can grab it without being seen..."

Leonard's eyebrows hiked before he winked comprehension. "Ah.

Interesting hobby, Lieutenant. I'll see what I can do."

"Don't push it, sir," Jamie said. "They'll be watching you." The doctor shuffled around for a second, then boomed, "Excuse me for a few minutes. I need to get some more iodine," and departed.

Next to Jamie, Senator Hillinger sighed. "G.o.d, I'm such a d.a.m.n fool. I've been trying for these last two days not to feel like a prisoner, but that's exactly what it amounts to. So much for being part of the solution. I really thought I could make a difference."

"You did, ma'am. Make a difference, I mean." Senator Hillinger lowered her shaking head, and Jamie thought maybe she trembled. "Talk about being outflanked. We haven't been able to contact anyone-not the Red Cross people, not anyone in our government or our families-since just before the Chinese recessed the talks." Her shoulders hunched. "We keep trying and they keep telling us it's just a communications glitch and it'll be fixed jin chee, jin chee. I guess I've wanted to believe that. Figured it was probably just as well that I couldn't get through to Rebecca and the girls for a few days. What would I say, anyway?" She glanced up at Jamie. "How would I have explained it to them? I acted on impulse, I admit it. I knew there were risks to staying on here instead of leaving with the others, but I saw the chance for a game-changer and jumped without asking them or even telling them. I thought if I-" She grabbed fistfuls of her own hair and growled her frustration through gritted * 217 *

teeth. "G.o.d, I don't even know anymore what I thought. Except I sure as h.e.l.l thought wrong."

"For what it's worth, you have made a difference, ma'am. At least for all of us here." Jamie wanted to scoop up Lynn Hillinger, hold her, hug her, thank her. "Especially me. I think you're the reason Shoo Juh had to stop. I don't think I had much time left..." Lynn Hillinger curled her hands into her pants pockets and turned her head to look up at Jamie. For a moment she said nothing while she looked, and Jamie wondered what she was trying to see.

"Why did you become a marine, Lieutenant?" Jamie snorted. "Seemed like a good idea at the time." Senator Hillinger nodded with a wry, I-know-the-feeling pucker.

"ROTC? Finish college early?"

"No, ma'am. No college," Jamie inspected a small rip in her pant leg. "Didn't even finish high school."

"Really?"

"Boarded the bus for Parris Island the day after I turned seventeen," Jamie said. "Turned out to be a good marksman, so they sent me to Scout/Sniper School. And then here, to the Palawan."

"And how'd you end up-?"

"Oh, the black bar? A demented major general. Combat appointment from staff sergeant right smack to one-lite." Jamie was able to stiffly snap the fingers of one hand and smiled grimly at the victory. "Just like that. Still haven't recovered."

"Ben Embry, right?" Senator Hillinger's handsome face carried sign of recognition. "Sounds like something he's nervy enough to do."

"Yes, ma'am." Small world up there at the top of the food chain, I guess. "You know him?"

"Oh, indeed. Ben and I go way back." A pause. "Your family must be proud."

Jamie's head dropped. "No, ma'am. No family. Not anymore."

"None, Lieutenant? None at all?"

"Not a single living soul."

"So how long were you in foster care?"

"Uh..." Jamie began, then stopped because her breathing had become unsteady. No one had ever asked her real details about where she'd come from. Not even Marty Rhys ever did that. Not even Marty Rhys wanted to look inside her. "I, uh...foster care was fifty-five weeks.

* 218 *

Before that, there was only ever my mother. Died when I was fifteen.

Trying to get some smack, best I can figure." Senator Hillinger nodded slowly, telling her to go on.

"Foster care was...It was, uh...Got raped once by the husband.

My own d.a.m.n fault in a way. I knew he wanted to do it. But I didn't realize how much, you know? He waited for me to make a mistake, and I did finally. Thought he'd left the house, but he hadn't, he was waiting.

And, uh, he jumped me."

The memory flooded in. Bob Baines's hand squeezing her throat...

his fist pounding on the side of her head...her powerlessness as her own hands couldn't break his grip. "After he did that, I-I came so close to-"

There had been a moment-while she anguished for air, while she thought he'd murder her as well as rape her-when she was terrified.

Afterward, moment by moment, day by day, the terror evolved into a single obsession: Kill Bob Baines.

She planned everything-when to sneak up on him, how to get away, where to go. There he was in her mind's eye, waking thras.h.i.+ng and helpless as she thrust one of his own kitchen knives down again and again to rip him open, the inverse of his thrusts into her.

This, Jamie had told herself, only this, would free her from the void engulfing her. And once he was dead, maybe she'd be able to sleep again. She got as close as standing over his loudly snoring form late one night with a ten-inch blade clutched in her hands, raised high and ready to plunge. She gazed at him, then at the knife, and for the first time imagined all the blood. His blood.

That was when she understood with absolute certainty that she wouldn't get away with it. She'd spend her life as property of the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts in Day-Glo orange convict scrubs, locked away in a five- by seven-foot cage, drowning in the raucous desolation of imprisonment. Worse than those thirteen endless days and nights she'd endured in the county jail after she stole that car and drove it to the bluff overlooking Provincetown where Alby crashed and died.

Worse because they'd never let her out. Except maybe to strap her to a gurney, force her to watch the fatal pharma flow down the tubes and into her, paralyzing her lungs, then her heart while she struggled in vain to live.

Standing over Bob Baines, knife raised high, she answered the * 219 *

question before her- Is this p.r.i.c.k worth that? -by returning the unused knife to its drawer in the kitchen.

Jamie shook off the memory; her voice shrank to a whisper.

"Joined the Corps soon as I could so I wouldn't change my mind and go through with it, you know? Now I kill strangers instead." Jamie looked down, rolled her shoulders to slough off the taunt of irony. "Get raped by strangers instead, too."

That's when Senator Hillinger reached across the small distance to anoint Jamie's cheek with a tenderness Jamie had longed for all her life.

Jamie tilted her head dreamily, instinctively into the touch, into its compa.s.sion. Tears filled her eyes. She didn't look away, not even when Senator Hillinger stepped up to her and delicately embraced her.

Her breath caught, but after a moment she let her hesitant hands wrap around the senator's back, and their embrace strengthened.

Never before had Jamie experienced anything like this. Something loosened in her gut, a stranglehold released. Her breath escaped. It was almost a moan, and the force of it would have frightened her but for the way everything glowed, the way this woman's touch succored and strengthened her even while it invited her surrender. Jamie closed her eyes, submitted, and the feeling filled her, trembled her.

Senator Hillinger must have understood because she didn't let go.

Jamie clung to her and tried, tried not to cry.