took his good arm, helping him up. He gulped air-there was violence all around him, and Puppetman was too dazed to even feed. He forced himself to think, to ignore the throbbing pain. "Billy, go on. Get the others." There was little to do. The remainder of Nur alAllah's people were tending to their prophet; Peregrine had slipped outside; Jones and Braun were shepherding Lyons and the other dignitaries. Hiram had turned Tachyon nearly weightless and was assisting him outside as the doctor shook his head groggily. No one resisted their retreat.
Sara let Gregg lean against her as they fled. As they tumbled into seats in the helicopter, she hugged him softly. "I'm glad you're safe," she whispered. She took his hand as the chopper's blades tore the night air.
It was as if Gregg grasped a doll's wooden hand. It meant nothing. Nothing at all.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF XAVIER DESMOND
FEBRUARY 7/KABUL, AFGHANISTAN:
I am in a good deal of pain today. Most of the delegates have gone on a day trip to various historic sights, but I elected to stay at the hotel once again.
Our tour... what can I say? Syria has made headlines around the world. Our press contingent has doubled in size, all of them eager to get the inside story of what happened out in the desert. For once, I am not unhappy to have been excluded. Peri has told me what it was like....
Syria has touched all of us, myself included. Not all of my pain is caused by the cancer. There are times when I grow profoundly weary, looking back over my life and wondering whether I have done any good at all, or if all my life's work has been for nothing. I have tried to speak out on behalf of my people, to appeal to reason and decency and the common humanity that unites us all, and I have always been convinced that quiet strength, perseverance, and nonviolence would get us further in the long run. Syria makes me wonder... how do you reason with a man like the Nur al-Allah, compromise with him, talk to him? How do you appeal to his humanity when he does not consider you human at all? If there is a God, I pray that he forgives me, but I find myself wishing they had killed the Nur.
Hiram has left the tour, albeit temporarily. He promises to rejoin us in India, but by now he is back in New York City, after jetting from Damascus to Rome and then catching a Concorde back to America. He told us that an emergency had arisen at Aces High that demanded his personal attention, but I suspect the truth is that Syria shook him more than he cared to admit. The rumor has swept round the plane that Hiram lost control in the desert, that he hit General Sayyid with far more weight than was necessary to stop him. Billy Ray, of'course, doesn't think Hiram went far enough. "If it'd been me, I would have piled it on till he was just a brown and red stain on the floor," he told me.
Worchester himself refused to talk about it and insisted that he was taking this brief leave of us simply because he was "sick unto death of stuffed grape leaves," but even as he made the joke, I noticed beads of sweat on his broad, bald forehead and a slight tremor in his hand. I hope a short respite restores him; the more we have traveled together, the more I have to come to respect Hiram Worchester.
If clouds do indeed have a silver lining, however, then perhaps one good did come out of the monstrous incident in Syria: Gregg Hartmann's stature seems to have been vastly enhanced by his near brush with death. For a decade now his political fortunes have been haunted by the specter of the Great Jokertown Riot in 1976, when he "lost his head" in public. To me his reaction was only human-he had just witnessed a woman being torn to pieces by a mob, after all. But presidential candidates are not allowed to weep or grieve or rage like the rest of us, as Muskie proved in 72 and Hartmann confirmed in '76.
Syria may finally have put that tragic incident to rest. Everyone who was there agrees that Hartmann's behavior was exemplary-he was firm, cool-headed, courageous, a pillar of strength in the face of the Nur's barbarous threats. Every paper in America has run