doubted anyone inside the Lab or at the TOC was grinning. I probably was.
“We’re doing . . . this . . .” he gasped, fighting the pain, “to . . . save the world.”
I patted his cheek.
“Who gives a fuck?” I said. I drew my Wilson Tactical Combat Rapid Response knife from my pocket and with the flick of my wrist snapped the blade into place. That blade is only three and a half inches long. Length is relative, though. Scalpels are much shorter. It’s all about how something is used.
“Names,” I repeated. “Locations. And timetables.”
He shook his head.
People think they’re tough. They think they are able to endure. Gunter hadn’t been able to resist them. This guy knew that. Why, I wondered, did he think he’d be able to resist me?
But . . .
He told us everything he knew. Every last bit. Who was running Silentium. Where the next strikes were planned. How they got the bioweapons. My friend there was very willing to talk. So, as it turned out, was his friend, who told the same stuff to Top.
As I said, we are good men, but we are not nice ones.
Nice ones don’t save the world.
Nice ones can’t.
8.
PHOENIX HOUSE
OMFORI ISLAND, GREECE
We sat in the mess hall back at Phoenix House, watching the news.
The lead story on every network was the dismantling of Silentium. It was, according to Jake and Wolf and Anderson and Sean and Rachel, a joint effort on the part of governments that set aside politics and fought for the common good. Sure. That’s a good version of the story to tell. It’ll be great when someone makes a movie. A feel-good story.
What’s that old saying? When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Sure. In the news, the only monsters were the millenarian cultists who wanted to destroy lives in order to create a version of the world they wanted. They were the monsters of the piece.
Top, Bunny, and I were not mentioned at all.
And that, I suppose, is how we all sleep at night.
NOT IN THIS LIFETIME
SHARON SHINN
Lili doesn’t believe me when I tell her we were friends many times in the past, but she likes to hear the stories anyway.
“Where did we live last time?” she asks.
“New York City. We were waitresses then, too.”
“When was it?”
“Nineteen sixty-five.”
“So were we out marching for civil rights? Did we go to consciousness-raising sessions and burn our bras?”
I laugh. “No. We got stoned and listened to the Grateful Dead.”
“Did we go to Woodstock?”
“That was 1969.”
“Right, but we could have gone anyway. Were we still friends in 1969?”
I was dead by then, but I don’t want to tell her that. “Not really.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “Why do friends ever drift apart?”
Lili stops asking me questions for a minute so she can wipe down the last two tables while I refill saltshakers. It’s Monday morning, the diner will open in less than half an hour, and there’s still a lot to get done.
“How did we meet?” she asks. “Do you remember?”
“I was walking to work one day. You were standing under an awning, smoking a cigarette. I stopped and asked if I could borrow one, and we got to talking.”
“Did you recognize me? You know, from before.”
I turn to smile at her. Even in the gingham polyester apron that all Deli-Lishes employees have to wear, with her frizzy black hair pulled back in a ponytail so it won’t get in the food, Lili is adorable. Bubbly as a cheerleader, friendly as a puppy. One of my best days, in every life, is the one in which I meet her again for the first time.
“Of course I did. That’s why I stopped to ask for the cigarette.”
“I can’t believe I smoked back then.”
“Everybody smoked.”
“Did I recognize you?”