George Martin - Suicide Kings

It had been a long time since they’d gotten drunk and burned Peregrine’s house down. There weren’t many people Bugsy had actually known that long. Not that were still alive, anyway.

“Brokering world peace keeping you busy,” he said, his tone making it an offer of sympathy.

“Water rights. Human rights abuses. The slave trade. I come in every morning, and I find something new and terrible. And every afternoon, I find why we can do nothing direct. Nothing final. I am becoming tired,” Lohengrin said, then sighed. “What do you know about the Sudd?”

“Their second album sucked.”

Someone in the next office ran their shredder for a second. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” Lohengrin said.

“Yeah, not really. No.”

Lohengrin nodded like he’d just won a bet with himself and leaned forward over his desk. “The Muslim government of the Sudan has taken steps to join their nation to the Caliphate.”

“Ah,” Bugsy said. “That’s a bad thing.”

“No,” Lohengrin said. “That’s the background.”

“That’s not the problem?”

“No.”

“Ok-ay.”

“The People’s Paradise of Africa,” Lohengrin said, “under the leadership of Dr. Kitengi Nshombo, has accused Khartoum of enacting a policy of genocide against the black tribal population of the south and west Sudan.”

“Got it. Genocide. Problem.”

“No,” Lohengrin said.

“Genocide not a problem?”

“Genocide isn’t happening. It is an excuse. The PPA has manufactured evidence and generated propaganda to make a case for the invasion of the Sudan. Its forces are making incursions across the border, and the Caliphate has mobilized to defend Sudanese national territory. Yesterday there was a battle in the Sudd. A terrible battle.”

“And that’s the problem, right?”

“Yes,” Lohengrin said. “In the bigger picture, that is the problem. But it gets worse. The PPA forces are being led by Tom Weathers. The Radical.”

Bugsy sat up straighter. “Hold it,” he said. “Same guy who tried to set off Little Fat Boy and nuke New Orleans last year?”

“Same guy, ja.”

“I don’t like him much, you know. He tried to kill me. I mean, I don’t like the Caliphate much either. They tried to kill me too.”

“Tom Weathers tried to kill many hundreds of thousands of people,” Lohengrin said.

“Yeah. And I was one of them.”

“The PPA has been a destabilizing influence for years. Now they have begun to use aces to further their own political agenda.”

The silence was a hum of climate-controlled heating and the distant ringing of phones. Lohengrin looked serious and waited for Bugsy to work through the implications.

“World war,” Bugsy said. “Only fought with aces. Meaning probably the Committee.”

“And a great many dead people,” Lohengrin said.

“What about getting Little Fat Boy back in play? A fourteen-year-old nuke with a personal grudge against Weathers should rein the PPA in, right?”

“Ra,” Lohengrin said. “His name is Ra now, and no. So long as Old Egypt is not attacked, the Living Gods are determined to stay out of the conflict.”

“How very Swiss of them.”

“There is a further problem with Tom Weathers. We’ve always known that Weathers had more powers than most aces. Insubstantiality. Strength. Ultraflight. Heat beams. We know he was involved in the battle in part because these powers were in play. But other powers have been reported as well. The wave of darkness? The terrible mauling of the bodies?”

“You think he’s like the Djinn?” Bugsy said, sitting forward on the couch. Nothing took the humor out of a situation like the Djinn. “You think Weathers is picking up new powers.”

“I do not know,” Lohengrin said. “New powers. Or new allies. We know little about the man himself. Where he comes from, how he drew the wild card, what his weaknesses might be. What exactly his powers are. That is what I want you to uncover, Jonathan. Tom Weathers is likely the most powerful ace in the world, he is starting a war, and I know nothing substantial about him.”

“And so,” Bugsy said, “who the fuck is the Radical?”

Unnamed Island

Aegean Sea, Greece

“Daddy!”

The woman who came flying at him across rocky soil tufted with pale green grass was tall and slender. Despite the fact her handsome face was clearly middle-aged, it showed few lines. Her hair, long and blond, had begun by slowly evident degrees to turn to silver. Yet her manner was that of a seven-year-old girl.

A very happy one. She caught him in a hug that for all his superhuman strength still almost overbalanced him. She was just four inches shorter than his six-two.

He kissed her. “Sprout. Hey, sweetie.” He tousled the long straight hair. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. Can we go to the park soon?”

“Aye, that’s a good idea,” said Mrs. Clark, emerging from the modest field-stone cottage behind her. “It’s not fit for her to spend all her days cooped up here alone, with no one for company but an iPod and a dried-up old biddy like me.”

“I wouldn’t call you dried up, Mrs. Clark,” he said, past the woman’s cheek, wet with happy tears.

“You’d not dare.”

“You got that right.”

This was true. The caretaker was a middle-aged to elderly New Zealander, half Maori with a crisp Scots brogue. Her coloration and build were those of a brick wall; her tight bun of curly hair was nearly the same hue. Sprout loved her. She treated Sprout with patient cheerful firmness and took absolutely not ounce one of shit from anybody else. Not even Tom.

Which was fine. It was what he paid her for. Fantastically well, he vaguely gathered. Unlike most of the self-proclaimed socialist revolutionaries he met, Tom had no interest in money whatsoever; it was one of the reasons he always wound up getting pissed off at the posers, and then there was trouble. Dr. Nshombo-more often Alicia-always gave him whatever he asked for. Most, in fact, went toward keeping his daughter well cared for and as happy as possible in a succession of the remotest locations Earth provided.

It was the only way he knew of keeping her safe from that teleporting puke. Until he hunted him down and killed him, of course.

“I could use a day’s shopping as well, I admit,” Mrs. Clark said. “Time to myself and a few necessities for the child and me. Maybe tomorrow, Mr. L?”

She didn’t even try to pronounce the name he gave her, which was Karl Liebknecht. Among the things he paid her so well for was not to wonder about such things as why his daughter sometimes called herself by the last name Weathers, and other times Meadows. Or why the daughter looked older than her father. Her main concern was that there was no funny business between her employer and her charge. Once he had convinced her of that, she was content to live in isolation with her charge, so long as she got the occasional day off in civilization. And in between had a sufficient supply of mystery novels.

“Tomorrow?” his daughter said, blue eyes shining eagerly. “You promise?”

He nodded. “I promise.”

Sprout hugged him fiercely. “I wish I could stay with you, Daddy.”

“Someday you can, sweetie. Someday. But I got some things to take care of first.”

Noel Matthews’s Apartment

Manhattan, New York

Niobe was sleeping, worn-out by the emotional upheaval of the past few hours. Noel wandered around the apartment they had rented while they underwent the fertility treatments. It had come furnished with sofas and chairs designed more for magazine covers than the human body. They had tried to personalize an impersonal space by putting up lots of framed photos-most of them of Niobe’s “children”-the little aces who had lived and died like mayflies. Noel found the pictures depressing, but they were important to Niobe so he never said a word. His own efforts had consisted of leaving magazines piled on the glass coffee table and used teacups on the side tables. Niobe had also crocheted an afghan to throw across the black leather and chrome sofa.