Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

Blaisdell returned to his seat. The woman went to the ladies' room and disposed of her hot dog, and then went home to her weapons.

Her first weapon was an illegal FBI infoworm, threading undetected through municipal transportation records. She found out that a third party shared the cab with the agent and his supposed victim; they had stopped the cab on Grand Street, no particular address. The original order had been for 1236 Grand, but they'd stopped early, a verbal cancel.

She went back to the security tapes and saw that the two had been followed by a large black man in uniform. She didn't yet know that there was a connection between the scientist and the black mechanic. She assumed he was a backup for Ingram; Blaisdell hadn't mentioned it, but maybe it was an arrangement Ingram had made on his own.

So Ingram probably had a car waiting, to drive his victim out into the country to dispose of her.

The next stage depended on luck. The Iridium system that provided global communication by way of a fleet of low-flying satellites had been quietly co-opted by the government after the start of the Ngumi War; all of the satellites had been replaced by dual-function ones: they still took care of phone service, but each one also spied continuously on the strip of land it passed over. Had one of them passed over Omaha, over Grand Street, just before midnight on the 11th?

She wasn't military, but she had access to Iridium pictures through Blaisdell's office. After a few minutes of sorting, she had an image of the cab leaving and the black mechanic getting into the back seat of a long black limousine. The next shot was a low angle that showed the limousine's license plate: "North Dakota 101 Clergy." In less than a minute, she had it traced to St. Bartholomew's.

That was strange enough, but her course was clear. She already had a bag packed with a business suit and a frilly dress, two changes of underwear, and a knife and a gun made completely of plastic. There was also a jar of vitamins with enough poison to murder a small town. In less than an hour she was in the air, headed for the crater city Seaside and its mysterious monastery. St. Bartholomew's had some military connection, but General Blaisdell didn't have high enough clearance to find out what it was. It occurred to her that she might be getting in over her head. She prayed for guidance, and God told her in his stern fatherly voice that she was doing the right thing. Stay your course and don't fear dying. Dying is just coming home.

She knew Ingram; he was a third of her cell-and she knew how much better he was at mayhem. She had killed more than twenty sinners in service to the Lord, but always at a distance or protected by extremely close contact. God had gifted her with great sexual attractiveness, and she used it as a weapon, allowing sinners in between her legs while she reached under the pillow for the crystal knife. Men who don't close their eyes when they ejaculate will close their eyes a moment later. If she was on her back with the man above her, she would embrace him with her left arm and men drive the dagger into his kidney. He would straighten up in tetanic shock, his penis trying to ejaculate again, and she could sweep the razor-keen blade across his throat. When he sagged, she would make sure both carotid arteries were severed.

Sitting in the plane, she put her knees together and squeezed, remembering how the last dying thrust felt. It probably didn't hurt the man too much, it was over so fast, and he faced an eternity of torment anyhow. She had never done it to anyone who had taken Jesus as his Savior. Instead of being washed in the Blood of the Lamb, they drowned in their own. Atheists and adulterers, they deserved even worse.

Once a man had almost escaped, a pervert she had allowed to engage her from behind. She'd had to half-turn and stab him in the heart, but she didn't have full force or good aim, and the point of the knife broke off in his breastbone. She dropped the knife and he ran for the door, and might have run naked and bleeding into me hotel corridor, but she had double-locked it, and while he was struggling with the combination of latches, she retrieved the knife and reached around him and slashed open his abdomen. He was a gross fat man, and an incredible mess spilled out. He made a lot of noise dying, while she knelt helplessly sick in the bathroom, but the hotel was evidently well soundproofed. She left by way of window and fire escape, and the morning news said that the man, a well-connected city commissioner, had died at home, peacefully, in his sleep. His wife and children had been full of praise for him. A godless swine too fat to engage a woman normally. He had even pretended to pray before they had sex, currying favor because of her crucifix, and then expected her to use her mouth to make him ready. It was while she was doing that, that she had savored the image of splitting him open. But her hate hadn't prepared her for the multicolored jumble of gore.

Well, this one would be clean. She had killed women twice before, each one a merciful pistol shot to the head. She would do that and then escape or not. She hoped she wouldn't have to kill Ingram, a stern but nice man who had never looked at her with lust. He was still a man, though, and it was possible that this redheaded professor had led him astray.

It was after midnight by the time she got to Seaside. She got a room at the hotel closest to St. Bartholomew's, slightly more than a kilometer away, and walked over to take a look.

The place was completely dark and silent. Not surprising for a monastery, she supposed, so she went back to the hotel and slept for a few hours.

One minute after 8:00, she phoned the place, and got an answering machine. The same at 8:30.

She put on her weapons and walked over and rang the doorbell at 9:00. No response. She walked completely around the building and saw no sign of life. The lawn needed mowing.

She noted several places she could break in, come nightfall, and went back to the hotel to do some electronic snooping.

She found no reference to St. Bartholomew's in any database of religious activity, other than acknowledgment of its existence and location. It was founded the year after the nanoforge cataclysm that formed the Inland Sea.

It was doubtless a cover organization for something, and that something was somehow connected with the military-in Washington, when she'd typed in the name, working under Blaisdell's aegis, she'd gotten a message that "need-to-know" documents would have to be processed through Force Management and Personnel. That was pretty spooky, since Blaisdell had unquestioned access to top-secret material in any part of the military establishment.

So the people in that monastery were either very powerful or very subtle. Maybe both. And Ingram was evidently part of them.

The obvious conclusion would be that they were part of the Hammer of God. But then Blaisdell would know about their activities.

Or would he? It was a large organization, with linkages so complex and well-protected that it was possible even the man in charge could have lost track of an important part. So she should be ready to go in shooting, but also ready to tiptoe away quietly. God would guide her.

She spent a couple of hours assembling an Iridium mosaic of snapshots of the place since the 11th. There were no pictures of the black limousine, which was not too surprising, since the monastery had a large garage and there were never any vehicles parked outside.

Then she saw the army truck and bus appear, and watched them reappear as blue church vehicles, and leave.

It would take a long time, and a lot of luck, to trace them through the Interstate system. Fortunately, the powder blue was an unusual color. But before she settled into that mind-numbing chore, she decided to go check the monastery for clues.