"I don't read spy novels."
"I know."
"It wasn't an assignment," said Theresa. "But ye
s, he did put the thought into my mind. That the best thing for everybody would be for the Beast not to leave Brazil alive."
"Actually, I don't think that's so," said John Paul.
"Why not? Surely you don't think he has any value to the world."
"He brought everybody out of hiding, didn't he?" said John Paul. "Everybody showed their true colors."
"Not everybody. Not yet."
"Things are out in the open. The world is divided into camps. The ambitions are exposed. The traitors are revealed."
"So the job is done," said Theresa, "and there's no more use for him."
"I never really thought of you as a murderer."
"I'm not."
"But you had a plan, right?"
"I was testing to see if any plan was possible--if I could get into his room. The answer was no."
"Ah. So the objective remains the same. Only the method has been changed."
"I probably won't do it," said Theresa.
"I wonder how many assassins have told themselves that--right up to the moment when they fired the gun or plunged in the knife or served the poisoned dates?"
"You can stop teasing me now," said Theresa. "I don't care about politics or the repercussions. If killing the Beast cost Peter the Hegemony, I wouldn't care. I'm just not going to sit back and watch the Beast devour my son."
"But there's a better way," said John Paul.
"Besides killing him?"
"To get him away from where he can kill Peter. That's our real goal, isn't it? Not to save the world from the Beast, but to save Peter. If we kill Achilles--"
"I don't recall inviting you into my evil conspiracy."
"Then yes, the Beast is dead, but so is Peter's credibility as Hegemon. He's forever after as tainted as Macbeth."
"I know, I know."
"What we need is to taint the Beast, not Peter."
"Killing is more final."
"Killing makes a martyr, a legend, a victim. Killing gives you St. Thomas a Becket. The Canterbury pilgrims."
"So what's your better plan?"
"We get the Beast to try to kill us."
Theresa looked at him dumbfounded.