Shadow Puppets (The Shadow 3)

"Our tickets--should be to separate destinations."

He stopped packing and looked at her. "I see," he said. "You get what you want from me, and then you walk away."

She laughed nervously. "Well, yes," she said. "You've been telling me this whole time that it's more dangerous for us to travel together."

"And now that you'll have my baby in you, you don't need to be with me any more," said Bean. He was still smiling, but she knew that beneath the jest there was true suspicion.

"Whatever the Wiggins do, all hell is going to break loose," said Petra. "I've memorized all your dead drops and you've memorized all of mine."

"I gave you all of yours," said Bean.

"Let's get back together in a week or so," said Petra. "If I'm like my mother, I'll be puking my guts out by then."

"If the implantation is successful."

"I'll miss you every moment," said Petra.

"God help me, but I'll miss you too."

She knew what a painful, frightening thing that was for Bean. To allow himself to love someone so much that he would actually miss her, that was no small matter for him. And the two other women he had allowed himself to love with all his heart had been murdered.

"I won't let anybody hurt our baby," she said.

He thought for a moment, and then his face softened. "That baby is probably the best protection you could have."

She understood and smiled. "No, they won't kill me till they see what our baby turns out like," she said. "But that's no protection from being kidnapped and held until the child is born."

"As long as you and the baby are alive, I'll come and get you."

"That's the thing that frightens me," said Petra. "That we might be the bait they use to set a trap for you."

"We're looking too far ahead," said Bean. "They aren't going to catch us. You or me. And if they do, well, we'll deal with that."

They were packed. They both went over the room one more time to make sure they were leaving nothing behind, no sign they had ever been there. Then they left for Women's Hospital and the child who waited for them there, a bundle of genes wrapped in a few undifferentiated cells, eager to implant themselves in a womb, to start to draw nutrients from a mother's blood, to begin to divide and distinguish themselves into heart and bowel, hands and feet, eyes and ears, mouth and brain.

10

LEFT AND RIGHT

From: PW

To: TW, JPW

Re: Reconciliation of keyboard logs

You'll be happy to learn that we were able to sort out all the logs. We have tracked every computer entry by the person in question. All his entries dealt with official business and assignments he was carrying out for me. Nothing that was in any way improper was done.

Personally, I find this disturbing. Either he found a way to fool both our programs (not likely), or he is actually doing nothing but what he should (even less likely), or he is playing a very deep game about which we have no idea (extremely likely).

Let's talk tomorrow.

Theresa woke up when John Paul got out of bed to pee at four A.M. It worried her that he couldn't make it through the night anymore. He was still a little young to be having prostate problems.

But it wasn't her husband's slackening bladder capacity that kept her awake. It was the memo from Peter informing them that Achilles had done absolutely nothing but what he was supposed to do.

This was impossible. Nobody does exactly what they're supposed to and nothing else. Achilles should have had some friend, some ally, some contact whom he needed to notify that he was out of China and safe. He had a network of informants and agents, and as he showed when he hopped from Russia to India to China, he was always one step ahead of everybody. The Chinese finally wised up to his pattern and short-circuited it, but that didn't mean Achilles didn't have his next move planned. So why hadn't he done anything to set it in motion?

There were more possibilities than the ones Peter listed, of course. Maybe Achilles had a means of bypassing the electromagnetic shield that surrounded the Ribeirao Preto compound. Of course, he couldn't have brought such a device with him when he was rescued, or it would have shown up in the search that was conducted during his first bath in Ribeirao. So someone would have to have brought it to him. And Peter was convinced that no such device could exist. Maybe he was right.