Discord's Apple

  There weren’t any aftershocks.

  Arthur said he’d rather being doing something, and Evie understood the urge. All she could do right now was write.

  She’d left Tracker totally in the air. The laptop battery was charged up. She’d write as long as she had the juice. So where was she?

  She shot him.

  She didn’t wait for him to draw first. She’d been watching his hands at the edges of her vision; she knew he was holding a gun. Before the words had left his mouth, she leveled and fired.

  Twice more she fired, and the Russian and Chinese officers lay on the floor, writhing on top of the American agent’s body. The whole sequence took only a couple of seconds, because she’d been planning it since she first heard their voices.

  The agent had studied her dossier, she assumed. Her dossier said that she never shot first.

  Three more times she fired, three shots to three heads, killing them.

  She leaned back against the wall and loaded a fresh magazine, waiting for guards to come barreling down the hallway at her. On the verge of hyperventilating, she swallowed back gasps. The room remained silent.

  This was probably exactly what the agent was talking about, when he said the Eagle Eyes were out of control. She searched the bodies, not believing for a minute that they’d have any hard record of their multinational negotiations and war-brokering. But the U.S. agent had a data stick in his breast pocket. She took it. What the hell.

  Apparently, they hadn’t brought any guards with them. No witnesses that way. A pickup was probably scheduled for them later. She wondered what the agent had expected he was going to do with the Eagle Eyes when they showed up. Was he arrogant enough to think he could have killed them all? He might have been able to—they expected him to be on their side.

  She found that the first room in the bunker was rigged to collapse, low-level explosives planted on key support beams. That was how he’d planned on getting rid of them.

  Back outside, staring at the expanse of tundra, the hopelessness of her situation hit her. She had no way to call for help. She had no place to go. Her own government had betrayed her. And her friends.

  She had to find them. She had to give Talon the flash drive. He’d know what to do. He was the only one she trusted now.

  She had to be out of sight when the pickup for the others came. She turned west and started walking.

  The trick to writing suspense was to fling the characters into increasingly impossible situations and then find plausible ways to get them out. And hope the situation you created wasn’t too impossible.

  She ate the last bit of rations—a smashed-up energy bar—she had stashed in her fatigues. Washed it down with a swig of vodka, which wasn’t the smartest thing she’d done all day, but it was all she had. If she found a snow patch, she’d melt as much of it as she could to rehydrate. She didn’t like the way her vision was blurring.

  The rhythmic, air-pounding whump of a low-flying helicopter sounded at the edges of her hearing. She reacted slowly. She wanted help; her hindbrain cried out that this was someone come to rescue her.

  Or it could be the pickup for the meeting. Her paranoia won, and she dodged for cover.

  Forests spotted the area, and she’d been heading for one of these. She ran now as the helicopter came into view to her left, a black spot growing larger and taking on form. She hesitated, looking for markings, until she realized that even if she saw an American flag on its tail, she couldn’t trust it. So she kept running, into the trees, past the trees, in case they’d seen her. Just reaching cover wouldn’t be enough.

  The ground dropped away and she screamed.

  She fell and kept falling. She hadn’t simply tripped and hit the ground. A ravine had opened in the middle of the forest, a sinkhole or fault or something that meant she was now hurtling twenty feet down to another part of the forest. She curled up and tried to go limp.

  Her leg caught under her, twisted wrong, and she knew what it meant. She heard the crack before she felt the pain. When she finally stopped, she lay there for a long time, flat on her back, staring up at the sky. As soon as she tried to move, she would hurt.

  But she had to move. She had to find Talon.

  When she sat up, pain squealed through her right leg. Tracker clamped her mouth shut and swallowed back nausea. She was dehydrated; she couldn’t afford to throw up. A few deep breaths. A self-indulgent moan. Time to keep working.

  Training had taught her, drilling into her over and over again what to do in a situation like this, how to survive, how to splint bones, how to keep warm. But training was nothing like reality. She couldn’t tie a splint tight enough. She couldn’t inflict that much pain on herself.

  She gave up trying to climb out of the ravine—it hurt too much even to stand. She could rest here until morning, then make her way along the bottom. She would still be traveling west.

  At least she hadn’t cried yet. Every muscle ached, from clenching against the pain.

  Night was falling. She was about to get even colder. She managed to find a sheltered place, where the wind howled above her, instead of at her.

  She was going to die alone in this place.

  The memory stick was intact in her vest pocket. One misstep, and all her work and training came to nothing.

  Captain Talon wouldn’t reprimand her. He wouldn’t even be angry. If she managed to get out of this and find him, he’d smile, tell her she did a good job, that she was a good soldier. His voice would be steady, kind. And all the more cruel because she didn’t deserve his kindness.

  One more time, because as long as she kept trying, she was moving and wouldn’t freeze, she hoisted herself to her feet.

  Hera, sitting in the passenger side of the front seat of the car, pulled off her sunglasses and considered Frank in the back. He stared straight ahead. Beside him, Robin was grinning, lounged back with his legs straight, seeming to enjoy himself.

  “Mr. Walker, so good to meet you,” Hera said.

  “What’s this about?” Not even pretending to be friendly. What was it about these Walkers?

  “I only wondered if I could persuade you to part with a little something in your Storeroom.”

  “You should have come to the house.”

  “I did. Your daughter wasn’t very helpful.”

  His look turned even colder, settling into the game of cloak and dagger he probably thought they were playing. The girl evidently hadn’t told him about her.

  “Then there’s nothing there for you,” Frank said.

  “I don’t care if you think I should have it or not. I’ll take it, one way or the other.” She turned to the Wanderer. “Take us to the cemetery.”

  They pulled onto the state highway. Two turns later brought them to an isolated part of the town, a windswept corner of dried-up yellow prairie. Weathered headstones and monuments lined up in rows. A few larger mausoleums stood guard around the far edge. The place was peaceful and unnoticed. They could be a family out to visit a dearly departed loved one, to lay a few flowers on a grave.

  The Wanderer turned the car around a miniature cul-de-sac, then pulled over on the straightaway and shut off the engine. No one moved. They had only to wait now, entertaining each other as best they could.

  The Wanderer looked at Frank in the rearview mirror. “You hide it pretty well, but you’re scared, aren’t you?”

  Frank glanced up, meeting his gaze in the mirror, revealing nothing. “I’m not scared of you.”

  “Not of me. Of dying. You’re terrified of dying.”

  “You can’t threaten me.”

  Hera watched the exchange with interest, smiling a little at the Wanderer’s insight, and at Frank’s show of bravado. She said, “But I can threaten your daughter. I have someone at the house now. Evie Walker will learn that we have you. She’s a very devoted daughter, isn’t she?”

  Frank settled back into the seat, glowering.

  It was only a matter of time before Evie Walker arrived, more t
han willing to hand over the apple in exchange for her father’s safe return.

  Her laptop battery had some life to it yet, and at some point, the wireless network had been restored. She had Web access again.

  She checked the major news sites for information about the earthquake and had trouble finding anything—the story rated only a sidebar blurb, far down on the list of headlines. Russia had suffered another wave of terrorist attacks: train lines, government buildings, shipyards. The Middle East had flared up again, with every separatist ethnic group taking a stand. India was massing its army, and Pakistan had responded in kind.

  The difference between American and foreign news Web sites was astonishing. The foreign sites showed graphic photos, featured angry interviews, and talked about the failure of the world powers to act. The U.S. sites mentioned only that an emergency meeting of the U.N. General Assembly was in session.

  She wrote.

  Some time later—a minute, an hour—Tracker heard another helicopter. Or the same one, circling in a search pattern. Using a broken tree limb as a crutch, she hobbled about ten feet from where she’d landed after her fall.

  She had decided that she would signal the next aircraft that came by. She needed help, and if it had to be from someone who was going to take her prisoner, so be it. Even U.S. agents sent to kill her would need her alive for a time, if they thought she could help them find the rest of her team. She couldn’t drag a broken leg across Siberia.

  Or maybe, just maybe, Talon and Sarge had found Jeeves and Matchlock and they were out looking for her.

  She tore a strip of cloth from her shirt, soaked it in vodka from the dead mercenary’s canteen, and stuffed the alcoholic cloth into the mouth of the canteen, leaving a tail hanging out. She had a lighter in her kit and lit the end of the cloth, let it flare into a good blaze, then heaved it over the edge of the ravine. She sighed with relief when it cleared the edge and didn’t come bouncing back at her.

  The vodka lit with a roar. Fire spilled out and caught on the surrounding trees. All in all, a nice little signal fire. She hobbled far enough away that she wouldn’t be engulfed by the blaze in the next few minutes.

  The thumping beat of the helicopter motor became louder as it approached to investigate. Tracker had only to wait to see who found her.

  It didn’t take long. Not as long as she would have liked. She wanted to scuttle to some high ground, some vantage where she could hide if she didn’t like the look of whoever found her. But in seconds, the tops of the trees were swaying with the wind of the descending helicopter. She couldn’t see it; it must have found a clearing nearby. The troops inside must have hit the ground before the craft had even landed, because she heard voices calling. What language . . . what language . . . she strained to understand.

  The first one came over the rise, circling around the flaming patch where her fireball had ignited. She was on her feet—her foot—leaning on a tree, waiting, dizzy, unable to catch her breath. Another figure followed the first. Both were dressed in olive fatigues, wore knit masks and sunglasses.

  She should have recognized them, she so wanted to recognize them.

  They saw her then, aimed their rifles at her, and shouted something. The words were muffled.

  When she saw the American flag on one uniform, she fainted.

  Someone knocked at the door just then, of course. Evie saved the file before racing to the kitchen, Mab loping at her heels. Maybe Johnny, realizing how sick Frank was, had finally brought him home. Though with the quake, the police probably needed all the help they could get from the Citizens’ Watch. Why did Dad always have to be helpful? Or maybe Arthur had come back to tell her that he’d seen her father and everything was fine. Of course everything was fine. What could happen? Besides earthquakes, goddesses, and the prophesied return of mythical monarchs.

  She opened the kitchen door, standing in the way to keep Mab from rushing out.

  Alex looked back at her. “Are you all right?” he said, gasping like he’d been running. “The earthquake—I ran over—I was worried.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say. His question seemed so odd—his concern seemed odd. Why was he worried about her? What did he want from her?

  “You’re Sinon,” she said.

  A smile broke, pleasantly softening his face. “I knew you’d figure it out. Can I come in?”

  She stayed fast in the doorway. Beside her, Mab wasn’t wagging her tail.

  “I don’t think I can trust you.”

  While Alex’s—Sinon’s—smile didn’t fade, it took on an edge, a different gleam to his eye. “Because I lied my way past the walls of Troy?”

  She flushed, a wave of dizziness burning along her skin. She hadn’t wanted to believe. How much easier it was to think he was just a clever, witty man.

  “You were terrorists. The Trojan Horse—it was the Bronze Age version of a car bomb—”

  “That’s only because you read Virgil’s side of it. We waged honest war for ten years. Then we became desperate. No one can blame us for what we did. We paid for our victory.”

  He seemed so calm. But then he’d had to deal with it for three thousand years. How could he not be calm? “You were a spy. What would you do to get into the Storeroom?”

  “Nothing,” he said gently. “I’ll stay away, if you want me to.”

  “Will you tell me something?”

  “Anything.” His earnestness made her nervous.

  “Are you working for Hera?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because I don’t know anything about you, because you were following me. You’re spying on the house, you know more about what’s happening here than I do, you could read the writing on the apple. You act like you know her—what are you doing here? Why aren’t you dead?” She ran out of breath before she could ask him what the Trojan War had been like.

  Standing there, slouched in his jacket, he didn’t look like a Greek warrior. She tried to imagine him in one of those crested helms from the pottery glazes.

  Then she blurted, “Was Helen really the most beautiful woman in the world?”

  He looked away, bit his lip, then said, “Yes. I saw her once, standing on the wall of Troy. It wasn’t just her looks, but the way she moved. Every turn of her head was grace itself. Nothing wasted. Remember, though, she was a demigoddess. Zeus’s daughter. Comparing apples and oranges, putting her up against mortal women.”

  Evie shook her head, amazed, awed, befuddled. She didn’t believe it, looking at him, his creased expression like he was getting ready to laugh at a joke at her expense. He seemed—normal. Pleasant. Not mythological at all, not like Hera, who’d shaken Evie to her bones.

  Yet that haunted voice that kept drawing her to the Storeroom murmured, He’s old, this one. Very old.

  She sighed. “All the things you’ve seen. All the things you must have forgotten—how can you stand it?”

  “I don’t have a choice. I—I have this vision, that a billion years from now the world ends, swallowed up at last by a bloated sun or crumbled to ash. And I’m still here. I live through it, floating in space with nothing to do and no place to go. The lone repository of human history, and a mediocre one at that. Maybe some god out there will have pity on me and take me in—but I think they’ve all gone away. I can’t blame them. But I don’t have their power, so I’m stuck here with whatever fate hands me.”

  “Have you thought about going insane?” It would seem like a reasonable thing to do, given his circumstances.

  “Did once. Got boring, so I snapped out of it.”

  She looked hard at him, wanting to be kind. “I can’t think of anything in the Storeroom that will help you. I’m sorry.”

  “Listen,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “Hera’s planning something. She’s a bitter old bitch. But I can get close to her, find out what she’s planning—”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you say the same thing to her?
”

  He closed his mouth on whatever obvious answer he’d been ready to give.

  Someone was walking up the driveway. Evie stared at the figure over Alex’s shoulder. He caught her gaze and turned to look.

  She wondered who it would be this time: Jack come to fetch some golden eggs, a Persian merchant searching for a rolled-up piece of flying carpet, a Viking unfrozen from the permafrost wanting Thor’s hammer. Her gut sank, and she waited for the instinct that would drag her unerringly to the basement.

  Mab pricked her ears forward and growled.

  The figure, a woman of average height, in early middle age, slim, and with thick black hair hanging loose down her back, walked up the driveway.

  “Shit,” Alex muttered, turning up the collar of his coat and slumping against the wall as if he were an unconcerned vagrant.

  The woman was cinnamon-skinned, with Latina features. Mab’s growling doubled in ferocity, lips pulled back from her teeth. The strange woman stared at her, made a motion with her hand—and Mab fell quiet, frozen in her place.

  “Evie Walker?” she said.

  Evie nodded.

  “I’ve come to deliver a message. Hera has your father. She’ll trade him for the apple. Will you trade?”

  Evie’s muscles flinched in panic. Yes, yes! The words were on her tongue, but she couldn’t say them. Instead, she said weakly, “Gave up trying to bust in?”

  The woman’s expression was cold and superior. “She found a better way. What’s your answer?”

  “I—I need—” Yes, anything, don’t hurt him! “I need to think about it.”

  “Come to the cemetery this afternoon. Bring the apple. Come alone.” She bestowed a fleeting glance at Alex as she turned to walk down the driveway.

  Mab collapsed with a heartbreaking whine; Evie knelt beside her and helped her to her feet. The dog didn’t seem hurt physically. But her eyes showed fear, and her tail was locked between her legs. Evie hugged her close.

  Evie’s voice cracked when she said, “Who was that?”

  “She’s working for Hera.”

  “What will Hera do to my father?”