The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [17]
“Guess who’s back?”
“I have no idea.”
“Guess . . .”
“I don’t know . . . that girl from Cairo?”
“Let me give you a hint: He was killed at the Daytona Speedway eight years ago.”
O’Shea stopped midstep in the middle of the street. Not in panic. Or surprise. He’d been at this too long to be fazed by bad intel. Better to confirm. “Where’d you get it?”
“Good source.”
“How good?”
“Good enough.”
“That’s not—”
“As good as we’re gonna get, okay?”
O’Shea knew that tone. “Where’d they spot him?”
“Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur.”
“We have an office there . . .”
“He’s already gone.”
No surprise, O’Shea thought. Boyle was too smart to linger. “Any idea why he’s out?”
“You tell me: It was the same night President Manning was there for a speech.”
A red Fiat honked its horn, trying to blast O’Shea out of the way. Offering an apologetic wave, O’Shea continued toward the curb. “You think Manning knew he was coming?”
“I don’t even wanna think about it. Y’know how many lives he’s risking?”
“I told you when we first tried to bring him in—the guy’s poison. We should’ve never tried to flip him all those years ago.” Watching the rush of Paris traffic, O’Shea let the silence sink in. Across the street, he watched the thin woman with the red bifocals dole out another basket of fries with aïoli. “Anyone else see him?” O’Shea finally asked.
“President’s aide apparently got a look—y’know . . . that kid with the face . . .”
“He have any idea who he was looking at?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
O’Shea stopped to think about it. “What about the thing in India next week?”
“India can wait.”
“So you want me on a plane?”
“Say good-bye to Paris, sweetheart. Time to come home.”
6
St. Elizabeths Mental Hospital
Washington, D.C.
Make it quick, Nico—no futzing around,” said the tall orderly with the sweet onion breath. He didn’t shove Nico inside or stay with him while he undid his pants. That was only for the first few months after Nico’s assassination attempt on the President—back when they were worried he’d kill himself. These days, Nico had earned the right to go to the bathroom alone. Just like he’d earned the right to use the telephone and to have the hospital stop censoring his mail. Each was its own victory, but as The Three had promised him, every victory brought its own cost.
For the telephone, the doctors asked him if he still had anger toward President Manning. For the mail, they asked him if he was still fixated on the crosses—the crucifix around his nurse’s neck, the one the overweight lady wore in the law firm commercial on TV, and most important, the hidden ones only he knew were there: the ones created by windowpanes and telephone poles . . . in intersecting sidewalk cracks, and the T-shaped slats of park benches, and in perpendicular blades of grass, and—when they stopped letting him go outside because the images were too overwhelming—in crisscrossing shoelaces and phone cords and wires and discarded socks . . . in the seams of the shiny tile floor and the closed doors of the refrigerator . . . in horizontal shades and their vertical pull cords, in banisters and their railings . . . and of course, in the white spaces between the columns of the newspaper, in the blank spaces between the push buttons of the telephone, and even in cubes, especially when the cube is unfolded to its two-dimensional version
which then allowed him to include dice, luggage, short egg cartons, and of course, the Rubik’s Cube that sat on the edge of Dr. Wilensky’s desk, right beside his perfectly square Lucite pencil cup. Nico knew the truth—symbols were always signs.
No more drawing crosses, no more carving crosses, no more doodling crosses on the rubber trim of his sneakers when he thought no one was looking, his doctors had told him. If he wanted full mail privileges, they needed to see progress.
It still took him six years. But today, he had what he wanted. Just like The Three promised. That was one of the few truths besides God. The Three kept their promises . . . even back when they first welcomed him in. He had