“You don’t know Luther St. Vincent.” Hemingway rose, crossed to the bar, and returned with a dirty martini for her, a bourbon and water for himself. When he had taken a first sip, watching her do the same, a tiny smile plucked at the corners of his lips. “So St. Vincent is finally moving against Whitman. I do believe that he’s made a fatal mistake. Perhaps all I have to do now is to sit back and watch events unfold. This is good, Julie. Very good.” It was then he noticed her expression. “What? Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

“I think it’s the other way around.”

His eyes narrowed. “What d’you mean?”

She thought of Sydny, and of what Whit had taught her. Drawing herself up, she said, “I think you’ve lied to me from the beginning of this assignment.”

Under the guise of taking another hit of bourbon, Hemingway studied her. “You’re different,” he said now. “Something’s changed in you.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No, it’s an observation. A mighty surprising one, I might add.” He sat his glass down, rolled it back and forth between fingers and thumb.

“You won’t answer me, will you?”

“Not at your pay grade.” That scrutiny started up again. “You see, this is what I mean about how you’ve changed.”

“My eyes have been opened.”

“By whom?” Hemingway moved his drink out of the way, laced his fingers as he leaned forward. “Who opened your eyes, as you call it?”

Julie’s smile was as enigmatic as the sphinx. “There isn’t a pay grade in the world high enough for me to tell you.”

*   *   *

Whitman and Charlie lurched sideways, ducking their heads, then sprawling belly first onto the ground. They rolled away from the splintering rotors, and kept rolling to steer clear of the bulging fuselage that was being ripped asunder.

They fetched up against a boulder whose nearside had been split down a seam by the titanic explosion. What was left of the gunship was virtually unrecognizable, as was the ground behind it, furrowed as if by a colossal knife.

No one left alive, Charlie thought. The twin onslaughts of life and death had met head on, annihilating each other. There are no words to describe this, Charlie thought, and if there were I wouldn’t want to know them. Years from now, if they made it out of this hellhole alive, she would be reliving the destruction over and over, trying vainly to figure out how she could have saved lives instead of taking them. Life wasn’t fair, she knew that, of course she did, but the extent of its indifference was a cruelty beyond comprehension.