Any of them could have worked a late night, providing opportunity. Access logs could show who had been in the lab when. But he didn’t have access to those logs or videos. Only Internal Affairs did, and he certainly didn’t want them digging.

Motive, then. What was the motive for the inside man? Hatred of the President? Money? Blackmail?

He played it out in his head at the end of the day, as he walked to his car in the dark but now heavily secured parking garage. Which of those twenty-two were ideologues? Who needed money? Who’d bought a flashy car recently, moved into a bigger house?

Holtzmann frowned as he opened his car and placed his cane and bag in the passenger seat. He kept pondering his list of suspects as the car cleared the security perimeter and turned onto the freeway on autodrive. And so he didn’t see the ripple of distortion in his rear-view mirror. Didn’t hear a rustle of cloth as the man who’d been hidden in the back of the car came up to a seated position, a barely visible blur against the faux-leather seats and the retreating highway lights behind them.

“Martin.”

Holtzmann jumped in shock. The voice was distorted, mechanical. His heart slammed into his throat. He scrambled for the handle to the door, then heard the chunk as the car locked itself.

Stupid man. If they’d come for him, he was dead already. Nothing he could do.

“Relax, Martin,” said the deep, anonymized voice again.

Holtzmann looked into the mirror to see the face of his killer. The figure in the back seat was just a shadow, a barely perceptible distortion. A man in a high-tech chameleonware suit, then. A professional.

Holtzmann swallowed hard, wishing he’d told Anne the truth, that he’d trusted her.

Then the figure behind him raised a hand, and Holtzmann closed his eyes to wait for the killing blow.

Chapter 16: Only Forward

16

ONLY FORWARD

Friday October 19th

Feng pulled Kade along behind him to the jeep, then climbed into the driver’s seat. Monks followed them with canisters of fuel and liters of water. Even in the midst of shock and sorrow, they did what needed doing. Like soldiers.

Feng leaned out of the jeep to place a hand on the shoulder of a monk.

“Thank you.” He put his respect into it, beamed it out of his mind to theirs, one soldier to another. They bowed. Then Feng put the pedal down, and he and Kade were off.

The first priority was to be gone. Feng pushed the jeep hard and fast down the dirt road. Brilliant green trees and brush raced past them, contrasting with the red earth of the bare ground they drove on. This was the bottleneck, the one road up or down from Ayun Pa.