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Page 27.

He interrupted her. He agreed, and had heard it before. Health care was communism and evil socialism, we can't afford it, every man for himself, Jesus loves capitalism, we are all fucked and stupid. "So, Hannah, you were smart enough not to let Fincoff have the package."

"I was. Give me credit for at least that much. I hid it under the bed here in Fincoff's apartment. My plan was to play him and play them, because somehow I smelled a rat. I never did really trust Fincoff, even though Mélusine gave me his name. He didn't have it on him. He was obviously all bullshit. So they tried to beat it out of him, and when that didn't work, they killed him."

"And I was lying there at the other end of the alley, puking."

"You and me both, partner."

"You could have left me there."

She gave him a fair and square look. "Not my style. I got you into it, and I figured it was my duty to help you get out of there."

"Thanks," he said ironically, meaning both thanks for saving him, and no thanks for creating the situation in the first place.

"I needed a friend," she said. "I knew you were American."

"From California," he added.

"No way."

"Way."

"Where?"

"Santa Barbara area."

"Up the coast a ways. How cool."

"Neither of us has a friend in the world right now except each other."

She regarded him hungrily. "I'd give anything if you'd be my buddy."

He stared at her, wanted to gush out that he already loved her as a friend. He thought about the dead men standing all around him, especially Charley, and said nothing. He couldn't speak.

"You poor guy," she said. They had stopped eating and sat staring at each other. "You're wondering if you'll ever have another friend in the world."

He nodded. "I want—so much—" he started to say, and then nothing more came out.

She sighed deeply and bit into her ham and cheese bread. "Eat, Rick. We are going to be lucky to have each other."

He started to eat again, savoring the fresh food, and being alive. "I suppose you'll want to go home."

She nodded. "I want to go back to the States. Someplace where Wan will not be able to find me. Those huge internationals, they are all in it together, even when they are fighting each other tooth and nail for profit share. I'll have to go down deep somewhere, maybe even in Canada, change my name. And you?"

He did not have to think long. He'd never stopped thinking about it. "I ran away, and there are warrants out for my arrest as a deserter. NATO, the EU, the U.S., you name it. Everyone is looking for me. I just bought myself a little time to be free before they catch me."

"You stopped taking your medicine."

"Yeah. Well, maybe it was a way of committing slow suicide. I was half whacked out most of the time, talking to myself, seeing little men—seeing ghosts, like my buddy Charley, who died out there on that road in Fuckmestan. But I could still enjoy how it feels to walk in the rain, to feel fresh air that's scented with trees and grass. Even little things like the smell of wet asphalt."

She nodded. "That's all part of how it feels to be alive. You don't want to leave before your time is really up. Do you?"

He shook his head. "Honestly, no. And I wish I could go home to the World with you. But I'll never make it. They will catch me, and ship me back to Mannheim for my trial. Then I'll face years at hard labor. Yeah, I'll see the USA again—in plain, ragged old prison fatigues at Fort Leavenworth. When I was in basic, we used to call them ghosts—the old men who were doing life for some reason in the Army system. If they weren't doing hard labor anymore, they'd be on light duty, like policing spent brass on firing ranges. They wore fatigues, but no insignia. They weren't allowed to salute or be saluted. They couldn't talk to anyone. They didn't have much to say to each other. I think most of them smoked cigarettes all day, hoping to get sick and die to escape their life."

Hannah shook her head. "Geez, Rick, get over it. You'll never end up like that."

He felt sick inside. More than anything, he wanted to stay with her, forever maybe. And he knew it could never happen. There was one hope—a JAG officer named Kendra Walsh. As the medicine coursed through his blood stream, he felt his thoughts getting less depressed, less jumbled. He could see her before him—African American, attractive, with a ball of black glistening hair, dangling silver earring loops, and sympathetic plum-colored eyes. Her skin was milk chocolate; she had a wide, pretty nose, and full pink lips. He smiled at the memory of her—the one person who had shown an interest in him, who might have trusted him after all that went down. When Kendra Walsh smiled, her teeth showed, and she had the most infectious, wry way of smiling that made you want to laugh with her. Her boss was a big old Infantry colonel, 85% cacao, and gnarly as shoe leather, with whom Rick had locked eyes once.

He told Hannah about Kendra—Major Walsh, Staff Judge Advocate's Office. "The worst part of it is that I feel guilty about her too, like everything else. Like why drag her into this mess I'm in? She can't save me from the people who want to flush me down the toilet."

"You are too hard on yourself," Hannah said. "Finish your sandwich. We need to get going."

"Going?"

"Yeah," Hannah said. "Didn't I mention it? We are going to leave for Luxembourg as soon as we finish eating. I want to make sure Mélusine gets the package. There is a Professor Hilaire Sander who teaches political science at the Uni Lux. He is going to make sure the package reaches the right people in PAX this time—not a sleazy middleman and opportunistic bottom-feeder like Fincoff."

At that moment, there was a knock on the door.

Hannah and Rick stopped chewing and looked at each other, wide-eyed.

Hannah gripped Rick' wrist in terror while she stared toward the door.

The knocking grew more persistent, so much that the door rattled.

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