Burn(14)

Dernovich had considered it all a wild goose chase, even with the word “assassin” showing up now and then. Until Chase and Godwin—who were cold-interviewing members of the non-Waste Cells willing to talk to them (a perishingly small number)—had clearly found something they acted upon without telling the bureau. Dernovich thought they were probably hoping to get in good with the new boss by making an arrest, but had instead turned up melted with their car this morning. Now he had to face the extraordinarily unpleasant possibility that the Believers not only did have a serious plan but seemingly the wherewithal to commence it with gusto. It was enough to make him lose his appetite.

“You’re Canadian, then?” he asked Agent Woolf, setting down his fork.

“Montana,” she said. “There are some isolated chapters in the wooded north of our own country, Agent, not just here.”

“How long?”

“Until I was nearly thirty.”

Dernovich wouldn’t have guessed she was much older than thirty now. He was on the verge of asking when she answered. “Thirty-four,” she said. “But I was on my way out of it for many years before then.”

“The journey out isn’t years long,” he said. “You just leave.”

“Spoken like someone with opinions on the subject but no actual experience.”

His face got hot. “Not the way you want to be speaking to a senior agent, Woolf.”

She shrugged, as if it were nothing. “I was merely being factual. That’s our job, isn’t it?”

“Our job is to ascertain if there is an assassin—”

“There is. We know the runes they’re reading from.”

“Find him—”

“Or her. It’s likely to be—”

“And stop him.”

She finally seemed a little piqued. “Shall we just arrest every Believer we see? Like this boy?”

“Of course not,” Dernovich said, so firmly that it shut off all the ambiguity he’d felt when he’d first seen the boy. And “boy” was right. He couldn’t be more than seventeen, disappearing into the trees that lined the river, probably to smoke, or whatever Believer teens did to rebel. Not a chance he was the one they were looking for, and they needed to find that person, as soon as possible. It had all suddenly gotten very serious.

Obscured as it was by the shock of finding out Woolf had once been a Believer, Agent Dernovich would only remember this mistake when it was far too late.

Malcolm walked along the riverbank. He had not had to kill anyone, which, despite all he’d been taught, was a relief that nearly made him dizzy again. All in all, a success.

“Thank you,” he remembered to whisper as he walked.

His ear felt better, too, and the day, though still bitterly cold, was shaping up to remain clear. He had no doubts. His fears had lessened. The FBI agents who were hunting him, had they but known, had he but known, were receding behind him.

The border would only grow closer.

So would his target.

And when Malcolm—or whatever he was calling himself by that point—crossed the border, walked a further two hundred miles and found that target.

Well, then. What a day that would be.

He picked up his step and moved on.





Five


SARAH LOOKED UP Kazimir’s name in the decaying encyclopedias in her school library. “Someone famous for his prowess in battle,” the book said, confirming Kazimir’s own explanation, but it also meant “destroyer of peace” as well as, in that way that language was so often unhelpful, “bringer of peace.”

“How did he know your name, though?” Jason asked as she put the J–K volume back on the dusty, dusty shelf.

“Maybe he heard my dad say it?” They both knew how unlikely this was, given how careful Gareth Dewhurst was around a dragon. Around anyone.

“They’re inscrutable. Always have been.”

“And you’re a vocabularian,” she said back. “Always have been.”

“It’s a really ace name,” Jason continued. “I’d probably get picked on less if I was named Kazimir.”

“You don’t really think that.”

“I don’t, no.”

In truth, neither of them was so much picked on at school as effectively invisible. Even Kelby’s anti-Japanese feelings now felt out of date, what with all the newspaper headlines screaming about the Soviets.

“Did you see today’s?” asked Miss Archer, coming over to them. She was their kind, young librarian who preferred the word “bachelorette” over “spinster.”

“Are they going to nuke us into oblivion?” Jason asked, as he gathered his things to go. He had his part-time job tonight, Sarah knew, at Al’s, Frome’s one and only diner, run by Albert, whose real name was Noriyuki, but Sarah only knew that because Jason had told her.

“They wouldn’t,” Sarah said, meaning the Soviets, though who knew, really? She scanned the paper. It was full of photographs of the USSR testing new launch equipment, deep inside the boundaries of that mysterious, closed country. The Soviets still had the U.S. spy they’d caught, maybe he was even the one who took these pictures.

“They’ve got something planned,” Miss Archer said. “Most likely the space race. Everyone wants to be the first ones in orbit or on the moon.”