Pa'an

Saxton Horsnby’s driver dropped him off right at the mall’s main entrance. The nice thing about being a Senator from a minor state was not having any Secret Service security people on your tail, he thought. Probably slim compensation for his infamous lack of political ambition. He hustled through the mall and spotted the tall, blond man in a tailored topcoat lounging near Jay Jewelers. The man turned. Yes, it looked like the fellow on the airplane. Good thing he had a politician’s memory for names and faces.

Jag grabbed him by the elbow and shook his hand. That was a more effusive greeting than Sax expected. “Senator, sorry, Sax, I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am to see you, and I apologize for the short notice.”

“Well, you got me going there. You’re lucky I remembered that necklace thing.”

“There‘s a coffee shop here. Let’s go where we can talk.”

There was an empty booth in the back of the coffee shop. Sax strode in and waved at the barista, “Coffee, black.” He raised a questioning eyebrow at Jag who nodded. “Make it two coffees, black.”

Jag decided to dump it all on him. “Sax, that man in the story about the radium rosary… I didn’t know it at the time, but that man was my father.”

“Your father. Really, your father?”

Jag waited for him to absorb it all.

“You mean you never knew your father? Were you orphaned in a war or something?”

“I was taken from my natural parents and raised by foster parents.”

“So, if you never knew your real father, how can you know anything about this radium rosary affair?

Jag leaned over the table and realized he probably looked angry and aggressive. He took a few deep breaths and tried again. “I know who murdered him. Or rather, I know who ordered the murder.”

Sax was busily putting two and two together and getting something more than four. That murder was the trail to the owners of the virtually all the world’s loose fissionables. This was no trivial thing. In fact, not only was it directly in his line of responsibility as a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but it was the answer to a long line of questions about the shadowy organization behind it, the stonewalling, the…

It was not something one discussed casually in a coffee shop.

“Jag, if I get the drift of what you are about to tell me, we had better get over to my office. This is not the kind of thing we want to talk about in a coffee shop.”

“Sorry, but I’m probably under surveillance and you may not know who in your office is reliable. I don’t know a better place to discuss this.”

“Well, let’s not make it easy for them.” He took a few gulps of coffee and pulled a ten dollar bill from his pocket. “Let’s walk.”

Jag started his story. “I was raised according to a plan to make me useful to a group of very ambitious and powerful people. I was trained almost from birth. Even now, I only know a few of the members, and I know little or nothing about the rest of the Order and its goals. I don’t even know the name of the man who hands me my assignments. I call him Mentor.” Jag gritted his teeth at the mention of the name. “I was told to take over Ultradata, throw out the management, take over the patents for the Exaplex memory module, and get rid of the resident AI.” They were taking a devious path through the mall, going outside then coming back in through another door. No one was following.

“Can you identify this “Mentor”? Maybe help us collar him?”

“Yes, but it’s the wrong thing to do. There’ll be another after him, and nothing important will change.”

“Is there a top person, a chief honcho?”

“I don’t think so. It’s a committee, and the members are probably under diplomatic, or even sovereign immunity.”

“That high?”

“That high.”

They walked for a while.

“Jag, I understand about your father, but you never knew him. What do you want out of this? Just revenge?”

“I don’t quite know. Sure, I’m damned angry. But there is something more than just revenge. I don’t want to see people like that pushing the world around. It just isn’t right.”

“Hmm. I see people pushing things around all the time. That’s what we do up on the Hill, you know. Does it really matter which group does the pushing?”

They walked on while Jag thought about that. It was an important question, the kind of question Mentor would sometimes throw at him to keep him off-guard.

“Verdammt. It matters. It matters. Even if you live in a garbage pail, you should still try to get rid of the really putrid items. Hell is a shithole where no improvement is possible.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to be one of the demons in Hell. Not any more.”

Sax and Jag looked each other in the eye. Each saw what he needed to see. No more words were needed.

They parted and went their separate ways.

At the airport security gate Jag rediscovered the treasure in his pocket and wondered who he would give it to.