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Frat's eyes went wide and white. "Wha-I don't understand."
"I had that big satchel you carried, the one like mine, tested. There was some spilled preservative in there and a hell of a lot of ravies virus in the preservative fluid. What did you do? Put it in the water supply of the towns we visited?"
"We're going to have to handle this ourselves," Lambert said. "If it gets out in Kentucky that we were the vector that spread the disease . . ."
"I'll do it," Valentine said, speaking quickly as his voice fought not to break, go hoarse, choke off the words. "I brought him into Southern Command. I'll take him out."
He shoved Frat to his knees and pulled the old .45 out of its holster. A gift from another man he'd brought over from the Quislings.
Or did he hate Frat for playing the same trick he'd so often played: infiltrating, striking from within? Being better at the deadly game?
What kind of hold did Kur have on Frat's mind? They found a bright young boy, trained him, and then sent him out among decent people like the Carlsons-probably to learn more about the underground in the Kurian Zone, the mysterious lodges Valentine had heard mentioned now and again. Surely Frat was bright enough to see that life in the Freehold was better than that in the Kurian Zone. What did they promise, life eternal? Did fourteen-year-old boys even consider questions of mortality?
"It's an ugly truth, Frat. Shit rolls downhill. It's hard to stand in front of a superior and say, We threw the dice on this one-and lost. Someone must be to blame. You made the blame list."
Did Frat, miserable and shaking, know how like brothers they were? An accident of birth put Valentine in the woods of the Boundary Waters, Frat in some Chicago brownfield. If Valentine had been raised up in the Kurian Zone, would he have answered the bugle call of the Youth Vanguard, done his damnedest on the physical and mental tests?
Valentine stepped behind him. His .45 had never felt so heavy.
"I want my second chance," Frat said.
"What?" Lambert said. Valentine froze.
"You heard me," Frat said. "I'll put up my right hand and take the oath. Put in my years, just like the rest. Wash all this shit away."
"He's helped kill thousands in the clans," Duvalier said. "Whole families wiped out. You can't just let him walk away from that like a wet Baptist."
Valentine wondered. A highly trained ex-Kurian agent could be a valuable asset. Had Southern Command ever taken one alive? If they had, he wouldn't know about it.
But the virus Frat spread had killed thousands. Even though it had backfired on the Kurians, there were men, women, and children all over Kentucky who'd died in the madness, from the disease itself or the stress brought on by the change, or in the fighting.
"Let him live and you'll lose half of Kentucky."
Frat raised his right hand. "I freely and of my own resolve . . ."
Valentine had to make a decision. Is an ideal-a collection of words that makes everyone feel cleaner, purer-worth anything if you can just discard it at will? He'd promised every Quisling who came over a new future if they sweated and suffered and risked for the Cause.
Suppose Frat meant it and was ready to put his obvious talents to work for the new Freehold coalescing in Kentucky?
Valentine had squeezed his conscience through the keyhole of a technicality before. He pressed the pistol to the back of Frat's head, but the man who'd helped him rescue Molly Carlson went on speaking with only the briefest of pauses.
He couldn't do it. Cowardice or compassion?
He pulled back the gun.
"If you're going to take that oath, take it on your feet, Frat."
"Don't be a fool, Valentine," Lambert said.
"You want to shoot him?" Valentine asked. "Go ahead. It's not so easy to do."
"She's right, Val," Duvalier said. "Quisling snot'll turn on us first chance he gets. You can't change him no more than you can train a scorpion to quit killing beetles."
"Maybe," Valentine said. "But I'm also an officer. That little hearing we had may have returned a verdict, but it wasn't sent to headquarters for confirmation. I'm ready to suspend the execution on that technicality, barring an emergency that requires me to carry out the sentence.
"We're both hung men, Frat. We'd have nooses around our necks in civilized lands. But we're still kicking."
Frat looked off at the eastern horizon. "I'm not afraid of that gun. It's those motherfuckers who need to be afraid. They said they'd protect me."
