The Sisters Page 29

Appleyard fitted the silencer onto his pistol and bracing his arm with his other hand, aimed at the window. He caught a flicker of light-Ourcq would be igniting the fuse now, he knew. In a moment he would maybe arc the grenade up through the second-floor window. It would explode with a great whooshing sound, sucking up all the oxygen in a split second, suffocating every living thing in the room. The air would be sucked maybe out of their lungs even.

  If ever there was an appropriate moment, this was maybe it. Filling his own lungs, drawing his lips back against his teeth, Appleyard began to imitate the sound of the sun setting.

  In a car parked down the road, G. Sprowls heard a noise he couldn't identify, and then one he could-glass breaking, followed by a great sucking sound, as if all the air in the universe were being consumed. G.

  Sprowls frowned. He was not happy to be working with Russians, but it was unavoidable. The Director's instructions had been explicit. People in high places had communicated with each other; had decided that each side had too much on the other; that if they continued to play the game, there would only be losers. The only thing left to do was acknowledge the standoff and assign trusted people on both sides to tie up the loose ends. The suspect in police custody had been shot that morning by a local bar owner. All traces of a second shooter on a grassy knoll had been removed. The world would be invited to accept as fact that there had been one shooter, a demented loner acting on his own initiative. G.

  Sprowls had been given the phone number of the Canadians. Together they had just taken care of the other loose ends.

  The idea flashed through G. Sprowls's head that someone might one day consider him a loose end. But he dismissed it as preposterous.

  The Canadians were coming down the unpaved road toward the car now. The heavyset one was limping painfully along on two crutches, cursing with each step. The other one trailed after him, imitating the sound (so he claimed) of a noiseless patient spider spinning its web.

  Ourcq thought he had finally tripped up Appleyard. "How come I can hear it if the fucking spider is fucking noiseless?"

  "Concentration," Appleyard, unfazed, suggested, "is what it's a question of. You have got to listen with both ears so you can maybe hear what's there to be heard." And he repeated the sound that he said was produced by a noiseless patient spider.