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was safe to open fire as soon as those three men came running out . . . Their information had been that
Ax was in imminent danger of execution. The doctor
who dressed his sores (and ripped-up fingertips), a black bloke with humorous
eyes, appraised Ax s bearded face and said, ?You don t look much like him.
?Who?
?Axl Rose. I m into classic hard rock.
?Sorry. Not a single tattoo. How many of them did you get?
?We killed three here. We ll get the others, don t worry.
He was in the back of the APC, dressed in camouflage fatigues, sipping a cup
of US armed services bouillion, when the girl who had believed in him arrived,
She d been kept back, out of the firing line. He d known itcouldn t be Fiorinda,
unless she d forgotten everything she ever knew about playing guitar. But he d
hoped. One look at Lurch s face, and he knew the news was not good.
?Hi. She was holding the Les Paul, in its case. ?I ve, um, been carrying this
around since you ve been gone. She gave it to him, took out a pack of cigarettes
and gave him those too. ?I m so glad.
?So am I, said Ax. ?Thank you, Kathryn. I owe you, mightily. Tell me about
Fiorinda. What s been happening in England? I ll need to talk to David Sale 
?No . . . The Ugly American wet her lips. ?David Sale s dead.
?David is dead? David Sale is dead? he repeated, stunned.
?Ax, there s no easy way to tell you . . . It s a different world. Things have changed so much. I don t
know where to start.
8: The Night Belongs To Fiorinda
Fiorinda put the bi-loc phone back in its hiding place in that never-furnished
spare room; which had been partially colonised by Sage s stuff, but remained a
complete dump. Sage. Ghosts of him . . . She was hiding the phone from herself
as much as anything. If she had it in sight she d be calling Ax every five minutes,
and she mustn t do that. In the kitchen Elsie was playing don t-step-on-the-floor,
mad-eyed little cat perched on the fridge, psyching herself up for the suicidal,
really insane bit where she leaps for the hood over the cooking hob. Claw marks
scoured in plastic showed the frantic record of failure.
?Don t do it, said Fiorinda. ?Life is still worth living. She sat at the kitchen
table, in afternoon sunlight, pressing her hands over her eyes to hold the
memory of that cool grey morning, thousands of miles away.
The day Sage had left, as soon as it was too late, everything had become clear
to her. Her father had been screwing around with her, trying to break up the
Triumvirate, and Fiorinda, FOOL, IDIOT, had played into the bastard s hands.
One of those drowning moments when your blood turns to ice-water.
If she had only told Ax and Sage . . . If she had told them what? What could
they have done? A terrified little voice deep inside said there was no defenad. Felipe and Simon
screaming at each other, having fled back inside the
block. More firing, thunder of booted feet, shouting in New World Spanish and
American English. Men and women in uniform filled the doorway of the dirty
room. ?My God, said the man first through the door. ?My God, this incredible.
You were given up for dead, Mr Preston, months ago. This is unbelievable!
?I m glad somebody believed, said Ax.
They freed him from the cuffs. They helped him upright and wrapped him in
a blanket (Ax thought of Massacre Night; of the clearing at Spitall s Farm), and
took him outside. There were an amazing number of soldiers milling around,
American and Mexican. The officer in charge said they d found the ghost town
house a week ago, and come up with the guitar ploy to signal that help was near.
They d been monitoring the warm body count in the house, so they d known it
was safe to open fire as soon as those three men came running out . . . Their information had been that
Ax was in imminent danger of execution. The doctor
who dressed his sores (and ripped-up fingertips), a black bloke with humorous
eyes, appraised Ax s bearded face and said, ?You don t look much like him.
?Who?
?Axl Rose. I m into classic hard rock.
?Sorry. Not a single tattoo. How many of them did you get?
?We killed three here. We ll get the others, don t worry.
He was in the back of the APC, dressed in camouflage fatigues, sipping a cup
of US armed services bouillion, when the girl who had believed in him arrived,
She d been kept back, out of the firing line. He d known itcouldn t be Fiorinda,
unless she d forgotten everything she ever knew about playing guitar. But he d [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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