A police car, siren screaming, tore past.

Plath said, “We need to switch cars. Google ‘how to hot-wire a car.’”

“You’re serious?” Keats demanded. But he Googled it. “I’ve got a YouTube.”

Plath pulled over suddenly and killed the lights. They watched the YouTube. But first they sat through an ad for a new Avengers movie.”

“Looks good,” Keats said.

“Boy movie,” Plath said. “But save your pennies. I’ll get the tools from the trunk.”

“Trunk?” Keats asked.

“The boot,” Burnofsky explained helpfully.

“We’ll need an older car,” Keats said. He scanned down the street. They were in a residential neighborhood. Through the gap between two houses he could see a slice of the Capitol Building, a bright ivory dome.

Plath returned with the tools. “No wire cutter but there was a Swiss Army knife. How about that old Toyota over there?”

It was not as easy as it had been on the YouTube video. But neither was it terribly hard. Ten minutes later, they were in the Toyota, and Burnofsky’s wrists were bound in electrical tape.

The phone chimed. Keats read the message. It was not from Nijinsky.

Pick up “Billy” at 18th and Q NW. Then to Stone Church. Beneath altar.

Keats gave Plath the address. “We’re picking someone up. Then, there’s a church.”

“I wonder who this Billy is.” Plath said. “The survivor?”

“I’m going to guess another sociopathic gamer who will soon be turned into a raving schizophrenic ex-gamer,” Burnofsky snarked. “Like Vincent.”

They found the corner. It was a quiet space with three apartment buildings and a couple of well-lit embassies across the road. There was no one waiting but a mixed-race kid carrying a torn black plastic garbage bag.

“Kind of young to be a homeless person,” Plath observed. She rolled down her window. “Kid. What’s your name?”

The boy was wary. He looked up and down the street. “Who you looking for?”

“Our friend sent us to pick someone up. The friend’s name is Lear.”

That was good enough for the boy. “I’m Billy. Billy the Kid.”

“Of course you are,” Burnofsky said drily.

The boy started to get into the backseat, realized it was crowded, and took the front seat instead.

“I’m Plath. That’s Keats. This is someone from the other side. A prisoner.”

Billy turned to look, and Plath took the opportunity to check out the boy in the hard greenish glow of a streetlight. He was a cute kid, she decided. And by kid she meant he was, what, three years younger than her?

She decided immediately not to do that. Not to treat him like a child.

“What’s in the bag?” Plath asked.

“Laptops and phones. And guns.”

“Laptops and phones and guns, oh my!” Burnofsky parodied.

“I grabbed it all after we got shot up,” Billy said.

“Shot up?” Keats asked, as Plath turned a hard left.

“They pretended to be cops and came in. Bang bang bang.”

Plath saw Keats’s eyes in the mirror. She asked the question on both their minds. “How did you get out alive? And have time to grab laptops?”

Billy shrugged. “Everyone was dead by then. Except the one guy I let go.”

“You let one go?” Plath could not help but be intrigued.

“It was over by then,” the kid explained. “He surrendered. Plus he pooped himself, so it didn’t seem cool to shoot him.”

“Jesus,” Burnofsky said, disgusted, but at the boy, not at the disgraced man.

“There’s the place,” Plath said, leaning down to see out of the windshield. “We’ll get out. Then I’ll go ditch the car and come back. Do you have a gun on you now, Billy?”

“Yeah.” He drew it out from under his sweatshirt. It looked absurdly large.

“If Mr Burnofsky here tries to run away will you shoot him?” “If you want me to,” Billy said.

There as an awkward and overly long pause. Finally Keats said, “Yes, that’s what we would like. If he runs or cries out, shoot him.”

“The good guys and their child soldiers,” Burnofsky said.

Not far away Helen Falkenhym Morales was writing the eulogy for her husband.

She had speechwriters, but it seemed wrong to ask one of them to write a eulogy for her husband. The whole country would be watching and weeping when she read this speech.

And so far she had written the words,

I loved him. I don’t know why he had to die.

She was using a laptop, a highly secure laptop, of course— no one

hacks the president’s laptop. So she could write here, in the privacy of her office—not the Oval, that was the official office—she could write the truth or at least what she knew of the truth.

I don’t know . . .

Something happened . . .

Bad things happen . . .

Sometimes . . .

It was like bad haiku.

She swallowed Cognac. How had she ever disliked the stuff? Why did she like it so much now?

There was a bill in Congress to …something important. Very important.

Wasn’t it?

And one of the justices of the Supreme Court had been caught on tape making calls to a porn site. And that would blow up in the press.

The Iranians were. . .

The Euro . . .