“A genetic propensity. It blinded my father,” Noel lied glibly.
“Wow, sucks,” Weathers repeated.
“Monsieur Pelletier, I would like to introduce our dear Tom, and his lovely lady Sun Hei-lian.”
“So pleased to meet you.” They shook hands, and Tom played boy games with an overly strong handshake. Noel kept his deliberately weak, quickly pulled his hand away, and gave it a surreptitious shake . . . though not too surreptitious. Weathers noticed, grinned, and dismissed him as a weakling, and therefore not worthy of attention. Noel turned his attention to Sun, and gave her one of Monsieur Pelletier’s flourishing greetings. She didn’t respond to it half as well as Alicia.
Noel decided that engaging in small talk with Tom Weathers and a Chinese agent known for her brains and deadly abilities didn’t make a lot of sense. “My champagne is empty,” he said. “I’ll leave you all to talk.”
And he hurried away down the stairs, only to stop halfway down. He kept walking in place as he tried to overhear.
A shadow fell across the hatch. Someone was coming.
It was too late to move farther down the stairs. Noel set aside his glass, and bent quickly to tie his shoe. He always wore wing tips for just this reason. Retying a shoe was always an excuse for loitering.
Sun appeared at the top of the steps and stared down at him. Noel straightened, recovered his glass, smiled, nodded at her, and continued his descent.
Manhattan, New York
They were all quiet on the way back to the apartment.
They came out from the subway at Fourteenth Street, the closest stop to Michelle’s apartment. The first snow of winter was falling in thick, wet, white flakes. Most of the people exiting the subway turned up their collars against the cold, hunching down in their coats.
“Snow,” Joey said in an awed voice Michelle had never heard before. She held out her hand and stared at the flakes hitting her palm. “Cool. I’ve never seen snow before.” Her face was full of wonder.
Michelle just wanted to get inside and figure out what to do next. But Juliet took her hand and that made her stop walking.
And so Michelle and Joey and Juliet stood on the sidewalk and let the snow fall on them until they were damp and cold.
Tuesday,
December 8
On the Lukuga River, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The bodies in the river were becoming more numerous; they’d passed three of them in just the last hour, and one of the floating corpses was that of a child. Wally had stared at the bloated form, at the distorted face, trying to see if it might be Lucien. Jerusha could feel his silent anguish, and she could do nothing more than put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not him, Wally. It’s not.”
The worry and fear on his face was a torment to her. She found tears gathering in her own eyes as she saw the anguish in Wally’s face. She hugged him, wishing there were something she could say that would comfort him, wanting to be able to reassure him that it would be all right in the end.
But she didn’t believe that. She couldn’t believe that. They needed help; they needed it quickly. If the babbling of the frightened child soldier they’d captured was even halfway true, then the Committee had to know. Now.
Jerusha hardly believed it herself: a prison where hundreds of children had been injected with the wild card virus, where hundreds more had already died in order to produce two or three aces for the PPA. The thought sickened and infuriated her. She wanted to see the place razed and burned, wanted to see the Nshombos and Tom Weathers tried and executed for what they were doing here. And Wally . . .
Poor Wally. She didn’t know what to say to him. He glared downriver as if his gaze alone could drive them toward Nyunzu and his precious Lucien. All she could do was stay close to him, to stroke his shoulders, to whisper in-effective comforts that yes, they would still find Lucien alive. They would . . .
Their satellite phone was useless, and her cell didn’t work—no bars, no service—and the battery was nearly dead to boot. Jerusha sighed and thrust the phone back into one of the pockets of her cargo pants. Squinting into the sunlight, she could see a village set in the hollow of the next bend.
Wally crowded into the tiny cabin of the craft as they passed the village, and Jerusha avoided looking at the people staring as they motored past, facing forward as if confident and unworried about their presence on the river.
As soon as the bend put the village out of sight, she extended a hand to help Wally clamber out again. “Put us in here, Wally,” Jerusha said. “We really need to find a way to tell Lohengrin what’s going on down here. Maybe there’s a landline in that village I can use.”
Wally’s face stiffened. “That’s too dangerous.”
The roiling in her stomach agreed with him. “I don’t see another choice. Some of these people may not like the Nshombos any more than we do; they’re scared, but they might be willing to let me make a phone call.”
“And what if there’s a PPA fella there? It would only take one of them.”
She’d been thinking the same, but she tried to shrug as nonchalantly as she could. “It’s a chance we gotta take. I’m not sure we can do this alone, Wally. There’s something awful going on here, something big—something Lucien looks to be caught up in.”
Wally vented a breath through his nostrils. The boat puttered toward the bank and Jerusha cut the engine; Wally jumped out, knee-deep in the water, to drag the boat out of the river into the cover of leaves.
Jerusha gave him another hug. “Be right back,” she said.
“I’m going with you.”
She shook her head. “I’m black, remember?” she said with a brief flash of a smile. “Wally, it’s one thing if a woman who looks mostly like them shows up in the village. I’m not visibly an ace and not visibly threatening. It’s another thing entirely if a big guy made out of iron is with me. Then they’d know we’re up to something.” She slid a hand along his arm. She could feel the rust spots, like patches of dry, scaly skin. “Stay here—hey, use those S.O.S pads you brought along.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t either,” she admitted. “I’ll tell you what: if you hear me yell, you come running, okay?”
A grimace. “Okay.”
She hugged him once more, then headed back upriver along the bank, pushing through the thick vegetation toward the settlement as stealthily as she could. If anything looked wrong with the village, she promised herself, she would head immediately back to Wally and the boat.
As she approached, she could see through the fronds and leaves a cultivated field between her and the village: corn, soybeans, and other crops rising straggling from the poor jungle earth. A woman worked the field, walking along the rows with a cloth sack from which protruded a few corn husks. The woman was only a dozen feet away. Jerusha parted the leaves at the edge of the field and called out softly to the woman in French. “Bonjour.”
The woman glanced up, startled, and backed up a few steps. “No,” Jerusha called out, showing her hands. “I’m not going to hurt you. I need a telephone. A landline. Do you have one here?”
The woman glanced over her shoulder, and Jerusha looked in the same direction. A man was standing at the end of the small field nearest the village. He had a semiautomatic weapon of some sort strapped around him, though he was looking out toward the river, not toward Jerusha.
“No,” the woman answered in heavily accented French, quickly and softly. Her eyes were wide and frightened. “You should go. There’s nothing here. Nothing.”
“I have to make a call,” Jerusha persisted. “It’s urgent. Please. If there’s any way . . .”
“There’s no phone here. What the rebels didn’t destroy, the Leopard Men smashed. No phone. No electricity. Not for months.” She gestured. “Go! You can’t be here!”
The armed man called out to the women, though not in French—he was looking their way. Jerusha slid back toward the brush but it was alre
ady too late. He began to run toward them, bringing up the blackened muzzle of his weapon. Jerusha plunged a hand into her seed belt as the man shouted again, words that Jerusha couldn’t understand. The woman screamed and flung herself to the ground.
Something dark and heavy slammed into Jerusha from behind and she went down just as the weapon loosed its deadly staccato clamor. She heard the bullets whining away, tearing harmlessly into the leaves, and ricocheting off iron. Wally was standing in front of her.
Gardener threw the seed she’d plucked from the seed belt as if it were a hand grenade: one of the remaining baobab seeds. It rolled to the ground at the attacker’s feet and he glanced down, scowling as Jerusha sent her power plunging hard into the seed. It seemed to explode: roots plunging down, branches shooting skyward. One snagged the weapon and ripped it away from him as others wrapped around him. Soon he was encased in a snare of branches fifteen feet off the ground.
Wally plucked Jerusha up from the ground. The village woman lay in a fetal curl. Wally stared upward at the new baobab and its captive.
“You were supposed to stay with the boat,” Jerusha told him.
Wally grinned. “Sorry.”
The man shouted from his wooden cage, and people were beginning to look toward the field from the village.
“We should go, Jerusha,” Wally said.
“Yeah,” she told him. “I think maybe we should.”
Wally turned and plunged into the jungle, tearing the foliage apart and crushing it underneath his massive feet. Jerusha followed his orange-spotted back.
People’s Bank
Kongoville, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
The bank had been built during the colonial era, so it had some grace and charm as opposed to the proletariat grandeur (an oxymoron if Noel had ever heard one) of the Nshombos’ People’s Palace, Palace of the Arts, People’s Defense Headquarters, Justice Center, etc.
His guide for the day was supposed to be the Economics Minister, but at the last minute he had been replaced with Alicia. Noel looked over at the woman as they sat in the backseat of a Mercedes limo. “What an . . . ah . . . incongruous building,” he said, not wanting to call it beautiful in case the sister loved proletariat grandeur.
Alicia made a face. “I think it’s beautiful. I wish we had emulated this building, but my brother has strong attitudes about Western culture. I think we should embrace all the West has to offer.” And she stretched out an arm, and dragged her fingertips across the back of Noel’s neck and down his arm.
Just as Lilith’s sexuality could arouse men, his male avatar had the same effect on women. This was one time when Noel wished he could have appeared as a middling height, very average Englishman.
Noel leaned in close to Alicia’s ear and whispered confidingly, “I too love French architecture. But then we French love many things.”
Alicia turned to face him. They were only an inch apart. Every line in her body and the softness of her lips said she was waiting to be kissed. Noel knew he had to oblige her.
As he pulled back from the snog he thought, God, I hope it doesn’t go past this. Noel knew Alicia had a taste for torture . . . no, more than a taste, a veritable passion for torture. And he also had Niobe waiting at home. He wanted to be done with killing and fucking for crown and country.
Realizing the silence was going on a little too long, Noel said, “I do hope the security has been upgraded since 1920. On your recommendation I’ll be depositing a great deal of cash rather than using electronic transfers.”
Alicia made a soothing gesture with her plump but perfectly manicured hands. “Not to worry. The president put in place state-of-the-art security measures.”
“May I have a hint as to what they are?” Noel asked.
“I’ll tell you a few, but I must keep some secrets,” Alicia said with a suggestive smile.
Noel returned the smile. “Thank you, I am reassured.”
The driver parked illegally in front of the bank, and they climbed out. Noel glanced back at the not-so-subtle unmarked security car that rolled slowly past them. The three men inside were so large it looked like a college prank or a clown car at the circus. Monsieur Pelletier would not notice a tail, no matter how obvious, so Noel said nothing.
The bank manager held open the etched-and-frosted glass-and-brass front doors and bowed them into the marble interior. Art Nouveau nymphs held up brass lamps, carved pediments showed a Classical Greek influence, a pair of gigantic chandeliers illuminated every corner of the lobby. Their heels rapped sharply against the marble and echoed in every corner. What with all the brass, glass, and stone, Noel expected it to be cool inside, but the moist, breathless Congo heat still held sway. The Europeans could bring their architecture, insist on their own cuisine, wear wool, corsets, and cravats, and die, but they could not defeat the jungle. Ultimately it won. It always won.
“Monsieur Pelletier is going to be building a Peugeot factory that will employ three thousand people,” Alicia said to the manager. “You know how my beloved brother prefers to do business in cash, so that the Western powers cannot steal our wealth.”
The manager’s head bobbed up and down so energetically that all Noel could picture was the man’s head set on a dashboard instead of a hula girl or a bobble-headed dog.
“I would like to see the vault, just to reassure myself,” Noel said.
The manager looked to Alicia for guidance. She nodded, and he said, “But of course.”
Two of the men from the car strode into the bank and began pushing patrons aside. This, as well as the slung Uzis, were so obvious that Noel felt he could comment. “There seems to be a great deal of . . . er . . . security around you. I’m concerned. Are you in danger?”
“Oh, no, no, no, monsieur. There is no problem inside the country.” Alicia frowned. “The problem is counterrevolutionaries who seek to stop the march of our glorious country. One of these aces actually came into the country and killed our beloved Tom. Shot him dead as he stood inspiring the troops.”
That wasn’t actually how it had been. Bahir had unloaded a clip from a machine gun into Tom Weathers’s back as he took a piss into a latrine trench. Noel put on an appropriately horrified expression. “But I met him yesterday. How did he survive?”
“Our Lady of Pain brought him back to life before she was killed by those same wicked elements.”
Ah, mystery solved, Noel thought. I’d wondered about that. But as one of those “evil elements” I know I didn’t kill her, and I didn’t hear of any other Western power moving against her. Interesting. “You must be terrified for your brother,” Noel said.
“I do worry, but the Leopard Men are ever vigilant. They even stand guard next to the beds while we sleep. And we change our rooms every night.”
“How wise. I’m reassured.” God damn it. Paranoia makes my job so difficult. And then, as if he’d heard Niobe’s voice, Noel corrected himself. Not my job any longer.
Alicia gave him a secretive little smile. “And we have other . . . resources. The PPA will soon be one of the great powers in the world.”
Noel slipped an arm around Alicia’s waist. It was a long reach. “Oh, you intrigue me. Might I know what constitutes these resources? I might find myself wanting to make a larger investment.”
Alicia bestowed a flirting tap on the cheek. “Now, now, you mustn’t be too nosy. Perhaps when we know each other . . . better.”
The manager led them down to the vault. The massive steel doors were rolled back, but steel bars still separated Noel from the actual vault. The two walls that weren’t covered with safety deposit boxes were discolored, and there were a few evidences of actual mold where the moisture from the surrounding soil had leached through the concrete. Noel made note of steel tracks beveled into the floor, cameras that had a depressingly wide angle of coverage, and tiny nozzles mounted up near the ceiling. There was a doorway into another room, and Noel could just see steel pallets stacked to a height of about four feet
and covered with tarps. It could only be one thing: the treasury of the PPA.
And only twenty feet and a vast array of security devices lay between him and it. Noel looked over at the bank manager. “You have people watching those cameras?”
“But of course.”
“Would you like to see the control room, dear Etienne?” Alicia cooed.
“Yes, please.”
As they headed back up the stairs the manager asked, “And when might we expect monsieur’s deposit to arrive?”
“It will take me several weeks to raise that much cash, and arrange to have it safely transported to Kongoville.” And by that time I hope to have recruited help, returned, and robbed you blind.
Risen Savior Spiritual Center
Ashland, Oregon
The risen savior spiritual Center looked like a cheap community college. A neatly kept “campus” with winter-yellow grass where dirty snow hadn’t melted, flagstone paths, and concrete benches built to withstand Armageddon. Bugsy guessed that if the world ended in fire, there would probably still be something more comfortable to sit on. The residential buildings were in the back. They looked less like a cloister and more like dorms.
He asked a pleasant-faced woman in a conservatively cut blue dress where he could find Kimberly Joy and was directed to the back.
The meeting room looked less like college, and more like a preschool for adults. Soft couches and cheap linoleum tables. Inexpensive butter cookies and a cheap metal samovar squatting next to a stack of foam cups and a basket of herbal teas. Low bookshelves were filled with magazines featuring pictures of a white, big-eyed Jesus or his ecstatic white followers or else books with crosses on the spines. The woman by the window looked up as he walked in.
If he hadn’t spent most of the plane ride out from New York reviewing his records, he wouldn’t have recognized her. The long blond hair was gone, replaced by a shoulder-length soccer mom coif. The challenging grin was a tight, nervous smile with lines around it that made her mouth seem puckered, even when it wasn’t. The free-breasted hippie chick had vanished. A thick-bodied grandmother in her not-so-great Sunday best remained.