“You have children,” she repeated, “and yet you could do what you have done to these other children?” Jerusha said it softly, and the man’s eyes narrowed. He shifted abruptly back to leopard form, snarling and roaring; she tightened the vines around him, around the soldiers. She was crying as she manipulated the plants: in frustration, in fear, in rage. She heard them scream, heard the screams fade to moans as the vines clenched tighter, sliding up to wrap around throats, to slide into open mouths to choke them. The were-leopard at her feet clawed futilely at the ground, and again he shifted back to human form. He was staring at her, but the eyes were now dead and unblinking.
She watched for a long time, until she was certain that he was no longer breathing.
On the Lualaba River, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Ghost materialized out of the darkness at the edge of his campfire, silently watching him. Her toes dangled an inch from the ground. Light from the coals glimmered on her dark eyes. She looked diaphanous in the silvery moonlight.
Wally’s eyelids slid lower . . . lower . . . The muscles in his neck relaxed. His head dropped. The effort not to fall into a dead sleep made his eyes water.
Ghost’s feet drifted into his narrow, blurry field of view. She reared back, winding up for another whack with the knife. Wally jumped up and lunged at her.
His body passed clean through her. Ghost’s body had no more substance than a wisp of smoke. He landed beside the dwindling campfire with a clang and a thud. “Ouch.” He looked up. Ghost stared down at him, expressionless as always. “What’s your name?” he asked.
She drifted back into the jungle. Silent. Unreadable.
He stood, brushed himself off. But Wally knew she was out there, waiting and watching. So he sat cross-legged beside the dying fire and called out, “My name’s Wally.”
The answer was a silence punctuated only by the chirping of nocturnal wildlife.
Friday,
December 18
The Louvre
Paris, France
The security detail for the peace conference was an unholy mélange of mercenary commando and hotel concierge. The hotels for blocks around the museum were booked. Negotiators for the Caliphate, emissaries from the People’s Paradise of Africa, UN experts and security, the press of fifty different nations. The perimeter was a greatest hits album of the Committee. Walking in toward the Louvre, Bugsy saw three different flyers floating menacingly in the cool Parisian air. Snipers dotted the rooftops like postmodern gargoyles. In the courtyard, milling around the famous I. M. Pei glass pyramid, were groups of men and women in suits and soldiers in urban camouflage.
When they came close enough to see the familiar forms of Lohengrin and Babel, Simoon released his arm. As if by a common understanding, Simoon reached up and plucked out the earring, and Ellen was walking at his side. Not two lovers in Paris, but two colleagues working for the Committee. And Lohengrin didn’t have to figure out the right etiquette for talking to a dead girl.
Klaus had the lock jawed look that Bugsy associated with the Teutonic God-Man feeling like someone had stepped on his dick. The fog was burning off, the first blue of the sky peeking through. Babel and Ellen were speaking in French. Apparently Ellen spoke French. The things you learn. “So how’s the war?” Bugsy asked.
Lohengrin shook his head, the jaw clamping tighter. “We were putting together an exploratory subcommittee on sanctions against the Nshombos,” he said, the round, full vowels cut almost short with frustration. “Only word got out. Now I have eight memos condemning the existence of the subcommittee and a second subcommittee forming to explore better methods of creating exploratory subcommittees.”
Bugsy chuckled. Lohengrin frowned deeply, then smiled, then laughed and shook his head. “There was a time when we were effective. Now, it’s all become bureaucrats talking to bureaucrats over drinks at the Louvre while people suffer.”
“Isn’t that always what it comes to?” Bugsy said. “I mean, look at what we’re doing. A peace conference. What exactly is that but a place for the kids with the most toys to get together and have a gentlemanly conversation about who’s going to kill the most innocent people? We wouldn’t be doing this at all if hauling out tanks and missiles and battle-ready aces wasn’t actually more destructive, right?”
“I know,” Lohengrin said with disgust. “And yet those days in the desert, marching from the Necropolis to Aswan with the army of the Caliphate slaughtering people and biting at our heels? Then at least we could do something.”
Aswan. Where Simoon had died.
“Yeah,” Bugsy said bitterly. “The good old days. So what’s my line?”
Lohengrin tilted his head. In all fairness, it was a pretty obscure way to ask the question.
“Where do you want me?” Bugsy said. “I’m here being all secure and detailed. I figure . . .”
Lohengrin nodded and took Bugsy’s elbow, leading him a few steps away from Babel and Cameo. “We need you for coordination. A few dozen wasps here and there throughout the perimeter, but not so many that you would seem . . . out of place in the reception hall.”
“So no dropping a leg or anything.”
“No.”
“Okay, but I’m going to need warm spots. Sluggish, half-dead wasps aren’t going to fit your bill.”
Lohengrin frowned.
“Cleavage works,” Bugsy said. “If you’ve got anyone with cleavage. Hey! Joking. Just joking. But seriously, it does work.”
“I’ll do what I can. But if trouble comes, I want you to warn us. I do not like the mix of people here. Too many armed men, and it stops being security.”
“Who do we have on the inside?”
Lohengrin nodded across the courtyard to where Burrowing Owl was making polite talk with Tricolor, the local ace host and face of all things French and vaguely trite. Snowblind was just behind them.
“That all?”
“You, me. Babel. Cameo. She did bring . . .”
“Simoon and Will-o’-Wisp,” Bugsy said. “We’ll have firepower if we need it.”
Lohengrin nodded, but he still didn’t look happy.
“Toad Man as well, provided we can convince him to stop the frog’s legs jokes. And you know Garou?”
“Don’t think we’ve met,” Bugsy said.
“Garou!” Lohengrin called. A decent-looking man came over, eyebrows raised in question. “This is my old friend, Jonathan Hive.”
“Good to meet you,” Bugsy said, holding out a hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Garou looked nonplussed, but shook Bugsy’s hand all the same. “We’ve met,” he said.
“We have?” Bugsy said.
“Twice.”
“Ah.”
Garou nodded to Lohengrin and walked away, looking less than amused.
“Apparently, I have met him,” Bugsy said.
“Yes.”
“Well, at least I got the big faux pas of the night out of the way early.”
“Ah, Paris again.”
“And the weather couldn’t be worse,” Siraj grumbled from where he sat next to Noel in the backseat of a Mercedes limo.
Noel looked out at the falling rain and couldn’t disagree. Through the murk and fog the Louvre loomed. The stones were stained grey from dirt, soot, and exhaust. In the dim light it looked like what it was—a fortress.
His was not a fanciful nature, but Noel found himself looking away. “Now remember. Talk, talk, talk,” he said.
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m not an idiot or a child,” Siraj snapped. The big limo breasted the honking, darting minis and citrons like a shark through minnows. Siraj kept his tone offhanded, but the anxiety showed through. “Do you think Weathers will be here?”
“I doubt it. He’s not the negotiating kind. If Nshombo is here it won’t take much effort to drag this out endlessly. Punch the right buttons and he’ll go on about dialectic materialism for fucking hours.”
“Lovely,” Siraj said sourly.
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Noel laughed. “Remember, we’re playing the tune here. Enjoy it.”
The car slowed and rolled to a stop at a security checkpoint. Noel, in his role as Prince Siraj’s attaché, offered over their identification. The French soldier peered at the papers, then peered into the car, nodded in satisfaction, handed back the documents, and waved them through.
The car joined the line of vehicles disgorging passengers in front of the I.M. Pei glass pyramid. In the west the setting sun managed to struggle out from beneath the hem of the clouds. The glass facets of the building grabbed the fire and glowed red and gold.
Noel checked his watch. It was still seventeen minutes until he could have access to Lilith. He didn’t think he would need her, but he would have preferred to have this party either in full day or full night.
Another soldier, this one in more antique, comic-opera uniform, opened the back passenger door. Siraj stepped out and Noel followed. He shot the cuffs of his shirt until he had the perfect rim of white beneath the cuffs of his tuxedo coat. Noel had opted for the traditional white tie. He didn’t want to stand out in this gathering.
They entered the pyramid.
“Dr. Okimba?” a sleek UN gopher said. “I’d like to introduce some of the Committee members who are providing security for the peace talks.”
Tom Weathers nodded his head. It was still his head. It still felt like his head. But to the glittering crowd beneath the smoked-glass and steel pyramid it was the big, shaven, plump-featured head of Dr. Apollinaire Okimba.
“Your Honor, Simone Duplaix from Canada, whose ace name is Snowblind. And Nikolaas Buxtehude from Brussels. He’s called Burrowing Owl.”
“Enchanted,” Okimba said, cupping the soft hand of the girl in a tight black T-shirt and black jeans and raising it to his lips. Her bobbed hair was electric blue, with a gold stripe dyed in her bangs. Okimba didn’t know her from Grace Slick, but Tom Weathers had met her in Kongoville, before the Committee turned on the PPA—and Tom. “It is always a great pleasure,” he murmured, “to meet a young woman as formidable as she is lovely.”
He turned to the second ace. Burrowing Owl was a short shit about as wide as tall, wearing an odd pointy brass cap, goggles, and old-time leather flying clothes under what was either a feathered cape or folded wings. He clicked his heels and nodded as Okimba shook his hand. The hands were big and red and massively calloused, as if he used them to burrow with. “Deeply honored, sir,” he said.
“Likewise.” This was a groovy power, though one Tom didn’t use much. Which was too bad; he was a pretty good actor, if he did say so himself. He looked and sounded and even smelled exactly like the jurist: a large, fat, heartily affable black man in his early sixties.
The real Dr. Okimba was a major legal eagle. He was also a counterrevolutionary pain in the ass who made a lot of noise about civil rights for the citizens of the People’s Paradise. Right now the good doctor was enjoying captivity deluxe and incommunicado in a suite in the Nshombos’ vast new palace.
The gopher was burbling about how historical this all was. Tom tuned him out. He was scoping the crowd, checking out the opposition. Several of the Committee members who’d been in Africa last year were there: big Buford Calhoun looking as out of place in his human skin as he would as a toad the size of a Volkswagen; the Lama, snickering at what Tom suspected was a most unsagelike dirty joke; Brave Hawk, visible through the glass of the pyramid overhead as he soared the pink and pale green sunset sky on combat air patrol. No one he couldn’t handle, if it came to that.
Tom excused himself and moved off as if to find a waiter serving champagne. He wouldn’t dare drink it. He didn’t trust himself to keep from showing sudden fury on his borrowed face. He’d just spotted a tall, handsome dude with white-blond hair hanging to the broad shoulders of his Savile Row suit. Men and women crowded around him like groupies at a rock concert. He was the German ace Lohengrin, current chairman of the Committee and global superstar. But Tom knew that broad-jawed smiling face from another setting. Jackson Square in New Orleans. Where Tom had gone to rescue his kidnapped daughter.
“Keep it cool, lover,” Hei-lian whispered in his ear. She and her Guoanbu nerd-gnomes were ensconced in a pension just across the Seine, keeping track of the proceedings via a shitload of little audiovisual pickups studded literally all over him and siphoning feeds from the innumerable media cameras present. “You’ve got a job to do.”
Tom made himself nod. Smile while you can, you square-headed Nazi puke, he told himself. Payback’s a motherfucker.
Then by a trick of acoustics he heard Simone burble to her companions, “Oh, my God, did you see that? That fat geezer totally came on to me!”
Tom allowed himself a grin. I guess I’m glad Doc Prez hasn’t let Alicia feed this fat fuck to her pets after all, he thought. Shit, this is fun.
Siraj opted for the escalator rather than the winding staircase. As they glided down Noel noted the white linen-draped buffet table, the white-coated waiters slipping through the crowds with trays of drinks and canapés for those too lazy to walk to the buffet. The glass above them, the white marble underfoot turned the usual drone of conversation into a sound like clashing cymbals. The setting was fantastic, but as a place for diplomatic conversation it left much to be desired.
Noel noticed Lohengrin’s golden head looming above the crowd. Here and there a leopard-print fez thrust above the crowd, marking the presence of Leopard Men. Secretary-General Jayewardene, with Babel at his side, moved through the crowd looking plump, smug, and serene. Or perhaps that was just him showing a what, me worry? diplomat’s face to the world.
Personally, Noel was worried. There was a level of free-floating tension that was almost like a metallic scent beneath the smell of perfume and canapés.
Siraj walked away to greet Jayewardene. Noel snagged a glass of champagne and started moving toward the buffet. He noticed Lohengrin skittering off in the other direction.
Wondering if it was just coincidence, Noel changed course and moved toward Lohengrin. The young German ace looked around wildly, spotted Jayewardene and Babel, and started heading for them. Tallyho, Noel thought, and ducked into a clump of people. He moved through the crowd, staying out of Lohengrin’s sight until he stepped out of another knot of people directly in front of the younger man.
Klaus reared back like a startled horse. “Didn’t you and I have a weekend in Paris?” Noel asked.
Blood washed up Lohengrin’s neck and suffused his face. “Don’t talk about such things,” he said in a low whisper.
Noel thought back on those times when, as Lilith, he had seduced and pumped (so to speak) the big German ace for information about Jayewardene and the Committee.
“I cared for you. I told you my deepest dreams. I planned for a life together—”
“I used you. Get over it,” Noel said.
Lohengrin’s expression registered both hurt and shock at the blunt reply. “Have you ever cared about anything?”
“Don’t go there, Klaus. I have many things I care about. You just don’t happen to be one of them.”
“Would you ever consider coming back to the Committee?” Lohengrin asked. “We could use you.”
“No, thank you.”
“So, the good work of the Committee means nothing to you?”
“No. I think you’re a bunch of idealist idiots.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because there are things I do care about.”
“I think you are a coward. I think you got scared in Jackson Square, and now you leave others to fight your battles.”
“And I think you haven’t gotten over discovering your Lili Marlene was a boy.” Noel clinked his glass against Lohengrin’s and sauntered away.
The conference began with the reception; the Louvre closed for a private party, and how classy was that? Tables laid out with the most expensive snack food known to man. Soft music supplied by a string quartet in somber attire. And milling around like guests at a
party, the representatives of the bloodiest war on the planet. Over there by the stairs Prince Siraj, who now commanded the same people who had been trying to kill Bugsy in Egypt. On the far side of the space, Dr. Okimba radiated charm and goodwill on behalf of the PPA. And all around them, spreading out for miles, the greatest works of human art, as if by rubbing Okimba and Siraj against civilization, maybe some of the chrome would stick to them.
The whole thing appealed to Bugsy’s sense of the absurd. He slouched over to the bar—because what better symbol of peace than an open bar—and got another rum and Coke. The Committee was out in force. Lohengrin, smiling and preening in front of the cameras for an international news network. Garou still smirking at him coolly. Toad Man filling up on free prawns.
Cameo folded her arm in Bugsy’s, smiling the way she did when she didn’t mean it. “I just talked to Babel.”
“Uh-huh. Um. You’re wearing the earring. Are you . . . ?”
“Ali’s here, but she’s letting me drive. Jayewardene’s had one of his hunches. There is going to be trouble. He thinks something may happen with Dr. Okimba.”
“Ah. Right. Who’s that?”
He felt her go stiff. “You’re joking, right?”
“Yes, totally joking,” Bugsy said. “Okimba. Doctor. Jurist. Big name in the PPA, chief negotiator, hasn’t killed anyone we know of. So what’s the word? Do we think someone’s going to go for him? Or is he going to turn all ninja assassin in the middle of the talks?”
“I don’t know. But Lohengrin needs people near him and ready without seeming like they are.”
“I’m on the case, boss,” Bugsy said, giving a snappy salute only slightly marred by the lack of two fingers. “Don’t worry about it too much though. Hunches. Gut feelings. Jayewardene’s just nervous, right?”
“Not really,” Cameo said.
“Where is the object of all concern?”
Cameo nodded toward the center of the room.