The Dark River

18

Hollis ate breakfast at a coffee shop, then walked down Columbus Avenue to the Upper West Side. It had been four days since Vicki and the others had left for London. During that time, Hollis had moved into a shabby single-residency hotel and found a job as a bouncer at a downtown club. When Hollis wasn’t working he had offered bits of information to surveillance programs that fed into the Vast Machine. Each clue was supposed to convince the Tabula that Gabriel was still hiding in the city. Maya had given him a Harlequin slang word for what he was doing. It was called chumming-a fisherman term for throwing bait into the water to attract sharks.

The Upper West Side was filled with restaurants, nail salons, and Starbucks coffee shops. Hollis had never been able to figure out why so many men and women spent the day at Starbucks sipping lattes as they stared at their computers. Most of them looked too old to be students and too young to be retired. Occasionally, he had glanced over someone’s shoulder to see what project took so much effort. He began to believe that everyone in Manhattan was writing the same movie screenplay about the romantic problems of the urban middle class.

At the Starbucks at Eighty-sixth Street and Columbus, he found Kevin the Fisherman sitting at a table with his laptop computer. Kevin was a slender young man, very pale, who ate, slept, and occasionally washed his armpits at Starbucks around the city. He had no home but Starbucks and no reality other than the coffee shop’s WiFi access. If Kevin wasn’t taking a nap or pushing his shopping cart to a new Starbucks, he was online.

Hollis grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the table. The Fisherman raised his left hand and wiggled his fingers to acknowledge the presence of another human being. His eyes focused on the computer screen while his right hand continued to type. Kevin had hacked into the files of a casting agency and downloaded the digital photographs of handsome-but unknown-New York actors. Using these photographs, he created profiles on Web sites for singles. The actors were turned into physicians, lawyers, or investment bankers who wanted to take long walks on the beach and get married. All over the world, hundreds of women were typing away, desperately trying to get Kevin’s attention.

“What’s up, Kevin?”

“Rich lady in Dallas.” Kevin had a high-pitched, nasal voice. “She wants me to fly to Paris and meet her for the first time beneath the Eiffel Tower.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“Actually, she’s the eighth woman I’ve met on the Internet who wanted to meet in either Paris or Tuscany. They must all watch the same movies.” Kevin glanced up from the screen. “Help me out here. What’s a good astrological sign?”

“Sagittarius.”

“Good. That’s perfect.” Kevin typed a message and hit the send button. “You got another job for me?”

The Vast Machine had created the need for an untraceable way to send and receive Internet communications. Whenever someone used a computer to send e-mail or access information, the signal was identified by the Internet protocol address unique to that particular machine. Every IP address received by the government or a large corporation was retained forever. Once the Tabula had an IP number, it gave them a powerful tool to track Internet activity.

For day-to-day anonymity, Harlequins could use Internet cafés or public libraries, but a Fisherman like Kevin provided a different level of security. Each of Kevin’s three computers had been bought at a swap meet, and that made them difficult to trace. The Fisherman also used special software programs that bounced e-mails off routers all over the world. Kevin was occasionally hired by Russian gangsters who lived in Staten Island, but the majority of his clients were married men who were having affairs or who wanted to download specialized pornography.

“How would you like to make two hundred dollars?”

“Two hundred dollars is good. You want me to send out more information about Gabriel?”

“Go into chat rooms and put comments on blogs. Tell everyone that you heard Gabriel give a speech against the Brethren.”

“Who are the Brethren?”

“You don’t need to know.” Hollis pulled out a pen and wrote some information on a paper napkin. “Say that Gabriel is going to meet his followers tonight at a dance club downtown called Mask. There’s a private room upstairs and he’ll use it to give a speech at one o’clock in the morning.”

“No problem. I’ll get on it right away.”

Hollis handed Kevin the two hundred dollars and got up from the table. “Do a good job on this and I’ll give you a bonus. Who knows? Maybe you’ll make enough to fly to Paris.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“You could meet the woman at the Eiffel Tower.”

“That’s no fun.” Kevin returned to his computer. “Real flesh is too much trouble.”

HOLLIS LEFT STARBUCKS and flagged down a taxi. On the way to South Ferry, he studied his copy of The Way of the Sword. Sparrow’s book of meditations was divided into three parts: Preparation, Combat, and After the Battle. In chapter six, the Japanese Harlequin analyzed two facts that seemed contradictory. An experienced warrior always developed a strategy before an attack, and yet, in the confusion of the battle, the warrior usually did something different. Sparrow believed that plans were helpful, but their true power was that they calmed the spirit and prepared it for fighting. Toward the end of the chapter Sparrow wrote: Plan to jump left although you’ll probably go right.

Hollis felt conspicuous on the ferryboat ride out to one of the most guarded locations in America-the Statue of Liberty. The boat was filled with school groups, elderly tourists, and families on vacation. He was a solitary black male carrying a backpack. When the boat reached Ellis Island, Hollis tried to lose himself in the crowd that was herded toward a large temporary structure that had been erected at the base of the statue.

He stood in line for about twenty minutes. When he reached the front he was told to enter a walk-in machine that reminded him of an enormous CAT scan. A mechanical voice told him to stand on two green shoeprints, and then he felt a sudden blast of air. He was in a sniffer-a machine that could sense the chemical emissions that came from explosives and ammunition.

When a green light flicked on, he was directed to a large room filled with lockers. No backpacks were allowed near the statue, so everything had to be stored in a wire basket. When Hollis placed a dollar into the payment slot, a mechanical voice demanded that he place his right thumb on a scanner. A sign above the lockers read YOUR FINGERPRINT IS YOUR KEY. USE YOUR FINGERPRINT TO OPEN YOUR LOCKER UPON RETURNING.

Concealed within the knapsack was a mold of Gabriel’s right hand. A few weeks earlier, Maya had melted modeling plastic in a cooking pot, and Gabriel had dipped his hand into the brown goop. The mold was a bio dupe-a physical reproduction of biometric information-and it could be used as a decoy to distract the Tabula. Hollis concealed the fake hand in his jacket sleeve, and then pressed the rubbery thumb against the scanner window. In less than a second, Gabriel’s print was transformed into a packet of digital information and transmitted to the computers of the Vast Machine.

“This way for Liberty. This way for Liberty,” a guard chanted in a bored voice. Hollis left his knapsack in the locker and followed the other citizens as they entered the stone base of the enormous statue. Everyone but Hollis looked happy. They were in the Land of the Free.

HOLLIS RETURNED TO his hotel late in the afternoon and was able to sleep for a few hours. When he opened his eyes, he was looking at a strip of four black-and-white photographs that he and Vicki had created in a “pose yourself” booth. An enormous cockroach approached this private altar and started waving its antennae, but Hollis flicked the insect onto the floor.

He picked up the photographs, held the strip beneath the lamplight, and studied the last image. Vicki had turned to look at him and her face showed both love and understanding. She truly knew him-knew the violence and selfishness that had claimed his past-but accepted him anyway. Her love made Hollis want to march out and slay monsters; he would do anything to justify her faith.

Around eight o’clock in the evening, he got dressed and took a cab downtown to the meatpacking district-a twenty-block patch of industrial buildings west of Greenwich Village. Mask, the dance club, occupied what had formerly been a chicken processing plant on West Thirteenth Street. It had been operating for three years, a fairly long time in this peculiar world.

The large central room was divided into two parts. Most of the building was occupied by an open space for dancing, two bars, and a cocktail area. Toward the end of the room, a staircase led upward to a separate VIP area that overlooked the main dance floor. Only the pretty people-those with beauty or money-were allowed upstairs. The ground floor was for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, customers who had either driven a car or taken a crowded train to get to Manhattan. The men who owned the club were obsessed with the ratio between these two groups. Although the bridge-and-tunnels made Mask a profitable business, they were drawn to the club by the actors and models who drank for free upstairs.

Without flashing lights and thumping dance music, Mask felt like it could easily be converted back into a factory for plucking dead chickens. Hollis went into the tiny employees’ locker room and changed into a black T-shirt and sports jacket. A hand-lettered sign over the mirror announced that any employee selling drugs to customers would be fired immediately. Hollis had already discovered that management didn’t mind employees selling drugs to one another-usually various uppers that kept the security staff alert until the end of the evening.

Hollis slipped on a radio headset that connected him to the other bouncers. He returned to the main room and walked upstairs. The employees at Mask saw the club as an elaborate device to squeeze money out of the customers. One of the most lucrative jobs was guarding the VIP area, and a man named Boodah currently held this post. Boodah had an African-American father and a Chinese mother. His nickname came from his enormous stomach, which appeared to protect him from all the craziness in New York.

The bouncer was arranging the chairs and cocktail tables inside his kingdom when Hollis came upstairs. “What’s up?” Boodah asked. “You look tired.”

“I’m all right.”

“Remember. If anyone wants to go through the rope, they gotta come to me.”

“No problem. I know the rules.”

Boodah guarded the main entrance to the VIP area while Hollis stood at an exit on the opposite side. This exit was only used by pretty people who wanted to go to the downstairs bathroom or if they decided to rub shoulders with the sweaty crowd on the dance floor. Hollis’s job was to keep everyone else out. Being a bouncer was about saying no all night long-unless you got paid to say yes.

HOLLIS HAD PERFORMED his job like an obedient drone, but he felt that something different might happen tonight. A walkway protected by a railing ran from the VIP area to the private room. Inside the room were leather couches, cocktail tables, and an intercom to order from the bar. A mirrored window overlooked the dance floor below. Tonight the private room was going to be occupied by some hustlers from Brooklyn who liked to use drugs at nightclubs. If the Tabula came to the room looking for Gabriel, they were going to get an unpleasant surprise.

Hollis leaned against the railing, stretching his leg muscles. He returned to his post when Ricky Tolson, the club’s assistant manager, climbed the back staircase. Ricky was one of the owners’ distant relatives. He made sure there was toilet paper in the bathroom and spent most of his time trying to pick up drunken women.

“How you doing, my brother?” Ricky asked. Hollis was too low in the club hierarchy to have a name.

I’m not your brother, Hollis thought. But he smiled pleasantly. “The private room is booked, right? I heard that Mario and his friends were coming tonight.”

Ricky looked annoyed. “No, they called up and canceled. But there will be someone else. There always is…”

A half hour later, the club deejay began the evening with a Sufi religious chant, and then gradually brought in the thumping beat of house music. The bridge-and-tunnel crowd arrived first and grabbed the few tables near the bar. From his vantage point above the dance floor, Hollis watched young women wearing short skirts and cheap shoes run to the bathroom to check makeup and tease hair. Their male counterparts strutted around and waved twenty-dollar bills like little flags at the bartender.

The voices of the other bouncers whispered into his right ear from the radio headset. The security team had a continual dialogue going on about which man looked like trouble and which woman was wearing the most revealing dress. As the hours went by, Hollis kept his eye on the private room. It was still empty-but maybe nothing would happen tonight.

Around midnight he escorted two fashion models to a special bathroom that required a passkey. When he returned to his post, he saw Ricky and a girl wearing a tight green dress heading down the walkway to the private room. Hollis walked over to Boodah and shouted over the noise, “What’s Ricky doing in the room?”

The big man shrugged as if the question barely deserved an answer. “Just another little girly. He’ll give her some coke and she’ll give him the usual.”

Hollis looked down at the dance floor and saw two men wearing athletic jackets entering the club. Instead of checking out the women or buying a drink at the bar, they both looked up at the private room. One mercenary was short and very muscular. His pants looked too long for his fireplug body. The other man was tall and his black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

The two men walked upstairs to the VIP area and the short mercenary slipped several bills into Boodah’s hand. It was enough money to buy immediate respect and entrance past the red velvet rope. Within a few seconds, the men were sitting at a table and staring at the narrow walkway that led to the private room. Ricky was still there with his girlfriend. Hollis swore beneath his breath and remembered Sparrow’s advice: Plan to jump left although you’ll probably go right.

A drunken woman started screaming at her boyfriend and Boodah hurried down the staircase to solve the problem. The moment he left the area, the two mercenaries got up from the table and headed for the private room. The tall man moved slowly down the walkway while his partner stood guard. Lights hanging over the dance floor grew brighter and began flashing in rhythm with the beat. The tall mercenary turned and a sliver of light was reflected off the blade of a knife held tightly in his hand.

Hollis doubted that they had a photograph of Gabriel. Their instructions would be to kill whoever was in the room. Up until that moment, Hollis had started to believe that he could act like Maya and the other Harlequins. But he wasn’t like them. None of the Harlequins would have worried about Ricky and the young woman, but Hollis couldn’t stand back and let it happen. To hell with it, he thought. If those two fools die, their blood stains my hands.

With a courteous smile on his face, he approached the shorter of the two men. “Excuse me, sir. But the private room is occupied.”

“Yeah, it’s a friend of ours. So get the hell out of here.”

Hollis raised his arms as if he were going to embrace the intruder. Then his hands became fists and punched toward each other, striking both sides of the man’s head at the same time. The force of the concussion staggered the little man and he fell backward. The lights and the booming dance music were so overwhelming that no one noticed what had just happened. Hollis stepped over the body and moved forward.

The tall mercenary had his hand on the door handle, but he reacted immediately when he saw Hollis. Hollis knew that anyone holding a knife concentrated too much on the weapon; every particle of death and malevolence was squeezed into the point of the blade.

He reached out as if he were about to grab the mercenary’s hand, then jerked backward as the man slashed out with the knife. Hollis kicked the toe of his shoe into the man’s stomach. When the mercenary bent forward, gasping for breath, Hollis punched upward with all his strength, knocking the man over the railing.

People screamed below, but the music continued playing. Hollis ran down the walkway and forced a passage through the tables. When he reached the back staircase he saw that three other mercenaries were now pushing through the crowd. One of them was an older man with wire-rimmed glasses. Was this Nathan Boone-the man who killed Maya’s father? Maya would have attacked immediately, but Hollis continued moving.

The crowd surged back and forth like a herd of animals terrified by the smell of death. Hollis stepped onto the dance floor and pushed forward, shoving people out of the way. He reached the back hallway that led to the kitchen and restrooms. A group of young women were laughing about something while their makeup mirrors reflected the light. Hollis got past them and pushed through a fire door.

Two mercenaries wearing headsets stood in the alleyway. Someone had told them about Hollis and they were waiting. The older man raised a canister and shot chemical spray into Hollis’s eyes.

The pain was incredible. It felt like his eyes were on fire. Hollis couldn’t see-couldn’t defend himself-as someone’s fist shattered his nose. Like a drowning man, he grabbed the attacker in front of him, and then jerked his upper body forward, giving the mercenary a head butt in the face.

The first man fell onto the pavement, but the second man had his arm around Hollis’s neck and began choking him. Hollis bit the man’s hand. When he heard a scream, he grabbed the mercenary’s arm, forcing it downward, and then twisted it until it snapped.

Blind. He was blind. Touching the rough brick wall beside him, he ran through his own darkness.