The Golden City

41

Priest used Boone’s key card to enter the room at the Culver Hotel. Immediately, he saw two dead men, one on the carpet and the other on a couch. The Harlequin slipped a plastic shopping bag over his hand, turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom. The third mercenary was lying beside the bed with a surprised look on his face.

As he stood beside the dead man, Priest remembered a line of scripture from the Collected Letters of Isaac Jones. “The foolish man calls forth a demon to harvest his fields and carry his water. But the demon will destroy his master.”

“Hell, yes,” Priest muttered. It looked as if Boone’s particular demon was killing everyone around him. Trying not to step in the blood, he checked the bathroom and the closet, then called Maya on her mobile phone.

“We just found three dead rats.”

“Get out of there and help our friend find his brother,” Maya said. “I’ll call you when I get more information.”

Priest left the building and returned to the car. When they had searched Boone’s hotel room, Maya found a manila envelope filled with black-and-white photographs of the kidnapped children. Gabriel was sitting in the front seat, examining each photograph.

“Boone was telling the truth. There were three bodies in the room. Now what do we do?”

“This could be the moment that we challenge the Brethren. If the children are still alive, then it substantiates our own story.”

“Will you make your speech?”

“Let’s wait to hear from Maya. If the news is good, we’ll activate the Revelation Worm. I’ve got a laptop and a web camera in my pack. We need to go on the Internet at a location where we won’t be disturbed.”

“We can probably use my martial arts studio. It’s still being run by my students.”

He turned south and drove through his old neighborhood. All the familiar sights seemed to float past the windshield. An elementary school surrounded by a chain-link fence. A doughnut shop with barred windows. A line of palm trees defaced with graffiti that marked off the borders of different street gangs.

There were skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles, but the urban style was distilled into cheaply made two-story buildings with stucco façades. These days Priest felt no connection to a city or a language or a name on a passport. So many things in the world were just glitter tossed on a dance floor.

His old martial arts school was in a mini-mall on Florence Avenue. The liquor store was still there, but the video outlet had been replaced with a shop that sold beauty supplies. His two best students, Marco Martinez and Danny Wu, hadn’t changed the words painted on the front window, but they had placed a sign on the dirt strip near the sidewalk. The sign showed four people-black, white, Latino and Asian-flying through the air with a variety of capoeira moves. Think. Feel. Be Real, the sign said. Defend Yourself!

“Do we have to break in?” Gabriel asked.

“There’s a key for emergencies. It might still be there.”

A clay pot filled with cactus was near the entrance to the school. Priest dug his fingers into the dirt and found a fake rock with a secret compartment. He took out the key, opened the door, and led Gabriel into the reception area.

The glass case with his karate and capoeira trophies was still there, but someone had added a new display. Now his framed photograph was hanging from the wall with a sign that said Hollis Wilson. Our Teacher. Our Master. Our Guide. Beneath the photograph was a shelf where people had left votive candles, gold medals won at recent competitions and folded pieces of paper. Priest unwrapped one of these messages and read: The warrior uses the power of the brain to be deliberate and the power of the heart to be instinctive. He had told them that. A lifetime ago.

“This is new.”

Gabriel laughed. “You always had a big ego. But I didn’t think you’d put up an altar to yourself.”

“That’s what it is. An altar. It’s like I’m dead.”

“Now you have the opportunity to see your legacy. It’s clear that you changed some lives.”

They walked past the two dressing areas and entered a long windowless room with a mirror on one wall and a little office at one end. Someone had installed a bookshelf and had cleaned up the messy desk. While Priest set up the web camera and attached the computer to an Internet cable, Gabriel called Simon Lumbroso.

“I think we’re going to offer the world a Revelation. Tell all the groups to get ready.”

Gabriel sat down at the desk and switched on the web camera. The Traveler’s face appeared on the monitor, but it was half-concealed by shadows. Priest turned on all the lights in the office and adjusted a desk lamp. When everything was ready, Gabriel went on-line and used the cell phone to contact the Nighthawk in London.

“This is your friend in America. It might be time for the message. I’m on your site right now. Can you see my face? What about the sound?” Gabriel lowered the mobile phone and turned to Priest. “We need the microphone in the backpack. He says it’s difficult to hear me.”

“No problem.” Priest plugged in an audio cord and attached a microphone to Gabriel’s shirt.

Gabriel switched off the phone and began adjusting the lamp. “Right now, all we can do is wait. Let’s see what happens out in the desert.”

Priest left the office, found the school’s refrigerator, and took out two bottles of water. He gave a bottle to Gabriel, then paced back and forth in the work-out room and watched himself in the wall mirror. What would happen when Tommy or Marco opened the school the next morning? Would they notice that someone had been there? He had spent years of his life in this room, teaching people, trying to show them a better way. Now Hollis Wilson had turned into a house god, a minor spirit protecting a new generation of students.

He heard the cell phone ringing and hurried back to the office. Gabriel was smiling as he talked to Maya. “That’s wonderful! Okay. I understand. Be careful and come back to the city as soon as you can. I’m sending out the message in five minutes.”

Gabriel switched off the phone and began typing on the keyboard. “The children are alive. Maya’s calling the local sheriff. She’s going to wait on a side road until the police show up at the mine.”

“What about Doyle?”

“He’s dead, and it sounds like Boone killed himself.”

“The Tabula won’t be happy.”

“Let’s give them something else to worry about.”

Words flashed on the screen. Sound good. Image good. Ready for transmission. Nighthawk. Priest felt alert and ready. For years, the Panopticon had grown larger and more pervasive. Now some of those walls were going to collapse.

Gabriel sat up straight in the office chair. “Give me ten seconds.”

Priest raised his hand and counted off the final seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.

And then the Traveler began to speak.