Two Songs This Archangel Sings

19

Waiting; trying to remember all the lies I had told so that I could repeat them if I had to, hoping I'd done the right thing in offering up a decidedly bent version of the truth. Garth, whose cell I now shared, wasn't so sure.

"If you were going to talk to him at all, why didn't you just tell him all of it, straight?"

I winced at the loudness of Garth's voice. Putting my finger to my lips, I walked around the cell, checking the walls, ceiling, and under the cots for anything that might be a listening device. I didn't find any-which didn't mean there weren't any there. I motioned him toward the sink, where I turned on the faucet. "Where would you have had me start?" I asked in a low voice. "With a newly elected president coming to town? A bullet hole in a window? A painting and ten thousand dollars in a hidden compartment? How about a white-eyed ninja who seems to be able to appear and disappear at will? Come on. If I'd started trying to explain how and why Veil is the center of gravity in this particular universe, I'd have had to talk about all the killing he's done up to this point, and then get into the whole Archangel business."

Garth shrugged. "So?"

"So the way I handled it seemed like a good idea at the time," I replied, making no effort to hide my irritation and impatience. "My version played a whole hell of a lot better than the truth would have. Besides, Veil's the only ally we have at the moment, and he doesn't need a horde of state troopers and F.B.I, agents looking for him in addition to Henry Kitten and Madison's people. Veil's discredited, remember? Bringing him into it would only have made a bad situation worse."

"Ally? You've always had a weird way of looking at the world. He's responsible for this shit."

"Funny, I thought Orville Madison was responsible."

"Kendry's responsible for you being in the situation you're in."

"What, are you visiting this cell as a tourist?"

"I don't give a shit about myself, and you know it. Besides, I ended up here working in an official capacity."

"We've been through this before, Garth, and there's no sense in playing it all through again. I took his money, didn't I?"

"To put it in the bank for him. He sandbagged you. The trap he set may have been subtle, but it was still a trap."

"Asking a friend for help isn't setting a trap."

"He knew what would happen."

"Drop it, Garth. What's done is done."

"'Dropped' is what we're going to be when Lippitt won't talk to McGarvey, and your Senator Wyndham-if he can even get hold of her-tells him that your story about being hired by her committee is a fairy tale."

"Don't be such a Goddamn pessimist. Besides, what difference would it have made if I had told McGarvey about Veil, Gary Worde, and the Archangel plan? We'd still have had to run some kind of game on McGarvey if we hoped to get somebody from Washington to bring us in. Lippitt was worth another try, and gambling on Wyndham having some brains and suspicions didn't seem like a bad bet. I couldn't think of anything else."

"You'll never pull this one off, Mongo. I'm not saying you were wrong; I'm just saying it won't work."

It wasn't going to take long to discover whether or not Garth had a gift for prophecy. Approaching footsteps echoed in the corridor. I didn't like their sound, staccato-quick, like drumbeats of anger.

McGarvey's face, when he appeared in front of our cell, was pale with fury. "I gave you the benefit of the doubt, you bastard," he said to me in a trembling voice. He clenched, unclenched his fists. "That's a mistake I'm happy to say I won't ever have the opportunity to make again. What the hell did you think you'd accomplish by shoveling all that bullshit at me? Did you think I was a fool? Didn't you think I'd actually make the calls? Did you think that because of your reputation I'd just open the doors and let you walk out if you pitched me just any old story? I take what you did as a personal insult, Frederickson."

"Captain, I-"

"Shut up! I don't want to hear any more lies! That first number you gave me isn't even working. There is no 'Mr. Lippitt,' is there?"

So Mr. Lippitt was still out to lunch, and apparently intended to stay there until the Archangel matter was resolved, one way or another. The old man who had played such an important part in our lives, the irascible and tenacious fighter whom even Garth had come to consider a friend, had even unplugged his phone. Perhaps, I thought, it was understandable. Lippitt and Madison were, after all, colleagues in the close-knit covert intelligence community, and had been for years. Lippitt had probably known Madison longer than he had known Garth and me, and the two men could well be drinking buddies. Mr. Lippitt just didn't want to get involved.

Strike one.

"Senator Wyndham says you're trying to make a fool out of me," McGarvey continued. "She just laughed when I asked if her committee had hired you to investigate Madison."

"Did you mention the Archangel?"

"She didn't know what I was talking about."

So much for what I'd dared hope might be a thorough Senate investigation.

Strike two.

McGarvey continued, "The fact that Orville Madison was confirmed as secretary of state this morning made it seem even funnier to the senator, Frederickson. She didn't ask how I felt. Now I'm going to do what I should have done in the first place, which is to turn you over to the people who know how to deal with spies."

Orville Madison's men must have been camped out in the parking lot all night, because it wasn't ten minutes after we'd received the bad news from the captain when a trooper came into our cell, cuffed our hands behind our backs, and led us out of the lockup area to the front of the building where four big, unshaven men in business suits were waiting. The exchange was short and simple. Nothing was said. Papers were signed, and Garth and I were led outside to separate cars, both late-model Chevrolets.

Madison's men were apparently not interested in our personal belongings or the contents of our backpacks, for there was no sign of them. There was always the possibility that the packs had already been placed in the trunk of one of the cars, but I doubted it; the men had gotten what they'd come for. Whatever was in the yellow oilskin packet I'd taken off Gary Worde's body, I was glad I hadn't told McGarvey about it. Someday, in some way, the truth about Orville Madison might still come out.

There was also some consolation, if not a great deal, in the knowledge that the men who killed us would almost certainly die themselves, in a most unpleasant fashion. Veil was still free. I suspected that Orville Madison's tenure as secretary of state was going to be a short one, which made me happy. What made me unhappy was the thought that he would almost certainly be honored as a martyr after Veil killed him.

As we approached the cars, I turned to look at Garth, to say goodbye, but I was rudely shoved forward, slammed into the back seat of the first car. One of the two men accompanying me slid onto the seat beside me, while the other got behind the wheel. The driver started up the car, pulled out of the parking lot. I looked back, saw the car with Garth in it following close behind.

"I take it we're finally going to meet Secretary Madison," I said carefully. "I assume he wants to know all we have to tell him about where to find Veil Kendry."

Fat chance. The man beside me, who was red-eyed from lack of sleep and smelled slightly of body odor, just kept staring straight ahead. We pulled onto the southbound lanes of the Thru way and drove along at exactly fifty-five miles per hour, as silent as the funeral cortege we were. Orville Madison would know that we didn't have the slightest idea where Veil was, and so it was only a question of where, and in what manner, they intended to kill us.

As we drove along, I found myself looking out the window at the passing landscape, savoring the sight of trees and grass and sky for what I assumed would be the last time. It was an exceptionally bright day for February, and I was sorry I would not see spring.

It seemed an excellent time for the cavalry to arrive, but there wasn't even a car in sight, much less a horse. There was the sound of sirens far in the distance, behind us, but that didn't seem important; it wouldn't make much sense for the State Police to turn us over to the bad guys only to try and get us back a few minutes later.

But the sirens kept coming closer, and no car that the State Police might be pursuing sped past us. In the rearview mirror, I could see the driver glance up nervously, while the man beside me turned around in his seat and looked back.

"Something's gone wrong," my seat partner said tensely. "They're after us."

"Kill him," the driver said in a flat voice.

"We can't! What excuse can we give?!"

"Not our problem; Madison will get us out, probably on some national security angle. But we have our orders. We don't want bullet holes or blood; use your hands."

He used his hands, leaning over in the seat and wrapping them around my neck. I used my foot, or more precisely the toe of my shoe, kicking up hard into the man's groin. His eyes bulged, his breath exploded from his lungs in a kind of whoop, and his hands came away from my throat and went to his crotch. As he bent forward, his throat was exposed. I lunged forward and sank my teeth into his jugular.

"What the hell-?!"

I heard the driver's startled shout over the strangled cries of the man whose throat I was biting. He clawed at my back and head, but I stayed fastened to his throat and bit down hard. I felt my teeth sink through his flesh, then into the tough walls of the carotid artery. Working my head back and forth like a terrier, I kept gnawing. Then blood spurted, filling my mouth and splashing over my face. I jerked my head back and ducked away just as the driver, struggling to control the speeding car with one hand, reached over the back seat with his gun and fired off a shot. The bullet missed me, hit the shoulder of the man whose life was gushing out through the tear in his throat.

I could hear two distinct sets of sirens now, two trooper cars continuing to gain on us. I had no way of knowing what was going on in the car behind, but I had to assume that those men had made a similar decision, to kill Garth. Considering my brother's size, I didn't think they'd be overly concerned about blood or bullet holes; they'd simply shoot him, if they hadn't already. Sooner or later the driver of the car I was in was going to put a bullet in me, unless I could find a way of putting him out of commission. With my hands cuffed behind my back, I had no choice but to use my whole body as a weapon and shoot for the moon.

I stood up on the back seat, then, as the driver's revolver again swung around in my direction, bounced up and over into the front seat, landing head first in the driver's lap and stripping his hand from the wheel. The car immediately went out of control, into a shrieking power slide. I rolled over into the passenger's seat, slid down onto the base of my spine, and planted both feet on the dashboard just as the car hit the shoulder, abruptly stopped skidding, and began to roll. Pushing with all my might against the dashboard, I closed my eyes and held my breath as the car bounced and rolled in a bone-jarring, kaleidoscopic cascade of nauseating motion and a cacophony of shattering glass, snapping plastic, and tearing metal. Through it all, I somehow managed to stay braced in my position.

Finally, what was left of the car came to a rest. Glass tinkled, metal groaned, steam hissed. Slowly, I opened my eyes, saw the reason why my back felt ready to break and the muscles in my legs ready to tear loose from their joints; I was upside down. I couldn't see the man who had been in the back seat with me, but I thought it quite safe to assume he was dead. I also found it immensely satisfying to see that, while the driver's seat belt had kept him securely fastened in his seat, the steering column had collapsed in on him and crushed his chest. Powdered safety glass was everywhere, covering the interior of the car-and me-like sharp, scratchy snow. There was pain in every muscle and bone in my body, but it was welcome pain; it meant my back hadn't been broken. Indeed, I doubted that anything major was broken; if it were, I wouldn't have been able to remain braced. I accepted the pain as a celebration of life.

From somewhere outside my disoriented, upside-down universe, I heard the sound of gunfire and felt sick at the thought that my brother might be dead. At the same time I smelled gasoline, and knew I was likely to be dead very soon myself if I didn't get out of the wreck fast. I relaxed the tension in my legs and dropped the short distance to the inverted roof of the car, landing on my left shoulder and crumpling into a heap.

I'd always had excellent control of my body, and years in the circus combined with the training Veil and other martial artists had given me had allowed me to expand and refine that control to a high degree. I used that control now to arch my back and drop my right shoulder almost to the point of dislocation; that allowed me to draw my cuffed hands under my hips and down the length of my legs, putting them in front of me. I searched through the glass and twisted metal, got lucky and found one of the men's guns. I made a quick, rolling exit out through the gaping hole left by the shattered windshield, got to my feet, and ran as fast as I could away from the car just seconds before it exploded, knocking me to the ground. I rolled over onto my belly, ducked, and hunched my shoulders against the flaming debris and black smoke that rained and swirled around me, pointed the gun in what I hoped was the general direction of the highway.

What I saw when the smoke cleared didn't look good. The second Chevrolet had skidded to a stop at a sharp angle off the side of the highway, and Madison's men were behind it, their backs to me, trading gunfire with four troopers who were shielded by their own cars, forty or fifty yards away.

There was no sign of Garth.

I raised the gun with my cuffed hands, carefully sighted down the barrel on the back of one of the men, and shot him between the shoulder blades. His arms flew up in the air as he arched and fell stiffly backward. Startled, the second man ducked away from the trooper's fire, turned, and saw me at the same time as I squeezed off two shots; one bullet caught him in the face, the other in the chest. I was up and running even before he hit the ground.

Fortunately for me, the troopers had stopped firing when the two men had disappeared from sight. My muscles fueled by fear at what I might find inside the Chevrolet, I sprinted up the slight incline, yanked open a rear door on the bullet-scarred car. To my immense relief, I found Garth huddled on the floor, where he had rolled in order to avoid the hail of bullets. He appeared unhurt, and his eyes went wide with both joy and concern when he saw me.

"Mongo! You're shot!"

At first I didn't understand, until I looked down and realized that I was covered with blood. "I had to take a little nip out of a guy," I said as I dropped the gun and grabbed two handfuls of Garth's parka and helped him out of the car. "It's his blood, not mine."

The four troopers, with Captain McGarvey in the lead, came running toward us, guns drawn, along the shoulder of the highway. When McGarvey saw us walk out from behind the car, he abruptly stopped and holstered his gun, motioning for the others to do the same. Then McGarvey walked slowly toward us, disbelief written all over his face as he stared at me.

"Frederickson," the captain said, "how the hell did you survive that car crash?"

"Oh, that? Surviving flaming car crashes is just a routine part of Russian spy training. You'd be amazed how many candidates they mash or burn up before they get somebody like me who can do it right."

McGarvey didn't smile. "Are you all right? You're covered with blood."

"Like I was telling Garth, most of it doesn't belong to me. How about getting our cuffs off?"

"Sorry, Frederickson," McGarvey mumbled as he produced a set of keys from his pocket and freed my hands, then Garth's. "I still don't understand what's going on, but you were certainly on target when you said I shouldn't turn you over to those men."

"Don't worry about being sorry," I said as a trooper brushed past me and walked to join one of his colleagues, who was angrily waving on rubbernecking drivers. "I'm just happy you changed your mind and came after us."

"I wish I could take credit for changing my mind, but that's not what happened. We got a call five minutes after those guys drove off with you. There's someone who wants to talk to you."

"Who?"

"Come on," McGarvey said, motioning for us to follow him to the trooper cars. "There's a good motel a few miles back where you can clean up and get some rest. The rooms will be courtesy of New York State."

"We need our backpacks."

"No. Everything we have stays with us for the time being. If you'll give me your sizes, I'll see that you get fresh clothes-also courtesy of New York State."

"Hold on a minute," I said, stopping, then taking a step backward to stand beside Garth. "Your concern is touching, Captain, and I mean no disrespect to you when I say that you must have received one whopper of a phone call. Who was on the other end this time, and who wants to talk to us?"

"You'll see."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means I can't tell you, Frederickson," McGarvey said in a slightly embarrassed tone. "Give me a break."

"Give you a break?! Damn, Captain, I love your material. Are we still under arrest?"

"No… uh, not technically."

"Still, if it's all the same to you, we'll pass on the motel and save the state some money. We're safer in your lockup; you can leave the cell doors open if it makes you feel better."

McGarvey shook his head. "They want you in a hotel or motel-the best. We'll put a guard on you."

"How long will it be before we get to meet this person?"

"I don't know."

"What do you know?"

"Whoever it is has to come from Washington. Besides that, all I've been told is that you're to be well taken care of."

The thought of a hot shower, a good meal, clean sheets and a soft bed was certainly inviting-but I couldn't help but remember what had happened to Colonel Po when Orville Madison had decided to pay Henry Kitten's fee for an "extra assignment." If Henry Kitten were to be sicced on us, the assassin would also find the thought of us in a hotel or motel inviting.

"We still prefer the lockup," I said.

"No."

"Remember what happened when you didn't listen to me before?"

"This is different. I have my orders. I told you we'll put a guard on you."

"One guard won't do. We'll need one outside our door, one on the roof, and one outside the window on the ground. Our room will have to be on the top floor. When you hear what I have to tell you-"

"Hold it right there, Frederickson," McGarvey said, putting up his hand. "You can have anything you want, including as many guards as you think you need. But I don't want to hear what you have to tell me-not now. I'm not even supposed to talk to you, beyond what I've already said, and I'm not supposed to listen to anything you have to say."