Both men were breathing through their mouths as they circled one another in the center of the hold. They leaned in, jabbing and slashing, neither gaining an advantage over the other. Each was bleeding, and both knew they couldn’t let their guard down. Davis lunged and Henson defended. But rather than backpedal or duck aside, he came at the thrust, his forearm in swift motion under the knife hand, knocking it aside with his forearm. In a blink, Davis’ midsection was exposed, and with a grunt, Henson, seeing the other movements slow down as if viewed through thick amber, his own mind empty of anything but being, drove his knife underhanded into the area just below the curve of Davis’ rib cage.
Davis’ eyes saucered and he staggered. This time, when he collided with an assortment of crates, he remained still. He looked down at his fatal wound and then at Henson. The explorer’s mouth was set in a line, the bloody knife in his hand.
“Davis…I,” he began.
“Seems you have the better of me, Mr. Henson.” Red spittle foamed on his lips.
Henson wasn’t sure what he felt.
Davis, hand to his wound, walked a few steps toward his vanquisher. Blood was slick on the skin of his hand and soaked the front of his shirt. He put a hand to his throat and plucked loose a thin chain around it. “This is yours, now.”
Henson frowned at the oblong medallion on the end of the chain.
“It’s Diana, goddess of the hunt,” he said, holding the keepsake before him, then it dropped from his slick hand. “As it should be,” Davis muttered, weaving on his feet. He did a half-turn and began walking as if to leave the hold. But he only got a few feet then wilted to the floor, his ankle tucked behind the other like an exhausted dancer who’d come to the end of his strenuous workout. He lay on his back, his vacant eyes looking up out of the hold into the cold night air.
Henson wiped his fingerprints off every surface he could think of in the hold including the rungs. He finished. He’d just killed one of the wealthiest white men in the world and the police would be all over this ship looking for clues. He didn’t think Davis though, who had no immediate family, could come after him from the grave. But there were the others who sat with him on that Medusa Council Tesla had called it, as well as Davis’ relationships with various shareholders in various enterprises. Some of them, if they figured it out who had killed him, may not see this as the fair fight it had been.
Well, fuck ‘em, Henson concluded, as he picked up the medallion. If this was the deed that the white world would recognize him for, having mostly ignored his accomplishments as an explorer and later as a kind of daredevil for hire, well then, so be it. He would hold his head up high as they marched him to the gallows. He was his own man and damned if he had to exist in anyone’s shadow.
Back up top, he looked about the hulk of the darkened freighter, its crane masts in blacker relief against the dark. Not too far away there was light and activity on another cargo ship, but it didn’t seem there was any attention being paid to him. Nonetheless, he stayed in the shadows as much as he could as he left the ship and walked among the warehouses. His shirt was bloody, and while he was bold about his larger act, he knew only too well his current appearance was more than enough motive for a couple of white cops to stop him and maybe he might not make it back to the precinct this time.. Common sense tempering his arrogance, he stole a shirt left out on a clothesline with other items behind a tenement. He felt bad about this, these were working folks who could ill afford the loss. He left three dollars secured by the clothespin and continued on.
When he finally made it back home and into his bed, after attending to his wounds, he lay there signing in his throat, katajjait it was called by the Inuit. Though mostly performed by women, he’d been taught these guttural rhythmic sounds by Akatingwah, his son’s mother, and he’d sung them to the child when the boy was an infant to entertain him or calm him to sleep. Henson imagined he was near a dying campfire in the Arctic never dark. When he awoke at daylight, he didn’t know how long he’d sung, but his throat was sore as was his body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Nikola Tesla swung the Electro-Pulsar about and unleashed a coherent bolt of energy that bored a hole through a five-inch steel plate mounted upright on a table several yards away. Several electrical oscillators were connected by cable to the machine. The beam was modulated so that it didn’t continue through the metal, though it could have easily if the calibration hadn’t been so precise. He shut the device off, a whine diminishing inside its casing as it powered down. The others gathered near him were silent, amazed and fearful of what they’d just witnessed.
“The light of the gods in human hands,” Henrik Ellsmere marveled, his face anxious. His equations were the key to tapping into the space stone and metering its flow.
Tesla had a faraway look on his face.
Bessie Coleman walked over to the steel plate and touched the metal. “Cold, it’s a cold light that bore through,” she said, looking from Shorty Duggan to Hugo Renwick who seemed on the verge of tears. The five of them stood in the hanger of the Weldon Institute’s private airfield in the Jersey wetlands.
Coleman broke her silence. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I do,” Destiny Stevenson said from the hanger’s opening. She had a gun in her hand. “This thing will not prevent war, but instead bring wholesale slaughter to a world already beset and bestride with troubles. It must not be.” She drew in a breath slowly. “And if any of you won’t do anything to prevent this, I will expend any and all efforts to make sure this…death ray is never fully realized.”
Tesla said, “Miss Stevenson, surely that is too pessimistic an outlook. Think of the good that could be achieved with a device such as this.” He rested a hand on the Electro-Pulsar atop its tripod. “A person trapped under fallen rocks or timber, a wall collapses, and—”
“Then they’ll be counted among the dead if conventional means can’t save them,” Stevenson said sharply. “Better that than the death toll this wickedness could and will unleash.” She pointed at the instrument, “And all because of that tear of the sun goddess.”
Inside the pulsar was a piece of the piece of the Daughter Henson had given Tesla. It was the power source.
“I think you’re overdoing it, Destiny,” Coleman began. “I realize you’re still bothered by what happened in the garage, but you have to look past that, honey.”
“Look past destruction on an untold scale?” she challenged.
“Dr. Tesla would see that wouldn’t happen,” Duggan chimed in.
“Yeah,” Stevenson snorted, “ask Edison about that.”
“That’s not fair, Miss Stevenson,” Renwick said. “Progress is always fraught with uncertainty. Through the institute, we can wield this responsibly.”
“Bullshit,” she said, stepping in more, the gun level before her.
“You plan to gun us all down in the name of mankind, lass?” Duggan said.
“I plan to make you fools come to your senses.”
“Remember that gadget you showed us?’ Coleman said.
“What?”
The aviatrix threw the twin joined canisters Stevenson had shown her and Henson several days earlier. Designed to disorient, it exploded at Stevenson’s feet with a flash and a bang, causing the other woman to stumble backward. Duggan was on her and took the gun away.
“God damn you all,” she said, blinking hard to clear her eyes.
“Wait,” Tesla said. He walked over to his machine and opened a hatch in its side. The piece of the Daughter was secured there by two metal rods and wiring. He got the fragment loose and handed it to Stevenson. “Hold onto this, throw it in the river, hide it away do with it as you will. Perhaps you’re right. These recent events do have me questioning my ideas. I pride myself on always knowing the answer I seek. Now I don’t know.”
“Seqinek shall guide her,” Ellsmere muttered.
Lucy DeHavilin poured some punch into her glass. A dark-eyed woman
in pearls walked up beside her. They were at a function.
“Hello, Marie,” DeHavilin said to her.
“Hello, yourself. How was Cuba?” Marie LaSalle asked.
“Relaxing and fulfilling. Though I wish a certain someone had been there with me.”
LaSalle smiled. “A certain someone who was in all the news because of his saving the day at Liberty Hall?”
DeHavilin winked at her as a man with a walrus mustache in a black suit took to the podium.
“Thank you for coming out today,” he began. “I know in one way or the other our beloved Fremont Davis touched the lives for the better of those gathered here in this institution, the Challenger’s Club.”
As the speaker went on, LaSalle glanced at the mounted enlarged photograph of the late Fremont Davis, silently toasting Matthew Henson.
The ship, a Patoka-class oiler called the Mesquita sat listless in its berth. Destiny Stevenson stood on the dock near Matthew Henson, the two gazing into each other’s eyes.
“Write if you get work, kid,” Ira Kunsler joked.
Henson turned to his friend and the two men hugged, patting each other on the back. “I wouldn’t have made it without you, Ira.”
“You’re gonna get me all weepy,” he sniffed.
“Take care of yourself, Matthew.” Cole Rodgers stuck out his hand.
Shaking it, Henson replied, “You too, Cole. I look forward to reading about you in the papers. Give ‘em hell, brother.”
They grinned at each other. Henson embraced Stevenson again. “Once I square things with Ackie, maybe we come back here or maybe you’ll learn to like walrus-fur coats.”
“Maybe.” She gave him a crooked smile.
“Tell Victor good-bye for me,” he added. He was referring to her father’s half-white son who’d disguised himself as Vin O’Hara to get the goods on Dutch Schultz.
She nodded and kissed him.
Henson hefted his duffle bag on his shoulders and giving his friends a half wave, turned and walked up the gangplank onto the waiting ship and his return to the Arctic.
-The End-
About the Author
Gary Phillips is the son of a mechanic and a librarian. He was weaned on too many comic books, Dashiell Hammett stories, reruns of the original Twilight Zone, and experiences ranging from community organizer to delivering dog cages. His 1950s set graphic novel the Be-Bop Barbarians riffs on race relations, jazz, police brutality and the Red Scare. His novel Violent Spring was the first such mystery set in the aftermath of the 1992 civil unrest, and he edited the Anthony award-winning anthology, The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. He is story editor on FX’s “Snowfall,” about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Visit him at www.gdphillips.com
Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem Page 23