by Jackson, Gil
‘So what’s the difference? He says, or Is?’ Hamilton asked her.
‘Pilate had failings ... wise counsel wasn’t one of them. When a man is hanged or imprisoned for robbery, the crime sheet doesn’t say: He says he was convicted for robbery; it says: He was convicted for robbery.’
...the wording on the woodwork stays as written.
‘All the difference in the world. Pilate did Jesus and the Early Christian Church a great service that day. Still want to go ahead with Revelation as an example?’
She went on to say that the Torah went back to 1230 BC, after the Israelites were kicked out of Egypt. Delivered on Mount Sinai by Moses, and that his is a noble religion that became the foundation for both the Early Christian Church and Islam.
‘So do you accept the Angel we’ve among us as some sort of Christian message?’
‘No more than you. All our beliefs are based on interpretative writings, most of us would die for. Don’t get me wrong: that there is a God out there: I’m convinced. As you.’
He nodded.
She was shot with anger. ‘It’s this blasted interpretation by man that perpetually clouds the picture.’
‘Then your faith is as shallow as mine. You. A Carmelite sister—’
A fundamental question for all people with faith that they had to answer and carry. She had all the Popery within her to fill St. Peter’s Basilica and still it wasn’t enough. Following blindly. What did it all amount to? A detective’s solution. What was it again? Jesus of Nazareth’s crucifixion and placement in the sepulchre; of Joseph of Arimathaea and several women entering to prepare Jesus’s body and them finding two strangers where He should have been — wearing shiny suits. His body lifted and taken elsewhere. Or as He said: I am the risen Christ. Her assumption that if He had been taken there would have been people around with an axe to grind that would have shopped his whereabouts to them. That only leaves, Resurrection and the diminutive little Entity that made it all possible. There was no more account of the shining clothed persons.
Hamilton sympathised with her doubt, as he himself had long endured with his own. Tried to make light of it. ‘Perhaps they were wearing Tonic mohair?’
She laughed. ‘What as in Abercrombie & Fitch? Don’t think so. Shining clothes could only have been threads of gold or silver ... and a lot of it to make cloth shimmer. If it had been, we’d be talking serious shekels—’
‘A king perhaps, or someone of that order?’
She had reasoned that the likelihood of people of high status walking off the street into a Jewish Sepulchre. On spec. That the Son of God was lying in State. No.... When all had been taken into account all that was left was they were Angels and an Entity. The Resurrectionist had been and gone. What part of her faith was she to keep?
‘And what would you dispense with?’
He already had, time ago.
* * *
Hamilton thought Genesis, Exodus, and Moses, the author of the Pentateuch on which his teachings of traditional Judaism had been based. Contemplating, as many others of his generation, during their annual commemoration of Yom Ha-Shoah; of God’s lack of Divine intervention that such immense evil as the Holocaust had the endorsement of God or, the Death of God in finality; before going into a soul-search that was to lead him to his eventual conversion to Humanistic Judaism; no more contemplative of the Passover and long before he had heard of Sister Anne Carter or Charlie O’Hare.
* * *
Set among the cables and pipes of AG-MX-960 a team of engineers and scientists were liaising with one man. That man standing in front of a computer consol, turned.
‘Let’s get on with it.’
Director Nathaniel Johnson spoke briefly with Daniel Sullivan, then nodded to consol control. Frederik Spannocs, seated himself in a chair, cut off from the outside world except for a combination microphone and earphones, answered as if he was a on a video telephone link: his mouth not quite in sync with his voice. Bring it on! A child, no more than three, maybe four. A boy. Apparently drugged, was brought forward to the Plexiglas container attached by a leash. The woman — dressed as a Western Belle, smiled at Spannocs, stood outside taking up the position as if making an offering of a human sacrifice. Hamilton jumped up.
Annie screamed at Johnson. Then turned to Hamilton. ‘This wasn’t what was agreed. Stop this!’
Hamilton ran forward, but was restrained. He called out to consol control, his back to him.
‘This experiment with evil! This your life’s work? ... The President would not have been party....’
* * *
Then she was there. Inside the bay door. The blizzard outside pouring wind-driven snow into the hangar shaping itself around her. And she, balanced, as if to spring: with hands configured like claws. A metre from the ground her height giving the appearance of an Amazon.
Annie had said the same to Hamilton when he had first been introduced to her. Like Queen Orithyia. That might have accounted for a lack of vagina. She had smiled at him, Famous for her perpetual virginity, you know ... known as Androktone: A killer of men!...
He had smiled tentatively.
Annie recognised her immediately for who she was (no Amazon), putting praying hands to her mouth more from surprise than devotion to worship. There was no question in her mind. She didn’t need the earthly accoutrements that separated male from female; nor the vanities of a make-over industry. She was pure blown form. Long hair with a tone she could not easily put a name to, blowing back across and tumbling over her shoulders. Her skin sheen unblemished light brown. Her mouth slightly open, baring off-white teeth, her eyes as a tigress. She slowly moved her head from side to side as if to sum up what she was about.
Everyone in that place had the look of horror on their faces fearing whom she was going to come for. Hamilton (struck with the horror of: a killer of men) dared a look into the large video screen that had been strung from the metal roof trusses. The cctv camera full on her. An open bay door with snow pouring through — leaving no more than her sylph-like impression in its flakes — was all he could see, leaving no doubt, if doubt existed before, that image manipulation had been used when he had first laid eyes on her. And she, knew what her business in this place was. After years in the darkness who she was to avenge before leaving this infernal world for a better. The demigod! Forgiveness was not in the equation for what he had done to her and others.
To Annie, if ever required to give a visual interpretation of one of the seven angels with seven vials from the Book of Revelation’s Visions of Doom, this huntress would be as good a starting point as any. She ... was ... awesome! and nothing like the one that had been laid out on a slab before being abducted. Whoever masterminded that, clearly had little idea of what they were taking on. Until at the finality, at their end, didn’t they just...?
* * *
Frederik Spannocs tried to get out of his box at the sight of her. If ever evil was to be conquered, in his present condition he would be crushed, and he knew it. He had run before, or rather, his alter ego from downstairs had, and by the feel of things he had run again; and the worry to him was that she wouldn’t recognise the difference, and certainly in no mind to reason. Something had happened and he didn’t know what. It was not supposed to happen like this. He looked to the consol. Past the boy and his handler.
The huntress came across the hangar like a tornado and blew the door of the Plexiglas box right out across the building as if tissue paper. Spannocs backed away from her, but he could see there would be no contest against this astral being—
* * *
Charlie, backed by a team of heavily armed FBI agents, burst into administrative (annexe ii-38) section pen.gov. The reception area, attended by a two security guards and a girl, was quickly secured. Codes for the lift obtained. Security guards’ communication devices were removed and discarded into fire buckets of water. The telephone switchboard was disconnected from the computer; the computer disabled with a sharp blow from one of the FBI men’s
short automatic rifle butts through the screen. Reception was escorted from the building. Charlie looked at the occupant manifest, nodded at the team, and went away in one of the lifts. Exiting the top floor, another FBI man smashed the fire alarm, chased after Charlie and the rest of his team until they came upon a corridor door marked:
SPECIAL SURVEILLANCE OPERATIONS
NO ENTRY TO UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL
(INCLUDING FBI & CIA)
There was an eye-scan lock to one side. A ramming rod in the hands of one of the men, made it instantly obsolete. They pushed through staff answering the call of the fire alarms, coming the other way as Charlie frantically looked for the door that he needed. There it was:
OPERATIONS DIRECTORS
(Dr. Nathaniel Johnson, Univ. of Pittsburgh).
(Dr. Daniel Sullivan, Univ. of Ohio).
He hesitated at the last name, nodded at one of the FBI men, who kicked the door open. The office was empty. They went out: another: next door to the first.
PENSIONS ADMINISTRATOR
Another nod from Charlie. Another door separated from its hinges. There, seated at a desk surrounded by papers, books, old telephones and teleprinters, answer phones: Marco Giuseppi — looking his age.
He looked at Charlie from the other side of his desk. The hair on his head; that had been blonde in an earlier life was sparse dirty yellow grey. His face wrinkled and dry; his eyes hollow lacked expression; if they had been closed he would have looked no more in this world than open. He arose from his chair and Charlie — just for the moment — felt a hint of sorrow for what was before him. But, as he had earlier in life learned, situations are never quite what they first seem. And that lesson learned was not about to be dismissed here.
‘You could have knocked, sir!’
‘And when was there ever a requirement of the Prince of Darkness to stand on ceremony?’
He shuffled his feet, his head lifted with apparent difficulty of age. ‘You mistake me for another, sir.’
‘Never did. Either of you.’
The two FBI officers in the room, not used to confronting elderly gentlemen with heavy weapons drawn, momentarily lowered them, before standing easy.
Charlie saw them. ‘Hold your guard! Fuck-you!’
There was a blast of air past Charlie and Giuseppi went into a sudden but recoverable fit. Charlie staggered but recovering his composure, levelled the gun in his left hand, and jangled the little gold cross in his right, into his face.
‘You’re wanted in Alaska? Now get your hands up and face the wall. And whoever that Old Gentleman is, that just tried to push past me—? Had better come too.’
* * *
Flashes of green and white surrounded the Plexiglas box, and within a second she screamed and turned. Seeing the Western Belle holding the child was on her and tore her head off, sending blood spraying up the outside of the tinted plastic; made a grab for Frederik Spannocs, pulled him to her. She hesitated, then dropped him. The call from the consol operator to ready the main coils to hold what would come next. The hum from the power source was deafening, as the scientists and engineers put ear defenders on.
Allan Georgos called at the top of his voice praying that he didn’t attract her attention any more than he had to, ‘Shut it down, it’s not him.’
AG-MX-960 whirled its motors down. She was gone. There had been no second coming, leaving Frederik Spannocs alone with the slumped headless body of his assistant sprawled across him. She clearly hadn’t lost it.
* * *
Charlie nodded at them. ‘Do it!’ One of the FBI men pushed him into the wall kicking his legs apart and shouted hard at him. One ran his hands over his upper body, removed a gun from inside a shoulder holster, the other continued down his legs feeling an obtrusion. He unbelted and pulled the old man’s trousers down and removed a stiletto from inside a strapped upper thigh knife case. He then pulled his hands behind his back, handcuffed him and put a black bag over his head.
‘He’s clean and ready to go, Mr. O’Hare.’
‘Sergeant Charlie O’Hare. As I live and breathe. Typical. He didn’t even have the bottle to identify himself.’ Giuseppi said to his assailant.
The FBI man hit him expertly in the kidneys. Giuseppi didn’t make a sound.
‘That’s your old man for you,’ Charlie said shaking with excitement, then turned to Giuseppi. ‘Couldn’t be in two places at once, could you, Marco? Will the real Marco Giuseppi please stand? I’ve waited a long time for this. You’ve had an Achilles heel and no one knew of its existence. Well it’s out now, so it is, and you’re busted.’
Giuseppi laughed said. ‘But can you keep it that way, Sergeant?’
‘No. But we know a woman that can. Take him away, I’ll join you in a minute. And keep that bag over his head, whatever happens.’
Giuseppi was bundled down out of the building screaming and struggling into an armoured van where he was chained to the floor and a return flight to USAF White Bear.
* * *
Charlie tore through files and paperwork that Nathaniel Johnson and Daniel Sullivan had accumulated over the years. Skim reading and discarding. An old clown’s mask. He found references going back to his and Frank’s time working the beat on Lower East Side. How Johnson and Sullivan had been placed as undercover overseers in the dockyard to keep a look out for Communists, radicals, saboteurs and the like under the new deputy head of the Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. A switching of interest toward Marco Giuseppi, head of The Dockyard, Ships & Rigging and Allied Workers’ Union; when two officers from 7th Precinct, NYPD were going out of their depth over an immigrant family’s child’s abduction and murder linking it to him. (Not wrong there, he thought to himself.) That they would need recruiting to the Bureau for their own protection. What he came across next sent a chill through him. For the killer of Frank Weinberg was not, as he thought at that time, Marco Giuseppi; or an axe-grinder from the Seager Inquiry; but an off his own back, assassination for what Frank had witnessed — Allan Georgos! (The two-faced bast—) He read on, Recruited by Special Surveillance Operations because of his knowledge of cults; and the cloaked head of the Order of the Most Divine Third Circle (he continued); with the intent of looking into Marco Giuseppi as having supernatural abilities to possess, ...something not of this world; and the reach to pull it among us.
‘Fooking ‘ell!’
Remembering that Director Franklin Lomax had shown him a photograph after it had been removed from Frank’s body. The planting of an indecent photograph in his jacket pocket was a nice touch after his murder, Charlie thought — not. (A witness, said it looked like Rabbi Levin.) How they had discussed at the time that Frank had probably been the victim of a gangland execution as a result of his work with the Seager Inquiry, and an attempt to hypocritise Frank using indecent material. It had put doubt into both himself and Lomax’s mind as to Frank’s integrity at that time. That doubt had been discharged and he felt guilty for the misgiving.
He took the relevant files and left the building for the flight back to Alaska with a Marco Giuseppi and the concern of how he was to keep Jekyll from Hyde.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 31 – 1997
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels.
HENRY VIII, ACT 3
The Plexiglas box that Frederik Spannocs had been seated was empty. The headless bloodied mass of the would-be abused boy’s handler was there, and the wax dummy of the baby stood against the control consol. Not even they had dared use a living child. The experiment had been a monumental disaster. Except for Johnson and Sullivan the hangar was empty and being cleaned. AG-MX-960 was being wound down to see if any damage had resulted from what had been an unexpected disaster. And to top it all Charlie O’Hare had returned with half the country’s Marines, armed to the teeth and ready to blow them all to kingdom come unless they put their hands up.
Daniel Sullivan was heard to say. ‘This has not turned out to b
e a good day, Nathaniel.’ He turned at the commotion coming in the door arming himself with an automatic rifle. Seeing Charlie O’Hare enter the hangar from the other end with a dozen armed men. ‘Who the fuck is that with the black bin liner over his head?’
‘You may well ask ... Daniel Sullivan.’ Charlie said. ‘And this fiasco has just cost another million lives. She’s gone, hasn’t she. You didn’t have the right ingredients. I warned you of its continuation?’
Charlie decided that he would say nothing of what he knew, for the time being at least — let it come slowly. He was not sure if he was to expect trouble. He nodded and raised his eyes at them in an assured expression of satisfaction. Twenty or so armed Marines behind him tended toward a degree of a smirk.
Seeing they were slightly outgunned, and the sight of enough blood the day previous, Nathaniel Johnson decided where this red-haired Irishman was coming from nodded at Sullivan who dropped his weapon.
‘That’s better. I think I might have some answers for you, Nathaniel.’
‘Of course, Charlie, nothing personal, we do after all work for the same side.’ Johnson said.
Charlie smiled. ‘Of course we do, Nathaniel, and I’ll remind you of which when I kill you! Your office yielded up some useful information. And if you’ll forgive me I can’t help wondering whose side someone else is on. Allan Georgos in the house?’