Daniel swiveled his head to see Pat sitting in an armchair to his left. Pat closed the Rebus novel he’d been reading and gave Daniel a serious nod that said: Take it easy.
“Where the hell am I?”
“We,” said Pat. “We are in the Hotel Amigo, in beautiful downtown Brussels.” He put the book aside and leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees. “When you came to—”
“In the car.”
“Yes, in the car. You—”
“I have no memory of it.”
“Yeah,” said Pat, “so shut up for a second and let me finish a sentence.”
“Right, sorry. Go.”
“When you came to—in the car—you were really weird.” Pat shrugged, conceding the obvious. “I mean, weirder than you are now. You were having some kind of episode—manic, babbling nonsense. Some of it wasn’t even English, sounded kinda like Tim used to, when a fit hit him, like speakin’ in tongues.”
Daniel remembered driving into New Orleans, his uncle beside him in the passenger seat, when Tim was rocked by a particularly violent fit—not the phony speaking-in-tongues performance of his televangelist act, but the real deal, courtesy of AIT. The memory made him shudder.
“Damn.”
“Yeah. At first I thought, you know, dissociative state, but you came to on your own—I didn’t wake you up.”
Daniel opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
“What?” said Pat.
“I was thinking: Of course you didn’t wake me up. I was awake when I was in Source.” He looked around the room. “I don’t even know what this place is. I—I don’t feel awake.”
Pat made a calming gesture with both hands. “Dude. Freak out a little quieter or you’ll wake the neighbors.” He stood and crossed to the desk and filled a mug with coffee from a thermal carafe. “Anyway, it wasn’t a dissociative state—you knew who we both were, and where we were. You kept insisting Noah couldn’t find you now. Things had changed, you said.”
“It’s true,” said Daniel. “I got right up in his kitchen and he didn’t feel my presence until I put my attention on the energy he was sending down.”
“I’m just gonna assume that makes sense to one of us,” said Pat.
“Basically, he noticed me noticing him. Not before.”
“Ditto,” said Pat. “Sugar?”
“No thanks.”
“Maybe it was a trap.” Pat carried the mug to the bed. “Maybe Noah laid out the red carpet for you, just pretending not to notice until you got close. Maybe he wanted to capture you.”
Daniel took the mug with a nod. “No. When the light dipped, I could feel his shock and anger. He didn’t know. And his goons didn’t aim to capture, they came after me with murderous intent. You can feel people’s emotions from a distance in Source.”
“Okay, so something’s changed and now Noah can’t see you from afar, so long as you don’t put your attention on him.”
“Right. Which gives me an idea.” Daniel sipped some coffee. It tasted weak, thin, not much like coffee at all. He took a larger swallow, then gulped down the rest.
Nothing.
Daniel sailed the mug across the room, where it bounced off the wall and broke against the edge of a table.
Pat followed the fate of the mug, then looked back to Daniel and raised his eyebrows.
Daniel said, “We’re in a five-star hotel in Belgium. I can assume the coffee’s pretty good, right?”
“The fuck, man?” Pat snorted out a bemused laugh, without humor. “The coffee ain’t up to your standards? Seriously?”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m asking you. Is the coffee good?”
“What? Yes, the coffee’s good.”
“Strong.”
“Yes, Daniel. The coffee is strong.”
“Tastes like brown water to me.”
Pat poured a mug for himself, took a sip. “It’s just coffee, man. Look, I know it’s easy for me to say, but I don’t think the professor sacrificed her life so you could climb up your own ass.” He sipped some more coffee. “And I mean that with love.”
Daniel nodded, got out of bed. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just having a bumpy landing. Need to reboot.” He headed toward the bathroom. “I’m gonna hop in the shower. Do me a favor, order us up some room service. I’m starving.”
25
Daniel could barely taste the grilled octopus, but his body needed the protein, so he ate it all, while telling Pat about his increasing power in Source, about meeting Huck and spot-traveling long distances and manifesting dumpsters, and everything he’d seen and done in Noah’s tower.
“Which brings us to my idea,” he said, depositing his empty plate on the room-service trolley. “We don’t know who the hell Noah even is on Earth. He could be anyone.”
“Tell you what,” said Pat. “He could be runnin’ for president or prime minister someplace, got a 6-6-6 birthmark on his scalp. Or maybe he already won.” He whistled an impression of a theremin.
It made Daniel laugh, and he started to feel like he wasn’t dreaming after all. He said, “Or he could be some war vet with a traumatic brain injury, sleeping rough, living under bridges with his dog. No way to know. But we know Elias—”
He stopped short. Thinking of these people by their Source names was not helping Earth feel like less of a dream. Digger had been a woman living on Earth, an archeologist from New England working as a professor in Spain, and her name was Dana Cameron. Huck was a sad boy named George from Kokomo, Indiana, who bounced around foster homes.
Real people, living real lives.
“We know Lucien Drapeau,” he said. “Whatever Drapeau’s got cookin’ on Earth is in service to Noah’s agenda. You can take that to the bank. So we fly to New York, get my Drapeau file from Vasili’s locker, and we go through his known associates, find him that way. Keeping my focus on Elias—Drapeau—instead of Noah.”
“And Noah won’t be able to see you, ’cause your attention ain’t on him.” Pat grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”
Daniel sat at the desk and woke the laptop computer. He scanned his thumbprint on the laptop’s pad and brought a secure web browser up on the screen.
Pat said, “Use the UK passports, they’re still clean.”
“In a minute,” said Daniel, as he typed his current password to access his voice-mail. “First, you know the best part of my go-to-New-York plan?”
Pat said, “You’re taking me ice-skating at Rockefeller Center.”
“Better.” Daniel swiveled his chair to face Pat directly. “Kara. And me. In New York, with twinkly Christmas lights, not ice-skating ’cause I’d fall on my ass, but dinner, wine, maybe a piano bar. I’m gonna send her a ticket.”
“That does sound lovely, and I hate to be the voice of reason, but you think it’s wise to take your eye off the ball right now for a romantic rendezvous with the girlfriend? Come on, man, you’re smarter than that. Get your head in the game.”
“This coming from a guy who’s never kept a girlfriend longer than six months.”
“It’s not relationship advice, idiot. It’s survival advice.”
“It’s not up for debate. I need to see her. I need to look into her eyes and hear what she has to say, and I need to show her that, my recent behavior to the contrary, I want her in my life.”
“Oh, gag me with a pitchfork,” said Pat, pulling a pack of Dunhills from his pocket. He shook a cigarette from the pack. “I’m gonna step out on the roof. Be sure to let me know when you’re done ovulatin’.”
Daniel shot Pat a friendly middle finger as Pat opened the window and climbed outside. Clicking through to his inbox, Daniel found a new voice-mail from Kara. A long one. He brought the transcript up on the screen.
Got your email. Whatever you’re doing, whatever’s occupying your time, it’s clearly the most important thing in your life right now—but since I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what that means. But I have a decision to make that won’t wait until you can fit me int
o your schedule. And you can remove the sarcasm from that last statement if you’re being chased by armed bad guys or something. I hope you’re safe, even if I sorta want to kill you myself. I hate that you’ve put me in this position and I didn’t want to tell you this way, but you’ve given me no choice.
I’m pregnant. And unless the archangel Michael paid me a visit in my sleep, you’re the father.
I’m angry I can’t see your face right now. Angry I’m going to get back a considered response instead of the raw truth of how you feel about this. Truth is, we don’t know each other that well, not really. There hasn’t been time. I don’t even know if being a father is something you see for yourself.
I’m keeping my baby—you don’t get a vote in that. You do get to decide if you want to be involved with raising your child. As for you and me . . . I have no idea.
I’m in San Diego this week. Interviewed at the UCSD Medical Center, and it went well. I expect they’re going to offer me the job. I just . . . I thought we should discuss it first but . . . I don’t know. Talking to an answering machine sucks. This isn’t fair to me.
I don’t know what else to say. I’m staying at the Marriott Marquis. Room 2309. Come see me, or don’t.
The ball’s in your court.
Daniel sat motionless for a few seconds, reflexively doing the math in his head. The night the condom broke. They’d laughed about it at the time, sweat-soaked bodies collapsing together. They’d been drinking champagne. Kara would be four months, maybe four and a half. So, an April baby, or maybe late March. Springtime. Renewal.
He stood and snatched the laptop from the desk, strode into the bathroom, and closed the door behind him. He set the laptop down on the marble countertop.
Then he clicked Record Message.
“Listen, you: No risk of a considered response; it’s been all of thirty seconds since I read your voice-mail. What follows is exactly the truth of how I feel about this.
“I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Also a bit scared to be honest, but having a kid is a big step, so that’s normal. Mostly, I can’t wait to see you and get started on this journey. And I want to be more than involved, I want us to raise our child together. I want to be there for the pregnancy, the birth, changing diapers, first day of school, teenage tantrums—I want to be there for all of it. What I’m saying is: I’m in.
“You say we don’t know each other that well, but I think that’s fear talking. We haven’t been together that long, but what we’ve been through together . . . I think we do know each other. And, lady, I swear we are for each other.”
Daniel reached for the trackpad to hit Send. Instead, he played it back, to hear how it would sound to Kara.
He clicked Erase Message.
Then he hit Record Message again.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
He hit Send.
26
From the hotel rooftop, Brussels was a perfect picture postcard: magnificent gothic architecture, towering spires illuminated by floodlights, a crescent moon hanging high above.
Pat blew a plume of smoke into the night sky. “You skip school the day they taught birth control in health class?”
Daniel shrugged. “You know how it says on the box, 98 percent effective?”
“Well, shit,” said Pat.
“I think you just mispronounced congratulations,” said Daniel.
“You can’t seriously want to bring a child into this world, not after all you’ve seen.”
“I think I liked you better when you were a pothead,” said Daniel. “This cynicism pose is getting out of hand.”
“Ain’t posin’,” said Pat. “You think I sold my house and gave away my dog and moved to a boat on a lark?”
“You gave Edgar away?”
“I found him a good home,” Pat said, a little defensively. Pat had once told Daniel that Edgar was the longest relationship of his adult life, with any living thing.
“You just walked away from him?”
Pat took a long drag on his cigarette and Daniel could see the pain in his eyes and wondered if he’d overstepped.
Pat said, “Look, man. World is going through a massive shift . . . dark days ahead. And they’re almost upon us.”
“Not if we can stop Noah.”
“I ain’t even talkin’ about Noah, I’m talkin’ about right here. I’ve been deeper in the belly of the beast than you, for a lot longer than you. I can see the patterns. History is cyclical, one step forward and three back, same shit in a different package, over and over. And right now, all the signs are aligned—the current empire is about to fall, and we’re past the tipping point. The plutocrats know it, and they’re doing what they always do—same thing they did at the end of Rome and every other empire. They’re asset stripping, funneling wealth to the top and selling war to the masses, everything on credit, bankrupting the dying empire even faster. And the rate of their asset stripping tells us we’re past the tipping point, because they’re no longer shearin’ the sheep. They’re skinnin’ the sheep.”
“You are just a ray of sunshine,” said Daniel.
“Tough titties,” said Pat. “I’m telling you this so you can start thinking about gettin’ ready, ’cause the shitstorm’s coming, like it or not. Planet’s getting hotter, less arable land, pretty soon we gonna have water refugees on our doorstep, and we’re still burning dead dinosaurs to run our machines. There’s gonna be a disease pandemic in the next century ’cause we destroyed antibiotics with our greed and desire for constant comfort. And look at what our governments focus on—look at the villains and con artists running for high office. And winning. They ain’t runnin’ as public servants, they’re runnin’ as saviors. And one thing has always been true—every time people think they’re voting for a savior, they end up electing a tyrant.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but so-called ‘Western democracy’ is dying of corruption, and authoritarianism is on the rise again, and it’s a worldwide thing. The social order’s under stress, and now people are realizing AIT is spreading faster than anyone in charge of anything is admitting, and the protests are growing faster than Occupy, faster than anything. The Foundation expects mass violence will paralyze London during the G7 next month—I’m tellin’ you, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down even sooner than I think.”
“And your solution is to not have children?”
“Be a start,” said Pat. “Everybody had just one kid for the next three generations, our great-grandchildren would be born into a world of plenty. Enough for everyone.”
“Make you a deal,” said Daniel. “I stick to just one, and you find a way to be happy for me.”
Pat put on a game-show-host smile, toasted Daniel with his cigarette. “Congratulations, I’m sure you’ll make a swell dad.”
“Thank you.” Daniel looked across the city to the spire atop the Hôtel de Ville, where a gilded Saint Michael, wings rising behind his shoulders in triumph, impaled Lucifer during the battle for heaven. Michael the archangel, who would later visit Mary with the news of her miraculous pregnancy.
Funny that Kara had made reference to the archangel in her voice-mail message. Felt like the kind of synchronicity that happens in dreams. But Kara was real and the baby growing inside her was real and Daniel, ready or not, was really going to be a dad.
Would he be a good one? Hard to say. Daniel’s mother had died in childbirth and his father had committed suicide three hours later by throwing himself off the Greater New Orleans Bridge. So he’d been raised by his uncle, a world-class con artist.
Consequently, he had to admit, his reference point for fatherhood was perhaps less than ideal. As a role model, Trinity had left almost everything to be desired, and Daniel hadn’t made it through childhood undamaged, but who really does? Despite his shortcomings, Trinity had loved Daniel and treated him with kindness.
That was a start.
Daniel said, “Remember that Bible Tim carried everywhere and waved around on
television all the time? Bright royal-blue cover?”
“Whole world does,” said Pat. “Hell, they sell Tim Trinity editions now. Pages edged in silver, blue leather cover, just like Tim’s.”
Daniel nodded. “In Noah’s tower, in the meditation hall, there was kind of a hologram of the shared meditation—”
“You told me. Tudor chapel.”
“Right. In the chapel, there was a stained-glass portrait of Saint James the Apostle. He was writing with a quill, writing his letter in a royal-blue Bible, just like Tim’s.”
“Huh,” said Pat.
“Feels like a clue,” said Daniel.
“But to what?”
Daniel thought about it. “Remember Tim’s last television broadcast, before we went on the run?”
“Shortest sermon in history,” said Pat.
“Exactly. He quoted Saint James—said faith without works is dead. And then he had some kind of panic attack and bolted off the stage. The media hyped the hell out of it.” Daniel remembered how the cable news announcers had immediately dubbed it Trinity’s Faith Without Works Is Dead sermon, which seemed a little on the nose, since that’s basically all he’d said.
“I remember the controversy,” said Pat. “Tim didn’t just say Saint James was right, he said Saint Paul was wrong. He basically said faith don’t matter a lick, and only works matter. Why they killed him, if you ask me.”
“The hell are you talking about?” said Daniel. “Conrad Winter had Tim killed to prevent the world from learning about the existence of AIT, because the Council was working to harness it for themselves. We know this.”
Pat lit a new cigarette with the dying butt of the last. He said, “Sure, but people often have multiple motivations. What I’m saying: Tim had the whole world watching, and what did he say? He said that to love each other as brothers and sisters means to treat each other as brothers and sisters. You know who else came carrying that message? Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus, to name but a few . . . all carried that message, all had followings that grew uncomfortably large for the power brokers of the day, all assassinated. Tim, too. And you can add Bob Marley to the list, except the guys they hired botched the job.”
The Savior's Game (The Daniel Byrne Trilogy Book 3) Page 14