To paraphrase Jesus, "When in Rome do as the Romans do," but we are not in Rome any longer. Just as the Vatican became its own country, so must other concerned and righteous peoples separate themselves from the corruption of secular governments. We will shelter any who request asylum in the name of Christendom.
Chapter 16
"What did you just say?" The spell was broken. Just as I feared – the Danny I'd been hoping to be reunited with slipped out of my grasp.
"God has spoken to me," he said. I searched for the glint of madness in Danny's eyes, but only his familiar green eyes greeted me. Dorshak's words in the interrogation room came back to me: "Your partner is completely off the deep end. He thinks the LINK-angels guided his hand."
I shook my head, as though trying to will the words back into Danny's mouth. "No, you don't mean that."
Ignoring the tremor in my voice, he smiled crookedly. "Yeah, I do. I've received an answer from the Almighty ... a sort of peace."
I pushed away from him and sat down on the bleachers. I squinted up at him. "What are you talking about, Danny?"
He sat down next to me. The long-unused plastic creaked in protest at the added weight. Danny reached into the pocket of the trench coat and carefully laid a Bible on my knee.
I stared at the scarred and battered book, as though it might be a carrier of his insanity.
"I smuggled this out for you," he said, patting the book. "You'll find it illuminating."
"I'm a Catholic, Danny. You know we never read that thing," I said, pushing the Bible back at him.
"Maybe it's time." Firmly, Daniel placed the book back in my lap. He looked deeply into my eyes. "I've been thinking about that night. All my notes are in there."
I looked at the Bible with renewed interest.
He shrugged. "It was the best I could do. It's the only paper the Moral Office allows besides toilet paper. But I could hardly have kept notes on that stuff, now could I? Keeping a Bible is expected."
I nodded, not sure what to make of this new development. "Danny, you haven't become a New Right convert, have you?"
"Hell no!"
"Why all this God-talk, then?"
"I told you, Dee. I've been chosen. God has spoken to me." :
"Sure," I said hollowly. His shoulder touched mine, and we stared out at the ruined ballpark. The glass field glinted like a multifaceted diamond in the silvery moonlight. I put my hand over his where he pressed the Bible into my lap. His knuckles were dry and his fingers thin. As I caressed his hand, I noticed the absence of a band on his ring finger. "She divorced you?"
"Wouldn't you have?" His face scrunched up in a grimace.
"It's illegal. How could she possibly have gotten ..."
"It's not illegal in cases of adultery, remember," Daniel said. "And even though you were acquitted of the charges, by the time the circus was through the press painted you a total nymphomaniac. Barbara didn't believe me when I told her I'd stopped before ... well, you were there. You know the truth."
I pulled away at the memory of that night. In my mind, his hot hands, so unlike the gentle ones resting on the Bible now, pawed at my dress like an animal. "Yeah," I said hoarsely, "I was there."
He removed his hand deliberately, conscious of me staring at it. He folded his arms across his chest. "Dee, about that night ... Did you get my letters?"
I nodded, returning my gaze to the glass-shrouded arena.
"It's important, Dee. This is why I wanted to meet. I need you to understand it was ... Them." He unraveled one hand to jab a finger at the Bible. "Them, not me, who were in control that night."
I shook my head. He was completely delusional. "Oh, Danny."
"No, you've got to listen to me. The therapist at the psych ward told me to take responsibility for my actions, but he didn't understand me. I know I did it; it just wasn't me that did it."
"Do you know how crazy that sounds?" My voice took on the same tone Rebeckah's had when she begged me to join a twelve-step program, sympathetic yet tinged with hopelessness.
His eyes locked on to mine, asking me to trust in our partnership, to remember who he used to be. With a nod, he said, "I know how crazy it sounds, Dee. I think sometimes that I have gone off the deep end. But, you were my partner for five years. Was I really capable of any of it?"
"Sometimes we don't know what we're capable of." My voice sounded mechanical, harsh. "Danny, you have to face facts. They caught you with a smoking gun. You killed the Pope."
"Right. Right," Daniel said, impatiently. "I've seen the tapes. The whole world has. It was me, but who pulled the strings?"
"I don't believe in fate." The open air of the stadium robbed my words of their impact. I shook my head and muttered, "Freewill down here, my friend, freewill." I could feel my throat constricting, and tears burning behind my eyes. "Danny, maybe that doctor was right."
To have come so far only to find him so changed. It was almost more than I could stand. A tear slipped down my cheek, and I touched his back lovingly. I could feel his shoulder blades tremble beneath my fingers. He looked up at me, finally, his eyes so full of pain that I pulled away.
He looked up at me, his face puzzled, lost. "I thought you would understand."
"I'm sorry."
"I know I fucked up your life," Daniel said. "Believe me, where I've been I've had just as much time to think about it as you have – maybe more. But, I'm trying to talk about what really happened that night."
Daniel's eyes danced with that same excitement he used to have when we cracked cases together. His mood was infectious. He shifted his body to address me directly. I found myself mirroring his posture. "It was tech-telepathy, Dee," he said. "Don't you see? It was me doing all that stuff, but it was Them pulling the strings. I was a puppet."
"Except there's one big hitch," I said, articulating my biggest stumbling block to completely believing that the LINK-angels were man-made. "Tech-telepathy is fool's gold, Danny, and you know it. And what you're talking about is not just mind-to-mind communication– – it's much bigger. Even if it were possible to send a mental image through the LINK, there's no way anyone could control your actions – make sure you do it."
"True. Okay, let's back up a second," Daniel said, waving his hand. "Maybe I used the wrong word. What I'm talking about isn't exactly tech-telepathy. It's more like sending an emotional command over the LINK. Hate ... Rage ..." – He dropped his eyes – "Lust ... blinding emotions. As if someone could electronically transmit that very moment you 'see red' and lose all rational thought."
"Like the Jordan Institute's tech," I agreed, suddenly excited. "I've been thinking about all this. I thought, maybe ... well, until recently, I never really connected it with what happened to you. Do you remember what we were working on, the tech-theft from the mental health biotech people?"
He blushed. "Not well. When they pulled the strings on the LINK I lost a lot of my memory files. I guess my brain wasn't used to storing things the old-fashioned way anymore."
I nodded. It was true for me as well. "Well, I've been piecing it back together. Jordan Institute was developing emotion-manipulating software – it was supposed to help people with chronic pain, or other emotional problems. Something that could touch those parts of the brain – pain, pleasure – who knows what else. But, I don't know, Danny." I shook my head. "It's a big leap from masking the pain centers to killing the Pope."
"Have you ever had an out-of-body experience, Dee?" Daniel said suddenly.
I gaped at him.
"Neither have I," he said to my stunned silence. "And, that's what makes me so certain that I was possessed by something."
My mouth still hung open, but now for a different reason: it made a kind of twisted sense.
"Okay," I said hesitantly. "Go on."
Danny's eyes watched mine intently. "Both times that it happened, there was a brief moment, before the emotion overwhelmed me, when I felt separated, floating."
"Separated from what? From yourself?"
Daniel nodded, then frowned in disgust. "Of course, the doctor at the psych ward told me that was just me disassociating from the horror of the event, but, Dee, it wasn't that."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Just before I ..." He fumbled for the right word, then settled on, "... attacked you, and just before I shot the Pope, I was LINKed."
"LINKed where?"
"Nowhere in particular, I think I was just taking a call."
"From whom?"
Daniel shook his head. "I don't remember."
"You said hello to the 'big guy,' that night we were together."
"Did I?" He looked genuinely puzzled. "Who the hell would that be?"
Considering Daniel's earlier assertion of being chosen, I feared suggesting what I suspected: that the big guy was either God or Satan. Instead, I said, "Probably whoever stole the tech from Jordan Institute. Letourneau? Mouse?"
"You and Mouse are the ones in phone contact, not me. And I think I'd remember a call from the presidential candidate."
"True." I rubbed the back of my neck and took a deep breath. "So, what happened after the phone call? You said you thought you were LINKed during the entire time?"
"It was the strangest thing, Dee. I could see everything I did. Hurting you ... shooting the Pope, but it felt like my consciousness was projected somewhere else. Somewhere surreal. I have the vaguest memories of it – a blank space, wide and open like the prairie, yet confined. I was certain I was on the LINK ... but not ... I exactly."
"Mouse.nest," I whispered.
"Sorry?" Daniel looked expectantly. "What did you say?"
Glancing into his green eyes, I decided to trust him. I took a deep breath. "What you're describing sounds like Mouse's hub."
"You've been there?"
I nodded.
He laughed out loud and clapped me on the back. "Ah, Dee. Good thing I'm crazy, because otherwise I'd suspect it's you who's gone off the deep end. I thought Mouse's hub was pure fiction."
"It's not. And, he's got angels there."
"LINK-angels?" He asked, and when I nodded, he said. "So, aren't the LINK-angels everywhere on the web?"
"That's just it," I explained. "Mouse.nest isn't on the net, it's under it."
"Now you do sound crazy," Daniel said with a smile.
"Yeah, it's amazing, kind of far-out, but Mouse's house exists inside the old hardware that's supporting the LINK. Seems Mouse built himself a cozy little nest inside the nodes, the hardware, deep in the walls of the LINK – just like a real mouse would."
Daniel's face grew serious. "No shit?"
"I always wondered how mouse.net got its power," I said, "He really is just a parallel operation."
"Cool." Danny nodded. "But what does this have to do with the LINK-angels?"
"I don't know yet, not one hundred percent, anyway. All I know is that I ran into Phanuel inside Mouse's house," I said.
"My God," Daniel whispered. "Do you think he's the one ..."
I shook my head. "I don't know. Mouse isn't really big enough for this; he doesn't have the tech. Not even all the nodes on the LINK are big enough to hold the code it would take to do all that. I mean, what you're suggesting is that someone took over your body, moving your consciousness out of it. No one knows how to separate the mind from the body ... or even if such a thing is possible."
Daniel shrugged. "What if what I felt was pure unadulterated emotion, something so strong it blotted out everything else and gave the impression of pushing me out?"
"I suppose if Jordan Institute had found the pain centers, maybe our emotions are constructed the same way ... or whoever stole the tech figured out some way to augment it. Still, it would take a lot of power."
"But the LINK-angels do exist. They can manipulate emotion. It's clearly possible, don't you think?" The way Daniel asked, it sounded more like a statement than a question. Inwardly, I smiled, his old cop-talk was coming back to him.
I shook my head. "Everyone says the LINK-angels are a miracle."
"You don't really believe that."
I swallowed a laugh. I didn't, but I still couldn't reconcile what I knew about tech with what the LINK-angels had done. Plus, I felt the need to play devil's advocate; I was enjoying the sense of our interplay too much.
"Let's say for the sake of argument they were miracles? You're the one who's born-again. Are you telling me you don't believe in the LINK-angels?"
"You know I never did. And, I'm not born-again. Chosen by God. Big distinction." Daniel frowned at me as if he were the one trying to gauge my sanity, instead of the other way around. "Okay, all I'm saying is that the experience I had felt similar."
He gave me a weary look, and I remembered what Dorshak had said about Daniel: "Daniel said the LINK-angels guided his hand." Daniel chose his words carefully, as if he'd had this kind of discussion before. "Can we agree that technology of the LINK-angels is similar to what I'm claiming happened, at least?"
I nodded. "Although Phanuel operated on the individual level, Gabriel was sort of a group emotional experience. If the LINK-angels' appearances aren't miracles, and, in fact, are human hacker genius, or the product of Jordan Institute's research – then it is technologically possible. But, who has that capability? Or that kind of firepower?"
"Government."
I sputtered out a laugh. "Government? Now you're telling me you think it's a government plot?" Daniel didn't even crack a smile at my teasing, so I continued, "This is all hypothetical since I still maintain all the nodes in the world couldn't pull it off, but why Would the government do it?"
"Letourneau clearly has motive," Daniel said grimly. With patient deliberation, he was building his case. Motive and opportunity, the standard requirements in any homicide.
"Letourneau isn't government yet – not until after the election anyway," I reminded him. "What about Mouse? He has the same access. And the angel in his hard drive could constitute evidence."
"True. Mouse could be working for Letourneau."
"Why would a Muslim work for the New Right?" I asked.
"Mouse is a terrible Muslim," Daniel reminded me. "He's far too interested in worldly goods."
I nodded. "He told me Letourneau stood for things he believed in – especially the LINK expansion."
"Makes sense. He wants to keep America out of Christendom, keep the LINK more chaotic, a hacker's paradise."
I started to nod. Then I stopped, suddenly conscious of what Daniel and I had been proposing. "Wait a minute. Letourneau? What made you suggest it might be Letouraeau?"
"Haven't you been listening to me, Dee? The LINK-angels. They were what made me kill the Pope."
"The LINK-angels, yes, that's what I thought. But no one has ever connected Letourneau to the LINK-angels." Besides Michael, I added silently. "Except that they say Letourneau's the Second Coming."
"I'm making the connection."
"Okay," I said, "let's hear it."
Daniel took a deep breath, and said, "God told me the LINK-angels were false prophets."
I blinked.
It was the kind of statement I expected the Reverend-Senator himself to make during a press conference, not my ex-partner. I stared at Daniel. He stared back. His face betrayed nothing but absolute seriousness. Of course, truth was, an angel told me the same damn thing.
"God didn't happen to give you any hard evidence by chance, did he?" I asked.
"God doesn't need evidence, Dee," Danny said, exasperated. "God is God, for Chrissake."
"True." I smiled. Despite myself, I was starting to enjoy this conversation. "But he's not being very considerate of his humble servant, is he? It would help our case a lot if he'd deigned to leave us something that would hold up in a court of law."
Danny smiled back, but shook his head. "Don't make light of all this, Dee. I'm serious. This sounds even crazier than anything else I've said – but an angel came to me in my cell. A real angel."
My smile faded. The evening breeze felt cold against my
cheeks. "An angel."
Daniel watched my face intently. "An angel. A real angel. I never told that doctor about this. I know exactly what he'd have thought of this new development, but, yeah, it was a real angel."
"How do you know? What did he look like?"
"Well, that's the strange part. He didn't look at all like what I expected. He ... well, I guess 'she' ... was a Chinese-American drag-queen ..." He laughed, and looked away self-consciously. "A drag-queen angel. Man, now that sounds crazy."
I touched Daniel on the arm gently. "No, it doesn't. In fact, that's the most sane thing I've heard you say all night."
He looked relieved, but skeptical. "Why do you believe that, of all things, Dee? That's the last thing I thought anyone would believe."
"I've met an angel, too." It was the first time I'd admitted that out loud, and I surprised myself by saying so without hesitation. "He's an Italian cop with a fondness for leather and blue jeans."
He laughed. "Mine preferred sequins."
"I'm sure the two of them would look great together."
"Heaven must be one strange-ass place." Daniel shook his head, giving me a ghost of a smile. A familiar twinkle lit his eyes.
"Neither of us is likely to find out."
"Hey, I might," he said. When I shot him a look, he added, "Well, I'm trying to change my life. I mean, for once, I think heaven might be my kind of place. I always thought heaven must be boring – perfect peace and all that. But, if drag queens and cops are angels, hell, it almost makes me think I might actually enjoy eternity up there."
Archangel Protocol Page 22