Iron Angels

by Eric Flint

  Next, he clicked the photo gallery—the first photo interested him greatly. “Ah. Here is option number five: Lali is involved with the cult—intimately involved, I’d say. What do you make of this?”

  The photo was of a sleeping man, sprawled out on top of rumpled sheets. The view was narrow, not providing many clues, but appeared to be a large industrial building. The bed rested on a raised platform of some sort, but the angle of the photo precluded exact details of the location.

  “Looks to me like some sort of weird S&M thing. See the bindings here and here?” Temple pointed at loops attached to the headboard—an extremely odd headboard depicting what could only be described as scenes of debauchery. “You think she ties him up or the other way around?”

  “If only there were any clues as to the location.” Jasper handed the laptop to Temple. “I’d bet a year’s salary this is the place they took Steve and Carlos. This is the Câ Tsang’s club house where they hang out and sharpen their knives and lower their IQs.”

  “Has my vote as well.” Temple squinted at the screen. “Any other photos in here?” Temple clicked on the track pad and slid her fingers across the surface.

  “You’re an old pro at the Apple stuff, huh?”

  “We use these in SAG for field work. All the typical Bureau paperwork and databases still require PCs with Windows.”

  “Here’s a thought,” Jasper said. “What if Lali is the leader of the Câ Tsang?”

  Temple grimaced. “I don’t think so. Look at this guy closer.” She flipped back to the original photo. “He has markings on the back of his arms—tattoos I guess. I’d say tribal, but I’m no expert in such things.”

  “Asian characters—”

  “That’s a pretty broad statement,” Temple stared at the screen.

  “Remember what we learned from Penny? Weren’t their origins in Bhutan? The cult’s origins? That would account for the odd characters. You think these characters stand for words or they’re simply random symbols?”

  “If this is the cult leader on the bed here, the characters mean something.” She squinted again. “Here, these are odd marks on his back and on his legs where the sheets cover his calves.”

  “Mind if I?” He reached for the laptop, which Temple relinquished.

  “Let’s take this into the dining area. I have a few letters of hers I want to go through.”

  They moved to the dining room, and Jasper wondered for the first time what they’d say if caught by someone or questioned. But he dismissed any worry immediately—people were in danger, the door was open and Lali’s expectation of privacy at this stage was nil. Hopefully, nothing to do with this investigation would ever find its way to court anyway.

  He set the laptop down on the dining room table and pulled out a chair. Temple continued scanning the letters and papers now littering one half of the table.

  “The marks on his body appear to be raised scars, what are they called—”

  “Keloids?”

  “Yeah, like rippled and wavy scars. Odd.” Jasper frowned. “They aren’t large, but they definitely exist. Some more angry red than others.”

  “Maybe some are older.”

  “Could be.”

  “If they’re into rough sex,” Temple glanced up from the paper she focused on, “which it appears they are, the scars may be the result of some bondage thingy?”

  Jasper laughed. “Bondage thingy?”

  “Yeah,” Temple grinned. “Bondage thingy—not my sort of thingy, but hey, they’re bizarro consenting adults, right?”

  “You know,” Jasper said. “Was it you I was with when Lali’s makeup appeared thick and overdone? You know, when she slathered the makeup on to hide bruises and marks on her face?”

  “Yep, and it fits now. So the marks weren’t necessarily abuse if this adds up like we think.”

  Jasper scrolled through the photos in the laptop. “Here she is with Carlos, so their relationship is confirmed.”

  “Nothing perverted?”

  “Thankfully, no. A shot of them with their heads together, smiling. They don’t have the appearance of a real couple to me. But what do I know—I couldn’t hold on to my wife, and everyone—friends and family—thought we were the perfect pair, everyone except my mother.”

  “Yeah, it’s always the case. Couples have a private life no one has knowledge of, and taken separately, they’re probably both great people, but put them together and sometimes the mix isn’t always peanut butter and chocolate.”

  “And who is recycling jokes and sayings now?” Jasper smiled.

  “At least it isn’t Ghostbusters or Star Wars references. But, really, think about relationships—how many of your friends appear to be happily married and when you’re in public they act perfect and never quarrel?”

  “True. Only your closest and dearest friends ever confide unhappiness, and even then, don’t want to be viewed as failures. I’m learning a lot about myself, here.” Jasper never admitted to failure, and didn’t want to appear foolish, but in the end, when Lucy left, he had no choice but to come clean to his parents and family and friends. “Okay, let’s change the subject. Too depressing—I think you’ve jaded me toward all the poor saps pretending to be happy.”

  “I’m sure happily married people, or people in perfectly normal relationships of one kind or another exist.” Temple held up an envelope. “Here we go. A credit card statement. I bet she pays for her gas with the credit card, as well as quite a few other items. Perhaps we’ll figure out a pattern and get in the general vicinity of wherever the S&M photo was taken.”

  “Excellent.”

  Lali’s spending habits, indeed, showed a pattern. She owed quite a bit on her credit card—a little more and she’d max this piece of plastic out. Where she bought her gas was consistent enough, and in a commercial area with few industrial buildings, so no luck there. She stopped at the same fast food joints and shopped at the same places for food.

  Temple pulled out two more statements from the previous months for the same credit card account and put them all side by side. “This is better than waiting on a subpoena for the records or doing a trash cover—”

  “Yeah, and picking up thrown out mail covered in gravy or slop or worse.” His face scrunched up recalling some of his dumpster diving attempts. Rotten food, baby diapers, hair clippings, dental waste, and at times, all of them combined, creating a miasma of muck—all in the furtherance of investigations now deleted from his memory.

  Temple flattened out the statements, offering them both a better view. “Here,” her finger traced a line down the statement. He hadn’t noticed before, but her nails were finely manicured—not too long, though—and with not a chip on the polish. The woman had such a forceful personality that it was easy to overlook the fact that she was also quite elegant.

  Jasper glanced at the statements.

  “Here, she started going to a shop, the Far East Night Bazaar—”

  “Makes sense so far.”

  “The shop must be an Asian food, herb, or supply store. Her trips there began a few weeks ago. But since the first time on last month’s statement, she goes there two times a week like clockwork. Where is the Bazaar located?”

  Jasper pulled up the web browser on his phone. “The store’s oddly placed, not what I’d expect, but near a heavy industrial areas. They sell exotic and rare herbs and medicinal remedies. Maybe I should have been quoting Big Trouble in Little China all this time.”

  “Too late now,” Temple said, “but Chinese herbal medicine, huh?”

  “Yes, Chinese herbal medicine is listed. Any other obvious entries on her statement?”

  “An influx of cash within the past couple of week—deposits larger than she receives from the waitressing job.”

  “Selling drugs? You think this cult thing is just a cover for a drug operation?” Jasper didn’t think that was true, but he still held out hope this wasn’t supernatural or fantastical in nature.

  Temple shot him her Really? fa
ce.

  “Yeah, taking a shot, that’s all.”

  “Something Joy said popped into my head.” Temple kept her gaze on the statements. “She said Lali was hanging around with some creeps—”

  “She didn’t quite put it like that, but yeah.” Jasper smiled.

  “What if some of the cult lived here, in the building? We should check on this building, it isn’t large, only a few floors. While we’re at it, the owner—we need to find out who owns this dump.”

  “We shouldn’t go to the building manager, though. I have a feeling he or she wouldn’t be compelled to keep their mouth shut. I’d be afraid of them being in on whatever all this is or having loose lips.”

  “You have someone you trust back at the office to run all the checks on the apartment building for us?” Temple scooped up the statements.

  “I do, the same person who helped run all of the initial stuff we’d found. I’ll give Mandy a call and tell her exactly what we need. You’re not taking those, are you?” Jasper raised his chin at Temple, meaning the credit card statements.

  She turned sheepish for a second. “Bad idea?”

  “Probably. But here’s an idea. Put them on the table, spread out like before.”

  Temple did so, but seemed confused. Jasper stepped forward and pulled out his phone. Temple smiled, and nodded. “Got ya.”

  Jasper took close-up photos of the documents with his Bureau issued smartphone. “There, now we didn’t take anything we shouldn’t have. Anything else in here, you think?”

  “You perused her laptop’s browser history?”

  “Yeah, but the history was wiped clean. Nothing, just like the email. And I didn’t find any other photos we’d care about. Let’s button this place up and get going. You can drive while I call in what we need to the office, okay?” Jasper tossed the Charger’s keys to Temple.

  Chapter 32

  Watching Samyaza enter the fissure, Armaros decided this was his chance. He’d been observing Samyaza closely for some time, and knew that the pheon had had little success in his recent forays into the hell world. He had taken too many chances, too often. His sensorium was duller than ever, his labrum ragged at the edges.

  Samyaza disappeared.

  Now.

  Armaros followed him into the fissure.

  Chapter 33

  By the time Jasper and Temple rolled up to the Euclid Hotel, the afternoon was half over. And so far they’d found no sign of where Carlos and Steve could have been taken, and still didn’t understand Lali’s role in the affair. There were no other vehicles present and no signs that anyone was inside the hotel. But if anyone was in the basement they’d never know until they descended the steps and poked their heads in.

  Vance pulled up behind them on Euclid Avenue in Temple’s rental car. She’d called him as they left the apartment building and told him to bring all the testing and evidence collecting gear he’d brought to Indiana. Jasper had phoned in his request to Mandy, the Staff Operation’s Specialist. She would gather as much information as she could on the apartment building and the residents. Jasper assumed she’d run open source as well as all the FBI, state and local, as well as paid subscription databases—Dun and Bradstreet, Lexis Nexus, and Acurint—and whatever else she could get her hands on. Hopefully she’d do a quick compile and get Jasper the results as soon as possible.

  A bit to Jasper’s surprise, Ed White was with Vance, brandishing his thermos. Having Ed in the rental car was technically a violation of Bureau policy since a rental was considered a Bucar. But, oh well, who cared about Bureau policy—it wasn’t like they were breaking any laws, and this was important.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, after Ed got into the rear seat of the car.

  “I came down here to see you, actually.” That sentence from Ed struck Jasper as a bit shifty. He’d be willing to bet Ed had been a lot more interested in seeing Temple than him. But he let it pass.

  “Okay, why?”

  “Just had some ideas I wanted to kick around.” He pointed with his thumb at Vance, sitting next to him. “When I got to the FBI office, he was just leaving, so I hitched a ride with him.”

  Which meant he’d left his car parked in the FBI’s parking area, which was not exactly what you’d call public parking. Oh, well. Jasper figured that was maybe the eighty-seventh thing he’d get chewed out for by his bosses. Lot of transgressions—way bigger ones—were lined up ahead of it.

  He glanced back at the object in Ed’s hand. “That your security blanket there, Linus?” Jasper grinned.

  “Ha, ha.” Ed pointed the dinged up hunk of metal at Jasper. “You better watch yourself, young man, or you’ll get a whooping from your elder. What’s worse, you won’t get any of the Starbucks coffee in here.”

  Jasper slapped Ed on the back. “You know I love you.”

  Vance coughed. “We’ve come up with something which may or may not be something.” Vance carried his kit, which dipped his body to one side noticeably. He waited a second, but realized he should just keep speaking. “Right. So, we found a commonality, well, Ed did”—he nodded toward the biologist standing next to him—“regarding the mushrooms and sea squirts. I added in the high-speed steel component and what we found was that all of them have vanadium in common.”

  Jasper frowned. “What is vanadium? And why do we care?” He started for the entrance located in the courtyard of the abandoned hotel. Temple followed.

  “Hey, wait,” Vance said, following him. “This may be important. Vanadium is a metal used to make some steel alloys. One of them is what they call high-speed steel, which machinists use to cut other metals. But mushrooms and sea squirts contain high concentrations of the metal also, either as a toxin or an aid to producing enzymes.”

  “I’m still not seeing why this would be important,” Temple said.

  Jasper paused before entering the building. “Okay, so Wayland Precision works specialty steel alloys and also tends mushrooms and sea squirts. They obviously discovered the connection—” The light bulb went off in Jasper’s head. He laughed. “Of course. Penny told us herself.”

  Temple’s eyes acknowledged she remembered as well.

  “You were right, Vance,” said Temple. “But I don’t think any of the other parties in this, neither Völundr’s Hammer nor the Câ Tsang, are aware of exactly why any of this works. At least with the guilds, it seems obvious that a lot of their knowledge doesn’t amount to much more than lore passed down by tradition. Which doesn’t mean a lot of it isn’t true.”

  “So, the vanadium works against whatever alien or otherworldly creatures they think they’re fighting against or helping, depending on the viewpoint?” asked Jasper. “This brane…”

  “Cosmology,” Vance supplied.

  “Brane cosmology,” Jasper said, “suggests another universe is leaking into ours and perhaps alien life is finding a way through. They’re apparently drawn by iron in some forms and…repelled by vanadium, I assume.”

  “Presumably, given that Wayland seems to use vanadium to ward off…whatever these things are,” Vance said.

  Temple shook her head. “I still say they’re Satanic in origin.”

  Ed twisted the beat up thermos in his hands. “You two are arguing about this as if it’s an either/or proposition. They’re either demons from Hell or aliens from another universe. But they could be both, you know.”

  The FBI agents stared at him. Ed smiled and spread his hands, the thermos spinning atop his right hand. “Hey, I’m not a theologian—although I know some and I’ll point out that there at least two theological seminaries associated with the University of Chicago so it’s not as if we can’t get expert advice if we want it. But even a layman like me understands that unless you belong to one of the literalist denominations”—he broke off, glancing at Temple. “Uh…do you?”

  “Depends on what you mean by ‘literalist,’” she said.

  “I mean by the term the belief that every word in the Bible is literally true. No if
s, ands, or buts—the Bible, as written, is inerrant. And never mind whether we’re talking about the original Aramaic or the Greek Septuagint or the King James English version.” He waved his hand. “To a fundamentalist, that’s piddly stuff.”

  Temple was almost scowling. “That’s not what ‘fundamentalism’ really means. But…never mind. No, my church is not literalist.” The scowl shifted to a slight smile. “We don’t even have a problem with evolution.” The scowl came back. “We got no truck with abortion, though.”

  Ed tucked the thermos under his arm and looked a bit relieved. More than a bit, actually. Jasper knew that Ed, like himself, had a basically agnostic attitude on matters of religion. He could probably get along well enough with a woman who was a devout Christian, so long as she wasn’t somebody who thought the Earth was really only six thousand years old—which meant she didn’t believe in any science at all, certainly not the one he’d devoted his life to.

  “Okay, good,” he said. “The point is that unless you’re a literalist you can’t claim to really understand how God shaped the universe—or how many he created. Maybe this ‘other world’ is both alien and demonic. Who knows by what means the Almighty chose to let Satan manifest himself and his minions? Maybe he let the devils have their own universe—or forced them to take one He made for them and adapt to it, whether they liked it or not.”

  The three FBI agents were staring at him again. Then Jasper sighed. “Look. We know there is a cult and we know there is another—well, not cult—but guild that opposes them. So the two groups hate each other, but does that necessarily mean there are aliens—or devils, whatever—running around mincing people up or putting them through sausage grinders? Why couldn’t a group of demented and fucked-up assholes do the same thing? Hell, if I’m in a cult and my leader tells me to stop eating mushrooms and stay away from sea squirts—not that I’d even know how to find a sea squirt; sushi bars, maybe?—I’d damn well stay away from them because I was told to and I’m a mindless freak who needs guidance from some charismatic clown claiming he’s a guru or grand poo-bah, or—” Jasper broke off his rant and took a breath. “Oh, fuck it. Let’s go in and look for evidence. At this point, I’ll go with the flow.”