by Mick Farren
He had seen the small knot of NYPD uniforms struggling against the tide, and he had fought his way through to them. The STG's plan was simple and obvious. They were going to drive the crowd south on Eighth. They would probably run the hardcore all the way down into the twenties, down as far as the devastation left by the recent bread riot. There they would finish them. The lucky ones would be arrested, and the rest would be left for dead.
The uniforms did not need a second urging. They were as glad as he was to get out of that deadly chaos. They formed a tight phalanx around him and started fighting their way to the nearest entrance. They were not particularly gentle about it. Once they had made it to the door, Carlisle was surprised to find that nobody responded when they beat on it. He looked around anxiously.
"Anybody got a track on this?"
He was delighted when one of the uniforms broke about fifteen regulations by blowing off the inspection plate and running an illegal-looking DU through the lock system like a hot knife. The door slid back, and they tumbled through.
SEVEN
Kline
Cynthia Kline woke with a strange man in her bed. It took her half a minute to remember his name. Harry. Harry Carlisle. She had brought a cop home. Not only a cop, but a lieutenant attached to the counter-terrorist task force. Was she developing a deathwish? She had heard that could happen to some agents who stayed undercover for too long. The greatest irony was that she did not feel bad about it. It was hard to think of this Harry Carlisle as the enemy – he behaved too much like a human being. Of course, she had taken care of the basic practicalities. There was nothing in the apartment that would betray her. The diskette that the man in the cowled coat had given her was still in her bag. She was certain that Carlisle was not the kind who would get up from a woman's bed and go through her purse. And even if he ran the disk, it would no doubt appear quite innocuous on the surface.
Cynthia sat up in bed and lit a cigarette. There was no way she could pretend that she had brought him back there with some ulterior motive. She was not seducing for the cause. After the violence and insanity of the previous night, she simply had not wanted to sleep alone. She had picked up Harry Carlisle because he was there and he seemed normal, at least in comparison to the psychotic bloody deacons and the rest of the smug, self-satisfied leeches with whom she had recently been spending the majority of her time. She dragged angrily on her cigarette. The enthusiastic applause in the VIP lounge as the monitors showed the STG club and gas their way down Eighth Avenue was still too vivid.
She had spotted Harry Carlisle after they had come down from the VIP lounge and were waiting in the main entrance area to be allowed to leave. There had been quite an assortment of people marking time in the area. The tech crews from the show sat on flight cases and complained about how they should have been back at the hotel hours earlier. Groups of exhausted-looking NYPD drank coffee and also complained. Deacons tried to hold up their steel-eyed image while the STG stole their thunder.
Harry Carlisle had been sitting by himself on the bottom step of a stationary escalator. He had found a fifth of scotch somewhere and was drinking it from the bottle. Cynthia had been coping with three particularly obnoxious deacons who were trying to hit on her and she had used Carlisle as an excuse to get away from them. She had walked over to the escalator and sat down beside him on the step. Up close, it was clear that he had been battered by the riot. There was blood on his cheek, and his jacket was ripped at the shoulder. The scotch was probably emotional first aid.
She nodded at the bottle. "Could I get a taste of that?"
He looked quizzically at her clerical auxiliary's dress uniform. "Aren't you bothered that someone will see you?"
"Screw them. I've had enough of religion for one night."
He nodded wearily and passed over the bottle. "You can say that again."
She took a long pull on the scotch and then coughed. Harry Carlisle laughed.
"Never did see a deacon drink like that, particularly a lady one."
"Deacons are something else I've had it with."
As he took back the bottle, he looked at her closely. "Don't I know you?"
"I work at Astor Place. I've seen you around the corridors. My name's Cynthia Kline."
"Hello, Cynthia."
"You're Lieutenant Carlisle, right?"
"Right. But you can call me Harry."
He took a long drink and looked reflectively at the bottle. "I kicked a deacon in the balls earlier. You probably know him, too. Goes by the name of Winters."
She giggled. "I know Winters."
It had been about that time that the first bunch of STG had come in, swaggering, fresh from the kill. Their insect gas masks were pulled aside to reveal the flushed faces of hard-eyed, brutalized farmboys. The center 7s of the STG stenciled on their helmets were painted over so they became large white crosses. The very sight of them had started Carlisle on a slow burn that, fueled by whisky and the STGs' loud boasting, quickly escalated to a white-knuckled anger. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she had talked him out of going after a couple of them and probably getting himself killed in the process. It was around that point that she had decided to sleep with him. Transportation had started arriving and the conversation had reached a certain impasse. She knew that he was thinking about suggesting they go somewhere, but he seemed unwilling to come to the point. Finally she had taken the initiative.
"Why don't you come to my place for a nightcap? I don't live too far away."
He had nodded with an expression that suggested that one part of him had surrendered to another. "Thanks. I'd like that."
She mashed out the cigarette. Harry Carlisle was still asleep. His light-brown hair fell over his forehead. He looked so peaceful and vulnerable. Almost like a little boy. As she watched him, he stirred in his sleep but did not wake. When they had first started to make love, he had seemed almost reluctant. It was not as though he didn't find her attractive or he had any doubts about himself. He certainly was not one of those simultaneously horny and guilt-ridden individuals that she had started to think were the norm in these soul-sick times. It was more as if some serious pain in his immediate past had frozen his capacity to be freely and openly sensual. This Harry Carlisle was a complex one. It had taken him awhile to thaw, but once he had put his thoughts on hold and wanned to the purely physical thrill, Cynthia found that her patience had been amply rewarded. He had been very good. His frustrations channeled themselves into pure thrusting energy and, stage by stage, they had worked their way toward noisy, clawing, and more than merely satisfactory orgasm.
She put out a hand and stroked his hair. His eyes opened. He slowly raised his head. For a few seconds, he looked as if he did not know where he was. Then a kind of recognition dawned. His face broke into a lopsided smile.
"Hi."
"You know who I am?"
"Sure, Cynthia, I know who you are."
He was grinning. He stretched out a hand and stroked her breast. "Is there anywhere we have to be?"
She was grinning, too. "I don't think so."
His arms slid around her body and he pulled her to him. She did not resist.
Thirty-five minutes later, she wrapped a sheet around herself, kissed him on the cheek, and padded barefoot to the shower. He watched her go. Hot water actually came out of the shower head on the first try, and Cynthia suddenly felt so irrationally pleased with life that she sang to herself as she lathered. Maybe, despite the odds, it was going to be a good day. When she emerged from the tiny bathroom, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, smoking one of her cigarettes. His face was serious.
"It'd be a very bad idea if we fell in love with each other. We could wind up in a whole lot of trouble."
Her good mood diminished considerably. She sat down in front of the dressing-table mirror and started to brush out her hair. There was a controlled anger in the strokes.
"What makes you think we're going to fall in love with each other? Aren't you taking
a hell of a lot for granted? I mean, you're cute and all and good in the sack but- – "
"People often do when they feel comfortable around each other."
"And you're comfortable around me?"
"More comfortable than I've been in a long time."
"How come you don't have a girlfriend or something?"
"It's more like or something."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I had a girlfriend. She's in a camp out in the Midwest. I haven't heard from her in more than eight months."
Cynthia looked at the image of his back in the mirror. So that was what had caused his first reluctance. "I'm sorry."
"So am I."
The outside world, with its peeling paint, poverty, and paranoia, was starting to close in on them. Harry Carlisle must have sensed it, too. He covered the moment by searching on the floor for his shorts. Cynthia could see no way but to go along with it. The day had started.
"You want some coffee?"
"Sure."
The diskette was in her bag, and the games of deceit were waiting to be played. There was no more time to hide under the bedclothes and pretend. For the first time, she noticed that he had old white scar tissue over his left shoulder blade. She picked up the coffeepot and went to the sink. This time, the tap only coughed out a cupful of rust-colored liquid and men quit altogether. Suddenly angry, she slammed down the coffeepot.
"There's no goddamn water."
"It's probably a result of last night's unpleasantness."
"It's off half the time these days. The West Side's been falling apart ever since the Javits Center burned down. I've got some of that generic Coke that tastes funny, or there's half a bottle of vodka in the freezer."
"You're kind of a free spirit for a deacon."
"I'm not a deacon, goddamn it. I'm nothing more than a glorified secretary."
"You look better out of that uniform."
First the water and now this. Cynthia's face froze. "You take a job where you can get it."
"I'm not too proud of what I do, either."
She did not believe him. "Oh, yeah? I thought you cops regarded yourselves as the blue knights."
"That was when we used to chase the bad guys. Now all I do is kiss the asses of psychotic bigots. No disrespect intended."
"Aren't you worried that I might pass the word of this conversation along to my bosses?"
Harry laughed. "You're not wearing any clothes. How would you explain that?"
"Seriously. Don't you worry about what they could do to you for talking like that?"
"I think I'm actually past caring. There could be a warrant out for me now, after what went down last night. Aggravated assault on a holy officer should be worth dismissal from the force and three to five years."
"Winters?"
"The very same. He'd love to hand me my head. If not him, it'll be another one. They're going to get me sooner or later."
"Aren't you frightened?"
"Sure I'm frightened, but what the hell can I do about it? Fear eventually becomes something that you live with."
Cynthia was discovering that she had a lot of sympathy for Harry Carlisle and his attitudes. She could not tell him, however, without coming clear out of her character. She had let it slip quite far enough already.
"You could run. Go to Canada or Brazil. You've got to have the contacts."
Harry Carlisle was struggling into his T-shirt. "I don't know. I may be crazy but I still feel like sticking around. I have this feeling that something's going to go down very soon. I don't know what it is, but I can feel it. Something big's about to happen. That shit last night was only an opener."
Cynthia sat down. His instincts were almost certainly correct, but she did not want to think about the future right there and then.
"Could you do something for me, Harry Carlisle?"
"Sure, anything."
"Bring that bottle of vodka and come and fuck me some more. There's too many people walking on our graves."
Winters
Rogers pulled the car over to the curb in disgust. He slapped the wheel hard with the heels of his hands. "This can't be right."
Winters slowly twisted his Academy ring. He felt the shock just as strongly as his companion. Only moments earlier they had been informed that the warrants for Alien Proverb had been revoked on the authority of no less than the president himself. To make matters worse, a number of the lesser warrants had also been canceled, including the one for Carlisle that he had sworn out himself.
"What are they trying to do to us, make us look like complete idiots?"
For the last three hours, they had been chasing their tails all over the city following fruitless leads on Proverb and his people. Neither man could ever remember when a day had gone so disastrously wrong. As Monday dawned, the deacons had been on top of the world. The first shift at Astor Place had strutted like roosters. The riot outside the Garden had been crushed and, although the civilian casualty figures were running just under two hundred, the general feeling was that those numbers were acceptable. There had also been two deacons, one STG, and three regular cops slain. It was the arithmetic of eyes and teeth. Proverb was still at large, but it was only a matter of time. A figure as public as he was could not hide for long. Even if he went to Canada, they would get him in the end. The opposition that he represented appeared to have been effectively crushed. It was starting to look as if they were on the threshold of a glorious new era. Proverb was down for the count. The PD would be quickly brought to heel. Soon they would have a free hand to deal with the Lefthand Path and all the other terrorist groups. The officers in the corridors of CCC had a light in their eye and a spring in their step.
By noon, the light had faded and the spring was a great deal more tentative. Things were starting to come apart like an old pair of overalls and nobody could quite understand why. Someone appeared to have caught the ear of the president, and whoever it was had been no friend of the New York deacons. At ten-thirty, a video-conference was netted between New York and Washington. Those wired in included the vice president, Attorney General Harrison, the mayor, the police commissioner, the local military commandant, and Senior Deacon Booth.
The deacons were effectively isolated by a threat from Washington to place the city under martial law. The other city agencies were quick to point the finger. Words like 'excessive force' and 'incompetence' were being bandied about. At twelve-thirty, Dreisler had been summoned and Booth had been placed under arrest. The senior deacon was to be the scapegoat of the moment. The shock spread through deacon posts all over the city. The final blow had come with this most recent bulletin. Proverb was going to get away with it, at least for the time being.
The city itself had a strange feel to it. The streets were unnaturally empty for a Monday afternoon. Large numbers had stayed home from work, and even the lines outside the supermarkets were noticeably shorter. The usual schizophrenia of the censored media had almost reached its breaking strain. Everyone in the city knew about the bloodshed of the night before, but the media in no way acknowledged that it had even happened. There were reports coming in via Virginia Beach of how rumors were spreading through other cities that a vision of the Four Horsemen had appeared right in the heart of Manhattan. It was being treated as a harbinger of The End.
Something else that was spreading was the slogan 'There will be a cleansing of the temple'. Some bunch of subversives had been busy in the night. The words were daubed on walls all over town. Winters felt very uneasy when he looked at them. He could not forget the moment when the same phrase had appeared on his computer terminal. He and Rogers were parked in front of a boarded-up storefront on Park Avenue South a little to the north of Union Square. It was covered with half-torn-down duraprint posters for the Proverb show. 'There will be a cleansing of the temple' had been pressure-painted right across them all in foot-high, vibrating yellow letters.
"You want to go and rip that thing down?"
Rogers, who seem
ed to be taking the catastrophic course of events very personally, shook his head. "Why bother? There are hundreds of them."
"So what do we do? Head back to Astor Place?"
"I should imagine that CCC is the last place we want to be. There's probably faeces hitting the fan all over the building."
Winters was thoughtful. The bruising around his groin was still painful. "You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to forget that we heard about the warrant on Carlisle being dropped and go and pick him up anyway. We know where he is. He went home with that whore Cynthia Kline."
Rogers shook his head. "They'd crucify you if you mess with Carlisle after what happened today. Besides, it's not only Carlisle, you'd also be messing with this month's party girl."
"This week's party girl, the way that she's going."
"You still don't want to put your neck on the rail."
Winters scowled. He didn't like Rogers and was not happy about being paired with him, but he had not imagined that the man would be so chicken-shit.
"I'd like to do something about him. He isn't going to get away with what he did to me."
"There are more ways of skinning a cat."
Winters glanced sidelong at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Think about it."
Rogers dropped the slightest hint of a wink. Winters looked at him long and hard. He had not suspected it of Rogers. He was seeing him in a new light. "You mean you're a- – "
Rogers grinned. "Don't say it. There's no such thing."
The word that they were not using was 'magician'. The Magicians were a legend among the deacons, and in other quarters as well. They were a powerful and highly secret society of officers with a very radical attitude toward the enforcement of social order and the elimination of enemies. They were called the Magicians because they made people disappear. Membership of the Magicians was also supposed to be an inside track to promotion. They were the clandestine cream of the agency.
Rogers had taken out his wallet. He pulled out a small pink card. "You know that a replacement for Fifteenth Street has opened up?"