by Mick Farren
"I didn't. I…"
Rogers indicated that he should take the card. "Why don't you come along tonight?"
Winters quickly shook his head. The thought of dim lights and perfume started an uncomfortable constriction in his chest. "I don't think…"
Rogers did not let him finish. "You're not hearing me. I said why don't you come along tonight, relax, and have a little fun? You'll be contacted, and you'll meet with some people. It's possible that the case of Lieutenant Harry Carlisle will come under discussion."
Winters swallowed hard. The constriction had gone and there was an excitement building inside him. "I'll be there."
"Good."
Rogers put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. He was grinning cheerfully, his mood totally changed. "I tell you what, let's roust some street punk and work off a few frustrations."
Mansard
Rita looked up from the intercom. "There's three deacons on their way up."
Fear clutched at Charlie Mansard's brain. He prayed that he had heard wrong. "Say that again."
"Three deacons, to see you."
Suddenly there was cold sweat under his armpits and beading his back. Even the normally unshakable Rita had turned the color of a corpse.
"Did they look serious?"
"Of course they looked serious. Deacons always look serious."
"Oh, Christ."
Here was the moment that he had been dreading all night. Indeed, here was the moment that he had been dreading ever since the Fundamentalists had first taken power. It was only the best part of a bottle of scotch inside him that stopped him from going headfirst out of the window. He had always joked about the day when the deacons came for him, but now that the day seemed to have really arrived, he was more terrified than he could ever remember. All the torture stories started to close in on him. He was not going to be tortured. At the very suggestion of physical pain, he would talk. He would cooperate fully. He would tell them anything.
Rita was looking at him uncertainly. "Do you want me to stay?"
Mansard quickly shook his head. "No, get the hell out of here. Tell all the others you see to make themselves scarce. The fewer of us involved in this the better."
Most of the crew were scattered around the building or in the bar down the street. By far the majority had come there straight from the Garden; the others had drifted in quite soon after. Nobody seemed to know where to go or what to do. They had put up the biggest projected image ever, and then two hundred people had died. Mansard's crew seemed to want to stay together as a group and share the confused depression.
Rita did not need any second urging. She gathered up her coat and bag and slipped out the side door. Mansard sat back in his chair and did his best to compose himself for the arrival of the deacons. Without thinking about it, he took a pencil out of the organizer on the desk and started tapping it on the Lucite top. With Proverb on the run, he did not have a friend in the world. He had called a few of the preachers for whom he worked regularly, but they had all been in meetings or at prayer. None of them could be disturbed.
The deacons knocked. Mansard raised his eyebrows. They were observing the niceties. Maybe he still had some value. He counted to five.
"Come in."
A junior officer came through the door first, holding it open for his boss. The top man of the trio sauntered in with studied deacon arrogance. His lip was slightly curled as if there were a bad smell under his nose. The heavy brought up the rear. He had a machine pistol slung under his right arm. The situation did not have the air of a social call. The three arranged themselves in front of his desk in positions of courteous menace. Charlie Mansard looked at each of them in turn. They were all variations on the same theme, cold-eyed and clean-shaven with those thin, smug, lipless mouths. The young one was a mere flunky, nodding and opening doors and absorbing the moves. The heavy was wider and flatter, flat mid-European cheekbones and a flat forehead. He had huge hands that looked built for crushing. Mansard did not even want to look at those hands. The top deacon did the talking. He was one of the ones with that constant aura of amused superiority. Soon they would be cloning the bastards.
"Charles Mansard?"
"Yes."
"Charles Everett Mansard?"
Mansard sighed. "Right. Charles Everett Mansard."
"Would you please come with us?"
The deacon's tone left no space for a refusal. Mansard felt sick, but he did not immediately move. He tried to maintain as much dignity as he could. He carefully replaced the pencil in the organizer.
"Am I being arrested?"
"Not at this moment, but we do want to ask you a number of questions."
"So please ask them."
"It'd be better if you came with us."
"I'm a very busy man. Couldn't you simply ask your questions here?"
The heavy started giving him a very hard stare. The top deacon leaned forward and placed a black-gloved hand on the top of Mansard's desk. "It would be better if the questioning was conducted down at the Astor Place complex."
Mansard was wondering if his legs would actually support him. He did not want to have to be carried from his own office. The top deacon straightened up. He glanced at the heavy, who managed to flex his muscles without actually moving. Mansard pushed himself up from the chair. His legs held.
"I'll get my coat."
The phone rang.
The top deacon put a hand on it but did not pick up the handset. Mansard looked at him questioningly. The top deacon shook his head.
"The phone will have to wait."
It continued to ring, nine times in all. When it stopped the deacon removed his hand.
"Shall we go?"
The door was pushed open, and Rita walked in just as if it were any other day. There was no sign of her coat or bag. "Charlie, you'd better take this call. It sounds important."
The booze was slowing him down. He did not have a clue as to what was happening.
The top deacon swung around. "There will be no phone calls."
Rita looked at the deacons as if she were seeing them for the first time and did not like what she saw. "I think you'll want him to take this one. It's from the White House."
The deacons froze. Junior and the heavy both looked at their boss for some sort of signal. He seemed at a loss as to which way to jump. Mansard took advantage of his indecision and slowly picked up the phone. He wished mat he had not drunk so much. The top deacon reached for the handset.
Mansard leaned back out of reach. "I don't think you want to be asking the White House if it's really them."
The top deacon stopped in his tracks. If Mansard had not already been so shook up, he would have enjoyed the man's discomfort. He spoke into the phone. "Mansard here."
The voice on the other end was as smooth as silk and twice as professional. "Charles Mansard?"
"Speaking."
"This is Ron Cableman, Charles. I'm President Faithful's Director of Special Projects. I '11 be in New York tomorrow, and I wonder if we might meet."
Mansard hated to be called Charles, particularly by people he had never met. "Could you give me some idea what we might be discussing, Ron?"
"Despite last night's very tragic incidents, the president was greatly impressed with your sky walker. I'd like to talk about the possibility of you doing the same kind of thing at a future presidential event."
Mansard laughed with relief. "I'd be delighted to meet you, Ron. There is, however, one small problem."
Ron Cableman's voice was suddenly very cautious. "A problem, Charles?"
"Right at the moment, I have an office full of deacons, and they seem to be trying to arrest me."
Ron Cableman sounded less than happy. "Why are they arresting you, Charles?"
"They seem to think I'm somehow responsible for last night's tragic incidents."
Ron sounded considerably relieved. "Perhaps I should speak to these deacons, Charles."
"I wish you would, Ron."
/> Ron Cableman spoke to the top deacon for just over a minute, during which time the deacon said almost nothing. By the end of it, he was all but standing to attention. Finally he handed the phone back to Mansard. When he spoke, his voice sounded as if it were choking him. He avoided Mansard's eyes.
"I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding. I'm sorry you've been troubled."
Mansard waved them away. They left quickly. Only the heavy looked back. His eyes indicated that, as far as he was concerned, it was only a reprieve, not a pardon. Mansard went back to Ron Cableman with a slight shudder. That had been much too close.
"Well, I guess I have to thank you for that, Ron. I never have been very good with policemen. About tomorrow, shall we say the Skylounge at one? You know it? I thought you would. Ciao to you, too."
He hung up and regarded Rita with some suspicion. "So who cooked up the phony call?"
"It wasn't a phony call."
"They'll be straight back and madder than hell. I don't think it's helped anything."
"It wasn't a phony call."
Mansard shook his head. His mind had to be caving in. "What?"
"The call was the real deal."
"Are you telling me that the president wants to hire us, after everything that's happened?"
Rita nodded. Mansard stood up. He moved like a man in shock.
"I'm going to the bar. I have to think about this."
Speedboat
The cab slowed to a stop in front of Terminal 4 at La Guardia. Speedboat slowly climbed out and handed the driver three twenties.
"Keep the change."
For a few seconds he just stood on the curb and looked around. He had seen too many old movies where people jumped on planes without a second thought, and airports were bright gleaming places with cocktail bars and newsstands packed with souvenirs, where sexy flight attendants made dates with handsome men in expensive suits. Speedboat pulled his parka around his shoulders. This place was like an armed camp. Ever since the cab had turned off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, they had been driving through various levels of anti-terrorist defenses. Armored cars and light tanks were parked along the service roads and runways. The major intersections were controlled by quadguns in sandbagged emplacements. Even the most minimal security area was surrounded by rusting razor wire. The cab driver told him that there were even patrol boats out on the water under the flight paths.
He thought he had never been so pleased to see a cab for hire in his life. The scene outside the Garden, when he finally managed to get out of there with his forged travel passes in his pocket, had been like a scene from a World War II horror show. There were bodies strewn all across Eighth Avenue, and the road surface was slick and black with drying blood. The air was filled with sirens and the gut-wrenching stench of EZA. Emergency medical units came and went, but there were not enough of them to clear the hundreds of injured. Detainees in prison gray had been drafted up from the Tombs to help load the dead onto sanitation trucks. The helicopters that still clattered overhead were the sleek modern craft used by the STG, not the old and battered Cobras and Hueys that belonged to the police department. When people inside the Garden had talked about a massacre going on, he had thought they were exaggerating. The first step outside, however, proved them to have been perfectly accurate.
He had been extremely reluctant to leave the comparative safety of the Garden. The STG was everywhere. Their squad captains were having the greatest difficulty stopping their troops from randomly savaging people who had done nothing but have the bad fortune to be out on the street. Scarcely a minute passed without the crack of an electric club and the resulting screams. Proverb's biblical hell had been made flesh. At first, Speedboat found safety in numbers, sheltering behind a crowd of the tech crew who had all left together, but as they dispersed to go their separate ways, he struck out on his own. Most of the STG seemed to be straggling back up Eighth Avenue from the twenties, so he headed due east to get away from them in the fastest possible time. His objective was a derelict tenement on East Third where he had cached the remainder of his money. The streets were busy for the small hours of a Monday morning. Every block had its straggling gangs of the stumbling, the glazed-eyed, and the all-too-frequently bloody. Wary knots of uncomfortable nightstick-tapping cops were gathered under the few streetlamps that were still working. Many of the stragglers were drunk, having tried and failed to blot out the horror with alcohol. The bars had been shut down when the trouble started, but the downtown shebeens and speakeasies were doing a roaring, if grim, trade. It was like the end of some nightmarish blood-soaked New Year's Eve.
Once inside the building on Third, Speedboat had worked in complete darkness. He turned off his jury-rigged electronics and emptied the hidden homemade safe. Back on the street, he was even more nervous now that he was carrying his traveling money. To his amazement, he had walked only a block when the cab came into sight with its 'For Hire' sign glowing like the morning sun. He had actually waved money to get it to stop.
The wind at La Guardia was chill. Speedboat realized that he had been standing on the curb for too long. Two of the airport's own paramilitary rentacops had started looking him over. If he did not move on into the system, they would begin to get interested. He walked toward the first-stage security check. It was the same basic system as the sensor tunnel that he had walked through to get into the Garden, but it was much older and therefore much less sophisticated. Nothing took an objection to him, and he found himself in the main body of the airport. It was a dirty, dilapidated place of cracked and smeared glass and degenerate plastic. The walls were plastered with cheap government posters, mainly red and black ones warning of the criminality of various kinds of behavior and the penalties that might be expected. There were quite a number that referred to forgery and undocumented travel. A distorting sound system played sacred feelgood music. One closed-off section of the arrival area was still scarred and blackened from last year's bomb attack.
At least half of those traveling were in some branch of the military. Again it was reminiscent of a World War II movie. Brown, tan, and olive-drab uniforms were stretched out on benches or sprawled in broken TV chairs. Some had even sacked out on the gum-crusted carpet with their heads on their kits. The traveling civilians were a sorry bunch who had the dull, hopeless look of people who were for from convinced that their plane would come at all. Of course, La Guardia was the poor folk's airport, from which the domestic cattle cars went to Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth. Forty miles away at Koch International there were cocktail bars and restaurants and people who took the suborbitals to Manila and Rio de Janeiro.
Before a person could even purchase a ticket, there was a three-phase document check. The first level was comparatively benign, a counter where airport clerks checked out the documents before the bearer moved on to population control and finally the deacons.
Speedboat joined that line. It took him almost an hour to reach the counter, and by that point he was more bored than worried. But when he faced the unsmiling clerk with sandy hair, bad teeth, and a receding chin, all his fears came back.
The clerk looked over the two flimsy plastic strips that gave him the right to travel and then looked at him. "Mr. Evan?"
The documents identified Speedboat as Leroy Evan, a U.S. citizen with a Canadian grandmother in Toronto. She was dying, and he had compassionate permission to visit her.
"Yes?" he said politely.
"Mr. Leroy Evan?"
"That's right."
The clerk dropped the plastic into the scan slot in his computer terminal.
"I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother."
"You're very kind."
The clerk took a red folder from under the counter and put Speedboat's plastic slips in it. He handed the folder to Speedboat. "Please follow the red line to the bench, Mr. Evan, and wait there."
He indicated a bench against the wall. Two sorry-looking men were already sitting there, clutching red folders. Speedboat's heart
sank. The papers were no good. He had been ripped off and now he was busted.
The unsmiling clerk processed two more people and then put up the 'Use Next Position' sign. He walked over to where Speedboat was sitting.
"Please come with me, Mr. Evan."
There was a line of private interview cubicles behind the counter. As Speedboat followed the clerk toward them, he was certain that he was terminally screwed. That bastard at the Garden – -if he ever got out of all this, he would kill the creep.
Inside the cubicle, there was a desk and a chair. The clerk sat in the chair. Speedboat had to stand. The clerk held up the flimsy plastic strips.
"You understand that one of these allows you to fly to Buffalo and the other to cross the border on the Trailways bus to Toronto?"
"Right."
The clerk shook his head. "Wrong."
"Wrong?"
"These are really terrible."
"What do you mean?"
"You actually paid for these?"
"I don't understand."
"These are very poor forgeries. You were robbed, my friend."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you do." He held out the documents to Speedboat. "Look at the ink, look at the embossing. The data fix only just holds up."
Speedboat sagged. There was no point in going on pretending. "So what happens now?"
"The one for the flight to Buffalo isn't too bad. Nobody looks too closely at domestic flights, and you could get away with using it. The one for Toronto is a joke. It'll never stand up to the kind of scrutiny that you'll get at the border. I'd sell it if I was you."
"Say what?"
"Sell it to another sucker. Try to cut your losses."
Speedboat could not believe what he was hearing. "Are you serious?"
"Sure I'm serious. You look like you know your way around. In tact, I'll do you a favor. I'll give you a hundred for it right now."
Speedboat was at a loss. "Why should you do that?"
The clerk smiled for the first time. "Because I can get five hundred for it inside of an hour."
Speedboat knew that corruption was endemic, but this was absurd. It was also reeked of a possible con job. "I don't know about this."