The Golden City fr-3

by John Twelve Hawks

  They came over the hills and saw the shops and street lights of the two adjacent communities of Palmdale and Lancaster. This was the farthest extension of the suburban sprawl-a daily commute from downtown Los Angeles to single family house with a hungry mortgage. But the moment they passed through this area, the Mojave Desert surrounded them. The only bright features in this region were illuminated billboards for Indian casinos and plastic surgeons. Change Your Looks! Change Your Life! shouted one of the signs, and a photograph of a surgeon named Dr. Patmore grinned like a smooth-skinned idol of perfection.

  Rosemond was a desert community for the pilots and military personnel who worked at Edwards Air Force Base. The population was so mobile, so impermanent, that they passed a lot where pre-built houses had been placed on trailers. They turned off the freeway, glided past a shopping center, and took a right turn near the local high school. Twisted Joshua trees lined the road and a mountain with three peaks was visible in the distance. The mountain was separate from everything else, so deliberate that it looked as if the earth had rejected something malignant and thrust it upward toward the sky.

  Boone turned off the paved road and stopped at a cattle gate with a large sign. Private Property! Trespassers will be prosecuted.

  “This road goes up the mountain to the mining site.”

  “How far away is it?”

  “Three or four miles.”

  “Switch off the headlights and go slowly.”

  Boone opened the gate, got back in the car, and drove up a dirt road that led to the mountain. Light came from the stars and moon, but the road was overgrown with weeds; it would be easy to get lost. After the first half mile, Maya rolled down a side window. She could hear cicadas and the crunch of their tires on patches of gravel.

  Boone stopped at the entrance to the abandoned gold mine halfway up the mountain. A cyclone fence topped with strands of razor wire surrounded the mining claim and no “trespassing signs” were everywhere. Someone else had arrived earlier; a red sedan was parked in front of gates held together with a lock and chain.

  They both got out of the car. Now that Boone had guided her to the gold mine, there was no longer any need for his existence. The shotgun was a noisy weapon. She should draw one of her knives and slit his throat.

  “He’s here,” Boone said. “This is one of the rental cars driven by my employees. Doyle took the car after he killed the men at the hotel.”

  Maya stepped away from the gate and looked up the slope. Outdoor lights marked a winding pathway to the top of the mountain.

  “Who’s guarding the children?”

  “I left two employees here. They’ll be suspicious if Doyle shows up alone.”

  Boone returned to the red sedan, opened the door and inspected the garbage Doyle had left on the passenger seat. Maya touched the outline of the stiletto hidden beneath her jacket, but she hesitated and left the knife in its sheath.

  Let fate decide, she thought, and pulled out the random number calculator hanging from her neck. An even number would cause his death; an odd number would postpone the decision. She pushed the button. 3224 flashed on the screen. The random number indicated death, but it caused a counter-reaction that was immediate and certain. This isn’t what I want, she thought. This isn’t who I am. She concealed the device before Boone emerged from the car. “I found some sterile bandages and gauze.”

  “Do you think one of your men wounded him?”

  “I doubt it. Doyle probably bought a knife and cut out the tracer beads inserted beneath his skin.”

  Maya reached into her waistband and pulled out Boone’s automatic. He stood calmly-as if he expected to be executed-but she reversed the weapon and handed it to him. “Don’t make any noise as we walk up the hill. We’ll become an easy target the moment we step into the light.”

  Priest had supplied her with a sawed-off shotgun that had a leather carrying strap. It reminded her of the lupara that men carried in Sicily. She slipped the strap over her shoulder, jumped onto the chain, and slipped through the gap between the two gates. Boone followed, and they headed up the hill to the mine. The air was cold and clear and smelled like sage. The only noise came from the mine’s power generator; it sounded like a puttering lawn mower that some confused citizen had left in the middle of the desert.

  The first building was a clapboard house with a sheet metal roof. Light glowed through the old newspapers taped to the windows. “What’s inside?” Maya asked.

  “This where the two guards sleep and cook their meals.” A wooden plank creaked when they stepped onto the porch. Maya tried to peer through the windows, but the newspapers completely covered the glass. She raised the shotgun and whispered to Boone. “Open the door and step away.”

  He turned the knob slowly, then pushed the door open. Maya charged inside. The house was one long room filled with a refrigerator, a propane stove and a kitchen table. A dead man lay on the floor next to an overturned chair. A blotch of dark blood was the middle of his white T-shirt and there was a second wound below his belt buckle.

  “You know him?”

  “He’s a former Austrian policeman named Voss.”

  “Where are the children?”

  “We put some cots in the building where they refined the ore.”

  They returned to the darkness and continued up the hill past the stamping machinery used to crush the rocks. After the ore was reduced to gravel, it was sent through filtering screens and metal troughs, then loaded into handcarts and pushed over to the refinery shed.

  Lights burned inside the shed, and Maya could hear cheerful music coming from a television. She pressed the shotgun stock against her shoulder, then yanked open the door. Folding cots were in the middle of the room. A television placed on a table played a video of dancing animals. Another dead man lay a few feet away from the television with his mouth and eyes open.

  “Only two people worked here?”

  Boone nodded. “Maybe Doyle took the kids out to the desert.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s dark. He couldn’t find them if they ran away. Let’s go to the mine.”

  They left the shed and followed the narrow railway track that once guided the handcarts. Near the top of the mountain, a framework of steel struts had been built over the mine shaft. An electric motor powered a winch that raised and lowered a steel cage. When the mine was active, the handcarts were filled underground, rolled into the cage, and raised to the surface.

  “This works like a freight elevator?”

  “That’s right,” Boone said. “If he’s got the children down in the mine shaft, they can’t run away and we can’t save them.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Doyle will hear the winch moving when we raise the cage up to the surface. He’ll kill everyone before we reach them.”

  Maya left the area near the mine shaft and began to search the site. “Did you ever read Sparrow’s book, The Way of the Sword?”

  Boone nodded.

  “There’s a chapter about evaluating your opponent. The weakest opponent is the one who expects a victory.”

  “And you think Martin Doyle is in that category?”

  Maya picked up an old towel covered with grease. “He’s waiting to hear the elevator, but that’s not going to happen.”

  She ripped the towel in half, slipped the shotgun strap around her neck, and climbed onto the elevator struts. Wrapping the towel around the cable, she swung out into the middle of the shaft.

  “I’m going to follow you,” Boone said.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “This is my responsibility.”

  Slide down a few yards. Stop. Slide down a little farther. Stop. A year ago, she had met her father in Prague and stabbed a man in an alleyway. Since then, her life had been shaped by what was hidden from view. Maya felt as if she were descending into a secret world. Somewhere beneath the surface, the innocent were about to be destroyed.

  The cable swung to one side, and she almost lost her g
rip. Looking upward, she saw that Boone was about thirty feet above her, swaying back and forth as he followed her down. Maya tried to move a little faster, pressing her feet against the cable to control her descent.

  Finally, she reached the top of the elevator cage and stopped, waiting for Doyle’s attack. When nothing happened, she climbed down into the mine’s main tunnel. Light came from dust-covered bulbs attached to an orange power cable. The tunnel went off in two directions, but she could hear voices coming from the left. Children were singing a frightened, wavering chorus.

  “If you’re happy and you know it,

  Clap your hands…”

  With the shotgun close to her chest, she followed the tunnel into the heart of the mountain. Small hands clapping. Voices singing. Then she heard a man’s voice echoing off the stone walls. “Louder, everyone! Louder!”

  As she came around the bend of the tunnel, she saw the captive children. A man stood in front of them like a choir director who wasn’t satisfied with their performance. The children watched him-obedient, terrified-as the big man swung his hand to beat out the time.

  “If you’re happy and you know it

  And you’re not afraid to show it-”

  “You’re not clapping,” Maya said. Drawing a handgun, Doyle spun around to face her, and she fired the shotgun. The pellets knocked him backward and he collapsed on the floor of the mine. His body convulsed, and then relaxed. The malevolent power that had propelled him through the world melted away, leaving nothing but a dead body.

  Maya was frozen in that moment of destruction until the children started crying. Their tears and frightened faces changed everything. She slung the shotgun on her back so they couldn’t see it, then stepped forward and spoke with a soothing voice.

  “Don’t worry. No one’s going to hurt you.”

  She took a little girl’s hand and guided her and others back down the tunnel. “You’re safe. The bad man is gone,” Maya said. “We’re going to take you back to your families.”

  Boone was waiting for them at the base of the mine shaft. The elevator gate made a shrieking metallic sound as he forced it open. The children scurried into the cage like baby chicks trying to hide from a hawk, but instead of following them inside, Boone shut the gate and turned to Maya. He looked as if they had just lost the battle.

  “There was another child.”

  “What?”

  “Another child’s body is at the end of the terminal. She wasn’t on the list.”

  Maya felt sick to her stomach. They had entered the mountain and destroyed this demon-and failed. Without thinking, she touched her belly. All her caution disappeared as she followed Boone down the tunnel to a T-intersection. She was prepared for a dead body, but found only gravel and dust. Suddenly, Boone pulled the automatic from his waistband and faced her. There was no way she could defend herself.

  Boone stared at her for what felt like a long time. She could see his sadness and pain.

  “Forgive me.”

  Maya nodded. Yes. I forgive you.

  Boone raised the gun with one quick motion and shot himself in the head.

  41

  Priest used Boone’s key card to enter the room at the Culver Hotel. Immediately, he saw two dead men, one on the carpet and the other on a couch. The Harlequin slipped a plastic shopping bag over his hand, turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom. The third mercenary was lying beside the bed with a surprised look on his face.

  As he stood beside the dead man, Priest remembered a line of scripture from the Collected Letters of Isaac Jones. “The foolish man calls forth a demon to harvest his fields and carry his water. But the demon will destroy his master.”

  “Hell, yes,” Priest muttered. It looked as if Boone’s particular demon was killing everyone around him. Trying not to step in the blood, he checked the bathroom and the closet, then called Maya on her mobile phone.

  “We just found three dead rats.”

  “Get out of there and help our friend find his brother,” Maya said. “I’ll call you when I get more information.”

  Priest left the building and returned to the car. When they had searched Boone’s hotel room, Maya found a manila envelope filled with black-and-white photographs of the kidnapped children. Gabriel was sitting in the front seat, examining each photograph.

  “Boone was telling the truth. There were three bodies in the room. Now what do we do?”

  “This could be the moment that we challenge the Brethren. If the children are still alive, then it substantiates our own story.”

  “Will you make your speech?”

  “Let’s wait to hear from Maya. If the news is good, we’ll activate the Revelation Worm. I’ve got a laptop and a web camera in my pack. We need to go on the Internet at a location where we won’t be disturbed.”

  “We can probably use my martial arts studio. It’s still being run by my students.”

  He turned south and drove through his old neighborhood. All the familiar sights seemed to float past the windshield. An elementary school surrounded by a chain-link fence. A doughnut shop with barred windows. A line of palm trees defaced with graffiti that marked off the borders of different street gangs.

  There were skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles, but the urban style was distilled into cheaply made two-story buildings with stucco façades. These days Priest felt no connection to a city or a language or a name on a passport. So many things in the world were just glitter tossed on a dance floor.

  His old martial arts school was in a mini-mall on Florence Avenue. The liquor store was still there, but the video outlet had been replaced with a shop that sold beauty supplies. His two best students, Marco Martinez and Danny Wu, hadn’t changed the words painted on the front window, but they had placed a sign on the dirt strip near the sidewalk. The sign showed four people-black, white, Latino and Asian-flying through the air with a variety of capoeira moves. Think. Feel. Be Real, the sign said. Defend Yourself!

  “Do we have to break in?” Gabriel asked.

  “There’s a key for emergencies. It might still be there.”

  A clay pot filled with cactus was near the entrance to the school. Priest dug his fingers into the dirt and found a fake rock with a secret compartment. He took out the key, opened the door, and led Gabriel into the reception area.

  The glass case with his karate and capoeira trophies was still there, but someone had added a new display. Now his framed photograph was hanging from the wall with a sign that said Hollis Wilson. Our Teacher. Our Master. Our Guide. Beneath the photograph was a shelf where people had left votive candles, gold medals won at recent competitions and folded pieces of paper. Priest unwrapped one of these messages and read: The warrior uses the power of the brain to be deliberate and the power of the heart to be instinctive. He had told them that. A lifetime ago.

  “This is new.”

  Gabriel laughed. “You always had a big ego. But I didn’t think you’d put up an altar to yourself.”

  “That’s what it is. An altar. It’s like I’m dead.”

  “Now you have the opportunity to see your legacy. It’s clear that you changed some lives.”

  They walked past the two dressing areas and entered a long windowless room with a mirror on one wall and a little office at one end. Someone had installed a bookshelf and had cleaned up the messy desk. While Priest set up the web camera and attached the computer to an Internet cable, Gabriel called Simon Lumbroso.

  “I think we’re going to offer the world a Revelation. Tell all the groups to get ready.”

  Gabriel sat down at the desk and switched on the web camera. The Traveler’s face appeared on the monitor, but it was half-concealed by shadows. Priest turned on all the lights in the office and adjusted a desk lamp. When everything was ready, Gabriel went on-line and used the cell phone to contact the Nighthawk in London.

  “This is your friend in America. It might be time for the message. I’m on your site right now. Can you see my face? What about the sound?” Gab
riel lowered the mobile phone and turned to Priest. “We need the microphone in the backpack. He says it’s difficult to hear me.”

  “No problem.” Priest plugged in an audio cord and attached a microphone to Gabriel’s shirt.

  Gabriel switched off the phone and began adjusting the lamp. “Right now, all we can do is wait. Let’s see what happens out in the desert.”

  Priest left the office, found the school’s refrigerator, and took out two bottles of water. He gave a bottle to Gabriel, then paced back and forth in the work-out room and watched himself in the wall mirror. What would happen when Tommy or Marco opened the school the next morning? Would they notice that someone had been there? He had spent years of his life in this room, teaching people, trying to show them a better way. Now Hollis Wilson had turned into a house god, a minor spirit protecting a new generation of students.

  He heard the cell phone ringing and hurried back to the office. Gabriel was smiling as he talked to Maya. “That’s wonderful! Okay. I understand. Be careful and come back to the city as soon as you can. I’m sending out the message in five minutes.”

  Gabriel switched off the phone and began typing on the keyboard. “The children are alive. Maya’s calling the local sheriff. She’s going to wait on a side road until the police show up at the mine.”

  “What about Doyle?”

  “He’s dead, and it sounds like Boone killed himself.”

  “The Tabula won’t be happy.”

  “Let’s give them something else to worry about.”

  Words flashed on the screen. Sound good. Image good. Ready for transmission. Nighthawk. Priest felt alert and ready. For years, the Panopticon had grown larger and more pervasive. Now some of those walls were going to collapse.

  Gabriel sat up straight in the office chair. “Give me ten seconds.”

  Priest raised his hand and counted off the final seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.

  And then the Traveler began to speak.