John D. Ifi&cDonald colorless eyes and lips, mouse hair, and huge shoulders. I made certain I got all the names right. Alvor had to have been in the van with Persival. Nicky was missing, and I overheard a comment that indicated he was down at the gate as a lookout.
I was sitting on the narrow mattress, leaning back against a cushion, with Nena and Stella on ei- ther side of me. I was the center of all attention. When I remarked that it had certainly seemed like a very strange Christmas day, they reacted as if I had said something profound and witty. We had Christmas toasts in a sharp California red. I was being touched by the young women beside me, not in any sensuous way, but with little pats of affection, of lacing. And when the men would squat in front of me to talk directly to me, they would slap me on the side of the leg, give my ankle a squeeze. Wherever I looked there was someone maintaining direct eye contact with me, projecting warm am proval. I tucked McGee's suspicions into the back of my mind. Brother Tom McGraw was a lonely man, of lonely habits. So I responded to warmth. And to Battery.
'A knew at once you are a highly intelligent and sensitive man, Mr. McGraw," Persival said. 'I could sense that about you. But you seem to feel the need to conceal the real you from the outside world. We are not like that here. We're together."
"In school I never got past "
"Public education in this country means less than
The Green Ripper nothing," Sammy said. "From the earliest grades, the children are taught to conform, to be good con- sumers, to have no interest in their government or the structure of their society. The rebels drop out. The rich get classified as exceptional students and go on to the schools which teach them how to run the world, their world. Never apologize for dropping out, Brother."
The stew was beef this time. I said it was great. Haris, the Englishman, had cooked it. "Whatever there is, we share. Always," he said.
"You're a worker," Nena told me. "You have a skill. You use your skill to feed the people. Even though you are exploited, it's still something to be proud of."
Mr. Persival said, with poetry and force, 'iWe can guess that there have been Christmas nights like this in mountain country all over the world, little groups of determined people, meeting together, all of them willing to give their lives for their beliefs. In the Cuban mountains. In the mountains of Honduras. Mexico, Yugoslavia, Chile, Peru, Rhodesia. Together, sharing, living the great dream."
'~Vhat's the dream?" I asked.
"The same as yours, of course," said Persival. "Freedom for all people of all colors. An end to imperialist exploitation. To each according to his needs. You are the kind of man who, once committed, would give his life for what he believes."
"I've been known as stubborn. I don't give up easy. But what you were saying there, sir, isn't that kind of Commie?"
He shook his head sadly. "Communist, Socialist, humanist, Christian Democrat, Liberation Army. The tags mean less than nothing, Brother Thomas. We do God's work. We are the militant arm of the Church of the Apocryphal We are the ones who have been tested. We work for mankind against the exploiters, deceivers, the criminal warmongers. We will win if we have to tear down the entire structure of society. Your daughter believed in the cause or she wouldn't have joined us."
"She wasn't much for destroying things."
"Most of the people in the Church are gentle people. We are the elite. We're pleased with you, Brother Thomas. We may have a mission for you."
It was at that point I began to feel very strange. At first I thought it was because the room was airless, even with the door standing wide open. Colors got brighter. People's faces began to bulge and shrink, bulge and shrink. My tongue thickened. They had popped me with something. It turned the world into fun-house mirrors. And I knew it could give me a better chance of getting my head blown apart. I made my tongue sound thicker than it was. I began to do as much inconspicuous hyperventilation as I could manage. More oxygen never hurt anything. I crawled across to the water jug, sat and upended it and drank heavily, and crawled back. I
The Green Ripper tipped over my wine by accident and held my glass out for more.
By then we were into recitations of training, with the freedom fighters standing up and declaiming their background.
Nena stood very straight and said in a paradeground voice, "Basic training at Kochovskaya. Guerrilla training at Simferopol. Selected by World Federation of Democratic Youth in Budapest. Transport arranged by World Federal Trade Unions in Prague."
When she sat down everyone applauded. Ahman stood up and said, "Basic and guerrilla training PLO Camp Three in Jordan and Camp Nine in Lebanon. Graduate, University of Maryland." Applause.
Barry had been trained in Cuba by the DGI and had been a weapons instructor at Baninah near Benghazi in Libya. Chuck had trained at a camp near Al-Ghaidha in South Yemen, along with people from the IRA. Sammy had trained in the U.S. Marine Corps and later in the Cuban training center near Bagdad, where the famous Carlos was an adviser. Persival interrupted to give Carlos's correct name, Ilyich Rameirez Sanchez. Stella had been in the Weather Underground and had trained in their mountain camp in Oregon, and later in Bulgaria.
"How," I said heavily, "how these great people get to go so many crazy places inna worl' anyhow?"
"We selected them, Brother Thomas. We tested them, and we selected them, and we sent them away to be trained and come back to us. We sent them as delegates, most of them, to the World Peace Council meetings in Helsinki, or the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Budapest. You see only a few here. There are scores of them, Brother Thomas. Travel is easily arranged for them. The Church provides the funds, of course. They are pledged to make this a better world. They are saviors of mankind."
I mumbled something unintelligible and slowly toppled over to my left to land with my head in Stella's lap, eyes closed, breathing slowly and heavily. I hoped the show would continue. I wanted to hear more. But my collapse broke it up. They picked up all their gear and the dishes and left, after covering me up and turning out the light. I heard the locking of my door. My head was still thick with whatever it was they had given me. I did some fast pushups in the darkness, and a series of knee bends. My knees creaked and breath came fast. But it helped a little. I slept heavily.
I awakened once before daylight and did not know where I was. It alarmed me. Then I remembered. And I remembered the way Gretel and I had talked about what to do on our first Christmas together. We had decided to take the Flush down to the lower end of Biscayne Bay and find a protected anchorage with maximum privacy and swim, and
The Green Ripper eat, and drink, and exchange Christmas greetings all day long.
No breakfast arrived. I pounded on the door and did some yelling. At about ten o'clock they unlocked the door and shoved Nicky in, with such force that he ran across the room and smacked the cement wall with his palms. He had a purple cheek, with the right eye swollen almost shut.
He sat in the chair and slumped over, staring at the floor.
"What's going on?" I asked him.
"Damn bastards are all uptight. Do it by the book. No variations permitted. According to them, I've tucked up twice in a row, which is twice too many times, but they won't even listen. One lousy weapon. One lousy Czech machine pistol, and I forgot to clean it after it was in the creek. For Chrissake, they've got a whole damn building full of weapons, grenades, plastique, nitro, napalm, and God only knows what else. One rotten pistol." He peered up at me with his good eye. "You tucked up too, eh? Or you wouldn't be locked in."
"I did? I don't know how. I got a little drunk."
"Percival doesn't think you're who you say you are, so they were going to give you some love-buzzing and open you up some, and then try some kind of Pentothal stuff he uses. You must have slipped up. Who the hell are you anyway?"
'`Thomas McGraw, dammit! Looking for my girl, dammit! Are you crazy or something? I like an your fAends. I don't know why they locked me up again. It don't make sense."
"You must have slip
ped up, or you wouldn't be here. That's all I know. Except I know I slipped up once too often. The way I am, when there's no action, I relax. I can't stay wound up all the time. These characters are gung-ho every minute. Like a bunch of cheerleaders. You like them, huh? Because they spent the evening liking you. That's the way it works. Barry, Sammy, and Ahman have had some action. Not much. Chicken-shit operations. Car bombs and burn-downs. In and out, like thieves. I had time in Nam, and then Zambia. We were in the hills near Refunsa. The way it worked, the Zambians would cross into Rhodesia and hit and run, and then suck the Rhodesian army units into Zambia, and we'd ambush them. Very tough people. Very tough country. I just can't stand waiting around so long with no action. I get sloppy. Persival says we don't move until maybe summer. Coordinated You never get to know much. You hear there are fifteen groups and then you hear forty. Who knows? When it comes time, we'll get the word from Sister Elena Marie."
4'Who?"
'4I forgot you don't know. The boss lady. They send out cassettes. I don't believe in a lot of this stuff, but I believe in her. I believe in her all the way." His voice and face were solemn.
There were questions I wanted to ask, but they
The Green Ripper were not questions Tom McGraw would have asked.
"Do you think this Sister Elena Marie would know where my little girl is?"
"I don't know. I don't even know if they've got any central records. I don't know where she is, even, where she makes the tapes. They say there were like three hundred of them here at one time, and this was a small retreat compared to the others. They moved them out to where they could help raise the money. Everybody has to do that. Your daughter had to do it too. Teams go up and down the streets, hitting every house. Sometimes you say it's for children, and sometimes for foreign missions. You sell stuff. Handicraft stuff. Also candy and artificial flowers and maybe fresh-baked bread. Once you catch on, it isn't hard. Four on our team, we'd raise two hundred, three hundred a day, every day. Ride around in the black vans with the crosses. Twenty cents' worth of junk candy for two dollars, to help the starving Christian children in Lebanon. You can claim one quarter of what your team raised when you have to stand up in the meeting and shout out what you turned in. They switch the teams around a lot. I'm so big people were always glad I was on their team. It's harder to say no to big people."
The door opened again. Four of them were there. Ahman and Sammy were in their coveralls, carrying the automatic weapons, left hands clamped on the forestock, right hands around the trigger assembly, long curved clips in place. Persival looked unlikely in an orange-yellow leisure suit and white turtleneck. Stone-faced, no-color, big-shouldered Author wore a wrinkled dark business suit, a white shirt with a frayed collar, and a narrow striped tie.
"Come along," Persival ordered. The four of them walked a dozen feet behind us. Persival told us where to go. We went to the place where the flats sloped down to the splintered trees, near the spot where I had found the cartridge case.
"Stop there," he said. "Move to your right two steps, McGraw. Now both of you turn slowly around and face me."
My heart gave an extra thump. Ahman and Sammy were aiming the weapons at us. Sammy was holding on Mck, and Ahman on me. Ahman's swarthy face and shiny black eyes revealed nothing. So maybe, when Persival had told somebody to check me out, they had checked more carefully than I had assumed they would, and found that Thomas McGraw had been dead for some time, and never had a daughter.
"What the hell is the matter with you people now?" I asked. I did not have to fake a definite quaver in my voice.
"You know, each of you, why you are dying today."
"Chicken shit," Nicky said in a husky voice.
'where can be no carelessness. None. Maximum
The Green Ripper precautions will be taken to prevent any premature disclosure. There will be no second chance for anyone whose actions could compromise us all. All orders will be obeyed, without question, without argument."
"Chicken shit," Nicky said again.
"Come here, Mr. McGraw," Persival said. "Over here. Stop there. Fine. Now turn and face the condemned." I was three feet from Persival, but I noted as I turned that Ahman's gun muzzle followed me like an empty steel eye socket.
Persival's voice deepened. "Dear God of wrath and mercy, take unto thy bosom this soldier of our faith and grant him eternal peace. We send him to thee now so that he will not further endanger the holy mission with which thou hast entrusted us, thy faithful soldiers in the army of justice. Amen.
His hand appeared in front of me, holding a slender automatic pistol with a long barrel. "Take it and shoot him in the head, please," Persival said. Same tone of voice as he would have said, "Have some more stew, please."
And the scenario was suddenly clear. I would shoot Mcky in the head with a blank, and my obedience would remove Persival's lingering suspicion of me, and Nicky would be frightened into being more careful next time. Two birds with one fake stone.
"It's ready to go," he said. "Just aim and fire."
There was no great need to aim. Nicky was per haps fifteen feet from me. If you aim a handgun with the same motion you use to point your finger at someone, if the barrel becomes your finger, you can hit a six-inch circle on the other side of the room ninety-nine out of a hundred times.
So I pointed and fired. It made an unimportant snapping sound. A dark spot appeared beside Nicks nose, on his good cheek. It snapped his head back a little. He made a coughing sound and sagged down onto one knee, then rolled over backward and rolled down the slope. I moved forward to keep him in sight. He came to rest in dead branches, against a splintered trunk, his back to us. One leg jumped and quivered and vibrated for a few seconds and then subsided. He seemed to become visibly smaller.
The life had gone out of him, now and forever. Persival reached around and tugged the weapon out of my hand and moved back away from me. '`Turn around slowly," he said. This was not the scenario I had envisioned. I had imagined all of them crowding around me, Nicky included, whacking me on the back, welcoming me to the team.
Instead, Persival was chucking a magazine into the pistol. The slide had remained back after I had fired. So there had been just the one shell in the chamber. This man took no chances. They held weapons on me. Ahman had set his weapon aside and was collapsing an SX-70 Polaroid while Sammy examined the print as it developed. I re
The Green Ripper called hearing that tantalizingly familiar sound of the SX-70 a fraction of a second after I had fired and killed Nicky.
They were all curious about me, all waiting for my reaction. I could read a certain righteous satis- faction on their faces. I was fighting nausea and hoping I hadn't turned so gray-green they would suspect how close I was. Nausea, and a tendency of the world around me to fade in and out. Killing is such an ancient taboo. Only freaks ever adjust to killing people they have known and talked to, except when it is to save their own lives. Discipline enables uniformed people to kill unseen strangers. Children can imitate something seen on television, but the aftershock can be deadly. I had killed before, and it has never ceased being a wrenching psychic trauma. As I sought for some reaction which would make me reasonably acceptable to these people, suddenly I lost control of my acquired identity.
I stared at Persival. He was trickery. He was death. He was insane devotion to an incomprehen- sible cause. He was a shooter of little silver pellets into the necks of the lovely and innocent.
"You dirty, murderous, crazy son of a bitch!" I said in a low and shaky voice.
He raised the reloaded weapon and aimed carefully from eight feet away at a spot on my forehead. I knew where the slug would strike. The spot felt round and icy.
I was convinced I was about to join Nicky.He knew he was going to die, and I could find no better last words than his.
"Chicken shit," I said.
"Any questions, McGraw?"
"There's nothing I want to know that you can answer." I was watching the trigger finger. As soon as I saw pre
ssure whiten it, I was going to dive for his ankles and try to come up with the weapon before Sammy and Ahman could blow me away.
"Any last statement, fisherman?"
"I will state that if you don't make the first shot good, I'll get my hands on you before you can fire that thing again."
He looked at me for a long time, and then slowly lifted the barrel of the weapon until it pointed at the sky.
Y think my first hunch was correct, Brother Thomas. I think we can train you and find a use for you. I think you can become very valuable."
I could feel the tension go out of all of us. Deep exhalations..
He put the weapon away. He turned to Sammy and reached for the picture. After Persival had e~c- amined it, he motioned me closer and handed it to me. I was on the right, in fuzzy focus, enough of the left side of my face showmg to make me recognizable. The barrel of the pistol was half raised to the perpendicular, the ineradicable habit pattern of people used to firing pistols and revolvers. Nick was
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